Welcome to the blog of Rajesh Gajra a living being on the Earth plane.
I hope you find it worthwhile to observe the parts of my journey this lifetime that I share here.
The posts on the articles as a journalist in this blog are mostly the raw copies I submit. These undergo vetting and editing before getting published. Hence, these raw copies must not be attributed to the companies I work/worked for.
Showing posts with label indian democracy not for all. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indian democracy not for all. Show all posts
Human Rights Watch has just released a World Report (downloadable here) highlighting events in about 90 countries with every country covered in a separate chapter. Out of three thematic essays accompanying the report is one titled "A facade of action" that I found very insightful.
I want to connect what this essay says with what a three-judge bench of India's Supreme Court remarked earlier this month on 20 January. A newspaper reported, "The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday pulled up social activist Teesta Setelvad, who has been fighting for Gujarat riots victims, for approaching an international human rights body raising the issue of protection for witnesses. The court, which was seized of a law suit seeking transfer of cases from Gujarat to another state, expressed its displeasure on Setelvad’s move. “We do not appreciate that other organisations interfere in our functioning. We can take care of (them) ourselves and cannot get guided by others. It is a direct interference in our functioning. We do not appreciate it,” a bench of justices DK Jain, P Sathasivam and Aftab Alam said. Setelvad-run NGO, the Centre for Justice and Peace (CJP) had sent a letter to the Geneva-based office of the high commissioner for human rights, associated with United Nations, giving details of the proceedings in the Godhra riots cases. When Harish Salve, who is assisting the court in this case, drew the judge’s attention towards Teesta’s letter, an anguished bench told her counsel Kamini Jaiswal that CJP chief seems to have “more faith in foreign organisations than this court”. “It seems that witnesses would be protected by these organisations,” the bench remarked, adding if such letters are written then the court would pass the order without hearing the contentions of the CJP”. “If you send such letters then we would hear the amicus curie and pass the order (without hearing you),” the court warned. "All the cases are being monitored by us, we do not like any correspondence of her with foreign agencies’’, the court added. We do not appreciate letters sent to a foreign country. We do not approve of such a letter. Tomorrow, you will report these (SC) proceedings to them. This letter shows that you have more trust in them.”"
I think if Indian court judges are confident that they are doing their job properly then why have any apprehensions of any international human rights body being updated with any detail of any court case in India. This betrays arrogance on the part of Indian judiciary and is very unfortunate.
I connect with what the writer of the essay "A Facade of Action" in the Human Rights Watch's World Report, which I refer to above, says, "In last year's World Report, Human Rights Watch highlighted the intensifying attacks by abusive governments on human rights defenders, organizations, and institutions. This year we address the flip side of the problem-the failure of the expected champions of human rights to respond to the problem, defend those people and organizations struggling for human rights, and stand up firmly against abusive governments. There is often a degree of rationality in a government's decision to violate human rights. The government might fear that permitting greater freedom would encourage people to join together in voicing discontent and thus jeopardize its grip on power. Or abusive leaders might worry that devoting resources to the impoverished would compromise their ability to enrich themselves and their cronies. International pressure can change that calculus. Whether exposing or condemning abuses, conditioning access to military aid or budgetary support on ending them, imposing targeted sanctions on individual abusers, or even calling for prosecution and punishment of those responsible, public pressure raises the cost of violating human rights. It discourages further oppression, signaling that violations cannot continue cost-free. All governments have a duty to exert such pressure. A commitment to human rights requires not only upholding them at home but also using available and appropriate tools to convince other governments to respect them as well. No repressive government likes facing such pressure. Today many are fighting back, hoping to dissuade others from adopting or continuing such measures. That reaction is hardly surprising. What is disappointing is the number of governments that, in the face of that reaction, are abandoning public pressure. With disturbing frequency, governments that might have been counted on to generate such pressure for human rights are accepting the rationalizations and subterfuges of repressive governments and giving up. In place of a commitment to exerting public pressure for human rights, they profess a preference for softer approaches such as private "dialogue" and "cooperation.""
"....The first step towards reimagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination—an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfilment. To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past, but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this, we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the water in the rivers? The trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain? If they say they cannot, then perhaps they should stop preaching morality to the victims of their wars."
... is how Arundhati Roy concludes her insightful write-up in the latest issue of Outlook magazine.
Arundhati Roy has articulated very well and very firmly the thoughts that are concerning any just-minded Indian today. Here are some more excerpts from her write-up:
The Trickledown Revolution
The answer lies not in the excesses of capitalism or communism. It could well spring from our subaltern depths.
Arundhati Roy
....
In his seven years in office, Manmohan Singh has allowed himself to be cast as Sonia Gandhi’s tentative, mild-mannered underling. It’s an excellent disguise for a man who, for the last 20 years, first as finance minister and then as prime minister, has powered through a regime of new economic policies that has brought India into the situation in which it finds itself now. This is not to suggest that Manmohan Singh is not an underling. Only that all his orders don’t come from Sonia Gandhi.
....
Over the years, he has stacked his cabinet and the bureaucracy with people who are evangelically committed to the corporate takeover of everything—water, electricity, minerals, agriculture, land, telecommunications, education, health—no matter what the consequences.
Sonia Gandhi and her son play an important part in all of this. Their job is to run the Department of Compassion and Charisma and to win elections. They are allowed to make (and also to take credit for) decisions which appear progressive but are actually tactical and symbolic, meant to take the edge off popular anger and allow the big ship to keep on rolling. (The best example of this is the rally that was organised for Rahul Gandhi to claim victory for the cancellation of Vedanta’s permission to mine Niyamgiri for bauxite—a battle that the Dongria Kondh tribe and a coalition of activists, local as well as international, have been fighting for years. At the rally, Rahul Gandhi announced that he was “a soldier for the tribal people”. He didn’t mention that the economic policies of his party are predicated on the mass displacement of tribal people. Or that every other bauxite “giri”—hill—in the neighbourhood was having the hell mined out of it, while this “soldier for the tribal people” looked away. Rahul Gandhi may be a decent man. But for him to go around talking about the two Indias—the “Rich India” and the “Poor India”—as though the party he represents has nothing to do with it, is an insult to everybody’s intelligence, including his own.)
The division of labour between politicians who have a mass base and win elections, and those who actually run the country but either do not need to (judges and bureaucrats) or have been freed of the constraint of winning elections (like the prime minister) is a brilliant subversion of democratic practice. To imagine that Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are in charge of the government would be a mistake. The real power has passed into the hands of a coven of oligarchs—judges, bureaucrats and politicians. They in turn are run like prize race-horses by the few corporations who more or less own everything in the country. They may belong to different political parties and put up a great show of being political rivals, but that’s just subterfuge for public consumption. The only real rivalry is the business rivalry between corporations.
A senior member of the coven is P. Chidambaram, who some say is so popular with the Opposition that he may continue to be home minister even if the Congress were to lose the next election. That’s probably just as well. He may need a few extra years in office to complete the task he has been assigned. But it doesn’t matter if he stays or goes. The die has been rolled.
In a lecture at Harvard, his old university, in October 2007, Chidambaram outlined that task. The lecture was called ‘Poor Rich Countries: The Challenges of Development’. He called the three decades after Independence “the lost years” and exulted about the GDP growth rate which rose from 6.9 per cent in 2002 to 9.4 per cent by 2007. What he said is important enough for me to inflict a chunk of his charmless prose on you:
“One would have thought that the challenge of development—in a democracy—will become less formidable as the economy cruises on a high growth path. The reality is the opposite. Democracy—rather, the institutions of democracy—and the legacy of the socialist era have actually added to the challenge of development. Let me explain with some examples. India’s mineral resources include coal—the fourth-largest reserves in the world—iron ore, manganese, mica, bauxite, titanium ore, chromite, diamonds, natural gas, petroleum and limestone. Common sense tells us that we should mine these resources quickly and efficiently. That requires huge capital, efficient organisations and a policy environment that will allow market forces to operate. None of these factors is present today in the mining sector. The laws in this behalf are outdated and Parliament has been able to only tinker at the margins. Our efforts to attract private investment in prospecting and mining have, by and large, failed. Meanwhile, the sector remains virtually captive in the hands of the state governments. Opposing any change in the status quo are groups that espouse—quite legitimately—the cause of the forests or the environment or the tribal population. There are also political parties that regard mining as a natural monopoly of the State and have ideological objections to the entry of the private sector. They garner support from the established trade unions. Behind the unions—either known or unknown to them—stand the trading mafia. The result: actual investment is low, the mining sector grows at a tardy pace and it acts as a drag on the economy. I shall give you another example. Vast extent of land is required for locating industries. Mineral-based industries such as steel and aluminium require large tracts of land for mining, processing and production. Infrastructure projects like airports, seaports, dams and power stations need very large extents of land so that they can provide road and rail connectivity and the ancillary and support facilities. Hitherto, land was acquired by the governments in exercise of the power of eminent domain. The only issue was payment of adequate compensation. That situation has changed. There are new stakeholders in every project, and their claims have to be recognised. We are now obliged to address issues such as environmental impact assessment, justification for compulsory acquisition, right compensation, solatium, rehabilitation and resettlement of the displaced persons, alternative house sites and farmland, and one job for each affected family....”
Allowing “market forces” to mine resources “quickly and efficiently” is what colonisers did to their colonies, what Spain and North America did to South America, what Europe did (and continues to do) in Africa. It’s what the Apartheid regime did in South Africa. What puppet dictators in small countries do to bleed their people. It’s a formula for growth and development, but for someone else. It’s an old, old, old, old story—must we really go over that ground again?
Now that mining licences have been issued with the urgency you’d associate with a knockdown distress sale, and the scams that are emerging have run into billions of dollars, now that mining companies have polluted rivers, mined away state borders, wrecked ecosystems and unleashed civil war, the consequence of what the coven has set into motion is playing out. Like an ancient lament over ruined landscapes and the bodies of the poor.
Note the regret with which the minister in his lecture talks about democracy and the obligations it entails: “Democracy—rather, the institutions of democracy—and the legacy of the socialist era have actually added to the challenge of development.” He follows that up with the standard-issue clutch of lies about compensation, rehabilitation and jobs. WhatWhat solatium? What rehabilitation? And what “job for each family”? (Sixty years of industrialisation in India has created employment for 6 per cent of the workforce.) As for being “obliged” to provide “justification” for the “compulsory acquisition” of land, a cabinet minister surely knows that to compulsorily acquire tribal land (which is where most of the minerals are) and turn it over to private mining corporations is illegal and unconstitutional under the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act or PESA. Passed in 1996, PESA is an amendment that attempts to right some of the wrongs done to tribal people by the Indian Constitution when it was adopted by Parliament in 1950. It overrides all existing laws that may be in conflict with it. It is a law that acknowledges the deepening marginalisation of tribal communities and is meant to radically recast the balance of power. As a piece of legislation, it is unique because it makes the community—the collective—a legal entity and it confers on tribal societies who live in scheduled areas the right to self-governance. Under PESA, “compulsory acquisition” of tribal land cannot be justified on any count. So, ironically, those who are being called “Maoists” (which includes everyone who is resisting land acquisition) are actually fighting to uphold the Constitution. While the government is doing its best to vandalise it. compensation?
Between 2008 and 2009, the ministry of panchayati raj (village administration) commissioned two researchers to write a chapter for a report on the progress of panchayati raj in the country. The chapter is called ‘PESA, Left-Wing Extremism and Governance: Concerns and Challenges in India’s Tribal Districts’. Its authors are Ajay Dandekar and Chitrangada Choudhury. Here are some extracts:
“The Central Land Acquisition Act of 1894 has till date not been amended to bring it in line with the provisions of PESA.... At the moment, this colonial-era law is being widely misused on the ground to forcibly acquire individual and community land for private industry. In several cases, the practice of the state government is to sign high-profile MoUs with corporate houses and then proceed to deploy the Acquisition Act to ostensibly acquire the land for the state industrial corporation. This body then simply leases the land to the private corporation—a complete travesty of the term ‘acquisition for a public purpose’, as sanctioned by the act....
There are cases where the formal resolutions of gram sabhas expressing dissent have been destroyed and substituted by forged documents. What is worse, no action has been taken by the state against concerned officials even after the facts got established. The message is clear and ominous. There is collusion in these deals at numerous levels....
The sale of tribal lands to non-tribals in the Schedule Five areas is prohibited in all these states. However, transfers continue to take place and have become more perceptible in the post-liberalisation era. The principal reasons are—transfer through fraudulent means, unrecorded transfers on the basis of oral transactions, transfers by misrepresentation of facts and mis-stating the purpose, forcible occupation of tribal lands, transfer through illegal marriages, collusive title suits, incorrect recording at the time of the survey, land acquisition process, eviction of encroachments and in the name of exploitation of timber and forest produce and even on the pretext of development of welfarism.”
In their concluding section, they say:
“The Memorandums of Understanding signed by the state governments with industrial houses, including mining companies, should be re-examined in a public exercise, with gram sabhas at the centre of this inquiry.”
Here it is then—not troublesome activists, not the Maoists, but a government report calling for the mining MoUs to be re-examined. What does the government do with this document? How does it respond? On April 24, 2010, at a formal ceremony, the prime minster released the report. Brave of him, you would think. Except, this chapter wasn’t in it. It was dropped.
.........
Justice, that grand, beautiful idea, has been whittled down to mean human rights. Equality is a utopian fantasy. The word has, more or less, been evicted from our vocabulary. The poor have been pushed to the wall. From fighting for land for the landless, revolutionary parties and resistance movements have had to lower their sights to fighting for people’s rights to hold on to what little land they have. The only kind of land redistribution that seems to be on the cards is land being grabbed from the poor and redistributed to the rich, for their landbanks which go by the name of SEZs
......
During the Emergency, the saying goes, when Mrs Gandhi asked the press to bend, it crawled. And yet, in those days, there were instances when national dailies defiantly published blank editorials to protest censorship
.....
This time around, in the undeclared emergency, there’s not much scope for defiance because the media is the government. Nobody, except the corporations which control them, can tell it what to do. Senior politicians, ministers and officers of the security establishment vie to appear on TV, feebly imploring Arnab Goswami or Barkha Dutt for permission to interrupt the day’s sermon. Several TV channels and newspapers are overtly manning Operation Green Hunt’s war room and its disinformation campaign. There was the identically worded story about the “1,500-crore Maoist industry” filed under the byline of different reporters in several different papers. Almost all newspapers and TV channels ran stories blaming the pcapa (used interchangeably with “Maoists”) for the horrific train derailment near Jhargram in West Bengal in May 2010 in which 140 people died. Two of the main suspects have been shot down by the police in “encounters”, even though the mystery around that train accident is still unravelling. The Press Trust of India put out several untruthful stories, faithfully showcased by the Indian Express, including one about Maoists mutilating the bodies of policemen they had killed. (The denial, which came from the police themselves, was published postage-stamp size hidden in the middle pages.) There are the several identical interviews, all of them billed as “exclusive”, with a female guerrilla about how she had been “raped and re-raped” by Maoist leaders. She was supposed to have recently escaped from the forests, and the clutches of the Maoists, to tell the world her tale. Now it turns out that she has been in police custody for months.
The atrocity-based analyses shouted out at us from our TV screens is designed to smoke up the mirrors, and hustle us into thinking: “Yes, the tribals have been neglected and are having a very bad time; yes, they need development; yes, it’s the government’s fault, but right now there is a crisis. We need to get rid of the Maoists, secure the land and then we can help the tribals.”
......
Not many analysts and commentators who were pained by the Maoist killing of civilians in Dantewada noticed that at exactly the same time as the bus was blown up by the Maoists in Dantewada, the police had surrounded several villages in Kalinganagar in Orissa, and in Balitutha and Potko in Jharkhand, and had fired on thousands of protesters resisting the takeover of their lands by the Tatas, the Jindals and Posco. Even now, the siege continues. The wounded cannot be taken to hospital because of the police cordons. Videos uploaded on YouTube show armed riot police massing in the hundreds, confronted by ordinary villagers, some of whom are armed with bows and arrows.
The one favour Operation Green Hunt has done ordinary people is that it has clarified things to them. Even the children in the villages know that the police works for the “companies” and that Operation Green Hunt isn’t a war against Maoists. It’s a war against the poor.
There’s nothing small about what’s going on. We are watching a democracy turning on itself, trying to eat its own limbs. We’re watching incredulously as those limbs refuse to be eaten.
.......
In Orissa, for instance, there are a number of diverse struggles being waged by unarmed resistance movements which often have sharp differences with each other. And yet between them all, they have managed to temporarily stop some major corporations from being able to proceed with their projects—the Tatas in Kalinganagar, Posco in Jagatsinghpur, Vedanta in Niyamgiri. Unlike in Bastar, where they control territory and are well-entrenched, the Maoists tend to use Orissa only as a corridor for their squads to pass through. As the security forces are closing in on people and ratcheting up the repression, they have to think very seriously about the pros and cons of involving the Maoists into their struggles. Will its armed squads stay and fight the State repression that will inevitably follow a Maoist “action”? Or will they retreat and leave unarmed people to deal with police terror? Activists and ordinary people, falsely accused of being Maoists, are already being jailed. Many have been killed in cold blood. But a tense uneasy dance continues between the unarmed resistance movements and the CPI (Maoist).
......
People who live in situations like this do not simply take instructions from a handful of ideologues who appear out of nowhere waving guns. Their decisions of what strategies to employ take into account a whole host of considerations: the history of the struggle, the nature of the repression, the urgency of the situation and the landscape in which their struggle is taking place. The decision of whether to be a Gandhian or a Maoist, militant or peaceful, or a bit of both (like in Nandigram), is not always a moral or ideological one. Quite often, it’s a tactical one. Gandhian satyagraha, for example, is a kind of political theatre. In order for it to be effective, it needs a sympathetic audience which villagers deep in the forest do not have. When a posse of 800 policemen lay a cordon around a forest village at night and begin to burn houses and shoot people, will a hunger strike help? (Can starving people go on a hunger strike? And do hunger strikes work when they are not on TV?) Equally, guerrilla warfare is a strategy that villages in the plains, with no cover for tactical retreat, cannot afford.
.....
Since the government has expanded its definition of “Maoist” to include anybody who opposes it, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Maoists have moved to centrestage. However, their doctrinal inflexibility, their reputed inability to countenance dissent, to work with other political formations and, most of all, their single-minded, grim, military imagination makes them too small to fill the giant pair of boots that is currently on offer.
(When I met Comrade Roopi in the forest, the first thing the techie-whiz did after greeting me was to ask about an interview with me published soon after the Maoists had attacked Rani Bodili, a girls’ school in Dantewada which had turned into a police camp. More than 50 policemen and SPOs were killed. “We were glad,” she said, “that you refused to condemn our Rani Bodili attack, but then in the same interview you said that if the Maoists ever come to power, the first person we would hang would probably be you. Why did you say that? Why do you think we’re like that?” I was settling into my long answer but we were distracted. I would probably have started with Stalin’s purges—in which millions of ordinary people and almost half of the 75,000 Red Army officers were either jailed or shot and 98 out of 139 Central Committee members were arrested, gone on to the huge price people paid for China’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and might have ended with the Pedamallapuram incident in Andhra Pradesh, when the Maoists, in its previous avatar as People’s War, killed the village sarpanch and assaulted women activists for refusing to obey their call to boycott elections).
Governments can lie. Before WW2 started, very very few in the then-mainstream media, worldwide, were inclined to understand that Adolf Hitler's Nazi government was very adept in spreading falsehoods. In this ugly game, Jews, Gypsies etc were used as the favorite whipping boys of German authorities.
In India, at present, the same deadly, ugly game is being played out. Almost every tragic incident in the eastern states of India is being attributed to be the causation of Maoists (Left extremists). To be sure, Maoists are involved in quite some of them. But there is absolutely no surety that they are involved in all of them or even 60-70% of them.
The latest is the tragedy that struck the passengers of a train in West Bengal that derailed in the early morning hours a few days back. All television channels and print media companies were quick to attribute the train derailment to Maoists. Proof is, of course, hard to come by. Maoists have not admitted to being involved.
Forget wrong attribution. Governments can, at times, even create incidents and then wrongly attribute to their favorite whipping boys. Many records of the Nazi government that came to light in the late 40s and early 50s clearly brought this out. The 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and the US, I have very little doubt about, could have not happened without active participation by insiders in the George Bush Jr. regime.
Anyway, since Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, P Chidambaram and Kamal Nath do not resemble Nazis in style and looks, it is very easy to get swayed by their subtle attribution of anything and everything dangerous in India to Maoists, or the other one, Islamic extremists from Pakistan (the latter though, in my view, are indeed deadly and criminal in their acts).
But looks can deceive.
I was reading a news story in a latest issue of Tehelka weekly newsmagazine that emanated from ground zero (an area where Maoists are fighting a dirty war against the state and the state is fighting the whole tribal population with still-dirtier tactics).
Fish, Rice, Blood A CIVILIAN BUS IS BLOWN UP. SIX MEN ARE ARRESTED. BELOW RADAR, A MINDLESS CYCLE OF VIOLENCE ROLLS ON IN DANTEWADA. TUSHA MITTAL REPORTS FROM GROUND ZERO
Mood shift A civilian bus is blown up by Maoists in Dantewada, with 15 SPOs on board Photo: AFP
The mangled remains of a charred bus lie on an empty road in Chhattisgarh. On may 17, an ied blast trigged by the Naxals blew up a private bus travelling between Dantewada and Sukma. 31 died: all ordinary people with ordinary lives. Yet, distinctions emerged. There were 15 SPOs — special police officers, one CRPF constable, and 15 civilians. Rummage amid the debris, where blood stained clothes have already begun to mix with earth — and the distinctions seem to melt. All you find are leftovers of lost lives. There is a diary page that rips at ‘I love V’, a wedding invitation to Shri padmbhan Thakur, an audio cassette of Gautam Kumar, a photo of durga, a ruled book with English Lesson 9: Whom does the sunshine wake up every morning? In many ways, the distorted wreck tells the story of Chhattisgarh — a zone of escalated conflict, where it is becoming impossible to create any categories of hero and villain, victory and defeat, oppressor and oppressed; where everyone seems to be a victim first. There are the nine Adivasi women of Durvaras village — all were on that bus, returning from Malaiwara with mahua fruit crushed into oil. Miraculously, all of them survived. Sodi Deva, 8, had crawled out the bus window to help the women. The incident has left many in the village scared of bus rides. “I’ll never again go on the same bus as the security forces,” says Sodi Huva, a farmer in Durvaras. “I’d rather walk for miles.”
The SPO says, ‘The Naxals have nothing. They loot because if they don’t, how else will they eat?’
There is the 25-year-old SPO, one of many survivors recovering at Jagdalpur hospital. He joined the Salwa Judum 5 years ago and earns Rs 2,150 a month. “I became an SPO to protect my country, but we have achieved nothing. The salwa Judum hasn’t solved the problem. The government has everything. The Naxals have nothing. They loot because if they don’t, how else will they eat?” There is a CRPF jawan huddled in a tent outside a salwa Judum camp, which he is convinced the Naxals will attack in 25 days. “I’m counting down,” he says. “10 days up. I’m prepared to die.” And yet he reverts to the Mahabharata when you ask what he thinks of his enemy. “They are like Krishna,” he says with a long sigh. “There was a yug during which even Krishna had to kill the Rajas. It’s inevitable.” There is Madvi Pojje, an Adivasi woman in Mukram village. Last week, an SPO threw her on the ground and tried to shove her into an irrigation sewer pipe. A few kilometres ahead, Madkam Deva was also hurled down, stripped and beaten so hard he limps now. Only days earlier, the cRpf had asked villagers from Mukram for fish from the pond. There weren’t enough to distribute even among the villagers, so none were sent to the CRPF. The anger resurfaced as Deva was being dragged to the camp. “Is our money any different from the Naxals. You give them fish. Why not us? You are with them,” the jawans bellowed.
Victims all Sodi Dhule, one of the bus survivors. PHOTOS: TARUN SEHRAWAT
Oyem Aitte, mother of Oyem Hirma arrested as a Maoist
Ever so often, a major event brings Chhattisgarh back into the national public gaze. Yet below the radar, a lowintensity conflict continues to simmer — a senseless cycle of violence and counter violence. Each local incident can be traced back to another, sometimes as micro as the outrage over fish. It is as if the Adivasis of Chhattisgarh have become pawns in a dangerous game of chess where every move is a trigger, an action and a reaction at the same time. THE MOST recent move has come from the security forces, who have been on the back foot after a recent surge in Maoist violence. on April 6, the Maoists ambushed a CRPF patrol team in Chintalnar, killing 76 security personnel. It was the biggest Maoist attack in India. A bus explosion only a month later came as a major embarrassment. The report of the EN Rammohan committee highlighting procedural lapses in the Chintalnar incident and calling for the dismissal of both CRPF and police top brass only added to the disgrace. On May 21st, CRPF’s Deputy Inspector-General Nalin Prabhat, was transferred out of Chhattisgarh. On May 24th, the Chhattisgarh Police announced a major breakthrough — the arrest of six Naxals — a “self-styled” Naxal commander called Barse Lakhma and five others — responsible for the Chintalnar attack. Only Lakhma was presented before the press. Police identified the five others as Podiyam Hidma, Oyam Ganga, Durga Joga, Oyam Hidma, Kawasi Budra, arrested from Minapa village on May 23. “The six arrested were part of a 150-strong jan militia. Along with Barse Lakhma, the five men planned and executed the Chintalnar attack. They were arrested during recent search operations,” says Dantewada SP Amresh Mishra. TEHELKA travelled to the village to verify police claims. The locals say that these five men were picked up a month ago and have been in police custody since.
Each incidence can be traced back to another, sometimes as micro as the outrage over fish
A rugged pathway through the forests leads to the remote village of Minapa, about five kilometres from the sight of the CRPF ambush in Chintalnar. In Minapa, the huts are smaller and spread further apart; the women are skeletal, the children are mostly naked, and even many men wear nothing but a patch of cloth. There is a sense of bareness, even the usual flutter of chicken and wild boar is absent. The only sign of government is a pDs ration shop, 10 km away in Chintagupha, where Adivasis get 25 kilos rice monthly. Nothing else is available. It is this Chintagupha market from where locals allege the men, excluding Oyam Hidma — were picked up. This is the version of their families: On April 10, the four men — aged 22-25, left for Gunjaigunda village in Orissa. It was haldi farming season during which locals customarily go to Orissa. Podiyam Hidma, the village sarpanch’s nephew and Oyam Ganga, an ordinary farmer, had consecutively visited Orissa the last two haldi seasons. For the others, it was their first visit. The four boys returned from Orissa on April 14 and stopped at the Wednesday bazaar in Chintagupha. Forces arrived for random search and picked them up. Since the incident, the village women have protested at Chintagupha thrice, only to be turned away each time. Meanwhile, Oyam Hidma, 20, studies at a local school in Sukma town. His father alleges that Hidma was picked up from his rented room in Sukma. After being held for 10 days in the Chintagupha station, the locals claim that on April 24, all five men where flown out on a helicopter from the Chintagupha camp. They say they received this information from other villagers living nearby. While it is impossible to independently corroborate either version, travel through the Chintalnar forests and there is a sense that the security forces are escalating operations, under pressure to show results. MUKRAM VILLAGE, around three kilometres from Chintalnar, has become the epicentre of another cycle of violence. This village is significant because it is here the 82-strong CRPF patrol party lost their wireless set. The security forces reportedly ate dinner here on April 5, hours before they were ambushed. for several days post the April 6 incident, the villagers of Mukram had abandoned their huts fearing a backlash. Enter Mukram a month later and there is still an eerie sense of desertion. The first thing you see is a local school blasted by the Maoists, their signature scrawled across its broken walls: Sabhi Chunavi party dokhebaz hai. Dushman ke hathiyar hamare hathiyar hain. (All electoral parties are traitors. The enemies’ weapons are our weapons) Walk on and a silent row of locked huts greets you. They are abandoned, but not by choice. On May 22, villagers say security forces entered Mukram at around 10 am and barged into the first few houses they found. Four Adivasis — Nuppo Bhima, Nuppo Hadma, Madvi Kosa, Iama Nanda, and the village Sarpanch Iama Ganga were picked up from their homes. “I saw them beating my father. I don’t think they knew he was the Sarpanch,” says his son Keshav, a security guard in Raipur home on vacation. “When my brother and mother tried to save him, they were also beaten with sticks. I was too scared to come out.”
Police have arrested five Maoists this week. Families say they are farmers in custody for a month
While Nuppo Hadma’s wife is able to produce his voter ID, others cling to newly made plastic cards. After the on-set of Operation Green Hunt, several villages including Mukram got together and trekked into town to have photos clicked and private IDs made. All have listed their occupation as “farmer”. Though the ID is not considered legitimate by security forces, it is telling of the fear psychosis the war has triggered. Travel along the Dantewada-Sukma road, on which the May 17th bus attack took place, and every turn yields a potential trigger. There is Gumyipal village, where the security forces had conducted search operations on May 16, a day before the bus attack. Police claim to have killed two Naxals. But villagers claim they were innocent Adivasis. “Malla and Aituram were sleeping at home,” says Gujjo Bai, the sarpanch. “They were woken up and killed. Their houses and fields were burnt. They are not Naxals.” While these claims cannot be independently verified, the incident is significant because it resurfaced in CPI(Maoist) leader Ramanna’s statement about the May 17 incident. he claimed it was revenge for the Gumyipal killing, and other such encounters. Then there is Bhusharas village — the SPos at Jagdalpur hospital have told TEHELKA they were on a search operation here immediately before they boarded the bus to Sukma. Stop at Bhusharas at you will meet a frail a 30-year-old widow, Hidme Mandal. On April 21, at around 10:30 pm, the Naxals barged into her hut. Threatening Hidme into silence, masked men sliced a knife through her husband Manoj Mandal while he slept beside her. After the killing, they fired three shots in the air and disappeared into darkness. Mandal had been murdered for being a police informer, but villagers say he was an ordinary farmer.
Hunter, hunted Kawal Singh Nar, 21, in Jagdalpur Hospital, an SPO who survived the latest Maoist attack
MURLI KUMAR, a local teacher in the area is no stranger to such killings. it was the mid 1980s, Kumar’s family lived in a remote village in Bijapur district, where the Naxals ensured the local patwari and the local contractor could not overcharge villagers. “We thought it was a good thing. Everytime the Naxals called a baithak, we went for it.” Things changed in the 1990s, when his father, an Adivasi farmer, was accused of being a police informer. “Some Maoist cadre started this rumour because of personal rivalry,” Kumar says. his father was called for questioning by the Maoist top brass — Ramanna and Ganesh VK. They found no evidence of guilt and let him go. Yet, a few months later, Kumar’s house was attacked, his family beaten and his father killed by the Maoists. Aghast, Kumar wrote a letter to Ramanna asking why his men had killed an innocent man. Within weeks, the reply came. An apology and an offer of compensation. “We did not know our comrades killed him. We are sorry. Come and meet us.” Kumar refused the money and left the village with his family. If you travel the remaining 80-odd km up to Sukma town, the microcosm of violence becomes more evident. Mediyum Bandhi was shot inside Sukma Police Station on May 19, two days after the bus attack. Sukma Sho Sandeep Chandrakar confirmed the death of Bandhi, 25, but said he was shot while trying to flee from the police station. According to Chandrakar, Mediyum Bandhi and Pariyam Kosa were picked up from Neelavaram village, a few kilometres from the station. “We found them randomly in another village. When asked why they were visiting, they could not answer, so we brought them for questioning. Soon after we received a message from the Sho of Gadhiras that they are wanted in other criminal cases,” he told TEHELKA. “on May 19, we brought them out of their lock up to have dinner. At around 7:15 pm, the Naxals fired at the station. The police took up their positions and began firing in return. Bandhi escaped from behind the policemen. he was shot by a police bullet while trying to run away.” Bandhi and Kosa belong to the Aitpal village in Korra block. “Around 300 security forces came to Aitpal on the morning of May 16 and dragged them from their houses,” Korra deputy sarpanch Mooya told TEHELKA. “There are ordinary farmers like the rest of us. We feel helpless.” Again, the counter narrative.
There is much hypocrisy among the educated affluent of India when it comes to the issue of property rights. When they talk of industrialisation and 'development' they are desperate to snatch away the property rights of individuals, families and tribes residing in the remote areas and villages of India so that their kind of 'development' happens. But if at all their own homes and offices were to be snatched away for the same purpose they will cry themselves hoarse about their property rights not being respected.
"Development is just an excuse to grab land for companies who will then make electricity, goods etc which will be consumed in urban India and other countries. Such capitalists are an insult to true capitalism that says that governments should not interfere in the free play of property rights and competition in trade. Why then do companies worldwide manipulate governments to seek tax favours and other cruel interventions against poor people living in remote areas?
Why aren't the property rights of these poor & un-influential, whether individual or collective (of a community or a tribe) respected by industrialists, politicians and civil-service-bureaucrats? Their machinations and double-standards disgust me completely. As a journalist, I know, for a fact, that they also manipulate very senior editors in the media (print, TV and internet) to carry forward their ugly agenda. The affluent citizenry, in the meanwhile, continue to remain steeped in their excessive consumerism."
Currently, the government of India, that is supposed to be beholden to democracy, is using excessive, even brutal, force against the villagers and tribals of Orissa who are protesting against the illegal and forced acquisition of their land for steel company Posco.
Below is a copy of an email I received from an internet-based group called 'Orissa Concerns' (I am on its mailing list) that gives details of more violations going beyond land acquisition ones:
From: Anivar Aravind
Date: 15 May 2010 22:19
Subject: [OrissaConcerns] Police Open Fire for Illegal Mineral Robbers: The Real Story of the POSCO Project
To: connect , Invitesplus , common-concern
Police Open Fire for Illegal Mineral Robbers: The Real Story of the POSCO Project
Today, Orissa police opened fire on peaceful protesters sitting on dharna for their lands and livelihoods. We join other democratic forces in condemning this atrocious brutality, in which at least 50 people have been injured, markets have been burned and many more are likely to be wounded or killed. We also wish to draw attention to the following facts:
This is not just a “dispute over land acquisition for development.” The POSCO project is illegal and will not bring any benefits for the local population or the country's economy. Rather, it is simply plunder of lives and resources:
The POSCO project is illegal as it violates the Forest Rights Act of 2006. Under that law, no forest land can be given to anyone until 1) all the rights of the people in the area are recognised and 2) their consent is given to the project. This is the requirement of the law, acknowledged further by an Environment Ministry order of August 3, 2009. This has never been done in the area despite the people demanding it. The Central and State governments have no legal right to hand over this land to POSCO. In law, not just in public view, this is daylight robbery. Please see the attached timeline for more details.
The project is nothing less than a robbery of the country's natural resources by a multinational. There is no conflict between people's rights and “development” here. Despite grand talk of 51,000 crores of foreign investment, what is not mentioned is that POSCO is getting a huge amount of:
land: 4,000 acres for the plant, 2,000 acres for a “township”, 25 acres in Bhubaneshwar for their office, plus an unknown amount in the mining and port areas;
water: an estimated 12,000 crore liters from the river Mahanadi, threatening the water supply of Bhubaneshwar and Cuttack;
iron ore: 600 million tonnes in the form of captive mines, and a further 400 million tonnes will be “allocated';
in exchange for which it will:
pay essentially nothing for the water and the land;
pay a pittance as royalty, allowing it to make tens of thousands of crores in profits just by the difference between market prices and extraction costs (one 2005 estimate put the net profits at 96,000 crores from extraction alone);
practically no income and other direct taxes, as it is seeking SEZ status;
provide 13,000 jobs – by their own estimates, which in the case of all industrial projects have proven to be gross overestimates – while displacing around 40,000 people in the plant and port sites alone (not including the mines). More than 20,000 people will lose employment in the plant site alone.
In sum, no tax revenue, net loss of employment, no royalties, loss of 15% of India's proven ore reserves, environmental devastation and the forced displacement of 40,000 people. This is what our government considers “development.”
Today's police action shows better than any other that the government is neither concerned about law nor resources nor development – it is interested in daylight robbery. We stand by the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti, who are among the many unsung heroes of our country today, fighting not only for themselves and their homes but for the idea of true democracy in India.
June 22, 2005: MoU signed between Orissa government and POSCO-India, subsidiary of the POSCO Corporation of South Korea. MoU pertains to an integrated iron ore mine – steel plant – private port project. Rs. 51,000 crore investment is spoken of. Critics point out that there are almost no linkages with local or national economy; operation consists of extracting iron ore while paying extremely low rates of royalty, processing into steel without paying full land, electricity, water or tax costs (due to SEZ status and use of State government's powers for all these resources), and exporting it.
MoU allocates an area of 4,004 acres for the steel plant in Jagatsinghpur District. Of this, 1,253 hectares (approximately 3,000 acres) are officially classified as forest land. However, this “forest land” is largely under cultivation by various betel vine, cashew nut and other cash crop cultivators as well as people engaged in aquaculture. Some of these people have lived in the area for over a century and most have been there for several decades. The land was classified as forest land as a result of an agitation in the 1950's demanding afforestation in the area. The main actual forests of the area are mangroves, which occupy only a small part of the “forest” land.
Due to absence of title, out of an estimated 4,000 families that will be physically displaced by the steel plant, only 270 odd are officially entitled to compensation.
August / September 2005: POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti formed to oppose project. A people's blockade declared in three gram panchayat areas affected by plant. The blockade allows all persons entry and exit except government officials and POSCO employees. The Samiti calls for negotiations. No negotiations have been held till date.
December 18, 2006: Forest Rights Act passed by Parliament. Some sections that are relevant:
2(o) declares that all those living on forest land for at least three generations (75 years), as well as forest dwelling scheduled tribes, have rights under the Act
3(1)(a) recognises right to land under occupation and/or cultivation in forest areas
3(1)(c) recognises right to own, use, collect, dispose of minor forest produce
4(5) bars removal of any forest dweller without recognition of rights
5 empowers gram sabha to protect and manage forests as a statutory authority
November 29, 2007: Police and hired goondas attack PPSS dharna at one entry point with bombs – more than 50 people injured – dharna tent demolished. The protesters are driven back into one gram panchayat (Dhinkia). Police set up camps in the schools of the other two villages, deploy in heavy force.
January 1, 2008: Forest Rights Act notified into force.
August 8, 2008: Supreme Court upholds “in principle” clearance for use of forest land but directs Environment Ministry to proceed “in accordance with law.” No final clearance granted. The case is only between Orissa government, Central governent and POSCO; no opponents to the project are represented.
March 23, 2008: Gram sabha of Dhinkia passes resolution electing a Forest Rights Committee and starting process of inviting claims under the Forest Rights Act. Resolution also states the gram sabha's decision to protect the surrounding area from environmental destruction in exercise of its powers under section 5. Claism are filed, but Sub-Divisional Officer illegally refuses to accept them. The State government takes no steps to implement Act in the area. Claims are till this date with the gram sabha.
August 3, 2009: Following prolonged protest, Environment Ministry issues circular clearly stating that no application for “diversion” (i.e. clearance for non-forest use) can be made without inter alia certificates from gram sabhas of the affected area stating that:
The process of implementation of the Forest Rights Act is complete and all rights have been recognised
That they consent to the diversion after being informed of the nature and details of the project and rehabilitation project.
50% quorum is required. Without these requirements, the Ministry says, no final clearance can be granted.
December 29, 2009: In violation of its own circular and the Forest Rights Act, Ministry grants final clearance for diversion of forest land.
January 5, 2010: POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti writes to Ministry against illegal action. CPI also raises issue, and various people's organisations protest.
January 8, 2010: Environment Ministry “clarifies” that clearance is subject to the August 3rd, 2009 circular, including “informed consent of the tribal people” (emphasis added). There are no tribals in the area, but there are people eligible as other traditional forest dwellers, who are also protected to the same extent by the Forest Rights Act. Taking advantage of this obvious and illegal loophole, POSCO responds within a few days that there are no tribals in the area. Despite the “clarification”, illegal final clearance is not withdrawn and all government officials are treating it as final.
First week of February, 2010: In response to a request from the Collector for the opinion of the gram sabhas, all three in the steel plant area pass resolutions refusing consent for diversion of forest land and demanding recognitin of their rights and power to protect forests. As per law, the forest clearance is now clearly illegal and has to be withdrawn. Despite this, till date MoEF has done nothing and the clearance is standing.
February 2010: PPSS begins a three month dharna at main entry point at Balitutha.
May 11 2010: 25 platoons of police deploy in the area. Attack on protesters expected at any moment.
May 15 2010: Attack begins. At least 50 people injured, market areas and protest camps burned, police attacking people.
Like it does for most countries, Human Rights Watch organisation has articulated the state of India's human rights reasonably correctly. The first article below is what HRW has to say about India in 2009 and the second article below is what a HRW official has to say about how in the United Nations India supports abusive regimes in the world.
1] INDIA Events of 2009
The ruling alliance led by the Congress Party returned to power after elections in 2009. In its first term in office the Congress-led coalition made only modest progress on rights. It has not yet addressed some of India's most pressing needs, including better training and reform of its police force; providing health, education, and food security to millions still struggling for subsistence despite the country's economic growth; ending discrimination against Dalits, tribal groups, and religious minorities; and protecting the rights of women and children.
A spate of indiscriminate bombings in various Indian cities, culminating in the seaborne-based attack in Mumbai in November 2008, which killed at least 171, and injured over 300 people, led to continued tensions with Pakistan. While the Mumbai attack was attributed to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, earlier deadly bombings were blamed on Muslim and Hindu extremist groups. Under intense public pressure, the government amended the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, reinstating harsh provisions from previous counterterrorism laws that had either been allowed to lapse or been repealed.
Maoist insurgents known as Naxalites broadened their attacks in 2009, resulting in increased deployment of paramilitary and police forces. Although government officials announced a "zero tolerance" policy for human rights violations during security operations against the Maoists, separatist militants, and other armed groups in various parts of the country, cases of custodial killings, torture, and arbitrary arrests continued.
These abuses occur in part because of failure by the government to properly train or modernize its police force. Police officers face dismal working conditions and recruitment lags far behind increasing duties, creating an overstretched force that is likely to take short-cuts to gain convictions. Embittered and overworked, the police regard themselves as enforcers of the law-but not beholden to it.
The government's failure to protect minorities and other vulnerable groups engenders justified grievances and contributes to militant activity around the country. At senior levels of government there is growing acceptance that Maoists are attracting supporters in part because of the state's long failure to address basic socioeconomic needs; the continued arbitrary displacement of families to make way for government-backed infrastructure, mining, and factory projects; and discrimination based on caste or ethnicity. Justice and Accountability India points to its independent judiciary, vibrant media, and active civil society as evidence that it is a thriving, rights-respecting democracy. Yet fundamental, structural problems remain including, most glaringly, widespread impunity for human rights violations. The government routinely fails to hold security forces accountable for abuses.
2009 marked the 25th anniversary of mass killings of Sikhs to avenge the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984. A10-year security operation against Sikh militants, who were responsible for numerous human rights abuses, resulted in the arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and extra-judicial killing of thousands of young Sikh men for suspected affiliation with separatist groups. Many victims, witnesses, and alleged perpetrators have died in the long, fruitless wait for accountability.
In Jammu and Kashmir and in the state of Manipur and elsewhere in the northeast, many citizens have lost confidence in the state's willingness to hold perpetrators of human rights violations accountable. Kashmiris protested on the streets after the death of two women in Shopian in May, refusing to believe a police investigation would be fair. An ongoing inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation has calmed tempers, but the protests were symptomatic of the government's failure to address impunity. In July an unarmed 27-year-old in Manipur was shot and killed by police in a crowded market place, a killing captured by a photo-journalist. Despite widespread outrage, the Manipur chief minister initially praised the police for shooting a "militant." Only after weeks of protests did the state government order a judicial inquiry.
Laws such as article 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act provide legal protection for members of the security forces who violate human rights. The problem of de jure impunity is likely to be exacerbated by December 2008 amendments to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, which expand the already vague definition of terrorism, authorize search and seizure with few safeguards, and double periods of pre-charge detention to 180 days, 30 of which may be in police custody. The use of draconian laws such as the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, which allows confessions to police to be used as evidence despite it being evident that they are coerced, is a cause for serious concern, as are efforts by other states such as Gujarat to enact similar legislation.
While India claims that its National Human Rights Commission ensures the protection of rights, the commission often defends government behavior, lacks sufficient resources to conduct its own investigations, and is not empowered to investigate violations by the army. State human rights commissions are even more poorly equipped and vulnerable to political pressure. Conduct of Security Forces Militants in many parts of the country have been responsible for large numbers of killings. Nearly 2,000 people, including over 500 civilians and 350 security personnel, were killed by militants in 2009, while over 1,000 civilians and nearly 40o security personnel were killed in 2008. At the same time nearly 2,000 alleged terrorists have been killed since January 2008.
The Indian government and militants in various parts of the country are locked in a vicious cycle of violence. Cases of arbitrary arrest, torture and forced confessions by Indian security forces are common. The use of "fake encounters"-in which people are taken into custody and shot, with officials falsely claiming that the deaths occurred during an armed exchange-are a continuing cause of serious concern. Police torture is also common, including in counterterror operations. Some Indian Mujahidin suspects, blamed for a series of indiscriminate bombings in Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, and Delhi in 2008, have claimed that they were tortured and forced to make false confessions, as have Hindu militants arrested for bombings in Malegaon, Maharashtra. Violence against Minorities
Following attacks on Christians in Orissa in 2008, mob attacks on churches and other Christian institutions, apparently instigated by Hindu extremist groups, occurred in several states. While some of the alleged perpetrators of the Orissa attacks have been arrested, there has been little success in containing Hindu extremists. Women's and Girls' Rights The rights of women are often neglected. A 2005 UN study estimated that two-thirds of married women in India suffer domestic violence. Female infanticide and sex-selective abortions are the primary causes of skewed sex ratios and reflect the unequal share of resources made available to women and girls in areas such as access to education, food, and medical aid.
In part because of healthcare system failures, tens of thousands of Indian women and girls die each year in childbirth and pregnancy. More suffer preventable injuries, serious infections, and disabilities. Recent data show that more than a fourth of maternal deaths worldwide take place in India. The country's maternal mortality ratio is many times that of Russia, China, and Brazil, and a girl who reaches reproductive age in India is 100 times more likely to die from such causes than a girl in the developed world. Access to Education, and Child Soldiers Millions of children in India have abysmal educational opportunities. While the constitution provides for free and compulsory primary education, actual delivery remains patchy. High numbers of students are out of school for reasons that include poverty (with millions of children still employed in hazardous and other "worst forms" of labor), gender discrimination, early marriage, poor quality of teachers and curriculum, and lack of basic facilities. Many are further affected by internal conflicts. For instance, the education of tens of thousands of children has been disrupted by the Maoist conflict, with the Maoists bombing remote government schools and government security forces occupying and using schools as long-term outposts.
The Maoists admit that it is standard practice to recruit 16 and 17-year-old children in their forces; they have used children as young as 12 in some armed operations. Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity In a positive development, the Delhi High Court in July ruled that section 377 of the Indian Penal Code can no longer be used to treat consensual homosexual conduct between adults as a criminal offense. While the ruling was challenged in the Supreme Court by a few groups and individuals, the Indian government decided not to oppose the verdict.
International Role India has failed to adequately use its considerable influence to address human rights problems in other countries or to be a human rights promoter at the United Nations. India has played a negative role at the UN Human Rights Council, siding with a bloc that opposes strong action to address violations. As India's regional and global influence grows, it needs to modernize its foreign policy to reflect its status as the world's largest democracy. In the past India was a strong opponent of apartheid in South Africa, supported the democratic opposition in Burma, and backed groups demanding democracy in Nepal and Bangladesh. But officials now often use the language of "non-interference in the internal affairs" of other countries to defend their inaction. In part, this reflects India's growing strategic concerns about China's role in the region, which has strongly invested in Burma and Pakistan and is expanding its influence in Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. India claims that it needs good relations with its neighbors to counter threats to national security by groups operating across borders. It wants Bangladesh, Burma, and Pakistan to arrest and prosecute separatists. In particular, it wants the international community to pressure Pakistan to end tacit protection of groups blamed for attacks like the one in Mumbai in November 2008. Key International Actors India's rapidly growing economy and increasing importance as a trading partner has meant that its domestic human rights record rarely elicits serious international scrutiny, including from the US, the country with the greatest external influence. After a visit to India in March 2009, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay called upon the government to bridge the gap in implementing "national laws and policies that promote and protect human rights and seek to support the most vulnerable." She also sought repeal of laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act "that breach contemporary international human rights standards" and encouraged India to welcome the visits of UN special rapporteurs. India is yet to act on those recommendations. India has also not responded to international recommendations that it more effectively combat caste- and religion-based discrimination. India has been repeatedly urged to play a greater role in advancing human rights and protecting civilians in Burma and Sri Lanka. While India claims that it privately raises such subjects with the governments concerned, Indian officials say little publicly and do not play a leadership role in protecting
2] India’s Slippery Moral High Ground
by Meenakshi Ganguly, senior South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch
February 3, 2010
Western colonialism collapsed after the Second World War, leaving much of the world in shambles, resources looted, and people suppressed and impoverished. As Indians know all too well, borders of newly independent states were often carelessly drawn, leading to violence that plagues us generations later. Those most affected by these decisions never had a voice at the high table.
Decades later, new faces have gathered at that crucial table. India, left traumatised and unable to fully celebrate its freedom from colonial rule in 1947 because millions had perished or been displaced, has become a visible and vocal negotiator. In a recent instance, minister of state for environment Jairam Ramesh claimed that India played a constructive role in the climate change conference in December, as it could speak for the G-77, the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) group and the industrialised nations. Few agreed, sadly. Depending on their politics, critics either said India had been obstructive or that it compromised too much.
Unfortunately, much of India's foreign policy remains shrouded in a similar lack of clarity. India often ends up considered either an obstruction or a cop-out.
In Burma, for example, India has moved away from supporting the democracy movement and honouring detained Opposition leader Aung San Su Kyi to deciding that economic and security concerns take precedence. India's business-as-usual relations with the repressive military regime have been widely criticised. Indian diplomats respond that activists like to complain without understanding how nuanced diplomacy works.
However, what remains baffling is what exactly India can claim to have gained from supporting one of the most abusive regimes in the world. India has not won significant access to Burma's energy reserves and is regularly beaten by China at the finishing line. The Burmese military has not cooperated consistently with efforts to contain rebels in India's Northeast. Nor has India been able to undercut China's influence with the junta. Yet, in October, India voted against a United Nations General Assembly resolution to protect human rights in Burma. The resolution was passed with 92 votes in favour. Of the 26 that voted against, India was in the company of countries such as Syria, Zimbabwe, China, Libya and North Korea - not quite the best examples of the democracy Indians celebrate so much.
There are other, equally odd decisions. India rightly joined the world in condemning Sri Lanka's abusive Tamil Tigers. But many believe that when the Sri Lankan Army committed apparent war crimes and caused unimaginable human suffering among civilians caught up in the conflict, India did not speak out forcefully enough. In May 2009, at a special session of the UN Human Rights Council, India opposed a resolution criticising abuses by both sides; the weak resolution adopted instead largely commended the government. In June 2009, A. Gopinathan, India's permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, responded shockingly to concerns about Sri Lanka expressed by Navanethem Pillay, UN high commissioner for human rights, suggesting that her office may have been motivated by its own agenda or that "of some states, or unrepresentative or unaccountable organisations". Ms Pillay, a South African of Indian origin with a full understanding of apartheid and colonialism, would instead have expected the support of the world's largest democracy.
India is a part of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), an attempt to end the trading of diamonds unearthed in conflict zones, known as "blood diamonds". Human rights groups have made repeated appeals to suspend Zimbabwe from the process for continuing human rights abuses and widespread smuggling in the Marange diamond fields after the government of Zimbabwe failed to comply with the recommendations of a KPCS review mission. India, chair of the group's participation committee, was in a strong position to influence the decision to suspend Zimbabwe but instead agreed to its empty promises that it would adopt compliance measures.
There are indications that significant numbers of raw Marange diamonds have already been channeled to India's large diamond cutting and polishing industry. Why is India willing to risk tainting the reputation of its domestic industry by championing the Mugabe regime?
India is keen not just to gain a greater say in global policy discussions, but also a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. For India to present a compelling case for its candidacy, it needs to focus on its obligation to protect individual rights.
Yet at the Human Rights Council and General Assembly and in backroom diplomacy, India is often on the side of abusive regimes, blocking, slowing down or voting against efforts to protect rights.
India now has a voice and it should use it to speak for many that still do not. It cannot allow its uneven domestic human rights record to come in the way of becoming a robust and moral champion to hold all states - including powerful ones that often escape scrutiny - to account. No nation can claim a perfect record, as the United States has displayed with great success since 9/11. Ironically, India is now often mimicking the behaviour it has so long decried in other countries.
Caprice or strategic and economic gains are the legacy of colonial history. India may have won its place at the negotiating table, but if it wants to be respected it should not display the same behaviour that caused it such suffering in the past.
In Burma, the generals have promised elections this year. India should insist that they release all political prisoners, allow the Opposition freedom to contest and campaign, and establish an independent and impartial election commission (one of India's own most prized institutions), or the poll will be considered a sham. India should call upon Sri Lanka's recently re-elected President Mahinda Rajapakse to initiate a reconciliation process that ensures civil and political rights for Tamils and other minorities, to end the repression of media and dissident civil society, and to support an impartial international investigation into all allegations of war crimes.
New Delhi has appointed a highly respected former diplomat as the new national security adviser. Shivshankar Menon should recommend that the government take these first steps as proof of India's vision and commitment to protect the rights of every citizen of the world.
Otherwise, despite the promise of trade and a robust economy, it will find itself alone, or in the company of those most disliked by the world community.
