Misogyny in media exposed

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

A #MeToo wave sweeping across India is knocking down the reputation of some well-known figures of news and entertainment media.

The best known public figure among those exposed by survivors so far is Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar. Ten women journalists, including two foreigners, have made accusations against him, all dating back to his days as newspaper editor.

Akbar was abroad on an official tour when the allegations surfaced. On his return he denied the allegations and threatened legal action against his accusers.

Several Bollywood celebrities also attracted charges. Tanushree Dutta, an actor and model, accused Nana Patekar, a veteran of Hindi and Marathi films and winner of many awards, of sexually harassing her on the sets of a film 10 years ago. She said the film’s director, producer and choreographer were complicit in her harassment.

Patekar denied the charge and sent her a legal notice demanding an apology. She responded by filing a police complaint against him and the director, producer and choreographer. The matter is now under investigation.

While Dutta’s allegation against Patekar relates to conduct on the sets of a film, the charges against some others include attempts to lure young co-workers to locations away from the workplace.

Actor Salomi Chopra, who had once worked as assistant to film maker Sajid Khan, accused him of personal abuse. Following this, several stars working with him on a new film dropped out. Among them was Patekar.

Sajid Khan stepped down as director, assuming moral responsibility, but asked friends to not pass judgment until the truth was out.

Subhash Ghai, maker of many box-office hits, and Alok Nath, lead actor of popular television serials, were among the others at whom women colleagues pointed fingers.

Ghai said he was a #MeToo supporter but some were diluting the campaign for fame. Alok Nath’s wife filed a defamation case against the script writer who had levelled charges against him and demanded a compensation of Rs 10 million.

On Sunday 11 women film makers, including Nandita Das, Konkona Sen Sharma and Zoya Akhtar expressed solidarity with the survivors and vowed not to work with sex offenders.

The first to name Akbar was a journalist who had started her career under him in the 1990s. Her disclosure prompted others to come out with their own #MeToo accounts.

Akbar, who began his journalistic career with the Times of India group in 1971 at the age of 20, had made a mark quickly as a feature writer. He was one of the young editors who blazed a new trail as the press, suppressed during the 1975-77 Emergency, regained freedom. He helmed The Telegraph which within a few years of its launch in 1982 ended The Statesman’s century-old primacy in Kolkata.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi drew him into politics, and he became a Congress member of Parliament. Returning to journalism later, he launched the Asian Age, associated himself with a Hyderabad-based newspaper chain and helped the International Herald Tribune to print in India circumventing government regulations. Taking to politics again, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party before the 2014 elections.

Akbar appears to be digging in, relying excessively on one accuser’s statement that he “didn’t do anything”. However, her account and those of the other accusers contain much that falls within the ambit of the legal definition of sex offences.

His best protection is his political affiliation. Parties go to great lengths to shield their members. In Kerala state, two legislators belonging to the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), one of them an actor, have attracted sexual harassment charges, but the police is not in the picture.

The #MeToo campaign has already extracted a price from some media persons. The Times of India sent its Hyderabad resident editor KR Sreenivas on forced leave. Business Standard principal correspondent Mayank Jain resigned following allegations by colleagues.

A common feature of the allegations is that the accusers were very young and highly vulnerable when they came under attack from men in powerful positions who would not take no for an answer.

There are signs of the #MeToo campaign spreading to other areas too. A columnist has called out popular novelist Chetan Bhagat and celebrity consultant Suhel Seth. Lawyers and human rights defenders have asked survivors in their spheres of activity to speak out.

There is enough material in the public realm to conclude that misogyny is still widespread and the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court in 1997 and the steps taken by the government subsequently are not adequate to address the issue of sexual offences effectively. -- Gulf Today, October 16, 2018

Overcoming US pressure

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

The emerging strategic partnership with the United States and Washington’s threat to impose sanctions did not deter India from signing an agreement with Russia to buy a $5.43 billion missile system during President Vladimir Putin’s visit last week.

After the signing ceremony, Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in glowing terms of Indo-Russian relationship. Putin described it as unparallelled and Modi termed it unique.

The Trump administration had wanted India to scrap the proposal to buy the Russian missile system and to stop purchase of crude from Iran from November. 

Alluding to the waiver given to India when the last US administration imposed sanctions against Iran, Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton had told media persons some time ago, “This is not the Obama administration”.

Ahead of the Putin visit, India lobbied for waivers and sought to reassure Washington that the Russian contacts will not compromise operational secrecy of US military equipment.

While the US has not announced any waiver so far, India is going ahead also with purchase of crude from Iran, which has been one of its major sources of oil since long.

Quoting industry sources, the Russian news agency Sputnik said the state-owned Indian Oil Corporation, which had planned to buy about 0.75 million metric tons of Iranian oil every month during the year ending March 2019 was importing the usual quantity.

It also said Indian refiners had placed a contract for 1.25 million metric tons of crude, to be delivered next month. As Iran gives India a short credit, payment will be due only two months later. Since a second set of US sanctions will come into force before that India has arranged with Iran to receive payment in rupee instead of US dollar.

The US had offered to make good India’s oil shortage resulting from stoppage of purchases from Iran. But, citing traders and the French shipping intelligence company Kpler, Sputnik said India bought from the US only 64,000 barrels per day last month as against 347,000 bpd in June.

The US imposed sanctions against Russia and Iran under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act passed by Congress last year. The law targets North Korea too.

While signing the bill into law, Trump had said it was “significantly flawed” as it restricted the executive branch’s authority by limiting its flexibility in foreign policy matters.

The Putin-Modi meeting was the 19th annual Indo-Russian summit. This has served as a major forum for sustaining the warm relationship forged before the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was India’s major source of military hardware.

India-Russia defence cooperation continued in the post-Soviet period and has led to acquisition and joint development of weapons and equipment. The modified Kiev-class aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, which the Indian Navy acquired in 2013, start of work on first India-built aircraft carrier INS Arihant and development of BrahMos supersonic missile are among its major achievements.

It was at the 17th summit held in 2016 that India agreed to buy the S-400 Triumf air defence system. This decision has now been firmed up through a formal agreement. 

At that meeting the two countries had agreed also on a project to construct four frigates, one to be built in Russia and the other three in India. It was also decided to set up a tripartite joint venture of a Russian export firm, Russian Helicopters and the Indian public sector undertaking Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to manufacture 200 light utility helicopters for the Indian army. There is no word on the fate of these projects. 

After defence, the most importnt area of Indo-Russian cooperation is that of nuclear power production. Two units of the Koodamkulam plant in Tamil Nadu, built with Russian help, have been completed, despite strong objections from the local population on grounds of safety and environmental protection. But a three-year-old proposal for Russia and India to collaborate in building a nuclear plant in Bangladesh appears to be in cold storage.

One of the agreements signed at the latest summit envisages Indo-Russian cooperation in space exploration. 

All these point to continued Indian cooperation with Russia in sensitive areas, notwithstanding the Modi government’s pursuit of strategic defence partnership with the US.

Army chief Gen. Bipin Rawat outlined India’s approach in a speech on Sunday: “While we may be associating with America in getting some technologies from them, we follow an independent policy.” 

Russia is keen to boost economic cooperation with India as well. Last year India participated in the St Petersburg International Economic Forum as a guest member. Putin has invited Modi to be the chief guest at an investment conclave planned at Vladivostok to boost economic development of Russia’s far eastern region. --Gulf Today Sharjah, October 9, 2018.

Mixed signals from court

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

India’s powerful Supreme Court, which, generally speaking, has been conservative on social issues, confounded orthodox elements recently with a series of landmark judgments.

Last month it decriminalised adultery and gay sex, which were punishable under the Indian Penal Code, introduced by the British colonial administration a century and a half ago.

Human rights groups, especially those voicing the demands of sexual minorities, had been seeking changes in the law for some time. Public opinion on the issue was not strong enough to compel the government to accept the demand and change the law.

When the matter was brought before it, in a break with the past, the Supreme Court took a liberal view in the light of the personal freedoms which the Constitution guarantees to all citizens. In effect, the recent judgments have taken the Indian legal system out of the confines of Victorian morality in which the British had set it.

Last year the Court, by a 3-2 verdict, declared instant triple talaq unlawful. While two judges said it was inconsistent with the Constitution, a third judge struck it down on the ground that it was against the Sharia and the basic tenets of the Koran. Last week the court, rejecting the arguments of a section of Hindu orthodoxy, overturned a supposedly traditional practice of barring women of the 10-50 age group from trekking to the Sabarimala shrine nestling in the Western Ghats.

Chief Justice Dipak Misra, who delivered the main judgment, said the bar was a clear violation of Hindu women’s right to practice religion. Interestingly, the lone woman on the five-member Constitution Bench, in a dissenting judgment said the question was one of faith and the court could not go into it.

The Preamble of the Constitution, which outlines its objectives, grants primacy to “justice — social, economic and political”. As the sole authority for its interpretation, the Judiciary is the ultimate arbiter of what is constitutional and what is not.

Initially, the higher courts took care not to upset powerful elements. When a petitioner belonging to a so-called upper caste approached them claiming she could not get admission in a medical college because of the reservations favouring backward communities and arguing that the reservation system was against the principle of equality enshrined in it, they readily accepted it.

To get over the courts’ objections, Parliament amended the Constitution and added a proviso that permitted special provisions for socially and educationally backward classes of people. The Supreme Court upheld the amendment.

Later on the Judiciary moved forward to ensure political justice by coming down on authoritarian acts of the Executive. There was a setback when Indira Gandhi’s government declared an Emergency and the apex court upheld its contention that it could suspend all fundamental rights, including the right to life.

On economic justice, the court inevitably lagged behind as the expensive legal process is weighted in favour of the rich and casts a disadvantage on the poor.

If the recent Supreme Court judgments on social issues have warmed the hearts of the liberals, some decisions with a bearing on civil and political rights have disappointed them. As they say, you win some, you lose some.

Last year a nine-member Constitution Bench declared right to privacy a fundamental right. This led to hopes that it would rule that the Aadhar card project, under which the government has gathered a good deal of personal data about citizens, unconstitutional. But it only provided partial relief.

The Aadhar project was initiated by the previous United Progressive Alliance government. At that time the Bharatiya Janata Party opposed it and Narendra Modi unleashed a Twitter campaign against it. On becoming Prime Minister he enlarged its scope and compelled linking of Aadhar numbers with bank accounts, mobile phone numbers etc.

The court stopped linking of Aadhar with bank accounts and mobile numbers but did not interfere with the scheme itself.

The Court made a quick intervention and denied the Maharashtra police custody of five reputed social activists it had arrested in a multi-state swoop in late August and ordered to keep them in their own houses. Since then it has been granting piecemeal extension of their house arrest, without going into the points raised in the petition challenging the arrests, betraying Hamletian indecisiveness.

On Friday, Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice AM Khanwilkar allowed the Maharashtra police to go ahead with the investigation while Justice YV Chandrachud, in a dissenting judgment, virtually accused it of trying to muzzle dissent. There has been speculation that the majority judgment was a last-minute development. --Gulf Today, October 2, 2018. 

Decoding the Rafale deal

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

 

A slanging match is on between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Congress on the deal which Prime Minister Narendra Modi struck with France to acquire 36 Rafale warplanes.

According to Congress President Rahul Gandhi, Modi tweaked the agreement the previous United Progressive Alliance government had negotiated with a view to favouring a crony businessman.

The search for a new multi-role combat aircraft to replace the ageing fleet of Soviet MiGs began when the first BJP-led government was in power and continued under the two UPA governments.

After field trials in which six manufacturers participated, Dassault’s Rafale was adjudged the best, and in 2012 negotiations began for acquisition of 126 aircraft. 

UPA negotiated a deal to acquire18 aircraft in fly-away condition and manufacture108 in India in collaboration with the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. Dassaault’s talks with HAL were inconclusive when the change of government took place in 2014.

On an official visit to France in 2016, Modi signed an agreement with President Francois Hollande to buy 36 Rafale aircraft in fly-away condition.

It dumped the 78-year-old HAL, which has produced some small planes and helicopters on its own, and manufactured, under licence, aircraft of foreign design like the British Vampire, Gnat and Jaguar and the Soviet Mig 21, Mig 27 and Sukhoi. Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence, which was incorporated just weeks before the Modi-Hollande agreement, came in as Dassault’s Indian partner.

The Ambani firm cut into the deal under an offset clause in the agreement which requires France to invest half the contract cost in India. According to media reports, France will invest 30 per cent of the cost in India’s military aeronautics-related research programmes and 20 per cent in local production of Rafale components. 

The Congress says under the UPA deal an aircraft would have cost India only Rs 5.26 billion. Under the Modi deal the price goes up to Rs 16.70 billion.

The government refuses to give details of the price agreed upon, saying there is a clause in the agreement which binds it to maintain secrecy.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman claims the price fixed by UPA was for the bare aircraft while what India is now getting is aircraft fitted with sophisticated weapons. Experts aver the price difference is too high to be attributed to the difference in equipment ordered.

Ms Sitharaman is one of the most articulate BJP leaders. But the more she talks on this issue the more she wades into deep waters. 

She seeks to explain away HAL’s exclusion saying UPA did not pump money into it to enable it to take up manufacture of Rafale. She does not say why her government, instead of pumping money into HAL, brought in a private company with no experience of manufacturing even aircraft parts, let alone a whole aircraft.

She insists the government had no role in the selection of Reliance Defence as Dassault’s partner. Under the 2016 government guidelines, all defence offset proposals require the Defence Minister’s approval.

She is silent on how India will get 90 more aircrafts to meet the assessed requirement of 126.

Anil Ambani is the younger brother of Mukesh Ambani, who owns the larger of the two Reliance conglomerates. Both brothers have been close to Modi since his days as Chief Minister of Gujarat and are among the BJP’s financiers.

In July, Modi had invited flak by giving Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Institute, which has not even started working, “Institute of Eminence” status, making it eligible for a government grant of Rs 10 billion.

It is reasonable to assume that Dassault pushed up the price of the aircraft to cover the offset costs. The government has rejected suggestions for a probe into the Rafale deal by a joint parliamentary committee. Since the BJP will have a majority in the JPC there is no need to fear an adverse decision. But, then, the JPC will be able to call for information which the government is hiding.

As the Congress mounted an attack on the Rafale deal, Anil Ambani shot off two letters to Gandhi to say the party was misinformed, misdirected and misled by malicious vested interests and his corporate rivals. 

Taking a leaf from the book of BJP President Amit Shah’s son, Jay, who obtained a restraint order against the Wire.in, he also sent legal notices to the Congress’s official spokespersons and the Gandhi family–owned newspaper National Herald in a bid to stop them from pursuing the subject on pain of heavy damages claim.

When the Ambani family assets were divided in 2007, according to Forbes, Mukesh’s net worth was $49 billion and Anil’s $45 billion. The 2017 Forbes list puts Mukesh’s assets at $38 billion and Anil’s at 3.15 billion. Fall in the value of the Rupee may account for the decline in Mukesh’s assets. The steep fall in Anil’s assets points to business failures. The Rafale deal offers him a bailout.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, September 18, 2018

India, US inch closer

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

India took the penultimate step towards actualisation of its strategic defence partnership with the United States when the two countries signed the third of four foundational agreements at the first joint meeting of their Defence and Foreign Ministers, dubbed 2+2, in New Delhi last week.

The Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), which they signed, opens the door for transfer of specialised equipment for encrypted communications for US-origin military platforms.

The agreement comes into effect immediately. It will facilitate interoperability between the militaries of the two countries.

Since India has a lot of military equipment originating elsewhere, especially Russia, certain specific provisions have been incorporated in COMCASA to safeguard its national and security interests. However, it also includes a provision for US inspection of Indian bases. 

The quest for strategic partnership began when President Bill Clinton visited India in 2000. The first Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, which was in power then, signed the first foundational agreement in 2002.

There was no progress during the ten years of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. The second foundational agreement was signed by the Narendra Modi government in 2016.

Now only one agreement remains to be signed. It is the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA), which provides for geospatial cooperation.

It was decided at the talks to establish hotlines connecting India’s External Affairs Minister and Defence Minister with their counterparts, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defence.

Modi has been pushing the strategic partnership, viewing it as something that will help realise India’s global aspirations. However, the progress has been slow because of difficulties arising from the different approaches the two countries have followed since long on many issues. 

The present forward movement, after two postponements of the inaugural 2+2, comes even as the US is pressing India to stop buying oil from Iran by November and desist from going ahead with its plan to buy S-400 missile systems from Russia.

India is the world’s largest importer of oil, and Iran is one of its major sources of supply. When a previous US regime imposed sanctions on Iran, it had granted India a waiver. India has made heavy investment in the Chabahar port in Iran and is due to get operational control of a part of it next month. It views the new port as its doorway to Central Asia.

Under a US law, the proposed purchase of Russian missile systems will also invite sanctions. India, however, plans to go ahead with it, expecting a waiver. There are reports that waivers will come, but with conditions requiring India to scale down oil purchases from Iran and gradually reduce purchase of weapons from Russia, which has been the country’s major source for military hardware since the Soviet days.

India and the US have several issues to sort out. They are not all related to military ties. Some are trade issues. India has a favourable trade balance with the US, and Washington wants New Delhi to increase purchase of oil and gas and aircraft to wipe it out.

A joint statement issued after the 2+2 said that, apart from defence and trade issues, the ministers discussed cooperation in fighting terrorism, creation of “free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region” and promotion of sustainable debt-financing in the region.

The last two issues have a bearing on China. One reflects the two sides’ concern over Beijing’s assertion of its growing clout and the other the fear that the countries which are becoming part of its Belt and Road Initiative may get drawn into a debt trap.

As Indian ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Sushama Swaraj met with Defence Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, China welcomed the dialogue. It, however, made no comment on the security pact.

Some analysts have drawn attention to the one-sided nature of the dialogue with the US laying down the rules and India acquiescing in them. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) was the only opposition party to express any views on the Indo-US security pact. It said the agreement would compromise India’s defence communications network and bind it down to buying military equipment from the US. 

Does the silence of the other parties mean they are quite willing to go along with the govenment? It is more likely they are too engrossed in parochial matters to apply their minds and come to clear conclusions on it. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, September11, 2018

Court stalls crackdown
BRP Bhaskar Gulf Today In a swift, unprecedented intervention, the Supreme Court last week denied custody of five human rights activists, well-known for their devotion to the cause of tribals and other oppressed communities, whom the Maharashtra police had picked up from different states on conspiracy charges. Police teams from Pune had raided the residences of the activists in Mumbai, Thane, Delhi, Faridabad and Hyderabad simultaneously and arrested them. They obtained permission from local magistrates to take Telugu poet and Marxist ideologue Varavara Rao from Hyderabad, former university professor Vernon Gonsalves from Mumbai and writer and cartoonist Arun Ferreira from Thane with them to Pune. However, High Courts blocked the paths of the teams that arrested prominent woman lawyer and trade unionist Sudha Bharadwaj at Faridabad in Haryana and journalist Gautam Navlakha in Delhi. On a petition filed by eminent historian Romila Thapar and four others, the Supreme Court held an urgent hearing and passed an interim order directing the police to keep the arrested persons in their own houses until September 6 when it will hear the matter. The police had to send back to their homes those whom it had taken to Pune. Some activists whose houses were raided were not taken into custody. According to the Pune police, the arrests were made in connection with the violent incidents at Bhima Koregaon where a large number of Dalits had congregated on January 1 to celebrate the victory of British-led Mahar (a Dalit community) soldiers of the East India Company over the army of the caste supremacist Peshwa regime in 1818. Dalit icon BR Ambedkar had led his followers to Koregaon in 1927 to commemorate the event. Since then Dalits have gathered there on New Year’s Day every year to mark the occasion. Being the 200th anniversary of the war, this year’s event attracted a large crowd. Some residents of the area, resentful of Dalit assertion, attacked the celebrants in the streets. One person was killed and several were injured. A first information report registered with the police named Sambhaji Bhide and Milind Ekbote, two leaders of the powerful Maratha community. Ekbote was arrested and released on bail. There was no action against Bhide, whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi had honoured with a visit during his election tour of 2014. The day before the celebration a big public meeting, styled as Elgaar Parishad, was held at the Shaniwarwada fort in Pune to protest against attacks on Dalits in different parts of the country. The speakers included Gujarat Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani, MLA, and Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader Umar Khalid, both of whom have emerged as faces of resistance to Hindutva advance. On a complaint filed by a businessman alleging the speakers had tried to promote hatred among sections of society the police registered a case. Six months later, in June, the police arrested five activists, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut, Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson and Shoma Sen, who, it said, had organised the meeting. Initially, the police saw no link between Elgaar Parishad and the Koregaon violence. Now they are seeking not only to connect them but also to link them with an alleged Maoist conspiracy involving the 10 activists arrested so far. It alleges there was even a plot to kill Modi and overthrow the government. It appears the Maoist conspiracy theory was first articulated by a retired army officer in a paper prepared for a think tank, named Forum for Integrated National Security (FINS). Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary Seshadri Chari is one of the conveners of the Forum, which is based in Mumbai but has an office also in Pune. Activists have been a bugbear of Modi since they played a big part in bringing to light the anti-Muslim riots which occurred in Gujarat soon after he became the Chief Minister. One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to block sources of funds of an NGO which led the effort and launch cases against its founder, Teesta Setalvad. The Pune police could not satisfy the High Courts about the charges against the activists. Its theory about Elgaar Parishad was punctured by former Supreme Court judge PB Sawant and former Mumbai High Court judge GB Kolse Patil who said they had organised the event at their own expense. One question begs for an answer: if there was indeed a conspiracy involving people in different states why is the investigation left to a district police and not to a national agency? Meanwhile, the Hindutva camp, aided by compliant media, is propagating the concept of a new “other”, nicknamed Urban Naxal.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, September 4, 2018.

Towards dialogue in Kashmir

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The question still lingers

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turning blessing into curse

 BRP Bhaskar                                                                                                                 

  The Tribune                                                                                                                    


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Modi’s messages to judges

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bracing for a Modi challenge

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

There is no sign of a grand alliance of opposition parties against the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party emerging before the next Lok Sabha elections. That, however, does not mean the BJP will benefit from the division in the opposition ranks as it did in 2014.

When India embarked upon parliamentary elections on the basis of adult franchise, recognised national parties collected three-fourths of the votes polled. Regional parties’ share of votes was less than 10 per cent. Independents accounted for the rest. Over the past six decades, the national parties’ share has dwindled to about 60 per cent.

The Congress, the party that led the freedom movement under leaders like Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and dominated the political landscape for decades, is now a pale shadow of what it was. Its vote share came down from close to 50 per cent in the early elections to just 19.52 per cent last time.

The BJP is the only national party which has grown in recent years. From a paltry 3.06 per cent votes gathered by its first avatar, Jana Sangh, in 1952, it has become the country’s largest party. It secured more than 31 per cent of the votes in 2014 and is now a part of the ruling dispensation in 20 of the 29 states.

Carried away by the party’s current status, BJP President Amit Shah recently exulted that the Congress has been reduced to a regional party. The fact is that all the parties recognised by the Election Commission as national parties owe their national status to the very liberal rules set by that body.

Strictly speaking, even the BJP is not national. The South is still out of bounds for it, and its presence in the East is largely the result of help from regional allies.

Apart from the six national parties, 39 state parties and 419 registered but unrecognised parties contested the 2014 elections. While the polity is fragmented and variegated, the ground situation permits the emergence of regional combinations that can challenge the BJP effectively.

In the recent by-elections in Uttar Pradesh, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati and Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, who have been rivals for power in the recent past, set aside their mutual animosity and engaged the BJP in one-to-one fights, leading to its defeat. They are now in talks on seat sharing for the Lok Sabha elections.

If BSP and SP can combine forces they will be able to severely limit the BJP’s tally in UP. In 2014 the party and an ally had together taken 73 of its 80 seats. It will not be easy for the BJP to make up a major loss in UP with gains it may make elsewhere. 

Although the Congress is only a small force in UP now, BSP and SP can improve their competitive edge in this state as well as neighbouring ones by bringing it also into their deal. 

Some regional party leaders, who are running state governments, like West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Andhra Pradesh’s N Chandrababu Naidu (Telugu Desam Party) and Telangana’s K Chandrashekhar Rao (Telangana Rashtra Samithi) have been talking of a Federal Front for some time.

They are well placed in their states and are in a position to resist the BJP’s advance even without a front. A formal alliance among them may be of little help in the electoral contests in their states but it will give them additional clout in the post-poll negotiations for government formation.

Some of the regional leaders are known to harbour prime ministerial ambitions. Mutual suspicions engendered by their conflicting personal ambitions appear to be inhibiting progress on the alliance front. They can overcome the hurdle if they set aside personal considerations for the time being and concentrate their energies on putting together a common manifesto laying stress on the need to strengthen the federal character of the national polity. 

There are reports that the Congress is looking for about 150 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. Since it got only 44 seats in 2014, this may appear to be an ambitious target. But it is attainable with the right kind of alliances.

The Congress target makes it clear that it is thinking of a coalition government. Some Congressmen have said Rahul Gandhi is their prime ministerial candidate. But party sources have indicated that he is open to the idea of a coalition government headed by Mayawati or Mamata Banerjee or anyone else not connected with the BJP or its ideological mentor, the Rashtreeya Swayamsewak Sangh. Such open-mindedness is what the situation calls for. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 31, 2018.