Moving from poll to poll

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Bharatiya Janata Party has been celebrating its modest gains in the recently concluded Assembly elections in three States and one Union Territory to dispel the popular impression that the Modi magic ended with last year’s setback in Bihar.

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi completes two years in office, with development failing to create jobs, there is a pressing need to boost the morale of the rank and file which slumped following failure to bring Bihar under BJP’s control. Especially so since seven states, including Uttar Pradesh, the most populous one, and Modi’s own Gujarat, are due to go to the polls next year.

The states of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam and the Union Territory of Puducherry, which figured in the election calendar, together account for 116 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, the BJP could bag only 10 of them. It picked up half of Assam’s 14 seats but got only two out of West Bengal’s 42 and one out of Tamil Nadu’s 39. It drew a blank in Kerala, which has 20 seats. Its regional ally picked up Puducherry’s lone seat.

Modi attached great importance to the Assembly elections in these states, and drew up plans to boost the BJP’s prospects with the help of new allies. The services of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh cadres were requisitioned.

The plan succeeded only in Assam. This was the smallest of the four states and the only one where the BJP and the Congress were in a direct contest for power. The BJP was able to oust the Congress government headed by Tarun Gogoi, which had been in office for 15 years at a stretch, and seize power for the first time in an eastern state.

The BJP won by precipitating a sharp polarisation on religious lines in the state, which has an ethnically diverse population. The party’s Hindu vote share shot up from 43 per cent to 63 per cent, while the Congress’s declined from 30 per cent to 25 per cent.

Muslims constitute a third of Assam’s population. Their number has been rising at a higher rate than that of the Hindus from one census to the next. While the community’s higher birth rate accounts for this partly, the BJP has been attributing it mainly to illegal migration from Bangladesh. Sarbananda Sonowal, the new Chief Minister, has vowed to seal the borders to prevent infiltration.

Both the Congress and the BJP were small players in the large states of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. The regional parties ruling these states, led by charismatic women, won a second term.

Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress had stormed into power in West Bengal in 2011, putting an end to more than three decades of rule by the Left Front, headed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Now in a debilitated state, the CPI (M) entered into an informal alliance with the even more debilitated Congress. They could not prevent Mamata Banerjee’s return with a bang.

The CPI (M) suffered a double defeat. It lost the status of the main opposition to the Congress, which had contested fewer seats but won more than it could.

Tamil Nadu has been ruled by two regional parties, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and its breakaway group, the All India Anna DMK, since 1967. In recent elections the two parties had won in alternate elections. This time AIADMK Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa beat off the DMK’s challenge and secured a second successive term.

The Trinamool Congress and the AIADMK were both constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, and Mamata Banerjee was a member of his Cabinet. But the two parties have stayed out of Modi’s NDA.

The Congress party forged an alliance with the DMK in Tamil Nadu. Failing to find an ally, the BJP went alone, and 230 of its 232 candidates forfeited their deposits as they got less than one-sixth of the valid votes polled in their constituencies.

In Kerala, where the Congress-led United Democratic Front and the CPI (M)-led Left Democratic Front have been alternating in power for more than three decades, the BJP picked up an Assembly seat for the first time. A new Hindu party set up by the social organisation of the Ezhavas, the largest OBC community, with Modi’s blessings, was its main ally. While the alliance cut into the votes of the UDF and the LDF, it could not prevent the LDF’s assumption of power in keeping with the established pattern.

The Congress which lost power in Assam and Kerala received a consolation prize in Puduchcherry.

Modi, whose forte is electioneering, has already started making plans for next year’s big fights.-- Gulf Today, May 24, 2016.

BJP bid to extend footprint

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India has six political organisations which the Election Commission has recognised as national parties. They are, in the order of their appearance on the political scene, the Congress, the Communist Party of India, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the CPI-Marxist, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the National Congress Party.

They owe their national status to the easy terms set by the Commission. When the CPI was about to lose its national status a few years ago, the Commission lowered the norms to help it remain a national party.

The Congress party has declined since the days of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nationally, it has been pushed to the second place by the BJP. In the big states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu it is in the third, fourth or even still lower place.

For several decades, the influence of the two Communist parties has been limited to the three states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. Five years ago the regional Trinamool Congress brought to an end three decades of Left rule in West Bengal.

The Bahujan Samaj Party of former UP Chief Minister Mayawati and the National Congress Party of former Maharashtra strongman Sharad Pawar are essentially one-state parties with just enough presence elsewhere to qualify for national status.

The BJP is the only national party which has recorded growth in the recent past. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, Narendra Modi led it to a spectacular victory, and it became the first party to secure an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha in three decades.

While it swept several states in the north and the west, it could not make much headway in the east and the south.

Two eastern states, West Bengal and Assam, and two southern states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, are going to the polls in May to elect new Assemblies. Assam has been under Congress rule for 15 years. In Kerala, the Congress-led United Democratic Front is seeking an unprecedented second successive term. West Bengal and Tamil Nadu are ruled by regional parties.

These states, which together account for 113 Lok Sabha seats, had contributed only 10 seats to the BJP’s tally of 281 in 2014. The party is hoping to use the opportunity provided by the Assembly elections to extend its footprint in these regions.

In the Lok Sabha elections the BJP had done well in Assam, winning seven of its 14 seats with the help of regional parties aligned with it. In West Bengal it got only two out of 42 seats and in Tamil Nadu just one out of 39.

Assam is the only one of the four states where the BJP is represented in the Assembly at present. It has five members in the 126-member house. It has no members in the outgoing Assemblies of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.

Kerala has been inhospitable to Hindutva politics all along. Neither the BJP nor its predecessor, the Jana Sangh, ever won a Lok Sabha or Assembly seat in the state. However, in last year’s local bodies elections the BJP did well in some urban centres, including the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram, where it emerged as the second largest party in the City Corporation after the CPI-M.

This has led to high hopes in the BJP camp, and the party’s national leadership and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, are directly plotting the party’s campaign in the state to take advantage of what they view as a favourable situation.

A key element of their strategy is attracting sections of the backward castes and Dalits who are disillusioned with both the CPI-M and the Congress for one reason or another. Traditionally, the bulk of these sections have voted for the Left. The BJP has succeeded in enlisting the support of a couple of organisations of backward communities but the ability of their leaders to influence electoral conduct remains to be proved.

While the Congress and the CPI-M are engaged in a bitter power struggle in Kerala, their West Bengal units have come to a tacit understanding with the blessings of their national leaderships to take on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.

The Trinamool Congress and a few regional parties of Tamil Nadu, including Chief Minister J Jayalithaa’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, were constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. These parties have shown no interest in aligning with Modi’s BJP. The party as well as the RSS must introspect on why its ability to win friends has diminished. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 15, 2016.

Battle over liquor

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India’s Constitution-makers had directed the state to work towards prohibition of consumption of alcohol. They did so not on moral or religious grounds, but on the mundane considerations of improving living standards and public health.

Accordingly, many state governments decided to introduce prohibition in stages. By 1964, one-fourth of the country’s population was in areas where liquor was banned. At that stage, most of them started rolling back prohibition rejecting the Central government’s offer of grants to cover half of the loss of revenue resulting from the ban on liquor.

Only Gujarat in the west, Manipur and Nagaland in the tribal northeast and Lakshadweep, a group of Arabian Sea islands, continued with prohibition. Last month Kerala, which boasts of social indices comparable to those of the West, decided to change course and resume the journey towards total prohibition. 

Tipplers in India had relied entirely on locally tapped or brewed drinks until the British introduced foreign liquor in 1837. The high cost of imported liquor limited its use to the affluent. Bengali nationalist leader Keshub Chandra Sen opposed liquor imports but the British were unwilling to give up the fast growing Indian market.

Later on, Gandhi campaigned against all kinds of liquor. The constitutional directive on prohibition was a result of his work.

When Gandhi came on the scene, prohibition was an idea which had wide appeal across the world. It was in force in the USA, Canada, the Soviet Union (where it was introduced in the Czar’s time) and a few European countries like Norway and Iceland. All of them soon abandoned it, declaring it was unworkable.

Today prohibition prevails only in a dozen Muslim states, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Bangladesh.  In Pakistan, non-Muslims can obtain permits to buy liquor.

Half of Kerala was dry when a coalition government headed by Communist Party of India-Marxist leader EMS Namboodiripad wound up prohibition to augment the state’s finances. Three types of liquor were available in the state: toddy tapped from coconut palms, locally distilled arrack and what is officially labelled Indian made foreign liquor (IMFL).

Kerala was a poor state at that time, with its per capita income below the national average. Today, it is the country’s richest state, thanks mainly to remittances from the large expatriate population in the Gulf States. Consumption of liquor grew steadily as the state prospered. It now accounts for the heaviest consumption of alcohol, estimated at 8.3 litres per head per year, as against the national average of about 4 litres. 

The state’s stake in the liquor trade rose when it set up the Beverages Corporation in 1984 and granted it monopoly over sale of IMFL. The 1997 ban on sale of arrack boosted IMFL sales. The corporation now contributes more than Rs72 billion a year to the exchequer, which is about a quarter of the state’s total revenue.

The government took the decision to push ahead with prohibition in circumstances that raise doubts about its sincerity.  A court had ordered closure of more than 300 hotel bars working in insanitary conditions. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy was inclined to find a way to reopen them but state Congress president VM Sudheeran opposed the move. As Sudheeran’s stand proved popular, the government upstaged him by announcing the new policy.

In terms of the government decision, all bars except those in five-star hotels were to close down last week. But the Supreme Court, acting on a bunch of petitions filed by bar owners, asked the government not to enforce the decision until the end of this month, by which time the High Court will rule on the issues raised by the petitioners.

The bar owners have claimed that their licences allow them to function until the current financial year ends on March 31, 2015. This is true but, then, they were given the licences on the specific understanding that the government has the right to cancel them at any time.

The High Court verdict may not be the last word on the subject since the losing side is certain to go in appeal to the Supreme Court, leading to further delay.

Contrary to the popular impression, the new policy will not result in total prohibition. Wine and beer parlours will continue to exit, and their numbers may well increase.

Many believe that the legal ban on liquor will fail, as happened in the US. However, in the conditions prevailing in Kerala  there is a need to limit availability of liquor, if only to prevent children from taking to drinking. The law stipulates that one must be at least 21 years old to drink but studies have indicated that many start drinking in their early teens.

If Kerala wins the battle against liquor, other states may come under pressure to rethink on prohibition. In neighbouring Tamil Nadu, a political party, the Pattali Makkal Katchi, has already demanded that the state follow the Kerala example. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, September 16, 2014.    

Storm over dam in South

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

A storm is brewing over a river water dispute between Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which has been simmering for decades, with political parties and the media playing up emotive aspects like risk of a dam burst and drying up of farmland.

In the eye of the storm is the Mullaperiyar dam, built in 1895 to divert the waters of the Periyar in the state of Travancore to irrigate parched lands in British-ruled Madras presidency. Kerala is worried as the collapse of the aged structure can endanger the lives of three million people in the state.

In 1886, under pressure from the British rulers, the Maharaja of Travancore leased 8,100 acres of land to them for 999 years. The lease agreement gave them British the right to construct irrigation works there and use the impounded waters for irrigation in the Madras presidency.

Since Travancore became part of Kerala, and the areas that benefit by the diversion of river waters are in Tamil Nadu, these states became successor parties to the agreement. Although the two states signed fresh agreements regarding use of the waters of the river after Independence, the colonial character of the lease remained unchanged: the dam located in Kerala remains under Tamil Nadu’s control.

The first dam built by British army engineers was washed away by flood waters within a year. They then built the present one, with a full reservoir level of 152 feet, using stones and surki, a mixture of sugar and calcium oxide. A reinforced concrete parapet was added later.

Concerns about the safety of the dam arose in 1979 when it developed cracks. At a meeting of Kerala and Tamil Nadu officials, convened by the Central Water Commission, it was decided to reduce the reservoir level to 136 feet immediately. Medium and long-term measures to strengthen the dam were also agreed upon.

In 1986 , the CWC proposed additional measures to strengthen the structure and said if Tamil Nadu raised the height of the concrete parapet by two feet the reservoir level could be raised again to 152 feet.

A series of mild tremors, of not more than three on the Richter scale, in the vicinity of the dam aggravated fears about its safety. Experts said a quake of magnitude 6 can bring down the structure. With Tamil Nadu pressing to raise the reservoir level and Kerala resisting it, there was no meeting ground.

In 2000, the Supreme Court, which took over a bunch of petitions filed in the high courts of the two states, asked the Centre to convene a meeting of Chief Ministers to resolve the dispute. The meeting failed to break the deadlock.

In 2006, the court allowed Tamil Nadu to raise the reservoir level to 142 feet and take up measures to strengthen the dam, after which, it said, the level could be raised to 152 feet. Kerala immediately enacted a law to place Mullaperiyar in the Schedule of Endangered Dams and prohibit raising of water level beyond 132 feet. It also announced plans to build a new dam to replace it. Tamil Nadu urged the court to strike down the law and stop Kerala from going ahead with plans to replace the existing dam.

An empowered committee, appointed by the Centre at the court’s instance, is now grappling with the problem. Meanwhile, with 26 tremors reported in four months, Kerala wants to construct the new dam early and scrap the present one.

Tamil Nadu politicians often take a jingoist position on the issue. At their instance, the state last week banned a movie, Dam 999, made by a UAE-based Keralite, Sohan Roy, under a Hollywood banner. They alleged the film, based on the collapse of the Banqiao dam in China in 1975, was made with Mullaperiyar in mind.

Lately some Kerala politicians, too, are adopting strident tones. This may be due partly to the influence of the increasingly sensationalist media and partly to the upcoming Assembly by-election at Piravom, close to the dam site, where the ruling United Democratic Front had scraped through earlier this year with a slender majority of 157 votes.

Actually there is no conflict of interest between the two states. Kerala relies upon Tamil Nadu for grains and vegetables. It is in its interest to ensure that Tamil Nadu farms get water. If the dam collapses, Tamil Nadu will go without water. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy puts it this way: “Safety for Kerala, water for Tamil Nadu.” The system’s failure to resolve the issue can only be attributed to the lack of sensitivity of those operating it. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, November 28, 2011.

Tardy response to concerns

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

It was a bridge player who once said “Learn all you can from the mistakes of others. You won’t have time to make them all yourself.” Indian policy-makers too can profit from this advice. Across the country, concerns over nuclear and other hazards are erupting into protests. The government’s tardy response to them betrays an inability to learn from other people’s mistakes.

In Maharashtra, people are agitating against a nuclear plant being set up at Jaitapur in the Ratnagiri district. Last week police fired on protesting villagers, killing one. Two former high court judges and a former Navy chief who were to lead a three-day march from Tarapur, near Mumbai, where the country’s oldest reactor is located, to Jaitapur were arrested.

Kerala is observing anti-endosulfan day today (April 25) to press the demand for a countrywide ban on the pesticide which has ruined the health of a large number of people. The issue has become a bone of contention between the state and the Centre, and Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan has said he will fast during the day.

India, which has 17 operational atomic power plants and two under construction, plans to boost nuclear energy output from 4,000 megawatt to 47,000 megawatt over the next 40 years to meet the country’s galloping power needs. The civilian nuclear agreement with the USA, concluded in 2008, cleared the way for its implementation by ending the embargo on nuclear trade imposed on the country in 1998 following weapons tests.

As the tsunami strike at Japan’s Fukushima installations heightened concerns over nuclear safety across the globe, the anti-nuclear and environmental groups in India urged the government to reconsider its plan.

Although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked nuclear scientists to review the safety systems but it soon became evident that a serious re-think is not on the cards.

The Indian government has repeatedly sought to reassure the public about the safety of the power stations. However, there are doubts about the wisdom of relying entirely on the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, which is under the Atomic Energy Commission and headed by one of its officials.

The government has ignored the demand to set up an independent body to oversee nuclear safety, as several other countries have done. The International Atomic Energy Agency has an integrated regulatory review service, which provides for peer review of member-countries’ nuclear and radiation regulatory infrastructure against international standards. India has not made use of this service.

The Jaitapur plant will have six reactors, each with a capacity of 1,650 megawatt. When completed, with a total capacity of about 10,000 MW, it will be the world’s largest nuclear power station. The estimated cost is Rs687 billion.

Anti-nuclear groups have questioned the viability of the project. According to them, power generated at Jaitapur will cost Rs5 to Rs8 per kilowatt/hour as against Rs2 to Rs2.5 for power produced at a thermal or gas plant. The Shiv Sena, a powerful regional party having entered the fray, the agitation against the Jaitapur plant appears likely to spread in the coming days.

The Kerala campaign for a countrywide ban on endosulfan coincides with the start of a meeting at Geneva where member-nations of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants are to consider the issue of a global ban on this pesticide. Endosulfan, banned in most developed countries, is still used in India and several other developing countries. It was sprayed extensively in a state government-owned cashew plantation in Kerala’s Kasergode district during 1976 and 2000, affecting at least 50,000 people. Many of them are still suffering from its after-effects.

A whole generation is growing up in Kerala with serious deformities attributable to the pesticide. The state government is faced with a demand for their rehabilitation. Kerala banned the pesticide six years ago but it is being smuggled in from other states as there is apparently big farmers want it. The state government, therefore, wants it banned all over the country.

The Central government, which is awaiting the findings of a study by the Indian Council of Medical Research, says that adverse effects have not been reported from any other state and that a countrywide ban of endosulfan is undesirable as no effective substitute is available. What is worse, at Geneva, it reportedly plans to oppose the proposal for a global ban.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, April 25, 2011.

Marching into old age

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

About half of India’s population is younger than 25 years. According to some experts, between 2010 and 2030 the country’s working-age population will grow by 241 million while China’s will grow by only 10 million. This is supposed to give India a distinct advantage in the perceived economic competition with its neighbour.

There is, however, no room for euphoria. The old age population — those aged 60 years and above — which registered only a small increase in the last century, from 5.06 per cent in 1901 to 7.70 per cent in 2001, is set to grow at a fast pace. It is expected to soar to 23 and 30 per cent by 2050.

Some parts of India are already facing the problem of an ageing population. The problem appears to be more acute in the villages than in the urban areas. A national sample survey held a few years ago showed that 84 out of 1,000 aged persons in rural areas could not move and were confined to the bed or home as against only 77 out of 1,000 in the urban areas.

Ageing has assumed serious proportions in Kerala, which boasts of social development indices comparable to those of the West. The state had an old age population of 8.2 per cent at the time of the 2001 census. While the 2011 census data is still being processed, it is estimated that the state’s old age population is now around 11 per cent and may rise to 20 per cent in a decade.

Kerala, which accounts for only about 3.5 per cent of India’s population, already had about 11 per cent of its old age population of 77 million in 2001. An expert group of the Planning Commission has estimated that, life expectancy in the state, which is 71 years for men and 76 years for women, may rise to 75 years and 79 years respectively in 20 years. This means the state is close to the stage where it will have to take care of two generations of old people.

Kerala’s predicament is the result of a successful family planning programme. Tamil Nadu, which has the best record in population control after Kerala, also has a growing geriatric population.

1n 1999, the Indian government formulated a National Policy on Older Persons to ensure the well-being of senior citizens. It envisages provision of state support for financial and food security, health care, shelter and other needs of older persons, an equitable share in development, protection against abuse and exploitation, and certain services to improve the quality of their lives.

Although the Centre advised the states to formulate separate policies of their own to supplement its efforts, few has done so. At present the Centre is reviewing the working of the national policy. This exercise is likely to result in some changes in the policy.

In 2007, the Centre enacted the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act to cast on the younger generation an obligation to provide need-based maintenance to parents and other senior citizens. If children fail to discharge their duty, parents can seek relief from a tribunal set up for the purpose. The law provides for protection of life and property of senior citizens, revocation of transfer of property and award of penalty in case of negligence or abandonment by relatives.

Almost all states have brought the law into force but many of them are yet to take follow-up measures like framing of rules, appointment of maintenance officers and setting up of maintenance tribunals.

The increasing number of cases of neglect of parents reported from Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which have taken follow-up measures, indicates that the law is not yielding the desired results. Last November Tehelka magazine reported that in some villages of Tamil Nadu family members use the services of quacks to extinguish the lives of senior citizens by administering some poisonous stuff as they are not able to bear the burden of looking after them.

The law is failing as it does not address some critical issues. A comprehensive social security system is needed to ensure that the old do not become a burden on the young. The limited geriatric care facilities available in the country are located in the cities. Such facilities must be available at the primary health centres which serve the rural population. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, March14, 2011

Crucial election for Left

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

West Bengal and Kerala, strongholds of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, are among four Indian states going to the polls shortly. For the Left movement, the outcome of the assembly elections in these states is crucial.

In West Bengal, the Left Front, headed by the CPI-M, has been in office continuously since 1977. The severe setbacks the party suffered in last year’s municipal elections and the previous year’s Lok Sabha elections have damaged its winning record.

The Left’s main challenger in West Bengal is the All India Trinamool Congress, founded by Mamata Banerjee after quitting the Congress in 1997 saying it was soft on the CPI-M. It quickly became the main opposition.

In 2004 the Trinamool Congress aligned itself with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha poll and became a partner in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government. Now it is a partner of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. Last week Mamata Banerjee, as Railway Minister, offered a bouquet of projects to West Bengal to woo the voters.

The Congress, which has had a troubled relationship with the volatile Mamata Banerjee, has reconciled itself to being a junior partner of the Trinamool Congress.

The CPI-M is facing the electorate with a severe handicap as the bitterness caused by its high-handed action in Nandigram and Singur against those opposing forcible acquisition of land for industrial projects has not subsided. Mamata Banerjee personally led the agitation in both places.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya lacks the charisma of Jyoti Basu, whom he had succeeded a decade ago, and the LF partners who unquestioningly accepted the CPI-M’s dictates earlier are now remonstrating.

The CPI-M national leadership is hoping for gains in Kerala to compensate for likely losses in West Bengal.

In the last three decades, Kerala has voted the Left Democratic Front, led by the CPI-M, and the United Democratic Front, led by the Congress, to power in alternate elections. The LDF, which will have to make way for the UDF this year if the trend continues, is making a bold bid to break the jinx and win a second successive term.

The poll season began, as usual, with ministers laying foundation stones for projects and the parties organising marches to enthuse the cadres. Away from public gaze, other strategies were also taking shape.

An estranged relative of Muslim League leader and former UDF minister PK Kunhalikutty, whose name had cropped up in a sex scandal in the 1990s, and a television channel spilt into the public domain information on how he had got away without even figuring as an accused in the case. The government promptly asked the police to investigate the matter.

It also sought the Vigilance court’s nod for further investigation in the palmolein case which Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan had been pursuing from the time he was Leader of the Opposition. The prime accused in the case, former Chief Minister K Karunakaran, died recently. The fresh probe is aimed at bringing Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy into the net.

The CPI-M had demoted Achuthanandan from the Politburo in 2009 as a disciplinary measure. But his image as a crusader against corruption has brightened with the Supreme Court awarding a year’s rigorous imprisonment to Kerala Congress (B) leader and former UDF minister R Balakrishna Pillai in another case which too he had been pursuing independently of the government. However, it is not clear whether the party is ready to restore his Politburo membership and give him another term as chief minister.

Responding to the revival of the old cases against its leaders, the UDF also tried to breathe new life into some old allegations. Its primary target now is Achuthanandan’s son, VA Arunkumar, not any of the ministers against whom it had previously levelled charges.

The re-floated scandals are unlikely to sway the fronts’ traditional supporters whose loyalties are primordial. Will they persuade the non-partisan voters whose swing from one front to the other leads to a change of government? The answer to this question must wait.

Although the CPI-M does not figure in power play outside Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura, its decline has implications for the nation as a whole. It will further reduce the influence of the Left which has raised its voice against the evils of globalisation even though it has generally comprised with them where it is in power. --Gulf Today, February 28, 2011.

Left on the decline

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Left-wing parties which wield power in three states in India are going downhill. The Communist Party of India-Marxist, which leads the pack, was routed in local self-government elections in Kerala last week. It had received a severe drubbing in the municipal elections in West Bengal in May.

The Left Front, headed by the CPI-M, has ruled West Bengal continuously for more than three decades, setting a record. The Left Democratic Front, also led by it, has been voted to office in Kerala in alternate elections for as long.

Coming after the heavy losses in last year’s parliamentary poll, the reverses in the local elections are a major setback for the CPI-M as it prepares for the Assembly elections, due next year, in the two states. The other Left parties count for little.

The CPI-M has established procedures for evaluation of its performance, identification of mistakes and initiation of remedial action. However, the time available to it to take corrective measures and avoid a third successive reverse is too short.

Lately, the corrective system has not been functioning well. The party’s state and central committees had conducted mandatory reviews after the Lok Sabha poll but no meaningful measures ensued.

When the country gained freedom in 1947, the Communist Party of India was committed to a policy of violent revolution but it participated in the elections. In the first national elections on adult franchise, held in 1952, it emerged as the largest opposition group in the Lok Sabha, winning more seats than the Socialist Party which polled more votes.

Five years later, the world sat up and took notice as the CPI formed the government in Kerala. That was the first time Communists had come to power through the ballot box anywhere. The government, sadly, was short-lived. The Centre dismissed it in 1959 as violent protests against land and educational reforms initiated by it swept the state.

Despite the rude experience, the CPI remained on the parliamentary path. When the party split in two in the wake of the rift in the international communist movement both the factions continued along the same course. Although communist influence in the country shrank, the CPI-M outpaced the parent body and emerged as the strongest political formation in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura.

In all these states the CPI-M is now facing a problem which other parties that are a part of the power structure have faced before. It is problem resulting from prolonged exposure to and involvement in power politics. As a party with an assured place in the ruling Establishment it tends to attract those seeking political power more than those wanting social and economic changes.

Party documents show that it is losing long-term cadres who are not interested in the loaves of office. The annual dropout rate has been above 10 per cent in Kerala for some year. It is one of several states where more than 40 per cent of the party members are comparative newcomers.

Elections are a costly process. In a five-year period, parties now face three separate elections — one to the Lok Sabha, another to the Assembly and the third to the local bodies. At one time the CPI-M could proudly say it relied entirely on small contributions from the poor. Material that surfaced in the recent past indicates that the Kerala party has benefited from the munificence of some businessmen with dubious backgrounds.

The absence of charismatic leaders like EMS Namboodiripad and Jyoti Basu, who had led the party in Kerala and West Bengal along the parliamentary path in the early years, is a major handicap for the CPI-M in facing today’s challenges. To make things worse, the central leadership is in the hands of persons with little grassroots level political experience.

Under former general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet, the CPI-M had carved out a place for itself in national politics by acting as a catalyst in the formation of non-Congress governments when elections threw up a hung parliament. His successor, Prakash Karat, helped in the formation of the last Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government and the party was able to influence its working to some extent.

Karat’s attempt to bring down the UPA government on the issue of the civilian nuclear agreement with the United States backfired. His effort to put together a non-Congress, non-Bharatiya Janata Party alternative in advance of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections also failed. The party needs a win in the Assembly elections to retain its relevance at the national level.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, November 1, 2010.

Assault on Professor Joseph: an ode to Indian democracy

AVINASH PANDEY

Rarely do individual tragedies reflect all that is wrong in a society. Even rare are occasions where their implications go beyond the lives of the individual, his family, or the neighborhood. But, when they do, they assume a significance that has bearings on the history of the community and the society.

The recent attack on a college professor in Kerala comes under the category. The attack is no doubt tragic. The fact that it happened in front of his family is worse. The brutality of chopping the palm off the teacher has scarred the psyche of the family, scars that will probably never be erased. The significance of the event, however, does not lie in the personal tragedy inflicted upon the family by a gang of criminals. It goes much beyond the family, the town where they live, and the state of Kerala.

The attack, rather, is a marker of the times to come in India. Times when freedoms guaranteed by the constitution will cease to be guarantees and convert into empty words devoid of any meaning, buried deep down the pages of a book no one uses anymore.

Or these dark undemocratic times have already descended and the attack is just a grim reminder of that?

The details of the case point to nothing if not this. The attack did not emanate from any personal enmity. The intent was not only to hurt, or to kill, but also to terrorize everyone. That is why the assailants decided to attack him in full public view. The most bizarre thing about the attack, however, is the motive and not any of the above. The assailants allegedly belonged to the Popular Front of India, a fundamentalist Islamic political organization. They were incensed at a paper allegedly having a blasphemous conversation between God and Muhammad, set by the professor for the examinations of the private missionary run college.

Just that nothing in the conversation pointed to the Muhammad being referred to as the Prophet Muhammad. Yet, there was a boycott of the papers and protest rallies were promptly organized. Realizing the electoral ramifications of the controversy, the state government sprung into action and directed the college administration to suspend him. It goes without saying that the government did it without any proper inquiry. Yet the real question is a little more startling, that in what capacity a secular and socialist (literally as Kerala is ruled by an alliance led by the Communist Party of India Marxist) state directed a private institution to suspend a professor in absence of any enquiry, internal or by the state agencies.

The travesty of the justice and abuse of state institutions did not stop at that. The suspension of the professor was followed by a police case against him for 'hurting religious sentiments' and death threats issued by fundamentalist Islamic groups. Further, the police issued 'wanted' posters against the professor who had gone into hiding precisely because of the reluctance of the police to provide him with security in the face of death threats. But maybe we are just cribbing too much. Maybe it is the discretion of the police whether to provide security to a person or not, especially if the person is accused irrespective of the facts of the case.

Just when we might think that things could not go worse than this, they went. As if failing to provide security to professor and bringing the culprits to books was not enough, the police did go all the way wrong, post attack as well. The first thing the police did, as per media reports was convincing the Church leaders about their earnest pursuit of the attackers. The Hindu, one of the most respected news papers of India quoted T. Vikram, the Superintendent of Police, Ernakulam Rural, saying: "We have talked to church leaders to convince them that an all-out effort is being made to nab the culprits."

A person like me with limited understanding of democracy may wonder how the Church leaders enter the scene and why exactly a senior ranking police officer was trying to convince 'them' about the 'all-out efforts' the police was making to nab the culprits. This was a criminal assault after all and the police are required to do their job. To gather the evidence and produce the suspects for trial is in essence what policing is. Further, they should investigate the attack in all details, including the role of instigators and not only the perpetrators. They should have done all this, further, without even thinking of the identity of the victims and that of the perpetrators.

Is not the political identity of being a 'citizen' the crucial and decisive one in a democracy? Does not the Indian constitution guarantees the same while criminalizing any kind of discrimination based on any of the exclusive innate identities attached to a person, like those of caste, religion or ethnicity? And does not the very act of convincing church leaders in this case prove that the trail must have been going cold more often than not in cases where neither the victim nor the case has high profile.

The question what the police will do after nabbing the suspects and getting them convicted comes up here. Will the police apologize to the leaders of Muslim community in case all the accused happen to be Muslims, as is most likely? This sounds absurd but then this very absurdity is the hallmark of the Indian criminal justice system. Where a criminal is not just a criminal, but has an identity to invoke and dodge the law.

The legal course-of-action should be very clear. Anyone, and just about anyone, violating the law of the land should be dealt with firmly. Further, citizenship should be the only identity recognized by the law, accepting none other barring those of deprived sections constitutionally mandated for positive discrimination.

The case, therefore, should have been treated as an outright case of criminal and murderous assault and investigated like that only. Further, the investigation should have tried investigating the roles of instigators as well and to bring the whole ring of such exclusivist and fundamentalist religious fanatics to books as they pose a grave threat to the very ethos of the country.

All this discussion makes it very clear that the police had no business of convincing the religious leaders. But they did it. So, the question arises whether they are, in fact, responsible or at least answerable to religious leaders? De facto if not de jure. And if they are, leaders of which religion are they answerable to? Or, are they answerable to leaders of all religion? They are, or at least seem to be. In that case what will be the line of action in cases of communal/ religious riots?
There was nothing new in the Kerala police's action. Police forces across the country have done the same. Right from being biased in favour of one particular religion, they have presided over the genocidal attacks of one religion on another. The way Delhi police acted in 1984 when murderous Hindu crowds butchered Sikhs, in the name of taking revenge for the killing of Indira Gandhi, the then prime minister, by her Sikh bodyguards. The government in charge of Delhi police was led by Indian National Congress, the party the slain prime minister belonged to.

Disgusting it may sound, but that was still better than what Gujarat police did in 2002 pogrom of Muslims by murderous Hindu crowds belonging to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh(RSS) and its affiliates. This time they did not assist the pogrom just by looking away. Rather, they actually supported it by stopping the Muslims from trying to escape the attacks. They did this by firing, actually firing, at Muslim victims running for their lives. Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), the political arm of the RSS, was in the government.

The Orissa police did this in 2008. Christians were the target this time though the perpetrators remained the same. The riots took place apparently for revenging the killing of a Hindu sadhu belonging to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, another RSS affiliate, allegedly by the Maoists. The police looked the other way again. Rather as per several victims, the police were quite friendly with them. The province was being ruled by an alliance of BJP and Biju Janata Dal, a regional political party.

These cases are just the tip of the iceberg. The gross ones. In all of these cases, the riots were led by the ruling party itself, which controls the police. Apparently, the police cannot go against their political bosses. For every riot this huge, there are hundreds if not thousands of small localized attacks on minorities.

Most of these attacks are supported, if not organized, by the local government and the police. And that is done for a simple reason, for democracy. This may sound weird to untrained ears but then this is it. These riots are organized to mobilize communal passions. The communal passion in turn animates communities herding together. And that translates into votes for the leadership of 'democratic' parties.

The governments, therefore, need the religious leaders, especially of the highly sectarian nature as mobilizing communal passion will be very difficult without them. And the numbers would follow the age-old dictum, the more the merrier, as there would be as many fault lines to play with as there are religions/sects/denominations. What else can explain the best political scientists of the country explain every election in the biggest democracy of the world, right from the village council to the parliamentary ones, in terms of caste, sect and religious and ethnic breakups of the constituencies. Forget that these were precisely the identities that should play no role in any democratic process, leave aside elections.

But then, India is a democracy more than half of whose parliamentarians have serious criminal charges against them. Where a chief minister of a rich state organizes and presides over a pogrom of Muslims to win an election and retains his chair. It is a democracy where the same chief minister mocks the commission appointed by the Supreme Court of the country for looking into the pogrom. It is a democracy where half of the top leadership of the main opposition party would have been behind the bars for inciting communal frenzy and destabilizing peace.

The systemic and systematic cultivation of mechanisms to find loopholes in the legal system and exploit them to escape punishment for one's crimes makes the flawed democracy India has evolved into. The failure of the system has resulted in the police evolving as the extra arm of the ruling parties which is often used to terrorize the opposition. The injustices committed by the police lead to the alienation of whole communities from the system, leading to their taking recourse to extremism. Can one forget incidents like the Mumbai police lining up more than a thousand Muslim youth immediately after the blasts that rocked the city? Or the fact that there had been no action or even an inquiry against officers of the Uttar Pradesh state police who killed the alleged masterminds of the bomb blasts in Varanasi almost a year before the Delhi police killed a completely different set of people for being the masterminds of the same blast?

This is what leads to a situation where extremist groups belonging to all religions play victims and emerge as the saviours of their communities. The clash of these fundamentalist groups with the state placating the needed one on that hour becomes the inevitable consequence of such an unjust system. A system where murderers of Muslims and Christians take oath in the name of the Indian constitution and run governments, and where no action is taken against Muslim legislators even when they assault and incite their supporters to kill Taslima Nasreen.

Evidently, cracking down on the religious fanatics does not make sense in a democracy of the Indian kind. Neither does secularism. Rather, it does. Not in the Nehuruvian sense though which defined secularism as 'equal state protection to all religions'. It makes sense in its current form, equal state protection and immunity to the highly organized and institutionalized, rogue fundamentalist fanatics of all religions. The fanatics then, of course, can protect the followers of their religion.

Avinash Pandey alias Samar is a research scholar based in New Delhi. Currently Samar is in Hong Kong on an assignment with the Asian Human Rights Commission.

In Kerala, leftists, church attack CBI's movie-gilded image

B.R.P.BHASKAR
Comment
IANS

Kerala's largest political organization, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), and best organized religious establishment, the Catholic Church, are venting their spleen on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). At stake is the agency's image, which, in Kerala, has been gilded by a series of Malayalam movies.

The two powerful institutions trained their guns on the nation's premier investigating agency after it named persons high up in their hierarchy on criminal charges.
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Looking back on Kerala land reform

Kerala’s land reform is not the grand success that it is claimed to be. The domination of landlords weakened and tenants gained security, but the landless did not get land and productivity did not grow. Feudal land relations were eliminated, but agricultural output did not increase and there was no significant investment in the agriculture. Human development levels rose but there is no evidence to suggest that this was the result of investments in education and health brought about by land reform. Even a cursory look at the census data will bear out that the process that put the State at the top of the human development chart had begun long before land reform took place. Above all, women, Dalits and Adivasis remain outside the charmed circle of power-wielders.

Looking back, it appears the reform measure was drawn up without proper appreciation of the ongoing socio-economic changes.

These are some of the observations in the paper I presented at the three-day seminar on "Land Reform re-visited" organized by the C. Achutha Menon Foundation, Thiruvananthapuram, from April 24 to 26, 2008.

The text of the paper can be accessed here.

Are courts and media substitutes for governance? AHRC poser

Can courts and media be substitutes for governance? The Asian Human Rights Commission raises this question in the context of the Kerala government's response to its communications regarding human rights violations in the State. Below is the text of the statement issued by the Commission on October 26, 2007:

ON OCTOBER 22, 2007 the Asian Human Rights Commission received a communication from the government of Kerala in India. The communication, in the form of a letter, dated September 9, 2007 prepared on behalf of the Additional Chief Secretary to the government informs the AHRC that if the AHRC is concerned about incidents of custodial deaths in Kerala, the AHRC must approach the human rights commissions in the country or the courts or the media and NOT the government or any of its departments, particularly the Home Department.

While the letter triggers a series of questions regarding governance, of particular interest is the role of the Home Department and the local police this department controls and allegedly govern. The Home Department is an important government agency that is primarily responsible for law and order within its jurisdiction. In the initial communication from the AHRC to the state government, written in October, 2006, the AHRC urged the government to take appropriate steps to address the issue of custodial violence committed by the local police. The AHRC also urged the government to initiate enquiries into reported cases of custodial deaths from the state.

The extent to which violence is used as part of crime control and case investigation is no news to anyone who is familiar with policing in India. Policing in Kerala is not different. The performance and temperament of the Kerala State Police is not different from the police elsewhere in India. In most cases, if a crime is registered, investigation begins with the arrest and detention of a suspect. What then follow are confessions leading to recovery and charge-sheeting. It would be naïve to believe that a large proportion of persons arrested of being accused of charges easily confess their crime. It would be equally naïve to agree that any person who dies in police custody died from cardiac arrest, since it is often the excuse the Kerala State Police poses when a person die in custody.

Custodial torture and violence are the brutal means often adopted by the police in India for investigating crimes and maintaining law and order. Fear and aversion are the two most common feelings the general public express about their police in India. Who is responsible for this? It would be unfair to blame the police in isolation.

Custodial violence is an external manifestation of a failing institution -- the police department. The lack of a clear political determination to rule out the possibilities of custodial violence perpetuates the use of uncontrolled violence by the law enforcement agencies. For instance, there is no specific law in India that prohibits custodial violence. Sceptics may tend to argue that with the provisions in the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and the procedures laid out in the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 are adequate enough to prevent custodial violence in India. But what is missing in this argument is the gravity of the offence.

A crime committed by a police officer upon a person under his custody is more serious than a crime committed by a local criminal. This is why the crime of torture as of today has the status of ius cogens in international law. Unfortunately in India custodial violence is just another crime, which takes the regular course of investigation and trial. In most cases these trials result in an acquittal.

The Home Ministry of the state is directly accountable for the law and order in the state in addition to the police force. Law and order and rule of law are directly related. Proper maintenance of law and order is one of the foundation stones for establishing rule of law in a country. Rule of law in simple terms means that no one is above the law. Catalysts like trade and commerce has resulted in evolving new sequencings for establishing rule of law. Yet, what Samuel Rutherford said in Lex Rex in 1644 and a century later Montesquieu in Spirit of Laws in 1748, the fundamental principle of what rule of law is has not changed.

What was said centuries ago are now sought to be perfected by several states across the globe. In fact rule of law has become the backbone of economies in some countries. One example is Hong Kong. Even though there is great scope for improvement like the concept of full democratic governance as a separate entity within China, the administration in Hong Kong has achieved enough to be proud to advertise the territory's potential for investment by showcasing its rather impeccable record of rule of law. A postal stamp released earlier this year says exactly this. The stamp displays a caricature of the Hong Kong skyline with 'Rule of Law' printed on the skirting.

The AHRC wonders how many other Asian countries can be honest and bold enough to advertise their country, pitching rule of law as one of the key factors to attract business. Unfortunately most Asian countries cannot, since they are institutional wastelands as far as rule of law is concerned.

What the governments in India have failed repeatedly is to establish the minimum guarantee of rule of law, while the country is allegedly marching towards economic progress. An economy without the basic guarantees of rule of law can never be stable. In this context it is imperative to look into what is lacking in India. The country has one of the best constitutions in the world, is home to some of the best jurists and legal professionals and also has a governance mechanism. But this all in theory. In reality India is a far cry from what it ought to be. Somehow the democratic institutions in India have failed to make their 'real' contact with the people. Casting a vote once in a while and having some courts and other similar semi-functional institutions is not what democracy or rule of law really means.

In this context, policing has a major role to play in India. Courts, human rights commissions and the media are not substitute mechanisms for what policing must be. While courts and commissions are dispute redressal forums, the media serves the purpose of being the public's eye and ear. None of them can be expected to replace the police. The question is what if the policing itself is bad? Even though the presence of these institutions serves the purpose of a deterrent, that role is limited. The very purpose of having a Home Department is to monitor the functioning of the police and to lay down rules and procedures for policing and also to define the norms required to maintain discipline in the force.

Widespread use of custodial violence is an indicator that the Home Department is ignoring this role, intentionally. The letter issued by an officer as senior as the Additional Chief Secretary to the government is a proof to this. The courts in India and other para-legal mechanisms have tried to address this issue in part. The judgment of the Indian Supreme Court in the Prakash Singh v. Union of India delivered in 2006 is just one example.

In this case the Supreme Court of India has asked the state governments to come up with effective policies and even legislations to regulate policing in their respective jurisdictions, including but not limited to maintaining internal discipline and procedures to be put in place for the police to strictly adherence to the law of the land. The guideline in the judgment also to a large extent is expected to reduce one of the worst curses of policing in India – political interference. The AHRC believes that it is the duty of the Home Department in each state, among other duties, to advice their respective ministries how the judgment of the court could be effectively implemented. The communication received by the AHRC however does not reflect this attitude.

The Home Department is literally ruled by a Minister – the Home Minister – advised by a team of bureaucrats who might not be directly involved with policing. The implementing agency of the decisions made by the Home Department however is the police. What the AHRC, like any other human rights organisation did, was to urge the state government and the concerned departments to discharge their duty and in the process to help the police in correcting itself.

The response by the state government of Kerala to the AHRC is not only condemnable, but also exposes the neglect and contempt with which the department views their execution wing - the local police. If not for human rights organisations like the AHRC, at least the local police themselves must be concerned about why their bureaucratic counterparts in the government neglect them to an extent that the local police is taken for nothing more than a joke.

About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.