Ahmedabad, where high growth is accompanied by low human development, social exclusion

June 25, 2019

Bombay Hotel area in Ahmedabad

development and planning, two important pillars of India’s economic growth and development pathway, were given importance in the ‘New Urban Agenda’ adopted at the Habitat III conference in 2016 to help achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 – safe, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable cities. India’s urban development journey over the last two decades has coincided with increasing marginalisation, exclusion, conflict, and everyday violence in the cities. This violence has gone unnoticed and unanalysed in the urban planning and policy-making world.The economic reforms of 1991 increased urban inequalities, which have worsened through inequitable urban planning. As an instrument of planning, the Master Plan has also deemed many areas of the city to be illegal and, as a result, the Indian state has engineered the “elite capture” of urban spaces. It has also subverted pro-poor provisions of Master Plans.

The poor thus find spaces in the cities through “occupancy urbanism”, a gradual process of informal land occupation under political patronage, while living in fear of the constant threat of eviction. By being deemed “illegal”, the informal urban living spaces created by the poor themselves are denied the provision of basic services.

Governance is not just about what the state does in implementing plans, but also what the state does not do. A good example relates to the provision of basic services. The denial of essential urban services to the poor – because governments lack the political will, capability, or capacity to meet the needs of low-income communities – has also led to the emergence of non-state providers operating as mafias. These informal sector entrepreneurs and middlemen – often with links to government functionaries and the police – use the vulnerability and unmet needs of the poor to manipulate them.

The inability of the State to provide services, employment, and access to the corridors of power for the poor also leads to a failure to provide justice and protection. This failure introduces and sustains a system of violence, coercion, and extortion in urban areas. Such processes emanating from urban governance are not only forms of structural violence, but also cause non-state actors to threaten or use physical violence. The fact that the means of violence are no longer monopolised by the state and that non-state actors either collude or conflict with the state is interlinked to urban planning and governance processes as well.

Local design issues can also create opportunities for perpetrators of violence, conditions for tensions to escalate to violence, or an environment that invokes fear. Paved streets with streetlights and multiple activities throughout the day can create safe environments. In a culture such as India’s, where machismo is valued, everyday conflicts can escalate into violent confrontations. Geographic concentrations of low-income populations can create ghettos where criminals can find shelter.

Ahmedabad is the brand ambassador for the Gujarat Development Model of high growth accompanied by low human development, entrenched communalised polity, and social exclusion. In Ahmedabad, the focus areas and case-study locales were:

conflicts linked to land, housing, and basic services in urban informal peripheral localities, which are also religious (Muslim) ghettos (focusing on one such locality populated by more than 25,000 families)
conflicts linked to land, housing, and basic services in slum resettlement sites constructed using Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) funds (focusing on three slum resettlement sites on the urban periphery)
women’s safety in traversing public spaces and in accessing and using public transport (focusing on two low-income localities).

Land as a driver of structural violence

In Ahmedabad’s Bombay Hotel area, located in the informal urban periphery, a decade went by with the state being completely absent and residents having no political voice in the city due to the combined effects of living in an informal development and their identity as Muslims in a city and state dominated by a right-wing Hindu political party. Informal developments have grown up on agricultural land through informal land transactions and devious behaviour by land developers without development permissions.

Bombay Hotel’s development into a large and dense Muslim neighbourhood has a violent history. Muslims displaced due to state-engineered communal riots in 2002 (Concerned Citizens Tribunal – Gujarat 2002) either purchased a plot/house in the locality or were resettled there by charity organisations. The nuclearisation of Muslim families living in the old city areas also led to the search for affordable homes to purchase, which they found in Bombay Hotel as builders floated low-instalment-based housing schemes.

All the land transactions are on sale agreements made on stamp papers, which are quasi-legal documents that record the monetary exchange but not the transfer of ownership. The legal ownership of the lands thus remains with the original farmers.

In 2013, planning came to this locality through the Town Planning Scheme, which is a land pooling and readjustment mechanism. The mechanism mandates that up to 50 per cent of the original land be vested with the planning authority for uses categorised as ‘public purposes’ such as roads, water, and sanitation infrastructure; education and health facilities; and Socially and Economically Weaker Section (SEWS) (low-income) housing known in the global literature as social housing.

The implementation of two Town Planning Schemes as an urban planning tool would have demolished about 10 per cent (2,200) of the houses in the area. Since the residents do not hold legal land rights, they do not qualify for compensation. This led to tensions, followed by mobilisation and protests.

“This lane is supposed to be demolished under [the] TP [Town Planning] Scheme. We don’t know whether we will get a house or not. We have invested all our life savings in the house and have just completed paying our instalments and now this fear lingers above us.” (Resident of Bombay Hotel Area, Ahmedabad)

In recent years, slight shifts in politics in the city and the state saw Ahmedabad’s right-wing Hindu political party attempting to woo voters from among the Muslim community. Demolishing such a large Muslim neighbourhood would have attracted bad press and therefore the demolitions under the Town Planning Scheme were put on hold.

Further, the boundaries of electoral constituencies were changed during the 2010–2012 period, bringing a change in local elected representatives. Centrist party (Indian National Congress) candidates won the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and state assembly elections for this locality, leading to pressure from local leaders and residents on the elected representatives to halt demolitions and extend basic services to the locality. The residents were successful on both counts. Significantly, the conflict over eviction was mitigated when the elected representatives intervened, causing the local government to modify the implementation of its Town Planning Scheme to address people’s concerns.

However, the process is incomplete, and conflict over eviction could arise again as the Town Planning Scheme implementation progresses. In the meantime, municipal services, such as drainage and water supply, are being extended to the locality. This has the potential to alleviate some of the conflicts and violence emerging from the informal provision of services as well as structural violence resulting from deprivation.
Housing as a driver of structural violence

The lack of an affordable housing policy and related schemes led to the development of informal housing. Low-income households prefer to live in locations where they can easily access a livelihood and do not have to incur commuting costs. If the formal housing is expensive in such locations, they tend to live in informal housing. In Ahmedabad, for example, informal housing emerged on lands in central areas of the city close to opportunities for work, such as on the banks of the Sabarmati River that divides Ahmedabad.

The riverfront development project displaced between 12,000 and 15,000 households of which approximately 11,000 were resettled at various JNNURM housing sites. Many were resettled at the Vatwa resettlement sites on the urban periphery, along with evictees from other infrastructure projects. The Vatwa sites comprise 9,200 dwelling units across seven sites that were selected due to their low land prices. We selected three of these sites, Sadbhavnanagar, Kusha Bhau Thakre (KBT) nagar,5 and Vasant Gajendra Gadkar (VGG) Nagar for our research.

Here, we found that urban planning has been used as a tool to displace low-income households from core areas of the city to the underdeveloped periphery, rather than bringing them into the urban mainstream and providing them with a wider set of opportunities. This is a typical case of reproducing and, in many cases, deepening inequalities through the urban planning process and further entrenching structural violence. The constrained mobility and stressed livelihoods faced as a result of relocation have deepened the structural violence in the lives of the majority of residents.

The resettled residents, uprooted from their former homes from which they could walk or cycle to work, are now forced to use motorised transport and pay for their travel to work. Specifically, women’s livelihoods were extremely constrained due to the fear of harassment and violence in commuting longer distances. Many dropped out of the labour market or began to work from their homes. At home, they produce goods on a piece-rate basis, resulting in a decline in their income.

All of these factors together have increased housing and transport costs for the residents and have pushed them below the poverty line. Residents reported spending between one-third and one-quarter of their income on commuting, while also indicating increased housing costs. This deepening of structural violence, through induced poverty, has led to thefts of private and common property.

Robberies and burglaries became widespread at the Vatwa resettlement sites. Petrol from bikes; the tyres of rickshaws, motorbikes, and even bicycles; lids of overhead water tanks; tubing covering electric wires; and water pipes have all been stolen.

Many residents have been robbed, sometimes at knife-point, while moving in and around the sites. Residential burglaries have taken place where cash, jewellery, mobile phones, and other items have been stolen. Residents try not to leave their houses unoccupied for long. Residents described how they felt insecure; women, in particular, did not step out of their homes after dark, which was not the case where they used to live. Communities that used to be close knit have been dispersed across different sites and randomly situated within those sites due to the house allotment process.

A resettlement colony in Ahmedabad

This haphazard approach to resettlement has led to social disruption and resulted in the loss of moral authority that local leaders, elders, and residents in general were able to exercise previously. Overall, internal informal social control is now lacking at the resettlement sites, creating a “mahol” or environment in which crime is committed with impunity and youth, in particular, easily stray towards theft, gambling, and illicit activities such as selling/consuming drugs. This latter situation is exacerbated by the absence of feasible livelihood options.

“When there are no jobs, the youngsters get spoilt. They get into wrong activities [sic]. They do not have money for the transport fare … when a person goes hungry then he will steal; he will get into bad businesses.” (Female resident at the Vatwa resettlement site)
“If [a child’s] mother is not at home the whole day and they are hungry then they might steal. If I leave my shop unattended just now and if a child who has not eaten since morning comes by, he might pick up something.… Today he might pick up something costing INR5; tomorrow he will steal something more.” (Female resident at the Vatwa resettlement site)

The built environment at the resettlement sites has also enhanced crime. Some stretches of the main road have few activities. The lack of ‘eyes on the street’ has created opportunities for robberies and the harassment of women. Within the sites, large sections do not have functioning streetlights and, where they are present, those who engage in crime break the lights whenever they are repaired. The common passageways in most buildings do not have functioning lights due to disputes about electricity bill payments.

Overall, the physical environment is intimidating, especially for women. Thus, we see structural violence leading to increased crime. Emanating from it is everyday fear of crime and violence among the residents. Lack of proper policing, due to the overall failure of local security governance at the site, has deepened these fears among residents, which have a strong gender dimension.

Water supply systems as a driver of structural violence

Conflicts related to water are primarily due to the lack of a formal water supply in informal settlements. This is an urban planning issue. However, conflicts have emerged: in Bombay Hotel, these are due to the supply by informal water providers; in the Vatwa resettlement sites, they are due to the local government’s approach to the design and governance of water infrastructure.

In Bombay Hotel, the absence of a municipal water supply has led to the emergence of many different kinds of informal water supply arrangements, such as builders or better-off residents providing water from private bore-wells and residents fetching water from surrounding factories. Some of these arrangements mitigate extreme deprivation and conflicts around water, but many lead to a variety of conflicts:

among residents of a neighbourhood
between residents of different neighbourhoods
between residents and water suppliers
between residents and the local government.

The conflicts often involve verbal and low-intensity physical fights on a daily basis. The informal water suppliers are motivated purely by profit; their approach to supplying water reflects this, with fixed territories of supply to protect profits and coercive practices. They collect monthly charges whether or not they are able to supply adequate water. Residents are unable to oppose this due to a lack of alternative sources and the high-handedness and threats from the suppliers.

In fact, residents cannot even complain about these operators without raising their ire. Multiple types of everyday conflicts emerge from the coercive management of water supply systems by these non-state actors. All conflicts have the potential to result in violence between residents and the water suppliers as well as among the residents themselves.

“In one of the societies [a community], a local leader complained to a politician about the poor quality of water being supplied by the bore-well operator. This angered the operator who then stopped supplying water to the residents which in turn led to an argument between the residents and [the] local leader as the former felt that the latter should not have complained to the politician as this had totally cut off their access to water.” (Resident of the Bombay Hotel area)

Municipal officials have been aware of unregulated groundwater extraction, its sale in the area, and the consumption of this contaminated water by residents. These facts point to the local government’s complicity in the situation. In recent years, the local government has started to send water tankers into the locality. However, this method of supply is wholly inadequate, leading to violence at the tankers, frequently among women who usually bear the family responsibility for water collection:

“Sometimes, these fights are bad. A few days ago, two women physically attacked each other and pulled each other’s hair. We had to call the police. One woman was sent to the hospital and the police arrested the other woman. Women fight with each other because only one tanker comes here for so many people and we cannot be certain that each of us will get water.” (Woman from Bombay Hotel)

In a couple of rare instances, residents have managed to collectively dig bore-wells to make arrangements for water, freeing them from the water suppliers and associated conflicts. This collective effort is an important bottom-up practice, but it still does not ensure good quality water and does not totally address the issue of deprivation and structural violence. At the Vatwa resettlement sites, water provision was arranged without sufficiently resolving outstanding governance questions. This led to a lack of potable water and inadequate running water due to leaking and blocked water pipes.

The structural violence created by resettlement on the urban periphery through socially disruptive processes has made the possibility of residents managing, maintaining, and sustaining the water supply extremely rare, thereby perpetuating structural violence. Municipal officials sometimes intervene, either out of benevolence or due to political pressure, but this generally results in uneven and inadequate interventions, furthering micro-local inequalities.

Some officials are also unsympathetic towards residents because they consider resettlement to be an act of charity. As a consequence of insulting them in this way, residents have retaliated by vandalising public property at the municipal office, exhibiting counter-violence against the state. Here, despite residents’ protests, the local government has remained unresponsive and has withdrawn the low level support that it was providing to keep the water supply system working.

Residents have almost completely stopped making demands on the government in the face of its increasingly uncompromising stance. But with access to water not resolved, the point of conflict has shifted to conflicts among the marginalised: among residents and between residents and water operators over maintenance and repairs. Furthermore, inequities are also reproduced as women and children regularly bear the brunt of gathering adequate amounts of water for the household.

Public transport as a driver of women’s insecurity

Ahmedabad has good public transport coverage through buses operated by Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Services (AMTS) and the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS). However, there are issues related to frequency, connectivity, and affordability of public transport in Bombay Hotel and the Vatwa resettlement sites. Women were forced to commute using para-transit vehicles such as ‘shuttles’ (three-wheeled auto-rickshaws that operate on a shared basis). Many women perceived the shuttles to be unsafe when sharing them with male passengers or when they had to take them alone because they feared the male driver.

“She used to go from here to the BRTS road in a shuttle and then from there to Dani Limda in another shuttle and then walk from there to school. The driver would keep a watch on her and would not take any other passenger when she was in his rickshaw; he would tease her and take her through different routes every day. Out of fear, she stopped going to school.” (Resident of Bombay Hotel regarding her niece’s experience)

In Bombay Hotel and Vatwa, walking to public transport stops was also challenging for women. They often face insecurity and harassment in public spaces. There are multiple drivers of this insecurity, many of which stem from the built environment: poor lighting; uneven roads and the absence of footpaths; and vacant spaces and structures along access roads that can be used by goons for illicit activities such as manufacturing, selling, and/or using alcohol and drugs or gambling.

Multiple causes, including a lack of good employment opportunities, draw many male youths into illicit activities, which then lead them to harass girls and young women. As such, women in Bombay Hotel and Vatwa will only undertake a trip if it is a necessity.

—
*Visiting professor at the School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad; **independent scholar based in Ahmedabad, formerly senior research fellow at the Centre for Urban Equity, CEPT University

These are excerpts from the paper “Everyday violence in urban India Is planning the driver or mitigator?” published with the permission of Prof Darshini Mahadevia

Courtesy: Counter View

Adivasis In Jharkhand Protest Police Inaction Against Lynching

June 25, 2019

On 10 April 2019, Prakash Lakda, a 50-year old Adivasi of Jurmu village of Gumla’s Dumri block, was lynched to death by a mob of men from the neighbouring Jairagi village. Three other victims from Jurmu – Peter Kerketta, Belarius Minj and Janerius Minj – sustained severe injuries due to the beating by the mob.

On 31 may 2019, Kendriya Jan Sangharsh Samiti organised a protest against the violence and administrative inaction. Despite this protest, the police has failed to take any action against the perpetrators of the Dumri lynching. The police has in fact charged the surviving victims of the lynching with cow slaughter. To once again protest against the continued injustice, Jan Sangharsh Samiti organized a protest today in front of the office of the Gumla Deputy Commissioner. The protest was attended by hundreds of people from not only Gumla, but also from the nearby districts of Ranchi and Latehar.

Today’s protest began with Albert Tigga from the Jan Sangharsh Samiti briefly recollecting the incident of lynching and the fact finding of the incidence and protests against the violence and administrative inaction. The fact finding team clearly established that the owner of the dead ox requested the victims and others of Jurmu village to carve the dead ox. While carving the dead ox, the villagers were attacked by a mob of 35-40 persons from Jairagi village and beaten for hours.

Ashutosh Rahul Tirkey shared that instead of taking action against the perpetrators of violence, the police filed a FIR against the Adivasi victims of the lynching. Further, the Gumla district court has rejected the anticipatory bail filed for these victims. The attached court order clarifies that the police did not include the testimonies of the residents of Jurmu in the case diary. Even the testimony of the dead ox owner has not been recorded properly by the police. The facts have been recorded in a distorted manner in favor of the perpetrators of lynching.

Villagers from Jurmu said that since the lynching, residents of Jurmu are being threatened by people from Jairagi. On the advice of the local administration, residents of Jurmu stopped supplying mud to a brick kiln being operated by a resident of Jairagi. In retaliation, the brick kiln owner threatened residents of Jurmu with the comment “khoon ki nadiyan baha denge” (will flow rivers of blood). Moreover, Adivasi children from Jurmu are denied water from a public hand pump at Jairagi chowk.

Social activist Ashok Verma said that on 17 June another person was lynched, this time a Muslim in Saraikela Kharsawan district of Jharkhand. Like in case of Dumri, this victim was also forced to say “jai shree ram” and “jai hanuman”. This is the eighteenth lynching death in Jharkhand in the past three years. These series of lynchings clearly indicate the immunity provided to the perpetrators of violence by the state government.
Jan Sangharsh Samiti’s Saroj Hembram said that she protests against the bovine protection law that is used to kill people on the name of cow slaughter. Kendriya Jansangharsh Samiti strongly condemns these series of lynchings, the subsequent harassment of surviving victims and the administrative inaction against the perpetrators of violence. Towards the end of the protest meeting, a delegation of protestors submitted a memorandum to the Gumla Deputy Commissioner with the following demands:

Withdrawal of false cases of cow slaughter filed against the Adivasis of Jurmu
Arrest of all the perpetrators involved in the mob violence and file charges against them under The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act
Take action against the local police for its long delay in arranging medical treatment for the victims and filing of false case of cow slaughter
Provide interim compensation of Rs 15 lakh to the deceased’s family and Rs. 10 lakhs each to the injured victims
Compliance with the recent Supreme Court judgement on lynching
Action against the continued harassment of Adivasis of Jurmu

Courtesy: Counter Current

Academics and Writers Respond to the UP Private Universities Ordinance

June 25, 2019

On June 18, the Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government approved the draft Uttar Pradesh Private Universities Ordinance, 2019. Among other things, the draft ordinance would make it mandatory for new and existing private universities to give an undertaking that they will ensure that no “anti-national” activities will take place in the campuses.

The approval comes right after the re-election of the Modi government at the centre, and is being seen by many as a repressive move. To understand the implications of the proposed law and what it specifically imeans for democratic rights, the Indian Cultural Forum spoke to some eminent academics and writers.

Nandini Sundar, Professor of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, said that such an ordinance would have a “chilling effect on all research, teaching and activity in the university. Even if “anti-national” activities are not defined, the target is quite clear – anything that is critical or questioning the current government will be considered as “anti-national”.” Sundar pointed out that the government prescribing such rules for universities is extremely dangerous, and added that “if people are engaged in anti-national activities there are other laws to deal with that.”
Reacting to the draft ordinance, writer and scholar Ganesh Devy said, “Universities are meant for generating thought and meaningful social questions…This kind of “fatwa” is the end of the university system.”

The universities would be given a year to enforce the law. Many feel that this is a part of the larger attack on academic institutions since the current regime came to power in 2014. The Modi-led government, accused time and again of curbing debate and saffronising education, is opposed to the very idea of a university. The draft ordinance, they think, is another step in the same direction.

Ghanshyam Shah, sociologist and former Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, is of the opinion that the ordinance defeats the very purpose of a university. He says: “University is meant for free and open discussion. And nothing is sacrosanct as far as the discussion within the university campus is concerned. Now this “anti-national” – one wonders what is meant by that. Anything I might want can make an “anti-national”. I want development for dalits and I might be accused to be an “anti-national” because you are not talking about India’s upliftment, but dalit upliftment. So any opposition or any criticism of those in power would be then “anti-national”.”

Echoing a similar concern, Abha Dev Habib, Professor of Physics at Delhi University, points out: “Academic institutions may be funding or conducting various research projects – how will you scan whether what they are doing is ‘national’ or ‘anti-national’? By scanning every seminar? By scanning every research project? I don’t understand the need for such a bill.” She sees the move as contrary to the basic requirements of fruitful research and academics: “If you want to really do well in research or in knowledge production, then the universities – whether public or private – need to have the freedom to think in a new manner, and it may not be an easy task… We must understand that anything new in science came only through questioning what existed and challenging superstitions.”

According to her, there is also a direct connection between the unfolding projects of the Adityanath-led UP government and the agenda of establishing an academic stranglehold. She says, “If you look at what has happened over the last five years in Uttar Pradesh, and the kind of violence that has happened against dalits and women, and how the focus has been shifted to the cow…they want to have a greater control over these processes through control over universities – through a greater control over what is taught and how it is taught.”

Eminent historian Uma Chakravarty claims that the draft law is of a piece with some of the worst forms of authoritarianism historically. She says, “It is like from the McCarthy era in the US where they imagined “un-American” activities and hauled hordes of people from the universities and from the cultural world and slapped such accusations against them. They aunched a huge witch hunt against those whom they identified as “un-American” for their supposed communist sympathies. It didn’t matter whether they were or they weren’t communist. The process amounted to a farce. It wasn’t even any legal procedure — they called someone to testify, that person will then know other people, and they will be asked to come and testify, and then basically they lost their jobs, they moved away quite often from America to go and teach in other universities. They were terrible times. Even people like Charlie Chaplin went away from Hollywood. I am reminded, as a historian, of this kind of thing. It is a targeting of the universities where, according to the ruling regime, there should be no critical thinking, no independent thinking and you can create a bogey of nationalism and charge others with “anti-national” activities. You could be stuck in court and meanwhile your careers would be destroyed. I am reminded of the McCarthy era in America in the late 40s — their version of hysteria against the so-called communists. It is basically a witch hunt.”

While Uma Chakravarty invokes the migration of dissenting academics to other countries, Debaditya Bhattacharya, Assistant Professor at the Kazi Nazrul University, thinks that a different kind of journey may be playing out in India today. Locating the draft ordinance in the situation of public universities under the Modi regime, he says: “This is a clear move to bring the axe down on private universities because the public universities are already on their way to becoming privatised. Over the past five years, we have seen that public universities have been hollowed out of any kind of defence or even any potential for defence. Now that they have been neutralised and sanitised, the private universities have to be the next target.”

The move from public to private has been the result of a systematic persecution of voices in public universities. He says further: “Because of the larger policies that have been played out in terms of non-filling of vacancies, along with public university spaces becoming increasingly intolerant spaces, a lot of good people who were either working as contractual faculties within the public university, have either moved to private universities or have moved abroad.” He cites Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, Hyderabad Central University, Allahabad University and IIT Chennai as instances of this unfolding tragedy.

The “exodus”, as he terms it, naturally results in policies like the draft ordinance. He says, “People who have been students of public universities, people who have been trained to think about public initiatives, who have been taught to think about the order of the day, have all moved into private universities. Which is why there has to be a clamp down on private universities now.”

It seems, on the view of these academics and writers, that the draft ordinance brings together communalism with full-blown privatisation. While the full implications of the law will only be gauged in practice, the draft ordinance sounds an ominous note in the increasingly dismal situation of the right to democratic dissent in India. Response to it must also be, therefore, to the larger onslaught on democracy and dissent.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

Don’t Defame India in the Name of Ram!

June 25, 2019

Abhisar Sharma discusses attack on a Muslim youth in Jharkhand who was reportedly forced to chant Jai Shree Ram.

US Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo has released a report which mentions increasing attacks on non-Hindus, including Muslims, Christians and dalits in India. The report lists 18 such incidents which resulted in the death of 6 people. The report also highlights that there have been 300-500 incidents of attacks on Christian padres and churches. In this episode of NewsChakra, senior journalist Abhisar Sharma discusses this report and the attack on a Muslim youth in Jharkhand who was reportedly forced to chant Jai Shree Ram.

Courtesy: News Click

How Gujarat govt imposed curbs on livestock export for ‘fear’ of losing BJP vote share

June 25, 2019

Insidious are the ways authorities function, preaching one thing, practicing quite another. Administrative muscle-flexing to suit political goals was on display when the BJP-led Vijay Rupani government in Gujarat banned the export of livestock days ahead of Eid. Even the Narendra Modi-led government expressed its intent to confirm it countrywide, but stopped short of doing so.

Here is a classic case of how governments function in India, looking London and talking Tokyo.

In April, the Gujarat High Court quashed three notifications of the state government aimed at stopping export of livestock from Tuna port in Kutch, terming it a “colourable exercise of powers”, to do something which cannot be done directly. A division bench of justices Harsha Devani and Bhargav Karia termed the decision as “grossly illegal, unconstitutional and violative of the fundamental rights of the petitioners”.

Several livestock exporters had sought judicial redressal after the state government issued orders up to December 2018 which banned the export of livestock, principally sheep and goat, from Tuna. The judges said in their verdict that ”with a view to appease a section of society which is averse to export of livestock from Tuna port, the government has from time to time taken all steps to ensure that the petitioners and similarly situated persons are not able to carry out this export from here”.

The sequence of events makes for interesting reading. On December 14 chief minister Vijay Rupani announced that the government will not allow livestock exports from the port. On the same day, the agriculture department issues a notification under the Gujarat Essential Commodities and Cattle (Control) Act, prohibiting movement of cattle from outside into any drought-affected area.

Kutch had already been declared drought affected. Soon after, the director of animal husbandry informed the collector of customs that the state government has decided to withdraw the services provided for health check-ups of animals to be exported and would not allow export of live animals until the specified (check-up) facility was established.

On the same day, the home department directed the Kutch police to set up check-posts to keep a watch on transportation of animals, the High Court noted.

“What cannot be done directly by the state government is sought to be done indirectly under the guise of exercise of powers under section 4(1)(b) of the (Cattle Protection) Act… Notification, therefore, clearly has been issued in colourable exercise of powers and deserves to be struck down”, the court ruled. It added that ”the intention was to prohibit export which is otherwise not a state subject”.

The state government requested a stay of the order so that it could move the Supreme Court but no stay was granted.

MTM Hakim, advocate who represented some of the petitioners, said that this was not the first time that the state government had attempted to stop these exports from Tuna port. Two previous attempts had been too.

On August 3, 2018, the director-general of shipping in consultation with the mercantile marine department allowed mechanized shipping vessels to operate from Tuna port in August. The consignment was to leave by August 6.

But the same day, the district magistrate of Kutch, Ramya Mohan, stopped the consignment of about 8,000 sheep and goat which was to be exported to UAE. She cited violation of Prevention of the Cruelty to Animals Act,1960 and immediately appointed a three-member committee to probe this.

The panel comprised of the sub-divisional magistrate, Anjar and the deputy police chief and deputy director, animal husbandry. They were asked to submit their report within a day. However, before that could be done , the D-G, shipping stopped the vessel on August 8 without assigning any reason.

The mercantile marine department which had cleared the export then backtracked saying that according to the Indian Merchant Shipping Act ,1958 and the Sailing Vessel Rules, 1997, vessels must not sail in the foul season of June 1-August 31 and cancelled the port clearance through a letter dated August 7.
Aggrieved exporters sought the intervention of the High Court and a single judge bench of Justice Bela Trivedi stayed the August 6 order of the district magistrate till the pendency of the petition filed by the Livestock Exporters Association (LEA). The Court also observed that the panel formed by the district magistrate lacked the authority of law.

Besides the apparently communal nature of events, things fell in place once realization dawned that Bakri-Eid in 2018 fell on August 22 when demand for such livestock in the Gulf countries peaked and any obstruction in exports then was likely to result in huge economic losses with penalties and potential blacklisting.

There was also realisation that livestock exports from Tuna in 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 had crossed seven lakh heads.

According to reports, a Dubai-based company, which had invested heavily in these exports, wrote to the external affairs ministry to resolve the matter, as such undue interruption in export sullied the name of Indian exporters. Adil Noor, secretary of the Livestock Export Association, Gujarat, also drew attention of the authorities to this fact.

According to data from the Union commerce ministry, the export value of sheep and goat meat from India has increased from US$ 128.38 million in 2015-16 to US$ 129.69 million in 2016-17. Some 60 countries import this meat from India and almost 80 per cent of the total meat exports go to West Asia. UAE followed by Nepal are the two main countries which import live sheep and goats from India.

It was only after these efforts came to nought, that the Rupani government pulled out all stops to block the livestock export with a series of measures including the December notification.

The fact that there is more than meets the eye became clear when the Rajkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry pressed for a ban in livestock export.

In a representation in March to commerce and industry minister Suresh Prabhu, it stated that ”now it seems that our livestock exporters are beyond the law of the land. It is high time you need to take serious note that such unruly export is threat against national security and it is also conniving hawala and money laundering”.

This shocking representation from a trade body that had no locus standii in the matter only further strengthened the suspicion that larger forces were at work. Incidentally, Rajkot is the hometown of Rupani who is a Jain.

Tuna, which is the sole designated port for livestock export in the country, falls under the Gandhidham Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which is representative trade body of Kutch, and has extended support to the exporters. Ashish Joshi, secretary of the body , is on record stating that the livestock exporters had sought their help and “we extended it to them.”

Initially, it was made out that the curbs were imposed due to representation by animal rights activists and members of the Jain community .However, opponents were quick to point out that there are no restrictions on either serving or eating non-vegetarian food in Gujarat. ”No government can ever impose such curbs at home for fear of losing out on vote share”, said a ruling party politician.

Former Gujarat chief minister Suresh Mehta said the High Court judgement was an eye-opener since it has brought out the biased way in which power was exercised to subvert the very edifices which it was duty bound to protect. And the judgement has clearly damned the government.

Was it not Thomas Jefferson, author of the US declaration of independence and former President who said: ”Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry!”
—
*Senior Gujarat-based journalist. Blog: http://wordsmithsandnewsplumbers.blogspot.com/

First published on https://www.counterview.net/2019/06/how-gujarat-govt-imposed-curbs-on.html

The New ‘Emergency’!

June 25, 2019

First Published on: June 18, 2019

The country will never forget that infamous night of June 25/26, 1975, when the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had a state of emergency declared all over the country. During that dark chapter of the country’s history which lasted for a twenty-one-month period till March 21, 1977, civil liberties were suspended, freedom of speech and expression was totally muzzled, political opponents of the Government and those who protested the emergency were imprisoned and human rights violations by those in power were the order of the day! The most obvious response for the people of India was to say “never again!” and to ensure that those dark days would never visit the country again!

Sadly, that is not the case today! Forty-plus years later we live in a new ‘emergency’ in India! In a brilliant and hard-hitting expose ‘Democracy can die in daylight too’ (The Hindu, June 13, 2019)on the role of the media in the recently concluded general elections, Krishna Prasad a former Editor-in-Chief, Outlook, and former member of the Press Council of India writes, “When the media’s darkest days — the censorship under Indira Gandhi’s 21 months of Emergency — are invoked, L.K. Advani’s quote that the press crawled when asked to bend is airily recalled. But at least the media of the time was adhering to a formal order which had a start date and an end date. In the 21st century, it didn’t take a presidential order for the ‘feral beasts’ to suspend their instincts, to look the other way, to stoke majoritarian fires, to fearlessly question not the ruling party but the Opposition, and usher in Modi 2.0”. The hard fact is that freedom of speech and expression is throttled as never before. One only has to switch on some of the so-called ‘mainstream’ channels or glance at the headlines of some dailies, to realise how biased they are and how afraid they are to focus on news which are truthful and objective.

Prasad blatantly states how media has abdicated their core responsibilities, “notwithstanding Mr. Modi’s advertised disdain for journalists, making the media forget their core tasks — to witness, to verify, to investigate, and to make sense, in the words of the British media scholar George Brock — was always a vital weapon in the manufacture of consent for the ‘Gujarat Model’. Despite early failures as Chief Minister, Mr. Modi deftly achieved this goal. Established media houses were tamed by patronising their competitors. Some pesky editors were reined in or eased out by intimidating owners. Advertisements were turned off and on to let the bottom line send signals to managers”. So today if some media personnel have the audacity to witness, to verify, to investigate, and to make sense – the writing on the wall is clear! The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has recently ( June 15) barred NDTV Ltd.’s three key promoters -Prannoy Roy, Radhika Roy and their holding firm-from the capital market for two years! No guessing why!

On June 8, Prashant Kanojia, a freelance journalist, was arrested by Uttar Pradesh police in Delhi for a tweet that had “objectionable comments” on Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Kanojia, was picked up from his home in Delhi after a complaint by a police officer in Lucknow, alleging he tried to “malign” Adityanath’s. Kanojia’s wife Jagisha Arora challenged his arrest in a petition to the Supreme Court. Ordering his immediate release on bail the Supreme court bench said that it disapproves the deprivation of right to liberty by the state “A citizen’s right to liberty is sacrosanct and non-negotiable. It is a fundamental right granted under the Constitution and can’t be infringed upon by the state” Whilst the prompt intervention and decision by the Supreme Court needs to be applauded, there has been a wave of protests on social media on the way freedom of speech and expression are being throttled in the country. ‘The Editors Guild of India’ condemned the arrest of Kanojia and the editor and head of a NOIDA-based television channel, Nation Live, Ishita Singh and Anuj Shukla, saying, “The police action is high-handed, arbitrary and amounts to an authoritarian misuse of laws. The Guild sees it as an effort to intimidate the press, and stifle freedom of expression…. a brazen misuse of law….” On June 11, a journalist, who was covering a train derailment, in western Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli was beaten up on camera by a group of GRP personnel. The group was seen repeatedly slapping and thrashing the journalist while he tries to reason with them (the video has gone viral). According to ANI, the journalist associated with a news channel, said, “They were in plain clothes. One hit my camera and it fell down. When I picked it up, they hit and abused me. I was locked up, stripped and they urinated in my mouth.”

On June 12, an eight-member team of the Pune police raided the Ranchi residence of Jesuit Father Stan Swamy. It was the second such raid on the 83-year-old’s house since August 2018. Fr. Swamy, a great upholder of the rights of Adivasis, is an ‘accused’ in the Bhima Koregaon/Elgaar Parishad case in which police have so far booked 23 people, including prominent rights activists and intellectuals. The ‘Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha’ condemned the raids on Stan Swamy and arrests of other human rights activists saying, “the central government and media houses close to the BJP claim that the human rights activists were part of a Maoist conspiracy related to the Bhima-Koregaon incident. This concocted story seems to be part of a larger propaganda, based on terms like “urban Naxals”, aimed at stifling any criticism of the government. The raids and arrests are part of the government’s growing attempts to stifle dissent and intimidate those who are fighting for justice. Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha demands an immediate end to the raids, dropping of all false charges against human rights activists across the country and release of those who are arrested. These harassments are politically motivated and wholly unjustified”.

The throttling of ‘freedom of speech and expression’ has been happening with frightening regularity in India-particularly in the last five years! Media personnel, academics, intellectuals and others who stand up for justice, transparency and truth and have had the courage to voice these non-negotiables, have had to pay a heavy price; they have been hounded and harassed, arrested and tortured and some even killed! A few months ago, when ‘Reporters Without Borders’ released its annual global press freedom index, India was ranked a measly 140 out of 180 countries. A pathetic performance from the world’s largest democracy!

The grip that throttles the essence of Indian democracy, must be released. Bertolt Brecht, the German poet and fierce critic of the Nazi regime, provides a cue

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing
About the dark times.

It is time now for those who cherish the freedom of speech and expression, to wake from their slumber and their inability or fear to act! But do we have the courage to halt the new ‘emergency’ being foisted on the nation?

Madras HC upholds Right to freedom of religion; quashes restraining order on conducting prayers

June 24, 2019

In an order issued by Madras High Court, the court ruled that prior permissions from authorities are not required for conducting prayers in one’s own residence.

A petition was filed by a Christian Pastor, from Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu, against the local Police who restrained him from conducting prayers in his residence ordering that prayers will be allowed only after having a peace talk with Hindu Munnani Party, an organisationwith ultra right wing associations, based in Tamil Nadu. The local police had raised the issue that the pastor did not obtain any prior permission from local authorities before conducting the prayer, also the petitioner did not obtain any prior permission for construction of prayer hall as required under the provisions of the Tamil Nadu District Municipalities Building Rules, 1972. The police also presented before the court the objection raised by Hindu Munnani Party that the prayer meeting had created sound pollution and parking of vehicles on road restricted the free movement of public. The Hindu Munnani Party had also threatened the pastor saying that they would stage a dharna protest if the pastor will not agree to their demands.

Referring to the AdiSaivaSivachariyargalNalaSangam -vs- State of Tamil Nadu case the local police raised the point that though right to freedom of religion and managing religious affairs come under Fundamental Rights of Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution, it is still subject to subject to public order, morality and health, which could enable the state to intervene on a larger public interest.

Whereas the Madras High Court referring to its earlier order [in R.Jeganathan Israel vs. Superintendent of Police] upheld the rights of the petitioner (pastor) by ruling that “the question of requiring the Petitioner to get prior permission from any authority for assembling and conducting any prayers in his dwelling place per se, without causing nuisance or disturbance to others and without causing hindrance to the general public of the locality, does not arise”.

Also Justice JusticeP.D.Audikesavalu quashing the direction given to Christian Pastor said the “order calling the Petitioner to attend the peace talks with the Hindu Munnani Party, who had lodged objections, and restraining the Petitioner from conducting prayers till such peace talks are concluded, which is without any authority of law, cannot be sustained”.

Whilst this being said, the court also added that “the Petitioner is bound to ensure that while conducting such prayers in his residential premises, no hindrance or disturbance is caused to the general public and for that purpose, it is certainly open to the concerned authorities on the basis of subjective satisfaction with concrete evidence to take necessary action under the provisions of the relevant statutes in accordance with law in the event of any nuisance being caused due to noise pollution or for violation of any statutory provisions or for any bonafide reasons”.

This order is something to be looked up to especially in the present socio-political climate where crime minority communities are being denied of their rights and crimes against them are on rise. Though rulings such as these gives some relief still there is much to be questioned like the power to decide whether any activities come under acts which cause nuisance by violating any statutory provisions or for any bonafide reasons are with authorities who might be biased to certain sections or groups in the society.

‘Deaths cannot keep happening, we need answers’: SC to government on Encephalitis deaths

June 24, 2019

Delhi: Coming down heavily on the Central and the Bihar state government over the deaths of more than 100 children due to the ongoing Encephalitis epidemics, the Supreme Court (SC), in a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by advocate Manohar Pratap and Sanpreet Singh Ajmani, sought a response within 7 days regarding the steps being taken to bring the situation under control.

Supreme Court

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and B R Gavai in today’s order, said “This is a serious concern. Deaths cannot keep happening. We need answers.” Further, the bench directed the Bihar government to file an affidavit on the adequacy of medical facilities, nutrition and sanitation and hygiene conditions in the state. The apex court also asked if policy initiatives are in place. The court said that there were reports about villages where no children were left. Evoking instances of similar problem faced in Uttar Pradesh (UP), the Supreme Court questioned how UP coped with the situation.

Stating that negligence by the State is violative of the Right to Life guaranteed under Article 21 of our Constitution, the petition read, “Right to Life is sacrosanct fundamental right guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. This Hon’ble Court in catena of judgements has accepted it has highest in all fundamental rights. The present act of negligence by the respondents who are ‘State’ within the framework of Indian Constitution has resulted in the death of hundreds of young innocent lives. This continuing act of negligence on the part of state is consistently violating the fundamental right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.”

The petitioners further contended, “This year i.e in 2019, the epicentre of the said disease is Muzaffarpur in Bihar where more than 126 children have lost their lives in the past one week. Media reports shows that there is acute shortage of doctors, medical facilities, intensive care units and other medical equipment in the hospitals in nearby areas and children are dying in hospitals due to lack of required facilities.”

The PIL also pleaded before the SC to direct the government for arranging 500 ICUs and 100 mobile ICUs and further direct all private medical institutions in the affected area to admit and provide free treatment. It even sought a compensation of Rs. 10 lakhs to the surviving family members of the deceased who have died due to the negligence of the state machinery.

The SC order comes on a day when the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court in Muzaffarpur has also ordered a probe against Union health minister Harsh Vardhan and Bihar health minister Mangal Pandey in the matter.

Symptoms of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) include high fever, convulsions and extremely low blood sugar levels. Among the factors said to trigger the syndrome are malnutrition. There were more than 44,000 cases and nearly 6,000 deaths from encephalitis in India between 2008 and 2014, said a 2017 study published in The Indian Journal of Medical Research (IJMR).

The petition was filed considering the rapid increase in the number of deaths of children, mostly in the age group of 1 to 10 years, in the past few weeks with the latest figure being 152 of which 130 alone are from the Muzaffarpur.

The next hearing is scheduled on July 5, 2019.

Related Articles:

1...1,3861,3871,388...2,697 Page 1,387 of 2,697

Ahmedabad, where high growth is accompanied by low human development, social exclusion

Adivasis In Jharkhand Protest Police Inaction Against Lynching

Academics and Writers Respond to the UP Private Universities Ordinance

Don’t Defame India in the Name of Ram!

Abhisar Sharma discusses attack on a Muslim youth in Jharkhand who was reportedly forced to chant Jai Shree Ram.

How Gujarat govt imposed curbs on livestock export for ‘fear’ of losing BJP vote share

The New ‘Emergency’!

Madras HC upholds Right to freedom of religion; quashes restraining order on conducting prayers

In an order issued by Madras High Court, the court ruled that prior permissions from authorities are not required for conducting prayers in one’s own residence.

‘Deaths cannot keep happening, we need answers’: SC to government on Encephalitis deaths

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

Important Links

Other Links

CONNECT