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Nov 5, 2009, 3:07:01 PM11/5/09

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Chintan

Uneven Democracy : the Cry from Chhattisgarh.

Posted: 05 Nov 2009 05:46 AM PST

Sumit Verma was being rushed by his wife Isha to the medical emergency centre of PGIMER – Chandigarh with hope in her heart. PM Manmohan Singh was also there on a visit. His security detail didn’t allow them to go in for over one & half hour. By the time they were allowed in he was declared brought dead. Manmohan Singh, the nice gentleman that he is, has apologized to Isha & has assured the country that he has instructed the authorities to be ‘more sensitive’ to the concerns of common man. Unluckily our PM doesn’t know that authorities are downright callous to common man when it comes to VIP movement & security in our country. The story got picked up because it was Chandigarh & main stream media must have been present in strength to pick up the concerns of the VVIP. Poor tribals living in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa & other states are not as lucky as Sumit Verma. Their spouses don’t get the courtesy of an apology from their PM. In fact, mostly they had been left to their own devices since independence to eke out an existence in remote, inaccessible, forests & hills that had been their home for millennia. They were pushed into these hostile landscapes since the time of earliest migrations into India. Situation changed when their lands started beckoning ever hungry Corporate with their untold mineral riches. Official website of the Government of Chhattisgarh (GOC) describes it as the land of tribals & natural resources. Natural resources are just the things that are needed for mighty growth & development in the age of ‘globalization’, but tribals are the nuisance. Tribals are unwanted even in these remote, inaccessible, parts now.

Again GOC website describes that this region has been beset with “process of questioning and protest” for past three centuries because of expropriation & exploitation of the poor populace. After independence nothing really changed for these people. Actors changed, but actions did not. Expropriation & exploitation continued unabated by sundry officials of every denomination. Even after the agrarian revolts over oppressive conditions in Telangana (Andhra Pradesh) & Naxalbari (West Bengal), which were crushed with brute force, the apathy of the state towards these forgotten subjects continued. Maoists grew in this vacuum feeding on the discontent of these marginalized people – what some describe as ‘Harvesting the Grievances’. When state satraps woke up to the opportunities for money making from tribal lands, spates of MOUs were signed with multinationals. The secrecy of many of these MOUs was jealously guarded like Swiss Bank accounts. When Corporates came to occupy the lands where miming leases were granted, the tribals & social organizations working among them rose up in revolt. What to do with these stupid, adamant tribals, who were resisting the golden dawn of development shining on their ancient land? ‘Salwa Judum’ or the peace movement was the answer. Ostensibly this was the corps of tribals & ex-Maoists disaffected by the excesses of CPI(Maoist). State governments armed this ‘Sarakari militia’ ably aided & supported by state police & paramilitary forces like totemic Cobra & Naga battalions to engage Maoists in armed combat. Salwa Judum went about its task methodically. Goading tribals to come & stay in camps especially created by them. This was to save them from Maoist depredation. Also to deny Maoists food supplies & other help that they coerced out of tribals. Tribals stubbornly refused to see what was ‘plainly good’ for them. Then the iron fist came out. Tribal possessions were looted, villages were burnt, crops were destroyed, women were raped, and individuals were killed; just so that they will see reason. In Dantewada district alone some 650 villages were made to see reason this way. Some fifty thousand tribals saw reason and were rounded up & herded into camps. Overwhelmingly large numbers though were so unreasonable as to flee into surrounding forests or even cross border into neighboring states. Several civic society organizations sent fact finding mission to discover that “the Salwa Judum and paramilitary operate with complete impunity &the rule of law has completely broken down”. The truth came out. Government was not trying to protect the tribals, but in fact was trying to get rid of them. It was vacating the lands of tribals for the ‘golden development’ to take place. It was following the scorched earth policy that has been pursued by many like the military dictatorship in Sudan in the infamous Darfur region and earlier in oil producing Unity, Heglig, & Melut basins. It is for oil in Sudan. It is for iron, bauxite, diamonds etc. in India. There it is orchestrated by a military dictatorship. Here it is handiwork of a democratic government. Salwa Judum was set up by threatening, coercing and by offering lucrative inducements to arrested Maoist cadres & other tribals. Orwellian doublespeak of ‘peace movement (Salwa Judum)’ lay in tatters. It succeeded in turning tribal against tribal, brother against brother.

Tribals don’t live in Chandigarh, Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore. How does the game of democracy play out for them in their tribal-lands?

1. Freedom of speech & expression (article 19 of constitution) granted to every citizen has no value in the absence of means to communicate those views. Even whatever meager avenues were available were muzzled in 2005 through the draconian Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act. Mainstream media hardly has the time or the inclination to investigate the situation first hand and often carries the official version unverified – (“I wouldn’t like to call it a war. A war is fought against the enemy, not against our own people. — Vijay Raman, Special Director General, Central Reserve Police Force and commandant of joint Centre-states anti-Naxalite operation Green Hunt”. “These words from the man-in-charge of the biggest anti-Naxalite offensive underway in the Naxal-infested areas of central India should dispel the general impression that the much-hyped operation is set to march on like a juggernaut stomping the affected areas mercilessly”). A favorable verdict is announced even before the official version is in place.

2. Personal liberty & life (article 21) that are guaranteed cease to have meaning when tribals are forcibly evicted from their home & hearth. In 2008, the Supreme Court ordered the GOC to implement the National Human Rights Commission's recommendation to facilitate safe return and rehabilitation, compensate for damages and restore democratic rights.“ Largely it has gone unheeded.

3. Right to food & Right to livelihood are being/ have been legislated but are denied to tribals when their grains are destroyed & farms are devastated. Blockades by Salwa Judum vigilantes & security forces prevent villagers from attending nearest village markets few kilometers away and have to trudge several times more to go to distant places to meet their daily needs.

4. A woman who is raped has a right in law to have her complaint registered immediately without any dillydallying. Not so if you are a tribal. Six women who were raped in village Vrechhapal failed to get their FIR registered by superintendent of police. Then they approached chief judicial magistrate –Dantewada, who directed them to go to Konta, 140 kilometers to the south – a Salawa Judum stronghold. (The whole story is movingly captured in Havoc and the Dogs of war by Gandhian activist Himanshu Kumar of Vanvasi Chetana Ashram at Dantewada – demolished illegally on 17^th May 2009).

A tribal is forever pushed away from food, livelihood, safety, liberty that our constitution expects us to enjoy. When humanity of a tribe woman is thus denied, her citizenship is rendered worthless, isn’t it the act of grossest & most degrading violence? It is this violence that is prompting the tribal to use the arms – bows & arrows - that they have always held. It is this violence that is forcing the tribals into the arms of Maoists, who act & pose as their saviours. Operation Green Hunt (described by India Today as A Hushed Raid on Naxals) that central & state governments have launched in cohort will only magnify this systemic violence further compounding the misery of our already wretched fellow citizens. A co-opted wretched soul like an indebted cotton farmer from Vidarbha will commit suicide in shame & utter hopelessness. A free-spirited wretched like a tribal will fight back with whatever means at his command, may be to a last man.

On 4^th November PM admitted in a conference of Chief Ministers & State Ministers of tribal affairs that “systemic failure in giving tribals a stake in modern economic processes that inexorably intrude into their living spaces has built alienation over decades that is now taking a dangerous turn in some parts of our country”. He further said, “Over the years, a large number of cases have been registered against the tribals, giving rise to a good deal of harassment to those whose traditional rights were not recognised by earlier forest laws. The heavy hand of the criminal justice system has become a source of harassment and exploitation”. He then added “Systematic exploitation and social and economic abuse of our tribal communities can no longer be tolerated....... But the fact is that no sustained activity is possible under the shadow of the gun”. Very well said, Mr. Prime Minister! But mind that the shadow of the gun that the state is holding under your leadership looms ominously over any arms that tribals hold or groups claiming to hold on their behalf. It is not a level playing field.

Our democracy is patchy. Our democracy is uneven. Even in our cities it is the experience of every ordinary citizen that law is not applied to everyone evenhandedly. There is justice of choice for the high & mighty, quite another for the rest. A judge of the Supreme Court had to recuse himself the same day PM was addressing the above conference from hearing a case of dispute between Ambani brothers. He did so over possible conflict of interest. He is the third judge who had to recuse himself in a case involving Ambani brothers. Earlier, ministries of GOI were found playing favourites to one or the other Ambani brothers. One may not find a single position of power in the great Indian State that is untouched by the Reliance group empire in one way or the other. That is the power of Corporates. Would the democracy work the same way for an Ambani and the man in the streets of our cities? How would it appear to a half naked, half hungry tribal in the back of beyond? Would he see it as a “Level Playing Democracy”? Operation Green hunt wouldn’t level democracy, but probably bludgeon one set of actors – the tribals – into oblivion, into history, forever. Their land left to grieve over the loss.

O O O O O O O O O O

1. Citizens Initiative for Peace Letter to Chidambaram

2. Congress’ Digvijay Singh writes to Himanshu Kumar

3. Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas – Planning Commission

4. Sri Lankan Model favoured by GOI

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Nov 7, 2009, 3:06:49 PM11/7/09

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Chintan

Coveted Lands, Doomed People

Posted: 07 Nov 2009 01:33 AM PST

Land is not made by man. It is only conquered and exploited by him. Often in the name of progress, development & divine destiny. Always for greater good (or public interest), however vaguely & nebulously worded that is or it’s after-actions turns out to be. Price is invariably paid by weak, poor, illiterate & backward. Benefits seldom slipout of the grasping hands of the haves. Threat posed to tribal lands in India today, once unfolded with untold horror, plundering & the blood of indigenous tribes in the Americas. That gruesome drama unfolded over three centuries in 17^th to 19^th.

An Indian head tribes man, Chief Seattle of Suquamish & Duwamish people, as the story goes wrote to President Franklin Pierce a letter in 1854/55. A version says that Chief Seattle never wrote this. It was written by New York city playwright Ted Perry (or was it Dr. Smith in 1887 as per another account) in 1970 for movie called “Home’. If one asks an historian, he would say “definitely not, probably not, or maybe”. The letter may be fictional, but the feelings it expresses are genuine. The distinction it makes between the ways of the white man & Indian tribe man is moving. Moreover destruction caused to Indians & their way of life is a fact of history (read People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn). History can be used as a weapon – to hide & obfuscate inconvenient truths, or to build falsehood & narratives that bolster the establishment. The same way mainstream media is reporting or non-reporting the ongoing assault on tribes to conquer their lands in the name of countering red Maoist menace. Even the manner of naming the tribal lands as ‘Red Corridor’ gives away the game. It makes one feel that behind every tree or boulder there is lurking a ruthless Maoist. Why not call it a ‘Darkness corridor’, ‘Starvation corridor’, ‘Illiteracy corridor’, ‘Oppression corridor’, or simply the ‘Forgotten corridor’? But that would be suicidal for the “development game”.

Whoever wrote or compiled the letter, it awakens the spirit of fairness & justice. Therefore as someone said it, “Here is Chief Seattle’s letter, which should be instilled in the hearts & minds of every parent & child in all the nations of the world”.

The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man.

The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth and it is a part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man--all belong to the same family.

So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us. The Great Chief sends word he will reserve us a place so that we can live comfortably to ourselves. He will be our father and we will be his children. So we will consider your offer to buy our land. But it will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us.

This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghastly reflection in the clear water of the lake tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.

We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers' graves and his children's birthright is forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.

I do not know. Our ways are different from your ways. The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand.

There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night? I am a red man and do not understand. The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleansed by rain or scented with the pine cone.

The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath: the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. The white men, they all share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench. But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow's flowers.

So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept I will make one condition. The white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers.

I am savage and I do not understand any other way. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important that the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected.

You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

Even the white man, whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see. One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover---our God is the same God. You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the God of man and his compassion is equal for the red man and the white. The earth is precious to him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt upon its Creator. The Whites, too, shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

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Nov 9, 2009, 3:09:27 PM11/9/09

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The Rise & Rise of BSE PSU index

Posted: 08 Nov 2009 07:07 PM PST

Bombay Stock Exchange gives thumbs up to Operation Green Hunt

What is the truth behind operation Green Hunt? Is the official narrative to be trusted that it aims to crush the Maoist menace so that welfare & development schemes may be rushed in to tribals? Or are the activists working in tribal areas for umpteen years to be believed that it is a grand strategy to dispossess the tribals of their ancestral lands in the name combating Maoists? The answer to this vexing issue is to be found in the behavior of BSE PSU index on Friday last (6^thNovember09). BSE PSU index tracks the market’s perceptions of Public Sector Undertakings. Stock markets are supposedly prescient about the functioning of the economy & the future of companies operating within it. Whole range of events unfolding elsewhere in the economy & the polity that have an impact on the prospects of a company are factored into its share price by operators on stock exchanges. BSE PSU index rose 3.91% on that day. Remarkable, but not extraordinary considering that the government had announced a sale of some stake in PSUs. Sensex, the bellwether index of Bombay Stock exchange, itself had a pretty modest outing in the field rising only 0.6%. An extraordinary event was the performance of NMDC (10% rise), MMTC (20% rise), Hindustan Copper (10% rise) etc. The market cap or the notional worth (Number of outstanding shares x market price/share) of NMDC rose by Rs. 120 Billion & of MMTC by Rs. 300 Billion. Why were these companies worth so much more overnight? The answer lies in their business. National Mineral Development Corporation is in the business of “exploration of wide range of minerals including iron ore, copper, rock phosphate, lime stone, dolomite, gypsum, bentonite, magnesite, diamond, tin, tungsten, graphite, beach sands etc“. Minerals & Metals Trading Corporation on the other hand boasts of managing with “commendable élan the bulk operationsspread across far – flung areas in the mineral rich states of the country and by exporting minerals from all the major ports of India“. The third company, Hindustan Copper, modestly claims that “It has the distinction of being India’s only vertically integrated copper producing companyencompassing mining, beneficiation, smelting, refining and casting of refined copper metal“. So this troika straddles the mineral wealth of the country – and they are currently owned by “We the People of India…….” Turning to the other side of the story, the State of Chhattisgarh
is home to 28 varieties of minerals including diamonds as per the Mining.pdf document available on its official website. It lists Coal, Tin, Iron Ore, Bauxite, Limestone, Dolomite, Corundum, Alexandrite, Beryl, Garnet, diamonds, gold among others minerals. Now a very tight coupling is complete. On one hand is a state extremely rich in minerals. On the other you have companies best placed to exploit those treasures. The only irritant is that the minerals are buried deep below the lands that for millennia have belonged to tribals. The minerals can be got out if the tribals can be got off that land. The stock market has given resounding thumbs up to operation green hunt because it knows it will vacate the mineral rich lands of the nuisance of tribals. It is happy at the twin gravy train UPA-II government has set rolling for it. First it is unlocking the mineral wealth. Then it has started the process of eventual privatization of public assets by selling stake in PSUs – bit by bit. A grand scheme of defrauding ‘We the people of India…..‘ So Bastar & Bombay are interconnected after all. It is the misfortune of Bastar, but lady luck is smiling on BSE.

Lyrical Scribe.

No one has a monopoly over truth. Truth has many facets. Facets that don’t find expression in the media need to be told with vigour. It is not a privilege but duty of the media to give voice to the most dispossessed. Such reporting strengthens democracy by helping to reach benefits of growth to reach all. Press is therefore called the fourth estate – the 4^th leg of parliamentary democracy. Yet, time & again we find mainstream media not only reporting official narrativewithout questioning, but even supporting it with unabashed enthusiasm. Sample this piece by Sankarshan Thakur in Raipur for The Telegraph : “Vishwa Ranjan is a poet and a pragmatist, a palpably split persona who can sing the eloquent song of injustices done to tribals and, in the next breath, bluntly set out the imperatives of crushing the Maoist surge”. “His is a finely articulated position on reasons and requirements — he can understand, he says, why the Maoists have been able to make a base for themselves in Bastar and expand, but isn’t willing to accept their strategy of redressing wrongs“. One would imagine that Vishwa Ranjan is being honoured & felicitated for his accomplishments. But, No! He is the DGP of Chhattisgarh (“chief executive officer of Green Hunt“, as he is approvingly called by the scribe) & Thakur is there to find out what is happening there in the wake of ‘operation green hunt’. Thakur should have been skewering the top cop with some tough questions to get at the bottom of what exactly is going on. He should also be doing that to activists & social organizations that have expressed serious apprehensions about government’s motives & repercussions of its actions on the tribals. What he is doing instead issinging paeans to the man whose actions will have serious consequences for the region. This is what is going on in the name of reporting. Reader be aware!

Democracy for Sale

Hindu editorial, Journalism for sale, Says, “in 2009 the free, fair, and democratic attributes of these elections have been compromised as never before by the large-scale, illegal, and scandalous use of money power — which, to a considerable extent, involved recycled dirty money garnered through corruption in executive and legislative office“. Distribution of money to voters is not new, though the scale this time was unprecedented. What is of more interest is the role played by media as pointed out by P Sainath, the well known journalist & author, in his article “The medium, message and the money“. “Sainath’s article exposes the phenomenon of ‘coverage packages’ exploding across India’s most industrialised State during the recent Assembly election. Candidates paid newspapers different rates for well-differentiated and streamlined packages of news coverage. Those who could not or would not pay for the packages tended to be blacked out. The Andhra Pradesh Union of Working Journalists has, on the basis of a sample survey conducted in West Godavari district, estimated that newspapers across the State netted Rs. 350 crore to Rs. 400 crore through editorial coverage sold to candidates during the 2009 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections“.

Figment of Imagination

Palaniappan Chidambaram would have the nation believe from the IPS academy in Hyderabad that operation green hunt is a ‘media invention‘. He further added “There is no such operation. The Green Hunt or whatever is a pure invention of the media. The state governments are carrying out counter-insurgency measures against Naxalites wherever it is necessary. The Central government is providing assistance by way of central paramilitary forces, intelligence sharing and technical help“. He obviously wants to downplay the seriousness of it all by terming what is going on is all routine. Serious note has been taken by many researchers, activists, thinkers of the biggest exercise so far to dispossess the tribals of their mineral rich lands everywhere, but more particularly at the moment in Chhattisgarh. His artifice is a classic attempt at disguising extra-ordinary events as common. Mercifully the media has not accepted in this case the official line from the man in charge of internal security of the country. Soumitra Bose reporting for Times of India writes, “Despite home minister P Chidambaram’s assertion in Hyderabad on Friday that Operation Green Hunt against the Maoists was a `media creation,’ preparations are on in the rebel-hit areas of Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh to mount such an operation. Special forces belonging to Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) are being flown in to Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra where a few companies of the CRPF are already in place. Besides, other paramilitary forces and police personnel would be there to help the elite force“. He has also raised a crucial point, “However, the big question is: where are the Maoists and how to identify them in the thick jungles of Gadchiroli“, which has made many people concerned about the heavy toll of lives that innocent tribals will have to bear.

Science is concerned

It is heartening that students of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore are concerned about the fate of our fellow tribals in far away Chhattisgarh. On 7^th November they organized a seminar, “The War Within : The Maoists, The Tribals and The State“. The title is very apt too as it shows the tribals caught between the State & the Maoists. Ramchandra Guha, the noted historian & sociologist, pointed out that “the tribals were the most dispossessed people in the history of India“. Sudeep Chakravarti, a journalist & author of the book The Red Sun travels in the Naxalite country, commented that “the state is deeply disconnected with its own people“.

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