The Indian Express and the Hindustan Times had reported the attack but the latest news coming in to Sabrangindia is that though 'he was supposed to have been removed to a safer location', he is in fact no more. The police claimed that 30 police personnel were injured as a frenzied crowd of around 1,000, including some self-appointed cow protectors, laid siege to 55-year-old Usman Ansari’s house in Giridih district’s Bariabad on Tuesday afternoon. According to the police version, Usman Ansari at Beria Hatiatand village in Deori area, nearly 200 km from Ranchi, was brutally attacked on Tuesday, June 27 after some people spotted the carcass of a cow.

But Tanveer Ahmed, senior activist from Ranchi told Sabrangindia that the victim Usman Ansari is feared dead though the police claims he has been moved to a 'safe location.' ADG (Operations) RK Mullick told the Indian Express that “The mob was highly charged and nearly 50 of our men sustained injuries in the stone-pelting. The situation has been brought under control,”  Over 200 security personnel, including senior officers, have been deployed at the spot.

The incident is the latest in a string of attacks, extremely vicious largely against Muslim and Dalits, reported from across the country in the name of cow protection.
Junaid, a Haryana teenager was lynched allegedly by his co-passengers in a train on June 22 after an argument. The crowd allegedly called him and his two brothers, who were injured, as beef-eaters.The Centre has restricted cattle trade and several BJP-ruled states have come up with stringent punishment for smuggling or slaughtering cows, considered holy by Hindus.
The opposition and right activists have accused the BJP of pursuing the Hindutva agenda of its ideological parent the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Singh and targeting Muslims and Dalits through its cattle-trade rules.

Jharkand has seen a spate of brutal killings, lynchings since March 2016 when Mazlum Ansari and his nephew Imtiyaz were lynched and hung to die. Thereafter too there have been a series of attacks, assaults and killings. The last one was last friday after the Alvida Namaz on the Friday before Eid, on June 23 when 24 year old Mohammad Salman was allegedly shot dead by a posse of policeman. One arms guard is even under arrest after confessing to the crime. The National Commission of Minorities (NCM) even brought out a report on the deep rooted communal polarisation in Jharkand, even within the police force after the Latehar hangings.

In early April 2017, a Maulvi was brutally assaulted at Kodarma and thereafter in May 2017 rumours of child lifting had left many Muslims and some Hindus dead.

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Farmers stage a demonstration in New Delhi in June 2017. Apart from meagre farm income, rising healthcare costs increase farmer debt–now the primary reason in more than 50% farmer suicides in India.
 
Nearly 70% of India’s 90 million agricultural households spend more than they earn on average each month, pushing them towards debt, which is now the primary reason in more than half of all suicides by farmers nationwide, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of various government data.
 
The failing economics of such farms–agricultural households in the south are most indebted–are exacerbated by additional loans that families take to meet health issues, leaving them with diminished ability to invest in farming. Outstanding loans for health reasons doubled over a decade to 2012, and loans for farm business fell by about half over the same period.
 
These data help understand the nature of India’s farm crisis in the light of the recent spate of farmer protests across states to demand loan waivers and better prices for their crops.

 

 
These 62.6 million households spending more than they earn had land holdings of one hectare or less, according to the 2013 situation assessment survey of farm households by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), the latest available data.  In contrast, 0.35 million (0.39%) households owning more than 10 hectares of land had an average monthly income of Rs 41,338 and consumption expenditure of Rs 14,447, thereby maintaining a monthly surplus of Rs 26,941.
 
Nearly 85% of all operational farm holdings in the country are smaller than two hectares in size, NSSO data show.
 
No more than a third of Indian small and marginal farmers have access to institutional credit, as IndiaSpend reported on June 8, 2017, which suggests that loan waivers may not help them.
 

         
 

Source: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
Note: ‘Income’ includes earnings from all sources, including non-farm business and wage labour
 
Households in southern India are most indebted
 
Andhra Pradesh has the highest share of indebted agricultural households (93%), followed by Telangana (89%) and Tamil Nadu (82.1%). The nationwide figure is 52%.
 

Source: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
 

Indebtedness was listed as the primary reason for 55% of farmer suicides in 2015 and more than 300,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since 1995, IndiaSpend reported on January 2, 2017.
 
Rising healthcare costs swell the debt burden
 
Apart from meagre farm income, rising healthcare costs increase farmer debt. Outstanding loans for health reasons have doubled from 3% in 2002 to 6% in 2012, according to a 2015 analysis of NSSO data by the National Bank For Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). Meanwhile, loans for farm business fell by half over a decade, from 58% in 2002 to 29% in 2012, as IndiaSpend reported on July 21, 2015.
 

Source: National Bank For Agriculture and Rural Development 2015
 
Nearly half (48%) of overnight trips made by millions of Indians in rural areas are for medical purposes. The corresponding figure for urban areas is 25%.
 
More than half of India’s rural population uses private healthcare services, which are four times as costly as public healthcare, and can cost the poorest 20% of Indians more than 15 times their average monthly expenditure, as IndiaSpend reported on July 16, 2016.
 
“In all the farm households I’ve visited, where people have killed themselves, the single largest component of family debt was health costs,” said P Sainath, Ramon Magsaysay Award winner who pioneered farmer suicide reporting in India.
 
Loan waivers are not a solution
 
Recently, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra wrote off loans worth Rs 36,359 crore and Rs 30,000 crore, respectively. India faces a cumulative loan waiver of Rs 3.1 lakh crore ($49.1 billion), or 2.6% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2016-17, IndiaSpend reported on June 15, 2017.
 
However, indebtedness is a symptom and not the root cause of India’s farm crisis, according to a 2007 expert group report on agricultural indebtedness. Chaired by economist R Radhakrishna, the group reported that the average farm household borrowing had not been “excessive”, and laid the blame on factors such as “stagnation in agriculture, increasing production and marketing risks, institutional vacuum and lack of alternative livelihood opportunities”.
 
In his 2016 budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had promised to double farmers’ income by 2022. “We are grateful to our farmers for being the backbone of the country’s food security. We need to think beyond food security and give back to our farmers a sense of income security. Government will, therefore, reorient its interventions in the farm and non-farm sectors to double the income of the farmers by 2022,” he had said.
 
Subsequently, Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar outlined a seven-point strategy to double farm income, which included measures to step up irrigation, provide better quality seeds and prevent post-harvest losses, as Mint reported on June 17, 2017.
 
These efforts face a range of challenges, as IndiaSpend said in this March 30, 2016, story. These include: Increasing costs of farm input such as seeds, fertilisers and irrigation; irrelevance of minimum support price for government procurement; absence of marketing infrastructure such as warehouses and cold storages; and the fact that 85% of farmers do not have insurance.
 
Clearly, India’s farm crisis calls for a multi-pronged solution that addresses each of these challenges, and loan waiver is only one part.
 
(Saha is an MA Gender and Development student at Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.)
 
Courtesy: India Spends

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The Slowdown in GDP Growth:  A retrospective revision of the base in short had artificially boosted the growth rate figure.  When the CSO had released advance estimates of GDP for the October-December quarter of 2016-17, within which demonetisation had occurred, the fact that the economy had still shown a 7 per cent growth rate, had been an occasion for much celebration in government circles. It had been used by the government to argue that, contrary to the claims of the critics, demonetisation had not hurt the economy.

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The press conference was sought to be disrupted as the assaulters had slipped in as if they were journalists. Despite the disruption, it went on as scheduled. "We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win," the CPI(M) general secretary said in response.

One of the two protesters who tried to manhandle him was later caught and handed over to the police. The men shouted slogans of 'Hindu Sena zindabad' and 'CPI(M) murdabad' and were said to be from the Hindu Sena.

The Delhi Police had also deployed heavy security in view of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's presence at the meeting.

Vijayan has been facing flak from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) over his criticism of the Centre's recent notification relating to cattle slaughter.

The post Sitaram Yechury: Battle Between Gandhi & Godse after Bid to Manhandle Him Failed appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Here is what happened:

♦ Attackers drove van into pedestrians on London Bridge before stabbing people in Borough Market
♦ Prime minister says too much ‘tolerance of extremism’ in UK
♦ 48 injured people taken to hospitals
♦ General election campaigning suspended

Full report: Police shoot dead three suspect after London attack

In the event of a major ISIS-inspired action in Britain, what principles do far-sighted – and brave – politicians need to observe? First published on 20 January 2017.
 

Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire/PA Images. All rights reserved.

"A few months before the 7/7 attacks in London in July 2005, and in the wake of the Madrid bombings, I went to a meeting that the Bishop of Bradford had convened to try and think through how a multi-confessional city like Bradford might respond if there was a similar attack in the UK. He brought together representatives from the local mosques, the police, the Council, the youth service and community groups, and I think this might have been one of the factors that helped maintain a degree of calm and resilience in the city when the 7/7 attacks came. Remembering this was part of what prompted me to write the following piece for openDemocracy in January, which was republished on 23 March in the light of the attack in Westminster.
Following last night’s terrible attack at the Manchester Arena, it may be helpful to look at the original column again. Now that we are in middle of a very fractious general election campaign it may be that the final few paragraphs, especially the last one, are particularly salient."
Paul Rogers  23 May 2017

Another 7/7-type attack in the United Kingdom is likely. In the aftermath, it will be essential to respond carefully with responses that seek to explain the wider context.
In London, the inquest has opened into the deaths of thirty British beach tourists in Sousse, Tunisia in June 2015. Eight others were killed in the ISIS-facilitated attack. Many questions remain over the warnings given and the levels of security offered.

The assault, as well as causing great grief to family and friends, had a substantial national impact. Yet this was less than the bombings of London's transport network on 7 July 2007, when fifty-two people were killed on a bus and three underground trains. (The four perpetrators also died). It remains the defining event for Britain in relation to political violence, closely connected to the Iraq war although this was strenuously denied by the Blair government at the time.

This “disconnect” has remained a feature of British attitudes to al-Qaida, ISIS and other extreme Islamist groups, even if some people pointed out at the time that the loss of life on "7/7" was no higher than the daily loss of life in Iraq.

Now, nearly twelve years later, the war goes on with a similar disconnect – there is simply no appreciation that Britain is an integral part of a major war that started thirty months ago, in August 2014. It may take the form of a sustained air-assault using strike-aircraft and armed-drones, but its intensity is simply unrecorded in the establishment media. This is a straightforward example of “remote warfare” conducted outside of public debate.

Thus, when another attack within Britain on the scale of 7/7 happens, there will be little understanding of the general motivations of those responsible. People will naturally react with horror, asking – why us? Politicians and analysts will find it very difficult even to try and explain the connection between what is happening "there" and "here".
The straightforward yet uncomfortable answer is that Britain is at war – so what else can be expected? It may be a war that gets little attention, there may be virtually no parliamentary debate on its conduct, but it is a war nonetheless.

There are several factors which underpin this approach.

The post-9/11 western-led wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya have left three countries as failed or failing states, killed several hundred thousand people and displaced millions. This causes persistent anger and bitterness right across the Middle East and beyond. While the Syrian civil war started as the repression of dissent by an insecure and repressive regime, it has evolved into a much more complex "double proxy war" which regional rulers and the wider international community have failed to address. This adds to the animosity.

The situation in Iraq is particularly grievous, given that it was the United States and its coalition partners that started the conflict and also gave rise directly to the evolution of ISIS. The Iraq Body Count project estimates the direct civilian death-toll since 2003 at more than 169,000. After a relative decline over 2009-13, an upsurge in the past three years has seen 53,000 lose their lives through violence.

Since the air-war started in August 2014 the Pentagon calculates that over 30,000 targets have been attacked with more than 60,000 missiles and bombs, and 50,000 ISIS supporters have been killed. But there is abundant evidence that western forces have directly killed many civilians. AirWars reports that:

"As ISIL was forced to retreat in both Iraq and Syria, the year [2016] saw a dramatic jump in reported civilian deaths from Coalition airstrikes. A total of between 2,932 and 4,041 non-combatant fatalities are alleged for 2016, stemming from 445 separate claimed Coalition-caused incidents in both Iraq and Syria."

ISIS, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS), and other groups have no air-defence capabilities yet are determined to continue the war, seeing themselves as guardians of Islam under attack by the “crusader” forces of the west. At a time of retreat they will be even more determined than ever to take the war to the enemy, whether by the sustained encouragement and even facilitation of individual attacks such as Berlin or Nice, or more organised attacks such as in Paris and Brussels.

The aims of these groups are threefold:
* Retribution via straightforward paramilitary actions, responding especially to the current reversals in Iraq.
* Demonstrating to the wider world, especially across the Middle East, that they remain a force to be reckoned with.
* Inciting as much anti-Muslim bigotry and hatred as possible in the target countries.

In the last of these they are greatly aided by the attitudes of Trump, Le Pen, Wilders, UKIP and other western political phenomena, especially the incitement of fear of refugees which reached its height in Britain in the closing days of the Brexit campaign.

A repeat 7/7–level attack in Britain is probable, although when and how is impossible to say.  Again, it will not be easy to respond. But in trying to do so, two factors need to be born in mind.
First, the aim of ISIS and others will be to incite hatred. Any tendency to encourage that is doing the work of ISIS. This can and should be said repeatedly.

Second, the links between the attack and the ongoing war in Iraq and Syria must be made. That Britain is still at war after fifteen years suggests that some rethinking is required.

Politicians who make these points will face immediate accusations of appeasement, not least in the media. But however difficult the case, it needs to be made if the tide of war is to be turned.

About the author:
Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy's international security adviser, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His latest book is Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threat from the Margins (IB Tauris, 2016), which follows Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on Twitter at: @ProfPRogers
 

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Lekshmi Narasimha Murthy Vishnu Temple in Malappuram held the Iftar party for Muslims breaking their fast in the holy month of Ramzan. The temple has been doing renovation works and has been conducting Punaprethishta (restoration) rituals from May 29, which will go on till July 4. 

The Iftar party was conducted as a part of these rituals. As many as 400 Muslim people participated in the function along with 100 people belonging to other communities.
Nearly 300 Muslim families also have funded the restoration of the temple. The temple is located at Vettichira, which is also Muslim dominated region.

“We have grown up in an atmosphere of religious harmony. What matters for us is humanity, not religion. Everybody has the right to follow their religion or caste, but it does not mean that we should not be friendly to people of other religion. We should not close our heart from welcoming people of other religion” Temple Committee Secretary PT Mohanan told the local Malayali media.

The Iftar party was held in the house of Mammu Master as the temple could not accommodate so many people.

The dishes were vegetarian including the traditional Kerala meal, sadhya. Muslim families in the area were informed in advance of the party and they turned up in large numbers “There was no hesitation from anybody’s part. The response was overwhelming,” Mohanan added.
 

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