Campaign against Politics of Terror and Targeting of Muslim Youth

A public meeting on POLITICS OF TERROR: TARGETING THE MUSLIM YOUTH was scheduled for 3 p.m. today, July 9, at the Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi . 

 

Below is a statement issued by the organizers of the meeting:

 

Steps to prevent misuse of Criminal Justice System

Over the last 11 years, hundreds of Muslims arrested on charges of terrorism across India have been declared by courts to be innocent of the allegations. In many cases, judges have openly castigated the police for framing the accused and fabricating evidence against them. 

 

In Maharashtra and Gujarat, several policemen face trials for killing innocent Muslim men and falsely claiming that they were terrorists.

 

VICIOUS CYCLE

Once an accused is arrested on charges of terrorism, he/she is typically booked under laws such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and Section 124(a) of the Indian Penal Code, which makes it an offense to spread disaffection. Thereafter, nearly every case takes the following route. The accused is --
• Never allowed bail even if the trial doesn't start for years
• Implicated in many other cases, including past and even future cases
• Implicated in cases across various states
• Acquitted of the charges that are never proved
• Continues to be in jail in other cases
• Is finally acquitted in all cases only after many years

 

Despite the grave miscarriage of justice evident from the above, the criminal jurisprudence process initiates no criminal suit against the guilty policemen even in cases where the judges clearly rule that the police framed the accused. Moreover, no compensation is ever offered to the accused compounding their utter humiliation on top of the suffering and the misery of years.

 

BRINGING JUSTICE

It is demanded that the Government of India and Parliament bring the following changes in the criminal jurisprudence pertaining to cases of terrorism in order to ensure that Muslims are not illegally and criminally trapped in false cases on fabricated evidence:

 

1. Fast-Track Courts be set up to exclusively hear terrorism/sedition cases of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and Section 124(a) of the Indian Penal Code
 

2. Daily hearings must be held in every case
 

3. Prosecution must file charge-sheets within 60 days against the present 180 days
 

4. The accused will have automatic bail if the trial is not concluded and judgement delivered within one year from the date of arrest
 

5. A High Court judge would evaluate intelligence reports on the basis of which arrests are made and/or charge-sheets filed must be presented, before the start of the trial. All such rulings would be classified for a period of ten years.
 

6. An accused acquitted in one case would have the right to automatic bail in any and every other case of terrorism/sedition
 

7. Once an accused has earned bail in one case, he/she would be allowed bail in other cases if he/she is able to post sureties as deemed by the court
 

8. Irrespective of the number of cases against an accused, he/she cannot be denied bail for more than one year
 

9. If an accused is implicated in more than two cases, an automatic review of the charges would be be brought before a judicial officer of no lower than a District Judge's rank who must rule on their prima facie genuineness within six weeks
 

10. An acquittal would automatically trigger the process for determining the quantum of compensation that Government of India would pay the former accused
 

11. An acquittal would automatically trigger the process of inquiry by a judicial officer of a rank no lower than a District Judge leading to prosecution of the police officials who had been instrumental in the arrests and investigations
 

12. Promotions, awards and rewards for policemen for any work would remain suspended from implementation until inquiry against them is over
 

13. The telephone call records of the policemen involved in making arrests of terror accused as well as in encounter killings would be made case property
 

14. Police raids to arrest the terror accused, if based on previously received intelligence inputs, would mandatorily be video recorded
 

15. All police officers involved in the arrest of the terror accused would have to mandatorily undergo lie detector tests before the trial of the accused begins

 

JUDICIAL INQUIRY

It is demanded the the Government of India file a petition before the Supreme Court of India following a detailed investigation of the terrorist cases brought against Muslims since 2001. Such a petition would argue before the honourable Supreme Court that the Indian police has deliberately, maliciously and criminally targeted the Indian Muslim community implicating its youths in false cases of terrorism by way of an organised campaign.

Dear Friends,

 

There is rising concern across the country about the large-scale arrests and harassment of Muslim youth by the security forces of the state. Young men are being picked up without explanation, taken into police custody, beaten and tortured and eventually thrown into jail awaiting trial for years on end. Several have died in custody, the latest case being of Qateel Siddiqui who died in mysterious circumstances in the Yerwada Jail, Pune. He was arrested last November and killed in a high security prison for a case in which his complicity had still not been established.

 

There has been silence about the disappearance of Fasih Mahmood, the engineer picked up in Saudi Arabia. Except for denying any knowledge of his whereabouts, there has been no response from the UPA government about efforts to trace an Indian citizen whose family is now running from pillar to post in search of Justice.

 

Urdu journalist Syed Kazmi remains in jail on charges of terrorism, with the police still to file a chargesheet against him.

 

These are just a few cases of hundreds, with official reports now admitting that a majority of prisoners in Indian jails are Muslims. Citizens concerned about the increasing intolerance and authoritarianism of the Indian state where the minorities no longer feel safe in their own homes have decided to come together to organize a public meeting to raise a voice against injustice and what amounts to state terror.

 

A resolution calling upon the state for remedial action at different levels will also be adopted at the meeting that will be addressed by Sri Mulayam Singh Yadav, Sri AB Bardhan,Sri HD Deve Gowda,Sri Sharad Yadav, Sri Prakash Karat, Sri D.Raja, Sri Gurudas Das Gupta, Sri Mani Shankar Iyer, Sri Hanumant Rao, Sri Ram Vilas Paswan and senior representatives of civil society.

 

We call upon you to join the program and support the initiative

With Thanks and Regards,

Mohammed Adeeb, MP, Rajya Sabha.
Seema Mustafa, Senior Journalist.
Prof.Anuradha Chenoy,JNU.
Ajeet Sahi, Journalist.
Iqbal Ahmad, Journalist
Ameeque Jamei, Activist

Uncertainty in politics

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India’s major national parties are in the throes of crisis. Their internal problems may have their impact on developments at the national and state levels in the months ahead.

The Congress, which heads the ruling United Progressive Alliance government, has lost its second most important Cabinet minister, Pranab Mukherjee, having picked him as its candidate in the presidential election to be held this month.

An astute politician, Mukherjee was perhaps the one most qualified to be the prime minister. Congress President Sonia Gandhi having chosen Manmohan Singh, a non-politician, for the post, it fell to him to handle sensitive negotiations. Apart from being finance minister, he was chairman of most of the Cabinet committees.

The prime minister’s decision to keep the finance portfolio with himself and to distribute the chairmanship of Cabinet committees among several senior ministers testifies to the paucity of talent in the party’s higher echelons.

Mukherjee has the support of several parties outside the UPA, including the Janata Dal (United) and the Shiv Sena, which are constituents of the rival National Democratic Alliance. The Congress party’s largest partner, the Trinamool Congress, has set its face against his candidature, but he is set to win, thanks to the wide measure of support from outside the UPA.

So far there is nothing to indicate that the switch of loyalties by some partners of UPA and NDA in the presidential election signals the beginning of a realignment of forces at the national level.

Most Congressmen regard Sonia Gandhi’s son, Rahul Gandhi, who is general secretary of the party, as a future prime minister. His attempts to rejuvenate the party in Uttar Pradesh, the original home of the Nehru Gandhi dynasty, have not been a success. However, no one in the party sees it as a reason to delay his induction as a minister and eventual elevation as prime minister.

While Sonia Gandhi can easily bring about changes at the national level, she finds the going tough at the state level. In Andhra Pradesh, the largest state where the Congress still has primacy, the revolt by family members and followers of former Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy has administered the party a rude shock.

The party’s top leaders in Maharashtra are under the shadow of scams. In Kerala, the caste and religious forces on which the party has relied for sustenance have become an acute source of embarrassment.        

The Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads the NDA, too, is facing serious troubles. Since its long-time prime minister-in-waiting Lal Kishen Advani is too old to be in the reckoning, a frantic search is on for a new candidate.

The Hindu rightwing Rashtreeya Swayamsevak Sangh, the power behind the party, wants Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to be projected as the presidential candidate. Nitin Gadkari, whom the RSS pitch forked into the party chairmanship some time ago, has started preparing the ground to bring Modi to the national stage. Young parliamentarians like Sushama Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, who lead the party in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha respectively, resent the move.

The RSS can smother all opposition to Modi from within the BJP but it will have a hard time selling his candidature to the NDA constituents as he bears the odium of having presided over the 2002 pogromme against Muslims in Gujarat. The Janata Dal (U) has made it known its opposition to Modi in no uncertain terms.

Like the Congress, the BJP, too, faces internal problems in its strongholds. In Karnataka, BS Yeddyurappa, who was forced out of chief ministership in the wake of grave corruption charges, is seeking the ouster of his successor, DV Sadananda Gowda. Former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vajayaraje Scindia, who is hoping to stage a comeback riding the anti-incumbency wave against the Congress government, is encountering opposition from a dissident faction.

The Left parties, which once played a role far in excess of their natural strength in times of political uncertainty, are no longer significant actors on the national stage. The largest of them, the Communist Party of India-Marxist, is in deep trouble in its traditional strongholds. The Trinamool Congress, which put an end to its unbroken stewardship of the West Bengal government for 33 years, is making it difficult for the party to rebuild its shattered base. In Kerala, several CPI-M leaders are in custody in connection with murder cases being investigated by the state police and the Central Bureau of Investigation.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 3, 2012.

The Emergency: Where were you?

“Where were you when America was attacked?” asks an American website. 

It is a site which "exists to gather the thoughts and emotions of people to the events on and after September 11, 2001," the day terrorists brought down the World Trade Center.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea for Indians to record their experience of the Emergency?

I was in Srinagar, staying at the Circuit House, at that time. On arrival there as chief of the UNI bureau, the Jammu and Kashmir government had allotted me a government bungalow, to which I was entitled as an accredited correspondent. One night when I reached home one of two men who were hiding in the dark pounced upon me. After the attack which resulted in a week’s hospitalization, I gave up the bungalow and moved into a room in the Circuit House.

Correspondents of the national media usually began their working day with a visit to the India Coffee House in the heart of the city, where they would hang out for an hour or two. Since there was nothing much to do before the 10 a.m. Coffee House rendezvous – there were no newspapers to read as there was no English newspaper in the state and the Delhi newspapers did not arrive until noon – I generally got out of bed only after listening to AIR’s 8 a.m. bulletin, which was my primary source of information on what had happened around the world after I left my office the previous night.

On the morning of June 26, 1975, as usual, lying in the bed, I switched on the transistor to listen to the news. The bulletin began without the customary opening words, “This is All India Radio. Here is the news.” Also, the news reader did not give her name. “A state of Emergency has been declared,” she said.

I suddenly realized the voice was Indira Gandhi’s, not that of any AIR news reader. I was listening not to a news bulletin but to the Prime Minister’s broadcast to the nation announcing the proclamation of the Emergency.

UNI’s Srinagar bureau, like most other state bureaus, remains closed from 3 a.m. to 9 a.m. As soon as the Prime Minister’s broadcast was over I got ready and left for the office to be there when the teleprinter line opens and the news flow begins.

The day’s transmission began with repeat of a series of flashes about the declaration of the Emergency, clamping of press censorship, arrests etc, which the Delhi office had sent out after 3 a.m.

Soon several friends dropped in to get the latest information. Among them was Shamim Ahmed Shamim, the young editor of Aina and Srinagar MP. Around 10.30, Blitz editor R K Karanjia came in. He and his wife were holidaying in Gulmarg. On learning of the Emergency he decided to cut short the holiday and return to Bombay. He stayed with us until it was time to leave for the airport to catch the Delhi flight.

With Karanjia and Shamim around, there was animated discussion on the dramatic developments.

While Central government officers were designated as Censors all over the country, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, whom Indira Gandhi had installed as Chief Minister the previous February after a gap of 22 years, persuaded her to let the state government handle press censorship in Jammu and Kashmir.

Mrs. Gandhi offered the press the option of self-censorship on the basis of the guidelines the government issued but the Indian and Eastern Newspapers Society, the organization of newspaper owners, chose to submit to official censorship

Since UNI’s Srinagar bureau did not release any material to newspapers directly I decided not to submit any report to the state censors for clearance. I informed UNI’s Delhi Desk, which edits and releases material filed by the Srinagar bureau, accordingly. I suggested that if they had doubts about any report and wanted it to be cleared by the authorities they should send it to the censors in New Delhi.

On the first Friday after the Emergency proclamation, I received a phone call from a Deputy Director of Information, who was also a censor. He told me the speech Awami Action Committee Chairman Mirwaiz Mohammed Farouq was to deliver that day had been censored.

Maulvi Farouq, who was Sheikh Abdullah’s chief political opponent in the Valley, made all important pronouncements while addressing the Friday congregation at the Juma Masjid.

I told the officer that I did not consider his directive a valid order from the censor. Maulvi Farouq was yet to speak. His order had no legal validity as it was issued without any knowledge about the contents of the speech. Any court would quash it saying it had been issued without application of mind.

The Maulvi usually spoke in high flown Urdu. I had, therefore, made it a point to talk to him directly and get a gist of his major pronouncements. I called him and asked whether something important could be expected from his speech that day. He said he planned to condemn the Emergency and welcome the Prime Minister’s 20 point programme.

After the Maulvi had spoken at the Juma Masjid I called him again. He confirmed he had condemned the Emergency and welcomed the 20 point programme.

I filed a report which highlighted his welcoming the 20 point programme. His condemnation of the Emergency was mentioned in the second paragraph.

AIR in its afternoon bulletin made the Maulvi’s speech a headline item. It said he had welcomed the 20-point programme. It did not mention his condemnation of the Emergency.

After Sheikh Abdullah inducted Mohammed Sayeed Malik, Patriot's Special Correspondent, as Director of Information, the journalists had the satisfaction of having one among them as the Chief State Censor.

In 1976, the Emergency regime forcibly merged the two English news agencies, PTI and UNI, and two Hindi news agencies, Samachar Bharati and Hindustan Samachar, and formed Samachar. Two senior journalists of PTI were named No. 1 and No. 3 in the new organization and two senior journalists of UNI were named No. 2 and No.4. PTI’s Srinagar bureau chief, C.P. Maniktala, was moved to Delhi. UNI’s Deputy General Manager, V. P. Ramachandran, was shunted off to Ranchi as Industrial Correspondent. Two PTI journalists close to Sanjay Gandhi played a key role in the placements.

A committee headed by G. Kasturi, Editor of The Hindu, was set up to manage Samachar and Wilfred Lazarus, who had earned a name as PTI’s correspondent in Egypt and Congo in times of crisis, was appointed Chief Editor. But effective control was in the hands of Mohammed Yunus, a Nehru family hanger-on, and K. N. Prasad, an IPS officer from Bihar, who was Additional Secretary in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

Lazarus issued a circular asking all UNI correspondents to report to the local PTI bureau chief who would be head of the integrated Samachar bureau. I telephoned him and said I would not report to the PTI bureau since, after Maniktala’s departure, there was no one there who could claim to be senior to me. He told me since I was the seniormost person I would be in charge in Srinagar and asked me to go to the PTI office and take charge immediately. I told him not to expect me to go to PTI office and stage a coup. If he wanted me to take charge of the Samachar bureau and operate from the PTI office he should issue instructions to that effect.

While the Emergency led to denial of basic freedoms elsewhere in the country, in Kashmir the situation was quite different. With Sheikh Abdullah, who had been heading the opposition, back at the helm, there was near-normalcy in the state after a long period.  

When the Tribune’s correspondent, Makhan Lal Kak, a Kashmiri, was detained by the Haryana government, the Srinagar press corps urged Sheikh Abdullah to intervene. The Sheikh spoke to Indira Gandhi and she accepted his request to shift him to a Srinagar jail. On transfer to Kashmir, he was released on parole.

The IENS was publishing a journal, named Indian Press, at the time. Its Editor, S. Venkat Narayan, asked me for an article on I and B Minister V.C. Shukla’s claim that censorship would improve the quality of the press. In the article, I said censorship was a prophylactic device and it could not make any difference to the quality of journalism.

When the government promulgated the Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matters Ordinance, I wrote another article in that journal. In it I argued that PPOMO was an obnoxious measure and should be allowed to lapse and not enacted as PPOMA.

During the Emergency, I made it a point to visit the Indian Express office on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg every time I was in New Delhi and spend some time with the Editor, V. K. Narasimhan, who was bravely standing up to the Emergency regime. “This is a solidarity visit,” I would tell VKN, who was an Assistant Editor in The Hindu when I worked there as sub-editor in the 1950s. After Kuldip Nayar was released from jail and started attending office again, a call on him also became part of the solidarity visit. It was Kuldip Nayar who had recruited me in UNI a decade earlier.

I once asked VKN how he was able to get away with the things he was doing. He said before being eased out of the Editor’s chair, S. Mulgaonkar had written to V.C. Shukla seeking clarifications about press censorship. Shukla, in his reply, said the purpose of censorship was not to cut out criticism but to protect national interests. VKN opened a draw, took out Shukla’s letter and said, “I am holding on to this.”

Kuldip Nayar paid a handsome tribute to VKN in an article in Deccan Herald last April. “An editor like him should have been honoured in public for the service he rendered to the press,” he wrote.

On one visit, VKN asked me: “Babu Bhaskar, do you still have your Samachar job?” The question was prompted by the Indian Press article criticizing PPOMO.

I gathered from N.N. Omchery, a senior I and B official and censor, that he was asked to scrutinize that article. He suggested that since the article appeared in a professional journal which did not reach a wide circle it was best to ignore it.

When the 1977 Lok Sabha election results came in, the state government was functioning from the winter capital, Jammu. The outstation correspondents, who were camping at the Circuit House, gathered at the office of the Director of Information to follow the election results flowing in on the new agency printer. There were loud cheers as news of the defeat of the Emergency regime was received. It was followed by a Flash which read: CENSORSHIP LIFTED.

I walked up to Sayeed Malik, gave him my accreditation card which had not been renewed after 1975 and said, “Now that you have ceased to be Chief Censor, I want to submit this for renewal.”

“You did not renew it all this time?” he asked   

“No,” I said. “I didn’t want to carry a card issued by the Chief Censor.”

Falling between two stools

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The buglers are proclaiming a victory for India at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, last week but non-government organisations campaigning on the issue of sustainable development are unimpressed.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flew into Brazil from the G-20 meeting in Mexico where, playing Santa Claus, he had pledged $10 billion towards the $73 billion committed by the BRIC nations to recapitalise the International Monetary Fund to enable it to bail out crisis-hit Europe.

At Rio, he appeared like a mendicant rather than a philanthropist. He complained there was little evidence of industrialised world helping the developing nations to find the resources and technology they need to reduce the intensity of emissions.

The conference, dubbed Rio+20 as it was taking place two decades after the Earth Summit held in that city, brought together leaders from more than 180 countries. India was a key player at the 1992 conference as the chief spokesman of the developing world. A major achievement of that meet was the Climate Change Convention, which led to the Kyoto Protocol.

Rio+20 took place in vastly different circumstances from what prevailed at the time of the first meet. The average annual global temperature was up by 0.32 degree Celsius, global carbon dioxide levels were 10 per cent higher and primary forests had dwindled by 300 million hectares. What is more, the rich nations’ interest in protection of the environment had waned as their economies declined.

India appeared to be not too sure where exactly it stood. As Sejal Worah, World Wildlife Fund’s project director in Delhi, put it, India was straddling both sides — the rich as well as the developing nations. “We have not heard of India being on any side,” she told reporters at Rio. “It is losing its leadership edge. It is always riding on someone else. We don’t stand for anything.”

Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan said India was happy that no specific goals and targets had been agreed upon. Environment journalist Daryl D’Monte termed her comment astonishing.

India’s diminished role at Rio II is a reflection of the dichotomy in the government’s approach to developmental problems. Its record in upholding the principles laid down at Rio I is less than satisfactory.

“Human beings are at the centre of concern for human development,” the first Rio declaration had said. “They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.” An agreement concluded at that time directed governments not to carry out any activities on the lands of indigenous people that would cause environmental degradation or be culturally inappropriate.

Yet all across India the government is endangering the lives and livelihood of the indigenous people, who live in subhuman conditions, by permitting domestic and foreign corporations to grab their lands for industrial projects. In Orissa, for seven years tribesmen have been fighting an unequal battle with the South Korean giant Posco, which wants to set up the world’s largest steel plant in their homeland.

Disappointed with the draft of the declaration prepared for adoption at the summit meeting, Indian NGO representatives gathered at Rio issued an open appeal to Manmohan Singh to display bold leadership and rescue the conference. They asked him to advocate strong fundamental principles for the world and make basic changes in economic and other policies back home.

It turned out to be a cry in the wilderness. “We are reiterating the mistakes of the past while the crisis has worsened,” Ashish Kothari of Pune-based Kalpavriksh said later.

The official claims of victory rest primarily on a few passages in the platitudinous declaration, grandiloquently titled “The Future We Want.” It says all countries, especially the developing nations, need additional resources to ensure sustainable development and unwanted conditionalities on development assistance must be avoided.

The declaration asks all countries to prioritise sustainable development and allocate resources based on national needs. It also talks in vague terms about giving assistance to the developing countries to ensure long-term debt sustainability.

The G-77 countries and China sought $30 billion a year for assisting the developing nations but the document makes no firm financial commitment. Instead, it suggests that additional resources be mobilised on a voluntary basis through innovative financing mechanisms.

In a joint letter to the UN, a group of international civil society organisations said: “The Future We Want is not what resulted from the Rio+20 negotiation process.” -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 26, 2012.

Black money is piling up

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

There was a spurt in money stashed by Indians in secret accounts in Switzerland last year. The last time a big jump occurred was in 2006. The gap of five years is significant.

According to Swiss bank data, Indian deposits increased by one million Swiss francs in 2006 to touch a peak of 6.5 billion francs (about Rs400 billion). Thereafter the deposits started falling and were as low as about Rs93 billion at the end of 2010. Last year fresh inflow of funds raised the total to Rs127 billion.

 

It is not unreasonable to draw a link between the swelling of Swiss bank deposits and national and state elections in India, normally held at intervals of five years. The fall in deposits since 2006 can then be explained in terms of repatriation of funds to meet the expenses of the elections of the last five years, including the parliamentary poll of 2009. And the recent spurt can be seen as part of the preparations for the upcoming elections, including the Lok Sabha poll due in 2014.

The Association for Democratic Rights, a non-governmental organisation monitoring election malpractices, estimated that campaign expenses during a five-year period could be anywhere between Rs350 billion and Rs810 billion. It reckoned that one-fourth of the estimated Rs100 billion spent during the 2009 Lok Sabha poll was black money. 

Reacting to the Swiss disclosure, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said all the money parked abroad by Indians was not black money. Businessmen and business houses could have legitimate deposits abroad.

If the public tends to view all deposits in foreign banks with suspicion, the blame rests entirely with the government, which has been unwilling to gather full facts and publish them. A month ago, the government placed before Parliament a white paper on black money. The voluminous document did not name black money holders or reveal the extent of their holdings. Overlooking the political connection, it blamed foreign investment, corporate activity and the stock markets for generating black money.

India could not get information on tax evasion from the 77 countries with which it had signed double taxation avoidance agreements since the pacts did not provide for exchange of information on tax evasion. New agreements have been negotiated with 37 countries in the last three years. However, no information obtained from them on illegal wealth of Indians has come into the public domain so far.

A few years ago Germany made available information about the bank accounts of 15 Indians and three foreign-registered trusts with Indian connections in the tax haven of Liechtenstein, contained in stolen database which it had bought paying $7.4 million. The government said it was investigating the matter but there was no action against any of the account holders.

Speaking at the first Interpol Global Programme on Anti-Corruption and Asset Recovery in New Delhi in February this year, Central Bureau of Investigation director AP Singh put the illegal money held abroad by Indians at $500 billion. He said some recent CBI investigations had revealed that money reached Switzerland and other tax havens through Singapore and Mauritius.

In the white paper the government talked of setting up fast-track courts and awarding deterrent punishment to check black money. However, it has not come up with a concrete plan in this regard.  It is widely believed that the government is reluctant to act because powerful political, bureaucratic and business elements are involved.   

Yoga guru Ramdev, who recently fasted in New Delhi, along with anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare, has demanded steps to recover black money hoarded abroad. Several national and regional parties have endorsed his demand. However, few regard him and his backers as credible agents of change.

The Election Commission, a statutory body with wide powers to ensure free and fair polls, has taken several steps since 2010 to check the use of black money in campaigns. Last year it seized more than Rs1.2 billion of unaccounted money in election-time raids. When five states went to the polls early this year, it deployed more than 200 income tax officials to check the flow of black money. They hauled in Rs470 million in cash and large quantities of liquor and drugs.

The Election Commission has the power to disqualify a candidate found guilty of electoral malpractices. However, in the absence of political will to unmask the evildoers, getting a guilty verdict is no easy task.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 19, 2012.

Quest for a new President

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India is looking for a successor to President Pratibha Patil, whose five-year term ends next month. Although the office of the head of state is largely ceremonial, the current quest has special significance since the new president may be able to influence the choice of the next prime minister.   

The main contenders for power at the national level, the Congress, which heads the ruling United Progressive Alliance, and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads the opposition National Democratic Alliance, are, therefore, moving warily.

Nominations will open on June 13 and close on June 20 but the UPA and NDA are yet to choose their candidates. The BJP has said it will take a position only after the Congress reveals its mind.

The electoral college that chooses the president comprises elected members of the two houses of parliament, who number about 800, and elected members of the legislative assemblies of the states, whose number runs into several thousand. The values of the votes of the MPs and MLAs differ widely since they are pegged to the number of people they represent.

In the early years of the republic, the Congress could get its nominee elected smoothly as it dominated both parliament and the state legislatures.  With the political spectrum highly fragmented, it now needs the support of not only its coalition partners but also a few more parties to see its nominee through.

There have been occasions when the major political rivals joined hands to facilitate smooth election, as when a wide consensus emerged in 1997 in favour of KR Narayanan, a diplomat-turned-politician, making it possible for the distinguished Dalit to become the first member of that marginalised community to adorn the nation’s highest office.

Five years ago, Pratibha Patil’s candidature generated much enthusiasm across the political spectrum as it provided an opportunity to install the first woman president. At that time the Left parties, who were backing the UPA government from outside, extracted from the Congress a promise to consider a person of their choice for the post of vice-president. They picked retired diplomat Hamid Ansari.

Some vice-presidents have been elected president. The BJP blocked serious consideration of Ansari’s candidature for the office this time by making known its opposition in advance. Apparently to stave off charges of communal motivation, the Hindu right-wing party floated the name of former president APJ Abdul Kalam.

The BJP’s fondness for Kalam rests on his reputation as the man who headed the country’s missile programme. Its proposal that he be brought back had no takers. Barring the first president, Rajendra Prasad, no one has had a second term so far.

The constitution mandates that the president must act on the advice of the council of ministers headed by the prime minister. But the appointment of prime minister is a decision he has to take on his own.

When a party or combination of parties commands an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, the President has no option but to invite its leader to form the government. However, recent parliamentary elections have invariably thrown up ‘hung’ houses.

Since the Left parties withdrew their support to the first Manmohan Singh government on the issue of civil nuclear agreement with the United States, the UPA has survived in office with the support extended from outside by a host of parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal.

State Assembly elections of the last five years point to a weakening of the Congress and its allies like Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam of Tamil Nadu. In the circumstances, the strength of the UPA may well be depleted in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014. The Congress, however, can derive comfort from the fact that the BJP and its NDA allies are also not on a strong wicket. In several states, the Congress and the BJP are already minor players.

In the circumstances, the smaller national parties and the regional parties will be able to play a critical role in the next Lok Sabha. The leaders of some of these parties are known to entertain ambitions of emerging as prime ministerial candidates.

If there is room to doubt the majority claims of the rival contenders, the president will be required to exercise discretion based on his/her assessment of who is in a position to garner majority support in the house. Many small parties may be inclined to go with whoever is given the first opportunity to form a government. The situation demands the president must be a person with mature political judgment. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 12, 2012.

Changing security scenario

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The United States administration’s decision to shift the bulk of its naval vessels to the Asia Pacific region, announced last week, heralds a significant change in the security environment as China and India prepare to play their role as emerging economies. However, neither country appears to view it as a major concern, at least for the time being.

While making drastic cuts in the defence budget in the light of the difficult economic situation, the US administration had sought to reassure the Asian countries that look up to it for protection that the military, though leaner, would be more agile.

Currently the US naval assets are divided 50:50 between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The decision to change the ratio to 60:40 by 2020, announced by Defence Secretary Leon Panetta at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, is in line with that promise.

The annual Shangri-La Dialogue brings together defence ministers from countries of the Asia Pacific region. China’s defence minister, Gen Liang Guanglie, attended it for the first time last year as part of the process of wider engagement with the rest of the world in keeping with its status as an emerging global power. However, he stayed away this year pleading domestic preoccupations.

Lt-Gen Ren Haiquan, who headed the Chinese delegation in his absence, responded coolly to Panetta’s speech. A Hong Kong television channel quoted him as saying, “We should not treat this as a disaster. I believe this is the US response to its own national interests, its fiscal difficulties and global security developments.” He added that China would intensify its vigil but there would be no lashing back.

India’s Defence Minister AK Antony, who was at Singapore, confined himself to the prepared text, which touched upon matters of immediate and direct concern to the country such as Afghanistan, Middle East and maritime security. Outside the conference hall, too, he did not comment on the US plan.

Antony, however, voiced India’s concern over the rise in China’s military spending, which touched a record $106 billion in this year’s budget. Obliquely justifying the hike in India’s own military spending, he said it was “building its capabilities to protect its national interests”.

The mature Chinese response to Panetta’s speech reflects the country’s growing self-confidence and increasing understanding of the concerns of other nations.

As early as 1998, the US, taking note of China’s economic growth and the growing trade between the two countries, had decided on comprehensive engagement with it. The primary objective of the exercise was to gain insight into the working of the Chinese military and minimise misperceptions and miscalculations. There was also a faint hope that military-to-military engagement would lead to strategic relations that may persuade China to go slow on modernisation of its military machine and back away from assertive action in maritime disputes.

Most US strategic experts believe the objectives of military-to-military engagement could not be achieved. Some even argue that it helped China to gain a good understanding of the military thinking of the US, which it considers a potential adversary. While strategic ties are no longer on the cards, there is agreement that engagement must continue though not with the same degree of transparency, reciprocity and consistency as before.

Some China experts in the US believe there are differences in the perceptions of the Chinese government and the military. They point out that while President Hu Jintao, in two joint statements with President Barack Obama, accepted the USA as an Asia Pacific nation that contributes to peace, stability and prosperity in the region, there is nothing to show that the Chinese army shares these sentiments.

It is well known that US interest in strategic relations with India grew after hopes of such ties with China faded. In 2010 the Chinese army criticised fresh US arms supplies to Taiwan, suspended many military contacts and postponed exchange of visits.

Even after establishing diplomatic relations with the Beijing regime, the US has remained committed to the defence of Taiwan, which China considers an integral part of its territory.  It also has commitments to protect Japan and South Korea.

A trilateral meet of India, Japan and the US, held last year, was seen by some in China as part of an attempt to encircle it. The Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily distanced itself from that line. Its website carried an article which said, “India has been pursuing an independent foreign policy and mainly considers its own interests.” -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 5, 2012.

Right to Food Campaign calls for end to harassment of rights defenders

The following is a statement issued by the Right to Food Campaign, India, against the continuous harassment and attempts to criminalize the work of Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan (JADS) and the targeting of Ms. Madhuri Krishnaswami by the Badwani District (MP ) administration and corrupt politicians, forwarded by the Asian Human Rights Commission:

The Right to Food Campaign condemns the continuous harassment, the filing of false cases and the issuing of show cause notice to extern (Zila Badar) Madhuri of (JADS) from the districts of Badwani and 6 nearby districts by the nexus of police, politicians and administrators. We were shocked to learn that the DM of Badwani had initiated proceedings of externment under section 8 (1) of the M.P Rajya suraksha Adhiniyamt, 1990, which have now been withdrawn after there was pressure from all over the country. We demand that the State Government of Madhya Pradesh take action against Mr Shriman Shukla, DM Badwani, who issued the show cause notices of externment to Madhuri.
Our stand is clear that such laws like the MP Rajya Suraksha Adhiniyam 1990 are un-democratic and un-constitutional and need to be repealed. Especially, when proceedings of externment in the last twenty years of the implementation of the Rajya Suraksha Adhiniyam in Madhya Pradesh, has been frequently used against activists, when it has not suited the local vested interests.

We believe that Madhuri, a renowned social activist, a member of Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan and also an esteemed member of the Steering Committee of the Right to Food Campaign at the national level, has been selectively targeted by the political opposition and the bureaucracy to benefit certain vested interests who are being challenged by the work of the Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan in Barwani. Instead of honouring them for the good work the administration is trying to bracket their work as a threat to public order and security and issuing notices of externment. Madhuri and other members of JADS.
The Right to Food Campaign also demands that the State Government set up a high powered committee to review all the cases pending investigation against Madhuri and other member of JADS and close them. As in the past courts have exonerated them in more than 5 cases due to lack of evidence. In many cases the investigation is pending by the local police for the last five to six years and these cases are just a tool in the hands of the police and administration. We are demanding this as most of the criminal cases filed by the administration and police were after peaceful protests for legitimate demands for the implementation of the Government scheme.

It is well known that JADS has worked consistently through democratic and completely transparent means, advocating and campaigning for the proper implementation of Government schemes in order to ensure the delivery of entitlements to work, food, health services, forest rights act to the locals of that area. Their work in the area of the implementation of the law and the other schemes has made a difference not just locally to the entitlements of the poor but also nationally at the level of policy and law making. Some of their work has included ensuring the implementation of:
1. The hundred days employment Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA);
2. The Supreme Court order for all the food schemes like the PDS, ICDS, Old Age Pension;
3. The law on the rights of the gram sabha, PESA and the Panchayati Raj Act following the 73rd and 74th Amendment. The Forest Rights Act;
4. Against the sale of illegal liquor;
5. Ensuring proper health care delivery and taking up those cases where the health system has denied health care;
6. The prevention of the exploitation of Adivasis and violence against them by officials, traders, including rampant corruption and non-performance in government schemes.
We demand that the State Government urgently intervene and take action against Mr Shriman Shukla, DM Barwani, who issued these externment notices to Madhuri, close all the cases against her and other members of JADS and ensure that all members of JADS including Madhuri are able to work freely as provided under the Indian Constitution and repeal the MP Rajya Suraksha Adhiniyam.

The Right to Food campaign and other progressive organizations would be holding a protest outside the MP Bhawan against this unconstitutional act of the local administration.

The following are the signatories to the statement:

Kavita Srivastava, Convenor), on behalf of the Steering Committee of the Right to Food Campaign.
Annie Raja (National Federation for Indian Women), Anuradha Talwar and Gautam Modi (New Trade Union Initiative), Arun Gupta and Radha Holla (Breast Feeding Promotion Network of India), Arundhati Dhuru and Ulka Mahajan (National Alliance of People’s Movements), Asha Mishra and Vinod Raina (Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti), Aruna Roy, Anjali Bharadwaj and Nikhil Dey (National Campaign for People's Right to Information), Ashok Bharti (National Conference of Dalit Organizations), Colin Gonsalves (Human Rights Law Network), G V Ramanjaneyulu (Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture), Kavita Srivastava and Binayak Sen (People’s Union for Civil Liberties), Lali Dhakar, Sarawasti Singh, Shilpa Dey and Radha Raghwal (National Forum for Single Women’s Rights), Mira Shiva and Vandana Prasad (Jan Swasthya Abhiyan), Paul Divakar and Asha Kowtal (National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights), Prahlad Ray and Anand Malakar (Rashtriya Viklang Manch), Subhash Bhatnagar (National Campaign Committee for Unorganized Sector workers), Jean Dreze and V.B Rawat (Former Support group to the Campaign), Ritu Priya (JNU)

Representatives of Right to Food (State campaigns):
Veena Shatrugna, M Kodandram and Rama Melkote(Andhra Pradesh), Saito Basumaatary and Sunil Kaul (Assam), Rupesh (Bihar), Gangabhai and Sameer Garg (Chhattisgarh), Pushpa, Dharmender, Ramendra, Yogesh, Vimla and Sarita (Delhi), Sejal Dand and Sumitra Thakkar (Gujarat), Abhay Kumar and Clifton (Karnataka), Balram, Gurjeet Singh and James Herenj (Jharkhand), Sachin Jain (Madhya Pradesh), Mukta Srivastava and Suresh Sawant (Maharashtra), Tarun Bharatiya (Meghalaya), Chingmak Chang (Nagaland) Bidyut Mohanty and Raj Kishore Mishra, Vidhya Das, Manas Ranjan (Orissa), Ashok Khandelwal, Bhanwar Singh and Vijay Lakshmi (Rajasthan), V Suresh (Tamil Nadu), Bindu Singh (Uttar Pradesh).

The struggle for survival

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Belying dark prophecies of the likes of Winston Churchill, India has survived as a political entity. Overcoming the global economic downturn, it has survived as a vibrant economic unit. But the challenges it is facing on the environmental front are proving to be tougher than the political and economic challenges.

There has been large-scale destruction of forests since the country gained freedom 65 years ago, mostly due to illegal felling of trees by commercial interests enjoying political patronage. The verdant states of Jammu and Kashmir in the north, Assam in the northeast and Kerala in the south are among the worst affected.

The latest official figures put India’s forest and tree cover at 78.29 million hectares, or 23.81 per cent of the geographical area. The government’s current policy envisages raising the forest cover to 33 per cent.

According to Director-General of Forests PJ Dilip Kumar, structural changes in the economy are needed to achieve the target. When more people migrate from villages to cities the fallow agricultural lands left behind by them can be used to grow forests, he says.

The official’s calculations are too simplistic. The developmental process that will create jobs and attract villagers to the cities will actually shrink the forest cover further, widening the gap to be filled. Many mega projects now in various stages of implementation are based on exploitation of natural resources located in forests or other ecologically sensitive areas. People living in these areas are already up in arms against the projects saying they threaten their lives and livelihood.

According to the latest ‘state of the forest’ report, in the last two years there was a net loss of 367 square kilometres of forest. Half of it was in the Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh.

Environmental Secretary T Chatterjee attributes depletion of Khammam forests to felling of eucalyptus by the paper pulp industry and clearance of forests by Left-wing extremists. The explanation is specious. Replanting goes on simultaneously with harvesting in plantations serving the paper industry. More than Left-wing extremists, who want places to hide in, it is the security forces, who are looking for them, that need to clear forests. 

Large-scale destruction of forests took place in the colonial period as the British administration, while laying railway lines, felled trees to make sleepers. The depredation yielded some unexpected dividends: the ruins of the Indus Valley civilisation at Mohenjo-Daro, now in Pakistan, and the Buddhist relics at Sanchi, in Madhya Pradesh, came to light.

Recognising the need to preserve the forest wealth, the British later initiated conservation measures. After their departure, things became lax, especially at the state level, and vested interests caused extensive damage with the connivance of corrupt political and bureaucratic elements.   

Prime minister Indira Gandhi, on her return from the 1972 Stockholm summit, initiated legislative and administrative measures to protect the environment. Her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, took steps to tackle the problem of pollution of the river Ganga, which sustains life in a large part of the country.

Globalisation threw out of gear even the weak implementation of the laws in force. The Report to the People on Environment and Forests, which the government released recently, paints a dismal picture of urban India, which is growing fast and expected to absorb millions of people from the villages in the coming decades.

The report admits that a critical deficiency exists in most cities in terms of facilities for collection, processing and disposal of waste. Existing facilities have the capacity to treat only 35 per cent of about 6.23 million tonnes of hazardous industrial waste generated annually. E-waste is currently estimated at 800,000 tonnes. Sixty per cent of it is generated by 65 cities. The Ganga continues to be a polluted river.

There is nothing in the report to indicate that the government has an action plan to tackle the serious urban problems it has identified. Much of it, of course, is beyond the power of the government at the Centre as the matter falls within the realm of the state governments and the urban and rural local bodies. They lack the resources to formulate and implement suitable schemes.

In the global debate on climate change, India, along with China, has been resisting the attempt by the rich nations to force reduction in carbon emissions, arguing it will hamper its developmental efforts. It has to look at the problem not only in terms of catching up with the developed world but also in terms of ensuring the survival of a large section of its own population.

Jawaharlal Nehru once asked, “If India dies, who lives?” Lopsided developmental priorities which threaten the environment invest these words with a new meaning.--Gulf Today, May 29, 2012,