Full Blown Conflict -III

Article written for The Post, Lahore

The previous sections dealt with the events as they have happened in Sri Lanka in the recent past. One would be clear that the situation in Sri Lanka is very much a civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) based in Kilinocchi in north east Sri Lanka and the central government in Colombo. The motivation for the conflict is the claim made by the LTTE that the Tamil population deserve an independent nation carved out of the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government is quite clear that no carving out is possible and the united nationhood of the Sri Lankan island is not going to be compromised.

The question that would be asked first is why at all has this problem erupted between the ethnic communities in the country, even as these communities have been living together for centuries in the island? Clearly the disaffection of the Tamils with the national system has grown out of alienation and maltreatment ever since the formation of an independent Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) from imperialist clutches. One has to understand the dynamics of ethnic troubles more thoroughly by studying both the colonial as well as the post-colonial period to answer the question of reasons for disaffection.

One thing is however clear – ethnic hatred between the communities is not a legacy of the ancient past as it is made out to be. The incompatibility of nationalism in countries with high concentrations of multiple ethnicity is a myth that has been a legacy of colonial understanding. That these myths have been used to buttress the idea of ethnic nationalism as the basis of nationhood today is a tragedy of post-colonial history. In fact, some of the biases and distinctions on ethnic basis were itself made by colonialists in Sri Lanka in the form of ethnic censuses that bracketed Tamils, Muslims and ethnic Sinhalese into boxes for bureaucratic purposes. Such a boxing in of myriad people within categories was a case in point in India too, where censuses were done on the basis of caste and religion.

It suited the colonial agenda to create these categories ostensibly to help the policy of ‘divide and rule’, as well as the fact that it reflected the imperialists’ understanding of their colonies and their people, that it was impossible for the colonised to rule themselves because of the myriad differentiations among them. Such thinking was prevalent even among the academicians. Prominent anthropologists for example maintain that primordial identity (caste, creed, religion or language) is a primary problem in the non-coalescing of a nation-state in countries such as India and obviously such logic applied to Sri Lanka as well. The fact that India has survived as a federal nation with its multiplicities of identities puts paid to such theories. The question remains why Sri Lanka has failed to emulate the Indian model effectively.

The ruling class in Sri Lanka (erstwhile Ceylon), just after the decline of the British empire, was represented by forces such as the United National Party, a right wing party leading the interests of the Lankan elite (landed gentry and business classes) that were satisfied with a dominion status under the British empire instead of complete independence. As these forces were pro-market and right wing, vast levels of disenchantment among labour (mostly plantation workers and agricultural labourers) was tried to be warded off by using means to pander to ethnic sentiments, particularly by fuelling the language divide. Widespread anger among the populace on the fact that plantations were still owned by British corporations and that there existed no national bourgeoisie representing the interests of the newly independent nation, was channelled into mobilisations on ethnic lines, due to skillful manipulation of this divide by the ruling elite. Since independence, essentially, the ruling classes pandered to Sinhala nationalism off and on, to exploit the disenchantment with the fact that the Tamils enjoyed a high share of urban government employment and had a high degree of literacy and education as compared to the much high numbers of unemployed among the ethnic Sinhalese.

The emergence of a centre-left, national bourgeois party, the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) in the power centre did not change things drastically, as this party nurtured Sinhala nationalism even further. Under the leadership of SWRD Bandaranaike, a Sinhala Only Act was passed that laid the first seeds for the growth of a militant Tamil consolidation. This Act meant that many Tamils in the civil service, for example, were forced to quit their jobs owing to the Sinhala-only policy and ethnic lingual prejudice created a strident rift between the communities. As such therefore, the ruling parties, despite their commitment to varying economic ideologies, worked on ethnic fault lines to buttress their strengths. It is not as if there was no opposition to this opportunism. There existed a strong Leftist party, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), a Trotskyite party that envisaged equal rights for both the Tamils and the Sinhalese in a socialist Lankan republic. The party was successful in forcing the ruling elite to declare Sri Lanka as an independent republic and was able to get the foreign owned plantations nationalised. It was also involved in several trade union movements and struggles. However, the party, having compromised itself in deals with the ruling parties (particularly the SLFP) owing to the inevitable pulls of parliamentarism, gradually weakened, a process that was accentuated by the international split in the Left movement. The disenfranchisement of the Indian Tamil plantation workers was a major blow to the support base of the LSSP too.

In essence the weakening of the Left in Sri Lanka, the only major force to support a political system that accorded equal rights to the minorities, left the political arena to openly ethnic parties. The Janatha Vimuktha Peramuna, an adventurist Leftist party that tried many insurrections to get to power, also based itself on a strong Sinhala nationalism. The continuing Sinhala-only policy and the repeated incidences of extreme violence against Tamil groups saw the rapid militarisation of Tamil outfits and the birth of radical forces such as the LTTE. The deep-seated anger against such lopsided policies by the Lankan government resulted in the marginalisation of even moderate groups such as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). The LTTE took to deadly attacks on the Sri Lankan military forces in an attempt to fuel support for the formation of a separate Tamil Eelam and these sporadic actions took the shape of a full-scale civil war since 1983. Organised pogroms in Tamil areas by the Sri Lankan government and guerrilla attacks by the LTTE marked the start of a prolonged conflict. Many Tamil militants also enjoyed support from covert agencies of the Indian government, as also from the political parties in Tamil Nadu, the south Indian state. The LTTE, through its policy of eliminating internal opposition among the various Tamil militant groups, emerged as the largest militant organisation, particularly in the Tamil dominated city in North Sri Lanka, Jaffna.

Indian intervention to broker peace between the warring sections in Sri Lanka only exacerbated the ethnic differences. While the nationalist elements in Sri Lanka were angered by the intrusion of Indian forces on Lankan soil, the Sri Lankan Tamils found the Indian interventionist action against the LTTE galling. The entire operation was thus a fiasco despite some initial gains and culminated eventually in the LTTE’s assassination of Indian leader Rajiv Gandhi, who had sent the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka. The notorious assassination (just a few years after IPKF withdrawal) started the international isolation process of the LTTE.

Essentially, the story of conflict in Sri Lanka is a complex one, which involves the failure of the elite as well as the subaltern in evolving a consensual republic that based itself on respect to ethnic differences. The success of India to overcome such differences in comparison to the Lankans owe to the largely progressive character of the Indian national movement and the assertion of sovereignty fairly early after independence. Can such a consensus evolve in the future in Lanka, is the question to be answered in the next section.

(to be continued)

Justice for Bilkis Bano

Editorial written for the Economic and Political Weekly

A sessions court verdict ends a harrowing six-year wait for justice by pogrom victim Bilkis Bano.

A measure of justice was finally provided to Bilkis Bano, one of many victims of gruesome incidents of hate crime during the Gujarat violence of 2002. Bano (who was pregnant at the time) was gang raped while 14 member of her family were massacred in the post-Godhra violence in Dahod (or Dahot?) district in Gujarat. The special court in Mumbai, to which the Supreme Court had transferred the case , awarded life imprisonment to 11 who were found guilty, while a police officer was given three years rigorous imprisonment for colluding with the perpetrators of the crime. Seven of the accused, including five police officers and a doctor were acquitted. While Bilkis Bano has welcomed the verdict, she has said that her struggle to bring the acquitted to book will continue.

Bilkis Bano's case is just one example of a score of heinous crimes that were perpetrated in Gujarat as part of the Godhra and post-Godhra violence that are still being heard in courts. The special court's judgement is significant as justice was awarded despite the active efforts to subvert it in Gujarat. The subversion of justice and the active role of the Narendra Modi government in abetting the planned violence against the minority community is a known fact.

Bano's case went through quite a few tribulations, as her case was initially ordered to be closed by a magistrate in Limkheda taluka in Dahot district in Gujarat. The Supreme Court then stepped in and ordered the transfer of the case to Mumbai, after taking into cognisance Bano's fear that witnesses were being intimidated and evidence was being tampered with in Gujarat. She must be commended for her brave determination in fighting the case by petitioning the highest judiciary, with the help of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), for an impartial hearing outside Gujarat. The case was one of a few which were referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) by the Supreme Court. The Best Bakery trial, where again a guilty verdict was handed down, was another such case. Other prominent ones such as the Naroda Patiya and the Gulbarg Society massacres (the latter involving the killing of former Member of Parliament Ehsan Jaffri) are still awaiting a conclusion. Meticulous investigative work by the CBI to present evidence on the massacre of many of the family of Bilkis Bano helped the sessions court in Mumbai reach its verdict.

The Bilkis Bano judgement should be a precedent for the scores of cases relating to the Gujarat crime that are still being heard, though with the passage of time it would be much more difficult to present convincing evidence in court. Revelations through media exposes have shown that the justice system in Gujarat has been wilfully thwarted by entrenched sections in government who have gone to the extent of even protecting the guilty. The CBI must quickly conclude its investigations and file charges against the perpetrators in the cases that have been assigned to it by the Supreme Court.

Question marks have been raised over the judiciary's handling of cases where the members of the religious minorities comprise the larger number of victims. While the prosecution and the courts have moved to deliver justice in cases where the members of the minority community have been the guilty, it is perceived that there has not been a similar intent in cases involving riots instigated by members of (or acting in the name of) the majority religious community. The most disturbing example of this is the determination with which the Bombay Blasts case was investigated and tried in court while the crimes of the Bombay riots of 1992-93 have been largely ignored.

The Bilkis Bano case verdict is therefore one that would go some way in dispelling such misgivings about the willingness of the state and the judiciary to prosecute the guilty irrespective of their religious denomination. The role of civil society in ensuring support to the carriage of justice must be commended as well. An end to further delays in the trials in many cases (more than 1600) that were reopened by the Supreme Court in 2004 should re-establish confidence in the legal-political system in the country, even if the political class in Gujarat continues to victimise the riot victims in the state.

Full Blown Conflict -II

Article written for The Post, Lahore.

The preceding section of the series focused on the recent events in Sri Lanka that have created the impasse between the insurgent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government in Colombo. The escalating crisis in Sri Lanka has reached a point of no return from a full-scaled civil war as more bombings and civilian killings have already taken place in the interim since the previous column. This article in the series tries to elucidate the reasons for the escalation of the conflict over the past few years and shows how the efforts made to bring a solution to the impasse have obviously failed.

The ceasefire agreement signed in February 2002 gave legitimacy to the LTTE as a frontal organisation representing minority Sri Lankan Tamils in a war of attrition against the Sinhala majority-led Sri Lankan government. Even though there were other agreements that failed in fructification of peace, the CFA of 2002 was encouraging as it laid out the basis of a comprehensive dialogue between the warring sections. A truce was brokered by a group of co-chairs from the US, Japan, Norway and the European Union (EU) between the Lankan government and the LTTE leadership, based in Kilinochchi city in northern Sri Lanka. The LTTE leadership (chief V. Prabhakaran and the now deceased Anton Balasingham, the chief strategist) negotiated a settlement for peace with the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe of the United National Party. Wickremasinghe himself was elected on an agenda of peace in the parliamentary elections concluded in 2001 after the Lankan forces had suffered several military losses and the state had experienced economic pressures during the Kumaratunga-Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) rule. Wickremasinghe’s peace plan and the response by the LTTE had the effect of ending open and hostile war for a period of time and was also responsible for a negotiated dialogue process through a series of talks between both the parties. The LTTE now also enjoyed legitimacy as a sovereign player in Sri Lankan politics, feted by international missions for multiple talks. Despite such formal privileges, the LTTE retained its covert abilities, and used the detente to target military intelligence personnel in the Sri Lankan government, as well as to assassinate people among the Tamil community inimical to the organisation (TULF leader, Neelan Thiruchelvam, was killed allegedly by the LTTE and so was Kethesh Loganathan, a Tamil human rights activist).

The CFA was thus being violated with impunity by both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government. The latter, which was supposed to cease hostilities and to recognise LTTE-held territories and to desist from military activities in these areas, did not pay heed to the CFA while capturing LTTE-held areas in the north-east region. One has, however, got to raise the question why the CFA turned out to be a dead-letter agreement without an actual proper implementation and an answer can be found by taking recourse to understanding the Byzantine world of Sri Lankan democratic politics.

The CFA, as mentioned earlier, was signed by the then Prime Minister Wickremasinghe of the UNP when President Chandrika Kumaratunga belonged to the SLFP. Several sections of the Sri Lankan populace, as well as the polity, were upset that the agreement acknowledged the LTTE as a legal and legitimate player, thereby weakening the case for the sovereign hold of the Sri Lankan state on areas in the north and north-east. Political players such as the nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and Buddhist parties that favoured a unitary Sri Lankan state were dead against any leeway given to the LTTE or indeed any Tamil nationalist outfit, let alone a separatist force. These sections were strengthened when they became part of a government led by Mahinda Rajapaksa (the current president) of the SLFP after a coalition was formed to defeat the UNP in 2004. The Rajapaksa coalition was able to form a government because Tamils (many of whom were sympathetic toward the UNP for its role in the ceasefire) were prevented from voting in the parliamentary elections in areas controlled by the LTTE. The hawkish coalition, from day one, ratcheted up the confrontation with the LTTE, which simultaneously was engaging in overt violation of the CFA through its own actions. Increasing the hostility between the two sides was the fact that the Lankan government was providing covert support to the breakaway Karuna faction of the LTTE in the eastern regions.

The LTTE, weakened by the breaking away of the Karuna faction was also seriously hurt by growing international isolation. Even as the monitors of the peace mission were deploring the violations of the agreement, a growing international consensus against “any form of terrorism” was hurting the LTTE. The death of chief strategist Anton Balasingham was a big blow, as Balasingham was seen as a moderating influence enjoying wide international access as a representative of the LTTE in the international fora.

Several representatives of the LTTE in various countries such as in the US, the EU and Australia were arrested for involvement in covert arms deals, money extraction from the diaspora and for other reasons. This dealt a serious blow to the LTTE internationally. The Sri Lankan government on the other hand increased its defence budget, and started buying weapons and defence material from various nations such as China and even India. Despite the presence of a Sea Tigers unit and even the use of light aircraft vehicles by the LTTE, the increasing bombing operations by the government targeted at the LTTE strongholds resulted in the death of at least one prominent LTTE leader, S.P. Tamilchelvan.

The strategies adopted by the two parties in the conflict were quite clear: the Lankan government wanted to weaken and destroy the LTTE militarily even as it kept the option of a federal solution to the minority problem open. The LTTE on the other hand, wanted to use the humanitarian crisis generated by the military operation undertaken by the Lankan government to highlight the improbability of a coexistence of the two communities under one sovereign, by alleging that the Lankan state was a majoritarian terrorist state bent upon “genocide”.

The Sri Lankan government’s formal rejection of the CFA now seems to be a political response to the growing demands by the ultra-nationalist segments supporting the government, to annihilate opposition by the LTTE militarily. These sections such as the JVP have for quite some time demanded a ban on the LTTE, as well as the abrogation of the CFA signed by the UNP. The JVP has even rejected a federal solution, retaining its notion of a unitary Sri Lanka rejecting the claims of the ethnic minority to get any respectable share in power. Even though the Sri Lankan government’s military actions against the LTTE in the north and the north-east have not been addressed very negatively by the international community owing to the tactics and actions of the LTTE, the tearing up of the CFA by the government is only bound to loosen the international shackles over the LTTE. The international community including the important neighbour, India, is not pleased with the open civil war that the Lankan government has embarked on, disheartened by the government’s response to the humanitarian problem caused as well as the measures taken against Tamil minorities in the capital city in the name of security.

It is clear that both the government and the LTTE’s visions of a protracted military driven conflict is only bound to obscure the real issues that entail the differences between the minority and the majority community, as well as to belie any hopes of a negotiated settlement of the problem. The LTTE’s reliance on a single point agenda of the formation of a separate state for Sri Lankan Tamils stems from an extremist viewpoint that suggests that a nation can only be formed out of a single communitarian identity, while the Sri Lankan state’s repeated failure in bringing about a political consensus for a federal solution to the problem highlights the entrenched presence of a majoritarian consciousness among the Sinhala polity. The reasons for this entrenchment, as well as the demand for a separate state, can only be explained by a review of the history of the island republic, which should be done in the next segment of this series.

Kenya erupts in violence

Editorial written for Economic & Political Weekly

Rival tribes engage in killings over presidential election results.

Incidents of internecine killings and violence have rocked the east African nation Kenya ever since the results of the December 27th presidential elections had been announced. The decision of the election commission in Kenya to declare the victory of incumbent president Mwai Kibaki of the Party of National Unity (PNU) has been the spur for these incidents, in which around 600 people have been reported to be killed.

It was widely believed that the results to the elections would have been extremely close with the opposition leader Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) mounting a strong challenge to Kibaki's rule. However with reports of rigging and electoral malpractices coming in, the declared victory of Kibaki is seen to a dubious one by several independent observers. The fact that the prominent candidates belong to different tribes; Odinga from the Luo tribe and Kibaki from the Kiyuki tribe is mentioned as the reason for violence against the Kiyuki tribe members by disenchanted voters belonging to the Luo and other tribes. The most prominent incident of violence involved the burning of a church which had provided refuge to Kikuyu tribe members in a small town about 185 miles away from the capital, Nairobi, in the process, killing a number of people trapped inside.

It is however too simplistic to term this violence as motivated by just another case of inter-tribe rivalry in Africa. The political rivalry between Kibaki and Raila has been very intense and both accuse the other of personal corruption. During the Kibaki regime, formed since the demise of the Daniel Arap Moi dictatorship, Kenya has seen significant foreign investment led economic growth (about 6 percent according to latest figures) but concurrently widening regional and economic disparities in the predominantly agriculture based country. While prosperity has been accrued to sections in and around central Kenya (Nairobi and some other urban centres), regions in the west has seen continuation and accentuation of poverty (a national average of 79 percent) that has characterised the nation for quite long. Raila Odinga derives a lot of support from these regions, while the Kikuyu tribe dominated central Kenyan regions have affirmed support to Mwai Kibaki.

Mwai Kibaki, when first elected to power in 2002 was able to defeat Arap Moi's designated nominee Uhuru Kenyatta of the Kenya African National Unity (KANU) with the support of Raila Odinga. Kibaki's legacy was to devolve power in a federated system for Kenya, but the problems of corruption had continued to plague his regime. Odinga, a prosperous industrialist became part of the ODM along with other politicians and launched a movement to oppose Kibaki's rule. A much touted move for a new constitutional draft through a referendum by the government in 2005 was defeated resoundingly by the opposition, particularly because of a powerful grass roots mobilisation by Odinga. Odinga therefore emerged as a powerful candidate to replace Kibaki in the recent December 2007 elections and opinion polls pointed out that he would win by a narrow margin over the incumbent president.

Fundamentally however, Raila Odinga does not offer any substantial change in the economic policy (Odinga belongs to the Liberal Democratic Party faction of the ODM) and his elevation would have been yet another case of circulation of elites, common to African post-colonial nations. As it is however, the doubts raised over the legitimacy of the election verdict, fuelled the current spate of violence as Odinga refused to accept the verdict and called for a re-count and resignation of the new government.

Supporters of Kibaki have alleged that rigging occurred in ODM strongholds as well and Kibaki has refused an official recount or resignation, conceding however that the allegations about the election verdict have to be fought in the courts. Kibaki has also suggested a national unity government with portfolios for members from the opposition; the idea having been refused by Odinga however. A presidential candidate Kalonzo Musyoka who came third in the elections (also from the ODM), has been named as the vice president in the newly installed government.

Representatives of the African Union have offered to mediate between the warring politicians in Kenya to bring about a conciliation, which could stop the internecine violence. An official and accurate recount seems to be the best way out of the impasse. But the prevention of internecine violence of this nature in the future can only happen if the structural problems of the Kenyan political economy are sufficiently addressed by a democratically elected non-corrupt government.

Full Blown Conflict -I

The island republic of Sri Lanka is now officially engulfed by civil war. With the breaking up of the farcical ceasefire agreement (CFA) between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the government has now acknowledged that it has plunged headlong into a full fledged war against insurgents in control of territory in the northern parts of the country. A series of articles will therefore focus on the current situation in the country, a background of the grievances that have created this quagmire and perhaps work out a way out of the impasse. The first part of the series will focus on the events as they stand.

The CFA was signed in 2002 between the two parties, brokered by a group of international monitors led by Norway. The agreement was welcomed widely as it had laid down the possibility of a lasting solution to the ethnic crisis in the nation, torn as it was by years of civil war and strife between the majority Sinhala and the Tamil communities. The Sri Lankan Tamil community's grouse was that they were denied basic rights for years by the Sinhala dominated central government and were at the receiving end of countless massacres led by the federal government. The Sri Lankan government on the other hand had deplored the insurgent tactics used by the LTTE, and claimed that the adoption of political assassinations, suicide bombings and Machiavellian tactics by the LTTE to retain military power was what that led to the impasse between both the parties.

The ceasefire agreement raised the possibility of a federal solution to the conflict and had also provided the first instance of the LTTE's acceptance of such a solution to the vexed ethnic nationality problem. It also gave official recognition to the LTTE's claim of representing the Tamilians. The LTTE was just one of a myriad set of groups fighting for various goals for the Tamil minority, from autonomy to complete independence. Groups such as the Tamil Union Liberation Front (TULF) which had existed for a longer time had advanced moderate methods of achieving goals such as federal autonomy and was endorsed by older and intellectual sections among the Tamils, while the LTTE and other paramilitary groups advocating the creation of a separate Tamil state, Eelam, found favour among younger sections. The LTTE over a period of time had been involved in internecine conflict among the various Tamil groups itself and after a period of attrition had emerged as the undisputed, strong and armed militant organisation. It had simultaneously cultivated an international backing through ties with the vast Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora and had also been supported by several sections of the Tamil polity in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan crisis in the late 1980s had created disenchantment among both the Tamils and the Sinhala sections and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) had to leave the Sri Lankan soil without tangible gains in bringing about an end to the conflict. The outcome of the IPKF saga led to the LTTE assassinating Rajiv Gandhi through a suicide bomber, as Gandhi was identified for having been responsible for the intervention in Sri Lanka. Rajiv Gandhi's assassination however had the effect of alienating the LTTE from support in India, as the organisation was banned and its leader V. Prabhakaran was made the prime accused for the Indian leader's brutal murder.

After long periods of civil strife in the 1990s, the Sri Lankan government under then prime minister Chandrika Kumaratunga came forward with a devolution package which was rejected by the insurgents even as killings continued as the Sinhala government wrested back control over strategically important regions such as the Jaffna peninsula in north Sri Lanka. The LTTE had then decided to go in for a detente not just to recoup from its military losses but also to gain legitimacy by setting up governing institutions, thus graduating from a guerilla outfit into a governing authority in some areas in the North and East Sri Lankan regions, after the ceasefire agreement. The LTTE set up policing and revenue collecting organs, as well as judicial courts, even as the tenuous peace held with the reduction in hostilities between the two parties.

The peace however was not to last, as political assassinations and violations of the CFA started with impunity. A big blow to the LTTE was the breaking away of a major commander of the outfit, Vinayagamurthy Muralidharan a.k.a “Col”. Karuna who started his own outfit consisted of disgruntled Tamil extremist elements from the east Sri Lankan region. This group was later to be tacitly supported by the Sri Lankan government forces. The defection of Karuna weakened the LTTE in the eastern parts of Sri Lanka.

The decisive blow to the CFA was the assassination of Sri Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar. Kadirgamar, who was an ethnic Tamil was an articulate minister who had ideas for not just the solving of the ethnic problem but also for increased economic and diplomatic co-operation between different countries in South Asia. Kadirgamar was however a marked man for the LTTE for having tried to convince the case against the insurgents in the international community and his brutal killing by a bullet of an assassin suspected to be from the LTTE, put paid to any hopes of the CFA holding up for longer. The Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) which was set up to monitor incidents that violated the CFA, was now flush with innumerable complaints and violations. Nearly 90% of the violations were from the LTTE side themselves.

The coming to power of a hawkish coalition led by president Mahinda Rajapaksa of the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) (supported by left nationalist Janata Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) and the Buddhist religious conservative Jathila Hela Urumaya) put paid to any hopes of reviving the CFA to workable levels. The Rajapaksa administration paid lip service to the question of granting federal autonomy to the Tamil minorities while going in for a full scale military offensive which included targeted air bombings. There were great hopes for a consensus on federal autonomy and an emulation of the Indian model of federalism in Sri Lanka through an agreement between the chief political actors in the Sinhala polity (the SLFP and the opposition United National Party), but it was prevented by petty politicking. An All Party Representative Conference called upon to evaluate a solution through the involvement of the mainstream parties was to become a cropper because of insistence of hardline positions by the JVP.

In the meantime, the military conflict achieved some victories for the Sri Lankan government as top LTTE leaders, political commisar S.P.Tamilchelvan and intelligence deputy “Col.” Charles were killed. But the conflict has escalated the humanitarian crisis in the region, affecting the already traumatised Tamil population greatly. More and more people have been forced to stay in decampments after severe aerial bombing and even the Tamils in cities such as Colombo have been harassed by security agencies ostensibly as a security measure. The LTTE has promised to retaliate in kind, meaning more bombings, suicide killings, and terror attacks in the Sri Lankan capital and other cities are in the offing.

After the tearing up of the CFA, the government has declared its intentions for a full scale assault on LTTE lines in the Wanni region in north Sri Lanka, saying no federal solution is possible without demolishing the LTTE. The LTTE is expected to revert to its time tested guerilla strategy of “hit and runs” and tactical retreats into jungles and many analysts say that the assault would be a long drawn one as the LTTE has withdrawn its cadre from the eastern belt to protect the northern strongholds. The humanitarian crisis is only bound to worsen as this conflict continues to escalate. All hopes raised in 2002 during the ceasefire are shattered and an interminable military confrontation looms large but very near. Future sections of this series will explore the historical basis for the conflict and would try to work out a viable solution, if at all possible.

Article written for The Post, Lahore

BJP wins in Himachal Pradesh

Editorial written for Economic & Political Weekly

Himachal Pradesh keeps faith with its voting history by ejecting the incumbent government

Since the creation of Himachal Pradesh in 1971, assembly elections in the state have usually followed the pattern of removal of incumbent governments from power. The recent elections conformed to the trend with the main opposition party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), winning a comfortable majority (41 out of 68 seats), defeating the incumbent Congress Party. The BJP's victory was significant as it followed up its success in Gujarat.

The BJP has gone on to claim that the national mood was turning in the party's favour and against the ruling coalition in the centre. The Congress, on the other hand, has dismissed the electoral loss as having no impact at the national level and has blamed the anti-incumbency factor for the loss. The party had hoped to break this trend by trying to announce welfare schemes in the later stages of the Virbhadra Singh-led government just before the election schedule was to be announced. That game plan came a cropper with the Election Commission announcing the poll schedule ahead of the expected date due to reasons of logistics.

The primary reason for anti-incumbency voting in the recent elections was the non-fulfilment of promises the Congress government had made after its victory in the 2002 assembly elections. The party had promised one job for every family in the state just after coming to power. Himachal Pradesh remains a state where agriculture, outside the apple orchards, is mostly subsistence based and the primary means of employment outside agriculture has traditionally been government provided. The problem of unemployment is chronic and the downsizing of government in this state too, a characteristic of neo-liberal reforms across India, has meant that newer jobs were left to be created primarily in the private sector through private investment. The Congress government had formulated that 70 per cent of all new jobs created in the private sector must be for Himachal residents, but this was not properly implemented on the ground. Unemployment therefore remained a burning issue that turned the voter mood against the Congress. Perennial issues such as corruption and patronage were other reasons for the grouse against the Congress as much as these were reasons that militated against the BJP in earlier elections.

The BJP victory in this election was qualitatively different from its earlier victories in the state. It was for the first time that the BJP won an overwhelming majority without help from parties such as the erstwhile Himachal Vikas Congress. This points to the effective management of the regional contradictions in Himachal Pradesh. The BJP, seen as strong in the Kangra region (termed New Himachal, as it merged into the old Himachal formed in 1966), was able to win substantially in the seats in the old Himachal region too. The BJP was also able to neutralise earlier perceptions and misgivings about the party on the issues of corruption and mismanagement as the electorate held the Congress government guilty of the same phenomena. The large margins of victory and the increase in vote percentage for the BJP are testimony to the disenchantment with the Congress government. Unlike Gujarat and other states, the politics of “hindutva” and communalism have mattered little in Himachal Pradesh, a state that has a very low concentration of religious minorities.

Another factor that was talked about in this election was the presence of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which contested most of the seats and threatened to make an impact by bringing disgruntled elements from the BJP and the Congress into its fold. The presence of a sizeable dalit population and the resounding success of the BSP in Uttar Pradesh raised hopes of the party making an impact in Himachal, but that was not to be. The BSP won only one seat, won by a Congress dissident and could only act as a spoiler in some constituencies.

Himachal Pradesh has always seen high levels of political participation, reflected in good voter turnouts. The fact that the politics of patronage, bad governance and the presence of corruption have ruled the roost in the state has forced the electorate to reject incumbent governments. The recently concluded election is validation of this pattern. Can the new Prem Kumar Dhumal-led BJP government buck the trend by providing an alternative to such politics?

A primer about the Primaries

To be published in The Post

The American primaries, elections which decide the presidential candidates of the two dominant political parties in the country, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have begun. The Iowa caucus is the first state poll followed by a sequence of polls in other states which decide the party candidate for president through a “winner take all” basis. Which means that the candidate who wins the most number of states is taken to be the presidential representative for the parties. For a interested south Asian, the presidential election process in the United States is important because one gets to see the various positions on foreign policy and worldview of the different candidates for the most powerful executive post in the world today.

In the predominant two party system that drives American democracy, the presidential candidate nomination process follows a set routine; the candidates get heavy duty funding from various sources and use expensive campaigns to get support for themselves. Numerous public debates are also conducted where the various candidates' positions on different issues come to the fore. The upcoming elections would widely decide if a change is brought about in the the decidedly right wing world view that has dominated the Bush presidency in the US. As such therefore, a perusal of the various policy positions of the different presidential candidates would serve a teaser preview of the possibility of such change.

The Democratic Party candidates, primary of whom are Hillary Clinton (former first lady in the Bill Clinton administration), Barack Obama (the only African American senator in the US senate) and John Edwards, attest to formulating and implementing a change in the disastrous foreign policy followed by the Bush administration. The prominent Republican party candidates, however, more or less affirm to the direction in the foreign policy brought about by the Bush administration and suggest a continuum of the unilateral measures adopted by the incumbent administration.

Yet for the outside observer, this difference hardly matters much. The prominent Democratic candidates with the exception of Barack Obama endorsed the war in Iraq by approving the measure to invade Iraq. John Edwards apologises for having done this basing his opinion on faulty intelligence in 2003, while Hillary Clinton refuses to acknowledge her mistake. Obama on the other hand has voted for increases in the war fund in Iraq. Even though he emphasises that his vision would envisage a change in the foreign policy discourse and that he would hold talks with regimes opposed to the US, he has betrayed the same unilateralist tendency as others in the Democratic fray by suggesting that he would keep the options open for a military initiative in Iran and even in Pakistan, disspelling any doubts on his respecting national sovereignty. Overall, the Democratic position on foreign policy seems nuantically different from the Bush course but in essence on overall policy, does not envisage any change in the American hegemonist positions on world affairs. And this is despite the near overwhelming opposition to the war among Americans, one reason for the strong Democrat performance in the 2006 Congressional elections.

The only Democrat candidate who has rejected “war as an instrument of foreign policy” and has opposed American unilateralism, including the Iraq invasion consistently is Dennis Kucinich, a Congressman who has promised a “Department of Peace” once elected to power. Yet, Kucinich seems to be a fringe candidate with very little funding and destined only to win a marginal number of votes of support. The record of other Democrat candidates does not inspire much confidence in them for a resident of the developing world, who sees hegemonic action by the United States as violation of all international norms and institutions, and as being dangerous to the citizens of the developing world.

The Republican candidates' positions are even more dreadful. Leading candidate Mike Huckabee has practically little knowledge about foreign policy and his social conservative and religious views reflect a warped understanding of the East. Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney not only endorse the war on Iraq but want to continue the unilateral course of action on other nations even if it amounts to invasion, bombing or violations of sovereignty, all in the name of “war on terror”. No remorse is shown for the near three quarters of a million Iraqi deaths since the American occupation, or for the fraudulent reasons that were advocated for the illegal occupation. Among the Republicans however, there is one candidate, Ron Paul who happens to be a libertarian and sees no place for a interventionist foreign policy, as it violates the constitutional principles of the United States and as it is a huge drain on the exchequer. Ron Paul, who has become some sort of a internet favourite in the US however remains as much a fringe candidate among the Republicans as much as Kucinich is among the Democrats.

The battle among the Democrats therefore seems to be as to who would occupy the liberal imperialist mantle and among the Republicans as to who would inherit the neoconservative hardline imperial position on foreign policy. The virtual non-existence of a recognition to strengthen liberal international institutions in regulating world affairs and to reverse the disastrous geopolitical course in west Asia is common to both the Republicans and the Democrats. As such therefore, none of the purported successors to George Bush inspire much confidence to the inhabitants of the third world, even as one would be relieved that the likes of George Bush and Dick Cheney would finally be out of power.

Noam Chomsky when once asked as to how different he would have acted if he was hypothetically in presidential power in the aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks in New York, replied sarcastically that he would have perhaps done the same thing as George Bush. Chomsky mentioned that whoever the president is in the United States, the foreign policy establishment and the policy making circles, driven by nationalism and interests of the elite have circumscribed decision making to a set of policies that tend to emphasise American hegemony. The current positions of the different candidates for president in the US among the two parties is reflective of Chomsky's understanding.

The future presidency in the United States would be exposed to a world that has been rendered dangerous because of disastrous foreign policy decisions by the Bush administration. West and south Asia are the spots where the effects of American intervention have been the most turmoil-ridden. In Afghanistan, there is virtual anarchy beyond Kabul as the NATO presence has not helped resist the return and rise of the Taliban. Iraq remains a nightmarish quagmire of ethnic, sectarian and internecine divisions which have been exacerbated by American rule. Years of meddling in Pakistan's internal affairs and covert links between the American establishment and the Pakistani military and ruling classes have resulted in a situation where extremism has reared its head, after having been nourished by covert support for quite sometime. The Palestinian greivances against Israeli expansionism continue to remain and the US' continued emphasis on rejecting a just solution to the Palestinian cause by favouring Israeli hegemony has resulted in tearing up of the peace process in the region. Renewed threats of bombing and military action by the US has been played upon by radical sections all across west Asia. Even if military action has virtually decimated Al Qaeda, the terrorist organisation's oxygen has been sustained by acts of American unilateralism in the region.

All these point out to the need for a radical change in American policy from unilateralism and from an urge to control natural resource rich regions in the world to winning the confidence of the peoples of this reason by strengthening international institutions. Except for fringe candidates in the presidential fray, none of the frontrunners have shown the wherewithal to bring about this much needed change.

Modi’s Victory

Editorial dated december 29, 2007 in the Economic & Political Weekly

Narendra Modi spearheads another triumph in Gujarat for the Bharatiya Janata Party.

For the second consecutive time, Narendra Modi has led the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a massive victory in the Gujarat assembly elections, making it the fourth time in a row since 1995 for the party. In every assembly election, the BJP has pitched a campaign theme; while it was the issue of anti-corruption in 1995 and an aggressive pitch for Hindutva in 2002, it was development of a “vibrant Gujarat” in 2007.

The victory in 2007 is different from the earlier assembly triumphs. The strings of BJP leadership in Gujarat had virtually passed on to Narendra Modi, with the gradual sidelining of other senior leaders who have either broken ranks or have remained dissidents. From former ministers (including ex-chief ministers) in the BJP government to other leaders in the Sangh parivar, an array of people who were in the forefront during the communally polarised elections in 2002 were this time ranged against Narendra Modi. Numerous exit polls and media surveys predicted that the outcome would be a close call between the Congress and the BJP. Yet, the prognosticators were proved completely wrong.

This was Narendra Modi’s election and this was his personal triumph, even if many had hoped that the Gujarat electorate would hold him accountable for the crimes of 2002, for which there has neither been atonement nor justice for the victims. The continued dominance of the BJP in 2007 points to the failure of the Congress in effectively countering the seeping in of communal consciousness that has been a fallout of uninterrupted BJP rule in the state. At the same time, the emphasis on “development” in the 2007 elections by the BJP suggested that Narendra Modi wanted to be judged by the voters on his government’s record in issues such as industrialisation, irrigation support, rural electrification, and economic growth. The agenda of “cultural nationalism” and Hindutva, which dominated the 2002 elections, was missing, even as, during the later stages of the election campaign, Narendra Modi started stirring up such issues again.

The Congress had hoped to mobilise support from disenchanted sections among dalits, tribals and particularly the minorities who have continued to live in fear and neglect in the BJP regime. It was expected that the “caste arithmetic” success formula in the 1980s for the Congress, the Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim (KHAM) alliance would be again forged, this time with the help of sections in the Patidar community led by BJP rebels. However, the inability of the Congress to address the ideology of Hindutva head on or to provide alternate solutions to the development paradigm followed by the BJP, as well as the absence of a viable charismatic leadership to take on Narendra Modi has resulted in yet another defeat for that party. Narendra Modi’s image as a chief minister with a direct style of governance, bypassing patronage networks and his being seen as responsible for services such as irrigation facilities, power systems, and investment for industry, was cultivated into a personality based propaganda campaign by the BJP’s. Modi’s tenure has been marked by a penchant for breaking away from party structures and pressure groups in favour of direct hands on management based on personal charisma. This personalised emphasis – which won him widespread popularity within the state – and the BJP’s aggressive “regional identity” message was manifest in the party’s campaign theme, “Jeetega Gujarat” (Gujarat will win).

The BJP has been clever in setting an agenda around communalism and majoritarianism during every assembly poll, while the Congress has always played second fiddle, unsure in its criticism and in its rejection of Hindutva as well as in the formulation of a more inclusive economic policy. The BJP’s victory in Gujarat despite the horrors of the state-led pogrom in 2002 and the continuing denial, subversion of justice and relief to the victims and survivors of the riots does point out to the weaknesses of liberal democratic institutions. It questions the ability of formal democracy to ensure that those who are guilty of violating constitutional duties and norms are held responsible for their actions.

Irrespective of the massive verdict in favour of Narendra Modi in the assembly elections, we must continue to work to ensure justice for the victims of 2002. And if the ideology of hatred that has taken root has to be defeated politically, all efforts must be made to project a viable alternative that wins the support of the Gujarati people. Only this can provide a strong counter to the charisma that Narendra Modi wields in Gujarat.

Dawn of Intelligence

In a dramatic admission of earlier negligence (although not in so many words), the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a report published by the co-ordination of the 16 intelligence agencies in the United States pronounced that Iran was not proceeding with a nuclear weaponisation programme since 2003. This admission came at a time, when the U.S. Administration was doing all that was necessary to ratchet up confrontation against yet another nation in the USA's perceived “axis of evil”, Iran. Only two years ago, the NIE had concluded differently, insinuating that Iran was a budding nuclear weapon threat, an estimate that ultimately led to the referral of Iran to the UN Security Council by the IAEA board of governors.
The main loser in the aftermath of this report is definitely the neo-conservative group in the United States establishment which has been hell bent upon going on the military path against Iran a la Iraq. The antipathy for the Islamic Republic in Iran in the US is not a secret and the current George Bush establishment has tried every trick in the book to go in for a military confrontation against the country. Making up the case for military intervention has been a series of revelations, insinuations coming about from different “intelligence sources”, and the threats have been built up step by hostile step from unilateral economic sanctions to naming the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist outfit. President Bush had even mentioned about the threat of World War III in the offing from a “nuclear armed” Iran. Such was the sabre rattling, as the hardline Iranian President's response to such hostility was defiance and a fall back to the tested means of combating international pressure, stronger nationalism, and emphasising Iran's sovereignty.

The Indian response to the unfolding drama involving the United States and Iran since 2003 has been a part of what this author considers a paradigm change in the nation's previously considered independent foreign policy. Ever since the earlier intelligence estimates in the United States had warned of a nuclear armed Iran and the US administration went upon taking the international community on board in an attempt to sideline, censure the Iranian regime and even threatening to impose unilateral military action, the Indian response has been contradictory to the affirmed non-aligned policy. India, in contrast to their public postures on supporting Iran's right to persist with a civilian nuclear programme, under the aegis of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT of which Iran was a signatory) and IAEA safeguards, voted against Iran in the IAEA in 2005 in a case that took the Iran nuclear issue to the security council. This act by India, was according to some experts due to coercion by the United States, who wanted Indian co-option as part of a quid pro quo for the nuclear deal agreement which was built in 2005.

This in turn caused bitterness between Iran and India, even as the nations formally affirmed to keep the still continuing talks on the natural gas pipeline through Pakistan going. On the ground, at every behest of the Bush regime to pressurize the Iranians through sanctions and threats, there have been consequences in the Indian relationship with Iran. Recently the State Bank of India stopped issuing Letters of Credit to Iranian companies. There has been a visible impasse in the pipeline talks eventhough conceptually the project is a slam dunk for addressing energy concerns in the country. Although the Indian side claims that there is no pressure on the culmination of the project, the slowdown in the talks point toward a political negligence to address the bottlenecks (mostly in pricing) quickly and move ahead with the implementation of the pipeline project. In the meantime, China and Russia have upped their relationship with Iran, as they sense the necessity for stronger ties to buttress the energy partnership with a fossil fuel rich Iran.

Obviously, the paradigm shift in Indian foreign policy to cohere with a bandwagoning process and closer relationship with the global hegemon, is not paying any dividends for India in the west Asian region. Defenders of this shift had argued that there were shared areas of concern for India and the US about a nuclear armed Iran and hence the coherence in policy. Now that the NIE has said it with “high confidence” that the nuclear weaponisation programme in Iran had been wrapped up in 2003, it brings into question, India's vote against Iran in the IAEA for short term expediency, without any correct assessment of both the international situation as well as Iran's considerations. It must also be pointed out that the “better late than never” dawning of sense in the intelligence agencies in the US was despite the IAEA's repeated mention about the correct nature of Iran's nuclear programme. That it was virtually the very same intelligence community in the US that had decided to build a phony case for a brazen, illegal war and occupation of Iraq, points out to the fact that this community has grown tired of the hawkish neocon establishment in the country.

For the ordinary political watcher, who is not privy to the Kafkaesque dealings of the murky world of spooks, spies, and the security agencies of various countries, it will be difficult to comment upon the technical details and veracity of findings of amorphous intelligence bodies, which have a closed-door way of functioning in a complicated bureaucracy such as the United States'. It would be therefore difficult to say anything for sure about nuclear weaponisation projects in countries such as Iran too, as such projects inevitably involve covert transfers, illicit deals and thick veils of secrecy. Some in India point out that the Indian vote against Iran was driven by the fact that illicit sales of nuclear fuel and components existed between Iran and the A.Q.Khan network, even as it is necessary to mention that Iran voluntarily declared its nuclear enrichment activities to the IAEA in October 2003. But indeed, it is imperative to mention that careful calibration of foreign policy is a must, and this policy making must not be bothered only about short term expediency or hinge only on one point agendas, as the Indo-US nuclear deal seems to be for the current ruling regime (the UPA) in India. By making it a point to bank upon a divisive and hugely unpopular George Bush regime as being the cornerstone for the “new enlightened national interest driven foreign policy”, India has burnt its hands in west Asia vis-a-vis Iran.

India should for a first step, try to mend its relationship with Iran, which has been affected by the events since 2003. The bottlenecks in business relationships in the trading and banking sectors,that have ensued because of the American insistence, must be done away with, immediately. Whatever hurdle that seems to persist in the final culmination of the gas pipeline, has to be addressed with solid political endeavour. And hopefully, India can be resilient enough to demand that the United States give up the path of confrontation, pre-emption and naked hegemony, a legacy of the Bush administration and focus on strengthening the international institutions which are already dime-a-dozen present to prevent nuclear weapon profileration, conclude world peace and transact the business of maintaining world harmony.

The saving grace of the NIE's report is the fact that the war hawks have their wings clipped and hopefully the US administration (even the forthcoming one in 2008) realises that the best way to solve international problems is to use international instruments and institutions. And also the fact that diplomacy still remains a viable, tried, tested method of addressing disputes. Perhaps, the forthcoming US administration will also show the willpower and imagination to engage regimes that are not close to the US, in a way that builds future cooperation through the use of moral norms of mutual respect. Which means that the US can cooperate with Iran and use the stature of the nation in stabilising the environs in west Asia, particularly in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. One hopes that there is further dawning of intelligence among the various decision making structures of different nations' leadership.

Article written for "The Post"

A non violent protest and lessons

December 10th is widely marked across the world as Human Rights Day. On the precise day in Mumbai, a symbolic protest was organised by an umbrella organisation led by the youth federation of the biggest leftist party in India, the CPI(M). The protest involved a boycott of the local municipal train network at some of the most busiest junctions in the western sector of the Mumbai Metropolitan train service. The boycott of the train service was near total with commuters preferring either to stay home on the working day or to use alternative means of transport to go to work. The simple use of a non-violent protest to register the disaffection with the problematic rail service was enough to bring media and authority attention on the strenuous conditions that governed rail-travel in India's most populated, dense and vibrant city, Mumbai. The protestors demanded increased frequency of service to reduce the load in the trains during peak hours in select stations where passenger density was the highest. Officials in charge of the railway functioning responded by promising to act upon assurances made earlier, much more quickly. In effect the registered protest was successful in raising the consciousness of the authorities about the pressing problems of the commuters.

When I arrived in Mumbai to start my journalistic career, I was terribly appalled at the crowded and almost dehumanized travel conditions that one had to experience while getting onto the trains to go to work. Apparently, the trains are the most convenient and the fastest way to travel, because of severe congestion in road transport, owing to near dilapidated traffic conditions as well as the profusion of private transport in the form of cars. The train service strives on manfully connecting arterially nearly every major location within the city and nearly 3/4th of the population uses this facility for commuting. However, the increase in population and no corresponding commensurate increase in facility has meant that trains are extremely crowded featuring heavy densities of commuters packed in stuffy compartments. In the western sector, particularly, the stuffing is so immense that many passengers fall off the train while travel, and there has been a rise in such casualties. Elaborate promise were made to ensure that there would be effective increases in rail services in the form of newer train rakes and lines, but the implementation has been at best ineffective, owing to delays in project fructification and lack of political will to address immediate relief to the harassed commuters. In the meantime, the commuters themselves have become sufficiently dehumanized to accept these conditions as they have adjusted to this packed stuffing experience as a normal routine. I personally would admit to that. Jostling and pushing for space and a tendency to elbow my way through is now a daily routine and I am surprised when I recall much shocked I was initially when I first used the service merely five months ago.

Not that I am not used to crowded trains. A stint in the suburbs of Tokyo for two years was responsible for experiencing similar crowded conditions in train travel. However, the relative comfort of the air conditioned trains and the seeming order displayed by the commuters made travel feel less strenuous, and quite fulfilling, in stark contrast to the experience of similar train travel in Mumbai. Suburban trains play as much an important role as in Mumbai in the extended city complex from Tokyo to Yokohama and the train network is the lifeline for transport for the dense populace within these industrial sectors. The hallmark of transportation in Tokyo is the substantively well maintained train network which include a slew of overground and underground trains and the fact that private transport in the form of cars and motor vehicles is more or less only secondary. In contrast in Mumbai, even though train transport remains the preferred option among the working classes, the proliferation of individual owned private transport has clogged the arteries of the roads in the city.

Added to the above fact is that expanding roads and constructing new ones has become a even more difficult proposition because of the encroachment problems. Lack of very effective urban planning has meant that every effort toward a consolidated model of comfortable urban transportation is complicated by the automatic but unplanned increase in pressure on services because of population increase or shrinkage of spaces. Thus infrastructure is one of the major constraints in building an effective transportation facility in quick time. There are plans aplenty to introduce newer services ranging from underground “metros” or “tube rails” to overhanging “skybuses” to cater to the burgeoning population and the Mumbai Urban Transport Project is co-ordinating the implementation of these plans. Land-sea links are being constructed to emulate similar mega projects that have been attempted in other cities such as Shanghai. High profile underground rail projects are being envisioned in line with the implementation of similar projects in other metros such as Delhi and Kolkata in India. Some amount of scepticism however remains vis-a-vis the burgeoning cost of such projects and whether at all the returns will be generated quickly and is commensurate with the costs.

That lack of enough will in quick implementation as well as a co-ordinated strategy to address the reasons for the same is what plagues Mumbai, is understood by nearly all stakeholders in the city. The problems of congestion and high burden is a complicated one. Apart from the slow implementation initiatives, there are other complex factors of increased migration to the city from the hinterlands in the country. Migration due to lack of sufficient rural economic growth and lopsided development is just another story. Yet, even these problems could be much mitigated if the city planners are responsive enough to spread out the developing locations away from the main metropolis, another area which requires concerted effort by the government which unfortunately leaves this duty in the hands of profit minded entrepreneurs and private bodies.

The suggestions to improve the functioning of the city in the age of globalisation and liberalisation veer down to “corporate solutions” such as naming of CEOs for the city and leaving the job of managing the city to an elite group of technocrats serviced by private corporations. Such suggestions do not consider the import of the necessity of assuring that citizens' democratic bodies capable of self regulation and participatory decision making are more efficient in conjunction with dedicated government action. But these are long term solutions. Short term effective solutions should consider that elaborate mechanisms such as queuing before boarding in stations, presence of services to be activated for accident casualties, and proper boards and signals to prevent passengers from using rail lines to cross platforms be assured. This would help reduce the dehumanisation that plagues commuting today in the city.

The non-violent protest undertaken on December 10th tells us a few things. The people in Mumbai who have been using the train services and have experienced near tortuous conditions of travel have had it enough. They want the promises made to be delivered quickly. The form of protest and the near unanimous participation also points out to the fact that the people want to get on with their lives in peace and do not want a confrontational attitude with the establishment, but only want them to be responsive to their needs and be sympathetic to their travails. Affordable, safe and comfortable travel is a minimum guarantee that blue collar workers, toilers, employees in the vast service industry, etc in Mumbai need. That means a responsive establishment, concerned for the plight of it's fellow citizens who are the lifeline of the vibrant economy that Mumbai projects itself to be, is the need of the hour. Which in turn means that this establishment must re-orient its efforts to take steps to handle the problem itself and not leave it for speculators and large corporations to take them up. This also means that citizens who have shown restraint in their ways of protest and hence responsibility, should show the same concern for the fellow passenger while alighting the clogged trains. A concerted effort therefore requires all sections of the society to act socially in help overcoming the beleaguered problems in urban transport.

Article written for The Post

The Bolivarian revolution is still “ON”

A referendum conducted in Venezuela to endorse a set of constitutional changes promoted by the current president Hugo Chavez and the country's National Assembly answered with a “No”. The margin was very close; nearly 51% of the voting populace saying “No”, while 49% replied with “Si” (Yes). This vote has captured analyst imagination. The constitutional changes proposed contained 69 amendments which included abolition of term limits, control over the central bank, greater grassroots democracy and planning, provisions for powers during emergencies, more social security, and rights for marginalised sections.

For nearly 9 years, Hugo Chavez's popularity has ensured that he has won almost every endorsement and every poll since his first stab at democratic power. This loss, according to analysts and people sceptical of Chavez's “populist” rule, signifies a trend away from a radical course that Chavez had embarked on for Venezuela against what is called the “Washington Consensus”. The US media in particular has been quite jubilant, as they see this vote as an indicator of decline in Chavez's rousing popularity in the Latin American state. The joy is however misplaced, in this writer's opinion.

Hugo Chavez is seen as the prime mover for the “Bolivarian revolution”, a broad term that encapsulates a viable alternative path to “neoliberal development” in Venezuela. This “revolution” seeks inspiration from democratic ideals, a vision for an egalitarian society, a co-operative unity for Latin America and a rejection of profit/pelf generating capitalism. Obviously, such a vision therefore finds itself closer to a new socialism and the call for egalitarianism and social justice makes Venezuela invoke pride in the presence of alternative systems such as that in Cuba. Hence, the constant evocation to Fidel Castro's Cuba and the close economic and international ties with the socialist state.

This pitch to America's “prime enemy”, Fidel's Cuba, and the call for socialism, is a huge problem for Chavez's antagonists, mostly those from privileged sections opposed in toto to the pro-poor turn in Venezuela's political economy enunciated by Chavez. A broad section of such antagonists were the prime movers for the “No” vote in the referendum, helped as usual by the domineering agent provocateurs from the north in the USA. The US has a history of sabotage and notorious meddling in Latin American affairs. It's avowed endeavor to bring about regime changes and disrupting any move to bring about radical change in Latin American countries, through crass means of assassination of leaders, sabotage, engineered coups, covert support is legion. The Venezuelan security agencies published yet another account of such an operation planned by covert operatives of the US secret agencies to sabotage and create an atmosphere for the “No” vote, just before the referendum. This operation involved wide usage of the mass media, groups opposed to Chavez (who had earlier participated in the aborted 2002 presidential coup) and others.

Yet, it would be futile to suggest that the “No” vote was won through external meddling. There are deep structural reasons for the narrow loss. A very significant section of the populace who have incessantly voted for Chavez, this time, either did not vote or switched sides. The western critics' opposition to Chavez's proposed amendments were to the ones that proposed dismantling of limited number of presidential tenures. The critics cried that this was proof of Chavez wanting to “rule for life”. At best, this was a nonsensical critique. There was no call for such tenures to go on for ever without democratic approval, meaning, the president would still have to fight elections to get re-elected. It is a standard practise in democratic third world countries that ensures that leaders are subject to re-election. Just because in presidential systems such as in the US, there is a limit on the number of tenures, does not make it necessary that this must be the practice everywhere else. The insinuation that Hugo Chavez intended to stay in power “forever” is therefore a mischievous and obfuscatory critique.

The rejection of the constitutional changes was more to do with the problems that were affecting Venezuelan economy now. There has been a serious food shortage and inflation problem affecting the state now. A significant section of voters identified as “Chavistas” or Chavez supporters, particularly those who were poor and were in the informal economy were disillusioned because of these economic troubles. Conversely though, the constitutional changes were to be made in place precisely to mitigate these economic problems. The Venezuelan planners were not talking of a statist socialism (despite the evocation of Cuban success in social justice) but were asking for a “new socialism” that considered the importance of grassroots democracy, self-planning by local “communal councils”, more or less commensurate with a mixed economy that privileged empowerment of workers and poorer sections.

Chavez and his supporters, who gracefully accepted the verdict and vowed to fight on to bring these qualitative changes, however must realise the gravity of the results. The prime reasons for the “no” vote is got to do with the fact that despite high emphasis on empowerment and social justice, government mechanisms have not been sufficiently geared to bring amelioration of economic troubles. The antipathy showed by the sections of “big capital” and those who preferred the privileges for the rich in the agro-businesses and corporates indeed has affected macroeconomic processes, such as reduced distribution and decreased production as opposed to the relative increase in purchasing power of the general public in the recent past. The solution to address these problems would have been greater democratic mobilisation and more focussed regulation of the mixed market economy. The Venezuelan economy is fuelled by an over-dependence on the proceeds of crude sales, which has helped significant spending without particularly having to tax big capital and richer sections for the same. It however indeed is a very difficult job to proceed without a definite class favour, as has been the case with erstwhile socialist systems.

The “Bolivarian socialists” in Venezuela therefore are embarking upon a new path, which tries to balance the radical rhetoric with innovative action on the ground. This “new socialism” is widely seen as a “new praxis” in a changed world, an affirmation for a democratic socialism. Hugo Chavez should not get distracted by reducing this democratic process for change into a battle for merely emphasising personal charisma. Over the past few months, Chavez has tried to use his charisma to be the prime mover for the “Bolivarian revolution”. This personalised approach has meant that energies to put for a positive mobilisation is wasted on creating a maverick image. Witness, for e.g., the drama following the spat with the Spanish king and the Colombian hostage situation, in which Chavez wanted to act as a mediator. The image of a warrior against imperialism and of a messiah for redistribution can generate massive popularity, but without collective leadership and continued dynamic action, social change as a process will be slowed down only giving impetus to forces inimical to such progression.

The future years will show how robust would the “Bolivarian revolution” be in handling the many contradictions that permeate a process for achieving egalitarianism using instruments of liberal democracy. Continued empowerment, increased co-operative formations ,collective leadership, dedicated grassroots mobilisation and action can still sustain the “Bolivarian revolution”. Chavistas who were disillusioned and switched sides can still be won over, through the force of logic and action on the ground. The defeat in the referendum must remind Hugo Chavez and his vast supporters,of the old cliché, the battle might be lost, but the war is still there to be won.

Article written for The Post, Lahore

Down the Spiral in Sri Lanka

Editorial to be published in the EPW next week.

There is a a full fledged civil war in Sri Lanka, with no end in sight

The spate of air attacks by the Sri Lankan air force and the bombings in Colombo and its environs (clearly the work of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE) is one more sign of the spiral of violence that Sri Lanka has once again descended into.

S.P.Tamilchelvan, the leader of the political wing of the Tamil insurgent organisation, was killed in an air attack by the Sri Lankan air force in Killinocchi in northern Sri Lanka. This is seen as retaliation to the earlier LTTE suicide squad and air attack on the Anuradhapura airbase that resulted in a considerable loss of face for the government. Ever since the coming to power of the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) led by Mahinda Rajapaksa with the support of the left nationalist Janatha Vimukhta Peramuna (JVP) and the Buddhist monk party, Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), both fiercely committed to an “unitary” solution to the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka, the government has taken a hawkish position against the insurgents. The military campaign against the LTTE has intensified every passing day with several attacks on targets in Tamil strongholds as well as gradual weakening of the LTTE's support structure in the diaspora because of the international crackdown against any form of terrorist activity.

The Sri Lankan government's thinking is that a major military victory over the LTTE and its near annihilation is both feasible and desirable. The political arrangement after the military victory would then involve a federal devolution of power to the linguistic minorities, so goes the thinking. On the other hand, the LTTE perceives the relentless campaign against it by the government as an opportunity to get international sympathy and legitimacy for their cause. This web of violence has been pointed out by scholars (Jayadeva Uyangoda, “Back to Square One”, October 27, EPW) as having thought out by both the antagonists to advance strategic goals suited to their ultimate objectives, the establishment of Eelam for the LTTE and maintaining the integrity of the Sri Lankan nation for the Sri Lankan government.

A thaw between the principal Sinhala political parties, the SLFP and the United National Party (UNP), which resulted in a MoU between the parties was short lived, owing to petty reasons of bickering that has characterised relations between these parties for quite some time now. An All Parties Representative Conference (APRC) set up to evolve consensus on the ethnic question also ran into teething troubles, because of the intransigence of the coalition partners of the SLFP government. All this has shown that the talk of a genuine devolution of power to the Tamil minorities basically remains unfulfilled and, in the context of the drawing of daggers by both the government and the LTTE, it seems a far fetched possibility. The LTTE has, on the other hand, arrogated itself the role of the sole representative of the Sri Lankan Tamils by decimating any viable alternative Tamil opposition as the killings of leaders from the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), and other Tamil organisations prove.

Experts suggest that the Sri Lankan government's more or less easy victory in the east over the LTTE was possible, because of a tactical retreat by the rebels into the Vanni jungles in north Sri Lanka and that the latter still retain a potent guerilla force. The killing of Tamilchelvan is significant, as he was the political representative and chief negotiator of the LTTE, who was involved in talks with the Sri Lankan government and other participants in the peace process that followed the ceasefire agreement in 2002. The return to high levels of hostilities, Tamilchelvan's killing and the existing political circumstances in Colombo, suggest that no immediate rapprochement between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE seems possible and the plight of the Tamils in the north is bound to worsen as the attacks and retaliations are bound to continue. Meanwhile passions for support to the Eelam cause are again being whipped up in Tamil Nadu, where Tamilchelvan's death has been termed as martyrdom by pro-Eelam political parties such as the Vaiko-led Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) and fringe groups. Even the Tamil Nadu chief minister M.Karunanidhi had written a poem in the memory of Tamilchelvan, an act which had drawn criticism from the opposition and the Congress party.

The narrowing of options in Sri Lanka means that sane voices that argue for peace and pitch for innovative solutions involving devolution of power to the minorities, who have long suffered their “second class status” in Sri Lanka, are drowned out in the thirst for military victories.

Hope for South Asia

A friend of mine based in the US asked me what was happening in the news scene in South Asia. While preparing myself to answer, it struck me that today’s South Asia is in a state of utter turmoil. In Sri Lanka, the ethnic conflict had reached a point of no return, with both the antagonists — the government and the insurgent LTTE – upping the ante to a full scale civil war. In Nepal, a much-awaited path to genuine elections has been derailed, raising dangerous omens of a return to strife that had engulfed the nation not long ago. In Pakistan, emergency has been declared even as extremist violence has reared its head. In Myanmar, the military junta has reacted ruthlessly to peaceful demonstrations by monks demanding the overthrow of autocracy. In Bangladesh, the premier political parties’ leaders are in prison as the democratic process has been suspended. The embers of violence in Afghanistan are still burning and there seems no end to internecine conflict. In India, there have been incidents of turmoil that are a dime-a-dozen in areas where the state has failed in its constitutional duties.

The question that one must ask is what explains this high degree of political turmoil? To a large extent, democracy has also not stabilised in most of the South Asian countries as one would want it to. India and Sri Lanka are exceptions, where the formal process of democracy has been pretty much intact and stable, while it is debatable if the substantive outcomes of such a liberal democracy have been robust enough.

Political scientists and theorists who have worked on liberal democracy have tried to link this up with the concept of economic development as they try to find answers to the dichotomy of democracy versus autocracy as related to the economic situation in a particular nation. One of the more comprehensive works in this regard was done by a group of political scientists, prominently Adam Przeworski from Columbia University, who used statistical techniques to delineate the relationship between democracy and economic development. Is it the case that democracy thrives only in countries that have reached stages of modernised development? This is the question that they ask and try to answer. This question is very much related to South Asia, as this region remains markedly part of the underdeveloped Third World.

Przeworski, et al, through the means of holistic statistical analysis of the type of political governance in nations in the past century, make a remarkable finding. They find that there is no linear relationship between democracy and economic development (in contrast to what modernisation theorists would aver) and that dictatorship can also thrive in economically developed countries, while democracy is seen to be more stable in more economically developed countries. In essence, Przeworski points out that it is very difficult for the less economically developed countries to have democratic institutions that tend to mature only when economic development has reached a sufficient level. They also analyse this finding with respect to other variables of development apart from growth, such as inequality.

While these findings seem relevant to South Asia, there is a major problem. India is a major “outlier” in this statistic-based finding. Using the same tools of measurement of economic development, the theorists find that the presence of democratic institutions and governance in India, despite its rather poor economic performance, is a major surprise because it is very rare to find such a thing in other places across the world. This admission is startling, for one cannot just ignore India as one outlier in the comity of nations. After all, India is the second most populous country in the world and hosts nearly one-sixth of the world’s populace, who cannot be ignored in totality as an “outlier”.

So, one would be tempted to reject the entire methodology of statistically determining theorisations, but personally this writer finds one grain of truth in what the theorists are saying, when weighing the findings with what is happening in South Asia and elsewhere. The case of India has to be understood thoroughly for construing the relative stability of democratic institutions in the country’s existence since independence. A frontal reason for such stability is the agency that drove India’s national movement for self-determination. This national movement privileged the presence of democratic norms and liberal values and instituted these norms in the Constitution after a full-fledged debate in a Constituent Assembly that was formed just before independence. There were problems, the result of which was the partition of the Indian nation, but otherwise, the robustness of democracy since independence owes to this privileging of democratic norms that set the stage for the birth of the Indian nation.

These norms ensured that despite low levels of economic development and growth, values such as political liberty and the ability to choose its political representatives have been institutionalised in India’s populace. The sheer numbers of the poor who vote and demand their political privileges is testimony of the same. One would have argued that the substantive norms of democratic functioning has not quite percolated into this consciousness for political liberties, but as decentralisation of power is being established owing to new constitutional norms, such an enabling is in the process of happening. India, therefore, perforce becomes a beacon for other class-divided, diverse nations where democracy has failed to develop because of the sheer diversity and division that persists and which is utilised by the elites to retain power or foment turmoil.

Yet, the failure of the presence of substantial democratic institutions to arrest the weak trends of economic development, i.e., the presence of poverty, vast gaps in economic indicators between different sections of society does not mean that these institutions are to be discarded. It means that these institutions have to be further strengthened and transformed as vehicles of carrying out substantial economic and equitable development.

In other countries of South Asia, therefore, a strong agency must be present that privileges the use of democratic norms for functioning and that counters the ideology of the elites and those in autocratic positions. These norms should be universal and progressive and must privilege enduring justice over temporary political gain. Can we see such an agency developing in countries affected by serious turmoil?

In Sri Lanka, the ethnic violence is sustained because of lack of appeal to universal human rights and due to the recourse to narrow sectarian ends. An agency that privileges universal norms for all Sri Lankans, which means providing autonomous and federal rights to minorities and, which is directed at preserving the integrity of the nation needs to be encouraged and developed. In Myanmar, democratic groups have been suppressed because of non-committal support to these sections by regional powers — India and China — that see economic relations with the junta as more profitable rather than engaging with the democratic struggles. In Nepal, the hurdles are minor, as the stakeholders have realised the necessity to raise questions of universal human values is very important to keep away feudal autocracy, and the room for hope still remains. In Pakistan, it is the duty of civil society to pressurise the political class to avoid quests for narrow political gain and to unite for the establishment of a democratic order committed to progressive values. In essence, there is hope for South Asia provided there emerges a progressive agency. It is the duty of the people to provide this agency in the days to come to get out of the constant turmoil.

The writer, trained in engineering and in political science, works with the editorial team at Economic and Political Weekly, and is an avid follower of sports, political economy and the performing arts.