Higher education: minority rights & social justice

M.A. Baby
The Hindu, 30 April

The irony of a constitutional provision meant to safeguard the interests of a vulnerable group itself becoming an instrument for the oppression of a more vulnerable group needs corrective intervention.

THE REACTIONS of Oommen Chandy, Kerala's Leader of the Opposition, and of Justice K.T. Thomas, former Judge of the Supreme Court, on the question of the grant of minority status to educational institutions run by the Pushpagiri Medical Mission (The Hindu, Kerala edition, April, 20) presented a study in contrast. While both expressed concern over the erosion of social justice that the decision of the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI) could result in, there was little else in common between their views. While Mr. Chandy's attempt is to score a few brownie points by criticising the State Government and to reassure the private lobby in education regarding his continued support while giving them a sufficiently tame lecture on social commitment, Mr. Justice Thomas hit the nail on the head by raising the question of the marginalisation of the weaker sections as a result of the NCMEI decision.

The irony of a constitutional provision meant to safeguard the interests of a vulnerable group (in this case, the minorities) itself becoming an instrument for the oppression of a more vulnerable group (the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes) needs corrective intervention to ensure the sanctity of the Constitution itself. A constitutional arrangement that negates social justice cannot be true to the spirit of the Constitution, the chief architect of which was Dr. Ambedkar, a great champion of social justice. Obviously, the problem is not with the constitutional provision that grants special protection to the minorities in establishing and administering educational institutions of their choice, but in the implementation of the scheme without reference to its spirit or context.

While the contextual relevance of the provision is ingrained in the principle of federalism, which is one of the basic features of the Constitution, the spirit of the constitutional provision for minorities has been enunciated in several judgments of the Supreme Court. The TMA Pai judgment, which categorically ruled that minorities have to be identified State-wise, emphasised the federal character of minorities. Subsequent judgments of the Supreme Court in both the Islamic Academy and Inamdar cases endorsed the ruling. While the specific rights of the minorities will be the same throughout the country, the categories identified as minorities, whether religious or linguistic, will vary from State to State. The Supreme Court has further clarified in Bal Patil that since the unit for identification of minorities is the State, the appropriate authority to undertake the exercise of identification would be the State Government concerned.

There are several obvious questions here. What are the norms for the identification of minorities? Is numerical criterion enough? Do a minority of one and a minority of 49 out of 100 get the same privileges? Does the minority have any right the majority does not have? The arithmetical criterion for the conferment of minority rights, which the NCMEI appears to have followed, clearly can be challenged on constitutional grounds. It does not apparently take into account the spirit of the provision for the special privileges for minorities. The Supreme Court clarified in TMA Pai and subsequent judgments that minority rights are a part of the right to equality. The principle of proportional equality, amplified by the Supreme Court in the Nagraj case, comes into play even in the identification of minorities.

While there is no one-line definition of minorities, there is substantial consensus in international fora on what constitutes a minority. Nowhere in the world is a minority identified merely with reference to numerical strength, though it is an important consideration. The more important question is the implication of numerical strength on the comparative empowerment/deprivation of the group in question. Minority, therefore, is not merely a measure of numerical deprivation; it is a measure of numerical deprivation coupled with deprivation in the social, political, religious, economic, educational spheres. The moot question here is whether the NCMEI, while conferring the status of minority educational institution, took its decision on an assessment of the index of educational deprivation of the community.

The NCMEI does not even recognise the need for an assessment of deprivation for the award of minority status. Strangely, the communities in question often cite the fact of their empowerment as justification for the award of minority status. They seem to argue that diligence and hard work should bring in rewards. True enough. But the reward need not be in the form of minority rights. Otherwise, the result would be as ironic as it is in the present case. Here, the community that runs the majority of educational institutions in the State gets the award of minority status. The special rights that go with minority rights will now be used not to achieve proportionate equality with the majority but to assume rights and privileges that are disproportionate to the numerical strength of the community in question.

A constitutional provision to ensure equality will in effect become an instrument to perpetuate inequality through the exercise of special rights and privileges. What is more, it could lead to the suppression of the educational rights of the majority belonging to all communities — minorities included. This is especially so in higher education, which has been classified as a category distinct from general education. The Supreme Court in Inamdar ruled that different considerations apply for general and higher education. Higher education is treated as a national wealth. Considerations of equity and quality override considerations of minority rights at this level of education.

The reinterpretation of the right to set up an educational institution as a right under Article 19(1) (g) by TMA Pai by overruling the Unnikrishnan judgment raises further questions about minority rights under Article 30(1). Article 19(1) (g) deals with the right to occupation which includes business, profession or trade. It means education is no longer a service or a charitable activity, as it was intended to be by the Constitution makers. The new interpretation makes the right under Article (30) (1) problematic. If education is no longer a service, but a trade and business, can minority rights be claimed to run that business? To put it differently, are minority rights applicable to trade or business? Can communities that make use of the commercial possibilities in education claim minority rights? These are serious constitutional questions that need to be pondered over by a Constitution Bench.

But a responsible government cannot wait for action till the Supreme Court resolves all the contradictions in the TMA Pai verdict. With all the limitations of power available at its disposal, it has to do its best to ameliorate the hardships of the people. Kerala's Leader of the Opposition has expressed his apprehensions about the possibility of commercialisation of education by the designated minorities. But his advocacy of dialogue as the only option available to the Government to solve the vexing issue amounts to reducing the role of the Government to that of a mercy petitioner.

The present State Government is not averse to discussions and dialogue. But it does not intend to limit its options to dialogue alone. A government has the responsibility to resort to both executive and legislative measures to safeguard the interests of the people. In fact, that is what the present Government did immediately after assuming office, by enacting the law to protect and strengthen equity and excellence in unaided professional education. The negative verdict of the High Court is not the last word on the legal validity of the law, much less on its social relevance.

The commodification of education is a comparatively recent phenomenon. This is an indirect result of the growing economic value of education. The role that knowledge plays in the process of production and consumption has increased so many times over the last few years that the appellation `knowledge economy' no longer raises any eyebrows. The prospects of commercialisation of education have grown with the growth of the knowledge economy.

The new role of knowledge as an economic agent is an opportunity and a challenge. It is an opportunity for the diffusion of wealth through the diffusion of knowledge. Theoretically, knowledge is free and could be shared freely. But the temptation to exploit this potentially commercial commodity is growing by the day. The challenge is to resist the temptation to commercialise education. Educational entrepreneurs have been resorting to this not because there is no one to counsel them against it. You can pretend to be so only if you do not want to resolve the problem.

A government committed to the welfare of the people cannot afford to pretend to discharge its responsibility by sermonising against commercialisation and exchanging pleasantries with the exploiters. It is duty-bound to act decisively through executive and legislative interventions to ensure access to education to the poor and marginalised sections. The present Government in Kerala is committed to producing results, trying all options at its disposal.

(M.A. Baby is Minister for Education, Kerala.)

Nandigram flares up, two killed

Special Correspondent
The Hindu, 30 April

Clashes between Trinamool and CPI(M) activists; houses set afire

KOLKATA: One person was killed and a few others injured in clashes between activists of the Trinamool Congress-led Bhoomi Ucched Pratirodh Committee and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Nandigram in West Bengal on Sunday. Houses were attacked and some set on fire.

Inspector-General of Police (Law and Order) Raj Kanojiatold The Hindu that the death toll may rise to two.

Though there were reports of sporadic disturbances in Nandigram over the last few days, this was the first major bout of violence after the police firing on March 14 in which 14 persons were killed.

The police found it difficult to reach the affected villages on timeas large parts of the area continued to remain inaccessiblewith roads dug up and culverts and bridges damaged. Moves initiated by local authorities to restore normality with the support of political parties fell flat as the Opposition refused to attend the all-party meetings convened.

There were conflicting reports on what led to Sunday's violence though the issue of acquisition of farmland for industry could no longer be the cause given the State Government's decision to call off the proposal to set up a chemical hub in Nandigram.

Rivalry

The rivalry between the Committee and the CPI(M) is now over political control of Nandigram, from where about 2,500 workers of the Left party were driven out along with their families over the last three months by the Committee's supporters.

While local CPI(M) leaders said the violence was started by Trinamool activists, who were trying to force their way into new areas and drive out those opposing them, the Opposition blamed it on the CPI(M) whose "armed cadres were bent on terrorising the people of the area with the connivance of the police."


Trinamool Congress for Manmohan, Governor's intervention

Special Correspondent
The Hindu

KOLKATA: The Prime Minister's Office and the West Bengal Governor have been informed of the violence in Nandigram on Sunday and their immediate intervention was sought to restore peace, Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee said here.

"The Communist Party of India (Marxist) cadres, armed with rifles and accompanied by goondas, were responsible for attacks on innocent villagers, many of whom are missing," she said.

The attacks were "a joint venture of the CPI (M) and the State Government," she alleged.

Recalling that she warned two days ago on the possibility of violence breaking out in the area in the face of continuing trouble there, Ms. Banerjee announced "a gherao of all thanas in the State on May 2 in protest against the assault on the right to life of the people of Nandigram." It would begin with an hour-long "rasta roko" across the State on Monday.

On Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's recent appeal to the Opposition to attend an all-party meeting to facilitate the restoration of normality at Nandigram, she asked: "Why should we attend a meeting organised by the State Government which itself is sponsoring violence there."

State Congress working president Pradip Bhattacharjee said "the State Government, which had failed to draw lessons from the March 14 incident, was responsible for the violence" as the administration had failed to restore normality in the area. Under such circumstances, the all-party meetings would not yield fruit.

"The right situation has first to be created for such discussions to be held and it is for the administration to ensure that."

Statesman News Service

NANDIGRAM, April 29: At least two persons were killed and several others injured as CPI-M cadres and supporters of the Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee were locked in an armed battle today to regain lost ground.

In a statement, Governor Mr Gopalkrishna Gandhi said he had discussed the development with the chief minister. “I am keeping a close watch on the situation.” said Mr Gandhi.

The trouble started, according to villagers here, early in the morning when about 200 CPI-M activists began to fire bullets and throw bombs from the Khejuri side of Talpati canal at Satangabari, Bahargunge area in Nandigram block-II and at Simulkhanda in Nandigram block- I. The villagers under attack fled their homes fearing “lethal” assault by CPI-M cadres.

Supporters of the BUPC regrouped around 10-30 a.m to confront CPI-M cadres who had already advanced into the villages at Nandigram. The battle continued for over four hours after which CPI-M cadres retreated.

The CPI-M claimed two of their supporters succumbed to bullet injuries. They were identified as Dilip Mondal (19), a resident of Gokulnagar, and Mahitosh Karan (42), a resident of Jambari. Two other injured CPI-M supporters, Pintu Mondal and Nitai Mondal, have been admitted to Kamarda block hospital in Khejuri. On the other hand, BUPC leaders claimed that four villagers belonging to their organisation sustained bullet injuries and were admitted to Nandigram block hospital. One of them, Prakash Das, was later shifted to Tamluk Sadar hospital in a critical condition.

AN ELEPHANT CAN RUN VERY FAST

______________________________________________________

The United States will attend the Aero India defence show next month, hoping to profit from India's hunger for military equipment; it wants to make India a counterweight to China. The relationship between China, India and the US is ill-defined; in
a region that bristles with weapons, India also will have to contend with Japan and Russia.

Martine Bulard
Le Monde Diplomatique, January 2007
___________________________________________________________

AMIT Raina, who is a student at the prestigious Jawaharlal
Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, said: "An elephant can
run very fast." He inclined his head slightly as he spoke, as
many Indians do. His fellow students agreed with him and all
were convinced that India would sooner or later resume its
place in the world. They were more divided over whether the
Indian elephant could overtake the Chinese dragon, yet all
dreamed of power.

Indian civilisation once rivalled China and was pre-eminent
in Asia; in 1700 it led the world financially (1). Yet by
1820 its share of global income had fallen from 22.6% to
15.7%, half that of China (which then followed it into
decline). By 1980 India, with 3.4% of global income, and
China, with 5%, had been marginalised. China has now shown
that a country can bounce back and India wants to catch up as
fast as it can.

India has decided to throw in its lot with the United States
in a spirit of pragmatism rather than any ideological
conviction (2). Navtej Singh Sarna, foreign ministry
spokesman, in his 1960s Soviet-style office in New Delhi,
said carefully: "The US is the dominant superpower, so it is
logical that we should seek to develop good relations with
it." This normalisation follows decades of non-alignment
spent in the diplomatic shadow of the Soviet Union and
resented by the US.

India's trade with the US rose to almost 11% of the Indian
total in 2005-6; trade with Russia, which was formerly its
main partner, was only just over 1%.

India wants a lot more. Stunned by the speed with which the
economy of China has taken off (3), India makes no secret of
its desire to utilise its new relationship with the US to
attract the investment that it lacks. In 2005 foreign direct
investment (FDI) into China rose to $72.4bn; India's FDI was
only $6.6bn, although this may be an underestimate, since not
all capital movements are recorded. The Indian government did
proudly point out that it received 40% of FDI in information
technology in developing countries, while China had only 11%.
Even so, an abyss separates them.

Copying China

The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has copied
China's example: among other measures it has set up special,
near tax-free economic zones, waived social protection and
lowered customs duties. These measures have yielded results.
There has been investment in IT services and in cars; in
November 2006 Renault announced the construction of an
assembly plant. The major supermarkets -- Wal-Mart, Tesco,
Carrefour -- are planning to move in: who cares if the
arrival of their vast stores kills local businesses and
overwhelms landscapes that have so far been spared the
monotonous urbanisation of the West?

"Modernisation" is under way. The US leads the investors,
followed by the island tax haven of Mauritius, Britain, Japan
and South Korea.

However, political preoccupations rather than economic
ambitions drive the Indian government: it wants recognition
as an Asian and global superpower. Hence the importance of
the deal over civilian nuclear technologies which, following
ratification by both sides of the US Congress in 2006, will
come into effect early this year, in time for President
George Bush's visit to New Delhi in March.

The embargo introduced in response to India's widely
condemned nuclear tests in 1998 will be lifted, although
India still refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation
treaty on the grounds that it is "discriminatory"; in an
assertion of its independence, it denies international
inspectors access to more than 33% of its installations. The
US and its allies continue to apply this demand to Pakistan,
North Korea and Iran.

India will now be able to import sensitive materials and use
nuclear power to generate electricity to meet its rapidly
expanding energy needs. The prominent diplomat, Shashi
Tharoor, the United Nations under-secretary general who
campaigned unsuccessfully to succeed Kofi Annan, explained:
"There is a more important issue than energy supply: the
agreement recognises India as a significant nuclear power in
its own right. It marks the recognition of the Indian
exception by the US and the official nuclear powers."

It is self-evident that "India is not a country like any
other"; this saying has become a mantra.

After independence in 1947 India's unique status, epitomised
by its policy of non-alignment, made it a moral force that
stood out from other third world countries in the process of
decolonisation. Now India is beginning to look like a
US-approved military power. Some Indians fear that it may be
falling into the alignment trap. The prime minister responded
by saying: "I am often disappointed by the lack of adequate
appreciation in our country, including among our political
leaders, of the changing nature of our relationship with the
world. Very often we adopt political postures that are based
in the past" (4).

Although some US senators have deplored the nuclear deal and
there has been concern that it "may enhance India's ability
to produce fissile material for weapons" (5), it has its
supporters in Washington. The Bush administration has already
expressed its disapproval of a gas pipeline project with
Iran, although this would supply a significant proportion of
India's energy needs and have the enormous diplomatic benefit
of forcing India to negotiate with its main enemy, Pakistan,
through which the pipeline would pass.

In the words of Edward Luce, a former adviser to Bill
Clinton, writing in the Financial Times
: "The pipeline would give Islamabad a strong incentive to
maintain stability with New Delhi" (6). For now, Manmohan
Singh is using Iran's excessive price demands as an excuse to
leave the issue unresolved, but this can only be a short-term
solution.

Nothing is settled

India must also come to an understanding with China. Either
the two giants build a regional understanding that will
influence Asian and international politics, or they fight it
out, which seems the more likely possibility. Nothing is
settled; there are really three parties in the ring,
including the US, or four including Japan.

The US was prepared to risk undermining the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty in order to encourage India to
become a counterweight to China, whose economic, military and
diplomatic rise threatens the long-term hegemony of the US in
the region. The US also has a problem with some traditional
allies -- such as South Korea, which has refused to adopt a
sufficiently aggressive stance against North Korea. India,
wary of its vast neighbour, is happy to cooperate with the
Bush administration for now.

China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, visited New Delhi in
April 2005. Showing an impressive sense of history, he
pointed out that for 99.9% of the past 2,200 years the
countries had lived in harmony (7). The discordant 0.1% was
the war of 1962 (8), an unexpected defeat that heralded the
end of the Nehru era and still rankles in India.

The economist Amartya Sen has suggested that the earliest
Sino-Indian relations were initiated by trade rather than
Buddhism; after the 1962 war, economic and trading links
restored good relations (9). Trade remained marginal, at $3bn
a year, until 2000; it was expected to reach $22bn in 2006.
China sells more than it buys and wants to exploit synergies
between the economies to make good its technological deficit.
It is pushing for a free-trade agreement that India, which
has only 33% of Chinese GDP and is fearful of being flooded
by Chinese imports, rejects.

India's priority is to consolidate its ageing and relatively
weak industrial sector. It recognises that it cannot
guarantee national development if it continues to rely
financially upon the contribution of outsourced call centres,
sub-contracted services for English-speaking businesses
around the world and IT. Nevertheless, during the visit of
the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, in November 2006, it signed
13 agreements to cooperate in finance, agriculture, IT and
energy.

Another potential area for detente is energy, with its
rapidly increasing demands. The two countries are in
competition for energy resources with China well ahead,
especially in Africa. At the end of 2005 the China National
Petroleum Corporation and India's Oil and Natural Gas
Corporation (ONGC) reached an agreement to invest in the
exploitation of Syrian oil reserves. Also in 2006 the Chinese
and Indian oil ministers discussed creating a buyers' cartel
to influence prices, a fresh idea that was thwarted when the
Indian minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar, was sacked.

The joint declaration that accompanied Hu Jintao's visit
emphasised the need to "encourage collaboration between their
enterprises, including through joint exploration and
development of hydrocarbon resources in third countries"
(10). The full significance of the declaration emerged in the
context of US protests to the Indian government about its
investment in Syria. The declaration also announced that "the
two sides agree to promote cooperation in the field of
nuclear energy, consistent with their respective
international commitments". The terms of the agreement were
left vague, unlike the agreement Hu Jintao signed with
Pakistan a few days later, yet this was the first official
reference to nuclear cooperation (11). China, while
acknowledging India's agreement with the US, was trying to
prevent it from establishing itself as the US's privileged
partner.

An anti-China axis?

Despite these developments, border issues remain unresolved.
China continues to claim part of Arunachal Pradesh in
northeast India, while India claims Aksai Chin on its
northwest frontier: the commission established to settle
these disputes has made little progress. China accepted the
incorporation of the former Buddhist kingdom of Sikkim into
India in 1975. More importantly, India has recognised Chinese
sovereignty over Tibet since 2003, although India continues
to play host to the Dalai Lama and more than 100,000 Tibetan
refugees.

In July 2006 the Nathu La pass in the Himalayas reopened
after more than 40 years of closure, restoring a section of
the old Silk Road. Traffic still falls far short of the early
20th century, when more than 75% of trade between India and
China used the pass, but there are grounds for hope that
merchants will slowly displace soldiers.

Even so, India remains suspicious and fearful of
encirclement. To the north, China has long offered
unconditional support to Pakistan in its conflict with India
over Kashmir (12), and it is now investing in the
construction of a deep sea port at Gwadar, on Pakistan's
coast, close to the entrance to the Persian Gulf. To India's
southeast, China is funding Burma's navy. China claims that
it is merely trying to secure sea access in order to
guarantee the security of its imports.

India remains unconvinced and has conducted several military
exercises with US forces, including some on the Chinese
border and in the Indian Ocean, as far east as the vital
oil-tanker route through the Strait of Malacca. It is also
conducting joint operations with Japan, which has been
adopting a more aggressive military posture (13).

India wants to show off its muscles. The Bush administration
wants India to be a rampart against China, a job that most of
India's openly pro-US political elite are happy to take on.
Some members of the business community are less enthusiastic.
As Shyamal Gupta, a senior executive with the leading Indian
manufacturer Tata Sons, insisted: "What we will see is not
India against China but India plus China" (14). Some
politicians share this reticence, including Jairam Ramesh, a
member of the governing Congress party and a former minister,
who has published a sensational book, Making Sense of
Chindia.

Nobody, of course, is proposing the construction of a
Sino-Indian alliance against the US. Everybody is mindful
that Chinese leaders are banking on a close relationship with
the US, upon which China is economically dependent. Asia is
nevertheless a region where military expenditure has recently
soared: China is the world's second-biggest military spender,
Japan the fourth, and India the eighth. So giving real
substance to the declared Sino-Indian intention to "explore a
new architecture for closer regional cooperation in Asia" has
become a priority.

As The Hindu's famous columnist Siddarth Varadarajan said:
"Asia is too big to be dominated by a single power. China,
India and Japan should not even think of controlling the
region, whether on their own or with the support of an
external power." Like many progressive intellectuals,
Varadarajan advocates more active Indian participation in
regional organisations.

Russia sidelined?

Russia, previously a cornerstone of Indian diplomacy, seems
to have been sidelined. Joint declarations have been guarded
and bilateral relations tepid. Despite the collapse of the
early 1990s, trade has resumed, especially in the military
sector where it reached $6.5bn in 2005. Professor Anuradha M
Chenoy of the School of International Studies at JNU told me:
"India is the only country that has a programme of technical
and military cooperation with Russia." Russia sells the most
weapons to India, ahead of Israel, with which the previous
Hindu nationalist government established close diplomatic
relations (15).

The quest for oil and gas supplies also encourages
cooperation with Russia. In 2004 the oil minister, Aiyar,
announced: "In the half-century of Indian independence,
Russia has guaranteed our territorial integrity, and in the
second half-century it may be able to guarantee our energy
security. I am talking about the strategic alliance with
Russia in energy security, which is becoming for India at
least as important as national security" (16).

This may not be the official position, but the ONGC is
involved in the Sakhalin I and II oil and gas fields. For
Russia, which has agreed to supply India with 60 tonnes of
uranium, energy has become a weapon in its attempt to
reassert itself as a leading global player.

As Yu Bin of the International Relations Centre explained it:
"The once super military power has now become the super
petro-power under Putin, whose mission is to remake Russia as
a world power to be respected, if not feared" (17).

So is the "CIA triangle", as its detractors call it, of
China, India and the US, about to be supplanted by an
alliance between China, India and Russia? Not yet. India has
decided to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)
as an observer, along with Pakistan and Iran. This body
includes four central Asian republics (Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), plus China and
Russia, which are trying to build up its diplomatic muscle in
the face of increasing US influence in the region.

India does not yet seem capable of any spectacular strategic
initiative. The writer Sunil Khilnani said shrewdly: "We have
become enamoured of the idea that we are soon to become a
permanent invitee to the perpetual soiree of great powers,
and so must dust ourselves off and dress for the part . . .
But we need to deliberate over what the role should be, and
how we can most effectively achieve it" (18).

Border issues

India is at present expending much energy in resolving border
issues. Although it feels no great pressure to engage in
equal relations with smaller neighbours, it did at least join
Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri
Lanka in setting up the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (Saarc) in 1985. Economic cooperation remains
marginal (less than 10% of trade) and the struggling
organisation is unable to transcend its own conflicts.

The strained relations between India and Pakistan contribute
to this. The talks that began over Kashmir in 2004 have made
little headway, but some trade has resumed. Discussions were
suspended after the July 2006 train bombings in Bombay, which
killed 200; India blamed them on Pakistan's secret services.
The talks resumed in October and in December Pakistan's
President Pervez Musharraf announced that, for the first
time, Pakistan was ready to abandon its claim to Kashmir if
India would do the same. The proposal was welcomed "with
interest" by Manmohan Singh. People on both sides of the
control line in Kashmir are not holding their breath.

India's relations with other immediate neighbours are less
conflictual, but by no means unproblematic, although an
agreement in Nepal in November between government forces and
the Maoists could improve the situation. The uncertainties in
Bangladesh and continued fighting in Sri Lanka are a problem
for India: there are thought to be 20,000 Bangladeshi
refugees in India, and 10,000 Sri Lankan Tamils crammed into
camps in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Many are
destitute; they fuel the activities of violent groups and
serve to justify police abuses.

Poverty feeds the Naxalite (Maoist) movement, particularly in
West Bengal, Orissa, Telangana (Andhra Pradesh) and, further
north, in the state of Bihar on the frontier with Nepal,
where calls for independence are getting louder. According to
Singh, this is India's most serious security problem. Indian
borders are porous, but Singh forgets to mention the social
causes of friction, especially the disastrous effects of
"modernisation" upon rural areas. More than 10,000 farmers
killed themselves in 2005, most often by swallowing
pesticides, because they could not meet their debts. India
exports cereals, yet more than 50% of its children are
malnourished; 40% of Indians can neither read nor write (only
10% of Chinese are illiterate). India ranks 126th on the UN
Human Development Index, well below China in 81st place.

The few measures that the government has attempted have often
been undermined by widescale corruption; neither the
government nor the upper classes seem concerned about the
divide that separates the majority of Indians from the 60-70
million people (5-6% of the population) who have achieved a
standard of living comparable to that in Europe.

Shashi Tharoor is one of the few who acknowledge this
situation: "We must do something for the other India . . . We
must invest in hardware [roads, ports and airports, all in a
pitiful state], but also in software, the human beings to
whom we must give what they need. It is a question of
civilisation." Wholesale exclusion is the vulnerable point of
India, which seeks to present itself as the largest democracy
in the world.
________________________________________________________

(1) Angus Maddison, Chinese Economic Performance in the Long
Run, OECD, Paris, 1998.

(2) Christophe Jaffrelot, "India's new best friend, the US",
Le Monde diplomatique, English language edition, September
2006.

(3) India has a 1% share of world trade; China 6%.

(4) Speech to the thinktank Indian Council for Research and
International Economic Relations, New Delhi, 6 November 2006.

(5) Dafna Linzer, "India nuclear report never done", Wall
Street Journal, New York, 16 November 2006.

(6) Edward Luce, In Spite of the Gods, LittleBrown, London,
2006.

(7) Jairam Ramesh, Making Sense of Chindia, India Research
Press, New Delhi, 2006.

(8) India and China were already in disagreement over Tibet
when they clashed on their Himalayan border in October/
November 1962.

(9) Amartya Sen, "Passage to China", New York Review of
Books, vol 51, n° 19, 2 December 2004.

(10) "Joint declaration by the Republic of India and the
People's Republic of China", New Delhi, 21 November 2006.

(11) See Siddharth Varadarajan, "New Delhi, Beijing talk
nuclear for the first time", The Hindu, New Delhi, 22
November 2006.

(12) See Jean Luc Racine, "Pakistan: a double game", Le Monde
diplomatique, English language edition, June 2004.

(13) See Emilie Guyonnet, "Japanese military ambitions", Le
Monde diplomatique, English language edition, April 2006.

(14) Associated Press, 22 November 2006.

(15) India needed a source of weapons to replace the
collapsed Soviet Union, but also sought to signal an
ideological alignment with anti-Muslim overtones.

(16) Anuradha M Chenoy, "India and Russia: allies in the
international political system", India's Foreign Policy, New
Delhi, forthcoming.

(17) Yu Bin, "Central Asia between Competition and
Cooperation", Foreign Policy in Focus, Washington, 4 December
2006;

(18) Sunil Khilnani, "The mirror asking", Outlook, New Delhi,
21 August 2006.

Translated by Donald Hounam
_______________________________________________________ © 1997-2007 Le Monde diplomatique

Asia and US Global Strategy

Sumanta Banerjee
EPW,October 12, 2002

To resist Washington's military and economic globalisation, it is essential to build up an equally globalised offensive. Terrorism that masquerades as anti-US war has to be ousted from the site of the contest and replaced with ideals of equality, democracy and social justice. For peace activists in Asia today it will obviously be a long haul.

Inaugurating the cold war era, the then US president Harry Truman in 1947 had declared: “The American system can survive in America only if it becomes a world system.” This was no idle rhetoric. It initiated a three-pronged strategy in the changed post-world war political arena. First, not only to ensure the survival, but to satisfy the growing appetite of US capitalism which had to depend on resources from outside, Washington sought to bring these resources under its economic control (as was evident in its interventionist policies in Iran from 1951 to 1953). Second, the fear that countries either producing these resources or occupying a crucial position in the US’s geopolitical strategy might fall under Soviet control or influence led Washington to pre-empt such a possibility through political and military interventions (as in the setting up of dictatorial banana republics in South America and satellite governments in south-east Asia). Third, to suppress the growth of public opinion in favour of socialism within the US (particularly in the wake of widespread sympathy and support for Soviet heroism during the world war), the administration inaugurated the notorious witch-hunt led by Joseph McCarthy, which whipped up a spy-mania against communists as well as liberal-minded intellectuals. The roles played by the CIA in thrusting the first two prongs and by the FBI in the last are by now well-documented by US historians themselves, whose works are easily available.

All these revelations should have disabused the liberal mindset, both in the West and India, of the illusion that past allegations of covert and overt interventions against the US were mere ‘Soviet propaganda’. They should have also helped this mindset to change itself and question the present US motives – given the disreputable role of the US in the past.

But illusions die hard – particularly among the political elite in Asia. This dawned upon me as I sat listening to the warnings delivered by peace activists from all over Asia who had gathered at a conference in the University of Philippines in Quezon City in August-September this year. They came from countries who are economically as far apart as an affluent Japan and an impoverished Kampuchea, neighbours who are militarily fighting each other like India and Pakistan, states who are territorially distant as Nepal in the north and Malaysia in the south. But they voiced a common concern – how the US is now requiring all states to restructure their coercive apparatus to fit America’s strategic concerns, to reinforce its earlier requirement that they restructure their economic apparatus to fit with Washington’s plans of neo liberal globalisation. As I listened to their narratives, I realised all of a sudden that the Truman Doctrine had come alive – and this time with a vengeance!

During Truman’s time, his doctrine failed to bring the entire world under the US system – primarily because of the countervailing impact of the alternative system represented by the Soviet-led socialist block, and the nationalist aspirations of the newly independent countries of Asia and Africa which formed the non-aligned block. But with the collapse of the socialist block, and the popular frustrations with the economic policies of the corrupt regimes in the non-aligned block, the ideological and political vacuum created in the present global scenario has provided Washington with a sort of tabula rasa on which it can at its will imprint Truman’s unfinished strategy. The long-term US objective is to use the ‘war on terrorism’ as a stepping stone to encircle China – which according to Pentagon is expected to emerge as a regional economic and military power in the next 10 years.

Crucial to the success of this strategy is the integration of the entire Asian region – from Central Asia to South Asia, from Asia Pacific to South-east Asia – into the Washington-led global order and military operations. Afghanistan has already become a cog in the wheels of the American juggernaut that plans to march into the oilfields of central Asia. As for the other parts of Asia, the extent of US military presence can be gauged from the following facts: there are some 1,00,000 US troops based in the Asia Pacific region, with 60,000 in Japan, 37,000 in South Korea and the rest in Guam, afloat or on various attachments; the US air force and navy enjoy transit, docking and logistics facilities in Australia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. The rest of Asia lies supine, ready to welcome the conqueror.

This was the pathetic picture that emerged, as one after another delegate from the Asian countries presented their country reports at the inaugural assembly of the Asian Peace Alliance in Quezon City from August 29 to September 1. It was obvious from the reports that the linchpin of the present US strategy in Asia is its military alliance with Japan. The 1997 Guidelines for US-Japan Cooperation allows Japan to play a more aggressive role in the guise of ‘peacekeeping missions’ and supporting role as the US’s junior military partner in areas outside Asia (such as in the Persian Gulf, Golan Heights, Central Europe, East Timor and of late in Afghanistan). These operations give Japan a military role that far exceeds the constitutional limitations that provide only for a self-defence force. In fact, the US government’s Armitage Report recommends the amendment of Japan’s Peace Constitution to allow the Japanese government to exert the right of collective defence (which is prohibited under the 9th clause of the Constitution that disallows any form of engagement in war by the Japanese army). Quite predictably, the Armitage report has encouraged the extreme nationalists of Japan to demand the independence of the army from the constraints of the Peace Constitution. As the Japanese delegates warned at the conference, the real threat to the Asian people is not North Korea, as made out to be by the US which demonises it, but the revival of Japanese military-nationalism under US aegis.

South-east Asia is the next region where Washington wants to restore the US military hegemony which it lost after its defeat in Vietnam. Soon after the September 11 events, the Bush administration sought to make this region the second front of its global war on terrorism. The excuse trotted out by it was that the region has the largest concentration of Muslims in the world with the majority (about 60 per cent) concentrated in Malaysia, over 200 million in Indonesia and significant numbers in Thailand and the Philippines, and therefore it was a potential host to Islamic terrorists. In the Philippines, for instance, the US military has found a convenient excuse for restoring its presence (after its troops were forced to vacate the Subic bay and Clark airfield bases there following an anti-US upsurge in 1991) by linking the Abu Sayyaf bandit group operating in the Mindanao region of southern Philippines with Al Quaida. Incidentally, the Abu Sayyaf group was spawned in the 1980s with covert CIA support for recruiting young Filipino Muslims to fight the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. With that military mission lost, the group has now turned to banditry in Mindanao. Here is yet another CIA-created Frankenstein, boomeranging like Osama bin Laden. But it has provided the US with the opportunity to induct some 4,000 troops, including Special Operations Forces to southern Philippines, purportedly to flush out the Al Quaida-cum-Abu Sayyaf bandits. On this plea, they are training Filipino soldiers in counter-guerrilla operations. Their targets are not a handful of bandits, but those who pose a real political threat to US hegemony in the Philippines – the Communist-led National People’s Army (NPA) which still wields power over large parts of the Philippines, and holds out the promise of a better future for the poor – however faded the dream of socialism might have become for the once-radical middle class groups in Asia. It is no wonder therefore that the Communist Party of the Philippines features high in the US list of terrorist groups.

In the Indian subcontinent, at the moment several continuing joint military exercises and deals are under way in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, ostensibly to fight terrorism, but with the real objective of providing a permanent stay of US ground forces to complement US air and naval access privileges. In Sri Lanka, for instance, behind the euphoria generated by the peace talks with the LTTE, what has attracted little public and media attention is a new Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) between Washington and Colombo which offers the US access to military facilities in Sri Lanka. Its strategic location in a huge area of the Indian Ocean from the west Asia to south-east Asia, needless to say, is of vital importance to the US.

The increasing US military presence on the plea of fighting terrorism of course suits the leaders of these governments in Asia. They are all too willing to barter off independence in exchange of billions of dollars of US economic aid which will be siphoned off into the coffers of the elite, their touts and hangers-on, who will eventually develop stakes in the continuation of US domination over their country.

Moreover, the US-led global war on terrorism has provided them with a pretext to extend and intensify the use of national security laws to suppress movements for democracy and human rights. Almost all these laws and their operation – whether in South Korea or Pakistan, Nepal or Sri Lanka, Indonesia or the Philippines – bear uncanny similarity with our POTA and the manner of its implementation. The common features are: arbitrary detention without charge or trial; criminalisation of communities and organisations by labelling them terrorist; undermining of the due process of law; repressive practices by state authorities like torture; restriction on freedom of movement; intensification of all forms of racism and discrimination, including those based on caste, religion, and gender, and against refugees and minorities.

But it is no use blaming the US only for the present sorry state of affairs. The debauchery of the ideal of socialism by the Soviet leadership has offered the US on a platter the unique opportunity to establish capitalist hegemony on a global scale. It is not only the amoral cynicism among the general public typified by a high degree of depoliticisation, but also the well-oiled media propaganda that privileges consumerism, crass materialism and individual pursuit of money and trivialises political activity and civic values, which paralyse any attempt to resist this US hegemony. Let me quote as an example the observations made by a taxi-driver who drove me recently from Quezon to metro Manila. When I asked him how he felt about the return of the US troops to his country, he was all gaga over the prospects of the reopening of massage-parlours and brothels to which he could carry his American customers, whose tips would amount to more than his daily earnings. This attitude shared in common by the elite and the urban populace is not peculiar to the Philippines, or other parts of south-east Asia. The desire to accept the ‘American way of life’ – the term used by the US during Truman’s time – is prevalent among various sections of the people of the Indian subcontinent also, which provides a fertile soil for US hegemonistic designs.

It is obvious that it will be a long haul for peace activists in Asia today. To resist Washington’s military and economic globalisation, it is essential to build up an equally globalised offensive. But that requires the stiffening of the moral fibre of the resistance, and restoration of human values like self-respect and dignity among the people. Terrorism that masquerades as anti-US war has to be ousted from the site of the contest and replaced with ideals of equality, democracy and social justice. The setting up of the Asian Peace Alliance could be a major step in that direction.

Darfur: need for urgent action

John Holmes
The Hindu, 26 April

Humanitarian action can never be a substitute for a political solution. The people of Darfur need it now more than ever.

THREE YEARS ago this April, my predecessor first brought Darfur to the attention of the United Nations Security Council. And now this April, I too have gone before the Security Council to brief them on the ongoing tragedy of Darfur following my recent mission to the region. The cost of inaction continues to be paid in countless thousands of lives lost. How many more Aprils can the people of Darfur endure?

In three years, the number of people dependent on an increasingly fragile humanitarian lifeline in Darfur has quadrupled from one million to nearly four million people. In recent months, access and safety for the thousands of aid workers seeking to assist them have declined precipitously. How can we sustain the world's largest humanitarian operation when needs are growing but our ability to help is severely curtailed?

A quick look at the numbers shows how much we have achieved in the last three years — and how much is at risk should bureaucracy and intimidation make humanitarian work untenable.

In April 2004 when the humanitarian operation in Darfur began to kick into high gear, we had just over 200 aid workers on the ground assisting 350,000 people displaced by the conflict. Today 13,000 aid workers, primarily Sudanese, are assisting almost four times that number. Global malnutrition has been halved since mid-2004, and mortality rates slashed to well below emergency threshold rates.

Unending problems

But these lifesaving gains could only too quickly evaporate. The problems in Darfur continue unabated and have spilled over into neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic. Some 420,000 people in Darfur have been displaced from their homes since last May, despite the signing of a peace agreement then, bringing the total number of people displaced to over two million — one-third of Darfur's population. Rape and other sexual attacks continue, committed by all sides in a climate of total impunity. Malnutrition rates have begun to climb again, particularly outside the camps in remote, insecure areas.

Our ability to reach people in need is meanwhile shrinking to dangerously low levels. We judge that only half of those affected by the conflict in Darfur are now regularly receiving clean water and primary health care. Fewer than 40 per cent receive sanitation services. Worse still, at any one time, nearly one in four people in need can no longer be reached with any assistance, meaning that some 900,000 people are out of reach of the humanitarian lifeline.

Aid workers are under attack as well, in direct contravention to the Geneva Conventions. Between June and December 2006, 12 relief workers were killed, more than in the previous two years combined. Last year, 120 humanitarian vehicles were hijacked. Hundreds of thousands of civilians can be cut off from life-sustaining help if and when humanitarian organisations withdraw from areas where their staff have been attacked. All the parties to the conflict share responsibility for these attacks.

Meanwhile, a stream of government red tape has severely hampered aid operations, sapped morale, and limited freedom of movement. A government which should obviously be helping those who are saving the lives of its own citizens has often seemed little interested in doing so.

So what is to be done? First, there should be an immediate end to all attacks against civilians by all sides in the conflict, be they government-backed militias, rebel forces or other conflict parties.

Last week (April 16), the Government of Sudan indicated its acceptance of the second United Nations support package designed to strengthen the African Union's (AU) peacekeeping efforts in Darfur. We welcome this and all steps to increase protection for civilians in Darfur. But speedy, effective implementation remains of the essence, and requires Khartoum's full, expeditious cooperation. The people of Darfur can brook no further delay in the deployment of the full U.N.-AU hybrid peacekeeping force.

Second, we need safe, unimpeded access so that humanitarians can reach all those in need. One welcome note from my recent mission to Sudan was the signing of a Joint Communiqué in which Khartoum re-affirmed and extended its 2004 pledge to ease up on visa, customs, and other requirements. Specific promises have been made. I intend to keep a close eye on their implementation.

Finally, let us not forget that humanitarian action, no matter how vitally needed, can never be a substitute for a political solution. We simply cannot sustain this massive aid effort for years at a stretch. Three years into this conflict, the people of Darfur need a political solution now more than ever.

I urge all parties to the conflict to support the efforts of the Special Envoys from the AU and the U.N. in ensuring adherence to an immediate ceasefire, and getting all the parties around the negotiating table to reach a lasting peace settlement.

"April is the cruellest month," wrote T.S. Eliot. I fervently hope that next April, still less the April after that, I will not be standing before the Security Council with fresh news of still more death and displacement in Darfur. It's time to stop this disastrous conflict. — Courtesy: U.N. Information Centre, New Delhi.

(The writer is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.)

Maharashtra’s money - Those Who Are Part Of The Problem Are Unlikely To Be A Part Of Its Solution

Subroto Roy
The Statesman, 24 April

Mr Percy Mistry, according to the World Bank’s official chronology, worked there with Moeen Qureshi, and S Javed Burki. Mr Qureshi was doyen of Pakistani bureaucrats in Washington and something of a king-maker back home, briefly becoming Pakistan’s PM himself; Mr Burki briefly became Pakistan’s Finance Minister and is an author in the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy created by WE James and myself in the 1980s in the USA.

Although Mr Mistry claims no special expertise about India’s monetary economy or public finances, he was appointed by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram to head an official committee that has given an opinion on a crucial monetary issue facing the country today, namely, the rupee’s convertibility. Mr Mistry apparently authored the report but resigned before its release, making it unclear who is responsible for its contents.

Mr Mistry has glossed over India’s present fiscal circumstances, said nothing of the limitless waste, fraud and abuse of the public purse the Sonia-Manmohan Government have been indulging in (like their Vajpayee-Advani predecessor) yet declared the rupee should be freed in 2008 ~ telling Business Standard a convertible rupee will allow people like “Ratan” and “Kumar” to raise capital in India for their foreign purchases, and not have to go to London as they must do now, poor things. All this in a report purporting to be a plan to make Mumbai an “international financial centre”, which is a different subject altogether.

Mr Mistry thus becomes a certifiable member of the “Dream Team” of Dr Singh, Mr Chidambaram, Mr Montek Ahluwalia, Mr Deepak Parekh and their big business/big labour/big media friends across political parties. Dreaming involves constructs in which normal logic and facts have no place. In the waking world, India is a labour-rich, capital-scarce country where wages are lower and interest-rates are higher respectively than in labour-scarce, capital-rich Western countries; hence India will be importing not exporting capital. In the real world too, Mumbai is not an off-shore island-resort outside India (like the so-called SEZs are going to be from a legal standpoint) but happens to be located in Maharashtra, whose public finances urgently require hard investigation and sober thought.

Now there used to be a “Bombay State” coinciding with the old Bombay Presidency plus “princely states” plus Marathi-majority districts of MP and Hyderabad and excluding Kannada-majority districts to Mysore. On May 1 1960, after much agitation, this became the new States of Gujarat and Maharashtra. There was talk of making Bombay city a Union Territory but the Marathis would have none of it. In fact, within a few weeks, Maharashtra reverted to calling itself “Bombay State” and it was not until the end of the year the Government of India officially declared it must be called Maharashtra.

The same quest for, or confusion about, cultural and political identity continues in recent times and may be at the root of the Shiv Sena’s erratic political behaviour which rocks Maharashtra politics so frequently. “Bombay” may be “Mumba Bai” or “Mumba Devi” but it had not been a Marathi town any more than Calcutta had been a Bengali town. Bombay’s traders and businessmen descended there while it developed after the decline of Surat, where the British initially came to trade in the 17th Century. Modern Bombay retains some of its “all-India” character and even today you cannot make money in its markets unless you speak Gujarati. Marathi-speakers have tended to wish Maharashtra was “Maratha-rashtra” reminiscent of the great Shivaji Bhonsla (1627-1680) but others have read the name only as “Great State”.

This continuing identity crisis had its most devastating costly impact through the Dabhol-Enron fiasco. As recently as March 4 2007, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said frankly “We could not generate a single megawatt of electricity in the last 10 years due to the Enron issue”, adding demand for electric power had been growing in the State at 10% per annum.

Indeed, before the 2005-2006 nuclear or any other deal could be contemplated with the Americans, the US-India Business Council, the American business lobbyist (and recent guest and soon-to-be host of the CPI-M’s Buddhadeb Bhattacharya), insisted India pay up fully for the Dabhol-Enron fiasco. Maharashtra and its sovereign guarantor the Government of India, duly paid out at least $140-$160 million ($14-$16 crore) to each General Electric and Bechtel Corporation in “an amicable settlement”.

It was only then that Dr Manmohan Singh could be hosted in the White House and in turn play host to President George W. Bush.

Without entering the intricacies of the fiasco, it may be still asked who was responsible. And in retrospect the finger must point both at the Mahajan-Munde BJP/ Thakeray-Joshi Shiv Sena, and at the Sharad Pawar Government and Manmohan-Montek Union Finance Ministry at the time. The BJP-Shiv Sena declared an intent to “throw Enron into the Arabian Sea” and thus vitiated the atmosphere with the Americans.

Americans are shrewd and practical people in commercial matters and accounted for such contingencies in their deal-making, tidily earning their money anyway, winning the arbitration awards in due course. Maharashtra’s identity confusion was exemplified by Rebecca Mark having to visit Bal Thakeray before a policy flip-flop could be permitted.

If the basic technical cause Enron’s electricity became too expensive was that it was denominated in dollar prices and the rupee depreciated rapidly during and after the deal-making, then the financial responsibility for the fiasco must be ultimately traced to India’s Finance Minister in the early 1990s, namely Dr Singh, and his chief acolyte and Finance Secretary Mr Ahluwalia. Maharasthtra is not a sovereign country, and it was the Union Finance Ministry’s responsibility to oversee the necessary cost-benefit and project appraisal analyses, and these if properly done would have accounted for exchange-rate depreciation scenarios. It is no wonder the World Bank later refused to finance the project because they had done their studies better. The same kind of cavalier unprofessional attitude in spending scarce foreign moneys earned by India’s public has been displayed now more than a decade later by the Manmohan-Montek duo, though on a vastly larger scale, in regard to the planned purchase of nuclear reactors from Russia, the USA etc on a turnkey basis.

Maharashtra may be a Great State but its public finances are in as great a shambles as any other. The table for 2003-2004 (before the Enron payments were made) reveals the very high continuing public indebtedness, and the same pattern as the budgets of West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh described in these columns earlier. A closer look would reveal, e.g., that Rs 814.36 crore (Rs. 8.14 billion) were spent in collecting Rs1,205.97 crore. (Rs. 12.05 billion) of “Vehicle Tax”! There is much that Mumbai’s and Maharashtra’s and India’s citizens have to ponder over and act upon before serious thought can be put to restoring the integrity of India’s money. In that process, those who have been part of the problem are unlikely to be part of its solution.

(The author is Contributing Editor, The Statesman)

Africa's `vanished' people in the war on terror

Xan Rice
The Hindu, April 24

Prisoners accused of supporting terrorists in Somalia were secretly transferred from country to country for interrogation outside the boundaries of domestic or international law.

FATMA AHMED Chande was cold. It was 3 a.m. and raining. The 25-year-old Tanzanian woman was kneeling on the taxiway at Nairobi's international airport. Headlights from a convoy of police vehicles punched holes in the darkness. She saw a group of blindfolded men being led towards a plane. She recognised some of the shackled women and children who followed them.

A policeman jerked Ms. Ahmed's scarf over her eyes. He tied her hands behind her back with a pair of plastic handcuffs that cut into her wrists. It was the same man who had threatened to kill her if she did not admit that her husband had supported Al-Qaeda terrorists in Somalia. "This is it," she thought. "I am going to die."

The quiet 25-year-old from Moshi, at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, did not die in the early hours of January 27. But the ordeal that had begun when she was arrested at Kenya's northern border three weeks before while fleeing the war in Somalia was far from over.

Bundled aboard African Express flight AXK-527 she was about to become part of the first mass "renditions" in Africa, where prisoners accused of supporting terrorists in Somalia were secretly transferred from country to country for interrogation outside the boundaries of domestic or international law.

Along with at least 85 others from 20 countries, she was flown back to Somalia — a war zone with no effective government or law — and on to Ethiopia. There, American intelligence agents joined the interrogations — photographing and taking DNA samples, even from the children.

On April 7, three months after her arrest, Ms. Ahmed was released. Salim Awadh Salim, her husband and father of her unborn baby, is still in detention. So, too, are 78 of the other passengers aboard the three secret rendition flights. At least 18 are children under 15.

Recuperating at her parents' house in Moshi, Ms. Ahmed made her allegations to The Guardian in the hope that it would pressure Ethiopia into releasing her husband and the other prisoners. She described how she had married in 2000 and moved to the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa, where her husband ran a mobile phone repair shop. When his business soured last year, he decided to try his luck in the Somali capital Mogadishu, where a loose coalition of clan-based courts had established law and order for the first time since 1991. She joined him in August.

War was brewing. Ethiopia, backed by the U.S., accused the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC) of links to Al-Qaeda. As Ethiopian troops pushed towards Mogadishu in late December, the couple joined thousands of people fleeing south by road.

They joined two Swahili-speaking women who were also trying to reach Kenya. Halima Badroudine had three young children. Fatma Ahmed Abdulrahman had a son aged about six. "They told us that their husbands were Somalis who had stayed behind in Mogadishu," said Ms. Ahmed.

Complex truth

The truth was more complicated. Ms. Badroudine is married to Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a Comorian; Ms. Abdulrahman to a Kenyan called Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan. Both men are Al-Qaeda members accused of prominent roles in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. When the group crossed into Kenya at Kiunga, on Somalia's southern tip, Ms. Ahmed thought she was safe.

But Kenyan anti-terror police identified and detained Ms. Badroudine and Ms. Abdulrahman. The problem for Ms. Ahmed and her husband, and dozens of others detained at the border at the same time, was that they too were presumed "guilty" of supporting the Islamists.

They were separated and repeatedly interrogated. After 10 days, Ms. Ahmed was flown to Nairobi. The aggressive questioning continued.

One Kenyan interrogator asked if she was willing to separate from Salim.

When she said no, he beat his fist on the table. "He wanted to make me admit that my husband was a member of Al-Qaeda," she said. "He said he would strangle me if I did not tell the truth."

She insists Salim had never had close contact with the SCIC in Mogadishu — or with Al-Qaeda members anywhere.

Though she had her Tanzanian passport with her, the police refused to acknowledge her nationality. Her husband, who had since also been flown to Nairobi, had his Kenyan passport and birth certificate, but was also documented as an "illegal immigrant."

Pressure was building on the Kenyan government to lay formal charges or release the prisoners. Kenya's Muslim Human Rights Forum filed an application to force the government to produce them in court. Instead, it produced three flight manifests.

The first two were African Express charters to Mogadishu on January 20 and 27, one showing Ms. Ahmed and her husband among the passengers. A third, operated by Blue Bird Aviation, had flown to Baidoa, Somalia's temporary capital, on February 10.

In Mogadishu, where insurgents were already beginning to ambush Ethiopian troops, Ms. Ahmed was held in a tiny cell with about 20 other women and children, including a Swede, a Sudanese, and a pregnant Yemeni. After nine days, they were flown to Addis Ababa.

On April 7, Ms. Ahmed was put on a flight to Kilimanjaro. Her escort promised that her husband and the others would be released with a week. It has now been 16 days. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

A willing suspension of disbelief

Siddharth Varadarajan
The Hindu, 24 April

Forget about Iran, North Korea, and terrorism, the principal security challenge of our time is how to restrain the U.S. from pursuing policies that promote conflict and undermine international stability. Europe and India know this, yet do nothing about it.


WITH THE shadow of conflict in Iran looming large, Indian and Italian editors and commentators held a seminar last week in Venice to ask whether the "inverted priorities" the United States, Europe, and India seem to have on many international issues could be resolved in a positive way. To cut a long story short, both sides were pessimistic about Washington. The prevailing mood of gloom was best summed up by Giuliano Amato, Interior Minister and former Prime Minister of Italy. "If the U.S. is for disorder, then there will be no order in the world," he told the closing session. He added that there was little India or Europe could do to convince America not to take recourse to military means. "The Americans have to convince themselves. It has to be self-restraint."

The problem, of course, is that restraint is the last thing on anyone's mind in Washington. The good folks in Peoria may be sick of Iraq but that's not stopping Beltway zealots from planning their next military adventure. When Congress voted supplementary funds for the Iraq war in March, it agreed at the last minute to delete a key clause directing the President to seek prior Congressional approval for any attack on Iran. There could not be a more clear-cut sign that another disastrous war might soon be upon us. And yet the willing suspension of disbelief continues the world over.

New threats, old threats

As the bitter debate over the invasion of Iraq recedes into distant memory, American foreign policy ideologues have once again succeeded in constructing a picture of world order in which "new threats" like terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and pandemics are more dangerous than the doctrines of pre-emptive war and regime change.

In a major speech to the United Nations General Assembly on the occasion of the U.N.'s 60th anniversary in 2005, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice claimed that the emergence of new threats had shifted "the very terrain of international politics ... beneath our feet." In the old world, which began in 1945 and presumably ended with the demise of the Soviet Union, "the most serious threats to peace and security emerged between states and were largely defined by their borders." Today, however, "the greatest threats we face emerge within states and melt through their borders — transnational threats like terrorism and weapons proliferation, pandemic disease and trafficking in human beings."

Depending on their own individual concerns, American scholars tend to add on to the list of new threats problems such as climate change, genocide, and human rights violations. For the American establishment, however, these are not core threats. As the world's biggest polluter, Washington tends to take a highly instrumental view of global warming. Rather than setting its own house in order, it prefers to turn domestic and international concerns about climate change into new business opportunities for American companies. As for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and human rights violations, the Bush administration's view on whether these constitute "threats" depends essentially on what is politically expedient at any moment in time.

Leaving aside the problem of what to include in the list, the discourse about "new threats" is problematic because it assumes the "old threats" to world order have either vanished or become less critical. In reality, the old threats have become more virulent and pose an even more fundamental challenge to the international system than their newer strains. Consider this list: The tendency for powerful countries to use force against smaller countries under one pretext or another; the nuclear arms race, which is now leading to the weaponisation of outer space as well as the search for smaller, "usable" nukes; the refusal to solve outstanding conflicts, especially in the Middle East, which is a major contributing factor to terrorism; the persistence of exclusion and poverty, which give rise to derivative "threats" like human trafficking and global pandemics.

Despite the ugly reality of Iraq, Dr. Rice declared in the same speech that the old threat of aggression was not the main cause of instability in the world. "In 1945, the fear was that strong, aggressive states — eager and able to expand their frontiers with force — would be the primary cause of international problems," she said. "Today, however, it is clear that weak and poorly governed states — unwilling or incapable of ruling their countries with justice — are the principal source of global crises — from civil war and genocide, to extreme poverty and humanitarian disaster."

This emphasis on "new threats," "weak states," and "rogue states" is an integral part of Washington's attempts to fashion new institutional arrangements at the global level that can more effectively deal with any present or future challenges to its hegemonic power. By selling its response to the 9/11 tragedy as part of a "Global War on Terrorism," the United States managed to receive unprecedented international backing for its projection of military power in the heartland of Asia. Of course, the U.S. suffered a setback when it invaded Iraq in open defiance of the international community and failed to find any weapons of mass destruction as a post facto fig leaf. The U.S. invasion was widely and rightly criticised at the time, but not always for the right reasons. In Europe, especially, critics decried the "unilateralism" of the Bush administration, as if Nato's "multilateral" aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 during the Clinton administration was somehow a qualitatively better thing. The significance of the distinction was not lost on Washington.

New `multilateralism'

That is why, since 2003, the U.S. has sought to recover some diplomatic ground by using the "new threats" discourse as the springboard for a new hegemonic multilateralism. From climate change to the promotion of "democracy," to curbing proliferation and terrorism, the emphasis is on remoulding the United Nations and also creating ad-hoc institutional arrangements that the U.S. leads but which have enough of a multilateralist facade to flatter the egos of Europe and even Russia, India, and China.

To be sure, the U.S. has not always been successful in this endeavour. It managed to push through the creation of the new Human Rights Council at the U.N. but has not been able to dictate its agenda as it had hoped. In the case of North Korea, Chinese stewardship of the Six-Party process has not allowed Washington a free hand. But where it has succeeded to a considerable extent is in Iran as well as on the question of Palestine.

Despite the Palestinian people exercising their democratic right to elect Hamas, the U.S. used the Quartet's demand that Israel's "right to exist" be recognised as a pretext to subvert the election verdict and starve the people of Palestine into submission. At no point have the Palestinians been shown the external frontiers of the Israel whose right to exist they are supposed to "recognise." And yet the Europeans allowed themselves to be press-ganged into the blockade that Washington and Tel Aviv mounted against the Palestinian Authority.

On Iran, the U.S. has been successful in first subverting the European mediation effort and then using Europe's failure as a stepping stone to take Tehran's Iran dossier to the U.N. Security Council. Against their better judgment, the Europeans today find themselves caught in an escalatory sanctions process that can only end in Washington's dreaded "military option."

In the Indo-Italian seminar, Mr. Amato cited the decline of the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain — whose pro-Iraq war stance has run foul of the prevailing national mood in the U.S. — as proof that the American electorate would help the world avert another conflict. "We have to rely more on democracy than on external constraints," he said.

Mr. Amato is right in hoping the American electorate disciplines its leaders but he is wrong to underestimate what Italy, Europe, India, and others can do towards the same end.

European opposition to the illegal "renditions" the CIA ran throughout Europe forced the U.S. to reroute its torture flights. If Italy were to insist that the U.S. extradite the CIA operatives who kidnapped Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from a Milan street in 2003, it would certainly push the policy debate in the U.S. in the right direction. On Palestine, if Europe and India were to take a more forthright stand against Israel's illegal settlements and Apartheid Wall, that would surely make it more difficult for Tel Aviv to avoid reaching a just and honourable agreement with the Palestinians. On the proliferation front, India and Europe need to take the lead in opposing missile defence and space weaponisation, and pushing for a negotiated solution to the Iran crisis without preconditions. If only Europe and India would stop appeasing the Bush administration at every step, they would find there is plenty that they can do to push the U.S. towards more responsible international behaviour.

Message from the meltdown

C.P. CHANDRASEKHAR
Frontline, April 7-20

The RBI's recent moves partly unravelled relationships between finance and the real economy, affecting expectations and triggering the sell-off in the markets.

FINANCIAL year 2007 began with one more strong "correction" of the bull run that has dominated Indian stock markets in recent months. The first trading day of the year, April 2, witnessed the second sharpest single-day decline ever in the benchmark Sensex. The close to 617 points decline was received as usual with alarmist statements that suggested that a bull-run that keeps stock indices rising should be the norm in a healthy economy.

"A world of gloom in your cup" declared one newspaper with a fondness for bizarre banner headlines. It was another matter that the day following the "crash" the market recovered and the Sensex rose by 169 points, indicating that the previous decline was partly the result of market panic.

Being addicted to buoyancy, it is not surprising that market movers and sections of the media chose to train their guns on the proximate force responsible for the April 2 crash. The decline, it is widely accepted, was triggered by an unscheduled monetary policy statement made by the Reserve Bank of India after close of business on Friday, March 30.

The statement and the measures it incorporated were driven by the central bank's perception that its monetary policy stance must shift from one that put "equal emphasis" on price stability and growth to one that focussed on stabilising prices immediately. The reasons are not hard to find: year-on-year inflation based on the wholesale price index had, by March 17, 2007, ruled at around 6.5 per cent for the third week in succession and inflation based on the various consumer price indices had moved to the 7.6-9.8 per cent range in February 2007 compared with 4.7-5.0 per cent a year ago.

Under pressure to bring inflation under control, the central bank decided to resort to the only measures it has at hand: those of reducing liquidity in the system as well as increasing the cost of capital. Not surprisingly, it has chosen to: (i) hike the cash reserve (CRR) by 50 basis points to 6.50 per cent in two steps starting April 14, so as to suck out of the system the equivalent of Rs.15,500 crore; (ii) reduce interest rates paid to banks on reserves in excess of 3 per cent held with the central bank; and (iii) raise the repo rate, or the interest rate on funds provided to banks by the RBI, by 25 basis points from 7.50 per cent to 7.75 per cent.

Debt-financed spending

In the two-day period between the RBI's announcement and the next trading day in the stock markets, speculation was rife that the RBI's moves would damage corporate performance and reduce profits, paving the way for the sell-off on the first Monday of April. These expectations were not without basis. They were based on the correct reading that the high GDP (gross domestic product) growth of recent times was driven by an expansion of housing, automobile and consumer credit that easy liquidity and lower interest rates had resulted in. If credit growth is reined in with a more stringent monetary policy and if the interest to be paid on credit was hiked because the cost of capital mobilised by the banks was higher, the debt-financed spending spree on housing construction, automobiles and consumer durables would falter.

Not surprisingly, the stocks most affected in the one-day meltdown were those of real estate companies, automobile producers and the banks. These were the areas in which debt-financed spending spurred sales and profits, making them stocks that attracted much attention. Faced with the prospect of a decline in these industries, investors, including the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) that led the bull run, chose to exit.

But these were not the only stocks that were affected. The sell-off was widespread, with all 30 stocks included in the Sensex losing ground and a total of 1,771 registering a decline, while only 702 companies recorded a rise in stock values on the Bombay Stock Exchange. One reason for this widespread decline could be that the expected increase in the cost of credit had encouraged some domestic investors to unwind positions financed with debt. Leveraged investments in stocks are less profitable when interest rates rise. They would be even more so if stock prices fall when interest rates rise.

The message from the market was thus clear: easy and cheap credit is necessary to keep both the economy and the markets going. In earlier times the relationship between finance and the real economy was read very differently. Finance, it was argued, had a supply-leading role. If the inducement to invest existed, the financial system was expected to play its role by making adequate capital available at reasonable interest rates so that viable projects were not abandoned for lack of funds.

Liberalisation, however, has changed the lending practices of financial institutions. It has encouraged them to focus more on housing finance, retail lending, and lending against real estate and stocks than on financing production directly. This has made the relationship between finance and the real economy very different. Financial firms by encouraging credit-financed consumption and housing purchases help spur demand, and indirectly contribute to growth. They also fuel speculation and allow asset and commodity prices to rise for reasons not warranted by fundamentals. The RBI's moves were partly unravelling these relationships, affecting expectations and triggering the sell-off.

This, however, does not mean that what the RBI is attempting is unwarranted. The thinking underlying the RBI's moves is clearly that excess liquidity in the system, resulting in easy credit and lower interest rates, has spurred demand, fuelled speculation, overheated the system and generated inflation. In the circumstances, it was using the only instruments available in its hands to respond to the situation. The question that remains is whether these measures would be adequate to curb inflation and whether they would have collateral effects that affect the growth potential of the system and damage those who were not the beneficiaries of the consumption splurge.

The recent monetary measures can be expected to be successful in curbing inflation if they curb demand growth for precisely those commodities that are the main contributors to inflation. With inflation as measured by consumer price indices ruling higher than that captured by the wholesale price indices, it can be concluded that there are two features that characterise the current inflationary trend. First, that it affects retail prices more than wholesale prices. And, second, that it is concentrated in essential commodities, which have a larger weight in the consumer price index than in the wholesale price index.

Supply-demand imbalance

Essentials are contributing to inflation not only because demand for them is rising too fast. Rather, they are the focus of the current inflation for two reasons: first, the fact that deprived of much-needed investment and access to credit, agriculture has been languishing while the rest of the economy grows, resulting finally in a supply-demand imbalance; second, the emergence of these imbalances has provided the base for speculation that has increased commodity prices.

One problem here is that the demand for essentials is not significantly financed with debt and would, therefore, not be affected directly by the RBI's measures. Monetary stringency can contribute to reducing speculation, inasmuch as such speculation is supported with easy and cheap credit. Further, to the extent that monetary stringency limits investment and growth, it can rein in the growth of employment and consumption and thereby restrain the growth in demand for essentials. While any curb on speculation is welcome, restraints on growth are not.

Moreover, the efficacy of these measures depends on the effects of monetary stringency on supply. If it constricts supply as much as it restrains demand, prices would still tend to rise. There are reasons to believe that the RBI's moves could affect supply. Limits on credit access and increases in the cost of credit can affect the production of essentials, especially because agriculturalists are considered less creditworthy and would be rationed out of the credit market. In the event, unless the restraint on the demand for essentials is greater than that on the supply of these commodities, the RBI's actions would not have their intended results.

These possibilities notwithstanding, the RBI has no option but to rein in the rapid growth of liquidity resulting from the sharp increase in foreign capital inflows into the economy, especially the stock markets. As the central bank's statement makes clear, "accelerated external inflows" have resulted in the addition of as much as $18.6 billion to its foreign exchange reserves over a two-month period, with their levels rising from $179.1 billion at the end of January 2007 to $197.7 billion on March 23, 2007.

The markets need this liquidity to keep the recent unprecedented bull-run going, because a substantial part of that capital enters the stock market through FII investments. It also needs those flows because the increase in the foreign exchange assets of the central bank has as its counterpart an increase in money supply that underlies the easy liquidity and credit situation. It is that easy credit environment that spurs credit-financed housing and consumption expenditure and delivers the growth in sales and markets, which also keep markets buoyant.

The problem is that while this is good for a small segment of the corporate sector and for the financial markets, it passes much of the economy and the people by. In particular, agriculture languishes, leading to a situation where, despite the reduced dependence of the non-agricultural sector on inputs and wage goods from the agricultural sector, the imbalance of growth finally leads to inflation. And the response to that inflation, which is destabilising in a parliamentary democracy, has to be a set of measures that would adversely affect the pace of growth and the returns from speculation.

The situation makes clear that something needs to be done about the surge in capital flows into the economy. This would help the Reserve Bank deal directly with the problem of a liquidity overhang. It would also result in a change in the pattern of growth, making it less dependent (directly and indirectly) on external flows. This, of course, requires rethinking and reversing the post-liberalisation trajectory of development that contributed to the recent acceleration of GDP growth in the country. The government, of course, would be reluctant to opt for such a policy correction. But, the message from the brief but sharp market meltdown is that if the government chooses to delay such a correction, the markets themselves would force it on the country.

Jobless growth in China

JAYATI GHOSH
Frontline, April 7-20

China is experiencing the same disjunction between economic growth and employment generation that is plaguing many other developing countries.

FOR some time now, policymakers in India and elsewhere in the developing world have been looking to China as the source of inspiration for policy - often in utter disregard of the very specific institutional conditions in China and other specificities that ought to be recognised.

It is certainly the case that China's spectacular rate of aggregate economic growth for nearly three decades as well as the substantial reduction in poverty are deserving of admiration and also emulation as far as possible. But some features of that growth suggest that uncritical emulation is unjustified, and that China is now coming up against problems similar to those faced by many other fast-growing developing countries.

The common problem everywhere, it seems, is that of employment generation. China is increasingly seen as the manufacturing powerhouse of the developing world to which manufacturing jobs from the North are increasingly being transferred. However, the actual evidence on Chinese employment shows a somewhat different recent reality.

To begin with, in the past two decades, the share of the secondary sector in total employment has changed very little, increasing from 21 per cent in 1985 to 23 per cent in 1995 to just under 24 per cent in 2005. This is despite the fact that though the share of the secondary sector in the gross domestic product (GDP) increased to reach nearly half of GDP in 2005.

Much of this is because the pattern of growth has been - as elsewhere in the world - much less labour-absorbing than in the past. Overall, employment elasticities of output growth have been low. But more to the point, they appear to have fallen sharply in the 1990s compared to the previous decade.

It is expected that primary sector employment elasticities will be low, and indeed they turned negative in China in the 1990s. After all, development is all about shifting people from agriculture and other primary activities to other sectors. However, even industrial employment generation has been inelastic, and the elasticity has fallen by five times between these decades, to only 12 per cent over the 1990s. This explains the low aggregate employment elasticity to GDP for China as a whole over the decade until 2000.

For any other developing country such figures would hardly be surprising, but China has become synonymous internationally with rapid economic growth based on the export of relatively more labour-intensive commodities. This naturally leads to the expectation that manufacturing growth will be such as to generate relatively more employment, and that the employment elasticity of manufacturing output at least would be relatively high.

In fact, exports have grown dramatically in the past 10 years in particular, and within that, the share of processing exports has increased sharply also in the last decade, going from less than 20 per cent of the total value of exports in the 1980s to more than 55 per cent in the most recent period. Processing exports are seen as generating less value addition but more employment, and, therefore, are more likely to generate more employment generation than resource-based or capital-intensive exports. This makes it all the more possible to expect that the pattern of Chinese growth would be such as to create more employment in manufacturing.

But the extraordinary thing is that despite all these favourable features, manufacturing employment in China peaked in 1995, when it was still less than 100 million workers.

Thereafter, and remarkably in the context of the enormous boom in export-oriented manufacturing that has been evident over the past decade, total manufacturing employment has actually fallen. There has been a slight recovery in recent years, but according to the official Chinese government statistics, it is still around 12 per cent below the levels of the mid-1990s.

The reason for this apparently surprising result is that China is now becoming more like other countries of the developing world that have gone in for export-oriented manufacturing production along with trade liberalisation. Other "successful" exporting countries of East Asia and South-East Asia, as well as Latin America, have seen domestic production being eroded by import competition, which has adversely affected employment-intensive small producers in particular.

The loss of employment in import-competing units has in most cases not been enough to offset the increase in employment in export-oriented activities. This has typically meant a net decline in manufacturing employment even in the most dynamic exporting countries.

In the case of China, the process of trade liberalisation has been more belated and was certainly more limited until the early years of this decade. Indeed, comparable trade liberalisation has occurred only after its accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which has exposed many more domestic producers to the same tough external competition. This is why the process of net manufacturing employment loss, which began even in many dynamic exporting countries in the early 1990s, started somewhat later in China, in the late 1990s.

As a result, the rapid expansion of export-oriented manufacturing in recent years has still not been enough to compensate for the loss of jobs in manufacturing production, which has been threatened or eliminated by import competition.

To this must be added the effects of the ongoing "reform" of state-owned enterprises in China, which has involved substantial reduction of the workforce in these. The loss of manufacturing employment has been most sharply felt in the state sector.

The share of state-owned enterprises in urban employment fell from more than 70 per cent in the early 1980s to less than 30 per cent in the early years of this decade. Indeed, in 2005, the share of private units was more than that of state enterprises for the first time.

The problem of unemployment is deeper than is revealed by official statistics, which show relatively low open unemployment (between 4 and 6 per cent) but do not include a significant proportion of workers laid off from state-owned enterprises and urban collectives. When these workers are included, the rate of unemployment in 2000 was much higher at around 12.5 per cent of the working population. The data also do not capture the jobless rural migrants.

It is now estimated that rural-urban migrants number around 150 million, most of whom are employed in informal activities, but a significant fraction of whom are unemployed.

So, despite the much higher aggregate export-oriented growth, the Chinese economy is experiencing the same disjunction between economic growth and employment generation that is plaguing many other developing countries, including India.

Index of equity

APARAJITA BAKSHI
Frontline, April 7-20

A recent study shows that West Bengal is a leader with respect to redistribution of land to Dalit and Adivasi households.

IN the heat of the current debate on land acquisition in West Bengal, and in the aftermath of the violence in Nandigram, some critics have questioned the basic character of development in the State. They have attempted variously to portray the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Left Front as organisations of upper-caste elites whose interests, by implication, are distant from those of the socially oppressed, or West Bengal as a State where the plight of the Dalit and Adivasi masses, under globalisation and liberalisation, is no different from their plight elsewhere in the country. Even preliminary research on Dalit and Adivasi households in village economies and their access to land in West Bengal shows that such views have little basis in the reality of the post-land reform West Bengal countryside.

West Bengal is a State where policy efforts have been directed to distribute land to the landless and the poor, and specifically to Dalits, Adivasis and other deprived social groups, and also to issue joint title deeds to men and women. Some of the social-distributive effects of the land reform programme show up in recent village-based research and analyses of secondary data. These show that West Bengal is a leader with respect to the distribution of agricultural and homestead land to Dalit and Adivasi households, and also with respect to the purchase of agricultural land by the rural poor, including Dalit households.

The village-level data come mainly from a series of village surveys conducted by Vikas Rawal and others in 2005 in seven villages in different agro-climatic zones in West Bengal (a study in which this writer participated).

The villages studied were: a predominantly tribal village of West Medinipur district, two villages from the agriculturally prosperous Barddhaman district, two traditional agricultural villages from Malda and Koch Bihar districts, a village in Uttar Dinajpur where tea is grown on individual holdings, and a prawn-cultivating village in the estuarine region of North 24 Parganas.

First, let us consider the redistribution of crop land to the landless and rural poor. In five of the seven villages the redistribution of land was an important component of land reform. For each of them, this writer constructed a simple Index of Access to agricultural land. This Index measures the share of Dalit households (or other social groups) in total land ownership, weighted by their share in total population. Thus, if Dalit households constitute 20 per cent of the total population and they own 20 per cent of the land in the village, the Index of Access is 1. Where the Access Index is less than 1, it represents a situation in which the proportion of Dalit households in the population is greater than the share of total land that they own.

Our data show that in three of these five villages, the Access Indices for Dalit households were 1.49, 1.28 and 1.21; in other words, their share in land ownership was greater than their share in the population. In the predominantly Adivasi village in West Medinipur, more than 60 per cent of Scheduled Tribe households gained agricultural land and almost 75 per cent of households gained agricultural or homestead land through land reform. In the last village (in Malda district), the Access Index was lower, that is 0.5, because the main recipients of land in the village were income-poor households from the Tanti caste, which is classified as an Other Backward Class (OBC).

By way of comparison, according to data from the Land and Livestock Holdings Survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), the Access Index for Dalits in rural India as a whole was only 0.5. The NSSO data tend to confirm our village results, since they show that the Access Index for Dalit households in West Bengal was 0.8 (unfortunately, the most recent data in this regard are from 1992; more recent results from the 2003-04 survey are yet to be released). This is the highest Access Index for Dalits among the States of India after Tripura (where the proportion of Scheduled Castes in the rural population is smaller than in West Bengal).

Secondly, let us consider the distribution of house-site or homestead land, which is an important component of land reform in West Bengal. Ownership of homestead land means not only a place to live and a changed position in society, but also represents access to a new source of potential nutrition and livelihood support as a result of house-site and kitchen-garden cultivation. In all the seven study villages, we found that the Dalit and Adivasi households were the major beneficiaries of this aspect of land reform. Out of 210 households that gained homestead land, 21 per cent were Dalit, 46 per cent were Adivasi, 24 per cent were Muslim, and 10 per cent belonged to other caste groups. Of the last group, a majority belonged to the OBCs.

Thirdly, let us consider the participation of the poor in land markets. A 2001 study by Vikas Rawal of land markets in two West Bengal villages published in the international journal Economic Development and Cultural Change reported noteworthy results. The study showed that while empirical studies in other States had found that the net buyers of cultivable land were large landowners and the net sellers of agricultural land were small landowners, the trend was quite the opposite in the West Bengal villages that were studied. The major buyers in these two villages of Bankura district were landless households and small landowners. The paper attributed this difference to the increased purchasing power among the poor in West Bengal facilitated by land distribution, tenancy reform, higher wage rates, and access to credit.

The present study confirms and adds a new dimension to this conclusion. Five villages of the seven have significant Dalit populations. In four of them, Dalit and Muslim households were net buyers of land, while caste Hindus were net sellers. The acquisition of ceiling-surplus land by the Government of West Bengal for redistribution was and still remains a major disincentive for large landowners to purchase land.

The recent policy document on land use of the Government of West Bengal says that the State is poised for "advance into a new phase of industrial modernisation... and diversification into different forms of non-agricultural economic activity." If such a policy is indeed to succeed, West Bengal will have been among the few States of India where industrialisation and economic diversification are based on the achievement of a socially broad-based land reform.

Aparajita Bakshi is a Junior Research Fellow at the Indian Statistical Institute working on issues of household incomes in rural West Bengal.