As Demand For Rural Jobs Rises, Government Curtails Funding For Key Employment Scheme

May 4, 2018

Banda (UP) / Mumbai: Bachcha Lal’s shirt hung loosely over his frail body, exposing his sunken collarbones, as he stood outside his straw-thatched home in central Uttar Pradesh’s (UP) Bundelkhand region. “They all rely on me,” he said, pointing towards his tubercular son, daughter-in-law and grand-daughter. Illiterate and a landless labourer, 65-year-old Lal makes about Rs 175 a day when he finds work digging ditches or building roads under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).

Bachcha Lal’s family in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, depend on his wages from MGNREGS work. Inadequate work, and delays in wage payment, have added to his problems.

“When the government first presented the MGNREGS to us, I thought that we’d get our money on time. I thought that I wouldn’t have to deal with abuse or unnecessary altercations, and that I’d be able to work well since it was a government initiative,” Lal told IndiaSpend. His experience could not have been more different. “We don’t get our wages on time. We could work for two days, but then remain unemployed for the next month or even the next year and a half or two years,” he said.

Launched in 2006, MGNREGS, the world’s largest rural jobs programme, guarantees 100 days of unskilled work to rural Indians such as Lal. It has 110 million active workers, and the wages it pays are an important source of income in Indian villages at a time when the farm sector is in crisis, more villagers are working as farm labour than as cultivators, and non-farm jobs are not enough to accommodate the large number of people entering the labour force.

Starting today, IndiaSpend will analyse the successes and failures of this scheme, and the challenges it faces, in a three-part series. This first part analyses budget allocations to find that despite heightened farm unrest, this year the government has set aside the least proportion of money for the scheme–48% of the budget of the rural development ministry–in the three years since 2016-17.

Reduced funding has resulted in 48% fewer projects getting completed over the six years to 2016. Although expenditure on wages now constitutes 73% of expenditure against the stipulated 60:40 wages-to-materials ratio under MGNREGS guidelines, delays in wage payment are frequent, as the second part will explore.

The final part will focus on how women in the state of Kerala have benefitted from MGNREGS, and what lessons that holds for policymakers.

This investigation is part of IndiaSpend’s series on the government’s performance on key flagship programmes in the run-up to the 2019 elections.

Inadequate funding

“There is massive under-funding of [MGNREGS] by the Centre leading to dilution of the programme,” Rajendran Narayanan, assistant professor at the School of Liberal Studies at Azim Premji University (APU), told IndiaSpend. He said allocation for MGNREGS as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) has steadily fallen–in 2010-11, it was 0.53% of GDP, and in 2017-18, 0.42%.

Adjusting for inflation and percentage of GDP (1.3-1.7%), the allocation for 2017-18 should have been no less than Rs 71,000 crore, Narayanan said. The actual allocation was Rs 48,000 crore.

Making this Rs 48,000 crore allocation, the government had claimed it was the highest ever. However, the programme had accumulated arrears of close to Rs 11,644 crore from the previous year that had to be paid, Narayanan said, adding that after taking out the arrears, the allocation amounted to about Rs 36,000 crore.

The allocation for the current year, 2018-19, is no more than last year’s revised estimate (additional funds requested beyond the budget allocation to meet excess expenditure) of Rs 55,000 crore.

As a proportion of the rural development ministry’s expenditure, too, MGNREGS spending is now the lowest in three years. In 2012-13, the share of MGNREGS was 55% of the ministry’s allocation. Since then, it has dropped seven percentage points to 48%.

The central government is responsible for 96% of MGNREGS implementation costs, as per the scheme guidelines: it pays the wages for unskilled and semi-skilled labour, and up to three-fourths of the cost of materials used. The state governments pay the unemployment allowance and the remaining cost of materials.

An applicant is entitled to an unemployment allowance if they are not given work within 15 days of their application being received. The allowance is at least one-fourth the wage rate for the first 30 days and not less than half the wage rate for the remaining period of the financial year.

Between 2012-13 and 2017-18, no more than 10% of households got 100 days of employment each fiscal year, defeating the professed objective of enhancing livelihood security in rural areas.

In 2017-18, the households provided 100 days of employment fell further by four percentage points to 6%, compared with 2012-13, as per figures available on April 28, 2018.

Source: MGNREGA Dashboard
*Figures have been rounded off

When MGNREGS expenditure overshoots the allocation by the central government, state governments make up the shortfall, which becomes a ‘pending liability’ for the Centre–the arrears mentioned above–this brief from Accountability Initiative explains. The cumulative liabilities until 2017-18 amounted to Rs 12,601 crore, twice the liabilities of Rs 6,355 crore in 2015-16.

Source: Accountability Initiative, 2018, Accountability Initiative, 2012
*Budget Estimate 2018-19

Assets created are useful, but few projects get completed

The scheme is designed to generate employment and create durable assets in rural areas.

With expenditure overshooting allocated budget, asset creation has been affected, largely due to payment delays.

“I do digging work mostly [under MGNREGS]. I worked as a farm labourer before this,” Lal told IndiaSpend in November 2017. Since MGNREGS employs unskilled manual labour, workers like him are often involved in digging-related works for soil conservation, horticulture, creation of sheds and farm ponds, etc.

All such works fall under the natural resource management (NRM) component of MGNREGS, which account for 100 of the 153 kinds of projects that can be undertaken under the scheme. Of all NRM projects, 71 are water-related works such as creating recharge wells, water harvesting structures and check dams.

Thanks to NRM projects, 78% of households reported an increase in the water table, ranging from 30% in Muktsar in Punjab to 95% in Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh, according to a 2017 study of 30 districts in 29 states conducted by the Institute of Economic Growth, a think-tank.

Further, 66% of households said there was more fodder available after water-conservation projects on public and private lands belonging to marginal and small farmers (farmers who cultivate up to 2.5 acres and 5 acres of land, respectively).

Verification of 926 MGNREGS wells across six randomly selected districts in Jharkhand found that 60% of sanctioned MGNREGS wells were completed, according to this May 2016 Economic and Political Weekly report. Nearly 95% of completed wells were being utilised for irrigation, leading to a near tripling of agricultural income.

“Assets do get created on the lands of small and marginal farmers,” APU’s Narayanan said, “For example, land leveling is something that a farmer can requisition from the gram panchayat. It isn’t true that only large farm owners are benefiting from the scheme.”

However, nearly 12% of all sanctioned wells were abandoned before completion reportedly due to payment-related issues, the report said.

The scheme is designed so that material ratios are lower than labour or wage costs, Avani Kapur, director of Accountability Initiative, told IndiaSpend, citing as examples works such as water conservation, pond digging and tree plantation that require little material input. “Programmes in which material costs are significant, such as sanitation or housing, are usually run as convergence programmes with existing schemes,” she said.

The gram sabha (village council) selects the works to be undertaken in the panchayat, and is expected to uphold the spirit of MGNREGS’ demand-driven approach. Often, this is not the case, however.

“If asset creation becomes targets-based and top-down, then one will hazard creating assets that are not useful,” said Narayanan, “How can somebody sitting in the state capital know or decide what is best for a gram panchayat that is far away?” The law under which MGNREGS operates clearly intended a gram panchayat-led, demand-driven scheme, he added.

At the same time, the quality of works has also been a cause for concern. One of the fallouts of low fund allocation of late has been that the recommended labour-to-material ratio of 60:40 has not been maintained.

The percentage of water conservation and water harvesting projects completed fell from 57% in 2009-10 to 2.5% in 2016-17. “Once you close a work officially, it becomes very hard to reopen (you’ll have to get three types of sanction–technical, administrative and financial). That is one reason for the percentage of works completed to remain low,” said Reetika Khera, an economics professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi.

The proportion of works completed has mostly remained below 50% through the 12 years of MGNREGS, and has been falling in recent years. In 2016-17, work completed dropped nearly 13 percentage points to 2.74%, from 15.6% the previous year. The present allocation is unlikely to improve the situation.

Wages unpaid

“They owe me Rs 6,000 for the work I have done,” said Sukhrani, a 50-year-old woman who goes by one name, sitting on a charpai (string bed) in her small, unplastered home in Mavai village in Banda district. She said two people in her family have enrolled under MGNREGS. “It’s been two months we haven’t been able to afford milk. We scrounge and borrow to feed ourselves. We don’t even have slippers,” she said, “Sometimes we sell or rent parts of our field.”

Delays in wage payment have been a constant throughout MGNREGS implementation. The guidelines recommend that wages be paid within 15 days of closing of the ‘muster roll’, the attendance register for a site.

However, a recent study by Azim Premji University has found that 78% of payments were not made on time, and as many as 45% payments did not include compensation for delayed payment as per guidelines.

Government data show the percentage of wages unpaid increased from 63.5% in February 2018 to 85.5% in March 2018 to 99% in April 2018, which part two of this series will explore in greater detail.

This is the first of a three-part series on the successes and failures of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

Next: Despite ‘Record’ Allocation, 59% MGNREGS Wages Due Remained Unpaid In April 2018

(This story has been produced in partnership with Khabar Lahariya, the country’s only indie, rural media platform, working out of Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, with an all-women reporters’ network. Paliath is a policy analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

Gazan Gandhis: Gaza Bleeds Alone as ‘Liberals’ and ‘Progressives’ Go Mute

May 4, 2018

Three more Palestinians were killed and 611 wounded last Friday, when tens of thousands of Gazans continued their largely non-violent protests at the Gaza-Israel border.

Yet as the casualty count keeps climbing – nearly 45 dead and over 5,500 wounded – the deafening silence also continues. Tellingly, many of those who long chastised Palestinians for using armed resistance against the Israeli occupation are nowhere to be found, while children, journalists, women and men are all targeted by hundreds of Israeli snipers who dot the Gaza border.

Israeli officials are adamant. The likes of Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, perceives his war against the unarmed protesters as a war on terrorists. He believes that “there are no innocents in Gaza.” While the Israeli mindset is not in the least surprising, it is emboldened by the lack of meaningful action, or outright international silence to the atrocities taking place at the border.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), aside from frequent statements laced with ambiguous legal jargon, has been quite useless thus far. Its Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, derided Israel’s killings in a recent statement, but also distorted facts in her attempt at ‘even-handed language’, to the delight of Israeli media.

“Violence against civilians – in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza – could constitute crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court … as could the use of civilian presence for the purpose of shielding military activities,” she said.

Encouraged by Bensouda’s statement, Israel is exploiting the opportunity to deflect from its own crimes. On April 25, an Israeli law group, Shurat Hadin, is seeking to indict three Hamas leaders at the ICC, accusing Hamas of using children as human shields at the border protests.
It is tragic that many still find it difficult to grasp the notion that the Palestinian people are capable of mobilizing, resisting and making decisions independent from Palestinian factions.

Indeed, for the nearly decade-long Hamas-Fatah feud, the Israeli siege on Gaza and throughout the various destructive wars, Gazans have been sidelined, often seen as hapless victims of war and factionalism, and lacking any human agency.

Shurat Hadin, like Bensouda, are all feeding into that dehumanizing discourse.

By insisting that Palestinians are not capable of operating outside the confines of political factions, few feel the sense of political responsibility or moral accountability to come to the aid of the Palestinians.

This is reminiscent of former US President Barack Obama’s unsolicited lecture to Palestinians during his Cairo speech to the Muslim world in 2009.

“Palestinians must abandon violence,” he said. “Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed.”

He then offered his own questionable version of history of how all nations, including ‘black people in America’, the nations of South Africa, South East Asia, Eastern Europe and Indonesia fought and won their freedom by peaceful means only.

This demeaning approach – of comparing supposed Palestinian failures to others’ successes – is always meant to highlight that Palestinians are different, lesser beings who are incapable of being like the rest of humanity. Interestingly, this is very much the core of the Zionist narrative about the Palestinians.

That very notion is often presented in the question “where is the Palestinian Gandhi?” The inquiry, often asked by so-called liberals and progressives, is not an inquiry at all, but is a judgement – and an unfair one at that.

Addressing the question soon after the last Israeli war on Gaza in 2014, Jeff Stein wrote in Newsweek, “The answer has been blown away in the smoke and rubble of Gaza, where the idea of non-violent protest seems as quaint as Peter, Paul and Mary. The Palestinians who preached non-violence and led peaceful marches, boycotts, mass sit-downs and the like are mostly dead, in jail, marginalized or in exile.”

Yet, astonishingly, it is being resurrected again, despite the numerous odds, the unfathomable anger and unrelenting pain.

Tens of thousands of protesters, raising Palestinian flags continue to hold their massive rallies across the Gaza border. Despite the high death toll and the thousands maimed, they return everyday with the same commitment to popular resistance that is predicated on collective unity, beyond factionalism and politics.

But why are they still being largely ignored?

Why isn’t Obama tweeting in solidarity with Gazans? Why isn’t Hillary Clinton taking the podium to address the unremitting Israeli violence?

It is politically convenient to criticize Palestinians as a matter of course, and utterly inconvenient to credit them, even when they display such courage, prowess and commitment to peaceful change.

The likes of famed author, J.K. Rowling, had much to stay in criticism of the peaceful Palestinian boycott movement, which aims at holding Israel accountable for its military occupation and violations of human rights. But she became mute when Israeli snipers killed children in Gaza, while cheering whenever a child falls.

The singer Bono of the band U2 dedicated a song to the late Israeli President Shimon Peres, accused of numerous war crimes, but his voice seems to have grown hoarse as the Gaza boy, Mohammed Ibrahim Ayoub, 15 was shot by an Israeli sniper while protesting peacefully at the border.

However, there is a lesson in all of this. The Palestinian people should have no expectations of those who have constantly failed them. Chastising Palestinians for failing at this or that is an old habit, meant to simply hold Palestinians responsible for their own suffering, and to absolve Israel from any wrong doing. Not even Israel’s ‘incremental genocide‘ in Gaza will change that paradigm.

Instead, Palestinians must continue to count on themselves; to stay focused on formulating a proper strategy that will serve their own interests in the long run, the kind of strategy that transcends factionalism and offer all Palestinians a true roadmap to the coveted freedom.
The popular resistance in Gaza is just the beginning; it must serve as a foundation for a new outlook, a vision that will ensure that the blood of Mohammed Ibrahim Ayoub is not spilled in vain.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London, 2018). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/

Interfaith: What These Two Women Can Teach Us

May 4, 2018

Three of us friends—M, N, and I—come from different religious backgrounds. One of the things that keeps us together is our common interest in promoting better relations between people who follow (or claim to follow) different religions. We are part of an active interfaith group. In addition, we sometimes together visit organizations that are doing good work for needy people from different religious backgrounds: interfaith service being at least as important as interfaith theological confabulations. I love these visits: one gets to meet inspiring people who are doing beautiful things with their lives, embodying inter-religious harmony and a spirituality that transcends religion even without speaking or theologizing about it.

Yesterday, we went on our latest such trip. N had collected some money which she wanted to give to a woman who had worked in her home as a domestic help when she was a child—which was perhaps more than 40 years ago. The woman, Bibi Jaan, is a Muslim. Now maybe 90 years or so old, she lives all by herself in a little structure in a slum in a distant part of the city.

Bibi Jaan had stopped working with N’s family many years ago. But sometimes during the Muslim fasting month of Ramzan, she would go all the way to N’s place, and N’s father (who is a Muslim) would give her some money in charity. With Ramzan this year scheduled to start shortly, N wanted to go over herself to meet Bibi Jaan and hand over some money that she had collected for her, and M and I decided to accompany her.

A woman called Uma was the only person N was in touch with who knew where Bibi Jaan lived. Luckily, N had Uma’s telephone number. She spoke to Uma, and Uma readily agreed to take us to meet Bibi Jaan.

When we got to Bibi Jaan’s place in the slum, we found the door locked. Bibi Jaan had gone out and we didn’t know where she was and when she would be back. It was pointless waiting for her. And so, we headed for Uma’s place.

Even though we missed meeting Bibi Jaan, our encounter with Uma made up for it. Uma’s love and concern for Bibi Jaan were palpable and truly touching, I discovered as we engaged Uma in conversation. Uma happened to be a Hindu, and Bibi Jaan a Muslim, but this religious difference didn’t seem to matter in what was their very obviously intensely close relationship.

Uma spoke in a language I couldn’t understand, but N translated bits of what she said, so I managed to get a rough idea. It was something like this: Bibi Jaan worked a domestic help in Uma’s home for a very long time. Uma had known her ever since she was a little child, maybe more than 50 years ago (Uma is now almost 60). Bibi Jaan had once served Uma and her family, but now she was old and infirm and alone and the roles had been reversed. It was now Uma’s turn to take good care of Bibi Jaan: which she does—and with seemed to me to be great love.

Every Thursday, Uma arranges for Bibi Jaan to come over to her home, where she gives her good food to eat and also gives her a ‘head-bath’. Bibi Jaan spends the night there, along with Uma’s family. The next morning, Uma takes Bibi Jaan in an auto-rickshaw to a Dargah, a Muslim shrine: perhaps Bibi Jaan likes spending time there. On several occasions, Uma has paid the bills when Bibi Jaan has fallen sick. Uma has also taken Bibi Jaan along with her on trips outside town.

Uma isn’t at all very ‘educated’ by the standards of the world. She lives in a very modestly-sized house and receives a meagre pension—a thousand rupees a month, if I understood correctly—on account of her deceased husband (fortunately, her son has a job and helps support her financially). Yet, despite (or perhaps precisely because of) her educational and economic background, she seems to lovingly tend to Bibi Jaan.

This was truly interfaith harmony in action: A Hindu and a Muslim woman bound together by a relationship based on love and mutual service that began more than half a century ago and is still going strong! I don’t think I’d witnessed anything like this before!

I don’t suppose Uma and Bibi Jaan have ever heard of the phrase ‘interfaith harmony’, but that’s something they’ve been living out together, over many, many years!

One should give even from a scanty store to him who asks

(The Dhammapada)

Courtesy: New Age Islam

Indian Farmers Lost Rs.3 Lakh Crore in 2017-18

May 4, 2018

This happened because of Modi sarkar’s refusal to fulfil promise of cost price + 50% to farmers.

Image Courtesy: DNA India

In the rabi (winter) harvest of 2017-18, which is currently in the market, farmers have suffered an estimated loss of at least Rs.60,861 crore in six major crops. Add to this the loss of over Rs.2 lakh crore suffered in the kharif season, and you get a staggering figure of around Rs.2.6 lakh crore worth of losses.

This is happening because of the continued refusal of the Modi govt. to declare a minimum support price equivalent to total cost of production (C2) plus 50% additional. This was a recommendation of the M.S. Swaminathan headed National Farmers’ Commission and also an election promise made by Narendra Modi during the 2014 Lok Sabha campaign.

How is the calculation done for finding out the loss? Let us take the example of wheat. According to the latest report of the Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) on Price Policy for Rabi Crops , total cost of production (C2) for wheat is Rs.1256 per quintal (100 kg). So the promised price for the farmers should have been Rs.1884. But the Minimum Support Price (MSP) declared by the govt. is Rs.1735. That’s a difference of Rs.149 per quintal.

Total production of wheat in the country is estimated at 97.11 million tonnes in 2017-18 as per the second advance estimates released by the agriculture ministry. Not all the wheat produced comes into the market. Some is lost, and a portion is kept back for self-consumption by farmers. It is estimated that about 70% of the wheat is marketed surplus, that is, out of every 100 kg wheat grown and harvested, about 70 kg comes into market through mandis etc. Applying this rate to the total wheat production of the country, we get about 70 million tonnes of wheat in the market.

So, if a farmer is losing Rs.149 per quintal of wheat, all farmers put together will lose about Rs.10,000 crore for the 70 million tonnes they brought to the market this season. Similarly for other crops.

It should be noted that these are approximations and they yield conservative estimates of losses. One major factor that cannot yet be firmly defined is this: the actual price farmers get for produce. If past years are any indication, thousands of farmers across the country get prices that are below the MSP. The CACP report mentioned above in fact gives details of various market centres where average prices were below even the MSP. So the losses suffered by farmers are even more if compared to declared MSP+50%.

This loot of the farmers is the cause of a series of horrendous consequences like farmers’ suicides, increasing indebtedness, intractable poverty with all its own results, and so on. It is also the reason why farmers are out on the streets in over 13 states in the last couple of years, culminating in the historic Kisan Sansad in Delhi in November 2017 in which thousands of farmers participated.

The complete indifference of Modi Sarkar to the plight of farmers and the false promise of doubling their income by 2022 even while allowing this robbery to take place indicates that the Modi Sarkar is fast losing ground and support in rural India. With several major state elections this year and then the Lok Sabha elections next year, this betrayal of farmers – who make up two thirds of the country – may well cost the BJP dearly.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

AMU Violence an attempt to strengthen anti-Muslim narrative,’ members of the society condemn police violence

May 4, 2018

A day after violence erupted in the campus of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), a series of reactions from the various sections of the society have come forward mostly condemning the act of Hindutva goons, while some people also questioned the presence of Jinnah’s photograph in the students’ union building of AMU.

The AMU Teachers’ Association (AMUTA) has condemned the “deliberate criminal activity by the aggressors” on Wednesday. The AMUTA has also condemned the police action on the students of the university and said, “…instead of taking action against the criminal aggressors, AMU students who were victims were re-victimized by lathi-charge.”

On Wednesday, several dozen people reportedly affiliated with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Hindu Yuva Vahini – a group formed by Yogi Adityanath – entered the campus through the University’s main gate and thrashed some students passing by. The major objection of the “goons” was the installation of a portrait of Mohammad Ali Jinnah in the students’ union building of AMU.

The matter became more grave as Hamid Ansari, the former vice-president of India, was inside the campus to deliver his lecture. The AMUTA has pointed the same fact in its letter, “This is a serious security lapse on the part of police administration as former vice president of India was present in the Guest House no. 3 when the incident occurred.”

Rihai Manch, a human rights organisation working in Uttar Pradesh, has accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of inciting hatred against Muslims. Shahnawaz Alam, the spokesperson at Rihai Manch said, “By highlighting the AMU controversy, BJP is trying to strengthen its anti-Muslim narrative. That is why Satish Gautam, the BJP member of parliament from Aligarh, raised the issue just before Hamid Ansari’s visit to the AMU.”

People also condemned the action of the police, who released the perpetrators even after the AMU students’ union panelists handed them over to the police.”Police released those terrorists who were going to attack former VP Ansari, because they had Muslims as the target in their mind,” said Alam.

In 1938, Jinnah, the Muslim League leader, was given an honorary membership of AMU’s Students’ Union, which is why his portrait was hung in the building of the same.

In the press statement released on Thursday, Muslim Students Federation (MSF) said, “Jinnah’s portrait at AMU Students’ Union Hall is a historical preservation and it will remain there anyway.”

MSF has also protested the move to “stereotype AMU as a regressive, radical and undemocratic institution.”

“The government and police must not act as the instruments of BJP goons. We will extend our support and join the students and others who are protesting against the move,” said MSF in the press statement.

Asaduddin Owaisi, the member of Indian parliament and President All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen, said in the tweet, “why did the local police allow the Hindutva goons to enter AMU campus shows that @CMOfficeUP wants to vitiate the University campus?”

However, there are many who are relating the Wednesday “conflict” with the upcoming Karnataka elections. Navaid Hamid, the president at All India Majlis-e-Mushawarat, told TwoCircles.net, “BJP is certainly trying to gain ground from this controversy as the polling in Karnataka is going to held in next few days. They must state that why they have not expelled or raised the demand for expulsion of Lal Krishna Advani, who went to Pakistan and rather wrote a book on JInnah?”

Ameer Ahmad, member of AMU executive council and AMU court, has put out a statement calling for peace within the varsity campus as well as in the community. Ahmad said, “These are all planned move to provoke us. If we fall prey into their trap, then they are successful. So, please think before you react.”

“India is our country too. Also majority of the Hindus are not communal still. That worries these goons. They want a polarisation for which only hope left for them is to provoke us and make us to react so that they can use the media and the machineries with them to propagate and malign the community as well as try to get the majority secular, decent and non-communal Hindus to their side,” Ahmad further said. “They don’t realise by this how much damage they are doing to this great nation.”

On the other hand, the students’ union at Aligarh Muslim University is mulling to file a petition at Allahabad High Court against the district administration for taking violent action against the union members as well as the students who were trying to catch the goons.

Courtesy: Two Circles

Filmmakers explain why they boycotted the National Film Awards Ceremony

May 4, 2018

Image Courtesy: Twitter

The 65th National Awards ceremony held on 3 May 2018 at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi raised some eyebrows when 69 artists and filmmakers decided to walk out of the hall, boycotting the award function. Smriti Irani, who was to present the award, was greeted with a largely empty hall, whose absence was made even more apparent by the nameplates of the award recipients that marked their seats. The award recipients boycotted the award after they found at the last-minute that President Ram Nath Kovind would only present the award to 11 recipients out of a total of 140. Those who did receive the awards from the President included Boney Kapoor, who received the award on behalf of his late wife, Sridevi), Akshay Khanna,on behalf of the late Vinod Khanna and Bengali actor Riddhi Sen.This is the first time in history that a serving President has not been available to present the award. The group who staged the walk-out had written a letter the day before, which was read out by Chaitanya Prasad, Additional Director General, Director of Film Festival. “It feels like a breach of trust, when an institution/ceremony that abides by extreme protocol fails to inform us of such a vital aspect of the ceremony with(sic) a prior notice. It seems unfortunate that 65 years of tradition are being overturned in a jiffy.” In response, the Rashtrapati Bhavan attempted to justify the change by issuing a statement that said, “The President attends the award functions and convocation maximum for one hour.” But it should not forgotten that one of the reasons why the national award is considered prestigious and important for the winners is because the award is given by the President of India and not by a random cabinet minister.

The Indian Cultural Forum spoke to multiple filmmakers about their decision to boycott of the 65th Nationl Award Ceremony. Here is what they had to say:

“65th National Film Award winners, including myself, have boycotted the function because this is an unprecedented situation. This has never happened before in the last 65 years where the President refuses to present the award. This is part of a larger political agenda to bypass the President’s power so that the country is under the control of a certain political party. Some of us have decided to take a stand. We refuse to receive the award from a BJP Minister, and boycott the award distribution ceremony.” Aneez K Mappila , Director, The Slave Genesis

“They are breaking a tradition of 65 years. We are not commercial filmmakers. They could have told us in advanced, then we would not have come here. President should present us the award. That is our right. It is a tradition that the President give the award. Its one his duties. It takes years to make a film. And it takes a minute for the President to present the award.” Meghnath, Filmmaker

“It is very important for us to protest. But we are not boycotting the award itself. In the letter we received, it was mentioned that the President of India will give away the award. If the President was not available, they should have mentioned it before hand that a Cabinet Minister will be presenting the awards on behalf of the President the awards will be given. There’s discrepancy in what the letter states and what actually happened. If they are saying that the President of India is giving away the award, then it should be him, not anyone else. We are very unhappy with this decision. We are not a union; we are a group of independent film makers who have been working in this field for years. Now we have decided to boycott the award function.” Teenaa Kaur, Director, When the Sun Didn’t Rise.

Read the full draft of the letter here:

Sreelakshmi is a member of the editorial collective of the Indian Writers’ Forum.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

Women and Post-Conflict Political Order

May 3, 2018

It’s not easy to build a stable political system after a war. But it’s even more difficult if women are left out of the equation.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former president of Liberia (Wikimedia Commons)

In 1993, the assassination of Burundi’s first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, catalyzed a 12-year civil war that killed over 300,000 people. The conflict ended in 2005 with the implementation of the Arusha Accords, which instituted a power-sharing agreement among the state military and various rebel groups. Thirteen years later, Burundi is still teetering on the brink of crisis. Why? In part, because the power-sharing agreement asked warring parties to trade weapons for political influence and in doing so, reserved power for key conflict actors. This paradigm leaves out a portion of the population that is fundamental to sustainable peace: women.

To be sure, women were deeply involved in the Burundian peace process. Female civil society actors mobilized to convene the All Party Burundi Women’s Conference and draft the Women’s Proposals to Engender the Draft Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement. However, women were not initially included in the peace dialogue, nor was their proposal for a 30% quota for women in political bodies accepted into the Arusha Accords. The negotiators at the Arusha dialogue maintained that there were not enough adequately qualified, educated women to hold that number of political positions. In the interim, between the installation of a transitional government in November 2001 and the completion of Burundi’s new constitution in 2005, the gender quotas for representative bodies never took hold. Women made up only 17 out of 184 seats in the National Assembly, and only 4 out of 26 ministerial positions, and 10 out of 54 seats in the Senate.

Fierce activism from women in the transitional government, in local civil society, and the international community eventually established a 30% quota in the 2005 constitution. However, inclusion and power are not synonymous. The major political parties contending for power in Burundi grew out of the armed groups leveraging violence to assert dominance during the civil war. After his initial election in 2005, President Nkurunziza, an ethnic Hutu, struggled to control the Tutsi-dominated judiciary, and coup threats began to circulate. Since then, Burundian politics have only become more contentious and sectarian. In response, Nkurunziza has severely limited the political rights of Burundian citizens, becoming increasingly autocratic. Female parliamentarians and cabinet members have been constrained by the male leadership of their parties and the authoritarianism of the Nkurunziza regime. The power-sharing agreement put in place by the Arusha Accords created a political system that encourages ethnic and political isolationism, with little to no cooperation among parties. It legitimized violence as political currency, making status as a war actor the prerequisite for power.

As a result, the post-Arusha political landscape is neither peaceful nor democratic. The ruling party has tightened its hold on power, and President Pierre Nkurunziza has become increasingly despotic. Nkurunziza’s disputed victory following his campaign for an illegal third presidential term sparked the latest bout of political violence.

Making Power Sharing Work
This pattern is not unique to Burundi. Empirical analysis demonstrates that 50% of post-civil war power-sharing agreements from 1989 to 2006 saw widespread violence recur within five years.

In Chad, violent conflict is endemic. The country has undergone five major periods of civil war as defined by the Correlates of War project: 1966-1971, 1980-1984, 1989-1990, 1998-2000, and 2005-2006. Although the most recent conflict period in Chad technically ended in 2006, there were 20 major rebel attacks in the country between 2005 and 2009. Today, Chad is still plagued by violence. Boko Haram is terrorizing civilians near Lake Chad. The Chad-Libya border is considered an active war zone. Peace has failed to take hold.

This is largely because post-conflict transformation initiatives in Chad have never been transformative. President Idriss Déby came to power in a military coup in 1990 and won reelection in a largely contested election in 2016. Chad has yet to experience a non-military regime change; armed takeover is the most viable strategy for gaining power in Chad. The established rules of politics in Chad are brutal, uncompromising, and militant. Reconciliation has always been defined as the current leaders promising opposition figures positions of power, creating a paradigm where power is consolidated by co-opting warlords. There is little room for civilian opposition or non-violent social movements.

The Afghan Civil War from 1996-2001 is rooted partly in a failed power-sharing agreement. After the Soviet Union ended its invasion of Afghanistan in 1989, multiple rebel groups vied for command of the state. After four years of fighting, the rebel groups (including the Mujahedeen) and the government signed the 1993 Afghan Peace Accord. The agreement established government by conceding political and military power to rebel groups, but it failed to bring peace, democracy, or basic security to the country. The 1993 government shortly collapsed, leaving in its wake a power vacuum that the Taliban moved to fill.

Other power-sharing agreements abet the rise of authoritarian leaders. In Cambodia, Hun Sen, who became prime minister through a power-sharing agreement following UN-facilitated elections in 1993, has ruled for 33 years and recently outlawed Cambodia’s main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party.

Gender is rarely a key component of mainstream analysis on why power-sharing agreements fail or why authoritarianism persists, but it should be. Women’s equal treatment and meaningful participation in civic and political life is critical to sustainable peace and inclusive governance. As gender parity rises, a nation’s proclivity for both inter and intra-state conflict falls. Greater proportions of female politicians decrease the likelihood of civil war, use of violence in the face of an international crisis, and the likelihood of state perpetrated human rights abuses.

Data and illustrative cases suggest that when women can wield their agency and influence in post-conflict settings, real change happens. According to the UN, a peace agreement is 60 percent more likely to be reached, 20 percent more likely to last at least two years, and 35 percent more likely to last more than fifteen year when women participate in peace negotiations.

Following the end of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, women civil society leaders formed the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) to contribute to peacetime politics. The NIWC won one percent of the vote, gaining two seats at the negotiating table. The voice and influence of the NIWC had immense impact on fostering a more inclusive, accountable, and democratic post-conflict political landscape. The NIWC secured the inclusion of cornerstone pillars of the peace agreement, including victims’ rights and reconciliation. The NIWC also proposed the Civic Forum, which cemented and formalized space for public participation in politics. Furthermore, the NIWC became a permanent political party; providing a path for greater gender equality in Northern Ireland’s politics.

Following the civil war in Liberia, which began in 1989 and persisted through 2003, women in Liberia mobilized into an organized peace movement to end the civil war. Fed up with the constant barrage of death and destruction, Christian and Muslim Liberian women worked in concert to protest the war, met with both President Charles Taylor and the main opposition groups, and ultimately convinced both sides to come to the Accra peace talks. When the women felt the peace talks were moving too slowly, they protested in order to force a comprehensive agreement. Though women did not have a seat in the formal peace negotiations in Accra, they were fundamental to securing peace for Liberia. Liberia held its fairest and most democratic elections yet two years after its second civil war. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, helped along by Liberian women who became further involved in politics after the formation of the women’s peace movement, was elected to the presidency in 2005 and peacefully transferred power to George Weah in 2017. The success of the peace process in Liberia hinged on women civil society actors exerting influence, even in the face of systematic exclusion.

Share Power with Women, Not Warlords
There is increasing recognition among the international community that gender equality is a strategic imperative for global security. The United States has demonstrated laudable leadership on this issue. Last year, Congress passed the Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017, which requires the U.S. to “develop a comprehensive strategy to increase and strengthen women’s participation in peace negotiations and conflict prevention.”

The development, peace, and security communities are spearheading an effort to rethink the foreign policy toolkit to break the cycle of recurring violence and civil war, and prevent, rather than respond to, crisis. USAID Administrator Mark Green has indicated that conflict prevention should be a core pillar of US foreign assistance. Outside of the US, David Cameron, alongside others have lead the charge on “escaping the fragility trap”. One of the core pillars of this agenda is to stop rushing to elections in post-conflict contexts and instead focus on fostering the building blocks of democracy. Cameron and the Commission on State Fragility, Growth, and Development contend that power-sharing agreements offer a viable alternative to immediately holding elections in the aftermath of civil war.

Women are not a panacea for peace, nor are all women innately peaceful. But democracy cannot exist without women’s participation and the participation of other civic actors. Women must be a critical part of post-conflict processes if those processes are to encourage sustainable peace and democratic principles. It is especially important for the U.S. to recognize this as it attempts to transform foreign assistance to prevent cycles of violence, conflict, and fragility. As Jamille Bigio and Rachel Vogelstien of the Council on Foreign Relations state in their report, “How Women’s Participation in Conflict Prevention Advances U.S. Interests,” taking steps toward ensuring women’s inclusion in post-conflict processes “will help the United States respond effectively to security threats around the world, improve the sustainability of peace agreements, and advance U.S. interests.”

The shift toward preventative foreign assistance and foreign policy is promising. It is important to rethink the assumption that elections confer inclusive, accountable, democratic governments. However, until power-sharing agreements share power across the citizenry, and not just among warring parties, post-conflict political orders will remain fragile.

Emily Myers is a Fall 2017 Scoville Fellow at the Alliance for Peacebuilding.

Courtesy: http://fpif.org/

India cuts a Sorry Figure on World Press Freedom Day

May 3, 2018

Attacks on media persons continue with impunity across the country

Today is the 25th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, which was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1993 on the recommendation of UNESCO’s General Conference. It is therefore a solemn day for Indian journalists given how the Press Freedom is being curtailed in the country, by both, state and non state actors. Here’s a look at the struggle to establish and honour Press Freedom and Freedom of Expression across the world as well as how India is still struggling on this vital front.

The Windhoek Declaration

Since then, May 3, which is the anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek, has been commemorated as World Press Freedom Day. The Windhoek Declaration was compiled by African journalists in 1991. It was introduced at a UNESCO seminar for ‘Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press’ that was held in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia from April 29 to May 3, 1991.

The Windhoek Declaration prompted similar moves, DW Akademie reported: in 1992, a UNESCO media conference in Kazakhstan adopted the Declaration of Alma Atma, which proclaimed complete support for the Windhoek Declaration. A similar move came with 1994’s Declaration of Santiago, and in 1996, the Declaration of Sana’a highlighted the priority of creating completely independent journalists’ associations, trade unions or syndicates, as well as publishers’ and editors’ associations. In 1997, too, the Declaration of Sofia called on “all parties concerned that the principles enshrined in this (Windhoek) Declaration be applied in practice.”

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India cuts a Sorry Figure on World Press Freedom Day

Attacks on media persons continue with impunity across the country

The Windhoek Declaration

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