The Gopalaswami Panel Recommendations: Teaching a Regressive Science in Sanskrit

April 27, 2016

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’, 1568 / Wikimedia Commons

ICF Team

Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani has presented students and teachers of science and technology with a tool to ‘facilitate’ their studies: the Sanskrit language. The purpose of teaching Sanskrit in institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) is, apparently, so as to study Sanskrit works which may contain ‘scientific knowledge’. Ms. Irani’s suggestion is based on the report of a panel chaired by former Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami, which also suggested that the ‘inter-disciplinary study of Sanskrit and modern subjects’ should be introduced in the IITs.

The Indian Cultural Forum asked two people closely associated with the field, Dr. Satyajit Rath and Prabir Purkayastha, about the panel’s recommendation regarding Sanskrit.

Dr. Rath, a highly respected senior scientist at Delhi’s National Institute of Immunology, wrote back to us saying:

This is a ‘recommendation’ from a ‘panel’ set up about ‘Sanskrit’. I wonder what other recommendations they have made, particularly in the context of studying any given ‘modern subject’ using Sanskrit texts. After all, surely it is important, even crucial, for students of economics (or home economics) to study ‘ancient’ Sanskrit texts for economic policies (and economical recipes)? Similarly, has the earlier ‘panel’ on ‘classical languages’ recommended that Tamil (not to mention other classical languages) be similarly taught in IITs so as to study ‘science and technology’ in ancient Tamil texts? There is a great deal of such textual material in Pali as well; has there been any recommendation about Pali?

On the other hand, I also wonder if this ‘Sanskrit’ panel has noted the many contributions the IITs have already made to studying Sanskrit at a variety of levels, from a lexical dictionary to a tool for identifying metre to providing an open online text-and-translation of the Valmiki Ramayana? Finally, I wonder if this ‘Sanskrit’ panel has given any examples of Sanskrit texts with viewpoints in science and technology that have remained unappreciated as a result of a lack of Sanskrit pedagogy in IIT syllabi and curricula?

If (as is likely) the answers to these sorts of questions are some version of ‘not likely’, then it is reasonable to infer that this latest ‘recommendation’–’suggestion’–’plan’ is mainly, if not entirely, about promoting a particular political viewpoint which depends on historical ‘superiority’ as the basis of current identity, dignity and rights, and therefore is anxiously and insistently trying to use any tools that will ‘establish’, or at least promote, this preconceived historical superiority. Such viewpoints inevitably foster, as is evident from the current dismal states of social discourse in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, a xenophobic and uncivil polity. If this is not regressive politics, what is? Further, they promote the idea, perhaps even more fraught, that scholarship ought to be about finding justifications and validations, rather than about exploration and understanding. If this is not regressive education, what is?

Prabir Purkayastha of the Delhi Science Forum responded:
Gopalswami is currently the Chancellor of the Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, and if he believes that Sanskrit helps develop science and technology, he can certainly try and get research conducted there to show results. Why is he prescribing what needs to be done in the IITs, about which he knows little, and understands even less?

There is nothing to show that learning Sanskrit will help in any way in understanding new knowledge. This belief in Sanskrit is akin to what people thought in the middle ages, when all medical students had to learn logic and classics in Latin for three years, spending only one year studying actual medicine.

Our institutes today lack basic infrastructure—labs, properly equipped classrooms, and libraries. They need access to the latest research findings through academic journals and books. Indian institutes such as the IITs, built in the 50s and 60s, today are far behind similar institutions in China, South Korea and Brazil. Quality science and technology education is capital intensive and needs public funding. Instead, the allocation for the IITs, and for higher education as a whole, has been cut significantly by the Education Minister and the NDA government in its 2016 budget—including a 55% cut in funds for the University Grants Commission.

Prescribing that IIT students study Sanskrit, and failing to provide the necessary funding, will lead our education down a blind alley. We seem to be following the path of science education in Pakistan under Zia-ul Haq, when knowledge of the Quran and sharia was considered a prerequisite for appointment as faculty in the sciences.

This attempt by Gopalaswami and his committee to claim that ‘high science’ is waiting to be discovered in Sanskrit classics is based on a belief in myths such as flying chariots, nuclear weapons and genetics in our history. Not surprisingly, Gopalaswami is also a firm believer in astrology. The problem is not his private beliefs, but in the HRD Ministry making his irrational beliefs the educational policy for the country.

The Indian Cultural Forum welcomes reactions to the Gopalaswami Panel recommendation from more scientists and educators at indianwritersforum@gmail.com.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

Academics Challenge JNU VC: Countdown to Hunger Fast By Students Begins

April 27, 2016

After the protest and press conference yesterday. April 26, held by the JNUSU, a massive late night rally will be held at the JNU today. The renewed agitation is against the JNU Vice Chancellor and his administration’s decision to unilaterally, without following due process take a set of actions –widely viewed as vindictive and irrational against almost two dozen post graduate students of this prestigious institute of higher education.

Ironically neither reports of the Inquiry Committee nor the reports of the High Power Committee are available in the public domain. Sabrangindia.in had been the first to do a thorough analysis into Magistrate Sanjay Gupta’s report into the incidents at JNU ordered by the Delhi government. This can be read here.

According to reports selectively leaked to the media, Anirban Bhattacharya has been rusticated till July 15, and ‘ordered’ out of bounds for five years from campus from July 25 onwards; Umar Khalid rusticated for one semester and fined Rs 20,000; Mujeeb Gattoo rusticated for two semesters; Kanhaiya Kumar fined Rs 10,000;Ashutosh Kumar ordered ‘withdrawal from hostel for one year and also fine of Rs 20,000; Komal Mohite directed out of the hostel till July 21.Banojyotsana Lahiri and Drupadi Ghosh ordered out of bound of JNU for five years and Saurabh Sharma fined Rs 10,000.Besides, Chintu Kumari, Anant Prakash Narayan, Rama Naga, Gargi Shweta, Aishwarya Adhikari, Reyazul Haque, Rubina Saifi among 14 who've been fined RS 20,000.

President of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) Kanhaiya Kumar, who has become an icon now against the vincidtive actions of the Modi government said this yesterday:

साथियो, ख़बर मिली है कि HLEC की रिपोर्ट के आधार पर JNU स्टुडेंट्स पर कार्रवाई की गई है। हालाँ कि, हमको प्रशासन केद्वारा अभी तक कोई नोटिस नहीं मिली है।फिर भी, बिना किसी अपराध को बताये, स्टुडेंट्स का पक्ष सुने बिना, यह कार्रवाई न्याय की हत्या हैऔर सरकारी इशारे परJNU प्रशासन द्वारा की गई इस शर्मनाक कार्रवाई के खिलाफ हम सब मिलकर लड़ेगें और जीतेगें। आज रातको 9 बजे JNUSU ने एक सर्वदलीय बैठक बुलायी है, जिसमें हम आंदोलन की अगली रणनीति को तय करेगें। When oppression is your privilege, Protest is our right.
#StandWithJNU
– Kanhaiya Kumar

Meanwhile, the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Associsation (JNUTA) has in a strong communication to Vice Chancellor, Jagadesh Kumar, severly chastised and castigated the running of JNU under his stewardship. The entire letter, signed by President JNUTA Ajay Patnaik and Secretary Bikramaditya Choudhary can be read here. In this letter, the JUNUTA says,

“The teachers of JNU have once again come in front of your office to express their strong protest at the unacceptable attitude adopted by the University Administration under your leadership towards the running of the University. We can discern a clear pattern from the University Administration’s actions that indicates its preference for a highly discretionary and centralized system of governance over a democratic and norm-based one. Indicative of this is the fact that the University Administration has adopted a stony silence to several concerns and issues raised by the JNUTA.

“The decision to impose extremely harsh penalties without fair enquiry in relation to the events of February 9 only serves to prove our point. The JNUTA has pointed out the lack of credibility of the HLEC enquiry process at every stage since its inception and thereafter. It violated the principles of natural justice leading to a situation where students did not or say could not even participate in the enquiry.

You have also been made aware of the fact that this need not have been the case if the established norms and procedures for such enquiries had been followed. The JNUTA’s position has been vindicated by legal luminaries like Justice A.P. Shah and this too has been brought to your notice.

That the Administration chose not to address the issues raised and instead went ahead with imposing harsh penalties on students implies that it would rather make JNU a ruthless penal institution than an upholder of fundamental and foundational principles of running a University. Institutional sensitivity and efforts to restore normalcy on the campus are buried in the whole exercise of “teaching a lesson” to the students.”

The JNUTA has been standing tall against the Administration’s attempts – pressurised by the Modi Government and the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) to break the back of the university’s autonomy and character. An earlier communication of the JNUTA can be read here.

Swachh Bharat Urban-Toilet Plan 76% Behind Schedule

April 27, 2016

A public toilet which was recently built under the Swachh Bharat Mission in Delhi.

* Of a target of 2.5 million household toilets in urban areas by March 2016, 24% (0.6 million) have been constructed.

* Of a target of 100,000 community and public toilet seats in urban areas by March 2016, 28% (28,948) have been constructed.

*Gujarat constructed 327,880 individual toilets until December 2015, more than any other state.

India’s ambitious toilet-construction programme–part of the Swachh Bharat (Clean India) mission to make India open-defecation free by 2019–is slipping, according to government data submitted to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament.

Another part of the Swachh Bharat Mission, to process urban garbage, is also failing its targets, as the second part of this series will detail.

Even if the toilet programme, started in September 2015, is brought on track, Indian cities and towns currently process no more than a third of the sewage generated by 377 million people, IndiaSpend reported in January 2016. The rest is randomly dumped in rivers, seas, lakes and wells, polluting three-fourths of India’s water bodies.

As many as 85 million people in urban India lack adequate sanitation, more than Germany’s population.

About 1.9 million toilets in urban areas are under construction, according to the government, but progress is slow.

Four of five states constructing most toilets governed by the BJP

Four of the five states that do best in toilet construction are governed by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Source: Lok Sabha

Gujarat constructed the most toilets until December 2015, with 327,880, followed by Madhya Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh, the only non-BJP state in the top five, comes in third.

Source: Lok Sabha

Some areas that are constructing toilets slowly, such as Delhi and Uttarakhand, may already have a high percentage of homes with toilets.

More Indians (households) use toilets in urban areas (81%) than in rural areas (43%), according to this Lok Sabha reply. Use varies, as some cities have better toilet facilities than others, although there are no reliable data.

As far as community toilet construction goes, Delhi tops the list, indicating a government effort to provide sanitation to slums, which is largely where such toilets are built.

Source: Lok Sabha

Source: Lok Sabha

Sewage systems are as important as toilet construction. India has 522 working sewage treatment plants, 62 of which are in Maharashtra, according to this Central Pollution Control Board report.

Only 36.8% wards in urban areas reported a proper liquid-waste disposal system for community and public toilets, according to the Swachhata Status report, released by the National Sample Survey Organization.

Delhi (86.8%), Gujarat (64.4%) and Tamil Nadu (62.6%) were among the states reporting a high percentage of wards with proper liquid-waste disposal systems for community and public toilets, the report said.

Maharashtra just announced it would clean its rivers by increasing investments in sewage treatment and solid-waste management. The government’s focus, thus far, has been on industrial effluents alone.

A Swachh Bharat cess, levied from November 2015, ramped up toilet construction nationwide, as IndiaSpend reported this week. Nearly 16 million toilets were constructed over two years (in rural areas), according to the government; 95 million need to be built over the next three to meet the government’s target of making India open-defecation free by 2019.

This is the first of a two-part series. Tomorrow: Swachch Bharat Mission Fails March 2016 Urban-Trash Targets

(Salve is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: IndiaSpend

Centre’s response to drought ‘lacking in compassion’: economists, activists to Modi

April 26, 2016

Photo credit: Indian Express
170 leading activists, economists, sociologists urge the central government to respond with some sense of urgency and purpose to the rural crisis which has resulted in "massive distress movement of populations, causing broken childhoods, interrupted education, life in camps, city pavements or crowded shanties"

The government's response to the massive drought being faced by large parts of the country "is sadly listless, lacking in both urgency and compassion", 170 eminent citizens wrote in an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The signatories, including leading activists, economists and sociologists such as Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander, Jean Dreze, Jayati Ghosh and Ajit Ranade, noted that the crisis has resulted in "massive distress movement of populations, causing broken childhoods, interrupted education, life in camps, city pavements or crowded shanties".

They urged Modi to make "rapid amends, by implementing all the traditional relief measures as well as by ensuring full implementation of the National Food Security Act 2013 and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 in letter and spirit".

Here is the full text of the letter.

Dear Mr Prime Minister,
We wish to convey our deep collective anxiety about the enormous suffering of the rural poor in large parts of India’s countryside as they are battling drought, often for the second or even third consecutive year. In areas where rains have failed, farmers who depend mainly on rainwater to irrigate their crops have no or very low crop yields. Those who rely on irrigation are also affected, with groundwater sinking and streams and reservoirs drying up. All this adds to chronic agrarian distress reflected in a massive slowdown in agricultural growth during the last few years, with no imminent signs of recovery.

The consequence of this adversity is massive distress movement of populations, causing broken childhoods, interrupted education, life in camps, city pavements or crowded shanties. Add to this the old and the infirm who are left behind, to beg for food or just quietly die. The cattle for whom there is no fodder, sold at distress prices or just abandoned to fend for themselves. And the drying up even of sources of water to drink.

However, the response of central and state administrations to looming drought is sadly listless, lacking in both urgency and compassion. The scale of MGNREGA works is way below what is required and wages often remain unpaid for months. Even more gravely, the central and state governments are doing far too little to implement the National Food Security Act, three years after it came into force. Had the Act been in place, more than 80 per cent of rural households in the poorer states would be able to secure about half of their monthly cereal requirements almost free of cost. In a drought situation food security entitlements should be made universal.

In addition, we find no plans in most of the drought-hit regions for feeding the destitute, especially old persons left behind when families migrate, children without care-givers, the disabled and other vulnerable groups. ICDS centres could have been upgraded to supply emergency feeding to the destitute during the drought, but this has not happened. Under Supreme Court orders, school meals should be served on all days, including holidays, in drought-affected areas, but this is rarely the case. Arrangements to augment drinking water supply, including ensuring that marginalised hamlets have functioning tube-wells and transporting water where necessary, are awfully inadequate. There are also few attempts to create fodder banks and cattle camps. Most of these measures used to be a routine part of state response to drought, and were often undertaken with a great sense of urgency, but they are barely being considered today.

The highest priority of the central government in a drought situation should be to ensure the creation of millions of additional person-days of work in all affected villages. Instead, the government has not even allocated enough funds this year to sustain the level of employment generated last year – 233 crore person-days according to official data. At current levels of expenditure per person-day, this would cost well over Rs 50,000 crores. Yet the central government has allocated just Rs 38,500 crore to MGNREGA this year, of which more than Rs 12,000 crore are required to clear pending liabilities. These liabilities, only prove the distress crores of workers have been put through because of wages left unpaid for months at a time. Unemployment allowance and mandatory compensation for delayed wage payments, are also not paid citing “insufficient funds”, resulting in a failure of the Act, and its legal safeguards. Most alarming today, is that instead of expanding, MGNREGA is all set to contract in this critical drought year, unless financial allocations are vastly expanded.

The enormous distress – of food, drinking water, work, fodder for animals, and dignity – of hundred of millions is utterly unacceptable. We demand that the central government under your leadership acknowledges these failures and makes rapid amends, by implementing all the traditional relief measures as well as by ensuring full implementation of the National Food Security Act 2013 and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 in letter and spirit.

Signed
1. 1 Aruna Roy, senior activist, Rajasthan
2. Jean Dreze, Economist
3. Jayati Ghosh, Economist
4. Harsh Mander, Activist, Writer
5. Satish Deshpande, Academic, Sociologist
6. Deep Joshi, senior environmentalist and water activist
7. Prof. Prabhat Patnaik, Professor Emeritus, Economist, Senior academician
8. Amit Bhaduri, Professor Emeritus, Senior Economist
9. Vijay Vyas, Professor Emeritus, Senior Economist
10. Utsa Patnaik, Professor and Senior Economist
11. Arundhati Roy, Writer
12. Admiral Ramdas, former Chief of Naval Staff
13. Lalita Ramdas, activist, Maharashtra
14. Naseeruddin Shah, Actor
15. Brinda Karat, Women’s leader, Politician
16. Medha Patkar, Activist, politician, women’s leader
17. Shabana Azmi, Actor
18. Kavitha Kuruganti, Activist, leader of farmer’s groups
19. Nivedita Menon, Academic
20. Nandita Das, actor
21. Mukul Kesavan, writer
22. Leela Samson, dancer
23. Ashok Vajpeyi, writer
24. Justice Rajinder Sachar, senior jurist
25. Syeda Hameed, women’s leader, former member Planning Commission
26. Shyam Benegal, filmmaker
27. Himanshu Thakkar, environmentalist
28. Wajahat Habibullah, former Chief Information Commissioner
29. Deepak Sandhu, former Chief Information Commissioner
30. Shailesh Gandhi, former Central Information Commissioner
31. Uma Chakravarty, historian
32. Ritwick Dutta, environmental legal activist
33. Trilochan Shastry, academic
34. Jagdeep Chhokar, academic
35. Advocate Vrinda Grover
36. Nandini Sundar, Sociologist
37. Shekhar Singh, RTI activist
38. Amar Kanwar, filmmaker
39. Prof C.P.Chandrasekhar, labour economist
40. Dilip Simeon, academic
41. Prithvi Sharma, activist, also on behalf of ICAN
42. Maja Daruwala, senior human rights activist
43. Mathew Cherian, Helpage
44. TM Krishna, Musician, Writer
45. Anand Patwardhan, filmmaker
46. Lalit Mathur, former civil servant
47. Kavita Srivastava, PUCL, Rajasthan
48. Anjali Bhardwaj, RTI activist
49. Achin Vinayak, academic and activist, Delhi
50. Ram Rehman, photographer
51. Pamela Philipose, journalist
52. Tushar.A.Gandhi , academic
53. Rita Anand, senior journalist
54. Nirmala Lakshman, senior journalist
55. Tripurari Sharma, Drama and Theater, playright
56. Harsh Sethi, writer
57. Madhu Bhaduri, former diplomat
58. Sharmila Tagore, Actor
59. Amitabh Mukhopadhyay, former auditor, CAG
60. Mridula Mukherjee, historian
61. Aditya Mukherjee, historian
62. Amita Baviskar, academic
63. Arundhati Dhuru, activist, UP
64. Kavita Krishnan, activist, leader of women’s groups
65. Reetika Khera, Economist
66. Sanjay Kak, filmmaker
67. Baba Adhav, labour leader
68. Achyut Das, activist, Odisha
69. Ajit Ranade, economist
70. Kalpana Kannabiran, sociologist, lawyer
71. Vasanth Kannabiran, teacher and activist, Andhra
72. Paul Divakar, dalit activist
73. Abha Sur, writer, academic
74. Rajni Bakshi, writer
75. Ravi Chopra, activist, Uttarakhand
76. Neelabh Mishra, writer
77. Poornima Chikarmane, Pune
78. Zoya Hasan , academic, political scientist
79. Shabnam Hashmi, activist
80. Rebecca John, academic
81. Anandalakshmy, academic
82. Smita Gupta, Economist, Head of economic cell, AIDWA
83. Praveen Jha, Economist
84. Gautam Navlakha, senior activist
85. Venkatesh Nayak, RTI activist
86. Seema Mustafa, journalist, editor, The Citizen
87. Bela Bhatia, academic
88. Bezwada Wilson, senior activist
89. Prof. Haragopal, academic
90. Sumit Chakravarty, Editor, Mainstream
91. Gargi Chakravarty, Women’s activist
92. Patricia Uberoi
93. Kamal Chenoy, senior academic
94. Janaki Nair, academic
95. Vipul Mudgal, journalist
96. Deepa Sinha, Right to Food activist
97. Himanshu, activist
98. Uma Pillai, former civil servant
99. Nikhil Dey, activist, Rajasthan
100. D.N.Rath, academic
101. Abey George,academic
102. Mahesh Pandya, ICAN
103. Jyothi Krishnan, academic
104. Balram, activist, Jharkhand
105. AL Rangarajan, ICAN
106. Rajaram Singh
107. Rameshwar Prasad, ICAN
108. Anand Murugesan, academic
109. Abha Bhaiya, women’s activist
110. Sagar Rabari, activist, Gujarat
111. Dhirendhra Singh
112. C. Rammanohar Reddy, former editor EPW, senior writer
113. Nandini K Oza, water activist, Maharasthra
114. Osama Manzar, Digital Empowerment Foundation
115. Rakesh Sharma
116. Pankti Jog, RTI activist
117. Rakesh Reddy Dubbudu, RTI activist, Telangana
118. Subrat Das, economist
119. Umesh Anand, editor, Civil Society
120. Charul,singer, cultural activist
121. Vinay, singer, writer, musician, activist
122. Maya Caroli
123. Ashwini Kulkarni, activist, Pune
124. Vibha Puri Das
125. Surjit Das
126. Amrita Johri, RTI activist
127. Madhuresh Kumar, activist
128. Ankur Sarin
129. Dipak Dholakia
130. Navdeep Mathur
131. Harinesh, activist, Gujarat
132. Persis Ginwalla
133. Shamsul Islam, theatre activist
134. Prafulla Samantara, activist, Odisha
135. Lingraj Azad, activist, Odisha
136. Sunilam, activist, Madhya Pradesh
137. Aradhana Bhargava
138. Meera Chaudhary, activist
139. Suniti SR, activist, Pune
140. Suhas Kolhekar, activist Pune
141. Prasad Bagwe
142. Gabrielle Dietrich, leader of Women’s groups
143. Geetha Ramakrishnan, activist Tamil Nadu
144. C.R. Neelkandan
145. P Chennaiah, activist Telangana
146. Ramakrishnan Raju, activist, Andhra
147. Richa Singh, activist, Uttar Pradesh
148. Sister Cella
149. Vimal Bhai, activist, Himachal Pradesh
150. Jabar Singh, activist
151. Anand Mazgaonkar
152. Krishnakanth
153. Kamayani Swami, activist, Bihar
154. Ashish Ranjan, activist
155. Mahendra Yadav, activist
156. Faisal Khan, activist, Haryana
157. JS Walla
158. Kailash Meena, activist, Rajasthan
159. Amitava Mitra
160. Aveek Saha
161. BS Rawat
162. Rajendra Ravi
163. Shabnam Shaikh
164. Mahesh Pandya
165. H.S. Shylendra
166. Iqbalkhan Pulli
167. Soumen Ray
168. Ramachandra Prasad, ICAN
169. Ravi M.
170. Dipak Dholakia

Government Insensitivity Amidst Acute Distress in Marathwada

April 26, 2016

Photo Courtesy: Reuters
During her tour of three districts of Marathwada which are reeling under a severe drought, former Rajya Sabha and CPI(M)’s politbureau member, Brinda Karat found the Maharashtra government’s relief schemes woefully inadequate and the local administration lethargic. The result: Agricultural labourers as well as kisans (famers) are in deep distress.

Highlights of her findings:

The publicised relief measures are in reality either non-existent or highly adequate.
The government’s promise of providing 150 days of work under MGNREGA is just that: an empty promise.
In one of the villages Karat visited, labourers had not been paid for 6 weeks. This in effect is pushing them into a debt trap.
The acute drought has made the soil hard and stony. Because of the unrealistic schedule of rates, though the daily wages are pegged at Rs. 191 per day, no labourer is able to earn more than Rs. 125.
With successive drought years, farmers are heavily in debt. Already in the first 100 days of the current year, 320 farmers have committed suicide. A majority of the farmers have yet to receive compensation for crop loss for the previous year. Instead of relief from government, farmers are receiving notices from banks adding to their trauma and despair.
With water and fodder in short supply, desperate farmers have to sell off their cattle at half the price.
Despite the publicity of water being supplied to villages by the administration, most of the water requirement is being met through private parties who are reaping huge profits.

In a memorandum submitted to the commissioner, Aurangabad, Karat has pointed to some urgent remedial measures. Here is the full text of her memorandum:

The Commissioner,
Aurangabad Division

Dear Shri Dangat ji,

The Kisan Sabha is holding a campaign on the issues of acute agrarian distress in the Marathwada region. As part of the campaign I had been to a number of villages, cattle fairs, cattle shelters and met approximately 200 kisans and agricultural and MNREGA workers from around 15-20 villages from the districts of Aurangabad, Beed and Jalna.

The Kisan Sabha will undoubtedly give you a comprehensive charter of demands in the coming days. Meanwhile, I would like to draw your urgent attention to the following issues. These are only related to the immediate short term issues which obviously have to be within the framework of a long term plan to deal with water scarcity, water conservation, forestry, etc:

1. The declared government schemes are not seen on the ground in large parts of the area and where they are in operation they are inadequate. The depth of the distress requires administrative measures in a mission mode to bring relief. Unfortunately this is not the case as the following examples show:

2. MGNREGA: I was told by the collector of Beed district that the number of workers on MGNREGA sites has increased from 10,000 to 55,000. However, in all the villages I had reports from there was no work available, not even for the large number of cane cutting migrant workers who have returned to their villages and are desperately looking for work. The government promise of providing 150 days of work is a mockery in the face of this reality.

Even assuming that the official records are all of real workers and not substantially "ghost" workers, as is being alleged by many of the workers seeking work, it is clearly inadequate. With no agricultural work available, the importance of MGNREGA cannot be overemphasised. I believe this requires much greater attention and monitoring to provide work on demand as mandated by the law.

3. I met MGNREGA workers at the worksite in village Takarwan. They were wearing black ribbons on their wrists as a sign of protest since they have not been paid a single paisa since the work on the project started one and a half months ago. When I checked with the collector, he said that the funds were slow in coming but that it would be done shortly.

It is extreme callousness that in times of such distress wages for work completed are not paid forcing the workers into debt. This is an example of government created and driven debt. I would request you to ensure immediate payment as per the law.

4. The other critical issue on MGNREGA is the current schedule of rates. The soil has turned hard and stony. Yet the work norms are so high as to be impossible for any worker to fulfill. I was informed by the women workers that they have to dig and lift approximately 5,000 kilos of mud a day to reach the work norm for a minimum wage. This is the extent of the cruelty of the government to deprive the workers of the minimum wage.

It is no surprise therefore that according to the measurement of work done, not a single worker is eligible for the full wage of Rs 191 but the average works out to around Rs 125. It is urgently required to ensure payment of the full wage and reduction of the SORs.

5. As far as kisans are concerned the urgent issue is that of immediate debt relief. Instead, banks are sending notices leading to further trauma and distress. As it is in this region till mid-April, the suicides this year are as high as 320.

Fruit growing kisans such as orange farmers stated that they have had to cut and burn their dried up trees for lack of water. In Beed district it was said that the compensation for crop loss of last year has still not been received by the vast majority of kisans. This again shows the absence of sensitivity on behalf of the government. It is essential to ensure debt relief as well as crop compensation on a war footing.

6. Distress sale of animals is a critical issue driven by debt as well as by the huge expenditure required to maintain the animals with no water availability and no fodder. In the cattle fair at Pachod in Paitha tehsil, Aurangabad, kisans were selling a pair of bullocks priced at Rs 70,000 for just Rs. 30,000-35,000. This is linked to the failure to provide water and cheap fodder.

There are two issues which need to be dealt with urgently. Firstly, the scheme for cattle shelters if implemented properly can be of great help. But these are far too inadequate in number. Also the government must directly run these shelters instead of handing them over to societies which are not being paid in time leading to further problems. Secondly, the amount of assistance does not cover the actual cost of maintaining the animal.

It was shocking to hear that of the amount of Rs 70 rupees to be disbursed per animal pay day, Rs 8 was being cut by government for the projected price of the manure from each animal per day. This is perhaps the most bizarre approach which depicts the callousness of the government and should be removed and adequate expenditure provided.

7. While the government has publicised its efforts to provide water, in the areas I had visited the main supplies were provided by private water companies. There were reports of a nexus between government suppliers and private companies. In any case, it is a fact that the private water companies are making windfall profits, exploiting the desperate need of the people for minimum supplies of water which the government has utterly failed to provide, leaving the field open for private suppliers. There is no regulation or control over the prices being charged. This is an urgent issue which needs to be addressed by the administration.

These are a few of the issues which I wanted to bring to your attention. The deep distress is the region demands a much more comprehensive and mission approach which is sadly lacking.

Yours sincerely,
Brinda Karat

(Along with colleagues in the Kisan Sabha and CPI(M) including comrades PS Ghadge, Bhausaheb Zhirpe, B Potbhare and B Bhumbe).

How caste is alive and kicking in Bengal

April 26, 2016

Photo courtesy: youthkiawaaz.com
Bengali middle class society is seen as casteless because caste violence lacks visibility. One woman’s story of working as a teacher shows how caste intersects with gender to reproduce discriminatory practices.

Bengal was the first region of British India to be colonised and modernised. The opportunities colonial rule opened up were taken advantage of by the bhadralok (gentlefolk) who were mostly upper caste. One of the leaders of the Indian Independence movement Gokhale said “what Bengal thinks today India thinks tomorrow” which captured this avant garde position of Bengal. In such a vision a ‘backward’ institution like caste was claimed to have no significant presence.

Consequently, in most academic and popular domains the castelessness of Bengali (especially) middle class society became an established fact particularly in comparison with other Indian states where caste violence and caste-based political parties have a high visibility. However, the absence of visible forms of violence and of caste-based parties does not necessarily indicate the casteless nature of Bengali society. The recent ‘suicide’ of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit student of Hyderabad Central University, brought to focus the naked face of caste discrimination in higher education in many regions of India. However, the pervasiveness of caste is no less significant in Bengal. The politics of repression has allowed caste to be insidiously reproduced in both public and private domains with little resistance.

The story of Lata Biswas, a Scheduled Caste (SC) person, demonstrates the insidious ways in which caste prejudice operates in Bengal. Despite evidence to the contrary, Lata claimed that she did not experience caste in her village where her caste, the Namasudras, formed the majority of the population. Based on her narrative I would argue that caste is encountered in Bengal in mostly middle class spaces such as educational institutions, urban and non-urban. Lata passed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Bengali literature with excellent grades, completed her degree for school teaching and joined a school in 1992. The school is located in an interior village of Burdwan district. She was the only Dalit teacher there and kept overhearing terms like ‘schedule’ in staffroom conversations between her women colleagues:

Each time I entered the staff room I would hear this word. At first I did not understand. Then such remarks became routine and kept increasing. Some were like ‘she is schedule you know, like the maid we have’, someone would reply ‘even my mother’s maid is schedule and now we have a schedule here again’. When I did not pay any attention to all these remarks they started saying new things. ‘Now the last one fled, but this one seems to be staying, more schedules will come, santhals [an advisasi group] will come, all those who eat rats, snakes, frogs will start coming and we’ll have these items for food as well. We should not drink water from the same jug but now we will have to, oh what has this world come to’. It was very humiliating because I never had to face these things when I was a student.

Lata faced other forms of discrimination which clearly told her that she did not belong. She was given a chair and a separate table to sit at apparently because there was no space for her on the long bench on which teachers normally sat in the common room. The next day the cloth on the table went missing, the newspaper that Lata used in place of the cloth had a similar fate. Within a couple of days her chair too disappeared. Finally getting angry Lata squeezed herself on to the common bench. That forced an open reaction from her high caste colleagues. One of them instructed her to sit on the floor.

What led to such animosity toward Lata? Middle class/bhadralok society has certain imagery about non-bhadralok beings, in particular the ‘lowly’ people, popularly known as chhotolok. They are seen as uneducated, lacking in culture, consciousness and agency, as docile and in perpetual need of bhadralok assistance. The bhadralok self is constructed and asserted through its other, in this case the marginalised castes. Lata disrupted this imagery.

She “did not look or behave like an SC” was another of the remarks that gained ground within a few days of Lata joining the school. She was assertive and argumentative. In disputes with the school administration, she often became the spokesperson for the teachers. She hardly lost her temper. Above all she was a good teacher and students were fond of her. Lata thus posed a danger: she was the figure on the threshold that threatened to disrupt boundaries between the bhadralok and the chhotolok and the assertion of middle classness by the local bhadralok teachers in the school.

In an interior village school the need for policing and reproducing the boundaries of middle classness was felt more by these teachers who formed a small segment of the local population. Unlike the earlier incumbent she asserted her ‘rights’, as a woman and as a Scheduled Caste person, Lata never felt the need to allow (high caste) men to speak on her behalf or along with her unlike her high caste women colleagues. Lata was therefore an anomaly: she did not exhibit ‘feminine’ qualities, or those of her ‘caste’. She seemed to have done violence to every understanding of bhadralok/middle class self in terms of her caste as well as gender.

Lata was tall, not “too dark-skinned” and was on average “good-looking”. In short, she did not have the typical attributes of a scheduled caste person. These remarks made Lata wonder how the previous incumbent looked. Through remarks and conversations she gained an understanding that her predecessor was “quite ugly” and “docile”. She, unlike Lata, had fitted into both the caste and gender stereotypes that bhadralok society produced in terms of appearance and disposition.

Since the Durban Conference on Racism in 2000 there has been much academic debate on seeing caste as a racial category. Regardless of such debates, in the everyday perceptions of people caste is seen to have a racial basis. Everyday life is a fuzzy domain that does not fit into the neat analytical categories developed by academics. When Lata claimed that she “did not fit into the Scheduled Caste category” because her physical features set her apart from the average figure of the Scheduled Caste person she was basing her statement on the commonly held perception that people’s castes could to an extent be marked out in terms of their physical features.

Besides these, Lata, as mentioned earlier would rarely get angry. She could argue using what is known as the language of reason and rationality. In a masculine space marked by caste (i.e. casted) like the school, upper caste men are supposed to be logical/reasonable and marginalised castes and women to be emotional. Bengali society had been remarkably successful in not having much meaningful engagement with caste, gender, or even class.

Bhadralok/middle class Left politics has considerably aided this disengagement. Lata’s narrative shows the process of becoming middle class and ‘casted’. Moreover upper caste men went off the handle in tackling Lata and in preserving the boundaries of spaces from where Dalits were historically excluded. Upper casteness and masculinity that together went into the making of middle classness suddenly faced a major challenge from Lata, a Dalit woman, who seemed to trespass into forbidden territory.

Being a ‘meritorious’ student Lata never needed her caste certificate for admission under the quota system. At university her “intelligence and grades” shielded her from forms of prejudice and discrimination. But in this workspace despite her grades Lata was taken in not as a General Category candidate but in the reserved post for Scheduled Castes. What we see in the workspace is that caste while it cannot be articulated is nonetheless incessantly articulated in conjunction with that of gender and local hierarchies. Here the high castes categorised as the General Category have to pretend that they are ‘uncasted’ whereas the Scheduled Castes who come in through a different category of caste do not have access to such privileged forms of denial/pretension. They are seen as permanently ‘casted’.

Therefore, Lata was not a person, she was only a caste, marked and categorised as inferior and inadequate to the rest. Everyday aggression is the central aspect of this articulation of gendered caste. Considered as trivial such aggression normalises institutionalised violence. These apparently inconsequential forms of violence considerably affect the sense of self among Dalits aspiring to be a part of the middle class.

This article was first published on Open Democracy.

I am Koonal Duggal, and they say I am “anti-university”: Dalit Student

April 26, 2016

Are Indian Universities becoming Authoritarian ?

Statement by EFLU-Joint Action Committee with Koonal Duggal

On April 14, 2016, on the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary of Babasaheb Ambedkar, Koonal Duggal, a Dalit PhD scholar in the Department of Cultural Studies, EFL University, and a guest faculty at the S N School of Fine Arts and Communication, UoH, for the first time learnt that he was no longer welcome on University premises by order of the Proctor, Prakash Kona Reddy.

That morning, Koonal had joined fellow Ambedkarite students and members of the SC ST Employees’ Association to participate in a small function paying homage to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. Koonal was one of the invited speakers.

He spoke about why our engagements and convictions in Ambedkar have greater relevance in today’s context where young Dalit scholars, like Rohith Vemula and others, are being isolated and alienated to the point of self-annihilation.

He then sang a revolutionary song by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, “Hum Dekhenge..”, when four security guards entered the venue. As soon as he finished the song, the security guards surrounded Koonal, grabbed his hand and attempted to take him away from the programme.

When students and faculty intervened, they said that they were acting on orders from the Proctor, who had given specific instructions to disallow Koonal from entering the premises except with permission of University authorities. Students were not given any explanation or shown the official circular with details of the disciplinary action. In addition to the fact that by then the Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations had come to a standstill, the atmosphere had become chaotic and the audience could not pay attention to the rest of the speakers. The security guards were then told to at least respect the sentiments of the participants and wait till the end of the programme.

Eventually, because of the students’ intervention, Koonal could not be removed from campus but it could do little to alleviate the immense humiliation and harassment that he had been made to undergo. This was made worse by the fact that Koonal was made answerable to his fellow students about a crime that he was not aware of. He had not been personally intimated of the disciplinary action or its basis, nor was he given a chance to defend himself in front of the proctorial authority.

Koonal, who has been a student at the University for five years, whose academic research has only enriched the intellectual archives of this mediocre university, was immediately set aside from the student community for a “crime” that appeared to be so grave that it could not be articulated in a decent social setting. One can imagine the kind of fear, insecurity, shame, anger, self-doubt, embarrassment and loneliness that Koonal had to undergo until his decision to do something about it, to stand up to it and file a police complaint against the Proctor under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act.

I am Koonal Duggal, and they say I am “anti-university”
“I have been part of the Department of Cultural Studies, EFL University, as a JRF scholar since 2010. When I joined the University, my engagement with the social sciences was relatively new having just completed one year of MPhil at the Centre for Study of Social Sciences, Calcutta. I have sometimes spoken to my friends about how I found it difficult to come to terms with my Dalit identity. Growing up, I felt embarrassed to reveal my caste.

My apparently upper-caste surname often relieved me from the confrontations of discussing my Dalit identity. But despite my attempts at veiling my Dalit identity, I found out that my caste was questioned and I was marked as a Dalit. It was during my time at EFL University, first as a student of cultural and subaltern studies, and through my continued engagement with the Ambedkarite organization DABMSA (Dalit Adivasi Bahujan Minorities Students Association) where I was a member of the Drafting Committee, that I began to embrace the political imperative of my identity as a Dalit scholar and artist. The exposure for the first time to an Ambedkarite organisation where the leadership was with Dalits and Adivasi students who openly talked about their caste, their backgrounds and experiences made me comfortable with my own self-identification as a Dalit.

For the first time I was in the company of people who talked about caste politically, and not with stigma.

Most of my time at EFL University was spent reading and introspecting and participating as a research scholar in seminars organized by the University and by students’ organizations. In fact, one of the first times I spoke up in a public domain was during the protests against the rape of a girl student at EFL University in 2014. I spoke about the gender insensitive atmosphere at EFLU and how it had personally affected me. (The anger that drove me to speak can be traced back to the suicide of Mudasir Kamran in 2013 who was again pushed to commit suicide because of the insensitive homophobic and anti-minority behaviour of the university administration that is interlinked to my coming out as a queer individual). Since the submission of my thesis titled “Crossing Religious Boundaries: Representation, Caste and Identity in Contemporary Punjab”, I have been teaching as a guest faculty at the Fine Arts Department, UoH. I have been engaging with the politics of caste discrimination in institutions of higher education, especially in relation to Rohith Vemula’s suicide and the ongoing movement around it. The movement, in fact, gave me a more immediate context to write about my own experiences of discrimination at CSSSC. I wrote about how I felt that “[T]he larger society and its various forms of discrimination are very much present in the functionings of CSSSC and that of some of its teachers.”

Just when I was beginning to firmly locate myself in the public space and discourse as a politically educated and empowered Dalit-Queer individual, and when I was writing and speaking more about it, my political self-realization and assertion is broken and violently disrupted by the EFLU administration that has been historically known for discriminating and harassing Dalit students. It is as if such upper caste institutions will not stop persecuting dalits for their caste identity, whether they run from it or whether I embrace it.”

On April 15, Koonal was shown a circular by the security officials stating that “Mr. Koonal Duggal, registered in the PhD programme at the Department of Cultural Studies, EFL University, has submitted his thesis in September 2015. However, he continues to trespass on this campus, indulging in anti-university activities. Therefore, his entry into the EFL University campus, which includes the hostels, is strictly prohibited except with the permission of the Proctor.” Neither Koonal nor the student community has the slightest idea as to what anti-university activity Koonal has participated in. Was it the song that he had sung during the peaceful solidarity gathering for Justice for Rohith Vemula outside the University gates or was it the fact that he was one of the students cleaning the Ambedkar statue on April 13?

So what is it that makes Koonal such a threat to today’s university spaces? Upper caste institutions will do everything to victimize a Dalit and then when they are faced with the radical potential of the Dalit identity, they do everything to take that away as well, just as we have seen in the case of Rohith, so we see in the case of Koonal, who is being asked to prove his Dalit identity (because apparently Duggal is a surname whose ownership lies only with upper-caste Punjabi Khatris).

Koonal is a Dalit queer student who wouldn’t choose to keep quiet when a Kashmiri Muslim student was murdered by homophobia, when a girl is raped in his own campus, when fellowship cuts affect a research scholar and when a fellow Dalit student is forced to commit suicide in another campus, and when he himself is subjected to humiliation and discrimination in the institutions he has been part of. He knows he has got to speak.

See also:
1. Caste Discrimination in Prestigious Institutes

Missing: an international response to the rising tide of impunity

April 25, 2016

Civil society organisations are targeted because political elites know they have power. But where is the international backup? A contribution to the openGlobalRights debate on closing space for civil society. Español

On the 5th of March 2016, the Turkish government took control of the country’s largest private newspaper, Zaman. The takeover happened at the newspaper’s head office during bizarre if not depressingly familiar scenes: police in riot gear firing canisters of tear gas into crowds of chanting protestors.

Ten years ago, such a brazen assault on the free press might have defied the logic of Turkey’s international political calculus. No longer. Sadly, we now live in an era where political leaders and powerful non-state actors know that civil society and the media are fair game, and that egregious violations of fundamental rights are less likely to attract punitive sanctions or even a cold shoulder from the international community.

Of course, civil society is reacting to the current threats against it, as shown through the courage of activists who continue their perilous struggle around the world every day. But it has done so mostly on a country-by-country basis. For its part, the United Nations has tried to address the situation by issuing strong condemnations in repeated resolutions, raising the profile of international agreements and supporting working groups and Special Rapporteurs, whose work helps to translate international law into practical recommendations for states to follow. Despite all of these efforts, the overall picture remains grim.

In today’s world, combatting terrorism, economic stagnation and the refugee crisis all trump the need to protect democracy and space for a vibrant civil society. There is no doubt that these are important issues, and all of them are at play in Turkey. The raid on Zaman comes at a time when European Union (EU) leaders are more likely to gloss over human rights violations—they desperately need the Turkish government’s help to address what they perceive as the much more pressing problem of mass migration through Turkey from the Middle East.

Thousands of protestors gather in solidarity outside the Zaman newspaper headquarters after Turkey declared a government takeover of the agency.

Governments all around the world are making similar calculations every day. A decade ago, we might have expected such attacks to be confined to particular geographic hotspots, beset by conflict, weak democratic institutions and authoritarianism. In 2014, CIVICUS published a list of 96 UN Member States that had violated fundamental freedoms to a significant degree. Our provisional findings for 2015 show that there are now at least 101 countries on this list. These countries are led by range of authoritarian, hybrid and democratic governments, and people living in these countries account for roughly 86% of the world’s population. Mimicking a contagious disease, the erosion of civil liberties has now spread worldwide.

Ever since 2013, when Edward Snowden revealed the extent of mass surveillance by the United States and several other established democracies through the Five Eyes alliance, citizens everywhere have realised that their own elected, supposedly accountable governments are threatening their fundamental freedoms. Attacks on civil society in democratic settings are now taking other forms too—from restrictive NGO rules in the UK, to harsh penalties for peaceful protestors in Spain and Australia, to public vilification of civil society in Hungary. According to our monitoring from 2015, the number of countries seriously violating space for civil society on the European continent jumped from nine to 16.

All of this has made it much more difficult for democratic states to claim the moral high ground when promoting human rights outside their borders. It has also emboldened other states, who know, like Turkey, that they are unlikely to be held to account internationally for abusing civil society.

Domestically, these violating governments also have free reign. While independent courts and a strong rule of law shield civil society from the worst forms of attack in democratic states, in many other parts of the world—where democratic institutions are much weaker—assaults on civil society are fuelled by a growing culture of impunity. This includes impunity for unidentified police officers using excessive force against peaceful protestors, and a lack of consequences for state and non-state agents who ransack NGO offices. Even worse, it means that people who have gunned down investigative journalists in cold blood are not investigated or prosecuted.Impunity also extends beyond individuals. For example, profit-making companies implicated in human rights violations—such as maquiladoras in Mexico—are not held to account. In addition, states such as Azerbaijan, Ethiopia and Egypt, which have destroyed their civil societies, continue to be courted on the international stage by democracies in geopolitical power plays. In pilot surveys that CIVICUS conducted with civil society in 2015-2016 about their operating environment, respondents in South Africa, Poland, Tajikistan and Macedonia universally rated lowest the state’s willingness to investigate abuses against the sector.

There is no doubt that civil society is unfairly targeted in all of this. No justification exists for beating or locking up people trying to foster robust democratic debate or hold leaders accountable. At the same time, civil society must avoid creating a one-track narrative based on disempowerment and victimisation. We must remember that civil society organisations, social movements and individual activists are singled out because they are having an impact, because they do have power, and because their actions are upsetting entrenched political and economic elites.

More fundamentally, the assault on civil society should be correctly understood not just as a symptom of democratic failure, but also as a weakening of the forces that can actually solve the problems of intolerance and exclusion currently dividing societies. CIVICUS’ State of Civil Society Reports in 2014 and 2015 made it abundantly clear how civil society has been the first responder in crisis and conflict situations, saving lives, reaching out with compassion to refugees and defending the rights of the most marginalised people in society.

What we now need is far greater international solidarity and the creation of an internationalised social movement, which should have as its core purpose the development of a positive counter narrative and a vision for free and equitable societies, safeguarded by a robust space for civil society. In 2016, CIVICUS plans to support these efforts through a new international campaign on civic space, and through the launch of our new Civic Space Monitor web platform. Civil society also needs to push its traditional allies to do more to prevent democratic erosions at home so that their calls for protection will be taken seriously. For instance, European CSOs must continue their efforts to ensure the EU makes more active use of tools like the framework to safeguard the rule of law, recently called into action for the first time in response to events in Poland.

If we don’t move on this now, actions like Turkey’s outrageous takeover of Zaman newspaper—and the world’s deafening silence—will only become more common.

This article was first published on Open Democracy

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How caste is alive and kicking in Bengal

Photo courtesy: youthkiawaaz.com
Bengali middle class society is seen as casteless because caste violence lacks visibility. One woman’s story of working as a teacher shows how caste intersects with gender to reproduce discriminatory practices.

I am Koonal Duggal, and they say I am “anti-university”: Dalit Student

Are Indian Universities becoming Authoritarian ?

Statement by EFLU-Joint Action Committee with Koonal Duggal

Missing: an international response to the rising tide of impunity

Civil society organisations are targeted because political elites know they have power. But where is the international backup? A contribution to the openGlobalRights debate on closing space for civil society. Español

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Photo courtesy: youthkiawaaz.comBengali middle class society is seen as casteless because caste violence lacks visibility. One woman’s story of working as a teacher shows how caste intersects with gender to reproduce discriminatory practices.

Are Indian Universities becoming Authoritarian ? Statement by EFLU-Joint Action Committee with Koonal Duggal

Civil society organisations are targeted because political elites know they have power. But where is the international backup? A contribution to the openGlobalRights debate on closing space for civil society. Español

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

Important Links

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Photo courtesy: youthkiawaaz.com
Bengali middle class society is seen as casteless because caste violence lacks visibility. One woman’s story of working as a teacher shows how caste intersects with gender to reproduce discriminatory practices.

Are Indian Universities becoming Authoritarian ?

Statement by EFLU-Joint Action Committee with Koonal Duggal