Rahul Gandhi's mistake and Akilesh Yadav's charm

Akhilesh is not an orator. But his speech is like a calm, even-toned drizzle in the abusive maelstrom of Uttar Pradesh politics. He lists the usual stuff: Mayawati’s corruption; her infamous statue-building hubris. He promises loan waivers to farmers, free education for girls, unemployment funds, roads, hospitals and electricity. He dismisses the BJP as a party not even in the fray but reserves some time to take down the Congress. He makes some fun of Rahul Gandhi for tearing his kurta and the much-talked of list of promises and suggests he might jump off the stage next in anger. Some of his talk draws laughs and cheers. Then he delivers his winning shot: he promises free laptops to the young and says he will ensure they can be used in Hindi and Urdu — and if necessary — in English too.

This might sound like unremarkable stuff, but Akhilesh is more astute than he seems. “I have been determined to keep our campaign positive,” he says. “Everything positive. No abuse. Nothing too caste specific. Just talk development and hope. That’s why our slogan this time is ‘ummeed ki cycle’ (cycle of hope).”

“Rahul made a mistake tearing that sheet of promises on the stage,” he continues. “What are elections but a promise, a chance at hope? It remains to be seen whether different parties will deliver what they promise, but if you tear up that hope then what else is there?” 

Shoma Chaudhury in Tehelka. Here 

Rahul Vs Akilesh

Only Rahul stood out in all this as a fresh face: a promise of a new, inclusive, development- driven politics. No one was betting that the Congress was going to finish first or even that it would do phenomenally well electorally, but there was a distinct swell of goodwill around Rahul, and his courageous bid to revive and recast the comatose Congress in UP was the big dramatic story.

Now, that story of fresh-faced hope has a virile new entrant. A challenger no one quite anticipated on this scale. Akhilesh’s optimism about a clean sweep may be a bit misplaced, but he’s undoubtedly upped the stakes for the SP and made Rahul’s own job more difficult. His older opponents’ disrepute must certainly have been part of Rahul’s long-term calculations. Suddenly now, there’s another young new leader with a clean image talking development and inclusiveness. Suddenly the youth (especially the rural youth), OBC and Muslim vote, target groups for both leaders, have not one but two new credible counters. Suddenly Rahul’s marathon lap has a sharp short-distance competitor.

Shoma Chaudhury in Tehelka. Here 

SHOCKING Report: Endosulfan and plight of mothers of Kasargod

 PREGNANT WOMEN in Kasargod district are fighting the endosulfan tragedy in their own way — by opting for abortion. A sacrifice conducted in silence, even a 10-year campaign against the chemical has not yet convinced the government to ban its use.

Without the intervention of the welfare state, they are now released from the fear of death and chronic disease. They have seen enough. They have lost many in a short span of time. Around 1,000 people have already died in the past seven years. Another 4,600 persons are living with chronic diseases. Most of them have babies with congenital defects — bedridden since birth. They spend their life nursing their babies till their death. They know that their babies will not grow up or go to school like normal children. They have gone through all this.

Doctors call it the ‘Hiroshima syndrome’. But these mothers have never heard of the place. They have been aborting their babies and successive governments have failed to do anything about this havoc that the deadly chemical has unleashed. Hardened by life, these women don’t want to deliver deformed children anymore. They are struggling to come to terms with the tragedy at a time when India is trying to resist a global ban on endosulfan.

carmine

Carmine Crasta, 31, lives in Yenthadukka village, close to cashew plantations owned by the state government. Her seven- year-old son Martin was born with neurological problems. Husband Maurice D’Souza, a carpenter, spends 60 percent of his earnings on the treatment of his only son. Carmine has terminated four pregnancies in the past seven years. “It was a hard decision. But I had no choice. How could I have another baby like him?” Carmine says, tears welling up in her eyes.

The couple were married in 2001. She conceived the following year only to suffer a miscarriage in eight weeks. “After six months, I became pregnant again,” she says. “We were very happy. Doctors also assured us that everything was fine and I delivered him. He was a normal baby. Very cute. But when he didn’t crawl after a year, we took him to hospital, where he was diagnosed with a neurological disorder. We have approached several doctors since then, but there is no change in his condition. I’ve not lost hope. I pray to God for a miracle.” In spite of repeated prayers, her saints have failed Carmine.

Jeemon Jacob in Tehelka. More

"I didn't join Anna Hazare. I stand for secularism and Justice.": Harsh Mander

Was the agitation a revolution or a fad?
Comparing it to Egypt and Libya was out of proportion. Unlike in those undemocratic countries, here, nobody was afraid of being stopped while walking into a protest. And it’s different from other candle-light vigils. It’s not about one case, but against a malaise, an idea. It made each of us introspect as to how we have participated in protesting corruption in our lives. When we buy a house, or register something, will we now say we won’t pay in black? Corruption is a complex ethical issue, and this should be the beginning of a larger reflection about social reform.

Why didn’t you join the protest?
On principle, I feel it was democratic dissent, and therefore legitimate. But my vision for democracy and good governance does not end at having an uncorrupt government but also a secular, just and egalitarian government. Some groups in this agitation are not known to adhere to these democratic principles. This is why I had personal reservations about coming out on the street, but I stand by the right to protest, and was glad that people did.

Is the Jan Lokpal Bill naive and anti-democratic?
During the agitation, drafters of the civil society Bill had valid criticisms about the government Bill — more accountability from politicians and bureaucrats, Lokpal as a onestop shop for all citizens’ grievances about corruption, and more transparency in the selection of the Lokpal. At the same time, the Jan Lokpal Bill assumes overwhelming power. You just can’t have adjudication, investigation and prosecution all under one institution. There will have to be checks and balances. The voices demanding Jan Lokpal are being idealistic, but why not? The job of the agitation was to initiate action. Now the process of drafting and discussion will begin. It will make the weak Bill and the strident Bill compete to give us a strong, sensible Lokpal.

Is the civil society making unreasonable demands?
It’s hard in popular imagination to go into specifics. We can’t expect details of the Bill to be argued out in newsrooms and on the street — these are spaces for emotion and drama. It's the job of the joint committee including some intellectuals, the NAC and the elected leaders to go into specifics. But without the strong street movement, the government would not be open to dialogue today.

Harsh Mander in an interview given to Rohini Mohan for Tehelka. More Here

I am a Muslim and I am not a terrorist

The case against me is nothing but a warning to the entire media, not to attempt to challenge the state. If you dare to do it, they will use draconian laws against you. If you belong to the minority community, they will also profile you. It is very difficult to prove that you are not a terrorist. It is equally difficult to prove that you are not a Maoist in our life and times.

In this era of paid news, I believe, it is important to speak for those who live on the margins, who are not able to pay.

I have always tried to give visibility to those who are invisible. This award espouses my efforts and gives me support and assurance in my way ahead.

K K Shahina in The Hoot. More Here. and Here and Here 

and the award winning report Here

The Media Foundation has chosen Shahina KK  as the winner of the Chameli Devi Award for an outstanding woman journalist. In her acceptance speech she spoke of her attempt to establish that the police conspired to forge a case against Abdul Naser Madani after the Bangalore blasts. ``I have always tried to espouse the cause of those who live on the margin and who cannot have their say,’’ she said.

She was awarded for work done while with Tehelka. She is now with Open magazine.

Now that Aseemanand has confessed, what about the innocent Muslim youth languishing in jails?

Whispers have become words. Murmurs have taken form of sentences. Private conversations and personal convictions are no longer confined within the four walls of a decrepit Muslim household. A quiet sign language has been replaced by a wild scream. The guilt-soaked eyes have got new sparkle of hope and redemption. The Indian Muslim has finally got the guilt-free-pass handed by a ‘devout’ Hindu priest Swami Aseemanand of Dangs, Gujarat.

 

Aseemanand’s judicial confession – that he and his Hindutva men were responsible for five major bomb blasts – has opened Pandora’s Box. The bees of the box have stung so many men in Khakhi. One confession has destroyed the credibility of countless police officers. It is safe to assume that Rajwardhan, the then Rural SP of Nasik, did not sleep properly on Friday night. He weaved a dangerous fictional tale in order to implicate 11 innocent Muslims in Malegaon’s 2006 blasts. It is equally safe to assume that the conscience of former ATS chief KP Raghuvanshi must be cursing himself. It was Raghuvanshi who proudly displayed sketches of two suspects who bought new cycles. How conveniently he forgot the fact that the sketches don’t match with the bearded Muslims languishing in jail! How conveniently he forgot the fact that Shabbir Masiullah, one of the accused, was already in Mumbai police custody since many months before the blasts! How conveniently he forgot the fact that Noorul-Huda, the accused number one, was under close police watch since many years! 

Aseemanand’s confession has brought open the divide within the CBI. The confession is an indictment CBI as well. CBI blindly followed the footprints of KP Raghuvanshi when it filed a supplementary chargesheet in Malegaon 2006 blasts repeating the lies woven by ATS. How conveniently CBI relied on ATS theory that Zahid, the Imam of Phoolsavangi, planted bomb when he was leading Friday prayers hundreds of miles away!  It is altogether a different matter that Aseemanand was arrested by CBI! Therefore it can be safely assumed that there are two kinds of CBI; one highly communal and the other secular. Does CBI stand for Communal Bureau of Investigation?

Harish Gupta, the then Hyderabad Joint Commissioner of Police, took inspiration from KP Raghuvanshi when he falsely implicated 19 Muslims in Mecca Masjid blast case.

The role of RSS has come on spotlight after Aseemanand’s confession. Ram Madhav, RSS spokesman, has said that confession was given under “duress”. He should know that it’s a judicial confession recorded as per the guidelines laid down in Section 164 of Criminal Procedure Code which says that confessions recorded before a magistrate are legally admissible evidence. Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab had given confession under the same section. It is very difficult to retract the confession given under this section. If one retracts confession then it is quite possible that perjury charges will be slapped on him. Retired Bombay High Court judge Justice Hosbet Suresh is of the opinion that the accused can retract his statement. In a recent interview Justice Suresh remarked, “Even if the prosecution relies on it, the magistrate who recorded the confession is summoned and he will give evidence in the court. The magistrate can be cross-examined”.

The communal and biased role of investigating agencies must be fully examined by Prime Minister Manmoham Singh. There is an urgent need for a legislation which will hold our investigating agencies accountable for their misdeeds. Delivering the Fourth R.N. Kao Memorial Lecture on January 19, 2010 organised by the Research and Intelligence Wing (RAW), Vice-President Hamid Ansari had called for greater “oversight and accountability” in the operations of the country’s intelligence agencies. He had suggested setting up of a standing committee of Parliament on intelligence. He passionately argued that just like other democracies like the United States and the United Kingdom, the “concerned agencies should make public their mission statement, outlining periodically their strategic intent, vision, mission, core values and their goals”. It is high time to implement the suggestion of Hamid Ansari. 

Similarly we need to have a mechanism in place whose job is to keep watch that no innocent is falsely accused on terror charges. 32 Muslims have been wrongly imprisoned on terror charges. Four years of incarceration has ruined their lives; their families had literally given up the hope that they will get justice. It remains to be seen how the Indian government is going to right the wrongs done by law-enforcing agencies. Will the offending police officers be booked under the same stringent laws which were abused by them? This will be the biggest test of Indian democracy.   

Indian Muslim’s quest for inclusion in new India will remain a dream unless the guilty police officers are punished. The average Indian Muslim is still trapped between two keywords: Justice and survival.  

From Mubashir Mushtaq's article in Inquilab. More Here

 

A case of a Muslim reporter meeting a Muslim leader in jail!

Shahina K K, a journalist with Tehelka went to Karnataka to prepare an investigative report on the case on Abdul Nasar Madani, the Chairman of PDP. Madani had spend almost 10 years in Jail as an undertrial in the 1998 Coimbatore blast before he was let off without any charges on 1 August 2007. In her report ( Why is this man still in prison? , Tehelka Magazine, December 4th, 2010) Shahina tried to look into the police story that Madani had conspired in the Bengaluru blasts in separate meetings two years ago — one which took place in Madani’s rented home in Kochi and the other in the Lakkeri estate in Kodaku Karnataka.

Here, she not only talks of the reports about the many people who have questioned the police story - like James Varghese, the owner of Madani’s rented house in Kochi, and Madani’s brother Jamal Mohammed – but she also investigates the witnesses whose accounts have led the court to deny Madani bail. According to her investigations Shahina finds out that many of the witnesses have things to say that goes against the police story. For instance, Yoganand, a BJP worker whose testimony is recorded in the charge sheet, Shahina reports, does not even know that he is a witness in the Madani case !

Now this is a case of good investigative journalism, which has the power to unsettle the stories that are constantly being planted in the media by the police. However, just a few days after her report comes out, the Karnataka police slaps a case against Shahina under IPC 506, for “intimidating the witnesses.” No stretch of imagination allows one to view the attempt of a journalist to talk to the witnesses in a particular case as ‘intimidation.’ Yet, in this age of embedded journalism and paid news and the likes of Praveen Swamy and Burkha Dutt, this critical attempt at investigation which challenges a given police story, can easily be labeled thus and the journalist targeted. More importantly, Shahina’s case is further mediated through other important issues, which includes the political career of Abdul Nasar Madani, whose case she was investigating and her own identity as a Muslim woman.

Shahina’s attempt to investigate goes deep into the whole issue of how Abdul Nasar Madani, who holds a particular and important political position in Kerala, was incarcerated in jail for long years, without trail, and then acquitted with all charges against him unproved. This gross case of injustice was further extended when the police tried to implicate his wife Sufiya in the Bengaluru blasts that took place on 25th July 2008. Three months back, in spite of protests from various quarters in Kerala, Madani was arrested once again for conspiracy as one of the accused in the Bengaluru blasts. Later, his bail application was also dismissed considering what the court called the “nature and gravity of the offence.” The repercussions and the backlash on Shahina’s investigations are clearly connected to the case of Abdul Nazar Madani.

In fact, even to bring up the issue of Madani is to evoke anxieties about Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. In the words of Charles Hirschkind and Saba Mahmood,
“a whole set of questionable assumptions, anxieties, and prejudices [are] embedded in the notion of Islamic fundamentalism.” (From their article: Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counter-Insurgency.) This then is used as a bogey to deal with any kind of response, activity or political action from the location of a Muslim identity. However, no one worries that this political leader has been in jail for 10 long years without trail and that now, he is back in jail and being systematically denied bail. An issue that Shahina’s report addresses too, with its title: “Why is this man still in jail?” In fact, today, the question of terrorism and the Muslim can obfuscate all other questions about equality and justice. The Muslim, is caught in a construction that implicates him/her as inherently capable of terrorizing this country and therefore easily punishable. S/he is always already someone who can be easily pushed outside the ambit of the discourses of human rights and legal justice.

In fact, Madani is an important political voice in Kerala who addressed the question of Muslims and dalitbahujans after the Mandal-Masjid phenomenon of the 90s. Rooted in a discourse that drew from Islamic tenants, Madani’s vision focused on the inherent inequalities in Kerala society, both in terms of caste and religion. However his new political language was found 'deviant' and ignored or attacked by dominant discourses, mainly because of its allegiance to Islamic discourses and the Muslim identity. Thus Madani, who had been able to organize some of the most unprivileged sections in Kerala, is shorn of all his political credentials from within the stand point of the construction of the Muslim as the fundamentalist other of a Secular State/Culture.

The media has always stood strongly on the side of such dominant constructs all through the political career of Madani. Recently when his wife Soofiya Madani was alleged to have been involved in a conspiracy that led to the burning of a Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation bus at Kalamassery, Kochi in September 2005, reports in the media found her guilty even before Judicial processes could start. Similarly we have seen the media conniving with the Police/State on other issues concerning the “others” of Kerala. One can recall the maligning of the Dalit Human Rights Groups (DHRM) as terrorists and the false case of Love Jihad, where young Muslim men were accused of converting Hindu women into Islam after starting romantic relationships with them. However, when in May 17, 2009 6 Muslim men from a fishing community were killed and 47 others injured (27 of them had bullet injuries) in a police firing in Beemapally, most of the Malayalam media kept completely silent about this incident, which was one of the most violent incidents of police oppression that Kerala had ever witnessed. All this are surely signs of the impunity with which the Malayalam media treats issues that are related to its “others,” especially the Muslim.

It is this entrenched attitude of the media that Shahina’s report tries to confront, head on. However, it is a Shahina who is doing this and not just another journalist; like Madani, she too is caught in the same issues that haunt the Muslim location and identity. In fact, Shahina herself has reported how, when she went to the village to investigate, she was stopped by the police and asked whether she was a terrorist. Many of the papers in Karnataka like Sakthi, Prajavani and Kannada also reported the incident as a “suspicious” visit by a “group of Muslims !” Here, just as Madani’s Islamic roots could tarnish the weight and importance of his political career, Shahina’s Muslim name could do away with all her other identities.

It is no wonder then that a report in the Mathrubhumi faithfully reports the police version that Shahina and the others in her group tried to “threaten” the witnesses. Such a report, without even a preliminary kind of investigation, quickly reiterates the police story, putting the blame squarely on Shahina’s shoulders. This is exactly how much of the media has behaved in the case of Madani too. In many ways, it was the media in Kerala that raised the alarm against Madani so high and shrill that it was so easy for the police to get him back in jail and keep him there. We need to think seriously about all these issues raised in connection to the Shahina case.

Surely, as Shahina writes in her status message in Facebook: “this is not a case against me as an individual, but it is a warning to the entire press community not to try to quash the cooked up stories by the police.” Moreover, this is also yet another instance where the complex and often oppressive relationship of the Indian state and the Muslim minority is clearly revealed - a relationship in which the media has always played a highly dubious and questionable role. It is not surprising then that Shahina’s alternative mediation, to investigate into this and to reveal the fissures within many of our consensus has met with such a reaction. It is important that we reflect on these issues and extend our support to Shahina and to Madani, who is still in jail, also as a result of all these various, anti-minority mediations.

From  When Two Muslims Meet: The Media(ted) Case Of Madani And Shahina an analysis by K Ashraf & Jenny Rowena in Countercurrents. More Here
Tehelka article here

Arundhati Roy is the creation of the system

It is futile to denude metaphors to their bare meanings, but in this case it might be useful to try. We know very little about conscience but what we do know is that there is an unattainable moral superiority about it, and that it usually transmits unsolicited advice, which is the opposite of what the mind really wants to do. But at the same time, it is fundamentally a creation of the mind, a creation that is meant to come in conflict with its maker. That is Roy. She is the creation of the very system that she aspires to bring down.

A weak economy and an immature democracy would systematically empower a particular class of people, first by giving them a social headstart through the early landed wealth of their ancestors, then by letting them cash their social gains for even greater affluence and influence. Some of them would then begin to challenge the injustices of the very system that made their righteous ire possible. A reason why Open receives so many story pitches from foreign-returned journalism students who want to do only bleeding-heart stories—the trauma of child labour, the plight of village women and the agony of stray dogs. And Kashmir. It seems every loaded intern wants to do an anti-Indian Government Kashmir story (and on the way, liberate Tibetans).

Roy is more talented, genuine and courageous than most people who would get along with her. But the fact remains that she is, more than anything, an anomaly that completes the system, a system that not only made her but also needs her for its own balance and survival. If this part is somewhat familiar, it is because it is derived from The Matrix trilogy.

There is a scene in The Matrix Reloaded where I usually imagine Arundhati Roy as Neo, the hero of the tale. It is the scene where Neo meets The Architect, the creator of the Matrix, the computer programme that has replaced the real world and its real life. In this scene, Neo wants to know, “Why am I here?” The Architect, who looks like Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, gives a tangential answer, “You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control, which has led you, inexorably, here.”

That Roy is here as the inevitable consequence of the very system she wants to dismantle, that she is an expected anomaly, becomes more evident in her other battle—against globalisation and a potent version of capitalism. The huge advance for her debut novel that brought the first tremors of critical and commercial interest in her work, the rise of the reading middle class, the liberal movement, the many forms of media that conveyed her thoughts to millions, the international interest in Indian writers, and her own favourite Mac on which she writes her essays against capitalism, are all consequences of capitalism’s ways. But then capitalism also needs the imagination of soul, self-loathing, the delusion of introspection, so that people are not completely repulsed by their own greed. As The Architect would have said, “Ergo, Arundhati Roy.”

From Manu Joseph's view in Tehelka. More Here.

IPL, greed, big money and an icon from Mumbai..!

Sachin Tendulkar

SHANTANU GUHA RAY writes in Tehelka:

IT’S THE open secret no one wants to acknowledge: the IPL is not about cricket. The ugly controversy surrounding Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor and IPL chief Lalit Modi — over Tharoor’s friend Sunanda Pushkar owning 4.9 percent free sweat equity in the Kochi team that Tharoor helped put together — is merely a warning sign pointing to a much deeper dirt pit that comprises in equal parts big money, politics, glamour, greed, sex, drugs and intense backroom jostling.
 
The further irony is that, according to highly reliable sources in the cricketing management fraternity, the 4.9 percent free sweat equity Sunanda Pushkar is being pilloried for does not even belong to her. A mere .5 percent is reserved for Pushkar. Disturbingly, the rest belongs — off paper and on trust — to two iconic cricketing giants, one of who is still playing for the Mumbai IPL team. This free equity is the quid pro quo they demanded for helping put the Kochi team and its promoters together — not a rank corruption perhaps in the larger scheme of things, but certainly an impropriety.

Who is that iconic cricketing giant still playing for the Mumbai team?


Read the full article here. 
and Lalit Modi charged with 'Betting & Laundering'