It was a lot to take in, even in these whipsawed media moments.
In one 24-hour news cycle, President Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, appointed the war and torture-backing CIA chief Mike Pompeo to replace him, and then tapped Gina Haspel—who covered up CIA torture in Thailand—to replace Pompeo.
While the media descended on that circus, many missed that the White House quietly convened high-level representatives of 20 countries ostensibly to “brainstorm” about the crisis in Gaza, where Israel’s repeated military incursions and blockade have devastated the territory’s infrastructure, health and water systems.
The gathering, which took place on March 13, was less splashy than the Tillerson-Pompeo-Haspel saga. But it spoke volumes about dangerous new drifts in U.S. foreign policy.
Look who’s in the room together The United States has long backed Israel’s siege of Gaza and defended Tel Aviv’s succession of military assaults on the impoverished, densely populated territory of 2 million.
So the notion that Trump, whose uncritical support for the Israeli government surpasses that of any of his predecessors, is suddenly concerned about mitigating the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza seems pretty far-fetched. Especially when Israel, the country most immediately responsible for the destruction of Gaza, was one of the nations playing a starring role in the White House gathering.
On the humanitarian front, little came of the meeting. Officially, Reuters reports, “the multi-nation humanitarian and reconstruction effort remains in beginning stages.”
More significant than the outcome, however, is the grouping the meeting brought together.
The gathering featured Europeans, Israelis, Egyptians and representatives of most of the Gulf Arab monarchies—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain—all sitting in the room together. Not included were Palestinians, who have been clear they won’t follow U.S. diplomatic leadership since Trump’s provocative decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
According to Reuters, unnamed officials insisted that “the format did not allow for direct discussions between Israel and the Arab states.” But that is likely not the end of the story.
It’s been clear for a long time that Israel and the Gulf monarchies, led by Saudi Arabia, are desperate to cozy up to each other. Both are U.S. allies and huge purchasers of U.S. arms. And both rely on U.S. diplomatic protection at the United Nations to avoid accountability for their human rights violations. And most importantly, at this moment, both sides are eager to join forces against Iran.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have been battling for regional dominance for a long time. Their competition has stoked a brutal proxy conflict in Syria, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has orchestrated a devastating attack on Yemen as a challenge to Iran’s influence there.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to persuade the United States to abandon the nuclear deal and attack Iran have served as a backdrop to Israel’s regional policy for years.
At a quiet Washington meeting supposedly discussing something quite unrelated, they were all sitting down together — ahead of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s own visit to Washington.
A dangerous regional agenda Despite years of Israeli and Saudi propaganda, Iran isn’t actually an existential threat to either Israel or to Saudi Arabia. But Iran’s rise is definitely a challenge to long-standing Israeli and Saudi efforts at regional dominance.
The more dire regional threat, however, is that the Trump administration is showing every indication of wanting to escalate tensions with Iran. That’s exactly what will happen if the Trump administration pulls out of the Iran nuclear deal, as Netanyahu continues to urge, and as Senate Foreign Relations chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) recently predicted.
Trump’s appointment of Mike Pompeo, a leading Iran hawk, to the post of Secretary of State increases this risk. Pompeo has gone even beyond Trump himself in criticizing the Iran nuclear deal, a position that bodes very badly for diplomacy under this potential new diplomat-in-chief. So does the fact, as Peter Beinart wrote in The Atlantic that “Pompeo embraces anti-Muslim bigots, and defames Muslims, with almost as much gusto as Trump himself.”
As Secretary of State, it will be up to Pompeo to inform the president whether or not Iran is complying with its obligations under the nuclear deal. The international agency charged with monitoring Iran says it is complying. But Pompeo, even before he became CIA director, was already tweeting that he was looking forward to “rolling back” the “disastrous” nuclear deal.
Palestinians left out With these people running U.S. foreign policy, any moves by Washington to encourage the Israeli and Gulf Arab governments to join forces against Iran becomes even more dangerous.
Tel Aviv and Riyadh are both eager for this front. What stands in their way is popular outrage at home.
In places like Saudi Arabia, absolute monarchs shed crocodile tears about the plight of Palestinians while doing nothing to actually end Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. But thanks to widespread popular support for the Palestinian cause in the Arab world, Arab officials are pretty much forbidden to publicly meet with Israelis.
Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and his BFF Prince Mohammed bin Salman are working to change that. Getting Saudis and others in the region accustomed to the idea of Israelis and Arab leaders sitting in a room together is a key component of this strategy. That not-so-public meeting in the White House may have been just the beginning.
Once again, the Palestinians—and especially the people of Gaza—are being held hostage to the regional and global aspirations of more powerful countries. Instead of actually addressing the suffering in Gaza, the United States and its allies may have turned a conference on humanitarian assistance into a war room aimed at Iran.
Middle East expert Phyllis Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.
How does one tackle inequality within the caste system?
Sony Pellissery is an associate professor at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, where he concentrates on introducing ideas of social justice into public policy debates. Beyond Trafficking and Slavery caught up with Sony at the conference ‘Bridging Silos: Trafficking, Slavery and SDG 8.7’ held in in August 2017 in Bangalore, India, to talk about his work and the fight for social justice in India.
Neil Howard (oD): Could we start with a question that is simple to ask, but difficult to answer. What is social justice? Sony: My understanding of social justice has varied over the course of my personal journey. At early stages I had a socialist understanding of social justice – a classic understanding of the term, where you go to the streets, gather everybody, and get your rights. But the more I have worked with communities which face exploitation, the more my idea of social justice is being defined by the leaders of these communities.
For example, some of my current research projects are with bonded labour communities. Their understanding of social justice does not share many of the well-laid principles of classical social justice. They have a more communitarian understanding of what should be justice for them. For bonded labour communities, for dalit (lower caste) communities, it’s more about correcting historical social injustice. That is social justice for them. I’ve begun to think through the lens in which they want to see things, rather than imposing my ideas of social justice as an academic upon them.
Neil (oD): It sounds like your understanding of social justice has become much more participatory. Am I hearing you correctly that for some of the bonded labour communities that you work with, it’s about recognition as much as about rights and redistribution? Is that correct? Sony: That’s right. Even within bonded labour or dalit communities, they have experienced their own changes. For instance, immediately after the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act came into effect in the mid-1970s they focused on releasing the people who were in bondage. But more and more they have realised that release is only one part. Today business is thriving in Bangalore and other places, there is great opportunity, and if they don’t participate in it they will have no future. It will be like be bonded all over again. So instead of fighting against that, they are thinking of ways to participate in the economy. That’s a change. Is it redistribution they are seeking, or recognition? They themselves are moving with the currents. Similar issues are found within Adivasi communities. There were times when Adivasis were told to preserve their culture, their identity. But today, Adivasi communities are asking to learn the English language, and to compete with everybody else. So, each of these deprived communities are finding that earlier paradigms were problematic. That the earlier paradigm of development constrained them in particular ways, and that they need new paradigms. That’s the kind of change that’s happening in all the marginalised segments of society.
Neil (oD): Two questions then, to provide an overview for people who are not expert in these topics. One, could you outline a way for us to understand the causal factors of extreme exploitation in the sub-continent, and, following that, what are your ideas for what we could do about it? Sony: Indian society is a very hierarchical society, and the exploitation is hierarchical. It is not the one who is on the very top of the hierarchy who goes down and exploits the lowest. That is not the way it operates. The exploitation is layered. The one who is on top of the hierarchy will exploit the one who is next below. That exploitation takes place in different ways: oppressing him, paying him less wages, demanding extra things. And then similar kinds of exploitation take place at each level.
It’s difficult to define a standard of exploitation. The type of exploitation a person experiences is based on where they are in the caste hierarchy. To see the most extreme form, the cruelest form of exploitation we have to go to the very bottom. There you see that the form of exploitation is on the bodies themselves. Dalits must do things like get into an open well and clean it, and sometimes they will die in the process. In formal factory settings they might be asked to do the hardest of the jobs. But in this system that’s what they are seen as destined for – to clean a land owner’s well they may have to die, and they are not entitled for any other rights.
Neil (oD): So identity interacts with market forces to make the type of exploitation experienced relative. Sony: Yes. The other identity that is experiencing extreme exploitation is gender of course. Violence against women is very common in India, particularly female children. The homes in which they work are supposed to be safe places, yet they are often exploited and sexually harassed. These are cruel forms of violence.
The third form that you can see in India is the distinction between urban and rural areas. Some 60-70% of India’s population still works in agriculture, yet the sector accounts for only around 15%-20% of the GDP. So these three markers – being dalit, being a woman, or coming from a rural area – are generally the axes along which exploitation in India operate.
Neil (oD): On the basis of such a matrix, which has structures intersecting to create exploitative relationships, what are some of the things you think progressive elements in society can do to fight against exploitation? Sony: What counts as progressive in India today is very divisive. For example, the old kind of thinking – that is, a left-leaning ideology for organising exploited groups – still operates. There is still a lot of buy-in for that. However, large sections of Indian society today – especially the upcoming, young population of India under 40 years old – are less convinced by this rationalistic frame. They would imagine progressive means looking for a freer society, and that leftist organisation is a waste of time. These are the two different types of logics currently operating in India. Both claim they are progressive. But they cannot come together on a single platform.
The strength of the second group is that they have a very strong, communitarian logic, and the question of identity is at the centre of the discussion. They say that without your identity you cannot really talk about ending exploitation or achieving social justice. The first group, in contrast, believes there is a certain rationalistic thinking to which you are attached, that your ideas therefore operate at that level, and thus they underplay the identity question.
Unfortunately the political currency is now with the communitarian group. That group is winning because the Indian middle class, which is a large stakeholder within the whole game, has built up an understanding of India as a mega force in the region and the whole world. That conception has the backing of Indian civilisation, scripture, etc., which imagines India as a superpower of sorts. To push that discourse harder, you have to push your Indian identity very strongly. Communitarians have been very successful at that. The symbolism of Hindu philosophy primarily operates through a denial of equality.
To end exploitation, they will immediately think about imagery from mythology, or religious scripture. They will say it’s been done in the past, and therefore this is how it’s going to end – new instruments of rationalised discourses coming from elsewhere are unnecessary. That use of symbolism is hugely problematic for ending exploitation.
The symbolism of Hindu philosophy primarily operates through a denial of equality. You cannot have equality if you subscribe to Hindu philosophy. If you believe yourself to be a Hindu, you have to believe in the caste system – it’s at the heart of Hindu philosophy, according to some writers. And that is where the problem lies, as the moment we subscribe to Hindu symbolism is the moment when we also subscribe to the problems of a hierarchical society.
Having said that, individuals like Ghandi thought that there was a way to reform Hinduism within Hinduism by bringing in rational discourses. He thought that the denial of equality was not at the core of Hinduism, it is only one of the operations of Hinduism. So there are multiple strands of thought on this, and some of them open up space for challenges.
My personal conviction – I’m not sure if it’s cynicism or not – is that India has passed that stage to be a transformative society. For India to have done that, it would have had to be at the time of Indian constitution making: the 1950s. The Indian constitution could have been a challenge to traditional Indian philosophy. But that never happened. The Indian constitution is a very rationalist, idealistic constitution. It lives with a very rough ideological foundation of Hindu society, which is hierarchical.
Neil (oD): And you understand this to be one of the major obstacles to progressive alliance building? Sony: We’re not quite there yet in the discussion. So far I’ve talked about two types of orientation. The ideological divide is one major cleavage. But, to my understanding, much more difficult is the process of a modern polity that has become available to Indian society. This is exhibited through more acceptance of democracy in this country. In many ways, that democratic process gives all the progressive groups a lot of strength. It allows people to say that they can deal with the question through democratic forces, and people do mobilise around those forces. People thus are willing to work through these channels because they think they can make a larger difference.
But, there is an illusion about what you think you’re achieving through a democratic process and what you finally end up getting. That is a larger picture which people are not able to see when they work very minutely on the details of getting the votes, and getting small successes. But the larger picture remains somewhere else.
Where is that larger picture? It goes back to what ideas you are able to forcefully put forth. Communitarians have put forth a strong ideology. Unlike traditional organising, where you go door to door to convince people to attend meetings about topics beneficial to them, communitarians do things like go in front of a school, put up a special symbol, and everybody knows what it means. You don’t even have to ask them to come. They come on their own.
They have created a highway of ideology to which people immediately jump, while other types of progressive groups shrink to being just alleys or small roads in comparison, which people must negotiate in order to get to the main highway. Why would people not simply join the bandwagon of the main highway from the outset? That’s where everybody has to go, as everything else has become small pathways. And for those already on the small pathways, they keep hoping that eventually – after following enough pathways – they will also end up on the highway.
That’s the biggest challenge. You have a big elephant in the room, and everybody else is fighting it for fear of being taken over by it.
Neil (oD): I’m guessing that you would also be of the belief that the communitarian ideology is not an ideology that is likely to lead to emancipation for the kinds of bonded labourers that you have worked with. Am I right? Sony: The communitarian ideology will push up certain sections of the people, and other large sections will be left out. That’s what communitarian ideology will do, because the hierarchical logic leads you to a situation where there are small sections of people on top who have to have all the benefits. You cannot share that with everybody, because ‘we’ are a special group.
Neil (oD): What do you think the opportunities are for, as you called it, the rationalist challenge to the communitarian? What can be learned from what the communitarians are doing so successfully? Sony: Yes! Indeed, the progressive alliances are learning from the communitarians. For example, in the past progressive alliances have always foo-fooed the question of identity. They said we all have to be rational. We all have to be alike, and agree on certain things. Now, seeing the communitarians, the progressive alliances are opening their eyes. They’re saying that, yeah, there are among us vast differences and we failed to see them, and that’s why somebody else has come in and gotten all the attention. Therefore, let us recognise the differences among us, let us recognise these identities. That will help us to have much more meaningful unity than a formal unity that was wished for. That change is now happening. What will come out of it, and how far it will go, I don’t know. But change is happening.
There are among us vast differences and we failed to see them, and that’s why somebody else has come in and gotten all the attention.
There is hope. Something we haven’t talked about yet is how knowledge is created and used in different types of alliances. Within the communitarian paradigm, knowledge is sometimes subjugated for the purpose for which you’re fighting. In other words, more of a religious kind of knowledge creation – you don’t challenge the basic text. You still have knowledge, but you operate within that. Opened inquiry is not required.
Certain progressive groups have also struggled because they’ve been looking to the west for their source of knowledge. They have not been able to create an indigenous base of knowledge for their context, and thus appropriate knowledge for dealing with social justice questions is not getting created. Wall stencil in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. Adam Jones/flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Neil (oD): You see a real need for participatory, contextually specific knowledge. Sony: It’s not there, and that creates uninformed members of society regarding the sorts of social justice they are looking for. The moment you talk about a very rationalist social justice it’s coming from somewhere else. It’s not contextualised, and the class question is not mixing with the caste question.
Neil (oD): They’re missing the locally meaningful symbols, through which they can translate the rational concept. Sony: That is a huge problem for addressing meaningful exploitation, and I think these are the types of tools you need to address them. Within them you will be at a loss.
Neil (oD): Before we finish, what sort of policies do you think would be necessary, assuming that the rationalists get their act together and that there is a change in the political order, to address the extreme exploitation that takes place in India? Sony: There’s a larger pre-issue to that. In the Indian context, the moment we use policy we take on a huge amount of baggage. The state is not visible here, or it’s seen as a repressive force. The state is the one who is sending police to arrest me rather than to protect me. The state is seen as a problem here. The moment we talk policy to solve an issue, within the Indian context it takes on a very different kind of colour. So – I think the answer to this for many of the progressive groups is to organise people. What that basically means is that they see the solutions as coming from society rather than the state. The state will always be a problem creator and a predator. But society is good, and you can trust society. You can trust people.
Given Indian society’s post-colonial situation of the state, the whole feeling is that we should get rid of the state. So, policy-as-a-solution has a very limited reach in a country like ours. Solutions might not come from policy, they might have to come from elsewhere. Policy-as-a-solution has a very limited reach in a country like India.
Neil (oD): Given that context, are there other ways you can see for reducing the kinds of exploitation we are talking about? Sony: One of the ideas we have experimented with in both the university and elsewhere is the idea of reimaging the government as an instrument which gives an opening for starting deliberations or discussions. For example, several policy changes have been suggested in recent times. One of them has been a big debate on labour courts. We see this as an opportunity for starting a discussion. The moment government issues a labour court, which everybody thinks is going to be very problematic and create further inequalities, we see that as a further opportunity for discussion among labour groups. It’s also an opportunity to lead the government by discussion, or reconstitute the government by discussion.
I don’t think any policy that is prescribed here will have acceptance by society as is. But you can push it further, work on it, and make it better, rather than leaving it as is.
Neil (oD): A final question about basic income. For a moment, let’s assume in the abstract that the state is not a predator and can be trusted to transfer money to every citizen. Would that contribute to the reduction of exploitation? Sony: I think it would not. The reason is that different states in India have different levels of human development, income, etc. You can easily identify at least four of five ‘types’ of state in India. So when you say a basic income for all of India, for many of us that can be seen as a threat to the purpose for which India became a union. India became a union on the premise that each state can keep its identity. Each state can keep their basic autonomy. That is the principle, and you can’t experiment here like you did in Europe, where you created a single economic system and said everyone fell within that. That is a very big proposition. If we have a single basic income created at the national level, it would be too low for some states, and very good for some people.
There are researchers who have done some kind of calibration regarding what a basic income in India would be. It works out to be 10,000 rupees per month. 10,000 rupees per month for a domestic worker is good money. It’s almost her salary per month. But for large sections of the middle class and upper middle class, it’s not what they are looking for.
And, if the middle class doesn’t give its assent to a basic income proposal, it has got very little viability to be accepted. And that is something which is to be contrasted with the European experience. There, the welfare state is about middle class. It’s about getting pension, getting unemployment benefits – it’s about the middle class, about nearly everybody except for perhaps the top 5% or so. But here, the welfare state or basic income proposals become attractive only for the poorest class. Not for the middle class and upper class. Thus, it’s not going to end inequality. It’s going to become yet another welfare measure which might help the poor section that finds it attractive.
Egyptians are voting in presidential elections on March 26-28. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who grabbed power in 2013, is set to win another term by a landslide. Yet this is far from a sign of strength: opposition candidates have been silenced, and even pro-government media are being purged of the slightest undertone of dissent.
Al-Sisi’s grip on power may appear firm, but his country’s problems can’t be thrown into jail like his opponents. His predecessors Hosni Mubarak and Anwar Sadat learned this the hard way.
Yet don’t expect much hand-wringing from the West about Egypt’s stability in the coming days – despite its having been through a revolution and a coup already this decade. Governments and other strategists only appear to worry about countries in this region once discontent turns “hot” – like in Syria, Yemen, Libya or Iraq.
Our research shows that this may be a serious and costly mistake. The whole region is suffering from exactly the same deep-seated problems as before the Arab Spring of 2010-11. In Egypt and various other apparently stable countries, there are very high levels of discontent that could easily boil over.
Then and now
The uprisings earlier in the decade were not simply demands for Western-style democracy. Protesters may have been disillusioned by all the election rhetoric from these authoritarian regimes in democratic clothing, but they were primarily disgusted by corruption, abuse of power and economic inequality. They wanted governments that would address these concerns rather than lining their own pockets and those of their cronies.
Unfortunately little has changed, as newly released opinion polls show for Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia – with upwards of 1,000 people surveyed in each country. While citizens worry about issues their governments prioritise, such as security, terrorism and religious extremism, their main concerns are the same as in 2010 – decent jobs, inflation, inequality and corruption.
Top two challenges by country
Arab Barometer, 2016.
People don’t believe their governments are responsive to their priorities. Fewer than one third of Egyptians think so, while in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Jordan that figure drops to a quarter or less. In Lebanon it is a mere 7%.
Across all six countries an astonishing 85% or more think their governments are not making a serious effort to tackle corruption. Meanwhile, 75% or more are not satisfied with their governments’ efforts to create jobs or fight inflation.
Views on economy, corruption and terrorism
Arab Barometer, 2016.
The discontent is worst in Lebanon, where fewer than 5% of people approve of the government’s work. Even the performance on internal security – the one area where citizens in the other five countries are relatively satisfied – was considered adequate by only a quarter of Lebanese respondents.
This region-wide disenchantment translates into low confidence in parliaments and political parties, the key institutions which ought to be representing citizens’ interests. Confidence varies from country to country: Lebanon again scores poorly. Egypt fares better than others, but this owes more to intense government propaganda than any real effectiveness.
Trust in state institutions Arab Barometer, 2016.
Citizens also don’t feel they have the civil and political rights necessary to legitimately express their grievances and push their governments for reforms. When people are unable to adequately express their unhappiness, it inevitably increases the potential for radicalisation.
Views on civil rights Arab Barometer, 2016.
Little changed
As a result of the Arab uprisings, governments fell in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and eventually Libya, while there were more limited political changes in Jordan and Kuwait. Governments in other countries announced political concessions, including Morocco, Algeria, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
Yet since the issues which drove many of these protesters to the streets have not been addressed, their governments remain vulnerable both to mass mobilisation and to less obvious forms of radicalisation – as recent protests in Tunisia show.
Western policymakers and academics concerned with security are at risk of missing this. They do not seem to have learned the lessons of the Arab uprisings. Absent armed conflict, they still tend to dismiss the importance to stability of social cohesion, inequality and poor political representation.
We must therefore reassess the stability of countries like Egypt. We must stop assuming their leaders will forever be able to simply repress dissent, and stop assuming that such repression doesn’t come with costs and risks, both human and political.
These countries are in fact security “sinkholes”: regimes whose foundations erode while apparently seeming stable, often to the point of collapse. Far from being a sign of strength or stability, remaining deaf to the needs of the people make things worse in the long run.
As al-Sisi makes his inevitable victory speech, we would be wise not to ignore these warning signs. Until we learn that conflict must be dealt with at its roots, history is liable to just keep repeating itself.
Srinagar: A nursing school in Srinagar district of Jammu and Kashmir has landed itself in controversy after directing its students to sign an affidavit not to wear ‘Abaya’ or cover their face during the working hours.
The Ancillary Medical Training (AMT) has asked its female students to sign an affidavit which states not to wear ‘Abaya or face-covering during clinical posting’.
“I will maintain the dress code as per the policy of the institution. I will maintain the code of ethics as per the policy of the institution, and I will not wear Abaya or cover my face during clinical postings,” reads the affidavit that the students require signing.
The students have threatened to take legal action against the institute if the notification seeking signing of the affidavit isn’t rolled back.
The institute’s principal Dr. Razia Mahmood while talking to a local newspaper has defended her decision and termed Abaya as a source of infection during work
“That is why there is an emphasis on proper dress code. The students can put on their Abaya or veil after the working hours,” she was quoted as saying by Valley-based newspaper Greater Kashmir.
According to the chairman of International Forum for Justice, Ahsan Untoo the institution can’t force students to sign the affidavit against their will.
“Every person has right to wear what they want to wear. Instead of asking students not to wear Abaya or face cover, the institute should provide them medical gowns and masks,” Ahsan told TwoCircles.net.
A Srinagar-based rights activist MM Shuja has threatened to approach court if the notification isn’t taken back.
The PM’s app collected 22 types of data without telling users.
Newsclick Image By Nitesh
The personal data of Indians is being leaked to all and sundry. And when the ruling political party is itself collecting and sending the data of unsuspecting citizens to foreign companies — as revealed by a French cyber security researcher on 23 March — little remedy can be expected.
At least two separate fact-checks, by AltNews and NDTV , confirmed that the official Narendra Modi Android application — popularly known as the NaMo App — sends users’ personal information to a third-party domain (in.wzrkt.com) owned by American company CleverTap, which helps marketers “identify, engage and retain users.” All of this without consent, of course.
The BJP responded by saying that data was being used only for analytics using third-party service, “similar to Google analytics”, in order to provide “contextual content”.
The NaMo app scam has come in the backdrop of the recent Cambridge Analytica expose which showed how the UK firm harvested Facebook data to target ‘psychographic’ advertising in the Trump campaign.
It also came to light that the Facebook app has been logging the history of people’s calls and text messages without their permission. Facebook responded to these reports with a blog post denying that the company surreptitiously collected call data, and clarifying that it never sells the data. Quite apart from the NaMo app data being sent to a third party which could misuse it, consider this: now the BJP has in its possession 50 lakh users’ private data (acquired without their consent by the NaMo app) which it can analyse and use in whatever way it wants – from setting up their famed panna pramukhs and booth management system to targeting dissenters or others.
A day after the exposé, the privacy policy on the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s website was quietly changed . Earlier, the privacy policy had lied that the users’ “personal information and contact details shall remain confidential” and that it “shall not be provided to third parties in any manner whatsoever without your consent”.
After the whole scandal broke open, it has been changed to say that “certain information may be processed by third party services” to offer “the most contextual content”, give “a unique, personalized experience according to your interests”, show “content in your own language”, etc.
The NaMo app gets access to 22 data points on your phone — including camera, microphone, photographs, location, contacts, etc. Compare this to the official app of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO India App), which asks users for access to 14 data points.
Reports have emerged that recently, around 13 lakh students enrolled in the National Cadet Corps (NCC) have been asked to install the NaMo app on their smartphones “ahead of a planned interaction with the prime minister soon”. Their mobile numbers and email IDs were also collected. So, the govt.’s invisible hand is firmly guiding people – including youngsters – to unknowingly become data providers to the BJP.
Earlier, the same French researcher — whose name, reportedly, is Robert Baptiste but who goes by the pseudonym of Elliot Alderson on Twitter — had been highlighting security loopholes and vulnerabilities in the infrastructure of Aadhaar — the biometrics-linked Unique Identification number project. The numerous data breaches enabled by the Aadhaar infrastructure in the past are no secret.
Besides, the NaMo app revelations come in the wake of the controversy involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, a British analytics and political consultancy firm that reportedly harvested data of around 50 million Americans to influence the US election results. There were allegations that it may have meddled in Indian elections as well, as BJP and the Congress had reportedly used the services of a partner Company named Ovleno Business Intelligence.
Even after the NaMo app revelations, the Congress and the BJP had an accusatory exchange, after Elliot Alderson revealed that when a person applied for membership in the official INCIndia app, the personal data was sent to a server located in Singapore. However, the privacy policy of the Congress app does clarify that information may be shared with third parties for various purposes.
Recently an RTI reply revealed that “a private vendor previously employed by the ministry of defence may have walked away with the personal data of 50 lakh ex-servicemen,” reported the website Janta Ka Reporter.
“The reply by the MoD, headed by Nirmala Sitharaman, raises several worrying questions in light of the latest reports of Facebook letting users’ data get compromised from its platform,” the report said.
New Delhi: In a decade to 2015, India’s efforts to tackle diarrhoea–a disease easily preventable through sanitation, safe drinking water and hygiene–have led to a 52% fall in deaths of children below the age of four, but the prevalence of diarrhoea, at 9.2%, has remained high, according to national health data.
The decline in deaths was driven by improved treatment cover even as fewer affected children were given increased diet and fluids–vital to fight diarrhoea–data from the National Family Health Survey 2015-16 (NFHS-4), show.
Despite the improvement in mortality, diarrhoea remained among the leading causes of death in Indian children below the age of five, killing an estimated 321 children every day in 2015, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Diarrhoea, which results in dehydration–is also a leading cause of malnutrition globally. In 2016, India ranked 114 of 132 nations on stunting (low height for age).
In 2015, deaths from diarrhoea in Indian children under five accounted for 10% (117,285) of all deaths in the age-group, higher than 7% (3,273 children) in Myanmar, 7% (5,442 children) in Kenya and 9% (39,484 children) in Pakistan–countries with lower per capita incomes–as IndiaSpend reported on July 29, 2017.
Between 2000-2012, India’s under-five mortality declined by an average of 3.7% annually, according to this September 2013 study published in the Lancet. “Even though the deaths among children under five years have declined, the proportional mortality accounted by diarrheal diseases still remains high,” said this 2015 paper referring to the Lancet study.
More affected children received rehydration therapy
This reduction in deaths, as we said, was driven by the inception and success of many programmes for immunization, and control of diarrhoeal diseases through promotion of oral rehydration salts (ORS), improving breastfeeding practices and institutional births, explains the Lancet study quoted above.
India has adopted the Integrated Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Pneumonia and Diarrhoea (IAPPD) in 2014 to address the gaps.
Besides strengthening existing approaches, IAPPD aims to achieve higher coverage of interventions including appropriate infant and young child feeding, provision of safe drinking water and improved sanitation, Vitamin A supplementation, measles vaccination, Hib vaccination to prevent pneumonia and meningitis, hand washing and personal hygiene and provision of ORS, zinc.
ORS is a mixture of clean water, salt and sugar which is absorbed in the small intestine and replaces the water and electrolytes lost through faeces. Zinc supplements reduce the duration of a diarrhoea episode by 25%, and are associated with a 30% reduction in stool volume, according to the WHO.
In 2015-16, 60% children with diarrhoea received some form of oral rehydration–through ORS packets (51%) or gruel (28%) or increased fluids (7%)–up from 43% in 2005-06, NFHS-4 data show.
The proportion of children with diarrhoea who received rehydration therapy from ORS packets increased from 26% in 2005-06 to 51% in 2015-16. Yet, India did worse than neighbours Pakistan and Bangladesh in providing ORS and zinc tablets to children, as IndiaSpend reported on November 18, 2016.
No more than 38% of children with diarrhoea received continued feeding and oral rehydration, as recommended, according to the report.
In 2015-16, advice or treatment was sought from a health facility or provider for 68% of children with diarrhoea, up from 60% a decade ago.
More than 90% of treatments for childhood diarrhoea are incorrect, as IndiaSpend reported on February 18, 2015. Largely unqualified medical practitioners, unfamiliar with relatively simple life-saving medications, prescribe antibiotics and other potentially harmful drugs, the report said.
Sanitation gaps keep prevalence of diarrhoea high
In 2015-16, 9.2% Indian children below the age of five had diarrhoea–up from 9% in 2005-06, according to NFHS-4 data.
The prevalence fell 2 percentage points among children aged 6-11 months, “when complementary foods and other liquids are introduced”, while it fell 0.8 percentage points among children aged 12-23 months, “when children begin to walk and are at increased risk of contamination from the environment”.
Improved sanitation is a key measure to prevent diarrhoea, according to this May 2017 WHO factsheet.
In 2015-16, states that had low usage of sanitation facilities such as Jharkhand, where 24% of households used improved sanitation facilities, Bihar (25%) and Odisha (29%), also had high proportion of children under five who suffered from diarrhoea–7%, 10%, and 10%, respectively–according to data from NFHS-4, as IndiaSpend reported on July 29, 2017.
Improved sanitation refers to a household with its own toilet, connected to a piped sewer system or flush to septic tank, flush to pit latrine, ventilated improved pit/biogas latrine, pit latrine with slab, twin pit/composting toilet, which is not shared with any other household.
As of March 20, 2018, individual household toilets were constructed in 52.16% of the targeted 12 million rural Indian households under the ministry of drinking water and sanitation’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Grameen), data show.
Fewer children received recommended diet, liquids during a diarrhoea episode
In 2015-16, only 7% of Indian children under five years with diarrhoea were given more liquids than usual, as recommended by WHO–down from 10.2% in 2005-06, NFHS-4 data show.
While 31% children received the usual amount of liquids, 57% children with diarrhoea were given less to drink–up from 37% a decade ago.
“To reduce dehydration and minimise the effects of diarrhoea on nutritional status, mothers are encouraged to continue normal feeding of children with diarrhoea and to increase the amount of fluids,” the NFHS-4 report said.
In 2015-16, only 31% Indian children with diarrhoea were fed according to the recommended practice of giving the same or more food to the sick child–down from 39.4% in 2005-06.
In comparison, 56% sick children were given less food than usual during an episode of diarrhoea–up from 41.8% a decade ago.
(Tripathi is a principal correspondent with IndiaSpend)
The People’s Commission on Shrinking Democratic Space (PCSDS) has strongly condemns the brutal actions of Delhi Police on peacefully protesting students, teachers, academics and journalists during a rally in New Delhi on March 23, 2018. The PCSDS has demanded that all FIRs registered against the students are immediately withdrawn, commence prosecution proceedings on the police personnel responsible for the assault on students, teachers and journalists and immediate suspension and arrest of Professor Atul Johri. Further, the platform urges all the concerned in the civil society to support and join the People’s March on March 28, 2018, called by Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) and Federation of Central Universities’ Teachers’ Associations (FEDCUTA).
The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) and the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) had called for a march from the JNU campus to Parliament Street demanding suspension of Professor Atul Johri and legal action against him who has been accused by eight students of JNU of sexual harassment. The march was also against the recent announcement of autonomy of several universities directed towards privatisation of educational institutionsand the non-implementation of the reservation policy. With globalisation, the focus of education from its primary purpose of shaping active citizenry has been degenerated to that of building up a workforce that caters to the requirements of a market-based economy. The process of privatisation of education made it imperative to dismantle the state funded public education systems wiping out the basis of a welfare state.
The march was participated by thousands of students and teachers from JNU andother universities and colleges in Delhi and several others. The peaceful marchproceededfrom the JNU campus to the Parliament Street but was stopped near INA Marketby a posse of Delhi Police personnel.The roads were barricaded and the march wasn’t allowed to proceed. The Delhi Police used force including water cannon, lathi charge, deliberate physical and sexual assaulton women and journalists. Many students were detained at the Defence Colony police station. Actions by the police is in violation of fundamental right to peaceful assembly guaranteed by Article 19 of the Indian Constitution,recognised as an integral part and fabric of the Indian democracy. The State this time again has left no stone unturned in silencing voices demanding justice and asserting rights and rather created a negative perception of the students’ movements by spreading false propaganda through the corporate media.
While there was a brutal assault by Delhi Police on the peaceful march, students at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai and other campuses have been protesting for now over a month. They are protesting against the recent decisions of the TISS administration to increase the fees to several folds and withdrawal of fee waivers to Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Caste – NonCreamy Layer (OBC-NC) students availing Government of India Post Matric Scholarship (GoI-PMS).PCSDS strongly condemns the insensitivity of the TISS administration. The TISS administration must immediately respond to pertinent questions raised by students regarding scholarships and the use of scholarship funds from 2012-17. The TISS administration should clearly explain the steps taken to ensure that students from SC, ST and OBC-NC communities are ensured their constitutional guarantees and not use the existing deficiencies as a smokescreen to further corporatisation and pushing aside the primary purpose of education from free, rational and critical thinking.
PCSDS extends its support and solidarity with the students of Assam Women’s University (AWU) who are on a hunger-strike for the past four days against the decision of the Assam Government to downgrade the university to a technical institute. AWU being the only women’s university in the state of Assam and in the North-Eastern Region, the students are protesting to ensure the university status for AWU continues.
It is the centres of higher learning in India that have become the battleground for the foundation of Indian democracy and all it stands for. The government is engaged in constant attacks on students, teachers, employees, intellectuals, university autonomy and academic freedom across India. Aggressively pursuing its right wing authoritarian agenda, it has attacked democratic voices from India’s educational institutes.The recent events that have unfolded under the new regime, clearly indicate that the state’s intention to destroy centres of higher education to thwart intellectual oppositions.
Police personnel entered TISS campus on the 34th day of student’s strike, when the TISS administration allegedly made a false complaint of property damage against the students. Students allege that the registrar, C.P. Mohan Kumar made a false complaint to the police accusing students of vandalizing his office, including breaking the CCTV and other fixtures. The police entered the campus at around 11.30 am for a ‘routine investigation.’ Oddly enough, the burden of proof fell on the students who were compelled to assure the police that they did not engage in any destructive activity and that their protest has been completely peaceful.
Students said, “This is perceived as an act of extreme moral deficit of the TISS administration. Instead of a direct and constructive engagement with the students for addressing their legitimate demands they have resorted to false narratives and intimidation tactics through the interference of police force.”
On March 23, 2018 the students started a protest rally at 2 pm. The students undertook the rally to highlight that even after 31 days of protests, there was no concrete dialogues undertaken with the students regarding the demand charter. The students demanded the resignation of the Registrar, the Dean SPO, the Dean Students Affairs and the Section Officer after it became clear that they hid important information from students regarding the OBC NC GOI PMS Maharashtra scholarship. Students reached registrar’s office and waited to meet him. But, even after six hours there was no word from him. At around 9.30 pm, Dr. Parashuraman, TISS ex-director who doesn’t hold any office position anymore, came to dissuade students from protesting and even managed to humiliate the students present there.
Meanwhile, some faculty members entered the registrar’s office from the back door and took away some files. Students were later accused of stealing these. Following this, students demanded an immediate meeting with acting director Shalini Bharat and other faculties Prof. Vijat Raghavan, Prof. Shahajahan and the registrar CP Mohan Kumar. Students started blocking the registrar’s office on Saturday, March 24, as even after over a month of continuous protests, the administration was not willing to address the students’ legitimate demands.
Students at TISS campuses across Mumbai, Guwahati, Hyderabad and Tulajpur began their strike on February 21, 2018 protesting a roll back of fee exemptions for GOI-PMS scholars. The scholarships were originally designed for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to encourage them to enter academia.
In the ensuing days protests have seen lots of twists and turns and upheavals. Right from ex-director Prof. Parashuraman telling students that the institute was doing students a favour by facilitating fee exemptions, to a section of students’ union betraying the protest of students to UGC officials visiting the campus. After the UGC officials visited the campus, an arrear of 11 crores was released to the institute but this will not go towards the fees exemption. Since then students have expanded their demands and asked the institute to make their accounts and deficits transparent. Students are strongly against attempts to privatise the institute.
And on Monday March 26 today the administration has shut down the secretariat, hostel offices and blocked wi-fi in a bid to retaliate against the students for blockading the admin bloc. Students express that the administration might also try other harsher moves like shutting down the water and food supply in order to cut down the protests.
However, they have noted, “The students however have gained a higher resolve to continue the peaceful blockade of the admin block until the authorities agrees to an honest and sincere meeting with the student body.”
