Senior journalist Rajiv Shah first broke the story in November 2007. A just published book by then Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, “Karmayog”, created a storm. They contained some lectures by Modi to bureaucrats at the annual bureaucratic conclave called the Chintan Shibir(s) What Rajiv Shah of the Times of India found worth reporting was contained on pages 48 and 49 of the book. Modi qualifies the Valmikis’ centuries-old caste-based vocation – of cleaning up others’ filth, including toilets – as an “experience in spirituality”! Modi says in the book, “I do not believe that they have been doing this job just to sustain their livelihood. Had this been so, they would not have continued with this type of job generation after generation.” He adds, “At some point of time, somebody must have got the enlightenment that it is their (Valmikis’) duty to work for the happiness of the entire society and the Gods; that they have to do this job bestowed upon them by Gods; and that this job of cleaning up should continue as an internal spiritual activity for centuries. This should have continued generation after generation. It is impossible to believe that their ancestors did not have the choice of adopting any other work or business.”

In another blog that the senior journalist wrote five years later (http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/true-lies/modi-s-spiritual-potion-to-woo-karmayogis/), on December 1, 2012 he recounted his experience of telling this tale.

Five thousand copies of the books had been printed in 2007, but it wasn’t distributed because of the electoral code of conduct. A top public sector undertaking, according to the report by Shah, the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation, was roped in to fund the book. When its translation was published in Tamil Nadu, Dalits groups had burnt effigies of the then chief minister expressing their outrage at his views. The issue had also been raised by member of parliament (MP) from Gujarat, Pravin Rashtrapal in the Rajya Sabha.

References:
1. India: Silencing Caste, Sanitising Oppression – Understanding ’Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’  http://www.sacw.net/article9734.html
2. On Modi’s Social Engineering  http://www.countercurrents.org/gatade010313.htm
3. Know Your NaMo: Like ‘Father’, like ‘Son’ ? http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article4886.html
4. Swach Bharat Abhiyan: Too Many Erasures – I  http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=37132

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Image Courtesy: Janta Ka Reporter
 
Odds keep getting stacked against the Indian media as it consciously censors its own reports and findings. Recently, stories broke of two men being allegedly murdered and hanged in West Bengal and according to this report, Times of India deleted its story on 11 Bajrang Dal members being arrested in connection to these deaths.
 
According to the NDTV report, A young BJP worker Trilochan Mahato was found dead and hanging from a tree in Purulia district with messages written across his white shirt. They read, “This is for doing BJP politics from age 18. Been trying to kill you since the vote. Failed. Today you are dead.” The report stated that BJP President Amit Shah blamed the ruling Trinamool Congress for Mahto’s death. His tweet read, “A young life full of possibilities was brutally taken out under state’s patronage. He was hanged on a tree just because his ideology differed from that of state-sponsored goons.”
 
Another man from Purulia named Dulal Kumar was also found hanging, three days after Mahato was found dead and was declared a suicide by authorities. These deaths took place at a time when the state had elections which were marred by the controversy of rigging, intimidation violence and murder. TOI reported that 11 Bajrang Dal activists were arrested in connection with these incidents but were taken off their channels and the links keep showing ‘404 page not found’ message.
 
Many are speculating about the reasons why TOI removed its links. They say it could be fake news or it could be pressurized to stay mum and not circulate news that damages Bajrang Dal’s image.
 
Indian was ranked 138 on the world press freedom rankings list by reporters without borders and is consistently slipping in this regard. If the Cobrapost stings are anything to go by, it’s very simple to influence the fourth pillar of democracy. As this report suggests, TOI, DNA and many others erased their stories on the assets of Amit Shah witnessing a meteoric rise and Smriti Irani’s dubious degrees. TOI’s sister publications Navbharat Times (NBT) and Economic Times (ET) had also carried the report of Shah’s assets increasing by 300% before being taken down from there too. When confronted about this erasure by other media outlets, the media behemoths had no answers.

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Apologize for False Najeeb Story

Here is the DUJ's Press Release:

Press Release

TOI MUST APOLOGISE FOR FALSE NAJEEB STORY

The Delhi Union of Journalists is shocked that a leading daily like the Times of India should have discredited itself by publishing a malicious and misleading report on the missing JNU student Najeeb. The DUJ demands that the TOI issue an immediate apology for maligning a boy who is missing and unable to defend his reputation. 

The TOI report alleged that Najeeb had been surfing the Internet for information on the Islamic State and ways to join it.  It claimed that he had watched many videos on the Islamic State and was “watching a video of the speech of an IS leader on the night of October 14, just before he had a scuffle with ABVP members…” The story by TOI reporter Rajshekhar Jha was published both on the front page and page three on March 21, 2017.

This kite flying story was attributed to unnamed police sources and claimed the police had received “a report on the browsing history of Najeeb’s laptop from Google and YouTube”.  The following day Deputy Police Commissioner Madhur Verma denied that any report had been received from Google and YouTube and said “investigation conducted so far has not revealed anything to suggest that Najeeb had accessed any site relating to IS”. Special Commissioner of Police and Delhi police spokesperson Dependra Pathak also rubbished the TOI story in his statement to Hindustan Times.

It is apparent that the story was meant to discredit Najeeb and find an alibi for the Delhi Police’s inability to trace the missing boy. The story went into great detail on reported Police moves to search for him.

Jha’s clearly motivated story also went into allegations about Najeeb’s medical history, claiming he had been on drugs for obsessive compulsive disorder, sleeplessness, depression, fits, panic attacks and agoraphobia.  Najeeb’s family has previously denied that he was on such medication but the TOI chose to repeat all this in great detail.

The TOI published the false story on its front page with the heading “Najeeb saw IS videos, websites” on March 21, 2017 and another report on page three with a three-column bold headline “Najeeb searched for information on IS”.  However, the retraction it was forced to publish after criticism on social media was carried as a single column item on page 5 with the neutral headline, “Police deny Najeeb report” on March 22, 2017. This was merely a verbatim report of a statement by DCP Verma.

The Delhi Union of Journalists demands an apology by the TOI for its irresponsible and false reports. It also demands that the story be removed from its website immediately.

Sd/-                                                                            Sd/-
S.K Pande                                                         Sujata Madhok

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First of all, JNU has no exclusively M.Phil. intake at all. It either admits students to an integrated M.Phil./PhD or a Direct PhD programme. As per the 142nd Academic Council, the approved intake for the M.Phil./PhD programme for 2017-18 is 1072. Everybody in the combined M.Phil./PhD programme will enter at the M.Phil. level, this figure of 1072 is much less than the 1345 (sum up Row 1) allowed by the UGC Regulations 2016.

The conclusion: THE NUMBER OF JNU STUDENTS IN M.PHIL. DO NOT EXCEED THE BOUNDS DEFINED BY THE UGC REGULATIONS 2016.

Second, as per the 142nd Academic Council, the approved intake for the Direct PhD programme for 2017-18 is 178, a figure which is just a fraction of the 3894 students allowed by the UGC Regulations 2016.
Assuming that every year, 1072 students from M.Phil. get added as well to the PhD programme from the previous year’s integrated M.Phil./PhD programme as well, the fact is that every year just 1250 students start working for the PhD degree, i.e. just a third of the 3894 PhD scholars allowed each year.

The conclusion: THE NUMBER OF JNU STUDENTS IN PHD DO NOT EXCEED THE BOUNDS DEFINED BY THE UGC REGULATIONS 2016.

The only argument for reducing intake is therefore the caps on research students that were first introduced by the UGC 2009 Regulations and then repeated in 2016, whereby a Professor can guide a maximum of 8 PhDs and 3 MPhils, an Associate Professor can guide 6 PhDs and 2 M.Phils, and an Assistant Professor, 4 PhDs and 1 M.Phil. In a combined M.Phil./PhD integrated programme, it makes sense then to look at the PhD data in the table rather than the MPhil.

And what does one see there?

NO VIOLATION OF THE UGC REGULATIONS AT ALL (look at the first two rows in the PhD section): ALL THREE CATEGORIES IN JNU HAVE SIGNIFICANTLY LESS NUMBER THAN THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF SCHOLARS IN EACH. For example, where Assistant Professors as a group could have 636 students, JNU’s data indicates that they are only 534 PhD students enrolled.

With the case for an intake reduction disappearing, enter the VC as Robin Hood, trailing behind a shifting goalpost. The issue is no longer the UGC Regulations 2016 but how there must be an ‘equitable distribution’ of students. This is highly problematic:

Well, first of all, students are not LADDOOS to be distributed amongst the devotees. Students are as actively involved in the choice of supervisor as faculty are, and their decision about supervisors is guided by area of specialisation and topic of research. IS THE GOAL OF THIS REDISTRIBUTION TO ELIMINATE THE STUDENT’S RIGHT TO HAVE A SAY IN THE MATTER?

Second, in a faculty member’s career in the institution, there can be periods in which there are only a few research scholars or even working with her for a variety of reasons — such as engagement in her own research (e.g., writing a book, doing a research project), the demands of university administration, and other factors. CONSIDERATION OF DATA FOR JUST A YEAR OR TWO IS SIMPLY MISLEADING.

Third, should a university administration not be happy that in general, the university faculty, and particularly its professors, are so willing to shoulder the responsibility of research supervision? And SINCE SUPERVISORS ARE FORMALLY ASSIGNED TO STUDENTS BY CENTRES/SCHOOLS/SPECIAL CENTRES, WHERE IS THE QUESTION OF US ‘GRABBING’ STUDENTS?

Last year, in February, JNU teachers were called anti-nationals, living off the taxes paid by the toiling masses. This year, we are being accused of anti-national again – but this time, for working too hard!

Ayesha Kidwai is Professor at JNU and President, JNU Teachers’ Association

Courtesy: kafila.online
 

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With reference to the unsigned editorial ‘Indian Newspaper industry: Red Ink splashed across the bottom line’ (Times of India, Jan 19, 2017), a case is being made out for concessions to the newspaper industry on the grounds that it is in the doldrums and is beleaguered by various burdens, including that of wage board wages, GST, DAVP, etc.

Without mentioning the recent illegal closure of six editions of The Hindustan Times as the obvious peg for this, the editorial seeks a range of concessions – from a part-discontinuance of the wage board for newspaper employees, to subsidies on advertising and tax.

Clearly, what the newspaper industry has lost in judicial review, it is now seeking to stealthily recoup through administrative fiat.

Under the fig leaf of “freedom of speech”, the editorial makes a number of indefensible propositions. However, we will confine ourselves to the empiricial terrain of the Wage Boards and wish to make the following points:

That a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by the then Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam had on Feb 7, 2014 (ABP Pvt Ltd and Anr vs Union of India and Ors), upheld ‘the constitutional validity of the Act and the Amendment Act, 1974’ (referring to the Working Journalists Act, 1955) and rejected the contention of improper constitution of the Wage Boards, irregularity in the procedure adopted by the Majithia Wage Board and that Majithia Wage Boards had overlooked the relevant aspects and considered extraneous factors while drafting the recommendations.

The editorial in question has sought to raise several already-settled issues without any reference to the Supreme Court judgement as cited above. This piece of writing is surely tendentious, if not contemptuous of the Supreme Court order.

It has been almost three years since the Supreme Court upheld the Majithia Wage Board award and directed all newspaper establishments to implement the award and pay arrears within one year of the passing of the order. However, to date, not a single newspaper establishment in the country has implemented the award in its entirety. In fact, more than 50 Contempt Petitions are pending before the Supreme Court. Of course, the editorial fails to mention this fact.

The editorial further seeks to remove non-journalist staff from the ambit of the award claiming that blue-collar staff had received salary hikes of 45-50 percent. It would be instructive to quote the award on this subject. “On the probable impact of wage increase on newspaper establishments: the proposal of the wage boards suggests around 35 and 20 per cent increase in the wages/salaries over and above the salary, including interim relief of employees working in newspaper industry falling in classes I to IV and classes V to VIII respectively. Approximately, it would mean that with this increase, the wages would become about 13.5 per cent of the gross revenue in respect of newspaper establishments falling in class I to IV. This would, therefore, result in further burden of just 3.5 per cent of gross revenue. On a similar analogy, the burden of newspaper establishments in class V to III would be just tree percent of gross revenue. Moreover, this additional burden on newspaper establishment would dissipate over the period as per the past trend. Based on the financial data submitted by the news establishments, the boards feel that it would be possible for them to bear such a moderate increase.”

This view was accepted by the SC, which then went on to give an unprecedented concession to the newspaper establishments and news agencies by unilaterally reducing the period of arrears from 01.7.2010 onwards to 11.11.2011 onwards: thus, at one stroke, giving newspaper and news agency managements relief worth crores of rupees. This fact again goes unmentioned in the editorial.

It would be pertinent to point out that in an affidavit recently filed by Bennett Coleman and Co. Ltd before the Labour Commissioner of Maharashtra, the company has admitted that, in its establishments in Mumbai-CST, Kandivli, Pune and Nagpur, it has only 263 employees (34 working journalists, 86 administrative staff and 143 factory staff)

who are entitled to receive the Wage Board Award benefits. The same affidavit meticulously ensures that the columns for individual contract employees and those working through contractors and part time employees have been left blank. By conservative estimates, the Times Group employs at least 5000 people .It admittedly has only 263 eligible employees. Yet the company has chosen to launch an attack on the Wage Board.

The fact of the matter is that all the individual contract employees are also entitled to be paid Variable Pay @ 35 % of their Basic Pay under Clause 9 (b) of the Award. It has also not implemented Clause 20(f) of the Award regarding Assured Career Development. Thus, the Times Group has knowingly refused to implement the Award, choosing, instead, to launch a broadside against it: attack is the best form of defence.

The editorial also comes out with the curious proposal to ‘at least part discontinue the wage board’. Surely, this is unheard of. Which part should be discontinued? As part of its “solutions”, the editorial makes a plea that “government must review wage board and remove non-journalist staff from its ambit.” The editorial has tried to conceal the fact that newspaper and news agency managements have, over the years, compelled journalists to accept personal, fixed-tenure contracts that have subjected them (the journalists ) to the worst kind of iniquities, including denial of most of the rights that have been conferred on them by the Act of 1955.

Also, newspaper and news agency managements have compelled even those journalists who are receiving wages far below what they are entitled to receive under the Award to sign undertakings under Clause 20 (j) of the award, which gives the “option” to the journalists to retain his/her existing pay scale and existing emoluments. It is our contention that all these undertakings have been obtained under duress. Which journalist would forsake higher emoluments in favour of lower existing emoluments? But if you don’t sign on the dotted line, a transfer order is swiftly issued.

By arguing that the category of print journalist no longer exists, the editorial is seeking to extend the law of the jungle that today prevails in the electronic and digital media. Here, there are no minimum wages, no maximum hours of work, no well-defined periods of leave and no gratuity on the lines of those received by working journalists under the Act of 1955.

It is our case that the rights of benefits of working journalists under the Act of 1955 should be extended to those working in the electronic and digital media and not that the employees of print media be cast into an electronic media-like abyss.

It is our contention that most multi-edition media houses have branched out into various businesses including advertising and brand-related event management, entertainment, electronic and digital media, real estate, power generation, mining etc. This they have done on the back of their print media businesses and are thus covered by Sec 2 (d) of the Act of 1955 and clause 2 (5) of the Award. They have to account for all their gross revenue. But the bosses do not want to comply.

The timing of the editorial remains to be teased out. There are two obvious factors. One, the Supreme Court is on the verge of hearing the concluding arguments regarding legal issues. Second, the TOI, on behalf of the newspaper owners, is seeking to twist the arm of the Modi government which is in a vulnerable position today because of the demonetisation fiasco and the chaos over the forthcoming elections to the UP, Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand and Manipur state assemblies.

Indications of things to come can surely be read into the swift response of the IB minister, Venkaiah Naidu, to the TOI editorial today: “if required consultations with stakeholder ministries will also be initiated; will also meet representatives of industry for discussions”.

Match-fixing, anyone?

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कैच से बातचीत में अक्षय मुकुल ने बताया, 'मैं रामनाथ गोयनका पुरस्कार पाकर बेहद सम्मानित महसूस कर रहा हूं. मुझे इसकी बेहद खुशी है, लेकिन यह पुरस्कार मैं नरेंद्र मोदी के हाथों नहीं ले सकता. इसलिए मैंने किसी अन्य को इसे ग्रहण करने के लिए भेजा है.'

हार्पर कॉलिन्स इंडिया के पब्लिशर और प्रधान संपादक कृशन चोपड़ा ने उनकी तरफ से पुरस्कार ग्रहण किया. अक्षय मुकुल को रामनाथ गोयनका पुरस्कार उनकी पुस्तक "गीता प्रेस एंड द मेकिंग ऑफ हिंदू इंडिया" के लिए दिया गया था. इस पुस्तक को और भी कई पुरस्कार मिल चुके हैं.

The post ‘मुझे पुरस्कार से नहीं, नरेंद्र मोदी से पुरस्कार लेने में दिक्कत है’: अक्षय मुकुल appeared first on SabrangIndia.

On a summer morning this July in Srinagar, tear gas from the troubled streets of Batmaloo began to roll into the first-floor home of Fancy Jan. The 24-year-old went to draw the curtains to screen the room from the acrid smoke, her mother told a reporter later, then turned away from the window and said: “Mummy, maey aaw heartas fire (my heart’s taken fire, mummy)”. Then she dropped dead, a bullet in her chest, the casual target of an anonymous soldier’s rifle. Fancy Jan was not a ‘stone-pelter’. She was a bystander, like many of the 50 people killed in the last two months. She is not the first woman to be shot by the security forces in 20 years of the troubles. But her random death, almost incomprehensible in the presumed safety of her family’s modest home, coincides with a vigorous unsettling of the way women have been represented in this conflict.

Until the other day, Kashmiri women were little more than a convenient set of clichés, shown as perpetual bystanders in houses that overlook the streets of protest. When seen outside of that protected zone, they were cast as victims, wailing mourners, keening at the endless funeral processions. For an occasional frisson there is the daunting image of the severely veiled Asiya Andrabi, chief of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, a women’s group whose high media visibility seems inversely proportional to the modest numbers who adhere to their militant Islamic sisterhood. In black from head to toe, Andrabi always makes for good television, her arms and hands concealed in immaculate gloves, only her eyes showing through a slit. For the Indian media her persona insinuates the dark penumbra of Kashmiri protest, signalling the threat of ‘hard-line’ Islam, a ready metaphor for ‘what-awaits-Kashmir-if…’

But now an unfamiliar new photograph of the Kashmiri woman has begun to take its place on newspaper front pages. She is dressed in ordinary shalwar kameez, pastel pink, baby blue, purple and yellow. Her head is casually covered with a dupatta and she seems unconcerned about being recognised. She is often middle-aged and could even be middle-class. And she is carrying a stone. A weapon directed at the security forces. Last week, in a vastly underreported story, a massive crowd stopped two Indian Air Force vehicles on the highway near Srinagar. At the forefront were hundreds of women. The airmen and their families were asked to dismount and move to the safety of a nearby building. Then the buses were torched. This is not a rare incident: women are everywhere in these troubled times in Kashmir, and not in the places traditionally assigned to them. They are collecting stones and throwing them and assisting the young men in the front ranks of the protesters to disguise themselves, even helping them escape when the situation gets tough.

The government’s narrative of ‘miscreants’, of anomie and drug-fuelled teenagers working as Rs 200 mercenaries for the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, has meanwhile started to appear faintly ridiculous. A more reasonable explanation is being proffered to us now: it is anger, we are told, the people of Kashmir are angry at the recent killings and that’s why the women are being drawn in. That is true but only partially. For this is no ordinary anger but an old, bottled-up rage, gathered over so many years that it has settled and turned rock-hard. That accumulated fury is the stone in her hand. To not understand this, to fail to reach its source – or fathom its depth – is to be doomed to not understand the character of Kashmir’s troubles.

Two events will provide useful bookends for this exercise. In February 1991 there was an assault on Kunan Poshpora village in North Kashmir, where a unit of the Indian army was accused of raping somewhere between 23 and a hundred women. And then, a troubled 18 years later, the June 2009 rape and murder of two young women in Shopian, South Kashmir. In the case of Kunan Poshpora, bypassing a judicial inquiry, the government called in the Press Council of India to whitewash the incident, allowing its inadequate and ill equipped two-member team to summarily conclude that the charges against the army were “a massive hoax orchestrated by militant groups and their sympathisers and mentors in Kashmir and abroad”.

The travesty of the investigations into last year’s Shopian incident involved innumerable bungled procedures and threw up many glaring contradictions till the government of India roped in the Central Bureau of Investigation to put a lid on it. They promptly concluded that it was a case of death by drowning. (In a stream with less than a foot of water.) The case remains stuck in an extraordinary place: charges have been filed against the doctors who performed the post-mortems, against the lawyers who filed cases against the state, against everybody except a possible suspect for the rape and murder, or the many officials who had visibly botched up the investigations.

In the absence of justice, the space between Kunan Poshpora and Shopian can only be filled with the stories of nearly 7,000 people gone missing, of the 60,000 killed and the several-hundred-thousand injured and maimed and tortured and psychologically damaged. The men of this society took the brunt of this brutalisation. What of the price paid by the women? It is when we begin to come to terms with their decades-long accretion of grief and sorrow, of fear and shame, that we will begin to understand the anger of that woman with the stone in her hand.

The current round of protests will probably die down soon. The mandarins of New Delhi will heave a sigh of relief, tell us that everything is normal and turn their attentions to something else. But only their hubris could blind them from noticing what we have all seen this summer in Kashmir. This is not ordinary anger. It is an incandescent fury that effaces fear. That should worry those who seek to control Kashmir. 

 This article was published in The Times of India on August 8, 2010; http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Archived from Communalism Combat. July-August 2010, Anniversary Issue (17th).Year 17, No.153 – Cover Story 2

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