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The Gaze of the Developmental State and the Narmada Action Plans: Ashwin V.S

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Jal Satyagraha in Narmada valley 2013

The years following the Second World War were characterized by a renewed focus on the ‘Modernization’ of nation-states. While the constant feature of the post-war years was the high-stakes rivalry and arms race between the USA and the USSR; both tread a common ground as regards high-modernization and ‘development’. ‘Development’ fuelled growth was considered a panacea to all ills and soon became dominant across the post-colonial world. WW Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth was a significant work which argued for five stages of growth in which “traditional societies” could transform themselves into the “age of high mass-consumption”. It was no wonder therefore as to which nation-states were characterized as ‘traditional’ under this rubric and pushed towards ‘development’.

A standard feature of ‘development’ in India has been the showcasing of large scale industrial and apparently ‘public purpose’ projects; an instance of this is seen in the construction of large dams. As much as ‘modernization’ or ‘development’ can be witnessed through the industrial or ‘public’ projects themselves; the ambition of the ‘developmental state’ and its vision can certainly be understood through the one-constant feature of the bureaucratic machinery – paperwork.

Therefore, for the purposes of this essay, I attempt to evaluate the ambition of the post-colonial ‘developmental state’ in India by analyzing the language of a few planning documents. In this case, I consider the Narmada Valley Development Authority’s (NVDAs) Action Plans prepared in the years 1991, 1993, 1995 and 2000 for the Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R&R) of Sardar Sarovar Project ‘oustees’ in Madhya Pradesh. These Documents are revealing in aspects of the modern state’s enterprise and it’s most significant undertaking, planning.

The State’s gaze and legibility:

James Scott’s magnificent work Seeing Like a State characterizes a crucial difference between the pre-modern state and the modern state: while the former “was in many crucial respects, partially blind” and “knew precious little about its subjects”, the modern state is consumed by a desire to know. Armed with statistics and other tools of ‘accuracy’, the modern state stakes its claim to the accurate depiction of the social world, which it then tries to alter in accordance to its designs of ‘development’.

The NVDAs Action Plans of 1993 details the rigor of this enterprise by claiming that in order to “attain a high degree of accuracy as possible….Survey of all the affected villages has been completed and we have updated this survey in a number of ‘information camps’ held in the past few months.” As if to emphasize the point further; mention is made of a ‘64 column family survey proforma’ in which all information was recorded and later ‘computerized’ as well. The information collected and computerized of individual families in this ‘64 column family survey proforma’after having been categorized are then subject to R&R as per the guidelines of the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award (NWDTA) and the state’s R&R Policy.

The R&R policy extends beyond all things human too. An exclusive Chapter titled “Protection of Ancient Monuments” in the Action Plan of 1993 assumes that culture, monuments and heritage can be retrieved once destroyed or shifted. In the process, it categorizes culture and monuments themselves into the two categories of those which have ‘archaeological significance’ and are therefore important and those which do not enjoy this privilege. In a further note, emphasizing India’s museum culture, an elaborate plan for a “Central Narmada Valley Park” in Indore is formulated which would house and “open air museum, a closed door museum” and in one of the many insensitive statements in these Plans, “a panaromic view of Narmada going through submergence areas”.
 

The Voyeuristic State and her ‘Primitive Subjects’:

The post-colonial state’s full-fledged voyeuristic gaze is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the Action Plan of 1995 which specifically focuses on the ‘project-affected’, ‘tribal population’in the region. Curiously enough, the term ‘social engineering’ is used in order to handle the R&R of the ‘tribal population’.However, R&R is still a secondary concern; the state’s aim is to firstly present the ‘tribal’ from in his ‘primitive-ness’ by contrasting his/her image, culture and behavior with the modernist zeal and vision and thereby emphasize how even a tragic developmental project can be beneficial. Thus, as tragic as it is, displacement is looked at as an opportunity to improve the ‘standard of living’ of ‘tribal’ communities.

The 1995 Action Plan contains observations made by a “group of experts” and begins by making a claim on ‘tribal’ culture by observing that “tribal culture and ways of living have no future orientation. They are only concerned about the present”. The beliefs of the Bhil community are further described as “a curious mixture of superstitions, belief in supernatural spirits and propitiation of deities and animals”.

Thus, there is a new-found legitimacy in the state’s ‘development’ agenda to “insure against repeated mistakes of these (‘tribal’) types” and frame broad guidelines for improving their life. In a classic case of positing the traditional in need of the modern, the state’s voyeurism is full-fledged in its description of Bhil men and Bhil culture. Extremely detailed, these descriptions are fuelled by a desire to make visible a ‘primitive way of life’.

It is worth mentioning the graphically detailed description of Bhil men who are described as having “a fairly well-developed body…..straight, slender and lean body with proportional limbs and well-developed chest, buttocks and calves” and are “fond of keeping long moustaches….and walk with a peculiar gait which is difficult to translate into description.” In describing their behavior, the Plan observes that they “are rather grim-looking people who do not give an inkling of what they are thinking or what they are going to do. They are highly individualistic people having a strong sense of possessiveness…highly unpredictable…never forget or forgive…have volatile and violent temper and flare up suddenly. They have infinite capacity to bear pain and their body resistance is very high”.

The portion in italics reads as a cautionary note to the State authorities should they ever come in contact with the Bhils. Keeping the political circumstances of the time and the fierce anti-dam movements which existed (which I have considered below); it is quite evident who the State assumes to be a conspirator and therefore also as a criminal. The tendency to view ‘tribal’ communities in this way has its foundations in the colonial period, a lasting legacy of which still operates in the form of the Criminal Tribes Act of 1860. The state’s voyeuristic gaze is therefore of necessary caution and the need for surveillance on these communities. As a final note of emphasis on the apparently criminal nature of the Bhil community, the report declares that the “three things the Bhils love most in the world are: laadi, taadi, khedi-baadi (women, toddy and agriculture). Majority of their disputes and resultant murders centre around these”. The state’s job is thus to keep a strict eye on the often quarrel-some child and deviant child who must therefore be disciplined and reformed for his/her own good.
 

Submerging Resistance – What does the State gaze upon?

The resistance to the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Project had begun way before these Action Plans were formulated. Even before the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the Nimad Bachao Andolan in Madhya Pradesh and various other groups such as the ShramikSanghthana in Maharashtra as well as the Maharashtra RajyaDharangrastvaPrakalgrastShetkari Parishad (Maharashtra State Conference of Dam and Project Affected Farmers) had voiced their opposition to the Dam and were actively involved in raising questions over the rehabilitation of project affected people as well. The Narmada Bachao Andolan had declared its opposition in 1988 and has since then retained its anti-dam position. Resistance to the projection of brutal state-power unleashed through its ‘developmental’ agenda has therefore been an integral part of the politics of the Sardar Sarovar Project despite the state’s ambition.

Remarkably enough, while the 1990’s witnessed the most fierce opposition to the Dam; the Action Plans prepared in the same decade make scarce mention of any resistance from the project affected people except to refer to the presence of anti-dam activists as a problem and in one case (in the 1993 Plan) make it explicit that these anti-dam activists are members of “Narmada Bachao Andolan and are against the construction of the dam”. Thus, a mixture of ignoring resistance is combined with the minimal acknowledgement of resistance (whenever mentioned) as a problem, which the State must take preventive measures against.

‘Anti-dam activists’ are posed as a problem to conducting surveys and gaining information as “people are not free to express their preference to likely site for relocation”. The Action Plans also concede that they may be misguided in their surveys as they are “dealing with human beings in the shadow of anti-dam activists”, thus necessitating surveys conducted under secrecy and by “talking to a section of PAPs (Project Affected Persons) and by eliciting information from them”. In addition to these quotes, the only other lines which make mention of opposition is present in the Action Plan of 2000, which mentions the Supreme Court Case involving Narmada Bachao Andolan and the Union of India and Ors.

These Action Plans are thus a classic illustration of hegemonic planning that is present across all modern-states. The unyielding belief in the work of the official statistician or field official conducting survey and a ‘group of experts’ combined with the vision of the planner produces the legitimacy required to carry out a project with little or no regard for the consequences. In the process, the State also shows no regard for local participation and processes and imposes a uniform and standardized representation of the social world. Resistance is submerged as that which does not really exist or does so only as a minor hurdle which can be dealt with. In counting the hurdles faced in conducting surveys and in its lack of acknowledgment of resistance, the State is also allowed to cloak its brutal repression of dissent as well.
 

Conclusion:

Scott very rightly argues that the “most tragic episodes of state-initiated social engineering originate in a pernicious combination of four elements”, all of which “are necessary for a full-fledged disaster”. He notes that these four elements are i) ‘the administrative ordering of nature and society’, ii) ‘a high modernist-ideology’, iii) ‘an authoritarian state’ and iv) ‘a prostrate civil society’. In the case of the Sardar Sarovar Project, it may not be exaggerated to claim that the first three of these elements have combined with the fourth, (and continue to do so) in order to break the backs of existing resistance movements. Despite the fierce anti-dam movements, the idea of ‘development’ and its high-modernist ideology have no doubt become hegemonic in Indian society. One has to only consider the opinion of middle and upper-class Indians on the ‘development’ projects to see the far reaching influence it has had on our psychology; an instance of which was seen in the ‘pro-development’ or vikaasagenda which propelled someone like Modi to power in 2014.

‘Development’operates through knowledge which produces ‘truth’ in order to replenish its claim as an all-encompassing cure. The production of truth, as Michel Foucault has rightly argued is a function of power. And ‘Development’produces truths about the social world which has to be transformed, reinforces the belief in the ability of man to transform nature and human beings in accordance with its vision and also suppresses dissent. In these Action Plans, the Sardar Sarovar Dam, a faulty developmental project is presented as necessary to improve the standard of living of countless people despite the large scale human tragedy involved. Truth is produced in order to claim that the social world with humans and non-humans, traditions, culture, monuments, history and in fact civilization can despite being submerged be restored to their past positions and prominence. Truth is produced in order to firstly show the ‘tribal’ what he/she is lacking and also display him/her to the world as who still exists to be modernized.

In a final foray truth is produced in alliance with brutal state power to firstly repress resistance and dissent and secondly present them as ‘minor problems in conducting surveys’. Years of struggle and voices unheard, therefore fall prey to the politics of ‘development’.

Nevertheless, as much as any of these Planning Documents fail to understand and acknowledge resistance, they do not remain the final authority on which continued struggle and action can be based. It is therefore necessary to acknowledge struggle against these ‘produced truths of development’ at their minute levels and celebrate them; for herein lie our basis of resistance and alternate to any ill-conceived high-modernist utopia.

Note:

Throughout the essay, I use the terms development, tribal etc. as ‘development’ and ‘tribal’. I consider this important as these are categories which are not bereft of power and therefore need serious re-thinking. The term ‘tribal’ particularly is not social scientifically accurate and is a colonial construct as one which stood in contrast to the ‘civilized’ or the ‘modern’. The term adivasi would be more appropriate but I have used ‘tribal’ to emphasize the language of these Action Plans. Similarly, even the term anti-dam activist is presented as ‘anti-dam activist’ (sometimes in italics) in order to showcase a new category of individuals operating against the law in these Action Plans.

At the time of writing this essay, nearly 50,000+ families are yet to be Resettled and Rehabilitated fully and rightfully as per the provisions of the NWDTA and respective state’s R&R policy. The construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam is complete and the gates remain to be closed. Cases of massive corruption, undeniable environmental damage and loss to property and life accompany this disaster while the projected benefits of the project have also succumbed to forces of private capital and are being diverted for their benefit than to any of the project-affected people.

I’m thankful to Gail Omvedt’s open letter to Arundhati Roy (available here on this link –http://www.narmada.org/debates/gail/gail.open.letter.html) for mentioning resistance movements apart from the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

Ashwin was a volunteer with the Narmada Bachao Andolan for the past 3 months

Courtesy: Kafila.org
 

In Solidarity With Irom Sharmila: Forum Against Oppression of Women

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Statement issued by FORUM AGAINST OPPRESSION OF WOMEN
 
index

Let Us Work Together To Create New Strategies Of Struggle Against Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA)
 

We wholeheartedly support the decision of Irom Sharmila to withdraw, her fast of nearly 16 years for the revocation of AFSPA, we salute Irom Sharmila for her undying spirit, heroic struggle and undeterred determination in struggle against AFSPA.
 
It is our responsibility to take the struggle further and also support Irom Sharmila in her continuing struggle against AFSPA.
 
The history of post-Independence India is also the history of subjugation of the citizens of the North-eastern region. There has been a systematic crushing by the Indian state of their aspirations, and a consistent betrayal of promises made. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) was enacted as long ago as 1958, in order to suppress the genuine protests of the region’s inhabitants.
 
What is essentially a political issue has been treated simplistically as a law and order problem. AFSPA gives unbridled powers to the army and airforce. (Mizoram is the only part of India where the air force has actually bombed its own people.) The original Act allowed state governments to declare an area to be ‘disturbed’ and to call in the army. A 1972 amendment further allowed the central government to override state governments in order to do the same in any area.
 
AFSPA gives army officers the power to arrest without warrant, to shoot and kill on mere suspicion, to destroy property, and many other such draconian powers. The armed forces are required to act “in aid of” civilian authorities, but that caveat exists only on paper. In reality the army has virtually taken over large areas for decades together now, becoming a force unto itself, answerable to none. No army personnel may be prosecuted without permission from the central government – a permission hardly ever granted. Even bodies like the National and State Human Rights Commissions have little jurisdiction when it comes to human rights violations in the context of AFSPA.
 
What might have served at best as a short-term measure has become a permanent feature in Manipur and most of the North East (except Tripura where AFSPA was withdrawn in May 2015) and some parts of Kashmir. Yet the AFSPA is in violation of various international instruments that India has ratified, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention Against Torture, the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, the UN Body of Principles for Protection of All Persons Under Any Form of Detention, and the UN Principles on Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal and Summary Executions.  It is patently unconstitutional, which makes it all the more unfortunate that the Indian Supreme Court got carried away by security concerns and upheld the constitutional validity of the Act.
 
In Manipur there has been widespread unhappiness, with the continuing abuse of human rights by the armed forces under cover of AFSPA causing bitter grievances to surface. Protests against these abuses are a constant feature. In one unique protest in 2004, angered by the custodial rape, torture and killing of 32-year-old Manorama who was picked up from her home on “suspicion”, a number of women paraded naked in front of an army base in protest against the army’s atrocities against women. The other unique and non-violent protest has been that of Irom Sharmila, poet and activist from Manipur. In what has possibly been the longest fast-unto-death anywhere, she has spent more than fifteen years now refusing food and demanding the repeal of AFSPA. For these fifteen years she has lived under arrest and been kept alive through intravenous force-feeding by the authorities.

 

 
We admire Irom Sharmila’s iron will and absolute dedication. We wholly respect and support her demand for the immediate repeal of AFSPA. We are also with her and agree with decision to withdraw her hunger strike.
 
Protests against AFSPA and the highlighting of abuses by the armed forces must not only continue, they need to become more widespread. Meanwhile, we must keep in mind that the demand for AFSPA’s repeal is not just a legal demand, but a political one. Decisions to invoke AFSPA are political decisions, and in any political struggle the battle lines and strategies need to be redrawn from time to time. We could take a pointer from what happened after Bobby Sands and others of the Irish Republican Army went on hunger strike in 1981 for better prison facilities. The British Government led by Margaret Thatcher allowed Sands to die after 67 days of fasting, and allowed other activists who were on hunger strike to die as well. The remaining protestors finally withdrew their fast, not because they were defeated but because they realised that other modes of struggle might be more strategically appropriate. 
 
As a strategy, the hunger strike has worked well, as perhaps nothing else might have done – a lone woman in a hospital bed with a tube up her nose has made the  Indian State sit up and take notice, if only to keep self-consciously playing its own relentless role in the excruciating cyclical drama of Irom’s release and re-arrest. And of keeping her alive in between. Her fast has played a vital role in bringing the issue to national and international attention. It is time now to recognise that her keeping up the fast indefinitely will not force the government to withdraw AFSPA
 
Irom’s struggle has been long and heroic; but we are anxious about Irom. She deserves a chance to lead a more ‘normal’ life, as far as possible, after such a long fast.
 
There is need now for other strategies. The movement needs an active and mobile Irom Sharmila for this purpose. We feel she is too important an activist to be forced to lie in a hospital bed, for decades on end, letting her health deteriorate, when she could be using her articulation and commitment to mobilise larger numbers and to build stronger public opinion against AFSPA and for the defence of human rights.
 
 
Irom Sharmila we agree with you that you should end your hunger strike and that we should work together to take the struggle against AFSPA forward.
 
We promise to stand by your side as you try to find that new path to freedom from Army rule for your people.
 
FORUM AGAINST OPPRESSION OF WOMEN, Bombay

Should We ‘Make In India’ on the backs of our children?

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 Context

Let’s go back to 1985 when a draft bill presented by an NGO, for the first time introduced the concept of regulation of working conditions, rather than complete prohibition of child labour. Groups working with children and child labour were all drawn into a nationwide debate. They were divided in their stand. One group felt that, although it may not be possible to eliminate child labour immediately, any move — legal or programmatic must be towards elimination. The second group felt that since child labour was a ‘harsh reality’ steps must be taken to ensure that they are not further exploited and therefore, legal measures were required to ensure this.[1] This draft was what was converted into the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986.
 
For those of us who have been witnesses to the debates around child labour since the 1980s, there is sense of déjà vu. The PIB release that released on May 16, 2015 says – However, while considering a total prohibition on the employment of child, it would be prudent to also keep in mind the country’s social fabric and socio-economic conditions. In a large number of families, children help their parents in their occupations like agriculture, artisanship etc. and while helping the parents, children also learn the basics of occupations. Therefore, striking a balance between the need for education for a child and the reality of the socio-economic condition and social fabric in the country, the Cabinet has approved that a child can help his family or family enterprise, which is other than any hazardous occupation or process, after his school hours or during vacation”.
 
This could be an undated statement as this is exactly the same argument that the government had made in 1985-86 to allow for children to be able to work in family based work or for skill training, even if it was hazardous. The only difference in 2015 is that while making  an exception for children to be engaged in family based enterprises, the current bill  qualifies it by saying that children must continue in school as per their Right to Education, and specifies that the family enterprise must not be hazardous. But therein lies the gap.
 
Loopholes in the law- are they deliberate?

‘Family’ is defined in the proposed bill as child’s mother, father, brother, sister and father’s sister and brother and mother’s sister and brother. It uses the word ‘help’ to describe the child’s involvement in the family enterprise (after school hours and during vacations).
 
In a feudal, caste driven Indian society what do these provisions amount to? Child labour in India has become so normalised that there is neither shock nor shame – it is a ‘necessary evil’. Since most family based occupations in India are caste based, the exception in Section 3 in the law, which allows children to work in family occupations, will only keep the caste system intact-like, for a potter's son/daughter to be a potter, a weaver's child to be a weaver and so on. Without doubt, this kind of a law will worst affect the Dalit and the marginalised who are at the bottom of the caste hierarchy. The Ministry officials of course say that this is taking the argument too far!
 
But, why would the government of a country, that is today by its own admission, the fastest growing economy of the world, feel compelled to justify and keep children in labour despite Parliamentary Standing Committee examining the bill saying: "The ministry is itself providing loopholes by inserting this proviso since it would be very difficult to make out whether children are merely helping their parents or are working to supplement the family income. Further, allowing children to work after school is detrimental to their health as rest and recreation is important for their physical and cognitive development."[2]The Committee also stated that rest and recreation is of utmost importance for the mental and physical development of a child and that working will only adversely affect their studies and their health.
 
Clearly, the Committee was more cognisant of the fact that children in India find it very hard to continue in school. That is why despite rising enrolment, retention is not that great. It is the girls, the Dalits and tribals who are ones who drop out to ‘help’ the family.
 
It must be recognised that the assumption, that ‘cultural traditions’ have to be accepted without intriguing into the inherent inequalities, perpetuates certain historic exploitative practices. It has been argued that any abstraction of child labour from children’s work accords social acceptability to some forms of child-work, masking marked ideological and gender biases in society. [3]
 
The officials of the Ministry of Labour and Employment who have drafted this bill say that this proviso is imperative to prevent criminalisation of parents and families. As  a  very senior official said “this explanation or exception is necessary, otherwise if I ask my child to put a  nail on the wall—that too can be counted as child labour and lead to my prosecution- see how dowry law is used to harass innocent people. We don’t want a similar situation with this law”.
 
A quick look at the government’s ownstatistics of prosecution tells us how limited the use of the law has been in the past.

Details of Action Taken Against Employers Under the CLPRA, 1986
YearViolationsProsecutionsConvictions
2011144236017984
20121205250181144
2013899135631061
20141027792754
Government of India, Ministry Of Labour and Employment, Lok Sabha, UnstarredQuestion No.1285, Answered on 01.12.2014, Conviction under Child Labour Laws.http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/psearch/QResult16.aspx?qref=6668

 
What is more, the government also noted that most employers were acquitted by the courts as the prosecution failed to prove the offence due to the casual approach of the prosecution witnesses and inability to produce independent witnesses. [4]
 
Under these circumstances, is it at all likely that ‘zealous members of society’ that sees child labour as normal and necessary or labour inspectors who have been ineffectual in the past, will go around snooping into people’s houses only to pick up poor parents and prosecute them?
 
Defining or conceptualising child labour has been and continues to be one of the most complex issue as it involves three difficult-to-define concepts ‘child’, ‘work’and‘labour’. Each of them is defined differently by different countries and internationally. As stated by Burra, “those who have argued for narrow definition have best been motivated in part by the desire to reduce the size of the problem and thus make it manageable. But this conceptual sleight of hand flies in the face of common sense results in making the work of millions of children invisible to public policy and public action.”[5] This indeed is the reality even today.
 
Moreover, apparently non-exploitative, the notion of domestic work needs unpacking in the light of the fact that many children never get enrolled in school or are forced to drop out because they have to look after the home chores or undertake sibling care,  and this is especially true for girls.  This was an area that was highlighted and discussed even when the debate around child labour was at its nascent stage and continues to be as relevant today.
 
Children will and must support their families or ‘help’ their parents- they do so today and they will continue to do so. The problem lies in the inclusion of this proviso in the law, especially since we are well aware that the notion of family is a very wide and ambiguous in India. This is exactly the kind of legal loophole that has led to the continuation of child labour till now. Past experience of implementation of the law that had a similar proviso (Section 3 of the CLPRA, 1986) has amply shown that this was the one way in which children were tied to home based work and exploited.
 
Given the reality that the trafficking of children is rampant, in the back drop of the wide concept of family, this could also lead to children being trafficked for work as many traffickers claim that the children in their care are ‘family’. In the absence of comprehensive birth registration it may be very difficult to ascertain whether a child is really part of the family or not. In addition, many families may host children from the extended family as part of informal kinship care.

Remember, that the government is also in the middle of discussions on sponsorship- which will include kinship care.
 
And although all children are banned from working in hazardous occupations, the 16 occupations and 65 processes that were listed as hazardous in the 1986 law has now been replaced in the Bill with -mines, inflammable substance and hazardous processes which has the meaning assigned to it in clause (cb) of the Factories Act, 1948. These are the same that will also apply to the 14-18 year olds categorised as ‘adolescents’ in the Bill. 
 
This reduction in the number of occupations that fall into this category and no provisions in it for an increase in this list, means that children will be employed in domestic work, hotel and dhabas and several other such places that have now come to be recognized as extremely hazardous occupations.


 
Besides, every day newer ‘occupations’ are coming up which are hazardous and dangerous. For example when the law in 1986 was formulated, there was no employment related to e-wasteand no one can deny that children engaged in working with e-waste are in extremely hazardous occupations! Similarly the impact of working with pesticides on children in agriculture was not there in the past neither was working with bags full of hair to make wigs!But they will not find a place in the law.
 
Also, this proviso has been put in without taking into consideration the fact that although free and compulsory education is a right of children in the age-group of 6-14 years, we have only seen an increase in the enrolment rates, while attendance and retention of the students is still a challenge we are yet to overcome. In a situation when children feel compelled to work to support their families, there is a greater likelihood of their dropping out of school.
 
The second provison that has been included in the Bill is address children working as an artist in the audio- visual entertainment industry or in sports activities except circus. These are welcome inclusions given the large number of children in advertisements and reality shows today, or to address the fate of children like Budhia.[6]But what about children who are street performers and acrobats risking their lives on ropes and poles (although not in circus, what they do is not very different) or “artists” who are singing and dancing late into the night in restaurants and weddings? They are not covered by this law. Is that because they are needed to preserve our rich social fabric? There is a definite class bias to the law that needs to be addressed.
 
In fact it is high time to consider an amendment to Article 24 of the Constitution of India which identifies child labour as only those children below the age of 14 years and bans employment of child labour in only hazardous employments. In doing so, it remains  silent on employment of children above the age of 14 years and allows a statutory distinction between ‘hazardous’ and ‘non-hazardous’ sectors of employment,  which has resulted in a serious challenge in dealing with the issue.  It does not tell us what is to be done with the remaining children between the age of 14-18 years. This is important because this is how children have come to be defined in the National Policy for Children, 2013 and the provisions of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, National Plan of Action for Children, 2005 and other legal and policy instruments.
 
The Ministry of Labour and Employment says that the law is drafted keeping in view the option that the age upto which free and compulsory education will be made available can be raised and the law on child labour will be applicable accordingly. This is very welcome as today, the Right to Free and Compulsory Education law which only gives the right to education upto 14 years, or class eight, needs review as it does not qualify children for any further education or entry into any skill based/ vocational training in any recognised institute such as ITIs.  The age of child labour would then automatically be raised and our children protected. There is a clear argument for increasing the age of right to free and compulsory education to a minimum of secondary education so that children are protected from labour and exploitation. Although this is not in the purview of discussions around this bill, given the intrinsic connection between education and child labour, this cannot be ignored.
 
While in the 1980s and before, “nimble hands” were needed to knot carpets, today they are needed to cross-pollinate BT Cotton Seeds! It is perfectly justified! Most of middle class India, including many bureaucrats and political leaders feel it is perfectly “OK” to employ children as domestic workers as the children of the poor “need” to protection of art, culture and crafts and children’s working to do that is also justified.
 
This amendment to the child labour law must not be read in isolation. For example read the definition of family enterprise which means any work, profession, manufacture or business which is performed by the members of the family with the engagement of other persons along with the proposed Small Factories (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Services) Bill that seeks to exempt units employing less than 40 workers from 14 labour laws including the child labour law[7]etc. Will these small factories also be part of “Family enterprises” that children will be “helping” in? The Factories Amendment Bill[8] continues to have several clauses that allows for children below 14 years to continue working.
 
Indeed, this Bill must be seen and analysed in the context of the dilution of labour laws and standards in the country and the move towards greater informalisation of labour and the push towards manufacturing in the unorganised sector. As Mr. Shankar Aggarwal, Secretary Ministry of Labour and Employment is quoted saying “All the amendments are being done keeping in mind three things—need of the times, workers’ protection and creating an environment for more job creation,” ….“Every year, the country needs to create an excess of 10 million jobs and for that manufacturing sector is key. The proposed labour reforms will help the pace of industrialization while keeping workers’ rights intact.”[9]
 
Clearly the main stress of the Ministry is to create jobs to meet the needs for manufacturing, not so much to protect children. In this backdrop, when production is pushed into the homes, who is to regulate the entry of children into the work force? This is nothing but keeping the un-scrutinised and the unregulated informalisation of labour alive, so that corporates can ‘make in India’ without having to deal with the labour unions and the labour laws.
 
Not convinced? Watch a film Stained Glass by Meera Dewan[10]. She had made a poignant, and for many of us, a life changing film- Whose Children in 1986, just as the discussion on the child labour bill was on. She has followed the children that were there in her film in 1986 into their adulthood in Stained Glass. As we discuss the new amendment, it is good to see what those children of 1986 and now adults of today have to say, as also the child labourers of today.
 
Is it not a shame for the fastest growing economy of the world to continue with its growth path on the backs of children and justifying it as a social reality?  And is it not time that the law on child labour was aspirational rather than a reflection of “harshsocial reality”? 
 
Laws can be used to lead the change and this is one such opportunity that has come after 29 years. Let us not lose it. 
 

ProChild Coalition: New Child Labour Bill will push more children into hazardous work

A hindi version of the Press Release by the Pro-Child Coalition can be found here

After 30 years the government has introduced a new child labour law which claims that it bans all forms of child labour till the age of 14. Sadly, the country is buying into an illusion. The truth is that the amendment to the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Amendment Bill 2016, passed by the Parliament continues to allow children to be employed in family-based enterprises, and secondly, the employment of children in most hazardous occupations like tanning, bangle-making, zari work, carpets, domestic work, e-waste and numerous others that till recently were recognised as hazardous for children will now be permitted. ProChild Coalition, a network of academics, organisations and individuals strongly opposes the Bill in its present form. Through this brief note we would like to raise some important concerns that arise in the wake of this.
Legitimises Child labour
 
The government claims that it has banned all forms of child labour up to the age of 14 years however, with the new Bill it has de-incentivized education by legalizing family-based work. ‘Family’ is defined in the proposed bill as child’s mother, father, brother, sister and father’s sister and brother and mother’s sister and brother. It uses the word ‘help’ to describe the child’s involvement in the family enterprise (after school hours and during vacations). The problem lies in the inclusion of this proviso in the law, especially since we are well aware that the notion of family is very wide and ambiguous in our country. This is exactly the kind of legal loophole that has led to the continuation of child labour till now. Past experience of implementation of the law that had a similar proviso (Section 3 of the CLPRA, 1986) has amply shown that this was the one way in which children were tied to home based work and exploited.
 
Reinforces Caste based occupations
 
Since most family based occupations in India are caste based, the exception in Section 3 in the law, which allows children to work in family occupations, will only keep the caste system intact-like, for a potter's son/daughter to be a potter, a weaver's child to be a weaver, a tanner’s child to be a tanner and so on. In a feudal, caste driven Indian society what do these provisions amount to? Without doubt, this will worst affect the dalit and the marginalised who are at the bottom of the caste hierarchy, a ghastly example of which was the recent beating and humiliation of dalit youths in Gujarat.
 
Child labour over Child Protection?
 
Although all children are banned from working in hazardous occupations, the 16 occupations and 65 processes that were listed as hazardous in the 1986 law has now been replaced in 3 occupations and 29 processes that are in the Factories Act which covers only the organized sector.
 
This reduction in the number of occupations that fall into this category and no provisions in it for an increase in this list, means that children will be employed in domestic work, hotel and dhabas, brick kilns and several other such places that have now come to be recognized as extremely hazardous occupations and fall in the unorganized sector. Although the government’s data claims there is a significant decrease in the number of child labour in the country, in reality the number of children already working in the unorganized are multiplying (for example Census 2011 shows that child labour in urban settings has actually increased- and that is where the unorganized sector is).Besides, every day newer ‘occupations’ are coming up which are hazardous and dangerous. But they will not find a place in the law.
 
No Rights for Poor Children
While the Parliament unanimously passed the Indian Institutes of Technology(Amendment) 2016 to benefit the young wizards of India, the same Parliament, barring MPs from the ruling NDA,expressed surprising empathy for India’s children to oppose the passing of this regressive Bill.
Indeed, this Bill must be seen and analysed in the context of the dilution of labour laws and standards in the country and the move towards greater informalisation of labour and the push towards manufacturing in the unorganised sector. As Mr. Shankar Aggarwal, Secretary Ministry of Labour and Employment is quoted saying “All the amendments are being done keeping in mind three things—need of the times, workers’ protection and creating an environment for more job creation,” ….“Every year, the country needs to create an excess of 10 million jobs and for that manufacturing sector is key. The proposed labour reforms will help the pace of industrialization while keeping workers’ rights intact.”[11]
 
Clearly the main stress of the Ministry is to create jobs to meet the needs for manufacturing, not so much to protect children. In this backdrop, when production is pushed into the homes, who is to regulate the entry of children into the work force? This is nothing but keeping the un-scrutinised and the unregulated informalisation of labour alive, so that corporates can ‘make in India’ without having to deal with the labour unions and the labour laws.
 
It seems the government is in a state of intellectual and policy disarray. While on one hand it talks about Skill India, and Girls’ education, on the other hand by passing this law dilutes the efforts keep their children out of school, as theParliamentary Standing Committee examining the bill had cautioned: "The ministry is itself providing loopholes by inserting this proviso since it would be very difficult to make out whether children are merely helping their parents or are working to supplement the family income. Further, allowing children to work after school is detrimental to their health as rest and recreation is important for their physical and cognitive development."[12]Child labour in India has become so normalised that there is neither shock nor shame – it is a ‘necessary evil’.
It is obvious that the government is happy to put the burden to make ‘Make in India’ a success only on children from poor,dalit, muslim and tribal families but Shouldn’t a country vying for the global high table aim higher for its children?

 

[1]Children in Globalising India- Challenging our Conscience, HAQ: Centre for Child Rights http://www.haqcrc.org/sites/default/files/2002%20Chapter%20-%209_The%20working%20Child.pdf  Accessed on 09.06.15
[2]Standing Committee On Labour (2013-2014) Fifteenth Lok Sabha Ministry Of Labour And Employment The Child Labour (Prohibition And Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2012 Fortieth Report      http://164.100.47.134/Lsscommittee/Labour/15_Labour_40.Pdf  Accessed on 16.06.15
[3]Sumi Krishna (1996), Restoring Childhood: Learning, Labour and Gender in South Asia, Konark,
New Delhi, p21
[4] http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/psearch/QResult16.aspx?qref=6668
[5]Myron Weiner, Neera Burra and Asha Bajpai, 2006: Born Unfree. Child Labour, Education and the State in India. OUP. New Delhi. Pg.XXV.
[6] http://www.outlookindia.com/article/a-prodigy-packaged-and-sold/231385
[7] http://labour.gov.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/latest_update/what_new/5437e6a63557bSME23.sept.pdf
[8] For example see Clauses 18, 43, 57
[9] www.livemint.com/Politics/7iDANGIDKz9pDj6cO4TJEL/Govt-plans-big-labour-reform-push-in-monsoon-session-of-Parl.html
[10]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3LJSZCkBPs

[11] www.livemint.com/Politics/7iDANGIDKz9pDj6cO4TJEL/Govt-plans-big-labour-reform-push-in-monsoon-session-of-Parl.html
[12]Standing Committee On Labour (2013-2014) Fifteenth Lok Sabha Ministry Of Labour And Employment The Child Labour (Prohibition And Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2012 Fortieth Report      http://164.100.47.134/Lsscommittee/Labour/15_Labour_40.Pdf  Accessed on 16.06.15 

Why Dalits are turning against the BJP

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With Hindutva baring its anti-Dalit fangs, the BJP is bound to feel the heat in the next elections.


Image: Indian Express

The recent stream of spontaneous agitations of the Dalits has a distinct anti-BJP tinge. Whether it was countrywide students’ protests over Rohith Vemula’s institutional murder, or the statewide protests in Gujarat over a shameful incident of public flogging of four Dalit youth in a full public view, or the 19th July protest in Mumbai over the demolition of the iconic Ambedkar Bhavan, or the outrage over a minor school girl’s alleged rape and murder in Rajasthan, or the massive protests in Uttar Pradesh over the state BJP vice-presidents’s prostitute remark for Mayawati, the Dalit anger against the BJP was palpable. Howsoever BJP’s Dalit hanumans may try dousing the fire it is unlikely to be extinguished until the next years’ state elections. Moreover, there is a tinge of awakening to these demonstrations, a sense of being cheated, which, if true, could be devastating to the Hindu Rashtra project of the Sangh Parivar.

Rohith’s Repeated Murder

Rohith’s institutional murder is too well known to be discussed here. But the manner in which it is sought to be suppressed is no less criminal than the original murder. The Gachibawdi Police had filed a case under the Atrocity Act against Appa Rao Podile, the controversial vice-chancellor of the Hyderabad Central University (HCU), Bangaru Dattatreya, the BJP MP and minister in Modi’s cabinet and N Sushil Kumar, the president of ABVP in the HCU for abetting the suicide but the police never acted upon it. His death sparked off a massive agitation of students who formed Joint Action Committees all over the country. It forced Appa Rao to flee the campus.

But on March 22, after two months, when the tempers had receded, he made a sudden comeback. Naturally, the agitating students staged a protest at the vice-chancellor’s residence, surrounded by abnormally huge contingent of police, where he held a meeting. When the protesting students sighted ABVP members inside the building, they were shocked and wanted to get in. Making an alibi of the scuffle at the door, the police resorted to a severe lathi charge. The two faculty members who pleaded with the police were also not spared. They chased students into the bushes up to kilometers thrashing students and molesting girls.

In all 27 students and two faculty, Prof KY Ratnam and Tathagat Sengupta, were shoved into two police vans and a new round of brutal assault was mounted on them as the vans made rounds of Hyderabad for hours. Until late evening, there was no news about their whereabouts. They came out on bail only after seven days of incarceration. There was no question of doing justice to Rohith; instead those who demanded it were punished.

As if this was not enough, the professors who were arrested were later suspended. When they protested with an indefinite fast outside the gate of the university a flood of support poured in from the public and several progressive organisations. Scared of the consequences, a sense dawned on Appa Rao to take back the suspension orders.

Smriti Irani, the controversial minister, singularly unqualified to head arguably the most important ministry of human resource development, displayed her theatrical skills in Parliament reeling off lies after lies in justification of her and her minions’ actions. Instead of regret over what happened, she aggressively attacked those who agitated for justice to Rohith. There were hideous attempts to divert the issue by questioning Rohith’s caste as though his dalitness would have brought him instant justice and lack of it would lessen the crime of the culprits.

The full force of the Telangana state – for which nearly 600 people, many of them Dalits, gave their life – was unleashed on the aggrieved mother to prove her caste. Despite Rohith possessing a caste certificate as Dalit, despite having lived and died as a Dalit, the Telangana administration spread a canard that he was a Vaddera and not a Dalit. The family was made to run around to prove that Rohith was indeed a Dalit, leaving aside their pain of losing him. Fortunately all the tricks of the government failed and Rohith’s dalitness has been established.

Expectedly, it made no difference to the culprits. They are well ensconced in their respective positions of power, while the students who are struggling for justice are driven to their wits end as Appa Rao removed the Dalit vidhi, the temporary shelter Rohith and his four expelled friends had erected at the Shopcom, which worked as symbolic pivot for the current agitation. Ambedkar’s bust therein was stolen and Rohith’s portrait at his makeshift memorial was disfigured.     

Gundagardi in Gujarat

On July 11, a group of Shiv Sena men styled as Gau Raksha Samiti came across a Dalit family skinning the carcass of a dead cow, its caste-ordained vocation, in Mota Samadhiyala village in Una taluka of the Gir Somnath district of Gujarat. Accusing them of cow slaughter, they beat up the entire family and then picked up four youth. They stripped them up to waist, chained them to the back of an SUV and dragged them to Una town, where they were beaten right near a police station for several hours in full public view.

The assaulters, confident that they would never be prosecuted, filmed their sinister act and published the video which, however, backfired, enraging Dalits to come out on streets in a spontaneous protest. Although Gujarat has never been a model as far as the condition of Dalits in the state was concerned, such a blatant atrocity on Dalits in broad daylight was never witnessed before.

There were massive protests all over the state in a spontaneous wave. Nearly 30 Dalits tried to commit suicide to expose the injustice to their community. But the sanest act was to dump the cattle carcasses before the collectors’ offices at many places. Dalits stopped their traditional work of lifting carcasses and skinning them, sacrificing the income it entailed in an unusual act of solidarity. According to a report in The Times of India dated July 28, carcasses were rotting in Gujarat everywhere threatening an epidemic. According to animal husbandry department figures, there are nearly one crore cows and buffaloes in Gujarat with a mortality rate of 10%, which  means every day 2,740 animals die all over the state. Even the stench from a stray carcass rotting anywhere could make it unbearable for the public and hence the above number could spell a veritable calamity.

Cow protection outfits have been brought to their senses, forced to admit that they were not aware about the problem and they would now have to devise ways of disposing the carcasses. Dalits engaged in manual scavenging (they do exist in thousands despite the government’s sworn denials) should join this protest and so also all the sanitation workers all over the state, if not the entire country.

Destruction of Ambedkar’s Legacy

In the wee hours of June 25, hundreds of bouncers masquerading as Ambedkarites came with two backhoes and demolished the iconic Ambedkar Bhavan and Ambedkar’s press in Dadar at the instance of one Ratnakar Gaikwad, a retired bureaucrat who managed to get himself a plum post-retirement assignment as chief information commissioner. The press had historical value being associated with Babasaheb Ambedkar. Two of his important papers, Janata and Prabuddha Bharat, were printed and published from there and it was also a center of the Ambedkarite movement from 1940s. It continued to be so even after his death; most agitations like land struggles, agitation over the ‘Riddles’ controversy and the Namantar struggle were planned and executed from here.

The other structure, the Ambedkar Bhavan, was a single story inverted ‘U’ shaped structure built in 1990s. The alibi for demolition of these two structures that they were structurally dangerous was obviously ‘manufactured’ by Gaikwad. People were aghast at his dare-devilish act, more so at his shameless and arrogant defense of it. As the prior and subsequent events revealed, he was just a stooge for the BJP bigwigs in the state.

The chief minister, well aware of the disputed state of the trust had surreptitiously performed bhumipujan (funnily at some other place) for the proposed 17-storey Ambedkar Bhavan and declared a grant of Rs 60 crores to it. What happened on June 25 was a blatant criminal act which Gaikwad was forced to publicly admit. He should have been arrested but a false alibi of his constitutional status was projected for not doing so.

Enraged by the misdemeanour of Gaikwad and the BJP government, a massive protest morcha was taken out in Mumbai on July 19. The entire episode exposed the class divide among Dalits in the ugliest possible manner. While upper middle class Dalits, including the Dalit Diaspora and the Buddhist monks who live in comfort on the ill-gotten money from the Dalit bureaucrats supported Gaikwad, the vast majority of Dalits angrily demanded his arrest and supported the Ambedkars who stood against Gaikwad. The three grandsons of Babasaheb Ambedkar have generally been independent and have refused to be co-opted by either the Congress or the BJP.

Politically they have taken a pro-people stance lending support to peoples’ struggles. Howsoever weak, they represent the only Ambedkarite establishment today that is firmly against the Hindutva forces.

It is therefore imperative for the BJP to tarnish their image. A section of middle class Dalits is being covertly instigated to accomplish this task. They have slowly built up the propaganda that Babasaheb Ambedkar’s heirs are not Ambedkarites but supporters of Maoists. At least one Dalit paper, Mahanayak, has been feverishly spreading this canard over the last five years. Through the demolition drama the BJP intended to achieve the same objective. Gaikwad described the three grandsons and their father, Yashwantrao Ambedkar, as unworthy usurpers and goondas.

The demolition of Ambedkar Bhavan and sullying the image of the Ambedkar family were the twin tasks before Gaikwad in which he is being supported by the BJP government ignoring the mass ire erupting all over the country. The government’s approach is clear from the manner in which police and the state machinery have behaved and are behaving in dealing with this blatantly criminal case.

Shamelessness of Dalit ‘Hanumans’   

BJP has succeeded in transforming all three Dalit Rams into its ‘Hanumans’. They have also lured some so-called Dalit intellectuals to do their bidding. In the heat of the countrywide outrage over the flogging of Dalit youths in Gujarat, one such Dalit ‘Hanuman’ was shamelessly projecting how Gujarat was not to be identified with atrocities on the Dalits. His slavishness and intellectual dishonesty was evident from his wrong and out of context reading of the crime statistics of National Crime Research Bureau (NCRB). While other non-Dalit panelists were rightly condemning the outrage in Gujarat, this stooge was awkwardly arguing how Gujarat was better than many other states on caste atrocities.

The fact is that Gujarat has the dubious distinction of consistently ranking among the top five states in terms of incidence of atrocities on Dalits. In 2013, when Narendra Modi’s ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ mantra had reached the crescendo in the wake of ensuing general elections and his imminent coronation as the prime ministerial candidate, the number of atrocities per lakh population of the Scheduled Castes (SC) was 29.21, up from 25.23 in the previous years, marking it as the fourth worst state in the country.

In the past the NCRB had been erroneously using incidents of atrocities per lakh of total population; it is only since 2012 that it has been collating figures vis-à-vis per lakh of the SC population. Therefore, the rates of incidence of crime against the SCs as given in NCRB tables would necessitate correction in absolute figures but they are unlikely to alter Gujarat’s relative rank among the states. In terms of major class of atrocities like murder and rape also Gujarat is among the worst states. Table 1 provides the rates of these atrocities for the years 2012 and 2013 for the major states of India to show how Gujarat ranks among the top few for the crimes against Dalits.   

Table 1: Rate of incidence of Murders and Rapes (per lakh population of the Scheduled Castes)

Year20122013
 MurderRapeMurderRape
Gujarat0.562.290.713.82
Andhra Pradesh0.391.490.381.64
Bihar0.160.490.300.85
Chhattisgarh0.183.860.183.37
Haryana0.372.790.435.45
Jharkhand0.030.410.150.31
Karnataka0.340.830301.29
Kerala0.036.340.077.36
Madhya Pradesh0.786.750.687.31
Maharashtra0.271.490.302.75
Odisha0.152.212.262.77
Rajasthan0.543.440.625.01
Tamil Nadu0.260.470.190.39
Uttar Pradesh0.571.450.541.91

Source: Crime of India, 2012 and 2013. National Crime Research Bureau, Govt. of India, New Delhi

The table clearly shows that in terms of the rate of murders, Gujarat was ahead of all the states except for the two in 2012, viz., Uttar Pradesh (0.57) and Madhya Pradesh (0.78); in 2013 it was the worst offender. Thus ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ was more or less on par with Uttar Pradesh, the much maligned state for crimes against the SCs even in 2012. In terms of the rate of rapes, it was ahead of all the states in 2012 except for five, viz., Chhattisgarh (3.86), Haryana (2.79), Kerala (6.34), Madhya Pradesh (6.75) and Rajasthan (3.44). In the year 2013, it did worse, ranking fifth behind Kerala (7.36), Madhya Pradesh (7.31), Haryana (5.45) and Rajasthan (5.01).

Modi’s crocodile tears

Narendra Modi, it is reported, was disturbed to learn about the incident in Una as though such atrocity was happening in his ‘model’ Gujarat for the first time. In September 2012, in Thangadh, a small town in Surendranagar district of Gujarat, three Dalit youth were gunned down by Modi’s police on two consecutive days (September 22 & 23, 2012). But he did not utter a word although he was barely 17 km away from the spot, leading a Vivekanand Youth Vikas Yatra.

On September 22, police opened fire on the protesting Dalits against the Bharwards, who had beaten a Dalit youth over a minor clash, seriously injuring a 17-year-old boy Pankaj Sumra, who later died in a hospital in Rajkot. News of the death sparked outrage among Dalits who took to the streets demanding that a complaint be filed against police officials responsible for the death.

The next day, the police again opened fire on the agitating Dalits injuring three Dalit youths, two of whom, Mehul Rathod (17) and Prakash Parmar (26) died in the Rajkot civil hospital. These killings, just before the state assembly polls in 2012, had sent shock waves across the state and complaints were lodged against four police officials. Investigation was handed over to the CID (Crime).  However, despite three FIRs filed against policemen, charge sheet has been filed only in one case and one of the accused B C Solanki was not even arrested.

Gujarat has a long history of feudal repression of the Dalit community, which being relatively small – 7.1 per cent of the population, as compared with the national average of 16.6 – had largely remained politically inert. In recent history, after a flash of Dalit Panthers in early 1970s, they were rudely shaken out of their Gandhian slumber by the 1981 anti-reservation riots. For the first time, there was a spate of celebrations of Ambedkar jayantis all over the state. But this awakening proved short-lived. 
 
When the BJP realised the electoral importance of the Dalits and began wooing them, they easily succumbed and found themselves participating in a big way in its 1986 Jagannath rath yatra. Later Dalits even acted as the BJP’s foot soldiers particularly during the 2002 post-Godhra anti-Muslim carnage. However, nothing changed for them on the ground. The discrimination, humiliation, exploitation and atrocities continued unabated with a complicit state overtly or covertly backing anti-Dalit acts.
 
A recent study has demonstrated that of all the atrocity cases that occurred across four districts in Gujarat, 36.6 per cent were not registered under the Atrocity Act. Of the cases where the Act was applied, 84.4 per cent were registered under the wrong provisions, thus concealing the intensity of the violence in the cases.[i] Earlier, the Ahmedabad based Council for Social Justice had studied 400 judgements delivered over a decade under this Act since April 1, 1995 by the Special Atrocity Courts set up in 16 districts of the state. It found wanton violation of the rules by the police to weaken prosecution. The judiciary also contributed its own prejudices to render the Act toothless.[ii]
 
No wonder the conviction rate in atrocity cases in Gujarat is six times lower than the Indian average over 10 years for crimes against SCs and STs. In 2014 (latest available data), only 3.4% of crimes against SCs in Gujarat ended in convictions against 28.8% nationally. That is, one conviction for every eight across the country. Not surprisingly, the practice of untouchability is rampant in the state. A study titled ‘Understanding Untouchability: A Comprehensive Study of Practices and Conditions in 1,589 villages’, conducted in Gujarat during 2007 to 2010, by Navsarjan Trust, an organisation working among Dalits in Gujarat, in collaboration with the Robert E. Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights, revealed widespread incidence of untouchability being practiced in rural Gujarat.[iii] The new generation of Dalits, faced with dark future in the sea of prosperity around, would not stomach it. It is this buildup of anger accentuated by the sugar coated anti-Dalit policies of the BJP that has now burst out in the form of spontaneous flare up of Dalit anger in the state.

Curse of the Wretched

The chain of recent agitations indicates a new Dalit awakening. BJP’s duplicity and one upmanship vis-à-vis the Congress, building monuments for Ambedkar and projecting itself a bigger Ambedkar Bhakt stands fairly exposed through its serial anti-Dalit acts. When in October 2002 the cow vigilante gang of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) goons had lynched five hapless Dalit youth at Dulina in Jhajjar, Haryana, and set them on fire right under the nose of police, VHP’s vice-president, Giriraj Kishor had thus justified the killing: “In our religious scriptures (Puranas) life of a cow is more important than any number of people.” The then BJP Haryana chief Ram Bilas Sharma had promised to treat cow slaughter as a crime as heinous as murder. Dalits perhaps considered the incident as a one off act and pardoned the BJP.

But this time, such incidents in quick succession appears to have woken them up to the real anti-Dalit character of the BJP. Although the Hindutva camp has lately realised the critical importance of Dalit votes in accomplishing their agenda of Hindu Rashtra, the historical and ideological contradictions between them are not easily resolved. Anti-Dalit sentiments keep manifesting themselves through the rant of a swami or Sadhvi, or the atrocities committed by Hindutva hooligans.

Howsoever it is camouflaged Hindutva is all about pride in Hindu customs, tradition and culture, which are mere euphemism for the caste system and hence in contradiction to the agenda of Dalit liberation. Hindutva’s obsession for the cow and its progeny has hit the Dalits, just next to the Muslims. It deprives both of their favourite beef, a cheap source of protein. It has rendered lakhs of them jobless. As marginal farmers Dalits are cattle breeders. The cow slaughter bans severely affects their economy.

The most alienating aspect of Hindutva’s agenda is its irrationality and doublespeak. The irrationality has been exposed by scores of economists and could turn out to be the single biggest economic disaster for the country if persisted with for some years. The doublespeak is evident from the fact that while the cattle slaughter is banned for thousands of small slaughterhouses rendered lakhs of Muslims and Dalits unemployed, the big six export-oriented slaughterhouses, four of which are owned by the Hindus, two among them Brahmans, have thrived during the same time. Whether it is cattle slaughter or its cultural nationalist overtures, they are directly in contradiction to Dalit interests and aspirations.

With Hindutva baring its anti-Dalit fangs, the BJP is bound to feel the heat in the next elections.

Anand Teltumbde is general secretary of the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR), Maharashtra.

 

[i]http://navsarjan.org/navsarjan/status-of-dalits-in-gujarat/
[ii]https://www.sabrangindia.in/tags/council-social-justice.
[iii]http://navsarjan.org/Documents/Untouchability_Report_FINAL_Complete.pdf.

11 महीने में 17 कॉटन मिलें बंद, ‘मेक इन इंडिया’ को चुनौती

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‘मेक इन इंडिया’ और उद्योगों को बढ़ावा देने के तमाम दावों के बावजूद 11 महीनों के दौरान देश में 17 कॉटन मिल्‍स बंद हो गई हैं। ये मिलें नकदी की कमी, घटते मुनाफे और बढ़ती उत्‍पादन लागत से जूझ रही थीं और आखिरकार अपना वजूद बचाने में नाकाम रहीं। यह स्थिति देश के टेक्‍सटाइल सेक्‍टर की चुनौतियों को उजागर करती है।


By CSIRO, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35496321

लोकसभा में सांसद राजू शेेट्टी और प्रो॰ यविन्द्र विश्‍वनाथ गायकवाड़ द्वारा पूछे गए सवाल के जवाब में कपड़ा राज्‍य मंत्री अजय टम्‍टा ने जून, 2016 से मई, 2016 के दौरान देश में 17 सूती/मानव निर्मित फाइबर टेक्‍सटाइल मिलों (गैर-एसएसआई) के बंद होने की जानकारी दी है। टम्‍टा ने बताया कि इन सूती मिलों के बंद होने की प्रमुख वजह पूंजी की कमी, नकदी का अभाव, बढ़ती उत्‍पादन लागत और घटना मुनाफा है।

हैरानी की बात तो यह है कि ‘मेक इन इंडिया’ और उद्योगों को बढ़ावा देनेे का दावा कर रही केंद्र सरकार के पास बंद कॉटन मिलों के पुनरूद्धार के लिए वित्‍त और तकनीकी सहायता की कोई योजना नहीं है। यह बात भी कपड़ा राज्‍य मंत्री अजय टम्‍टा ने लोकसभा में दिए अपने जवाब में स्‍वीकार की है।

सांसदों ने यह भी पूछा था कि क्‍या सरकार नए टेक्‍सटाइल/स्पिनिंग मिल्‍स कलस्‍टरों की स्‍थापना करने जा रही है? इसके जवाब में टम्‍टा ने बताया कि सरकार आमतौर पर नई टेक्‍सटाइल यूनिटें स्‍थापित नहीं करती। बल्कि उद्याेेगों और निजी उद्यमियों को बढ़ावा देने वाली नीतियां और माहौल सुनिश्चित करती है।

गौरतलब है कि इस समय देश में 1420 सेती/मानव निर्मित फाइबर टेक्‍सटाइल मिलें हैं। बंद हुईं 17 मिलों में से 6 तमिलनाडु, 3 आंध्र प्रदेश, 3 कर्नाटक और एक-एक तेलंगाना, हरियाणा, महाराष्‍ट्र, राजस्‍थान और उत्तर प्रदेश में हैं। फिलहाल देश में 14 सौ से ज्‍यादा कॉटन या मैन मेड फाइबर टेक्‍सटाइल मिल्स हैं।

जारी रहेगा कपास की कीमतों में तेजी का रुख 

घरेलू उत्‍पादन में कमी के चलते इस साल कपास का भाव करीब 30-35 फीसदी ज्‍यादा हैं। अक्‍टूबर में नई फसल आने तक कपास की कीमतों में तेजी का रुख बने रहने के आसार हैं। हाल ही में केंद्र सरकार ने कॉटन कॉरपोरेशन ऑफ इंडिया को अपना सारा कॉटन स्‍टॉक छोटे व लघु उद्योगों को बेचने के निर्देश दिए थे। इसके बावजूद क्रेडिट एजेंसी इंडिया रेटिंग का मानना है कि नई कपास बाजार में आने तक कीमतों में तेज गिरावट के आसार नहीं हैं।

गौरतलब है कि इस साल कपास की उपज का क्षेत्र कम रहने की आशंका जताई जा रही है। इसके अलावा पंजाब सहित कई क्षेत्रों में सफेद कीट के प्रकोप की वजह से उत्‍पादन में कमी आ सकती है। इस वजह से भी कपास की कीमतों में तेजी रह सकती है।
इंडिया रेटिंग की रिपोर्ट के अनुसार, लगातार दो वर्षों से कमजोर मानसून और कई राज्‍यों में कपास पर कीटों के प्रकोप की वजह से कपास उत्‍पादन गिरा है। वर्ष 2015-16 सीजन में देश का कपास उत्‍पादन 7.4 फीसदी घटकर 352 करोड़ बेल्‍स रहने का अनुमान है। विश्‍व स्‍तर पर भी कपास उत्‍पादन 18 फीसदी गिरने के आसार हैं।

Courtesy: aslibharat.com
 

Reading French literature in a time of terror

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In the past 18 months, France has suffered, of the Western countries, more than its fair share of terrorist attacks. Most recent is the Nice attack. Before that came the synchronised attacks on the Bataclan theatre and related Paris locations, and before that – perhaps most infamously – the Charlie Hebdo shootings.

And every time France is attacked, a particular kind of sorrow overcomes me. In the late 1980s, motivated by a love of French literature, I spent a year in Paris studying the language at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, paying my way by tutoring French university students in English.

I had a good time with the young French people I taught. Many of them were around my age – in their mid-20s – and I was often invited to their homes or out to a restaurant for meal. They were of all backgrounds – Caucasian, north African, from Paris or the provinces – and they fascinated me. Here they were, the future custodians of French society and culture, learning English to stay competitive in the newly globalising economy. I, on the other hand, was mesmerised by their language and its legacy.

These days, France figures most prominently in my life via my book collection. My French books don’t take up the biggest space on my shelves: it’s the combined literatures of the Anglosphere that do. But French literature and thought is without a doubt the literature that has had the most influence on me as a novelist and academic.

I can’t imagine life without writers like Honoré de Balzac, Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Claude Simon, and more recently Michel Houellebecq. To contemporary sensibilities that may bristle at this somewhat canonical list, what can I say? If there was ever a literary canon worth establishing, it’s the French.


Marguerite Duras Wikimedia Commons

What is it that draws me again and again to this body of work? If I could pin it down at all, I’d say it was because the French novel has a quality that manages to blend social critique, personal struggle, entertainment and aesthetics in a unique way.

Underpinning all these elements is a formidable, nuanced irony, a kind of knowing wink to human weakness, that engine room of the tragic, the force that drives all our triumphs and failures.

Let’s look at a couple of examples. Emile Zola is best known for individual novels such as Germinal, Nana, and La Bête humaine. What is less known is that these books form part of a monumental 20-novel saga known as Les Rougon-Macquart series, in which he traces the natural and social history of a family of France’s second empire. Standing on the shoulders of his hero, Balzac, and his monumental La Comédie humaine, Zola trains a forensic eye on the foibles of his times, France in the second half of the 19th century.


Émile Zola Nadar, via Wikimedia Commons

Telling ironies abound in Zola: in tone, at the level of daily observation, but perhaps most importantly at the level of story premise. Nowhere is this better illustrated in his novel Nana, where we view Paris society through the tale of the courtesan/actress Nana, whose rise and fall provides insights into the moral and political climate of the times. But it’s also the success of novels like Nana – it sold 55,000 copies on the first day of publication in 1870 – that bears testament to how French literature could conduct a critique of French society with style and panache, and also be a hit with a public hungry for critical appraisals of society entertainingly told.

This was the France of nearly one-and-a-half centuries ago, a France that could never have dreamed of what was to become of its empire, nor forseen a time when nearly one tenth of the population would be Muslim, as it is today.

Mordant satire

Yet the spirit of critique lives on in their literature, most famously for Anglophone audiences in the form of novelist Michel Houellebecq’s mordant satires on French society. In a spirit arguably less nuanced than his canonical predecessors like Balzac and Zola, Houellebecq’s critiques are idiosyncratic and goading, testament as much to his dsyfunctional personality as they are to a desire to reveal potent ironies that speak to the times.


Michel Houellebecq in 2008. Mariusz Kubik/Wikimedia Commons

Nowhere is this sensiblity clearer than in his most recent novel, Submission, where irony of premise is well to the foreground. In the France of 2022, an Islamic party has taken power via the ballot box, and France finds itself on the path to Islamisation. Our hero is the Parisian academic François, a scholar of the great 19th century author of decadence, Huysmans.

Confronted with the new status quo, and disaffected with the hollow freedoms of Western culture, François finds himself lured by a world that reestablishes a clear-cut moral order and that, best of all, allows him to have multiple wives.
In an occurrence that could only be described as a freak accident of timing, Submission was published on the same day as the Charlie Hebdo attack, with that magazine’s current issue sporting Michel Houellebecq on the cover. The novel went on to become a bestseller in Europe and the English speaking world. Once again the spirit of French critique ­– this time a darker, more troubled one – found itself connecting with a national, and global, audience.

Houellebecq’s near-future satire is his commentary on the France of today. This is a France at a crossroads, caught between the historical and ongoing tug-of-war between Europe and Islam, between the desire to remain true to its legacy of liberty, equality and fraternity and the need to recognise that it has become a multi-cultural society that has to extend these values to all.


French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo EPA/IAN LANGSDON

How can France succeed in this juggling act? It’s a question that’s currently being posed to other European countries – Germany, Belgium, Great Britain – that have all become recent targets of Islamic extremists.

Whenever these attacks occur, I think back to the young French people whose hospitality I enjoyed nearly 30 years ago. No doubt many of them, like me, will have taken up their places contributing to their professions, will have their own families, will be endeavouring to make themselves useful and happy. Sadly they’ve inherited a world where, for a variety of complex reasons, they find their fellow citizens either being mowed down by a rented truck as they watch the Bastille Day fireworks, or shot down in the stalls of a retro theatre during a rock concert.

In these dark days of extremist violence, literature seems to offer few answers or consolations. But its spirit of critique, pioneered so brilliantly by the French, is certainly worth keeping up the fight for.

(Author is Associate Professor of Creative Writing, University of Technology Sydney)

Courtesy: The Conversation

Watch: Varanasi, holy city and PM’s constituency, is still a sex trafficking hub

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The NGO Guria has been rescuing girls for the past 14 years.

 

Varanasi, considered one of India's holiest cities, has a history of also being the home of courtesans. But this past now stands cruelly distorted as it acquires the status of being a hub for human trafficking.

The video above by Youtube Channel Blush shows this side of the city, with the focus on the NGO Guria, which has been rescuing victims while fighting the forces that have kept the practice alive for the past 14 years. Along with testimonies of victims, the founders of Guria, Ajeet Singh and his wife Manju Singh, point fingers at the involvement of the police.

Harvard scholar Siddharth Kara describes the pivotal position of Varanasi – infamous for its Shivdaspur red light district – in India’s human trafficking industry in his book Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery.
 

I learned just how much corruption teems under the surface of one of India’s holiest cities when I visited Ranjana Gaur, director of the Social Action Research Centre (SARC) in Varanasi.

Ms Gaur spent the day describing Varanasi’s role in India’s illicit sex trade… Nepalese women regularly arrived in Varanasi, where they were passed to local dalals who distributed them to Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, and other major Indian cities. More recently, trafficking victims spent an initiation period in Shivdas Pur because Mumbai brothels owners expressed a preference for girls who had already been broken. Dalals could charge up to 20 percent more for such girls. The initiation period was thus a cold business decision. Break the girls first; enjoy greater profits later.

“Shivdas Pur was not nearly as large as Falkland Road or Kamathipura. It consisted of pinjara-style brothels on a road no more than a quarter mile long. Typically, there might be around 2,000 prostitutes at Shivdas Pur, but the day before my arrival, they were thrown in jail by the local police for unknown reasons. Ms Gaur informed me that during police raids in Varanasi, the brothel owners and customers were never arrested, only the prostitutes. After a few bribes, most prostitutes were returned to their owners. It was a regular racket.
— "Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery", Siddharth Kara
 

A news report from 2014 points to the political apathy towards this part of the city. Varanasi – which is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency – was central to the general elections in 2014, but no political leader has visited or even acknowledged this part of the city.

 

In this earlier video by the Youtube Channel 101 India, Guria's Manju Singh here details the threats she and her family face for their work.
  

Courtesy: Scroll.in

Mahasweta Devi among First to Appeal to President Narayan on Gujarat 2002 Massacres

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Acclaimed writer and social activist Mahasweta Devi who tied today, July 28, at the age of 90 was among the first voices of sanity and anguish when the Gujarat massacres shocked the nation in 2002. She had been admitted to the hospital in Kolkatta with age-related ailments and her condition had been critical

Mahasweta Devi’s  was Among the First Voices to Appeal to President Narayan on the Gujarat 2002 Massacres. India was under NDA I rule at the time. Protect People in Gujarat, eminent writer Mahashweta Devi had pleaded with Indian President Narayanan expressing her anguish on March 2, 2002, three days after the Godhra incident when the western Indian stated had been racked by motivated and planned reprisal killings of the minority.
 
 She had in that communication urged President K R Narayanan to immediately intervene to protect lives of innocent riot victims of Gujarat and prevent the violence from spreading further. In a letter to the President, the writer said she was appalled at the outburst of communal frenzy even as the Gujarat Government as well as the Centre did not take any initial action ''and are doing too little too late''.

''The carnage which has been taking place in the last few days is clearly the outcome of motivated, well-planned out and provocative actions of the so-called Sangh Parivar," she said.

Seeking the President's intervention ''at this hour of national shame with whatever forces you can muster and put an immediate halt to this needless waste of human life and help restore sanity'', Mahasweta Devi said she was deeply disturbed and concerned at the sequence of events taking place in Gujarat.

''The people who perpetrated heinous vandalism in Ayodhya in December 1992 and stoked communal flames are again at their game for the last few months. We know the pattern. We even know the remedy. The trouble is a complete lack of political will to put a stop this kind of madness'', she said. 

The writer said while stern legal action should be taken against those who killed Kar Sevaks in Godhra, similar action should be taken against those indulging in arson and bloodbath in other parts of Gujarat and elsewhere.  
 
The author who was also a Magsaysay award winner was also lead petitioner who approached the Supreme Court of Indian in Writ Petition 530 of 2002 that had  sought many reliefs including asking for an independent commissioner to monitor the investigations. The CJP-led petition, DN Pathak and Others versus state of Gujarat filed on May 2, 2002 had also asked for the same reliefs.

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