Rohan Venkataramakrishnan | SabrangIndia

Government wants you to believe its cattle slaughter ban is about cruelty. It isn’t

Mon, 29 May 2017 05:40:22 +0000

Current law states that killing animals for food is not cruel.

The Environment Ministry last week notified new rules under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, banning the sale of all kinds of cattle for slaughter at animal markets nationwide. In one fell swoop, the Centre has attempted to change the way the meat network in India operates. The new rules make it illegal for any animal passing through an open market to ever be sold for slaughter. Instead, it mandates that animals on the open market can only be sold for agricultural use, and requires the market authority to collect undertakings from the sellers and buyers of the animals asserting that they are not being traded for slaughter.

The rules were immediately criticised. The chief minister of Kerala called them draconian and said the move intruded on federal rights. Representatives of livestock trade bodies condemned the rules. The West Bengal government said they would seriously jeopardise the jobs of millions of people in the state’s thriving leather industry. Many, particularly in South India and the North East, took to the streets to criticise the government for attempting to regulate what people can eat.

That might be a natural reading of the government’s intentions with the rules, considering its willingness to push support for state-level anti-beef laws as well as its close association with numerous gau rakshak cow protection groups that have indulged in horrific violence.

But the Environment Ministry, in a press release issued on Saturday, insisted that the rules had nothing to do with what Indians eat. “The prime focus of the regulation is to protect the animals from cruelty and not to regulate the existing trade in cattle for slaughter houses,” the release said.

Is this about animal cruelty?

The government insists this is about animal cruelty. The rules come under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. And indeed, many of the provisions do actually have a direct bearing on animal cruelty. For example, the rules mandate veterinary inspectors at animal markets, prohibit the use of chemicals on the animals, require poultry cages to be large enough for the birds to turn around and so on. The rules have titles like “handling and tying of animals” and “penning and caging of animals”.

Rule 22, however, is different. While the title of every other rule refers to all animals, this one is titled “restrictions on sale of cattle” – not animals, just cattle. If the concern is the welfare of animals, why does this section single out only cattle?

Is this about cruelty?

Rule 22, among other things, requires both the seller and the purchaser to provide an undertaking that they are not trading the animal for slaughter. This is the most controversial portion of the rules, the one that has been singled out as effectively being a backdoor ban on cattle slaughter. But why does slaughter make its way into this provision at all?

Is slaughter cruel? Individuals might have many opinions on this, but the government is clear. Indeed, the official position on slaughter – specifically the killing of animals for food – is established in the very Act that these rules are based on.

Section 11: Treating animals cruelly
(3) Nothing in this section shall apply to–
(e) the commission or omission of any act in the course of the destruction or the preparation for destruction of any animal as food for mankind unless such destruction or preparation was accompanied by the infliction of unnecessary pain or suffering.

In other words, the law states that killing any animal for food cannot be considered cruelty, unless those actions involve unnecessary suffering. Rule 22 does not point out any such unnecessary suffering, it simply bans the sale of all cattle meant for slaughter at open markets.

Which part involves cruelty? It can’t be the slaughter itself, since the law expressly establishes that killing of animals for food is per se not cruelty. Is it the government’s claim that simply taking cattle to an open market for sale constitutes “unnecessary suffering”? If that were the case, then the rules should be banning these markets and preventing animals from being brought for any purpose, whether agricultural or for slaughter. Instead, the rules actually lay the groundwork to legalise, notify and regulate animal markets. So where is the cruelty?

Why is this about cruelty?

It’s clear that Rule 22 has several problems. It selectively picks on cattle, instead of covering all animals. It doesn’t establish what cruelty is involved when it bans the sale of cattle for slaughter at open markets. Yet the government felt the need to include this under rules related to the Prevention of Cruelty. Why?

The answer is quite simple. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has been calling for a blanket ban on cow slaughter across the country. Yet this cannot be done at the Centre, because the Constitution gives exclusive powers to the states to make laws regarding livestock. Any decision to ban the slaughter of cows or other cattle, like the cow-slaughter bans that exists across much of India, has to be taken at the state level.

However, the Constitution does put the question of preventing cruelty to animals in the concurrent list. This means both states and the Centre can make laws, and if there is any conflict between the state and Central law, the latter will override the former. So the Centre seems to have tried to use its powers under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act to regulate sale of cattle, even though it has not established any cruelty involved. This is why the ministry, in its statement, had to insist that the law was about cruelty, not slaughter.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

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Even some on the Right think the ABVP’s actions in Ramjas were a mistake

Mon, 06 Mar 2017 09:43:18 +0000

A few commentators suggested that the Right-wing student body should pick its battles better.

When even Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju takes a step back, you know something is slightly off. Rijiju has become infamous for willfully wading into controversies with an inflammatory comment. In fact, he was responsible for turning Ramjas College into a national story with a tweet asking who was “polluting” a young student’s mind. Yet even Rijiju had to temper his reaction and admit later that he didn’t know what he was tweeting about. And the junior minister isn’t the only one. In the last few days, a number of commentators from the Right side of the spectrum have sounded notes of caution about the approach to Ramjas and the Kaur epsiode.

For two years in a row, February has brought with it violence and protests on college campuses in Delhi, accompanied by a fractious debate over nationalism. In 2016, it was Jawaharlal Nehru University. This year, an invitation to JNU student Umar Khalid – who was accused of sedition in 2016 – turned into protests and violence outside Delhi University’s Ramjas College. When Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur spoke up against the violence, the focus turned to her and an earlier video she made calling for peace as the daughter of a soldier who had died in action. The conversation became as much about Kaur’s right to advocate peace, as it was about the violence at Ramjas College.

But even so, a few commentators said that the Right-wing student group, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, was wrong to act the way it did at Ramjas College. R Jagannathan, Editorial Director of Swarajya, a magazine that calls itself the “authoritative voice of reason of the liberal centre-right”, said that the Right should pick its battles better.

The real lesson to learn for the Right from this development is to know which battles to fight and which ones to ignore. Taking on a naïve and possibly idealistic young woman is not going to get you any brownie points even if she is 100 per cent wrong. Ignoring it would have been the best option.

JNU professor Makarand Paranjape, who has said on Twitter that he is happy to be called Sanghi, went even further and called the Ramjas incident a “trap.”

Paranjape’s construction goes further than Jagannathan’s pick-your-battles advice, and effectively victim-blames the students of Ramjas College for having “provoked” the ABVP into violence, as if that were the inevitable outcome. Yet even as he embraces that fallacy, Paranjape acknowledges that the ABVP’s violent approach did it no favours. As he writes in the Indian Express,

Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid seem to fit the classic definition of agents provocateurs. Such persons inflame their enemies into making mistakes, committing illegal acts, thus compromising their own cause. The whole organisation – this time, ABVP – ends up discredited.

But does this exonerate ABVP? Clearly not. When will they learn that resorting to fisticuffs or bending the law is the worst possible strategy to win public sympathy? I can think of a hundred other ways to fight such battles: The best would be to take on their political opponents in an open debate.

On Sunday, Tavleen Singh, an Indian Express columnist who has frequently spoken up in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, took a different stand from the other two, who had simply suggested the ABVP messed up by getting violent at Ramjas.

Singh instead questioned the very principle being pulled up here: Whether the ABVP has a right to question someone else’s nationalism, and if pride in a country can be enforced by violent means.

Nationalism can never be imposed by fiat. This should be obvious. But, for some reason, it is becoming increasingly obvious that it is not. Since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, the idea of imposing nationalism by force appears to have gripped too many BJP political leaders. Ministers in particular should refrain from labelling people, but almost daily we hear them warning ‘anti-nationals’ that there will be dire consequences for those who speak against India. A particularly foolish statement came from a minister in the Haryana government last week. It is unworthy of being repeated here.

Unfortunately, he is not the only BJP leader to have offered his opinion on the brawl in Delhi University between students who believe they are nationalists and those they have labelled ‘anti-national’. It is my view that nobody has the right to decide who is a nationalist and who is not, but the two can play the game. So let me make it clear that I believe anyone who seeks to crush dissent and free speech on university campuses is anti-national.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

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Amit Shah does not need to look to UP for goondagardi – ABVP offers it in Delhi too

Thu, 23 Feb 2017 06:20:11 +0000

A year after the authorities in Delhi stood by as right-wing mobs attacked students, teachers and journalists in a city court with impunity, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is back at it. On Tuesday, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-backed students group locked a seminar hall in Delhi University’s Ramjas College and began pelting stones at it. The ABVP’s violence was in response to Ramjas inviting Umar Khalid, a Jawaharlal Nehru University student who was accused of sedition in 2016, to speak at a literary festival on campus. As a consequence, the college withdrew the invitation to Khalid. A day later, when students and teachers decided to protest the ABVP’s violence, the marches devolved into clashes .

Image: PTI

On Wednesday, the police, who were well aware of the tensions on Tuesday, unsuccessfully attempted to segregate the ABVP members from those belonging to the left-backed All India Students Association, as well as teachers who were also protesting. The police later filed a First Information Report against unnamed persons, after complaints that several students, teachers and even some of their own personnel had been injured. According to the Times of India, journalists were even “slapped, punched and kicked” by police personnel.

The incident suggests that Delhi, and the Delhi Police in particular, have not learnt enough from recent incidents. Last year, right-wing mobs complaining about Khalid and fellow students sloganeering in JNU, were allowed to attack their critics without fear of legal action. Right-wing mobs even managed to cloister a judge and the accused in the sedition case into a room inside Delhi’s Patiala House court complex while they beat up journalists and students outside. The home ministry, which oversees Delhi Police and is responsible for law and order in the capital, seemed more interested in finding fictitious Pakistani connections to the sloganeering students than cracking down on the violent mobs.

Of course, ABVP had the right to protest Khalid’s invitation. But its willingness to resort to violence suggests it has no interest in ensuring a free space for discourse that a college ought to provide. More dangerous is the police’s inability to maintain law and order.

On Wednesday, on the campaign trail in Uttar Pradesh, Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah complained about goondagardi or mob rule in the state, and referred to his political opponents as Kasab – Congress, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, an acronym that is reference to the name of the terrorist who was caught in the Mumbai attacks. Yet, his own government is unable to prevent violence from an outfit affiliated to his party. If the violence that occurs in Uttar Pradesh is goondagardi, how is the capital under Delhi Police and the ABVP any different?

This article was first published on Scroll.in

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What has the BJP done to set the CBI free from its parrot’s cage?

Thu, 05 Jan 2017 06:21:11 +0000

Cagey parrot
In the last few years of the corruption-tainted United Progressive Alliance government, it was not uncommon to hear complaints from Bharatiya Janata Party leaders about the ruling Congress’ willingness to use the Central Bureau of Investigation as a political tool. Congress Bureau of Investigation they called it. This impression was given additional ballast during Supreme Court hearings, in which Justice RM Lodha referred to the CBI as a “caged parrot”, forced to speak in its master’s voice.

Ironically, the same allegations are being leveled at the BJP government today. Just as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee raises the anti-demonetisation pitch, the agency has moved in to arrest her ministers in the alleged Rose Valley chit fund scam in which thousands are said to have been cheated. As Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s battle with the Centre got louder, it was the CBI that shut down his office building and raided the Delhi Secretariat.

As former CBI director Joginder Singh told the Hindustan Times after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power, “All governments work towards keeping CBI and other investigative agencies under their control.”

In the Rose Valley scam, as in numerous cases against political leaders during the UPA regime, it was not the legitimacy of the investigations themselves that came into question. Many of those seemed like genuine matters that needed looking into. Instead it was the timing of CBI actions, with not much movement on files for months until it became politically expedient for the investigation to move forward.

Under BJP rule, another trend seems to have emerged. The role of the CBI, already under much pressure because of a lack of officers and far too many cases, has expanded to cover any investigation that the Centre deems important – like the matter of cheating PayTM customers. Why else would former Delhi Lt Governor Najeev Jung have to transfer several cases from Delhi Police to the CBI before his departure?

The agency, political tool as it may be, remains one of the more reliable investigating bodies in India and, as a result, it is important that its independence and image be protected. After all its complaints about the “Congress Bureau of Investigation”, the BJP has done little to address this question or that other worrisome matter of whether the agency even has legal sanction to exist.

Responsible governments don’t just govern responsibly, they also create the structures to build integrity into the system. If the BJP truly meant its criticism about the pliability of the CBI and the recognises the need for an independent agency, it needs to do much more to ensure the body does not continue to sing the tune of whoever is in power in Delhi.

Courtesy: Scroll.in

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Despite black money being a ‘crime against humanity’, holders get new amnesty scheme

Tue, 29 Nov 2016 05:50:54 +0000

The government on Monday introduced a new bill in Parliament that sets the terms of what is effectively a new income declaration scheme for black money holders, two months after the end of the previous “last chance” to come clean. The Taxation Laws (Second Amendment Bill) allows citizens to declare unaccounted income under the new Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana. Through a combination of tax, penalty and a surcharge on top of the tax, this income will essentially be hit with a 50% charge. Additionally 25% of the disclosed income will have to be placed in an interest-free deposit scheme for four years.

The main aim of the new rule is to plug the loopholes in the current taxation law that would have allowed black money holders to simply declare unexplained income in advance tax returns this year and attract taxes without any penalty. In fact, the most recent figures of money deposited into banks following demonetisation, coupled with various moves to limit cash exchange options, suggest the government is seriously concerned that those with illicit funds have managed to deposit it – in the hopes of turning the money white – without a major hit.

Those who are found with unaccounted money without declaring under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana will be hit with taxes and penalties amount to about 75%. The taxation laws are retrospective, covering this entire fiscal year and any advance tax returns filed so far, although the government has taken pains to insist that they aren’t technically so because the year is still on-going.

For all the government’s vilifying of black money holders then, with the government calling it a “crime against humanity”, it has given them yet another chance to return to the system. To add to the narrative that the entire demonetisation effort has involved suffering for a better future, the government has directly grafted a pro-poor scheme to the declaration scheme, so that it cannot be accused of simply giving the black money holders a legal way to launder cash.

After the mixed results of the previous income declaration scheme, and the clear indication that those with illicit cash were finding ways around the demonetisation move, the question remains: Will black money holders play ball?

Courtesy: Scroll.in

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Why Modi must go beyond saying state should not interfere with media

Thu, 17 Nov 2016 05:31:59 +0000

Prime Minister Narendra Modi affirmed on Wednesday something that might be unexpected coming from him or a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party: The need for government to stay out of media matters. Speaking at the golden jubilee celebrations of the Press Council of India, Modi spoke of the danger of government interfering in the workings of news organisations.

Image credit: Twitter/MEA

“Mahatma Gandhi had said uncontrolled writing can create huge problems but he had also said that external interference would wreak havoc. Controlling it [media] externally cannot be imagined,” he said. “The government should not do any interference. It is true that self-introspection is not easy… It is the responsibility of the PCI and those associated with the press to see to it that what appropriate changes you can make with time. Things do not change from external control.”

Just days earlier, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry was being criticised for singling out NDTV India’s coverage of the Pathankot attacks and imposing a one-day ban on the channel for allegedly violating programme code provisions. That decision was later stayed after a general outcry and a discussion between the channel and the minister.

But that isn’t the only time the I&B minister has questioned the operations of news organisations. The Modi government has also mutely witnessed some truly problematic developments, such as the banning of a newspaper in Kashmir, the state’s hounding of journalists in Chhattisgarh and even attacks on journalists by goons yelling patriotic slogans inside a Delhi court complex.

Modi’s statements on Wednesday, including his condemnation of murdered journalists, are important signals that the government at least feels the need to say that it supports a free press. This is significant because the state has also helped build an atmosphere where any dissent or questioning, such as demanding evidence of the Army’s surgical strikes or reporting on the unhappiness caused by demonetisation, has been vilified as “anti-national”.

Simply saying that he stands against interference in the operations of news organisations is not enough. Modi needs to do much more to remind his colleagues and his fellow party leaders that a media which is free to ask questions and air dissent is more likely to make India safer and stronger than one that is cowed down and does not reflect the truth.

Courtesy: Scroll.in

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Bastar crackdowns warn India what an Emergency could look like in the 21st century

Tue, 15 Nov 2016 06:49:11 +0000

While Delhi occasionally has to grapple with the real excesses of state power, such as when the government orders a news channel to go blank, the police state is alive and thriving in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar. The district, which became infamous two decades ago for the significant presence of Maoists, has also become a symbol of Indian state abuse and has been the site of some of the most brazen attempts by the authorities to hound out all dissent.

On Monday, the Hindustan Times reported that one of its journalists was threatened by SRP Kalluri, Chhattisgarh’s inspector-general of police, a man who has made clear his willingness to act against anyone questioning his department’s actions. Kalluri told the HT journalist, “If you all do like this, we will not let you visit …you went with my reference to Bastar.”

This is not anomalous behaviour from the man who helped use the police-initiated citizens body, the Samajik Ekta Manch, to drive out any journalist living in the district who might question the police’s actions – including Scroll.in’s Malini Subramanian who faced threats of violence and brick-throwing. This week, Inspector-General Kalluri has made it clear that even those who live outside Bastar will have to toe his line if they want to enter the district to report.

This is even more pertinent because the story the HT journalist was working on concerns another effort to keep people out: the murder case against Delhi University professor Nandini Sundar and others. Sundar was accused of being part of a crowd that had gone to the victim’s village and warned him not to oppose the Maoists. However, the wife of the murdered adivasi in whose name the case has been registered against Sundar has said she did not add these names.

This again is being seen as an effort to keep out all those who might be able to reflect a different viewpoint, and counter the state’s narrative. These attempts gain further import because, as Bastar slowly turns into a blackhole from which no dissenting information can emerge, the chance of state abuse – already a recorded feature in the district – becomes even higher.

The Opposition is set to take up the matter in the upcoming Winter Session of the state assembly. Just days ago, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was defending itself against charges of having imposed Emergency following its now-stayed NDTV India ban, insisting that its leaders had to face the brunt of Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian tendencies and would never replicate the same measures.

If the BJP just looked at what’s happening in Bastar though, it would find a district that would fit much more readily into Indira’s Emergency-era India than the progressive nation they claim to dream of.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

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