It’s been a year since women’s right activist Loujain al-Hathloul was detained and jailed in Saudi Arabia for leading a movement to lift the kingdom’s ban on female drivers and overhaul its male “guardianship” system. Despite international outcry, she’s been imprisoned ever since. During that time, her family says, she’s been held in solitary confinement and faced abuse, including electric shocks, flogging and threats of sexual violence. The Saudi government has resisted calls from human rights groups and lawmakers from around the world to release Loujain and the other jailed activists.
 
Saud al-Qahtani, the infamous former adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, visited Hathloul in detention to oversee her torture, according to Walid, her brother.
 
“He sat in on one of the sessions. He told her: ‘I’ll kill you, cut you into pieces, throw you in the sewer system. But before that, I’ll rape you,’” Walid said.
 
Hathloul remains more concerned about the fate of women outside the prison walls than herself, said her brother in a report by The Guardian.
 
“Even when she was in jail, although she didn’t witness women being allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, she kept asking me how women there were feeling, whether they were enjoying their right to drive,” Walid said. “She was thinking about them even though she was in jail, and it wasn’t a time to think about others.
 
It’s not hard to guess why Hathloul is still behind bars. Her family, including brother Walid and sister Lina, have been outspoken on her behalf, including about the torture she says she endured: waterboarding, beatings, electric shocks and sexual harassment.

“They are saying, because you guys are speaking out, Loujain is not going to be released,” says Walid al-Hathloul. It’s a way of ensuring that other families remain silent about arrests and mistreatment of activists.
 
Thanks to such tactics, Saudi activists and human rights groups have been unable to determine how many political detentions have occurred since MBS came to power.
 
Including religious opponents of the regime and members of the royal family, the total could number in the thousands, says Safa al-Ahmad, a filmmaker who has documented Saudi repression in an article by The Washington Post.
 
According to accounts shared by her siblings, Loujain was kidnapped from the streets of Dubai by government officials, forced into an airplane and flown back to Saudi Arabia against her will. There she was held, first in an apartment in a secret location, later in a state prison.
 
“These are the things my brave, resilient sister has endured in prison,” Lina recently told an audience at the Women in the World’s New York summit. “She has been beaten until her thighs were black with bruises, subject to whippings and waterboarding, tormented with electric shocks, threatened with rape and murder.”
 
The refusal of her brothers and sisters to keep Loujain’s plight secret, as they had been instructed, make uncomfortable publicity for a nation working on an international media makeover.
 
“In the past year, Saudi Arabia has been rightfully proud of the leaps forward it has made in terms of women’s liberties; the first female ambassador has been appointed, women’s sport has lost its stigma and the infamous female driving ban has fallen. But what does all this mean, if the very people who campaigned peacefully for such rights are denied their own freedom?” Nicola Sutcliff, an international journalist, wrote.
 
There has been relief for some in the past few weeks; approximately seven of the jailed activists have been released ‘temporarily’ pending the results of their ongoing trials. But of Loujain in such headlines, there has been no sign.
 
The date of her last hearing was cancelled abruptly without explanation. Since then, there have been no updates on her case, and no news of when proceedings might be resumed.
 
Loujain has recently been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. At the time of her arrest she was training to work as a sociologist, “In the hope of taking part in the change that is happening in my country as a researcher and a consultant,” she told Sutcliff.
 

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That was former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) union minister of state Sanjeev Balyan addressing an election gather of 100, mostly men, in their white dhotis and pagris (turbans) in a square in Naghori village here in western Uttar Pradesh. He made no mention of the September 2013 riots that got him political fame, as 62 people–42 Muslim, 20 Hindu–were murdered. A former PhD in veterinary sciences, Balyan firmly cast his lot with the Hindus.

The polarisation that Balyan, 46, had effected did its job last time, so he made Modi his primary sales pitch. Many BJP leaders believed that the communal riots in Muzaffarnagar, with Balyan at its epicentre turned the tide for the party in UP,  delivering it 73 of 80 seats, its best performance in India’s electorally most important state.

More than 50,000–most Muslims–fled their homes and had to move to the neighbouring town of Shamli in the neighbouring district of Kairana. Balyan was charged with disobeying curfew orders, using criminal force to deter public servants from doing their jobs and wrongful restraint. He is still fighting these cases in court. But the polarisation between Hindu and Muslim in Muzaffarnagar gained him victory over his nearest rival from the BSP by a margin of 400,000 votes.

Balyan was rewarded and made union minister of state for agriculture. Two years later in 2016, his portfolio was changed to water resources and a year later, he was dropped from the union cabinet altogether.

Despite his patchy track record and the cases he is still fighting, the BJP calculated that, perhaps, Balyan would be able to consolidate Hindu votes yet again and named him the candidate from Muzaffarnagar constituency.

After the rally in Naghori village, Balyan sat in the drawing room of one of his supporters, before a table of cashew nuts and savouries, and talked plainly about  what happened during the Muzaffarngar riots.

First, as someone fighting cases in court, he was cautious.

“Pehli baat toh meri party ka usmey koi role nahi tha. I want to clarify first of all that my party had absolutely no role to play in those riots,” he said.

What about the role he played in the riots? Balyan was quick to reply.

“Ab bhi koi aisi sthithi aayegi toh mai abh bhi khada rahoonga. If circumstances like those arise again, I will stand up and do my bit again,” he said, referring to local attitudes. “Mai us kshetra se hoon jahan eenth ka jawaab paththar se kiya jaata hai. Where I come from, we believe in giving an eye for an eye.”

That a parliamentarian and former union minister was making a statement admitting to violence and ignoring the law was not an aberration. It is the fulcrum around which politics in Muzaffarnagar moves, as UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath confirmed during an election speech in the district on April 8, 2019. “It was Sanjeev Balyan who was fighting for you and even went to jail,” said Adityanath.
Balyan and Adityanath’s approach is connected with the economic distress of the region and the consequent availability of young men.

Foot-soldiers are available
Before the 2014 election, said a local BJP leader, requesting anonymity, violence was stoked to win votes. In August 2013, a local fight erupted between Jats and Muslims over the alleged sexual assault of a Muslim girl.

It spiralled after two young Jat men were killed by Muslims–seven were convicted in February 2019–and a Muslim killed by Hindu Jats. But the state stepped in and imposed a curfew. At this point, Balyan, a local Jat leader at the time, played a key role as a self-styled “protector of Jat pride”.

In defiance of the curfew, he and other BJP leaders from the area called for a Jat mahapanchayat or a grand council of Jats on the September 7, 2013. Slogans were shouted at this public gathering of Jats from across western UP and Haryana: “Muslims have only two sthans (places), Pakistan or kabristan (the graveyard).

The disregard for the law, said political scientist and UP watcher Sudha Pai, who has spent much of her professional life studying UP’s communal and caste politics, comes from a historical downward spiral of UP’s economy and Muzaffarnagar within it. “The bottomline,” said Pai is “a total breakdown” of law and order, which is true for not just the BJP but other parties in the state.

“Coupled with the lack of development, this has meant that there are a large number of men without jobs available as foot soldiers,” said Pai, the author of Everyday Communalism, published in 2018.

When the farm sector and local industry dwindled, politics shifted to carving out caste and community based vote banks, which are easier to tap, said Pai. But this time, there are concerns beyond communal polarisation–sugarcane, for instance.

The politics of sugarcane
Muzaffarnagar district is primarily an agricultural zone: 26.02% of the workforce are cultivators and the remaining 78.03% agricultural labour, according to the Muzaffarnagar district census handbook of 2011.

This is sugarcane country and the state accounts for 43% of India’s sugarcane cultivation, according to the UP sugarcane and cane development department. Muzaffarnagar is UP’s sugarcane epicentre, but the sugar mills currently owe farmers over Rs 11,000 crore, according to government data, referred to in a 2018 parliament question, an issue that appears to be the leading local political problem.  

The UP government’s cane development study outlines the problem: on average, a sugarcane farmer needs to make 53 trips every year to sugar mills for various reasons, including price inquiries and when she or he is likely to be paid.

This tedium has economic and political implications, as growing protests by cane farmers in the last few years indicate.  

In addition, sugar mills face the same predicament that manufacturing units across UP do. Of 31 states and union territories, UP has the lowest percentage of electrified villages, the second-lowest per person consumption of power. About half of rural UP still awaits electricity, according to 2017 government data.

Balyan and the cane failure
It was perhaps to address the sugarcane concerns of many of Balyan’s 653,391 voters that he was made union minister of state for agriculture and food processing. That did not alter the predicament of sugarcane farmers, who sell their produce to mills and are not being paid the arrears the mills owe them.

Balyan admitted as much: “Maine bahut shor machaya apni party me apni sarkaar me. 14 din ka payment sunischit nahi kara paya. Yeh fact hai. I raised a storm in my party, in the government repeatedly, saying sugarcane farmers must be paid their dues within 14 days of the delivery of cane to mills (as is the law). But I wasn’t able to deliver on that. This is a fact.”

It was also a fact that Balyan was moved within two years from the agriculture ministry to water resources, and a year after that, he resigned from the union cabinet.

A veteran BJP party leader from the region, who did not want to be named, summed up what he thought of the region’s persistent under-development and the continued faith his party has displayed in Balyan for 2019: “Western UP me inki prayog-shala ban chuki hai. Sanjeev Balyan ka uday yahin se hua hai – Hinduvaad se. Western UP has been turned into a factory of Hindu hate, and that is what Sanjeev Balyan owes his political origin to.”

Without Hindu-Muslim issues, the lack of development would make voters put their faith on caste and community-based politics, the pattern in UP over the last two decades. The proportion of Muslims in Muzaffarnagar is 41.3%.  In 2014, Balyan defeated the Muslim candidate from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Kadir Rana, a man who was also accused of stoking violence in the Muzaffarnagar riots. In the previous elections in 2009, Rana had won this seat. If Muslims voted en-bloc, then the violence in 2013 prompted various Hindu castes to consolidate around Balyan.

This time however, with no new polarisation to fall back on, Balyan admitted it was going to be “difficult”, especially with a formidable opponent in Jat leader Ajit Singh, founder of the Rashtriya Lok Dal. So, the battle for Hindu votes will be a Jat vs Jat contest.

Balyan hoped his past efforts to consolidate Hindu votes around a projected fear of Muslims would tide him over. As he left the rally, his supporter, Nirantar Singh emphasised the idea. “We don’t want the Talibanis back here,” he said referring to the SP and BSP alliance that many of Balyan’s supporters see as supporting Muslims and, therefore, Balyan the protector of Hindus.

A new generation of hate miners

Whether or not Balyan wins the seat again, it is clear that the template for Hindu politics in Muzaffarnagar district has been set and the next generation of political aspirants are copying this formula.

This was apparent in a town like Shamli, the place where Muslims displaced from the violence of 2013 re-located. The ramshackle town is 28% Muslim, double the national average of 14.3%, has potholed roads, patchy electricity and a near-absent drainage system in most residential areas.

In a such crowded shanty called Kaka Nagar lives 25-year old Bajrang Dal activist Vivek Premi. Up a flight of stairs in a living room flanked by two diwans, a large hairy rat paced the room as Premi spoke of his modus operandi as a Hindutva activist leading a cow protection group, a love-Jihad group, a temple-protection group and overall full-time career as a Hindu vigilante.

If Balyan is hoping to cash in on communal politics in this election, Premi is building a Hindutva base for the next generation. As part of the long term vision of the Sangh Parivar, a collective of Hindutva institutions that includes the intellectual arm – the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the World  Hindu Council or Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the muscular, trishul wielding arm, the Bajrang Dal. Once the ground work is done, the political wing, the BJP, cashes in on the catchment of Hindu consolidation. Balayan’s politics is the immediate. Premi’s–as he acknowledged–is long term.

Premi comes from a trading family. His father owns a jewellery store in the Shamli market. His grandfather was a freedom fighter. “Working for the country” is a sort of inheritance, said Premi, eyes shining.

He came by his nationalism at a Bajrang Dal training camp that he first attended when he was twelve. “I went there because of the physical training and exercise,” Premi said. “And then I was informed about the state of the nation.”

“Jis prakaar Islamic aatankvaad desh ke andar badh raha hai, kabhi love jihad ke naam pe kabhi land jihad ke naam pe. Roz kitni gauein ki hatya kari. Islamic terror is growing across the country, sometimes in the name of love jihad (holy war) at other times as a land (grab) jihad. So many cows are slaughtered every day,” said Premi.  

From this generalised indoctrination Premi said he was motivated to be part of specific campaigns, such as the 2013 Sangh Parivar campaign against India’s Congress led  government, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA); including a belief that it was breaking the Ram Setu, or Adam’s bridge, a rocky link to Sri Lanka, used–as mythology says–by Lord Rama.

Premi went around Shamli displaying what he said were stones from the Ram Setu and talked about what he had heard – that the UPA, led by the Congress party, intended to break the Ram Setu. This work gave him recognition in the Sangh and he was gradually given the official responsibility of indoctrinating students from schools and colleges across all of western UP.  

“Of course, I can’t get official permission from the school principal to talk to kids,” Premi said. “But as soon as it’s chutti time (when school gets over), the gates are open. I stand outside and introduce myself and two or three students gather around. And I tell the about the state of the nation and the need for this kind of nationalism.”

Premi’s work also includes spear-heading a cow-protection group. Shamli district is divided into six WhatsApp groups, by geography, by Premi and his followers, who have turned car mechanics and chai stall owners into Dal informers.

This is how it works.

As soon as an informer spots a truck carrying cows on the highway, they alert Premi or one of his team mates. The WhatsApp groups alert the nearest Dal member and a team gets on to the road to stop the truck–illegally because they have no legal authority. They can identify a lactating cow from a non-lactating one.

They also ask the truck driver to display his permit. If he doesn’t have one, they call the police and hand him over. The fact that this vigilante force works like a parallel administration and has become an integral part of the politics of Shamli does not surprise anyone any more.

Premi said “cow thieves” needed “to be taught a lesson” and that he has on occasion beaten up a few Muslim offenders to set an example.

“I did use a belt to beat up a man who stole calves. At the time “doosrey vicharon ki sarkar thi – there was a government with a different ideology then,” said Premi. “A government that allowed Muslims to get away with their lawlessness,” he added. “Toh woh gussa tha – that filled me with anger.”  

“2-3 chamdi udhad jayegi to phir samajh me aa jayega kit u gau hatya karega toh yeh parinaam hoga. When 2 or 3 miscreants are skinned alive, then they will know not to kill cows,” Premi said, grinning, his face full of pride.

On another occasion, this vigilantism was used to prevent a Hindu girl from dating a Muslim man. When asked if it occurred to him that this is not a crime, Premi stammered over his words. “Errrr haan,” he said. “Lekin samaaj ke vyawastha ke khilaaf hai aur hum uske virodh me hain. It’s against our social norms and so we are firmly against it.”

Premi is not an isolated vigilante in Shamli. As the BJP insider previously quoted explained, there is a connection between Balyan’s political rise, the faith the BJP has shown in him despite an arguably poor performance in two ministries and the politics of Premi.

Political scientist Pai, whose book explains the Hindu vigilante phenomenon, said that this time around, the predicament of this Jat-dominanted belt is more complex than 2014.

In 1992, buoyed by the movement to build a Ram temple at Ayodhya and the destruction of the Babri Masjid, the Jats voted predominantly for the BJP.

“By and large, the Jats of Muzaffarnagar may not mind being anti-Muslim, but they are not that comfortable with the destruction of a place of worship,” said Pai. “Also, Muslims work as labour on farmland owned by Jats. So when things return to normal (unlike the Babri demolition or the Muzaffarnagar riots), they will ultimately have to decide what they are going to do.”    

Regardless of who wins, Pai said, there is a long-term template of communalism that has now been set in this part of India’s most populous state. However, much depends on which way the votes go this time.

“If the mahagathbandhan (the grand coalition) or the SP-BSP alliance wins, that template could get buried,” said Pai. “A new normal may get created. But if Modi wins, it will make UP more communal. That’s why UP is so significant this time. It’s the mother of all battles.”

Muzaffarnagar appears to be the barometer of that battle.

(Laul is an independent journalist and film-maker and the author of `The Anatomy of Hate,’ published by Westland/Context in December 2018.)

This is the second of a six-part series exploring the Hindu vote in UP. You can read the first part here.

Courtesy: India Spend

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The Karnataka Special Investigation Team (SIT) investigating the political assassination of Gauri Lankesh has said that the leadership of Hindu rightwing outfit Sanatan Sanstha (SS) was aware of the activities of its “footsoldiers” in the killing of some rationalists. An SIT official speaking to The New Indian Express has said, “The leadership of Goa-headquartered Sanatan Sanstha was aware of the activities of its footsoldiers and lower rung cadre. We cannot subscribe to this statement that the leadership was not aware of it. They definitely knew about these plots.” Chetan Rajhans, the spokesperson of SS, in a press conference last week had denied all the allegations, and had claimed that the arrested were not its members. As the SIT official noted, all those who are arrested so far are linked to SS or its affiliates. Thus, Rajhans’ claims are illogical and as a senior journalist Urmilesh points out, is a tactic of the right wing to escape the crisis situation, by distancing themselves from the crisis.

On the one hand, the role of SS and its affiliates in the attacks on rationalists is coming to light, and on the other hand, the investigations in all the four cases is getting complicated. The political assassinations of Dr. Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare are being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and SIT of Maharashtra respectively. Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Karnataka and Karnataka SIT are investigating the cases of M M Kalburgi and Lankesh respectively. The four cases are being handled by three different investigative agencies in two different states.

Except for the investigation by the Karnataka SIT in the case of Lankesh, none of the other investigations have yielded any result. The investigations in Dabholkar’s case, the CBI had claimed, had reached a deadlock. However following the investigations of the SIT in the Lankesh’s case and fresh arrests made by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in the case of possession of explosives, proved the CBI wrong. The arrests made in the case of Lankesh and the information shared by the SIT has given a new direction to the investigative agencies in Maharashtra. Sachin Andure, along with Sharad Kalaskar, both arrested by the ATS, have confessed to have shot Dabholkar on August 20, 2013, while Virendra Tawade, who was the first suspect in the case, and is out on bail, had have planned the whole conspiracy, ATS has found. Even though this is not and should not be the end of the investigation, it is relieving to finally see the investigation moving forward after five long years.

As Megha Pansare, the daughter-in-law of Pansare has told Newsclick, there has been no progress so far in his case. Samir Gaikwad of Sanatan Sanstha (SS), who was arrested in September 2015, was granted bail by a Kolhapur court in June 2017, and Srikanth Pangarkar an ex-Shiv Sena corporator was detained in relation to Pansare’s case. Apart from these two, there have been no arrests. The CID has got no major leads in Kalburgi’s case either.

G. Parameshwar, the Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka, has said that the Karnataka government is thinking of handing over investigation into the killing of Kalburgi to the Special Investigation Team (SIT), after it completes its probe into the Gauri Lankesh murder case.

Complicated Investigation Ahead
All the arrests made so far are in the cases of Lankesh and possession of explosives. In the former’s case, the Karnataka SIT has arrested 12, and in the latter case, the Maharashtra ATS has arrested five. Further interrogations of those arrested have shown that it is the same set of people involved in all the four political assassinations. The five arrested in the case of explosives are also reportedly involved in the case of assassination. For example, Amol Kale, Amit Baddi and Ganesh Miskin, who were arrested and interrogated by the SIT in the case of Lankesh, are also being named in the case of Kalburgi which is being looked into by the CID. Now, CID which is willing to interrogate all of them, is also wanting to interrogate another arrested by SIT, Rajesh Bangera. This demand by the CID is not being considered by the SIT, as the investigation is still not complete.

There also reportedly exists a tiff between the Maharashtra ATS, SIT and the CBI looking into the cases of Dabholkar and Pansare. Both CBI, an investigative agency under the Centre and Maharashtra SIT were completely inactive in probing the assassinations of Dabholkar and Pansare. One wonders why this delay? If multiple investigative agencies investigating these cases independently is delaying the investigations, the reluctance of the agencies to cooperate with each other is saving the SS and its affiliates. As the agencies and the governments now are aware of a larger conspiracy involving the SS is in place, this delay can turn out to be dangerous.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in
 

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Gowri

wanton wayfarer!
‘father’s favorite peacock feather
who refused to come under his wings
 
Amidst kites that did not fly,
horses that did not run
you reached your destiny
crawling like an ant.
 
Cool, scarlet honge flower that grew out of
giant banyan tree,
though abandoned by undependable “words”   
you completed the journey through your deeds.
 
 
Neither obsessed with glory
nor infatuated by any sense of achievement
you continue to live an accomplished life even after your death.
 
Outwardly hasty, but slow inside,
 Burning yourself, you purified your innerself
Wiping out the difference between the inner and the outer,
You became , a maha-mane, where everyone had a space
 
You never doused burning truths, with restrained watery words,
nor wraped the naked world with erudite drapery,
refused to label the myths of post-truth as information.
wrote nothing except what you saw, as you saw.
 
Yes,
Some words there, some punctuation here were not needed.
But would it have changed the target of the bullets?
Name a fence sitter killed for following a safe middle path?
Why then Gandhi, the most religious one, was also killed?
 
You loved Love and hated Hate.
You melted, grieved, wept, grew angry, fought…
You became
mother, teacher, word, meaning, purpose…
dusky, red, blue, green, white…
became the spectrum of the rainbow
a hope, a possibility,
a symbol of immortality.
 
You
became Gowri,
defying death                                                                                                            
you became thousands of Gowris.

(Translated by VS Sridhar)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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

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

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

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

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

जारी रहेगा कपास की कीमतों में तेजी का रुख 

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

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

Courtesy: aslibharat.com
 

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