Open letter to the People of India

I am aware this may be completely drowned in the motivated cacophony of the BJP-RSS combine and the subservient media but I still think it may be worth talking to you as I do not know whether I would get another opportunity.

Since August 2018, when the police raided my house in faculty housing complex of Goa Institute of Management, my world turned completely topsy-turvy. Never in my worst dream, could I imagine the things that began happening to me. Although, I was aware that police used to visit the organizers of my lectures, mostly universities, and scare them with enquiries about me, I thought they might be mistaking me for my brother who left family years back. While I was teaching at IIT Kharagpur an officer of BSNL phoned, introducing himself as my admirer and well-wisher, informed me that my phone was being tapped. I thanked him but did nothing, not even to change my sim. I was disturbed by these intrusions but comforted myself that it might rather convince Police that I was a normal person and there is no element of illegality in my conduct. The Police generally disliked civil rights activists because they question police. I imagined, it might be due to the fact that I belonged to that tribe. But again I comforted myself that they would find that I could not perform that role either because of my full time engagement with my job.

But when I got an early morning phone call from the Director of my institute, informing me that the Police have raided the campus and were looking for me, I was wordless for a few seconds. I had come to Mumbai on official work just a few hours before and my wife had come earlier. When I learnt of the arrests, of the persons whose houses were raided that day, I was shaken by the realisation that I escaped the fate just by whiskers. The Police did know my whereabouts and could arrest me even then but for the reasons known only to them, did not do so. They did open our house too, forcibly getting a duplicate key from the security guard, but just video-graphed it and locked it back. Our ordeal began right there. At the advice of our lawyers, my wife took the next available flight to Goa, and lodged a complaint with Bicholim Police Station that the Police had opened our house in our absence and that we would not be responsible if they had planted anything. She volunteered giving our telephone numbers should the Police want to inquire with us.

Strangely, police had started holding press conferences soon after they embarked on the Maoist story. It was clearly meant to whip up prejudice in public against me and other arrested with the help of obliging media. On 31 August 2018, in one such press conference, a police officer read out a letter purportedly recovered from the computer of previous arrestees, as an evidence against me. The letter was clumsily constructed with the information on the academic conference I had attended which was easily available on the website of American University of Paris. Initially I laughed it out but next, decided to file a civil and criminal defamation suit against this officer and sent a letter on 5 September 2018 to the Government of Maharashtra for sanction as per the procedure. There has been no response from the government to date. The press conferences of the police, however, were stopped when High Court reprimanded them.

The RSS hand in the entire case was not hidden. My Marathi friends told me that one of their functionaries, Ramesh Patange, had written an article in their mouthpiece Panchjanya targeting me in April 2015. I was identified as Mayavi Ambedkarwadi along with Arundhati Roy and Gail Omvedt. Mayavi in the Hindu mythology refers to a demon meant to be destroyed. When I was illegally arrested by Pune Police while still under protection of the Supreme Court, a cyber-gang of Hindutva vandalized my Wikimedia page. This page is a public page and for years I was not even aware of it. They firstly deleted all information and only wrote “he has a Maoist brother… his house was raided … he was arrested for links with Maoist”, etc. Some students later told me that whenever they tried restoring the page, or editing the page, this gang would pounce upon and delete everything and put derogatory content. Ultimately, Wikimedia intervened and the page stabilized with some of their negative content.

There was a media blitzkrieg, reeling off all kinds of canard through RSS’ so called Naxal experts. My complaints against the channels and even to the India Broadcasting Foundation, did not receive a simple response. Then in October 2019, the Pegasus story came out that the government had inserted a very pernicious Israeli spyware on my phone, among others. There was a momentary uproar in media but this serious matter also has died still death.

I have been a simple person who has been earning his bread honestly and helping people to the extent possible with my knowledge through writings. I have an unblemished record of service for nearly five decades to this country in various roles in corporate world, as a teacher, as a civil rights activist and a public intellectual. In my voluminous writings comprising over 30 books, and numerous papers/articles/comments/columns/interviews, published internationally, not an insinuation of support to violence or any subversive movement could be found. But at the fag end of my life, I am being charged for the heinous crime under the draconian UAPA.

An individual like me obviously cannot counter the spirited propaganda of the government and its subservient media. The details of the case are strewn across the Net and are enough for any person to see that it is a clumsy and criminal fabrication. A summary note on AIFRTE website may be read. For your benefit I will provide its gist here:

I am implicated on the basis of the five letters among the 13 that the police purportedly recovered from the computers of two arrestees in the case. Nothing has been recovered from me. The letter make reference to “Anand”, a common name in India, but the police unquestioningly identified it with me. Notwithstanding the form and content of these letters, which was trashed by experts and even by a justice in Supreme Court, who was the only one in the entire judiciary who went into the nature of the evidence. the content does not refer to anything that could be remotely construed as even a simple crime. But taking shelter under the draconian provisions of the UAPA Act, that renders a person defenceless I am being jailed.

The case may be depicted for your understanding as follows: Suddenly, a police posse descends down on your residence and ransacks your house without showing any warrant. At the end they arrest you and lodge in the police lockup. In the court, they would say that while investigating a theft (or any other complaint) case in xxx place (substitute any place in India) police recovered a pen drive or a computer from yyy (substitute any name) in which some letters written by a supposed member of some banned organization were recovered that had a mention of zzz who according to the police is none other than you. They present you as part of deep conspiracy. Suddenly, you find your world turned topsy-turvy. Your job gone, family losing house, Media defaming you about which you cannot do a damn thing. Police will produce “sealed envelopes” to convince judges that there was a prima facie case against you that needs custodial interrogation. No arguments about there being no evidence would be entertained as judges would answer that it would be seen in trial. After custodial interrogation you will be sent to jail. You beg for bail and the courts will reject them as the historical data shows that the average period of incarceration ranged from 4 to 10 years before they got bail or acquitted. And this can happen literally to ANYONE.

In the name of ‘nation’ such draconian legislations that denude innocent people of their liberties and all constitutional rights are constitutionally validated. The jingoist nation and nationalism have got weaponised by the political class to destroy dissent and polarize people. The mass frenzy has accomplished complete derationalization and inversion of meanings where destroyers of the nation become deshbhakts and selfless servers of people become deshdrohis. As I see my India being ruined, it is with a feeble hope that I write to you at such a grim moment. Well, I am off to NIA custody and do not know when I shall be able to talk to you again. However, I earnestly hope that you will speak out before your turn comes.

Anand Teltumbde

The post Anand Teltumbde’s Letter To The People Of India Before His Imminent Arrest  appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The existing Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), was launched on 1 April 2008 by Ministry of Labour and Employment (since 2015 being administered and implemented by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare) to provide health insurance coverage for Below Poverty Line (BPL) families through a decentralized implementation structure at the state level. It provided for total insurance cover of Rs. 30,000 per family per annum, with cashless attendance to all covered ailments and transportation costs within an overall limit of Rs. 1,000. The insurance cost was to be borne by central and state governments in the ratio of 75:25. It had won plaudits from the World Bank, the UN and the ILO as one of the world’s best health insurance schemes. If this modestly formulated scheme failed in implementation^[1], the far more ambitious AB-NHPS scheme that targets 100 million families with insurance cover of Rs 5 Lakh each, and higher share of states (60:40) without any commensurate infrastructural support naturally creates skepticism.

India’s Healthcare
The public health expenditure in India (total of center and state governments), despite recent increases in allocations, has been little over 1 % of the GDP. It is abysmally low as compared to the world average of 6% and even with our neighboring countries like Maldives (9.4%), Sri Lanka (1.6%), Bhutan (2.5%) and Thailand (2.9%). The National Health Policy (NPH), 2017 aspires to increase it to 2.5% of GDP by 2025, but the fact remains that India has not even met its 2010 target of 2%. India’s total health expenditure of 3.89% as a percentage of GDP also is among the lowest as seen from the Table 2.

Table 1: Total health expenditure as percentage of GDP for select countries

Source: WHO Global Health Expenditure Database (2015)

Even it is lower than the average for Sub-Saharan (5.35%), low income countries (6.02%) and far below that of high income countries (12.38%). Out of the total expenditure, about one-third (30%) is contributed by the public sector, which also is far lower than that for other developing countries (Brazil- 46%, China-56%, Indonesia- 39%) and developed countries (USA- 48%, and UK- 83%). Out of pocket expenditures– the payments made directly by individuals at the point of services which are not covered under any financial protection scheme– dominate to the extent of 95%, balance 5% being insurance.  Table 2 provides distribution of the out of pocket expenditure.

Table 2: Major heads for out of pocket expenditure

Source: Household health expenditure in India (2013-14), December 2016, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

This out of pocket expenditure is typically financed by household revenues (71%), followed by state government (13%), Union government (5%), Other funds (7%) and local body funds (1%). About 86% of rural population and 82% of urban population are not covered under any scheme of health expenditure support. Due to this high out of pocket healthcare expenditure, about 7% population is pushed below the poverty threshold every year.

Modicare and Poor
It is in this context that Modicare will be implemented. The scheme seeks to provide coverage for hospitalization at the secondary (provided at district hospitals) and tertiary levels of healthcare (provided at specialized hospitals like, AIIMS and Apollo, etc.). The need of the poor, however, is to get cost-free access to basic health services. The High Level Expert Group set up by the Planning Commission (2011) had recommended that the focus of healthcare provision in the country should be towards providing primary health care. It had rightly observed that focus on prevention and early management of health problems can reduce the need for complicated specialist care provided at the tertiary level. As such, the priority of the government should have been to create a robust network of primary health centers (PHCs) with reasonable infrastructure in terms of beds, doctors, nursing staff and medicines, and an effective delivery model. In absence of this, the poor has to go to private doctors and purchase costly medicines as prescribed by them. In the urban areas, the General Practitioners (GP) who provided healthcare at nominal cost in neighborhood are vanishing fast and are being replaced by the specialists (MDs) who charge multiples of what a GPs charged for consultation (which invariably included medicine). In rural areas, even where the PHCs are created (like toilet construction under the Swachch Bharat Mission), there are no doctors to man them. Because of the lack of infrastructure, both at the PHC as well as in the village to professionally and personally engage them, the qualified doctors are not ready to work in rural areas. The skewed distribution of doctors in rural and urban areas–74% of doctors for 30% urban population and 28% of doctors for 70 % of rural population indicates this basic malady.

The private sector consists of 58% of the hospitals in the country, 29% of beds in hospitals, and 81% of doctors.[2]According to National Family Health Survey-3, the private medical sector remains the primary source of health care for 70% of households in urban areas and 63% of households in rural areas.[3] The study conducted by IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics in 2013, across 12 states in over 14,000 households indicated a stea[4]dy increase in the usage of private healthcare facilities over the last 25 years for both Out-Patient and In-Patient services, across rural and urban areas. Some studies observed that health care providers in the private sector tended to extract more money by making patients stay for longer duration and conduct more diagnostic exams compared to their public counterpart.[5]The thrust of the Modicare on hospitalization does not address the need of the poor whose most out of pocket expenditure (84%) is made up by buying medicines (52%), private hospitals (22%) and diagnostic tests (10%), and not hospitalization. Our own experience with such a scheme revealed that such schemes covered only 4 per cent of illnesses and yet consumed a quarter of the State’s health budget.[6]

Intent versus Actions
The NHP does speak of establishing 1.5 Lakh ‘Health and Wellness Centers’ as the foundation of India’s health system, which is certainly laudable as it will bring healthcare closer to people. They do address real health issues of people. But it got just Rs 1,200 crore in the budget and expected contributions of the private sector through CSR and philanthropic institutions in adopting these centers. This is the fond model of Public Private Partnership that lies behind most of Modi’s public schemes. The NHP may thus be counting on private initiatives as it is not at all reflected in Modi’s budget allocations. The allocation of Rs 52,800 crore for health in 2018-19 was merely 5% higher than the revised estimate of Rs 50,079.6 crore, in 2017-18. It is estimated that to meet the NPH objectives, the governments, both central and state, together should increase their total allocation towards health to Rs 800,000 crore, up from the current Rs 200,000 crore by year 2025, which means the central government health budget alone should increase at least 20 percent year-on-year for the next seven-eight years. There is no evidence of that happening yet.

The same could be said of the AB-NHSP. It is faulted by many public health experts for its underestimation of resources. According to them the actual fund needed might be as high as Rs 2.5-3 lakh crores. Many private hospitals including the Indian Medical Association (IMA) problematizedlow package rates for various procedures and interventions. Even after conceding the volume discounts, the insurance premium estimated by Niti Aayog at Rs 1,000-1,200 per family appears too optimistic when compared to Andhra Pradesh’s existing Rajiv Aarogya Raksha plan, which costs Rs 1,200 per individual for Rs 2 lakh cover for little more than 1,000 diseases. Even taking it valid, the scheme would entail Rs 10-12,000 crore every year as against Rs 3,333 crore provided for. Even factoring in states’ contribution (40%), the allotted fund adds up to only a portion of the required amount. The other imponderable is its assumption that it will subsume existing health schemes of the states. Whether the states will really forsake their political branding of such a pro-people scheme is a vital question that could be answered only by the unfolding politics. 

Like any of Modi schemes, the AB-NHPS may be a good concept but launched without adequate preparation, a la GST. The issues relating to funds may be covered up by the government but how will it create doctors and hospital beds? Modi’s own economic advisor, Bibek Debroy, had sensibly admitted that the scheme would take 20 years to be fully rolled out.[7]There are other issues too– no protection for OPD or medicine expenditure, lack of public health infrastructure, work force, quality, insurance frauds, excessive diagnostics and interventions by private sector, overcharging, etc.—which are hanging without any certain answers.What is certain,however, about the AB-NHPS is that it will channel huge public funds to the private coffers of the insurance companies and private hospital chains, with questionable gains to the target population.

(This article is also being published in the Economic and Political Weekly and is being published here with the permission of the author)

The post Dissecting Modicare: Benefitting Corporates Rather than the Target Population appeared first on SabrangIndia.

We, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a sovereign, democratic republic and to secure to all its citizens justice, social, economic and political;  liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; equality of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the nation; in our constituent assembly this  26th day of November, 1949, do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this constitution. [The original preamble of the Constitution of India]

In 1976, the 42^nd Amendment added two words to this, “secular” and “socialist”, so as to define a “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic”.
I would not add anything further — if the Indian state had internalised its vision; if the Indian state worked honestly for the realisation of this vision. This is the problem: the Indian state is the exact antithesis of this vision. 

It is not just a question of implementation. It is the duplicity, the doublespeak of India’s traditional ruling classes. When the colonial rulers left, handing over the reins of power to these native ruling classes, their “subdued traits” for over one millennium rose to the surface as they constructed the state. While their rhetoric spoke of the peoples’ interests, their actions were systematically against the people.   

The post-colonial state, notwithstanding the high praise for India’s constitution, is essentially the continuation of the colonial state. It adopted the entire colonial structure of governance. The constitution was written by a constituent assembly that represented barely 18 percent of Indians. Three-fourths of the constitution was the same as the existing colonial constitution, the India Act, 1935. The same bureaucratic structure, with the IAS and IPS down to the village level, persisted. It was the same army, the same courts, the same IPC and CrPC, the same governor and viceroy (called president) with their Raj Bhavans and Presidential palaces. Almost everything remained the same as they were in the colonial period.  How then could the state be different?  How could it turn into a sovereign democratic republic?  The colonial governance schema was, if anything, exacerbated by the addition of native Brahminic cunning. The ruling classes skilfully avoided the task of making India secular; they consecrated castes into the Constitution and drove their policies to shape India as the Indian big bourgeoisie desired.

India traversed this path of deceit until 1990. Thereafter, India openly adopted the neoliberal package perfected by the imperialist block. Neoliberalism, with its social Darwinist ethos, is ideologically anti-people; it denounces them as uncompetitive. Over the last three decades, it has completely marginalised left-liberal discourse and promoted right wing forces. In India, the right wing comes with its homegrown fascist ideology called Hindutva. Its phenomenal rise during these decades can be attributed, as in other countries, directly or indirectly, to a neoliberal policy regime.

The leader of this right wing is Narendra Modi, a demagogue with inimitable theatrical skills. In his long twelve-year rule in Gujarat, he convinced global capital that he would serve its interests better than anyone. During the last five years Modi has also provided a prototype of Hindu Rashtra — a euphemism for a mix of European fascism and Indian Brahminism. The Hindutva forces are aware that the contradictions between their accelerated neoliberalism and Hindutva may nullify their gains if their goal is not reached quickly. This need for speed drives their desperate, unscrupulous moves which are dismantling whatever little remains of a democratic India. A victory in the next elections would bring them to their goal — transforming India into a Hindu Rashtra.

At such a juncture, how do we imagine the kind of India we would like to have?
The foremost task is to save India in the 2019 elections. All democratic forces should set aside their differences and focus their energies on this single task. They should work towards bringing the self-centred opposition parties together so as to take on the BJP in the elections as an united opposition.

The India I would like to see is already spelt out in the Preamble of the Constitution — if it is honestly internalised. The noble ideals of the Preamble may not be realised in the short term. But they may be translated into certain basics that people need for their empowerment: education, healthcare, livelihood security, secure fundamental rights, rule of law and cultural diversity. Let me elaborate on each.

Education Our multi-layered education system, from the nursery to the highest level, excludes the lower strata from education of any consequence. Higher education is increasingly provided on the market principle. The government’s offer to WTO under GATS, means opening up the largest higher education market to global capital, without any social justice considerations (reservations, fee concessions, etc.) which are supposed to cause market inefficiencies. Free school education, supposedly provided by the government under the so called Right to Education, is hogwash. The government is already closing down schools on the pretext of rationalisation and handing them over to private players such as NGOs. This should stop. The state should provide education up to the age of 18 years – the universal definition of the child — under a common school system through free neighbourhood schools. Higher education too should be provided by the state or by institutions that can be regulated by the state. 

Healthcare India’s healthcare system ranks among the most privatised systems in the world today. And this in a country where over 80 per cent of the population barely subsists off their meagre earnings. Any minor illness pushes people into the debt trap; and these illnesses are frequent in an environment degraded by the lifestyles of the rich. Under Modi, budget allocations for health have gone down drastically. His health insurance scheme does not stand the test of basic arithmetic, and can be dismissed, like most of his other schemes, as propagandist. A credible system of free healthcare should be evolved for all needy people.

Livelihood security Providing means of livelihood could be translated into providing land to people who want to cultivate it, and helping in efficient farming, possibly in the cooperative mode. India is one of the most unequal countries in terms of land distribution, despite the trumpeting of land reforms in the early years after independence. 9.5 percent of households own up 56.4 percent of cultivable land. If household land is excluded, 41 percent of households are landless. Measures will also have to be devised to provide non-farm work in villages. In urban areas, this means providing jobs. Unemployment has grown to alarming proportions during the last five years. This has eroded the much-flaunted demographic dividend and turned it into a curse. I would like to see this problem solved on topmost priority.

Democratic Rights India’s constitution provides democratic rights to all individuals. But they are increasingly circumscribed by social inequalities as well as the draconian laws that have only multiplied with successive governments. The recent attack on rights activists and intellectuals, including me, have once again brought this reality to the fore. There is no place for such laws in a democracy; I would like to see them summarily annulled. No individual should be rendered defenceless before the state. The police cannot be given discretionary powers without accountability. There is no crime that cannot be dealt with by the ordinary law.

Rule of Law The Indian constitution assumes equality before law. But it is never realised in practice for several reasons, such as the intrinsic inequality in society and the expensive process of the law. The caste and community nexus, combined with access to money, can easily subvert constitutional equality: this is what Dalits experience day in and day out. Rule of law is the soul of democracy; hence I would like to see India striving in its direction.

Cultural Diversity Cultural diversity is the unique feature of India, and it has an intimate relationship with democracy. This is why we need to guard it zealously. But under Modi, this basic character of India has been damaged in many ways. Diversity is India, and the Hindutva forces, with their jingoist rhetoric and homogenisation drive, have been injuring it. No amount of GDP growth or developmental gains can compensate India’s loss of her very nature.

There are other obvious things, such as annihilating caste and attaining socialism and true secularism that I would like to see in India. At the present juncture, they may not be realisable, and so may need to be relegated beyond more immediate concerns. At the present juncture, this is what is paramount. I would not like to see India again under BJP rule. It has poisoned the population with its lethal venom of nationalism and religion.  It has deintellectualised the country.  It has pushed it into the dark alleys of obscurantism, corroded institutions with its saffronisation, undermined the democratic ethos and criminalised dissent.

Anand Teltumbde is a writer, political analyst, and Senior Professor and Chair Big Data Analytics at the Goa Institute of Management.

First Published on Indian Cultural Forum
 

The post Anand Teltumbde: “The foremost task is to save India in the 2019 elections…” appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: Indian Express

Umar could well have been dead but for his friends disorienting the killer. He would have just been added to the list of martyrs—Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, MalleshappaKalburgi, Shujaat Bukhari, GauriLankesh–who were gunned down by hindutva bigots. While Narendra Modi delivered his hysteric speech from the rampart of the Red Fort, trying to impress people with his characteristic hyperboles, half-truths and pure lies that reminded one of ‘India Shining’ campaign of Vajpayee’s NDA that had teased Indian voters to punish it for a decade, he did not express an iota of remorse over the jungle raj he created within just four years.

Who’s the Mastermind?

The next day Umar tweeted, also identifying the person who tried to shoot him. He was caught in CC TV camera. On 16 August,two men—Darwesh Shapur and Naveen Dala–claimed responsibilityfor the attack as “a gift of independence”by circulating a video on WhatsApp. The police that display amazing intelligence in discovering whatever documents required in establishing non-existent trail in admittedly ultra-secret Maoist network, hadpictures of the assailants their identities, and posting on WhatApp but could not reach anywhere. As I write,sevendays after the incident and fourdays after the availability of above information, there is no arrest.

The point, however, is not the police, whose credibility is an enduringquestion mark, but the temerity of the assailants to publicly challenge institutions that reveals brazen impunity they enjoy under the currentdispensation. After this shameful incident, the troll with which the hindutva camp celebrated it is perhaps more revealing:“Really condemn the unsuccessful attempt of shooting!! Try lynching him next time… This kind of anti national elements must be eliminated as soon as possible…”; “Khalid hum sharminda Hain..tum jaise abhi bhi zinda hain.”[1] Are these not abetments to murder? Are these people not identifiable? The police that threatened ArunFereira’s friends who tried to testify to his innocence when he was arrested in 2009 with Maoist tag, that they too would be booked as Maoists[2], simplyignore such cognizable crime. This is not the first time that hate speech has gone brazen and unpunished on social media. When GauriLankesh was shot dead last year, along with condolences and outrage, social media erupted with hate, with many openly celebrating her killing. One recalls some Nikhil Dadhich writing, “Ekkutiyakuttekimautkyamarisarepilleek sur me bilbilarahehai” or some Aditya Jung Bahadur Rana writing, “..I hail who did that [killing Gauri]..salute them. Now plz don’t stop at that. Start shooting all those like her & d anti-nationals …” Needless to say, no action was taken against any of these culprits. 

This is still around the symptom and not the disease. Even if the man who pulled the trigger is booked, the real culprits will still be at large. After all they are the creations of the motivated propaganda by certain hate channels like Republic, Times Now and Zee TV which shamelessly act as the BJP’s propaganda arm. The anchors like Arnab Goswami, the court jester of jingoism created the hashtag of “anti-national” and “tukdetukde gang” for Umar without a shred of evidence is singularly responsible for this attack. His imitators like Navika Kumar, Rahul Shivshankar and Anand Narasimhanareare accomplices in the crime. Gaurav Bhatia, BJP’s national spokesperson, is the instigator of crime when he says on television, “Umar Khalid ketukdekarenge’” The police that overlooked his demand for protection in the wake of death threatsis an abettor. Umar issued a statement on this attack wrote:
This hate campaign against me has been going on for last two years. There is no evidence, only lies. There has been no charge-sheet, only media-trial….. BJP leaders openly support those who say they will do “tukdetukde” of the country…The real culprits were people breeding an ‘atmosphere of hatred, bloodlust and fear’ from their seats of power and those providing a complete impunity for ‘assassins and mob lynchers.’[3]

Along the Murder Trail
To the extent the attack on Umar bears similarity with the previous murders, the tentacles of the killer outfit that operated in Maharashtra-Goa-Karnataka appears to have reached the North. Narendra Dabholakar, who crusaded against superstition through his organization- Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti (ANIS) struggled to get the anti-superstition bill passed in Maharahstra Assembly. It was opposed mainly by the orthodox Hindu outfits like Hindu JanajagrutiSamiti (HJS), a sister organization of the SanatanSanstha, a Goa-based extreme right-wing Hindu organisation headed by one Dr. Jayant Athawale. Two days before Dabholkar was gunned down on 20 August 2013, a caricature, published in SanatanSanstha mouthpiece, SanatanPrabhat depicted ANIS as a demon being slain by the HJS, Hindutvawadi outfits and Warkariorganisations. It was captioned “DharmdrohiKaydaBargalala (Anti-Religion Bill falls flat)” It clearly portended what followed.A day after, Athvalewrote in SanatanPrabhat, “It’s God’s grace to die in a manner in which Dabholkar died. It [instant death] is better than dying of a prolonged illness or suffering from pain induced by surgical procedures.,” Although these were clear enough clues, politicians rhetorically spoke of banning the organization but not to interrogate Athawale for his suggestive remarks. On 16 February 2015, Govind Pansare and his wife were fired upon, killing Pansare and paralyzing his wife. Two more murders would follow: Kalburgi’s on 30 August 2015 and GauriLankesh’s on 5 September 2017.
 
The SanatanSanstha appears to be the anchor for all these murders. Sanstha founded in 1999with a goal to establish Hindu Rashtra openly professes slaying of evildoers and had a systematic time table to reach its goal in 2023, which strikingly coheres with RSS versions. It terms the minorities, especially Christians and Muslims as the biggest obstacle and speaks of need to defeat even police and military to build a Hindu rashtra.[4] It considers “Violence towards evildoers is non-violence” and not to slay (murder) an evildoer as sin.[5]A list of 46 such evildoers was recovered by Karnataka SIT from Amol Kale, the mastermind of Gauri’s murder that contained the names of many progressive persons including leading Goan writer Damodarmauzo, provoking an on-going agitation in Goa to oust it. The expose of the Sanstha even in public domain is replete with gory details every bit of which is unlawful, which could shame the worst terrorist but none could touch it. Can this happen without blessings of power?

Hate Infrastructure
Much of the exposure of the murder network was accomplished by the Karnataka police but Maharashtra police groped in dark although most of the crime network existed on its soil and first of its crimes took place there. It is only when last month an exasperated bench of justices SC Dharamadhikari and Bharati Dangre of the Bombay High Court reprimanded the CBI as well as the government that the ATS raids in various places exposed the hate infrastructure of the hindutva forces. In four raids carried out in Nallasopara and Pune since August 9 this year, the ATS has allegedly recovered 20 crude bombs, a large cache of firearms and ammunition, including 16 country-made pistols, five air guns, ten pistol barrels, seven pistol slides, nine partially assembled pistols, 30 live cartridges, six pistol magazines, three partially-made magazines and springs and triggers for firearms; gelatin sticks, 26 detonators, safety fuse wires, 150 grams of white powder wrapped in newspaper, two bottles labelled ‘poison’, batteries, soldering equipment, PCB circuits, relay switches, a hand-drawn partial circuit diagram, circuit drawings and printouts on the composition of explosives. Apparently, and as ATS reported, this cache is not meant just to kill individuals but to hatch bigger conspiracies to polarize people to achieve their nefarious goal of hindurashtra.[6]

All the arrested people—Vaibhav Raut, Sharad Kalaskar, Sudhanva Gondhalekar and Shrikant Pangarkar—who are arrested recently or Sameer Gaikwad, VirendraTawde who were arrested earlier by Maharashtra ATS or Amol Kale, ParshuramWaghmare, and all others who were arrested by Karnataka ATS have been associated with hardline Hindutva outfits operating in Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka such as the SanatanSanstha, its affiliate Hindu JanjagrutiSamiti (HJS), SambhajiBhide’s Shri Shivpratishthan Hindustan and PramodMuthalik’s Sri Ram Sene, which are all ideological babies of the hydra-headed organization called RSS. It is said that Athawale of SanatanSanstha hypnotizes people into human robots to execute whatever is tasked to them. But the RSS has over the year hypnotized gullible masses of people into Hindu automatons who turn go rakshaks to lynch innocent people to death and come out on street in thousands in support of a rogue criminal as they did in protest against the arrest of VaibhavRaut in Nalasopara.

It is this venom that benumbed masses into enduring personal hardships unleashed by demonetization, blinded them to the destruction of the nation with jingoistic nationalism and made them celebrate lies as truth on to the path of self-destruction. It is the same venom that actuated them to brutally beat up Prof Sanjai Kumar in Motihari, Bihar just for commenting irreverently about Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his facebook page. It is this venom that spilled out in the form of tweets in the wake of unprecedented human tragedy as in Kerala: “Please donate to keep Kerala Hindus. Christians and Muslims worldwide raising lots of money to help mainly their own people and agendas” This tweet by the US-based Rajiv Malhotra, was retwitted in the thousands in India including the likes of Mohandas Pai.[7]
 

This hate republic is out to destroy India!

This article has also been published in the Economic and Political Weekly and is being reproduced here with the author’s permission

The post Umar Khalid and the Hate Republic appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Anand Teltumbde

Image Courtesy: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

To,
Mr Mukund Padmanabhan,
The Hindu,
Chennai.

Dear Sir,
A friend whatsapped me a clip of a news item published in The Hindu of today instant under the heading “Activist held meets abroad: police” in which in reference to me the following lines are written:

“The arrested accused claimed they needed to stoke violence and tension and maximize the death of a Dalit youth during the Bhima Koregaon riots, Mr Singh claimed, while reading out from a purported letter written by Mr. Anand Teltumbde to Mr Wilson in January this year. According to Mr. Singh the letter said, “It is time we carried out a big strike as is being suggested by VV (Varavara Rao) and Surendra,” referring to 80 vehicles burnt on the instruction of Mr Rao.

I am stunned to see such white lies being spread by the police to malign me. I state that while I know Rona since his JNU days and thereafter off and on as an activist, but never had I written to him even an email, leave apart letter. It is distressing that the state stoops to such lows to malign a defenceless citizen like me, who even in the face of it could not be connected with such bizarre activities. I have been an alumnus of IIM Ahmadabad, and had my entire career in corporate world ending with Managing Director and CEO of a holding company. Even, thereafter, when IIT Kharagpur invited me to join its faculty, I taught Business management for over five years. This year I launched India’s first Big Data Analytics programme in management. Can any sane person link up this background of mine with the bizarre stories police is churning out through so called letters.

Already, in having a raid on my house in the campus they have ruined my image before my students and jeopardized their careers as they in some way are linked with my own reputation.  My family, my vast friend circle, my corporate contacts, everything is devastated with this false campaign the police launched for whatever intension.

I heard from some journalists that the police spokesman in his press conference yesterday referred to my foreign visits that I collected money. I am a reputed scholar and go on invitations of universities abroad, and all these tours are well documented. Such kind of deliberate falsehood and fabrication by the state agent is dangerous for this country’s future to say the least.

May I request you not to give space to such unsubstantiated and bizarre police stories in the paper like The Hindu, which readers still see as getting them the truth.

Best regards,
Dr Anand Teltumbde
Senior Professor and Chair- Big Data Analytics

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

The post Letter to The Hindu appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
I had just woken up somewhat late, tired of late night arrival of the flight. Just saw missed calls from Prof Ajit Parulekar, who is a colleague and director of Goa Institute of Management where I work a Senior Professor and Chair, Big Data Analytics. He shocked me by informing that the Pune Police reached the campus and are looking for you. He said he is rushing to the campus and would let me know the developments.

I had come on an official meeting at 10 am and hence I had to rush for it. By the time I was through with the meeting there were spate of calls on phone which was kept on silent mode. By that time all the TV channels were flashing the news of nationwide raids on the houses of activists and intellectuals, and arrests of some of them. I called up my wife who said that our house also was opened and searched according to the TV reports. She was obviously scared and already booked the tickets for both of us at 3.45 pm. I asked her to hold on and consulted a lawyer friend who advised that the house needs to be checked by one of us for whether the police planted any object in the house with an alibi of search. He also suggested that a compliant needed to be filed at the Police station to that effect. As I had some worked planned at Mumbai, I asked my wife to cancel my ticket and to go to Goa. She reached Goa and took the help of a lawyer friend and filed the police complaint.

Later, when I called the director and asked him how the key of the house was given in our absence, he explained that before he reached the campus the police had done everything. They met him and handed over the Panchnama, the scan of which he mailed me through his secretary. He said that he read it and there appears to be nothing in it.

One of my colleagues, Prof Krishna Laddha, senior professor, who happened to meet the police, narrated whatever he knew. The police had threatened the security guard to get the key and asked him to open the door. Prof Krishna asked them that they should wait for the director to come before they opened the door. They rudely retorted him that the person accompanying them has the authority to issue a search warrant. He informed that the house was opened by the security person. One or two police officials along with security person and a videographer entered the house and came out within four to five minutes and asked the security person to lock the door. There being important meeting in the office, Prof Laddha left and did not know whether the house was opened again.

I spoke with Prof Vishnu, who stayed opposite my house. He narrated similar things but said that the eco clean lady saw some plastic box being taken away from the house.

My wife, after reaching Goa spoke with security and got the horrific description of the entire process. In the morning hours, a police van accompanied by two police vehicles gate crashed into the campus. They took away all the cell phones of security personnel and disconnected landlines. They enquired about me and picked up one security person from the main gate for showing the house. At the second gate they repeated the same, taking away all cell phones and disconnecting the phone line, and came over to our house. They threatened the security guard to get the keys. He brought the duplicate keys and the process of opening the house took place as described above.

The entire process is conducted as though I was a dreaded terrorist or a criminal. The police could have enquired with me whatever they wanted to, either by sending a police official or calling me to the Police Station. But the entire intention is to create an atmosphere of terror and project that I had already done some dreaded crime. All my information is in public domain. I have been a meritorious student all through, passing through prestigious institutes of the country including hallowed Indian Institute of management (IIM) Ahmedabad. Did my doctorate in Cybernetics and have worked my entire career in corporate sector, rising to be the Executive Director of Bharat Petroleum Corporation and subsequently Managing Director and CEO of Petronet India Limited, a holding company in private sector.  Unusually, while living my corporate life, I published over 20 research papers in prestigious journals. After my corporate stint, I was invited to be Professor in another hallowed institute of the country, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur where I taught business management courses for more than five years before coming over to Goa Institute of Management in July 2016 as Senior Management. I head institutes Big Data Analytics program, and launched a post-graduation course this year, the first of its kind in the country.

 This professional life has been engaging enough but with the intention to contribute towards creating a just society, I have been making my intellectual contributions by way of writing and speaking in the public for more the past three decades. Through this process, I have written 26 books, which are published in India and abroad by prestigious publishing houses such as Zed books, Routledge, and Penguin Random House. Beside I have written hundreds of articles along with a regular column, ‘Margin Speak’ in the prestigious Economic and Political Weekly. All my writings get regularly translated and published in most Indian languages and even abroad. Most of these articles are available on the net and all in public domain. I have delivered hundreds of lectures across India and abroad. I was twice invited by US universities for lecture tours. I have been doing this role of public intellectual for all these years, winning me several laurels, awards and honorary doctorates from universities.

I have thus reputation as one of the outstanding scholars in my own field of management; as a professional, I have my reputation as CEO level corporate executive, as a writer, I have reputation of being one of the most sought after authors; as a public intellectual, I have reputation of being one of the most sought after person in the entire country.

I have been an activist since my student days, as a student leader, and later as civil rights activist. In course of time, I got associated with many organizations, none of which advocate violence or do unlawful things. For instance, I am General Secretary, Committee for Protection of Democratic rights, Executive Member, Coordination of Democratic Rights Organizations, Presidium Member, Alol India Forum for rights to Education.

Of course, in my role as a public intellectual, I have been critical of the policies of the government which I voiced in not a superficial way but with scholastic discipline. I am definitely critical of the present regime but unlike many others, fault the entire post-colonial construction of the state for its rise.

As for insinuation of my connection with Bhima-Koregaon or Elgar Parishad, I happened to write a critique of the Bhima Koregaon episode published in The Wire [https://thewire.in/caste/myth-bhima-koregaon-reinforces-identities-seeks-transcend] incurring the wrath of many dalits all over the country. As regards Maoist, I had written books (for instance Anti-Imperialism and Annihilation of Caste, Introduction to Ambedkar’s India and  Communism, published by Left Word, and even Republic of Caste published by Navayana, criticizing their practice and reliance on violence.

I, like many other people who have been targeted by people, was not even in the conference. With what stretch of imagination, could I have even been suspected to have connection with these things? The entire episode is based on a letter police produced, the authenticity of which is far from established. Many people have already expressed serious doubt about its veracity. And on this basis, the police are targeting summarily all intellectuals in the country. They are misusing the draconian law like UAPA to terrorize people into silence by targeting select intellectuals and activists.
I urge the judiciary to take note of the monumental harassment and torture innocent persons like me is pushed to endure without any iota of wrongdoing on our part.

I also urge the people of my country to judge for themselves from the foregoing whether I deserve the treatment that I made to meet.
 
Dr Anand Teltumbde
BE (Mech), PGDM (IIM, Ahmedbad), Ph D (Cybernetics), FIE (I), FACS (USA), D.  Litt (Hon)
Ex-Executive Director, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, Mumbai
Ex-Managing Director & CEO, Petronet India Limited, Mumbai
Ex-Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
Senior Professor & Chair- Big Data Analytics, Goa Institute of Management, Goa
 

Related:

Pune Police forcibly detains activist Sudha Bharadwaj
State Crushing Dissent Again!
Sudha Bharadwaj’s Remarkable Journey: From Trade Unionist and Lawyer to ‘Urban Naxal’
 

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Image Courtesy: Hindustan Times

Narendra Modi who came to power in 2014 with a blitzkrieg against the “corrupt” Congress laced with the support of global capital and by mesmerizing people with his high rhetoric of achhe din and clean India, both literally and metaphorically, has only dirtied every aspect of our public life over the last three years that may be difficult to recover for many years to come.

Socially, the emboldening of the saffron brigade to enact its fascist antics unleashing terror on minorities and spreading communal poison; politically, systematic erosion of democratic norms, undermining of parliamentary decorum, and saffronization of institutions; economically, devastation of the informal sector due to irrational decisions like demonetization, hasty implementation of GST, and reversal of the growth trend in economy have been the hallmark of his rule. Now that people are slowly waking up to the reality from their state of inebriation with his theatrical oratory in the run up to the 2019 elections, reflected in the decline in his party’s performance in recent elections, there is a clear indication of the revival of strategy of communally polarizing people in the name of Ram Mandir. The country is going to face further fouling in coming years.

Dirt of communalism
It is well known that Ram Mandir, Article 370 on Kashmir and Pakistan (“the enemy”) have been the three main issues, which propelled the BJP from a party from fringes to be a formidable party in power. But it really flew off with the Ram Mandir issue which received fillip when the Rajiv Gandhi government enthusiastically ordered the opening of locks of the Babri Mosque within an hour of the Faizabad judge’s ruling on 1 February 1986. His strategy was to undercut the BJP’s Ram temple campaign, which was launched since 1984 but it badly backfired as the Sangh Parivar quickly seized the initiative. It gave BJP handsome dividend in terms of pushing up its tally of just two seats in 1984 to 86 seats in 1989.

Enthused by this success, a rath yatra was undertaken by Lal Krishna Advani, the then president of BJP from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya on 25 September 1990. If Pradeepsinh Jadeja, minister of state for home, is to be believed the architect of this vile yatra was none other than Modi. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/modi-architect-of-advanis-rath-yatra-gujarat-minister-pradeepsinh-jadeja/

Advani’s arrest on 23 October at Samastipur by Lalu Prasad Yadav government, consequent frenzy of the Kar sevaks assembled at Ayodhya, firing upon them by the Mulayam Singh government in UP on 30 October eventually led to demolition of Babari mosque on 6 December 1992. It sparked off riots across the country, particularly in cities like Mumbai, Surat, Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Delhi, Bhopal, resulting in over 2,000 deaths, mainly Muslims and loss of property of crores of rupees. A significant contribution to this build-up was in butchering of 2000 Muslims under Modi’s watch in Gujarat in 2002 in a sequel to this mandir issue.

The BJP gained hugely from these communal carnages. Yatras became BJP’s special purpose vehicle to whip up communal frenzy among people. The second yatra that followed in its wake was Ekta Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir led by the then BJP chief Murli Manohar Joshi, which ended with a handful of BJP leaders, including Modi, who was the convener of the yatra, unfurling timidly the tricolor at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk on Republic Day in 1992 amid tight security.

Another Yatra, “Rashtriya Ekta Yatra”, was planned in 2011 starting from Kolkata by the BJP’s Yuva Morcha to hoist the national flag in Srinagar was thwarted by Omar Abdullah government in Jammu and Kashmir as it could derail the peace process that was on then.

As it gained in strength, the BJP maintained strategic silence over these issues and instead projected development as their election issue. It was required to have a wider appeal and also to convince its patrons in global capital. Now that it finds itself on shakier grounds with the reality dawning on people about its non-performance, it appears to be resorting to its old game of communal polarization to consolidate its constituency.  

Ram Mandir, Once More
BJP’s global patrons, however, may not favour the idea and hence it appears to distance itself from the 41-day long Ram Rajya Yatra, which was to be flagged off earlier by the UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath. It was ultimately launched by a BJP MP at Ayodhya on February 13 on a 6,000-km long journey to Rameshwaram in Tamil Nadu. The yatra is said to be organised by an unknown Maharashtra-based organization — ‘Sree Rama Dasa Misison Universal Society’ — supported by two Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) affiliates, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Muslim Rashtriya Manch.
It is meant to “create awareness” about ‘Ramrajya’ and the Ram temple. The question is, do they need yatras to do that. BJP being in power at the centre and most states, including those the yatra passes through, it could very well demonstrate what Ram Rajya (welfare state by RSS/Modi’s definition) is like. If anything, its rule may be said to be its exact antithesis.

BJP’s political agenda is visible to everyone: as many as 224 Lok Sabha constituencies are being covered by the yatra in the six states, viz., Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharastra, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, not the least, the imminent assembly elections in Karnataka due in April. Although, the BJP government kept safe distance from the yatra, the Union Home Ministry has written to police chiefs of states through which the yatra will pass, asking them to facilitate its progress. It is interesting that the government that routinely denies permission to activists holding a small public meeting, leave apart a rally, without any rhyme or reason, has not only allowed this yatra, despite its potential threat to law and order, but also has mandated its machinery to facilitate it.

The demands of this Ram Rajya Yatra also are revealing: re-establishment of Ram Rajya, inclusion of the Ramayana in syllabus of schools and colleges, week offs on Thursday instead of Sundays and a declaration of a day as Vishwa Hindu Diwas. There is another angle to this project, which is that the Hindutva forces want to have an out-of-court settlement of the Ramjanmbhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute that is coming up for final hearing before the Supreme Court from March 14. The yatra can pressure the Muslim groups to agree to it as the verdict of the court could not be relied upon.

It may be interesting to see what this Ram Rajya is. This concept was first used by Gandhi for luring the masses into his freedom movement by promising that once Independence arrived, they will establish Ram Rajya. Gandhi, in his characteristic style, went on changing its interpretation, later dissociating it from the Hindu religion. He wrote on 26 February 1947, “Let no one commit the mistake of thinking that Ramrajya means a rule of Hindus. My Ram is another name for Khuda or God. I want Khuda Raj which is the same thing as the Kingdom of God on Earth.” The Gujarat chief minister Modi explained that Ram Rajya meant a “welfare state”, but all that he did there was dispossessing common people for satiating the unquenchable greed of the likes of Ambanis and Adanis.

Ram Rajya in practice appears to have served as rhetoric for all political parties to appeal to the gullible Hindus. The late Rajiv Gandhi had inaugurated the Congress party’s 1989 election campaign from the vicinity of Ayodhya with a promise to usher in Ram Rajya as his son does today. Ram Rajya is uncritically taken as ideal rule as described in Ramayana.

In the Sixth Book of Valmiki Ramayana, (Lankakanda), [critical edition (Varoda: Oriental Institute) canto 116 verses 84-90, vulgate (Delhi: Parimal Publications edition) 128.99-106] inter alia says, “All that is, Brahmins (the priest-class), Kshatriyas (the warrior-class), Vaiśyas (the class of merchants and agriculturists), and Sudras (the servant class)] were performing their own duties, satisfied with their own work, and bereft of greed.” This is the typical varna order that Gandhi believed in and our rulers would like to have. But what about the Dalits, Adivasis, Shudras and non-Hindus, who together constitute vast majority and would surely say ‘No’ to such a Ram Rajya?

Why No Outcry
When it comes to resist BJP’s Hindutva, there is no political opposition. As a matter of fact, there is no opposition party in India; all parties are united in broad anti-people alliance. In the present instance, except for the two parliamentary communist parties (CPI and CPM), there is not even a whisper of opposition from the formal political channel. Even their opposition is limited to timid statements like the yatra would lead to communal polarization as though they expected something different from a communal party. The Trinamool Congress in West Bengal which was being accused of ‘appeasing minorities’, because Muslims are relatively more populous in the state, also recently organised a massive Brahmin convention, the ‘Brahmin and Purohit Sammelan’. It was organised by a senior party leader and Trinamool’s Birbhum district president Anubrata Mondal. All the priests who attended the convention were gifted a copy of Gita, a shawl and pictures of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, and his wife Sarada Devi. All parties have similar skeletons in their cupboards. The Congress, which is expected to play oppositional role, becomes a comic competitor with its soft Hindutva in its desperation to show that it is not anti-Hindu. The manner in which the Congress president Rahul Gandhi is being projected as a janevu dhari Brahmin should be condemned but it sells in ‘secular’ India.
 
During the recent Gujarat elections Rahul Gandhi had visited 27 temples to stress that he too is a Hindu. The Congress believes that the 18 seats it won in the constituencies where these temples were situated, wresting 10 from the BJP, was due to his temple run. It is neither ashamed to see that in such a surcharged anti-BJP atmosphere as existed in the state it could not wrest power from the BJP, nor does it realize that it can never compete against BJP on the Hindutva platform. Those who bought Rahul Gandhi’s soft Hindutva today, will soon demand a hardline stance from him. It is a dangerous development which would only hasten the establishment of the Hindu Rashtra in India.
 
While it is true that electoral success is driven by religious and caste considerations rather than social or public service records, it is not the natural order. The ruling classes had deliberately intrigued to conserve castes and communities in the Constitution and cheated people on secularism as on many other things. Dharma nirapekshata is not secularism; it is a ploy to preserve dominance of the majority religion, which is what we see happened in India. Had India been truly secular, we would not have to face the specters of the Hindu Rashtra.

This article was first published by the Economic and Political Weekly.
 

The post Return of the Ram Mandir appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: Economic Times
 
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Maharashtra Police had apprehended one Sameer Gaikwad, a Sadhak of the Sanatan Sanstha on September 15, 2015 for the murder of Pansare and filed a charge sheet against him on December 14, 2015. In Dabholkar’s case, the CBI, brought in following directions from the Bombay High Court, had arrested one Dr Virendra Tawde, an ENT specialist and a member of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS), a splinter of the Sanatan Sanstha in Pune in June 2016 on charges of arranging weapons and logistics. Recently (on June 17, 2017), Gaikwad managed to get bail from the Kolhapur district and sessions court, which was rejected earlier by the same court as well as by the High Court, and effectively demolished the hope of getting justice to these martyrs. His two accomplices, Vinay Pawar and Sarang Akolkar, both Sanstha members are still at large. There is absolutely nothing happening in Kalburgi’s case. The Karnataka government, as though to cover up its inaction, has now given a state funeral to Gauri.
 
While the world is aghast at the impunity with which these murders are being committed, the prime minister does not feel worth his while even to say a word of concern. On the contrary, he follows the bunch of hindutva bigots who openly celebrated killing of Gauri, abusing her in filthiest terms on social media. Some of them are even rewarded with plum posts within the BJP. As a matter of fact, perhaps there is nothing indecent or vulgar when it comes to the partisan behavior of the Modi government. All the culprits of the Gujarat carnage and the accused in several acts of the Hindu terror stand acquitted and on the contrary, those like Teesta Setalvad are harassed and the late Hemant Karkare maligned. As this bullet trail continues unhindered pushing India into dark abyss of bigotry and backwardness, Modi has an ego trip on a bullet train to project India’s forwardness. What is common to both these seemingly dissimilar acts is the impunity and unscrupulousness of the current ruling dispensation.
 

Terror Tracks
 
Why did they kill Gauri? She was surely opposed to the communal politics and the cultural mumbo-jumbo of the Hindutva forces but that is unlikely to have been the sole reason because there were scores of others who were more intensely opposed to them than her or previous three in the trail. All of them –rather– reflected a liberal outlook and still spoke unambiguously against the hindutva overtures. This could communicate to the common people more effectively than the radical voice of the diehard opponent of the hindutva forces. It is meant not just to eliminate an individual but to terrorise many others who might follow in their footsteps. Being the least of the suspects, these individuals, moreover, become relatively soft targets.
 
The outfit that is linked by the investigation is the Goa-based Sanatan Sanstha run by a Ericksonian hypnotherapist Jayant Athawale, who is said to transform his subjects into human automatons to make them commit any crime. The Sadhaks of this Sanstha were arrested earlier in four bombings in Vashi, Thane, Panvel (all in 2007) and Goa (in 2009). The Maharashtra ATS had filed a 1,020-page charge sheet against six of them and others of Sanstha affiliate, the HJS, for these blasts in 2008. However, Ranjit Patil,  Maharashtra’s minister of state for home (The Asian Age, October  8, 2015), the Karnataka CID, Mohammed, Akram (The New Indian Express, July 22, 2016), and none other than chief minister of Goa, Laxmikant Parsekar (Times of India, September 24, 2015) and Minister of state for home for Government of India spoke out against banning the Sanatan Sanstha.
 
Why ? Largely because the investing agency had established that the weapon used (7.65 mm country-made pistols) and the modus operandi of all these murders was similar and directly and circumstantially pointed to the people connected with the Sanatan Sanstha. The CID in Karnataka is also on the lookout for Rudra Patil, another Sanatan sadhak who is an accused in the 2010 Goa blast case. Athavale, however, remains untouched although an array of crazy violent rants of his books and proclamations of “war for righteousness” can be directly linked to these heinous acts.

His publications have been openly exhorting its members that violence against durjans (evil) is not actually violence at all. His timetable for a successful Dharmayudh, against “evil-doers” (rationalists, Muslims, Christians and Hindus who don’t follow their dictates) in order to establish a “Divine Kingdom” runs as follows: 1997-1999: Impressing the minds of people that destroying evil doers is part of spiritual practice. 2000-2006: Actually performing the act of destroying evil doers. 2007-2022: Learning how to run Divine Kingdom. And 2023-2025: Commencement of the Divine Kingdom. One wonders whether the coherence of this time line with what Modi and his cohorts have begun speaking of 2022-23 just incidental? These details had come into the open through a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed against the Sanstha by Vijay Rokade in 2011, much before Dabholkar was murdered. While it was heard until 2013, since then, it has not come up for hearing.
 
High speed Hera-Pheri
 
While the bullet trail eliminated select individuals, the bullet train, born out of Modi’s megalomaniac obsession, will saddle entire coming generations with huge debt. Ironically, the bullet train is announced in the backdrop of 193 deaths from train derailments in 2016-17, the highest in a decade.[1] As many as 1,394 train accidents were reported over the last decade, of which 51% or 708 were due to derailments. They are mainly caused by excessive traffic and neglect of investment in maintenance of rail infrastructure. The other priority sectors like education and healthcare have accumulated huge backlogs and are further made to suffer in Modi era. The healthcare spend came down to 1.2% of the GDP, the lowest in a decade as against the global average of 5.4%. Education likewise stagnated at 2.7% of GDP, with increasing push to privatization. The agrarian distress is further deepened due to continued starving of investment. In such a context, the profligate idea of having a bullet train, relevant at the most to 4% of people should be nationally distasteful. But it is being justified widely including the bankrupt opposition that lost its coherence against Modi’s onslaught.

The cost of the Mumbai-Ahmadabad High Speed Railway (HSR) project is estimated at $17 billion (Rs 1.1 lakh crore) of which Rs 88,000 is coming as Yen-denominated loan from Japan at 0.1 % interest rate, with moratorium of 15 years payable over 50 years period. Obviously, Rs 22,000 crores is to be contributed by India to create this white elephant. This money could have been better spent to improve safety of railways for the average Indian or by providing with 140,000 bio-toilets in 55,000 trains to do away the national shame of having manual scavengers in the employ of the government. The government of India — that paradoxically spends crores of rupees on Amitabh Bachchan –to canvass for Swacchh Bharat is actually an offender by employing persons into manual scavenging an act that is now illegal after the enactment of the 2013 law. This once again, exposes how the BJP can jeopardise national interests to score brownie points for its petty electoral gains.

Railway Projects Supported by the World Bank in China[2]
 

 
Any public mega project of such magnitude has to have a competitive bidding backed by a feasibility study. Neither have been conducted for Modi’s bullet train. The BJP shamelessly dodges the question by saying that Japanese being the smartest investors must have done performed a efasibility study before investing into this project! The study by the professors of IIM, Ahmedabad had almost concluded that the project was infeasible. Prima facie, the CAG should object to it as irregular.
 
Modi bragged to the public that it was coming free. Really?
It is well known that the Chinese have an edge in HSR technology at the least cost. As the data in table shows that its unit cost varied between $ 18.66 to 13.5 Million per km. As against this, the cost of the Japanese bullet train works out to $ 27.44 Million per km. That means the investments are inflated by a factor of 1.45 to 2. Indians have been misled by the low interest rate but they are not told that the Japanese interest rate has been sub-zero. Therefore, from Japanese viewpoint 0.1% interest is quite profitable. The effective rate, moreover, would be substantially high in view of the expected appreciation of Yen against Rupee. For example, the yen appreciated by 64% against the rupee in the last ten years (from Ye-Rupee exchange of 0.3517 on September 17, 2007 to 0.5786 on 15 September, 2017.) With the Japanese economy expected to look up, this appreciation may still be higher. Additionally, Japanese strategic interests need to be taken into account in selling their “Shinkansen” for which there has not been any taker for years. Notwithstanding the technology transfer embedded in the agreement, there shall be demand for their wares for many years to come. It may be simply summed up as follows: We bought a thing of questionable value to us for Rs 88 that may be just worth 44 spending Rs 22 upfront to be paid for by future generations with an uncertain escalation.
 
Modi maintains a holy silence over the bullet trail of Hindutva fringe as though in tacit approval of their project of  slaying ‘demons’ to establish the kingdom of angels, a la hindu rashtra, but turns very vocal over ‘development’ that is rightly depicted by the bullet train syndrome. Both are hugely injurious to the people of India.
 
(A version of this also appears in the Economic and Political Weekly  has been shared with us by the author)

The post While the Bullet of Hatred Trail Kills, the Bullet Train Cripples Generations in Debt appeared first on SabrangIndia.

-B R Ambedkar[1]

 

Image: India Today

In the wake of a horrific tragedy in Gorakhpur that devoured 71 children within just five days for the lack of oxygen in the local BRD hospital, highlighting the grave reality of India’s healthcare system, prime minister Modi proudly unfurled the tricolor on the 71^st independence day and delivered his self-congratulatory speech from the ramparts of the red fort.

Notwithstanding his characteristic half truths and pure lies thrown on the face of 125 crores countrymen with an élan becoming of a hero from Bollywood, it was portentous that after 70 years of so called freedom the Indian people have to meekly endure such deception from their prime representative about development, a euphemism for gratification of the rich at the cost of a vast majority of poor.

Development without swaraj, for which people had primarily battled against the British and became martyrs, was meaningless. Swaraj meant freedom, self-rule that subsumed access to education, healthcare, livelihood security, democratic and cultural rights, so that the people could enjoy Swaraj in reality. Seventy years of systematic deprivation of all those covered under the boasts of development has amounted to no less than roguery of the ruling classes.  

The Fragility of Freedom
The ultranationalists at the helm who claim millions of years’ antiquity to their claims of ‘Indian’ (read Hindu) nationhood may not care for the fact that India itself was a gift of the British rule and hence there is no question of any nation in that name existing before. The idea of the nation emerged during the freedom struggle in which none of these worthies or their forefathers took part. This incipient emotion itself was due to political and administrative unification of the Indian subcontinent made possible and sustainable by the modern means of communication and transportation under the British rule. These changes effectively destroyed the static balance of socio-economic life of localised formations called village communities in India, setting into motion a process of nation-making. This process, as our founding fathers warned, was to be carried on by the independent India by pursuing the policies for achieving ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ and not for any jingoist Pakistan bashing or singing of anthems or songs. It is paradoxical that those who make such claims have effectively terminated this process for their political agenda to make this country a hindu rashtra.

As a matter of fact, there is little in Indian history to speak of the capacity of the ruling elites in India. Their conduct was always characterised by extreme self-centeredness and myopic self interests. They often betrayed people for their selfish gains and gave this country a long history of subjugation by the outside invaders. Cheating people has been part and parcel of their class/caste character. It is therefore many people were skeptical about their capacity to manage India after transfer of power. Winston Churchill, that rank colonialist but contrary to his projection not an India hater, had very perceptibly commented about them during the debate on the Indian Independence Bill in British Parliament:

 If Independence is granted to India, power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low calibre and men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles. A day would come when even air and water would be taxed in India.

There is a controversy over Churchill had ever said these words, but whosoever did it very aptly describes what happened during the last 70 years of Indian independence. 

The second is from our own C Rajagopalachari, who is counted among the founding fathers. He said:
We all ought to know that Swaraj will not at once or, I think, even for a long time to come, be better government or greater happiness for the people. Elections and their corruptions, injustice, and the power and tyranny of wealth, and inefficiency of administration, will make a hell of life as soon as freedom is given to us. Men will look regretfully back to the old regime of comparative justice, and efficient, peaceful, more or less honest administration…. Hope lies only in universal education by which right conduct, fear of god, and love, will be developed among the citizens from childhood. It is only if we succeed in this that Swaraj will mean happiness. Otherwise it will mean the grinding injustices and tyranny of wealth.

Even Gandhi, the progenitor of the idea, was himself worried that Swaraj had the danger of becoming a mobocracy.

Nothing Has Changed
The independence came ill-omened, bloodied with partition. The Congress Party, despite its transformation into a mass movement by the master strategist Gandhi, had remained the representative of the bourgeoisie at its core. Mouthing pro-people socialist slogans, it systematically structured the state and drove its policy that would further the interests of capital. Even before the formal transfer of power these intrigues began playing out. The constitution of the constituent assembly with the members indirectly elected by the provincial assemblies, elected in the March 1946 elections, which were based on barely 28 per cent franchise was symbolic of the concurrent duplicitous regime that would come into being.

The Constitution which incorporated the Government of India Act, 1935, the last colonial Constitution, ensured that essentially there shall be essential continuity from the previous regime. The same institutional structure of governance, the same laws, the same palaces, the same processes and police with the same draconian laws, only with native elite replacing the white rulers and thereby western liberal ethos with the brahmanic cunning, ensured the sameness of oppressive regime, intensified with their characteristic sly.

Post-1947, the five year plans emulating the soviet system and thereby reinforcing the socialist rhetoric of the new regime was actually stuffed with the content taken from the Bombay Plan which was the vision of the Indian big bourgeoisie. It was publicly rejected but surreptitiously adopted. The Land Reforms were implemented ostensibly to meet the aspirations of millions of landless but calibrated to create a class of rich farmers from among the populous shudra castes as an alley of the Congress in rural India. The Green Revolution, the capitalist strategy for agricultural development, was implemented in the name of quenching mass hunger. Its huge gains fed this class to replace the erstwhile upper caste landlords, spin off as petty businessmen and later as politicians with their regional parties. While this rural rich from among the middle castes thus got hitched to the dwija caste-band through capitalist ties, the dalits were denuded of their traditional jajmani relations and reduced to be the farm labourers in contradiction with the rich farmers. This class contradiction would precipitate through the familiar fault-lines of caste into new genre of atrocities. Kilvenmeni to Khairlanji to Kharda to Una are the direct byproducts of independent India. As political competition as well as crises of living intensified, the state began showing off its draconian fangs to repress people. As though it was not enough it brought social Darwinist ideology of neoliberalism and began pushing people off the margins. The new regime wearing a republican mask did everything with impunity that the colonial regime would not dare to do.

Quality of Survival
Contrary to doomsayers’ prophesies, and Ambedkar’s stern warning delivered on November 26, 1949 that if the political democracy created by the Constitution was not supplemented soonest by social and economic democracy, the victims of this lack would blast off the edifice of political democracy, Indian democracy has neither perished nor flourished but limped along past its 70 years. Should we be elated at this survival? If the import in Ambedkar’s warning is understood, we should not.

Today, the Indian elite and the middle classes that try emulating them are euphoric about the GDP growth and ‘development’ of India not caring to know it comes at the cost of misery of the millions of poor. While the present ruling dispensation as part of its ideological project wants to regain its imagined leadership of the world with missiles and bullet trains, it cuts outlays on basic healthcare and education of people.

India continues to languish at the bottom of the comity of nations on every parameter that constitutes real development of the country. India holds the dubious distinction of land of largest population that defecates in open, largest population that lives in slums, largest malnourished children, largest anemic mothers, largest children out of school, largest illiterates, and the list could go on.
 

In education, India ranks 92 which is way behind the ranks of other developing countries such as Phillipines (76), Malaysia (51), Sri Lanka (59) and many more.[2] Her achievement on a range of health indicators ranks her at 143 in a list of 188 countries, far behind countries like Sri Lanka (79), China (92), even war-torn Syria (117) and Iraq (128).[3] The country that boasts of being sixth largest economy in nominal terms, third largest in PPP terms; possesses fourth largest number of dollar billionaires and is the fastest growing economy, ranks below much poorer nations such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Ghana and even Liberia when it comes to healthcare for its masses. New research by medical journal Lancet, on the basis of data from the Global Burden of Disease report, 2015, ranked India at 154 out of 195 countries in terms of access to healthcare.[4] Modi may day-dream of India being a superpower, but she is nowhere near the top 10 countries when it comes to economy, entrepreneurship and opportunity, governance, education, health, safety and security, personal freedom and social capital. According to the Legatum Prosperity Index 2015, India ranks 99 among 142 countries that have been assessed in these sectors.[5]
 

And we are not speaking of the dalits, adivasis and minorities, who together constitute nearly half of India’s population, but live in unspeakable misery and destitution. Just on the eve of Modi’s address to the nation, Bezwada Wilson, who spearheads Safai Kamgar Andolan for liberating manual scavengers who empty 9.6 million dry latrines in the country as per the Supreme Court, has reported 27 deaths in sewer lines and septic tanks, 9 in Delhi alone, over the previous one month. As Modi spoke of his developmental spoils, somewhere a dalit was being lynched and a couple of dalit women raped!

(A version of this article has also been published in the Economic and Political weekly and is being re published here with the permission of the author) 

The post Congratulations India at 70: Development of a Few and Misery of the Masses appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: Indian Express

“When nobody gets equal opportunity, who are they deceiving by saying single exam for all..?.”
-S. Anitha

Anitha, a 17-year-old dalit girl from Kuzhumur village in Ariyalur district, Tamil Nadu, daughter of a daily labourer in Trichy’s Gandhi market, committed suicide at her home on 1 September. Unlike Rohith Vemula, she has not left a suicide note for the shameless establishment to take advantage of, and claim that she has not blamed anyone. Anitha has made an eloquent statement by her silence; and in doing so, blamed the neoliberal-hindutva agenda being pushed forth by the Modi government. What is left behind is her video clip asking for help in fulfilling her legitimate ambition of becoming a doctor. She urged everyone to notice how she worked hard for it, scoring 98% marks in her plus-two exam, and standing first in the school. But she apprehended that her father’s poor financial condition may come in the way of her higher studies. Anitha, like Rohith, represents the plight of the dalit students in this country and shames India with her death.

Who killed Anitha? In the face of it, her failure to qualify in the NEET examination, and consequently, in getting a seat in the medical college caused her death. What is this NEET — National Eligibility and Entrance Test? Like any other anti-people policy, this one was also born during the Congress regime. The announcement to introduce NEET-UG in 2012 came from the Medical Council of India. This announcement was opposed by several states including Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, stating that there was a huge difference in the syllabus proposed by the MCI and the state syllabi. Initially, the NEET was conducted in two languages: English and Hindi. But this language bias was later resolved, and nine more languages were included for the 2017 examination. 

NEET was declared illegal and unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of India in 2013. However, it was restored on 11 April 2016, after a five-judge Constitution bench recalled the earlier verdict, and allowed the Central Government and the Medical Council of India (MCI) to implement the common entrance test until the court decides to take a fresh decision regarding its validity. It is this NEET that failed Anitha and led her to kill herself. 

The NEET, it may be understood, is a part of the neoliberal reforms, first started by the Congress government, but now being zealously pushed by the present dispensation under Modi. There is a qualitative difference between the Congress and the BJP: While the Congress has also served the capitalist class by virtue of its composition of a broad spectrum of ideologies right of the centre, it tried to strike a balance between them, and thereby, made them durable. But the BJP is ideologically homogenous and represents the extreme right, working towards a specific goal of building a Hindu Rashtra while relying on fascist methods for policy implementations. Therefore, it does not have any qualms, and presents itself as far more decisive than the Congress. Homogenisation of every sphere of the country is informed by its ideal: One nation, one language, one leader, one people akin to ein reich, ein volk, ein fuhrer of the Nazis. This is intrinsically unconstitutional because it is against the diversity of India under the federal structure mandated by the Constitution. But who would challenge them? The NEET is formalised and implemented by the same fascist regime.

Is the NEET justified? The NEET is justified on the grounds that it will eliminate admission-related corruption in private institutions, and will provide relief to students giving multiple entrance tests; lessen corruption in the admission tests due to the supervision of MCI and CBSE and, finally, drive towards a common syllabus. All of this is assumed to be desirable. Consequently, it assumes that it will ensure that the same standard of physicians is produced all over India. It does not realise the mess created between input and output in such an assumption; an entrance exam does not determine the standards of the doctors who have passed out, unless the process, their education is also standardised.

Similar things can be said about each of the arguments proffered in its justification. For instance, most major states have their own state medical entrance exams. States like West Bengal and others have nearly four decades of experience in organising medical entrance exams. Is there any evidence of corruption there? It is a question of private medical colleges charging capitation fees for the seats in management quota. Who asked them to start these private colleges in the first place? If they indulge in corruption, they can be closed down or can be taken over by the state. In any case, the problem of capitation fee is the problem of the upper-middle class and the super rich, and should not influence the common policy of the government. The simple solution to this problem would have been to admit students through already existing state medical entrance exams.     

There are many students who might be seeking admission in other state medical colleges and have to, therefore, take multiple exams. Generally, students take their domicile state’s exam, try getting admission in more prestigious central institutions and appear for their exam, and then, when all the options are exhausted, they appear for the examinations conducted by private colleges. In any case, the central medical institutes like AIMS, JIPMER, etc., have been excluded from the NEET. Hence, students will anyway appear for examinations a second time despite NEET. Then what is the argument? Without any evidence of which exams are being eliminated by the NEET, they have implemented it. 

The common syllabus aimed at by the NEET is disconnected from the reality of school education in India. The NEET is based on the CBSE syllabus. The CBSE exists in the major towns and cities of India, started primarily for transferable central government employees. It stands as a minority among the state boards. Maharashtra state board alone has more Class XII students than the total strength of CBSE students all over India. Why, the question arises, is this minority consideration allowed to override the vast majority? With regards to the standards, do they imply that the standard of science in the CBSE syllabus is superior to that of the state boards? Again, there is no evidence. Rather, the evidence is the contrary: A rigorous study published in Current Science, 2009, shows that, in terms of science-proficiency of students, some of the state boards like West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh have done much better in all science subjects than CBSE. But when the NEET exam was conducted in 2013, both these states underperformed. Maharashtra may not have the best science education, but cannot be dismissed as the worst either, as the NEET results had indicated. The Delhi-based CBSE board syllabus is being imposed as the best. Scores of students from the state boards like Anitha are placed at a disadvantage because of this unreasonable policy of the NEET. 

What is more damaging is that the NEET is discriminatory towards students from rural areas; the urban poor and those belonging to the lower strata of the society. The CBSE being urban-centric completely excludes the rural areas. The devaluation of the Class XII exams gives rise to coaching classes. The institutionalisation of entrance exams at the state level has resulted in the mushrooming of coaching shops, resulting, in turn, in the marginalisation of school education. The students don’t attend classes in the eleventh and twelfth standards. As a result, they merely comply with, and sometimes barely meet the minimum requirements for sitting in the exams to pass. 

In the state level exams, for which the syllabus is the same for all, poor students who cannot afford expensive coaching classes can also hope to take the exams and perform as well as those who attend coaching classes. But in the NEET, their training and hard work is compromised. As it has already happened with the IIT-JEE (Kota being the hub of IIT-JEE coaching), this centralised exam will directly lead to more coaching centers. 

The government has already offered higher education to WTO-GATS. This was done for the first time under the BJP-led NDA government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and a second time in 2005, under Manmohan Singh. Once the current Doha Development Round is concluded, this offer will become an irrevocable commitment; and the higher education sector of India will have to be thrown open to international traders’ in higher education. All subsidies, a plethora of reservations, scholarships, and all social justice measures that characterised the education sector in India would go away, as they may be termed barriers to free trade. There was a strong apprehension about the conclusion of this round at the Tenth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation held at Nairobi, Kenya in December 2015. Fortunately, it did not conclude. But we must remain aware of, and alert to the fact that the Indian government, through its so-called education reforms, has been preparing itself to adopt the GATS agenda in education. These include the four-year undergraduate program (FYUP), the choice-based credit system, the cutting down of the non-National Eligibility Test (non-NET) fellowships, and research funding. All of this has been met with fierce opposition from the student community and educationists, but the government has haughtily ignored it so far. 

Poor Anitha is the victim of this neoliberal-hindutva agenda of the government.

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