Farmer Suicides: A First-hand Report from Karnataka
January 16, 2012
By Kaveri Rajaram Indira. This article was first published in Socialism.in
In Tumkur district of Karnataka (close to the state capital – Bangalore), a spate of 10 peasant suicides in the year 2011 has prompted some alarm over an issue affecting millions more peasants who are still alive and struggling. A group of us, that included six people in all, traveled to visit each of these families to understand the root causes of these suicides.
Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Act: The New Weapon of the Second Green Revolution
January 16, 2012
By Partho Sarathi Ray
The latest addition in the effort of introducing genetically modified food crops in India by the multinational corporations, especially the giant US agribusiness multinational Monsanto, is the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Bill, in short BRAI, which was to be tabled in the latest session of parliament (winter, 2011) by the UPA government. If this bill is passed into law by parliament, then the entire agricultural and food system in India will be affected and there will be far-reaching and dangerous effects on the 1 billion people dependent on that system. This law is not only about a scientific subject or some bureaucratic regulations; the future of agriculture and that of millions of farmers dependent on agriculture is intimately linked to this bill. This bill is also connected to the recent attempts to open the retail sector to foreign direct investment. What the bill is about, and what the real intentions are in trying to pass it into a law, need to be well-understood.
Farmer Suicides in India: A Policy-induced Disaster of Epic Proportions
January 15, 2012
By The Sanhati Collective
Since 1995, more than 253,000 farmers have been reported to have committed suicides in India, making this the largest wave of suicides in the world. Other than a few conscientious journalists like P. Sainath and Jaideep Hardikar, the mainstream media has largely ignored this historically unprecedented event. Busy with crafting a palatable picture of “shining” India, the mainstream media has neglected its duty to report on the lives and livelihoods of the largest group of working people in India: farmers. The Indian government’s actions on this issue has been equally, if not more, deplorable. Other than making vapid pronouncements and organizing high-publicity visits of Prime and Chief Ministers to the region, the Central and State governments have done little to ameliorate the conditions of the miserable farmers. No wonder then that the abominable phenomenon of farmer suicides continues with unmitigated ferocity. As a reminder that business-as-usual means disaster for the aam aadmi in Shining India, it was recently reported in the press that a fresh wave of suicides have occurred in various states in India in 2011.
Where Ants Drove Out Elephants - The Story of People’s Resistance to Displacement in Jharkhand
January 6, 2012
By Stan Swamy
This article is an introduction to the trajectory of peoples’ movements against displacement in Jharkhand in the last few years. As the author writes, the resistance in Jharkhand has resulted in the fact that “[o]ut of the about one hundred MOUs signed by Jharkhand government with industrialists, hardly three or four companies have succeeded in acquiring some land, set up their industries and start partial production.” - Ed.
Nuclear Energy: Way Forward for Developing Countries?
December 31, 2011
By Shiv Sethi
While Fukushima has evoked memories of Chernobyl, the issue of nuclear energy was always far more complex than its safety. In particular, the relevant questions in this regard—especially its suitability for developing countries like India—continue to be: (a) Is such a form of energy needed?, (b) Is nuclear energy economically viable?, (c) Is it safer than would be indicated by the recent Fukushima disaster?
Notes on The Eurozone Crisis
December 30, 2011
By Deepankar Basu
While there are many interesting dimensions of the crisis, I would like to focus in this note on three crucial factors: a credit crunch, government “austerity” measures, and a sharp fall in consumer and business confidence. This note provides an explanation of some of these recent developments, and develops the argument that the only way to “solve” the Eurozone problem and avert disaster for the global economy is to push for a progressive resolution of the structural factors underlying the sovereign debt crisis.
Authoritarianism and Incompetence - The Times in Bengal
December 17, 2011
By Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri
In and around the University of Kolkata and Presidency University are a plethora of bookshops and tea-shops, where students, would-be-poets, little magazine groups, freelance journalists, a multitude of couples and multiples undergoing pairing, are putting the world to right every day. Many of the established intellectuals of different eras have served their apprenticeship here. In this bohemia, Big Brother has made his entry in search of Maoists camouflaging as students. Bookshops have been visited by young, shamefaced scions of the Special Branch and famous teashops have been provided with CCTV cameras. This correspondent was accosted, as he stepped out of a rather traditional mainstream Left sort of meeting with students to discuss some piece of dry, new legislation on education, by a weedy, old watcher. He muttered resignedly, “Meeting still going on?” Beware Lancelot as you whisper sweet nothings to Guinivere, behind Arthur’s back, not only of Arthur or Mordred, but of hidden mikes of the cheap variety that might distort “sailing into the haven of your eyes” into “selling the AK47 likewise”.
In Defense of the LTTE Tradition
December 17, 2011
By Karthick RM. The author is a research scholar in political theory at the University of Essex.
“our friend, valiant heart,
exemplary child, golden warrior:
we swear in your name to continue this struggle
that your spilt blood may thus flower.”
-Pablo Neruda
A few weeks back, in an interview to the right-wing Indian news channel Times Now, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa stated that they still feared the rise of LTTE in Sri Lanka. Likewise, the paranoia of the Lankan army was so high on the Heroes Day week (November 21st to 27th) that it even forbade the ringing of temple or church bells, lighting of candles or public gatherings in this period. Despite this, the Heroes Day torch was lit in the University of Jaffna and people in Batticaloa gathered in public, in open defiance of the occupying Lankan military, to commemorate the occasion. Likewise, the Tamil Sovereignty Cognition declaration that was released on Heroes Day also stated that the symbols and expressions of the national struggle of the Eelam Tamils must be upheld.
The Indian Clean Development Mechanism (CDM): Subsidizing and Legitimizing Corporate Pollution
December 17, 2011
A study by NFFPFW (National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers), NESPON, and DISHA (Society for Direct Initiative for Social and Health Action). Compiled and Edited by Soumitra Ghosh and Subrat Kumar Sahu.
Ever since the unique mitigation strategy of carbon trading was conceptualized in the Kyoto Protocol, India seems to have been one of the busiest countries to put the concept into action. By the end of June, 2011, India had 645 CDM projects registered with the UNFCCC, 261 of which had already been issued 93834 kCERs. At that point of time, India accounted for 1603 CDM projects (it has since gone up to 1914, as of 8th November 20111), including the registered and CER-issued ones, with 922 at validation, and another 36 at various stages of registration. Taken together, the projects claim to reduce a whooping 444293 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2012(meaning that the same amount of tradable CERs will be credited to the projects, if UNFCCC registers them all). The corresponding figures for 2020 are 1516432 ktCO2 meaning that, taken together, the projects will reduce about 1520 million tonnes of Green House Gases.
A Note on the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA)
December 17, 2011
By Asit Das
In this article, the author takes a critical look at the contents of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, and then proceeds to trace its historical background, touching on the trajectories of Nagaland, Mizoram, and Manipur. Ultimately, the author locates the Act as an instrument in the conversion of the North East into a neocolonial hinterland of India, and the central tool for the explicit military subjugation of peoples identified as the “Cultural Other” - Ed.
Kishanji: Not Just Another ‘Martyr’
November 28, 2011
The California Hunger Strike: Repression, Resistance, the US Prison System, and Political Imprisonment in India
November 21, 2011
By Isaac Ontiveros. The author works on the media committee of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition.
An Introduction by Partho Sarathi Ray
The demand for the release of political prisoners is a major demand of democratic movements in India now, and the condition of prisoners in jail a major cause for concern. The case of Binayak Sen had brought the issue of political prisoners into focus, but there are thousands like him languishing in jails, including people like Jiten Marandi who have been sentenced to death.
Jiten Marandi: The Real Story Behind a Court Case
November 17, 2011
By Jiten Marandi (Translated by Priyanka Srivastava)
[This statement was composed by Jiten Marandi in prison and was published to bring his side of the story of his arrest and subsequent accusal in the Chilkhari case, in which he has been awarded the death sentence by a lower court in Jharkhand, to the public. This has been translated from the original Hindi. - Ed]
Socio-economic Inequality in India and the World since 1990
November 17, 2011
By Deepankar Basu
Abstract: Income or wealth inequality captures only a narrow slice of inequality in society. Non-income dimensions of inequality in health status and educational attainment are equally if not more important. The two dimensions, income and non-income, could be brought together to define a broader measure of socio-economic inequality. But unavailability of data on the distribution of health status and educational attainment across different sections of society make the construction of a direct measure of socio-economic inequality very difficult. This article proposes a simple and intuitive indirect measure. The indirect measure is used to rank the performance of 98 developing countries for the period 1990-2009. Countries which have aggressively embraced the neoliberal model display large increases in socio-economic inequality. Notable examples of such countries are: China, India, Kenya and Thailand. When compared with its neighbours (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka), India emerges as the worst performer in South Asia.
No Blank Cheque for Resistance
November 1, 2011
By Gautam Navlakha
A spate of crackdowns and arrests made by the security agencies in last two years in UP, Bihar, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Orissa, West Bengal does suggest that Maoists have suffered setback, but it also shows how rapidly Maoists had spread in different parts of India! While not everyone arrested was a Maoist, there is no doubt that they had managed to spread to urban areas as well as having made sizable gains in the countryside. Their worst critics were proved wrong in claiming that their politics was leading nowhere. In Jangalmahal region of West Bengal they had managed to break the shackles and emerge as a strong fighting force of the people, just as they did in Dumka (Jharkhand). But they are weaker today than they were a few years ago. This needs to be explained.
Revolts in Syria: Tracking the Convergence Between Authoritarianism and Neoliberalism
October 16, 2011
By Omar S. Dahi and Yasser Munif. Originally written on September 5, 2011
With the popular revolt in Syria entering its sixth month, it is looking more evident that the current regime in Damascus is in its final stages. While the regime continues to cling to power and brutally suppress the protest movement, it is also mobilising two of its main credentials : an ostensibly anti-imperialist, or resistant, ideology and its social welfare state economic model. While there has been some attention given to the first issue in the on-going debates , this essay examines the latter issue in order to question the regime’s economic trajectory and better shed light on the economic aspect of the revolt.
Tribals and Green Governance: Forest Rights Act, 2006
October 16, 2011
By Debasree De. The author is a UGC Junior Research Fellow at Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
The profit motive and integration into larger global capital markets drive the Indian State’s tribal and forest development programmes. The laws and the “new welfare models” are used by the State to retain its authority, power and supremacy over resources, alienate people from their land and way of life, and create and sustain capital markets. The governmental strategies, ominously identical to innumerable development interventions of the recent past have proven to be completely disastrous for the tribals and have completely failed as an approach to forest conservation. The sceptics further argue that visibly engaged in the path of development as India is today, contemplation and implementation of various ‘development’ projects for mining, dams, establishment of special economic zones, etc. will be on the rise and that can only mean that there will be more cases of displacement leading to further expropriation and pauperization of the non-elite tribal people. Pro-poor institutional reform may well resemble scaffolding, of which the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 is a plank.
Misplaced Loyalties: ‘Pink Left’ Countries and Sri Lanka
October 1, 2011
By Karthick RM. The author is a freelance writer based in Chennai
“How long yet will the madness of despots be called justice, and the justice of the people barbarity or rebellion? How tenderly oppressors and how severely the oppressed are treated!”
-Maximillien Robespierre
The informal discussion held in Geneva on the 21st of September regarding Canada’s proposal to debate the outcome of Sri Lanka’s ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’ (LLRC) was revealing on the position of various countries that participated.
Jiten Marandi - The Fate of an Openly Political Cultural Activist
September 18, 2011
by Prasant Haldar (Translated by Amit Basole)
[Jiten Marandi is a cultural activist from Jharkhand and also one of the secretaries of Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners. He was arrested in 2008 and accused by the police of being involved in the murder of 20 villagers, including the son of former Jharkhand chief […]
Sowing Confusion: The Seductive Charm of Fighting Corruption
September 13, 2011
By Gautam Navlakha
It would be churlish to dismiss Team Anna’s mass mobilization and its assertion of our collective right to protest, in support of freedom of expression. More so in view of the fact that chances have significantly brightened for the passage of a Lokpal Act by the 15th parliament, having waited four decades, since 1968. However, it would be naïve not to recognise that corruption is not a life and death matter for most Indian people fighting for their right to live in dignity or fighting for their right to life in regions where war goes on against our own people, in 136 out of 626 districts in India. Is corruption the fundamental issue that subsumes under it answers to all our woes? Can fighting corruption lift people out of poverty? End oppression? Resolve struggle against land grab? Help ascertain will of the people through referendum in J&K? Bring the war to an end in Manipur or halt “Operation Greenhunt’? Stop mining juggernauts from gaining from the war against our own people in nine states? End the persecution of minorities at the hands of Hindutva terror?
People’s Movements in Jharkhand: The Story of Potka
September 9, 2011
By Anindya Dey
“Sakchi and Kalimati were Santhal-Bhumij villages before the Tata steel plant was set up,’’ said a visibly flustered Harish Bhumij. “No one even cares to find out what happened to those people who were uprooted from their ancestors’ land!”
It was a sparkling winter morning in Roladih - a remote village in the Potka subdivision of East Singhbhum district, Jharkhand, as we sat talking to a large group of people in the village-center. The conversation hovered around issues of displacement of adivasis, the recent imprisonment of Binayak Sen and Mahasweta Devi’s visit to Roladih and nearby Kalikapur a few months back.
Private Nation, Public Funds: The Case of the Foreign Education Providers (Regulation of Entry and Operation) 2010 Bill
September 9, 2011
By Nandini Chandra
It is quite remarkable that the word “national” finds just one mention in the Standing Committee Report on the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of entry and operation) Bill 2010 (henceforth SCR) just tabled in the Parliament on 2 August 2011. One would imagine that the word could be the cornerstone of deliberation for such a bill, stressing regulation and moderation of foreign education providers (henceforth FEPs). In an earlier draft of the bill 2007, there is reference to “the cultural and linguistic sensibilities of the people of India”. The FEPs are urged to “not offer a course of study which has a context adversely affecting the sovereignty and integrity of India”. However, this entire section is deleted from the amended bill. We know this because the SCR makes a note about it and recommends that it be restored. And yet, it too fights shy of using national arguments to bring in tighter quality control. Why has the national suddenly lost its relevance?
The Neoliberal Revolution
September 7, 2011
by Anand Teltumbde
Expectedly, the high pitched media supported Anna anshan at Ramlila ground has come to an end with the Parliament passing a unanimous resolution as dictated by the team Anna. The three conditions that the lower bureaucracy should be within the Lokpal’s ambit, Lokayuktas in states should be brought in through a central legislation […]
Gobindpura, Punjab: Fact-finding Report on Land Acquisition by Poena Power Company
August 30, 2011
This report has been prepared by the Democratic Front Against Operation Green Hunt Punjab
Background
Gobindpura – a small village of Mansa district in Punjab is in shackles. All the fundamental rights of its people – Right to speak and expression, Right to organize & struggle, Right to free movement & carry put their profession and calling, have been crippled under the jackboots of the police. Their lands and houses have been expropriated and handed over to Poena Power Company after putting up barbed wire fencing around these. When they protest against this, the police pounce upon them. Women and little girls are assaulted, beaten up and huddled in police stations. There are police barricades all around the village, so that these people can not show their injuries to outside world, could not express their grief of being rendered landless and houseless, so that none from other villages comes to support them, to raise his voice in their favor, to console them. When farmers, khet-mazdoors and justice loving people from different parts of Punjab move in their support, they are attacked with lathis and guns, the fields and roads are drenched in blood.
Listening to the Elders at Keepers of the Water V Conference
August 30, 2011
By Radha D’Souza
Keepers of the Water in Lac Brochet
Lac Brochet is just 17 degrees below the Arctic Circle, a small dot on the map by Lake Brochet after which it is named; a place where the horizon appears to be within walking distance, where ink blue skies spread like a roof-top above your heads, where life ambles on and follows the rhythms of nature to the extent that is humanly possible for people subjected by a New World to a new cosmology, new systems of knowledge and new institutions for over a century and half. Lac Brochet is home to under a thousand Dene people, one of the many hundreds of indigenous peoples of Canada. Like the Adivasis of India, and many indigenous peoples around the world, the Dene people of Canada face renewed threats to their existence as nation and people. Like canaries in coalmines, the Dene people sense impending danger to the natural environment and with it the conditions that make human life possible. That much was clear at the Keepers of the Water V conference in Lac Brochet, Manitoba, Canada held from 10-14 August 2011, a conference where elder after elder, supported by walking sticks and wheel chairs, spoke of the impending environmental and social disaster they saw coming.
Video: People’s Movements in India - Lalgarh and Beyond - Partho Ray at MIT
August 24, 2011
This video in 4 parts features a presentation by Partho Sarathi Ray at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on July 17th 2011. The event was sponsored by Sanhati and Alliance for Secular and Democratic South Asia.
Where are the Popular Classes and How can the Anti-Corruption Movement be Radicalized?
August 23, 2011
This portmanteau article consists of two contributions on the anti-corruption issue:
1. Where are the popular classes? - Saroj Giri
2. How the Anti-Corruption Movement can be Radicalized - Deepankar Basu
In the Eye of the Storm: Women in Jharkhand Facing Operation Greenhunt
August 18, 2011
This investigation by Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS), a non-funded group, follows a similar publication by the same group on the assault on Adivasi women in Orissa, published previously on Sanhati - Ed.
Celebrating Women: from Mothers Day to International Women’s Day
August 18, 2011
By Judith Ezekiel, maître de conference, Université de Toulouse le Mirail, Visiting Professor, Wright State University
How do we celebrate women in a world in which male domination is the rule? Indeed, can we celebrate women when the category “woman” has exploded? This paper compares two different secular holidays: International Women’s Day (IWD) and Mother’s Day in its French and U.S. incarnations. While both holidays have tortuous histories, used and abused, I argue that the former can be, and has been (re)claimed by feminists around the world as a holiday with potential positive impact for women and feminism, whereas the latter is irremediably beyond redemption and antagonistic to women’s interests.
Sri Lanka, Eelam Tamils and the Ethical Crime
August 18, 2011
By Karthick RM
The author is affiliated to the Delhi Tamil Students Union. He is a freelance writer and lives in Chennai.
Sound, it can be said, is relative to the silence that precedes it. Deeper the silence, louder the noise. There was indeed relative silence in the world on the Sri Lankan war and the Eelam Tamils’ struggle, a silence that benefited a fascist state the most. The ‘Killing Fields’ video [available here] of Channel 4 came with a devastating bang and exposed to the world the horror that was Sri Lanka’s ‘war on terror’. While the news was already old for Tamil activists, something that many have been writing about for long, the powerful visuals of the 48 minute documentary created shock, especially among the ruling elites of Sri Lanka.
Judging the Judgment: Supreme Court on Salwa Judum
July 29, 2011
By Bela Bhatia
In this season of positive judgments, the recent Supreme Court order in the Salwa Judum case bolsters our confidence in the judiciary. Written in an easy style, the judgment has many parts which warm one up, as one does in the company of the like-minded. A full reading makes one concur, even applaud, but on quieter consideration some gaps register and call for a comment.
Peoples’ Health Movement in India: Looking Back at Dalli Rajahara - Achievements and Problems
July 29, 2011
After the murder of Shankar Guha Niyogi in 1991, newspapers were flooded with reports of Shaheed Hospital and Shramik Swasthya Andolan. Doctors and health workers in many parts of India, particularly in West Bengal, followed the lead given by the Shaheed Hospital after that. Now, once again people are expressing interest about Shaheed Hospital. The reason is that the person convicted for life under black laws by the Raipur district court on 29th December 2010, is an honourable staff who had been associated with the hospital from 14th May 2001 to 20th May 2009 – doctor and human rights activist, Dr. Binayak Sen.
The Universal Right to Health in India
July 29, 2011
By Binayak Sen (translated by Priyanka Srivastava from SEHAT AUR SAMAJ, Volume 1, June-August, 2011)
In India, the debate over right to health has reached a sensitive and complicated juncture. The provisioning of health care in the country displays acute disparities. Although the rich have recourse to a flourishing international medical tourism and sophisticated bio-medical technologies, the poor cannot even avail basic health-care facilities. Besides showing the lack of adequate facilities, the health condition of common people is reflective of the dismal state of the broader markers of public health. For instance, adequate food, clean drinking water, and sanitation are still not available to the numerous impoverished inhabitants of the country. Ever since economic reforms took off in the early 1990s, the per capita annual food consumption has gone down drastically. The findings of the recent National Family Health Survey (2005-2006) show that the decrease in child mortality rates has slow down enormously. The Survey provides equally shocking evidence of malnutrition among children. It amply proves that a market-oriented economy leads to deprivation and therefore, creates public health problems.
Why do Post-Colonial Countries Fail?
July 29, 2011
In a recent paper, Raghuram Rajan, ex-Chief economist of IMF and an economic adviser to the PM of India, analyses continual political and economic failure of countries in many parts of the world. The paper entitled “Failed States, Vicious Cycles, and a Proposal” attributes this failure to a host of endogenous causes plaguing such states [1]. The paper proposes that the populace of such states might consider democratically electing foreigners with known credentials in governance.
The Post-Mao Chinese Left: Navigating the Recent Debates
July 16, 2011
By Zhun Xu. Guest contributor, Sanhati. The author is a member of the Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
This year saw an unprecedented rise in political fights among the Chinese leftists. An outside observer might surprisingly discover such big differences on the “left” when all of the major leftist online forums began publishing harsh political polemics from opposing camps. Various issues are discussed, but the practical political stake is whether the left should be a political ally of the current CCP leadership or not, i.e. political program of a united leftist camp. One group, which mostly posts on one of the largest online leftist forum in China (Utopia, or wu you zhi xiang), has been a long supporter of the government and tries to consolidate the leftists under its pro-CCP flag and advocate reforms under current regime to “restore socialism”; while other groups, mostly publishing on relatively smaller online forums, take a different stance and argue that socialism cannot be built under the current capitalist state. The pro-CCP people accused other groups as “extremists”, and their opponents also called them “reactionary and opportunist”.
Maruti Suzuki Workers Strike: A Report from Gurgaon
July 16, 2011
From 4th to 17th of June, 2011 around 2,000 young workers engaged in a wildcat sit-down strike at Maruti Suzuki factory in Manesar [1]. With the following text we hope to contribute to the necessary debate about this important strike and invite friends and comrades, particularly in Delhi area, to share their experiences and views. Before we go into chronological details of the strike we try to provide a rough political summary.
Discussing Solidarity with the People of India
July 15, 2011
By Jan Myrdal
The following is the text of a speech given in London on June 12, 2011 by Jan Myrdal at a public meeting of International Campaign Against War on the People in India. It is a fairly comprehensive and accurate account of the situation in India and the response of the western press -Ed.
Fourth Letter From Peoples’ Committee Against Police Atrocities
July 15, 2011
This letter from the PCAPA is dated July 20, 2010, and is chronologically the fourth in a series of six letters. The other five have been published on Sanhati previously - Ed.
Discussions on the release of political prisoners - Whose committee is it ?
July 4, 2011
[The following is a discussion stemming from the recent article by Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri, published in his regular column, concerning the demand for the release of political prisoners in West Bengal. - Ed]
The Striking Workers at Lumtex Mill, West Bengal
June 28, 2011
By Sharmistha Choudhury, Uttaran. Translated by Siddhartha Mitra, Sanhati
Sanhati has followed the struggle of workers at Lumtex Engineering Pvt.Ltd., West Bengal, and translated a number of articles emanating from the ground. For example, this article, from 2009, gives a background to the struggle: “Lumtex continues to be a jute mill where 2,300 workers are well past the age of retirement. The management has not cleared their gratuity dues for the last 10-15 years and forces old, feeble, ailing workers to work at a measly rate of Rs. 100 per day. Loomtex is also a mill where the Provident Funds accounts of the workers have not been audited since 1997. Sangrami Mazdoor Union, newly formed by workers, has been agitating for clearance of the due provident fund and gratuity of since January 2008.”
The present article was published in Uttaran, and gives an update, current as of February 2011, of the struggle. Click here for the original Bengali version [PDF] »
Understanding Exploitation in Rural Bihar: A Note
June 23, 2011
By Anirban Kar
Even in this era of finance and globalization rural land ownership still occupies a central position in political economy of India. Peoples’ resistance, be it in Sompeta or in Narayanpatna, has revolved around similar aspirations; that of secured ownership of land. On the other hand, opposition to tenancy reform in Bihar and disbanding of Amir Das commission investigating Laxmanpur Bathe massacre show how desperate big landowners are to hold on to their privileges.
Overview of Coal Mining in India: Investigative Report from Dhanbad Coal Fields
June 21, 2011
[This is an investigative report on the coal mining industry in Dhanbad-Jharia belt, including a very detailed analysis of the politics and socioeconomics of the industry and the region where it is located - Ed.]
20 Suicide Attempts a Day - Tirupur, Tamil Nadu: Textile Workers in a Globalised Workplace
June 18, 2011
The Tirupur Report was prepared by a group of Delhi students, and presented at a discussion meeting held in Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi on 22 May, 2011
(Following reports of suicides of workers of Tirupur we formed a ‘Committee Of Concerned Citizen-Students n Youth’ and sent a ‘fact finding team’ to Tirupur in Tamil Nadu in March. Here are its observations.)
The reports of workers suicides from Tirupur were unconscionable. Here was this boom town in Tamil Nadu spinning, knitting and tailoring its way to prosperity and amid all this there were the suicide stories. Here was a truly globalised workplace which supplied apparel to all the big global brands – Walmart, C&A, Diesel, FILA, Reebok et al. It wasn’t a place where cotton had failed and the cotton producing farmers with no way to fend themselves had committed suicide as in Vidarbha. Herecotton was gold. With exports touching 12000 crore rupees and more, fortune dogged the heels of Tirupur. Here was a town showing us what entrepreneurship meant. What was a small hosiery, mainly undergarment, manufacturing centre in the 1970s went on to become a leading exporter of garments in the globalizing decades setting a scorching developmental pace. Suicides at such a place were a baffling phenomenon.
Video: The anti-POSCO Struggle and Beyond: Biju Mathew on SEZs, Mineral Exploitation and Land Grab
June 14, 2011
Prof. Biju Mathew is with the Mining Zone People’s Solidarity Group (MZPSG)
This talk was hosted by Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia and Sanhati. May 2011 at MIT, Boston, USA. The talk gives a first hand report on the unconstitutional neoliberal land grab, mineral exploitation, and ecological devastation and the people’s resistance in Orissa, India. Biju Mathew also describes his experiences in illegal mining in Andhra Pradesh and comments on SEZs (particularly in Raigad, Maharashtra).
Recorded and edited by Paul Malachi, Sanhati
List of Victims of Operation Green Hunt in Chattisgarh since August 2009
June 13, 2011
The victims of operation Green Hunt that has been going on over vast stretches of central India have been veritably unknown to us, lost in the statistics of “so many killed” or “so many missing”. It does not matter to the government which as a rule does not count the dead bodies of its enemies. Neither does it matter to the media of shining India whether some adivasi girl with a strange name is killed or raped in some equally strangely-named village in some forest of central India. That these are people with names, with parents, brothers, sisters, wives or husbands, with hopes and aspirations like everyone else, is all lost in the reporting in the inside pages of newspapers or in the scrollbars of 24 hour news channels. After all, we do not name the animals that are hunted. When the hunter sometimes get killed, like when the 76 CRPF jawans were killed in Chattisgarh, the state and the media wakes up to its patriotic duty, declares them as martyrs and writes human interest stories on them and their families, carefully omitting the fact that these jawans are also sent as cannon fodder to kill their fellow citizens to clear the ground for rapacious multinational corporations and the ruling class of India that serves them. This hue and cry over the killing of police and paramilitary forces and the so called special police officers carefully hides the real killers of the adivasi people of India. After all, doesn’t the state have the license to kill a Maoist insurgent or an adivasi boy out in the forest to collect mahua flowers?
J&K: When Personal Becomes Political
June 4, 2011
By Sahba Husain and Gautam Navlakha
Sahba’s account:
As our flight began to descend at Srinagar airport on 28th afternoon, Gautam drew my attention to what lay beneath: the landscape around the airport was dotted with army camps; the green rooftops glistening in bright daylight of a mild summer. We wondered how much more land would thus be acquired by a force whose presence is not only an eyesore but a formidable threat to all who live in their midst. But we were arriving here for a trek in the mountains of North Kashmir and hardly able to contain our sense of joy and excitement; despite the lingering discomfort and anguish at what we had just seen from a window in the sky…a grave reminder that we were about to land in one of the most militarized zones, although a familiar one. We have been returning here for any number of years; a little over two decades for Gautam and half of it in my case.
An Aesopian Tale
May 31, 2011
By T. Manolakos
The ‘American Idol’ was brought before the people of the United States in the wake of the Bin Laden affair. This Idol was a cold Nietzschean monster, presenting us with many lies. “I, the national state, am the people” was one of its favourite lies. Alas, this national state lies in many languages. Whatever it says, it lies; whatever it has, this is stolen. Just note how this national state attempted to devour the masses following the death of this Bin Laden. This idol likes to sun itself in the sunshine of good conscience. It will give you everything if you worship it, and no doubt in the wake of the Bin Laden affair, it demands to be worshiped [1].
Tearing Through the Water: Evaluating the environmental and social consequences of POSCO project in Odisha, India
May 28, 2011
A Study prepared at the request of POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samithi, Jagatsinghpur District, Odisha
by
Leo F. Saldanha and Bhargavi S. Rao
Environment Support Group
Environmental, Social Justice and Governance Initiatives
Click here for full report [PDF, English, 2.59 MB] »
This study is an effort to deeply enquire into the circumstances and the basis for the approval of the mega POSCO project in Odisha. An array of historical evidence is surveyed to appreciate the rich biodiversity of the Jagatsinghpur region over time and the nature of relationships between communities and forests. On this basis, the environmental and social impact information of POSCO’s steel-power-port components is critiqued to expose the fact that regulatory agencies could not have known anything of the short term and long term impacts of the project on the basis of the information that the company supplied to them. This report exposes the disastrous consequences of locating this mega venture in a region known to be the amongst the most vulnerable to frequent cyclonic activity in the world.
Video: Land-grab in India - Medha Patkar, David Harvey
May 24, 2011
Event: April 23, 2011 at Alwan for the Arts, sponsored by
Association for India’s Development - New York Chapter
Sanhati
South Asia Solidarity Initiative
The Center for Place Culture and Politics (CUNY)
Neoliberalism and the New Gilded Age: The Wealth Pyramid in the US
May 23, 2011
by Ramaa Vasudevan
An observer of US politics would be struck by the absurdity of the US Congress scuttling a proposal to let the Bush tax breaks expire for households with incomes over $250,000, as part of the deal for letting unemployment insurance be extended, at a time when most American people are still struggling with […]
Land Acquisition in Manipur: Perspectives on Lei-Ingkhol village and the Capital/Capitol Complex
May 22, 2011
The Manipur[1] State cabinet decision, dated 16 December 2011, to acquire land at the cost of the Lei-Ingkhol village (village), in addition to the already allotted 12.40 acres of land in the Mantripukhri area to construct components of the controversial Capital/ Capitol Complex,[2] subsequent forced surveys under the protection of police and land acquisition notifications[3] has created tension and unrest in Lei-Ingkhol.[4] Lei-Ingkhol villagers, as they had carried out continuous protest from February 2005 to September 2006, resolved to defend their village from any form of displacement. Although the Capital Complex issue has not been seriously taken up by bourgeoisie intellectuals in Manipur, the Lei-Ingkhol resistance to defend their village invokes deeper question about the ongoing trend of displacement forcibly carried out in the name of development in several parts of Manipur. On the other hand, the consistent resistance by Lei-Ingkhol suggests for analysing the dialectics of resistance and counter-resistance between forces respectively representing the oppressed and the oppressors within the structural parameter of an overarching exploitative political economy.
Assembly Elections in West Bengal: A Litany of Lies by the So-called “Left”
April 24, 2011
By Partho Sarathi Ray
The West Bengal elections are appearing to be fought in the intellectual space as much as in the cities and villages of West Bengal. As the CPI(M)-led Left Front increasingly stares at the scenario of being out of power after thirty four years of ruling West Bengal, the desperation of its leaders is increasingly portrayed by the ridiculous pronouncements and daily antics of Gautam Deb, the CPI(M) central committee member and West Bengal housing minister, the architect of the land grab that is Rajarhat, and the person the CPI(M) has put its reliance on to combat the opposition. At the same time, the CPI(M) has mobilized its intellectual brigade, in India and abroad, to write thoughtful pieces expounding on the “virtues” of Left Front rule in West Bengal, and lamenting the fate of the state that is fast going out of their grips. One such preposterous piece recently appeared in the CPI(M)-run website www.pragoti.org, written by US-based academic and CPI(M) apologist Vijay Prashad. In a desperate attempt to stand reality on its head, the author has presented a litany of lies about the record of CPI(M) rule in West Bengal, and has tried to anoint the CPI(M) with the mantle of the “Left” in India, a mantle that has been torn to shreds by its abject adoption of neo-liberal capitalism as its governing policy in West Bengal.
Chronicle of a Bail Foretold
April 20, 2011
By Saroj Giri
Till very recently it was not possible to discuss Binayak Sen without referring to the corporate land grab and state repression in Chattisgarh. Somehow the Salwa Judum, the displacement of thousands of adivasis and the Maoist movement would come in the picture. Above all, what would come out is Sen’s work in the specific context of the suffering of the adivasis. Indeed soon after the bail order was granted, it came so naturally for Sen’s beaming wife to state that he will of course go back to resume his work in Chattisgarh.
Sexual Violence in Adivasi Inhabited Regions: Assault of an Adivasi Woman by Orissa Security Personnel in Gajapati District
April 15, 2011
Below, we select the Background and Conclusions from a Fact Finding Report by Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS). This report sheds light on the general nature of sexual violence inflicted upon the Adivasi inhabited areas of East-Central India, and the challenges faced by these communities - Ed.
An allegation of rape of an adivasi woman by security and police forces was brought to the notice of WSS by local activists who had been approached by the survivor’s father. The incident is said to have taken place on February 12, 2010 in Gajapati district in Orissa, but local activists came to know about it in August. The arrest and rape of this woman has largely gone unreported, providing impetus for the present investigation. An all-India four-woman fact finding team went to Gajapati district in Orissa on September 30 to October 1 2010 to investigate the alleged rape.
Click here to read full WSS report [PDF, English] »
The MIT Videos - India: The War Within - Deepankar Basu and Gautam Navlakha
April 15, 2011
Today the Indian state is involved in armed conflict, covert and overt, in 235 of the total of 636 districts of the country. These include not only Kashmir and the North-Eastern states but also, since 2009, several states in the forested regions of East-Central India.
Recently, Sanhati and the Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia co-sponsored a special event at MIT to discuss these pressing issues with Gautam Navlakha, a leading human rights and civil liberties activist. The discussion was moderated by Prof. Deepankar Basu, Dept. of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who also provided a macroeconomics introduction.
Crying Wolf - Are We Over-counting the Number of Poor People in India?
April 15, 2011
By The Sanhati Collective
Abstract: The well-known and growing discrepancy between average consumption expenditure computed from the National Sample Survey Organization data and those reported by the National Account Statistics is probably reflecting the growing under-reporting by the rich and over-reporting by the poor. Once this is corrected in a meaningful manner, even the conservative estimates of the poverty ratios by the Planning Commission might increase, not decrease as supporters of neoliberalism claim; the reported measures of inequality will go up unambiguously.
The Union Budget 2011-12: Consolidation of a Pernicious Trend
April 3, 2011
By Sanhati Collective
Introduction
It is a truism that statistics can as much hide as reveal the phenomenon under study. For the presentation of Indian Budget, of course, the concealment is not accidental, it is by design. Behind the pronouncement that MGNREGS wages will be inflation-indexed, for instance, is the unsaid fact that total allocation under the scheme is being reduced. Behind the announcement of an additional 400 crore rupees for spreading the green revolution in eastern India is the unstated fact of fund cuts for agricultural sector. But how much is 400 crores rupees anyway? Recall that last year the revenue loss to the exchequer, courtesy the bonanza given to software technology parks in corporate tax exemptions, was eleven and half thousand crores. For Special Economic Zones, the notional revenue loss was a little over five thousand crores. So much for the 400 crore rupees financial boost to spread green revolution in eastern India!
The Lost People of Khammam
April 3, 2011
By Siddhartha Mitra, Sanhati
Speaking about the atrocities he witnessed during the time he spent in the concentration camp in Auschwitz, Primo Levi said - “Today, at this very moment as I sit writing at a table, I myself am not convinced that these things really happened.”
As I write these words, sitting in the middle of a busy city, far from the forests of Khammam, I find it hard to believe that I actually saw the camps in the forests there. That the insensitivity to other human beings, so grotesquely played out in the Nazi concentration camps, could occur in a more sinister manner, outside of history books, in todays world. I grew up with the basic belief in human compassion to other humans, and with the notion that the state is an entity, notwithstanding its defects, has the objective of the betterment of all in its territory - a collective reflection of the individual compassion of human beings. What I saw in the forests stood in stark opposition to that understanding.
Video: Gautam Navlakha Speaking at Sanhati Panel Left Movements in Contemporary India, Left Forum 2011
April 3, 2011
War Against the People, Civil Rights Movement and the China League
March 22, 2011
By Amit Bhattacharyya. The author is a Professor of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
On this occasion, I propose to speak on the war waged by the Indian state against its own people under the banner of ‘operation green-hunt’, people’s resistance for self-defence, debate within civil society and civil rights bodies on the question of application of violence by the resisting masses—whether violent struggles launched by the people are undemocratic and non-violent struggles are democratic.
The last section will dwell on problems encountered by the China League—the most important civil rights body in China in the early 1930s when the Communist Party of China(CPC) was faced with brutal repression and massacres perpetrated by the Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek. Hundreds and thousands of political prisoners were incarcerated and the China League was alleged by the state-sponsored media and the Kuomintang to be in league with the CPC. This situation is, in my opinion, somewhat similar to the present-day situation in our country. It would be educative for the civil rights bodies of our country to study the stand taken by the China League over several important issues.
Perils of a “strategic partnership” with the USA - the “Raymond Davis” affair
March 22, 2011
The early months of 2011 will surely be remembered for the spectacular mass uprisings in the Arab world. And yet, all the while that the world’s attention has been captured by these events, a much less talked about and yet highly significant story has been unfolding in Pakistan. This editorial from the Analytical Monthly Review outlines in detail the “Raymond Davis Affair.” The story of a CIA operative who shot and killed two young men in broad daylight on a busy Lahore street. His escape vehicle, in a bid to spirit him away ran over another man, a street trader, and killed him too. James Bond anyone? This article outlines the lies and deception of the US establishment as it tried to do damage control by claiming that Davis was a “diplomat” and hence had immunity from prosecution by Pakistani courts.
The Trial of Binayak Sen and Few Disturbing Questions
March 15, 2011
Selected Articles from Gurgaon Workers News, March 2011
March 13, 2011
We select two articles from Gurgaon Workers News, March 2011. The first article probes the question of how urban wage work impacts on village conditions and vice versa. The second looks at India’s Medical Industrial Complex, taking the specific example of a complex called Medanta Medicity, which, according to its website, is “one of India’s largest multi-super specialty institutes located in Gurgaon”.
State Sponsored Crimes against Adivasis in Assam
March 13, 2011
By Gladson Dungdung. The author is a Human Rights Activist and Writer based in Ranchi, in Jharkhand.
Introduction:
The Adivasis of Assam, whose ancestors had settled down in the land ‘around 150 years ago’[1] after they were forcefully brought from the states of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, West Bengal and Orissa, have been facing state sponsored crimes since independence of India. They had been enjoying their rights and privileges before there were states called ‘India’ or ‘Assam’.
State sponsored crimes against the Adivasis began with the enforcement of the Indian constitution, which denied them their status as “Scheduled Tribe” though they had been enjoying the same right during British rule. Thus, their identity was either confined to the tea-leaf, which they plucked, or as outsider (migrant) labourers. Consequently, inhuman treatment was perpetrated on them by the state as well as non-state actors. The ethnic cleansing of 1996-98, Beltola incident of 2007 and force eviction of 2010 are classic examples of state sponsored crimes against Adivasis of Assam.
In fact, the state, whose prime responsibility is to protect and ensure the rights of everyone guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, has not only failed to meet its responsibilities - it has been discriminating against, exploiting and torturing the Adivasis of Assam. Ironically, the Forest Department has been carrying on eviction processes in Assam even after the enforcement of the Forest Rights Act 2006, which recognizes the rights of Adivasis over ‘the forests and forest lands’[2] from where they ensure their livelihood.
This paper examines the ground realities of state sponsored crimes against the Adivasis residing in Lungsung forest areas of Assam.
Sahai’s report on migrant workers at IIT Kanpur - A localised look at India’s informal working class
March 6, 2011
One of the most important characteristics of the political economy of contemporary India has been the continuing “informalization” of the nonfarm economy. This has meant a stagnation of formal sector employment, coupled with an explosion of informal sector jobs. The latter are marked by a lack of job security, social security, low wages and abysmal working conditions. An overwhelming majority of the Indian working class population finds itself in this informal sector.
The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK), an educational institution in north India that employs a large migrant workforce, has regularly been in the news for labour law violations. The naked class conflict between the Institute officials and contractors on the one hand, and the informal workers on the other, offers a microcosm of the increasing destitution faced by India’s working class.
An alternative account of 100 days work: Condition of Joynagar’s mowa workers
March 6, 2011
By Arijit. Translated by Koel Das and Siddhartha Mitra, Sanhati. This article appeared in ShramikShakti, Dec 2010. Click here to read the Bengali version »
Bengalis, as connoisseurs of confections, love a variety of sweetmeats such as the sandesh made with nalen gur and various ‘pitha’s prepared at home during winter. The mowa, a sweetmeat prepared from date palm jaggery (nalen gur) and puffed sugary rice, traditionally from Joynagar in South 24 Parganas district, occupies a special place [1].
Sweetmeats traditionally associated with certain locations are successful because of the easy availability of raw materials and the special knowledge and local expertise needed in preparing these sweets in bulk quantity day after day. Other renowned examples, which have become a part of the food tradition of the state, are Mollachok’s yogurt, Bardhaman’s sitabhog and mihidhana and Krishnanagar’s sarpuriya and sarbhaja.
Introduction to Sovereign are the People by Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri: A Sanhati Publication
February 25, 2011
Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri’s column at Sanhati has cast an incisive gaze at political developments, as they have unfolded over the past few years in our state and beyond.
The reason that we decided to publish the collection as a book is that it is many things – a most interesting political chronicle from a seasoned observer, as well as a lesson in faithful, intelligent writing for the political journalist. Its publication in the 2011 Kolkata book fair comes at a crucial juncture in our politics, at a time when democratic voices are under immense threat of statist persecution. Dissent has faced the fist of the police, the bureaucratic menace of the judiciary, and the intellectual admonishment of the establishment. In a climate of fear and compromise, this collection throws out a challenge to the status quo with its uncompromisingly radical outlook.
Notes on the uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East
February 15, 2011
Anatomy of the Democratic Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt
February 12, 2011
By Yasser Munif. Contributor, Sanhati.
The author is currently pursuing a PhD in Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Three weeks ago, the tyrant Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee Tunisia and today Hosni Mubarak finally resigned. For lack of better references, some intellectuals asserted that the Tunisian uprising is an offspring of the French Revolution. Evidently, such a comparison is Eurocentric and misleading as it imposes a linear narrative in which Tunisia follows in the steps of a European nation with a delay of two centuries. A socio-historical analysis of the French and Tunisian revolutions, however, demonstrates the inadequacy of such comparisons. In contrast, other observers compared these democratic revolutions to the Romania revolution of 1989. Although Ben Ali and Nicolae Ceausescu extensively utilised security apparatuses to terrorise the people and both were supported by the West, the two had different relationship with the military. The Romanian army repressed demonstrators harshly and killed many but very quickly large factions of the military stopped obeying orders and supported the toppling and execution of Ceausescu. More importantly, the Eastern European revolts announced the end of the Eastern bloc and the uncontested rise of American supremacy; the Arab revolts signal the decline of American hegemony [i].
UID - An Apolitical Enabler or a Political Tool?
February 12, 2011
By T. V. H. Prathamesh and Shiv Sethi, Sanhati
UID (aadhar) is an attempt to make a biometric data base for the entire population of India. According to the UIDAI website [1]:
Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique number which the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will issue for all residents. The number will be stored in a centralised database and linked to the basic demographics and biometric information —photograph, ten fingerprints and iris—of each individual.
On the face of it UID appears to be a technological upgrade a society undergoes periodically. The proponents of UID emphasize its technological aspect and underline its role as an apolitical enabler in providing much-needed social services to a vast section of Indian population. However, no technological ‘development’ can be assessed without understanding the social context in which it is introduced. Even on a purely technological level UID has faced strong criticism (e.g. a set of articles on Center for Internet and Society web site [2]). This article will look primarily at the social implications of UID.
Introduction to Sanhati Selections 2011
February 7, 2011
While the international business press regularly applauds India’s recent growth trajectory, it consciously shies away from looking deeper into the nature of that growth process. Political and social activists, and progressive academics have characterized this as a peculiar form of neoliberal capitalist growth, foisted on a backward social formation in the periphery of global capitalism by an unholy alliance of domestic big capital and international finance. Such a growth process, many acute observers have noted, is built on ruthless displacement, dispossession, and pauperization of the majority of the population, including, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most vulnerable sections of Indian society. As the late Arjun Sengupta so tellingly reminded us: even today about 77 percent of the Indian population spend only about 20 rupees a day on consumption expenditures. Not the new breed of cars for them, nor the fat salaries of MNCs, not even the occasional vacations to the mountains; for three-fourth of the Indian population, life remains a struggle to put adequate and nourishing food on the table, to secure decent living quarters, to get clean drinking water and electricity on a regular basis, to have access to functioning medical and educational facilities. The neoliberal growth process has largely bypassed this segment of the population. As Debarshi Das points out eloquently in his article on agricultural investments in India, the contemporary growth narrative has nothing to offer to the majority of the Indian population save trickle down homilies.
Manufacturing Sedition from Political Dissent : The Judgment against Binayak Sen
February 7, 2011
The Political Significance of Arab Turmoil
February 3, 2011
Can Pakistan become a theocratic state?
January 29, 2011
Religion, politics and the working class
By Khalid Bhatti
The author is a member of Trade Union Rights Campaign Pakistan
After the murder of Punjab Governor, Salman Taseer, many questions have been raised about the future of the country and the possible take over by religious extremist forces. A lot of material has appeared both in the local English media and international press about the rising tide of religious extremism and collapse of liberal and secular layers in Pakistan. Some articles even gave the impression that the whole country is in the grip of religious bigotry and the entire liberal and secular layers have been silenced.
The Potential of the Forest Rights Act
January 29, 2011
By Sirisha Naidu, Sanhati
Introduction
Neoliberalism in India, rather than consisting of a wholesale withdrawal of the state, has seen its rollback in some spheres and an expansion in others. In the last few decades the state has withdrawn from providing basic goods and services, but has taken a much more active role in promoting new avenues of profitable investment (e.g., those associated with free market environmentalism, facilitating the process of commodification of goods and services that were previously outside the ambit of the capitalist market, and facilitating the privatization of state property). The Indian state has therefore played an active role in original accumulation, which involves the dispossession and expropriation of land from marginalized people in rural and urban areas, as well as ensuring that adequate resources (e.g., natural resources) are available to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of capital. It is in this context that the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA), hailed as a “historic” legislation was passed.
Food Inflation and Agricultural Swaraj
January 9, 2011
By Rahul Goswami
The price of a basket of staple foods has become crippling in rural and urban India. The government’s response is to favour agri-commodity markets, greater retail investment and more technology inputs. For food grower and consumer alike, the need for genuine farm swaraj has never been greater.
Notes on a Dirty, Old Man
January 9, 2011
By Kuver Sinha, Sanhati
Dr. Binayak Sen, Kolkata businessman Pijush Guha and alleged Maoist ideologue Narayan Sanyal have recently been sentenced to life in prison by the Second Additional Sessions Judge, Raipur, Chhattisgarh. They have been convicted under Sections 124A and 120B of the Indian Penal Code, pertaining to sedition and conspiracy for sedition, as well as under CSPSA 2005, and UAPA, 1967.
It is not the purpose of the present article to comment upon the trial of Dr. Sen, the evidence accumulated against him, or even his stellar record as a “doctor of the poor” and his political work as a civil liberties activist with the PUCL. References on his political trajectory and social commitment exist in abundance, and have been in circulation for a long time. It is a testament to their self-evident nature that even his detractors think twice before casting aspersions on the seriousness of his social engagement. The fable of the good doctor who surrendered his ticket to material comfort, chose to work with the oppressed, and ultimately ended up in prison leaves very little space for believable or “reasonable” opposition. Opposition, then, has to be articulated through active negation of the major plotlines. It is the purpose of this article to restore the major plotlines to where they belong.
In Memory of K. G. Kannabiran
January 9, 2011
By Ashok Prasad and Ramaa Vasudevan, Sanhati
On December 30, 2010, K.G. Kannabiran, one of the most important voices in the civil liberties movement in India passed away. His death brought to a close over four decades of commitment to the cause of people’s rights.
Kanna, as he was affectionately called, was born in 1929 and studied in Madras University. He started his legal practice in the early sixties in Hyderabad. Kanna was influenced by left wing and progressive politics as a young man and from early on his legal practice used to believe in using the law as an instrument for peoples struggles, what he was later to term “the jurisprudence of insurgence”. His life as a civil liberties activist thus forms part of the struggle against state repression on people’s movements in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere in India.
Nisan Sammelan-2010: “Cultural Resistance: War on People in Corporate Interest” - A Report from Bhubaneshwar, Odisha
January 4, 2011
Nisan Sammelan-2010 – A Report.
By Gunjan. December, 2010
“Combating the impending corporate imperialism backed by the state along with white terrorism in the name of Operation Green Hunt, political as well as cultural resistance is the call of the time in order to protect the life and livelihood and to safeguard the rights of the poorest populace of world’s greatest democracy”, was the unanimously resolved voice of the “Nisan Sammelan-2010”, Bhubaneswar on “Cultural Resistance: War on People in Corporate Interest”.
Wikileaks Beyond Wikileaks?
December 22, 2010
By Saroj Giri
Corporate media most likely tries to buy you off only if you pose a real danger – radical and subversive to ‘power’. While attacking Wikileaks for corporate collusion, therefore, its original radical potential cannot be overlooked.
Wikileaks’ close collaboration with big corporate media (including The New York Times and Guardian) and the ‘redactions’ raise serious doubts over whether information is actually flowing freely (Michel Chossudovsky, ‘Who is Behind Wikileaks?’ Dec 13, 2010, Global Research). And yet the Wikileaks’ intervention cannot be cast away in a cynical manner – the only way to welcome it however is by saving it from Wikileaks itself, in particular from its liberal slide. Let us problematise the kind of politics or the ‘attacks on power’ which Wikileaks represents, even as stories circulate about corporate-funding and CIA-backing. Indeed one gets deeply suspicious when for example The Guardian reports that, for the hackers, ‘the first global cyber-war has begun’, ‘the first sustained clash between the established order and the organic, grassroots culture of the net’. On the other hand, for someone like Jemima Khan typical of a whole swathe of liberal supporters, Wikileaks stands for something far less dramatic. In her already apologetic piece, ‘Why did I back Assange?’, she states that it is only about ‘a new type of investigative journalism’, about freedom of information and so on. What is it really?
The Flames of Narayanpatna
December 22, 2010
Foreword by Nachika Linga
The agitation launched by the tribes, farmers and daily wagers of Narayanpatna has caught the imagination of exploited people of Odisha and India as well. The consciousness of the exploited people of Narayanpatna has been developed, culminating in the agitation, which today is an organic entity dynamic in its spirit. The land dispute, which remained unsettled for generations together, could be solved due to concerted efforts of thousands of people led by the ‘Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh’, who, in the long run, have been able to take their lands back from the landlords, what was rightfully theirs.
The Emperor’s New Cloak: Marxism, “A Rights-based Approach”, and Patnaik
December 22, 2010
By Ravi Kant
Section 1
Recently, Professor Prabhat Patnaik, well known ‘Marxist academic’ and leading theoretician of parliamentary left in India, has proposed a ‘novel’ political agenda for the socialist project. To quote his lucid words (A Left Approach to Development; EPW, July 2010) “Against the ‘means-based approach’ to development that the bourgeoisie projects, the left must project ‘a right-based approach’…the acquisition of rights on the part of the people…amounts therefore to winning crucial battles in the class war for the transcendence of capitalism”. He argues that a bourgeois society because of the spontaneity of capital can never recognise the welfare rights of workers although there could be ad-hoc provisions which can be revoked at any time. Thus, the primary task of the left involves demanding right to minimum living standard and implementing it wherever they get the state power through parliamentary politics. Patnaik envisages this as an integral part of subversion to capital and a substitute of ‘violent revolution’, which in the words of Marx ‘is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one’.
Some Aspects of Agricultural Investment in India II
December 22, 2010
By Debarshi Das, Sanhati
This is the second and concluding part of the article examining development of agrarian capitalism through the lens of capital accumulation. First part discussed changing pattern of agrarian investment in India from a macroeconomic viewpoint (http://sanhati.com/excerpted/2905/). We found that investment in agriculture has not been significant. This probably has its roots in the plummeting levels of public investment. The effect has been the preponderance of small and marginal plots which can seldom be called capitalist farm. In this second part of the article, survey of some villages in Bihar has been discussed.
The Sham of Democracy
December 21, 2010
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Movement: 25 Years of Struggle and Quest for Alternatives in Narmada Valley
December 13, 2010
By Madhuresh Kumar
The author is National Organiser, (National Alliance of People’s Movements) NAPM and can be contacted at madhuresh [at] napm-india [dot] org
In the early 1980s, when murmurs of protest were taking shape against the Sardar Sarovar Dam, no one had thought that the reverberations of ‘Narmada Bachao, Manav Bachao’ [Save Narmada, Save Humanity] would continue for nearly three decades afterwards. Narmada Bachao Andolan, the seeds of which were sown in 1985, has continued to challenge the Dam, the technocratic model of development, and kept the flag of resistance and justice afloat for the communities in the valley who are facing submergence, loss of livelihood, cultural heritage and environmental disaster.
A Note on the Current Political Situation: Some Issues and A Conclusion
December 13, 2010
By Randhir Singh
MARX SERIES No. 11. Originally published in Mainstream, August 14, 2010 and reproduced in the September 2010 issue of Analytical Monthly Review.
Abstract: The opening section of this note dealing with the most important issue in the current political situation—’the Maoist’ or the Naxal issue—sets the context for the argument that follows, which deals with issues involved in understanding and acting in this situation. I reproduce some key passages, marginally modified and compressed in one case, from my 2008 T. Nagi Reddy Memorial Lecture—now available as Indian Politics Today published by Aakar Books, New Delhi—touching upon these issues; a little reason and ability to interconnect is all that is needed to recognise the issue involved. I conclude with a brief summing up of the argument.
Sixth Letter from the Peoples’ Committee Against Police Atrocities
December 13, 2010
Sixth Letter from the Peoples’ Committee Against Police Atrocities to the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), Lalgarh Mancha, Sanhati, Gana-Pratirodh Mancha and intellectuals in support of the people.
By killing our valiant martyr Umakanto Mahato through false encounter, arresting Manoj Mahato, raping and molesting our mothers and sisters in the Jangalmahal, by torturing, arresting and murdering common people, the lumpen CPIM will not be able to win in Jangalmahal.
What does Business have to Say about Maoism? An Analysis of the FICCI Task Force Report on National Security & Terrorism
December 13, 2010
By Rahul Varman
The media seems to be agog with the ‘gravest danger’ to the Indian economy and the ‘greatest threat’ to the nation. If we look at the mainstream press, it seems that business and its interests are right at the heart of this ‘problem’. While one side seems to be proclaiming that it is business which is the victim of this conflict, the other side has been suggesting that it is business which has been instrumental in perpetrating this proxy war on the tribals and common folks.
Kashmir: Fact-Finding Report in a Season of Unabated Turmoil - Part 3
November 24, 2010
Click here to read PDF version of report [English, 0.1 MB] »
FACT FINDING TEAM TO KASHMIR: Report 3
The team comprised of academic BELA BHATIA, advocate VRINDA GROVER, journalist SUKUMAR MURALIDHARAN and activist RAVI HEMADRI of The Other Media, a Delhi based campaign and advocacy organisation, at whose initiative the effort was organised.
Kashmir: Fact-Finding Report in a Season of Unabated Turmoil - Parts 1 and 2
November 24, 2010
Click here for PDF version of report [English, 0.2 MB] »
FACT FINDING TEAM TO KASHMIR
The team comprised of academic Bela Bhatia, advocate Vrinda Grover, journalist Sukumar Muralidharan and activist Ravi Hemadri of The Other Media, a Delhi based campaign and advocacy organisation, at whose initiative the effort was organised.
Dispossess them first and then hunt them down as criminals
November 9, 2010
Development: Maladies and Remedies
November 9, 2010
By Amit Bhattacharyya
The Hindustan Times, Kolkata carried a news under the caption ‘Her cry turned to whimper’ in its issue of October 6, 2010. Some excerpts from the report are as follows: “Baby Ghatal weighed 4.5lbs when she was born. ‘We did not know there was anything wrong with that’, says her father Santosh. Most of the children born here are of the same size and weight’. ‘Here’ is Kharband village in Jawhar taluka, Thane district—155km from Mumbai’s myriad restaurants and gleaming malls—where one in three children is born malnourished. Baby lived only four weeks. Classified as severely malnourished at birth, her mother was given tonics and iron and iodine tablets to help Baby gain in strength, but they didn’t help. As the infant grew weaker… her loud cries dropped to a constant whimpering sob. The worried parents took Baby to the local health centre, where she was diagnosed with full-blown pneumonia. She was taken to hospital. At the hospital, Baby’s lungs began to shut down. She stopped breastfeeding and her body went cold. She died…on August 6”. These parents were not the only ones who lost their baby in this way. In fact, in August alone, 32 children under the age of six died in Jawahar taluka, most of pneumonia. Jawahar is a tribal area where more than 90 per cent of the 1.27lakh people living here are abysmally poor.
Ganapathy on the Current Situation of the Revolutionary Movement and Contemporary Issues: An Interview
November 9, 2010
We have received the following interview in which Ganapathy, the General Secretary of CPI (Maoist) responds to questions posed by mediapersons. This interview addresses several contemporary issues and might be considered in continuation of an earlier interview conducted by Jan Mydral and Gautam Navlakha that we published in January 2010. - Ed.
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Recently some media persons including Rahul Pandita from OPEN Magazine sent some questions to Comrade Ganapathy, the General Secretary of CPI (Maoist). The martyrdom of Politburo member and party spokesperson Comrade Azad, the continuous losses to the Central leadership of the party, the issue of talks with the government, the deluge of militant mass movements in many areas, the situation of the revolutionary movement in the urban and plain areas, party stand on contemporary issues like Kashmir people’s movement, Commonwealth games, judgment on Babri Masjid are some of the issues on which Comrade Ganapathy concentrated and gave his replies. We hope this interview would be useful to know about party’s stand and understanding in the present situation.
- CC, CPI (Maoist)
Contemporary anti-displacement struggles and women’s resistance: a commentary
November 3, 2010
By Shoma Sen
Women’s exclusion in the present model of development needs to be understood as inherent to a system that benefits from patriarchy. Seen as a reserve force of labour, women, excluded from economic activity, are valued for their unrecognized role in social reproduction. The capitalist, patriarchal system that keeps the majority of women confined to domestic work and child rearing uses this as a way of keeping the wage rates low. The limited participation of women in economic activity is also an extension of their traditional gender roles (nursing, teaching, or labour intensive jobs requiring patience and delicate skills) with wages based on gender discrimination. Largely part of the unorganized sector, deprived of the benefits of labour legislation, insecurity leads to sexual exploitation at the workplace. In the paradigm of globalization, these forms of exploitation, in export oriented industries, SEZs and service sector have greatly increased.
India: Whither Development, and for Whom?
November 3, 2010
By Kobad Ghandy
Concept of development
What does a country comprise of? Basically, it entails its land and its people. India is a vast country with over a billion population. Development of these two factors, land and people, would mean development of our country. Retardation of these two factors would entail retrogression. Of these the latter, the people, is primary, but their development can never take place at the cost of their environment. The two can and must develop in sync in a close and homogenous inter-relationship.
The Modern Occupation
November 2, 2010
This article gives a detailed historical account of the formation of Israel, preceded by a description of the current occupation. - Ed.
By Shashwat Sinha
The Middle-East is burning; it is one of the few regions of the world including some parts of Africa that has not seen peace since decades. War, violence, impoverishment, lack of any semblance of justice has become a part of the daily lives of the people in the Middle-East.
The core issue that has cast its shadow over the peace in the region is the Israel-Palestine ‘conflict’ which involves Arab population living in Palestine, Israel and neighboring countries. The ‘conflict’ is a euphemism for land grab by Israelis that started mainly in 1967 has continued till date. Palestinians have lost virtually all their land to Israel, they now live on segregated isolated dots of land completely surrounded by Israeli territories. The kind of aggression, occupation and mass-murder that Israel has perpetrated in the region is matched and preceded only by land grab and genocide that occurred in the Americas after Columbus landed on its shores. It is déjà vu in human history, where, now in today’s modern world, several centuries later, a similar story of dehumanization and dispossession of an entire indigenous population is being repeated and the US is now its major sponsor. It is compounded by the fact that it has elements of apartheid that existed in South Africa, which was for decades, again supported by the US.
Principled versus Piecemeal Approach: Repeal of AFSPA, Troops Pullout or Ending War against our People
November 2, 2010
On 2nd November 2000, Irom Sharmila Chanu of Manipur began a fast to protest against the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which allows the armed forces to repress the civilian population with complete impunity in the areas where the act is in force. Ten years down the line her fast still continues, though it is often interrupted by arrests on the grounds of ‘attempted suicide’ and ‘forced feeding’ through nose by the police. While Manipur has provided the stage for this struggle, Irom Sharmila has become a powerful symbol of protest against AFSPA and state repression all over the world. On the 10th anniversary of her heroic fast we salute her great courage and commitment to democratic rights with the following article in which Gautam Navlakha raises the debate whether our opposition should be limited to the repeal of AFSPA or the pullout of troops or should constitute a principled demand for the ending of all wars on our own people. - Ed.
Some Aspects of Agricultural Investment in India: Part I
October 28, 2010
By Debarshi Das, Sanhati
Summary: Our study is divided into two parts. In part one we examine evidence from aggregate macroeconomic data. Part two discusses a field survey we undertook in the summer of 2010 in a few villages in Bihar. The choice of villages or respondents was not based on a proper random sampling procedure. However we have tried to take as representative a sample as possible. In the second part we investigate not only whether capital formation has been taking place, we go beyond. Advantages afforded by primary data collection exercise have been exploited: causes of low/high investment have been probed as far as possible, policy implications have been attempted to be formulated.
POSCO: Report by Mining Zone Peoples’ Solidarity Group and Commentary on Report
October 27, 2010
Click here to read Iron and Steal: The POSCO-India [PDF, English, 77 pages]. Prepared by the Mining Zone Peoples’ Solidarity Group (MZPSG).
A commentary on the MZPSG report:
The POSCO story: Corporate-state collusion and ongoing peoples’ struggle
By Amit Basole and Shiv Sethi, Sanhati
Introduction
This article summarizes the recent findings of two reports on the proposed POSCO (Pohang Steel Company, an international steel conglomerate based in South Korea) project in Orissa—Mining Zone Peoples’ Solidarity Group (http://miningzone.org/) report and the report of Meena Gupta committee, appointed by the MoEF (Ministry of environment and forests). Hereafter the two reports will be referred to as the MZPSG report and the MoEF report, respectively.
The Political Geography of Special Economic Zones in India
October 27, 2010
By Partho Sarathi Ray, Sanhati
Summary: We found from the geographical distribution of SEZs in India that SEZs have been set up near the big cities, on fertile agricultural land, in coastal areas and in areas rich in water resources, and in the states where the governments have been most aggressively following neo-liberal economic policies. This dispels several myths, for example the fact that SEZs will build new infrastructure in the interior. In addition to the clusters, there are also vacua: we see how a spectrum of peoples’ struggles, ranging from the legal methods used in Goa, to the peaceful protests by the villagers of Jagatsinhpur in Orissa against the POSCO SEZ, to the armed struggle being waged in large parts of east-central India, has been able to stop the establishment of SEZs in large portions of the country.
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