Why Manipur Burns?

Ashok Mitra
The Telegraph, 28 July 2004

Reading classics broadens the mind. It also offers clues that help to sort out knotty contemporary concerns. The national question fills a large part of the socialist literature spanning from the mid-19th century. The reason is not at all obscure.

A nation consists of a group of people who have a government of their own. Should some heterogeneities, such as of language and culture, distinguish the people constituting the nation, these are assumed to be taken care of by the deft hand of the government. The hand, however, can often be far from deft. The people are not unified, they are a baggage of nationalities riven by differences in ethnicity, language and culture, and the regime may fail to bring them together.

This was the problem afflicting the great Habsburg empire, dominated by German-speaking Austrians: German-speaking other fiefdoms had no difficulty in considering themselves as an integral part of the nation-state. The Slavs and the Czechs would not however agree to merge their identity with a nation chock-full of German-speaking groups. They kept resisting. The resistance was a major irritant to the emperor and his flunkies. It posed an almost equal problem for the ideologues dreaming of a magnificent proletarian revolution that would sweep across the whole of Europe. Leaders plotting and planning the revolution had no doubt in their minds: nationalities refusing to sacrifice their identity in the cause of the nation are a nuisance; their divisiveness splits the working class, and thereby,sets back the revolution. Marx had no time to spare for such splitters. Engels was somewhat more ambivalent, and had a word of praise at least for the Czechs valiantly fighting against centuries of German oppression; he was though not supportive of them on overall considerations. Lenin opted for a cautionary approach: yes, sympathy for the lesser nationalities, but they must not allow themselves to be used for sabotaging the revolutionary solidarity of the proletarian masses.

Besides, while the Poles, for example, had a strong case for establishing a separate nation-state of their own, would they have enough resources to run the administration of the state on a viable basis? Lenin had his reservations.

Till the November Revolution and the end of the First World War, much of this was academic polemics. The births of Poland and Czechoslovakia apart, circumstances altered in a radical manner for revolutionary ideologues once the Soviet Union emerged as a reality in 1917. There was now no question of not acknowledging the datum of the existence of nationalities such as the Uzbeks, the Turkmen, the Kirgizh and others; their habitations were a bulk of the former Czarist empire and became annexures of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Lenin was incapacitated before he could attempt to tackle satisfactorily the national question: how to reconcile the interests of Russians and these other folk. It landed on the lap of Stalin, who approached the issue with rare imagination. Those firmly of thebelief that Stalin was a cruel, insensate, blood-sucking dictator will experience a shock. "In [the Soviet] Union, which as a whole unites not less than 240,000,000 people, of whom about 65,000,000 are non-Russians. it is impossible to govern unless we have with us, here in Moscow, in the supreme organ, emissaries of these nationalities, to express not only the interests common to the proletariat as a whole, but also special, specific national interest. Without this it will be impossible to govern, comrades": this was Joseph Dzhugashvili writing to the party's central committee at the time the Soviet constitution was being drafted.

It is a different matter whether Stalin's pious wishes were followed to the hilt in the Soviet Union during the tortuous seventy years of its longevity. Perhaps it was, perhaps it was not beyond a certain point of time. But the dictum Stalin scripted stands out for its clarity.

The terms and expressions have got shifted, the debate is no longer in terms of nation and nationalities; these days we talk of the centre and the periphery. The centre is the dominant category, those inhabiting the periphery lead a tremulous existence. They want to migrate towards power and self-determination, but are thwarted. Thereby hangs a tale of dispute, misunderstanding, fulmination, reprisal and counter-reprisal.

Like many other things, the centre-periphery imbroglio is now a global phenomenon. Consider the current state of affairs in Manipur, and, for that matter, in the rest of the North-east. The entities in this region were, in the course of the 19th century, gobbled up by the British crown and directly administered, till 1947, by the viceroy of India. They were not, strictly speaking, a part of the Indian empire; the government of India Act 1935 did not apply to them. With the departure of the British, the north-eastern provinces were taken over by the Union of India as if by inheritance. The question of nationalities was not resolved though. States such as Manipur remained in the periphery; the Centre was distant and authoritarian. Each year, Jawaharlal Nehru made quite a ceremony of commendingto New Delhi artistes of different ethnicities from the North-east and have them perform tribal dances on Republic Day evening - a superficial gesture of this nature, smacking of feudal mores, took the periphery further away from the centre.

The nationalities in the north-eastern region have taken their turn to voice their discontent with the existing arrangements: they have many problems, and they want to be heard. The Centre has been cool and indifferent, provoking every now and then armed rebellions. A pattern has emerged over the past five decades in the region: the Centre initially is reluctant to even acknowledge the problems afflicting a nationality; riots rage; the Centre then falls back on army-bandobast. After many killings, a perfunctory attempt is made to arrange a ceasefire, followed by some sort of a written patch-up. This story has been repeated in Nagaland and Mizoram, and promises to be repeated in Manipur. But in no instance is any intent visible to go into the root of the malady. The Centre, besides, will robone nationality to placate another, or set one against another, almost on a regular basis: fun and games.

Perhaps the inability lies in the failure to comprehend that the assumption - the Centre always knows best the periphery will have to fall in, or else - will simply not pass muster. And yet, the solution of the centre-periphery issue should have been easier than it was in the European historical instances. The entities in India's North-east, in contrast to those 19th century nationalities who were dispersed all over Europe and flaunted their distinct identities, are territorially homogeneous. With adequate recognition on the Centre's part that they deserve equal respect, regard and attention as other federating states such as Uttar Pradesh or Tamil Nadu do, a happy season could still have unfolded in the North-east.

Instead, just watch what is happening in Manipur. While the Meiteis, concentrated in the three plain districts around Imphal, occupy only 10 per cent of the territory, they constitute 70 per cent of the state's population. Their grievances fall by the wayside because, at this juncture, the Nagas and the Kukis, who hold sway in the strategic hill districts, have to be given more consideration. The plain Manipuris are disaffected. New Delhi tries to side-step the issue by buying up votes of legislators.

The culture of smothering genuine grievances by bribing legislators or chieftains remains the same whether the party occupying the power centre is the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party. Manipur is unquiet, the Centre sends hordes of army and police forces. The situation worsens. More troops descend, incensing the Meiteis further. Unlike in the days of yore, no contingent of women of easy virtue accompanies the troops. The latter therefore pounce upon local women, and the situation becomes a thousand times more explosive.

The Meiteis are in fact a very gentle people, grace spilling from their countenance and bearing. They were won over to the Chaitanya cult of Vaisnavism in the 16th century, which preaches love and humility.

Provoked beyond endurance, the Meiteis are now on the warpath, and they are led particularly by the women. The Centre, installed in remote New Delhi, will conceivably continue to behave as woodenly as it has done in the past; it will send more troops.

SLIPPERY SURFACE - ONGC has been handed over on a platter to American conglomerates

Cutting corners / Ashok Mitra
The Telegraph, 19 March 2004

The Centaur Hotel scam was obviously a trial run. Sell off a public property to a private party at a ridiculously low price, a price that has no relationship with market realities. Allow a gap of three months, the private party which bought Centaur at Rs 73 crore would now sell it to another private party at Rs 116 crore, thereby making a whopping profit of 50 per cent in the course of a bare quarter, which works out to a 200 per cent rate of return per annum. The comptroller and auditor general would have some caustic things to say about the lurid business. But ex post lamentation is just that; the minister directly involved in the deal described the CAG’s comments as idiotic. In a sense, the minister was right. What the CAG did was to shut the stable-door after the horse had bolted. Such, however, is the only function laid down for the CAG in the Constitution.

The dare-devilry with the shares of the Oil and Natural Gas Commission is of far greater import. It was crafted by the same minister who did the Centaur in. The initial hurdles were deftly negotiated, the cabinet approved, clearance was obtained from the nation’s highest judiciary, the minister had the sanction and the authority to dispose of the country’s most prized assets to foreign interests, for a song. Much care went into the planning of the operation. Only 10 per cent of the ONGC equity was, for the present, offered for sale. With due fanfare, it was described as the initial public offering. The price band per share was set at Rs 680/750, although the latent market sentiment would have justified a minimum floor price of around Rs 800. In effect, the government made a prior commitment to sell the ONGC shares at less than what the market was willing to offer; no answer was provided to why this should be so.

The drama unfolded with the opening of the market on the designated day; the ONGC shares were over-subscribed during the very first hour. By the date the offer closed, the extent of over-subscription was staggering. The authorities are yet to do the actual allotment. The story behind the dazzling market-performance has since broken. One of the leading operators in the American bourses, Warren Buffett, has quietly put out a billion dollars, roughly Rs 4,500 crore, in quest of ONGC shares. Divide Rs 4,500 crore by Rs 750 and you can easily count the number of shares — 6 crore — Buffett will be able to lay his hands on.

For the public offer will, in effect, be reduced to a private placement, and the bulk of the equity offered for sale will now become the property of the American investment tycoon. It is as if the entire deal was intended to serve his cause. Small local investors were already carefully shut out, for it was stipulated that none of them would be allowed to buy beyond Rs 50,000 or more than 10 shares.

Gift-horses need to be looked in the mouth. Take a peep at the antecedents of Warren Buffett. He is by no stretch an industrial entrepreneur. He customarily arrives on the scene only to buy up established companies with long-term prospects. But he is basically a speculator in stocks and has no intention to lock up his money. Once the behind-the-scene negotiations are through and the majority of the 10 per cent of the ONGC shares are, by rights, his, he will, at the first opportunity, sell off his holding to Exxon, Mobil, Chevron or some other American oil conglomerate. The US oil tycoon will arrive and take charge of India’s oil reserves.

The doubting Thomases may raise a query here: how could the Americans assume total control of the ONGC with at most a 10 per cent holding of the total equity? The disinvestment ministry has, however, not given any undertaking that the process of denuding the nation’s oil industry is only a one-off operation. Should the minister’s party return to power and the minister himself retain his portfolio or be promoted to be the country’s finance minister, “strategic” sales could be repeated to the extent of another lot of 10 or 15 per cent of total shares. Strategic sales may then lead to “strate- gic management” by the American majors.

Discussion of mischief such as this should have been the principal constituent of the agenda in the election debates in the current season. It has not. As long as the two principal national parties have a mutual understanding on how best to scuttle the nation’s economic sovereignty, it is unlikely that, even following the polls, the issue will come to the fore. For meanwhile, the leaders of the Congress have gone on record; their party too is all for economic reforms.

A footnote has been generously added though; of course, such reforms are to be combined with adequate care for the nation’s poor. This pious hope is as good as a non sequitur. Ever since the International Monetary Fund launched its structural adjustment programmes, with further inputs from the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, the global experience is overwhelmingly one-sided. The economic reforms, by whatever names described, have in most cases led to the further immiserization of the countries on which the experiments have been tried. Even in the rare instances where the countries as such have not been further impoverished by the “reforms”, the poor in the countries have been crushed into progressive nothingness.

The silent acquiescence of the Congress in the ONGC sell-out is particularly galling. The establishment of the ONGC was considered by Jawaharlal Nehru as a milestone in the nation’s march to economic self-reliance; he took special pride in this achievement. It was a riposte to the American overthrow of Mossadeq in Iran. Oil was the most precious of intermediate products, and India must not fall into Anglo-American clutches in regard to its supply; the nation must begin from the beginning and, along with the take- over of distribution outlets and selling up of domestic refining capacities, develop its own oil exploration facilities and from there progress steadily but surely towards oil self-sufficiency.

The initial successes in this direction were spectacular. But the past one and a half decades tell a bleak story. The distribution system has been de-nationalized, foreign firms have been called back and exploration blocks gradually doled out to foreign companies either operating directly or under the cover of an Indian collaborator. The US conglomerates have played a waiting game. They were not prepared to enter into any profit-sharing arrangement with a public sector entity such as the ONGC. They leased in the exploration blocks, but hardly did any actual exploration.

There was a time in the past when domestically extracted crude supplied nearly one-half of the country’s total refining requirements. That proportion has now gone down to one-third or even less. The demand for oil has mounted and, along with it, the government’s philosophy has undergone a sea-change. Surrendering the nation’s oil infrastructure — built assiduously over the years with the nation’s own resources — at a throwaway price to foreigners is now taken to be a child’s pastime.

In a manner of speaking, what is happening is external assistance in the reverse. A poor nation is offering its physical assets at a highly subsidized price to foreign private parties, in order that the latter might exploit the nation to the hilt for an indefinite — perhaps infinite — period. It is part of a grand design. We do not feed our famished citizens, instead we export, via subsidy, our wheat and rice to feed American pigs. We dismantle out heavy machinery and engineering plants; instead export steel and even pig iron. We close our mines, and import coal from elsewhere. We hand over the ONGC, on a platter, to American conglomerates. The rich shall inherit the earth with some assistance from the Uncle Toms in poor lands.

It is a dirty story about how to return to colonial times.

GRAFFITI AND THE EC - It has to be asked if arbitrary controls strengthen democracy

Ashok Mitra
The Telegraph, 28 April 2006

Graffito, singular: writing on wall; plural, graffiti. Man has been urged through the ages to read the writing on the wall. Graffiti have thus emerged as an integral part of human civilization. The art of graffiti was there in Greek and Roman times, it was the rage in Pompeii. Civil society discourse through graffiti was handed down from the medieval days to the modern era.

The felt need to get to know one another and to get oneself known to others has always been an irresistible impulse for human beings.
Especially for the humbler species, graffiti have defined social awareness. Scribbling on the wall costs little; since generally displayed at public places, it attracts a large clientele. Graffiti, in that sense, perform the same functions as those of a public forum. The epic campaign in the United Kingdom against nuclear disarmament in the middle decades of the last century had graffiti as one of its main components: the thumbs-down to the ?no nukes? sign was repeated all over the country, in London, in big and small towns and villages, in dales and hills.

Visit France, overground or down in the Metro, never mind the decade, graffiti have kept hollering the cause: for or against Gertrude Stein, for and against existentialism, for and against the proposed new labour laws.

Cross over to Latin America, the campaign against Yanqui imperialism is unthinkable without graffiti. Drop in on the Caribbeans, walls are emblazoned with slogans exhorting fellow citizens to ?throw dem out?.

One of the most economical and yet devastatingly effective graffiti was seen some years ago on the walls of Dhaka in Bangladesh: ?Rascal, give us food.

A particular reason for the wide acceptability of graffiti is the scope they provide for giving as good as one receives. Examples can be quoted from the poll graffiti during successive elections in West Bengal: synoptic statistics and arguments, rhymes, slogans and cartoons vied with one another, democracy with all its awesome splendours came alive through the graffiti. Or recall the occasion a quarter of a century ago of the Left Front leading a campaign in the state for a drastic restructuring of Centre-state relations. Walls across the state were plastered with the vibrant political slogan, ?More power to the State?. That was however also the season when West Bengal was suffering from an acute shortage of power. The production of electricity lagged way behind current demand, resulting in widespread discontent especially in the urban areas. Bengali witticism was in full flow, those opposed to the Left Front covered the till-then-empty space on the walls next to the graffiti, ?More power to the State? with a parallel slogan, again in graffiti, ?More candles to the State?.

Exchanges of this kind are assumed to be natural adjuncts of multi-party politics. It is taken for granted that citizens have the prerogative to use public space for thrusts and counter-thrusts on public issues. Such graffiti expand the frontiers of knowledge, more so for the poor who cannot afford newspapers, radio or television. Graffiti are, it can be cogently argued, the perfect mode for electoral campaigning in a poverty-ridden country.

The Election Commission obviously has a different point of view. It has prohibited, during the current round of assembly elections in some states, the use of wall writings as well as placards and posters on billboards in public places. It has extended the ban on graffiti to cover walls of private buildings too. Uneasiness, however, is not dispelled.

Article 324 of the nation?s Constitution of course allows the commission the right to superintendent, direct and control the conduct of elections in the country. The question can still be raised whether its jurisdiction allows it to cut athwart the fundamental rights granted to citizens by other articles of the Constitution. Article 19 straightaway comes to mind; it accords citizens the right to form associations and political parties, as also the right to express freely their views and opinions. The private precincts of a citizen are his castle and it should be his absolute right to use the exterior of this castle ? the wall ? for whatever purpose he decides upon till as long as there is no infringement of public taste. No law or interdict from the EC ought to supersede this fundamental right. To argue that political graffiti lead to environmental pollution is equally fatuous. On the contrary, their calligraphy, according to many connoisseurs, contributes in a major way to brighten up the environment.
The political parties are anxious not to be on the wrong side of the EC in this season and have therefore accepted without much demur its fiat. The matter cannot, however, be allowed to rest there. For the commission has tied itself up in knots. It would not allow graffiti on a wall but it does not mind people walking about with campaign slogans and signs overwritten on, or attached to, their apparel, including shirts, blouses, footwear and caps. The commission also does not stand in the way of placards and posters stuck in moving vehicles. A metaphysical distinction is apparently sought to be established by it between a still picture and a moving visage: the former is forbidden, the latter is not. To say the least, this sounds crazy. Nor can the fact be brushed aside that the commission?s whims have raised substantially the poll expenses for a candidate, thereby narrowing the space for egalitarianism.

Finally, by enforcing a ban on graffiti in some states and not in others, is not the commission going against the letter and spirit of Article 14 of the Constitution? The fundamental right of equality before the law is clearly being denied to citizens residing in some states for reasons best known to the commission.

The EC?s attitude is as much a-historical as undemocratic. A thought occurs. Perhaps the root of the problem lies in the composition of the commission. The chief election commissioner and his colleagues are as a rule picked from the civil service. While taking decisions on important matters, civil servants tend to display a love for both caution and restrictionism; the wider aspect of the deus ex machina to ensure a living, thriving democracy often escapes them; there is an overwhelming urge to enforce controls without thinking things through, such as whether controls arbitrarily administered strengthen the democratic process, or weaken it further.

The Constitution merely says that the president would appoint the chief election commissioner and his colleagues. Since Article 324 makes no explicit mention of the qualifications and background of the members of commissions, the president would be perfectly justified to select election commissioners from a much wider ambit than from the roster of the bureaucracy. In neighbouring Bangladesh, where democracy is still a fledgling exercise compared to ours, a panel of wise men supervises the national elections; administrators are there to help the panel, but they work under its direction and superintendence. Is it at all impossible to conceive of a similar arrangement for the composition of our EC? In this vast country of eleven hundred million people, to locate a handful of individuals who possess a sagacious and balanced mind, who could be depended upon to be equidistant in their dealings with political parties in the election season and who would be in a position to take a broader view of the democratic process than a group of career civil servants is capable of taking, should not be that difficult a task.

Why cannot we have, for instance, Nirmala Deshpande as our chief election commissioner?