Nandigram showing us the way

Hindol Bhattacharjee


It is not a matter of confusion now that CPM is not at all a Communist party, it has become a mass party and has every kind of notions of fascism which is being expressed in different incidents now. During the 30 years of ruling over the people of West Bengal, all their operations have come to a pinnacle where since their venture to invite the Multinational companies here following the GATT and Dunkle consignment on the patent rules, 1991, CPM has become a mass party whose main destination is to demolish the economy and conditions of our fellow citizens, villagers and on those poor people who are below the poverty line. It is to be noted that after the early nineties, this globalize economy has manifested a globalize culture, the main intention of which is only to destroy the structure of society, culture and economy of the third world.

The degeneration of Communist party is manufactured through different ways in this country. First of all we can site the example of the system of our constitution and parliamentary politics that deal with only the vote bank. In this perspective, CPM, the so-called mass communist party has little interest to establish the concept of class struggle. They are using the semi-colonial and semi-capitalist structure, not trying to change it, because of their destination to sustain in the parliamentary politics. Secondly we have already noted that a communist party like a party of a higher democratic country tries to strengthen their structure of pan-optic to maintain the madhouse of keeping people mum about any kind of political and economic affair. It is to be noted that everything in a third world country is being overdetermined and nothing we can measure up by a linear deduction. So fascism can be practised here with no sign of fascism. It was, indeed practised by different parties, mainly by BJP and CPM in their areas. We have faced the degenerated issues like Ram mandir Babri masjid etc. Besides we have also experienced the massacre happened in Gujarat. It was a direct religious fascism about which we have raised our voice.

But we should not forget that in a comparative progressive state, like West Bengal. The practice of fascism is easier. This fascism is more dangerous as it remains under the coat of progressiveness. Different areas, different states, different locations have faced these fascism either directly or indirectly. Mr. Budhyadeb Bhattacharjee about the matter of nandigram is enacting. It was a pre-initiated incident which has a direct link with making a chemical hub there and for that reason they tried their operations there, lied, attacked people in the disguise of police and killed more than hundreds of people there, raped more than hundreds, burnt houses, molested but the war by the people of Nandigram has proved that everything can be opposed by a unite people and they were successful to fight back. Afterwards the cadres and central and state committee of CPM with the help of their fascism and state terrorism continued terrors and after 30 th November without any disguise of police fore, the cadres attacked nandigram and burnt more than 500 houses, damaged hospitals, killed patients, raped again a lot, captured people, damaged ambulances and killed and killed like butchers there with the help of modernized automated ammunitions, hiring hooligans and forces of their own party from different areas, states. Tapon and Shukur and Selim are the instances. For the reason of this massacre they are manufacturing the ideas that there were several Maoists but it is a half truth and people of third stream politics though went their but it was hard for them to fight like this. To make protest the artists, painters, poets, singers, writers and commonplace people have made a big rally on 14 th of November at Kolkata where people participated spontaneously and it has shown a new genre of political movement here with the help of Civil Society Movement. But afterwards like a classical fascist party CPM continued to attack on the media and some of them made statements to destroy all the media. They have even crossed the decency of maintaining democratic rights.

To demean the civil society movement and to break the movement CPM along with some brute fundamentalists connected the movement with Taslima Nasrin issue and due to their anarchy Taslima was given the verdict by the state secretary of CPM, Mr. Biman Bose to quit Bengal. This proves that religious fascism is utilizing the political fascism and political fascism is utilizing the religious fascism. How can we say that this is the characteristics of a Communist Party!

Mr. Budhyadeb Bhattacharjee and sons are continuing their limitless fascist statements and from individual to individual they are attacking, terrifying people to stop the entire protesting attitude. The people who are keeping CDs of the massacre at nandigram and on Chemical Hub are being threatened and even are being killed. An instance is Ajay Bagdi of Murshidabad, who for keeping CDs on these matters has been killed by the W.B Police force. This is continuing. They are trying to demean the movements taking place against these fascism and the persons like Medha Patkor, Joy Goswami, Kobir Suman, Prosun Bhowmik, Hindol Bhattacharjee among which excluding Medha all of them are poets of this age.

Budhyadeb Bhattacharjee is only a part of the system, but a fascist is a fascist. The whole system is originating in a fascist way. This is not a communist party and now the civil society movement can only show us the way of how to move.

Not being deviated by the conventionalist way we should introspect that what is the root behind this fascism after a long days of what our country is facing brutally. The BJP, led by Narendra Modi and CPM, led by Budhyadeb Bhattacharjee and Biman Bose are the reflections of this fascism. It is a clear but notorious sign that if we still remain silent about this and deviate from our new risen civil society movement, then a more dangerous fascism will make our democracy a phase of our dream. To strengthen our democracy in a newer form, we should continue our movement, more intelligently in this age of manufacturing consent beside managing relief for restitutes and people suffered due to the massacre.

We are arranging theoretical sessions and interactive sessions on different issues and if you are interested to take part please contact at:

Prosun Bhowmik,9830015598
Hindol Bhattacharjee 9830751535
Biswanath Dasgupta 9433517114
Torsha Bannerji 9830063848

A new East Asian focus on India

P.S. Suryanarayana
The Hindu, 26 November

The atmospherics of the East Asia Summit last week propelled India to the regional centre stage again.

Is India really central to the East Asia Summit (EAS) — an exclusive regional forum which is expected to play a key role in shaping the next big theatre in world politics? Surely, the latest EAS meeting in Singapore, which brought India and China, as also Japan, into sharp focus, was not designed to provide clues to such a long-term proposition. However, the atmospherics of the third annual summit of the EAS last week propelled India to the centre stage of Greater Ea st Asia in several ways.

The larger geopolitical region covers all the 10 countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Australia, and New Zealand. The United States, for long the dominant military power in this wider region, is not a member of the two-year-old EAS, which remains wary of letting the Americans on to its diversified but rather very Asian stage.

Interestingly, it was in an overarching cultural setting that the importance of being India in Greater East Asia was dramatically illustrated. The occasion was the dedication of an exhibition, titled “On the Nalanda Trail,” as an EAS project. The exhibition — tracing the trail of Buddhism in India, China, and Southeast Asia — is being organised by Singapore at the Asian Civilisations Museum in the City-State. The unusual show is aimed at promoting the establishment of an international university, through a multilateral treaty, at the old Nalanda site in India. The proposed university will offer a number of courses, including peace and security studies.

India’s centrality to the current process of inter-state engagement in Greater East Asia was best put across by EAS Chairman and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. At a reception hosted by him for the EAS leaders, Mr. Lee said: “The ancient university in Nalanda was not just devoted to Buddhist studies. It was also a first-class educational institution and the most global university of its time. ... The new Nalanda (university) should strive to perform a role consistent with this original ethos and vision. It should be a great intellectual centre, an icon of the (current) Asian renaissance. ... It should also be a centre of civilisational dialogue and inter-faith understanding as the original Nalanda once was. In this way, the (EAS) Nalanda project can be an inspiration for the future of Asia.”

Piloting the EAS and other ASEAN-related summits with diplomatic skill, clear from the way he warded off a Myanmar-related crisis that could have affected these events, Mr. Lee saw India’s relevance to planet-issues as well.

The East Asia Summit is the only pan-regional platform, as different from sub-regional groups, where India and China share the high table. Significantly, China had earlier joined Japan, the global eco-guru, and the U.S., a reluctant “leader” on green issues, in issuing a declaration on climate change. The occasion was the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum’s summit in Sydney in September. The APEC had then endorsed a set of “aspirational goals” as non-binding commitments to reduce the worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases. So, a general expectation ahead of last week’s EAS meeting was that India, not an APEC member, could perhaps now be brought into this emerging circle of key state-players as eco-friendly protagonists of economic growth.

Greenhouse gas emissions

What happened at the EAS was a different story though. Japan, taking off from its earlier platform of “Cool Earth 50,” now proposed a new package of measures to ensure “a sustainable East Asia.” The idea was that Japan could help its other East Asian partners in adopting eco-friendly but growth-protective technologies to ensure the reduction of worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases by half by 2050. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s EAS partners did not reject his offer. However, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India would be willing to place a “cap” on greenhouse gas emissions at a level equivalent only to the “cap” that the developed bloc might be ready to apply to itself. And, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made common cause with Dr. Singh in emphasising how growth would remain a priority for both their countries and how they could consider eco-targets only within the ambit of priorities. In the event, while the APEC consensus was not repudiated, the EAS could not create any fresh consensus that might have covered India as yet another example for the U.S. to follow.

If Mr. Wen and Dr. Singh were able to advance the cause of the developing countries, through their mutually reinforcing presentations at the EAS meeting, there was a political reason too for their bonhomie. Shortly before the EAS convened, they met for the first time after a political crisis rocked New Delhi over India’s civil nuclear energy deal with the U.S. Even as that crisis spiralled, it was seen in the U.S.-friendly circles in East Asia as a new reality check for assessing, over time, India’s credibility as a serious negotiator in sensitive matters. Against this background, it is understood, on good authority, that Mr. Wen was willing to consider cooperation with India on matters relating to peaceful uses of atomic energy within an overall framework of non-proliferation. Later, the Indian side even went public with a formulation that Mr. Wen was “forthcoming and supportive of international civil nuclear energy cooperation with India.”

This China-India meeting and the coincidental commencement of talks between New Delhi and the International Atomic Energy Agency set the stage for the EAS deliberations. And, Mr. Lee’s commendation of India and China for their “eloquent presentations” on their shared concerns about economic growth as “a priority” virtually put India back on the East Asian stage as a serious player.

Chikungunya: Where did the virus really come from?

N. Gopal Raj
The Hindu, 27 November

The disease is believed to have originated in Africa where forest-dwelling mosquitoes circulate the virus among wild non-human primates.

In the space of two years, chikungunya has gone from being a disease known principally to medical specialists to becoming a much-dreaded pestilence that, even if it doesn’t kill, leaves sufferers often enduring months of crippling pain.

Starting in early 2005, this disease, which is caused by a virus spread by mosquitoes, swept through the islands of Comoros, Mayotte, Seychelles, Reunion and Mauritius that lie in the south-western Indian Ocean, not far from the coast of Africa. The epidemic continued into 2006.

From late 2005 onwards, hospitals in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra found themselves swamped with patients complaining of fever and joint pain, which turned out to be chikungunya. Large numbers of people fell victim to the virus in these States during 2006, and the disease spread to other parts of the country as well. The statistics on the website of the Union Government’s National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme show that some 1.4 million people in the country may have contracted the disease in 2006.

From Kerala to Italy

Kerala continued to reel from the disease this year as well, and cases of chikungunya have been reported from West Bengal and Orissa too. A few months ago, Italy discovered, to its alarm, that a returning resident, who picked up the infection in Kerala, set off a chain of transmission with local mosquitoes in two neighbouring villages in the north-east of the country. There are now fears that viral transmission could resume when mosquito numbers increase again in the spring of 2008. As a result, chikungunya might spread further in Italy and perhaps to other parts of Europe as well.

Chikungunya is believed to have originated in Africa where forest-dwelling mosquitoes circulate the virus among wild non-human primates. “In South Africa, chikungunya is transmitted between African Grey Vervet monkeys and also between baboons by mosquitoes belonging to the Aedes furcifer/cordellieri complex,” according to Peter Jupp, a medical entomologist formerly with the country’s National Institute for Viology (NIV) and National Institute of Communicable Diseases. “The same mosquitoes feed on man and infect him when he is present in the same areas where the monkey-mosquito cycle is occurring,” he told this correspondent in an e-mail. However, the virus was not thought to be endemic in South Africa itself, but could be entering the country from neighbouring Zimbabwe and Mozambique, he added.

The chikungunya virus was first isolated from the blood serum of a patient during a dengue-like epidemic that broke out in Tanzania in 1953. Since then, many outbreaks of the disease have been documented in Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia.

In India, the first recorded outbreak happened in Kolkata in 1963, followed by epidemics along the the east coast and elsewhere during 1964 and 1965. Nearly four lakh cases were reported in Chennai alone in 1964. Then there was an outbreak in the small town of Barsi in Maharashtra in 1973.

“After that [the Barsi outbreak], there was silence,” remarked Vidya Arankalle, senior deputy director of the NIV in Pune, in the course of a talk she gave during the recent annual meeting of the Indian Academy of Sciences in Thiruvananthapuram. In view of the long absence of chikungunya epidemics, it was postulated that the virus had disappeared from India and South-East Asia, she observed in a paper published along her colleagues in the Journal of General Virology earlier this year.

The virus then re-emerged with a bang. “The scope of the 2005-2007 outbreaks is certainly of unprecedented magnitude,” noted Ann Powers and Christopher Logue of the Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a review paper published this year.

Using the latest tools at their disposal, including the ability to sequence and scrutinise the viral genes, scientists are trying to understand how the strain that set off the 2005-2007 outbreaks might have emerged and what makes this virus so virulent.

Based on their genetic similarities, chikungunya viral strains fall into three groups. Two of these groups are primarily Africa-based: the strains of the West African type form one cluster while those from East, Central and South Africa (ECSA) form a separate one. The third group comprises of strains found in Asia.

A team of French scientists sequenced almost the entire genome of six viral samples and partially sequenced a single gene of another 127 viral samples from the Indian Ocean island outbreaks. The study published last year by Isabelle Shuffenecker and fellow scientists at the Institut Pasteur in France in collaboration with clinicians and virologists showed that the same strain had caused those outbreaks and that it belonged to the ECSA grouping.

“Although, to our knowledge, no outbreak was reported recently in East Africa, this scenario is compatible with the human population exchanges between East Africa and Comoros [island], where the outbreak is believed to have started,” observed the scientists in their PLoS Medicine paper. But the possibility of the epidemic strain having been produced by the evolution of a hitherto animal virus could not be excluded, they added.

When NIV scientists sequenced viruses involved in outbreaks in five Indian States during 2006, they discovered that these too belonged to the ECSA group. Hitherto, the viral strains that caused previous outbreaks of chikungunya in the country had been of the Asian type. Moreover, the 99.9 per cent genome sequence similarity between the strains found in the Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean and in India “implies circulation of the same strains in both countries,” concluded the NIV scientists in their journal paper. “It also indicates a possibility of spread of the current strain from Indian Ocean islands to India, leading to an explosive epidemic of the ECSA genotype and not the Asian genotype that circulated earlier,” they added.

But there is another possible origin for the epidemic strain. In 2000, the chikungunya virus had been isolated from a mosquito found in the town of Yawat in Maharastra, although no cases were reported among humans at the time. “This strain has suddenly become very important for us,” remarked Dr. Arankalle in her talk at Thiruvananthapuram. When the genome of this virus was sequenced, it too was found to belong to the ECSA group and not the Asian variety. “That means we had the African genotype in India before ... the epidemic came in 2005,” she pointed out.

So might the Yawat strain have continued to circulate quietly in India since 2000, accumulating mutations till finally it turned into a form that spread with devastating rapidity and virulence among humans?

NIV scientists have been re-analysing their samples going back to 2001, taken from patients with dengue-like symptoms but who tested negative for dengue. They found that sporadic cases of chikungunya had indeed occurred in India between 2001 and 2004. “Right now what we are trying to do is to get [the] virus out of these cases,” said Dr. Arankalle in Thiruvananthapuram. “If we can get [the] virus from one of these cases, then we will be able to sort out as to why the Yawat virus did not produce the disease and what happened subsequently till 2005 when we had such a bad epidemic.”

However, in a brief piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine this year, Sylvain Brisse, Isabelle Iteman and Dr. Schuffenecker of the Institut Pasteur took the view that the strain that caused the outbreak in India was not the same as the one responsible for the disease on the Indian Ocean islands. Their analysis was based on comparing the genetic sequences among different strains for the viral gene that codes for one particular protein (E1). They also argued against “a direct link” between the Yawat strain and the strain implicated in the 2005-2006 Indian outbreak. But the fact that the Indian and Indian Ocean isolates shared two changes in their E1 gene sequence indicated a common ancestry for both, they stated.

Twist in the tale

There is, however, a further twist in the tale. E. Sreekumar and his team at the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in Thiruvananthapuram have been examining viral samples from chikungunya cases in Kerala during 2006 and 2007. They found that the E1 gene sequence of four viral samples from Kerala this year showed an extraordinary level of resemblence to that of the Reunion Island strain. One possibility was that the virus circulating in the State had mutated, observed Dr. Sreekumar. The alternative explanation would be that a strain that originated in the Indian Ocean islands had a hand in this year’s epidemic in the State. “We need to do more analysis to answer that question,” he told The Hindu.

Maharashtra ’s head-in-the-sand syndrome

P. Sainath
The Hindu, November 27

Vilasrao Deshmukh clearly believes he has been merciful towards those committing the ‘crime’ of suicide. Thanks to his government’s generosity, close to 32,000 farmers who have taken their lives in his State since 1995 have gone scot-free.

“Committing suicide is an offence under the Indian Penal Code. But did we book any farmer for this offence? Have you reported that?” — Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on farm suicides in Vidharbha.

That is the Chief Minister’s response to media questions on the ongoing farm suicides in Vidharbha. He has gone on record with that statement in an interview. (The Hindustan Times, October 31.) Leave aside for the moment this incorrect reading of the law. Mr. Deshmukh clearly believes he has been merciful towards those committing the ‘crime’ of suicide. Thanks to his government’s generosity, close to 32,000 farmers in his State wh o have taken their lives since 1995 go scot-free. Imagine what would happen should he decide to book them for their ‘crime.’ For the record, on average, one farmer committed suicide every three hours in Maharashtra between 1997 and 2005. Since 2002, that has worsened to one such suicide every two-and-a-quarter hours. Those numbers emerge from official data. This could be the State’s worst tragedy in living memory.

Of course, the question arises: who would he punish if he decides to enforce what he believes is the law? And how would he do so? Would their ashes be disinterred from wherever to face the consequences of their actions? Would the awful majesty of the law be visited upon their survivors to teach them never to stray from the path of righteous conduct? Or — more likely — would his government set up yet another commission to look into the matter?

Under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, attempting suicide is a crime. A suicide effort that succeeds places the victim beyond Mr. Deshmukh’s reach anyway. Beyond anything for that matter. As one of India’s foremost legal minds says: “the odd thing about suicide in India is that failing to commit it is a crime. One who succeeds in it is obviously beyond punishment. But the one who fails in his attempt to commit it could be in trouble. You could then be booked for ‘attempted suicide,’ an offence punishable by fine and even imprisonment.”

Abetment to suicide (Section 306) is also a crime. One that places Mr. Deshmukh’s government in the dock if we persist with this logic of ‘punishment.’ His Ministry has been widely criticised on the farm suicides in this State. Many point to the rash of suicides that occurred soon after the government withdrew the ‘advance bonus’ of Rs.500 per quintal of cotton in 2005. A move that tanked cotton prices and brought disaster to lakhs of farmers in the State.

Worse, his is a government which came to power that very year on a promise of giving cotton farmers a price of Rs.2700 a quintal. At the time, they were getting a mere Rs.2200 a quintal. A sum the government conceded was quite uneconomical. Further, neither the State nor the Central government took any steps at all to counter the distortion of global cotton prices. Prices crashed as both the United States and the European Union piled on subsidies worth billions of dollars to boost their cotton sectors.

To top it all, the Deshmukh government withdrew the ‘advance bonus’ soon after coming to power. That brought the price down to just over Rs.1700 a quintal. And the Centre did not raise import duties on cotton despite desperate pleas for such an action. This allowed the large scale dumping of U.S. cotton on this country, further crushing the farmers here. No, Section 306 is not something Mr. Deshmukh’s government would want to look into too closely.

But to be fair to Mr. Deshmukh, he is neither unique nor alone in this mindset. There is something wrong with a society where suicide data are put together by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The idea is in-built: suicide is a crime. From that flows Mr. Deshmukh’s simple notion of punishment. But he did not author the idea. He simply took it to unknown levels of insensitivity. With this statement, the Chief Minister outdid his previous effort when he made remarks about Vidharbha’s farmers that caused a furore. Remarks that suggested that they were both lazy and less than honest. Of course, he soon rallied to say he had been “quoted out of context.” (The Hindu, September 15, 2007). So maybe he will do so this time, too.

But he has certainly got the law out of context. What does Section 309 of the IPC really say? It states that “whoever attempts to commit suicide and does any act towards the commission of such an offence shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year or with a fine or with both.”

Fact: even the British Raj seems never to have used Section 309 against Mahatma Gandhi or other fasting leaders. And they had the excuse to do so when faced with, for instance, fasts unto death. This surely had less to do with humane behaviour than the hope that leaders like Gandhi would succeed in their fast unto death and rid the empire of a menace. Still the fact is: they did not resort to Section 309.

Mr. Deshmukh’s words suggest that he is holding himself back with much effort. If governments do start enforcing Section 309, the damage would be huge. For every farm suicide that occurs, there are a fairly large number of attempts that fail. Mostly, the police do not press the issue too hard. Even they see the ill logic of oppressing someone in misery who tries, but fails, to take his or her own life. (Such pressures have in a few cases, triggered a second — successful — attempt at suicide.) Following the ‘punishment’ logic would make life a living hell for those already in despair.


Decriminalising attempted suicide


For decades, social and legal workers and activists have struggled to decriminalise attempted suicide. One of them is Dr. Lakshmi Vijay Kumar, a consultant with the World Health Organisation on suicide research and prevention. As she puts it: “It’s a crazy law. One which only a handful of nations still retain. Most others have withdrawn it years ago. Apart from us, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Singapore seem to still have this kind of law. Sri Lanka too did but withdrew it in 1998. It’s a law that punishes those most in need of help. A move to repeal it went through the Rajya Sabha in 1974. The bill was also introduced in the Lok Sabha but that house was dissolved before it could see it through.” The Section was even struck down by a Supreme Court ruling in 1994. However, it was later reinstated by a full bench.

As we write, the Maharashtra Assembly is in session. In the tiny Assembly session ahead, the question of farm suicides is sure to crop up. Why is Maharashtra, with more dollar billionaires and millionaires than any other State in the country, home to the largest number of farmers’ suicides in India? Why is it that farm suicides in this State trebled between 1995 and 2005? Why did they go up so massively in a State where suicides amongst non-farmers fell marginally in the same period?

All the data on farm suicides carried in The Hindu (Nov.12-15) are from the National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. They are not the data of this newspaper. Nor of Professor K. Nagaraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) who authored the study reported in the paper. They are government data. So if Mr. Deshmukh’s outfit has different numbers for the State Assembly, it could be in danger of committing contempt of the house.

Maybe someone in the house will raise other questions too. Queries that go, as they should, way beyond the suicides. The suicides are, after all, a tragic window to a much larger agrarian crisis. They are a symptom of massive rural distress, not the process. A consequence of misery, not its cause. How many more commissions will the government appoint to tell itself what it wants to hear? When will it address the problems of price, credit and input costs, for instance? When will it, if at all, reflect on the role of cash crops in the crisis? When will it push Delhi to set up a Centre-State price stabilisation fund? When will it dig its head out of the sand?

SO NEAR, YET SO FAR - Development in the Northeast still awaits targeted planning

KRISHNAN SRINIVASAN
The Telegraph, 28 November

The Indian Northeast region, comprising about 5 per cent of the land area and 8 per cent of the population of the country, is one of the most complex in Asia, with about 200 ethnic groups, languages and dialects. These societies have lived in isolation not only from the rest of the country but also from each other, and both legal and illegal migrations have created new fault-lines in traditional societies. The whole area, where parochialism transcends nationalism or even regionalism, is in painful transition, trying to learn tolerance of other ethnic groups and adjust to the concept of planned development.

There is a tendency to assert that the Northeast is not ‘integrated’ with the rest of India because of ethnicity and insurgency, but this is only partly true; Arunachal Pradesh, which has the biggest number of tribes, is peaceful, while Manipur, which is prey to secessionist groups, is otherwise well integrated in terms of arts, culture and sports. Nagaland is the only state where militants are not reconciled to their tribal space being part of the Indian Union, though even there many people see benefits when compared to neighbours like Myanmar and Bangladesh.

There is another aspect to human integration: 90 journalists from Assam alone work in Delhi, 10 per cent of the information technology sector people in Bangalore are from the Northeast, hospitality sectors all over India look for and employ young people from the Northeast because they speak good English. Five thousand young persons from the region each year go to other states to find employment.

The Northeast comprises eight states with only 1 per cent bordering India — the rest of the borders are with Myanmar, China, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. India’s trade with the countries bordering the Northeast has gone up five times, but no impact is seen in that region because this commerce is through the seaports. The five-nation Bimstec was supposed to help the Northeast, but there is a lack of connectivity that precludes the opportunities leading to results.

Our import substitution economy after 1947 deprived the North-east of its natural markets, as did the 1971 Bangladesh war. There are massive imports into the region, and Chinese consumer goods are to be seen in every marketplace. The exchange rate is unreasonably low for Chinese imports and these goods have obviously not come through established channels. Illegal trade and smuggling exist because there is no trade facilitation.

There are three points for border trade with China at places where there is no dispute regarding the boundary; Lipulekh in Uttaranchal opened in 1993 and Shipkila in Himachal Pradesh in 1994. I led the Indian delegation to Beijing in 1994 that proposed the opening of Nathu-la to the Chinese. It then took nine years for the memorandum to be signed, and a further three for the border point to be opened for trade.

For 58 years after the Younghusband expedition of 1904, Nathu-la had been the main artery between India and China and made possible 80 per cent of the trade between the two countries. The expectation was that by 2010 trade at Nathu-la would represent 10 per cent of the total Indo-Chinese trade, namely $1 billion. Why 2010? Because the Border Roads Organization said it would take as long as that for the one-track road to be made into two lanes. Considering that India and China are among the two fastest growing world economies, and with Tibet itself growing at 12 per cent, Nathu-la should improve prospects for the whole Northeast, which has been left behind at about half of India’s growth rate.

However, the optimistic prospects envisaged for Nathu-la trade and its beneficial effects have not materialized, and do not look as if they ever will. If the Northeast opens up, would it be primarily for our exports or only for imports of cheaper Chinese goods? This question seems to obsess the decision-makers in New Delhi, who always want to play safe.

Progress in the Northeast depends on the creation of assets in power, infrastructure and opportunities. India may be looking East but evidently not to our own Northeast. The shocking fact is that 97 per cent of the natural resources in the Northeast, such as hydroelectricity, biodiversity and minerals, is not exploited. There is practically no private sector involvement. The entrepreneur does not need tax breaks and incentives from the state. What he looks for first are raw material sources, the potential market and logistics.

Tourism could transform the Northeast. Ethnologically and linguistically, the Northeast has historic links with south-west China and the Mon-Khmer peoples in Myanmar and Thailand. The structures for tourism are poor, but infrastructure is equally poor in south-west China, Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan, which are all also landlocked. Yet those countries and regions attract manifold numbers of tourists; Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet and Myanmar surpass by far the tourist numbers to the Northeast. There has been no use made of specialized promotion, such as adventure, veterans of World War II, wildlife, spiritual or other nostalgia (for tea planters and missionaries) or eco-tourism. Air connectivity to the neighbouring countries does not exist, and in the permit raj of inner line, restricted area, and protected area, permits are a serious obstacle.

The North Eastern Council was set up as long ago as 1971 and has been revamped many times since. Health and education are identified as priorities, along with employment, good governance and food security. The public’s interest in participating in development is high. But while multiple recommendations are drawn up, little or nothing is seen on the ground.

The Centre’s response has characteristically been, as in Kashmir, to throw money at the problem with no consideration of outcomes or accountability. In addition to the allocations in the state plans, there are funds from the NEC, and Central ministries since 1998 have allocated a non-lapsable 10 per cent of their budgets for the Northeast. There is reimbursement of expenditure incurred by northeastern states on security-related issues, funds for the modernization of the police, border areas development grants and other sources of funding too numerous to mention. Yet the minimum identified needs have not been met despite the massive funds poured into the region. With this cornucopia of funds, there has been great seepage and massive corruption. Effective measures to prevent this have neither been devised nor executed. Pumping in funds leads to distortions in the economy unless there are investments in real assets. The shift from agriculture to industry and services is going at a snail’s pace even compared to the rest of India.

There are legitimate fears of loss of identity — and the demand by various ethnic groups for increasingly more autonomy continues and has to be addressed. The need to protect the socio-cultural and religious practices of the various ethnic groups and to give them an effective say in running their own institutions has often been underlined. But there is no adequate devolution to the minority tribes in the autonomous areas and funds are not released directly to the autonomous councils.

The various ethnic fractures prevent cooperation in anti-militancy drives. The Union government has to deal with combating the 30-odd active militant groups both because of the states’ reluctance to get involved owing to the alleged lack of financial and human resources, and the Centre’s suspicion of the state governments’ ability to keep intelligence reports confidential. Even to resist illegal migration, HIV-AIDS and drug trafficking, there is little cooperation between the states. In other words, there is a lack of trust and faith all round.

This is the reason that so many aspects of governance in the region have been left to the supervision of the army, and the prolonged deployment of the military, which is unfamiliar with the local terrain, language, culture and social ethos, has led to serious recriminations and alienates the local people. After 50 years of existence in the Northeast, the armed forces act is viewed as tyrannical and it inspires hatred.

The Union government might want to look East but most of its bureaucrats in the region look West. Admittedly, life is difficult, and education facilities are limited. There are restrictions on the acquisition of property by ‘outsiders’. The result is that there is no long-term commitment on the part of the civil service. An administrative and police service for the region composed exclusively of officers from the Northeast is long overdue.

The author is former foreign secretary of India

Dignity devoured, by pack of wolves

The Telegraph, 28 November

Assam author Mamoni Raisom Goswami spoke to the girl who was stripped and chased in Guwahati on Saturday and recounts the victim’s trauma

One moment of wickedness, one act of animalistic action has pushed Assam back to the medieval age. Shocked? Numbed? For once, these strong words seem to have suddenly lost their sting. I feel indescribable pain as I try to put on paper the emotions that swirl in my heart. Just think, what must have been the physical and mental trauma of the young girl who was stripped naked on a Guwahati street, in front of the whole world, on Senseless Saturday?

I spoke to her on the phone this morning. It is a very cruel way of comforting someone who has been hurt. But despite my strong desire to travel all the way to Biswanath Chariali to meet her, I could not go because of my health. But to my surprise, I found myself speaking to a very strong girl. She is bruised and battered, in body and heart, but her spirit has not been broken.

She choked on her words as she spoke, recollecting the nightmarish moments of that day.

For a young girl who is just starting to look at life and the world in all their wonderful colours, there could not have been a more brutal manner to kill her dreams.

But I could sense that she has woken up to reality. She now knows that the world is not as simple as it seems.

She told me about her passions — music and dance. The daughter of a simple farmer, she will be sitting for the matric examination in a few months.

As a young girl growing up in the countryside, she had never seen Guwahati. It was the land of her dreams — with big buildings, fast cars and fashionable people.

So, the moment she was invited to join the rally organised by the All Adivasi Students’ Association of Assam, she readily agreed. But unlike many of the rallyists, who did not even know why they were coming to Guwahati, she is very much aware of the burning issues confronting the community.

But she had no idea that the fairytale land of hers would be full of monsters. She does not remember — or know — the exact moment when the violence started. All she remembers is the moment she saw her fellow rallyists being attacked. She started running, too, but found herself in the midst of a large group of people. A pack of wolves, I would say.

She told me how their eyes lit up on seeking a nubile young girl in their grasp and how they abused her with filthy language. She could still hear their shrill and wicked laughter ringing in her ears.

As she stood trembling there, like a deer amidst a pack of hungry wolves, the blows and slaps started raining. She tried to save herself, twisting and turning to avoid the blows.

Then they attacked her churidar-kurta; the chunni was first to be pulled away. She saw a knife being brandished by one of the attackers and then the unmistakable sound of clothes being ripped.

She panicked. Begged for mercy. Pleaded with folded hands.

But the “monsters” only laughed. One by one, they ripped off her clothes, till she somehow managed to wriggle out of their grasp and started running. Even as she ran, the last piece of cloth was ripped off from her body.

It was like a nightmare, she recalled. She wished the earth would part and gulp her, ending her misery.

She remembers running down the street and asking for help. But, horror of horrors, nobody came forward. She begged for a piece of cloth to hide her modesty. At last, an elderly man came to her, took off his shirt and gave it to her.

She ran again for help and entered Basistha police station, where she met some other Adivasi activists detained by the police. She was taken to the hospital for first aid and released the next day.

When she reached home on Sunday, it was nearly 10pm.

She told me that she can still feel the pain in her body, a reminder of the assault on her. Those will heal. What will remain is the pain in her heart.

HC hauls up CPM trio for contempt

Legal Correspondent
The Statesman, 28 November

KOLKATA, Nov. 27: The Division Bench of Chief Justice Mr SS Nijjar and Mr Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose of Calcutta High Court today issued a criminal contempt notice against the CPI-M state secretary, Mr Biman Bose, and the party’s central committee members, Mr Benoy Konar and Mr Shyamal Chakravarty (photographs on the right), for the allegedly derogatory remarks they made against the judiciary after the High Court had delivered judgment in the Nandigram carnage case, saying that the police firing in Nandigram on 14 March was wholly unconstitutional and unjustified.
Addressing a party rally, Mr Bose had said that democracy was threatened when one of its pillars, the judiciary, crossed its limits.

“If the court decided everything what was the use of the executive or the legislature in a democracy ? A democracy could not be run like that.” It was Mr Bose’s second brush with the judiciary. On an earlier occasion when he wasn’t the party state secretary, he had incurred the displeasure of the judiciary by making derogatory remarks on Mr Justice Amitabha Lala for his curbs on processions. However, Mr Bose then pleaded that his remarks weren’t directed against the judge, but the judgment.

Mr Shyamal Chakravarty asked if there was any point in ordering a CBI inquiry into the Nandigram firing after the High Court had made up its mind and held that the firing was unjustified. He found it strange that the plight of the CPI-M supporters from Nandigram, compelled to flee their homes, could elicit no sympathy from the Governor but the CPI-M's recapture of Nandigram happened to be abhorrent enough to dampen the ardour of Deepabali for Mr Gopalkrishna Gandhi. The Governor's heart did not bleed when 27 of the CPI-M activists were killed over the past 11 months in Nandigram.

Mr Chakravarty quoted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: “I can endure your brutality, not your hypocrisy.” Commenting on the police firing, Mr Konar said it was not the job of the police to paint or act. The honourable judge must be aware that policemen escorting him carried revolvers too. It was part of their job. Mr Konar called the Governor the Trinamul's flag-bearer. He asked the Governor to openly act like a politician if that was what he really wanted to do. He was a free citizen and he could carry the flag of the Trinamul Congress.

The Division Bench issued the contempt notice on the applications of the High Court Bar Association, Bar Library Club and the Incorporated Law Society. Mr Sakti Nath Mukherjee appeared for the Bar Association and Mr Jayanta Mitra appeared for the Bar Library Club.

The matter will come up for hearing after Christmas vacation.

The future is here

ND Batra
The Statesman, 28 November

The recent breakthrough in stem cell research carried out independently in Japan and the USA, by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and James A Thomson with his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, shows another path to human rejuvenation, including a cure for many incurable diseases.

By reprogramming a human skin cell, the researchers have been able to bring it back to its original pure embryonic stage, a pluripotent stage from where the cell could be coaxed to become any of the 220 specialised human cells, for example, heart, lungs, brain, muscle cells, which could be used for customised therapeutic healing. A brain-injured person could live a full, healthy life again. That is the future, perhaps.
The awesome beauty of this discovery is that the process of reversion of a skin cell to its de novo embryonic stage does not involve the destruction of embryos, which many pro-life people from President George W Bush to the late Pope John Paul II condemned as immoral. President Bush has steadfastly denied the use of federal funds “to promote science that destroys life to save life,” despite the fact that most Americans have never been with him on this issue.

Dr Bill Frist, a heart-lung transplant surgeon by training, who was Senate majority leader (2003-2007), for example, spoke for most Americans, when he said: “I am pro-life, I believe human life begins at conception. I also believe that embryonic stem cell research should be encouraged and supported.” Former First Lady Nancy Reagan said: “Embryonic stem cell research has the potential to alleviate so much suffering. Surely, by working together we can harness its life-giving potential.” Her husband, President Ronald Reagan, spent the last years of his life in Alzheimer’s limbo.

President Bush, nonetheless, repeatedly said, "my way or the highway". You see the power of presidential leadership; and also its limitations because he could not stop the private funding of embryonic stem cell research by states, biotechnology companies, and private universities who have been pursuing the research regardless of the opposition. For example, in 2004 California voters approved a $3-billion bond to promote research in the state.

Since last year, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute has been doing research using the Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer process to create specific cell lines from cloned human embryos, which again raised hopes for millions of people suffering from incurable diseases. Harvard research is said to be diseases specific; for example, the nucleus of a skin cell of a diabetic patient is inserted into an unfertilised donor egg, from which the nucleus has been removed. The newly engineered composite egg is nurtured in a Petri dish to develop into an early embryo from which embryonic stem cell lines is developed and guided into becoming healthy insulin producing pancreatic islet cells to replace the diseased ones, for example, in a child suffering from juvenile diabetes.

It is painful to imagine how much a child with juvenile diabetes suffers; or how much the family members endure as they see the wasting away of their loved one with the knowledge that one day if the stem cell research continued there might be hope for a most emaciating human illness. Anytime an older person forgets the name of his own children, you wonder if this could be the beginning of a slow end.

In the USA, people look to science and medicine for salvation. They know embryonic stem cells could be the beginning of a new life for persons suffering from fatal ailments. Stem cells that are derived from aborted and discarded embryos could be potentially directed to grow into any kind of specialised cells to repair damaged human parts and trigger a self-regenerative process in the human body. It is an example of how killing life can save lives. Choosing life over potential life is practical ethics at its best, it has been argued.

Though many people favour embryonic stem cell research, pro-lifers argue that research in regenerative and therapeutic medicine and technology should not be left to the marketplace because somewhere in the process life begins. The late pope John Paul II urged that a “free and virtuous society, which the USA aspires to be, must reject practices that devalue and violate human life at any stage from conception until natural death.”

The Pope was afflicted with Parkinson’s, one of the millions of sufferers of the debilitating disease but he never wavered, and warned “how a tragic coarsening of consciences accompanies the assault on innocent human life in the womb, leading to accommodation and acquiescence in the face of other related evils such as euthanasia, infanticide…”

That’s why many Americans could not ignore the late Pope’s warning that the destruction of embryos to extract stem cells, even when the purpose is to fight diseases and reduce human suffering, would dehumanise us. Stem cell revolution is as momentous as was the smashing of an atom; therefore, it needs safeguards to harness its benefits without the coarsening of our conscience.

The recent development of reprogramming skin cells into embryonic stages offers scientists an equally fertile method of developing cell therapy, which will make destruction of embryos unnecessary. Science has solved its own ethical dilemmas.

The discovery also illustrates the concept of “equifinality” in general systems theory, according to which a dynamic system, if challenged, could reach the same goal by other means. There is always an alternative. And thereby hangs another question: Is human body nothing but an information system that could be reprogrammed cell by cell? We will talk about human soul some other time.

(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University. The author of Digital Freedom, he is working on a new book, This is the American Way.)

Reciprocal truancy

A K Ghosh
The Statesman, 28 November

A report in The Statesman dated 26-10-2007 says: "Mid-day meals, an instrument designed to boost attendance in government schools, has brought in a role reversal of sorts with teachers devising ways to ensure enough money is sanctioned for the schools for the mid-day meal, while the mid-day meal organisers are somehow managing classes."

After 60 years of Independence, Indian children have little to celebrate: about 13.5 million of them in the age group of 6-13 years are still out of school. This, despite a constitutional directive urging all states to provide "free and compulsory education for all children until they complete 14 years". The Constitution envisaged fulfilling this objective by 1960. Yet, if the trend continues, our country will be far from reaching the goal.
It might be a misnomer to assume that poverty keeps children out of school; that they are forced to work to support their families, instead of opting for education. There is often a positive resistance to schooling on the part of the "whining schoolboy creeping unwilling to school", as Shakespeare in his Seven Ages of Man would have us believe. This should induce the removal of anomalies from the school system. Many children reject school because of the teachers' harsh attitude, corporal punishment employed for underachievers and first-generation learners. There are also drop-outs because, as a recent report of Unesco's International Institute for Education Planning says, 25 per cent of primary school teachers in India are absent from their workplace.
Truancy among teachers has assumed an alarming proportion. Many schools in rural areas remain without a teacher. The method of teaching is uninspiring and encourages learning by rote, despite clear directives in the National Policy on Education. The World Bank's mid-term appraisal of the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan also reveals that teacher absenteeism in India is substantially higher, against the average of 18 per cent in such developing countries as Zambia, Peru, Bangladesh and Ecuador.

If the PROBE survey, a few years ago, is any indication, teachers spend little time in active teaching, even when they are present at school. Coming late and leaving early is an accepted practice. Teaching aids are seldom available. Many schools have received new teaching aids through Operation Blackboard but the old traditional stick remains the choice. The teachers are disciplinarians who only try to control the students. They punish them, so the children end up not going to school. Most of the tiny tots stay away mainly because schooling for them is boring and irrelevant.

School drop-outs are often exposed to drugs and gambling. One can see them almost everywhere ~ ragpicking at street comers, shining shoes, as porters, selling newspapers at the traffic lights ~ half-naked, undernourished. Recently, the Border Security Force started considering ways to encourage drop-out children who were used as "carriers" to smuggle out goods along the India-Bangladesh international border to return to school. Schools often lack everything ~ adequate infrastructure, teaching faculties, et al. Children are too tiny to know their right to education. Sometimes governments are encouraged to open schools in good numbers to increase their votebanks.

In some cases, the building is used by the teachers for residential purposes; the premises are used as a store, as a cattleshed or even a public toilet. In 1993, 65 per cent of all schools had a pucca building, 4 per cent were run in open space, 3 per cent in thatched huts, and 0.3 per cent in tents. Fifty-six per cent of schools had no drinking water facilities and 70 per cent no toilets. The Sixth All India Education Survey also shows that in 1993, about 20 per cent of primary schools were single-teacher schools and 0.8 per cent had no teachers.

The Assembly Standing Committee on education, information and cultural affairs in its 10th report last year, recorded that 20,468 primary schools in West Bengal do not have toilets.

Also, 9,316 primary and 522 upper primary schools do not have drinking water facilities. As many as 3,046 schools have one teacher, while 10,094 primary schools have only one classroom. Even in Kolkata, as per the findings of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (2003-04), nearly 200 primary schools have only one classroom.

More than 350 primary schools and 17 upper primary schools in the city do not have any drinking water facilities. More than a dozen do not even have blackboards. To top it all, only 22 per cent of them have toilets for girls. While free education is a constitutional right, primary education in our country is not that free. The PROBE survey found that on an average the expenditure on fees, books, slates and uniforms for a child was Rs 318 a year. This financial liability has a particularly harmful effect on the schooling of girls.

Most girls in India, especially in rural areas, are conservative, and therefore hesitant to attend schools. Bogged down by household chores, girls may not have the time or the inclination to educated themselves. Economic pressure on families for basic survival sometimes force girls to share the burden.

Traditional families also view being taught by male teachers with suspicion. Also, a sense of insecurity prevents many adolescent girls from continuing with their education. A study conducted in rural areas reveals that barely 40 adolescent girls of every 100 make it to Class V. The drop-out rate is found to be much higher among tribes and castes that are patriarchal by nature.

Early marriage and shortage of women teachers are also factors leading parents to pull their daughters out of schools. In many cases, girls and boys suffer frequent bouts of illness due to malnutrition which force them to drop out of school.

If the report of 2006, released by the DFID, the British government's aid agency, mentioning largescale absenteeism of teachers, hostile attitude towards disadvantaged children and lack of accountability in the system, is to be believed, it is easier to understand why so many children dropout of schools despite a high-level of parental interest in their education.
What seems to be most disquieting, however, is that the guardians of education do still find it easy to suggest that the major factor behind the high drop-out rate is the consistently meagre financial provision for primary education.

(The author is Reader, Department of English, Gurudas College, Kolkata.)

Boundless brutality - 12 killed in Guwahati violence

(Second lead: Guwahati violence)

By ANI
Saturday November 24, 08:02 PM

Guwahati, Nov 24 (ANI): At least 12 people were killed on Saturday after a rally of Adivasi Students Union (ASU) turned violent here.

Another 100 people have been injured in the incident. According to State Principal Secretary (Home) Subhas Das, 60 of the injured were hospitalised.

Indefinite curfew has been imposed in parts of Guwahati and army has been deployed.

ASU members demanding the Scheduled Tribe status after holding a rally at Beltola, tried to march towards the State Assembly at Dispur. On being stopped by the police, the students turned violent and attacked and injured a magistrate.

Thousands of students, armed with bows and arrows, destroyed private property and set several vehicles on fire.

According to eyewitnesses, the area from Dispur to Bashista was turned into "battleground".

The locals furious at their property being attacked, also clashed with the students resulting in several being injured from both sides, officials said.

"We were pulling down the shutters of our shop when they came and attacked us. They even clashed with the police and damaged police vehicles," said Subhojit, an eyewitness.

Newspersons were not being allowed to get near to the troubled areas.

(ANI)


Statesman News Service

GUWAHATI, Nov 24: More than a dozen people are feared dead, most of them savagely beaten to death in the presence of policemen and in full public view, and more than 250 injured when participants in a protest rally organised by the All Assam Adivasi Students’ Union demanding Scheduled Tribe status for Santhals (most of whom work as tea plantation labourers) clashed with locals today. The official toll is one dead and 10 “critically injured”. An indefinite curfew has been imposed on the district and the government has ordered an administrative probe into the violence. Earlier, the rally had turned violent as the participants had gone on the rampage, prompting the residents of Beltola Last Gate and Survey areas of the city to take them on.

Eyewitnesses, who put the toll as high as 20, told The Statesman that trouble erupted between 12 noon and 12.15 p.m, when rallyists started pelting cars and vehicles with stones and ransacking shops, offices and business establishments in the area, triggering a barbaric retaliation from locals, which resulted in a free for all. Such was the brutality and barbarity of the clashes that even those who lay on the streets were not spared. Most of the injured persons are leaders of Aaasu. The eyewitnesses said that the number of policemen deployed to preempt violence had been inadequate. And that they had been mute spectators of the gruesome tragedy that was being enacted on the streets of the city. So much so, that the locals were seen hitting and kicking those who lay on the ground with whatever objects they had with them in full view of policemen stationed there. When things went out of control, Central Reserve Police Force jawans were called in who resorted to blank firing.

At the time of filing of this report, streets were littered with bodies and the injured persons were being rushed to Guwahati Medical College and Hospital. A majority of the rallyists are now protected by the CRPF at Beltola High School playground. Soon after the incidents, shops and business establishments in the nearby areas and along GS Road were shut down.

Assam DGP Mr RN Mathur told reporters that a detailed investigation had been ordered into the incident. The Santhal Adivasis are one of the earliest inhabitants of modern Assam who were brought to the State by British planters to work in the tea gardens in the middle of the 19th century. They have, for years, been demanding ST status which they enjoy in the rest of the country.

City SSP Mr Surendra Kumar said the Adivasis had no permission to rally, and were supposed to confine themselves to the ground on which they had converged. Police fired tear gas shells when they had tried to break into the Dispur Capital Complex, the administrative headquarters of the Assam government.

“When they (the Adivasis) were running helter-skelter for cover, some of them got agitated and resorted to violence,” he said. He confirmed that the curfew was indefinite. When asked about the negligible presence of police at the site of the rally, he said that “numbers were always relative”, and refused to concede that not enough policemen had been around. Kamrup (Metro) DC Mr Abinash Joshi said more than 250 persons had been injured, 10 of them critically, and that one person had been killed. He said a few arrests had been been made and that Adivasis had been escorted back to their homes under police protection. A red alert has been sounded across the state.

CM talks peace over tea

GUWAHATI, Nov. 24: As Guwahati erupted in barbarity, Assam chief minister Mr Tarun Gogoi was addressing, for the second time in three days, the India International Tea Convention (IITC) 2007, which concluded today, close to the site of the gruesome tragedy. Unaware of the brutality on the city streets, he was harping on the state of “peace in Assam” in company of his Congress colleague and Union commerce minister Mr Kamal Nath.

Though Mr Gogoi wasn’t exactly fiddling like the much-maligned Roman emperor Nero, the Assam chief minister was busy trying to appease the tea barons who had been upset with an acerbic speech delivered by the Union minister of state for commerce Mr Jairam Ramesh on the opening day of IITC 2007.
SNS


The Sentinel

Security personnel resorting to lathicharge and tear gas shelling to disperse Adivasi students near Dispur on Saturday when the students turned violent. (Right) Local people beating up the processionists. (Sentinel)


Violence: It’s Government’s failure

Red alert sounded in State; curfew from Dispur Last Gate to Bashistha Chariali .

According to eyewitness accounts, Adivasi people, mostly tea workers, started to gather at Dakshin Beltola High School from 10 am, and the number rose to about 10,000, but the police personnel on duty at the rally were below 10. It was at around 12 noon that a procession of about 5,000 Adivasi activists started from the Dakshin Beltola High School ground towards Dispur. At 12.30 pm, some of the processionists went berserk and started to damage vehicles, shops and residential houses along the road, with the police failing to control the mob. When they were about to reach Dispur Last Gate at around 1.30 pm, they were pushed back by the security forces. When the processionists started to run helter-skelter, the local people retaliated, while the police personnel remained mute spectators to the open battlefield, eyewitnesses said.

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Nov 24: One person was killed and about 230 others injured after the public retaliated against a procession taken out by the All Adivasi Students’ Association (AASA) near Dispur Last Gate here today, leading to imposition of an indefinite curfew from Dispur Last Gate to Beltola. The public retaliation came after the AASA activists vandalized shops, vehicles and residential houses along their way to Dispur where they were supposed to assemble to press for their demand for ST status for the Adivasi community. AASA vice president Rafel Kuzur, however, put the death toll at 20.

A red alert has been sounded in the entire State asking the police to remain alert so that such incidents do not occur anywhere in the State. The State Government instituted a one-man inquiry commission with Additional Chief Secretary PP Verma as the chairman to inquire into the incident.

The trouble broke out between Dispur Last Gate and Basishta, when over 5,000 Adivasis were marching towards the State Assembly after holding a rally at the Dakshin Beltola High School ground demanding ST status for the community. The Adivasi activists vandalized shops, vehicles and residential houses on their way to Dispur, with the police failing to control the processionists. About 100 vehicles, including that of MLA TP Das, were damaged. Magistrate SG Hilali and SDO (Sadar) CK Bhuyan were also roughed up by the processionists when the two officials made their abortive attempt to prevent the processionists from marching ahead. When they (the processionists) were pushed back by security forces by using tear gas shells near Dispur Last Gate, and started to flee, the public broke down on them mercilessly leaving one dead and over 230 injured, 20 of them critically. The police utterly failed to prevent the situation from turning worse. According to eyewitness accounts, had an adequate number of policemen been deployed in the area, the situation would not spiralled out of control.

According to eyewitness accounts, about 50 of the processionists were lying on the road and the chances of their survival were remote.

A high-level official meeting was held here this evening to review the situation. The State Government has announced ex gratia of Rs 50,000 for each of seriously injured and Rs 10,000 for each of those with minor injuries, while the next of the kin of the dead AASA activist will get Rs 3 lakh. All the injured will get medical treatment free of cost.

Government’s press handout(1) All Adivasi Students’ Association (AASA) requested for permission to hold a rally today at Dakhin Beltola High School field. No permission was granted to hold the rally at Guwahati.
(2) But about 3,000 people gathered at the site.
(3) After the gathering, they wanted to take out a procession to Dispur in support of their demand to declare the Tea Tribes as Scheduled Tribes.
(4) They were not given permission by the Magistrate on duty, where upon 500 to 700 persons broke away forcefully and entered the Beltola Dispur Road and indulged in vandalism and destruction of shops and cars along the route. This resulted in clashes between the resident shopkeepers and the agitators.
(5) The situation was brought under control within an hour and curfew was imposed in the affected areas, i.e. Basistha Road.
(6) All the injured were shifted to GMC (210) and MMC (30) hospitals.
(7) Total number of injured persons is 240, out of which 10 are seriously injured, while one person has succumbed to his injuries in the GMC Hospital.
(8) The situation is normal now, and under close watch.
(9) All arrangements are being made to send to the persons with minor injuries to their respective districts.

Congress behind crackdown: AASA
By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Nov 24: All Adivasi Students’ Union (AASA) president Justin Lakra today said that the Congress was behind the crackdown on Adivasi processionists in the city. He said Congress goons, who were among the processionists, went berserk and damaged shops, vehicles and residential houses. Meanwhile, the AASA has called a 36-hour Assam bandh from November 26 in protest against the killing of its activists.


Lapses during the rally
By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Nov 24: Who is responsible for the ugly incident that took place on the Beltola-Bashistha Road in the city today? Were not the police and the district administration alert when they had prior information of the All Adivasi Students’ Association (AASA) rally in support the Adivasi community’s long-standing demand for ST status?

It is worth mentioning here that the AASA had resorted to vandalism during a rally at Khanapara in 2003. A number of cars and vehicles were damaged in the 2003 AASA rally, and that experience should have been enough for the police and the district administration to remain alert during the AASA rally today.

According to eyewitness accounts, Adivasi people, mostly tea workers, started to gather at Dakshin Beltola High School from 10 am, and the number rose to about 10,000, but the police personnel on duty at the rally were below 10. On the other hand, police presence at the India International Tea Convention at Sarusajai, where Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had a programme, was very dense.

It was at around 12 noon that a procession of about 5,000 Adivasi activists started from the Dakshin Beltola High School ground towards Dispur. At 12.30 pm, some of the processionists went berserk and started to damage vehicles, shops and residential houses along the road, with the police failing to control the mob. When they were about to reach Dispur Last Gate at around 1.30 pm, they were pushed back by the security forces. When the processionists started to run helter-skelter, the local people retaliated, while the police personnel remained mute spectators to the open battlefield, eyewitnesses said.

EXIT THE AUTHOR

The system of thirty years’ standing has cowed in the face of fantastic, fanatical fury. The moral defeat is the state’s.

ARINDAM GHOSH-DASTIDAR
The Statesman, 25 November

I have no place to go. India is my home and I would like to keep living in this country until I die. ~ Taslima Nasreen

There is a sense of stark irony in Taslima Nasreen’s shift to Jaipur. Just as the Bengal Left had sheltered Qutbuddin Ansari, the Gujarat tailor who had become the icon of the 2002 pogrom, so too did the Rajasthan Right provide refuge to an almost permanently aggrieved feminist writer from Bangladesh. Virtually on landing did the Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief minister, Vasundhara Raje, assure her of round-the-clock security, emerging as a saviour in the process. But after one night in Jaipur, the government has been unnerved by the purported threat of further violence. Taslima’s predicament deepens as she is now reduced to a nowhere person in what they call the National Capital Region.

It is the Communist Party of India (Marxist) that has once again suffered a battering under a state secretary whose foot-in-the-mouth ailment has assumed near-chronic proportions. A day after the fundamentalist fury, Taslima was packed off to Jaipur. Even 48 hours later, there has been no official version on the move. Well may both the party and government ~ rather smugly ~ rest assured that the vote-bank has not been rocked. But the party has decidedly emerged as a bundle of contradictions. Having declared at the height of Wednesday’s violence that Taslima should leave West Bengal “if her continued stay disturbs the state’s peace”, it took Mr Biman Bose barely 12 hours to effect a swingback and plead that “I revise my earlier statement”. In attempting to justify the flip-flop, he could have spared us the knowledge that “the state government doesn’t have the authority to grant or cancel visa and that only the Centre can do this”. His initial bow in the direction of the fundamentalists has doubtless been reinforced by the manner and alacrity with which she has now been shown the door. Despite Mr Bose's somersault, there is little doubt that the government has accorded precedence to the minority card over freedom of speech and expression.

It isn’t exactly clear whether the West Bengal government has acted at the prodding of the Centre. The Chief Minister has been tightlipped since Wednesday as he invariably is in the wake of a controversy. Yet both he and the Centre need to come upfront on a matter of tremendous public import. The authorities would hate to admit as much, but it is pretty much obvious that the government has buckled under fundamentalist pressure. It would be no exaggeration to suggest that the administration has virtually surrendered to the demand of the Islamic fringe who think the Taliban and Al Qaida are jolly good chaps. And who are potentially lethal enough to bring Kolkata to its knees in a couple of hours. Even the assembly Speaker, Mr Hashim Abdul Halim, has gone on record with the statement that Taslima’s stay in the city had “created problems”. Still more alarming are the facts exposed by the Dainik Statesman in the piece titled Byapika Bidai (23 November 2007). A section of the police brass, including the previous Police Commissioner, had reportedly told her to her face that she had become a “security threat” and ought to leave the city. She was even threatened with withdrawal of security. The compulsion is only too perceptible: ahead of the panchayat elections, the government can hardly afford to alienate the minorities further, given the twin disasters over Rizwanur Rehman and Nandigram with a predominantly Muslim peasantry. In a sense, Taslima was in thrall of a bullying police.

The feedback of the Special Branch couldn’t have been so inadequate, after all. Of course, it had erred on the scale and intensity, but the provocation wasn’t wholly unexpected. The Centre’s refusal to renew her visa only served to lend the spark. This is confirmed, if confirmation were needed, by the assertion of the president of the All-India Minority Forum that the “protest” ~ a breathtaking expression of understatement ~ was against Taslima’s prolonged stay in Kolkata. In the manner of Biman Bose, Idris Ali has also effected a turnaround, stoutly denying that the violence was no less a reaction to the Nandigram issue. Double-think runs wild from moment to moment. Both Taslima and Nandigram were very much on the streetfighters' agenda on Wednesday and it has taken the Forum 24 hours to realise the thoughtlessly reckless disconnect.

To an extent, the violence was arguably an offshoot of the intra-community struggle for prominence, notably between Ali and Sidiqullah Chaudhry of the Jamait Ulema-e-Bengal, the former shrilling for Taslima’s exit and the latter buttressing the interests of the Nandigram peasant. This becomes fairly obvious from the appeal issued by at least one imam to both sides not to merge the two wholly unrelated issues. The mayhem was centred around an address in that amorphous locality referred to as south of Park Street, not for the cause of the landless or/and homeless in the backwaters of Purba Medinipur.

The sponsors of the demonstration must have known that they were playing with fire for dubious political ends. And the possibility of Ali ~ who represents the Congress with his own brand of machismo ~ facing party action is substantial. Secularism or religious tolerance or for that matter literary dissent does not mean putting up with calculated irresponsibility. It is fervently to be hoped that sense

will yet prevail upon men and organisations who place politics above humanity.
The lumpen vandalism, therefore, falls into a pattern confirming the government’s perception that an individual had become a security threat. Indubitably was the violence a siren call for action against Taslima, and for the government to be decisive. In effect the system has been cowed. Verily has it served to hasten her exit.

That forced exit in burqa and without police escort is arguably a logical corollary of the Marxist government's earlier ban on her book, Dwikhandito. The army may have restored order over a four kilometre radius, a fairly routine task one should imagine for the police but which proved to be hopelessly beyond its wherewithal. Eloquent protestations on the freedom of expression and liberal thought will now ring hollow. As must be the liberal pretensions of Kolkata and the state’s culturally virile Chief Minister. Taslima's novel was banned by his dispensation, after all.

The city owes a collective salute to Johnny Gurkha for having come to its rescue. Nonetheless, the system of thirty years’ standing has cowed in the face of fantastic, fanatical fury. The moral defeat is the state’s as it is for Taslima Nasreen.

The writer is Assistant Editor, The Statesman

REFLECTIONS ON A RALLY - November 14 threw up important questions

Rudrangshu Mukherjee
The Telegraph, 25 November

Calcutta is a city famous, or notorious, for its rallies. People who live in the city have become tired and jaded by demonstrations that stop traffic and disrupt normal life. Yet there was something novel about the procession that wended its way down College Street via Wellington Square to Esplanade on November 14.

For one thing it was silent. For another it had no political banners. Most importantly, it had not been called or organized by any particular group or organization. Different people, drawn from different walks of life and belonging to varied groups, came together. Word-of-mouth and text messages had brought them to congregate near College Square and then to walk silently to Esplanade. They were united in their protest against the atrocities of the CPI(M) in Nandigram and the irresponsible statements made about them by no less a person than the chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

In the rally walked people who would all broadly identify themselves as belonging to the Left. There were quite a few who had invested a lifetime in the communist movement as workers in the cultural front, as writers and intellectuals who, without actually being members of a communist party, had worked in various ways to help the CPI and the CPI(M). There were others who, as former members or supporters of the CPI(M-L), had once advocated the use of violence to attain political ends but now marched for peace. There was a huge and amorphous mass of people who, in elections, had voted for Left candidates. It will be no exaggeration to say that it was a Left rally against the Left.

The last statement may appear to be something of a contradiction. To explain the contradiction, one has to take the sting out of the statement: it was a Left rally against the established Left in West Bengal, that is, the CPI(M). People of the Left were expressing their utter disapproval of and disenchantment with the CPI(M), the way it functions, its arrogance, its authoritarianism and complete lack of any sense of responsibility. It will not be simplistic to describe those who walked (excluding perhaps the students) as being members of the intelligentsia.

Since the Thirties, across the world, the communist movement and the intelligentsia have had a very close relationship. The palpable reality of poverty and inequality in society, which capitalism seemed unable to solve but in fact aggravated, and the emergence of the Soviet Union as a viable alternative to capitalism and fascism, drew innumerable intellectuals, writers and artists to the communist movement. Some joined the communist parties and others remained at the fringes but were loyal to the cause. In India, especially under the leadership of P.C. Joshi, the best and the brightest came under the banner of the Communist Party of India. The intelligentsia has always had a Leftward, pro-communist tilt.

In Western Europe, the innocence did not last for too long. By the Fifties, as the true nature of the Soviet regime became apparent — especially with the Soviet invasion of Hungary — the intelligentsia began to move away from the communist parties. They did not abandon the vision of communism, but they declared their loss of faith in the established communist movements and communist regimes.

A further fall from innocence was to come with the complete collapse of communism across Europe. There was thus a sharp division in Europe between the intelligentsia and the communist movement, and there has been an ongoing process there to re-examine the entire tradition of Marx and what happened to the practice of Marxism under Lenin, Stalin and Mao. In India, this division, except through a few stray voices, has not occurred. And most emphatically, no reexamination of the Marxist intellectual apparatus has even begun. I would venture to suggest that such a re-examination is considered a sacrilegious act.

In West Bengal, thanks to 30 years of Left rule, the relationship between the intelligentsia and the CPI(M) and its government has been particularly cosy. This is why the rally of November 14 is significant. It marks a break, whether permanent or not only time will tell.

Since it was a rally of the intelligentsia, it can be assumed that the people who walked — or at least most of them — are still reflecting on why they walked, the implications of their actions, about what lies in the future and their roles in shaping that future. It is entirely possible that there will not be one answer to these questions. But the intellectual and political churning is important. I want to add to the churning by raising some uncomfortable issues that I think the Left intelligentsia needs to address.

Nandigram is by no means the only instance of the CPI(M)’s use of terror. Keshpur comes immediately to mind; there are many other instances, big and small, stretching over three decades. Violence has been a part of communist politics, and not just the CPI(M)’s. The Naxalites, much idolized and romanticized in West Bengal, openly advocated that political power flows from the barrel of a gun and made it their business to butcher whoever they thought was a “class enemy”. During all these events, the Left intelligentsia’s conscience was asleep. In election after election, they voted for the communists, justifying their actions with the plea that the alternative would be even worse. Are members of the intelligentsia willing to admit that they erred in not opposing earlier instances of terror, not only those perpetrated by the CPI(M) but also by others — say, the Trinamul Congress in Nandigram and in an earlier era by the Naxalites?

Is the present protest only about the CPI(M)’s terror, or is it also about the coming of capitalism to West Bengal and the social and economic changes that come in the train of such a process? If it is, then an alternative plan about the economic development of West Bengal needs to be presented and the idea that economic growth is possible via agriculture needs to be debated. It may also be the case that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was seen as the agent of change — not just of economic change but also change of political culture — and the protest is in part a response to what is perceived as a betrayal.

The point needs to be pushed further. There has to be a recognition on the part of the Left intelligentsia that their faith in the Leninist model was a delusion, that terror is inherent in the practice of communism. The CPI(M) is only another example that supports the generalization. Isn’t it time that there was a move away from the Cold War polarities of communism versus capitalism? In an era in which communism is dead, it might be realistic to look at means to humanize capitalism.

There are important questions that the Left intelligentsia have to face and answers to some of them might actually force them to abandon the epithet Left altogether. But it is important to face these questions since, without renegotiating the past, it is impossible to shape the present and to visualize the future. How open is the intelligentsia?

**********

I want to end this with a disclaimer. It will be easy to dismiss this as a critique of the rally and all that it represented. It emphatically is not. I believe that West Bengal is poised to change. The rally to my mind was one very important face of that change. But this change will never be meaningful without reflection and dialogue. More importantly, there has to be a clear admission that nothing can ever be achieved through violence.

THE SPLIT IN CIVIL SOCIETY IN WEST BENGAL AND THE CHOMSKY LETTER

See CHOMSKY LETTER right below

Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri, 23.10.07.

Civil society in West Bengal has split. International luminaries, including Noam
Chomsky, want the gap to be bridged and have signed a letter to this effect.

Let us examine the split.

The basis for the split lies in

(1) the recent change in CPI(M) policy, identifying big investments by
multinationals and domestic big capital as 'industrialisation' by the CPI(M) led
government of West Bengal (this is a recent change of policy),

(2) the fascist onslaught of gunmen of the CPI(M) and the police on people affected adversely by this onslaught of big capital.

The section of civil society linked to the ruling CPI(M) party is supporting this
onslaught of big capital, offering 'industrialisation' as the excuse.

The other section is supporting the adversely affected people, wherever and
whenever they are attacked.

Is the gap bridgeable?

A fact or two regarding the sham 'industrialisation'.

The recent Tata automobile factory at Singur, which saw the first determined
resistance against land grab on behalf of big capital, is supposed to provide 10,000 jobs, including jobs in downstream industries, as claimed by supporters of Tata. Apart from landowners who received compensation (of disputed adequacy), estimates of those who lost their livelihood, without compensation or resettlement, reaches 10,000 (even the figures quoted by the CPI(M) politbureau leader Vrinda Karat support this estimate). Net result=zero rise in employment.

In any case, even a high school student can appreciate the hopelessness of
employment generation in thousands, when the West Bengal finance minister
himself admits to an unemployment figure of 3.34 million in 2004-05. What is
needed is a new policy, not a fascist imposition of neoliberal trash.

The people affected by this 'industrialsation' offer resistance because they know well that the 'industrialisation' will not spread in the surrounding countryside. The huge US $ 2.2 billion investment in Haldia Petrochemicals (HPCL) and its downstream industries generated 4000 jobs in HPCL and 10,000 jobs downstream. 90% of the downstream units and 80% of the jobs were created not in the district of Midnapore (to which Haldia belongs) but in the Kolkata municipal area. The bankruptcy of this 'industrialisation' and the need for a new policy are underlined by the fact that every year 80,000 people are added to the 15-59 age bracket in Midnapore. (for sources see author's article on Haldia in sanhati.com).

A fact or two regarding the convergence of this 'industrialisation' with penetration of international big capital, including US big capital.

In 1996, there was no FDI to speak of in West Bengal. By 2003, the cumulative FDI flow reached US $ 1.346 billion ('Public Private Partnerships in India',01.04.07, Ministry of Finance, GOI), an amount equal to the contribution of the entire registered manufacturing sector to West Bengal's SDP in 2004-05.

Now, the US has smiled on West Bengal. Although US FDI amounted to $ 48
million between January 2000 and March 2006 (as estimated by the American
Consul General in Kolkata on 07.03.07), the situation is about to see dramatic
changes. US giant GE will invest US $ 8 billion in India over the next three years, of which a 'substantial amount' is earmarked for West Bengal. GE Equipment Services has already acquired a 15% equity worth US $ 37.5 million in the West Bengal railway wagon company Titagarh Wagons Ltd. (tdctrade.com. 07.011.07, Hong Kong Trade Development Council).

Noam Chomsky wants unity. Does he really want a civil society united in support of US big capital and its allies? Or, should the signatories have followed the golden rule of "No investigation, no right to speak"?

Towards participatory democracy

Amitabha Bhattacharyya
The Statesman, 25 November

The Right to Information Act has been in operation for a couple of years now. One of the fundamental requirements of successful implementation of the Act is the existence of a high degree of public awareness about the legislation. Unless citizens are aware that the Act has furnished them with a weapon to expose the proverbial skeletons in the cupboard, it will continue to exist like many another piece of well-intended but sterile addition to the statutes.

The right to information is defined by the Act as follows: (1) Right to inspect works, documents, records; (2) right to take notes, extracts or certified copies of documents or records; (3) right to take certified samples of material; (4) right to obtain information in the form of diskettes, floppies, tapes, video cassettes or in any other electronic mode or through printouts where such information is stored in a computer or in any other device.

Secondly, information means any material in any form, including records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, Press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law for the time being in force. While the concept of “public authority” does not require any elaboration as such, it includes even NGOs financed by government funds, directly or indirectly.

In terms of the Act, any public authority is required to have a public information officer to whom a citizen can make a request for providing information pertaining to the operation of the said organisation. Such requests should be accompanied by a fee of Rs 10 either in cash or by demand draft or banker’s cheque, payable to the accounts officer of the public authority. In addition, the applicant will be required to pay a fee to the public authority at the following rates: (a) Rs 2 for each page (in A-4 or A-3 size paper) created or copied; (b) actual charge or cost price of a copy in larger size paper; (c) actual cost or price for samples or models; and (d) for inspection of records, no fee for the first hour; and a fee of Rs 5 for each subsequent hour (or, fraction thereof) thereafter.

However, the RTI Act exempts certain areas from general disclosure in public interest: (a) Information, disclosure of which would prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the state, relation with foreign state or lead to incitement of an offence; (b) information which has been expressly forbidden to be published by any court of law or tribunal or the disclosure of which may constitute contempt of court; (c) information including commercial confidence, trade secrets or intellectual property, the disclosure of which would harm the competitive position of a third party, unless the competent authority is satisfied that larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information; (d) information available to a person in his fiduciary relationship, unless the competent authority is satisfied that the larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information; and (e) information, the disclosure of which would endanger the life or physical safety of any person or identify the source of information or assistance given in confidence for law enforcement or security purposes.

On receipt of a request for information, the public information officer (PIO) is required to furnish it as expeditiously as possible and in any case within 30 days from the date of receipt of the request. In case the public information officer rejects the request for any of the reasons specified in the Act under “Exemption from Disclosure of Information”, the applicant is required to be advised accordingly within the above timeframe. If the PIO fails to give a decision on the request within the period specified, he shall be deemed to have refused the request.

If a person does not get an answer in time, there is a provision for appeal. A public sector organisation is required to appoint an officer designated as appellate authority for the purpose of receiving such appeals. The Act provides a timeframe of a maximum of 30 days for the disposal of such appeals.

If the first appeal fails to yield any results, the applicant has a further right of appeal to the chief information commissioner, office of the Central Information Commission at August Kranti Bhavan, Bhikaji Cama Place, New Delhi.

One of the most notable features of the Act is the provision whereby the chief information commissioner is empowered to award an appropriate financial penalty on the delinquent authority of the organisation in question.

Here are a couple of instances of the operation of the Act:

The Supreme Court was approached for various data concerning the awarding of a death sentence. The initial response of the Central Public Information Officer of the Supreme Court was that no subject-wise record was maintained in the SC registry. On submission of the first appeal by the applicant, it was held by the first appellate authority that there must be a record with the SC where the full name and address of the person who was awarded the death sentence would be available and the record would also contain the names of the counsel as also duration of hearing.

It was thereupon stated by the CPIO that the compilation of the data would require voluminous paper work and there was no sufficient staff strength for the purpose. Thereupon, a further appeal was preferred and the appellate authority decided as follows:

(i) That how people are awarded death sentence is something which the common man must know. (ii) Death sentence is awarded only in the rarest of rare cases. Consequently, the importance of information ought to be seen vis-a-vis the amount of work involved. (iii) The three bodies, that is the executive, judiciary and the legislature are supposed to be equal; but in truth, the legislature, being the representative of the people, is supreme. The courts are to follow the law and not lay down the law, the only exception being where they find something violative of the Constitution or of fundamental rights. When the representative of the popular will confers a specific right to people, the judiciary ought not to deny such right on the excuse of there being shortage of manpower. (Shri Manish Kumar Khanna vs Supreme Court of India).

In the second instance, the Union Public Service Commission declined to disclose the proceedings of the departmental promotion committee on the ground of confidentiality. On a second appeal, the chief information commissioner directed the UPSC to submit a statement within 10 days specifying the reasons why the information must be kept sealed and, by keeping this information confidential, how does the protected interest outweigh the public interest in the context of S 8(2) of the RTI Act. (Ms Jyoti Legha vs Union Public Service Commission)

The RTI Act augurs well for the future of participatory democracy in the country. It has posed the most timely challenge to the vintage Official Secrets Act 1923, which is the last resort of a complacent bureaucracy.

(The author, working in a public sector undertaking, is a freelance contributor)