How the global women’s movement shaped the UN international development agenda

March 7, 2018

Amid conservative backlash against women’s rights, how did feminist advocates ensure that the sustainable development goals focused on gender equality?

International Women’s Day 2015 in New York City. Photo: IWHC.

Women’s rights are under attack around the globe, with progress threatened in many countries. Yet feminist organisations continue to fight back, mobilising and forming new alliances. At this challenging moment, much can be learned from the success of the global women’s movement which profoundly influenced the United Nations’ current international development agenda.

Agreed in 2015 by 193 governments, this agenda guides global development policies, programs, and financing until 2030. Its 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) and 169 targets focus on challenges including poverty, climate change, world peace, and gender equality. Unlike the previous millennium development goals, women’s rights underpin much of this agenda.

Amid conservative backlash against women’s rights, how did feminist advocates ensure that the SDGs focused on gender equality and other issues critically important to women? What strategies did the women’s movement use to influence this agenda?

Last year, the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) published a study – “Power Lessons: Women’s Advocacy and the 2030 Agenda” – on precisely these questions. Along with a related, short film, it documents and reflects on the years of analysis, coordination, alliance-building, and engagement with policy-makers that went into shaping the agreement.

UN negotiations have challenging, fast-paced dynamics and are often New York-based, limiting the participation of small and local women’s rights groups particularly in the Global South. This is one of the challenges that the Women’s Major Group (WMG) – a coalition of more than 600 women’s organisations and networks from around the world – sought to tackle.

The group, which is the focus of IWHC’s study, restructured its leadership to include regional representation, and raised money for women from the Global South to travel to attend the SDG talks. Online organising enabled virtual participation. One WMG member said: “It became easy because people felt included and valued for their contributions.”

High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) Side Event – A Feminist Accountability Framework: What the World Needs to Achieve Gender Equality and All the Sustainable Development Goals. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown/Flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Some rights reserved.

The WMG also brought together activists and organisations working across different issues and representing diverse peoples. They embraced others’ concerns, learning from each others’ areas of expertise. One participant said: “This is the story of the beauty of engaging more and more organisations and seeing what the added value is and how different people of different networks work.”

More than three years before the 2030 agenda was finalised, women’s groups held regional and global strategy meetings to start linking issues, prioritising demands, and developing clear, unified positions.

“The women’s movement pulled something off which a lot of people would have thought wasn’t possible, which was to actually develop one single common platform of women’s rights,” said another participant. “It covered every single issue that we knew was in play. That was extremely hard to do.”

The WMG also skillfully mapped allies in government and UN agencies, and developed technical language for negotiators to use in talks. “We talked to every government that was present in these negotiations to say, ‘This is what we want, and this is why it’s so important,’” said one member.

“We talked to every government that was present in these negotiations to say, ‘This is what we want, and this is why it’s so important.”

Lessons we can draw from this experience include: the significance of building transparent and inclusive structures and processes; organising early; prioritising demands; developing clear, unified positions; identifying champions; building relationships; and putting persistent pressure on decision-makers.

Of course, the women’s movement also faced a number of challenges. The IWHC study for instance identified fierce opposition on sexual and reproductive rights, as well as resistance to progressive demands related to global financial structures and systems.

Women’s groups had to balance bold demands with political pragmatism – working within the boundaries of what governments might realistically accept, while still pushing the agenda as far as possible. Despite continual fundraising, limited budgets were an ongoing constraint.

Women described solidarity and advocacy on the SDGs as an example of what can happen when feminist organisations come together to use a political opportunity to fight for rights and social justice. The impact they had shows the power and necessity of strong women’s rights movements.

The 2030 agenda is not perfect. But gender equality is woven throughout its goals and targets.

Amid volatile geopolitics and narrowing space for civil society, feminist advocates will need to sustain the intersectional approach they took to influence the SDGs. Inevitably, governments will “cherry pick” the most politically expedient goals and targets to focus on.

Some states are already backtracking on critical issues, such as sexual and reproductive health and rights, property rights, and challenges to the economic status quo globally and nationally.

At the same time, some governments are taking action and reallocating funds, showing political will to implement the SDGs. Feminists should take advantage of such opportunities and push to ensure that the goals are realised.

They must continue to work together, champion each other’s issues, and monitor SDG implementation at the local level. In the words of one advocate: “We’ve built our solidarity in ways that others haven’t… we should recognise that, and figure out how to sustain that power.”

Michelle Truong is a program assistant at the International Women’s Health Coalition and works on the Learning, Monitoring, and Evaluation team to bolster evidence-based advocacy and programming.

Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net

Harvesting The Rain: How One Kerala District Is Solving Its Water Problem

March 7, 2018

Thrissur: Jawab Valiyadath folded his blue lungi (sarong) around his waist and rolled up his sleeve as he reached to open a plastic tap near the sheet-metal fence that surrounds his house. The plastic pipe that stretched from his terrace to the fence rumbled. “It has been a tough year. Around here, wells dried up or water turned yellow and saline due to scanty rainfall,” Valiyadath recalled. “Recharging my well during the rains helped save water for our daily needs,” he said as water gushed out onto the dry sandy soil.

Well water availability has been falling across India, and in Kerala, it fell by 10 percentage points to 62% in the decade ending 2011. In 2008, the district administration of Thrissur initiated Mazhapolima, a scheme to recharge wells through rooftop rainwater harvesting. Over a decade, the scheme has benefitted more than 100,000 people and its success has prompted the state government to extend it to all districts.

A construction worker, 45-year-old Valiyadath, his wife Zeenath, and their three teenage boys live in the coastal Padiyur panchayat of Kerala’s Thrissur district. They have benefited from the district administration’s Mazhapolima scheme, through which villagers were provided a 75% subsidy to install rooftop rainwater harvesting systems (worth Rs 4,500). Since 2008, close to 30,000 units have been installed, benefitting 100,000 people. Officials estimate that many more people have installed units on their own, although data are not available.

As per a February 2013 impact assessment report, about 78% of respondents in the coastal and midland area reported a “significant improvement in the groundwater availability”.

Cycles of plenty and scarcity

Every year, from February until the monsoon arrives in June, Thrissur faces water scarcity. Proximity to the sea causes salt water ingress, limiting the depth to which families like the Valiyadaths can dig borewells for water. Shallower, open dug wells have therefore been an important source of water traditionally.

However, poor maintenance has put many wells into disuse while rainfall has been getting increasingly erratic. These factors, along with the loss of traditional waterways, drainage systems, wells and ponds, have led to scarcity of water in the dry season.

The state now faces an extended dry season from February until the end of May. In the decade ending 2011, household well-water availability in Kerala fell by 10 percentage points to 62%.

This mirrors the situation in the rest of the country–average well-water levels in January 2016 were lower than the average between 2006 and 2015 across India, IndiaSpend reported in November 2016. Only 35% of wells showed any rise in water level, while 64% showed a decline.

As per the United Nations, an area with an annual per capita availability of less than 1,700 cubic metres (m3) of water is considered ‘water-stressed’; less than 1,000 m3, ‘water scarce’.

In 2011, per capita water availability in India was estimated to be 1,545 m3, making it water stressed, IndiaSpend reported in December 2017 based on an assessment by the water ministry. Availability was expected to decline further to 1,341 m3 by 2025 and to 1,140 m3 in 2050, which would make the country severely water-stressed.

In Thrissur, 450,000 wells served the three-fourths of its three million population who were dependent on well water, which averages to four people per well. Yet, families such as Valiyadath’s faced water scarcity for months every year.

The Thrissur district administration, under the stewardship of the then Collector V.K. Baby, decided to initiate Mazhapolima (Bounty of Rain), a water harvesting programme, in 2008. The idea was to artificially recharge groundwater by harvesting rooftop rainwater directly into dugwells.

Dugwells: Disuse, and revival

Traditionally used to access groundwater, dug wells have rapidly fallen into disuse. In a little over two decades to 2014, the number of dugwells reduced by 9%, from 9.6 million to 8.7 million across 661 districts of India, according to the 5th Minor Irrigation Census.

Meanwhile, with groundwater becoming scarce in shallow aquifers, the number of deep tubewells (depth of 70 metres or more with discharge of 100-200 m3 per hour) increased by 86%, from 1.4 million to 2.6 million between 2006-07 and 2013-14, the irrigation census showed.

As one of the southern-most states in mainland India, Kerala is among the first to receive the monsoon (southwest) rains. The state is estimated to receive nearly 3,000 millimetres (mm) of rainfall annually. By comparison, Gujarat’s Kachchh district, among the driest regions of the country, receives 378.2 mm, 1/10th of Kerala’s despite being geographically larger.

Yet, Kerala was declared drought-hit in April 2017. It received only 33% of normal rainfall from June to December the previous year, as Scroll.in reported in April 2017. Between 1951 and 2010, the annual and monsoonal rainfall decreased on average by 1.43 mm and 2.42 mm per year, respectively, according to this report by the Indian Meteorological Department.

Groundwater had been the prime source of water to meet the domestic needs of more than 80% of rural and 50% of urban population, according to the Environment Information Centre. Water scarcity due to inefficient water management, particularly poor maintenance of dug wells, has affected vast numbers among Kerala’s 33 million population.

“Ever since government programmes ensured piped water supply in the 1970s, people have forgotten to protect wells in homesteads,” Jos C. Raphael, Secretary of the Mazhapolima scheme, told IndiaSpend, “Piped supply has reduced drudgery, but the loss of traditional waterways, drainage systems, wells and ponds, and erratic rainfall have led to a serious water scarcity problem in Kerala.”

Raphael and his team have been instrumental in engaging the community to take up recharge of wells through rainwater harvesting in Thrissur.

How Thrissur got it right

Mazhapolima has been implemented all across Thrissur district, including its highlands, midlands and coastal parts. Nearly 35% of the units have been installed in homes located in coastal regions and 32% each in lowlands and highlands. The remaining one percent have been installed in institutions like police stations, government schools and panchayats.

Rainwater harvesting units are of two types: One with a filter made of sand, charcoal and pebbles; and the other with a nylon or cloth filter.

In each unit, plastic pipes direct rooftop rainwater through a filter tank, before directing it to open wells. The initial gush of water is let out to avoid any contaminants or dirt from mixing with the well water. This water percolates into the soil too, and is not wasted.

One unit is estimated to cost Rs 4,500, of which the government pays 75% and the beneficiary pays the rest (Rs 1,125). Funds from ongoing government programmes such as the Integrated Watershed Management Programme, the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the district disaster management fund have been deployed. The Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation and private donors have also contributed.

In 2012, the Vellangallur block in Thrissur decided to pilot a cluster approach. Since numerous panchayats fall under the larger block, it decided to set up a lottery system, and Padiyur village was chosen from the lot. The panchayat utilised Rs 1 lakh from its ‘plan fund’–decided by the panchayat at the beginning of the year–to install units in 38 homes, one of which belonged to Valiyadath.

When the Valiyadath family moved to Thrissur in 2008, the water crisis was severe. “I used to walk several kilometres carrying pots to fill water at a public stand-post or the well near it. We needed at least five pots a day,” Zeenath Valiyadath said. An average pot of the kind Zeenath talked about carries 15 litres. The 12th Five Year Plan aimed to provide at least 55 litres per person per day in rural areas.

Jawab and Zeenath Valiyadath are among the beneficiaries of Mazhapolima, a district administration scheme that provides subsidies on rainwater harvesting kits for recharging dug wells. Zeenath no longer has to travel long distances to fetch water.

A borewell that Valiyadath installed in his house after the drought of 2017 struck water at 30 feet. “Beyond that fresh water will mix with saline water,” he explained, adding that the water recharging activity has made the groundwater more suitable for domestic use.

Not too far from the Valiyadath household, V.V. Laila, 61, lives alone. “After my mother passed, I, being the eldest, looked after my siblings. I remember carrying my younger sister and a pot of water from the well at the same time,” she said. “I’ve had to go through a lot to source water in the past.”

Living alone, her need for water is minimal and she does not have a piped water connection. “I use water from the well here for non-drinking water requirements. For drinking needs, I use the well close by,” she said.

V.V. Laila, 61, lives alone. Although water in her well turns turbid during the dry season, the Mazhapolima scheme has ensured that the well does not dry up. She uses this water for non-drinking purposes during the summer.

The well-water is yellowish, which shows the presence of iron. “Before the rain, I ensure that I clean the well. I place the chair on the steps leading to the porch to clean,” she said, adding that during the rains, the well water clears up.

As per this February 2013 impact assessment report, about 78% of respondents in the coastal and midland area, as we said, reported a “significant improvement in the groundwater availability”. The results have been less visible in the highlands, where 68% of respondents said the difference was “minimal”, a result the report blamed on the topography of the area. “[D]ue to the moderate to steep slopes and the porous nature of the formation the recharged groundwater may drain very fast to the valley portion. Because of this reason Mazhapolima project has not shown any significant impact on the groundwater regime in the highland area,” it said.

Maintenance is key

A majority of the respondents (85%) cited in the 2013 report said there is a need for periodic

maintenance of the recharge systems, use of quality materials and beneficiary participation.

“Often, in households below the poverty line, the system falls into disuse,” Raphael said. Maintenance of the pipe and addition of the charcoal and sand filter costs around Rs 2,000 every year, and many families can not afford it. However, Raphael said, “If the unit is maintained and cleaned well, a basic permeable filter [with a nylon net or cloth] should work.”

Pipes and filters tend to accumulate dirt and leaves over time, and are not easy to clean. Funds for maintenance are not available from MGNREGA as the work is skilled/semi-skilled; MGNREGA is used only for unskilled work.

Considering that more than 90% of MGNREGA participants are women–as the men tend to find higher paying jobs elsewhere–funds are required for women workers’ capacity building and training before they can take up maintenance-related work. “We are hoping to include it in our panchayat plan for next year,” said Sivadasan C.A., panchayat member in Padiyur village. Nevertheless, the final onus for conserving and maintaining will be the household owners’.

Although the Mazhapolima model has been extended to all districts, its monitoring is at the panchayat level. The data on its impact are anecdotal so far, based on household feedback.

Since 2008, Mazhapolima has been able to install close to 30,000 units, with over 100,000 beneficiaries. Many more people have installed units individually, Raphael estimated, but data are not available.

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

‘Chalo TISS’ earns solidarity from across India over scholarship protests; strike enters day 14

March 7, 2018

The ‘Chalo TISS’ call given by the General Body of TISS students was highly successful, with more than 500 people all across India along with 20 organisations participating in solidarity with the protesting students at TISS. The ‘Chalo TISS’ was a nationwide call given by the General Body as the strike entered Day 13. The ‘Chalo TISS’ call also included postcard campaign where thousands of letters by the participants of ‘Chalo TISS’ have been addressed to the MHRD, to intervene in the GoI post-matric scholarship issue at TISS.

By Daisy Katta, TwoCircles.net

Amidst rumours that the ‘Chalo TISS’ call was not given by the Students Union, Fahad Ahmad, General Secretary-TISS Students Union-clarified, “The Students Union is just an Executive Body and the final decision-making ability lies only with the General Body. Some members of the Students’ Union have gone against the constitution of TISS SU and violated it by not considering the General Body decision before giving out a false statement to the administration and the media about calling off the strike. As the General Secretary of the Student Union at TISS, I would like to clarify that the strike will go on unless all our demands are addressed by the TISS administration. According to the Article 1 of the TISS constitution its states, every final decision concerning the students lies with the General Body.”

Even as the TISS strike entered Day 13, the TISS administration has not come out with any concrete and sustainable solution to resolve the GOI PMS issue, despite the students time and again brought in to the administration notice the high number of dropouts which the institute has witnessed since 2015, when the fee waiver was rolled back.

Meanwhile, the student protests are still going strong. Different students groups in the institute including the Johar-Adivasi Students Forum, The North East Students Group, OBC students Forum, TISS Queer Collective, and Ambedkarite Students TISS have come up with strong statements in condemnation of the unilateral decision taken by few Union members saying that they will back off from the strike without consulting the General Body. The statements have also retaliated that the strike will continue till all demands, raised for the current and upcoming SC, ST OBC students are met of all the campuses.

The ‘Chalo TISS’ call also saw TISS Alumni coming in solidarity with the protesting students as they collected more than 800 signatures, from Alumni to a strongly worded letter to the administration asking for a continuation of fee waiver. Additionally, students from Mumbai University, IIT Bombay and IIPS have also lent their support.

Courtesy: Two Circles

Amidst the Prasar Bharati-Smriti Irani imgroblio, listen to Mahatma Gandhi’s only speech delivered at Broadcasting House in 1947

March 7, 2018

Recently, several reports were published highlighting the rift between Prasar Bharati and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, now helmed by Smriti Irani. While the debates surrounding the issue have, largely, focussed on the legality of the move, it is important to understand the vision with which Prasar Bharati was set up, which was, in fact, to find a framework that would make broadcasting autonomous.

In the years following the independence, All India Radio and Doordarshan had complete control over communication in India. Following a landmark Supreme Court judgement that declared airwaves as public property, several committees were put in place, from the 1960s to the 1990s, to draft a framework for an autonomus broadcasting service. Since the 1990s, the control that Doordarshan had, diminished, and several private players entered the market. Although the legal and technical loopholes in the frameworks still remain, we must remember the vision behind these “autonomous” institutions.

Prasar Bharati, a “statutory autonomous body established under the Prasar Bharati Act,” is “the Public Service Broadcaster of the country,” its website reads. According to Shanti Kumar, who teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, “the growing competition between Doordarshan and private television channels…forced the government to rethink its national policies, and create an autonomous corporation called Prasar Bharati, to oversee public broadcasting in India.”

Perhaps Smriti Irani should go back in time to a speech broadcast in 2001. On 12 November 2001, those who were watching Doordarshan or listening to the All India Radio, were privy to a rare speech delivered by Mahatma Gandhi on the same date, 54 years ago.

Gandhi chose to speak about the partition, and the rcommunal riots that had followed. The speech was meant to reach the farthest corners of the nation. An excerpt of that recording – the only time Gandhi visted the Broadcasting House in Delhi – is now available on YouTube. He used the occasion to address refugees camping in Kurukshetra in Haryana because he could not personally visit them. Listen to excerpts here:

While it is true that Prasar Bharati has never been completely autonomous, it is important to remember what its job is, i.e., to stand up for the values that are enshrined in the Indian Constitution. On the one hand, we had Gandhi, who used the media to promote communal harmony; on the other, we have Narendra Modi and his regime, who see media as yet another means of fuelling communal sentiment.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

Sri Lanka Declares Emergency After Communal Riots

March 7, 2018

Attacks by Buddhist hardliners on Muslim shops and institutions spark govt. response.

Image Courtesy: The Guardian

After anti-Muslim arson and attacks over the weekend near Kandy in the central highlands, the Sri Lanka government on 6 March declared a 10-day state of National Emergency and deployed heavily armed elite commandos and the army in the disturbed region.

The central district was already under curfew after allegedly a mob of Buddhists attacked Muslim shops, homes and mosques on 5 March. This was in reaction to an incident last week in which a Buddhist lorry driver was reportedly killed by three men alleged to have been Muslims, over some altercation.

The latest incidents come after simmering tensions between Muslim and Buddhist communities have repeatedly come to a flashpoint in recent years. Last week, mobs had attacked Muslim businesses and a mosque in Ampara in eastern Sri Lanka.

Nearly 70% of Sri Lanka’s 21 million population is Buddhist, mainly of the Theravada lineage. About 9% are Muslims and 10% Christians, besides 13% Hindus.

Declaration of Emergency gives sweeping powers to the security forces, including arrest and detention of suspects for long periods. It is after a seven year gap that the state of Emergency has been declared. Sri Lanka remained under National Emergency for 30 years due to the Tamil insurgency in the country’s northern parts. After the Tamil rebels were crushed in a military offensive in 2009, the Emergency was finally lifted in August 2011.

Recent years have seen increasing tension between hardline Buddhist groups, mainly led by the Buda Bala Sena (BBS) which has reportedly launched a campaign against production of halal food (2013-14), proposed a ban on burka (2014), and has been allegedly involved in various attacks on Muslims. There have been incidents of communal violence at Aluthgama-Dhargar town (2014), Grandpass (2014), Mahiyangana (2013).

The secretary general of BBS led by Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara has emerged as a fundamentalist and violent outfit with increasing clout in Sri Lanka. Its leaders are facing trial in last year’s communal incidents. BBS has links with Myanmar’s 969 Movement, another radical Buddhist organization.

In 2014, Galagodaatte Gnanasara told reporters that BBS was in talks with India’s Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) to create a “Buddhist-Hindu peace zone” in South Asia to counter Islamic extremism.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

The Fight isn’t Over: TISS strike enters 14th day despite Admin apathy and manipulations

March 6, 2018

History is being created at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), as the students of all four campuses at Mumbai, Tuljapur (Maharashtra), Guwahati and Hyderabad have been on strike since 21^st February 2018. In a militant display of student assertion, the student community has boycotted classes, blocked gates and administration blocks, gheraoed administration officials, mobilised faculty and alumni support and obtained the solidarity and backing of the student community and civil society from many parts of the country and even from universities abroad.

The militancy on display and the support garnered is largely due to the justness of the issues being raised by the students – issues affecting the most marginalised sections of the students – the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Caste (SC, ST and OBC) students and those from poorer backgrounds who are unable to afford the constantly rising fees of this elite institution. (Another article in this issue in Print by Ajmal Khan details the policies and practices of the Central and State governments and the TISS administration that have led to the demands of the present agitation)

Demands of the Students
The demands of the strike placed before the TISS administration in a letter of TISS-Students Union (TISS-SU) dated 25^th February 2018 are:

Immediate retraction of the notification of the administration that all GOI-PMS (Government of India – Post Matric Scholarship) 2016-18 and 2017-19 should pay Fees (Tuition, Dining Hall and Hostel fees)
Immediate rollback of the notification for payment of fees by GOI-PMS 2018-20 batch students from the website
Scholarship/Waiver applicable to GOI-PMS SC and GOI-PMS ST students should be applied to GOI-PMS OBC students also
Deal with the concerns of students with disability
Exemption of Dining Hall and Hostel fees for students of the BA MA integrated programme of the Off Campuses from 2015 onwards
Symbolic representation of the Office of Dean SPO (Student Protection Office) from SC ST OBC category
No punitive action be taken against students, individually or collectively

During the course of the strike, a memorandum from the TISS-SU was presented on 28^th February 2018 to Thawar Chand Gehlot, the Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, which raised the following demands:

Increase the amount of the GOI-PMS Scholarship to the SC/ST and OBC NC ( for B.A./M.A./M.Phil and Ph.D.) as per the expenses made by institute on each student and disburse it in advance
Write a letter to the head of the institute, TISS Mumbai requesting to continue the support to all GOI-PMS students and support the institute across all campuses (Mumbai, Tuljapur, Hyderabad and Guwahati) for all the courses with reference to the students from SC/ST and OBC NC ( B.A./M.A./M.Phil and PhD).
Issue guidelines to all the universities including TISS to set up an SC, ST, and OBC Cell/Student Protection Office with the appointment of licensing officer/Dean who must belong to SC/ST/OBC category to prevent discrimination against SC/ST or OBC students at the University/Institute.
Uniform income ceiling should be implemented throughout the states for the scholarship, as the prescribed Rs. 2.5 Lakhs ceiling by Union Government is not followed by every state.
All the OBC NC students get 100% scholarship.
Special attention of the ministry to the lives of the students particularly belonging to the SC/ST and OBC.
Fellowship notifications for the RJNF (SC/ST/OBC) and Maulana Azad fellowships for the M.Phil and PhD students from SC/ST/OBC and Minorities should be issued on time and the fellowships should be disbursed on time.

Students’ Unity and Struggle
As is amply clear from the above demands, the focus of the demands concerned the rights of the most marginalised student sections. However all the students spread over all four campuses came out in united action. What was initially a call by the TISS Students Union (SU) for a one day University Strike Across TISS campuses on 21^st February, 2018 swiftly built up into an indefinite struggle for the implementation of the above demands.
These demands had been under discussion over some years with various committees of the SU, but were merely dragging on without any solution in sight. Once the call for agitation was given, the mass of students quickly swung into action with the determination not to retreat unless the demands were conceded.

Tactics of TISS Administration
In the face of such determination from the students, the TISS administration started using several means direct, as well as devious, to derail the students movement. The former Director, S. Parasuraman, came out on the first night itself to address the students with the sole intent of forcing them into submission. Without making the slightest attempt at dialogue with the students, he announced that a favour had been done to them for the last fourteen years. He warned of ‘serious trouble’ and threatened the students with withholding of degrees and denial of jobs. His efforts bore no fruit and only earned him the jeers and boos of the students.

Meanwhile a systematic misinformation campaign was kept up by the administration. The genuine problems of the students were presented as baseless claims. The spontaneous upsurge of the student body was attempted to be shown to be the creation of a motivated elements with ulterior political ambitions. These tactics too proved of no consequence before the unity of the students.

Opportunism and Betrayal by a section of Student Union leadership

The next move was to create a division among the students by co-opting an opportunist section of the SU leadership. It appears as if some of the union office bearers had, from the start of the agitation, maintained a covert alliance with the administration, with the aim of keeping the doors open for some kind of compromise. This was resisted by the General Body of the students, who refused to accept closed door negotiations with a select few, and demanded that the administration state their position before the General Body.

When the administration was unable to convince the General Body in any way, they started overtly using other channels (read agents) in the student body to spread confusion and divisions and breakdown the students resistance. The betrayers even went to the extent of signing an ‘agreement’, which was used by the administration to declare that the strike had been ‘called off’ by them.

These betrayers landed themselves in the unenviable position of being rejected outright, not only by the students of TISS-Mumbai, but also by those of the other campuses. The extent of their pure arrogance and opportunism could be seen in the fact that they had attempted to ‘sign’ away the strike without consulting either the students they were supposed to be representing or the representatives of the other campuses whom they had called on strike in the first place.

Fig leaf of Social Justice phraseology

The tragedy of this betrayal is compounded by the fact that some of the people who betrayed this organic movement of the students, unfortunately, had earlier claimed to uphold Ambedkar. But it is now clear that they actually hide their politics of convenience in radical Ambedkarite phraseology of social justice and annihilation of caste.

While claiming to fight for the oppressed, all they were doing was holding closed door meetings with TISS administration. It appears that, in a tradition true to the hypocrisy of academic institutions, caste and social inequality only exists for them in text books and research papers. Because as soon as things started getting serious and required the Students’ Union leadership to take a stand between the status quo and the oppressed, they clearly chose to side by the status quo, and in no uncertain terms. Are they not aware that rights were won on the streets? Did not lectures on social movement teach them that the road to social justice was long, tedious and required some sacrifice of convenience? Did they not think, for a minute, that what will be the face of the institute if students from really marginalized backgrounds had no support to enter and sustain in an institution like this? The least they could have done, even if they wanted to withdraw from the fight themselves, would have been to stay quiet and not try to sabotage a movement that has, on numerous number of occasions, shown the mandate of the students! Highly unfortunate that today, they have come to even issue threats to struggling students, as apparent in the below note,

“Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Student’s Union 2017-18
Mumbai ·
Dear all,
This is regarding the mass circulation of a post titled “CHALO TISS” proposed to be taking place on 5th March 2018 at TISS Main Campus Gate. We, the Students’ Union 2017-18, want to *clarify that this message is in no way endorsed by the union*. A highly politicized narrative of TISS Strike has been circulated by some people to mislead the issues of demands. It’s our humble request to anyone concerned to not attend the said event. In case of any conflict, TISS Students’ Union will not be responsible for the same. We as Students’ Union 2017-18, condemn the event and the act. It must be further noted that we are happy to see the kind of support the Students’ body has given and also, appreciate and acknowledge, the historic win achieved during the protest.
– TISS Students’Union 2017-18”

This step has been strongly condemned in sharp words by different ideological factions on the campus upholding left and Ambedkarite politics (especially students who emphasised that they weren’t associated with ASA) and by students belonging to different sections such as SCs, STs, OBCs, Religious, Ethnic and other minorities belonging to various oppressed classes.

While the students of all campuses are determined to march ahead to achieving their demands, the fifth columnists in their ranks are plotting to break the back of the movement. Movements are our own road to self discovery and emancipation, movements bring people together, movements suggest a way into the future. The success of a movement is not easy to judge, it is not a cricket match.

What matters is the willingness of the people to take it through to the end. And this time, the students have clearly said, “The Fight is not Over until it’s Over!”

This article was first published on Aaghaaz

Lenin Today, Periyar Tomorrow, who’s next on the Fascist radar?

March 6, 2018

Abraham Thomas on Facebook says, “The bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh (AP) was preceded a series of desecration’s and decapitations of statues of prominent Telugu scholars and freedom fighters on Tank Bund in Hyderabad during the million march. Statues of several prominent historical figures hailing from Andhra, including king Krishna Devaraya, Ranik Rudramma Devi, Sri Sri, Joshua, Annamayya, Siddhendra Yogi Prakasham Pantulu were damaged by some of the participants of the Million March.” (sic)

Lenin in Tripura today, Gandhi tomorrow and who else will we bulldoze for crony capitalism and goondaism!?

India must stand up, now or never!

India did not have long to wait. Hours after a statue of communist icon Lenin was pulled down by BJP supporters in South Tripura’s Belonia district, Tamil Nadu BJP leader H Raja and BJYM Vice President SG Suryah threatened to raze the statues of Periyar, the founder of Dravidian movement, across the state. A sophisticated crane was used for the act of bringing down the statue. BJP National General Sectretary and Member of RSS National Executive, Ram Madhav reportedly appreciated the act in a tweet that was later deleted. The governor of Tripura, Tathagata Roy, a ‘pracharak’ of the RSS, sworn to its fascist views, has applauded the act. Days after the Left Front was voted out of power in the state, Tripura CPI(M) district secretary Tapas Datta said the five-feet tall fibre glass statue, which was unveiled by the party’s politburo member Prakash Karat a few months ago, was pulled down allegedly by BJP workers on Monday at College Square in Belonia, about 110 kilometre from Agartala.

In another Facebook post, which was later deleted, Raja called Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy Naicker, commonly known as Periyar, a “caste fanatic”, while Suryah tweeted saying “Can’t wait for the fall of EV Ramasamy statues in Tamil Nadu”. Raja said, “Who is Lenin and what is the connection between Lenin and India? What connection has India with Communists? Lenin’s statue has been removed in Tripura. Today it is Lenin’s statue in Tripura, tomorrow it will be the statue of caste fanatic EVR Ramasamy.”

Outlook reported that, reacting to Raja’s post, DMK working president MK Stalin said the BJP leader should not be allowed to touch Periyar’s statue and if he does so, the state government should jail him.

Periyar was a rationalist, one who believed that caste should be eradicated, and advocated for women’s rights. He is also credited with starting the Self-Respect Movement, in order to achieve a society where disadvantaged castes had equal rights. Both the main political parties in Tamil Nadu, the DMK and the AIADMK owe their origins to this movement. He launched the idea of a separate Dravida Nadu, an idea that was later modified to Tamil Nadu.

In October last year, Raja drew flak for posting a photo of actor Vijay’s voter ID card and official letterhead on Twitter, attributing the success of his film, Mersal, to his being Christian as his full name is C Vijay Joseph. Mersal contained dialogues critical of new national tax GST, introduced by the BJP government at the Centre in July 2017. Another rabid follower has appreciated Raja’s now deleted tweet.

Hate in the name of Peace: Kerala School Principal arrested

March 6, 2018

Image of a Class 2 Textbook
MM Akbar, Director of a chain of Peace International Schools in Ernakulam Kerala was arrested in February 2018 from Hyderabad. Kerala government has issued a lookout notice when the textbooks being taught in the schools were exposed for teaching objectionable and communal content.

Portions of a Class 2 textbook that propagates Islamic orthodoxy and conversion were leaked. It had come to notice that the school has activity questions such as:
Suppose, your best friend Adam/ Suzanne has decided to become a Muslim.
Among the choices, what advice will you give?

He/She has to change her name to Ahmed/ Sara, immediately
He/She is wearing a chain with a cross. Need to remove it.
Learn the Shahada
Run away from home as parents are not Muslims
Eat halal chicken

It can be seen that many of these messages may reinforce violent practices. Such as gently suggesting that if the child is wearing a chain with a cross, there is a possibility that it could be removed. If the parents are not Muslims, the suggestion being made is that the child can run away from home, suggesting that the child should run away. These messages create a subtle form of othering for children belonging from different religions and are creating an ‘Us’ vs ‘Them’ divide. Such subtle religious fanaticism is highly dangerous for children of an impressionable mind. This normalizes violent practices at an early age. Apparently the text book also taught students how to deal with non-Muslims.

The Kerala government had earlier issued an order to close the school in Ernakulam for teaching content that was found to be objectionable and communal in nature. But it was only after a month that MM Akbar, the director of the school was arrested in Hyderabad in February 2018. It came to light that MM Akbar heads the institution which has 13 schools under its purview in different districts.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayam ordered the closure of the school after taking into consideration the reports submitted by the Education Secretary and the Collector on the objectionable content taught in the school. The Education Department has reported and exposed the fact that the management was following textbooks compiled by a Mumbai-based Islamic educational institution NCERT, CBSE or SCERT textbooks. An FIR was filed against the school in October 2016 for promoting enmity among different groups on the basis of religion.

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Lenin Today, Periyar Tomorrow, who’s next on the Fascist radar?

Lenin in Tripura today, Gandhi tomorrow and who else will we bulldoze for crony capitalism and goondaism!?

Hate in the name of Peace: Kerala School Principal arrested

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