Twelve villages celebrate Shahadat of Sokalo’s son, Admin on its toes

July 15, 2019

Sokalo, a human rights defender, resolves to carry forward forest rights struggle

Villagers and forest dwelling people from as many as twelve or more villages in Sonbhadra, Uttar Pradesh (UP) gathered to commemorate the death anniversary of human rights defender SokaloGond’s son, Mithilesh Gond, on Sunday, July 14.

Mithileshdied six years ago in a Hindalco hospital located in Renukoot, UP because reportedly because of the negligence of the doctors there. His condition demanded an immediate blood transfer, however, even after 12 hours of being in the hospital, the then CMO there, Dr. Pramod Yadav delayed giving blood to the 13 year old boy, it has been alleged.

Action: CJP stands with the millions of Adivasis whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the shocking order by the Supreme Court. We are working to ensure the forest rights of Adivasis in Sonbhadra, Uttar Pradesh, and to deepen our understanding of the Forest Rights Act and support Adivasis’ struggles across the country. Please support our efforts by donating here.

An investigation into this matter led to the conclusion that there was indeed negligence on the part of hospital authorities. However, no action was taken against the callous doctors. Instead, villagers who protested this along with Sokalo, were charged in false offences.

Lack of basic healthcare is a common occurrence in the far flung villages of Sonbhadra, especially the Adivasi and forest dwellers’ hamlets. More often than not, the people, who have little or meagre economic resources, are turned away and are made to hop from one hospital to another.

This is inherently also linked to the subsequent governments’ apathy towards the condition of forest dwelling communities. With the recent Supreme Court order on ‘eviction’ of those families whose claims (as per FRA, 2006) to forest land have been rejected, these communities –already alienated from any state welfare schemes –find themselves on the brink of another life and death struggle, over livelihood and land. It was in these dire circumstances that, Sokalo, a vibrant womans leader of her people, called for for this commemoration of her son’s death as yet another occasion to strengthen the democratic movement of traditional forest dwellers and Adivasis.

As many as 100 or so people, braved rains and travelled for hours after their morning farm work, to Majhauli to commemorate the Shahdat(Martyrdom). Villagers from Lilasi, Bidar, JoruaKhad, Dhooma, Bom, Basauli, Baghuar, Gurda, Majhauli etc. gathered. All these villages are significant for the struggle they have carried on to claim community and individual forest rights under the FRA.

The program was organised near a site which the villagers intend to convert into a school under Sokalo’s guidance. Sokalo has a vision for the school to be able to train the residents of nearby villages in indigenous, medicinal techniques, as well as to form a co-operative to manage forest produce.Sokalo, told Sabrangindiathat those who gathered for the commemoration were in good spirits. They’ve resolved to challenge the Supreme Court order, and on July 22, the day that has been marked as National Protest day by forest rights groups, they’ll present a memorandum in Robertsganj district headquarters with their demands. She said that they’ll even motivate the new and young generation to join the struggle.

The state administration was especially vigilant during the program. Sokalo reported that a vehicle with around 10-12 police officers made rounds of the area a day before July 14, the Shahdatdiwas. On July 14, they were present since 7 am in the morning till about 6 pm in the evening.

“The administration were worried at the simple fact that we commemorated the martyrdom of Mithilesh, Didi,” she said on aconfident tone. She said that the Lekhpal too, who was present had received repeated calls from the District Magistrate (DM), Sub-Divisional Magistrate SDM Sokalothereafter asked some members of the administration, “What is the problem? Why do you need such heavy security for such a simple thing as the commemoration of my son’s death?”

Reportedly, the Lekhpal (a base level revenue official)* said, “Madam, everyone [in the administration] is feeling threatened by your name. We have received order from ‘above’ to be present here.” Sokaloalso told us that all the ‘concern’ of state authorities was probably because there was an assumption that the villagers would protest in front of Hindalco.

Sokalo sounded firm and resolute with the democratic protest and also confident of taking this forward.
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*Lekhpal is a clerical government employee entrusted with responsibilities of village revenue record keeping and also keeping accounts of the fields, crops etc. While a District is headed by a District Collector, under whom there is a Sub Division headed by SDM; a Tehsil headed by Tehsildar; a Pargana headed by Revenue Inspector; thereafter there is the Revenue Village headed by a Lekhpal.

Explainer: what Western civilisation owes to Islamic cultures

July 15, 2019

Algebra, alchemy, artichoke, alcohol, and apricot all derive from Arabic words which came to the West during the age of Crusades.

Sculpture of ninth-century Persian scholar Al-Khwarizmi in Khiva, Uzbekistan. Latin discovery of Al-Khwarizmi’s work introduced the numerals 0-9, one of many ways in which Islamic cultures have contributed to Western civilisation. LBM1948/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Even more fundamental are the Indo-Arabic numerals (0-9), which replaced Roman numerals during the same period and revolutionised our capacity to engage in science and trade. This came about through Latin discovery of the ninth-century Persian scholar, Al-Khwarizmi (whose name gives us the word algorithm).

This debt to Islamic civilisation contradicts the claim put forward by political scientist Samuel Huntington in his book The Clash of Civilizations some 25 years ago, that Islam and the West have always been diametrically opposed. In 2004, historian Richard Bulliet proposed an alternative perspective. He argued civilisation is a continuing conversation and exchange, rather than a uniquely Western phenomenon.

Even so, Australia and the West still struggle to acknowledge the contributions of Islamic cultures (whether Arabic speaking, Persian, Ottoman or others) to civilisation.

In an initial curriculum proposed by the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, only one Islamic text was listed, a collection of often-humorous stories about the Crusades from a 12th-century Syrian aristocrat. But Islamic majority cultures have produced many other texts with a greater claim to shaping civilisation.

Philosophical and literary influences

Many of the scientific ideas and luxury goods from this world came into the West following the peaceful capture of the Spanish city of Toledo from its Moorish rulers in 1085.

Over the course of the next century, scholars, often in collaboration with Arabic-speaking Jews, became aware of the intellectual legacy of Islamic culture preserved in the libraries of Toledo.

Their focus was not on Islam, but the philosophy and science in which many great Islamic thinkers had become engaged. One was Ibn Sina (also known as Avicenna), a Persian physician and polymath (a very knowledgable generalist) who combined practical medical learning with a philosophical synthesis of key ideas from both Plato and Aristotle.

Portrait of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) on a silver vase from Museum at BuAli Sina (Avicenna) Mausoleum, Hamadan, Western Ira. Adam Jones/Wikmedia, CC BY-SA

Another was Ibn Rushd (or Averroes), an Andalusian physician and polymath, whose criticisms of the way Ibn Sina interpreted Aristotle would have a major impact on Italian theologist and philosopher Thomas Aquinas in shaping both his philosophical and theological ideas in the 13th century. Thomas was also indebted to a compatriot of Ibn Rushd, the Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides, whose Guide to the Perplexed was translated from Arabic into Latin in the 1230s.

While there is debate about the extent to which the Italian writer Dante was exposed to Islamic influences, it is very likely he knew The Book of Mohammed’s Ladder (translated into Castilian, French and Latin), which describes the Prophet’s ascent to heaven. The Divine Comedy, with its account of Dante’s imagined journey from Inferno to Paradise, was following in this tradition.

Dante very likely heard lectures from Riccoldo da Monte di Monte Croce, a learned Dominican who spent many years studying Arabic in Baghdad before returning to Florence around 1300 and writing about his travels in the lands of Islam. Dante may have criticised Muslim teaching, but he was aware of its vast influence.

Domenico di Michelino, Dante and the Divine comedy, fresco, 1465. Dante is thought to have been influenced by Islamic cultures. Wikimedia Commons

Islam also gave us the quintessential image of the Enlightenment, the self-taught philosopher. This character had his origins in an Arabic novel, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, penned by a 12th-century Arab intellectual, Ibn Tufayl. It tells the story of how a feral child abandoned on a desert island comes through reason alone to a vision of reality.

Hayy ibn Yaqzan was published in Oxford, with an Arabic-Latin edition in 1671, and became a catalyst for the contributions of seminal European philosophers including John Locke and Robert Boyle. Translated into English in 1708 as The Improvement of Human Reason, it also influenced novelists, beginning with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in 1719. The sources of the Enlightenment are not simply in Greece and Rome.

Civilisation is always being reinvented. The civilisation some call “Western” has been, and still is, continually shaped by a wide range of political, literary and intellectual influences, all worthy of our attention.

Courtesy: The Conversation

Telangana govt proposes to give unfettered powers to forest officials, ‘help’ corporates

July 15, 2019

The Telangana Government is contemplating to replace the Telangana Forest Act 1967 with a new law – the Telangana Forest Act (TFA) 2019, trampling the rights of adivasis ensured under the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA Act 2006) and Panchayats Extension to Schedule Area (PESA) Act 1996 both of which are central acts.

The FRA recognizes and vests diverse preexisting rights to forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFDs) who have been residing in such forests for generations but whose rights could not be vested.

The proposed law confers a vast array of almost unfettered powers to the forest officials, and conflicts with and tramples the central laws as FRA and PESA which it should not, while promising to serve corporate interests welcoming them with open arms. The proposed law is in almost complete conflict with the National Forest Policy of 1988 which talks of symbiotic relationship of tribals with forests and serving community needs to be the prime purpose of forests.

If enacted, the law would surely escalate the simmering tension in the forest region of the State due to non-compliance by forest officials with FRA and their violations, converting the forests into a conflict zone.

From trustee of the forests, to servers of corporate interests

The major shift proposed by the law is in the creation of a new category of forests “Production Forests” for production of timber, pulp wood, fire wood etc in reserved, protected and unclassified forests to make these raw materials available to the industries. Private companies and the corporate sector are allowed to grow the forest products in private and institutional lands, and transport the harvested crops.

The Forest Department is to dovetail market interventions with agro forestry activities in such private lands. The Forest Department is to serve the corporate and business interests primarily. This can effectively be done only when the forests are securely fully free of any encumbrance.

Unbridled powers to forest bureaucracy

The forest officials can use fire arms and cause injury to any person and take possession of property in the name of commission and prevention of commission of any offence under the proposed law and the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972. Moreover, the officials are covered by providing impunity for their actions without prior sanction from the State Government. And the State Government would not sanction prosecution unless the Executive Magistrate conducts an inquiry.

This provides ample scope to escape prosecution by managing the local Tahsildars and other revenue officials. The proposed Act does not permit the State Government to with draw the cases filed under the Principal Act, against the accused with the permission of the court.

This is contrary to the procedure contemplated under Section 321 CrPC which permits the prosecution to withdraw the criminal cases filed with the permission of the court. The proposed Act also provides impunity to the forest officials for any act done by them in good faith which will not be considered as an offence.

The onus of proof of innocence is sought to be the burden of the accused in all prosecution cases turning on its head the well established dictum of ‘innocence until proved guilty’. The burden of proof lies always on the prosecution in all criminal cases to prove that the case filed against the accused is beyond any reasonable doubt.

This would virtually mean that enjoyment of forest rights under PESA and FRA could very well become, on a routine basis, an alleged forest offence which will require the right holders to prove again and again their innocence and a part of the rightful enjoyment of rights. With no consequences inbuilt in the law for false allegation, this would predictably become an instrument to smoke out and drive the forest dwellers away from the forests.

The proposed law gives power to the police, revenue and the forest officials to arrest and seize equipments if they believe is a result of or being used to commit a forest offence. Such powers for mere suspicion is a open freeway for abuse of the power. The State Government is to develop infrastructure for lockup rooms, transportation of accused, armories, ammunitions, etc.

The confessional statement recorded by the forest official from the accused is admissible as an evidence, which is against the cardinal legal principle of Section 25 and 26 of Indian Evidence Act which says that the confessional statement involving incriminatory acts is not admissible in the Courts. This is an open invite for extraction of confession through inducement or coercion which would incarcerate even innocent tribals in false forest cases.

Snuffing out rights, tweeking procedures

The draft Telangana Forest Act (TFA) 2019 gives enormous powers to the Forest Settlement Officer (FSO) from forest department, much more than what the Britishers did through the Indian Forest Act of 1927.

The authority to determine the rights of any persons over any land during the declaration of Reserve Forests that is vested with the Revenue Divisional Officer under the Telangana Forest Act 1967 is now to be handed over to the Forest Officials. Moreover, the time limit to give objections by the affected people to the constitution of Reserve Forest (RF) is to be halved from the existing six months period to three months.

The rights of persons will be extinguished if no claim is preferred within the time limit. The same FSO will also act as land acquisition officer to acquire the lands or enter into agreement with the owner to surrender his rights under the proposed Act. The Revenue officials are to be kept out from adjudicating the claims at preliminary stage itself and also in the acquisition of lands.

No longer can the person aggrieved by the rejection of claims by the FSO can go to the District Court for final orders as is possible under the existing 1967 Act. Instead, the appeal is to be made only to the District Collector. The time limit for filing the appeal is also halved to 3 months from 6 months. The aggrieved person can appeal to the State Government against the order of the District Collector for the revision. Thus the judicial intervention is kept outside of the framework of adjudication.

The proposed draft prohibits the entry into reserved forests except for livelihood activities for the rights recognized under the FRA. This in effect violates the authority of the rights holders and the Gram Sabha to protect, conserve, manage and regulate forest use under Section 3(1)(i) and 5 under FRA.

It is altogether another fact, that at present the determination of rights of individuals or communities under FRA are far from complete or correct. The proposed law further imposes restrictions on the tribals contrary to the FRA.

The State Government is being empowered to notify the trees or forest produce, grazing lands etc in protected forests and regulate their use or even suspend the rights of persons in violation of FRA. The forest officials can also evict the tribals from the forests lands if they feel that their activity is contrary to the Rules of Protected Forest.

The proposed law completely tramples on tribal rights in the Scheduled Areas in the exercise of their power in private lands for removal of dead or fallen trees to do anything for making agricultural implements as before. Further, the proposed law removes the right of tribals to cut trees in their private lands to develop their lands with the permission of the District Collector.

Modeled almost exact on the lines of the draft Bill to comprehensively amend the Indian Forest Act, 1927 that the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change circulated on March 7 this year to the Principal Chief Conservators of Forests of the states for comments by June 6 which has now been extended to August 17, one wonders why this tearing hurry to make this the law for the State when one does not even know whether the centre would enact the proposed Bill as given now.

If not, anyway some or many provisions of the proposed state enactment would become legally redundant. It does not make legal sense anyway. Perhaps the overzealous bureaucracy has gone overboard. Hope good political and legal sense prevails.
—
*Tribal rights activist, lawyer and researcher based in Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh

Courtesy: Counter View

Hindu Son Cries for Muslim Mother –A Tale of Communal Harmony in India

July 15, 2019

A Facebook post by Sreedharan that “my Umma (mother) has honored the summons of Allah, please pray for her soul…if there is heaven, my Umma will surely find a place there,” has caught many eyeballs. It appeared it was a cry of a Hindu child for her Muslim mother. There was definitely curiosity raised through the FB post.

In deeper introspection, it turned out to be a tale of human love cutting across religion and other parochialism that could be an eye opener to those who are forcing the Muslims to chant Jai Sri Ram and killing them for being an Indian Muslim.

The 46-year-old Sreedharan’s facebook post is an amazing account of how interfaith bonds survive in India even in these trouble times when Hindus minds were rigged in just concluded General Election of 2019.

A pious Muslim couple Subaida Thennad and Abdul Azeez Haji had three children of their own and they fostered three more, Sreedharan and his two elder sisters Ramani and Leela. The Muslim couple adopted these Hindu kids when their widow mother, Chakki passed away due to sudden illness. Having no one to look after these three Hindu children, Subaida took them under her wings, with Sreedharan being hardly one, and others being less than five years of age.

The three Hindu children were raised by Subaida in her house as practicing Hindus along with her own three practicing Muslim children. In the mornings, when the three Muslim children went to the madrasa, the three Hindu kids were sent temple to learn about their religion.

All the six children lived in the same house under one roof, in the care of the loving Muslim parents. They all ate together, played together and slept together and woke up together without an feelings of religious divide between them.

“Our foster parents brought us up like their own children and educated us. They got my sisters married off. Though we were taken in at an impressionable age, they never tried to convert us to their religion, said Sreedharan, who works in Oman in the FB post adding, his foster mother to him was like her own mother (Umma).

News of her mother’s death shattered Sreedharan who cried on his personal loss, holding bottles of perfume that he had bought for his beloved mother in Oman. He chose not to rush home in Kerala as he lacked courage to see her dead body. And instead wept and prayed for the departed soul.

The death of Subaida Thennad would have gone unnoticed outside her home in Kalikavu village in Nilambur taluk of Malappuram district in Kerala. It is her foster son, Sreedharan, who had put up a Facebook post that tickled many funnels hearing such tale of communal harmony, where recently one Tabrez Ansari was done to death by a Hindu mob for reasons Ansari being an Indian Muslim.

Another story of Communal harmony has come from Belarikhan village under the Gosaiganj Assembly constituency in Ayodhya district of Uttar Pradesh. Here in a rare gesture some Hindus have donated 1.25 bighas of land to Muslims for using it as their burial ground.

As per records, the land belonged to the Hindus but some Muslims have buried their dead since it was by the side of a graveyard. The land had been a bone of contention between the two communities and there were disputes and tension over this issue for years between them.

However some nine Hindu gentlemen who were shareholders of the land, signed a registered deed for 1.25 bighas of land in favour of the Qabristan Committee, Gosainganj on to bury their hatchet once and for all.

Khabbu Tiwari, the local BJP MLA who took the initiative said; “It’s a gift from the Hindu community through a proper deed and stamp duty, as the tradition of Hindu-Muslim brotherhood in Ayodhya has a long history. This is a small token of love from Hindus to Muslims and I hope this amity will continue,” he added.

In these days of Hindu religious fundamentalism where some radical Hindus are trying to lynch Muslim through mob attacks, such tales of goodness must be highlighted. These are rare instances of interfaith gestures of communal harmony in the country and reflect how India society is interwoven from below.

These stories will definitely give a tight slap to those relentlessly working overtime to increase the religious divide between the Hindus and Muslims in the country. It’s also a lesson or two those who are indulging in the conspiracy of silence by not opening up their mouths against those perpetrating hate crimes against Muslims in India.

German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) has rightly said; first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com

Courtesy: Counter Current

Undermining the Constitutional thrust on social justice, NEP 2019 raises serious questions for educationists

July 15, 2019

NEP 2019: The devil in the detail

Image Courtesy: The Hindu

The draft National Education Policy 2019 systematically evades the Constitution’s focus on social justice in educational institutions. It seeks to have power concentrated in an overpowering authority in order to keep the deception of having generated a level playing field within a fundamentally unequal, unjust and discriminatory social system.Can one hope that “the Draft National Education Policy 2019” will be the foundation on which the education policy of the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government would be conceived, articulated and comprehended? Will it provide justification for some of the sweeping strides already taken by the Government of India (GOI)—the massive cuts in budgetary allocations for both school and higher education with corresponding schemes for “rationalisation” of government schools through merger/closure of well over one lakh schools across the country, and the slashing of seats in public-funded higher education institutions while declaring at the same time that a non-existent “initiative” by a private corporate be recognised as an “institution of eminence”? Or will it be yet another smokescreen behind which different agendas are being furthered?

Dr K. Kasturirangan, chairperson of the “Committee for Drafting the National Education Policy”, is hardly reassuring in his Preamble to the Draft. Assuming that he would only have to build on the report submitted by T.S.R. Subramanian, who had chaired the “Committee for Evolution of the New Education Policy”, and the Ministry’s subsequent “Some Inputs for the Draft National Education Policy 2016” from the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry, he had agreed to submit it within six months (emphasis added, throughout). However, as he began to get “a sense of the members… with their rich and unique insights into our society and its implications for education”, he realised that “this Committee was going to be ‘out-of-the-box’ in its thinking”. Hence the two-year delay in preparing the draft.

The “completely new and far-sighted policy” to change the “educational landscape” and prepare the youth to meet “present and future challenges” is said to be guided by the goals of “access, equity, quality, affordability, and accountability” and will look at education as a “single organic continuum from pre-school to higher education”. Ensuring universal access to education of “high quality” is stated to be the draft’s topmost priority, as quality and equity are “considered central to sustainable development, achieving success in the emerging knowledge economy and society…and for building an equitable, just and humane society”.

The following recommendations are welcome: renaming the HRD Ministry as the Ministry of Education; the emphasis on teacher education; extension of coverage of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, and the mid-day meal scheme to include pre-primary on the one hand, and up to Class XII on the other; review of the amendment to the RTE Act’s no-detention policy up to Class VIII and the conception of the education system as an organic continuum from pre-primary to higher education. Regrettably, providing an “exit” point from Class VIII itself without demanding a complete ban on child labour is problematic as the current child labour laws allow children to work in “family” enterprises from 10 years onwards, reinforcing both caste-based occupations and economic exploitation. However, two fundamental contentions require to be probed as they apparently undermine the laudable objectives of the draft.

The first springs from a cavalier attitude to the Constitution using a selective quotation from Dr B.R. Ambedkar that the “working of a Constitution does not depend wholly on the nature of the Constitution….”

The second claims that what we have “so far not recognised is that there are a multiplicity of agencies and individuals in this country who will come forward willingly with their support if they are convinced that there is sincerity and honesty and an ethical approach to building a knowledge society”.

The republican Constitution of India is the outcome of a protracted and wide-ranging struggle against British imperialism. It was committed to the creation of a modern, independent nation and society in which the rights of all persons would be recognised and upheld. The nation-state is constitutionally obligated to defend and further people’s rights irrespective of caste, creed, region, language, gender and disability.

In particular, the state is obliged to ensure and safeguard the rights of those sections who, for centuries, have been traditionally relegated, often with strict religious sanctions, to a “depressed” status in the interest of dominant castes and communities. Consequently, in the education sector, special provision for “reservation” in post-secondary education and subsequent employment were made for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (S.C. and S.T.) and extended to cover Other Backward Classes (OBC) following the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations. Despite these measures, the educational status of these sections and that of the Muslim minority remains distressingly low. Between 6 and 10 per cent are able to complete Class XII and hence over 90 per cent do not even become eligible for reservation.

Silent on reservation

Yet, the draft, which also refers to relevant Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE) data for 2016-17, is shockingly silent on the issue and systematically evades the Constitution’s focus on social justice in educational institutions. The issue of making provisions for challenging and countering caste-based discrimination and oppression is absent from the document. In fact, the word “caste” itself has been used perhaps only twice in the draft and that too in a perfunctory listing of categories. The “reservation” policy is not referred to even once and the draft consistently emphasises the so-called “merit-based” criteria for admissions at all levels of post-secondary education, including the mandatory BEd for teacher training; for scholarships, for financial and other forms of aid on the basis of “socio-economic backwardness”; for the selection and appointment of faculty and for promotions during their career. How such a “meritorious knowledge society” can be created without addressing the issues of centuries of exclusion and oppression of the lower castes, of gender discrimination, of communal hostilities and tribal marginalisation appears to be a matter of little concern.

Unfortunately, the draft neglects to quote Dr Ambedkar on this question. Speaking in the Bombay Legislative Council, he unambiguously stated that “if all these communities are to be brought to the level of equality, then the only remedy is to adopt the principle of inequality and to give favoured treatment to those who are below level”.

Although it is recognised that “under-represented groups”—a euphemism for the “excluded” categories of persons—constitute a major deprived section of Indian society and require attention, no specific provisions by the Central and State governments are envisaged for them in the draft. It merely states that giving complete autonomy to private institutions of higher education may “encourage” them to voluntarily make some provision “either within or outside of CSR [corporate social responsibility]”.

The draft’s approach is particularly provocative as it comes in the wake of the institutionalised “murder” of research scholar Rohith Vemula (University of Hyderabad) which led to widespread and angry protests from all democratic sections. The GOI brazened it out as two of its Union Ministers were directly implicated in goading university authorities to ignore the legitimate grievances of the Dalit scholars. This was followed by the suicide of a 17-year-old Dalit student, S. Anitha, from Tamil Nadu after her petition against imposing the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to Tamil Nadu State government medical colleges was rejected by the Supreme Court. In her moving statement, Anitha had questioned the justice of expecting those who had been consistently denied equal opportunities to “compete” with the privileged for admission. Just recently, Dr Payal Tadvi, a second-year tribal student pursuing her postgraduate medical education, was driven to suicide because of constant harassment and persecution by upper-caste seniors at her Mumbai hospital.

These prominent cases are only the tip of the iceberg behind which lie the barely registered suicide deaths of several thousands of students from marginalised communities in higher education institutions as the combined result of socially discriminatory practices and insensitive responses from peers, faculty and administrators. One would have expected the draft to do a sustained analysis of this clearly problematic situation and offer recommendations appropriate to its urgency and gravity.

Instead, we have a sanitised assertion that students from “socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds require particular encouragement and support to make the transition to higher education successfully. …Universities and colleges must be required to set up high quality academic support to educationally disadvantaged groups and must be given adequate funds and academic resources to carry this out effectively” (page 241). This appears both exasperating and even offensive as there is a constant and self-conscious endorsement in the draft of “ancient” educational forms such as the caste-based gurukula, which is prominently eulogised among a list of “religious schools”.

Further, the term “Indian” as it is used to describe culture, civilisation, educational institutions and principles and the “India centred” vision of the draft make it difficult to escape the conclusion that the “Hindutva”/“Manuvadi” identification is being propagated as fundamental to Indian identity and nationhood. For example, in order to give legal studies the “necessary social relevance and acceptability”, framers of the law curriculum are advised to “fall back upon the culture and traditions of people, the history of legal institutions and the victory of ‘dharma’ over ‘adharma’ writ large in Indian literature and mythology” (para 16.7.1).

Promotion of Hindi & Sanskrit

Although references are made to the universities of Nalanda and Takshashila, and the draft’s goal is proclaimed to be “inspired” by both Nalanda and the Ivy League Schools, the plurality of India’s diverse sociocultural forms, languages, practices and beliefs are consistently downgraded by being referred to as “local”, “regional” and “State-level” to distinguish them from what is asserted as the dominant “Indian” identity. Thus, the draft recommends that promotion of Hindi and Sanskrit will be the Central government’s responsibility because these languages are not “restricted” to one State or community. The other Indian languages of the Eighth Schedule will remain only within the jurisdiction of their respective State governments. Perhaps this explains why the voluminous draft has been made available only in Hindi and English. Given the limited time to respond to the draft, it would be difficult even to arrange for translations in any other Indian language.

The treatment reserved for Sanskrit makes the neglect even clearer. Stated to be an “important modern” and functioning Indian language so that it can be propagated under the three-language formula along with Hindi and English, it is further privileged by claiming it as the classical basis for most other Indian languages. Its pre-eminence is thereby asserted over other “regional” or “community”-specific classical languages whereas, in fact, it is Brahmin dominance and the “standardisation” of other Prakrit languages that have contributed to their “sanskritisation” over centuries.

Multiple Agencies

Consider next the proposed role of multiple agencies, including religious, private corporate and/or philanthropic ones, in making provision for education. The need to find funding and “to find it quickly” seems to be a primary motive, but the experience so far with high fee-charging private schools and private universities has been less than inspiring as an important means for furthering access to education. The public-private partnership (PPP) model has become associated with the commercialisation of education. The draft’s solution is to substitute “Public Philanthropic Partnership” for the earlier PPP, but no attempt at regulation is proposed as it is suggested that “autonomy” will allow space for private “partners” to voluntarily rationalise costs and fee structures imposed on students.

Even low-budget private schools that are depleting public funds through reimbursement for enrolling students from the economically weaker sections under the RTE Act have proved to be inadequate as the majority of them have failed to meet the standards laid down in the Act and are now engaged in demanding that conformity to these norms be dropped so that students are not denied education. Significantly, the draft proposes that there should be no rigidity in observing the “input” norms prescribed by the RTE Act. The emphasis in government schools, it is argued, should be more on “outcomes” in order to improve learning skills.

Other agendas can also be well-served. Multiple agencies can run seamlessly with total autonomy within the structure of the public-funded system, but in what is truly novel for India today, they can also run parallel to it. In a little-noticed move, in February 2019 the Central government gave sanction to a private “Bharatiya Shiksha Board” (BSB), which had earlier been cleared by the Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Vedavidya Pratishthan (MSRVP), a fully funded autonomous body under the HRD Ministry working on promotion of “ved vidya”. The BSB will be funded, designed and managed by Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth. Like any other school board it will draft the syllabus, conduct examinations and issue certificates. Once established, it is likely to benefit educational institutions such as Acharyakulam, Vidya Bharati schools (run by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh) and gurukulas run by the Arya Samaj, allowing them to sustain their model of education up to Class XII, something which school boards like the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) did not permit so far.

Alongside these institutional channels, the draft also recommends inducting “volunteers”, non-governmental organisations and “social workers” through a National Tutors Programme (NTP) for retaining a close tutoring relationship with government school students on the one hand and adults in the literacy/continuing education programme of the Adult Education Centres (AEC) on the other.

It is clear that such an open-ended system will be almost impossible to monitor both for its adherence to the goals set by the draft for the education system or for the public funds and assets that it will become possible to assign to these diverse private players.

Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog

The draft’s crucial recommendation for setting up a supreme policymaking and oversight body for the entire education system, the Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog (RSA), is a singularly unimaginative and centralising solution to the problem of holding together a nationwide system of public/private school complexes—the “smallest unit of management”, and colleges and universities that are autonomous and empowered to combine curricular, administrative and financial elements within a single entity. This demands credible accountability procedures, and once again the draft resorts to the unimaginative but market-friendly one-size-fits-all remedy. All provision of education, regulation, standard setting, accreditation and funding will be undertaken by separate entities.

The deception of having so generated a level playing field within a fundamentally unequal, unjust and discriminatory social system is clearly in need of the “authority” rather than the “vision” of the Prime Minister as Chairperson of the RSA, and within the Prime Minister’s Office, that is, within the leadership of whichever regime is currently occupying the highest level of political office, to keep it all in place. All the bodies determining “accountability” are, of course, to be appointed by the RSA.

However, constitutional provisions are violated by this concentration of power. Education comes under the Concurrent List, and the Centre cannot override the powers of the States either in determining or in regulating education which are the prerogative of State governments and legislatures both of which are finally answerable to the people of the State concerned.

The impact on the education system itself is also extremely negative. The necessary autonomy and independence of the education system from direct political or bureaucratic control is seriously undermined by the proposed RSA. The report of India’s first Education Commission, the Kothari Commission, emphasised that teachers and students constituted a “learning society” with “shared” (but not uniform) “goals” which they must be left to pursue with as much academic freedom as possible, retaining their independence from interference by political and market forces, from pressures of governmental, administrative and financial intervention, and the prejudices of socio-religious ideologies.

Unfortunately, the draft fails to defend the learning society on every one of these counts.

(The author is Member Presidium, All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE); the article first appeared here and is bein published here on the express request of the author)

Fast Growing States May Not Offer Best, Most Jobs: New Index

July 15, 2019

Delhi: High economic growth does not necessarily lead to better jobs, and states that do better on gender equality performed better on a new employment index.

Andhra Pradesh (including Telangana), Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh lead Indian states on the quality and quantity of jobs they provide to their people, while Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh (UP) are last, the index reveals.

“Good quality productive jobs that offer good wages are an impetus for sustainable economic growth,” Sabina Dewan, president and executive director at research organisation JustJobs Network, said at the launch of A Just Jobs Index for India, on June 21, 2019.

Supported by Azim Premji University in partnership with the Centre for Policy Research, a think tank, the Index tracks the performance of states by employment, formality, benefits, income equality, and gender equality, based on a set of equally weighted indicators.

Despite economic growth, the pace of job creation has been slow, the report said. The country faces rising unemployment with 71% of workers employed in the informal sector, and inconsistent job creation across states.

India’s unemployment rate was 6.1%–rural (5.3%) and urban (7.8%)–in 2017-18, according to the government’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), released on May 31, 2019.

Gujarat, which has “consistently maintained” net state value-added (NSVA) growth rates of 10% or higher during the period 2012-13 to 2016-17, did not do as well in creating quality jobs, ranking 18 on the index.

Source: JustJobs Index, 2019
Note: Data for Andhra Pradesh are pre-bifurcation, and include those for Telangana.

Andhra Pradesh and Telangana lead the pack, as we said, with 57.3 points, followed by Maharashtra (57.2) and Chhattisgarh (56.39), while UP (32.04) is below Bihar (37.28) and Odisha (37.70) at the bottom of the list.

For each indicator, the index uses a mean of the available values for the period 2010-2018, using data from various government sources, such as surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Office, the Labour Bureau, the Annual Survey of Industries, the Reserve Bank of India and the PLFS.

The Index does not take into consideration the seven northeastern states due to small sample sizes in the available data.

“Demand-side” dimensions–such as employment, formality, benefits, income equality and gender equality–were selected, since they evaluate the quality and quantity of jobs, and “supply-side” indicators, such as education and skill levels, were not, authors Dewan and Divya Prakash, a research associate at JustJobs Network, wrote in the report.

Gender equality delivers a better overall score

While India’s female labour force participation rate is 24%, ranked 120 among 131 countries in 2018 by the World Bank, the jobs index found that states that did better on gender equality are associated with a better overall score.

Himachal Pradesh (72.9) topped on gender equality, while Bihar (13.5) ranked at the bottom.

To address the issue of gender disparity in employment, states with low female workforce participation should make public spaces, housing and workplaces safer for women, and women should migrate to cities if they needed to, Dilip Chenoy, secretary general, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, said at the launch of the report.

Chhattisgarh (95.29) performed the best on the employment dimension owing to its high labour force participation rate. Goa scored (15.88) the least due to high youth unemployment (28.7% in 2018).

A state with a larger share of workers with a written contract was ranked higher on the part of the index that measured the proportion of formal jobs. Goa (87.59) topped the index on this score; Uttar Pradesh (16.92) brought up the bottom.

States with higher benefits and safeguards to workers, such as union association, higher expenditure on pension as part of gross state domestic product and a higher share of workers with pension/provident funds, also ranked higher.

Jammu and Kashmir (55.47), Delhi (52.47) and Kerala (51.99) topped on the benefits dimension, which the authors attributed to relatively high state expenditures on pensions and union participation. Rajasthan (17.19), Chhattisgarh (14.14) and Gujarat (12.67) were at the bottom due to low union participation.

For income inequality, the index considers a higher ratio of minimum wages to average wages, a low Gini coefficient–an indicator of inequality–of consumption, and a high ratio of informal wages to formal wages. Chhattisgarh (83.03), Maharashtra (76.84) and Uttarakhand (73.39) were at the top here, while Uttar Pradesh (39.45), Jammu & Kashmir (36.24) and Kerala (36.24) stood at the bottom.

Lack of real-time data and indicators: authors

The authors of the report note the lack of real-time data about India’s labour markets, and the lack of better indicators, which led to gross domestic product and Ease of Doing Business rankings–in which India stood at 77 among 190 countries–to be substituted as indicators for job creation.

“The Index, which is being put in the public domain, would hold state governments accountable and push them to provide more productive jobs and enhance opportunities for the youth,” said Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, the government’s think tank.

Kant suggested the revitalisation of education for skill development, with a focus on “skills for the future”–digital literacy with a focus on hands-on training and mobile-based training for people in remote areas. This will help youth in rural areas become job creators rather than job seekers, he said.

(Sharma, a second-year MSc student at the Symbiosis School of Economics, Pune, is an intern with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

A National helpline to be launched against hate crimes

July 15, 2019

A National helpline will be launched tomorrow, 15^th July, at Press club of India, Delhi at 3.30 pm. The helpline will be launched by United Against Hate – an ongoing campaign against communalism, fascism and all other hate crimes such as hate mongering, mob lynching.

After the recent lynching of Tabrez Ansari in Jharkhand, the team of United against hate, that comprises activists, lawyers, academicians, scholars and others came up with this idea to launch a help line center at the national level to deal with hate crimes.

The toll free number will be announced tomorrow at the launch in New Delhi.

Says, Tamanna Pankaj, who is a lawyer associated with United Against Hate, on her twitter handle that “The incidents of lynchings are not spontaneous and sporadic cases of violence, but are rather systemic and carefully planned. After dealing with many such cases for almost two years we strongly feel that the response to such brutal assaults and the fight for ensuring justice need to be much more organized and systematised as well.”

The round the clock toll free number is for anyone who has witnessed a hate crime or faced a hate crime.

The help line centre assures: Rapid response; documentation, legal help and advocacy.

United Against hate, upon receiving the call will ensure immediate intervention of media and activists with help from the network of activists across India.

A host of different speakers from religious fraternity, lawyers, activists, academicians, Maulana Madni, Dr. Michael Williams, Malik Motasim Khan, Prof Ratanlal, Prashant Tandon, Advocates Sanjay Hegde, Fazail Ayubi, Anas Tanveer, Ehtesham Hashmi, Shreeji Bhavsar, senior journalist Urmilesh, Dr. Kafeel Khan, Ravi Nair, SHRDC, Prof Ghazala Jamil, Prof Apoorvanand will be present for the launch

Courtesy: Two Circle

India: authorities must stop harassment of Lawyers Collective and repeal Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act

July 15, 2019

The ICJ today condemned the raids on 11 July by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the homes and offices of Anand Grover and Indira Jaising, two lawyers prominent for frequently challenging the Indian government’s failures to respect and promote the rights of all people in India.

Image courtesy Scroll.in

Press Release from International Commission of Jurists

Grover and Jaising are both Supreme Court lawyers and co-founders of the Lawyers Collective, a non-governmental organization.

These raids were reportedly conducted pursuant to CBI’s registration of criminal charges into alleged violations of Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), a much criticized law frequently used to target human rights defenders and critics of the Indian government.

“This raid seems designed to harass and intimidate two tireless advocates of Constitutional and international rights in India,” said Sam Zarifi, Secretary-General of the ICJ.

“The Indian government must immediately cease harassment of the Lawyers Collective and its founders Anand Grover and Indira Jaising,” he added.

The CBI raids appears to be based on a 2016 Ministry of Home Affairs report, now under appeal in the Bombay High Court, and without any material change in circumstances since its release.

The raid has also been conducted notwithstanding a National Human Rights Commission statement seeking a status report from the CBI by 21 July 2019 to ensure that the investigation is “non-discriminatory and to avoid arbitrariness”.

The attack is emblematic of a broader pattern of official threats to and harassment of Indian civil society in general, and the Lawyers Collective in particular.

Lawyers Collective’s FCRA license was cancelled in November 2016, a decision that is under appeal in the Bombay High Court. The action relied upon overly broad and vague legal provisions of the FCRA that violate India’s legal obligation to respect and protect the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.

“The repeated use of the FCRA to target civil society including Lawyers Collective has had a devastating chilling effect on public comment about the government,” said Zarifi.

“The law should be repealed, or substantially amended to include safeguards against arbitrary use of its provisions, and to protect freedom of expression and association,” he added.

The ICJ supports the 2016 call by three United Nations Special Rapporteurs to the Indian Government to repeal FCRA, which decried the FCRA’s use to “silence organisations involved in advocating civil, political, economic, social, environmental or cultural priorities, which may differ from those backed by the Government”.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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Unbridled powers to forest bureaucracy

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Fast Growing States May Not Offer Best, Most Jobs: New Index

Delhi: High economic growth does not necessarily lead to better jobs, and states that do better on gender equality performed better on a new employment index.

A National helpline to be launched against hate crimes

A National helpline will be launched tomorrow, 15^th July, at Press club of India, Delhi at 3.30 pm. The helpline will be launched by United Against Hate – an ongoing campaign against communalism, fascism and all other hate crimes such as hate mongering, mob lynching.

India: authorities must stop harassment of Lawyers Collective and repeal Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act

The ICJ today condemned the raids on 11 July by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the homes and offices of Anand Grover and Indira Jaising, two lawyers prominent for frequently challenging the Indian government’s failures to respect and promote the rights of all people in India.

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Algebra, alchemy, artichoke, alcohol, and apricot all derive from Arabic words which came to the West during the age of Crusades.

Philosophical and literary influences

From trustee of the forests, to servers of corporate interests

Unbridled powers to forest bureaucracy

Snuffing out rights, tweeking procedures

NEP 2019: The devil in the detail

Silent on reservation

Promotion of Hindi & Sanskrit

Multiple Agencies

Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog

Delhi: High economic growth does not necessarily lead to better jobs, and states that do better on gender equality performed better on a new employment index.

A National helpline will be launched tomorrow, 15th July, at Press club of India, Delhi at 3.30 pm. The helpline will be launched by United Against Hate – an ongoing campaign against communalism, fascism and all other hate crimes such as hate mongering, mob lynching.

The ICJ today condemned the raids on 11 July by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the homes and offices of Anand Grover and Indira Jaising, two lawyers prominent for frequently challenging the Indian government’s failures to respect and promote the rights of all people in India.

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

Important Links

Other Links

CONNECT

A National helpline will be launched tomorrow, 15^th July, at Press club of India, Delhi at 3.30 pm. The helpline will be launched by United Against Hate – an ongoing campaign against communalism, fascism and all other hate crimes such as hate mongering, mob lynching.