A fitting reply to Anders Breivik. Is it?

In what can be described as a fitting response to Anders Breivik’s brutal assault on Norwegian multiculturalism, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg appointed a 29-year-old Muslim woman of Pakistani origin the new Culture Minister. Hadia Tajik is the first Muslim and youngest Minister ever in Norwegian political history. Ms. Tajik, who has degrees in law and journalism and has been a career politician in Norway’s Labour Party, was appointed in a Cabinet reshuffle.

‘Courageous move’

“This is a very courageous move on the part of the Prime Minister. She is an extremely intelligent person and has been an activist all her life. I would describe this as an important decision for Norway that will go a long way to prove that we are a truly multicultural society,” Dag Herbjornsrud, editor of the influential paper Ny Tid told The Hindu in a telephone conversation. “It was important that Norway proved this to the world, but it’s even more important that we proved this to ourselves.”

A S Panneerselvan is new Readers' Editor of The Hindu

It is pleasing to note that veteran journalist of Chennai Br A S Panneerselvan has been appointed as the Readers' Editor of The Hindu. I have been reading Panneerselvan since his Outlook days.

From Outlook he shifted to visual media and provided strength and dynamics to Sun TV where he functioned as Managing Editor. He was also attached with Indiaweek, a weekly magazine popularly launched by Business India for some time.

We wish him all success. 

More Here

Obama, FDI, Manmohan Singh and lies

For U.S. President Barack Obama there could be nothing more cheering. The ‘underachiever’ now goes to the presidential polls with a lot of confidence — India’s decision to open up FDI in multi-brand retail comes as a shot in the arm for the beleaguered American economy and will obviously boost his poll prospects. 

Mr. Obama certainly knows what is good for the U.S. economy; Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also knows what is in America’s interest. Mr. Obama, for instance, wanted to stop outsourcing to protect U.S. jobs. No amount of persuasion from India changed his mind. Similarly, knowing how important FDI in retail is for him, he had pitched for a new wave of economic reforms. It was surprising to see Mr. Obama telling India what is good for us.

Aided and abetted by TIME magazine and credit rating agencies like Standard&Poor’s, Fitch and Moody’s, India finally buckled under global pressure. What is little known is that India was also under a G-20 obligation to remove all hurdles to the growth of multi-brand retail.

But is FDI in retail really good for India? Will it improve rural infrastructure, reduce wastage of agricultural produce, and enable farmers to get a better price for their crops? While a lot has been said and written about the virtues of big retail, let me make an attempt to answer some of the big claims. 

Agriculture: The Prime Minister has repeatedly projected FDI in retail as a boon for agriculture. Unfortunately, this is not true. Even in the U.S., big retail has not helped farmers — it is federal support that makes agriculture profitable. In its last Farm Bill in 2008, the U.S. made a provision of $307 billion for agriculture for the next five years.

Where is the justification for such massive support if big retail was providing farmers better prices? And let us not forget, despite these subsidies studies have shown that one farmer in Europe quits agriculture every minute.

The second argument is that big retail will squeeze out middleman and therefore provide a better price to farmers. This is again not borne by facts. In the U.S., some studies have shown that the net income of farmers has come down from 70 per cent in the early 20th century to less than four per cent in 2005.

This is because big retail actually brings in a new battery of middlemen — quality controller, standardiser, certification agency, processor, packaging consultants etc. It is these middlemen who walk away with the profits and the farmer is left to survive on the subsidy dole.

Monopolistic power enables these companies to go in for predatory pricing. Empirical studies have shown that consumer prices in supermarkets in Latin America, Africa and Asia have remained higher than the open market by 20 to 30 per cent.

And finally, the argument that multi-brand retail will provide adequate scientific storage and thereby save millions of tonnes of food grains from rotting. I don’t know where in the world big retail has provided backend grain storage facilities?

FDI is already allowed in storage, and no investment has come in. Let it also be known that even the 30-per-cent local sourcing clause for single-brand retail has already been challenged and quietly put in cold storage by the Ministry of Commerce. 

Employment: The Indian retail market is estimated to be around $400 billion with more than 12 million retailers employing 40 million people. Ironically, Wal-Mart’s turnover is also around $420 billion, but it employs only 2.1 million people. If Wal-Mart can achieve the same turnover with hardly a fraction of the workforce employed by the Indian retail sector, how do we expect big retail to create jobs? It is the Indian retail sector which is a much bigger employer, and big retail will only destroy millions of livelihoods

State government’s prerogative: Very cleverly, the Central government has allowed the State governments the final say in allowing FDI in retail. This may to some extent pacify those State governments opposed to big retail. However, the industry is upbeat and knows well that as per international trade norms, member countries have to provide national treatment. Being a signatory to Bilateral Investment promotion and Protection Agreements (BIPAs), India has to provide national treatment to the investors. Agreements with more than 70 countries have already been signed. State governments will, therefore, have to open up for big retail. Industries will use the legal option to force the States to comply.

And more importantly, let us look at how the virus of big retail spreads, even if the promise is to keep it confined to major cities. Recently, a New York Times expose showed how Wal-Mart had captured nearly 50 per cent of Mexico’s retail market in 10 years. What is important here is that as per the NYT disclosure “the Mexican subsidiary of Wal-Mart, which opened 431 stores in 2011, had paid bribes and an internal enquiry into the matter has been suppressed at corporate headquarters in Arkansas”.

In India, we are aware that Wal-Mart alone had spent Rs.52 crore in two years to lobby, as per a disclosure statement made in the U.S. It has certainly paid off.

Devinder Sharma in Ground Reality and The Hindu

Who killed Baby Falak?

The two-year-old died a horrible death because the system did not care enough to want her to live.

A child died and we collectively mourn. She was just two years old. And she fought bravely, but the tubes and wires connecting her to life support in the AIIMS Trauma Centre were no match for the systemic failures that carried this baby to her death. For the truth is that Falak never really stood a chance.

What we know of Falak's life are odd fragments from media reports. A 15-year-old girl brings an unnamed baby to a hospital. The baby has human bite marks on her body, and has been beaten, almost to death. It turns out the teenager is not the mother, and has herself been abused by a partner who dumped the baby on her just months ago. Some days later, the real mother is found — 22-year-old Munni, trafficked across many State borders, from Bihar to Delhi and sold into a second marriage in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, forced to leave her three children to the mercy of strangers who promise to look after them but never do. Names of several men pop up along the way — Shah Hussain from Bihar, Munni's husband, who sold her; Sandeep Pandey, husband of the teenager's friend Pooja, who raped her, then tried to sell her in marriage to an old man in Etah in Uttar Pradesh, and then passed her on to a taxi driver Rajkumar; Rajkumar, the teenager's current partner and pimp; Jitender Gupta, the teenager's father who beat her so badly that she ran away into the arms of these pimps. There are other odd fragments — a man named Manoj and his wife Pratima, arrested from Patna — they are the ones who eventually handed the baby to Rajkumar and to the 15-year-old, leading finally to Falak's death.

Confusing human dots

How do these confusing human dots really join? There is much we might never know. All we really know is that the desperate, violent lives of Munni and a 15-year-old girl unknowingly crossed, and a little baby girl went from the arms of a helpless, trafficked mother into the care of a raped, abused, and disturbed teenager.

These tiny fragments are like a million shards of broken glass, which when pieced together create a hideous distorted mirror. A mirror to what we are — a nation with no state or social safety nets for the most desperate. Falak, Munni and the unnamed teenage girl were in free fall through every crack in our system. Their lives tell a thousand stories.

Girls in India are often born unwanted, if they are born at all. The decline in the child sex ratio (0-6 years), from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001 and further to 914 females per 1,000 males in 2011 — is the lowest since independence. Falak was probably among those unwanted, devalued girls, easily dispensed with. And had she lived, she may have been among the malnourished millions, among the 42.3 per cent of under-fives in India who are underweight or the 58.8 per cent who are stunted (The HUNGaMA report, Naandi Foundation, 2012). As a girl, she was at the lowest end of this malnourishment ladder. Perhaps if she were stronger she would have survived the abuse.

And what of the young 15-year-old teenager who first battered and then tried to save Falak? A run-away from the slums of Sangam Vihar, right in the heart of the capital. Her mother died and her father abused her, and so she ran for security to her would-be pimps. They prostituted and raped her, again and again. And yet this frightened young girl did not reach out to any system for help.

Should she have gone to the police? Could she have? Rape, it seems now, is such an everyday occurrence, and justice so elusive, it may have made little sense. For where would she go from the police station after lodging her FIR, with no family backing, no one to take her in? Where does she stay, how does she live as she fights a rape case? No support before, during or after. We offered her nothing but rape laws and a gender blind criminal justice system. Although the NCRB claims a conviction rate of 26.5 per cent in 2010, (marginally up from 26.12 in 2003), these figures are hugely misleading. According to legal activists, given the number of convictions overturned in appeals, a better approximation would be a 5 per cent rate of conviction in rape cases. So did this underage, runaway girl from a slum stand any chance of help through the courts? The rules of evidence, the procedural hurdles, a hostile police, the lack of community and public support to a rape survivor, and the enormous social stigma — these are the odds she would have been up against. What she did have was a damn good chance of being called a liar or a disobedient slut and being sent right back home. The truth is that we failed to give this young disturbed abandoned girl a choice more “real” than the one she sought in a violent abusive relationship. Today she probably needs psychiatric care more than the bars of a prison cell, but even that it seems is not on offer.

Falak's mother Munni was apparently sold and trafficked across two State borders from Bihar to Delhi to Rajasthan. Year 2010 saw 3,422 incidents of crime related to human trafficking reported compared to 2,848 in 2009, an increase of 20.2 per cent (NCRB, 2010). Clearly our men in uniform didn't manage to see or stop these traffickers. And this year they will add Munni to their statistic. But will we do anything to offer her a better life? Where are the “rehabilitation” programmes for women like Munni? As Munni went from a husband who sold her, to a pimp who re-sold her, did she have anyone to turn to? Look at the condition of the Nari Niketan shelter homes we have in India for women in distress, where abuse is the norm rather than the exception. Central schemes consist only of Swadhar and badly run short-stay homes.

Not an aberration

The tragedy is that neither the abused teenager nor Munni is an aberration. According to NFHS III (2007), one in three Indian women aged 15-49 years has experienced physical violence; and one in 10 has experienced sexual violence. Nearly two in five married women have experienced physical or sexual violence by their husband. Sixteen per cent of never married women have experienced physical violence since they were 15 years of age by a parent, sibling or teacher. One in four abused women have never sought help to end the violence. Two out of three abused women have not only never sought help, but have also never told anyone about the violence. Abused women most often seek help from their families. Very few abused women seek help from institutional sources. (Quoted in Psychosocial Care for Women in Shelter Homes, UNODC & NIMHANS, 2011)

And as for Baby Falak — child abuse remains among the most rampant and hidden forms of everyday violence in Indian homes. Systematic data, information and services on child protection are still not easily available. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights set up in March 2007 is a beginning. But there's a long way to go. In the meantime, a child has died a horrible death. She was just two years old. And she died because we didn't care enough, and we didn't care in time. She symbolises many. Let us plug every hole in our safety nets for women in distress and for victims of child abuse, so that her death does not go in vain.
Farah Naqvi in The Hindu. Here

(The author is a writer ; activist, and a member of the National Advisory Council. Views expressed here are personal. Email: farah.naqvi64@yahoo.com)

The plight of migrant labourers

Last weekend, a dishevelled, bare-chested man was almost done to death in Chennai. Police and scores of bystanders watched the young man being beaten unconscious. A few even cheered and egged on the mob. Barely three days before this incident the city witnessed the killing of five men, allegedly involve in a recent spate of bank robberies in the city, in a daring mid-night ‘encounter' with the police. The two incidents, close on the heels of each other, had one commonality—the ‘north Indian' factor. An eyewitness to the lynching told reporters “the mob was screaming north Indian thief” as they “thrashed him” and dragged his unconscious body to the main road. The apparent ‘burglar from north India' finally turned out to be one Venkat Rao from Andhra Pradesh. So who are these ‘north Indians'? What are they doing here?

The ‘north Indian'

Two applications filed in the Madras High Court by six advocates and residents of Velachery, the neighbourhood where the ‘encounter' took place, describes these ‘north Indians' as “the workers who had landed in Tamil Nadu for working, slowly steadied their roots here and later started indulging in many crimes, many of which are dastardly and grave ones”. They further state that “offences committed by (the) north Indians in Tamil Nadu are on the rise” and that in this particular instance “group of north Indians were on a rampage....disturbing the peace and tranquillity of the state”. The applications have been filed to counter the ongoing public interest litigation in the Madras High Court challenging the recent killings.

In their malicious and mischievous intent, there is one thing that the applicants have said that is true, that they are ‘workers'. But the truth stops there.

Tamil Nadu has a fairly large interstate migrant population, estimated to be over ten lakhs, with large concentrations around Chennai, Coimbatore, Trichy, Madurai, Hosur, Tirupur, Kanyakumari and Tirunelvelli. Hailing from Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and even Nepal, these men come to work on private and government construction sites, in small engineering ancillary units, steel rolling mills, lathe, hosieries, foundries, in roadside eateries as well as fancy city restaurants, as security guards and even as farmhands. While walking past a slum or even a fishing kuppam these days, one can catch a soft snatch of conversation or song in Bhojpuri, Hindi, Bangla or Oriya.

Dismayed by the derisive label of north Indian “thieves”, I wanted to find out who these “thieves” were and what their loot looked like. So I met a few young men from Bihar who had just come back from ‘duty'. They were huddled together in a small room in one such slum on Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR). A 120-sq.ft. room, peeling green walls, a few shirts and pants hanging from the hooks nailed to the walls, a mirror, a plastic comb, small suitcases and bags, a kerosene stove, a few cooking pots and pans, plates, tumbler and two buckets, floor mats and mobile phones! No toilet and an open bathing area.

Nothing extraordinary or remarkably different from the neighbour next door, who also happens to be a factory worker. Both are migrants, one interstate and the other inter-district. The only obvious difference is language. The neighbour speaks Tamil while these men speak Bhojpuri. The neighbour has a family, while these men have left their families back home.

But there is another crucial difference that makes the latter far more vulnerable—the terms and conditions under which an interstate migrant worker consents to labour. Most of the migrant workers in the State land up through informal arrangements orchestrated by multiple contractors and sub-contractors. Munniraj, a Dalit labour contractor in Hosur, has 650 Bihari workers whom he supplies to the various small-scale engineering units in the industrial area. The workers, who earn anywhere between Rs.3,500-Rs.4,000 per month, give him 10 per cent of their wages, which works out roughly to Rs.2 lakh a month. About 30,000 migrant workers from Bihar, Bengal, Orissa and Nepal work in the area. Ruing that local workers don't want to work in the factories and prefer MNREGA work, Sampat, an office bearer of Hosur Small and Tiny Industries Association said “these migrant workers have invaded our culture, they speak in Hindi, celebrate Durga puja”. A short documentary titled Finger made by Progressive Writer's Forum explains why the locals would rather work in MNREGA and not in these factories. The film shows the dangerous working conditions in the factories where accidents are commonplace, with workers losing their fingers in pressing machines as a matter of routine. Apart from some medical treatment, not much is given by way of compensation to the worker.

Madhumita Dutta in The Hindu Here

India may never be a super power : LSE Study

Despite India’s "impressive" rise, its ambition to be a super power may remain just that—an ambition, according to an authoritative new study by the London School of Economics to which several Indian scholars have contributed.

It pointedly dismisses what it calls the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s "unequivocal verdict" during her India visit in 2009 that "India is not just a regional power, but a global power’.

The study, India: the Next Superpower? acknowledges India’s "formidable achievements" in fostering democracy, growth and cultural dynamism but concludes that these are nullified by its structural weaknesses, widespread corruption, poor leadership, extreme social divisions, religious extremism and internal security threats.

India, it argues, still faces too many "developmental challenges" to qualify for "super power" status, or to be considered a serious "counterweight" to China, a role sought to be thrust on it by some in the West. Some of the report’s authors wonder whether India should even aspire to be a super power given its institutional weaknesses and social and economic divisions.

Historian Ramachandra Guha, currently the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE, suggests that rather than being seduced by the bright lights of great power diplomacy, India should instead focus on reforming its institutions and repairing the social fabric that seems to be coming off its seams.

“We need to repair, one by one, the institutions that have safeguarded our unity amidst diversity, and to forge the new institutions that can help us. It will be hard, patient, slow work,” he writes.

Hasan Suroor in The Hindu. Here

Gujarat is the battle for the idea of India

Among the human debris scattered around the courtyard of the Shah-e-Alam relief camp in Ahmedabad, the largest with over 10,000 survivors, are Saira (age 12), Afsana (age 11), Naina (age 12), Anju (age 12), Rukhsat (age 9), Nilofer (age 10), Nilofer (age 9), Hena (age 11). They are all survivors from Naroda Patiya. And they have seen things no child should see. They know words no child should have to learn.

“Balatkar” (Rape) — they know this word. “Mein bataoon didi?” (Shall I tell you?), volunteers a nine year old. “Balatkar ka matlab jab aurat ko nanga karte hain aur phir use jala dete hain” (Rape is when a woman is stripped naked and then burnt). And then she looks fixedly at the floor. Only a child can tell it like it is. For this is what happened again and again in Naroda Patiya — women were stripped, raped and burnt.” (The Survivors Speak, fact-finding by a women's panel, April 16, 2002. P. 13)

Nothing was left of these mutilated women — no bodies, no evidence, no justice. Nothing but the scars on this little girl's mind. I still remember her face, and today 10 years later, I wonder where she is, how she is making her way through life, scarred by this macabre, twisted image of rape. I wonder where those men are, the ones who butchered so many childhoods and got away with it. I wonder, again and again, at the State, whose constitutional duty it was to protect, that colluded in the massacre of its own citizens.
Remains a wound

Ten years to the pogrom in Gujarat, I try to look back. But for me, like for thousands of survivors and activists, it is impossible. How does one look back at something that is so much a part of one's present? And so, Gujarat remains a wound that stays with me always, deep and continuous. I cried often in 2002. I still cry. And I guess that is all right. Because Gujarat should make us collectively weep. And make us truly ashamed of ourselves as a nation.

What happened 10 years ago is the kind of upheaval that refuses to be historicised. That cannot be consigned to the pages of any history book with a full stop at the end. In part because the violence of Gujarat continued for long after February-March 2002, and is continuing today in the frightened little lives lived by scores of destroyed Muslim families; in the lives of thousands of men, women and children still languishing in ‘resettlement colonies' relegated to the margins of Gujarat's seemingly flourishing towns and cities. In part, because many battles for justice are still being bravely waged in the courts, and the narrative is still unfolding. But in greatest part because the ‘meaning' of what Gujarat did to India remains contested.

People say — “move on, get a life, why do activists keep raking up this ‘unpleasant' past? It's been 10 years.” Why? Because if we settle for the past as some would like it scripted, we threaten the meaning of our present, and endanger our future. These contestations are not just about many battles in courtrooms that must be waged. The contestation is about the meaning of citizenship. It is about the relationship between citizen and State. It is about challenging State impunity. Gujarat is the battle for collective memory against forgetting because it is ultimately the battle for the idea of India.

In 1950, India made a constitutional promise to protect the rights of its minorities to live with dignity and with full rights of citizenship. Time and again, that sacred promise has been violated — in Delhi, Nellie, Meerut, Bhagalpur, Hashimpura, Kandhamal, Gujarat and most recently in Gopalgarh (Sept. 2011). In each case, innocents were murdered, maimed, sexually assaulted, burnt out of hearth and home, scattered to the winds, simply because of their minority identity, because of who they were. In each episode of targeted violence, the officers of the State acted in a biased manner, failing in their duty to protect, to prosecute, and to give justice. How long can this go on? How long will those in political power use the might of the State, the guns, and the police, and sirens against one group of citizens and get away with it? Institutional biases of the State machinery cannot be acceptable in any civilised democracy — that is the lesson of Gujarat.

The challenges

The massacre in Gujarat poses many challenges to us as a nation, exposing holes in our hearts, in our social fabric, as well as in our criminal justice system, laws and jurisprudence. Now we cannot legislate against communal prejudice and hatred in the hearts and minds of people. That is a battle that we as a society and a people must wage in a million different ways at a million different moments in our collective and individual lives. But we can and we must legislate to ensure justice to the weak.

Elusive justice

Unlike any other violent episode in India's recent history, Gujarat 2002 tested the strength and resilience of many of our democratic institutions to the fullest. The National Human Rights Commission, the honourable Supreme Court, and the National Commission for Minorities. Each came forward and acted. And yet somehow, that thing called justice still eludes the victims of Gujarat. These victims and survivors call upon us to restore equality in the working of the law for all citizens; to create a legal remedy for institutional bias by the State; to fill the lacunae in our laws and our jurisprudence that has failed time and again to ensure criminal culpability for those in command, those who are never caught with the knives in their hands, but who instruct others to lie, and kill and misuse the law for electoral gain. These are not very tall orders. For, if we get this right it will help realise, better than we have so far, the constitutional promise of justice and equality before law. And without justice, we cannot move on.

A survivor's courage

On January 18, 2008, Bilkis Bano, a Gujarat survivor who had the courage to speak of the unspeakable, withstanding over 20 days of gruelling cross-examination, found a little justice, when 12 accused who had gang-raped her, murdered and raped 14 members of her family, and smashed her three-year-old daughter to the ground during the horrifying days of 2002, were finally awarded life sentences by a Mumbai Session court.

On January 21, 2008, at a press conference in Delhi, Bilkis made this statement:

“For the last six years I have lived in fear, shuttling from one temporary home to the other, carrying my children with me, trying to protect them from the hatred that I know still exists in the hearts and minds of so many people. This judgment does not mean the end of hatred but it does mean that somewhere, somehow justice can prevail.

This judgment is a victory for not only me but for all those innocent Muslims who were massacred and all those women whose bodies were violated only because, like me, they were Muslim. It is a victory because now, hereafter, no one can deny what happened to women in Gujarat in those terrible days and nights of 2002. Because now it will forever be imprinted on the historical record of Gujarat that sexual violence was used as a weapon against us. I pray that the people of Gujarat will some day be unable to live with the stigma of that violence and hatred, and will root it out from the very soil of a State that still remains my home.”

We give up on the battle for justice in Gujarat at our own peril. For in giving up on Gujarat, we give up on hope for a better India — an India that is by right home to each one of us.

Farah Naqvi in The Hindu. Here

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Secularism and the Pope

Baroness Warsi gives a copy of the Holy Quran to the Pope

Baroness Warsi gives Quran to the Pope

Baroness Warsi today handed over a copy of the Koran and a gold-plated cube inscribed with references to Allah as personal gifts to the Pope.

The Cabinet Office minister and chairman of the Conservative Party met Benedict XVI at the conclusion of a trip to the Vatican, also presenting him with a letter from David Cameron and a message from the Queen.

Baroness Warsi said the Pope thanked her for comments she made this week against secularism, adding "he said he was glad I was making the case for faith".

A report in London Evening Standard. Here 

Baroness Warsi's Christianity remarks came amid an ill-tempered debate on the place of religion in public life sparked by a court ruling banning local councils from holding formal Christian prayers at the start of official meetings. The ruling followed a complaint from the National Secular Society and an atheist councillor who argued that members who were non-believers were being “indirectly discriminated against”, in breach of human rights laws.

The government moved swiftly to reverse the ban but by then all hell had broken loose with faith groups warning against “the rising tide of secular fundamentalism” and citing the case as another example of attempts to “silence” Christian voices in Britain. The secularists and atheists hit back as hysterically with familiar arguments about keeping religion out of public space. The Queen also waded in with a strong defence of the Church saying it had a “significant position” in British life.

The debate is still raging as I write this.

To put it in perspective, while Britain is a secular society in practice the British state is Christian with an established church headed by the Queen. The only religious figures with the right to sit in Parliament are Christian. As many as 26 Church of England bishops, known as Lords Spiritual, sit in the House of Lords and read prayers at the start of each daily meeting. Sittings in both Houses of Parliament begin with Christian prayers

Hasan Suroor in The Hindu. Here 

For me, one of the most worrying aspects about this militant secularisation is that at its core and in its instincts it is deeply intolerant. It demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes – denying people the right to a religious identity because they were frightened of the concept of multiple identities.

That’s why in the 20th century, one of the first acts of totalitarian regimes was the targeting of organised religion.

Of course there is a crucial caveat to all of this. I am not calling for some kind of 21st century theocracy. Religious faith and its followers do not have the only answer. There will be times when politicians and faith leaders will disagree. What is more, secularism is not intrinsically damaging. My concern is when secularisation is pushed to an extreme, when it requires the complete removal of faith from the public sphere. So I am calling for a more open confidence in faith, where faith has a place at the table, though not an exclusive position.

When we look at the deep distrust between some communities today, there is no doubt that faith has a key role to play in bridging these divides. If people understand that accepting a person of another faith isn’t a threat to their own, they can unite in fighting bigotry and work together to create a more just world.

All the major religions ask their followers to stand up for their neighbours. Doing so doesn’t make you less of a Christian, less of a Jew, less of a Muslim – it makes you more of one.

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi in The Telegraph. Here

Richard Dawkins

Britain and most of the Europe has ceased to be religiously devout

Research carried out by for a secularist foundation has suggested that most of those who describe themselves as Christian in Britain have only a low level of belief and practice of the religion.

A poll carried out by Ipsos-Mori for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science indicated that half of those in Britain who say they are Christian rarely go to church while nearly 60% do not read the Bible.

A report in BBC Radio. Here

Tushar and Matt: Feeling the misery of the poor Indians

Late last year, two young men decided to live a month of their lives on the income of an average poor Indian. One of them, Tushar, the son of a police officer in Haryana, studied at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for three years as an investment banker in the US and Singapore. The other, Matt, migrated as a teenager to the States with his parents, and studied in MIT. Both decided at different points to return to India, joined the UID Project in Bengaluru, came to share a flat, and became close friends.

Yet, when their experiment ended with Deepavali, they wrote to their friends: “Wish we could tell you that we are happy to have our ‘normal' lives back. Wish we could say that our sumptuous celebratory feast two nights ago was as satisfying as we had been hoping for throughout our experiment. It probably was one of the best meals we've ever had, packed with massive amounts of love from our hosts. However, each bite was a sad reminder of the harsh reality that there are 400 million people in our country for whom such a meal will remain a dream for quite some time. That we can move on to our comfortable life, but they remain in the battlefield of survival — a life of tough choices and tall constraints. A life where freedom means little and hunger is plenty...

Plenty of questions

It disturbs us to spend money on most of the things that we now consider excesses. Do we really need that hair product or that branded cologne? Is dining out at expensive restaurants necessary for a happy weekend? At a larger level, do we deserve all the riches we have around us? Is it just plain luck that we were born into circumstances that allowed us to build a life of comfort? What makes the other half any less deserving of many of these material possessions, (which many of us consider essential) or, more importantly, tools for self-development (education) or self-preservation (healthcare)?

We don't know the answers to these questions. But we do know the feeling of guilt that is with us now. Guilt that is compounded by the love and generosity we got from people who live on the other side, despite their tough lives. We may have treated them as strangers all our lives, but they surely didn't treat us as that way...”

So what did these two friends learn from their brief encounter with poverty? That hunger can make you angry. That a food law which guarantees adequate nutrition to all is essential. That poverty does not allow you to realise even modest dreams. And above all — in Matt's words — that empathy is essential for democracy. 

Harsh Mander in The Hindu. Here

Salman Rushdie, Freedom from insult and Islam

“I wrote this biography of Muhammad just over ten years ago at the time of the Salman Rushdie crisis. For some time, I had been disturbed by the prejudice against Islam that I so frequently encountered, even in the most liberal and tolerant circle. After the horrific events of the 20th century, it seemed to me that we simply could not afford to cultivate a distorted and inaccurate view of the religion followed by 1.2 billion Muslims who make up a fifth of the world’s population. When Ayatollah Khomeini issued his infamous fatwah against Rushdie and his publishers, this Western prejudice became even more blatant.

“In 1990, when I was writing this book, nobody in Britain wanted to hear that almost exactly a month after the fatwah at a meeting of the Islamic Congress, forty-four out of the forty-five member states condemned the Ayatollah’s ruling as unIslamic––leaving Iran out in the cold. Very few Western people were interested to hear that the Sheikhs of Saudi Arabia, the Holy Land of Islam, and the prestigious al-Azhar madrasah in Cairo had also declared that the fatwah contravened Islamic law. Only a handful of people seemed prepared to listen sympathetically to the many Muslims in Britain who dissociated themselves from the Ayatollah, had no wish to see Rushdie killed, but who had felt profoundly distressed by what they regarded as the blasphemous portrait of Prophet Muhammad in his novel. The Western intelligentsia seemed to want to believe that the entire Muslim world was clamouring for Rushdie’s blood. Some of the leading writers, intellectuals and philosophers in Britain described Islam in a way that either showed astonishing ignorance or a quite horrifying indifference to the truth. As far as they were concerned Islam was an inherently intolerant, fanatical faith, it deserved no respect; and the sensitivities of Muslims who felt hurt by Rushdie’s portrait of their beloved Prophet in The Satanic Verses were of no importance.

“I wrote the book because it seemed a pity that Rushdie’s account of Muhammad was the only one that most Western people were likely to read. Even though I could understand what Rushdie was trying to do in his novel, it seemed important that the true story of the Prophet should also be available, because he was one of the most remarkable human beings who ever lived. It was quite difficult to find a publisher, since many assumed that Muslims would be outraged that infidel woman like myself should have the audacity to write about their Prophet, and that if they publish this book I would soon be joining Rushdie in hiding. But as it turned out, I was greatly moved by the warm and generous reception that Muslims gave my book in those difficult times.”

- the first few paragraphs of the Introduction to October 2001 edition (just after 9/11) of book Muhammad, A Biography of the Prophet written by former Roman Catholic nun Karen Armstrong.

Karen Armstrong was motivated to study Islam so thoroughly and come out with this biography only after the protest by Muslims following the publication of The Satanic Verses about two and a half decades back.

Soroor Ahmed in Two circles. More Here

Salman Rushdie is a third class writer: Justice Katju

Salman Rushdie is a “poor” and “sub-standard writer” who would have remained largely unknown but for his controversial book ‘Satanic Verses’, according to Markandey Katju, till recently a judge of the Supreme Court.

Katju, who is now the Chairman of Press Council of India, criticised the admirers of India-born author based in Britain, saying they suffered from “colonial inferiority complex” that a writer living abroad has to be great.

From a report in Hindustan Times. Here

Slamming the Jaipur Literature Festival's focus on the Indian-origin British writer, Justice Katju, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, criticised “so-called educated Indians” who “suffer from the colonial inferiority complex” and believe that writers living in India are inferior to those living abroad.

“Salman Rushdie dominated the Jaipur Literature Festival. I do not wish to get into the controversy whether banning him was correct or not. I am raising a much more fundamental issue,” he said in a statement issued on Wednesday. “I have read some of Rushdie's works and am of the opinion that he is a poor writer, and but for The Satanic Verses would have remained largely unknown. Even Midnight's Children is hardly great literature.”

From a report in The Hindu. Here

Islam emphasises on 'Freedom from insult'

Well, whether or not freedom to insult is a Western value, Islam has nothing to do with it. It lays emphasis on its exact opposite: the freedom from insult. 

It values human dignity, decency, and harmony in the society. The freedom of religion it ensures includes freedom from insults. While it does not shy away from academic discussion of its beliefs and showing the falsehood of non-Islamic beliefs, it makes sure that the discussion remains civil. In those discussions it wants to engage the intellect of its opponents; in contrast those who itch to insult their opponents are interested in satisfying their vulgar emotions.

Thus while its most important battle is against false gods it asks its followers to refrain from reviling them. (Qur’an, Al-anam, 6:108). It also reminds them to stay away from harsh speech. “Allah loves not the utterance of harsh speech save by one who has been wronged.” (Qur’an, Al-Nisa, 4:148). Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, who is being reviled by the scum of the world, taught Muslims to never let the low moral standards of their adversaries dictate theirs.

As a result of these teachings Muslims can never even imagine insulting any Prophet --- from Adam to Moses to Jesus to Muhammad, peace be upon them all. Even when they ruled the world, Muslims treated the religious leaders of non-Muslim also with respect – even during battles. In the Baghdad court Jewish and Christian scholars engaged in open discussions with the Muslim savants.

Needless to say they had not been attracted by the freedom to insult but its exact opposite. Freedom from insult is a fundamental value that assures peace and harmony. It leads to healthy societies. And Muslims are very proud of their impeccable record here.

A earlier post in Luthfispace Here and More by Khalid Baig Here

Lokpal, shopping malls and an ordinary hawker

Contrary to Gandhiji's ideas about the decentralisation of power, the Jan Lokpal Bill is a draconian, anti-corruption law, in which a panel of carefully chosen people will administer a giant bureaucracy, with thousands of employees, with the power to police everybody from the Prime Minister, the judiciary, members of Parliament, and all of the bureaucracy, down to the lowest government official. The Lokpal will have the powers of investigation, surveillance, and prosecution. Except for the fact that it won't have its own prisons, it will function as an independent administration, meant to counter the bloated, unaccountable, corrupt one that we already have. Two oligarchies, instead of just one.

Whether it works or not depends on how we view corruption. Is corruption just a matter of legality, of financial irregularity and bribery, or is it the currency of a social transaction in an egregiously unequal society, in which power continues to be concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller minority? Imagine, for example, a city of shopping malls, on whose streets hawking has been banned. A hawker pays the local beat cop and the man from the municipality a small bribe to break the law and sell her wares to those who cannot afford the prices in the malls. Is that such a terrible thing? In future will she have to pay the Lokpal representative too? Does the solution to the problems faced by ordinary people lie in addressing the structural inequality, or in creating yet another power structure that people will have to defer to?

Arundhati Roy in The Hindu. Here

"Just one slap?" :Anna Hazare over slap on Sharad Pawar

Harvinder Singh, a resident of Rohini in the capital, slapped the Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar in full glare of TV cameras on Thursday.

Anna Hazare, self-confessed arch rival of Pawar, was quick to respond to the incident. Initially with swagger Anna said, "Just one slap?"; 

A report in IBN LIVE. Here

Ek hi maara? : Anna  Hazara on slap on Sharad Pawar

After committing a faux-pas in his reaction to the attack on Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Anna Hazare said tonight that he was ready to apologise if his remark was perceived to be "wrong".

"He got slapped! Only one slap?" Hazare had said to a group of journalists at Ralegan Siddhi when he learnt about the attack on Thursday. But later he condemned the attack.

Explaining what he meant by his remark, Hazare, talking to a Marathi news-channel, was at pains to explain the faux pas saying "I was addressing a daily gathering of people when someone sent me a note informing about the attack. I wanted to know whether it was just a slap or there was some other kind of violence."

The social activist said he did not say or mean anything inappropriate when he said "ek hi mara?". He always believed in non-violent method of agitation, Hazare said.

"However, if it is perceived that I have said something wrong, I am ready to apologise," he said.

A report in DNA. Here.

“He got slapped! Only one slap?”: Anna Hazare

Anna Hazare on Thursday tied himself in knots with his reaction to the attack on Sharad Pawar first appearing to respond with contempt and later condemning it.

“He got slapped! Only one slap?” he said to a group of journalists who broke out in laughter at his reaction.

A report in The Hindu. Here

The rise and fall of Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher

Never has the flamboyant Vijay Mallya been in such a tight corner before.

He took over the UB Group even before he turned 30 after his father, Vittal Mallya, passed away suddenly in 1983. Since then, he has consolidated the group holdings, shed those companies, including a car battery making venture, which didn't make sense to his business, won a corporate battle — and a war of words — with the pugnacious Manu Chabbria, wresting from him Shaw Wallace, once among the top companies in the liquor industry. Today, his beer business controls half the domestic market while the liquor business controls three-fourths of the market.

But as the saying goes, the quickest way to become a millionaire is for a billionaire to invest in the airline sector.

The problem, of course, lay in acquisitive excess. For Mallya, there was no ducking the temptation of getting into the airline sector. For one, there was the glamour, something he couldn't get enough of despite the yachts and islands. In time, the airline became a stepping stone for the pursuit of other adventures.

He acquired Whyte & Mackay, a Scottish bulk liquor maker amidst drama and glamour, holding a press conference in London to announce the deal. He bought newspapers (Asian Age was one such), fashion and movie magazines, bought and sold a TV company and added football teams to his ever expanding empire. He even added a cricket team to his list of acquisitions and called it Royal Challengers. Someone who was known for his distaste for politicians, he actually funded a party and became a Rajya Sabha MP as well.

The acquisitions wouldn't just stop there. He went on to own a racing team (Force India) which regularly competes in Formula One racing events, launched a calendar named after his brand, Kingfisher, in which the best of the models fell over each other to feature. He held New Year parties at his famed Goan palatial bungalow.

Of course, the biggest venture of them all was Kingfisher Airlines and because he was the big daddy of the glamour world, he promised flyers a class of service not usually seen among the domestic airlines. Jet Airways was good and on time, but was for busy executives; Air Deccan was for the aam aadmi, a sort of shuttle service, while the others either didn't matter or were too small.

K Giriprakash in The Hindu. Here

Tipu Sultan and the Chennai connection

Ask any Chennaiite about the city’s connection with arms production and the spontaneous reply could be the Heavy Vehicles Factory at Avadi, which manufactures the indigenous Arjun Main Battle Tank. But, South India’s tryst with weaponry and ordnance manufacturing dates back to over 200 years, according to experts at the government museum in Egmore. The exhibit of the model of the State Gun of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan is, they said, a pointer to that. 

The miniature of State Gun displayed at the museum as the ‘Exhibit of the Week’ was fabricated at the Gun Carriage Manufactory of Madras for the Superintendent Major John Maintland, commemorating the victory of English East India Company over Tipu Sultan of Srirangapatnam near Mysore in 1799 during the Mysore War IV.

According to C Maheswaran, Curator, Archaeology Section, Government Museum, the British seized several cannons after defeating Tipu Sultan at Srirangapatman on May 21, 1799. “Thereafter, a miniature of the State Gun was made at the Gun Carriage in Chennai in the same year,” he added.

Interestingly, the Government Museum acquired the model just for Rs 60. During the pre-Independence era, the British government had transferred several objects to the museum  free of cost though a few historical exhibits like the State Gun model, which were sold for a price.

Historians claim that cannons were not conceptualised by the British — a popular belief among the countrymen — but was actually introduced by the Mughal emperor Babur in India. Firearm was an invention of the Chinese, who passed on the technology to the Mughals as the two races had good relations with each other. Hyder Ali and his successor Tipu Sultan developed the cannons to effectively counter the British during the four Mysore wars.Maheswaran said that Tipu Sultan could be termed a master in warfare, including the guerrilla warfare.

“Tipu Sultan was a legend during his lifetime, who ruled Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and parts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. He set up arsenals in almost all the areas under his control, constructing watch towers on the hill tops to have a watch on the enemies,” he observed.

The big guns have since gone silent. But the model of the State Gun manufactured by the British tells a tale — of bravery, resilience and resistance – of a ruler called Tipu Sultan to the present generation.

Yogesh Kabirdoss in The New Indian Express dated 9 Aug 2011. Here

Little school kids walk into the main building of the Government Museum Egmore to be stopped in front of a miniature model displayed as the ‘exhibit of the week'. 

“So, what is that?” asks a museum staff. “It is a bullock cart,” says a girl. Most of them have no clue as to the display – the miniature of the gun used by Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan to fight the expansion of English East India Company. 

C. Maheswaran, curator, anthropology section, patiently tells them the story — rather, the history — behind the miniature model. “At the fall of Tipu Sultan in 1799 A.D during Mysore War III, the English East India Company captured the State gun of Hyder and Tipu. In memory of this historical moment, it created a model of the gun in brass at its gun carriage manufactory in Madras the same year,” he says, adding the state gun is in Srirangapatinam. 

The children keep nodding their heads and walk away and the next batch of noisy kids troops in. “It is like a time capsule. We don't know where the gun carriage manufactory was in Madras but it was fabricated under the supervision of Major John Maintland,” he says. 

Inscriptions

The swell of the muzzle of mounted gun is shaped like the conventional head of Yazhi (the mythical animal). Urdu inscriptions are noticed on the stock of carriage. On the vertical bar, the word ‘Seringapatam' (Srirangapatinam) is noticed and on the horizontal bar the words, ‘progress' and ‘decline', are inscribed in equi-distance. 

“There is this word ‘Hoonsur” inscribed in Kannada. Probably, it could be the place where Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan manufactured the guns,” says Mr. Maheswaran. Interestingly, the Government Museum acquired this miniature exhibit for Rs 60.

A report in The Hindu dated 9 Aug 2011. Here

A pen that reads Quran!

What is so special about Quran reading pen? Well, the pen can read any verse of the Quran loud and clear. All one has to do is to touch it on any page or verse and listen to the Arabic version.

One can also choose the voice of famous reciters such as Abdul Rahman Al Sudais, Abdul Baset Abdu Essmad, Ali Al Hudhaifi, Sa'd Al-Ghamidi.

This is not all. Translation of the Koran is also available just at the push of a button. You can go for English, German, Urdu, Persian and French versions.

In good demand

This Chinese product is in good demand at the chains of Himalaya Book store in the city of Hyderabad. It comes with a copy of Quran printed in rich Usmani font, a functional manual, ear phones, charger and a Tajweed Book — all at Rs. 3,750.

“For people who do not know the Arabic script, the pen is of great help. They can learn to read Quran in the right diction. Others can also improve their recitation,” says Abdul Momin, manager at the Himalaya Book store.

The Tajweed Book is an added attraction. With the help of the pen, one can learn to pronounce the Arabic alphabets with the right intonation.

The pen has a four GB memory with TF card option to extend it. There is also the recording option and a built-in speaker with USB port.

Interestingly, the pen can read only the accompanying Quran and Tajweed Book since it connects with the special ink used in the print. For the devout, there is something new to look forward to this Ramzan.

J. S. Ifthekhar in The Hindu. Here

You would love see this photo again and again and again..!

An activist of the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti takes it out on a policeman during a demonstration in Guwahati on Wednesday.

A report in Hindu. Here and Here

Drones, death, and USA

Large or small, drones raise questions about the growing disconnect between the American public and its wars. Military ethicists concede that drones can turn war into a video game, inflict civilian casualties and, with no Americans directly at risk, more easily draw the United States into conflicts. Drones have also created a crisis of information for analysts on the end of a daily video deluge. Not least, the Federal Aviation Administration has qualms about expanding their test flights at home, as the Pentagon would like. Last summer, fighter jets were almost scrambled after a rogue Fire Scout drone, the size of a small helicopter, wandered into Washington's restricted airspace.

Within the military, no one disputes that drones save American lives. Many see them as advanced versions of “stand-off weapons systems,” like tanks or bombs dropped from aircraft, that the United States has used for decades. “There's a kind of nostalgia for the way wars used to be,” said Deane-Peter Baker, an ethics professor at the United States Naval Academy, referring to noble notions of knight-on-knight conflict. Drones are part of a post-heroic age, he said, and in his view it is not always a problem if they lower the threshold for war. “It is a bad thing if we didn't have a just cause in the first place,” Mr. Baker said. “But if we did have a just cause, we should celebrate anything that allows us to pursue that just cause.”

To Mr. Singer of Brookings, the debate over drones is like debating the merits of computers in 1979: They are here to stay, and the boom has barely begun. “We are at the Wright Brothers Flier stage of this,” he said.

Elisabeth Bumiller & Thom Shanker in The Hindu. Here and Here

Signs from the Holy Quran

“I learnt new English words,” writes Sajitha in my notepad. “I want to cultivate my mind. Kafeel has taught us how. I will do my best to spread this,” writes K.V. Karthikeyan. “I'm happy I came,” scribbles A. Abdul Rajeed. It's lunch break for Sayed Abdul Kafeel's class of 50-odd hearing impaired students. The just concluded session on lessons from the Quran has them all pepped-up. 

Value education

This is Kafeel's yearly session in the city organised by the Coimbatore Islamic Cultural Trust (Kafeel is from Kozhikode). He teaches values such as obedience, honesty, generosity, etc. in a way that is appealing. There are jokes and instances from day-to-day life, all woven together as a PowerPoint Presentation. Armed with his laptop and a few CDs, the 42-year-old travels across the country with a purpose — to teach Quran to the hearing-impaired people of his community. 

Speech and hearing-impaired himself, Kafeel has been doing this for over eight years now.

“I am a happy man,” he says in sign language. But, it took him a long time to get here. Kafeel is a school drop-out. “Our family lived in Mandya and I stayed with an aunt to attend school in Bangalore.”

Life was hard for the youngster as none of his relatives made an effort to communicate with him in sign language. “I was lonely,” he says. His family owned a travel company, and Kafeel tried to work there. But, his disability came in the way. “I did not have an interpreter back then, so communicating with customers was very difficult.”

“In 2000, I shifted to Kozhikode and married a hearing impaired girl.” Kafeel smiles at the thought of his marriage. “My wife's family knew no other language but Malayalam and my family knew only Urdu. Whenever they met, the two groups would communicate only in sign language!”

A chance to learn

It was in Kozhikode that Kafeel decided to take the Quran to the hearing impaired. “The hearing impaired in our community did not have a place to learn our scriptures and I decided to do something about it,” he says.

Kafeel approached ISM (Ithihadu Shubhanil Mujahideen), an NGO. With their support, about 300 deaf people from near-by villages were gathered. “Initially, a person read out portions of the Quran which was interpreted into sign language.” Classes were conducted for two hours every Friday. Kafeel watched from a distance. “But, I felt there was something missing. There were misinterpretations and mistakes. Our students had difficulty understanding.” Gradually, the numbers dropped. That's when Kafeel decided to take over. He pored over an English version of the Quran and selected portions of it for the benefit of the hearing impaired.

People came from all over Kerala for his classes. Carpenters, painters, daily wage labourers…Friday evenings with Kafeel became popular in the region. 

“In 2004, we registered our organisation, ‘The Truth of Deaf Da'wa Wings,” he says. Back then, Kafeel also taught value education to school children in the evenings. 

A good influence

“A lot of deaf teenage boys, who indulged in smoking and drinking just to be accepted by the other kids, changed for the better,” he smiles.

Kafeel put together a CD with verses from the Quran in sign language. “I've signed about 25per cent of the Quran so far,” he says. “I hope to complete it in about 20 years.” He has also trained some of his promising students to teach the hearing impaired in their areas. He has trainers in places such as Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Patna and Chennai who take lessons from him every month.

A good response

During his travels Kafeel interacts with speech and hearing impaired people from all walks of life. “A lot of our people are uneducated. They lack any kind of support,” he says. He thus conceived the idea of ‘Ability Institute for the Hearing Impaired,' which was set up with the backing of ISM in 2009. “We have courses such as B.Com with Tally, BCA, BSc I.T, Indian Sign Language, etc. approved by the government of Kerala.” As the principal of the institution, Kafeel is now a busy man. “We have a stream of applications coming in,” he smiles. 

Kafeel is pleasantly surprised at the amount of support and positive response he got from people across the country when he approached them with a proposal to conduct Quran classes.

Akila Kannadasan's report in The Hindu. Here

Declining sex ratio and heart wrenching questions

India's sex ratio, among children aged 0-6 years, is alarming. The ratio has declined from 976 females (for every 1000 males) in 1961 to 914 in 2011. Every national census has documented a decline in the ratio, signalling a ubiquitous trend. Preliminary data from the 2011 census have recorded many districts with sex ratios of less than 850. The ratio in urban areas is significantly lower than those in rural parts of the country.

Reports suggest evidence of violence and trafficking of poor women and forced polyandry in some regions with markedly skewed ratios. The overall steep and consistent decline in the ratio mandates serious review.

Sex selection and technology : Medical technology (like amniocentesis and ultrasonography), employed in the prenatal period to diagnose genetic abnormalities, are being misused in India for detecting the sex of the unborn child and subsequently for sex-selection. Female foetuses, thus identified, are aborted.

A large, nationally representative investigation of married women living in 1.1 million households documented markedly reduced sex ratios of 759 and 719 for second and third births when the preceding children were girls. By contrast, sex ratios for second or third births, if one or both of the previous children were boys, were 1102 and 1176 respectively. A systematic study in Haryana documented the inverse relationship between the number of ultrasound machines in an area and the decline in sex ratios. Studies have also documented correlations of low sex ratios at birth with higher education, social class and economic status. Many studies have concluded that prenatal sex determination, followed by abortion of female foetuses, is the most plausible explanation for the low sex ratio at birth in India.

K S Jacob in The Hindu. More Here

Sachin Tendulkar, World Cup and guests of Neros!

Do you know that, on average, 47 farmers have been committing suicide every single day in the past 16 years in our shining India — the next economic power, progressive with nine per cent growth?

Last month, on March 5, Friday evening, when Bangalore's watering holes were getting filled up, when all the DJs were blaring out deafening music, when we were busy discussing India's chances at the World Cup, sitting in CCDs and Baristas — just 100 km away from Bangalore, Swamy Gowda and Vasanthamma, a young farmer couple, hanged themselves, leaving their three very young children to fend for themselves or, most likely, die of malnutrition.

Why did they do it? Were they fighting? No. Were they drunkards? No. Did they have incurable diseases? No! Then WHY? Because they were unable to repay a loan of Rs 80,000 (a working IT couple's one month salary? 2-3 months EMI?) for years, which had gradually increased to Rs. 1.2 lakh. Because they knew that now they would never be able to pay it back. Because they were hurt. Hurt by our government which announced a huge reduction in import duty for silk in this year's budget (from 30 per cent to 5 per cent).They were struggling silk farmers and instead of help from the government, they get this! Decrease in import duty means the markets will now be flooded with cheap Chinese silk (as everything else!) and our own farmers will be left in the lurch.

On average, 17,000 farmers have been committing suicide every year, for the past 15 years on the trot. Can you believe it? Most of us wouldn't know this fact. Why? Because, our great Indian media, the world's biggest media, are not interested in reporting this! Why? Because they are more interested in covering fashion week extravaganzas. They are more interested in ‘why team India was not practising when Pakistanis were sweating it out in stadium on the eve of the match?' They are more interested in Poonam Pandey.

The media are supposed to be the third eye of democracy and also called the fourth estate, but now they have become real estate. Pure business.

So any attention from the media is out of the question. Who is left then? The government? But we all know how it works. The other day, I was passing by Vidhan Soudha in Bangalore and happened to read the slogan written at the entrance, “Government work is god's work”. Now I know why our government has left all its work to god!

Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa announced plots for all the players. But land? In Bangalore? You must be kidding, Mr. C.M.. So he retracts and now wants to give money. But where will it come from? Taxes, yours and mine. Don't the poor farmers need the land or money more than those players who are already earning in crores?

Nero's guests

What is happening in our country is not different from Nero's party. We, the middle-class-young-well-earning-mall-hopping-IPL-watching and celebrating-junta are Nero's guests enjoying at the cost of our farmers. Every budget favours the already rich. More exemptions are being given to them at the cost of grabbing the land of our farmers in the name of SEZs, decrease in import duties in the name of neo-liberal policies, increase in the loan interest rates if the product is not worth lakhs and crores. Yes, that's what we are, Nero's guests!

I'm not against celebrations. I'm not against cricket. I'm not against World Cup. I would be the first person to scream, celebrate and feel proud of any of India's achievements but, only if all fellow countrymen, farmers, villagers also stand with me and cheer; only if they do not take their own lives ruthlessly, only if there is no difference between interest rates for a Mercedes and a tractor. That would be the day I also zoom past on a bike, post-Indian win, with an Indian Flag in hand and screaming Bharat Mata Ki Jai. But no, not today. Not at the cost of my feeders. Until then, this is what I say. To hell with your malls. To hell with your IPL. To hell with your World Cup. And to hell with your celebrations.

(The writer's email is: naren.singh.shekhawat@ gmail.com)

Narendra Shekhawat in The Hindu. More Here and Here