Problems of affirmative action

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

The Supreme Court recently struck down the Centre’s decision to place the powerful Jat community of northern India in the “Other Backward Classes” category to make its members eligible for reservation in the services and in educational institutions. The decision was taken by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government last year with an eye to the Lok Sabha poll.

Also last year the Congress-led government of Maharashtra, through an ordinance, gave the powerful Maratha community of the state and the Muslims reservation of 16 per cent and five per cent respectively. The Bombay high court, acting on a writ petition, stayed the decision, pending detailed scrutiny. The BJP-led state government, which came to power last October, scrapped reservation for Muslims but retained it for the Marathas.

Reservation in educational institutions and government service for socially disadvantaged communities, introduced by Shahuji Maharaj, who was Maharaja of Kolhapur from 1900 to 1922, is the first known instance of affirmative action in the world. Under pressure from the South Indian Liberal Federation, better known as the Justice Party, the British introduced reservation for non-Brahmins in the Madras presidency. Princely states like Baroda, Mysore and Travancore also took affirmative action.

Initially the beneficiaries of reservation were determined solely on the basis of caste since social disabilities were a direct consequence of the caste system. The Constitution adopted after the country became free limited such privileges to Dalits and Adivasis. Two Brahmin petitioners from Madras challenged reservation for non-Brahmins in the court on the ground that it is against the equality provision of the Constitution. The Supreme Court upheld their contention. Thereupon the Centre amended the Constitution to permit special provisions for socially and economically backward classes of people.

Successive governments at the Centre and in most northern states took no steps in pursuance of this provision until Prime Minister VP Singh decided in 1989 to grant 27 per cent reservation to other backward classes (OBCs) on the basis of the Mandal Commission report, which had been gathering dust for a decade. The decision led to widespread protests by students belonging to the so-called upper castes and the BJP brought the government down by withdrawing its support.

The Supreme Court upheld the extension of reservation to OBCs. It frowned on caste-based reservation but said caste could be a factor in determining the backwardness of a group. While deciding other related cases, it set a 50 per cent ceiling on reservations and ordered exclusion of the creamy layer, comprising second generation of families which have benefited from reservation and families with incomes above a prescribed limit.

There are no data to determine the level of backwardness of any group. Since collection of data on caste was stopped after the 1931 census, even the number of persons belonging to different caste groups is not known. Following widespread demand, the UPA government ordered a caste count but its results have not been published.

In the absence of reliable data, it has been easy for leaders of caste organisations, which serve as vote banks, to make exaggerated claims either to secure benefits for themselves or to deny them to others. The grant of reservation to Jats, who are a major force in the politics of half a dozen states, and to Marathas, who have dominated Maharashtra politics since the state’s formation in 1960 and provided more than half of its 18 chief ministers, are examples of wrong decisions taken to appease large groups.

While reservation has helped disadvantaged groups to move forward, few communities have reached the level where they can do without the crutch. The primary responsibility for this rests on the lack of sincerity of the bureaucracy, which is still dominated by erstwhile caste supremacists.

In Tamil Nadu, where reservation has been in force for nine decades, Dalits have made remarkable progress by taking advantage of reservation in educational institutions, but intermediate castes which have achieved a dominant position through the anti-Brahmin Dravidian movement are denying them a legitimate share in the power structure.

The Judiciary is one limb of the state which has not come under the affirmative action regime. Some of its decisions have attracted criticism from supporters of reservation policy.

There is a legitimate fear among the forward castes that the beneficiaries of reservation may seek to perpetuate it. The remedy for the problem lies in gathering hard data periodically and progressively reducing the reservation quota of each beneficiary group in keeping with the social and educational progress it has achieved. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 24, 2015.

Coal block corruption

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

A Delhi special court last week asked former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to appear before it next month, along with industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla, to answer charges of conspiracy and impropriety in coal block allocations. Is this a case of upholding the majesty of law? Or is it one of judicial activism? Time alone can tell.

The coal scam came to light three years ago when the Comptroller and Auditor General reported that during 2004-09 the government had allocated coal blocks to various companies without competitive bidding. He estimated that the government’s inept handling gave the companies an estimated windfall gain of Rs10,673 billion. He later scaled down the figure to Rs1,856 billion.

The first Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government was in power at the time and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself was in charge of the Coal ministry for a while. Acting on a complaint filed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, then in the opposition, the Central Vigilance Commission directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the matter. The CBI registered first information reports against a dozen companies and, apart from company officials, some officers, including Coal Secretary PC Parakh, were cited as accused.

Last year the Supreme Court ordered the setting up of a special CBI court to hear the coal scam cases and appointed a special prosecutor to conduct them. It also cancelled all but four of the 218 coal blocks allotted since 1993, covering the periods of Prime Ministers PV Narasimha Rao (Congress), AB Vajpayee (BJP), and HD Deva Gowda and IK Gujral (both Janata Dal).

The CBI was on the point of closing the case relating to Hindalco Industries Limited and its chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla when special court judge Bharat Parashar asked it to record the statement of Manmohan Singh, who was holding charge of the ministry when the company was allotted coal block. Accordingly, CBI officials interrogated him at his residence and filed a status report.

Former CBI director RK Raghavan said the judge’s order reaffirmed the position that a Prime Minister – in office or outside – had no immunity from criminal prosecution. That a Prime Minister is not above the law was established years ago when Narasimha Rao faced three criminal cases, all of which were conducted by the CBI. Trial courts acquitted him in two cases for want of evidence. In the third, relating to bribing of MPs to buy support for his minority government during the voting on a no-confidence motion, the trial court found him guilty and sentenced him to three years’ rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs100,000. On appeal the high court set aside the conviction.

While the principle of supremacy of law has thus been asserted, there is room to doubt the reliability of the legal processes.

Created in 1963, the CBI traces its origin to the Special Police Establishment which India inherited from the British regime. It established an early reputation with its success in some sensational cases in which the role of the state police was suspect. However, in sensitive cases, like the Bofors scandal of Rajiv Gandhi’s time, it too failed miserably.

In 2013, on finding that the CBI had amended a coal block case affidavit at the instance of the Law Minister, Justice RM Lodha of the Supreme Court dubbed it “a caged parrot”. The court thereafter took certain steps to help it to function without political interference. However, few believe it is now a free bird.

There is something curious about the coal block cases. The CAG only accused the government of inefficiency. He did not allege corruption.

The conspiracy charge levelled against Manmohan Singh rests on the CBI report about a meeting between him and Birla before his firm was allotted the coal block. Neither the CAG nor the CBI has suggested that Manmohan Singh derived financial benefit from the allocation or that there was any quid pro quo.

Former Confederation of Indian Industry president Adi Godrej expressed surprise at the citing of Manmohan Singh and Birla as accused on the basis of their meeting. “It is not uncommon for senior industrialists to meet a minister or even the Prime Minister when an important matter needs to be discussed,” he said in a television interview. “If you keep summoning everybody as an accused, businesses will get disheartened and wouldn’t want to invest in the country.” --Gulf Today, March 17, 2015.

Rape film touches a raw nerve

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The cry of a young woman who fought back a gang of sexual predators in a Delhi bus on a cold night two years ago is reverberating throughout the world again, thanks to an hour-long documentary.

News reports of the gangrape outrage in India prompted Leslee Udwin, maker of the award-winning British film East is East, which deals with the life of South Asian immigrants in London, to confront her own past. A rape survivor, she had kept her teenage experience a secret and harboured a sense of guilt for decades. She came to India to find an answer to the question why men rape. The documentary, “India’s Daughter”, is the result of her effort.

The film was to be released on BBC 4 and the Indian channel NDTV 24x7 and shown at various other countries on March 8, International Women’s Day. Clips from the documentary and news reports about its contents alarmed the Narendra Modi government, which is already having an image problem. A commercial rival of NDTV launched a virulent campaign against the documentary, and the government, in a kneejerk response, banned the documentary without even seeing it.

On a plea by the government, a Delhi court issued an injunction restraining channels and websites from showing the film, also without seeing it. The BBC responded by telecasting the documentary immediately. Within minutes it was on YouTube too.

Bowing to the Delhi court order and BBC’s copyright claim, YouTube blocked the film but it kept reappearing as intrepid Netizens kept posting it again and again.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh asked the External Affairs Ministry to alert Indian missions abroad to prevent the exhibition of the film in other countries. Few foreign governments obliged.

As it happened, the government could scuttle only the NDTV telecast. The channel left the screen blank during the hour set for the telecast.  

The documentary divided Indian political parties and civil society.  The government described the documentary as part of an attempt to tarnish India’s image. It said the interviews with the accused and their lawyers included in it were objectionable as the legal processes in the rape case were still not over.

Kavita Krishnan, Secretary, All India Progressive Women’s Association, who is one of the persons Leslee Udwin interviewed for the film, rejected the government’s arguments for banning the film but said it did not address the problem of rape culture. A group of women activists, led by well-known lawyer Indira Jaising, while opposing the ban, wanted its screening to be delayed until the legal processes are completed.

The public outrage over the gangrape had forced the government to refer the case to a fast-track court. Within nine months of the crime, four accused were sentenced to death. This was a record in rape trials. The high court disposed of the convicts’ appeals in just six months, which, too, was a record.

Fast-tracking ended there. The convicts’ appeals against the high court judgement confirming the death sentence have been pending before the Supreme Court now for a year.

The argument that telecast of the film before completion of the legal processes may prejudice the rights of the victim and the convicts is based on a sound principle. However, it is disingenuous to suggest that it may influence the Supreme Court, which has stated that pendency of a matter is no bar on intellectual debate.

The anti-women statements of Mukesh Singh, an unrepentant convict, and ML Sharma and AP Singh, the defence lawyers, in the documentary touched a raw nerve. All three blamed the victim for her tragic end. Singh said on camera that he would burn his daughter alive if she had sex outside marriage.

The Bar Council of India has asked Sharma and Singh to show cause within three weeks why disciplinary action should not be taken against them for their misogynistic remarks.

Official statistics show that sex crimes are on the rise and the state is failing to send the culprits to jail. Rape cases in Delhi shot up from 706 in 2012 to 1,646 in 2013 and more than 1,789 in 2014, molestation cases from 727 to 3,515 and to more than 3,674, and lewd taunt cases from 236 to 916 and to more than 1,092. Courts returned a guilty verdict only in 6,892 of the 25,386 rape cases decided in India in 2013.

“Our heads hang in shame,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a Women’s Day speech. That statement explains the government’s ham-handed efforts to ban the documentary.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 10, 2015

Western media's doublethink on crimes against women

Reproduced below (in italics) is a message I received today from a former media colleague, who is now working abroad, in the context of the controversy generated by the BBC documentary ‘India’s Daughter’:

Look at it from the perspective of global media. Why wouldn't the BBC do a similar interview with a British rapist? One of these men could be fitting subject: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11443868/300-victims-groomed-and-assaulted-by-Oxfordshire-gangs-report-finds.html
Or they wouldn't have to go far for this: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/30/bbc-staff-child-sex-abuse-allegations

They could go the US and do an interview with a college rapist. The most dangerous place for a woman is not the streets of Delhi, but US college campuses. One in five women students are raped during their college career. http://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/campus-sexual-assault-stats

When US media -- and activists -- denounce India as a society of violence towards women, what they are trying to do is divert attention away from the US situation to India (and make themselves feel better by venting against Indians). After all, the college rapists are not hoodlums from the ghettos, but the brothers, sons, nephews and cousins of the media and social elite and their friends and house guests. Would they, in any case, want to taint with a broad brush the student population made up of people like their own.

Street harassment of women is quite widespread in the US, too. http://www.npr.org/2014/11/01/360494480/woman-in-street-harassment-video-i-do-not-feel-safe-right-now
But does the western media treat it the way they do harassment in India?

And US politicians? Todd Aiken, a US Congressman said there are legitimate rapes. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/08/19/todd-akin-gop-senate-candidate-legitimate-rape-rarely-causes-pregnancy/

Richard Mourdock, a Republican Senate candidate, said that rape and rape-induced pregnancies are part of God's (I presume he means the Abrahamic God) plan.

(No, they didn't belong to an Indian Khap Panchayat but were members of a mainstream US party -- not even on the fringe, but with wide party base.)

Indian media and civil society have done an excellent job of covering and violence against women in their society. Can that be said of the US media and civil society -- if you compare them to their attitudes towards similar problems in the US and in India, and how they and Indian media cover and condemn the issues in their respective countries.

When was the last time an Indian newspaper wrote a caustic editorial on rapes on US campuses or British rapes of children?

I am not denying the problems and in no way suggesting that they be hushed up -- the very active Indian media and civil society do an excellent job. I can't but notice, though, that western media is just trying to avoid criticizing their own by turning attention away from them. They don't need to raise conscience on this, when Indian society is doing a better job.

I am fully in agreement with my friend’s assessment that the Indian media has a better record of addressing the issue of crimes against women than its western counterparts. That, however, should not blind us to the fact Indian society is far more impervious to the idea of gender equality than western societies.

I have no hesitation to admit that, in my judgment, there is a good side to western media intrusions like ‘India’s Daughter’, whatever their motive. It is that they often handle the issue more professionally than our media.

As for the western media’s tendency to ignore similar developments in their own countries, the answer is to develop non-western international media institutions which will, hopefully, redress the imbalance. 

The chart below shows that the national outrage of December 2012 did not lead to a fall in the incidence of sex crimes in Delhi. On the contrary it shot up. 

Obviously we needed to be reminded of that horrendous crime, and the unchanged mindset of the criminals and their political and legal defenders. The BBC documentary has done that.  

Final call for Congress party

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who led the Bharatiya Janata Party to a sensational victory in last year’s parliamentary elections, frequently talks of a Congress-free India. Since the Congress, which the BJP has pushed down to the second place, still has the widest national reach, its disappearance may weaken the democratic character of the polity.

The standard bearer of the freedom movement, the Congress was in power at the Centre and in the states, at the dawn of Independence. It has been going downhill for several decades now. Unless it reinvents itself and regains lost ground, it may soon be a party of the past.

Of the 10 largest states, which together account for nearly three-fourths of the population, only one, Karnataka, is under Congress rule now. The BJP wields power in four – on its own in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat and in alliance with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.

Regional or state parties are in power in the remaining five states – Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, Janata Dal (United) in Bihar, Trinamool Congress in West Bengal , Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and the Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh.

The Congress has not been in power in Tamil Nadu since 1967, in West Bengal since 1977, in Uttar Pradesh since 1989, in Bihar since 1990 and in Gujarat since 1995. In all of them, except Gujarat, it has slid to the third or fourth position, with no sign of recovery.

After 1990, the Congress has formed the government in Madhya Pradesh only once and in Rajasthan twice.

The BJP and the Congress are the main contenders for power in these states. With Modi breathing new life into his party, the Congress’s prospects appear bleak.

In the Delhi assembly elections, the fledgling Aam Admi Party showed that the BJP is beatable. But, then, it also showed that the Congress is more vulnerable to attack than the BJP.

Political pundits attribute the Congress’s plight to its dependence on the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Dynastic succession was broken when former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Italian-born wife Sonia refused the party’s nomination as his successor on his assassination. She stepped in several years later under pressure from leaders to rescue the party from the mess in which Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and Congress President Sitaram Kesri had landed it. The party needed the family more than the family needed it.

Aided by the sympathy wave generated by Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, the Congress mopped up 47.6% votes and came to power in 1991. Narasimha Rao’s scandal-ridden regime pulled its vote share down to 28.8% in 1996. In the next elections in 1998, it fell further to 25.8%. With 25.6% votes, the BJP secured more seats than the Congress, and the National Democratic Alliance, which it led, came to power.

After the NDA’s five-year stint, Sonia Gandhi led the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance to power, and nominated Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister in deference to the sentiments whipped up by the BJP against a person of foreign origin assuming the top post. She held the party together but failed to revitalise it and shore up its base. Most of her advisers were leaders with no popular support.

Her son, Rahul Gandhi, who entered the Lok Sabha in 2004 and was made party general secretary in 2007 and vice-president in 2013, was initially a reluctant heir. He has been widely derided as a lacklustre leader but party men who have known him well affirm he has leadership qualities and sound understanding of issues. Last week he went on two weeks’ leave, leading to speculation that he is sore at having to share the blame for the party’s reverses even though effective control over still vests in his mother.

The Congress’s vote share, which hovered between 25% and 29% in the five Lok Sabha elections held between 1996 and 2009, fell to 19.3% last year and the party’s strength in the house dropped to 44. It is clearly on the edge of the precipice. When its votes in the Delhi assembly elections fell from 40.3% to 24.6% in 2013 it was reduced to the third position in the house and when it fell further to 9.8% it was wiped out altogether.

Since Sonia Gandhi has had health problems lately, the Congress will do well to settle the succession issue early. Whatever Rahul Gandhi’s weaknesses, at present there is no one in the Congress who has a wider national appeal than him. There are Congressmen who consider his sister Priyanka Vadra more charismatic than him but her entry is bound to raise questions about her husband’s reported land deals which the party, already seen as corrupt, will find highly embarrassing. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 3, 2015.

Bleak outlook for the Left

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

 As the Communist Party of India-Marxist, the largest of India’s Left parties, prepares for its triennial national congress, the outlook for the future is bleak as there are no signs of recovery from the setbacks of recent years.

The Communist Party of India was the main opposition in Parliament in the early years of Independence. It stunned the world in 1957 by seizing power in Kerala state through the ballot box. A few years later the party split in the wake of the Sino-Soviet rift, and the breakaway CPI-M, outgrowing the parent body, became the major political force in West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala.

In West Bengal and Tripura, it enjoyed a long run in power. In Kerala, a coalition led by it alternated in power with a rival front led by the Congress party.

As the Congress was reduced to a minority in Parliament, the CPI-M promoted the formation of non-Congress, non-Bharatiya Janata Party governments at the Centre but did not participate directly in them. It was the Left’s image as a progressive force that enabled the party’s general secretary, Harkishen Singh Surjeet, to bring together small national and regional parties to form coalition governments.

At one stage these parties wanted West Bengal’s charismatic CPI-M leader Jyoti Basu to be the Prime Minister. The party turned down the suggestion as it did not want to be part of a government in which it did not have a dominant position. Basu later termed the decision a Himalayan blunder.

In 2004, Surjeet’s successor, Prakash Karat, extended Left support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government from outside to keep the BJP out of power. He pulled the plug when the government concluded the civil nuclear agreement with the United States but could not bring the government down. The UPA won a second term in the 2009 elections.

In 2011, the regional Trinamool Congress brought the CPI-M’s unbroken 34-year rule in West Bengal to an end. The Left’s electoral rout was widely attributed to the pro-rich policies the government had adopted and the ruthless manner in which it attempted to seize farmers’ lands for industries.

Dr Ashok Mitra, a former CPI-M Finance Minister and well-known economist, said the party was defeated as its state leaders had deviated from communist policies and principles.

Last year’s Lok Sabha elections revealed shrinkage of the Left’s electoral base. The CPI-M’s vote share dwindled from 5.3% in 2009 to 3.2% and the CPI’s from 1.4% to 0.8%.

The results of two recent by-elections in West Bengal, one to the Lok Sabha and the other to the State Assembly, show that the party’s downward slide is continuing. The Trinamool Congress won both the seats. In the Assembly constituency, the BJP took the second spot pushing the CPI-M down to the third place.

In Kerala, the CPI-M has been debilitated by a feud between party veteran VS Achuthanandan and long-time state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan. A new act of the long-running tragi-comedy was played out at the state party conference which has just concluded at Alappuzha.

The small northeastern state of Tripura is the only place where the party is intact. Small pockets of influence which it had elsewhere in the country have been swept away by the rising tide of communal and regional parties.

The state of the Left in Delhi, where Prakash Karat served as the CPI-M’s state secretary before his elevation to the Central Committee in 1985, is illustrative of its sad plight at the national level. Five Left parties jointly put up 15 candidates in the Assembly elections there. Together they polled a paltry 5,405 votes. The state has an electorate of more than 13 million.

Prakash Karat, who became general secretary in 2005, is due to relinquish the post at the party congress scheduled to be held at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, from April 14 to 19. His poor stewardship of the party is generally attributed to his lack of experience in working class movements.

Sitaram Yechury, who is widely tipped to succeed him, shares Karat’s background. Both were student leaders catapulted into the top leadership without field experience.

The party’s West Bengal and Kerala units have powerful state level leaders but have not been able to throw up a single leader of national stature after Jyoti Basu and EMS Namboodiripad. Basu, who was West Bengal’s chief minister continuously from 1977 to 2000, died in 2010 and Namboodiripad, who was Kerala’s chief minister twice, died in 1998-- Gulf Today. Sharjah, February 24, 2015

AAP raises hope of game change

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

“The juggernaut has been stopped,” said Yogendra Yadav, the Aam Admi Party’s ideologue, as the Delhi Assembly election results dashed the Bharatiya Janata Party’s hope of seizing power in the state.

The BJP had won all but one of the Assembly elections held since Narendra Modi led it to power at the Centre last May. In Haryana and Jharkhand, it had come to power for the first time.

In Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir the BJP had to be content with second place. Even there, it was in a strong position as the Hindu-majority Jammu region gave it enough numbers to bargain for a place in the government.

Modi had personally led the BJP’s victorious campaigns in all the states. As his image grew election after election he appeared to have become unbeatable. When elections were called in Delhi, as usual, he came out to lead the party from the front, with his aide from Gujarat, Amit Shah, who is the party president, by his side. Not impressed with the calibre of the party’s local leaders, he brought in Kiran Bedi, who, as the first woman officer of the Indian Police Service, was known nationally, and proclaimed her its chief ministerial candidate.

He ran a characteristically vigorous campaign, running down Congress president Sonia Gandhi and son and vice-president Rahul Gandhi, and calling Kejriwal a quitter and an anarchist who should be with the anti-government rebels fighting in the jungles, and not in the government.

Kejriwal, who had served as Chief Minister for 49 days with the support extended by the Congress from outside, began his campaign with an open apology to the people for walking out of the government and pledging to stay put for five years and make Delhi a city they could be proud of. The voters forgave him and backed him to the hilt.

AAP raised its vote share dramatically from 29.7 per cent in 2013 to 54.3 per cent and its strength in the Assembly from 28 to 67. The BJP was decimated: its strength fell from 32 to three. The Congress, which had ruled the state continuously for 15 years until 2013, drew a blank.

While parties generally win elections by appealing to specific caste and religious groups, AAP was propelled to victory by voters who rose above such divisions. When the Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid exhorted his followers to vote for AAP, Kejriwal said he did not want the support of any communal group.

AAP’s spectacular comeback cast Kejriwal in the role of a superhero who can stop Modi. Political analysts saw him as the leader around whom a winning combination can emerge at the national level.

Kejriwal made Manish Sisodia deputy chief minister in his new government. Media reports suggested this was done to keep himself free to prepare the party to play a role at the national level. However, addressing the people of Delhi immediately after his swearing-in, he said he would be with them for five years.

AAP’s 2013 performance had generated high hopes about the possibility of rewriting electoral equations. AAP units came up all over the country. Grossly overestimating its prospects, the party fielded 432 candidates in the Lok Sabha elections. It could win only four seats, all from Punjab. Most of its nominees lost their security deposits.

Following the debacle, it called off plans to contest the Assembly elections in Haryana, where it had earlier reckoned it had a chance of coming to power.

Kejriwal, 46, is a leader with much to look forward to. But, wiser by experience, he is now inclined to move cautiously. He owes his present comeback to Delhiites’ fond memory of the efforts he had made during the short previous tenure to check corruption and reduce water and power rates. A good long-term performance will help him take on Modi nationally. But game change calls for much more. 

BJP’s popular base in Delhi declined only marginally – from 33.3 per cent in 2013 to 32.2 per cent. With an even smaller vote share of 30.1 per cent it was able to secure an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha last year. The impressive parliamentary win was the result of fragmentation of non-BJP votes and the dismal Delhi defeat that of consolidation of non-BJP votes behind one party. -- Gulf Today, February 17, 2015.

US rebuke evokes divided response

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Public statements by President Barack Obama chiding India for the recent attacks on religious minorities has chilled the officially promoted euphoria over the personal chemistry between him and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and elicited diverse responses from the Bharatiya Janata Party government and its Hindutva ideologues.

Obama was the chief guest at this year’s Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi. He and Modi appeared before the media after one-to-one talks to announce elevation of the strategic relationship between the two countries to a new level.

Modi repeatedly referred to Obama by his first name to impress listeners about his personal rapport with him. That did not hold Obama back from telling a home truth. Addressing a rally before leaving New Delhi, he said, “India will succeed so long as it is not splintered on religious lines. Nowhere is it more important to uphold religious freedom than in India.”

Obama’s remark, coming in the wake of a series of attacks on religious minorities and a spate of conversions in the guise of homecoming by those who had forsaken Hinduism, was interpreted by observers as a parting shot. Modi, his government and the ruling party were not happy but chose not to respond publicly.

Last week, Obama brought up the subject again while addressing the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual event in Washington attended by political, social and business leaders. He referred to his visit to India, a place “full of magnificent diversity…where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs” and said the acts of intolerance would have shocked Mahatma Gandhi. The government and the Hindutva outfits responded this time.

The first response came from unnamed officials who suggested that Obama’s statements were the result of political compulsions. They suggested that he had criticised India to placate the Christian lobby in the US and to prevent perceptions of closeness between India and the US racing ahead of ground reality. They also insinuated that the remarks were aimed at pressuring India into making concessions on the issues that defied solution during the Delhi talks.

For the first time officials admitted that the Indo-US nuclear, defence and clean energy discussions were marked by hard bargains. The most startling disclosure was that the US had pressured India to commit troops for service in Afghanistan, arguing they could be effective as they knew the region well.

One part of the officials’ theory was clearly wide of the mark. Far from pleasing the Christian lobby, Obama had invited its wrath by following up a reference to Daesh in his Prayer Breakfast speech with reminders of the terrible deeds committed during the Crusades and the Inquisition. Drawing attention to the treatment of the Blacks, he added, “Slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

As is his wont, Modi maintained silence on Hindu communalism. However, two senior ministers responded to Obama’s criticism.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who dismissed the attacks on minorities as mere aberrations, said, “The best example of India’s tolerance was the Dalai Lama sitting next to Obama.” The Buddhist leader, who has been living in India since he fled Tibet in 1959, was among the guests at the Prayer Breakfast.

“Religious tolerance is inbuilt in our culture,” said Home Minister Rajnath Singh. “No one is insecure in the country, no matter to which religion he or she belongs.”

In an apparent attempt to meet the US criticism, he asked the Delhi police to take stern action against those responsible for vandalising churches in the capital. A high official telephoned the Archbishop of Mumbai and apologised for the refusal of visas to two Vatican representatives who were to have attended a meeting of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India.

While the ministers spoke in measured tones, Surendra Jain of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, called Obama a “stooge of the Church” and said he had not been a good guest. He asked the government to weed out politicians batting for the Church.

By reiterating the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s stand that India is a Hindu nation in a speech on Sunday, its chief, Mohan Bhagwat, made it clear that the Hindutva forces are in no mood to relent. In fact, he sought to widen the social divide by raising a new slogan, “One language, one God, one religion”, which is a total negation of India’s cultural diversity. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, February 11, 2015

Unresolved nuclear dilemma

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

In the event of a nuclear disaster, who must bear the cost – manufacturers and suppliers of the faulty equipment that caused it or the unfortunate victims themselves? This, in essence, is the question that has delayed operationalisation of the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement.

After the highly hyped talks between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi late last month, the two leaders announced that the issue had been resolved. However, they revealed no details of the breakthrough. Though they still remain a well-kept secret it is becoming increasingly clear that the nuclear dilemma is unresolved.

The agreement of 2006 ended the nuclear isolation imposed on India by the US following the nuclear tests conducted by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in 1998. It was negotiated by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, braving the opposition of the BJP as well as the Left parties which were sustaining it in office with outside support.

By 2008 the agreement was ratified and ready for implementation but there was no forward movement as the US government sought the right to inspect use of nuclear material India obtained from that country and US equipment suppliers were worried about the provisions of the Indian Nuclear Liability Act of 2010. At their first meeting last year Modi and Obama agreed on the setting up of an Indo-US group to sort out the matter.

The breakthrough announced during the Obama visit was worked out by the group in secret confabulations. The US dropped the demand for right to track the projects, which are subject to international inspections anyway. Standing beside Obama, Modi declared that the nuclear deal was the centrepiece of the transformed relationship between the two countries. But observers remain sceptical about the future of nuclear cooperation between the two countries.

The main benefit that will accrue to India from the nuclear deal, according to its domestic supporters, is that it will help generate electricity at as low as Rs 2.71 per unit and reduce dependence on coal and oil. It was Homi Bhabha, known as the Father of Indian Nuclear Science, who first held out the hope of cheap nuclear power. Over the past six decades, India has built and operated seven nuclear plants without being able to realise the dream of cheap power.

A study by Suvrat Raju and MV Ramana, two physicists working with the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, has shown that power generated at the proposed nuclear plant at Jaitapur in Maharashtra, which is to use US equipment, will cost the consumers as much as Rs 15 per unit.  

India, which relies on thermal power, for about 70 per cent of its energy requirements, needs to tap other sources to meet the fast growing demand. At present, nuclear energy accounts for less than two per cent.

Government plans, drawn up long before Modi came on the scene, envisages raising of the share of nuclear power to 25 per cent by 2050. The question is whether this is the best option after the Bhabha theory has proved wrong and the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents have exposed the risk of high human and material costs it involves.

The efforts made so far to increase the use of renewable energy sources have increased the share of wind power to 8.3 per cent. Solar power still accounts for only one per cent of the total. The government’s fatal fascination for nuclear power when the huge potential of safe solar power remains untapped is inexplicable.

The issue is fast assuming the character of a conflict between nuclear power and people’s power. While Modi and Obama were talking, residents of Mithi Virdi, which the Gujarat government has chosen for locating a nuclear power plant, wrote an open letter to remind them that elected councils of four villages which will be most affected by the proposed plant have passed resolutions declaring the region a nuclear-free zone. They asked the two leaders to decide whether they want to channel billions of dollars to nuclear corporations or heed the people’s voice and cancel the unnecessary deals.

There have been protests at all places where work is in progress on nuclear projects. The secret Indo-US agreement is believed to provide for shifting the obligation to compensate nuclear disaster victims from the foreign equipment suppliers to the Indian government and insurance companies. It means the Indian taxpayer will have to pick up the bill. When the secret is out, opposition to the nuclear plants is sure to rise further. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, February 3, 2015.

Scourge of child labour

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Just as the long-drawn nationwide campaign against child labour showed signs of success, a new problem has surfaced: organised trafficking of children from the backward states to distant cities.

While conducting a cordon-and-search operation in the southern city of Hyderabad last week, as part of the effort to make sure that nothing untoward happens during the three-day visit of US President Barack Obama, who was in New Delhi as guest at the Republic Day parade, police stumbled upon a colony of about 250 child workers from northern states.

The children, aged 6 to 13 years, were kept in rooms in a place under the control of rowdy elements, the police said. They included 10 girls. They had been brought from the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to work in hazardous industries in which child labour is prohibited.

Also last week, labour officials in Tamil Nadu found three children from Uttar Pradesh working in a fishing village near Colachel in Kanyakumari district. They were living with local families, and were involved in fishing and in cotton cotton candy making.

A newspaper quoted a labour inspector as saying several fishermen’s families in the area have given up their traditional occupations after the December 2004 tsunami. Young people from other states have taken their place. Tamil Nadu appeals to people from West Bengal and Odisha and refugees from Bangladesh, whose staple diet is rice and fish, because of the similarity in food habits, he added.

Over the years, the Central and state governments have undertaken several schemes to eliminate child labour and draw the children into the school system. The most important initiative in this regard was the National Child Labour Project launched in 1988. Its focus was on rehabilitation of children working in hazardous occupations and processes. Over a million students are said to have been weaned away from the labour market under the scheme and put in about 6,000 schools set up especially for them.

The Indian government and UNICEF have been working together on promotion of children’s right to education, viewing access to and retention in schools as a major strategy to eliminate child labour. Since children belonging to the marginalised sections of the society are the ones most affected, they have accorded high priority to capacity building of such communities and enlisting the services of non-government organisations and community-based organisations at village level in the child labour intervention programme.

The 2011 census report testifies to the success of the programme. It showed that the number of child labourers had fallen dramatically to 4.35 million from the 2001 figure of 12.67 million.

In 2001, there were five states with more than a million child labourers. In 2011, there was none. Uttar Pradesh brought down the number from 1.93 million to 896,000, Andhra Pradesh from 1.36 million to 405,000, Rajasthan from 1.26 million to 252,000, Bihar from 1.12 million to 452,000 and Madhya Pradesh from 1.07 million to 286,000.

Child labour is most prevalent among Adivasis, Dalits, Muslims and other backward classes. Its most horrendous form is  bonded child labour, which is widespread in the informal sector.  It is a form of slavery since it obliges children to work in repayment of loans taken by the parents.

The Centre was slow in responding to calls to ban child labour because of a long-standing tradition ot of allowing children to work in agriculture and cottage industries. Under continuous prodding by civil society organisations, it enacted a law in 1986 to regulate child labour. The law did not ban on child labour. It only prohibited employment of children below the age of 14 in hazardous occupations notified by the government.

After the UN adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 the government came under further pressure to move forward. Accordingly, it enacted in 2005 a new law providing for the appointment of commissions at national and state levels to ensure that laws, policies and administrative mechanisms are in consonance with the Constitution and the UN Convention. It brought all those who are under 18 years within the definition of children.

Three years ago the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government brought forward a bill to amend the Child Labour Act to impose a total ban on employment of children. It did not push the measure through Parliament. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is more employer-friendly than his predecessor, has not indicated what his government plans to do in the matter. -- Gulf Today, January 27, 2015.

Confrontation with obscurantism

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today


Across India battle lines are being drawn as forces of modernisation face forces of obscurantism. Two spectacular manifestations of the developing confrontation took place last week.

Led by Leela Samson, the chairperson, the members of the Central Board of Film Certification walked out, alleging corruption and governmental interference in the working of the institution.

The immediate provocation for their action was the government’s role in granting clearance to a film which did not meet with the board’s approval. Embarrassed, the Minister who oversees the board’s working dubbed them rebels without a case.

The film at the centre of the controversy is “MSG – the Messenger of God”, a self-glorification project of Punjab godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insan, who has financed it and acts as himself in it. A tribunal which has the power to review the board’s decisions granted it clearance.

The Central government claimed it did not interfere in the matter. However, two circumstances cast doubts on the claim. One is that the tribunal was reconstituted just before “MSG” was referred to it.

The other is that the tribunal, which ordinarily takes months to conduct a review, cleared this one in 24 hours with record speed.

Samson and her associates, who were appointed by the Manmohan Singh government, had completed their term in May last year.

The Narendra Modi government asked them to stay on until a new board is constituted. There has been no explanation for the inordinate delay in the appointment of new members.  

In the south, a noted Tamil novelist, Perumal Murugan, facing the fury of casteist elements who have the tacit support of the official establishment and feeling isolated, dramatically announced his literary death and the withdrawal of all his books from the market.

Murugan’s agonised response brought forth a wave of sympathy for him in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere in the country. Breaking its silence on the subject, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the main opposition party of Tamil Nadu, extended support for him. Public readings from his novel were held at places as far apart as Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram.

Writers, publishers and readers attending an annual literary festival in Chennai adopted a resolution strongly condemning attempts to silence Murugan and expressing full solidarity with him.

Instead of protecting his constitutional rights, the state administration had abetted the campaign of intimidation against him, and made him sign a statement under duress, the resolution said.  

Instances of books being blocked under pressure from political, economic and social or religious groups are not rare in India.

Lately many highly respected authors and their works have come under attack from sections of the majority community, influenced by the communal propaganda of Hindutva forces. 

In 2000, the first Bharatiya Janata Party-led government halted the publication of a 10-volume history of the freedom movement by eminent scholars Sumit Sarkar and KN Panikkar under a project taken up by the Indian Council of Historical Research, apparently because it showed the Hindu Mahasabha in a poor light. Publication was resumed after the change of government in 2004.

A violent agitation by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s student wing, during which a professor was manhandled, led to withdrawal of an essay, titled Three Hundred Ramayanas, written by renowned poet AK Ramanujam, from Delhi University’s BA (History) syllabus in 2008.

The ABVP, or rather its mentors, were annoyed by the reference in the essay to a version of the epic in which Ram and Sita are siblings, not man and wife. 

Mumbai University dropped Rohinton Mistry’s novel Such A Long Journey from its BA (English) syllabus after the Shiv Sena’s student wing alleged that it contained passages critical of that organisation and derogatory to Maharashtra.

In Karnataka, police arrested Yogesh Master on a charge of creating illwill among communities after Sri Ram Sena, a Hindutva outfit, lodged a complaint alleging his novel “Dhundi” contained objectionable references to Hindu god Ganesha.

In an out-of-court settlement with Shiksha Bhachao Andolan, another Hindutva outfit, Penguin India last year agreed to withdraw and pulp all copies of the Indian edition of US professor Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History.

While acts of literary and cultural vandalism have been widespread, until now there was no collective nationwide response to them.

The concerted action by Leela Samson and her colleagues and the spontaneous effusion of support across the country for Perumal Murugan who was little known outside the circle of Tamil readers are the first indications that progressive sections of society are ready to take on the forces of obscurantism. 

It is too early to conclude what forms the confrontation will take and how protracted it will be. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 20, 2015.

Gandhi assassin as Hindutva icon

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

It was this month 100 years ago that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi returned to India after two decades in South Africa and went on to become the foremost leader of the country’s freedom movement.

It was this month 68 years ago that Nathuram Vinayak Godse, editor of a little known Marathi language daily, shot Gandhi dead, having been goaded, in his own words, “by the accumulating provocation of 32 years to the conclusion that his existence should be brought to an end immediately.”

In 2003, the first Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee, designated January 9, the day on which Gandhi landed in Mumbai harbour in 1915, as Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (Indian Expatriates Day). It also started the tradition of holding a Pravasi Bharatiya convention each year to underscore Overseas Indians’ contributions to the country’s development. India, which received $70 billion from expatriates in 2013, tops the global chart of foreign remittances by migratory workforce.

As delegates from across the world gathered in Gandhinagar, capital of Gujarat, last weekend for this year’s convention, Godse, whom ascendant Hindutva elements have resurrected and are seeking to enshrine as a national icon, was once again challenging Gandhi, the putative Father of the Nation.

Godse was associated with the Hindu Mahasabha, whose president, VD Savarkar, was the author of the Hindutva ideology, as well as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which is the biggest exponent of that ideology today. Members of both organisations had reportedly celebrated Gandhi’s assassination by distributing sweets.

Nathuram Godse, and his associate, Narayan Apte, were sentenced to death in the Gandhi murder case, and both were executed on November 15, 1949. Savarkar, too, was an accused in the case but was acquitted for want of evidence. He led a quiet life thereafter and courted death in 1966 by giving up food and medicine.

Efforts at glorification of Godse began when his younger brother, Gopal, another accused in the case, emerged from jail in 1964 after serving a prison term and was given a hero’s welcome. He wrote a book on the Gandhi assassination in Marathi in which he included the text of a long court statement in which Nathuram Godse explained why he killed Gandhi. It was translated into English and several Indian languages.

In the court statement, a strong indictment of Gandhi’s politics, Godse accused him of appeasing the Muslims and held him responsible for the partition of India. He said he had fired the shots as there was no legal machinery to bring such an offender to book.

While the statement is couched in terms that sound reasonable, the hatred that vitiated his thinking found expression occasionally, as when he said, “I felt that this man should not be allowed to meet a natural death so that the world may know that he had to pay the penalty of his life for his unjust, anti-national favouritism towards a fanatical section of the country.”

GD Khosla, one of the three judges before whom Godse read out the statement, wrote later that if it had been made before a jury it might have returned a ‘not guilty’ verdict.

When Vajpayee was prime minister, a portrait of Savarkar was installed in Parliament House, opposite Gandhi’s, and the airport at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, where he was imprisoned during the freedom struggle, was named after him. There was, however, no attempt to rescue Godse from political villainy.

The Hindu Mahasabha has now announced plans to make Godse a national hero. It proposes to build a temple dedicated to him at Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, unveil his statues at several places across the country and release a documentary on him, all on January 30, the anniversary of the assassination.

Last week the UP government foiled the Mahasabha’s bid to take out a rally in Lucknow in support of its Godse projects. Residents of the village where the organisation has acquired land for the proposed temple have said they would not allow it. A Pune court is looking into a petition against the release of the Godse documentary.

The Hindu Mahasabha is rickety today and cannot carry out the proposed projects without the support of the BJP and the RSS. So far neither of them has reacted publicly to the Mahasabha’s plans. However, the ambivalent statements of Sakshi Maharaj, who is a BJP MP and RSS activist, suggest that there are pro-Godse elements in both. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 13, 2915.

Control over levers of economy

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Months of uncertainty over the future of planning ended last week with the government deciding to set up a National Institution for Transforning India (NITI) Aayog.

Like the Planning Commission which it replaces, NITIAayog will have the Prime Minister as its chairman. Unlike it, the new body will have a governing council comprising the chief ministers of the states and the lieutenant governors of the union territories.

A brainchild of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who was an admirer of both Soviet planning and post-war Japanese reconstruction, the Planning Commission was established in 1950.

Finance Minister John Mathai, who was inducted into the Cabinet from the business house of Tatas, announced the decision to set up the Commission in his budget speech. As it happened, he quit shortly afterwards saying the Commission was ill-timed and its working and set-up ill-conceived. He feared that it would take away the finance ministry’s powers.

High inflation, steep capital costs and low savings rates were factors that demanded governmental intervention to determine the course of the economy. Nehru expected the Planning Commission’s labours to result in improvement of living standards of the people through efficient exploitation of resources, stepping up of production and expansion of employment opportunities.

The Commission’s main task was to formulate five-year plans for economic development and apportion funds for implementation of plan projects. Unusual circumstances interrupted formulation of five-year plans. On both occasions planning was continued on an annual basis. The fate of the 12th five-year plan, which is due to run till 2017, now hangs in the balance.

It is wrong to suggest, as some critics have done, that planning was a failure. The public sector undertakings, the ownership of which is now being divested to find money for new projects, were the products of the first eight five-year plans. Just as Deng Ziaoping’s reforms could not have succeeded without the modest achievements of the Mao period, the accelerated development of the Indian economy in the period of globalisation would not have been possible without the limited growth of the period of five-year plans.

Centralised planning was a failure inasmuch as the fruits of development did not reach the poor. Not long after the process began it became clear that intermediaries were siphoning off benefits that should flow to those at the bottom. The administration could not fashion measures to redress the situation.

As early as the 1970s Sukhmoy Chakravarty, a leading economist who was associated with the Commission for long, said it was not functioning the way it should. He suggested that it was suffering from “plan weariness”. But Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ignored the criticism. Her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, referred to the Commission members as “a bunch of jokers.” He too made no effort to reform the body.

The globalisation project, which led to further growth of inequality, brought the Commission’s failure into sharp focus. Large-scale suicide by impoverished farmers cried for immediate action. Initially the Commission and the government remained impassive. Later they sought to mitigate the situation by laying emphasis on inclusive growth.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, himself an economist, started talking about the inadequacies of the Commission as he began his second term in 2009. But he too failed to act. Just before laying down office, he was still voicing doubts about the Commission’s role. “Are we using tools and approaches which were designed for a different era?” he asked at the Commission’s last meeting he addressed as its chairman.

Within days of assuming office Prime Minister Narendra Modi received a report from the Independent Evaluation Office, which the Planning Commission itself had set up to study its working and recommend measures for reform. It said, “It is clear that the Planning Commission, in its current form and function, is a hindrance and not a help to India’s development.” It proposed that a think tank be constituted in its place.

While the Planning Commission was dominated by economists, the composition of the NITIAayog indicates that control of the levers of the economy will now be fully in the hands of politicians. It remains to be seen if this will improve the quality of developmental activity. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 6, 2015

Peshawar pain united people

BRP Bhaskar
Guf Today

The terrorist attack on the Peshawar army school which left about 140 persons, mostly school children, dead momentarily united the people of the Indo-Pak subcontinent in grief as no other event has done in eight decades.

The last time so many hearts fluttered in unison on the subcontinent was when an earthquake devastated Bihar in 1934 and Balochistan in 1935. The entire region was under British rule at that time. Since then it has been partitioned into three nations, and patriotic sentiments, restricted by geography and conditioned by religion, have prevented such wide sharing of sentiments.

The Indian government strongly condemned the terrorist attack and Parliament called upon all nations “to fight against all acts of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.”

Political and diplomatic considerations probably influenced the official and political response. But the extreme cruelty of the terrorists, who lined up children and shot them and burnt their teachers alive, shook the people. They poured out their heart in the social networks.

The Pakistani Taliban terrorists targeted the school to settle scores with the army, with which they had a cosy relationship at one time but was now out to liquidate them. They viewed the schoolboys, many of them children of military personnel, as likely future army officers. This gave the attack the character of an internal affair of Pakistan.

Terrorists have wrought havoc in India on several occasions and India has repeatedly asked Islamabad to rein them in. While conveying to Pakistan India’s sympathy over the Peshawar attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for joint efforts by the two countries to deal with the common threat of terrorism.

According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, set up by the India-based Institute for Conflict Management, terrorism-related casualties in India during 1994-2014 stood at 63,896. Of the dead, 24,401 were civilians, 9,533 security personnel and 29,962 terrorists.

It also provides the following figures of Pakistani casualties during 2003-2014: 19,751 civilians, 6,015 security personnel, and 29,750 terrorists, making a total of 55,516 killed in 11 years.

Going by these figures, Pakistan suffers from terrorism to a greater extent than India. Average annual casualties among civilians (India 1,220, Pakistan 1,796), security personnel ( 178 and 574 respectively) and terrorists (1,498 and 2,705 respectively) are significantly higher in that country than in India.   

Within Pakistan, the interests of the civilian government headed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of the Army suddenly coincided, leading to some quick, harsh decisions. Reversing an earlier decision to do away with the death penalty for terrorism, the government ordered the execution of some convicts. The army heavily bombarded terrorist hideouts, killing many.

Pakistan Army chief Gen Raheel Sharif and ISI head Gen Rizvan Akhtar flew to Kabul and sought the Afghan government’s help to deal with the terrorists holed up there. Afghan Taliban leaders are known to be operating from Pakistani soil and Pakistan Taliban leaders are known to be hiding in Afghanistan. Obviously neither country can tackle the problem of terrorism effectively without the other’s cooperation.

Pakistan, which has ignored Indian pleas that it act against terrorists operating from its soil, did not respond to Modi’s call for joint action. Indian feelings were exacerbated when a Pakistani court granted bail to Zaki Ur Rehman Lakhvi, whom India has identified as the mastermind behind the Mumbai terrorist attack of 2008. Taking note of the Indian outrage, the Pakistan government detained him and said it would appeal against the grant of bail. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 23, 2014.

Development vs Hindutva

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

For many years the Bharatiya Janata Party relied solely on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s Hindutva ideology to gather votes. When it first came to power at the Centre in the late 1990s it shelved the Hindutva agenda as it was anathema to most of its National Democratic Alliance partners.

The Hindutva agenda figured in the BJP’s manifesto for this year’s parliamentary elections, too, and Narendra Modi, as a lifelong member of the RSS, is committed to it. However, he steered the party to a spectacular victory without relying on it overly. Instead, he focused on development and attracted many young people with his promise of achche din (good days).

Since becoming the Prime Minister, Modi has coined new slogans like Make in India and Swachh Bharat (Clean India) to keep alive the theme of development. But a host of small, militant outfits under RSS activists appear determined to throw the spanner in the works.

The main items of the Hindutva agenda are enforcement of a uniform civil code, abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution which gives Jammu and Kashmir a special status and construction of a Ram temple at the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, which volunteers recruited and trained by the RSS had pulled down in 1992.

The Constitution enjoins upon the state to work towards a uniform civil code. But successive governments have done nothing in this regard in view of the sensibilities of the Muslims who have been following the Sharia personal law.

Under Article 370, conceived as a temporary measure, laws enacted by Parliament will apply to Jammu and Kashmir only if the President issues an order to that effect. The BJP and its predecessor, Jana Sangh, have been opposed to the provision as it puts J and K on a different footing from the other states.

Constitutional amendments are needed to implement the BJP’s poll promise on the two issues. The party and its NDA allies do not command the two-thirds majority needed to push the measures through the two houses of Parliament. It has, therefore, taken the position that there should be discussion on these issues. 

Since the ownership of the site of the demolished mosque is a matter pending before a court, the construction of a temple at Ayodhya must wait. Yet the BJP-appointed governor of UP, Ram Naik, has raked up the issue, saying construction of a temple there is “the wish of every Indian”. According to him, Modi is working on a plan to resolve the mosque-temple controversy during his government’s five-year term.

Meanwhile RSS affiliates led by saffron-robed BJP MPs have initiated activities with potential to divide the nation on religious lines. They want the minorities to convert to Hinduism or at least accept the Hindutva ideology, which the RSS and BJP equate with Indian nationalism.

Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, a minister of state in Modi’s government, in a campaign speech in Delhi, where State Assembly elections are due, said with utter lack of civility that there are two kinds of people in the country – ramzaade (children of Ram) and haraamzaade (b******s). When opposition members raised a storm in Parliament, Modi appealed to them to forgive her as she was a Dalit and a first-time MP. At the same time the BJP decided to retain her as star campaigner.

A little known RSS outfit surreptitiously converted to Hinduism 57 Muslim families of Bengali origin, eking out a measly living as rag-pickers at Agra, offering inducements like an identification card which will help them claim benefits under welfare schemes. Yogi Adityanath, BJP MP and head of a Gorakhpur temple trust, announced plans to convert 5,000 Muslims and 1,000 Christians to Hinduism at Aligarh on Christmas Day.

Another BJP MP, Sakshi Maharaj, embarrassed the party by stating in Parliament that Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Vinayak Godse, was a patriot. He later apologised for the statement, apparently at Modi’s instance.

Unlike the Sadhvi, who was recently inducted into the party to enhance its appeal to Dalits, Adityanath and Sakshi Maharaj are experienced parliamentarians with an unsavoury record of fomenting communal tension.

Modi has not spoken a word against the two men in public. Nor has his lieutenant, Amit Shah, who is the President of the BJP. Their ominous silence suggests that the RSS is in command in both the party and the government.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 16, 2014.

Rolling out of reforms

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Pressure is mounting on the Narendra Modi government from domestic and foreign business interests to roll out economic reforms promised by the Bharatiya Janata Party in its election manifesto.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said last week the Indian economy had shown signs of a turnaround and imbalances had lessened. It forecast that the economy, which registered a growth rate of only 5.3 per cent during the July-September quarter, could go up to 6.6 per cent in 2013-16 and to 6.8 per cent in 2016-17.

These rates are by no means too modest in the context of current global conditions. However, the Indian government is eager to push the rate up to the eight per cent level achieved before the global meltdown of 2008. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told Parliament a few days ago that the government was committed to go ahead with reform measures “to take India back to the original potential of eight per cent economic growth”.

The Western economies have a stake in accelerated growth of the Indian economy since it will boost their own recovery plans. On its part, the Indian government is looking forward to infusion of fresh foreign capital to expand economic activity and generate jobs. The rub lies in some local laws which both domestic and foreign investors consider a stumbling block.

The World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business report ranked India at 142nd among the 189 countries surveyed. This meant a decline from last year when it was at the 140th place. The Prime Minister has reportedly set for himself a highly ambitious goal of putting the country among the top 50.

An action plan drawn up by the Confederation of Indian Industry, with the help of the consulting firm KPMG, contains a set of proposals to make India the “best place for doing business”. It envisages, among other things, rationalisation of the tax regime, easing of land acquisition process and streamlining of procedures for investment approval and provision of utilities.

Some proposals, like the one regarding e-filing of applications, will certainly help cut red tape, reduce corruption and improve efficiency. Some are couched in euphemistic terms. An example is the proposal for creation of an appropriate labour development ecosystem. It talks of 44 Central laws, many of which are old and outdated and impose a heavy compliance burden, and says there is urgent need to realign them to new economic needs. This is a scarcely disguised plea to scrap laws that protect the workers against exploitation.

The OECD’s prescription for curing the economy’s ills also includes many of the CII-KPMG proposals but it presents them in a wider context giving the impression that it is sensitive to the needs of the workers and other weaker sections of the society. It asks the government to boost manufacturing jobs by simplifying labour laws, improving access to education and improving the business climate. It also proposes increasing female economic participation and improving access to quality healthcare.

The proposals of CII and OECD are not new. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government had seriously considered similar proposals but could not go ahead with them because of strong opposition not only from the Left parties but also some of its own partners.

Soon Modi will have before him yet another set of proposals drawn up by a World Bank team, which is now in India. It comprises experts on trade and competitiveness practices and was sent by Bank president Jim Yong Kim at Modi’s request to suggest measures to improve the business environment.

The team was reportedly holding discussions with public and private sector stakeholders in New Delhi and Mumbai on the reform initiatives and discussing various reform options and feasibility of their implementation. Its recommendations are bound to be on the same lines as those of the CII and OECD.

Parliament is now in session, and the government may try to push some reform proposals through it. However, major reforms must wait till the budget session which begins in February.

With a clear majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, the BJP has more elbow room than the Congress had. However, it is in a minority in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house, and needs the support of other parties to push any changes in law. Some of the reform proposals may require changes in the Constitution, for which a two-thirds majority in both houses is necessary. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 9, 2014.