World Food Day: A Wholistic World Food Policy is Needed

October 17, 2018

Since the hungry billion in the world community believe that we can all eat if we set our common house in order, they believe also that it is unjust that some men die because it is too much trouble to arrange for them to live.
Stringfellow Barr Citizens of the World (1954)

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030) aims by 2030 to “Double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets , and non-farm resources.”

There is a consensus that radical measurs are needed to deal with world-wide growing food neeeds. These measures must be taken in a whoistic and coordinated way with actions going from the local level of the individual farmer to the national level with new government policies to the world level with better coordinated activities through the United Nations System.

A central theme which citizens of the world have long stressed is that there needs to be a world food policy and that a world food policy is more than the sum of national food security programs. Food security has too often been treated as a collection of national food security initiatives. While the adoption of a national strategy to ensure food and nutrition security for all is essential, a focus on the formulation of national plans is clearly inadequate. There is a need for a world plan of action with focused attention to the role which the United Nations system must play if hunger is to be sharply reduced.

The FAO did encourage governments to develop national food security policies, but the lack of policies at the world level has led to the increasing control of agricultural processes by a small number of private firms driven by the desire to make money. Thus today, three firms —Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta — control about half of the commercial seed market worldwide. Power over soil, seeds and food sales is ever more tightly held.

There needs to be detailed analysis of the role of speculation in the rise of commodity prices. There has been a merger of the former Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade to become the CME Group Market which deals in some 25 agricultural commodities. Banks and hedge funds, having lost money in the real estate mortgage packages of 2008 are now looking for ways to get money back. For the moment, there is no international regulation of this speculation. There needs to be an analysis of these financial flows and their impact on the price of grains. The word needs a market shaped by shared human values structured to ensure fairness and co-responsibility.

There is likewise a need for a serious analysis of the growing practice of buying or renting potential farm land, especially in Africa and South America, by foreign countries, especially China and the Arab Gulf states. While putting new land under cultivation is not a bad policy in itself, we need to look at the impact of this policy on local farmers as well as on world food prices.

There is a need to keep in mind local issues of food production, distribution, and food security. Attention needs to be given to cultural factors, the division of labour between women and men in agriculture and rural development, in marketing local food products, to the role of small farmers, to the role of landless agricultural labour and to land-holding patterns.

Fortunately, there is a growing awareness that an integrated, wholistic approach is needed. World Citizens stress that solutions to poverty, hunger and climate change crisis require an agriculture that promotes producers’ livelihoods, knowledge, resiliency, health and equitable gender relations, while enriching the natural environment and helping balance the carbon cycle. Such an integrated approach is a fundamental aspect of the world citizen approach to a solid world food policy.

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/

After #MeToo: Legal System Needs Change

October 17, 2018

Actions of individual women are a brave step forward, but a larger social movement is needed to bring justice for millions of not so privileged women.

In recent weeks, #MeToo protests have shaken up the media and Bollywood worlds, with one case – MJ Akbar’s – spilling into the political domain since he was an editor earlier but now graces the Modi govt. as a minister. The women who have come forward to name their tormentors are undoubtedly brave and have rendered a public service.

But there is a vast world beyond this where women lead lives of quiet submission to such predatory oppression. This world spans all spheres of life, from homes to educational institutions, to factories and fields, and offices. They are submissive because of deeply entrenched patriarchal ideas and systems from which individual rebellion is virtually impossible. They are dependant, fearsome and alone in their suffering.

It would be deeply unfair and inhuman to demand that they individually step forward in the manner of #MeToo. What is needed is a social response that rises up and protests against such injustice collectively. And, such protest has to have both men and women as partners in it.

One of the focuses of any collective protests has to be the mechanism of redressal that is currently made available through the police and courts. This aspect is not a solution to the whole issue of women’s subjugation, but it certainly helps in the fight for justice. Sexual harassment at the workplace is a specific category within the larger experience of violence by women.

And, it is here – in the way our legal justice system works for complaints of sexual harassment by women – that a fatal weakness exists. The women’s movement in India has repeatedly pointed out this, fought for a better system, but the more things change, the more they remain same. Have a look below.

The Law Against Sexual Harassment
After the Nirbhaya case in 2012, and the massive outrage it sparked, the Justice Verma Commission recommended a slew of changes in relevant laws in 2013. The govt. amplified section 354 (assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty) to include, among others, section 354A which spells out sexual harassment. Cases registered under this section have jumped by 25% between 2014 and 2016 as per NCRB.

Reported%20Incident.png

Prior to 2014, the generic s.354 was applicable. Total cases under this section (including the added sub-sections since 2014) have zoomed up by over 100% between 2010 and 2016. The other provision, s.509 (insult to modesty) have shown a slight dip because cases of sexual harassment are now going under section 354A.

Even as more women are registering their complaints about sexual harassment, the police is lagging behind – both, in registering cases (for which obviously there is no official data) and also in investigating and sending them onward to courts for trial. Several #MeToo complainants’ stories narrate the difficulty they had with police. As shown below, each year’s case load at the police station is increasing while the number of charge sheets filed is lagging far behind at just 67% in 2016 (23416 out of 34816 cases).

Police%20Station.png

When it comes to the courts, the situation is forbiddingly bleak. As shown below, 73,774 cases under section 354A were pending in courts in 2016, up from 47,844 in 2014. That’s a staggering jump of 54% in three years.

Completion of trials is even more abysmal. In 2016, trials were completed in only 10% of the pending cases – in 7665 out of 73,744. With this kind of record it is small wonder that women don’t have much faith in the legal system for getting them justice in cases of sexual harassment.

Court%20cases.png

And, as a result of all this delay, and probably indifferent investigation (hence weak prosecution), the conviction rate has been going down – in three years it has dipped from an already shockingly low of 34.5% to about 30%. In other words, two out of three accused in sexual harassment cases gets away scot free.

Conviction%20Rate.png

What all this shows is that the law is failing the people, it is not offering redressal, it is too limited in its ambit and its implementation is too discouraging, even hostile. This is what forces women who are better placed to adopt the social media for #MeToo. But for the rest of women, there is no such option.

This can change provided the larger social collective moves in defence of women who are survivors of sexual violence. Its demand will be for better laws more diligently implemented. But this social movement will also have to take up larger but inter-related issues of women’s employment, equal pay and other rights, along with the issue of violence because only then can real empowerment of women as part of all working people take place.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

“The film industry’s attitude gives the notion of a very patriarchal space”: Bina Paul

October 17, 2018

In Conversation with the Film Editor on the Women in Cinema Collective

In February last year, a Malayalam actress was abducted and molested by a group of men while returning from work. Following the police complaint she filed, the police found one of the leading Malayalam actor Dileep’s involvement in the abduction. WCC, a woman’s collective, was formed by a group of women from the Malayalam film industry last year after the fatal incident. One of the reasons behind the formation of this collective was to fight against discrimination women are subjected to by the powerful men of the industry. The Indian Cultural Forum and Peoples Dispatch interviewed Bina Paul, an award winning film editor and an active member of WCC, about taking up struggles of women actors in the Malayalam film industry, AMMA and more.

The Indian Cultural Forum and Peoples Dispatch interviewed Bina Paul, an award winning film editor and an active member of WCC, about taking up struggles of women actors in the Malayalam film industry, AMMA and more.

Indian Cultural Forum and Peoples Dispatch (ICF & PD): What is the ‘Women in Cinema Collective’ (WCC) and why do you think was it necessary to form such a collective?

Bina Paul (BP): Women in Cinema Collective (WCC), as the name suggests, is a collective of women in cinema. This collective is registered as part of a collective of women who are working in cinema. At the moment we are a core group of twenty women. This includes directors, assistant directors, technicians, artists, makeup artists etc.

The collective was started after an actress from the industry was abducted. While following the subsequent enquiry by the Kerala police, it was found that a colleague- actor was behind this incident. We were outraged at that moment and asked the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) to set up an enquiry on this matter as this incident happened between two colleagues belonging to the same fraternity. Our demands were not considered by the association and some of us decided to form a collective of women declaring our solidarity with the actress.
The conversation started when some of the female members in the film industry wanted to support the abducted actress for what she had gone through: molestation. While some of us were discussing this issue, we discovered that there are many larger issues within the film industry that come out of a lack of gender sensitivity and gender friendliness. Presently, sexual harassment is only one of the many problems in the industry. There is no system to redress if one has a complaint which is against the mandatory law that an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) must be set up in every field.

Another issue that we found was a lot of content and attitude problem. No one was listening or talking about such issues. The first thing that WCC did was to meet the Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. We requested him to initiate a study on gender issues. The government has set up a high level committee to study on gender and the study is still going on. They are preparing a report on this issue by talking to people about the problems they face in their daily lives because no such study has taken place earlier. Meanwhile, we have been standing in solidarity with the actress. We had discussions with the Artists association and they wanted to take back the accused which we outrightly objected against. We sternly believe that it was unethical to take back the accused to the association.

WCC is presently trying to raise awareness on gender issues. It has widely opened doors for many to talk about gender. For example, we found out that till now no one had ever asked a woman about her experiences of menstruation. Do they have any provision for that? Not usually. No one will talk about it. Even when you are menstruating there are no toilets for you, and perhaps no changing rooms either. Issues of services, maternity and a lot of other issues went either unaddressed or inadequately discussed.

Also, the film industry’s attitude gives the notion of a very patriarchal space. Women are seen just as incidental to the space and men participate more actively than women. All these and more issues have opened up after we formed WCC. We insist that if a director has two or three assistants, than one or two of them should be women. In the policy making body there has to be 50% women. WCC is not a redressive forum, but we are asking these questions so that women go to their organisations and talk about such issues.

ICF & PD: Can you brief us about some of the specific issues that the Malayalam film industry is facing?
BP: Malayalam film industry has nothing exceptional in it. It’s part of a larger film industry. We exist because our society gives us that space. But if we look at a larger level, we can see that there are certain things that cannot be asked or questioned like the basic facilities on a set. I myself have worked in the industry as an editor for many years and I know that there are a lot of issues in the industry. For instance, it is not a 9am -5pm job and therefore one almost always needs to work overtime. However, working till late at night can lead to many security issues for women. Any taxi driver may take you home late at night, but is that good enough for you as a woman? What if something goes wrong? Whom would you go to if something does happen? Here we see a lack of mechanism, because there isn’t one. Pejorative messages, emails, gestures, casting couch, inappropriate behavior on the set; these are just few instances of sexual harassment that a woman is subjected to. So, we need to form a redressal cell to solve and discuss these issues.

ICF & PD: How do you think the formation of WCC has raised gender issues in movies, since most of the films patronise women through a patriarchal view?
BP: Certainly, for the past few years, the issue on gender has been discussed widely. Unlike the early 80’s or 90’s, people are more exposed to the question of gender and especially the younger generation. As a cinema collective, we have opened up the gates for such discussion and certainly it’s bringing a lot of change in the industry. It’s good to see people respond to such a crucial topic.

First published on Indian Cultural Forum

Hate Speech, Polarisarion, NRC & Amit Shah: Must the SC Act ?

October 16, 2018

The Supreme Court must consider gagging Amit Shah from speaking on the National Register of Citizens: His venomous speeches have turned the exercise into a tool for communal polarisation in India, which reflects badly on the court that is monitoring the process.

Photo Courtesy: Moneycontrol

It is time Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi reins in Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah and his friends from vitiating the process of updating the National Register of Citizens for Assam, which aims to separate genuine Indian citizens from those the State defines as “illegal immigrants”. Through their venomous speeches they have turned the exercise into a tool for communal polarisation and terrorising Indians outside the northeastern state in a bid to gain votes.

Justice Gogoi has a reason to worry because he and Justice Rohinton F Nariman have been supervising the updating exercise. Even though there have been many claims of faulty exclusion from the National Register of Citizens, the process has acquired credibility precisely because the Supreme Court’s monitoring of it has been devoid of political motivations.

But this perception is likely to change, if it has not already, because of the manner in which Shah and the BJP have been invoking the National Register of Citizens to frame the undocumented immigrants issue in India. This comes at a time polls in five states – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram – are imminent. Ever since July 30, when the final draft of the National Register of Citizens was made public, Shah has been explicitly or implicitly crediting the decision to identify such immigrants to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

This is downright fiction. The exercise to update the National Register of Citizens in Assam – for the first time since 1951 – was because of a Supreme Court ruling in 2013. Modi and the BJP had not yet come to power then. Judges are not inclined to demand credit. But what is worrying is the gradual politicisation of the National Register of Citizenship updating process.

For instance, on August 4, at a public rally in Rajsamand district of poll-bound Rajasthan, Shah said, “The BJP government has undertaken the screening of illegal Bangladeshis in the country but Congress is opposing so that their vote-bank remains intact.” He, however, also said at the rally, “There is a Supreme Court order and we will ensure it is implemented and they are identified.”

But it is not the BJP government but the bureaucracy, working under the supervision of the Supreme Court, which is engaged in the exercise of updating the National Register of Citizens. Nor is it correct to describe the 40 lakh people who did not make it to the final draft of the National Register of Citizens as “illegal Bangladeshis”.

For one, they all have yet another chance to prove their citizenship before the register is finalised. It is likely that the figure of 40 lakh could go down dramatically. Second, those who fail to make it to even to the final National Register for Citizens will still not become “illegal immigrants”. In each case, that status will have to be judicially determined.

But such legal subtleties are lost on Shah. In Gangapur town of Rajasthan on September 22, Shah was reported as saying, “The BJP government brought NRC [National Register of Citizens] and prima facie identified nearly 40 lakh illegal immigrants.”

Depending on what Shah speaks and where, it could very well appear to his listeners that the Supreme Court’s role in the updating of National Register for Citizens was either nominal or subservient to that of the government. Or, worse, both were working in tandem.

Us vs them

This should worry the chief justice because Shah has fashioned the National Register of Citizens into a veritable instrument for both terrorising and polarising people. In doing so, he has violated the very spirit of the observation that the bench of Justice Gogoi and Justice Nariman had made after the final draft of National Register for Citizens was released. They had said, “Court would like to observe that what has been submitted is a complete draft NRC [National Register of Citizens] which, naturally being a draft, cannot be the basis for any action by any authority.”

For sure, the Modi government has not taken any action on the basis of the draft. Nevertheless, in language both menacing and virulent, Shah has laid out a template for what that action would be in the future. For instance, in the rally at Gangapur, Shah said: “The infiltrators have eaten the country like termites.”

The only way to tackle termites is to eradicate them. The use of the word “termites” conjures a violent imagery, suggestive of the liquidation of human beings as a solution even though it is possible Shah did not literally mean it. Equating illegal immigrants with termites certainly dehumanises them. But it was not a one-off lapse. Shah repeated the word “termites” again at a rally in Madhya Pradesh, another poll-bound state. “While you [farmers] feed the people, they [soldiers] guard our borders,” Shah told the crowd at Ratlam on October 6. “But infiltrators are like termites, which eat away at the country’s security. They need to be removed.”

The National Register of Citizens is fast emerging as the most potent weapon of “othering” segments of Indians – that is, treating people of one group as outsiders and enemies. This is discernible from an analysis of Shah’s public speech in Delhi on September 23. “There are illegal infiltrators in Delhi,” he said. “Are they not a problem, tell me? Shouldn’t we remove these illegal infiltrators? Illegal infiltrators in crores have entered the country.” In Shah’s imagination, the 40 lakh people who could not make it to the final draft of the National Register of Citizens for Assam have multiplied to crores of infiltrators who slip through the borders to settle in different parts of the country. In Delhi at least, Shah described illegal infiltrators as those who “throw bombs and kill innocent citizens”.

Shah resorts to ambiguity of language because undocumented immigrants have never been perceived as a demographic or economic threat in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh or Delhi. His description of undocumented immigrants consequently becomes an innuendo against Indian Muslims, some of whom have been convicted in terror activities in the past. His references are in the nature of dog’s whistle that seeks to arouse the majority community’s suspicion of Muslims. Alarmingly, in Delhi, Shah again resorted to the termite imagery. “Like termites, they have eaten the future of the country,” he said. “Shouldn’t they be uprooted?”

The issue of undocumented immigrants has a long history. But what is new is the projection of the National Register of Citizens as a magical mechanism that was not available earlier to sift such immigrants from genuine citizens. Shah is implying that it is imperative to introduce the mechanism across India as there are, according to him, “crores of infiltrators” in the country.

It is this twisted logic that has had Haryana Chief Minister ML Khattarpromise that the National Register of Citizens will be updated for his state too. This will certainly terrify Haryana’s Muslims, who comprise just about 7% of the state’s population. Economically and educationally backward, their citizenship will be imperilled in the absence of requisite documents to prove it. Unlike Assam, the people of Haryana do not have a tradition of maintaining documents dating decades ago. However, the Hindus of Haryana will not fear the National Register of Citizens because their names will become a foolproof guarantee of their citizenship status. Haryana is not a border state. After Partition, unlike Assam, it has not reported an influx of Hindus from Pakistan or Bangladesh. From this perspective, the National Register of Citizens has become a tool for profiling and tormenting Muslims.

Supreme Court must act

The Supreme Court has been understandably sensitive on the National Register of Citizens issue. For instance, when the coordinator of the National Register of Citizens, Prateek Hajela, told the Indian Express in August that it was premature to describe as infiltrators the 40 lakh people who could not make it to the final draft, Justice Gogoi and Justice Nariman severely reprimanded him. “We should be holding both of you [the other person was registrar general Sailesh] guilty of contempt and sending both of you to jail. Whatever you say they all reflect on us,” the justices said.

Shah and leaders of the BJP are not officers of the court. Yet there can be little doubt that their pronouncements have brought the National Register of Citizens into disrepute, which, as it was in the case of Hajela, also reflects on the Supreme Court. Might not Chief Justice Gogoi take suo motu notice of Shah’s comments to rein him in from turning the National Register of Citizens into a darkled symbol of the future awaiting the nation?

Courtesy: Scroll.in

Meet the First, Unspoken of, Targets of the Police, Post Bhima Koregaon: Dalits & Workers

October 16, 2018

On January 12, 2018, two weeks after Bhima Koregaon Yalgar Parishad program in Pune, the anti-terrorist squad of Maharashtra police picked up four workers of Reliance Infrastructure, one contractor from the same company and a casual worker. Their houses in the slum were raided in the midnight for hours before the arrest. A union activist was picked up a day before. The ATS squad questioned several other workers from the same company in the following days and finally arrested one more person from Reliance Infrastructure on 25th January. Interestingly, all the eight arrestees are migrants from Andhra/Telangana region. All of them have been charged under draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

The arrests of the activists in June and August, allegedly in connection to Bhima Koregaon triggered much controversy across India, leading to the Supreme Court of India to finally interfere in the case. The Pune police have been flaunting a set of letters which they claim to have confiscated from those arrested. However, the authenticity of the letters makes it hard to believe any Maoist conspiracy. The case of reliance workers, after 10 months of their arrest with no media attention and scrutiny of the police excess, is in limbo.

Not many are aware of this case against the workers, which is the first case charged under UAPA in connection to the Bhima Koregaon violence. Several news reports appeared on the next day on this raid on worker’s home claiming theseto be the ‘arrest of seven Maoists in Mumbai.’ However, as the case unfolded it becameclear that the arrests had no connection to the Bhima Koregaon program except for using the claim for media attention, just like in the case of recent arrests.

Of the eight arrested, the five workers of Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. Satyanarayan Rajayya Karrela, Babu Shankar Buchayya Vanguri, Shankarayya Lingayya Gunde, Ravi Rajanna Maarampalli and Saidul Narsimha Singapanga are the founders and committee members of the Mumbai Electric Employees Union as well (MEEU).

The wives of the arrested have been frequenting the Mumbai City & Sessions Court and the High Court for the past 10 months – still in shock and unable to comprehend what and why has this conspired with them. “There were about 15-20 of them (policemen and women) in civil dress. I tried to stop them. But the women among them pushed me and came inside. They pulled out everything in the house and rummaged through all our belongings, making a mess. It was only at the end they told us that they are from police.” said Rajitha, wife of Sathyanarayana.  The ATS did not show them any arrest warrant or a notice justifying the raid. They were told that the men would be released by morning after questioning. But an FIR (CR No. 02 of 2018 at ATS Police Station, Kalachowki, Mumbai) was registered on January 13, 2018. They have been charged with a total of 11 charges including serious sections of the UAPA as also forgery (an ordinary crime under IPC).

The police have submitted a chagre sheet running into 5000 pages in the court. But MM Abhyankar (treasurer of MEEU) who has gone through the charge sheet says all the charges are either baseless or framed. He says, “As per the charge sheet, the union activist named Krishna is associated with the banned CPI Maoist. He has helped few Maoists to get medical treatment 10 years back when they came to city injured.  The charge sheet says that the arrested workers have been helping him”.

Contradicting the narrative, the charge sheet also says that the workers know Krishna only for the past 3 years. “Even if Krishna has helped some Maoists to help medical treatment 10 years ago, how are these workers (now wrongfully charged) supposed to know about it?” Abhyankar also explains says that the entire charge sheet is full of such un-corroborated stories. The police have listed literature like pamphlets and notices which call to fight for oppressed Dalits and to organise unorganised workers as ‘objectionable literature’ in the charge sheet.

Another person named Prabhakar Machha, a school teacher by profession, and a close associate and sympathiser of workers’ union, very respected in his area, used to translate English literature into Telugu for workers; was also picked up on the night of January 12, but was released later and was not arrested. His is a truly tragic case. The police continued to repeatedly visit his house and interrogate him for hours, and he finally committed suicide on January 23, 2018 (eleven days later).

One of the families thus targeted had to go back to their village in Andhra since the landlord (in Mumbai) asked them to vacate their shanty due to the frequent visits of the ATS squad! Of the 5 families, only one woman is employed, she works as a housemaid. The others are meeting the ends with the help of their relatives. They say even the relatives are not well off enough to send them money to meet the ends of the families living in a city like Mumbai.

The police have told the media that the posters of the Bhima Koregaon were found in the homes of these workers. But Bhima Koregaon posters could be found from anyone who is inclined towards the Dalit movement in Maharashtra. Lakhs of Dalit Bahujans visit Bhima Koregaon every year, and since this was the 200 year anniversary, multiple organisers had planned extended celebrations. Some of these workers have also visited Bhima Koregaon on December 31, a day before the violence occurred. But even this is only one among the hundred charges in the charge sheet alleging that these workers have Maoists links.

“The police told the court that they are Maoists and living with false identities! But the lawyers appeared for them showed the proof that they were regular employees of Reliance Energy and that they were members of a registered trade union, Mumbai Electric Employees Union, having permanent addresses, Aadhar and PAN cards and being employed in service for 5 – 15 years,” said Susan Abraham, one of the lawyers representing the case.

The stage is now set for framing of charges before the trial. Bail applications were filed in the session’s court which were also rejected. So now bail petitions are pending in the High Court.  Chances are weighed heavily against them, given the fact that draconian sections of the UAPA have been applied, a formidably long charge sheet stretching into 5,000 pages has been filed,  all of which will work to influence the court into assessing the case serious as a prima facie ‘serious’ case. Bail therefore seems a distant dream.

These workers from Reliance Infrastructure have been also active, both socially and politically, outside the Union as well. They have fought for the rights of all the workers to demand for necessary safety equipments while working, gloves, uniforms etc. Since, all of the workers arrested, along with other workers of the company, have been working for nearly two decades, they have been demanding permanency in the company. A court case articulating this demand has been filed since 2009 and is currently pending. “One can’t rule out the possibility of the company’s role behind the case. But we don’t know who took the initiative – the police or the company”, indicated N Vasudevan, the president of the Mumbai Electric Employees Union.

The ploy used against the Reliance Workers is similar to the more publicised case of the arrested activists and lawyers too. Despite the fanfare on television, the police has not cited any ‘Maoist-connection’ or link to the ‘Bhima Koregaon gathering on Janauary 1, in the court.

Is this one more ploy, like in the case of the activists and journalists, of the police playing to the tune of their political masters? All these workers, like the others have been committed to working with the marginalised. They are people who are known for their extensive work among the marginalised of the country. Like Sudha, Gadling or Arun who are lawyers representing many crucial cases in the court! In fact, Arun Ferreira is one of the lawyers representing the Reliance Workers case in the court till his arrest in August 2018.

“This is the way in which the police and the government is trying to divert the whole issue of attacks on Dalits by the upper caste Hindutva forces led by Ekbote and Bhide. In order to cover up,
they have put up this inconclusive narrative in all these cases.” added Susan.

“We cook one vegetable and the entire family eats it for 2 to 3 days. We don’t know how long we are going to live like this”, added one family member of an incarcerated worker, in tears. Shocked by the arrest of her son,  the mother of one of the workers passed away in two days after he has been taken into custody. All five families have children, from toddlers to school going children. They do not know where their fathers are. School going children had to drop out of their tuition centers as the fees are pending for months now. Ten months down the line, the families of these workers are clueless. There only hope is that their husbands might come home soon.

According to reports from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB),two-thirds of those falsely charged in UAPA cases are subsequently released. This exposes the falsification of the investigation and prosecution. This is a high acquittal rate, even compared other criminal cases. The trials also take years to conclude. Through this inordinately long time of prosecution, personal freedom is denied, since under the UAPA, there are strict conditions for bail. The fact that there are no penalties for false prosecutions encourages the police to register such motivated cases even when they have no substantial evidence.

This has happened in a number of cases under UAPA, including that against Arun Ferreira in the past. If the case made out against these workers of Reliance Infrastructure Ltd turn out to be false, would the criminal justice system of the country ever compensate for the lost years in the life of these extremely poor and marginalised families?

1200 Kashmiri students threaten to leave Aligarh Muslim University

October 16, 2018

Three students were slapped with sedition charges and suspended for holding a funeral meeting (Namaz-e-Janaza) for slain Hizbul Mujahideen militant Manan Wani, incidentally also an AU scholar at the university.

Aligarh: 1200 Kashmiri students studying at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in UP will leave the campus for their homes on October 17 if sedition charges against three of them are not dropped.

Three students were slapped with sedition charges and suspended for holding a prayer meeting for slain Hizbul Mujahideen militant Manan Wani, incidentally also an AU scholar at the university. The authorities that that was a video of three students shouting anti-India slogans at the gathering.

Speaking to Sabrang India, Sharjeel Usmani, a non Kashmiri student at AMU and witness to the incident, said that the funeral meeting was held to offer ‘Namaz- e-Janaza’ which offers prayers to the Almighty to forgive the sins of the deceased, have mercy on the soul and pardon the mistakes the person may have committed in this life. It is a prayer which is offered at every funeral.

He said that some students along with him had assembled in the campus lawn to peacefully to offer prayers but couldn’t do it as the proctor had arrived and dismissed them. The meeting was disrupted and later on Oct 12, 9 people were slapped with suspension and sedition charges out of which three were current students and others were graduates who were employed elsewhere. He also said that the authorities suspended them without due process or any proof of their wrongdoing. The students were not given a chance to defend themselves either.

“The media came up with headlines like ‘AU scholar joins Hizbul.’ They made the matters worse. He didn’t join the militant outfit because he was an AU scholar. He must have joined for the cause and his Kashmiri identity. We had assembled peacefully on Oct 12, a day after the news of his death came. We were lathi-charged and charges of sedition were slapped on three students and were later suspended,” he said.

“I and all other non-Kashmiri students at the university are positive that if the charges are not dropped, we will not let our Kashmiri students leave the campus. If they are forced, we will leave with them. What is happening is undemocratic and unethical,” he said.

Mannan Bashir Wani was among two Hizbul Mujahideen militants killed in the encounter in Handwara town last week.

In a letter to AMU vice-chancellor, AMU students union former vice-president Sajjad Rathar said, “If this vilification does not stop, more than 1,200 Kashmiri students will leave for their homes in the Kashmir Valley on October 17 as a last option.”

“Terming the slapping of sedition charges as “vendetta”, Mr Rathar said, “The option of holding Namaaz-e-Janaza (prayer meeting) in absentia was dropped after the AMU authorities did not give the permission. If no prayer meeting was held as confirmed by all official agencies, the slapping a case of sedition against three Kashmiri students is simply a vendetta, harassment and denial of justice,” reported NDTV.

“The letter was handed over to AMU Proctor Mohsin Khan in presence of large number of Kashmiri students at his office on Saturday night. Aligarh’s Senior Superintendent of Police Ajai Sahni said police took the action (on October 12) after a video surfaced, showing the three Kashmiri students raising “anti-India” slogans. “Police have filed an FIR against Wasim Malik, Abdul Mir and one unnamed person. They have been identified on the basis of a video recording,” he said in the report.

AMU Spokesman Prof Shafay Kidwai said show cause notices have been issued to nine students for trying to hold an unauthorised gathering Thursday.

“Some AMU students from Kashmir had on Thursday (October 11) gathered near Kennedy Hall on the campus to hold funeral prayers for Wani, following which the varsity staff and the students union leaders had rushed to the spot and tried to stop them. A heated exchange erupted between the students union leaders and the Kashmiri students and they finally moved out of the area, Kidwai said, adding three Kashmiri students were suspended for trying to hold the “unlawful” gathering,” the report added.

JNUSU expressed their solidarity with the students, “Are Kashmiri students still looked as enemies or anti-nationals that every time a Kashmiri raises a question or concern, the state has to invoke sedition? Is there no space for dialogue and reconciliation left. Are we in a state of war that the authorities or the state will always muzzle the voices of harmless students instead of engaging in any dialogue?” they asked in their statement.

“Students studying in campuses across do not need militarily or draconian interventions. There is a need of dialogue to address the issues, not by ruining careers of students, by imposing sending on them, to prison them under sedition laws. This is used only to incite hatred and violence,” they said.

AMUSU president Faizul Hasan had told PTI that he had always championed the cause of freedom of speech but any act of treason or terror was unacceptable to the students’ union.

Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik assured the safety of Kashmiri students in AMU on Sunday and said that his administration had discussed it with the Uttar Pradesh government.

The Union Ministry of Human Resource Development has asked Aligarh Muslim University for a report on the incident.

27-year-old Wani was pursuing a PhD course in Allied Geology at AMU. He had quit the university and joined Hizbul in January this year. He was killed in an encounter at Shatgund village in Handwara area of north Kashmir’s Kupwara district on Thursday.

Full Text of JNUSU Statement:

It’s very unfortunate and highly deplorable that universities are now being turned into war zones. The kind of vilification that is witnessed on AMU recently, is now getting reflected on the Kashmiri students who are studying in AMU by the mainstream media. It is very disturbing.

In a secular, democratic republic, freedom of expression is being muzzled en masse. It’s a concern for all the individuals who believe in the democratic institutions and the constitution.

University is a space where freedom of thought and expression have to be cultivated. Instead of that, we are seeing an atmosphere of fear and hatred is being created across the country.

The way mob violence has been unleashed on the Kashmiri students’ peaceful and democratic gathering is a very unfortunate sign of how students who have already been going through a lot of violence. They are being coerced into silence and fear. They had just gathered to have a discussion about the prevailing conditions in Kashmir and the dreadful situation that is also affecting them. Rather than allowing them to express their anxieties and concerns about the state of affairs in Kashmir, they were intimidated by violence.

It needs to be asked if the Kashmiri students do not have the democratic right to express; a right guaranteed by Indian constitution itself? Is it a crime to express their concern for the betterment of the conditions of the people of their native place?

Are Kashmiri students still looked as enemies or anti-nationals that every time a Kashmiri raises a question or concern, the state has to invoke sedition? Is there no space for dialogue and reconciliation left. Are we in a state of war that the authorities or the state will always muzzle the voices of harmless students instead of engaging in any dialogue?

The law of sedition is a living example of the dark colonial rule which is unfortunately followed till now. In almost all cases in the recent past, we have witnessed how sedition is being misused to scuttle voices.

Students studying in campuses across do not need militarily or draconian interventions. There is a need of dialogue to address the issues, not by ruining careers of students, by imposing sending on them, to prison them under sedition laws. This is used only to incite hatred and violence.

The charges of sedition and show cause notice to students must be revoked immediately. The govt of J&K, the Central govt, the civil society, and media have to handle this situation with sensitivity, not with an iron hand to bulldoze certain agenda of the ruling party at the centre.

The concerns that they are raising with regard to their safety of family back home or their safety on the campus are a genuine concern of common citizens.

Universities are the spaces of a battle of ideas where debate, dissent and discussion should prevail. These should not be spaces of coercion, control, intimidation, and violence.

Let hundred flowers bloom…
In support and solidarity with the Kashmiri students of Aligarh Muslim University.

Sd/-
Aejaz Ahmad Rather
General Secretary
JNUSU

Clashes erupt between two groups in Adampur, Varanasi

October 16, 2018

It was said that the fight erupted when a few people from one group played tunes on a loud music system and when crossing the opposing group.

कज्जाकपुरा रेलवे क्रासिंग के समीप शुक्रवार की रात दो समुदायों में हुई मारपीट व पथराव के मामले में पुलिस ने पार्षद समेत 21 के खिलाफ मुकदमा दर्ज किया है।

Varanasi: Clashes erupted between two groups in Adampur, Varanasi late Sunday night. According to a report in Hindustan Samvad, five people were injured in the clash between two groups near Hanuman Fatak.

It was reported that affected people cornered the Adampur Police station after the event which prompted Assistant Deputy Minister of city Vinay Singh and SP Dinesh Kumar to arrive at the scene and get the situation under control. The injured filed a case against 20 unidentified people on Monday.

It was said that the fight erupted when a few people from one group played tunes on a loud music system and when crossing the opposing group. When the other group confronted them, violence ensued. People suffered head injuries and others in the neighbourhood joined in large number thereon. The police were unable to control the mob.

A statement has been recorded of Peeli Kothi resident, Mohammad Asif who named 20 unidentified persons along with Ram babu, Shubham, Sonu and Raj. The accused were charged under many sections including intent to murder, violence and intimidation. The police have promised strict action.

It is not yet known if this incident is related to an Oct 6 event where two groups fought on the Kajjakpura Railway Crossing where the aforementioned SP Dinesh Kumar had to bring police from 18 stations to control the stone pelting mob.

Amendments to RTI Act will spell doom for good governance: RTI Commissioner

October 16, 2018

RTI Commissioner Dr M Sridhar Acharyulu, the information commissioner of India, opposed the proposed amendments to the RTI Act.

RTI Commissioner Shridhar Acharyulu (Ravindra Joshi/HT PHOTO)

Pune: RTI Commissioner Dr M Sridhar Aharyulu accused the government of interfering with the independence of CIC by proposing amendments to the RTI ACT.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) is an authorised body under the RTI Act which was established in 2005 under the government of India. It acted upon complaints from people who didn’t get their complaints addressed through due process.

Acharyulu, the information commissioner of India, opposed the proposed amendments to the RTI Act. He was speaking at an event organised by the NGO Moneylife Foundation and Pune Union of Working Journalists at the Patrakar Bhavan in Pune on Saturday.

Acharyulu said an RTI application was like a “Rs 10 Public Interest Litigation (PIL)” as it allowed citizens to fight for their rights. “Article 226 of the Indian Constitution allows any citizen to approach the courts to file a PIL if their fundamental rights are violated. However, this option is out of reach for many, which is why RTI comes into play,” he said in a report by The Indian Express.

“The two amendments proposed to the RTI Act would be detrimental to it. The amendments propose to control the term as well as salaries of information commissioners, which amounted to challenging the independence of the commissionerates,” the CIC said in the report.

In a report by Hindustan Times, it was reported that he hit out at the Union Government. He said, “The amendments proposed by the central government in the RTI Act, verily mitigate the power of the commission. By amending the existing act, the government is trying to reduce the status and the power of the central information commission.”

“In the bureaucratic hierarchy, if the CIC commissioner is below the secretary, he cannot pass the order to provide information sought through an RTI. These changes will in a sense enervate the power of the commission. Central government has no authority to make any changes in this regard and what they have proposed is absolutely wrong,” he said in the report.

“Acharyulu also expressed his astonishment over the Supreme Court asking the Centre to submit details of the decision-making process of the Rafale deal. He said, ‘I am surprised that now the Supreme Court has asked the government for the information regarding the decision-making process of the Rafale deal. Technical details of the deal are not important. Besides, why should the SC even ask for this information in the first place.’ Giving information is a symbol of good governance, however, when the government does not want to give information, it uses all the possible clauses to avoid the situation and refuses to give the information eventually, he added, referring to the Rafale deal,” the report said.

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1200 Kashmiri students threaten to leave Aligarh Muslim University

Three students were slapped with sedition charges and suspended for holding a funeral meeting (Namaz-e-Janaza) for slain Hizbul Mujahideen militant Manan Wani, incidentally also an AU scholar at the university.

Clashes erupt between two groups in Adampur, Varanasi

It was said that the fight erupted when a few people from one group played tunes on a loud music system and when crossing the opposing group.

Amendments to RTI Act will spell doom for good governance: RTI Commissioner

RTI Commissioner Dr M Sridhar Acharyulu, the information commissioner of India, opposed the proposed amendments to the RTI Act.

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