Human Rights Defenders Alert condemns raid on Teesta Setalvad’s home and office

Madurai, Tamil Nadu, 14^th July 2015 : Human Rights Defenders Alerts– India (HRDA) is shocked to hear about the raids by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) at the premises of social activist Teesta Setalvad, her husband Javed Anand, Gulam Mohammed Peshimam and office of Sabrang Communications and Publishing in Mumbai. HRDA strongly condemns this action by the CBI which comes in despite complete cooperation as submitted in writing by Teesta Setalvad to the CBI for all matters of investigation which is still ongoing. This is not the first time the activists working for justice and truth with regard to ‘Gujarat Riots’ have been targeted. Teesta Setalvad herself has been targeted in several other false criminal cases for which she had to seek anticipatory bail from the Supreme Court. It is clearly a part of repeated attempts to discredit human rights defenders and attacks on them.

Last week on July 8, 2015, the CBI registered a case against Ms Setalvad and her organisation under Indian Penal Code (IPC) section related to criminal conspiracy (120-B) read with sections 35, 37 of IPC and sections 3, 11 and 19 of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) for receiving funds from abroad without seeking the home ministry's permission. In the First Information Report (FIR), the CBI also named Ms Setalvad's husband Javed Anand and Gulam Mohammed Peshimam, both directors in Sabrang Communications and Publishing based in Santacruz, Mumbai.

There were a series of inspections of the accounts of the organisations Teesta Setalvad has been associated with i.e. Sabrang Trust and Citizens for Justice and Peace. These organisations have sent in over 25,000 pages of documentation answering every query about funding.  Despite this, the CBI has reportedly filed an FIR against Teesta Setalvad. HRDA believes, Teesta Setalvad has been hounded by the Government of India for her work to seek justice for past 13 years against the architects and perpetrators of the Gujarat Riots. These ongoing harassments of Teesta Setalvad and her colleagues at Sabrang Trust, Sabrang Communications and Publishing and Citizens for Justice and Peace is a gross tactic and blatant abuse of the State machinery by the Government of India to threaten human rights defenders (HRDs) working on the issues of justice and to ensure that a large part of HRDs time which otherwise would have focused on work related to justice is now spent running from one court to another.

HRDA strongly condemns the ongoing attacks on human rights defenders working to establish truth and justice in the Gujarat Riots and in this particular case of attack on Teesta Setalvad and the organisations she has been associated with. These repeated attempts by the Government of India to push the activists on defensive line have constantly failed over the past 13 years. The response of the State is contrary to the assurances of states in the UN Declaration of HRDs which in fact emphasizes all the work that Teesta Setalvad, Javed Anand and their colleagues have been carrying on patiently and silently.

HRDA also requests the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) through its Chairperson, Members and Focal Point for HRDs to immediately move and direct adequate protection of Teesta Setalvad to ensure her non arrest and guarantee freedom of peaceful association and assembly and to carry out their mandates which in this case are the organisations Teesta Setalvad has been associated with.

About HRDA:

Human Rights Defenders Alert – India is a national network for the protection and promotion of human rights defenders in the country floated by participants of two Participatory Learning Workshops on Rights and Responsibilities of Human Rights Defenders regional trainings that the trainers from the said workshops conducted.

Human Rights Defenders Alert – India is a platform to extend solidarity and assistance to Human Rights Defenders in trouble / at risk. Becoming a member of the Human Rights Defenders Alert – India will make you part of a larger family of human rights defenders and ensure strengthening of the forum and greater support from the human rights community in India. 

For More information contact:

Mr. Mathew Jacob, National Coordinator, HRDA-India, 6, Vallabai Road, Madurai – 625002. Mobile: 99943 68540

With regards,

Sd/-

(Henri Tiphagne)

Honorary National Working Secretary

--

For more information and sources related to HRDA visit www.hrdaindia.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hrdefendersalert

Tightrope walk on West Asia

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Israel was quick to claim that India’s abstention from voting on the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution in Geneva, condemning the Gaza killings of 2014, marks a shift in its traditional stand. India was equally quick in asserting there has been no change in its position.

The UNHRC adopted the resolution with 41 votes in favour, one (the United States) against, and five abstentions. Israel’s ambassador in India publicly thanked all, including India, “who did not support yet another anti-Israel bashing resolution”.

Noting that when the Gaza killings came up in the UNHRC last year India had voted in favour of the resolution calling for an inquiry, Israeli media described this year’s abstention as reflective of a significant change. One newspaper said it was another sign of warming of Indo-Israeli ties since Modi became Prime Minister.

The Indian government said there was no change in policy. It abstained this year because of disagreement with the wording of the resolution. Last year’s resolution merely called for an inquiry into Israel’s Gaza raids. This year’s sought reference of the issue to the International Criminal Court.

India is not a signatory to the Rome Statute which set up the ICC and has consistently abstained during voting on resolutions which mention that body, an official spokesman said. 

This is no doubt a convincing explanation. However, reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Modi a day before the voting suggests there was some high-level persuasion.

Successive Indian governments have supported Palestine’s struggle against Israel. But the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), fountainhead of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindutva ideology, has a soft corner for Israel. Its early leaders were admirers of Nazi Germany. Ironically, after World War II, Israel took its place.

India recognised the state of Israel as soon as it was created but did not establish diplomatic relationship with it until 1992. Negotiations in this regard began when Israel’s Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan made an unannounced visit to India in 1978. AB Vajpayee, who later became the first BJP Prime Minister, was the External Affairs Minister in the Janata Party government in power at that time. 

India had entered into secret military deals with Israel even when there were no diplomatic ties. It received small arms from that country during the 1962 China war and the 1965 and 1971 conflicts with Pakistan.

Indo-Israeli relations warmed up between 1998 and 2004 under Vajpayee who believed Israel’s experience could be of help to India in dealing with the problem of terrorism. At his invitation Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited India on the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Center.

Under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government the military relationship grew further. Today Israel is a major supplier of arms to India, and the Israeli defence industry is heavily dependent upon exports to India.

Israel supplies India radar systems, drone aircraft and missiles for maritime defence. It has expressed readiness to set up units to manufacture defence equipment under Modi’s Make in India programme.

India has a Muslim population of 180 million, the third largest in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. The Hindutva ideology renders the BJP less sensitive to the sentiments of this large religious minority than the Congress and other parties, and that makes it easy for its government to cosy up to Israel.

However, there are other factors which no government in India can ignore in formulating its West Asia policy.

One of them is India’s reliance on the region for more than 60 per cent of its crude oil imports. Last year the government decided to seek supplies from Latin America and Africa and raise domestic production of both oil and gas with a view to reducing the dependence on the Middle East. Progress in this regard will necessarily be slow.

Another factor the government cannot overlook is that more than five million Indians work in the Middle East. Last year India received $70.38 billion in remittances from its nationals working abroad. About 45 per cent f it came from the Gulf States.

In the circumstances, Modi has to do tight-rope walking. He is planning to visit Israel later this year and become the first Indian Prime Minister to do so. Indications are that he will include Palestine also in the itinerary. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 7, 2015.

Good days are not for the poor

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Considering India’s huge size and the complexity of the problems it faces, it is not surprising that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not able to work wonders in his first year in office. However, there are disconcerting signs that if and when his promise of achche din (good days) is realised, the vast poor population may be left out.

According to the disparate opposition parties, several steps the government has taken in the name of speedy development are making life increasingly miserable for the poor, who number about 300 million.

They point out that the changes made in the land acquisition law to help industrialists will deprive a large number of people, especially the farmers, of their means of livelihood.

Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who has been in a combative mood since he returned from a holiday abroad, has dubbed the Modi government “anti-farmer” and “pro-industrialist”. He has made it clear that the party would put up stiff resistance against the government’s anti-poor policies inside and outside Parliament.

He has also said Modi is paying back the loans of the industrialists – an allusion to the huge contributions they made to the Bharatiya Janata Party before the parliamentary elections.

Similar sentiments have been expressed also by the two Communist parties and the Janata Parivar parties which are in the process of reunification, realising that they will be annihilated if they don’t come together.

The government, on its part, justifies the steps it has taken saying they are part of long-overdue reforms needed to accelerate economic growth. It claims these measures will lead to increased investment which in turn will generate new employment opportunities for the poor.

This explanation has not impressed even some of the government’s supporters. A few Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh affiliates have echoed the opposition’s view that the measures are inimical to the interests of the poor. The RSS leadership can be expected to restrain them.

Modi’s economic reforms framework is no different from what Manmohan Singh laid down as Prime Minister of the United Progressive Alliance government more than a decade ago. When popular mood was not supportive of reform measures, the UPA was ready to step back and wait for an opportune moment to go forward again.

It also made conscious efforts to soften the impact of reform measures by introducing welfare schemes to mitigate the plight of the poor. These included assured employment to poor villagers for at least 100 days in a year under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and supply of rice and wheat at subsidised rates under the food security mission.

MGNREGA uses the villagers’ labour to create rural assets. Several studies have shown that the law has benefited the poor immensely. Yet Modi ran it down in Parliament as a living monument of the UPA government’s failure. Mercifully, he said the scheme will continue.

Early this year Modi launched a scheme to help the girl child with the slogan “save daughter, educate daughter”. At the same time, his government cut the budget outlay of the Women and Child department from Rs 211.9 billion last year to Rs 103.8 billion this year. The worst sufferer is the department’s flagship Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). Its allocation has been halved – from Rs160 billion to Rs80 billion. Social activists fear this will put poor children at risk.

Modi is actually attempting to replicate at the national level the development model which he evolved as Chief Minister of Gujarat state. While his party has uncritically accepted his claim that it was a great success, independent studies tell a different story.

Hemantkumar Shah, Professor of Economics at Gujarat University, in a book titled “Sacchai Gujarat ki” (The Truth about Gujarat) says the state’s economic and human development parameters worsened after Modi came to power in 2001.

Citing data, he points out that the state recorded an annual average growth of 14.97 per cent during 1980-1990 and 12.77 per cent during 1990-2000. The national average for the period was 5.5 per cent. Between 2001 and 2011, the average growth rate fell to 9.82 per cent, which was just 1.26 percentage points above the national average.

The number of families below the poverty line in the state in 1999 was 2.6 million. A government advertisement early last year gave the number of BPL families as 4 million.

Ahead of its first anniversary, the Modi government launched three insurance and pension schemes. The schemes are being publicised through radio and television and government advertisements to create a pro-poor image. But the situation calls for a hard rethink, not an image makeover.

Forebodings of an emergency

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader Lal Krishna Advani created a minor sensation last week by hinting at the possibility of another spell of Emergency in India. Forces wanting to crush democracy are strong and there aren’t enough safeguards to prevent an Emergency-like situation, he said.

Advani, who was Deputy Prime Minister in the first BJP-led government, is the seniormost among the old guard whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sidelined. His veiled warning came just days ahead of the 40th anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, when the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution remained suspended.

As it happened, as Advani spoke Modi was coping with the worst crisis since he took office in May last year with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia facing allegations of helping controversial cricket entrepreneur Lalit Modi (no kin of the Prime Minister) who is abroad and evading prosecution on money laundering charges.

Delhi’s Aam Aadmi Party Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is involved in a running battle with the Modi government, endorsed Advani’s assessment, and sought to portray himself as an early victim of the coming Emergency. Rashtriya Janata Dal chief and former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad said there was already an undeclared Emergency, with “authoritarian and Hitlerian tendencies prevailing in the country”.

The Congress did not comment on Advani’s reference to the Emergency but demanded the resignation of Sushma Swaraj and Vasundhara Raje Scindia.

Advani quickly toned down his remarks to spare the party embarrassment. He claimed the reference was to the Congress government’s Emergency rule of 1975-77.

When a reporter suggested that it might be taken as a message to Modi, Sonia Gandhi or Kejriwal, Advani said that would be a wrong interpretation. “I am not referring to any individual but to a fact that the fear of losing power can breed authoritarian tendencies.”

His explanation did not remove the suspicion that Narendra Modi was very much on his mind. “When you enter politics you get enormous authority and power. But my generation of politicians believed in humility, the kind of humility that (first BJP Prime Minister Atal Behari) Vajpayee practised,” he said. “Those who can’t be humble can’t serve the country.”

Sushma Swaraj is the only Advani protégé to get a respectable place in the Modi government. When media reports that she had helped Lalit Modi, who was in England, to travel to Portugal where his wife was undergoing treatment surfaced, she said she had acted on humanitarian considerations. Two facts cast doubts on that explanation. One is that her daughter was Lalit Modi’s counsel. The other is that she kept the Foreign Secretary in the dark about her intervention.

The Prime Minister and the other senior ministers initially remained silent. Then it came to light that Vasundhara Raje Scindia had earlier helped Lalit Modi on condition that her role will not be made public. Thereafter the party closed ranks behind Swaraj and Scindia.

While the damage has been contained the claim that the Modi establishment is scam-free has been breached. The issue may come back to haunt the government when Parliament reassembles.

There have been other developments which are forebodings of an Emergency. Attempts are on to strangle non-government organisations which are exposing human rights violations by starving them of funds.

Among the NGOs targeted by the government are two groups led by Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand whose dedicated efforts led to prosecutions in connection with some of the killings which took place in Gujarat when Modi was the Chief Minister and the India chapter of Greenpeace which has been spearheading campaigns against some mega projects which threaten the livelihood of thousands of poor villagers.

New rules framed by the government require NGOs who receive funds from abroad to undertake not to use the money for activities that are against “national public, security, strategic, scientific or economic interest” – terms broad enough to cover every human rights activity. They also enjoin upon banks to inform the government within 48 hours of every transaction made by the NGOs.

The regulations will cripple about 30,000 groups which are trying to protect the environment and defend human rights. Already the government has cancelled the licences of 13,345 NGOs.

The government has refused the Central Bureau of Investigation permission to prosecute Central and Gujarat state police officials involved in fake encounter killings.

There is a critical difference between Indira Gandhi’s Emergency and Modi’s undeclared one. The former was directed against the political opposition. The latter is targeted against civil society. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 23, 2015.

Challenges to federalism

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The feud between the Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads the Central government, and the Aam Admi (Common Man) Party, which runs the Delhi state government, and the skirmishes between the Telugu Desam Party, which rules Andhra Pradesh state, and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, which is in power in the recently created Telangana state, are sure signs of deterioration in India’s political climate.

The conduct of the constitutional authorities involved in the fracas poses threats to the future of democracy as well as the federal polity.

The trouble in the National Capital Territory of Delhi, which is not a full-fledged state, began as an ego clash between Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, both former bureaucrats.

Kejriwal had led the AAP to a massive victory in the Assembly elections last February, foiling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bid to bring Delhi state also under BJP rule. He believes the BJP is now seeking to rule the state using Najeeb Jung as proxy.

Relations between Jung and Kejriwal soured when the former appointed an officer of his own choice as the acting Chief Secretary, ignoring the Chief Minister’s wishes. Kejriwal retaliated by removing the officer who had issued the appointment order at Jung’s behest. Jung asserted that he alone was competent to appoint and transfer officers.

Throwing democratic niceties to the winds, the Centre endorsed Jung’s stand that he could act without consulting the elected government. The issue is now before the court.

Last week the Delhi police, which is under the control of the Lieutenant Governor, arrested State Law Minister Jitender Singh Tomar on a charge of using forged university degrees. If the arrest had not come in the wake of the battle between the Chief Minister and the Lieutenant Governor, it could have been viewed as an act in keeping with the principle that no one, howsoever high, is above the law.

Until recently the BJP was an ardent advocate of full statehood for Delhi. Its present stance shows that it is unwilling to forgive the AAP and the capital’s voters for dashing its hopes in Delhi and bringing the Modi juggernaut to a halt.

The trouble in the South is a fall-out of the division of Andhra Pradesh state, which had come into being in 1956 as the common home of the Telugu-speaking people who lay scattered in British Indian provinces and princely states during the colonial period. The Telangana state was carved out a year ago following prolonged agitation by people of the region, which was formerly part of the princely state of Hyderabad, alleging neglect by successive Andhra Pradesh governments.

Under the law enacted for the bifurcation, Hyderabad will serve as the capital of both Telangana and the residuary Andhra Pradesh state for 10 years. This arrangement was made to give AP time to build a new capital since Hyderabad is now part of Telangana. The two states also have a common Governor, who is in charge of law and order in the joint capital during the interim period.

A piquant situation arose when Telangana’s Anti-Corruption Bureau arrested A Revanth Reddy, a Telugu Desam Party MLA, on a charge of bribing a nominated member of the Assembly to vote for a TDP candidate in the Legislative Council elections. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao later released the tape of an alleged conversation between Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and the nominated member to show that he (Naidu) was aware of the bribery.

Naidu said the tape was a fabricated one. He accused Chandrasekhar Rao’s party of encouraging defections from the state unit of TDP. Workers of the TDP filed complaints at several places in Andhra Pradesh against Chandrasekhar Rao and the Telangana Home Minister on charges of tapping Naidu’s phone.

Any step taken by any government against corruption deserves to be welcomed. But the developments in Hyderabad have to be viewed in the broad context of attempts by the two regional parties which hold power in the neighbouring states to settle political scores. An ugly situation involving a serious challenge to the federal structure can develop if the two Chief Ministers persist in the present course.

The Constitution is resilient enough to deal with tricky situations. But it can work smoothly only if constitutional authorities rise above petty politics and display statesmanship when the occasion demands it. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 16, 2015.

A fraud on the Constitution

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

In a democracy, normally, the Legislature alone legislates. In India the Judiciary and the Executive also legislate.

The Judiciary’s power to legislate flows from a clause in the Constitution which says the Supreme Court’s decisions have the force of law. The court has, through judgments, written new laws and even made changes in the Constitution.

The Executive’s power to legislate is derived from the articles that authorise the President and the Governors of States to promulgate ordinances to deal with urgent matters when the legislative bodies are not in session. The President and the Governors are required to act on the advice of the council of ministers.

The Executive cannot make laws in the United Kingdom which has a parliamentary system, or the United States which follows a presidential system. Law-making by the Executive in India is a colonial legacy. The British-enacted Government of India Act of 1935 had a provision to that effect.

An ordinance issued during a recess of the legislature lapses automatically six weeks from the start of its next session unless replaced by a regular law. DC Wadhwa, former Director of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, while working on the issue of sugarcane production, discovered that since 1967 Bihar and some other states were reissuing ordinances repeatedly. An ordinance relating to sugarcane was kept alive in this manner for about 14 years without being placed before the legislature.

Over the years Bihar started relying primarily on the ordinance route. Between 1967 and 1981, the state legislature passed only 180 laws. The ordinance tally for the period stood at 2,014. As many as 50 ordinances were issued on a single day.

Wadhwa brought out his findings in a book titled: “Re-promulgation of Ordinance: A fraud on the Constitution of India”. He also took the issue to the Supreme Court.

Frowning upon Ordinance Raj, the court declared that re-promulgated ordinances could be struck down. However, it took an indulgent view of the government’s conduct. If there was too much legislative business in a session and a law could not be enacted to replace an ordinance, it could be re-promulgated, it said.

Governments continued to use the ordinance route with abandon. According to Shubhankar Dam of the Singapore Management University School of Law, the Centre promulgated 651 ordinances between 1950 and 2009, an average of close to 11 in a year. Of these, 177 were issued within 15 days before or after a Parliament session. Indira Gandhi nationalised 14 major banks through an ordinance a day before a session.

Ironically, abuse of the ordinance provision is as old as the Constitution itself. On January 26, 1950, the very day on which the Constitution came into force, Jawaharlal Nehru’s government issued three ordinances. Eighteen more followed during the year. GV Mavlankar, Speaker of the Lok Sabha, told him the house felt that it was being ignored, and resort to ordinances was not conducive to the development of the best parliamentary traditions. But the situation did not improve.

Nehru, who commanded the support of the majority in the two houses of Parliament, had no need to avoid them. His successors took advantage of the precedent he had set. Some of them headed coalition governments and were wary of facing the houses.

Charan Singh, who was Prime Minister for 170 days without having enjoyed majority support in the Lok Sabha even for a day, issued seven ordinances.

The issue of rule by ordinance came to the surface early this year when Narendra Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party commands a majority in the Lok Sabha but is in a minority in the Rajya Sabha, issued eight ordinances in his first 225 days in office.

These included one for acquisition of land for industries, one for auction of coal blocks and one for allowing foreign direct investment in insurance. Failing to push through the land acquisition measure during the winter session due to the stiff opposition of the Congress and other parties in the Rajya Sabha, the government re-promulgated it after the house went into recess.

Government spokesmen justify re-promulgation of the ordinance on the ground that this was necessary to ensure continuity and move forward with the reform agenda. With farmers up in arms against the new law and several parties vowing to block it, the government is not in a position to put the measure on the statute book through the normal process and it is well aware of this. In these circumstances, re-promulgation of the ordinance is an act that falls within the purview of Wadhwa’s expression “a fraud on the Constitution”.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 9, 2015.

Academia’s meek surrender

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Political opposition and civil society have raised their voice against a perceived attempt by the Narendra Modi regime to impose its Hindutva ideology on institutions of higher learning. The real issue is academia’s readiness to surrender meekly to political masters.

The cause of the uproar is the decision of the elite Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (Chennai), to derecognise the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle, a year-old campus forum that upholds the principle of social justice.

The action followed a complaint sent to the central government by casteist elements operating surreptitiously.

APSC bears the names of national Dalit icon BR Ambedkar (1891-1956) and Dravidian ideologue Periyar EV Ramaswamy (1879-1973), the foremost advocates of social justice in the last century. Additionally, Ambedkar is revered as the Father of the Indian Constitution.

After APSC marked its first anniversary in April with a lecture by a distinguished speaker on the contemporary relevance of Ambedkar, the Union Human Resources Development Ministry received an anonymous complaint levelling a number of allegations against it, including “trying to create hatred against the Honourable Prime Minister and Hindus”. An Under Secretary forwarded the complaint to the Director of IIT-M and sought his comments.

A week later the Dean of Students informed APSC that it had been derecognised and would not be allowed to use campus facilities for its activities.

Political parties condemned the action as a wanton attack on free debate in the campus. They pinned the blame squarely on the government. Demonstrations were held outside the residence of Human Resources Minister Smriti Irani in Delhi and near the IIT campus in Chennai.

IITs, set up under a scheme initiated by Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1950s, are supposed to be autonomous institutions. Their governing councils are headed by eminent persons. However, those in charge of the day-to-day administration look upon themselves as minions who must pay heed to the ministry’s wishes.

Customarily the government ignores anonymous communications. The complaint against APSC received attention because its contents were in tune with the thinking of the ruling establishment. Yet there was no directive to act against APSC. All that the government did was to seek the Director’s views on the complaint.

The IIT authorities used the occasion to demonstrate their loyalty to the masters in Delhi. They took punitive action against APSC without even giving it an opportunity to reply to the charges.

The views propagated by APSC are those that were articulated by Ambedkar and Periyar in their lifelong campaigns against casteism in Hindu society.

The move against APSC needs to be viewed against long-standing complaints of caste-based discrimination in the IITs.

IIT Delhi expelled 12 Dalit students in 2008 on grounds of low academic performance. Following the intervention of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, it revoked the expulsion of two students, making some relaxation in grade requirements, and appointed a committee to look into complaints of discrimination. The IIT later claimed the students did not place before the committee any case of discrimination, but the students said the committee did not entertain their complaints.

In a survey conducted among students of IIT Bombay, following the death of a Dalit student in mysterious circumstances last September, more than half of the Adivasi, Dalit and other backward classes respondents said they experienced discreet discrimination and were subjected to higher academic pressure than other students.

Ten years ago, IIT Madras had a faculty of 480 staff members, of whom 462 belonged to the advanced communities, prompting activists to characterise it as a Brahmin enclave. Ten Dalits, one Adivasi and seven OBC members made up the rest. In 2008, the government ordered reservation of 15 per cent of the faculty positions for Dalits, 7.5 per cent for Adivasis and 27 per cent for OBCs. The staff strength has now risen to over 500 but the reservation targets remain a distant goal.

MS Ananth, who became its Director in 2001, quit in 2011 following allegations of caste bias and corruption. Dr E Muraleedharan, an alumnus, said Ananth had denied him a teaching post because of caste bias. Dr WB Vasantha Kandasamy of the Mathematics department, who belongs to a backward caste, vigorously pursued the case of a Dalit candidate, SR Kannan, and foiled the bid to deny him a staff position.

In the process, Vasantha Kandasamy invited the ire of her superiors. She secured overdue promotions as Associate Professor and Professor only after a court battle that lasted 16 years. While deciding the case in her favour, the Madras high court ordered a CBI probe to determine the legality of all appointments made in IIT Madras between 1995 and 2000. The authorities appealed and got a stay on the probe order. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 2, 2015.

Strange power games in Delhi

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

A tussle is on in Delhi between the Central government headed by Bharatita Janata Party’s Narendra Modi and the administration of the National Capital Territory headed by Aam Admi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal. 

It was Kejriwal who put an end to Modi’s unbroken run of electoral victories. Modi had led his party to convincing victories in all Assembly elections held after he became Prime Minister except the one in Delhi. 

During the colonial period, Delhi, of which New Delhi, the national capital, is a part, was directly under the British Indian government. Under the Constitution which came into force in 1950, as a Union Territory, it remained under the Central government.

The Union Territory of Delhi had a council of ministers headed by a Chief Minister from 1952 to 1956. Thereafter the Centre ran it with the help of officials. In the 1990s, in response to popular demand for statehood, it was renamed the National Capital Territory of Delhi and given a Council of Ministers responsible to an elected Assembly with limited powers.

Under the new dispensation, the BJP ruled the state for five years. Thereafter the Congress was in power for 15 years, winning three elections in a row. In 2013, the BJP emerged as the largest party in the Assembly but could not muster enough support to chalk up a majority. Kejriwal formed an AAP government with the support of the Congress, which had been pushed down to the third place. The government lasted barely 100 days.

When fresh elections were held last February after a spell of President’s rule, the AAP won hands down: it picked up 67 of the 70 Assembly seats. The resounding victory was the result of a consolidation of non-BJP votes behind it. The Congress vote dropped so low that it could not win a single seat.

Since the BJP had made a clean sweep of all seven Lok Sabha seats of Delhi in last year’s parliamentary elections, it thought it would have an easy victory. Though Modi, as usual, campaigned vigorously, the party could get only three seats. The humiliating reverse apparently still rankles in him.

Kejriwal, who is given to theatrics, had staged street protests during his first term as Chief Minister. He began his second term by expelling from the party activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan and psephologist Yogendra Yadav, who were his closest associates since he broke away from anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare to enter politics, saying one had to get into the system to reform it.

Kejriwal did not start the present fracas, and he is not in direct confrontation with Modi. It all began with Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor, Najeeb Jung, appointing Shakuntala Gamlin as Acting Chief Secretary overlooking his wishes.

Kejriwal, who has been trying to pressure the Ambanis and other business groups into reducing power rates, accused Gamlin of siding with the firms. He also relieved the Principal Secretary (Services), who had issued her appointed order, and locked his office.

Jung hit back. He asserted that he alone had the power to appoint officers and cancelled all appointments made by Kejriwal. 

At this stage the Centre intervened and issued a notification vesting full powers over appointment of Delhi state bureaucrats in the Lt-Governor. It also used the opportunity to curb the powers of the Anti-Corruption Bureau which the Kejriwal government had set up. This made it clear that it was motivated by considerations other than posting of bureaucrats.

The BJP was until recently an ardent advocate of full statehood for Delhi. It has now given up that position and is seeking to rule by proxy the state which rejected it convincingly in the elections.

Delhi has a population of about 11 million. There is, no doubt, force in the argument that as the seat of the central government Delhi has to be treated on a different basis from the other states. However, the democratic rights of its citizens need to be protected. It is absurd to suggest that that the Centre’s interests will be in jeopardy if the democratically elected government of Delhi has administrative control over its officers and is able to act against corrupt elements.

Both Jung and Kejriwal have raised the issue before President Pranab Mukherji. Since the issue involves interpretation of the constitutional and legal position, the Supreme Court is the right forum to resolve the issue. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 26, 2015.

Remembering seeing Pather Panchali with Sathyan

    Above: Satyajit Ray.                     Right: Sathyan 

It has been 60 years since Pather Panchali, the first film of the master, Satyajit Ray, who put India on the world cinema map, was released. The film won an award at Cannes for the Best Human Document in 1956.

I saw Pather Panchali for the first time in Madras. It came to the city after winning the Cannes award, kindling pride in Indians. It was the first time that a Bengali movie was released commercially in the city.

My friend M T Antony, who was teaching at the Madras Christian College, and I planned to see the film on the very first day. As we were leaving for the theatre, Antony asked me, “How about calling Sathyan?”

Sathyan (1912-1971) was the lone star of Malayalam cinema in those days. He came to Madras often as Malayalam producers used the facilities of film studios in the city. Sathyan used to stay in Swamy’s Lodge  at the intersection of General Patters Road and Woods Road when he was in the city. On reaching the lodge, we found that he was back after the day’s shoot. He was quite happy to join us.

Pather Panchali was being screened at Chithra, on the banks of the Coovum. The crowds that one usually saw outside theatres on a Friday were not there. When the show began, apart from the three of us, there was only one other small group of three or four persons in the Balcony. There were fewer people in the Stalls. 

A scene from Pather Panchali 

The film demanded close attention. The sights and the sound, which was interspersed with silence, kept us fully occupied and there was little conversation during the show. There was in the film a noisy scene depicting a village drama. Sathyan told us Ray has put it in to show how cinema is different from drama.

As we were leaving the theatre, Sathyan said, “I know why you wanted me to see the film. You wanted to tell me this is cinema!”

He then explained why there can’t be a film like Pather Panchali in Malayalam. He pointed out that all the characters were going about doing things without looking into the camera. "If I do that, my director will tell me to look at the camera.” 

The international acclaim that Pather Panchali had already received did not impress film-goers of Madras. The theatre withdrew the film after just three days on view of the poor popular response.

Yesterday I reminded Antony, who now lives in New York, of our Pather Panchali adventure. He immediately wrote back: “I still very vividly remember, Sathyan, sitting next to me, was crying.” He added, “Let me dwell on the Satyajit.Revolution. Started with Mahabharath. Then came Kalidasa, then Tagore, and then Ray.”

Right Livelihood Award winners condemn death threat to Swami Agnivesh

Swami Agnivesh, the Arya Samaj leader and well-known activist, made an appeal for inter-faith unity while visiting Kashmir last month. Hindu Mahasabha members in Haryana responded with a public call to murder him. He also received two threatening phone calls from a group in Maharashtra.

Swami Agnivesh had received the Right Livelihood Award in 2004, along with the late Asghar Ali Engineer, “for promoting over many years in South Asia the values of religious and communal coexistence, tolerance and mutual understanding.”

In a statement, fellow winners of the Right Livelihood Award, and the Right Livelihood Award Foundation said:

We, the undersigned Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award, and the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, are deeply alarmed by reports published in Punjab Kesari, Dainik Bhaskar, Dainik Jagaran, Navodaya Times, and ABP News Channel on 24th and 25th, stating that Hindu Mahasabha members from Haryana have offered a reward of Rs. 5,00,000 to anyone who beheads Swami Agnivesh.

We join Adama Dieng, Special Advisor on Genocide Prevention to the UN Secretary General, and other international civil society leaders in condemning this brazen incitement to commit violence, and we express our fullest solidarity with Swami Agnivesh.

We urge that the Haryana police investigate this threat as a case of abetment to murder and criminal intimidation under Sections 108, 115 and 503 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and hold the perpetrators accountable.

We also note with deep concern that the aforementioned media organizations have reported this grave threat in a manner that glorifies and incites violence. Article 19(2) of the Indian Constitution clearly states that the freedom of speech does not include the freedom to incite a criminal offence.

We have written to the Editors of the media organizations requesting a full apology, and intend to request the Press Council of India to investigate this serious breach of journalistic ethics if the media organizations do not respond. Further, we call upon the police to investigate these media organizations for abetment to murder under Sections 108 and 115 IPC.

The following are the Right Livelihood Award laureates who have signed the statement:

Dr. Maude Barlow, National Chairperson, Council of Canadians, Canada (RLA 2005)
Prof. Dr. Anwar Fazal, Director, Right Livelihood College, Malaysia (RLA 1982)
Basil Fernando, Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong SAR, China (RLA 2014)
Dr. Hans Herren, Founder of Biovision Foundation, Switzerland (RLA 2013)
Dr. SM Mohamed Idris, Sahabat Alam Malaysia (RLA 1988), Consumers Association of Penang and the Third World Network, Malaysia
Asma Jahangir, Pakistan (RLA 2014)
Bianca Jagger, Founder and Chair, Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, Nicaragua/UK (RLA 2004)
Ida Kuklina, The Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, Russia (RLA 1996)
Birsel Lemke, Turkey (RLA 2000)
Helen Mack Chang, Fundación Myrna Mack, Guatemala (RLA 1992)
Prof Dr. h.c. (mult.) Manfred Max-Neef, Director, Economics Institute, Universidad Austral de Chile, Chile (RLA 1983)
Prof. Dr. Raúl A. Montenegro, President, Fundación para la defensa del ambiente, Argentina (RLA 2004)
Frances Moore Lappé, Co-Founder, Small Planet Institute, USA (RLA 1987)
Nicanor Perlas, Center for Alternative Development Initiatives, Philippines (RLA 2003)
P K Ravindran, Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, India (RLA 1996)
Dr. Sima Samar, Chairperson, Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, Afghanistan (RLA 2012)
Mycle Schneider, Germany (RLA 1997)
Dr. Vandana Shiva, Navdanya, India (RLA 1993)
Prof. Michael Succow, Founder, Michael Succow Foundation for Nature Conservation, Germany, (RLA 1997)
Suciwati, widow of Munir, Indonesia (RLA 2000)
Dr. Hanumappa Sudarshan, Karuna Trust & VGKK, India (RLA 1994)
Shrikrishna Upadhyay, Executive Chairman, Support Activities for Poor Producers of Nepal, Nepal (RLA 2010)
Prof. Dr. Theo van Boven, The Netherlands (RLA 1985)
Martín von Hildebrand, Founder and Director, Fundación GAIA Amazonas, Colombia (RLA 1999) 
Chico Whitaker Ferreira, Brazil (RLA 2006)
Alla Yaroshinskaya, Russia (RLA 1992)
Angie Zelter, Trident Ploughshares, United Kingdom (RLA 2001).

The below-named members of RLA Board and Jury have also signed the statement:

Jakob von Uexkull, Co-Chair, Board of the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, UK
Dr. Monika Griefahn, Co-Chair, Board of the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, Germany
Ole von Uexküll, Executive Director, Right Livelihood Award Foundation, Sweden

For more information, please contact:
Sharan Srinivas, Right Livelihood Award Foundation 
Email: sharan@rightlivelihood.org 
Phone: +46 8 702 03 35

Modi’s record is good in parts

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi completes one year in office, opinion on his performance is sharply divided. Fans affirm he has redeemed India but opponents say he is ruining the country. Then there are observers who wonder whether there has been a change of administration at all.

Modi, like Muhammad Ali, believes he is the greatest. So do his loyal followers. According to BS Yeddyurappa, Vice-President of his Bharatiya Janata Party, Modi is running a clean, efficient pro-people government. For the first time in many years there is a government that is scam-free, he says.

Yeddyurappa ran a corrupt administration in Karnataka and does not have the right credentials to issue a certificate of integrity. There are other reasons too for not taking his statement at face value.

Scams generally surface years late, when reports of the Comptroller and Auditor-General become available. The cases instituted against some members of Manmohan Singh’s second government were based on what they did as members of his first government. Modi’s acceptance of a custom-made suit, reportedly worth Rs1 million, from a businessman and the windfall gains his corporate financiers are making cast doubts on Yeddyurappa’s claim.

Political opponents who were alarmed by Modi’s emergence on the national scene in view of the Hindutva-engineered riots in Gujarat under his watch cite the rabid outbursts of some BJP MPs and the attacks on churches and reconversion campaigns in some states as evidence of the regime’s communal agenda. However, there is reason to believe he is trying to restrain the hotheads, though belatedly, since their activities are giving his government a bad name at home and abroad.

Modi is on the verge of setting a globe-trotting record with visits to 18 countries in 12 months. The travels were planned with the twin objectives of improving bilateral and multilateral relations and securing investments to make India a manufacturing hub. They have provoked the good-humoured comment that he is the first Non-Resident Indian prime minister.

The Make-in-India programme is Modi’s main employment generation scheme. Several countries, including China and the United States, have evinced interest in it. Since big projects necessarily take time to materialise, it is too early to decide how successful the programme is.

Meanwhile, Modi has some hurdles to cross at home. Several measures he has initiated to ease the way for domestic and foreign investors – these include relaxation in laws relating to land acquisition and employment of children – have met with opposition.

In his election speeches, Modi had accused the previous governments of wasting nearly six decades. He is now reassessing the past more realistically. Last week, at Shanghai, he spoke of a backlog of only three decades when he took over. That means he has exonerated all prime ministers up to PV Narasimha Rao, including his bete noire, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

Manmohan Singh, who headed the two United Progressive Alliance governments, is still on Modi’s list of defaulters, but observers are finding it difficult to differentiate between the economic policies of the two. Much of the economic legislation Modi has pushed through Parliament so far, such as the insurance, coal and general sales tax bills, are measures initiated by Manmohan Singh. As one scribe puts it, “Modi has achieved the impossible: he has given us another year of UPA.”

However, Modi has reason to be happy. The global downturn had slowed down economic growth during Manmohan Singh’s second term. With the US and other major countries on the path of recovery, the pace is picking up again, and the International Monetary Fund has forecast that India will register an expansion of 7.2 per cent, outstripping China’s 6.8 per cent.

Indian and foreign business interests are hopeful that Modi will be able to keep his promise and make changes of the kind they wish to see. The Associated Chamber of Commerce gives him only seven marks out of 10. But the global consultancy firm PwC’s 2015 survey says Indian CEOs are the most optimistic in the world.

Modi has not been able to infuse the same degree of optimism in the poor who constitute one-fourth of India’s population. Economic distress continues to drive peasants to suicide. Sensing trouble on this front, the BJP has drawn up a campaign plan designed to give him a pro-poor image.

Modi’s progress card for the year, like the curate’s egg, is good in parts. Opinion polls indicate that his personal popularity is still high. He will face a field test when some states go to the polls later this year. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 19, 2015.

Some are more equal than others

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

When a Mumbai court found film celebrity Salman Khan guilty in a hit-and-run case at the end of a protracted trial and gave him a five-year jail term last week, a leading British daily saw in it a message that India’s elite are not above the law. Few in India share that view.

In fact the speed with which the normally slow-moving judicial machinery granted Khan interim bail within hours of his conviction has provoked a national debate on the vaunted principle of equality before law.

The cause of action took place in September 2002. Salman Khan was returning home from a bar late at night when his car jumped the kerb, killing a man sleeping on the pavement and wounding four others. The trial dragged on for nearly 13 years. The usual practice of one party or the other seeking adjournment, non-appearance of witnesses and disappearance of evidence contributed to the delay.

Salman Khan, who was on bail, did not have to go to jail immediately as his lawyers rushed to the Bombay High Court and obtained an order giving him two days’ time to surrender to the law. That gave him enough time to file a formal appeal and secure regular bail till its disposal.

Considering that the charges were serious enough to fetch up to 10 years in jail and that normal procedures required him to give himself up immediately, Salman Khan got off cheap. While the High Court was considering his plea, lawyers were standing by in New Delhi to move the Supreme Court if its decision was unfavourable.

Khan’s buddies and fans, however, were not pleased. Their anger spilled out in the social media in the form of quaint arguments. “Roads are meant for cars and dogs, not for people sleeping on them,” singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya tweeted. Jewellery designer Farah Khan Ali said the accident was the result of the government’s failure to provide housing. If no one was sleeping on the road, Salman would not have driven over anybody, she wrote.

Such arguments infuriated many. Cars are supposed to ply in roads and not on pavements, one tweeter pointed out. In Muzaffarpur, Bihar, a court, acting on a complaint by a local advocate, directed that a first information report be filed against Abhijeet and Farah Khan for various offences including attempt to promote riot and enmity between different groups.

Film stars and politicians poured into Salman Khan’s residence in a show of solidarity. According to industry circles, those who have already invested around Rs 2 billion will be in serious trouble if Khan is unavailable to complete the films under production.

Salman Khan commands a measure of sympathy among sections of the population by virtue of his identification with various public causes. However, he has to contend with a few negative factors too. The hit-and-run case is the third in which he has been convicted. Ten years ago a Rajasthan court sentenced him to a year in jail on a charge of poaching protected animals. At the moment he faces a combined sentence of 11 years but has so far spent only six days in prison.

The High Court judge who granted him instant interim bail offered this justification: “Since the appellant was on bail throughout the trial and since a copy of the judgement of conviction has not yet been furnished to him, it would be proper to protect the appellant for some time in the interest of Justice.”

In theory all citizens of India are equal but in practice some are more equal than others, to borrow Orwell’s famous expression. The time-consuming and costly judicial process puts the rich in an advantageous position in courts of law. There have been occasions when counsel for affluent litigants went to judges’ residences after working hours and obtained instant relief. That is a privilege the poor cannot hope for.

Arrest, trial and conviction of the high and the mighty, which occur rarely, are exceptions, not the rule. The odds are stacked in their favour from the moment investigation of a case begins. It is not unusual for ministers to stay put in their jobs while officials serving under them go through the process of investigation.

Not long ago a posh car belonging to a company of Mukesh Ambani, the richest Indian in the Forbes list, was involved in an accident which resulted in two deaths. Some eyewitnesses said Ambani’s son was in the driver’s seat. But the police accepted the driver’s claim that he was at the wheel. Salman Khan’s driver also came forward with a similar claim but that was years after the accident, and the court wasn’t impressed. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 12, 2015.

Half-hearted anti-graft measures

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The largest single factor that contributed to the resounding defeat of the 10-year-old Congress-led government in last year’s parliamentary elections was the corruption scandals that engulfed it. Some Congress party leaders and a former minister belonging to coalition partner Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam were facing criminal charges when the country went to the polls.

A Gandhian movement led by Anna Hazare and backed by civil society groups raised the issue of corruption high up in the national agenda, and Narendra Modi, as Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate, cashed it in his vigorous election campaign.

Last week, nearly a year later, the Modi government announced a set of proposals to tackle the issue of corruption. It provides for enhancement of the minimum term of imprisonment for corruption from six months to three years and the maximum term from five years to seven years.

The higher penalties will raise corruption to the level of a heinous crime. However, some of the proposed changes may render the legal framework weaker than at present. For instance, there is a proposal to extend the protective umbrella of prior sanction for prosecution of public servants to those who have retired or resigned.

Under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988, a public servant is guilty of criminal misconduct and liable for punishment if “he while holding office obtains for any person any valuable thing or pecuniary advantage without any public interest.” Bureaucrats have long been unhappy that this provision as it renders them liable for action even when they have not derived any pecuniary benefit from their actions. One of the contemplated changes seeks to vest the power to grant prior sanction for investigation in such cases in the Lokpal or Lok Ayukta instead of the government.

On an average, trial proceedings in a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act last more than eight years. The government plans to fix a two-year time-frame for completing the proceedings. The cumbersome legal procedures and dilatory tactics employed by either of the parties involved may defeat the objective.

In the Transparency International’s global corruption index, India ranked 85th among the 175 countries surveyed last year. The authorities were pleased with the finding as the previous year the country was in the 94th position.

The licence raj which flourished under the restrictive economic policy which the country followed in the early years of Independence was widely believed to have bred corruption at the political and administrative levels. The 2G scam case in which the former DMK minister and several high-ranking bureaucrats are involved indicates that under economic liberalisation the situation has become worse. Not better.

Under the law, the bribe-giver and the bribe-taker are both liable for prosecution. A company official who bribes a bureaucrat can be prosecuted but not the company on whose behalf he makes the payment. An amendment under consideration envisages prosecution of the company as well.

Corruption takes place at the lower levels as well as the higher levels of the administration. At the lower levels, it takes the form of demanding or accepting illegal gratification to provide services which officials are bound to provide anyway. This hurts the poor. At the higher levels, it takes the form of payment of consideration for doing a favour. This benefits the rich.

When prosecution is rare and conviction even rarer, enhancement of punishment is an exercise with little practical significance. Except in rare instances like the 2G case, which, incidentally, was the result of exertions by constitutional functionaries like the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Supreme Court, only small fry are caught in the net.

Corruption is an affliction that affects many sectors. Studies have identified defence sector companies, all of which are government-owned, and the health care system, which is dominated by the private sector, as areas where ethical practices are extremely weak. 

The proposed changes are, at best, half-hearted measures. They cannot make any material difference since they do not address the core issue of political corruption, arising from the parties’ growing need for funds to fight elections. On the face of it, the BJP, which is now the main beneficiary of corporate munificence, and Narendra Modi, who used a business tycoon’s private aircraft for campaign tours and accepted a custom-made suit reportedly worth Rs 1 million presented by a businessman, are unlikely agents of change in this crucial area. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 5, 2015.