In Khambisar village in Gujarat’s Aravalli district, members of the Patidar community organised bhajan and yagna on the main road to stall a Dalit wedding procession. Another Dalit bridegroom had to be provided police cover after members of the Thakor community objected to him offering prayers at a local temple.
Ahmedabad: In Khambisar village in Gujarat’s Aravalli district, members of the Patidar community organised bhajan and yagna on the main road to stall a Dalit wedding procession, the groom’s family alleged.
The procession was delayed despite police presence as the Patidar community members refused to leave and it was reported that the two sides threw stones at each other.
“The incident occurred in the evening in Khambiasr village and officials said a posse of cops had been rushed to the spot to maintain peace. Several people and policemen were injured in the stone throwing. The wedding procession, which was held up for over five hours, could not proceed to the marriage venue due to the ruckus and family members of the groom blamed the police for the situation,” NDTV reported.
“Police have been deployed in large numbers. The situation is peaceful. The groom’s family has been provided protection and we will give them cover on Monday as well,” Gandhinagar Range Inspector General of Police Mayank Chavda said in the report.
The police official said members of both the communities had been called to sort out matters and bring about peace in the area.
One of the family members of the groom, however, alleged that they had sought protection, but the police failed in getting the procession to move forward.
“We got no police protection and were forced to come back. The members of Patidar community had blocked both the roads, making it impossible for us to move. We hope police give us protection on Monday so that the wedding ceremony passes off peacefully,” the family member said in the report.
Another wedding procession of a Dalit bridegroom had to be provided police cover on Sunday after members of the Thakor community objected to him offering prayers at a local temple at a village in the Sabarkantha district of Gujarat.
The procession, however, passed off peacefully, police said.
Anil Rathod’s family had sought police protection after elders of Sitvada village, belonging to the Thakor community, had objected on Saturday to the procession passing through the village and his plans to offer prayers at the temple, Bhikhabhai Vaniya, a villager said in a report.
According to Deputy Superintendent of Police Meenakshi Patel, “The family of the Anil Rathod submitted an application to the police seeking protection for the wedding procession. In their application, the Dalit members of the village had raised apprehension that members of another community might create trouble”.
“We offered police protection to the marriage procession and it passed off peacefully. The groom also visited the village temple before he left for a nearby village for the marriage ceremony,” the DSP said.
“In Hinduism, conscience, reason and independent thinking have no scope for development…. If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt be the greatest calamity for this country. No matter what the Hindus say, Hinduism is a menace to liberty, equality and fraternity. It is incompatible with democracy. Hindu raj must be prevented at any cost.” – Dr B R Ambedkar
Pragya Singh Thakur claimed at Bhopal, April 19, 2019 that “Hemant Karkare died because of my curse.” In her own words, the policeman had treated her “very badly” while she was in custody in the 2008 Malegaon blast case. Elaborating the point, she said, “Hemant Karkare falsely implicated me. He died of his karma. I told him he will be destroyed. I told him his entire dynasty will be erased. Maine kaha tera [Karkare] sarvanash hoga.” [1]
Entire dynasty of the IPS officer came under curse of a political fortune seeker while doing his duty with highest standard of efficiency, probity and competence. The IPS officer was known impeccable integrity and indomitable courage, Hemant Karkare was cursed by an accused. This reminds me a Bengali proverb, “Death does not befall a cow in consequence of curse of a vulture, does it?” Almost all Indian languages, I am sure, must boast of a proverb as this or similar to it.
Hemant along with his colleagues chased the Pakistani terrorists, who, on November 26, 2011, waged a war against India and invaded Mumbai. The Mumbai police fought valiantly and Hemant Karkare and some of his colleagues on mission finally laid down their lives. The nation is proud of those martyrs. About eight years later, we hear that the IPS officer died of curse of a political power-seeker, contesting 2019 elections from Bhopal Parliamentary constituency, Madhya Pradesh. This nonsense or rubbish has widely been reported, commented upon and/or condemned by Indian media, columnists and opinion-makers.
The nation conferred on slain Hemant Karkare, posthumously, the Ashoka Chakra for his exemplary sacrifice. This is India’s highest peacetime military decoration conferred for valour, courageous action or self-sacrifice away from the battlefield. It is the peacetime equivalent of the Param Vir Chakra, and is awarded for the “most conspicuous bravery or some daring or pre-eminent valour or self-sacrifice” other than in the face of the enemy.
According to a British Broadcasting Corporation bulletin, the Mumbai terror attacks of 26/11 of 2008 left 166 people dead and soured ties between India and Pakistan. During the 60-hour siege, the gunmen also ambushed a group of policemen, including three of the city’s top officers travelling in a vehicle and killed six of them. The only policeman, Arun Jadhav, with grievous injuries, survived the unprovoked brutalities launched on India to tell the world “the grisly story of his escape.” [2]
Besides, Karkare, Sadhvi Pragya’s curse, if anyone takes her at all seriously, drew curtains on lives of valiant Indian Army Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, Mumbai’s Additional Police Commissioner Ashok Kamte and Senior Police Inspector Vijay Salaskar who, in no way, were involved in the alleged torture of Pragya Thakur during investigations of Malegaon blasts cases. A television channel reported that India had asked Pakistan to hand over Mumbai underworld Don Dawood Ibrahim, Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Maulana Masood Azhar for their suspected involvement in the Mumbai terror attacks. [3]
Any person with an iota of intelligence would be appalled at the direct linkage the curse straightway established between the merchants of deaths and manufacturers of terror aforementioned operating from Pakistani soil and the Hindu Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, who enjoys the umbrella held by the Hindu nationalist ruling Party over her head to contest parliamentary elections 2019. The implication of the Sadhvi’s claim underlines that Pakistani terror outfits patronized by Dawood Ibrahim, Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Maulana Masood Azhar took immediate and absorbing interest in translating her curse into action with bloody and devastating consequences. A deadly gang of terrorists, including Ajmal Kasab, descended on Mumbai within ‘theek sava mahine’ or 37-38 days, to achieve the objectives and purposes of sadhvi Pragya’s curse, i. e., Hemant Karkare’s sarvanash. It is of immense national importance to decode the secrets along with the mystery enveloping the entire issue. However, no Indian worth his salt would pocket an insult as this for his motherland. This is a crying need to investigate the probably link between the two ends—a Sadhvi of India and terror outfits in Pakistan.
Part-II Puri Jagannath & His Temple Surrendered to East India Company in 1803
In a 14-day campaign, the East India Company captured Orissa unopposed and brought an end of oppressive Peshwa rule in 1803. The army simply marched up to Pipli within firing distance of Puri temple town. A delegation of the temple priests and pandas welcomed the victorious commanding officer of the British Army. They surrendered the control, management and maintenance of Bhagwan Jagannath, and his temple in obedience to an ‘oracle.’ [4]According to Swami Dharma Theertha (pre-ascetic Parameswara Menon, B. A., LLB) “the oracle of the Puri Jagannath proclaimed that it was the desire of the deity that the temple too be controlled by the Company.” [5] What an enigmatic desire of the Lord of the Universe!
Lo and behold the fate of bold and abiding promises Lord Krishna made in the Holy Geeta to his followers:
“Yada yada hi dharmasya glanirbhavati bharata Abhythanamadharmasya tadatmanam srijamyaham Paritranaya sadhunang vinashay cha dushkritam
Was it any better than hogwash or a pre-election promise dishonoured and neglected in compliance? Though Lord Krishna was fervently expected to destroy the invading British along with the temple priests and pandas whose mischief out of petty self-interests threw Him, his brother and sister under the feet of the British overlords.
From 1803 to 1841, the British Trading Company controlled, managed and maintained the Jagannath Temple which was the home of Lord Krishna, his elder brother Balabhadra and their sister Subhadra. Regulations were passed in 1806 and taxes collected from the pilgrims in tens of thousands resorting to Puri from all over India. They paid taxes in lakhs of rupees. The Company spent, by and large, half of the income on the temple management, rituals, maintenance and establishment and the balance half was credited to Company Exchequer, as solid profits. The priests of the Jagannath temple did not suffer any qualms of conscience for this sorry state of affairs.
The question really to ask is: Are the slokas of the Bhagawad Geeta afore-quoted anything but work of fiction? Interestingly, the Englishmen, at home and abroad, condemned their own most famous Trading Company for subscribing to idolatry. No Indians ever appear to have voiced any grievance against British occupation and control of Jagannath Temple for about four decades when they minted tons of money. They also taxed pilgrims at Gaya, Tirupati, Prayag, etc. with enormous benefit. The British shared income from taxes with priests in these centres and so they were kept in good humour.
The BJP Sankalpa Patra Lok Sabha 2019 on national security enunciated ‘Zero tolerance’ approach to terrorism as follows:
“Our security doctrine will be guided by our national security interest only…. We will firmly continue our policy of ‘Zero Tolerance’ against terrorism and extremism and will continue our policy of giving free hand to our forces in combating terrorism.” [01] Lord of the Universe, Jagannath was desirous of enjoying the superior control, management and maintenance of the foreign rulers! No countrymen seemed to have ever questioned Jagannath’s attachment for British rulers! Pragya Thakur’s curse invited Pakistani terrorists right in Mumbai with terrible consequences. Should she not at least be asked to enlighten the countrymen how did a gang of dreadful Pakistani terrorists become so handy in materializing her curse, waging a war against their sovereign neighbour? Does the blueprint of national security of BJP in their Sankalp for Lok Sabha 2019 presented before the country stand to be compromised by someone like of the Sadhvi?
(*The writer, a retired IAS officer and former Vice-Chancellor, Dr Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Muzaffarpur, Bihar, Dr A K Biswas can be contacted at biswasatulk@gmail.com.)
UPDATE: As reported by the Indian Express, the accused has been identified as Giriraj Singh, a polling agent appointed by the BJP. He was produced in court and is now out on bail.
Sub Inspector (SI) Kuldeep Singh, Station House Officer (SHO) of the Sadar Palwal police station said, “We found out about the matter on Sunday afternoon after someone sent the video to us. An FIR was registered regarding the matter and the accused was arrested in the afternoon itself. He has been produced in court and released on bail today.”
In his complaint regarding the matter, on the basis of which the FIR has been registered, the Presiding Officer, Amit Atri, states that the accused, “with the excuse of helping voters”, pressed the button meant to cast votes three times. “I stopped him each time but Giriraj Singh did not listen. While Giriraj Singh was trying to put a vote, some person recorded a video film and made it viral. During this time, a crowd of other voters came and Giriraj Singh managed to escape,” the complainant stated.
An FIR has been registered under Sections 171C (undue influence at elections) and 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and Section 135 of the Representation of People Act, 1951, and 1988.
Faridabad: In what could be a serious tampering of a democratic exercise, a polling agent has been accused of booth capturing at Asaoti in Prithla village that falls under the Faridabad seat, that went to polls on Sunday.
In the video that went viral, a man in blue shirt, later recognized as a polling agent, kept walking up to the polling booth and appears to have either pointed to the party symbol on the EVM or pressed the button, for at least three lady voters. Notably, no other official present in the room tried to stop the polling agent.
The Election Commission took action against the agent after many people tagged the Haryana election body’s twitter handle in the video.
Election Commissioner, Ashok Lavasa, confirmed that an FIR was lodged and the accused has been arrested. The District Election Officer (DEO) said that the polling was not compromised despite the attempts of the accused.
“DEO Faridabad reported that the observer, Sanjay Kumar, investigated the entire matter. Report of the observer will be examined by ECI and action will be taken against those found wanting in their duty,” Lavasa tweeted. The DEO, Faridabad also tweeted “Prompt action taken. FIR lodged. Person behind bars. Observer enquired the matter personally and is satisfied that polling was never vitiated (sic).”
The person in the video is the Polling agent who has been arrested in the afternoon itself. FIR lodged. He was trying to effect at least 3 lady voters. Observer & ARO with teams visited the booth at Asawati in prithala constituency. He is satisfied that voting was never vitiated
— DISTRICT ELECTION OFFICE FARIDABAD (@OfficeFaridabad) May 12, 2019
In Faridabad, Union Minister Krishan Pal Gurjar of the BJP is seeking re-election. Avtar Singh Bhadana is the Congress candidate and Pandit Naveen Jaihind is the Aam Aadmi Party candidate.
In the first phase held on April 11, there were reports of booth capturing at Numaish Colony, Bharat Mata chowk, Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. Predictably, the police categorically denied the charges. Strikingly, the affected area is a BJP stronghold.
Polling agents are appointed by the candidates standing in the election to oversee the process in the polling station.
It is significant to note that the accused agent’s political party has not been made known as yet. Instead, the authorities have completely refrained from commenting on this crucial aspect, the reason of which is best known to them!
Reactor number four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant suffered an explosion during a technical test on April 26, 1986. As a result of the accident, in the then Soviet Union, more than 400 times more radiation was emitted than that released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (Japan) in 1945. It remains the largest nuclear accident in history.
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Ukraine) with the new safe confinement building over the number 4 reactor unit. May 2017. Germán Orizaola
Decontamination work began immediately after the accident. An exclusion zone was created around the plant, and more than 350,000 people were evacuated from the area. They never returned. And severe restrictions on permanent human settlement are still in place today.
The accident had a major impact on the human population. Although there are not clear figures, the physical loss of human lives and physiological consequences were huge. Estimates of the number of human fatalities vary wildly.
The initial impact on the environment was also important. One of the areas more heavily affected by the radiation was the pine forest near the plant, known since then as the “Red Forest”. This area received the highest doses of radiation, the pine trees died instantly and all the leaves turned red. Few animals survived the highest radiation levels.
Therefore, after the accident it was assumed that the area would become a desert for life. Considering the long time that some radioactive compounds take to decompose and disappear from the environment, the forecast was that the area would remain devoid of wildlife for centuries.
Chernobyl wildlife today
But today, 33 years after the accident, the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which covers an area now in Ukraine and Belarus, is inhabited by brown bears, bisons, wolves, lynxes, Przewalski horses, and more than 200 bird species, among other animals.
In March 2019, most of the main research groups working with Chernobyl wildlife met in Portsmouth, England. About 30 researchers from the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Belgium, Norway, Spain and Ukraine presented the latest results of our work. These studies included work on big mammals, nesting birds, amphibians, fish, bumblebees, earthworms, bacteria and leaf litter decomposition.
These studies showed that at present the area hosts great biodiversity. In addition, they confirmed the general lack of big negative effects of current radiation levels on the animal and plant populations living in Chernobyl. All the studied groups maintain stable and viable populations inside the exclusion zone.
A clear example of the diversity of wildlife in the area is given by the TREE project (TRansfer-Exposure-Effects, led by Nick Beresford of the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology). As part of this project, motion detection cameras were installed for several years in different areas of the exclusion zone. The photos recorded by these cameras reveal the presence of abundant fauna at all levels of radiation. These cameras recorded the first observation of brown bears and European bison inside the Ukrainian side of the zone, as well as the increase in the number of wolves and Przewalski horses.
European bison (Bison bonasus), boreal lynx (Lynx lynx), moose (Alces alces) and brown bear (Ursus arctos) photographed inside Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (Ukraine). Proyecto TREE/Sergey Gaschack
Our own work with the amphibians of Chernobyl has also detected abundant populations across the exclusion zone, even on the more contaminated areas. Furthermore, we have also found signs that could represent adaptive responses to life with radiation. For instance, frogs within the exclusion zone are darker than frogs living outside it, which is a possible defence against radiation.
An oriental treefrog (Hyla orientalis), Chernobyl (Ukraine). May 2018. Germán Orizaola
Studies have also detected some negative effects of radiation at an individual level. For example, some insects seem to have a shorter lifespan and are more affected by parasites in areas of high radiation. Some birds also have higher levels of albinism, as well as physiological and genetic alterations when living in highly contaminated localities. But these effects don’t seem to affect the maintenance of wildlife population in the area.
The general absence of negative effects of radiation on Chernobyl wildlife can be a consequence of several factors:
First, wildlife could be much more resistant to radiation than previously thought. Another alternative possibility is that some organisms could be starting to show adaptive responses that would allow them to cope with radiation and live inside the exclusion zone without harm. In addition, the absence of humans inside the exclusion zone could be favouring many species – big mammals in particular.
That final option would suggest that the pressures generated by human activities would be more negative for wildlife in the medium-term than a nuclear accident – a quite revealing vision of the human impact on the natural environment.
The future of Chernobyl
In 2016 the Ukrainian part of the exclusion zone was declared a radiological and environmental biosphere reserve by the national government.
Forest and meadows inside Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (Ukraine). May 2016. Germán Orizaola
Over the years, Chernobyl has also become an excellent natural laboratory for the study of evolutionary processes in extreme environments, something that could prove valuable given the rapid environmental changes experienced worldwide.
At present, several projects are trying to resume human activities in the area. Tourism has flourished in Chernobyl, with more than 70,000 visitors in 2018. There also plans for developing solar power plants in the area, and for expanding forestry work. Last year, there was even an art installation and techno party inside the abandoned city of Prypiat.
Over the past 33 years, Chernobyl has gone from the being considered a potential dessert for life to being an area of high interest for biodiversity conservation.
It may sound strange, but now we need to work to maintain the integrity of the exclusion zone as a nature reserve if we want to guarantee that in the future Chernobyl will remain a refuge for wildlife.
In the last months of 2018, the Dibang Multipurpose project received a go-ahead from the National Green Tribunal (NGT) after long legal battles. This project is among the 165 dam projects that were proposed for Northeast India in 2000. Hailed as “clean and cheap”, these dam projects, mainly situated in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, would purportedly help sustain India’s energy and environmental security in the era of climate change by adding more non-carbon power to the electricity grids.
A sacred site downstream of Lower Demwe project
These projects proposed by the central government have been unpopular with the public of the Northeast as well as a wide range of independent environmental researchers. Their ministerial approvals based on expert appraisals took years. In fact, the projects also met with much political criticism including from the Bharatiya Janata Party (the party that is now in power at the Centre) during the period from 2010 to 2014. The collective opposition was so effective that these projects did not materialise for 15 years, except for the half built Lower Subansiri Dam. This project has been called the tomb of India’s hydropower program.[1]
Years have passed, but the Central and Arunachal governments continue to be attached to these and several other hydropower projects in the region. Their attachment to these projects belies the shifts that have taken place in the energy sector over a decade and a half. The revival of hydropower in Northeast India under the new regime at the Centre since 2014 shows the intransigence of politics that threatens both development in the Northeastern region and its socio-ecological dynamics.
Hydropower based development
Lower Subansiri and Dibang dams are iconic projects of India’s hallowed water bureaucracy. The projects are massive structures of 116m and 288m height proposed to be built on free flowing Himalayan rivers, the Subansiri and the Dibang by NHPC Ltd. (earlier National Hydroelectric Power Corporation), a public sector dam builder. These rivers gush down from the Arunachal Himalaya to join and form the Brahmaputra. They wash Assam’s plains every year, causing massive floods but also leave behind rich soil sediments. For years, economists and planners have tried to regulate these rivers and turn them into a valuable resource. But controlling these rivers has been far from possible.
In the early 2000s, India’s energy requirements were expanding at the back of a rising economic growth rate. To the BJP government in power then, hydropower offered a seemingly simple solution to provide non-carbon fuel for this growth. One could call the Northeast hydropower programme, the NDA’s energy transition version 1.0. Dams designed in the 1970s were revived as part of this programme in the attempt to green India’s economy by increasing the share of hydropower in it.
At the time when these new dam proposals for Northeast India were announced, India’s dam building efforts had already caused large scale displacement, tremendous ecological impacts on vast landscapes and a near shut down of the sector due to lack of domestic and foreign investments. Yet, the Northeast dams were argued as necessary to alter Northeast India’s pervasive underdevelopment.
One benefit that was expected from large dams in this region was flood control. The Dibang Multipurpose Dam is designed as a conventional storage dam with a flood cushion component to protect downstream areas from flooding. More importantly, the projects were geared to be profit-making ventures by maximising their power generation capacity. Lower Subansiri is a “Run of the River” or RoR project. A regular RoR is a benign project that generates power from undammed flowing water. But the Northeast RoRs are aimed to be peaking power stations.These projects involve creating a ‘head’ by stocking water behind a large dam for 24 hours and every evening when the demand for electricity peaks, the waters are released to pass over turbines to generate power.
The amendments to the Electricity Act of 2003 opened up a new front for private investment. Once electricity production was thrown open to private actors, dams in Northeast India also presented a means of attracting financial capital into this corner of India. The 1,750 MW Lower Demwe project proposed on the river Lohit, a tributary of the Brahmaputra that flows through the Mishmi hills in the eastern part of Arunachal Pradesh, was among the hundreds of new ones that hoped to profit by investing in this sector which had zero fuel costs, extremely low operation costs and high returns through its lifetime. Besides, the public sector dam building organisations, other prominent project developers include Reliance and Jindals besides many smaller players looking to expand their construction portfolio[2]. The state government of Arunachal Pradesh holds 26 per cent share in the Athena Demwe Power Limited, an SPV with Athena Energy Ventures Infraprojects Private Limited. As the state where most of the proposed dams and their associated infrastructure would be built, Aruanchal Pradesh was hoping to see capital flow in at an unprecedented scale.
Environmental impacts
Globally, hydropower dams are being redefined as renewable energy projects. But in tropical regions rich in biodiversity and where communities have socio-cultural and economic uses of rivers, such projects can have serious consequences. Scholars have suggested that dams in the tropics are an anatopism or ‘out of place’.[3] As expected, the projects proposed in Northeast India, a region that is part of the Indo-Myanmar biodiversity hotspot, one of the 25 recognised global biodiversity hotspots and where indigenous communities are the traditional stewards of the region’s forests, ran into consent troubles.
Large projects seeking environmental approvals have to undertake mandatory public hearings. The hearings for the Dibang project were cancelled or disrupted a dozen times between 2007 and 2013 because of a near total community opposition before the government could claim that they were “successfully”done. The Lower Subansiri and Lower Demwe public hearings were stretched by protracted negotiations and demands for jobs and compensations. They also faced opposition due to displacement, forest loss and takeover of community lands by the project.
The projects’ environmental impact assessment reports limited the impact zone of the projects to a 10 km radius, an arbitrary standard. This helped to contain the studies, present the projects as less damaging and negotiate the project with fewer affected people. This left the people of Assam out of the consent procedures for most projects in Arunachal Pradesh, even though the dams would affect them in the most profound ways. Nearly 20 million people live in the Brahmaputra valley. They are, as Richter and others note, the people in the “shadow zone” of these projects, uncounted for and unspoken to.[4] The people of Assam could engage with these dams only through the antagonistic routes of protests and litigation because they were ignored by the project authorities. In the view of the Assamese protestors, these project studies legitimised water grabbing by an upstream entity.
Rich biodiversity at a dam site
The Northeast dams also struggled to obtain the nod of environmental experts. The national level Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) for hydropower projects and the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) are in charge of recommending environmental and forest approval to large projects. An approval from the standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) is needed in case of projects that affect Protected Areas. The Dibang project was rejected twice by the FAC. It took the intervention of the Cabinet Committee on Investments (CCI) and the Ministry of Power and a reconstituted FAC in 2015 to revise this decision. The project was legally permitted to use over 4,500 ha of forest land holding 350,000 trees.
The non-official expert members of the NBWL including noted bird expert and former director of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), Dr Asad Rahmani, practically staged a protest at the meetings to discuss the approval for the Lower Demwe project. While the senior most government officials of the Arunachal government claimed that the delay was frustrating the people of the state, the experts argued that the project would affect Protected Areas such as the Kamlang Wildlife Sanctuary and the Dibru Saikhowa National Park in addition to several riverine islands or chapories, grasslands and forests. The project would use 1,415 ha of forest land. Finally, the then environment minister, Jayanti Natarajan, who headed the NBWL, approved the project in December 2011.
These committees received scores of letters from independent experts, environmentalists and protestors pointing to the underestimation of impacts in the EIA reports done with the aim of obtaining approvals. Ideally these complaints should have put a cap on these projects, but all the projects received approvals based on questionable arguments and were subsequently challenged in courts. Water regulation Among all the impacts that the projects would cause, the extreme regulation of river flows downstream of the dams has been the most contentious and has stoked statewide protests in Assam. The release of dammed water by projects every evening to generate power would permanently alter the very nature of these rivers. The flow regime imposed by the projects, which activists called the daily starving and flooding of the river, would destroy the seasonality of rivers in this region and all the livelihoods attached to them such as fishing, floodplain farming, driftwood collection and grazing during the lean season.[5]
Debates on downstream impacts of dams, mainly provoked by Assam’s concerns, have thrown up the question of how much water does a river need? So far, there is no consensus on what should be the ecological standards imposed on large hydraulic structures so that rivers, our main source of freshwater, are not turned into dead channels. Is flowing water a waste or a valuable environmental feature? What should be the tradeoff between maintaining water stocks for power generation and ecological flows for human and non-human needs? Should these decisions be based on certain governance principles or must it be left to economists and engineers? The answers to these questions have not been ascertained before investing in the Northeast dams.
There are also no scientifically backed regulations addressing the role of dams in water disasters. Last year, the Kerala floods brought to public view the contribution of dams in such situations. In the Northeast, monsoon floods have been routinely exacerbated by dam discharges in the neighbourhood. During the 2018 monsoon, both the Doyang Dam in Nagaland and the Ranganadi project in Arunachal Pradesh, expelled their dam waters increasing the scale and intensity of the floods. Yet their attribution to the destruction caused to over 2,000 villages in Assam is left unaddressed.[6] These projects are much smaller in comparison with the new ones proposed to come up.
In this region, the problems of river regulation are queered further because most of the rivers on which dams are proposed flow through territories beyond Indian borders. India has no sources for real time hydrological information to manage these rivers rationally. Secondly, the Indian government has proposed multiple projects on each of the river basins. The plans are based on impromptu policies, made on the go, of the minimum distance between projects and minimum flows from dams.
Due to public pressure, expert appraisals of dams now require cumulative impact studies and carrying capacity studies in addition to the EIA reports for individual projects. However, the Lower Subansiri, Dibang and Lower Demwe projects are left out of these studies on the claim that they are the first to be built in their respective river basins. All three projects received approvals as single projects.
Litigation
The three projects have gone through long years of litigation. The environmental clearance (EC) of Lower Subansiri project was challenged in 2003 and the case went on for six years in the Supreme Court before the EC conditions were settled in favour of the Arunachal government. But this did not resolve the downstream concerns on the ground. Protestors in Assam have stonewalled the project construction since 2011. In 2013, Aabhijeet Sharma of an NGO, Assam Public Works filed a case in the National Green Tribunal (NGT), a specialised green court, over these unresolved issues. The judgement of the NGT in this case states that a “neutral” three-member team will mediate a way forward for the project. Their report will inform the reappraisal of the project by the Environment Ministry. However petitioners of the case opposed the ministry’s selection of these members as they were retired employees of government institutions well entrenched in India’s large dam bureaucracy. The NGT upheld their selection to the committee in November 2018. The petitioner of the case has challenged the NGT’s decision in the Supreme Court.
After its journey in the approval tunnel for eight years, the legal challenges to the approvals for the Dibang project went on for three years in the NGT. Finally, in November 2018, the project’s approvals were upheld because “more stringent” conditions had been imposed on the dam including reducing the dam height by 10m to reduce the loss of forests by 445 ha. The Lower Demwe project’s approvals were challenged in the NGT for eight years starting 2010. In this case, the final judgments and Union environment minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan’s decision as NBWL chief have tied the project’s operations to the recommendations of a wildlife study. But the study itself will take two more years to complete. Regulatory and legal challenges to the projects have forced the production of several new studies by government agencies. The studies influence and in some cases contradict the water, forest, land and other calculations done by project EIA reports. Like the EIAs, the new studies generously model different scenarios of water regulation giving the illusion that these have no real consequences for the people of the region. Irrespective of their methodologies or approaches, these studies are tailored to encourage private investment in dam projects in the region. The acceptance of these studies and simulation models in the final decision-making on the dam projects has technicalised the subject of water management in the Northeast.
The opposition to the projects within and outside courts has restricted the future operations of the dams to balance development with environmental concerns. For example, the NHPC was pushed to keep one turbine of Lower Subansiri running through the day to maintain water in the river and the NGT recommended a monitoring committee to oversee the implementation of Dibang project’s environmental measures. The legal sanction to these projects poses an unprecedented challenge to regulatory institutions to monitor their operations in one of the most ecologically and seismically sensitive regions of the world. The period of construction and then the lifelong regulation of downstream flows once the projects are operational would require intense monitoring of multiple dam proponents on a daily basis. With the Arunachal Pradesh government having a considerable stake in the profits from running these dams, the regulatory system will have to reign in the state government and dam builders.
More importantly, the additional safeguard conditions that bind projects create a conundrum for project investments. To be in compliance with the revised parameters, projects will have to operate under less favourable cost-benefit calculations. Their financial arrangements with the state government, with lending banks and the power purchasers to whom they have promised merchant sales may have to be renegotiated. Who will underwrite the financial losses due to these aspects, in addition to the cost overruns due to project delays? The cost of the Lower Subansiri project, for example, has more than doubled to over Rs.15,000 crore since 2003[7]. News reports state that the Athena Power Company is already battling insolvency and has urged the Arunachal government to bail it out. Would these costs be palmed off to consumers or tax payers as is usually the case?
Water politics
The spate of legal clearances to these projects notwithstanding, the political problem caused by the dam proposals looks more menacing today. Water sharing has been a historical problem in South Asia. Unusually, the protests against these proposed dams in Northeast India have politicisied the issue of interstate water sharing before the dams are built, unlike in other parts of India where water conflicts have blown up after projects have come up. How will the sharing of water between Assam and upstream dam building states like Arunachal Pradesh be arrived at? Will it be in favour of project developers and the Arunachal government, which seeks to generate ‘hydrodollars’, as stated by the former chief minister Dorjee Khandu, or will it accommodate a more fair approach to water management in the region?
In 2010, this question was taken up by political parties in opposition to the Congress government in Assam as well as in Parliament. The political backlash to dams in Arunachal Pradesh forced the setting up of an Assam expert group and a house committee of the legislative assembly to assess the downstream impacts of these projects. In September 2010, the then Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh made a trip to the Brahmaputra valley to meet protestors. He came back convinced of Assam’s problems with the dams. But it seemed too late to change the course of events. By that time, his party’s members in the state were complicit by omission or commission in the over hundred deals and monetary arrangements struck with first time dam builders.
Today it is the turn of the BJP-led governments in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and at the Centre to take a political decision on these dams. While these projects were being litigated, the energy sector has undergone huge changes and solar and wind power are far more competitive than traditional energy projects. Rather than eschewing destructive mega dams, the central government has recently drafted policies to make large hydro projects more lucrative for private investment. In March the Indian cabinet declared that all large hydro (over 25 megawatt) will be considered renewable energy. This allows the hydropower sector to benefit from more competitive pricing and longer debt repayment. The policy changes also relieve projects of the ‘burden’ of financing the flood moderation and infrastructure building for roads and bridges. The Central government’s policies on energy and the environment do not leave hope for reflexive decision making on hydropower projects in the Northeast or other parts of the Himalayas. There is hardly any developmental justification today to push these hydropower projects that are unpopular and outdated. Until more enlightened policies for managing the water resources of the Northeast are arrived at, the environment and development of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh are in jeopardy.
Unlike a regular corporation, the corporations that manufacture and sell weapons to their government are virtually 100% dependent upon their government and its military allies, for their own success; their markets are only those governments, not individuals (such as is the case for normal corporations). Consequently, either their government will control them, and those firms won’t have any effective control over their own markets, or else those firms will, themselves, control their government, and thereby effectively control their markets, via the government’s foreign policies — not only via expanding its military alliances (those firms’ foreign markets), but via its designating ‘enemy’ nations that it and its ‘allies’ (those arms-producers’ foreign markets) can then use those weapons against.
The main ‘ally’ of the U.S. is the Saud family, who own the government of Saudi Arabia. As a recent debate-brief said, “The US has been the world’s leading exporter in weapons since 1990 and the biggest customer is Saudi Arabia. The U.S. sold a total of $55.6 billion of weapons worldwide, and in 2017, cleared $18 billion dollars with Saudi Arabia alone.” Under Trump, those sales are set to soar, because on 20 May 2017 “U.S. $350 Billion Arms-Sale to Sauds Cements U.S.-Jihadist Alliance” — notwithstanding now the slaughter in Yemen and the slaughter of Jamal Khashoggi. Yet, Trump talks up his ‘humanitarian’ concerns for the people of Venezuela as ‘justification’ for his possibly invading Venezuela, and America’s military is preparing to do that.
The main and central ‘enemy’ of the U.S. is Russia’s government; and all of the other ‘enemies’ of America (the spokes of America’s ‘enemy’ wheel) are led by people — such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Viktor Yanukovych, Bashar al-Assad, Salvador Allende, Jacobo Arbenz, and Nicolo Madura — who are friendly toward Russia. The objective here is to force other nations to join America’s anti-Russia alliances or else to face the consequences of a likely invasion or coup by America to overthrow and replace those leaders. Therefore, America targets all nations that are/were friendly toward Russia, such as pre-2003 Iraq, and such as pre-2011 Libya, and such as Syria, and such as pre-1973 Chile, and such as post-1979 Iran — all of America’s various target-nations, which are the authorized targets for America and its ‘allies’ to invade or otherwise regime-change (change from being a target, to becoming instead a new market).
In order for privately controlled arms-producers to thrive, there is just as much of a need for ‘allies’ as for ’targets’, because without targets, there can be no authorized markets, since every weapon is useless if it has no authorized target against which it may be used. There consequently needs to be at least one ‘enemy’ for any country whose arms-production is privately instead of publicly controlled. Both ‘allies’ and ‘enemies’ are needed, in order for America’s arms-makers to continue flourishing.
By contrast, in Russia, where each of the arms-producers is majority-controlled by the government instead of by private investors, each arms-producer exists only in order to defend the nation, there is no need for any ‘enemy’ nations, and the best situation for such a government is to the contrary: to have as many allies, or buyers of its country’s weapons, as possible (so that it will be as safe as possible), and as few nations as possible that are enemies. For such a country, there’s no benefit in having any enemies. America has publicly been against Russia ever since the end of World War II, and privately and secretly remains against Russia even after the Cold War ended on Russia’s side in 1991. Whereas the billionaires who control America’s arms-makers profit from this military competition against Russia, the controlling interest in all of Russia’s arms-makers is Russia’s government, which simply suffers the expense of that competition and would greatly prefer to end that competition. It’s just a drain on Russia’s treasury. The profit-motive isn’t driving the arms-producers in countries that control their own arms-makers. The government leads the nation there, basically because the nation’s billionaires — even if they are minority stockholders of the armaments-firms — don’t. And the reason the billionaires don’t is that the arms-producers in Russia are controlled by the government, not by any private investors.
Consequently, in countries that socialize arms-production, ‘humanitarian’ excuses don’t need to be invented in order to create new ‘enemies’. Instead, the goal is for the number of enemies to be reduced, so that the nation itself will be safer. Their arms-producers don’t need constantly to generate (by lobbying, media-propaganda, etc.) authorized targets (‘enemies’ such as Iraq, Syria, etc.), because such a nation, as this, has designed its system to be driven for protecting the public’s safety, and not for any investors’ profits. If an armaments-firm, in such a nation, goes out-of-business, that’s entirely okay, so long as that nation’s safety isn’t being reduced by ending the firm. The international policy of such a country is totally different from that of a country in which arms-makers’ profits, and not the entire nation’s welfare, is in the driver’s seat regarding all foreign policies.
If arms-makers are being driven for profits, then target-nations are needed in order to expand profits so as to serve their investors. Such a country is run actually for its investors, not for its public. But if the arms-makers are being driven to serve the government instead of to serve private investors, the government is controlling the armament-firms. The nation’s safety is the objective in such a land, because increasing profits for private investors in its weapons-firms is not the company’s objective. Any profits to such investors, are then irrelevant to the government. It’s truly sink-or-swim, for each of such a nation’s arms-makers — not socialism-for-the-rich, and capitalism (actually fascism) for the poor, such as is the case in the United States.
In a nation such as the United States, the constant need for new wars is being constantly driven by investors’ needs for expanding both markets and targets. And — since in the arms-making business, all of the markets are one’s own government, plus all of its allied governments (no significant consumer-business whatsoever, which is why such firms are fundamentally different from the firms in all other types of fields) — the government needs to serve its armaments-firms, because those firms are totally dependent upon the government, and upon its international diplomacy (to increase the sales of its armaments, and thereby to serve the billionaires who control the armaments-firms). So: the government there naturally becomes an extension of its major “contractors” or armaments-firms. The politicians know this, though they don’t want to talk publicly about it, because they don’t want the voters to know who is actually in the driver’s seat. They know whom they are actually serving, which is the billionaires who control the armaments-firms. So: those politicians, whatever they might say in public (“America shouldn’t be the policeman for the world,” etc.), always actuallyvote to invade (Iraq, Syria, etc.), and to approve the first stage of any war, which is economic sanctions (such as against Russia itself, or Iran, or Iraq, or Syria, or Venezuela, etc.), and it’s always allegedly being done “to serve God, mother and country” at home, and “to expand freedom and protect human rights in that dictatorially ruled country” abroad. This is basically the marketing campaign for the owners of the armaments firms. The winning politicians in such countries are the ones that those billionaires support. In such a country, it’s almost impossible for any politician who is competing for a national office to succeed who isn’t being funded by those billionaires. And, the billionaires’ ‘news’-media support only such candidates. That’s why there’s almost no possibility for an honest person to be elected (or appointed( to any national public office in the United States.
If a nation’s sole reason for producing weapons is in order to protect the public — a public purpose — then there is no reason for the government to lie so as to demonize foreign leaders such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, Salvador Allende, Viktor Yanukovych, and Nicolo Maduro. And this has nothing whatsoever to do with how bad (or good) the demonized leader actually is.
Why does the U.S. government demonize those people, while simultaneously serving (if not actually installing) barbaric dictators such as King Saud, Augusto Pinochet, Castillo Armas, and the Shah? The publicly stated reasons are always ‘humanitarian’ (when not ‘national defense’ — and often, as in 2003 Iraq — both at once). The alleged purpose is to ‘bring democracy to the people there’, and to ‘protect human rights, which are being violated’ by ‘the dictator’ — but it’s actuallyin order to make suckers out of their country’s own population, so as to serve the billionaires whose income can’t be boosted in any other way than to turn ‘enemies’ (targets) into ‘allies’ (markets) — to conquer those ‘enemies’. This is just a marketing campaign, and the voters are not the consumers of these products, but they are instead merely the gulls who have to be fooled in order for those profits to keep rolling in, to the (usually) offshore accounts of those billionaires. This is not the type of socialism in which the government controls the economy, but instead the type of economy in which the economy — actually the billionaires who control the armaments-firms — control the government. This is why it’s “socialism for the rich and capitalism for everybody else.” (The term “fascism” can be used for that.)
This is the New America. And here is the New America Foundation, which is one of the many ‘non-profit’ PR arms of this new America. (That one represents mainly Democratic Party billionaires. Here is one that instead represents mainly Republican Party billionaires.) These are taxpayer-subsidized public relations agencies for their businesses. These individuals are exceptionally gifted businesspeople, because they deeply understand how to fool the public, and they understand that the public never learns and so history just keeps repeating itself, such as in 1953 Iran, and then in 1954 Guatemala, and 1973 Chile, and 2003 Iraq, and 2019 Venezuela, and so many others, ad nauseum. And it goes on and on, for decades if not forever.
But how can the world be protected from such countries? If there is not widespread public recognition that ‘permanent war for perpetual peace’ is a vicious lie, then can there be any other way to do it? Maybe not. Apparently, constant lying by the government and by its (i.e., by its billionaires’) media — and by all of its successful national politicians — is required in any such country. This seems to be the only effective way to control the public in such a country; and, if the public there aren’t deceived, then the arms-firms’ control over the government won’t even be possible. So, regarding foreign policies, the lying in such a country is constant — especially about foreign affairs.
For example, that explains the stunning findings, in the recent study by a media-watchdog organization, that “Zero Percent of Elite Commentators Oppose Regime Change in Venezuela”. Having something like this happen after Americans were lied into invading Iraq in 2003, is proof that (and it explains why) the public never learns. This is the way the system has been designed to function, siphoning off the society’s wealth into billionaires’ — largely offshore — accounts. The system is actually set up to operate that way. And the system’s owners (and their media) call this ‘democracy’, and are peddling that ‘democracy’ to the rest of the world.
This is a very successful trick, because — at least until now — the public never learns. (Of course, the system itself is set up so that they won’t.) The public never learns that the actual enemy is the domestic aristocracy itself. But one major American magazine recently made fun of this by headlining “In Billionaires Is the Preservation of the World” praising them as “nature’s own life-preserver” and closing by “With life itself depending on it, how do we determine which billionaires to kiss up to?” The enemy is within, but it’s no joke, and (as Trump makes so clear) ‘aliens’ get the blame, while the domestic aristocracy just get the money.
This type of racket has worked that way for thousands of years, and yet it has always remained “Top Secret,” or (at least) “Confidential” or etc.; but, anyway, very private — and not acknowledged in their ‘news’-media, but instead publicly denied (though, occasionally, also joked-about). A more-serious phrase for this is “the Deep State.”
Bathinda: Stress had put deep wrinkles on Balkara Singh’s forehead though he was just 32 years old. The daily wage worker, dressed in a faded blue sweater and jeans, has come to the Gol Diggi labour hub in southern Punjab’s Bathinda city every single day for the last five years to look for jobs.
The Malgodam labour hub in Mansa, 60 kms from Bhatinda, is close to the railway station; nearly 100-150 daily wage labourers visit every day. Most are hired by private contractors for load carrying, cleaning and other minor construction work.
Since the end of 2016, he has returned home disappointed most days. The best he could hope for were about 10 days of work in a month, he said.
Poverty drove Balkara out of school when he was in Class 2 and his only dream was to see his children–aged four and six–complete their education. His small house in Amargarh village where he lives with his wife, children and parents, is about 14 km from Gol Diggi. It takes two bus changes and Rs 30 to reach the hub.
When we met Balkara in early April 2019, he was no longer sure if his dream would ever come true. The move by the Narendra Modi government in November 2016 to withdraw 86% of India’s currency, by value, had knocked the bottom out of the casual jobs sector which ran on cash payments–agriculture, small scale textile units, unorganised retail businesses, and tourism as IndiaSpend has reported.
Five million men, mostly from the unorganised sector, lost their jobs over the two years following demonetisation, said a new report ‘State of Working India 2019’. This latest estimate of job losses was published by the Centre for Sustainable Employment (CSE), Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, and released on April 16, 2019. The numbers would have spiralled if women were to be included in the study.
As Punjab votes on May 19 in the ongoing general elections to the Lok Sabha, we look into the state’s informal jobs crisis.
The unemployment rate in Punjab in November 2016–when demonetisation was announced–was 4.9%, which increased to 6.1% in December 2016 according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a consultancy. This unemployment rate reached 8.9% in June 2017 and further increased to 9.2% on the first anniversary of demonetisation in November 2017. In October 2018, the figure reached 11.7%, and by February 2019, recorded 12.4%.
The jobs at Gol Diggi were among the several millions that disappeared. Balkara, who managed to earn Rs 15,000 a month, now barely scrapes together Rs 9,000. Almost every worker we spoke to at Gol Diggi reported daily wages dropping–from Rs 450-Rs 550 before demonetisation to less than Rs 300 now. Towards the end of the month when families run out of savings and desperation sets in, this plunges to Rs 200.
Soon after demonetisation, the construction industry had “literally came to a standstill”, Balkara recalled, and there was a time when he worked barely four days a month. The casual job scene has rallied around somewhat but it is still not as vibrant as it was before, he said.
You hear stories like this across the Gol Diggi labour market, located at the heart of Bathinda’s commercial centre and surrounded by showrooms that sell expensive brands. From 8 am every morning, around 100-150 daily wage workers gather at the hub seeking cleaning, carpentry and masonry jobs among others.
The contractors arrive here in trucks and seek out workers willing to settle for low wages. There was a time when workers were in short supply in this market. Now, by 11:40-11:45, panic sets in among the workers who haven’t been picked. More than 60 of them could be seen going from one contractor to another pleading for jobs with folded hands. Most end up agreeing to wages as low as Rs 150-Rs 200 while the official minimum wage is Rs 311.12 for an unskilled labourer and Rs 375.62 for a skilled labourer.
This is the eighth of an 11-part series (you can read the first part here, second here, third here, fourth here, fifth here, sixth here, and seventh here) reported from nationwide labour hubs–places where unskilled and semi-skilled workers gather to seek contract jobs–to track employment in India’s informal sector. This sector, which absorbs the country’s mass of illiterate, semi-educated and qualified-but-jobless people, employs 92% of India’s workforce, according to a 2016 International Labour Organization study that used government data.
By delving into the lives and hopes of informal workers, this series provides a reported perspective to ongoing national controversies over job losses after demonetisation and the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax in July 2017. The number of jobs declined by a third over four years to 2018, according to a survey by the All India Manufacturers’ Organisation, which polled 34,700 of its 300,000 member-units. In 2018 alone, 11 million jobs were lost, mostly in the unorganised rural sector, according to data from the CMIE.
Daily wages are up but few jobs
In 2017, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance was defeated by the Congress in Punjab’s state assembly elections. The disappointment with the SAD alliance was so acute that its seat count fell 73% from 56 in the 2012 elections to just 15 in 2017. Amarinder Singh, the new chief minister, came to power promising to address the two biggest issues plaguing the state: unemployment and drug use.
Soon after it came to power, the new government launched its flagship double mission, Ghar Ghar Rozgar (a job for every home) and Karobar (business) Mission that promised every family a source of income. More than 550,000 youth have been offered jobs since the launch of the scheme, the CM said at a job fair in Jalandhar in February 2019. Between September 2017 and February 28, 2019, 37,542 youth have been given government jobs, the CM claimed.
Around 171,000 individuals had been placed with the private sector and around 365,000 helped under self-employment schemes through loans ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 100,000 at low interest rates, a government press release said.
The District Bureaus of Employment and Enterprises, established in September 2017 across all districts in Punjab, aimed at coordinating and implementing government employment schemes. The state would train 50,000 youth under various skill development schemes in 2019-20, said Charanjit Singh Channi, minister of employment generation and technical education. In February 2019, the state government signed an MoU to provide Punjabi youth with an internationally-recognised training for jobs in the construction sector. The programme included basic training in construction skills like carpentry and masonry work.
In 2018, the Congress-led state government fixed Rs 341.12 as minimum daily wage for semi-skilled labour, Rs 311.12 for an unskilled worker and Rs 375.62 for a skilled one. Most workers at the Gol Diggi told us that they are forced to settle for less. In 2016, just before demonetisation, the minimum wage for a semi-skilled worker was lower, Rs 317.28.
However, labourers then earned more, anything between Rs 350-500 a day. Today, the rate for both skilled and unskilled workers has severely fallen, workers told us.
‘I get work maybe 10 days a month now’
Sixty-two-year-old Sachha Singh covers his faded pink turban with a shawl to protect himself from the morning glare as he waits to be picked for a job at Gol Diggi. In 2009, the uneducated labourer, who was a private mason, started taking on daily wage work.
Saccha Singh lives with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren in a compact one-room house in Lal Singh Nagar, about 5 km from Gol Diggi. While his house has access to electricity, residents in the area often complain about getting contaminated water.
Demonetisation and its aftermath came a shock for Sachha and his family. Till then, he could earn upto Rs 500 for a day’s work and found work at least 20 days a month. After November 2016, his wage fell to Rs 350, and then slid to Rs 250 by month-end.
The family runs on Sachha’s salary of around Rs 3,500 a month and his son’s monthly earning of Rs 8,000 as a security guard at a local factory. “Soon after demonetisation, there were days when all I earned was Rs 1,400 an entire month,” he said.
Private mason Sachha Singh, 62, whom we met at Bathinda’s Gold Diggi market, started taking on daily wage work in 2009. Before demonetisation, he earned upto Rs 500 for a day’s work. After November 2016, this fell to Rs 350, and then slid to Rs 250 by month-end.
Demonetisation caused widespread panic not only amongst the working class, but even among small industrialists across Punjab, said DP Maur, general secretary of the Joint Council of Trade Unions. At least 10,000-15,000 unskilled contract workers in Ludhiana–across industries that produce cycles, hosiery and auto parts among others–might have lost their jobs after demonetisation, he said. An exact figure is hard to ascertain because Punjab’s industries mostly employ unorganised workers, he said.
Different labour hub, same woes
After an entire day of waiting for odd jobs at the Malgodam labour market of Mansa district in northern Punjab, Ram Singh, 67, simply returns home with a few vegetables. Mansa is nearly 60 km from Bathinda and here too we heard the same stories of joblessness in the informal sector.
Lean and frail, Ram Singh is an illiterate worker who takes up jobs like cleaning, load carrying or helping masons and carpenters. Since 2008, he has been travelling 8 km by bus from his village, Nangal Kalan, to the labour hub, paying Rs 20 daily. He lives with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren in a small house. His son works as a contract labourer at a factory in Mansa, while his daughter-in-law works in a field as an agricultural labourer. Together, the family earns about Rs 11,000 every month.
The family has had to cut down drastically on its daily expenses, and drop pulses from their meals. There were times immediately after demonetisation, Ram said, when he was able to find just two days work a month.
His average daily wage fell from Rs 350 to less than Rs 230 now. The family’s reduced income has also affected the grandchildren, both of whom are in school. Ram cannot afford to purchase new books for his granddaughter and she has had to make do with her elder brother’s books these last two years.
The Malgodam labour hub in Mansa is close to the railway station; nearly 100-150 daily wage labourers visit every day. Most are hired by private contractors for load carrying, cleaning and other minor construction work. Before demonetisation, about 150 labours would wait at the area for work. Immediately after demonetisation, the number fell to 50-60 but is now gradually increasing.
The adjoining shoe market that primarily sells Punjabi juttis is often visited by labourers and locals. Labourers start trickling in by 7 am and those who do not get work, wait till 11 am. Around 12:30 pm, a group of another 30-40 labourers visit the area for half-day wage work. Contractors land up on bicycles to locate workers.
Unskilled workers seek basic jobs like cleaning and load carrying. Skilled workers are marked by the bags of tools they carry. Every job deal is only finalised after hard negotiations over wages.
Gora Singh, 35, a Class 2 dropout and an unskilled labourer, can no longer send his two sons to school. “I have no money to buy books or uniforms for them,” he said.
He has been visiting the labour hub since 2013. Before demonetisation, he managed to find more than 20 days’ work a month; today he is happy if he gets even two weeks. He earns about Rs 3,000 a month now and his wife earns Rs 3,500 working as a domestic helper. If it is the month end and the family’s savings dip, he will settle for Rs 150 as daily wage. The family lives about 2 km from the labour hub in a one-bedroom house, paying Rs 800 as rent. Singh walks to work and back to save bus fare.
Gora Singh, 35, an unskilled labourer, has been visiting the Malgodam labour hub in Mansa city since 2013. Before demonetisation, he managed to find more than 20 days’ work a month; today he is happy if he gets even two weeks’.
Labour contractors took the blow too
Labour contractors across the state’s job hubs are stressed too, we found. The wages have risen beyond pre-demonetisation rates and there are not enough workers across various sectors. Since there are no fixed rates or wages, the cut taken by the labour contractor varies widely.
Jagtar Singh, 48, is a labour contractor from Mansa, who usually hires for the brick kilns in the district. The labour market has splintered post-demonetisation making it difficult for anyone with a stake in it to survive, he said.
“A large number of workers who earlier worked as daily wagers have shifted to agricultural labour after demonetisation left them with no work,” he said. Though agricultural workers only get seasonal employment, currently there is perennial demand for them, Singh added.
Before demonetisation, Jagtar Singh, a Class 4 dropout, employed about 16 labourers (eight groups of husbands and wives) at a brick kiln, but now is left with only eight workers. Brick kilns have yet to recover from the shock dealt by demonetisation on the construction industry in Punjab. Jagtar Singh’s monthly income has fallen from Rs 34,000 to Rs 20,000.
Migrant workers get paid even less
A large chunk of the casual worker population–including migrants–in Punjab gets agricultural employment only for 50 days a year during wheat harvesting, paddy sowing and paddy harvesting seasons, as per Lakhwinder Singh, an economist at Punjabi University in Patiala.
Of all these tasks, only paddy sowing requires some prior experience or knowledge. So the agriculture sector tends to absorb the least skilled workers.
The brick kilns of Punjab also employ a large number of migrant workers. While local labourers know their rights, migrant workers are often paid less than the minimum wage, we found. The wage rate is usually fixed per 1,000 bricks at kilns.
Jagtar employs both local and migrant workers. A couple could earn about Rs 10,000 a month before demonetisation; this is now down to Rs 7,500, he said.
GST landed the next big blow
Medium and small enterprises in Punjab have been doubly affected by demonetisation and GST. Cheap imports from China had already impacted these enterprises when demonetisation crippled them, said Badish Jindal, former vice chairman of National Productivity Council (NPC) and president of Federation of Punjab Small Industries Association.
“While demonetisation forced industrial units to lay off workers, the implementation of GST made them spend resources to understand these taxes and file them under the new regime,” he said. “Both demonetisation and GST did not go well for the cash economy.”
Rajinder Kumar, 40, is a cable operator in Mansa. He managed nearly 15,000 cable connections before demonetisation and GST, which is now down to less than 12,000. While big direct-to-home services could slash prices to make up for the GST paid by customers, operators like Kumar had to deal with losses. “After the implementation of GST, our cable connection became costlier by nearly by Rs 100,” he said. “People cut cable connections and opted for cheaper DTH links run by national giants.”
AIDWA condemns the targeting of Human Rights activists and senior lawyers Indira Jaising and Anand Grover and their organization “Lawyers’ Collective” through a petition filed by a so called NGO “Lawyers Voice” where credentials are totally unknown.
Ms. Indira Jaising had recently, like so many eminent citizens and lawyers and women’s rights organizations and groups been critical of the procedure adopted by the Supreme Court and the “In-House Committee” of the Supreme Court in dealing with the case of Sexual Harassment filed by an ex-employee of the Supreme Court against the Chief Justice of India. The timing of this petition immediately thereafter asking for a criminal case to be filed against them for some alleged violation of “FCRA” directly in the Supreme Court seems to suggest that they are being targeted for this. We feel that no notice should have been issued in this matter and urge the Supreme Court to immediately dismiss the petition.
