Malnutrition deaths in Karnataka and 'Governance of BJP'

Over 2,600 children under the age of 6 years have died of malnutrition in Raichur district of Karnataka during the past two years, as per data provided by women and child welfare department.

Ironically, Raichur is home to India's only active gold mine - Hutti mines - situated in the Lingasugur taluk of the district.

"As many as 4,531 malnourished children are on their deathbed. Malnutrition has hit epidemic proportions in villages of Deodurg and Manvi taluks in the Raichur district. We are fed up of raising the issue with the authorities concerned. For them, it is a joke," rued Y. Mariswamy of Samajika Parivarthana Andholana (SPJ), a movement for people's rights.

Acute poverty, unemployment, poor income and lack of health services coupled with government's apathy and nonimplementation of NREGA has turned Raichur into a mini Somalia. Raichur district is one of the hottest and arid regions in Karnataka. Landless people from the district often migrate to Hyderabad and Bangalore in search of livelihood.

Though there are number of schemes for the malnourished none of them has benefited the people in the district.

"The entire system has collapsed. It has now become a sociopolitical and economic issue. Karnataka claims to be a progressive state but look at what is happening in these villages," Dr Akhila Vasan, a child healthcare expert and worker, said.

The Data also shows that 78,366 children are malnourished in the district, of which 639 are severely malnourished (grade III and grade IV). "People in Deodurg and Manvi talukas are agricultural labourers. Their combined family income is not more than Rs 100 per day. Their staple diet is jowar. Neighbouring Bagalkote, Gulbarga, and Bidar districts have similar issues," Ambanna Arolikar of the SPJ said.

Karnataka has a poor track record in implementing child welfare schemes.

The infant mortality rate in the North Karnataka districts is higher than the state average of 55. As of now, there are 8,620 children belonging to grade III and 643 children belonging to grade IV levels of malnutrition in the state. Of this, Raichur district alone accounts for the bulk of it.

"It is shameful that such a serious issue is being neglected by the government. The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) has completely failed. There are enough complaints that the packaged food given to children (below 6 years) at the Anganwadi centres is sub-standard. Hot cooked meals containing cereals, pulses, and egg have to be given to malnourished kids. But in remote villages, the Anganwadi centres do not even exist," pointed out Clifton Rosario, state adviser, Office of the Supreme Court Commissioner on Food Rights.

Arvind Gowda in India Today. Here

Anna Hazare and Hindutva and the lurking danger

Hazare is the leader of 'banal Hindutva'. He has no moral centre and his scruples are his misunderstandings. He typically is the kind of person described so eloquently by Hannah Arendt in her account of Eichmann's trial: the pathetic, selfserving individual, who attains to a position of power and influence by accident.

Fallout

He is not demonic but just spectacularly mediocre. And he attracts a sizable number of those who are either his kind, or, if they are not necessarily mediocre, are just plainly opportunists, who find a state of political and moral anarchy convenient for their own ends. He is attractive because he does not challenge anyone intellectually or morally. All he asks anyone is to bask in his moral superiority. Like Krishna asking Arjuna to suspend everything and come unto him, Hazare too wants us to suspend judgement and follow him.

Will 'banal Hindutva'replace the more formal versions of the Hindu nationalist ideology? The answer is that it is unlikely. What Hazare is knowingly or unknowingly doing is to become the informal recruitment centre for the harder versions of Hindutva. By making 'banal Hindutva'honourable, Hazare has begun the process of making the harder versions of Hindutva more acceptable and legitimate. The collateral damage, as stated earlier, will be Indian democracy. But does he care? 

Jyotirmaya Sharma in India Today. Here

Who the hell is this Subramanian Swamy?

Consistency and credibility have never really been Subramaniam Swamy's virtues. He has accused Sonia Gandhi of smuggling antiques, Harkishan Singh Surjeet of corruption, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Congress leader Arjun Singh of conspiring to derail the Rajiv Gandhi assassination trial, Vajpayee of getting drunk at an official function, and much more, without ever proving these charges. Yet, Swamy is now in the news for digging up hard evidence exposing the sins of commission and omission of UPA ministers in the 2G spectrum allotment scandal.

Maverick for many, evil incarnate for his detractors, Swamy is the epitome of opportunism in public life.

Now he is a great friend of the Hindutva forces, an avowed soldier of the Sangh Parivar and a true ally of the BJP in his singleminded pursuit of the 2G scamsters. But not long ago, on March 29, 1999, he held a tea party at The Ashok in Delhi, where Sonia Gandhi was his guest of honour. The sole purpose of the party as Jayalalithaa described it then, was to bring down the first Sangh Parivar government at the Centre, which was not even a year old.

Vajpayee is a terribly consistent friend who never forgives his foes. He had fallen out with Swamy when they were together in the Jan Sangh during the Emergency, when Swamy's evasion of arrest gave him a hero's halo. Despite Swamy's Ph.D. from Harvard, his communication skills in English, Hindi and Tamil and his links abroad, the Sangh chose Vajpayee as foreign minister and L.K. Advani as information and broadcasting minister.

Now he wants to steal the voting rights of the minorities. But he has always been consistent in his opposition to the anti-Brahminical politics of Periyar in Tamil Nadu. When Jayalalithaa got the Kanchi Shankaracharya arrested for murder, Swamy defended the alleged murderer, which probably helped him build bridges with the RSS again. Right or wrong, reasonable or rabidly communal, Swamy always barges into the news rooms, grabbing eyeballs and headlines.

d more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/janata-party-chief-subramaniam-swamy/1/153419.html?google_editors_picks=true

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/janata-party-chief-subramaniam-swamy/1/153419.html?google_editors_picks=true

Rajesh Ramachandran in India Today. Here

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/janata-party-chief-subramaniam-swamy/1/153419.html?google_editors_picks=true

The rise and fall of Baba Ramdev

If Baba Ramdev's followers are dwindling, post Ramlila grounds, blame it on Hinduism. Hindus have problems gathering around a religious leader, as a religious leader. They quickly transform the person, saffron robes, notwithstanding, to a specialist healer, magician and personal good luck charm. Hindus, therefore, make bad devotees but good clients.

As tradition tells us, Hindus are not given to collective sentiments in their religious observances. The concept of a church or congregation is foreign to them. This is why one can be a pious Hindu yet never set foot in a temple. To be able to host an at- home with your own customised guru is the ultimate Hindu fantasy. This would not work for Muslims, Sikhs or Christians. The idea of a ' communion' is essential in these religions.

Amongst all the pop yogis, Baba Ramdev is probably the best known because he comes on television and, in full view, contorts his body convincingly. Most people in saffron are overweight, and cannot pull in their diaphragms and expose their ribs the way the Baba can. As yoga trooping Indians tend to be potbellied, they look at him with awe.

But, at the end of the day, Baba Ramdev remains a yoga expert. What does this make those who attend his yoga sessions? Clients or devotees? Clients, decidedly. None of them want to be beaten up by the police or have an income tax raid on their humble businesses. At the first sight of pain, they will boot the camp and go home.

If only politicians were to acknowledge the fact that Hindus are not saffron driven outside of the saffron domain our public life would have been less opaque. Hindus may flock to Kumbh Melas in large numbers, even go hysterical when Lord Jagannath gets an annual day out. But for every 100 Hindus in such carnivals a million and more stay back home. This is not because they are irreligious or against superstition, far from it. It is simply because it is too much effort; besides there is the store to run.

The low turnout at Baba's Haridwar ashram these days is because his clients are horrified at the prospect of pain without gain. This is exactly the opposite of what attracted them to the man in the first place. But, as the issue has now become political, they would rather stay home and watch Ramdev's re-runs on TV. For most of them, Baba Ramdev is the Bruce Lee of yoga, and that is how they would want him to be.

Dipankar Gupta in India Today. More Here

Mamata Banerjee is the face of Muslim Revenge

Basu's crucial error was his compromise with parochialism in order to sustain his vote base when his economic policies had exhausted their ability to deliver. This retreat was symbolised by his ban on the study of English at primary school level in 1982. He advertised this as a triumph for the mother tongue. It was nothing of the kind. It was a retreat into the narrow mind of regionalism by a party that had lost its imagination. Unable to create jobs, it sought to cynically exploit a barren emotionalism. By the time the decision was reversed in 1999, half a generation from the lower middle class and poor-or, those who needed English most for upward mobility-had fallen behind. Basu's own grandchildren went to La Martiniere, of course.

This ban came during precisely those years when the young began to recognise that English had become the language of aspiration in India; it was no longer "foreign". Modern jobs demanded, increasingly, English language skills. English, once guardian of colonial rule and its fauxaccented servants, has, today, been assimilated to such an extent that it is part of Bollywood's "Hindi" lyrics. The unique aspect of the "item number" Sheila ki jawaani is not that Sheila isn't going to give you her body (there was not much chance of getting it anyway), but that more than half the song is in English. Bengal's young paid a silent price so the CPI(M) could remain in power.

The second swivel-mistake was soft-secularism, the unspoken Leftist assumption that Bengal's Muslims- who constitute over 30 per cent of the state's effective vote- could be taken for granted if you protected their life without ensuring their livelihood. Muslims bought this shoddy deal for a long while, until the Sachar Commission report laid out facts of their unemployment levels in government jobs. Mamata Banerjee is the face of Muslim revenge. The Left bastion could not survive the collapse of its strongest pillar.

The Left ruled longer than it deserved to because cadres filled the chasm created by vanishing ideas and ideology. It was as if by the 1990s the CPI(M) had pawned its intellect, and begun feeding off diminishing returns. By 2000 it was dining off alibis. And yet the gold dust of electoral success persuaded them that power was eternal.

Mamata Banerjee has proved that even in Bengal power is terminal.

M J Akbar in India Today. More Here

A tale of IPL India and BPL India..!

The capital witnessed a bizarre spectacle earlier this week - the lavish wedding of the children of two Delhi politicians on which an estimated Rs 250 crore was spent. A five-seater helicopter worth Rs 35 crore was gifted by the bride's father to the groom. Instead of indignation, the event generated nothing more than gasps of disbelief among the chatterati.

The groom's father and Congress leader, Kanwar Singh Tanwar, and the bride's father, former- MLA Sukhbir Singh Jaunpuria, might deny these estimates should the income tax authorities dare to question them. And, who knows, this expense might indeed be from well- earned and tax- paid income.

However, the Tanwars and the Jaunpurias are not alone. Society pages of newspapers tell us that the Indian wedding has not only become fatter over time but that families buy space in newspapers to show-off their the wedding and guests. Mere consumption is no longer enough, it also has to be conspicuous.

How much will the political elite, made up of a few hundred families, agree to forgo to prevent the delegitimation of its immense power? Might not the ordinary citizen begin to question the legitimacy of the system of governance which catapults such people to the top? It is not just the question of an A Raja or a Suresh Kalmadi. Corruption scandals have marred almost every government that came into power since the mid- 1980s.

There is a nexus between the worst elements - criminals, cheats, land grabbers and contractors who milk public funds - and politicians which is very difficult to break.

This is what makes one wonder that while the Indian economy may indeed return to nine per cent growth from this year on, might it not bring social and political problems which this society shows no sign of tackling? Will it be able to digest a high economic growth that comes with social unrest? Growth is necessary because the alternative is the socialism of poverty which does no one any good. But without an ethical basis, economic growth can aggravate inequity to unmanageable proportions. Economic growth and its concomitant increase in income and consumption ideally ought to have a moral and ethical underpinning. This is particularly important in a society where wealth distribution is skewed and inequalities abound.

The economic distance that already exists between " IPL India and BPL India" ( to use Sitaram Yechury's memorable phrase) can eventually result in the political alienation of large sections of society. Those who are heard declaring that an Egypt will never happen in India because of the safety valve provided by our functioning democracy may not be able to delude themselves for long. It may not take more than a decade for India to become a dysfunctional society. The result of mal- governance is already visible in the Maoist affected areas of the country. The question is whether its spread can be tackled amicably and whether our political elite are capable of this.

Bharat Bhushan in India Today. More Here. 

The groom wore a garland made of bank notes and received a helicopter as a gift, there were 18,000 guests - or perhaps it was 30,000 - and 1,000 workers took 40 days to prepare the venue.

The exact details have been fiercely disputed, but Thursday's newspapers in New Delhi were all in agreement that this had been one very big, very fat Indian wedding.

Lalit Tanwar married his bride Yogita Jaunapuria at a family farmhouse near the city in a ceremony Tuesday celebrated with 100 dishes, 12 giant TV screens to broadcast proceedings, and even a gift of $5,500 for the groom's barber.

The Times of India calculated the cost of the extravaganza uniting two influential political families at Rs1billion ($22 million), while the Mail Today went for the less conservative figure of $55 million.
"I don't understand why there is so much hoopla about this marriage," the groom's father, Kanwar Singh Tanwar, told the Times. "All estimates of this marriage in the media are speculation." In the Indian Express, he was quoted as saying: "True, a Bell 429 helicopter was given but it was a simple wedding."

Kanwar Tanwar is a wealthy city politician from the ruling Congress party, while the bride's father is a former politician in the capital - making the arranged marriage a perfect power deal.

The media recorded each lavish detail with a mixture of shock and delight.
The Hindustan Times reported that at a pre-wedding ceremony last week 2,000 guests were each given a silver biscuit, a safari suit and $500 in cash, while at a different ritual the bride's family welcomed the groom with gifts worth $5 million.

The newly-weds, both 26, were heralded on Tuesday night by flowers and lights bedecking three kilometres of roads leading to the function, where no meat or alcohol were served in line with Hindu tradition.
However the groom's new $8 million five-seater helicopter could not be present due to flight regulations, and instead he was given its keys and a small silver replica.
Celebrations are set to continue with another reception on Thursday and a final gathering on Sunday at a five-star hotel attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

A report in Gulf News. More Here.