Anaarkali - The saga of Bhil Tribal Adivasi Indigenous People

Lady Tarzan Cuts Timber Mafia to Size

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:56:00 +0000

Here's an inspiring story of a brave tribal woman published in the Hindustan Times

Eleven years ago, Muturkham forests, lying southeast of capital Ranchi, used to be the timber mafia’s busy workplace. No different from the rest of the state, which has lost 50% of forest cover to illegal logging in the last 10 years. Until 1999, when Muturkham’s jungle mafia met ‘Lady Tarzan'

Jamuna Tuddu, 32, a short and stout woman belonging to the Santahl tribe who had studied till Class X, led a band of 25 tribal housewives to form the Van Suraksha Samity (Forest Protection Committee) and registered it with the state forest department. The women patrolled the forests in three groups, collared illegal loggers — usually hired hands from nearby villages — and handed them over to the forest department. Word spread that the trees in Muturkham were not to be touched.

The 50-hectare forest in East Singhbhum district which had turned barren (the mafia had chopped down every tree over three metres tall) now has one lakh trees. There is a kendu, eucalyptus or acacia tree every six feet; the gap between two trees 10 years ago used to be more than 24 feet. Several species of reptiles and avians, wild boars, hares and the elephant have made this forest their home.The local initiative could well be the model for protecting the 23,60,500 hectares of Jharkhand’s rich jungle cover — the size of about 16 Delhis — from timber cartels.

Tuddu has worked as a mason as well as a beautician to supplement the family income. Her reasons for forming this committee were prompted by basic economics: there was no firewood in her kitchen.“In the summers, there was no shade. We had no firewood, no fodder for our cattle and water levels were dipping across a 15-km area,” she says. “Today, anyone caught felling trees is fined R501 and handed over to the forest department.” The amount is deposited in the Samity’s fund, utilised for community welfare work and to purchasing cell phones for better networking during patrols.Muturkham has been rewarded for its brave enterprise. A smooth road connects it with the Chakulia-Tata Main Road and an overhead water tank ensures 24-hour supply to every household. There is a well and a check dam on a hill stream. There is a school building, a generator set and machines to make leaf plates.Most of these were delivered by the forest department as a gesture of thanks for the Samity’s achievements under the World Food Program and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.Tuddu, however, does not rest on her laurels. It is 6 am and ‘Lady Tarzan’, as she is locally known, is tightening the strings of her bow in her house. A group of around 12 women, some with children in their arms, quietly assembles outside, each carrying traditional weapons and lathis for the daily patrol. Tuddu leads them to the Muturkham forests.

The Samity membership has now grown to 70 women. The youngest is Bahamayee Tuddu, 13, and the oldest is Malati Tuddu, 70. The older women guard the foothills with village dogs to prevent illegal lumberjacks from escaping. At night, some men accompany the patrol team.Tuddu’s women say their forest duties do not affect their household and farming responsibilities. The village head, Charu Charan Tuddu, says the entire village is in their debt. The forest department has adopted Muturkham as a model village.The work can be dangerous. Last November, Sister Valsa John, a 52-year-old nun from Kerala, was hacked to death with spears, clubs and axes in Pakur district for protecting tribal rights and forests. But Tuddu is not scared. Her team has so far nabbed over a dozen illegal woodcutters. “Now the summers are no longer unbearable. We have shade,” says local youth Kanu Ram Hansda, 28.Women who earlier had no mode of earning now make plates from sal leaves with hand-operated compressors and earn up to Rs 12,000-15,000 a year selling them in nearby marketplaces. The state government has recognised the committee’s achievements led by Tuddu with cash awards. Tuddu contested the panchayat polls last year for the mukhiya’s post but lost by just 18 votes. But Tuddu has a bigger job. She is the guardian of the forest.

The Original Holocaust

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:05:00 +0000

The White Settlers in the United States carried out a systematic elimination of the native indigenous peoples who had been residing there and over a period of a century killed as many as nineteen million people. This was the original holocaust and it appears that Hitler studied the techniques used by the Americans to effect this decimation of the Indian Population. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian" is what General Philip Sheridan of the U.S. Army is supposed to have stated during his campaign against the Indians in the 1870s. Sheridan carried out an extermination of the wild buffaloes which provided the sustenance to the Indians and restricted them to their reservations. The practice of confining the Indians to their reservations was similar to the ghettoisation of the jews in Europe. A documentary film vividly depicts the details of this systematic genocide with interviews with present day native american researchers and activists -
American Holocaust of Native Americans
This video clearly brings to the fore the problem of modern development being against nature and those who traditionally lived in harmony with it.

In Search of A New Horizon

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 07:42:00 +0000

The year 2011 will remain an important one in history because of the many important mass protests that took place during the year. Consequently even Time magazine has anointed the anonymous protester as its Person of the Year. The most important mass protests were indubitably those that took place in the Arab countries beginning with Tunisia and still rumbling in Syria. These mass protests were against totalitarian regimes and have resulted in the establishment of bourgeois liberal democracy in most places where they took place. So they can be termed as being equivalent to the French Revolution. However, coming as they do all of three centuries after that epoch making event the mass upsurges of the Arab Spring can hardly be labelled as revolutions but must be considered to be reformist uprisings. Especially considering the fact that bourgeois liberal democracy has not been able to really bring freedom and justice to the masses even in countries like France, England and the USA where it has been practiced for quite some time now. In fact all these countries are seeing mass protests of one kind or another against the depredations of modern capitalism.
The Occupy movement in the USA is also something to be noted. It started off earlier with the Spanish youth who were the first to catch on to the Arab fever and occupy the city centres in Barcelona and Madrid. Later the American youth took heart from this and initiated the Occupy Wall Street movement which soon spread to other locations across the world. The fever later spread to Russia also as people came on to the streets to protest against what they felt was a rigged election in their country.
Closer home we had the India Against Corruption movement for the enactment of a strong centralised Ombudsman legislation. Beginning in an obscure way in April it very soon took on mass proportions and garnered very good media support to be able to pressurise the government into bowing to its demands initially. However, the end of the year saw this movement losing steam and not being able to maintain the same level of mobilisation that it had achieved earlier resulting in the Ombudsman legislation ultimately not being enacted. In fact the possibility now is that a weak legislation will finally come through in the new year.
Overall despite all these movements across the world the centralised state system and economy still rule the roost and not much has changed. Even in the Arab countries, political and economic power still remain in the hands of an elite. In Europe and the USA, the substantially unjust financial system and the centralised political governance that backs it remain unscathed and well ensconced.
This obviously brings to the fore the question as to why these mass protests have not been able to bring about any fundamental changes. The answer is that the centralised systems are very powerful and are able to wear out the mass protests which are more or less spontaneous. In the case of the Occupy movement in fact there is a stated aversion to getting organised and structured because of its anarchist fundamentals. In the case of the Arab movements, the leadership that has emerged has plumped for the establishment of bourgeois liberal democracy rather than look for something more radical and democratic.
The case of the IAC movement in India is even more quixotic. Their demand for a strong Ombudsman was well within the liberal democratic framework and voiced because its main protagonists had earlier seen the failure of the Right To Information Act to rein in corruption. However, the belief that a strong Ombudsman Act would be implemented even if it was enacted is a naive one. In fact in India any legislation or policy favouring the poor gets implemented only if there is pressure from the masses and even after that not very well. As things have turned out the political mainstream has refused to enact the strong centralised Ombudsman legislation that the IAC is pushing for. However, the IAC too has lost steam suddenly as it has not been able to muster the kind of mass support that it had earlier and is unable again to pressurise the political establishment to bow to its demands. It would be worthwhile to ponder on the reasons for this subsequent loss of support.
The mass support that had been mobilised by the IAC earlier was a spontaneous one spurred by extensive media coverage and covert support from the Sangh Parivar. Instead of building on this spontaneous mass turnout by putting in place a cadre based organisation built around a coherent programme of action the IAC then went about promoting a personality cult around Anna Hazare and its leading members engaged in frivolous activities like campaigning to make a Congress candidate lose in a peripheral by-election. The core group of the IAC is an amorphous one and soon there came to the surface contradictions between its members with different people talking in different political languages. Moreover, the Sangh Parivar having used the IAC to embarrass the Congress then launched its own anti-corruption campaign and at the same time went about ensuring that a strong Ombudsman legislation did not in fact come about. This time round it has forbidden its cadre from taking part in the IAC campaigns. The media too has now become lukewarm after there was considerable criticism of the way in which it became a party to the IAC campaign rather than being an objective reporter of events. The IAC this time had announced a nationwide "Jail Bharo" campaign and had claimed that more than a lakh people had confirmed that they would court arrest in favour of the Jan Lokpal Bill. The coordinator of the IAC in Mumbai had even gone to the extent of announcing that they would apply to the Guinness's Book of World Records to get them to cover the event! However, all this was going on through the internet and mobile messaging without any hardcore grassroots work. Eventually the expected mass turnout did not materialise and the IAC had to call off its agitational programme.
Thus, what all these mass movements of the year gone by have underlined is the need for long term grassroots mobilisation and the building up of an organisation with a clear ideology and programme of action that can sustain a long drawn campaign against the centralised state system. The campaign has to be a positive one and there has to be democracy within the organisation instead of the present cabalic character of the core group of the IAC. We need to search for new horizons instead of trying to go for easy solutions because there are none.

Never Say Die

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 11:44:00 +0000

The struggle of the Bhilalas of the villages bordering the Narmada river in Alirajpur and Badwani districts of Madhya Pradesh against their unjust submergence by various dams on the Narmada and its tributaries continues. Here is a report from the struggling bravehearts who are fighting it out once again by taking the attack to the government.
Undeterred by the biting winter cold, the Sardar Sarovar (SSP) and Jobat dam affected adivasi oustees successfully completed three full weeks (21 days) of their indefinite action at the Agricultural and Seed Production Farm, Jobat where they have occupied and been cultivating government-owned
land. Except for the Alirajpur District Collector, who has been trying to take forward the rehabilitation process, no responsible official from the Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA), Narmada Control Authority
(NCA) or the state government has cared to respond till now. It is well known that there are hundreds of adivasi families affected by both the projects in Alirajpur district and Badwani district (SSP), but
none of them have been rehabilitated till date with cultivable and irrigable land as per legal and judicial stipulations. After 2 decades of litigation, dialogue with and agitation before the state and central
authorities and utter non-compliance with the binding Tribunal Award and the Supreme Court’s Judgements, the SSP oustees have resorted to this ‘Zameen Haq Satyagraha’, as a last resort, wherein they have occupied and are cultivating the seed farm land.
Fearing earlier strictures passed by the High Court for violating the ‘right to peaceful agitation’ of the oustees through brutal lathi-charge, the state government has so far not shown the temerity to use force or even any other means to ‘convince’ the oustees to vacate the land. However, the government has not been totally ambivalent as well. The administration has cut-off power and water supply within the Farm and the people have been living in the dark all through. Lack of electricity was a means for the government to frustrate the attempt of the oustees to cultivate & irrigate the land and destroy the maize and wheat crop. However, the people have innovatively decided to intensify their occupation over the land and have started cultivating native vegetables and greens which require less water.
Earlier in the week, the Chief Minister, Mr. Shivraj Singh Chauhan on his visit to Alirajpur told the press that “Law will take its own course. Land would be given where it is available and where it is not, it is ‘legal’ to give cash compensation. This is as per law and judicial orders. People have a right to demonstrate peacefully, but this is certainly not a right approach of the oustees to agitate”. After 15 years of gross neglect, illegal submergence of land, crop loss, dire poverty, hunger, malnourishment, loss of dignity and even death of a generation of elders, seeking cultivable land for years, what else can the oustees do? What other‘right approach’ do they take up ? Has the CM and the Government complied with law? Is this the treatment that will be meted out to those believe in the legal system? Is this Rule of Law?, we are compelled to ask.
Stung by the CM’s response, the oustees, asserted their right to life and right to land on the ‘Human Rights Day, and have decided to intensify their actual occupation and cultivation over the entire expanse of the Seed Farm and also to other locations, wherever cultivable government land is available. The people are always open for a meaningful dialogue and lawful rehabilitation, but can wait no more for the State to deliver by itself.
“We, the dam-affected hilly adivasis are living in sub-human conditions since a decade and a half. If this is not a gross atrocity on the adivasis, what else is,” question the women and men, who have also begun igniting their own ‘village choolas’ at the satyagraha site, as a mark of protest against the State for violating their right to food and right to life. They say, “hame kaagaz nahi, pathar nahi, kheti laayak zamin
chahiye”. People have clearly decided that they shall not vacate this land, until they are actually provided cultivable, irrigable, suitable and unencroached land, with house plots at developed resettlement sites. Earlier, the oustees took out a death parade of the NVDA through the main streets of Jobat with the effigy of the CM to symbolize the fact that the ‘Authority’ is virtually dead, in so far as the displaced persons are concerned. More than a hundred children from the Narmada Jeevanshalas (life-schools) in villages Bhadal, Bhitada, Jalsindhi are also energizing the agitation and have shifted or immolated their schools to the satyagraha sthal.
As a statutory monitoring body, the Narmada Control Authority has also totally failed in its role and has not taken any initiative till date to expedite the rehabilitation process nor has it issued stern directives to
the state government to provide land and house plots to the oustees, as per law. Shockingly, not one official from the NCA has made even a single visit to the submergence areas in the past ten years to assess the serious impact of displacement without rehabilitation that people have been facing. NCA has also not checked the legality and viability of the unilateral land offers made to the oustees, most of which is uncultivable, unirrigable, encroached and hundreds of kms away from the house plots.The NCA has relied entirely on NVDA’s false Action Taken Reports and has reported in its recent Annual Reports that there are no balance families to be rehabilitated. This is absolutely incorrect, illegal and a gross violation of the right to life of hundreds of project-affected families (PAFs).
On the other hand, the adamant stance of NVDA on the Land Bank, has once again led to a stalemate.The Supreme Court has directed in no uncertain terms that “oustees must be offered lands which are really cultivable or irrigable, along with basic civil amenities and benefits as specified in the Award”. In the background of large-scale refusal by oustees of land offered to them from the Land Bank, the Court directed in May 2011 that “The Government must continue to search for additional land than what is already available in the land bank and to find out the means of its purchase for allotment to
the oustees. The Government should also ensure that the allocated land is not encroached upon by the unscrupulous persons”.
NVDA, NCA, and even the authorities in Delhi must face the reality; accept the fact that the land bank offers are illegal and unviable and start a genuine process of identification and allotment of cultivable, irrigable, unencroached land to the oustees, beginning with the agitating hilly adivasis. This is possible and indispensible, with the participation of the oustees, as is happening in Maharashtra and Gujarat, through Land Purchase Committees.As already declared, until such a bonafide and concrete process takes-off, the Satyagraha shall continue…
...... Narmada Bachao Andolan.
The NBA has distinguished itself as a mass movement that never says die and has consequently been able to hold up the completion of many of the dams on the Narmada River.

A Sting lies in this Tale!

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 13:09:00 +0000

In the remote village of Katkut in Khargone district of Madhya Pradesh, there is a government residential middle school for tribal and dalit girls. The residential school was set up to counter the problem that tribal and dalit girls in rural areas are not sent to school beyond the primary stage because parents are reluctant to take the risk of their adolescent girls commuting over a distance to do so. The premise being that if the girls stayed in hostels and were continually monitored then they would be able to break free of the patriarchal norms that doom most of them to early marriage. All very laudable and eminently reasonable no doubt but for the reality that actually prevails on the ground.
In the case of the school in Katkut the possibility of good education for adolescent tribal and dalit girls was tossed out by the presence of a corrupt Dalit headmistress of the school. The funds for the food and other accessories of the girls came to a bank account that had to be operated by two of the girl students. Once again an admirable arrangement to ensure transparency. However, the headmistress used to get the girls to sign on blank cheques that she kept with herself and which she used to withdraw the money as she pleased. The standard of food served obviously deteriorated and so the number of girl students also went down. But on paper the numbers were maintained at a healthy level of about twenty girls per class so that the funds continued to come to the bank account. Now, the headmistress could not have done such a big ripoff continuously over the years without paying off other people. She paid off the local non-tribal leaders of the village and her bosses in Khargone who were supposed to monitor the operation and performance of the school. So for many years together funds meant for the education of adolescent tribal girls were being siphoned off leaving them stuck in the same dark patriarchal morass in which their mothers were.
Then things changed for a time. The Adivasi Shakti Sangathan became active in the area in 1996 raising demands for justice and the rule of law. One of the parents of a girl studying in the school complained to the Sangathan in one of its weekly meetings about the sorry state of affairs prevailing there. A special village meeting was held in Katkut, the Gram Sabha, in which in the presence of hundreds of tribals a resolution was passed that the Sangathan should take up the issue of good governance in the girls' residential school. A delegation went to the school and recorded the statements of the girls about the defalcation of the funds. On the basis of this a formal complaint was filed with the higher authorities in Khargone. Since the Sangathan had already established itself as a feisty campaigner in other spheres the complaint was taken seriously and the girls' hostel began functioning properly for the first time since it had come into existence. The power of the Gram Sabha was visible. Grassroots democracy had become potent.
However, the State struck back. It announced that the Sangathan had become a parallel authority undermining that of the State and this could not be allowed. If the villagers assert their rights and demand transparency, justice and the rule of law then the authority of the state will obviously be reduced and it will have to share power with the Gram Sabha. This is what, in fact, is envisaged in the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution for tribal areas and in the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act (PESA). Thus, the Sangathan, like on many occasions earlier in the post independence era had brought to the fore the contradictions in the Indian Constitution between its centralist and anarchist provisions.
While many horrible things were done by the State to crush the organisation it will be fruitful here to follow the tale of the girls' school to its end. The local non-tribal leaders and the headmistress, who had been deprived of their illegal earnings, obviously with the support of the State, succeeded in getting a police case registered against the five member delegation of the Sangathan that had carried out the inspection of the girls' school alleging that they had threatened to kill the headmistress and prevented her from doing her administrative duty. The police then proceeded to catch these people one by one, beat them up and send them to jail. When this happened the second time the whole Sangathan rose up and immediately surrounded the police station and refused to let the arrested member from being taken away to jail. A long day's sit in later the higher administrative authorities came down to Katkut and promised to take action against the guilty tormentors of the tribals and the demonstration ended. But like in earlier such instances the police instead of acting against the guilty government servants filed yet another criminal complaint against members of the Sangathan alleging that they had once again threatened to kill them and prevented them from doing their duty! This was in 1998. The focal point of this tale and the one that is the sting in it is the court case that resulted from the filing of this complaint.
Sixteen people were arraigned including three old men in their sixties and four women. Then started the most frustrating part of the whole exercise. For thirteen long years the accused had to make rounds of the court at Barwah the nearby town at regular intervals. Despite many efforts in between to expedite the case it dragged on. Finally due to the huge public opinion building up against the delay in court cases the Madhya Pradesh Government in consultation with the High Court decided to appoint a few more magistrates across the state to clear the backlog. An extra magistrate was posted in the Barwah court to dispose of the older cases among which the one involving the Adivasi Shakti Sangathan members. This should have brought cheers at the prospect of an end to the case. However there was a twist. Over the years the higher judiciary has taken note of yet another public outcry. This is the tendency of the police to do shoddy investigation against criminals and then the lower judiciary taking a lenient view of their crimes, both after receiving bribes, resulting in a very low conviction rate. Consequently, the higher judiciary has sent down strict directions to the lower judiciary that they should convict at the slightest hint of criminality and on the flimsiest of evidence. Thus, the combined pressure of disposing of cases quickly and of convicting the accused has made the lower judiciary insensitive to the context of the case. This has proved to be a bane for activists of mass organisations fighting for rights. They are frequently arraigned under criminal charges but the magistrates these days do not make a distinction between them and begin treating them as criminals and convicting them.
The new magistrate in Barwah, after taking charge, immediately began convicting the accused in the cases that came up before him. The lawyer of the Adivasi Shakti Sangathan activists became jittery and told them that the situation was serious. Neither was it possible to delay the case and nor was it possible to avoid conviction he said. This is when I thought it was time I stepped in. I too along with my wife Subhadra were among the accused. However, I had not paid much attention to the case and nor had I been attending the court proceedings as the other co-accused would file exemption requests for me. But now with the lawyer feeling cowed down by the magistrate I had to take things into my hand. I sat down with the charge sheet and the evidence given and found a number of flaws starting from the first information report filed itself. I then found out a host of previous rulings of the Supreme and High courts pointing out that such flaws were enough to dismiss the case. I also unearthed enough evidence to show that the police had concocted evidence to falsely implicate us. A defense argument was prepared on the basis of this which the lawyer, now emboldened with all this preparation, argued very well in front of the magistrate. Consequently not only were we acquitted but the magistrate also recorded in his judgment that the police had concocted the case!
We had won the case no doubt but only because I am not just a field level activist but also have considerable knowledge of the law. A knowledge that has been built up over the years by fighting innumerable cases at various levels. Especially the one that the State foisted on us after killing four of our colleagues in police firing in Mehendikhera in 2001. I spent two and a half months in jail at that time being denied bail solely on the suspicion that I was a Naxalite. These days there is a lot of heartburn in the higher judiciary about denial of bail being a form of injustice because some high profile people have been arraigned in corruption cases, but for activists of mass movements there is no sympathy in the judiciary at all yet. We had to fight tooth and nail and do a lot of hard legal research to win that case and get ourselves acquitted. It is of course another matter that the State has appealed against our acquittal in the High Court. However, after that incident of 2001 we took a decision never again to undertake any action that would call for the State to foist criminal cases on us and put us behind bars. The costs in terms of money and time lost in fighting legal cases has become prohibitive these days and so the militancy of mass movements has decreased considerably. This is the final sting in the tail in the form of lengthy and expensive court cases that in many instances result in conviction that keeps the surging discontent among the masses in leash.
When a simple effort like trying to ensure that tribal girls get a good education can end up in so much harassment and require so much skill to avoid conviction in criminal cases foisted on the campaigners, then it is easy to see why more fundamental and challenging campaigns like ensuring the right to work, food and housing have never been successful.

Whither Anarchism

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 09:03:00 +0000

The Occupy Wall Street Movement has completed its initially announced time period of two months on November 17th 2011 and is still going strong. What had started off tentatively has now gained support across the globe and despite repression is refusing to die down. In many ways this is a significant protest movement -
1. First and foremost the movement is leaderless. It does not even have a core committee directing it. Everything is decided by mass consensus. Thus, an attempt in the middle by some participants to get some kind of a manifesto together and place some concrete demands before the authorities was shot down and apart from the broad demand that the exclusivist financial system should be dismantled, there is nothing else in the form of a programme of action coming out from the movement.
2. The movement has touched a chord among many people across the world who feel that the present economic and political system is unjust and they have spontaneously come out onto the streets. So not only young people who are without a job or older people who do not have social and economic support but also intellectuals and well heeled people, have come out in support of the movement.
3. Even though initially the mainstream media had totally blacked out the movement, the latter has through its persistence and spread to other cities in the USA and elsewhere in the world been able to force its way into the news and even got sympathetic attention.
4. The establishment has had to sit up and take note of the movement. Its persistence and resilience have made the authorities resort to repressive behaviour only to be met with peaceful protest again and again. No sooner is the Zuccotti Park cleared out than the protesters are back again. The courts have upheld the rights of the owners of the park to get the protesters evicted but that has done little to prevent the latter from occupying the park again.
However, though all this is fine as far as it goes, the problem is that it does not go really far in the present day and age. In fact anarchist mobilisation, especially of the peaceful variety, has always had a fundamental problem that the centralised state systems do not pay much attention to them unless they gather huge strength - mobilisation in hundreds of thousands or even millions. To get that kind of mobilisation on a sustained basis unfortunately there has to be some organisation, some leadership, some concrete demands and some programme of action. But this is against the basic anarchist credo which is why the OWS Movement has remained amorphous even if it has been resilient. Even though it claims to be inspired by the mass movements of the Arab Spring there is a fundamental difference here. Those movements had a clear agenda of overthrowing repressive dictatorships and so immediately large numbers of people joined the movements. That is not happening here because there is no clear agenda or programme of action and so there are a few hundred people at each of the locations and it is not causing the establishment any great worries. After all occupying Wall Street is only the first step and if that is not being done in large enough numbers to actually prevent Wall Street from functioning then just the symbolic nature of the occupation is not going to bring about any far reaching changes. Since there has not been any consensus, so an alternative system has also not been offered by the OWS.
The dilemma is a very deep one for anarchists. Having struggled in our work here among the Bhil tribals continuously with this question I feel that in the present context something new has to be evolved to counter the huge centralisation of the establishment. In India especially we have seen that much stronger movements than the OWS have not been able to achieve any substantial change other than some legislative leeway. As for example is going to happen with the India Against Corruption movement for a Jan Lokpal Act and as has happened earlier with the enactment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or the Forest Rights Act. A basic change in the way governance and development are practiced is not being achieved and that is what is required. In fact in more core areas even proper legislation is not coming up. The Land Acquistion, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill that is going to be tabled in Parliament shortly is a case in point. This is one issue on which there have been innumerable mass movements and at any given time there are movements going on with an activist Sister Valsa John having been murdered just a few days ago by the mining mafia in Jharkhand. Yet, the bill is a travesty of justice as it seeks to facilitate the alienation of landowners, especially those without the wherewithal to fight lengthy court cases, rather than protect their rights as has been rightly critiqued by a group of organisations and individuals. The weakness of anarchist mobilisation in the face of a state totally controlled by capitalist forces committed to exploitation and accumulation is there for all to see.
In the same way as liberalism or marxism cannot provide all the answers to the problems of social, economic and environmental injustice, so also anarchism too is a partial ideology in the present context of centralised capitalist development. The challenge is to seek a balance between centralisation and decentralisation both in the alternative systems to be fought for and the programmes of action that have to be adopted in this fight.

Rural Development Dissected

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:37:00 +0000

I attended a workshop on rural development today. It was specifically about ensuring land rights for tribal women in Jhabua. The NGO which had organised the workshop had initiated a programme for empowering Bhil tribal women in Jhabua to gain formal rights to their land. However, after starting the programme they found that this was a very difficult proposition. Not only is the Bhil society highly patriarchal but also the average household landholding is now around 0.3 hectares. Consequently the Bhils do not get much of an income from agriculture and have to rely on migratory labour to make ends meet. Under the circumstances even if women were given formal rights to the land as per the law after considerable struggle with the men it would not really give them much in material terms.
The women who came from the villages, said that they wanted some livelihood support, so that they could stay in their villages and earn money and not have to migrate long distances to Gujarat and Rajasthan. This feedback had made the NGO too start some minimal livelihood programmes. However, undertaking large scale livelihood programmes requires the investment of huge amounts of funds and also skilled implementers. Since these are not easy to come by, so the trend these days is to do rights based work which requires less funds. However, doing good rights based work requires even greater skills which are more difficult to find than funds. Especially for trying to ensure land rights for women in a highly patriarchal milieu! In the end I advised them to try and improve the implementation of the MGNREGS which is pretty poor in Jhabua at the moment with on an average only 30 days of work is being provided every year to each household. If women were to organise and press for more work under MGNREGS for soil and water conservation work on their farm lands successfully, then this would considerably increase their standing within the family and society vis-a-vis their men. Thereafter, the general issue of gender justice could be taken up on a wider scale.
Earlier I had attended another field learning exercise and analysis workshop in Orissa organised by the same NGO in collaboration with its funders and the United Nations. The purpose of that visit was to study the work being done for rural development and specifically women's rights by NGOs there and then analyse the learnings from the visit to come up with recommendations for implementing good rural development. Some of the top rural development practitioners and thinkers from across India had been invited as resource persons and many people from Orissa too participated. Consequently the recommendations that came out of that workshop are unexceptionable. Covering all the key areas of governance, livelihoods, environment, gender rights and tribal rights these recommendations constitute an ideal set of guidelines for rural development. However, the problem is not about identifying the correct strategies for rural development but about implementing them. Implementation always comes up against vested interests which do not want the poor to improve their condition. Eventually true rights based action requires hard grassroots activism and this will also ensure good rural development. But such activism invariably faces state repression and so the status quo remains.

The Question of Legitimacy

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:43:00 +0000

The question of the legitimacy of non-adivasi activists working among adivasis has cropped up once again. A few young adivasi intellectuals in Jharkhand have raised an objection to two non-adivasi activists getting the Gandhi Foundation Award for 2011 because the citation says that the award is being given to them on behalf of the adivasis of India. The adivasi activists claim that there are enough qualified activists from among themselves and so if the foundation wants to award the adivasis of India they should choose an adivasi to represent the adivasis and not a non-adivasi. Such was the controversy raked up over the initial letter that eventually one of the awardees decided not to accept the award and wrote to the Gandhi Foundation declining.
This non-adivasi activist in his initial response to the adivasi activists' letter had said that the adivasis were not a homogeneous group and that even among them there were some bad elements like for instance the members of the Salwa Judum vigilante outfit and so targeting a non-adivasi who has after all borne tremendous sacrifices for sticking up for the rights of the adivasis is not fair. In the second letter declining the award this non-adivasi activist says that he has always thought and felt like he was an adivasi and so just the fact of his being born a non-adivasi should not disqualify him from claiming to be an adivasi. He goes on to say that this kind of segregation on the basis of birth is akin to being an ethnic fundamentalism.
The basic issue, however, is not about whether non-adivasis can or cannot represent adivasis or whether birth should or should not determine whether one is an adivasi or not but about the fairness of an award being given to a non-adivasi on behalf of the adivasis of India. The vast majority of adivasis have suffered horrendous injustices from non-adivasis or, as in the case of the Salwa Judum vigilantes, adivasis sponsored by non-adivasis and continue to do so. They have formulated their own strategies for fighting these injustices and are capably implementing them. In fact they are doing much more for themselves than the non-adivasi activists who are fighting along with them. Then going just by the numbers, there are many more adivasis suffering state and capitalist repression than there are non-adivasis who are fighting for them and so any award to the adivasis of India should go to an adivasi who is by birth an adivasi and not to a non-adivasi who may think that he is in thought and deed an adivasi. Especially since there are a number of adivasi activists who are fighting capably for the adivasis and should be rewarded for their efforts much more than any non-adivasis.
There is also of course the whole debate about the politics of awards. Like charity and philanthropy the phenomenon of awards also is a kind of sop that seeks to paper over the deeper injustices of capitalist exploitation. If there is no exploitation and resultant poverty in the first place then where is the need for philanthropy and awarding people who work to alleviate the suffering of the poor. Ideally those working for a just social order should refuse awards from an unjust social order. However, given that such awards do give some strength to the fight against injustice, there may be some justification in accepting these awards but only if they are given to the actual sufferers of capitalist exploitation and repression and not to those from the upper or middle classes who go and help them, however laudable their work may be.

India Against Corruption in Trouble

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:52:00 +0000

The India Against Corruption movement is in a spot of bother. Allegations are surfacing that two of its leading members may have done financial dealings that do not appear to be above board. One other member has made a statement favouring a plebiscite in Kashmir that has not gone down well with Anna Hazare. Some others from its core team have quit on the ground that the IAC should not be campaigning against any one party as some of its members had done in the Hissar Lok Sabha by election. These developments bring to the fore the problems of the hodge podge kind of mobilisation that the IAC is.
There is first and foremost a lack of ideological clarity. Corruption is a part and parcel of capitalist liberal democracy so there is no question of being able to get rid of it without getting rid of capitalism itself. The so called core team of the IAC has a varied character with people from the right to the centre in it but none from the left of centre. Moreover its support base is a fluid one that came together at the time of the dharna at the Ramlila Ground but seems to have melted away thereafter. Any movement has to have continuous programmes of actions if it is to stay alive. However, there seems to be a lack of unanimity regarding the kind of action to be taken. The stand taken by some that the IAC will not itself participate in the elections but will campaign against the Congress for dilly dallying in enacting the Jan Lokpal Bill is not endorsed by others in the core team. To make matters worse the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad have publicly stated that their members participated actively in the Ramlila dharna and the associated mobilisations across the country.
The problems of the IAC can be further illustrated with what is happening in Alirajpur. At the peak of the IAC movement in August there were daily demonstrations in Alirajpur also. The leaders of these demonstrations were members of the Bharatiya Janata Party's youth wing Akhil Bharatiya Yuva Morcha. These non-tribal youth are all the children of the wealthy traders and moneylenders who have been exploiting the tribals for ages together. Consequently even thought the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath morally supports the IAC it did not mobilise its own members to join these demonstrations. In fact the KMCS has been conducting a campaign for quite some time against these traders and moneylenders. There are strict anti-usury laws to regulate the practice of moneylending in tribal areas. As is to be expected these laws were not being implemented and the moneylenders were having a field day in extorting money from the tribals. The KMCS has taken action against these moneylenders by lodging complaints against them for violating the legal provisions. Consequently hundreds of tribals have regained their silver ornaments which they had kept as security with the moneylenders for taking loans. The moneylenders had extorted many times the principle amount over the years.
This campaign was so effective that the moneylenders and traders made a formal complaint to the Home Minister of Madhya Pradesh when he visited Alirajpur recently that the KMCS should be reined in and prevented from helping the adivasis in this matter. Thus, the important question surfaces as to what is going to be the mass base of the IAC. If the mass base is going to be the middle and upper classes who are steeped in corruption and are exploiting the lower classes then the IAC does not have much of a future. Also if its action programmes are built around campaigning against the Congress for not enacting its Jan Lokpal Bill rather than around basic problems faced by the poor then also it is going to face problems in the future if the media does not provide the same kind of coverage that it did at the Ramlila Grounds.

Ensuring Nutrition Security and banishing Profits

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 16:02:00 +0000

A Bhil tribal before taking his food always dedicates a small piece to the Gods. This is an acknowledgement that the food is a gift from nature. This reverence for the forces of nature that make it possible to have food is a feature of all religions and cultures which were the products of a traditional agricultural lifestyle. Even though humans had developed agriculture for a long time they remained dependent on the vagaries of nature and so they paid their obeisance to it. The Bhil tribals have in fact named some of their main Gods after their food crops. Kansari the most prominent Goddess of the Bhils is symbolic of the staple cereal sorghum and is propitiated through elaborate night long rituals accompanied by the singing of epic paeans to her virtues as a life giver.

This reverence for nature also resulted in the Bhils developing their agriculture in tune with the natural endowments of their dry land environment. It was a highly bio-diverse agriculture. Each small plot had many crops of cereals, pulses and oilseeds with various levels of capacity to sustain water stress. So, regardless of whether there were too much or too little of rains some part of the crop would always come in. Simultaneously the forests too provided many fruits and vegetables. Even some of the weeds in the agricultural fields were eaten as food. Thus, there was a bio-diverse agriculture that made the best use of the local natural resource endowment and gave the tribals foods rich in necessary nutrients. These foods were cooked simply and provided a wholesome meal to the Bhils with which they could work hard in the fields and the forests. They remained healthy and active despite the hard work.

However, with the coming of the modern economy all this gradually began changing. Subsistence farming was replaced by commercial agriculture. Instead of producing for home consumption the Bhils were enticed into producing for the market. The bio-diverse agriculture was replaced with mono-cropping and instead of organic manure, chemical fertilisers were introduced. However, this latter regime was not suitable to the soil and water situation of the mostly undulating lands of the Bhils and so despite the greater investments in chemical inputs, irrigation and hybrid seeds the yields have been less and less over time. The money earned from crops such as cotton and soyabean is not enough to buy adequate food from the market. Due to the cultivation of soyabean the production of pulses has gone down drastically. So the Bhils are eating food that is inferior in quality and quantity. This is in fact a trend in agriculture throughout the world regardless of the natural endowments of the land but it is more pronounced in the poorer soil and water resource environments in which the Bhils live.
The Bhils today have no answer to their food woes like other marginal farmers around the world. The multinational corporations controlling commercial agricultural from inputs to the food reaching the dining table, too, do not have any answers to this problem busy as they are in ensuring more and more profits rather than food security. Matters have been compounded by Financial companies speculating on the global agricultural commodity futures markets to bolster their profits which have been threatened by the downturn in the other financial security markets.
There has to be a radical re-orientation of agriculture and our food habits and this will only be possible if we also think of re-orienting the industry and the economy. Unless there is a move away from profit making in general there is very little chance of establishing bio-diverse organic agriculture and ensuring local food and nutrition security.

What Kind of Food Should We Eat?

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 13:22:00 +0000

The most important question today is regarding what kind of food to eat. Should we eat to keep ourselves and nature healthy or should we eat to fill the coffers of the agri-business multinationals and keep their finances healthy. For many millennia people ate only what they grew on their fields or at the most on the fields of others within a radius of a few kilometers. Even though trade in spices and salt over long distances began quite early, staples, meat, fish and pulses were sourced locally till the nineteenth century. Even if new food varieties like the potato were brought from America and introduced into Europe and later Asia, they were subsequently locally produced. It is only with the introduction of diesel engine based transport that food in large quantities began to be exported from one region to another. Thus, it became possible to industrialise agriculture as huge production in one area could easily be transported to another and even then the cost of this food in the destination area would be less than the locally produced food. Today not only raw food but cooked food is available made from ingredients that have been imported from large distances.
The modern food system has wreaked havoc in many areas. Huge investments have been made in artificial input agriculture which has degraded the soil and polluted both ground water and rivers. The production of these artificial inputs like chemical fertilisers and insecticides causes even more pollution and disasters like the Bhopal Gas Leak which is still counting its fatal victims. Local agricultural production, especially in dry land areas where irrigation is not possible is neglected and it has decayed. The people in these areas who constituted the majority of the population of the world have to buy food produced in the industrialised farms from the market. Since they do not have the wherewithal to do so they are forced to go hungry. Their miseries are increased by the fact that financial institutions speculate on the world food markets and raise the cost of agricultural commodities even further. So much so that even Governments find it difficult to buy food and then distribute it at subsidised prices to the poor.
The biggest problem is that of the sustainability of food production. Agricultural bio-diversity is fast decreasing and instead of farmers, big agri-business multinationals are the ones who are producing and marketing seeds. The latest trend being the introduction of genetically modified seeds. What will happen if there are only a few strains of GM seeds around controlled by greedy multinational corporations a few years down the line is a sobering thought.
Another major problem area is that of water resource management. The huge demands of water for irrigation has led to the over exploitation of groundwater and the construction of large dams leading to serious social and environmental problems. In situ soil and water conservation have been neglected in the same way as dry land agriculture leading to serious problems of erosion and water scarcity.
However, despite these multiple problems the greed of financial oligarchs and technocrats is leading us down a path to perdition. Continuous propaganda through advertising and also the promotion of food habits through films and soap operas has led to unhealthy over eating by the rich which sustains the artificial industrialised agriculture that has created the present food crisis the world over. So even though it would be sensible to go back to a decentralised organic agriculture based localised food system this will not be possible in the near future.

Blog Action Day 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:02:00 +0000

Blog Action Day is nigh again as on October 16th 2011 millions of people will blog together again this year. Since the day coincides with World Food Day this year the theme is FOOD. All my posts on this blog till and on the BAD will be related to FOOD.
The greatest tragedy of our civilisation is that today we have more people, and especially children, dyiing due to hunger and malnutrition related causes. There are plenty of food stocks to feed everyone but since it is profitable not to do so but to speculate on agricultural commodity futures, people are going hungry. In India at the moment we are going through a black comedy of sorts. Our Planning Commission has said that only those living in rural areas on less than half an US dollar a day can be counted as being poor and deserving of subsidised rations. The compulsion to make such statements comes from the fact that the food subsidy has burgeoned out of control and so the government wants to limit the number of people to whom it will give food at subsidised prices.
Food is something that has to be kept cheap if capitalism is to prosper because increase in food prices and their non-availability invariably lead to higher wages having to be given thus cutting into the profits. However, since the meltdown of 2008 the avenues for investment of speculative financial capital have dried up considerably and it has made its way to the agricultural commodity markets making food prices shoot through the roof. A combination of inflation and recession has led most economies of the world into a debt trap and hunger related deaths are on the rise all over. Food availability is also governed by the sustainability of agricultural production and this is another area where the thirst for profit has played havoc.
In the coming days we will discuss these and other issues related to FOOD and HUNGER.

Reflections on an Award

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:36:00 +0000

The prestigious Times of India J.P. Morgan Social Impact Awards are to be presented today, the birth anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Dhas Gramin Vikas Kendra which is the sister NGO of the trade union Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath is to be awarded the prize in the category of advocacy and empowerment. Shankar, Khemla and Veena the veteran Bhil tribal activists along with Bhania and Udlibai two of the thousands of the village level members of the KMCS will accept the prize from the Prime Minister of India. Three decades of hard grassroots work in ensuring the rights of the Bhil tribals has finally won recognition from the establishment. All the physical harassment, stints in jail and the sheer dogged persistence has paid off and it will be the moment of their lives when Shankar and Bhania go up on stage to receive the award. However, there is need for some reflection on the overall significance of this award.

The KMCS has always worked within the liberal democratic framework of the Indian Constitution but with the clear understanding that this framework has some inherent limitations. The organisation has thus been critical of the nexus between capitalists and the elected rulers and bureaucrats which effectively renders impotent many of the enabling provisions for tribals that are there in the Constitution and other laws. The work of the organisation has been anti-statist even if it has remained within the framework of the Constitution. In its espousal of the traditional anarchist lifestyles of the Bhils it has consistently posited an anti-statist political vision. Thus, the acceptance of an award from the establishment is in many ways a contradiction that needs to be reconciled.

The basic problem has always been about the funding of the activities of the organisation. The poor Bhils who are its members are in no position to fund the expenses of running the organisation, especially that of the full time activists. So from the beginning these expenses have been met only in part by the Bhils and have had to be supplemented by external funding. Ad hoc funding, sourced from the Social Work and Research Centre in Tilonia, Rajasthan, sufficed for sometime. But from the 1990s onwards this was not enough and so wider funding sources had to be tapped. The Dhas Gramin Vikas Kendra, which had been registered as a public trust in 1987 and was lying dormant, was activated and grant funding from capitalist sources was accessed. Not very much, just about Rs 10 lakhs a year, was enough to keep the wheels of mobilisation oiled. Thus, even if rights based work continued to be done it was funded by the very capitalists who are ultimately the targets of such rights based mobilisation. This has come about because the capitalists too have progressively had to accommodate such rights based mobilisation as more and more people are getting frustrated with the misery being heaped on them by the depredations of capitalism. The culmination of this change is the institution of the TOI JP Morgan Social Impact Award.
The award is not only being given to NGOs working in the standard development areas of health, education, livelihoods and environment but also in that of the potentially subversive area of advocacy and empowerment. Not only that, despite a rigorous selection process which must have revealed the clearly anti-statist work of the KMCS, its supporting sister organisation DGVK has been chosen for the empowerment category award. The DGVK was initially nominated by a well wisher and when the application invitation was sent, the online application form was filled and submitted. Thereafter the DGVK was shortlisted after a two tier selection process and finally selected by the jury. What this award will do is improve the visibility of the work of the KMCS by grandstanding it before the world through media coverage. It is something that is in tune with the basically reformist character of the work being done by the organisation.

Many friends have criticised the acceptance of this award. The most telling comment was - " we had never thought that the KMCS would one day be be known as an NGO". This comment is actually a tribute to the stand adopted and work done by the KMCS. However, in the changed scenario the KMCS has been able to continue its work only with the grant support accessed through the DGVK. If that grant support had not been there then the KMCS would have vanished by now. Thus, the challenge is to continue to do the work that the KMCS is doing with the grant support of the DGVK, keeping its anti-statist vision intact. So far at least, the grant support has not been able to dilute the anti-statist vision of the KMCS.

A Fighter to the Last

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:59:00 +0000

Independence day this year on August 15th 2011 brought some very bad news. Shyamali Khastagir became independent of her life on this earth after a month long hospitalisation following a serious brain stroke. Shyamalidi as she was known and Shyamali Mashi or auntie to me because she used to call my late mother Didi or elder sister, played a very important part in my choosing the less trodden path of political activism among the Bhil tribals. After passing out from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in 1983 I was at a loose end as I did not want to pursue a corporate career as a civil engineer and I was not sure as to where exactly I should start working for the poor and deprived. On Hiroshima Day, August 6th, a public meeting had been organised by some groups at Esplanade in Kolkata and I went to attend with a friend of mine who is a Trotskyist. There for the first time I saw Shyamali Mashi.
When she got up to speak there was nothing remarkable about her, diminutive and soft spoken as she was. However, as she began speaking and linking the disaster of nuclear power and warfare to the civilisational crisis emphasised by Tagore I became interested. I learnt from enquiries that she was based in Shantiniketan and an environmental and civil rights activist. It so happened that I subsequently spent one and a half years in Shantiniketan building my parents' home there so as to get a breather to find out what I could do with my life. This provided me an opportunity to visit Shyamali Mashi frequently at her residence in Purva Palli. The first time I visited I was treated to a puppet show. She had this puppet called Vasundhara which symbolised Mother Earth. The puppet had one foot that was suffering from Elephantiasis. Shyamali Mashi then launched into a hilarious satire on the consumerism of humans that had disfigured Vasundhara's foot.
I slowly got to know the depths of Shyamali Mashi's activism. She was a tireless person continually participating in various actions across the country. Indefatigable is the only adjective I can think of. The major problem of the environmental movements in this country is a lack of human power. Since these movements never have any money they have to rely on voluntarism of the skilled intellectuals. Shyamali Mashi by participating in a whole host of such movements tried to make up single handedly for this lacuna.
Personally for me the crunch came on December 3rd 1984. Lethal gas leaked from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal killing thousands of people in their sleep. Next day Shyamali Mashi called a meeting at her home and announced that she was going to Bhopal to do rescue work. I could not go with her but this immediate response of hers made a deep mark on me. There was pressure on me at that time from my parents to give up my wayward ideas and take up a job or pursue higher studies. But that one action of Shyamali Mashi's strengthened my resolve that as soon as the house was completed I would set off to follow a life of activism. I started searching and found a place in Madhya Pradesh where some activists were fighting for the rights of the Bhil tribals. When Shyamali Mashi came back from Bhopal I asked her whether I would be right in disobeying my parents and following my head to go off among the Bhils. She said that as a human being my duty to the poor was more important than the wishes of my parents! I of course did not tell my parents of this and just followed Shyamali Mashi's advice. She was the quintessential anarchist having little respect for the institutions and norms of a society built on injustice. Not surprisingly many looked askance at her activities and attitudes. But she fought on regardless.
Later she visited the Narmada valley and also took considerable trouble to set up a support group for the Narmada Bachao Andolan in Kolkata and Shantiniketan. She mobilised many young people in Shantiniketan to take part in local actions.
This is what is the most important quality of Shyamali Mashi. The ability to inspire and advise youth to work for the community. Not only I but many other youth over the years have been inspired to give up the mainstream and work for the rights of the poor and for the conservation of nature. Not only youth but elders also sought refuge in her quiet greatness. The great Pannalal Dasgupta spent his last days at her home because that is the only place where he could live according to his whims and fancies. She continued to fight and inspire right to the end despite her failing health. When Binayak Sen was unjustly incarcerated in jail in Raipur on cooked up charges of hatching a conspiracy in cohorts with the Maoists, Shyamali Mashi took part in the protest rally.
Fighting for justice is a thankless and tiresome task as I have realised over the years. It requires tremendous amount of stamina. Especially in the context of the modern world in which consumerism is being promoted like wildfire and people like Steve Jobs who make billions out of selling overpriced electronic baubles manufactured by exploiting Chinese labourers are considered to be the heroes. Consequently Shayamali Mashi and her legacy of tireless struggle will always remain to inspire youth who want to live a more meaningful life in pursuit of justice.

Media Mantar to Saffron Lila

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:08:00 +0000

The most successful non-party political demonstration, since the first of such demonstrations in independent India of the Chipko movement in the early 1970s, has just got over. The government and the entire parliament acquiesced to the demands made by the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement bringing to an end the twelve day fast by Anna Hazare and the extraordinary mobilisation across the country around it. While it is definitely a time to rejoice, it is also a time to reflect.
One can't help harking back to two other such events in Indian history which have great similarity with the present demonstration. The first was the Dandi march of Gandhi in 1930 and the other was the Sangharsh Yatra of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) in 1991. Both these demonstrations were carefully planned and orchestrated by the national and international media. While the Sangharsh Yatra had much greater planning it could not match the media attention that the Dandi Yatra got and consequently failed to catch the imagination of the nation as the Dandi Yatra and the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) of 1930-31 had. In that respect, the IAC outdid the NBA in terms of both planning and media attention and has outdone the CDM in terms of being able to achieve something concrete from the rulers. In fact both the CDM and the NBA failed totally in getting the rulers to agree to any of their demands. Unlike the NBA and the CDM, the IAC had only a very narrow agenda of attacking corruption in the government setup through a legislation for an ombudsman. As the demonstration progressed they watered down their strong demand for the enactment of their version of the ombudsman legislation, "Jan Lokpal Bill", by August 31st 2011 and instead settled for some of the main provisions of their bill being referred for consideration to the Parliamentary Standing Committee that is discussing the absolutely worthless bill that the Government had tabled in parliament earlier.
Even though this "victory" of sorts is a culmination of some very hard preparatory work done by the IAC and many supporting organisations across the country and is in a very important sense a step forward for the non-party political fringe that had become active with the Chipko Andolan forty years ago, it has to be acknowledged that there have been two other mainstream forces that have played very significant roles in the success of this demonstration. The first of course is the media. When the rag tag bunch of people first congregated at Jantar Mantar in Delhi in the first week of April they were like any other of such "civil society" groupings that frequently hold dharnas and fasts there. In fact various organisations representing the Bhopal Gas Survivors and the National Alliance of People's Movements have frequently staged fasts and dharnas there. However, they have never got any media support beyond some cursory mention. The IAC movement, from the very beginning, got massive media support and this fired the imagination of the middle classes across the nation which was very well mobilised by the IAC through the social networking media. A spontaneous response began building up and the media found that the TRPs of the news channels were going up and so they increased their coverage. As I had mentioned in my earlier post the disillusionment with the neo-liberal growth story combined with the obvious corruption and the effects of inflation led to the middle class coming out on the streets. This time around too the media provided round the clock coverage and as has now become clear the TRPs of the news channels had gone up by nearly 100% in the last fortnight. Thus, this demonstration is a great victory for the media too which is the fourth pillar of democracy. Without media support the IAC would not have been able to register the victory that it has.
The other force behind this victory is the saffron brigade. They played their cards pretty shrewdly. Throughout the country and especially in the Ramlila grounds the members of the various organisations of the saffron brigade were very active and this was most visible in the frequent chants of "Vande Mataram" and "Bharat Mata ki Jai". Ashok Singhal of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has stated that his cadres supplied free food to the people at the Ramlila grounds and obviously people also to swell the crowd. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) too supported the movement wholeheartedly inside and outside parliament to ensure that the Congress was thoroughly discredited. Some of the BJP leaders in fact criticised the party for not doing more to take advantage of the situation created by the IAC and the spontaneous upsurge. Meanwhile, Medha Patkar, of NBA and the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) reportedly took on the onerous task of convincing the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra to support the Jan Lokpal Bill, which news is a shocker to say the least. Thus, what started off as a media mantar at Jantar Mantar in April finally ended as a saffron lila at the Ramlila Grounds in August.
The fact that the US administration made a statement criticising the arrest of Anna Hazare may also be construed as an indication that the forces of global capitalism may have supported this agitation. The intent being to provide a safety valve for letting out the gathered steam of frustrations that had obviously arisen in the masses due to the exploitative policies of capitalist development. In fact the whole of civil society is awash with various campaigns which are funded by imperialist countries and donors. Thus, there may well have been various other covert forces acting to fan this movement. Even though this does smack of the typical conspiracy theory, nevertheless this suspicion cannot be just blown away. Especially since the IAC has steered clear of targeting corporate and multi-national corruption.
Consequently, even while celebrating this major victory of the non-party political process we have to be aware of its drawbacks if this movement has to seriously challenge the state and not just tinker with the way in which governance is done in this country. First of all as we in the non-party political process know from bitter experience, there are always many slips between the cup and the lip. So some hard campaigning has to be done to see that a strong Lokpal Act is indeed legislated and the institutions required for its implementation are all put in place. This is in fact the biggest hurdle as all the recent progressive legislations like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Right to Information Act, the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act and the Forest Rights Act are being sabotaged by the bureaucracy and the mainstream political parties. For this the IAC will have to become a much more disciplined cadre based organisation than the spontaneous voluntary outfit that it is at present. Possibly the ongoing alliances like the NAPM could be brought into the fold and their experience in mass mobilisation could be drawn upon. However, if that happens there is also the danger that with a more fundamental and broad based agenda of change, the IAC might lose the media support that it now has for a limited platform and it will also definitely be deserted by the saffron brigade. Like grassroots RTI activists who have faced threats and imprisonment from vested interests, one of whom Akhil Gogoi of Assam is part of the IAC and NAPM, those trying to implement the Lokpal Act too will be targeted. Moreover, corporate corruption which generates the most amount of black money has not been touched at all by the IAC. If this issue is raised many of the middle and upper middle class supporters would desert the movement.
Finally there is the issue of the saintly halo around Anna Hazare. While it has helped in mobilising huge numbers of people it is to be seen whether this kind of hagiography will aid in building up a strong cadre based organisation that is prepared to implement a good Lokpal Act at the grassroots. The IAC is presently backed up by the Public Cause Research Foundation (PCRF) of Arvind Kejriwal. The PCRF was set up with the funds received by Arvind Kejriwal as part of his Ramon Magsaysay award. This NGO has been trying its best to get the RTI Act implemented and it also has a campaign for grassroots democracy. This organisation has continually tried to build up cadre at the grassroots and has also done advocacy at the national level to build up critical mass on the issue of people's democracy. This preparatory work has been the backbone of the IAC and resulted in the high level of voluntary effort being put in by tech savvy people from the middle class who have built up the financial and publicity backend of the movement. So far the challenge of conducting a movement of national proportions while still staying true to grassroots activism has been innovatively met building on the earlier experiences of the NBA and the National Campaign for the People's Right to Information. Let us hope that in future too this movement will continue to build on its positives.
This post is an attempt to get over the cynicism that naturally pervades our minds when confronted with such spontaneous mobilisations. A cynicism based on an understanding that state power is in the hands of the capitalists both global and national and it will not easily bow to such populist demands. However, the reality is that the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath has been operating as a reformist organisation within the liberal democratic framework regardless of its detailed critique of the system. Thus, in the interim, all that can be achieved is that this reformist agenda will be advanced a little bit further with the adoption of a strong Lokpal Act and nothing more.

A Real Life Ramlila Begins!

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:35:00 +0000

The middle class is out on the streets. Possibly because of the shattering, post the 2008 meltdown, of the dreams of climbing up corporate ladders fanned by unfettered growth. We have to think why the middle class has come onto the streets in such a way. Not that most of them understand the nitty gritties of the Lokpal Bill. Its just an expression of disgust at the massive corruption that is taking place and the impunity of those who are engaging in it. Most of the middle class finds it difficult today to live the consumerist lifestyle that it aspires to. Aspirations that have arisen after being bombarded by advertisement and programming on television that rampantly promote greed and consumerism. The majority of the middle class see that those among them who are part of the government and administration can easily satisfy their consumerist greed by taking bribes over and above the relatively fat salaries that they now get. While the Congress and the BJP governments in the Centre and the states are all corrupt, the left too could not provide a solution to this while it was in power in West Bengal and Kerala. In fact the Left Front administration in West bengal was one of the most corrupt in the country. Thus, it is the middle class that is not in government service that has hit the streets against those of the middle and upper classes who are in government service and are skimming off public money!
The media is also mostly staffed by the non-government servant middle class. So it is natural that it will take up the cause of the non-government servant middle class. Though why the upper class controllers of the media have gone along with this is something that requires deeper reflection. Possibly they see this cynically as a way to increase viewership and readership and so garner more advertisement revenues as they know that the movement has limited goals which will not really harm their interests. The middle classes do not want to give up their consumerist culture but at the same time want to be free of corruption. If you tell them that there has to be a radical reorganisation of the development process and the sacrifice of many comforts that we now enjoy, the consumerist culture in particular, then you will not get the same kind of support. In fact Anna Hazare does mouth such statements as "gram swaraj and decentralisation are the need of the hour" but this gets drowned out in the Lokpal Bill cacophony while at at the same time giving him a selfless Gandhian halo. It was this kind of halo that helped Gandhi also to become a messiah of the masses. It would be interesting to see whether Anna can succeed where Gandhi failed and overturn the modern industry based development model for an anarchist decentralised village based model of development. Though the chances are low given that like Gandhi, Anna too has a weak understanding of the logic of capitalist accumulation and especially of the kleptocratic dispensation that presently rules the world from Wall Street.
Thus, Anna Hazare, himself is not important, he just happened to be the man of the moment when he launched his movement in April at a time when possibly the non-government servant middle class, and especially those suffering from their home loan, vehicle loan, education loan and credit card repayment rates shooting skywards due to runaway inflation (caused not a little by corruption), had had enough. I am sure that Anna and his team were themselves surprised by the huge response they got and are getting. The movement is still of a spontaneous nature and it remains to be seen whether it does assume a more coordinated shape in future and what is the kind of political program and strategy it adopts beyond getting a good, strong Lokpal Act which now seems to be a certainty.
Anyway, what is important here is that the middle class have come out on to the streets. They are obviously more powerful than the peasants and the industrial proletariat currently and have more clout with the ruling class because of their greater articulation, intellectual formalism and purchasing power. Obviously the lokpal bill is a half measure and wont really do much, in the same way as the Right to Information Act has proved to be more or less a failure because the Information Commissions have not handed down the penalties they should have done to recalcitrant public information officers. So in all likelihood, like in the case of many other laws that are there to regulate corruption, the Lokpal Act too will be sabotaged after it is passed. but that is the next stage of the movement when the middle class will have to start thinking more deeply. For the present it is a positive development that what the left and fringe players like environmentalists and anarchists could not do in trying to stop dams or in the case of the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath ensuring tribal autonomy, the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement has been able to do - make the government listen to the people's demands for the time being.
The Congress has been trying to discredit the movement by saying that it is trying to usurp the power of parliament to make laws and it has been suggesting that the IAC should contest and win elections and then make laws of their choice. However, this criticism it appears has not held water with the mass of middle class supporters of the IAC. The level of corruption in elections is so well known that everyone knows that it is not possible to win them without money power. Thus, if elections have to be won, then corruption must go first! Actually elections are a different ball game altogether. They involve crores of people and the IAC at the moment can tot up only a few lakhs across the country and not enough to even save the deposit in any constituency. Therefore, one of the shrewdest moves of the IAC team is to declare that they are not interested in contesting elections but only in creating public pressure on the already elected lawmakers to do the right thing. The IAC leadership team consists of people who are well versed in the constitutional nitty gritties and the finer points of bourgeois liberal democracy. Their challenge is from within the liberal democratic fold and that is why it is so potent and has also got the media to support it as compared to the mobilisations of the left which have on occasions been much bigger.
All in all there is much to celebrate in these happenings as they are an indication of the vibrancy of people's politics in this country. Delhi has now become the stage for a real life Ramlila.

Occupying Wall Street!

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:05:00 +0000

I have often wondered why the American People have not risen up in protest against the huge problems created for them by the greedy kleptocrats of Wall Street. Ever since the meltdown of 2008 the common people of America are going through a very hard time. The huge amounts of money provided in the form of bailouts to the beleaguered banks have only served to bolster up the old rotten system without changing it in any way for the better. Consequently the economy is still in the doldrums and the situation in Europe also is grim where many of the smaller economies are on the verge of defaulting on their sovereign debt.
Thus, it is heartening to note that an initiative has begun, taking inspiration from the middle eastern Arab uprisings, for the staging of a similar protest for occupying Wall Street for two months from September 17th 2011 onwards. It is extremely significant that the protest is to be staged in Wall Street and not in Washington as it underlines the fact that that it is the financial kleptocrats of Wall Street who actually control the US Government and so the whole world.
At the moment the initiators of the movement do not have a clear charter of demands. In fact they have said that the website is an open source platform and the demands and the strategy will have to evolve through discussion. Obviously it will not be possible for these people while occupying Wall Street to completely alter the way the world is doing business at the present moment. But there is a realisation that some minimal concrete demand that can force the administration to negotiate has to be put up. Here is the latest from the initiators of the movement -
"Strategically speaking, there is a very real danger that if we naively put our cards on the table and rally around the "overthrow of capitalism" or some equally outworn utopian slogan, then our Tahrir moment will quickly fizzle into another inconsequential ultra-lefty spectacle soon forgotten. But if we have the cunning to come up with a deceptively simple Trojan Horse demand … something profound, yet so specific and doable that it is impossible for President Obama to ignore … something that spotlights Wall Street's financial capture of the US political system and confronts it with a pragmatic solution … like the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act … or a 1% tax on financial transactions … or an independent investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into the corporate corruption of our representatives in Washington … or another equally creative but downright practical demand that will emerge from the people's assemblies held during the occupation … and if we then put our asses on the line, screw up our courage and hang in there day after day, week after week, until a large swath of Americans start rooting for us and President Obama is forced to respond … then we just might have a crack at creating a decisive moment of truth for America, a first concrete step towards achieving the radical changes we all dream about unencumbered by commitments to existing power structures."
The challenge of course is about how to remove greed from the matrix of socio-economic and political arrangements. It is all very well to talk of decentralisation and people's control but to dismantle the present system and bring in a decentralised one is not an easy task. It involves the reversal of a ten thousand year trend towards more and more centralisation of wealth and power.

Poor Economics

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:44:00 +0000

Recently I read a seminal book on development economics and especially on eradication of poverty that is a must read for all development practitioners. Poor Economics is exactly what its subtitle claims - "a radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty". Radical in the sense that though the authors, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are firmly positioned within the neo-classical development economics paradigm they nevertheless question large macro-economic policies and advocate instead the taking of small steps suited to local conditions and building these up into a quiet revolution. In fact one cant help wondering whether the title is a pun casting aspersions on the poverty of standard neo-classical economics! It is a very long time since I read such a sensible book about development put together from the results of high quality economic research in a readable narrative that is accessible to the lay reader also. Long time grassroots practitioners of rural development will fully appreciate the way in which the authors have given weightage to the innumerable inhibiting factors that the poor face which are not easily removed through macro level magic bullets. They show tremendous respect for the poor and place the blame for their miserable situation squarely on the fact that they are provided little support to overcome the huge mountain of difficulties that they face.

Specially commendable is their analysis of micro-finance institutions and their conclusion that these are at best providing a much needed financial service to the poor for their small businesses whether farm or non-farm and cannot really dent poverty or address the inherent unprofitability of these businesses across the board. The tendency of MFI buffs to quote a few success stories and paper over the huge problems of the sector has been ably critiqued by the authors through the results of their large sample randomised control studies. In these studies conducted for a number of development interventions ranging from education and health to agriculture and microfinance, randomly selected households who are beneficiaries of some development intervention are studied and compared to another set of randomly selected households who have not received these benefits but are generally living in similar socio-economic circumstances. It is the results of these studies which show that macro level policy initiatives even when seemingly successful do not really bring about massive positive changes. In most cases the results over a large sample are disappointing.

The book deals a lot with the work of NGOs and ignores the work of mass action based groups totally. Those who are engaged in rights based mass action work within the development sector will naturally be critical of this. The stark fact is that failure of judicious regulation or policy making by governments at the macro level takes place not only in developing countries but in developed ones also. The meltdown of 2008 occurred due to both a regulatory and a policy failure and it continues to haunt not only the USA but all developed countries. Basically the problem is the dominance of financial capital and its rent seeking tendency (euphemistic economics jargon for just plain greed!). This is why ultimately the small businesses of the poor cannot succeed because this rent seeking emanating from Wall Street seeps down through to the moneylenders and traders who dominate the local markets and also influence the local politicians and bureaucrats. This is where politics and political economy are important even if in some cases they may not have the primacy that the Marxists are prone to give to them. Throughout the world and especially in India there are many grassroots movements of the people going on which, even if issue based, are basically fighting against the local manifestations of the rent seeking behaviour of global financial capital. The authors have not seen fit to discuss these movements at all. If they could have designed large sample randomised control studies to test whether such people's movements bring about improvement in the economic conditions of the people or not it would definitely enrich the discussions around micro development considerably. They have mentioned the difficulty that the NGO Pratham faced in mobilising people to demand their rights from the administration under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan as opposed to just sending their children for the extra classes organised by the NGO. This is not easy but still there are innumerable examples of small organisations that have succeeded in mobilising people at the local level all over the world through effective rights based mass actions and the impacts are visible. But these have not been systematically studied in the way the work of NGOs has been studied through randomised control methods. Thus, quite glaringly, in the final sentence of the book the authors do not include activists of mass movements in the list of well intentioned people striving to eradicate poverty that they have provided! Consider for example the work of Babasaheb Ambedkar. He single handedly did more to improve the economic condition of the Dalits than anyone else has ever done!

At a higher level there is the question of the mode of development. The present mode of development guzzles resources and pollutes the environment in such a way that the very continuance of this mode is in question. and it is because of this resource guzzling and accompanying pollution and direct and indirect displacement that a lot of the small farm and non-farm businesses of the poor are unprofitable. Especially of concern is the crisis of agriculture. Chemical agriculture has reached its limits and is being sustained only through huge subsidies worldwide. What we need is for these subsidies to be given to organic agriculture instead, which can be much more productive on a sustainable basis than chemical agriculture. however for that the whole financial apparatus supporting modern agriculture, agro-processing and agro-trade has to be dismantled and decentralised sustainable agriculture, processing and trade has to be introduced. It is extremely distressing to see that most people today eat food that comes from places very far away after expending a tremendous amount of energy. The Bhils for instance do not produce enough food on their farms and have to get rations from the Public Distribution System or buy food from the market and in both cases they are eating food produced in far away places. As long as energy was cheap this passed muster but now with energy prices sky rocketing, the prices of food are also moving northward, helped not a little by speculation on world agri-product futures markets by the likes of Goldman Sachs.

After all as there is a law of conservation of energy or mass in a closed system so also there is one in the case of wealth. if wealth gets concentrated in a few hands then both nature and the vast billions of people will necessarily be impoverished. Over the past sixty odd years or so since the second world war and especially since the 1980s there has been a huge concentration of wealth in the hands of a few and a corresponding huge rise in the proportion of people living on less than 99 cents a day and in the devastation of nature. No doubt small steps are necessary but unless a perspective is there regarding the nefarious character of global financial capital and a program to effectively counter its hegemony these small steps will never coalesce into a revolution to end poverty.

Coming back to topics covered there is no mention of the rigours of patriarchy that make poor women sustain a double burden and especially the lack of discussion of the ill effects of alcoholism too is a lacuna. There is also no discussion of the retrogressive effects of indirect taxation which is the main fiscal instrument in developing countries. Reduction in indirect taxation and increase in direct taxes would be a progressive move not only by making the rich pay more taxes proportionate to their income than the poor (since the poor often borrow at usurious rates to buy household goods they effectively pay even higher than the nominal value of the taxes) but also because of the reduction in inflationary pressures which too hurt the poor more than the rich.

Nevertheless as a single book can't deal with everything it has to be admitted that by making me think deeply about the work I have been doing all these years as an activist it has served its purpose of stimulating debate on one of the most challenging issues of our time.

Water Management in Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 17:12:00 +0000

Here are some points to ponder over regarding water management in India -

It is not possible to manage water resources effectively without a proper estimation of the availability and use of water. This is where a serious problem exists in this country. Reliably measured data on ground water and surface water availability and use at the local level is absent in most parts of the country. While the central and state groundwater boards have done commendable work in fairly accurately estimating the availability and use of ground water at the district level there is still a lack of information at the subdistrict level. The estimation of the availability and use of surface water is still largely based on insufficient hard data. To correctly estimate the availability of surface water we need much more detailed measurement of stream flows, run off coefficients and evapotranspiration at the watershed level. Similarly detailed studies of crop production data have to be done to better estimate the agricultural water use. At present very approximate empirical formulae are being used for determining surface water availability and use. For example despite 85% to 93% of the annual flow of the Brahmaputra (there are no firm estimates) being contributed by its Indian tributaries there is no flow measurement taking place on these tributaries and the estimates are based only on the measurement of flow in the main river stem at different points above and below the confluence of a tributary by very approximate methods. The proper estimation of water availability and use requires a multidisciplinary approach involving hydrology, geology, agriculture, remote sensing, sociology, anthropology etc. This has to be done in fact in a campaign mode involving the people also through the panchayats and municipal wards. People have to be made aware of the need for sustainable water management and the importance of good grassroots level data collection to make this possible. The adhocism in planning and the mismanagement of water resources in this country has occurred precisely because of this criminal ignoring of the need to collect authentic grassroots level data on water availability and use.
Agricultural production is geared to food consumption. So unless our food consumption habits change it will be very difficult to change agricultural production. Following the trend of the developed economies in India too there is a trend towards the consumption of foods which require high amounts of water for their production. Higher consumption of high water demand foods leads to many diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure etc which are all silent killers. So to reduce the water demand of agriculture it will be necessary to change the food consumption patterns of the population. In recent years there has been considerable research work done on the calculation of virtual water of food items and this needs to be popularised to make people change food habits to less water consuming items.
There is in fact a tremendous interlinkage between much of our consumption habits which all contribute to unnecessarily high water demand and subsequent wastage. The important issue of recycling of waste water to meet a substantial part of the demand for water has to come onto centre stage. For instance there is an open drain releasing a considerable amount of the sewage of Haridwar just upstream of the Har ki Pouri where millions of pilgrims take a dip in the Ganges to wash their sins! Recycling of waste water can be done much more cheaply in a decentralised manner than in a centralised manner especially in cities and towns. There is a need for starting a campaign for this as it is the best way to clean up our polluted water bodies from our village tanks right up to our biggest river - Ganga.
Engineering is always based on scientific principles and if the scientific principles are good then engineering also must be good. Thus, when there is bad engineering it results from bad science means making wrong assumptions and wrong deductions. In Engineering since actual work has to be done rather than just make hypotheses the need for assumptions is even more than in science. In most cases bad engineering results from making bad assumptions and deductions due to ulterior motives spurred by greed and this as mentioned earlier is partly due to a lack of authentic data.
For proper nation wide water management the Panchayati Raj Institutions have to be made the nodal institutions. They have to be provided with the resources to be able to characterise their watersheds completely both above and below the ground and plan water conservation and use scientifically and in a socio-economically just manner. This is essential if the universally accepted "ridge to valley" concept of water management has to be implemented as opposed to the present unsustainable big dam oriented approach. The stress has to be on in situ water harvesting which is economically and ecologically the best option. Especially in a country like ours where 70% of the area is underlain with hard rock and has low rainfall combined with high evapotranspiration.
Coming to big dams apart from the ecological and social consequences of these projects the huge gap between the cumulative designed irrigation potential and their actual performance is a big shame. There is a huge body of literature on the reaons for this shameful situation and the ways in which it can be remedied and this must be immediately prioritised than building even more of such misconceived projects.
The artificial recharge of Groundwater aquifers has to be explored much further and appropriately implemented on a war footing. aquifers present a much better option for storing water than big surface reservoirs and it is much cheaper to tap them when they are filled than to build dams.

Gender Inclusion

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:09:00 +0000

Inclusion is the byword in development parlance these days. Without addressing the exploitative aspects of the global development model that exclude the marginalised sections, theorists and practitioners just talk of inclusion. So even after all the grandiose plans of ensuring social inclusion the poor continue to remain excluded. Consider for example the exploitation of women or gender exclusion. Patriarchal social structures are very much entrenched and so despite the rhetoric women remain oppressed and excluded. In fact despite vociferous lobbying by women on two important issues which resulted in their being recognised in the Fourth World Women's Conference in Beijing in 1995 there has not been much implementation on the ground. The patriarchal rulers of the world were so cornered in that conference that they have prevented the holding of another such conference even though one has been due since 2005.

The first is the issue of women's reproductive and sexual rights and health. The thrust of development programmes has been to address the ante-natal, delivery and post-natal care aspects of reproductive health and the AIDS related aspects of sexual health. However, for most poor women in this country poor gynaecological and sexual health arising from patriarchal oppression, sexual oppression within and without marriage, gender based violence and lack of menstrual hygiene are a serious problem that they suffer mutely because there is a deafening culture of silence that shrouds these issues. The NGO SEARCH in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra did the first pioneering participatory research on this issue in 1989 ( Bang RA et al High Prevalence of Gynaecological Diseases in Rural Indian Women, Lancet Jan 14, 1989 pp 85). This study found that even though 55% of the women surveyed with a participatory and very encouraging methodology had gynaecological complaints to make, later clinical examination revealed that 92% of these women had some gyneacological disease or other and on an average each woman had 3 diseases. There have been many more studies conducted on these lines thereafter which have confirmed this trend. Masoom an organisation in Maharashtra, one of whose members Shri Ramesh Awasthi, is a member of this community, along with SEARCH has done path breaking work in empowering women to tackle these serious issues of gynaecological moribidity and the root cause of patriarchal oppression from which they arise. There are also many other NGOs which are conducting such programmes throughout this country. Unfortunately despite this evidence of widespread gynaecological morbidity and successful models of participatory approaches to tackle it there is still today no effort on the part of the government or the concerned UN agencies to mainstream this in development discourse. Neither is there provision of any budget for the conduct of such surveys and clinical diagnosis and testing which are quite costly, nor are there any efforts to run pilot amelioration programmes. Ideally a committee consisting of people who are experts in this matter and have many years of ground level experience should be formed to collate and analyse all the work that has been done and is being done in this sphere and devise a rigorous programme of sample survey and clinical diagnosis of gynaecological morbity across the country. Something like a specialised form of the National Family Health Survey that is conducted every five years, so that the shroud of silence over this crucial problem facing millions of women in this country is finally torn asunder. This can then be followed up with a much better designed reproductive health programme than the one that is now in place. It is important to remember that women are not just child bearers they have a life apart from that also.

The second is the issue of the adverse gender division of labour. Recently I went on a field visit to a village in Orissa. The village I visited had a very active group of women who were engaged in fighting for and protecting community forests. However, this required them to spend a lot of time in community work. This has increased their work burden as the men have not shared in the domestic care work that traditionally women have to do. In fact this is a problem being faced by women throughout the country with the introduction of reservations for women in Panchayati Raj. Women's work and exposure in the community is increasing without a corresponding reduction in unpaid domestic care work. Once again there is a need to conduct detailed participatory surveys to find out what exactly is the extent of this adverse gender division of labour. There is a culture of silence here too that needs to be broken. Yet again a committee of experts in this field should collate and analyse all the work that has been done to quantify the adverse gender division of labour and women's unpaid work and devise a rigorous sample survey paralleling the National Sample Survey Organisation's 66th Round Large Sample Consumer Expenditure and Employment Survey, the results of which have just been released. A huge exercise like this will automatically generate its own momentum that will start a process that will ensure that men begin chipping in to do unpaid domestic care work. Once again it is important to remember that women are not just home makers but have a life apart from that also.

Facing an Uphill Task

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 17:56:00 +0000

Koraput district of Orissa is part of the famous KBK triad of Koraput, Bolangir and Kalahandi which is notorious for poverty and starvation among its tribals and dalits who constitute 55% of the population of which 71% are residing below the poverty line. So when I got an opportunity to visit a village in this district last month I grabbed it. We visited a village called Gunnar populated totally by Paraja tribals. A small village with less than a hundred hectares of agricultural land and some 50 families. Most of their land is in the hilly forests where they have traditionally practiced shifting cultivation. However, as one farmer regretfully noted the forests have become degraded and the population pressure has gone up so the cycle of shifting cultivation has led to deterioration in land quality. Only in a very small proportion of land along a stream that passes through the village is there any irrigation. The meagre farm and forest produce is mostly consumed by the poor tribals who were visibly mal nourished and there is little surplus to sell or process. The weakness of the economy of the village can be gauged from the fact that the intra village daily wage rate is only Rs 20 and the mortgage rate for land is Rs 2000 per acre.
The school building is under construction and the teacher is absent on most days. There is no child care centre under the Integrated Child Development Scheme and neither do the women get the benefit of ante-natal or post natal care from the Rural Health Service. Most women deliver their babies in their homes with the help of a traditional birth attendant and only in complicated cases are referrals made to hospitals because of the difficulty of transporting.
The villagers have organised themselves with the help of an NGO to demand individual and community forest rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Recognition of Rights Act. Especially the women, under the leadership of Utto Mudali, a widow with a paralysed arm, have been active in the battle for forest rights.

The women have not only secured the rights to their own forest farms but have also socially fenced off and planted a variety of trees on a fifty hectare plot of community forest land shown below. This is a significant change for this community which has traditionally cut down and burnt forests to do shifting cultivation. Seeing that with the changed situation they have to adopt a different attitude toward the forests they have begun conserving them. However, the battle over forests is not yet over as the deeds that have been given to them for their forest farms are not properly made out. They have also not yet been given the title to the community forest that they have begun protecting and which still has a long way to go as shown below.

The basic problem is the low land availability which is less than an acre for agricultural land and about four acres for forest land per household. The poor soil quality, the hilly terrain and the lack of irrigation further compound matters. The remoteness of the village from the nearest market is also a negative factor. Under the circumstances it is not surprising that the people are living on the edge in grinding poverty with little hope of achieving sustainability and economic well being. The only handpump is dysfunctional and the people have to drink the river water as shown below and this results in water borne diseases.

The whole situation in this village angered me tremendously. These people were really working hard but given their resource constraints and the remoteness of their habitat from the mainstream market economy there was little that they could do to pull themselves up from their dire living conditions. The government and the administration are obviously not bothered. In fact there is a board in the approach to the village that says that a spring based potable water system has been installed but there is no sign of it anywhere. When the state machinery is so callous and apathetic then the people have a difficult task at hand to make their lives better. A pity given that they are so hard working and innovative and have done their level best to adapt to changing circumstances. They even tried to migrate for work because the MGNREGS is not being implemented properly and only about ten people have got ten days of work last year. They went to Chennai to work as construction labourers but eventually came back after earning just their meals and to and fro fare.

There is an NGO working in this village trying to provide them with guidance and support. A scheme promoted by the National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development for improvement of Horticulture and Agriculture is being implemented. However, given the huge resource constraints, the NGO's efforts like those of other NGOs is a only a drop in the ocean. Unless there is a systemic change in the developmental model on a global scale there is not much hope of any notable improvement in the livelihoods of these poor villagers.

Difficulty in Implementing the Rule of Law

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:17:00 +0000

Liberals generally like to think that the fact that justice, liberty and equality are promoted through a recognition of rights in the statutes and the administration of these statutes so as to ensure the rule of law makes the liberal democratic system the best form of governance. However, the reality is that the "Rule of Law" does not operate in practice. The executive consisting of the council of ministers headed by the Prime Minister and supported by the bureaucracy is supposed to act according to the law. If they do not do so, then they can be pulled up by the legislature, the judiciary and the media. However, in reality this separation of powers does not really benefit the vast majority of the poor citizens of this country. Primarily because it is very time consuming and expensive to get the attention of the judiciary, legislators and the media over small every day issues of the malfunctioning of the executive. Here I will give two examples from the work of the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
The NHRC had issued a recommendation in November 2010 that the Gujarat Government should pay a compensation of Rs 3,00,000 to the kin of each of the 238 Bhil tribals from Jhabua and Alirajpur districts who had died due to silicosis contracted while working in stone crusher units in Gujarat. However, the Gujarat Government after initial dilly dallying sent notices to the kin of the deceased that their complaints had been registered under the ESI Act and that they should come with all documents to the designated court to fight the case for compensation. This was in gross violation of the original basis of the Supreme Court order to the NHRC. The Supreme Court had reasoned that it was a gross dereliction of duty on the part of the Gujarat Government not to have regulated the stone crusher units as it should have under the law and so it had a moral responsibility to compensate the kin of the illiterate and poor tribals who had died due to this governmental negligence. The NHRC has now stated that it will go back to the Supreme Court saying that the Gujarat Government is refusing to comply with its recommendations. A delegation from the KMCS also visited the Labour Secretary in Ahmedabad requesting him to comply with the NHRC recommendations but they too were fobbed off with the plea that the government had registered cases in the courts and that the victims should seek redressal there.
The NHRC had also recommended that the Madhya Pradesh Government should design and implement a rehabilitation package for the 304 tribals who are affected with silicosis but are still alive. The MP Government too has not complied with this and has instead listed the benefits given to some of these tribals under ongoing social welfare schemes as its rehabilitation package.
The NHRC had also issued notice to the Superintendent of Police of Alirajpur regarding the beating up of a tribal woman by a Head Constable without any rhyme or reason. The police had to then conduct a thorough investigation and the conclusion was that the Head Constable had illegally beaten up the woman. However, after that the police tried to put pressure on the woman to retract her complaint. The KMCS had the media do an investigative story on this underhand pressure of the police and the Superintendent of Police said that action would be taken against the guilty policeman. A similar letter was sent to the NHRC. Subsequently the NHRC closed the case saying that the police had taken action against the guilty policeman and the KMCS must also have got relief for the woman from the State Human Rights Commission and the State Woman's Commission. The KMCS has now filed a complaint with the Inspector General of Police in Indore regarding the inaction of the Police in Alirajpur. Eventually the KMCS will have to approach the High Court if justice is not done.
This underlines the difficulty of getting the rule of law implemented for the poor who are resource less in many senses of the term. The KMCS has continually fought right from the grassroots level up to the centres of power in Delhi employing both political lobbying and legal action but even so it has not been really able to achieve much. This brings to the fore the weakness of liberalism as a practical political programme. The huge concentrations of power in centralised systems invariably distort institutions and laws put in place to ensure liberty, equality and justice especially for those who are the most powerless. There has to be an appreciation of the importance of decentralisation and work has to be done to actualise devolution of power rather than just undertake formal measures.

Displacement Dissected

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 09:24:00 +0000

The major problem of economic development in India currently is that of involuntary displacement. Whether it is construction of highways and industrial and urban nodes adjoining them, airports, mining projects, dams or industrial plants, everywhere land is needed and so people living on that land have to be displaced mostly against their wishes. This month has been full of such incidents which have unfortunately not got the same kind of media attention that Baba Ramdev or Anna Hazare have got. There was the clash in Bhatta Parsaul village in Uttar Pradesh where people were protesting against acquisition of their land by the government for the Noida Expressway. Then there was the police action to evict the people living in the Golibar Slums in Mumbai to make way for urban development by a private developer again helped by the government. The Orissa government tried to move its police forces into the villages of Gobindpur and Dhinkia to acquire land for the POSCO steel plant. Finally Swami Nigamanand died while fasting against the quarrying along the River Ganga which was causing loss of livelihoods for the people living alongside the river due to environmental destruction. In between the Supreme Court passed some strictures on the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) for allegedly giving wrong information in its petition regarding the displacement of tribals due to the Omkareshwar dam on the River Narmada.
In all these matters the government and the administration have continuously ignored the social and environmental costs of industrial and urban development and used the Land Acquisition Act 1894 and various other draconian laws to crush dissent. The judiciary too by criticising the NBA on wrong grounds has shown scant respect for justice and favoured the government and shown support to industrial development sacrificing the rights of the people who are being displaced. The reason is that giving the displaced people the true value of their land or alternatively resettling them pushes up the cost of the project so much that it becomes either economically unviable or reduces drastically the profit margins because of the interest on the increased capital cost.
Matters have come to a head, however, as it is no longer possible to steam roll protest in a democracy in which the electorate has begun voting in large numbers and throwing out visibly corrupt and repressive governments wherever there is an alternative available. Thus, the Maharashtra government had to agree to the demands of the slum dwellers who were being helped in their battle by the National Alliance of People's Movements and Medha Patkar. The Orissa government has had to recall the massive police force it had deployed to clear the two villages for the POSCO project faced with resistance from children, women and men. The Uttar Pradesh Government has had to come out with a new Land Policy which gives the farmers a better deal. This shows that determined resistance can push the government back. In this context an alternative rehabilitation bill has been drafted by a group of social activists that provides for the Gram Sabha or Mohalla Sabha to be given all the project details and only if they feel the project is necessary should it go through with proper rehabilitation and resettlement. This bill can be accessed here.

The Battle Goes On

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Mon, 23 May 2011 17:21:00 +0000

The National Alliance of People's Movements has launched yet another phase of the struggle against the builder politician nexus in Mumbai under the leadership of Medha Patkar.
The Golibar Resistance
What’s the big issue?
The corruption and nexus between the Government and Builders under the cover of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) in Mumbai, that has led to lakhs of slum-dwellers struggling for the basic right to a house.
What’s wrong with SRA?
SRA authorises private builders to redevelop slum land. The slum-dwellers are moved into vertical establishments, and the land that is thus freed up, becomes available as a free-sale component in the property market. Privatisation also means that the government is not responsible for maintaining transparency and quality. Since the money to be made from new land sales in Mumbai is extremely high, there is a vicious competition amongst the builders to woo the slum residents.
Moreover, SRA only authorises a house to those people who can show their citizenship until 1995. It also gives the power of go-ahead to the Builder if they can attain approval of 70% of the people in a society. These 2 facts are exploited by the Builders to practise extortion, fraud and forgery at the ground level, and have become the common practise to lure societies into signing a deal with them.
A date based cut-off to the Right to a House, and limited participation of a government agency, have made the SRA into a pro-Builder scheme. This needs to be rectified.
But why redevelop slums? Aren’t they illegal in the first place?
Today 60% of the population of Mumbai lives in slums. Those recognised under SRA have paid Assessment Tax to the government. The people living here comprise the major part of the people working in the service industry and small-scale industries. Slums are not a result of squatting, but instead because of a lack of low-cost housing options. This big gap in housing development has left only very high-cost options that the poorer people cannot afford.
So is SRA the only scheme for redevelopment?
It is the most prominent one in place to resettle slums. Others look into Project Affected People (PAP) – people forced to move because of development of Highways, high-tech parks etc. For settlements that came into being after the cut-off date of 1995, there are currently no schemes at all.
Why now? What’s the urgency?
This is not a recent struggle. People of the slums have been fighting for their rights since 2004, when vast areas of slums in Mumbai were razed to the ground by the Vilasrao Deshmukh government to convert Mumbai to Shanghai. The Adarsh Housing Scam, Hiranandani Developers Land grab are examples of the extent to which a handful of powerful people are robbing the common man of a basic right to shelter.
Another such instance is the history of ‘redevelopment’ in Khar Golibar, wherein 140 acres of land- home to 46 societies and over 26,000 families- has been literally gifted to a single private company – Shivalik Ventures, by invoking a special clause – 3K- of the SRA. This clause gives a single builder complete rights to redevelop a large slum without inviting tenders.
A small society of 323 houses in Golibar - Ganesh Krupa - has become the flash point for the struggle between the SRA/Builder nexus and the Slum dwellers, ever since it slapped a case of fraud and forgery on Shivalik Ventures, the builder that forcefully undertook the rights to their development. 6 forced demolition drives over the past 1 year led to the society appealing to Medhatai Patkar and ‘Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao’ for help.
Although the CM had earlier assured Medhatai Patkar of an inquiry into the matter of Golibar demolitions, and the larger issue of redevelopment of slums in Mumbai, no action has been taken for over two months. This has forced Medhatai to go on an indefinite fast to get justice.
What’s the history of Ganesh Krupa Society?
The slum housing the Ganesh Krupa Society consists of 324 tenements. The slum was declared in 1997 and the rehabilitation scheme was approved in favour of M/s Madhu Construction Company, to which the slum dwellers were amenable. The Slum Rehabilitation Authority had issued a Letter of Intent bearing No. SRAIENG/819/HE/PULOI dated 3rd October 2004 in favour of Madhu Constructions, however due to financial constraints and pressure from big companies, Madhu Constructions could not undertake the project and hence entered into a Joint Venture Agreement with Shivalik Ventures Pvt. Ltd. on 3rd March 2008, without the knowledge of the slum dwellers. Thereafter Shivalik Ventures indulged in forging documents to procure the Letter of Intent bearing No. SRA/ENG/1188/HE/ML/LOI dated 20th August 2009. The crucial resolution dated 7th February 2009 of the Society approving of and giving consent to the company to carry out the development itself has been fabricated by Shivalik Ventures, in respect of which criminal proceedings initiated by the slum dwellers are pending. However, relying on the fraudulent document and consequential actions Shivalik has succeeded in obtaining favourable orders from the Courts and began forcible and illegal demolition of houses in the slum. While 167 families have voluntarily shifted, but 48 houses were demolished in January 2011, and on 19th and 20th May 2011, 24 houses in total were demolished.
The slum dwellers have already initiated criminal action in regard to the fraudulent document purported to be the General Body Resolution dated 7th February 2009 and can always avail of the necessary civil remedies available to them, there is one another important aspect that is of mammoth proportions and consequences, and this being the link of this, and other projects of Shivalik Ventures, to the 2G scam.
Who is Shivalik Ventures?
Unitech owns 50% of shares of Shivalik Ventures Pvt. Ltd. even as per its own website and Annual Report 2009-10 (page 52). The Annual Report 2009-10 of Unitech further provides under the heading “Capital Commitment” that: "Investment in 10,00,000 equity shares of Rs. 10 each at a premium of Rs. 9990/-per share aggregating of Rs. 1000 crore has been made in joint venture company, Shivalik Ventures Pvt. Ltd. An Amount of Rs. 442.77 crore has been paid against the allotment of fully paid-up shares. The balance securities premium of Rs.557.23 crores will be accounted for on payment.”
As pointed out above, Shivalik Ventures, in turn, has entered into an agreement of Joint Venture on 2nd March 2008 with M/s Madhu Construction Company to jointly develop Ganesh Krupa slum at Golibar.
It is important to highlight the period during which Unitech has entered into re-development of slums in Mumbai since it corresponds to the period during which it illegally secured thousands of crores in the 2G scam. The Director of Unitech has been included in the charge sheet filed by CBI and has been under arrest since then. And as per the CAG report, Unitech after availing the Spectrum licence in September – October 2008 for Rs 1658 crores subsequently sold it off to Telenor company at the rate of Rs 6120 crores. According to CBI, Unitech was alloted Unified Access Service licenses in 22 circles for Rs.1,658 crores, 60% of which it offloaded to Norway's Telenor even before roll-out.
We are apprehensive that this illegal gratification enjoyed by the Company has been diverted and invested in its 50% equity at the Shivalik Ventures Pvt. Ltd. and the same is being channeled into the developmental projects of Shivalik Ventures including the slum projects in Golibar.
Why is Medhatai on an indefinite fast?
Previous attempts to initiate corrective action from the government’s side have met with no success. Along with Medhatai, a large delegation of 10,000 strong from different slums in Mumbai had even marched to Azad Maidan in April to raise the issue of redevelopment. Despite this, today the police and collector’s men have entered Ganesh Krupa with impunity and razed it to the ground with a bulldozer. An indefinite fast is now the only alternative left. These are the demands:
· Revoke 3k clause and thus cancel the agreements between builders and SRA for the 6 projects where 3k has been applied.
· Review SRA scheme itself and modify it to allow Self-development as an option.
· Implement Rajiv Aawas Yojna across the slums in Mumbai. This scheme is not biased like the SRA and promises a house to everyone without one, irrespective of a date.
National Alliance of People’s Movements

National Office: Room No. 29-30, 1st floor, ‘A’ Wing, Haji Habib Bldg, Naigaon Cross Road, Dadar (E), Mumbai - 400 014; Ph: 022-24150529
Delhi Office: 6/6, Jangpura B, Mathura Road, New Delhi 110014
Phone : 011 26241167 / 24354737 Mobile : 09818905316

What would Geronimo have thought of Laden

noreply@blogger.com (Rahul Banerjee) — Sun, 22 May 2011 09:56:00 +0000

Possibly the most significant event of the modern era is what has come to be termed the "Columbian Encounter" - the colonisation of the Americas by the Europeans beginning with Christopher Columbus' first landing in the Bahamas in 1492. This conquest was achieved by the spreading of diseases like cholera against which the indigenous Americans had no immunity resulting in their being decimated in large numbers and by the practice of deceit arising from uncontrolled greed which too were foreign to the culture of the indigenous Americans. Subsequently Europeans in large numbers migrated to the Americas and marginalised the indigenous people there, setting humanity on the road of capitalist development that is exploitative of both people and nature.

Throughout history scientific and technological development, while improving the life chances of human beings, has also simultaneously vastly increased their greed and murderous capacities. Capitalist development just raised the rate of growth of avarice and militarism by exponential proportions. And nowhere has this been more demonstrated than in the United States of America. The greed of the white settlers and their military power was used to wipe out the indigenous Americans and their saner, egalitarian and nature friendly culture. This greed and militarism then spread to other areas and has now become the dominant culture throughout the world thanks to the mesmerising power of television. It has become accepted practice to kill in pursuit of greed either directly through war or indirectly through poverty and disease. However, if anyone else other than the Americans or the Europeans do this and target them then they are branded as criminals and attacked. That is, the Europeans and Americans can kill for greed but others who suffer as a consequence cannot retaliate and if they do then they are considered to be criminals. The Arab Middle East and West and Central Asia have been at the receiving end of US and European imperialism from the nineteenth century onwards primarily because of the vast reserves of crude oil and natural gas in the region which is a crucial ingredient for the satisfaction of modern greed and militarism. Injustice upon injustice have been heaped on the people of this region by the imperialists culminating in the invasion of Iraq by the USA. Consequently there is tremendous anger among the people of the region against the Americans which is manifested in various ways the most dramatic of which was the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York killing thousands of Americans. While the Americans may see this as a criminal act those who committed it saw it as revenge for all the miseries that the Americans and the Europeans had piled on the Arabs for over a century.

Predictably the response of the Americans was not to introspect on their own criminality which had bred similar criminality among those oppressed by it across the world but to embark on an even more criminal military operation in Afghanistan similar to the one launched earlier in Iraq to further secure their greediness. In the process a special offshore prison was opened in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where the Americans have a naval base where suspects, euphemistically labelled as enemy combatants, were incarcerated and tortured without access to the American judicial process. The latest high profile action has been the killing of Osama bin Laden suspected to be the brain and financier behind the 9/11 attack in a secret operation in his hideout in the military garrison town of Abbottabad just 70 kms from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

As opposed to the very strong stress on due process of law in the criminal justice system of the United States which gives prime importance to the freedom of individuals and their right to life, the actions of the USA in its campaign against those who attack it have eschewed these principles and have relied on incarceration without charge, torture and summary executions without giving the accused a fair trial or the chance to defend themselves. Primarily because the evidence against these accused, including Laden, is insufficient to get conviction in a fair trial. This injustice added to the earlier injustices is bound to worsen the situation rather than improve it. The new Al Qaeda leader has already made announcements of increased strikes against the Americans and the British.

The story dished out for public consumption about the Abbottabad killing of Laden itself is full of problems. Even if it is assumed that the stealth helicopters could have successfully reached the house in which Laden was hiding without being detected by the Pakistani radars, the sound of the fighting that immediately began must have reached the army units stationed less than half a kilometer away. Especially the blowing up of one of the helicopters that was damaged during the landing. That these army units did not interfere with the USA commando operation which went on for over half an hour could only be because the Pakistani establishment knew beforehand where Laden was hiding and had guessed what was going on even if they were not warned by the CIA to keep off once the operation commenced, which latter is more likely. This means that the Pakistani establishment was aware of the fact that the USA is a mighly imperialist predator whose power it cannot counter and also that there is tremendous anger throughout the world against this continual criminality of the Americans which has resulted in Laden being worshipped as a hero by many and so they had also provided a safe shelter for him. A typical example of the resistance of the weak arising from a moral economy that perceives the Americans to be criminals who cannot be countered in straightforward combat.
That the Americans have learnt little about behaving in a democratic and just way with those it considers to be aliens even after so many wars, some of which have gone awry for them, is evident from the fact that they named this commando strike as "Operation Geronimo". Geronimo is the name the white Americans gave to the great Chiricahua Apache Indian leader Goyaale who fought against them in the later part of the nineteenth century to try and safeguard the Apache homelands from encroachment. These homelands were rich in crude oil deposits and also provided pastures for raising of beef cattle. He was finally forced to surrender in 1886 after a three decade long unsuccessful battle against the white Americans. The Americans are still proud of what they did to the Apaches and so they thought nothing of visualising Laden as the new Geronimo. One can't help wondering what Geronimo would have thought of Laden given that they have both fought unsuccessfully a mighty criminal power.
The power of the modern American state is very scaring. The huge resources it has deployed to carry out an intelligence cum commando operation like the one on Laden is a sobering thought for people who are trying to fight for justice in small pockets around the world. This power extends to the control of media as the overwhelming response to the action has been a laudatory one with even the United Nations Secretary General welcoming it unequivocally despite its obvious violation of human rights and international law.
The common person in the USA seems to view the killing of Laden as a welcome development because an opinion poll conducted immediately after showed that rising above partisan affiliations 57% of those polled approved of President Obama's overall job performance though 60% still felt that this would not raise their level of safety against terrorist attacks. When there is such a tremendous lack of self introspection among Americans even after the 2008 meltdown, regarding the model of development that has been adopted by them and following them the rest of the world, then it is difficult to conceive of a more just world order emerging in the near future. Thus, there seems to be no possibility at the present moment of challenging the criminality of the Americans and so the struggle for justice continues on the fringes of mainstream society throughout the world. Even if these struggles sometimes manage to hold centre stage as in the case of Egypt or Tunisia, they are very soon defused using various stratagems. The culture of deceit and mass murder let loose by the Columbian Encounter still holds supreme after more than 500 years stifling the voices calling for a saner, non-accumulative and so non-violent mode of development.