Perennial Misery

How can Bihar end the flood disaster that visits its people year after year?

Submerged railway tracks near Madhepura, 250 km from Patna. (Photo courtesy PTI)

The breaching of embankments in the upstream areas of the Kosi river, in Kusaha village in Nepal, has resulted in yet another round of floods in north Bihar, in the districts of Supaul, Saharsa, Araria, Madhepura, Katihar and Purnia.

The disaster this time is much larger than usual. More than three million people have been affected and a million have been forced to seek higher ground.

The tragedy of floods ravaging this populous area is that the phenomenon is a regular occurrence. This time though, there is now enough information that the Kosi floods could have been avoided if there was coordinated action to prevent the breaching of the embankments. Yet this was not to be.

The Kosi is known to be a dynamic river that carries heavy sediment loads along with its flow. The river has therefore undergone several course changes in its history. The upstream management of embankments in the Kusaha area of Nepal was India’s responsibility (that of the government of Bihar to be specific). If the heavy silt load in the river and its meandering flow gnawing at the embankments had been monitored and acted upon, it would have been possible to prevent the breach that finally took place. Once the embankments were breached, then the Nepal police, fearing a greater inundation of living areas, cut a chasm in the path of the river to redirect the surging waters away from villages in the area. The result was that the Kosi began to flow through older stream-ways that it used to take in the past and this ended up in a flooding of vast tracts in and around north Bihar.

Negligence, lack of coordination between the government of India and Nepal, and sheer laxity of the state government in handling a perennial problem were the proximate causes of the Kosi catastrophe, which has been exacerbated by heavy rain in the region. Hundreds of thousands remain marooned in the area. The loss of property in the 16 affected districts includes destruction of 3,00,000 homes and of a swathe of crop area. Flooding by the Kosi is, at the time of writing (September 5), still under way and there is a danger of an epidemic of water-borne diseases. Quick evacuation, deployment of a larger number of boats for movement to higher ground, provision of relief (including medical supplies and food) and construction of facilities such as temporary homes are priority concerns for a state government that is struggling to cope with the enormity of the disaster. The National Disaster Management Authority should help to expedite relief efforts and coordinate work of the relief agencies along with the army. Yet, considering that the flood situation has been described as a national calamity by prime minister Manmohan Singh, relief efforts by the central and state agencies remain woefully inadequate.

Relief and rehabilitation after a disaster of this magnitude do pose a major challenge to state and society, but what of the future for the Kosi basin and other flood-prone areas of Bihar? The recurrence of the problem suggests that the strategy of controlling the flow of water through artificially constructed embankments and bunds is problematic, simply because their maintenance is too difficult a job to carry out with certainty. Frequent breaches have only made flooding even more disastrous than what the natural process of flooding would have entailed.

Much of the misery that visits the people of north Bihar every year could be mitigated if the strategy of dealing with floods was not merely reliant upon the “hold or break” approach of managing rivers. One school of thought feels it is necessary for the water resources ministry and the disaster management authorities in both the central and state governments to study the issue from a newer perspective that places much more emphasis on strategies such as proper flood plain zoning, retaining the natural drains of the river in its course-ways, constructing flood-proof facilities in the very vulnerable areas and disseminating information about flood management, sanitation, and water usage. In a nutshell, the prescription is for reducing the dependence upon culverts, embankments and other artificial structures to regulate the flow of the rivers through the region and to manage the natural outflows of the water, including by temporary cultivation on the flood plains.

Another school of thought suggests that flood avoidance is incumbent upon building high dams in Nepal to check the flow of the rivers in Bihar. But this remains a difficult task to undertake, for it would mean that Nepal would have to manage large volumes of water in reservoirs which would also be subjected to rapid silting. However, Nepal would be able to receive considerable income if the water in the reservoirs could be used to generate hydropower. The presence of a newly elected democratic government in Nepal should make it much easier for the governments of the two countries to negotiate a solution to the flooding problem.

In the end, disasters such as the floods in Bihar should not be considered as one-off incidents that are forgotten after the floods subside. A comprehensive change in perspective in viewing flood management is necessary to prevent recurrence of this tragedy that the people of Bihar have been experiencing for decades.

Editorial written for the Economic and Political Weekly

A proud father and a husband...

A new chapter of my life begins. That of being a father. Am I the most elated person in the world? My wife doesnt' quite agree :).

A Cauldron of Communal Violence

Image courtesy The Hindu

State inaction against communal elements has exacerbated an already polarised region in Orissa.

Communal violence is becoming a regular feature of Orissa society, differing from much of the rest of the country only in that it is the Christian minorities rather than Muslims who are at the receiving end. The violence against Christians and the community-run institutions in Kandhamal district following the murder of a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activist Lakshmanananda Saraswati and four others comes less than a year after a string of attacks in Kandhamal district by the Sangh parivar on Christians on Christmas eve of 2007. At that time the conflagration was a culmination of various factors: the issue of conversion and re-conversion, demands for scheduled tribe (ST) status by some groups, and, of course, the underlying poor socio-economic status of the people in the mostly tribal area in an already communally affected Orissa.

Investigations are still under way to identify the murderers of Lakshmanananda Saraswati. Despite rumours and “beliefs” that the attack was conducted by Maoists, no concrete proof has emerged. The subsequent rioting and burning of Christian missions, schools and households and deaths of around 10 people at the time of writing reveal that the Sangh parivar has few qualms in directing violence at the poor of other communities.

Kandhamal district has, over the years, emerged as a cauldron for rival communal groups who are engaged in proselytism and “re-conversion”. Lakshmanananda Saraswati was a VHP activist who was based in the region for close to four decades. A lynchpin of the Sangh parivar’s efforts to forge a presence in the tribal areas of Orissa, he was involved in activities such as “re-conversion” of non-Hindus back to the “Hindu fold”, apart from running institutions for Hindutva groups. Much like in December 2007. Saraswati’s murder produced a predictable reaction in the communally fragile region. In these sensitive tracts, action such as the targeting of religious symbols by communal organisations on both sides has time and again resulted in violent reprisals by the other side.

The communally charged atmosphere has turned all the more tense because of certain caste issues. As in some of the states in the south, many in the dalit community who have become Christians have not been able to claim scheduled caste (SC) status to achieve social mobility through employment in the government apparatus because the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 prevents them from availing of reservations. Those among the dalit Christians in Orissa who speak the Kui language are instead demanding ST status, since tribal groups irrespective of their religion can utilise reservations. The antagonism between the Christian dalits and others has only increased because the kandh tribals who have been accorded ST status feel threatened by the demand from the dailt groups for a similar position. These antagonisms have become exaggerated in a region mired in poverty, state inaction, poor governance and where social provisions and functions such as education and health are hegemonised by communal groups. This is not to mention the fallout of political rivalry between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress who have been openly allying with communal groups to build up electoral support.

It goes without saying that the state government has to reassert its presence, punish those responsible for communalising the situation and bring back normalcy to this violence-prone region. The presence of the BJP as a partner in the Navin Patnaik-led coalition has tied the government’s hands, if indeed it wanted to respond to the situation. That the government has been lax in punishing those engaged in communal violence even as the death of Lakshmanananda Saraswati has given the BJP an opportunity to further whip up communal sentiments is there for all to see.

The State has to reclaim the space where it has a major part to play in development and in the provision of social services. The government has been hitherto more concerned with promoting a model of development in which commercial interests are given free rein over the resources traditionally under the control of the tribals. The communal forces have used the vacuum left by the state to “win over” tribals in the name of their upliftment and have used this to establish themselves in the region to further their narrow and divisive agenda.

Editorial written for Economic and Political Weekly

Fair paying job

The intent of the Sixth Pay Commission is not quite problematic but implementation is key.

With the acceptance by the union cabinet of the recommendations of the Sixth Central Pay Commission (SCPC), five million employees working for the central government of India have finally been able to benefit from a wage restructuring after nearly a decade since the last such revision. This move should provide some relief to most of those working in the government sector, whose salaries do not compare that well with those of similarly positioned workers in the private sector, especially in the higher rungs. This wil soon be followed as before by the state governments too implementing the recommendations of the SCPC.

The recommendations in the SCPC highlight the necessity to reward qualitative performances and this is done through the instrument of the performance-related incentives scheme apart from the creation of running pay bands within groups of employees so as to avoid “stagnation”. The other emphasis in the recommendations is on incentives for employees who wish to retire after a minimum duration of service and on a gradual increase in pension benefits with age, apart from giving cognisance to reduction of gender biases in employment by provision of a better working environment and other pecuniary and gender-specific rules such as the availability of a larger number of days for maternity leave. These emphases need to be welcomed but proper implementation of the recommendations wuld be essential. A complaint of the defence forces that they have been discriminated against in the recommendation has been addressed with the provision of a special pay– albeit more at the junior/middle officer level and not for the jawans -- by the government in the final order.

As such, the intent in the recommendations is to provide a fair amount of compensation in government jobs through the instruments of the pay structure. Yet, such an exercise can only be successful if the implementation of the recommendations are in tune with the intent of the Commission. Critics of the public sector have argued that the SCPC's recommendations will not effect any change in the “system” as it is marked by corruption and wastefulness, but such a critique of the commission is misplaced as its brief was to lay out a rationalising structure of pay relative to performance and to provide for a recognition of skills and training as part of the structure. Corruption and reform of administrative structure of the government was not a part of the brief to be handled by the SCPC and they have to be targeted through other reforms in public administration.

There is the other critique that the pay commission's recommendations would perforce have too much of a fiscal impact on the centre's finances, by way of providing an average of 21 percent hike in the salaries of central government employees (as claimed by the government). The pay commission award would amount to nearly Rs 22,000 crores which would include the railway bill as well. The government's response that this fiscal pressure of Rs 22,000 crores has already been budgeted and factored in while calculating the targets for the fiscal deficit seems reasonable. The burden will no doubt be more on the state governments when they implement a similar revision.

There has, however, been resentment among certain sections of the labour force, particularly those in the lower rungs, that the increase in emoluments is not sufficient in comparison to those in the higher rungs. It is to be noted that the intent of the commission was to recognise skill upgrade and training, in contrast to the last Commission's emphasis on downsizing of government.

One problematic recommendation of the commission pertains to the effort to encourage early retirement through incentives such as full pensions based on a minimum level of service as opposed to full service. It would have been prudent for the government to raise the age of superannuation or at-least avoid the over-emphasis on downsizing on the basis of age, as there is no adequate proof to suggest that efficiency of the workforce is directly and inversely proportional to a decline in average age. This would also have given greater recognition to the rising life expectancy of the general population. As for the critique that the lower rungs of the public sector are paid too much in comparison to the private sector, it is to be borne in mind that spiralling inflation necessitates the emoluments currently paid to such workers apart from the fact that the private sector underpays lower skilled workers very poorly and those in the informal and unorganised sectors are paid a pittance.

At the same time, the effort has to be made to ensure that implementation of the recommendations do not tend to be subjective. This would mean judgement of performance and skill should be a decentralised exercise with adequate remedies, again an administrative detail beyond the purview of the Commission. In essence, the SCPC's recommendations and their acceptance by the government open up avenues for reforming the nature of government service by incentivising performance and at the same time provide emoluments and benefits of a fair order to those engaged in the service. It is now left to the means of administration to ensure that this intent is executed fairly and transparently.

Editorial written for the Economic and Political Weekly

Textbooks, Religion and Politics

An opportunistic opposition sets alight passions in Kerala, merely to embarrass the ruling Left coalition.

The class VII textbook controversy in Kerala has brought back memories of the Vimochana Samaram (liberation struggle) agitation that resulted in the dismissal in 1959 of the E M S Namboodiripad-led government by the Nehru-led Congress government in the centre. At that time it was a combination of religious groups along with the main opposition, the Congress, leading an agitation against an education bill that sought greater control for the government over the administration of educational institutions. Today it is the text of a chapter on religious tolerance and secularism in a social sciences school textbook that has brought similar groups together in opposition to the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government.

The textbook presents concepts in social science in a critical and reflective manner and introduces students to social issues through various analytical exercises – all this apart from learning from history. One could ask if the contents, which are supposed to be part of the first of a series on social science, are presented too early in school learning. But having posed that question there is nothing in the contents that justifies the irrational and inflammatory passions that have been aroused by the political opposition in the state.

The chapter (in Malayalam school books) talks about a schoolboy, Jeevan (“life”) whose parents belong to two separate religions. At the time of Jeevan’s admission to school, his parents have not declared any religion for him and they suggest that he will be free to decide his religious faith when he grows up. Following this lesson is a series of quotes from history from a variety of sources: Jawaharlal Nehru’s will, and from religious texts about tolerance, and exercises for the students. The reaction to this chapter by the various forces such as the opposition Congressled United Democratic Front, some church organisations, Muslim groups and caste bodies has been a vociferous demand to withdraw the book, and street protests, in one case leading to the murder of a school headmaster in Areekode.

The government’s constitution of a committee headed by senior academic K N Panikkar to review the textbook ultimately led to some changes in the controversial chapter (the lesson was renamed ‘Freedom of Faith’ instead of ‘Jeevan with No Religion’ as in the original), amendments to correct errors in the quotations, and the inclusion of sayings on tolerance by other social reformers such as Sree Narayana Guru. These changes were more than token alterations and they went even further than what the Congress Party and its motley allies had initially demanded. They could even be seen as a mild rebuke of the LDF government. Though the government has accepted the recommendations of the committee, they have been rejected by the opposition who have now chosen to raise questions about the membership of the committee and have raised other irrelevant issues. The opposition has constituted its own “committee” and has also produced an “alternate” textbook. What else does this response say other than that the issue is not about a so-called state interference in faith but an insistence on fanning communal and religious passions to embarrass the ruling coalition.

The presence of normative values such as tolerance and the freedom to choose one’s faith as expressed in the Jeevan chapter has been interpreted by the opposition as an attempt by the LDF government to instil “atheism” and “communism” in the students through textbooks. Such an interpretation is plainly indefensible. Even if one considers that Kerala’s society is a mosaic of various religions and people are now showing increasing religiosity, the opposition to the textbook can be only seen as regressive, revealing a communal fear of religious tolerance.

The agitations on Jeevan have brought to the surface the traditional discomfort among religious and communal institutions in the state with the Left. Be it the issue of education reforms involving controls over self-financing institutions or efforts by the government to reform certain practices such as entry of women into certain temples, all these have been opposed by communal and religious groups. The dependence of the Congress Party and its allies on communal-caste organisations for support is now there for all to see. Yet, it is also a fact that after more than half a century the Left in Kerala has not yet learnt how to relate to the subterranean passions on religion and caste.

The question one can ask is how is it that a state like Kerala, which boasts of high social development indicators, can still arouse so much anger about the inculcation of values such as inter- religious marriage and freedom of expression of religion. Surely, this must be attributed to the lack of sufficient political work to defeat the obscurantist revivalism led by organised religious and caste groups in the state. Even the left organisations in the state have at times tempered their radical political discourse, so as to not to antagonise the entrenched religious outfits because of electoral considerations.

The relative defiance of the left led government in the textbook issue against the concerted efforts of a regressive opposition should be a good precedent for those who want to continue the social renaissance of Kerala, but more political work is required to halt the increasing influence of communal organisations in the state.

Editorial written for Economic and Political Weekly

The way out in Zimbabwe

Cartoon courtesy, The Economist

Robert Mugabe's authoritarianism takes Zimbabwe into a downward spiral

From a freedom fighter who led Zimbabwe's movement for independence from British colonialism, to a ruler with an iron fist, refusing to honour democratic commitments, president Robert Mugabe has come a long way. Mugabe now presides over a Zimbabwe whose economy is in a tailspin with raging hyperinflation (in more than a million percentage points), 80 percent unemployment, food and essential commodity shortages and a nation wrecked by continuous violence unleashed by members of Mugabe's party, Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).

In recently held presidential elections, Mugabe lost out in the first round to opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), but official results showed that Tsvangirai had not managed to get the mandated 50 +1 percentage vote to win outright. Tsvangirai refused to participate in the June run off because of daily violence unleashed by ZANU-PF on the opposition supporters even as Mugabe was declared winner in the sham polls.

Robert Mugabe was the hero of the liberation struggle against the British and became the prime minister of liberated Zimbabwe (only after a commitment to the erstwhile colonisers on a ten year moratorium on constitutional amendments). However following impressive social and developmental gains in the early years of liberated rule, Zimbabwe under Mugabe followed a reform programme with guidance from the IMF, a move that ultimately resulted in hardships for the vast poor and black majority. Faced with elections in 2000, Mugabe embarked upon land seizure from minority white farmers who controlled large farms part of a profitable export oriented cash crop economy and redistributed this land to the poor.

The main reason for the economic instability has been the anarchic manner in which Mugabe went about restructuring the lopsided agricultural land ownership in the country earlier in the decade. A handful of “white” owners had controlled the most productive land in the country and Mugabe's moves to appropriate the same triggered a flight of such owners away from the country. The land seizure and redistribution process was however chaotic with many intended beneficiaries hardly in knowledge of farming practices. Adduced to this anarchic measure was the steady system of cronyism and patronage that Mugabe had developed with many of the ZANU-PF leaders having a strangehold over institutions in the country.Mugabe and ZANU-PF have used repressive measures against urban workers, farm labourers and even the intelligensia to stem out any discontent against the regime.

The collapse of the cash crop economy and agriculture in general meant that Zimbabwe, a food surplus country was now a net importer. Shortages of essential commodities and some irrational monetary policies resulted in situation where hyperinflation took over. How Mugabe has managed to retain his support despite the grave economic situation that Zimbabwe is in today is most perplexing. The key to his support is the fact that many in the majority tribal group, the Shonas, particularly in the rural areas still look to Mugabe as an anti-imperialist saviour of Zimbabwe. But given the fact that the economic issues and shortages have touched even those people dependent upon subsistence farming, the MDC has managed to go beyond its traditional urban base and gain wide support. The ZANU-PF has retaliated with violence, while Mugabe has branded the MDC as agents of imperialism and has blamed economic sanctions by western countries (which were imposed on some of the leading members of the ZANU-PF) for the steady deterioration of the economy.

Owing to the chaotic economic conditions and the difficult conditions for the population, Mugabe is now forced to have talks with the MDC's leaders. South Africa has offered to mediate, but initial negotiations have yielded only a deadlock. It is now pretty clear that Mugabe's continuance in power with the support of his cronies in the ZANU-PF as well as the military is not going to solve the grave economic conditions in the country.The fact that Mugabe still commands a degree of support from the populace means that the best way out of the impasse is an initiative that involves both the ruling as well as the opposition parties in positions of power. .

Zimbabwe's experience as a post-colonial nation proves that the replacement of colonialism with authoritarianism has only disastrous consequences. A short term solution of a unity government featuring the MDC can bring about confidence back into investors, could restrain authoritarian impulses of the ZANU-PF leaders and eventually bring a halt to the downward spiral of the Zimbabwean economy. Strengthening democratic institutions and credible elections are a must to prevent a catastrophe of the nature unleashed by Mugabe's authoritarianism.

Editorial written for the Economic and Political Weekly

Setback for the left in Nepal

Article written for The Post, Lahore

Just as the trust vote in India saw dramatic intrigue featuring some dubious moves that ultimately mattered in the result (the government won the vote), the presidential election in post-monarchy Nepal came about with a thrilling climax. There was equal intrigue, deceit and backstabbing, sudden friends and instant enemies made in the presidential elections story, which saw the Maoists outsmarted, just as the leftists in India were unable to stop the nuclear deal’s operationalisation.

The Maoists had won the elections in April but the win was nowhere decisive. This resulted in a situation where the formation of a new government was put off till alliances were created that would ensure a numerical surety for whomsoever who had the majority claim. Initially there were attempts to generate consensus among the seven party alliance for the major executive posts (president, vice-president, prime minister and speaker). That consensus was elusive. The main losing parties in the constituent assembly elections, the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal – Unified-Marxist-Leninist (UML) – were nowhere willing to partake in a consensual understanding with the Maoists. So after much haggling and drawn out processes of talking between every political party, some kind of understanding was worked out between the two largest leftist forces in the country, the Maoists and the UML. The idea was for the UML to get the post of president while the Maoists would retain the chief executive post of prime minister. It all looked hunky dory at this point of time till the UML announced its preferred choice for president.

Madhav Kumar Nepal is one of the senior-most communist leaders of not only Nepal, but the subcontinent. Coming of age in the Jhapa movement, he had steadily grown in the ranks of the party before eventually becoming the main leader of the UML in the mid- and late 1990s. He had however lost out in the recently held CA elections in both the constituencies where he had been fielded by his party. That in one stroke meant that he had lost moral authority to lead his party and he promptly resigned from the general secretaryship of the UML. Over the past few months since the elections, he had been replaced from the leadership by other leaders such as Jhalanath Khanal and had gradually faded away from the limelight, before the decision by his party to suddenly pitchfork his name for the post of president.

The Maoists were deeply uncomfortable with the idea of Madhav Nepal as the president for many reasons. For starters, they perhaps wanted someone who was not part of the old political guard that dominated Nepali politics in the 1990s and the 2000s; which ruled out Girija Prasad Koirala of the Nepali Congress and Madhav Nepal for the largely ceremonial post. The Maoists were also keen on pitching a Madhesi face for president, to mark a symbolic break in the history of Nepal with a name from the plains for the highest (if purely ceremonial) constitutional post in the country. They were also thinking of arranging the executive posts (president, vice-president, prime minister and speaker) in a manner that various identities were represented in them; a Madeshi, a person from the hills, a janajati (roughly translating to a tribal identity) and a woman. And this idea was what motivated the Maoists to suggest the name of Sahana Pradhan, a senior UML woman leader for the post of president, but the UML were adamant on getting Madhav Nepal the post.

When the understanding between the UML and the Maoists led to a deadlock, the latter thought it best to propose a new understanding with the largest Madhesi party, the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) and get a Madhesi face elected as president. And the candidate was Ram Raja Prasad Singh, a veteran and militant republican from the plains. It seemed that the Maoists’ new coup wrought out with the alliance with the MJF would catapult Singh to president, but it was not to be.

The rug was pulled out from the Maoists’ feet by last minute machinations worked out by the NC, UML and surprisingly by the Madhesi parties too, as all these players ganged up and rejected the primary Maoist candidate by putting up Ram Baran Yadav, a veteran Nepali Congress leader from the plains. And the MJF got the vice presidential post nomination, with Parmanand Jha named as the joint candidate of the newly formed front of these parties. In one sweep, two Madhesis were elected president and vice-president and although the Maoists’ idea of ensuring representation of a prominent name from the plains succeeded, the persons finally elected were a “soft” monarchist from the Nepali Congress and a former judge from the plains representing the MJF. Surprisingly, neither of these posts were occupied by anyone closer to the Left, even though the Left parties in Nepal had enjoyed nearly two-thirds majority together in the constituent assembly.

Eventually, the Maoists were checkmated in the plain old game of Kathmandu power politics. They were still determining whether or not to join the government and to take the prime minister’s post, which according to the mandate was rightly theirs. A unity government with Left domination had proven to be a mirage, with the UML and the Maoists unable to get over their differences, much of which were got to do with their leaders’ ego, in this writer’s opinion. The UML was not able to think beyond minor considerations of getting their senior-most leader accorded a ceremonial post, while the Maoists were being too calculating in their approach to get a configuration of executive posts to their liking.

The machinations wrought out by the various parties against the Maoists could be used by the latter to get more support from the people who are already tired with the shenanigans that have accompanied government formation since the elections and declaration of a republic. To get more popular support from the people by pointing out the machinations, would require the Maoists to sit in opposition. But that would mean that the levers that the Maoists would hold in the creation of an egalitarian and progressive constitution will be considerably weakened.

It is a new dilemma for the newly entered force into mainstream polity. The Maoists had a lot at stake while they were entering the mainstream. They had to pacify their radical constituency which had sacrificed a lot in ensuring power for the radical party, whose armed wing was barracked and is still awaiting a decision to either integrate with the armed forces or accept a new “security” role. Criticisms have emanated about their tactics to integrate completely into mainstream polity at the cost of their stated aim to achieve a revolution in Nepal immediately. But so far, the Maoists were consistent in manoeuvring the various political steps to be taken in Kathmandu toward achieving a progressive constitution and toward laying the foundations of a radical democracy, before this new setback that they received. Lack of consensus, primarily with the UML has been the main reason for the setback to not just the Maoists but to the Left in Nepal.

It is high time that the Maoists sat down and had long and elaborate talks with the UML about their vision and the need for unity. Or else all gains made so far in constructing an agenda for genuine change from the discredited parliamentary and unitary system in the newly declared republic will come to nought.

Interview with Prakash Karat

Prakash Karat, general secretary of the CPI(M) gave his responses to an emailed set of questions on the current political situation in the aftermath of the government winning the trust vote. Cross-posted from www.pragoti.org :

[Exclusive interview with Prakash Karat, General Secretary CPI(M) on the current political situation]

Q: The UPA government considers the victory in the trust vote as a mandate for going ahead with the nuclear deal. Given that the deal is now on an 'autopilot' mode, what is the future of the struggle against the nuclear deal?

Prakash Karat (PK): The manner in which the trust vote has been won has exposed the government and the Congress leadership. 16 MPs of the opposition were bribed or intimidated to support the government. How can this vote be interpreted, in any way, as a seal of approval for the nuclear deal? The Indo-US nuclear deal has to go through various stages for its operationalisation. At present, the IAEA Board is to consider the draft Safeguards Agreement. With the text being made public, it is clear that the government has not got what it had claimed. Till the US Congress adopts the 123 agreement and the final steps are taken by the Indian government to operationalise the deal, such as finally signing the Safeguards Agreement and the Additional Protocol, the intervening period should be utilized to further mobilise opposition to the deal. The government will find it difficult to sustain itself on the basis of defectors and bribe takers. We will continue to mount pressure on the government not to proceed with the deal. Already the Left, alongwith other secular opposition parties, have decided to campaign against the deal.

Q: Following the Left parties’ withdrawal of support, the government seems to have decided to push for neoliberal reforms in the final few months of its tenure. Do you think the government will get the green signal for these reforms in parliament?

PK: If the Manmohan Singh government decides to push forward with legislation such as the Pension Bill and allowing more FDI in other sectors like insurance and banking, the Left parties, trade unions and other mass organisations will mobilise people and there will be bigger struggles against such measures. Inside Parliament too, the government will face stiff opposition. It will not be easy for them to muster a majority in both the Houses of Parliament given the unstable nature of the motley crowd which they mustered for the trust vote. We will work hard to see that such legislations are defeated in the floor of the House.

Q: We have seen a coming together of the BSP in a broad alliance involving the Left parties and the UNPA. Has this alliance been formed only to oppose the nuclear deal or is it a new coalition in the making for the forthcoming elections?

PK: We have not formed any coalition or alliance. The Left parties have decided to launch a campaign alongwith parties belonging to the UNPA, the BSP, Janata Dal (Secular) and the RLD. This campaign will be on price rise, nuclear deal, farmers’ issues and so on. It is premature to talk about any alliance.

Q: Has there been a miscalculation on the part of the Left to rely upon the Samajwadi Party, which has been so closely identified with sectional and industrial interests? Has the Left overestimated the potential for a third alternative? Isn't there risk of such volte-face from the BSP, TDP and other regional allies?

PK: It was the Left which opposed the nuclear deal. It was our consistent opposition which rallied others and made them take a stand. We did not rely on the Samajwadi Party. The SP earlier decided to oppose the nuclear deal on its own and later changed its position. Therefore, there is no question of any miscalculation on our part on that count. As far as the regional parties are concerned, we know their character. Most of them are, in terms of class character, bourgeois parties and they can take opportunist positions. That is why our Party Congress has explained that our concept of a third alternative should not be reduced to elections. We have maintained that the UNPA, of which the Samajwadi Party was a part, is not our idea of a third alternative. We are working for a more durable alternative based on a common policy platform. As far as parties like the TDP and other parties are concerned, we are trying to evolve some common platform of issues to work together for. We know that till the independent strength of the Left increases, many of these parties will come and go.

Q: Critics have argued that by withdrawing support to the UPA government, the Left parties have strengthened the chances of the BJP’s victory in the next elections. In case the BJP comes to power, how would it help in the struggle against the strategic alliance with the United States? How do you justify your voting alongwith the BJP in the trust vote?

PK: As far as the CPI (M) and the Left are concerned, for the last three years, we have been opposing the strategic alliance with the United States and the nuclear deal. We had clearly stated a year ago that we will withdraw support if the government goes ahead with the deal. This was a basic issue for us. The Left could not have supported a government, which goes into such a strategic alliance. So, our withdrawal of support and voting against the Manmohan Singh government was a fundamental issue for us. If other parties like the BJP also voted against the government, that cannot be interpreted as the Left joining hands with the BJP. As I said, it is inconceivable that the CPI (M) would facilitate India becoming a strategic ally of the United States. The Manmohan Singh government was following precisely what the previous BJP government attempted to do. If any other government seeks to pursue this path in the future, we will fight them too.

Q: Over the past few years, we have seen a broad understanding between the secular parties at the national level in order to defeat the BJP. This was the basis for the UPA-Left alliance after the 2004 elections. Now that the Left has broken away from the Congress over the strategic alliance with US imperialism, how will the fight against the BJP be taken forward?

PK: As far as the CPI (M) is concerned, we had no understanding or alliance with the Congress party. When the BJP was in power, we gave a call to defeat the BJP. But we did not form any alliance with the Congress. We had differentiated between the BJP and the Congress on the issue of the communal character of the BJP. Our efforts would be to gather non-BJP, non-Congress parties to fight against both the BJP and the Congress in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. While we will oppose BJP’s communal agenda, we will also oppose the Congress for its anti-people economic policies and for forging a strategic alliance with the United States.

Q: Apart from West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, the state units of the CPI (M) that have registered political strength – Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan – have undertaken various movements on class issues. A third front at the national level may require alliances with regional parties based in those States, which may be in direct class opposition to the CPI (M). How would your party handle this contradiction at the state and national levels and will an alliance at the national level have a bearing on the state level movements?

PK: We have an all-India political tactical line and that will be implemented in all states. We don’t foresee any problems in the states that you mentioned. Relations with the regional bourgeois parties will be determined by our all-India political line and the role they are playing in the respective states. Any electoral understanding with a regional party will not hamper our independent role and the struggles that we conduct of the basic classes.

Q: Coming back to the nuclear deal issue, what is your opinion about the nature of the debate that has been generated? How far has the Left's enunciation of independent foreign policy and energy policy been appreciated?

PK: The CPI (M) and the Left have succeeded in bringing foreign policy and strategic issues to the centrestage of national politics. The arguments that we have set out against the nuclear deal have met with a big response in political and intellectual circles. We have published the notes exchanged between the UPA and the Left in the nine rounds of negotiations. That should give a fair idea of the intense work we have put in and the seriousness of the debate.

Q: Your views on Somnath Chatterjee’s expulsion from the party…

PK: As far as we are concerned, the person who becomes the Speaker does not become a non-party person. He should not indulge in party politics when occupying the post of the Speaker. When the CPI (M) withdrew support to the government, the situation changed. How can a member of the Party preside over the trust vote and protect the interests of the government? It is unfortunate we had to take a decision to remove him from the Party. But when he refused to step down, there was no other option.

Deadly Cocktail

Alienation and communal fissures make Kashmir a tinderbox that can explode with a spark.

The fissures of communalism run deep in Jammu and Kashmir and there are enough groups among both Hindus and Muslims who are quick to take advantage of a situation. This is the message from the conflagration that swept across the state in June. An order by the forest department of the Jammu and Kashmir state government to transfer to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB) less than 40 hectares of forest land to construct temporary sites for pilgrims visiting the Amarnath shrine near Pahalgam in the Kashmir valley triggered the outbursts that ultimately resulted in the fall of the Congress-People’s Democratic Party (PDP) coalition government and the imposition of governor’s rule.

The scrapping of the order by the state government did not end the controversy. It only triggered protests on the other side – by Hindutva groups in Jammu. Four people were killed and many injured in the valley in police action over many weeks.

Some of the logic used to justify the protests against the transfer was mind-boggling: the separatists – who included a section of hardline communal elements such as the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat (TeH) – claimed that the transfer of forest land to the board for constructing restrooms and other facilities for pilgrims would result in a demographic invasion by outsiders. The ridiculous follow-up protests led by the BJP and its fraternal organisations, once the order was cancelled, included calls for blockading food supplies to the valley.

Part of the reason for the fury of June had to do with the simmering discontent that has remained in the valley. The alienation of decades has not disappeared with the return of a semblance of peace since 2005. Human rights violations by the armed forces stationed in the valley and the lack of a sense of participation by the Kashmiris in the various political processes in the state have only served to keep alive the feeling of hurt and anger. The snail’s pace of progress of the peace dialogue with moderate separatist outfits (such as the Mirwaiz Farooq faction of the Hurriyat conference) has not helped matters. Fears of a state-orchestrated change in the demographic profile of the state have always simmered under the surface. In this situation all that is required for an eruption is a spark like the land transfer of 40 ha.

The valley’s political outfits, be they Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s TeH or other moderate separatist groups of the Hurriyat conference, or the “mainstream” National Conference and the PDP, all took up radical positions, in this case communal positions on the SASB issue. All factions of the divided Hurriyat have called for a boycott of the upcoming state elections and even though the subsequent cancellation of the order by the government saw a reduction in tension in the valley, they have not withdrawn their boycott call, hoping to further delegitimise the Indian State in the valley. The halting steps made in the direction of peace in the valley now seem to have been reversed.
The SASB which is headed by the Jammu and Kashmir governor was established in 2001. The previous governor, S K Sinha, whose tenure ended in June this year, was an appointee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in the centre at that time and was known for championing Hindu chauvinist interests. It is a mystery why the United Progressive Alliance government continued with him until the end of his tenure.

The BJP along with other organisations of the Sangh parivar were naturally quick to take advantage of the situation and called for a “Bharat bandh” to protest the cancellation order. Trying to use the volatile situation to reap communal votes, the BJP conveniently ignored the fact that the J&K government had not withdrawn any facilities to the pilgrims. Instead of using the forest department land, it has given the tourist department the responsibility of providing facilities for the pilgrims, whose numbers have soared every year since the mid-1990s.

Years of conservative indoctrination and the communalisation of the insurgency movement have threatened to wipe out the tolerance inherent to the syncretic Kashmiri culture. No wonder an order ensuring provision of facilities for pilgrims turned out to be an emotive issue exploited almost without exception by the various political groups in the region. Competitive communalism now thrives in Jammu and Kashmir as the separatist as well as extremist political organisations in the Kashmir valley on the one hand and the BJP and the members of the Sangh parivar on the other have used the same mechanisms of fomenting communal hatred to further their expedient causes.

An EPW editorial

Nuclear deal and dealing leaders

In perhaps the darkest day in Indian parliamentary “democracy”, the UPA government used the maxim, “if not by hook, we will win by crook” to win a trust vote that was necessitated owing to the withdrawal of left support to the government. Allegations were already flowing thick and fast about how the support was won off certain legislators in the opposition through the means of graft and bribery, even as crony capitalist manoeuvring and naked dispersal of pelf and patronage in the form of ministries was indulged in, in the open by the government, just to get a dubious nuclear deal with the United States passed through. In the end of it all, the “technocrat prime minister” Dr. Manmohan Singh was beaming unabashedly, shedding no sense of remorse over the sheer duplicity of the Pyrrhic victory won by his ruling party and its coalition allies, even as the bourgeois press went gaga over the Machiavellian triumph.

The image of the day from the Lok Sabha was that of three BJP legislators pouring out wads of thousand rupee notes and alleging that they had been paid to vote against the government by representatives of the Samajwadi Party, whose sudden volte-face in supporting the nuclear deal was itself dubious. The BJP legislators had named Amar Singh, the voluble general secretary of the Samajwadi Party and Ahmed Patel, the behind-the-scenes political secretary of the Congress party as the lynchpins in the entire bribery scandal.

Even more damning was the fact that there existed video footage (a sting operation done by the private channel CNN-IBN) which insinuated in clear as to what was transpiring beyond the public eye in the way legislators were being bought for their votes. But the channel, perhaps wishing not to embarrass the government and thereby jeopardise the nuclear deal, thought it wise not to air the contents to the public.

In essence, everything about the manner the Manmohan Singh government went ahead with getting legislative approval for the deal, was dubious. An opera that begin with a slew of lies made by the representatives of the government to its erstwhile left allies, continued with the addition of new partners (Amar Singh, Mulayam Yadav and his cohorts) who had their own shady self serving agenda. It has now culminated with a dark flourish as nearly 11 members of parliament went “Aya Ram, Gaya Ram” and endorsed the government, while at the same time, ensuring that their wallets were sure to be bursting out of the seams with hard money. Others took the “higher road” to patronage by negotiating ministries (the JMM for example).

In the midst of it all, the sutradar and the opera conductor, the United States administration was laughing all the way to the bank. Here was the Indian government, which had now forsworn its commitment to a better, progressive and a multipolar world, to embark upon a notorious nuclear deal with the unilaterist Americans and heck, they had even gone one step ahead of the guru of graft and chicanery, George Bush, in getting the all powerful legislative approval for the deal.

The nuclear deal has still some steps to be negotiated. The IAEA board of governors meets in a while to signal its decision on the initialled safeguards agreement negotiated by the Indians. What follows is then the deliberations by the representatives of the Nuclear Suppliers Group cartel to give a clean chit to the Indian government, which will then in turn take up the deal to be endorsed in the American legislature through an up-down vote.

Thus the genie is now out of the India's legislature's bottle. The deal is on autopilot. The dealers however, will not be spared. They have shamelessly justified their means by pointing out to their utilitarian understanding of the benefits of the ends met by the deal. The public will not be convinced. As the shameful image of legislators pouring out 1000 Rs notes with Mahatma Gandhi's face etched on it, onto the well of the parliament, is painted on the television day in and day out, so much will the anger with the charade, followed by the Manmohan Singh government in getting a dubious deal passed, pour out eventually into the ballot boxes. The Congress(I) and the Samajwadi Party are thereby served notice. The people might have forgotten the earlier pathetic episode of graft in the JMM parliamentarians' bribery scandal involving the Narasimha Rao led Congress government (of which Manmohan Singh was the finance minister). But this memory would last till at least March 2009. The dealers will be dealt appropriately.

No Trust Left Anymore

The polity in India is set to take a precipitous turn into the unknown as a trust vote awaits the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in the country. Virtually reduced to a dependence on bit players to swing their support for survival, the UPA government has now resorted to various methods of alluring disparate members of parliament (MPs) to vote for the government during the trust motion. Methods such as dangling cabinet berths to hearing out crony capitalist demands to naming public property such as airports in the memory of a politician’s father to curry his support to plain old transfer of money are being touted as the ways to win the support of legislators over to the UPA’s side.

And all this for getting the nuclear deal to get a stamp of approval from the parliament, nipping in the bud, once and for all the widespread understanding that the deal does not enjoy majority legislative support. This kind of inducement led bartering of morality in governance and in politics, has been justified as imperative decision making in a fractured polity, by the unabashed spokespersons of the ruling coalition. They must know better, for such bribing of legislators was practised as a honed art by the Congress party, which went about this dubious charade in 1994 by paying off legislators belonging to the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) to defeat a no-confidence motion. The then prime minister Narasimha Rao, his trusted lieutenant Buta Singh and the JMM MPs were later let off from the criminal case on this issue, owing to a ruling that provided immunity to legislators from criminal prosecution. History is now repeating itself as yet another farce with the same party, the JMM’s legislators led by its convicted chief Shibu Soren demanding favours in order to curry support for the nuclear deal. Soren ostensibly has categorically asked for a cabinet berth or at least the chief minister’s post in the Jharkhand state. Such is the level of murkiness that Indian polity has been reduced to, in the aftermath of the Left parties withdrawing support to the UPA government.

Criminality in politics is not a new phenomenon, nor is it something unexpected for a third world nation like India. But the very fact that such criminality happens in broad daylight, and at the highest decision making centres such as the parliamentary level on crucial issues of national importance makes a mockery of the entire procedure of formal democracy embodied by the parliamentary system. What is even more galling is that the government of the day has deigned it fit to carry public advertisements in the name of a government ministry (the petroleum and natural gas ministry) to tout the virtues of the nuclear deal. One such advertisement carries among its bullet points, a blatant lie, that nuclear energy would offer a viable and important substitute to fossil fuels at a time when crude oil prices are high. Nothing can be a more ridiculous an argument than this.

Nearly all of crude oil goes into creating refinery products that fuel transportation and other facilities such as cooking. None of the above functions can be provided by using nuclear energy. A very minuscule component of the crude oil imported is used for power generation. Plus there is no assurance that the nuclear energy that would be imported would add up to a strategically important component of the entire energy basket or if the imported reactors and fuel would arrive at a cost that would eventually translate into a reasonable user fee (from some estimates, the user fees charged would be much higher than electrical power generated through other sources such as from burning coal).

It therefore reeks of a dubious intent to publish advertisements that make a mockery of energy policy. Manmohan Singh and his party have not only thrown caution to the wind as they embark upon the ‘my way is the “George Bush is the friend” way or no way’, but have given the short shrift to any or whatever ethical norms of executive functioning that characterises the parliamentary system. Manmohan Singh even made the outrageous statement the other day in the ramparts of the G8 summit that “India and the US should work shoulder-to-shoulder together” to solve pressing issues of the world. When one realises that the US’ pig-headed aggressive and murderous foreign policy in west Asia for example is part of the great set of problems that the world faces today, it shames the “thinking Indian” when her/his prime minister says this at a summit with glowing reference to one of the biggest warmongering criminal heads of state today, despised by not only the majority of the world’s population but by his own countrymen (with historically low approval ratings hovering in the late 20s and early 30 percent points).

Some of the justifications made by the Indian establishment include a bizarre enunciation of national interest over-riding all other concerns about the US’ unilateralism. Since the purported benefits of the nuclear deal (which is supposed to recognise India as a nuclear power despite it not signing the NPT and accord it with privileges deserving of the nuclear-haves) are overwhelming for these folks, they are ready to ride roughshod over any argument against having any kind of strategic hug with the global hegemon, that too ruled by someone who sincerely believes in neo-conservatism and hostile militarism. As argued repeatedly, the purported benefits of signing the deal have been exaggerated, while the risks, which include burning bridges with already semi-hostile neighbours and other historical relationships in west Asia (read Iran), are played down and hidden away from the argumentative Indian’s ears.

What is left is therefore a rump of an argument that favours the nuclear deal, no matter what and tries to establish support from disparate sections with promise of power, pelf and patronage, with the scantiest regard for ethics in public life. The UPA for example broke a promise it made in writing to its erstwhile Left allies that it would not go ahead with operationalising the deal without getting the safeguards agreement initialled at the IAEA, being discussed threadbare at a co-ordination committee set up for that purpose. Shockingly, it also found it prudent to lie about putting off the step of approaching the IAEA board of governors till it won the confidence vote, by doing the same the very next day after it made this promise.

Then there is the saga of hiding the IAEA safeguards agreement text from public view, before it was leaked out onto the news websites and blogs, and after which the external affairs ministry was forced to carry the text on its website.

All of these shenanigans have added to a shrill negative image of the Congress-led government, which has deemed such methods a Machiavellian manoeuvre to get the nuclear deal passed. And this has only created a situation where there has been a total break in relations between the secular coalition, formed as it was to keep communal elements from getting to power. No prizes for guessing who will benefit from this break: the communal forces represented by the BJP themselves. A four year arrangement which promised to make a break from the governance paradigm led by the BJP, has ended up on such a bitter note that the chances of the BJP coming back to power have indeed brightened.

As one gets to see the spectacle of the Left voting against the government with the rightist forces spelling out their own reasons for opposition, and as one gets to see a handful of self-seekers siding with the government after having been bought off, in a trust vote, one loses any trust that is left of the parliamentary system. Someone said that the democratic polity in India represented the general will of the people. It turns out that what is left is only the general ‘wile’. Time would tell as what impact such disastrous expediency of the ruling UPA coalition would lead to.

Mendis again

The Blog article on Ajantha Mendis has been republished in The Post. Link here

Just in case, the link gets diverted after archival, re-carrying contents:

In the late 1990s, when this author used to be a teen, a catchy slogan that was splashed on the television screen was 'Normal is Boring'. Featuring the cartoon character, Fido-Dido, the adage was used to convey that being 'freaky' was not to be scorned but to be encouraged. Watching Ajantha Mendis bowl recently in the Asia Cup cricket tournament reminded one of the slogan immediately. Mendis is the new Fido-Dido of otherwise mechanical and 'playing to the norm' story of cricket.

His 6-13 performance against India in the Asia Cup was, to tell the truth, no surprise for this author. I had watched his debut game on TV against the West Indies and was as much bamboozled with his art as much as the batsmen in the game were. It was only a matter of time that the bewilderment was to be infected by other players facing him, and India was at the brunt of the Mendis attack in the game.

So far, Mendis has not yet played Test cricket. He is expected to make his debut against India in the upcoming Test series. But the relatively small sample of One Day cricket and a single T20 match is enough to whet the appetite of the gluttonous connoisseurs of the 'art of cricket'. An assortment of what spin is all about is what Mendis is all about. He can turn the ball from the off to the leg (the off-spinner); he can deliver the same with the wrist (the googly); he can tweak his off-spinning hand to flick the ball from mid to outside off (the doosra), he can bowl the conventional leg-spinner and most devastating of all, he can make the ball hit the turf and rear up with an extra co-efficient of restitution (the top spinner). He is in essence a catch-all spinner, except not much of him is caught by the batsman facing his onslaught of variety. The greatest attribute he has is the ability to keep his line and length simple, i.e. 'plonk' in the area right in front of the stumps. And all that with his nimble fingers and subtle movements of the wrist, that act in close co-ordination with a courageous mind that takes on all batsmen - accomplished or not - as surefire prey for his spinning hunt.

The off-spinner is more or less conventionally delivered, but the doosra retains nearly the same configuration of fingers and wrist, but is delivered with a flick of the middle finger. The googly brings in the wrist more into action, with the ball shifted to the thumb and index finger for emphasis, while the top spinner follows the same co-ordination principle of the doosra, except that the middle finger is replaced by the index finger for emphasis. The delivery which is flicked by the middle finger to create the discombobulation in flight and on hitting the deck is what has been termed the 'carrom ball'. In essence, the variety is controlled by a co-ordination of fingers, wrist and a nimble mind constantly trying to out-think the willow wielding opponent. Technical aspects apart, the simple sophistication of this newcomer is a whiff of fresh air to the art of cricket, ravaged as it is by the takeover of the brutal and the mechanic, both of which adjectives are the rage of the T20 dominated cricketing hour. No doubt, as Mendis flits about playing his inscrutable art, he will be the object of scrutiny. Recorders, video players and laptops would be dissecting his flavour of delivery and the conventions of mechanics would soon be trying to overcome the mystery of his art. Science therefore would be hitting out at art and deciphering the laws of his difference and batting machines will be tuned to overcoming the gap between comprehension and mystification. That possibility is always there.

But what differentiates Mendis from the rest of the freak-shows of the past (Saqlain Mushtaq discovered the doosra but forgot that he was an off-spinner, Muttiah Muralitharan's birth defect makes his spinning skill a permanent one-off) is that his freakishness is all encompassing. How much ever batsmen master his top spin, they would still have to contend with trying to find the difference in a split second between his doosra and his off-spin and if they did that, they would still have to handle the variation between his googly and his leg-spin. There is enough hope for Mendis to keep prospering as the examination that he has set for the batsmen with his ability is much tougher than the tests of the past freak-shows. That is his biggest advantage as a prospect for the future: his ability to set a paradigm shift in the art of spin bowling. A little peering into the backpages of cricket history would reveal that there was indeed one other practitioner of the 'carrom ball' art, Australian bowler, Jack Iverson. However, his career was short but at the same time, highly effective. One expects that Mendis' career on the other hand, should be a long and tortuous one for the batsmen facing him.Here is wishing him the best of fortitude and resilience in keeping his art show intact. We need the Fido-Dido of international cricket to continue to resist the tendency to 'normalise' and 'standardise' the sport and keep proving the freakish adage, "Normal is boring" right.

Lies, Damn Lies and Sycophancy

It is time to launch a massive campaign not just against the "notorious nuclear deal" as Prakash Karat put it, but against the agencies of disinformation and lying that predominate the corridors of power. Quick Comment.

In November 2007, the Indian government formed a UPA-Left Committee to look into the aspects of the nuclear deal from a political, strategic and technical perspective. The committee was supposed to discuss the features of the deal before ultimately making the final decision whether or not to operationalise the deal. It was seen as a face saving device between two allies, who had virtually diametric opposite views on the deal. While the Left had not let the government to proceed any further, the government got a valuable concession from the left to allow it to talk to the IAEA to pencil a safeguards agreement. The concession came with the caveat that the negotiated agreement be then brought into committee, before any decision to provide it to the board of governors of the IAEA is made.

First Lie

It turned out that neither was the text brought to the purview of the committee (the government instead presented a summary), nor was the government willing to place the text for discussion, terming that the text was classified. Instead the government tried to play a new tune, 'let us go to the IAEA board of governors, we will bring back the deal to the parliament after the up-down vote in the US Congress at which point the parliament's decision to accept it or not will be considered'. This refrain was confirmed by the prime minister himself in his statements. Clearly this refrain was not just against the grain of the UPA-Left Committee's written agreement, it was a blatant violation. Obviously the government had lied when it said that it wanted the text to be discussed before sending it to the board of governors.

The Text is "classified"?

When pointed out that the text of the IAEA safeguards agreement was not available in the public domain (the features of the safeguards agreement and the necessity to verify it's contents need not detain us in this article; they have been laid out in a statement of the left parties and also by a statement by eminent nuclear scientists circulated in the media), the government mentioned that it was not possible, as one had to "join government" to get to see the text of the agreement. Why is the government making this classification? After all texts/protocol negotiated with the IAEA by other countries (most prominently, the government's guru these days, the US) are available in the public domain and the IAEA itself has gone on record saying that it has not classified the text. Clearly the government has something to hide. Is it the fact that the text has clauses that violate the understanding provided by the prime minister in the house when he provided clear cut assurances about "full civil nuclear cooperation"? We cannot but speculate as the government is not keen at all to provide the text for us to make a reasoned conclusion.

Another lie

The next lie was even more damning. Just the day when the government effectively became a "minority" after the left parties withdrew support, the external affairs minister gave an assurance in public, that the government will not go to the IAEA board of governors before winning a vote of confidence as required once the president formally asks the government to face parliament on this issue. Fair enough, we thought, the government had spine and was willing to the right thing. We were wrong. The government, atleast the external affairs minister, simply lied. It was revealed by the IAEA itself in a press release on the 8th of July that the Indian government has indeed requested the IAEA secretariat to circulate the draft treaty for consideration of its board of governors. Clearly, the Indian government and its representatives in the cabinet had lived upto their lying credentials yet again.

What explains these public displays of bluffing and lying to the nation, in a matter of few days? It is not very difficult to surmise from where they have learnt this habit: from the perpetual liar and head of the US government, George Bush. Just a day before, Manmohan Singh emphatically said that India should stand "head-to-head and shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States". In a prelude to such "standing", Manmohan Singh's government now stands toe-to-toe and heart-to-heart with the biggest liar (ask Center for Public Integrity which documented more than 900 public lies by the George Bush government leading up to the horrible Iraq occupation). It is no secret that the US administration is teaching our dishonored government to just fib off right in the eyes of the public hawks of Indian democratic institutions. It is after all easy to do that. Very few newspapers/ news channels (such as The Hindu) will question these lies by pointing them out. After all, the corporate press is gaga about sending the nuclear deal to the next stage, "written agreement" may go to hell. And what if the IAEA safeguards text is not available in the public domain, eh?, they would not even ask. After all they have already been standing heart-to-heart and toe-to-toe with the American press in the way things are reported.

It is time to launch a massive campaign not just against the "notorious nuclear deal" as Prakash Karat put it, but against the agencies of disinformation and lying that predominate the corridors of power. It is time that democrats, progressives and believers in the spirit of constitutionalism join hands together in this endeavor.

Ajantha Mendis -- normal is boring

One of the few ads that always caught my attention was one that featured the Fido-Dido character for Seven up with the tagline, "Normal is Boring". It caught up my imagination so much that I imagined up the character as the logo for my college culturals, "Interface 2000" with the tag line, "And the Freak shall inherit the Earth". And me and my under-grad classmate, Vijay Anand (aka Jinnah, now Dr. "Fuel Cells" Vijay Anand Sethuraman at Berkeley) were always turned on by the Apple Computers' pitch: "Think Different" (sic). Perhaps it was in our character to do so, and perhaps that explains my zany career path. But I digress. The Fido-dido dude's new incarnation is in cricket: the carrom ball deliverer and wicket guzzler, Ajantha Mendis.

His 6-13 performance against India in the Asia Cup was, to tell the truth, no surprise for me. I had watched his debut game on TV against the West Indies and was as much bamboozled with his art as much as the batsmen in the game were. It was only a matter of time that the bewilderment was to be infected by other players facing him, and India were at the brunt of the Mendis attack the day before yesterday.



So far, Mendis has not yet played test cricket. But the relatively small sample of one day cricket and a single T-20 match is enough to whet the appetite of the gluttonous connoisseurs of the "art of cricket". An assortment of what spin is all about is what Mendis is all about. He can turn the ball from the off to the leg (the offspinner); he can deliver the same with the wrist (the googly); he can tweak his offspinning hand to flick the ball from mid to outside off (the doosra), he can bowl the conventional leg spinner and most devastating of all, he can make the ball hit the turf and rear up with an extra co-efficient of restitution (the top spinner). He is in essence a catch-all spinner, except not much of him is caught by the batsman facing his onslaught of variety. The greatest attribute he has is the ability to keep his line and length simple, i.e. "plonk" in the area right in front of the stumps. And all that with his nimble fingers and subtle movements of the wrist, that act in close co-ordination with a courageous mind that takes on all batsmen - accomplished or not - as surefire prey for his spinning hunt.

Photo shots from video clip of his first match against the Windies (googly, off spin, doosra- from l to r)

The off spinner is more or less conventionally delivered, but the doosra retains nearly the same configuration of fingers and wrist, but is delivered with a flick of the middle finger. The googly brings in the wrist more into action, with the ball shifted to the thumb and index finger for emphasis, while the top spinner follows the same co-ordination principle of the doosra, except that the middle finger is replaced by the index finger for emphasis. In essence, the variety is controlled by a co-ordination of fingers, wrist and a nimble mind constantly trying to out-think the willow wielding opponent.

Technical aspects apart, the simple sophistication of this newcomer is a whiff of fresh air to the art of cricket, ravaged as it is by the take over of the brutal and the mechanic, both of which adjectives are the rage of the T-20 dominated cricketing hour. No doubt, as Mendis flits about plying his inscrutable art, he will be the object of scrutiny. Recorders, video players and Laptops would be dissecting his flavor of delivery and the conventions of mechanics would soon be trying to overcome the mystery of his art. Science therefore would be hitting out at art and deciphering the laws of his difference and batting machines will be tuned to overcoming the gap between comprehension and mystification. That possibility is always there.

But what differentiates Mendis from rest of the freak shows of the past (Saqlain Mushtaq discovered the doosra but forgot that he was an off spinner, Muthiah Muralitharan's birth defect makes his spinning skill a permanent one-off) is that his freakishness is all encompassing. How much ever, batsmen master his top spin, they would have to still contend with trying to find the difference in a split second between his doosra and his off spin and if they did that, they would still have to handle the variation between his googly and his leg spin. There is enough hope for Mendis to keep prospering as the examination that he has set for the batsmen with his ability is much tougher than the tests of the past freak shows. That is his biggest advantage as a prospect for the future: his ability to set a Kuhnian paradigm shift in the art of spin bowling.

Here is wishing him the best of fortitude and resilience in keeping his art show intact. We need the Fido-Dido of international cricket to continue to resist the tendency to "normalise" and "standardise" the sport and keep proving the freakish adage, "Normal is boring" right.

Nepal Political Diary III

A visit to the Kathmandu valley, the political and cultural centre of Nepal after the constituent assembly elections brings the author in touch with leaders of the major political parties, public intellectuals, and the representatives of commerce and industry. This is the third and final part of the author’s diary of his travels in Nepal during May.

The three team members in front of Darbar Square in the night

As we entered the Kathmandu valley and made our way into the three adjoining cities of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan, it was abundantly evident that we had reached the political and cultural centre of Nepal. We parked ourselves at a hotel near the historic Darbar Square, close to the tourist district of Thamel, as Prashant Jha, consulting editor of Himal, helped fix our political itinerary of meetings with leading lights of the major political parties, public intellectuals and the representatives of commerce and industry.

Madhesi Concerns

The first of our series of meetings was with Upendra Yadav, chairman of the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF). He gave us an overview of the “discrimination” faced by the Madhesis owing to “Pahadi racism”, as he put it. Reeling off statistics about Madhesi under-representation in Nepal’s politico-economic-administrative structure, he made a case for a single autonomous state to be carved out of the Terai region and “self rule” that would help address the concerns of the Madhesis. When reminded that the Tharus and other sections of the inner and outer Terai had reservations about a single Madhes state, Yadav was dismissive; according to him, this was part of a “conspiracy to divide Madhes”. It “was in the Tharus’ interest to have a separate Madhes and they were misled by the Maoists during the elections”, he argued.

On the caste question and the question of radical land reform Yadav was evasive, saying that social and economic transformation was secondary to the ushering in of a truly federal structure. Indeed, he did not believe that the Maoist model of economic redistribution was necessary in the Terai; all that was required was the infusion of investment and scientific inputs in agriculture. Yadav scoffed at the allegation that India had a role to play in stoking the Madhesi identity issue, saying that India had always sided with the Nepali ruling classes of pahadi origins.

Regarding the Terai Madhesi Loktantrik Party (TMLP), the other Madhesi outfit that had done quite well in the constituent assembly elections, we were told that the TMLP was dominated by an upper caste leadership in contrast to the backward caste dominated MJF. But clearly, the strong performance of the Madhesi parties had ensured that the issue of identity and representation was going to be high on the agenda of the deliberations in the constituent assembly. The Maoists in particular had a federal model of autonomy that addressed headlong the questions of ethnicity and representation as well as redistribution.

Leading Figure of the CPN(M)

With Dr.Baburam Bhattarai at his residence

In the immediate, what kind of political and economic system did the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [CPN(M)] have in mind for the republic of Nepal? A twohour conversation with Baburam Bhattarai, senior standing committee member of the politburo of the party helped clarify what the Maoists had in mind on the political and economic fronts.

We started our conversation with Bhattarai on the Maoist handling of the identity issue. Bhattarai felt that by taking up the cause of the janajatis and the dalits, the Maoists had won their staunch support, in the process empowering them in the course of the political struggle. On being asked as to why the Madhesi parties had halted the sweep of Maoist forces in many parts of the Terai, he mentioned that the people’s war was concentrated in the hills; it will take the Maoists some time to consolidate their presence in the Terai. The Maoists had articulated the issue of representation for the Madhesis along with radical social and agrarian reform and that was why the underprivileged such as the dalits and the landless had voted for them, even in the Terai. The Madhesi parties were particularly strong in one area of the Terai, Bhojpura, contiguous with the Bhojpuri-speaking parts of Bihar in India, but he was confident of “politically addressing the concerns of these people and winning them over”.

The conversation drifted towards larger questions: the “triangular ordering of the three contending class forces in Nepal, that of the monarchy representing feudalism and the comprador bourgeoisie, the parliamentary parties representing the small and weak (national) bourgeois class, and the revolutionary forces, the proletariat, the semi-proletariat and the poor peasantry, represented by the Maoists”. This “triangular class contention turned into a bipolar one after the initiation and development of the people’s war; the parasitic reactionary classes were polarised on one side, and on the other side were the progressive forces – the bourgeois class represented by the parliamentary parties and working people represented by the Maoists”. The Maoists had always emphasised a combination of mass and military approaches keeping in mind the “balance of (aforementioned) class forces”.

The phase of the people’s war, which entailed sacrifice and led to the loss of many lives, was in hindsight justified as it had achieved the abolition of the monarchy and the breaking of the back of feudalism, Bhattarai asserted. It is but obvious that over time the contradictions between the bourgeois forces and the Maoists are bound to lead to open con- flict; the Maoists were however con fident of handling this through the “continued support of the masses”. As for the masses themselves, their “expectations were huge”. This was one of the “two main challenges” of the present, the other being the “reactionary forces ganging up against Maoist rule” or sabotage of the current peace process, something that was already underway, he cautioned. “Crucial” to the writing of a progressive constitution was the “unity of the left forces” in Nepal, he emphasised.

On the question of development, he said that the primary focus in policymaking would remain “industrial capitalism – development of industrial capitalism – oriented towards socialism”. A pro-people and pro-poor government was necessary to transform underdeveloped Nepal and the Maoists were “studying the experiences of left-led governments in India”, Bhattarai said. Dependence on foreign aid routed through non-governmental organisations was a problem as these bodies were not accountable to the people. The Maoists would regulate the inflow of such aid and carefully route it to relevant areas, he said.


Bhattarai dismissed the demands to disband the Young Communist League (YCL) and expressed surprise that even a left party like the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) [CPN(UML)] had made such a demand. He said that the Maoists were willing to work for a radical constitution through the application of consensus, but at the same time, “would not give up basic issues such as land reform, particularly in the Terai”. He expected that the “coalition of reactionary forces allied with imperialism could hinder the process of writing the new constitution”.

Left Unity: Need of the Hour

Our next meeting was with Shyam Shrestha, former chief editor of Mulyankan, a left monthly magazine with a circulation of around 30,000 copies, and an active proponent of broad left unity. “Civil society” had an important role to play in the anti-monarchy protests and the eventual mass opposition to the emergency (the jan andolan II of April 2006), said Shyam Shrestha, when we met him at his home in Kirtipur, a picturesque suburb in the Kathmandu valley. “Kirtipur was the hub of the pro-democracy protests of 1989 and it was no different in 2006”, Shrestha emphatically mentioned. Along with other civil society activists, Shrestha had helped orchestrate the mass protests against the emergency and worked towards getting the mainstream parties, the Nepali Congress (NC) and the CPN(UML) together with the Maoists in a united struggle against the monarchy. He gave us an overview of the days leading to the lifting of the emergency and the spontaneous protests and blockades conducted by the people in and around Kathmandu, particularly along the Ring Road and in the blue-collar areas, such as Gongabu.

With Prachanda, the CPN(M) General Secretary

A prominent left intellectual, Shrestha was wary about the Maoists’ intention to foster industrial capitalism with foreign investment, worried that they would eventually follow essentially the same economic policies as the other mainstream political parties. On the criticism that the YCL was using strong-arm tactics, he suggested that this only happened in places where the local Maoist leadership was not “mature”. Above all, Shrestha felt that a broad left unity was the need of the hour in Nepal so that a “radical constitution” can be drafted by the constituent assembly.

Left Unity: Not for Now

With Madhav Kumar Nepal of the CPN(UML)

But even as Shyam Shrestha strikes a chord for left unity, for a leading light of the CPN(UML), former general secretary, Madhav Kumar Nepal, this seems out of the question. Madhav Nepal is among the senior most communist leaders in the country and had a long tenure as general secretary of the party. In the course of the interview he gave us, he presented an elaborate overview of the left movement in Nepal. The CPN(UML)’s contribution to “people’s multiparty democracy” and their coming to power through the ballot were the party’s major accomplishments, he said. The party’s short-lived government in 1996 had undertaken a series of relief and development measures, enjoying the confidence of the people. However, an unfortunate split in the party had paved the way for the NC to entrench itself in power again; by the time the party reunited, it was too late to capture a majority, he pointed out.

As regards relations with the Maoists, he was committed to left unity in the country, but expressed deep anguish and anger against the activities of the YCL. He emphasised that despite the Maoist leadership’s repeated assurance to control their young cadre, the “cult of violence” unleashed against his party could not be tolerated any more. Support for coordinated action in drafting a new constitution was contingent upon the Maoist leadership containing its YCL cadre and this was the major sticking point in fraternal relations with the CPN(M), he argued. There were differences on the issue of federalism too; the carving of the country into federated regions based on ethnicity alone will not serve any purpose. Socio-political considerations and economic viability should govern any federal restructuring, apart from ethnicity, he said.

As we interacted with the people in the streets, taxi drivers, shopkeepers and others, we found that many who were formerly staunch supporters of the CPN(UML) had gravitated towards the Maoists. Despite positive memories of the short-lived CPN(UML) government in 1996, in the popular imagination, the party seemed to have lost its distinctiveness after having taken a series of vacillating and conciliatory political stands during the course of the people’s war.

Nepali Congress: Next Generation

We also met the spokesperson of the NC, Minendra Rijal. Interestingly, Rijal was critical of the Koirala leadership’s intention to continue in government. Rijal expressed his fears of a communist-led Nepal under the leadership of the Maoists. “We have no intention of letting Nepal become a communist state”, he said. The NC was also opposed to the integration of the People’s Liberation Army with the Nepal army. Rijal’s statements clearly established that sections of the NC, given their inherent antagonism towards the Maoists, were bent on destabilising the consensual peace process.

It was heartening to know that the younger generation of the NC, those who came into prominence during the jan andolan II of April 2006, were staunch republicans. One youth leader of the NC who had helped organise multiple rallies during the April movement and has been a popular campaigner since then was Gagan Thapa. We met him at a restaurant at Darbar Marg. Thapa had been active in student politics before his rise in prominence. He had actively campaigned during the CA elections, but was not given a ticket in the first past the post polls, only to be nominated to the assembly through the proportional representation route.

Gagan Thapa of the Nepali Congress

Thapa analysed the Maoist victory, saying how the areas which were under effective Maoist control during the “people’s war” phase were literally out of bounds for the NC and how the elected representatives from this region had virtually neglected any mass contact with the people. It was no wonder that the Maoists had won over large sections of people who had hitherto voted for the mainstream parties. He was critical of the NC’s senior leaders who vacillated on the demand for a republic by playing “old style conservative politics”. Only a resolution supported by party members who had participated in the 2005 movement could force the leadership to accept the demand for the declaration of a republic as one of the NC’s slogans.

There was a debate within the party whether or not to join the new government. He was frank enough to suggest that many of the old guard in the party were afraid of coming out of government as they were apprehensive that the Maoists would replace them in dispensing “patronage” once they took over the reins of power. The Maoist leadership had the strategic acumen as well as the organisational strength to remain in power for a long time by addressing the precarious living conditions of the people, he felt. He expected the NC to eventually occupy the liberal democratic space in Nepali politics. Gagan Thapa also gave us an insight into the hold of US and Indian diplomats over Nepali polity. He was concerned about international meddling in Nepali affairs during the constitutionmaking phase and asserted that the younger republican members of the NC would strive for a change in leadership and policies in the party. The Nepali Bourgeoisie During our stay, many of the main headlines and first page news in the major national dailies were about meetings between the Maoists and the representatives of commerce and industry. The main refrain was the assurances given by the Maoists about supporting national capital and forging public- private partnerships.

We met Shekhar Golchha, executive director with Golchha organisation, a big private manufacturing and trading company, the largest private employer in Nepal. We asked him about his concerns regarding the coming of a Maoist-led government to power. Golchha said that the end of the people’s war and the return to peace were positive steps. The recent verdict was for peace and he hoped that the Maoists would be able to ensure peace and stability which were necessary for business prosperity. He was under the impression, after talking to a section of the Maoist leadership, that labour-capital relations will be cordial once the Maoists came to power.

He was welcoming of the fact that the focus of the Maoists was to protect “national capital”; he wanted some amount of protection vis-a-vis foreign competition, but was also hoping for foreign investment in select areas, such as power infrastructure. He was also hopeful of expansion of the basket of goods from Nepal enjoying zero customs/import duty status in India. He was not quite appreciative of proposals for free trade and a common market as he was apprehensive of a flooding of the Nepali market with Indian goods, as companies in India had “greater economies of scale”. He also wanted foreign direct investment to be regulated and a preference for joint ventures with the participation of local firms.

Our next meeting was with Sujiv Shakya, a management consultant and president of Tara Management, a managing company handling several diversified businesses in Nepal, including the hydro power sector. Shakya was sceptical of the political processes in place under the leader ship of the Maoists. He was against any form of patronage that was inevitably a feature of Nepali polity. He did not want any form of political interference in any industrial activity and quoted the Indian experience of the last few years (laissez faire economic reforms) to buttress his argument. He particularly wanted labour reforms. The problem of implementation of big industrial projects was precisely due to the fact that it was difficult to underwrite such projects in times of political crisis. When we asked him about his opinion regarding the Maoists’ statements about the “development of industrial capitalism oriented towards socialism”, Shakya was dismissive and said that these moves were only going to encourage “crony capitalism”. We could thus get two views from the “representatives” of capital.

Towards a Vibrant Democracy

A victory poster of the CPN(Maoist)

We now needed to take some time off and so we headed to the landmark places, particularly the Narayanhiti palace occupied by the king and the new venue for the constituent assembly in New Baneswor. We were particularly struck by the proximity of the Narayanhiti palace to the huge compound housing the United States embassy. Every political leader we talked to, every journalist who had inside information about the happenings in diplomatic circles expressed concern about interference by the Americans or the Indians as had happened in the past.

Narayanhiti Palace

We were keen on travelling to the eastern parts too, but due to lack of time as well as a travel blockade in those areas, we had to cut short our visit and return to India. We took an unconventional route to Hethouda on the east-west highway and crossed the border through Birgunj into Bihar.

Red signal to the monarchy

In our 15-day sojourn which ended on May 13, we were witness to history in the making in Nepal. Our meetings with farmers, labourers, guerrillas, industrialists, journalists, politicians, and representatives of the civil society were richly rewarding. Nepal’s transformation into a republic had been facilitated by the coming together of progressives, democrats and communists and because of the peoples’ overwhelming support for such a culmination. It was the collective effort of the long suppressed citizenry that brought the monarchy down.

The talk of diplomatic intrigue and international interference worried us the most. The possibility of sabotage of the process of building a radically new Nepal should not be underestimated as the country is seen by imperialists as a launching pad of destabilisation strategies against its neighbours, even as the latter see Nepal through the lens of competitive geopolitics. There is also the presence of threats from obscurantist forces within Nepal and in India. The historic endeavour of writing a constitution for the federal democratic republic of Nepal and building a self-reliant industrial economy rests on the ability of the polity to maintain the bonhomie and consensus generated in the peace process. The long march to a vibrant democracy in Nepal has just begun.

(End)

Series of articles published in Economic and Political Weekly