How can we get to the bottom of Hollywood’s diversity problem?

February 21, 2017

The struggles of black individuals in the United States have all shared the “attempt to be understood as full complicated human beings”, says Jelani Cobb, professor of African-American Studies in Ava DuVernay’s excellent Oscar nominated documentary, The 13th.

Hidden Figures // Twentieth Century Fox

There is nowhere that this is more apparent than in one of America’s greatest institutions, the cinema. The lack of diversity within the industry has dominated the conversation the past few years. It has even tarnished its glittering annual event, the Oscars, with #OscarsSoWhite going viral last year after there were no actors of colour nominated in the four acting categories for the second year in a row.

Diversity has become almost a buzzword for Hollywood’s indifference to difference, and meanwhile articles continue to be published decrying the industry, and their awards, for their uniformity. As David Cox wrote on the Guardian film blog in 2016: “The Oscars may not be anti-black, but they are hideously white.”

The 89th Academy Awards, taking place on February 26, by no means illustrate a colossal change in the industry, but there is more recognition bestowed on films starring, directed and about black individuals. Of the five nominees for best documentary, three are directed by African Americans, while a fourth is by a Haitian filmmaker. In the acting categories, Denzel Washington (Fences), Ruth Negga (Loving), Mahershala Ali (Moonlight), Viola Davis (Fences), Naomi Harris (Moonlight) and Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures) are all nominated, in addition to British-Indian Dev Patel (Lion).

Pick of the bunch

These examples can be used to argue that the Oscars are embracing diversity. But of course, this may all just display an aberration – one year where the stars aligned and variety befell the ceremony. Both arguments have been made, but what is often lost in the debates is the simple fact that diversity is not solely an awards issue. It is an industry-wide problem.

The films that are awarded by the academy are chosen as the best of that particular year, but with less choice overlooked films can easily be dismissed as not up to the standards of the award votes instead of ignored due to their focus on non-white subjects. Take DuVernay’s Selma. Each year, the Hollywood Reporter publishes anonymous academy members discussing their votes. In 2015, a female academy member commented of Selma’s two paltry nominations (best picture and best original song): “But if the movie isn’t that good, am I supposed to vote for it just because it has black people in it?”

Selma was just one example of a film about the black experience in America, but being directed, produced and starring black individuals, it became a lightening rod for debates about diversity. A positively reviewed film about Martin Luther King’s fight for voting rights in Selma, Alabama, the film was included in many critics’ end of year top ten lists. Awards are always subjective, but when films with less diverse casts and significantly less positive reviews receive more nominations (such as The Theory of Everything), it becomes more difficult to separate voting from politics.

And herein lies the central issue for the academy. While they are able to pick through countless films by white male filmmakers about white male individuals, there are generally only a handful of quality films produced each year with diverse casts and filmmakers. Snubs can be more easily accepted when there is a plethora of films to choose from, but when there are only one or two, all the hopes for a diverse industry get unfairly pinned on to one film (as happened with Selma).

Lives deserve to be told

When Viola Davis accepted her supporting actress award at the BAFTAs in London recently, she mentioned her father, who died of cancer in a McDonalds, asking if his life mattered. She went on to say that playwright August Wilson (Fences is an adaptation of his play) illustrated that “our lives matter as African Americans” and the stories of African Americans “deserve to be told”, echoing Cobb’s comment in The 13th.

The desire to be understood and represented as “full complicated human beings” is shared by women, LGBT individuals, Asian, African, and Hispanic individuals – anyone who doesn’t not fall into the category of the white straight male. Stories have of course been told about these groups, but their real entrance into the mainstream is further hampered by the film industry’s themes, narratives and characters. Too often, Hollywood produces films that rely on stereotypes, such as the prevalence of black characters as servants, slaves, drug addicts, musicians, athletes or criminals.

This year’s nominations may represent a changing tide. Stories in 2017 include that of the African American female scientists who worked at NASA during the space race (Hidden Figures) and a tale of black masculinity that focuses on sexuality and emotion more than societal pressures and systematic racism (Moonlight).

Institutional racism should certainly never be ignored, but defining the experience of an individual by only their race is to misrepresent the complexity of their lives. The white male dominance of Hollywood is so difficult to overcome because it has long been presented as a universal experience by Hollywood. The black experience, to take one example, is not universal, nor should it be presented as such. Only films that expose the socio-historical context of a variety of individuals’ lives and focus on their complexities without resorting to the stereotypes that have persisted in the cinema since its earliest days will truly promote the diversity of human life.

Until La La Land can star two actors of colour, or two women, as its leads, incorporating their particular life experience into the traditional “boy meets girl” romantic narrative, Hollywood will continue to struggle with diversity and the academy will be limited by their award options.

Julie Lobalzo Wright, Teaching Fellow in Film Studies, University of Warwick

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The strange death of social democracy in Europe

February 21, 2017

What happened to social democratic parties in Europe? And what is coming to take their place?

Antonis Galanopoulos: Hollande is the most recent example of a social democratic leader who failed. What are the main reasons for the decline of social democracy?
Philippe Marlière: The decline of social democracy is essentially due to a number of policy choices. For instance, in the case of Greece, would Pasok have collapsed the way it did if it hadn’t implemented the austerity policies that we know? It’s the same today with France. The Socialist party is doing very badly because it has been implementing policies which are not responding to popular expectations and needs. At the same time, would the far right, the populist right, be as important as it is if social democracy had done things differently? Probably not.

But the problem of social democracy is deeper than that. The history of social democracy of the past 15 years has been a history of steady decline. The structural decline is due to the deep transformation of the traditional constituencies of social democracy: blue collar workers, white collar workers and employees. Gradually all these social categories have undergone dramatic political and sociological transformations which have been brought about by recent economic and workplace changes.

The 1990s were a period of adaptation to the free market. Tony Blair’s Third Way, endorsed by other social democratic parties, essentially went along with the rules, the principles and the philosophy of neoliberalism, with the hope that the economic growth created by this adaptation would trickle down and benefit ordinary people. Now social democracy has entered a new phase. The idea that by sticking very closely to the neoliberal narrative you can reap some benefits for the middle and working classes is disastrous. It only helps strengthen the far right across Europe.

Social democratic parties must come up with new solutions which, in my view, would mean a historic shift in the direction of regulating the markets. Otherwise you can’t do anything at all. You can’t redistribute, because neoliberalism is about maximising profits, exploiting more and privatizing constantly. There is nothing good there for ordinary people. Going back to more interventionist policies doesn’t necessarily mean going back to the 1970s. Social democrats really have to change or they are doomed. We have seen that in Greece, in Spain, and France may follow.

AG: What about the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour party in the UK? It opened the discussion about the future of social democracy.
PM: Corbyn is an exception. It is incredible news for social democracy, because he is the leader of one of the biggest and oldest social democratic parties in Europe, one with working class support and links to unions.

And it shouldn’t have happened. It’s a ’political accident’. The new mode of election for the leader, the principle of ‘one member, one vote’ and the fact that supporters and sympathizers could also vote, was all designed for a centrist candidate to win. They thought that sympathizers were politically moderate, so they would vote for a moderate leader. But people on the left in Britain got fed up with Blairism. They understood that it was a failure, a dead-end for the left.

Moreover, they did not accept the explanation given by the party leadership when Ed Miliband was defeated in 2015. Back then the party’s right-wing said that he had been defeated because he was too left-wing. Labour people didn’t accept that. They said ‘on the contrary, he wasn’t consistently left-wing enough. He wasn’t bold enough.’

It was a matter of finding an opportunity and a person that would come out with the type of discourse which would meet popular expectations. And this person was Corbyn. He came along and talked the way he had been talking for years as an MP. The way he talked was a perfect match for the expectations of the people.

By using the same tactics as the populist right, I think that people will not, in the end, make the distinction between left-wing and right-wing populism.

People felt that if he got elected as leader, there would be a shift to the left. Now, the hardest thing for him is to fight and change the party line. It is difficult, because he is still in the party minority and the parliamentary group is against him. Some for ideological reasons, others because they think that he is not the right man to lead the party and become Prime Minister. For them, it’s a question of image and perceived competence.

Corbyn is very good on post-materialist issues such as the environment and gender. He has embraced the cause of nuclear disarmament. He was one of the first MPs to fight against apartheid in South Africa. He was a supporter of the Palestinian cause long before it became fashionable. On the economy, he has concrete and pragmatic policies which could be labeled neo-Keynesian. He has two problems though.

The first one is that he has to convince his party that he is the right man for the job. And the second one has to do with the way he comes across and he is seen by the public. The right-wing press will always be against him, but he has also made mistakes in terms of style and speech delivery. Besides, he doesn’t always fight the right battle at the right time. He has a fraught relationship with the media, and his necessary public-relations skills are rather weak.

AG: Do you think that populism can be an effective strategy for the left and for progressive politics in general? Or is populism essentially anti-democratic with nothing to offer progressive politics?
PM: That’s a new debate on the left. I don’t see another big debate apart from that one. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe seem to have inspired a number of radical left parties in Europe, notably Podemos and Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France. The idea seems fairly simple: populism is about parties and politicians trying to channel popular anger and to direct it against the so-called ‘elite.’

The idea is that we should not abandon ‘the people’ to the far right. We, as left-wing parties, should also represent the people, so we should also try to adopt the same tactic, to channel popular anger and be the spokespersons for the people who are not represented by the social democratic parties, by the right, by the neoliberals, or even by the media. So we should really be talking on behalf of the people who are not represented anymore. The difference with the far right is that the aims and policies are different of course. Left-wing populists are not the same as far-right populists; they are ideologically different.
Now, I understand the tactic and the strategy, but I have doubts about the effectiveness of it. The opposition between the 99% and the 1% is far too simplistic. It also loses sight of the best teachings of Marxism, the construction of a class that is politically conscious.

in the end the electorate will say ‘Well, if they talk like Le Pen, let’s try Le Pen, the original version instead of the copycats!’

I have also doubts because people have become accustomed to hearing this kind of anti-establishment, anti-elite stance from the far right. I fear that by constantly making these kinds of simplifications (‘the people against the elite,’ ‘the 99% against the 1%’), we will fail to explain exactly how exploitation and forms of domination work.

It’s too simplistic to simply target things like the government and the media. Not all politicians are corrupt, not all media tell lies. By using the same tactics as the populist far right, I think that people will not, in the end, make the distinction between left-wing and right-wing populism.

Lastly, the populist strategy puts too much emphasis on the leader, who acts as the incarnation of the people. This is a potentially dangerous development. Hugo Chávez, for example, did very good things in Venezuela, but his regime wasn’t a model of democracy and pluralism.

Philippe Marliere. Photo supplied by author.

AG: In France there are two populist parties, one left-wing and one right-wing: Front de Gauche and Front National. It is clear that ‘the people’ are choosing the latter. Why is that? What does Marine Le Pen have to say to the French people that is so attractive and persuasive? And why does Mélenchon fail to do the same?
PM: When the left is in power and doesn’t implement the right policies for its supporters, left-wing voters despair, and their despair transforms into anger, and when you are angry you tend to lose faith and confidence in the people you used to vote for. So two things happen: people abstain (as the majority of blue collar workers in France do) or you stop trusting the left as a whole anymore. The Front National tries to appear as a party which is genuinely concerned about the socio-economic situation of the working-class. This is why it appeals to blue collar workers, many of whom used to vote for the left.

But at the same time, with extreme right-wing populism, the problem is immigration, it’s Islam, it's so-called ‘Marxist teachers’ in schools, etc. Part of the program of Front National is allegedly ‘left-wing,’ because it is protectionist and mentions public services.

But this is an illusion. The FN’s narrative and politics are that of the traditional far right. This narrative is today so influential that all mainstream parties are embracing it, Fillon is an example of that, Nicolas Sarkozy without doubt, even Manuel Valls the former social democrat prime minister. Left-wing populism is inaudible in that cacophony: everyone talks about national sovereignty, the exit from the EU, the loss of identity due to immigration, globalization, refugees, Islam.

Under Marine Le Pen, the old policies of the Front National haven’t changed much. What has changed is the rhetoric, the narrative and the image. She is a woman, she is calm, she smiles and she doesn’t make any silly racist or anti-Semitic jokes like her father. She doesn’t insult journalists, and when she makes claims about Islam, she tries to make them in a ‘rational,’ albeit wrong manner. It’s a tactical diversion, and it works. The media, instead of scrutinizing Le Pen’s inconsistencies and the gap between her new image and her (still) far-right policies, prefer to focus on superficial details.

The left got it wrong when it opposed the burkini. Instead, it should have upheld and defended the value of personal liberty.

There are now mainstream politicians and media in France who are crazy enough to talk Le Pen’s talk and of course if you do that, you legitimize Le Pen and in the end the electorate will say ‘Well, if they talk like Le Pen, let’s try Le Pen, the original version instead of the copycats!’

That’s how the whole debate in France has dramatically shifted to the right. The ideas of Le Pen on immigration, refugees or Islam have become mainstream. Even if she doesn’t win the next presidential elections, she has managed to set the political agenda on a number of important issues.

AG: Identity issues remain wedged into the politics of Europe today. How can we, within the current context of the economic and refugee crisis, tackle the identity politics of the right?
PM: Identity politics flourish in the emptiness of class and social politics. When I say class and social politics I mean it in the broad sense, which is the idea that social inequality should be tackled by proper policy decisions which benefit the majority of the people.

If you say that there is no alternative to neoliberalism – which is not true – people despair, you make them angry and if social democracy and the centre-right do that as well, then there is no political competition anymore. There is just emptiness, a void, and this void is filled by all the demagogues of the far right who have nothing to say about socio-economic inequalities but always want to pursue their identity agenda, about the failure of multiculturalism.

The rise of identity politics today is due to the failure of political parties of the left and the right to engage properly with socioeconomic issues. The responsibility of the left is overwhelming. Don’t expect the right to do something about the socioeconomic inequalities; historically that’s always been the role of the left.

AG: The banning of the ‘burkini’ in France was an extreme example of identity-driven policy that was discussed across Europe.
PM: I personally defended the right of women to wear a burkini, not on the grounds that I like it, it doesn’t matter what I think about it, but I defended the burkini on the grounds of the autonomy of the individual, of women’s independence, who are free to make their own choices about what clothes they want to wear or not wear.

Some women decided to wear a burkini because they don’t want to go semi-naked on the beach. You might think whatever you want about that from an aesthetic point of view but you can’t claim, as the majority of French people did, that this choice has been imposed on those women. It’s not the case. They made freely that choice. Is it the role of the state to impose on you what kind of clothes you should wear, what you should eat or drink?

Individual freedom and the autonomy of the individual are key values in democratic societies. Some are adamant that the burkini and the hijab are signs of oppression and domination. In these cases I would support the women who want to take off the veil or the burkini but how about the other cases where they freely decide to do it? We have to respect their decision. The left got it wrong when it opposed the burkini. Instead, it should have upheld and defended the value of personal liberty.

AG: What about the concept of laïcité? Has its meaning been distorted? Does it eventually become an identitarian laïcité as Balibar argued recently?
PM: Yes, I think that laïcité has been distorted in France. Initially, there was the law of 1905, a very liberal-minded law because it simply states in two major articles that there is religious freedom in France, and also the liberty to believe or not believe. The second article states that there can’t be any interference by the state with regards to religion and vice versa. These are the very basic principles of laïcité; it’s a law of separation and a modus vivendi which lets you do as you like as long as you don’t break the law.

But the interpretation of laïcité by some people has almost become the opposite of that. Le Pen just has to emphasise what the republican left has been saying for the past 30 years, which is that laïcité is an anti-clerical and anti-religious notion. But of course her anticlericalism is directed at Islam.

It's a pretext. If you say there should be no religious signs in the public sphere, it doesn’t concern Catholicism, it concerns very specifically Islam. You don’t even have to name it, people understand that you are talking about the hijab, the burkini, etc. It’s a pretext now to launch an attack on Muslims. Le Pen merely has to repeat what ‘mainstream’ politicians like Manuel Valls, Jean-Pierre Chevènement or Nicolas Sarkozy have been saying for years.

This interpretation is one of domination, of imposition of a certain lifestyle. François Fillon said it in a debate against Alain Juppé: ‘when you come to a foreign country, you shouldn’t try to seize power.’ He meant that you have to not only keep a low profile, but also to adopt the norms, the code of conduct, the philosophy of that country.

It becomes so coded, you don’t even have to say ‘you have to take off your hijab.’ People understand that. We’ve now got to the point where by talking very generally about things, people immediately have that in their mind. It’s clearly a corrupt interpretation of laïcité, used now as an anti-Islam weapon, deeply intolerant of pluralism and diversity.

Interview by Antonis Galanopoulos.

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This interview was conducted in the occasion of the Workshop ‘Europe's new radical Left in times of crisis,’ hosted by the School of Political Sciences at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Athens Office) in November 26-27, 2016.
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This article was first published on Open Democracy

Three months after declaring it illegal, Modi government to reintroduce Rs 1,000 notes

February 21, 2017

Unbelievable as it may sound, but the Reserve Bank of India and the government have reportedly made up their minds to reintroduce Rs 1,000 notes to replace the note of similar value, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared invalid on 8 November last year.

Quoting senior government officials, Indian Express reported that the RBI has already started production of the new Rs 1,000 note.

The report further added that the initial plan was to introduce the new Rs 1,000 note in January but “it has been delayed due to the pressing need to supply Rs 500 notes”.

The news comes a day after Baba Ramdev said the Rs 2,000 should be withdrawn calling the denomination as the root cause for economic crimes.

PM Modi on 8 November had declared Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes illegal blaming them for promoting black money. The government had then introduced new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes.

More than 200 people had died due to demonetisation related stress. The government and the RBI had come under plenty of criticism for constantly changing policies during the demonetisation period.

More than 70 new rules were passed during the 50 day period of the note ban.

Prime Minister Modi had promised to restore normalcy by 30 December, but ATMs across the country continue to remain without cash.

India’s NPA crisis points to the crony capitalist rot at the heart of the economy

February 21, 2017

Dole for the rich

They’re like a silent-time bomb. In 2016, the bad loans – or gross non-performing assets – of state-owned banks surged by an incredible 56% to Rs 614,872 crore.

Indian Overseas Banks, the worst hit, has a gross NPA ratio (the ratio of bad loans to total loans) of 22%. The figure for UCO bank is 17%.

Who has taken these bad loans? The corporate houses with the largest bad loans are Reliance, Vedanta, Essar, Adani and Jaypee. These NPAs represent a massive transfer of wealth from the Indian taxpayer to India’s business empires. Many large corporate houses are being supported by India’s poorest citizens who, in good faith, pay taxes on everything from biscuits to their hard-earned income.

The effect on India’s economy is disastrous. Many of India’s largest capitalists, surviving on family wealth and government doles, are not entrepreneurs anymore. They have stopped adding value to the system and now exist simply as rent seekers.

Given the strong ties between large capitalists and political parties, there is little action against loan defaulters. In March, for example, Vijay Mallya, who was a member of Parliament at the time, was allowed to fly out of the country by the Modi government in spite of the fact that he owed public sector banks Rs 9,000 crores. Mallya is simply the tip of the iceberg. The largest defaulters sit comfortably without any fear of action from the authorities.

Apart from promoting rent seeking, the extremely stressed nature of India’s banks mean that they will be very cautious about granting new loans in the near future. Given the depressed nature of the economy due to demonetisation, this is bad news.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

Links of ISI with BJP members allegedly Exposed: CM Shivraj Chouhan in a Political Soup, MP

February 21, 2017

BHOPAL: It must have been a highly embarrassing moment for RSS Chief Dr. Mohan Bhagwat. It was during his presence in Madhya Pradesh(MP) that the MP cops busted a ISI spy ring operating in the state. MP is ruled by RSS’ blue eyed boy, two times chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Image: Asian Age

The embarrassment must have been even more acute because this spy ring was being allegedly run by some persons who had connections with outfits closely connected to the RSS. Further, this spy ring was busted on the very day (February 10) when Dr. Bhagwat lashed out at ISIS at a programme in a town in MP. To quote, Dr. Bhagwat said that ISIS is a threat to humanity; They are killing innocents and there seems to be no solution to the crisis.

In a major breakthrough MP Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) busted an international call racket used by ISI agents to spy on India's military operations. The spy ring facilitated calls from and to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, bypassing legal channels.

At least 40 'Simboxes' (Chinese-made gadget that holds multiple SIM cards) and 3,000 SIM cards have been seized from eleven suspects, including a brother of a leader of the BJP. They were arrested from Bhopal, Gwalior and Satna. They have all been booked on charges of waging a war against the country. Officials expect more arrests soon.

The suspects were involved in espionage, money laundering and fraud, says the MP police. MPATS chief Sanjeev Shami, who led the operation, said that more people including those working with telecom majors are on the radar and would be soon put behind bars.

Besides the crime of spying against the country, the racket has also led to massive loss to the telecom department. "They were running a parallel telecom exchange, enabling cross-border handlers posing as senior Army officers to call up military personnel posted in Jammu and Kashmir and dig out details of operations, deployment and installations," said Shami.

The MPATS team was working 24×7 in coordination with central agencies for the last two months. While three people were arrested from Bhopal, five were arrested from Gwalior, two from Jabalpur and one from Satna district.

MPATS officials have seized several pieces of Chinese equipment, including mobile phones, laptops and data cards. Calls made via internet were sent to these SIM-boxes which redirected the illegal VoIP traffic onto mobile networks.

Immediately after the arrest State Congress also claimed that one of the 11 arrested for espionage racket in Madhya Pradesh is also the close relative of a BJP corporator from Gwalior.

Speaking to reporters, state Congress president Arun Yadav said, "One of those arrested from Gwalior, Jitendra Singh Yadav is the brother-in-law of BJP corporator from ward number 58 of Gwalior, Vandana Satish Yadav."

The Congress leader alleged the family of Vandana Satish Yadav is closely associated with Union minister for rural development Narendra Singh Tomar and state minister for urban administration Maya Singh. "The ATS should investigate this angle of the closeness of accused Jitendra Singh Yadav's family with top BJP leaders and the role they played in the ruling party," PCC chief said.

Later some more names having connection with the Sangh Parivar came to the light one such name was that of Ashish Singh. The moment Ashish Singh's name became public it triggered a Twitter war between Congress and BJP.

While senior BJP leader Kailash Vijayavargiya praised the state police for busting the racket, AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh sparked controversy by stating "none of the ISI suspects was a Muslim". "I congratulate chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Madhya Pradesh Police for this special achievement against terrorism and its perpetrators in any form must be crushed," tweeted Vijayavargiya.

Digvijaya took a dig at Prime Minister Modi and his supporters by tweeting, "ISI agents arrested in Bhopal do not have a single Muslim. One of the suspects is a BJP member. Modi's supporters must think of it."

Congress leaders then released some pictures, alleging that one of the suspects, named Dhruv Saxena, was district convener of the IT cell of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM). Some pictures showed Saxena at BJP programmes accompanying top BJP leaders, including the CM, Vijayavargiya and Bhopal BJYM president Anshul Tiwari.

BJP countered that anybody can take a selfie with top leaders and can join the party’s membership drive. State BJP chief Nand Kumar Chauhan said, "I don't know Dhruv and neither is he a member of the party. I congratulate ATS for the arrests. Digvijaya Singh's tweet is aimed to vitiate communal harmony in the state."

"A picture cannot corroborate connivance of any leader with a criminal or anti-social element. People take photos with top leaders and sometimes join public and party functions to take advantage. But this does not indicate any association," said Anshul Tiwari.

Home minister Bhupendra Singh eulogised Shivraj Singh Chouhan for "his efficient leadership leading to breaking the network of ISI in the world".

"The most powerful action against terrorism in India is being taken in Madhya Pradesh. First, police killed SIMI terrorists after a jailbreak and now the law enforcing agency unearthed the ISI network," he told reporters in Sagar.

Facing flak over allegations that Dhruv Saxena, one of the suspects arrested in the ISI spy ring bust is a BJP member and office bearer of the party IT cell, BJP went to great pains to distance itself from him.

BJP state Chief Nandkumar Singh Chauhan has denied the charge that spy racket has exposed Bhagwa Atankvad (saffron terrorism).

"We have nothing to do with Dhruv Saxena. Absolutely nothing, he was not a member of BJYM. One can take a photo with anybody, a leader or a minister. There is no method to find out who is standing beside me now, for instance," Chauhan said, when asked about the pictures of Dhruv with senior party leaders circulating on social media.

On the statement given by Dhruv's mother Rajni Saxena that her son was working for BJP, Chauhan said, "Her statement is not true; there was no connection, not at all."

The BJP state unit issued a new list of its Yuva Morcha and state IT cell office-bearers claiming the party has nothing to do with those arrested in the ISI spy ring case.

BJYM district head Anshul Tiwari has released a list of district office-bearers where Dhruv's name is not included. Asked about allegations of intelligence failure by police and ATS, Chauhan said ATS has done a "remarkable job".

Supporting Nandkumar's statement, BJYM state head Akhilesh Pandey also claimed that morcha had released a statement denying any involvement with Dhruv Saxena. "Rajesh and Anshul Bhadoria is IT cell in charge and they have denied that Dhruv was a member of the cell," clarified Pandey.

The government is trying to find out how come Dhruv Saxena managed to get a picture clicked with chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. It is alleged that besides, Dhruv, two more suspects Jitendra Thakur and Mohit Agrawal have BJP connections in Gwalior and Bhopal.

Sangh terror modules and hate-campaign in Bengal exposed!

February 21, 2017

Before we start this article, we would like to appeal the government of Bengal to act against these terror camps and schools that are sheltering hooligans. We are ready to provide the proofs that we have gathered.

The videos in this article are exclusive.

RSS has always denied its links to terror camps supporting and nurturing Saffron terror. But these videos are the perfect proofs of what RSS shakhas teach and why. We would like you to see the RSS propaganda first.

They are constantly asking Hindus to take up arms against the state, an act of waging war against the nation. The “nationalists” are not only confined to cane and swords, they are encouraging people to take up illegal guns. Irony is, they blame people of Malda for the illegal weapon trade and terrorism while they themselves are preparing to wage a civil war. These videos are from Ichapur, Kolkata. The person who is seen teaching to use the cane is Arman Singh, who heads the local Shakha.

In this video, if we hear the conversation taking place in the background, we find that two men are talking about someone’s arrival with something and someone. The second man says very clearly that someone will be coming with a Bangladeshi man. At the end of the conversation one of them says,

‘Bomb- tomb plant kora uchit chhilo sala’
Meaning, ‘we should have planted a bomb’

The question which arises is, are bombs accessible to these men?

We have already seen what Mr. Singh had added to the BJP IT cell appeal of gathering weapons (The same IT cell whose members are found to have ISI links)

The confidence by which he writes makes the readers suspect that weapons worth 5000- 7000 INR are within his reach. It is alarming that a Bangladeshi man is visiting a not so known area of Bengal and that too to a group which is already gathering weapons as per the previous screenshots.

In the second video, we hear a conversation

…(laughs) the moment they’ll say “Eid Mubarak” they’ll get a blow on their heads.

Now, this shows the actual purpose of this training. RSS is running such terror camps in most of the poverty sickened areas of Bengal. Hate speech are made now and then, encouraging the Hindus to gather weapons against the other communities and the state. We need to understand that if we do not stop them now, they will destroy the country with their hatred.

This man doesn’t stop here, he uses photoshop to edit Bengali Hindu figures and tries to cause ethnic enmity too.

He is constantly visiting areas which have a good population of poor non-Bengalis. Particularly the areas near Shyamnagar and Bhadraeshwar. If these groups are not stopped now, they’ll end up with either communal riots or ethnic riots. We believe the videos are enough to suggest what’s going on in Bengal. Further this is another example-

“War exercise for violence in India”- that’s exactly what he has written. This statement is scary as well as painful.

This is Saradamoyi, Ramakrishna Paramhamsa’s wife who is considered a holy mother. We can see what exactly he has posted publicly. It is strange that those who scream around for the Hindu sentiments, didn’t even think twice before mocking a Bengali Hindu figure. This shows ethnic and communal discrimination of RSS/BJP. BJP- TMC politics could be experimented without dragging Saradamoyi. But constantly, RSS is trying to destroy the secular and diverse fabric of India.

Recently we saw the rise of fake personalities. The best example being, Deepak Dubey alias Shifuji Shaurya Bhardwaj who used Indian army insignia as a propaganda tool for BJP. The same tactic we see in Bengal where Sarup Prasad Ghosh roams around in Saffron clad styled in the same way as of the monks of the RKM order. We see a great similarity between Bhardwaj and Ghosh in terms of political tactic and inclinations.

Pictures like these, with real Army officer and monk, used by these men respectively to fool the people that they are associated with the institutions. When our article was published, Mr. Ghosh locked all his pictures while on being exposed by Mr. Abhishek Shukla, Dubey/ Bhardwaj (whatever it is) removed his pictures. If they weren’t doing anything wrong then why did they remove their pictures?

As per an article on The Logical Indian, people threatening Mr. Abhishek Shukla claimed to be commandos. And we have solid proofs (interviews of senior RSS members who accepted) that the name of Ramakrishna Mission is being used by RSS). We have written to RKM regarding this issue and hopefully we’ll get a detailed response. But the issue of fake commandos is problematic. We have seen videos of Shifuji training a large number of men dressed in camouflage but apparently, they aren’t soldiers. Then who these people are? For what purpose are these men trained?

The guns seen in his videos are M16, these are not used by Indian Armed forces but by the forces of a neighbouring country. Certainly, it isn’t China, Sri Lanka, Nepal or Bangladesh. It is a much serious problem that we are facing today. Bengal had never seen riots till BJP entered. In our first article, we have discussed how RSS is spending on migrations. It is our appeal to the Government of Bengal and secular forces to raise the issue and get these terror camps banned else India is deemed to break if RSS/ BJP continue to divide the masses for their political gains.

This article was first published on India Resists

After being denied hall tickets by EFLU, UoH students allowed to write exam

February 21, 2017

The two students were members of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) at UoH.

Days after two students from the University of Hyderabad (UoH) were denied their PhD entrance exam hall tickets by the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), they have now been allowed to appear for the exam.

The two students, Kavyashree Raghunath and Manani MS, are members of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) at UoH, were denied their hall tickets for participating the protests surrounding the death of Rohith Vemula.

While Kavyasree Raghunath is the General Secretary of the ASA, Manasi MS is the Cultural Secretary of the association's UoH wing.

The students claimed that they were not able to download the hall tickets online, and directly approached EFLU's administration.

Prakash Kona, the proctor of EFLU, stated orally that they both had actively participated in all the protests following Rohith's death, and that he had "photographs of you two on my table", the students alleged.

Several students condemned the alleged act by the university, also highlighting that the university has a "history of casteism".

However, the university defended its stand, saying, "There is a university rule which does not allow students involved in acts of indiscipline to write the entrance exam."

The students reportedly received an SMS on Sunday, stating that they are now allowed to write the exam and can download their hall tickets from the website.

Speaking to TNIE, Manasi said that they were asked to write a letter, regarding the denial of hall tickets and they did so. They were able to download the hall ticket on Monday afternoon.

The entrance exam is scheduled to be held on February 25, 2017.

Courtesy: The News Minute

Residents of Mumbai’s poorest slums know polls won’t change a thing for them – but they vote in hope

February 21, 2017

Elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, India’s richest civic body, will be held on Tuesday.

Indranil Mukherjee/AFP

Campaigning for the Mumbai civic elections reached a fever pitch on Sunday, the last day of canvassing. In the lanes of M-East ward in eastern Mumbai, the energy was electrifying. The streets were packed with rallies. Candidates and their supporters were out on bike and foot. Children ran around holding flags of various parties, and shouting slogans they perhaps could make little sense of. The campaign offices and booths of major parties buzzed with activity, and parties and candidates held street-corner meetings.

On Tuesday, people of this ward, and in 23 other wards across Mumbai, will vote for a new general body of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation – the country’s richest civic body with its budget for 2016-’17 standing at Rs 37,052 crores.

As the campaign ended on Sunday evening, promises flew thick and fast: cleaner and regular water supply, water connections in homes, repairs to school buildings and better education for “our children, tomorrow’s future”, more study centres to help students in high school and colleges, improved health centres and expansion of the lone civic hospital in the area, jobs in factories or small units that would be set up here, increased security, and reducing and eliminating drug abuse.

If electoral promises were kept, Mumbai’s M-East ward – the poorest, filthiest and most under-served municipal ward in India’s wealthiest city’s – would be transformed over the next five years. However, residents of M-East ward, especially of its many slums that house nearly 78% of its nine lakh population, know better.

When residents of M-East ward head out to vote for their 15 corporators in the new 227-member general body on Tuesday, they go with the knowledge that their vote has limited power to change things in this most blighted of areas in Mumbai. That, at the end of the day, it is the informal, underground, illicit network of service providers who will determine basic services like housing, water, toilets, schools, gardens and jobs in their communities. But the residents of this ward vote because they must.

(Photo credit: Venkatraghavan Rajagopalan).

Below par civic services

“Those who are asking for votes are not those who give us civic services,” said Zulekha, 29, in Sanjay Nagar, a slum in M-East ward. “Those who provide the necessities won’t come for votes, they don’t need to.”

A number of men and women here also speak off-the-record of how elected representatives, civic officials and what they call the “mafia network” are hand-in-glove and how they all share a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of below-par civic services in the area.

The M-East ward will have as many as 15 corporators – the highest for any ward in Mumbai – in the municipal corporation’s new general body. In the previous house, the ward had 13 corporators: four from the Samajwadi Party, three from the Shiv Sena, two Congress, one each from the BJP and Bharatiya Republican Party, and two independents.

Abu Asim Azmi of the Samajwadi Party has represented the area in the Maharashtra Assembly in the 2009 and 2014 elections. The face of the Uttar Pradesh-based party in Mumbai, Azmi is better known for his misogynist comments and noise in the Assembly than for his work in the lanes and gutters of M-East. The current MP is Kirit Somaiya of the BJP.

“Of the corporators who spoke up for this area, it was Rais Shaikh bhai who took our issues to the big guys,” said Sunil, 31, who is a resident of Govandi and recently landed a job in a mall. “But it’s an entire system that is either corrupt or uncaring of this area, perhaps both.”

The non-profit Praja Foundation, which works towards enabling accountable governance, issues an annual report card in which its ranks the city’s municipal corporators depending on their performance. In the past, this report has evaluated Rais Shaikh as one of the city’s best corporators. His effort to reconstruct lanes and small roads in Govandi slums to prevent water-logging and water-borne diseases is spoken of highly in the area. However, his ability and willingness to be vocal about pressing issues of his constituency has not translated into concrete and comprehensive action on the ground.

Haphazard development, if at all

M-East ward has seen haphazard development with local politicians and various non-governmental organisations doing independent work to fill in for the absent or negligent civic administration. Over the years, every local election has been turned into an event in which candidates make promises, lay new pipelines for water, open some centre and then forget about it. Of the 13 corporators in the ward, three to four represent the better-off middle class areas in it. But the rest are hardly heard on the issues facing their voters.

“It is not for want of money that there has been no development in M-East ward over the last few years,” said Sabah Khan who teaches at the School of Habitat Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. “It is for want of vision, want of willingness on the part of the civic system.”

The institute’s campus is located in M-East ward, at Deonar, and Khan is a key resource person in the institute’s Transforming M-East Ward Project, started in 2011 to document and facilitate development in the area.

Khan continued: “This is why we, in the project, had suggested to the assistant municipal commissioner of M-East that the BMC should undertake slum mapping. This would help create models, and there will not be a haphazard laying of pipelines left unfinished, or yet another small school constructed, or another badly-planned community toilet block. Each agency would know what civic services are required in which slum and which remain unfinished. But this needs a vision.”

Without a vision, the municipal corporation’s efforts become discretionary.

Residents said that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation administration, under assistant municipal commissioner Kiran Dighavkar, took a few initiatives such as opening study centres to stem the number of dropouts from the area’s 75 municipal primary schools, and allocating areas for makeshift playgrounds in the area that is starved of open spaces. But by and large, the municipal corporation was either absent or negligent in providing basic civic services such as sanitation and water, they added.

“We hold on to doors and slabs in the toilet blocks or fear falling into the septic tank below and dying,” said Akhtar Abdul, 40, a construction labourer living in the Shivaji Nagar slum. Once such mishap killed three people in this area earlier this month.

The Shatabdi Hospital in Govandi is another example of negligence. Constructed in 1986, its services need to be upgraded, especially considering that it serves a large low-income population. In 2006, corporators representing this area went on a hunger strike to demand that funds be allocated for its repair and maintenance. The municipal corporation unveiled a plan to renovate, expand and modernise it three years later. But the tenders for this plan were not opened till early this year, 11 years after the demand was first made. Neither the outgoing corporators nor the MLA Abu Asim Azmi made a noise about this.

Elections bring empty promises

Yet, candidates come around at election time to give assurances that have been given before – and broken. “There will be a change in this area, ” promised Samajwadi Party candidate Akhtar Razzaq Qureshim in Shivaji Nagar. “I will see to it that you all get water, good quality and good supply of water in your taps.”

Candidates hold out the same promises: water, power, better houses and schools every election – civic body, state Assembly or Lok Sabha. Only their methods of campaigning change. For instance, this civic election has seen a liberal use of mobile phones and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp. In fact, there have been regular fights between parties over the addition of ineligible voters to WhatsApp groups. Some parties are adding Bangladeshis to voters’ lists, we won’t allow that to pass, said campaigners of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena candidate Satish Vaidya.

“Why things do not change in M-East ward is a deep question,” said Arun Kumar, chief executive officer of Apnalaya, a non-profit that has been conducting programmes for pregnant women and malnourished children, women’s empowerment and gender justice, education and livelihood in the area for the last three decades. “It boggles the mind because there is enough political representation at the BMC level as well as state and national level. This isn’t some far-flung inaccessible part of the country.”

What the elected representatives of M-East do – or not do – in the municipal corporation matters. Four of the 13 corporators elected five years ago were on the civic body’s Markets and Gardens Committee but the ward suffers from an abject lack of gardens and open spaces. Shiv Sena’s Rahul Shewale, a corporator from Mankhurd-Mandala in M-East, was ranked 223 out of 227 corporators in the Praja Foundation’s annual report card 2015-’16. He had not asked a single question in the corporation last year. He is also a MLA since October 2014.

Mohammed Siraj Shaikh, independent corporator from Shivaji Nagar, neither attended the municipal corporation proceedings nor asked questions in the House in 2015-’16, according to the report card. Shaikh scored a rank of 211 among 227 corporators. Neither Shewale nor Shaikh were available for comment. Their offices said they were busy campaigning.

Communalisation of non-development

M-East ward has a large presence of Muslims, overwhelming poverty, appalling social indices and lack of imaginative development initiatives. The Samajwadi Party has often run electoral campaigns that were communal in nature but this year, Asaduddin Owaisi, president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, conflated religious and development issues in a perilous way.

In his bid to dislodge the Samajwadi Party as the voice of Mumbai’s Muslims, Owaisi alleged at a rally in January that the city’s Muslim-dominated areas are deliberately denied development funds. “If Muslims are paying taxes to the BMC, it is their constitutional right to get amenities as well,” he said to thunderous applause. “The Muslim-dominated areas of Mumbai must get 21% of the BMC’s Rs 37,000 crore annual budget, that’s Rs 7,700 crore, because it matches the proportion of Muslims in the city’s population.”

Since then, Owaisi has fielded the largest number of Muslim candidates in the BMC election – 57 in all compared to 39 by the Congress, six by the BJP and five by the Shiv Sena – and has concentrated resources in the 15 civic constituencies of the M-East ward. The population of Muslims in the ward is close to 51%. In some areas such as Shivaji Nagar, it is closer to 85%, according to studies conducted by Apnalaya.

Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen won two seats in the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly in its first outing during the 2014 state election and has since won handsomely in municipal corporations in Nanded, Aurangabad, and Mumbai’s far suburbs of Kalyan-Dombivali. Owaisi is hoping to build on those gains.

However, not everyone in M-East is impressed by Owaisi and his party’s aggressive campaigning. “This kind of talk unnecessarily communalises the issue,” said Bilal Khan, a social activist who works in the realm of housing rights, “People need civic services because they live and work here, because they are citizens of Mumbai, not because they are Muslims.”

In the stinking bylanes of Rafiq Nagar adjoining the Deonar landfill, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen and Samajwadi Party battle for the attention of voters with competitive posters and booths. Residents said that the youth were getting attracted to Owaisi’s party. “So many political parties have failed to do anything here,” said Kabir Husain Sheikh, 36, a technician. “The youth is now hoping that the AIMIM [All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen] can.”

The older residents of this area are wiser. “There’s so much attention and visits for a local election,” observed Dil Mohammed Qadri, 62, social worker. “Once elected, no one bothers. Abu Asim Azmi who claims to be the father of this basti hasn’t done anything in the last eight to 10 years. The saying ‘naam bade aur darshan chhote’ [grandiose reputation and inconsequential work] suits him very well, but it’s amazing how stupid slum-dwellers can be.”

Money is not a constraint

In the last six years, the municipal corporation’s annual budget has almost doubled – from Rs 20,417 crores in 2010-’11 to Rs 37,052 crores in 2016-’17. Budgetary allocations to health and schools have seen an increase too. The M-East ward gets its allocations on paper. Moreover, in addition to the civic body’s planned outlay, each corporator gets Rs 60 lakh as corporator funds. Additionally, each corporator can draw from the area development fund, which was Rs 40 lakh till two years ago but was raised to Rs 1 crore in February 2014. That makes Rs 1.60 crore available to a corporator every year to undertake development projects in consultation and coordination with the civic administration.

“There are people interested in keeping this slum as a slum,” said Arun Kumar. “And over the last few years as the rest of Mumbai got attention, got upgraded, there has been a gradual invisibilisation of the M-East ward.”

The M-East ward has all but moved out of the attention of Mumbai’s mainstream media and the average Mumbaikar’s consciousness – unless there is a major fire in the ward’s Deonar landfill, which threatens the entire city’s air quality. However, the unkindest cut is that it seems to have fallen off the radar of civic and state administrations too. With the citizenship of its residents ambiguous, their voices are unheard.

Elected corporators may not have done much for the makeover of M-East ward but they remain the residents’ hope and voice – however feeble – in the city’s municipal corporation.

With additional reporting inputs by Suryasarathi Bhattacharya.

This is the concluding part of a series on the poorest part of India’s wealthiest city. The first three articles can be read here, here and here.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

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After being denied hall tickets by EFLU, UoH students allowed to write exam

The two students were members of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) at UoH.

Residents of Mumbai’s poorest slums know polls won’t change a thing for them – but they vote in hope

Elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, India’s richest civic body, will be held on Tuesday.

Below par civic services

Haphazard development, if at all

Elections bring empty promises

Communalisation of non-development

Money is not a constraint

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