Trouble in Xinjiang

Pent up frustrations result in violent riots in Uyghur capital in China

Incidents of ethnic violence involving deaths of more than 190 people, rocked Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China on the 5th of July, when rioters belonging to the predominantly Sunni Islamic Uyghur ethnic denomination attacked members of the Han Chinese community in the city. The immediate trigger for the incidents in Urumqi was the violent targetting of Uyghur migrants by Han workers in a toy factory in the southern China province of Guangdong on June 26th. Miffed by what some Uyghurs felt as Chinese government inaction in bringing the guilty Han workers to justice, protests were staged in Urumqi, which further transformed into a bloody ethnic riot with Uyghurs attacking the migrant Han Chinese population. While Xinjiang has been rocked by sporadic incidents of violence for quite some time, including terrorist bombing and other riots, the incidents of July 5th were of such an alarming order that the Chinese President Hu Jintao had to shorten his visit to the G8 summit in Rome to return back to his country.

The official reaction of the Chinese government was to blame external forces for these incidents, pointing fingers at an Uyghur separatist leader (of the World Uyghur Congress) based in the United States. But just as in the Tibetan set of events last year, the riots in Urumqi must be attributed to resentment among the minority ethnic groups of China's population and umbrage against some of its government's policies. One such policy is the "Western development" initiative launched in the later half of the 1990s which involved the large scale capital investment in utilisation and extraction of natural resources in an endeavour to economically develop the western regions of China. Simultaneously there was also an influx of ethnic Han Chinese to partake in the economic benefits of the growth process in these regions, including Xinjiang. What has been resulted is the garnering of a large share of the employment opportunities by the Han migrants. This combined with measures such as teaching of Mandarin in schools in Xinjiang has not gone down well with the local Uyghur speaking people. While the Chinese government insists that these policies are meant to give better opportunities to the Uyghurs, that perception is not shared by the local indigenous population in Xinjiang. Thus despite certain concessions to minorities such as the relaxation of the One-Child policy or other social measures, resentment against Han in-migration, corruption among the ruling elite, lopsided development and employment opportunities plus perceptions of cultural suppression has seen Uyghurs increasingly getting antipathetic to the Chinese government. This resentment also resonates with the perceptions of rising inequality and government corruption elsewhere in China.

China's Constitution and its instituted 1984 Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law provides for ethnic minorities the right to protect, preserve and promote their cultures. Apparently the intent to respect and provide for diversity in the Constitution and in the autonomy law has not translated fully in its implementation in Xinjiang (as in Tibet), giving rise to grievances. In the medium and long term, the Chinese government has to bring make a paradigm shift from its current policy of conflating all forms of Uyghur dissent and grievances within "separatism, extremism and terrorism" to adopt a far more accommodative approach basing itself on the stated aims of the Constitution. The relative restraint with which the Chinese government handled the aftermath of the July 5th incidents could be a starting point. Merely blaming the separatist elements in the Uyghur diaspora for "fomenting" the riots is not going to help resolve the situation that resulted in the incidents in the first place.

The danger of a Han chauvinist and nationalist reprisal and consequent repression of Xinjiang remains, but thus far the Chinese government both at the national and at the local levels have tried to restore normalcy by appealing for calm while engaging in bringing those engaged in murder and violence to justice. The relative freedom and access given to the press (both local and foreign) in covering the events after the July 5th incidents suggests a marked change from the Chinese government response to the Tibetan incidents last year.

Beyond the political measures, the Chinese have to revisit the capital intensive growth paradigm as well, not just in the western regions but elsewhere in the mainland as well. Due to objective conditions - the global financial crisis and the structural problems in the Chinese economy, the Hu Jintao regime has instituted a more populist set of policies than its predecessor, but that is still not enough to mitigate the socio-economic troubles faced by the nation.

Draft of an editorial written for the Economic and Political Weekly.

Saffron intact in BJP's pot-pourri

The Bharatiya Janata Party offers a confused mixture of policies, but anchors itself firmly on its Hindutva base on the eve of parliamentary elections.

Incoherence and posturing has always characterised the Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP). Owing to the limitations of the exclusivist ideology that it depends upon, the BJP has tried to camouflage its Hindutva base, to win over alliances in the fractured polity that is India's. Such a strategy has paid the party dividends in the past as well as in assorted state elections across the country, wherever its adversaries have been lacking in governance/administration or ability in forming the right identity-based alliances. But every now and then, in order to keep its ideological mentors in the Sangh Parivar impressed and to foster the hard-line impulses of its activist base, the party goes back to the Hindutva theme.

One such occasion was its recently held national executive and council meetings in Nagpur. The party yet again performed its trapeze artistry of swinging between Hindutva and a modern vision for itself and the nation. In essence though, it offered no coherent alternatives and responses to livelihood issues of the day as a contrast to the ruling alliance's, beyond putting forth a string of grouses.

As an opposition party, the BJP repeatedly disrupted proceedings in Parliament on the slightest pretext. The meaningful oppositional space had been usurped by the left parties, even when they were supporting the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and after the withdrawal of support. After five years of rabble rousing and harping on agendas such as minority appeasement and “soft state”,the BJP had more of the same in its political resolution for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

There was therefore a return of the hackneyed slogans on Ram, “Ram temple in Ayodhya” and Ramarajya from its president Rajnath Singh, and which received some lip-service from its prime ministerial candidate L.K.Advani. And Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi stayed true to his hard-line image by alluding toward “inside help” for the Mumbai terror incidents. And while waxing eloquent on its strategy to fight terrorism at all costs, the party president dismissed the investigations to the Malegaon blasts' suggesting that Hindus are being maligned in the name of terror. All in all, the party chose the proximity of its national executive meeting to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's headquarters as an excuse to burnish its Hindtuva credentials, harping yet again on minority bashing and other obscurantist agenda.

The economic road-map chartered by the party promises a employment oriented policy of growth and a determination to address the agrarian crisis in the country. But beyond pointing fingers at economic mismanagement by the UPA, the BJP has little to offer on how it plans spur the economy through “recapitalisation of the financial sector” and “spend on infrastructure”. While the BJP criticises fiscal spending and suggests that this had resulted in high inflation in the country, it insists on “massive” infrastructure spending on a “war-footing” as part of its core agenda in the same breath in its resolution. Interestingly, Rajnath Singh in his address invoked Gandhian swadeshi economics as well to pitch in yet another economic vision in the resolution's hotch-potch of neoliberalism (pension reforms), Keynesianism (infrastructure spending), self-reliance and what not.

The situation that the BJP finds itself today is not encouraging for the party. Its insistence on retaining its Hindutva extremist fringe has seen it reap highly polarising gains in Gujarat, Karnataka and Orissa. In other states, however, despite the rhetorical shift to an agenda of efficient governance, it has only got mixed returns, as the wins in the assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Chattisgarh have been juxtaposed with losses in Rajasthan and Delhi. The party's polarising ideology has assured that the party stands bereft of an alliance partner and of a base in most states in the south and east of the country. And the language used by the party in it's run-up to the elections only suggests a further isolation on that count.

The rise of the BJP to the centre-stage of Indian politics and as one of the two biggest political forces, has had disastrous consequences on the nature of the Indian state. Be it in the weakening of the welfare state, or the vitiation and communalisation of the body politic,the rise in disenchantment among myriad sections (minorities in particular), the BJP's legacy has been malignant. That the party has stuck with Hindutva as a core and basic political philosophy even after years in opposition, suggests the threat that the cancerous influence of communalism continues to pose to India's polity.

Editorial written for the Economic and Political Weekly. Cartoon courtesy, The Hindu newspaper

Cricket, Excesses and Market Mania

Article published as a commentary in the Economic and Political Weekly

The Indian Premier League (IPL), a corporate driven tournament featuring a set of city teams playing Twenty20 cricket has made news with a multimillion dollar player auction. Players from various cricket playing nations were “bought” and “sold” through bids made by the corporate owned teams (the franchisees). Cricket in India has become the only sport that has captured widespread mass and media attention. The popularity of the sport has increased in leaps and bounds and the way the sport has been managed and administered has reflected the dominant mode of economic transactions in the country.



From being a sport that was a hangover from the colonial era and restricted to teams divided on communal basis (the Pentangular, for example, during the early 1940s) to becoming a symbol of nationalism and now to becoming a full- fledged commercial enterprise, cricket has traversed a path very much followed by the nation in its socio-economic course. If playing for the nation’s pride was what drove professional cricket after independence, it is playing for commercial gain that is the driving story today, much in consonance with the sharp changes in the nature of nation-building that exists in India today.

An Afterthought

Sport was always viewed as an afterthought activity for leisure by the post-independent Indian state and it never fitted in with youth development and community building. The neglect of sport because of this lack of priority has meant that India as a nation has performed poorly in international competitions and, other than a few individual and team successes, the story is one of despair. Even in sports where Indians held a traditional advantage such as hockey, the lack of adequate institutional support and planning has meant that the sport has gradually withered away.

Cricket, however, underwent a different trajectory. Run by an autonomous board (the Board of Control of Cricket in India or BCCI), which has created a structure of age group, state, and domestic tournament based cricket and manages the national cricket team, cricket has effectively become a popular sport that has touched several urban and semi-urban bases in the country. At the same time, the powerful board has followed an opaque model of functioning even as it has earned money by the fistful owing to the growing popularity of the sport, particularly after the victory in the 1983 World Cup and the growth in popularity of one-day cricket.
The growth of the market economy since 1991 given the BCCI manifold opportunities in the “system”. So, just as corporate bodies in India control pretty much the nature of growth and the pulse of nation-building, cricket has passed into their hands too. In the past, Indian cricket was used as a tool to buttress nationalism; and the Indian cricket team (managed by the BCCI) was meant to represent the Indian nation in international competition. The players in the national team were therefore performing a national duty. However, over time, commercial and corporate interests could no longer be kept out of the way cricket was run.

Ergo, the IPL, an assortment of eight city-teams (franchises) playing Twenty20 cricket. This new league is a form of commodity market, where the commodities are players, the owners are the corporates, and the value of the commodity is determined by a set of rules that play itself out on a maidan with cricketing instruments and more so on the television screen in the form of commercials.

Commodity Market

The establishment of this commodity market was kicked off by an auction system that instituted market value for the players through a valuation process. This valuation process considered not just the skill levels of the players but also their brand building capabilities. So it is that Ishant Sharma, a tyro who has promised a great future through some inspiring performances in Australia for the Indian team was valued at $ 9,50,000 as compared to the established Umar Gul valued at just $ 1,50,000 although he took the most wickets playing for Pakistan in the World Twenty20 tournament. Sharma’s value as a representative for brand building the franchise, owing to his Indian nationality, trumped over the real value of Umar Gul.

Obviously the corporates were looking ahead at great returns for their investment. India had just won the Twenty20 World Cup some months ago and this form of the game had captured the imagination of the masses. Added to the buzz of Twenty20 was the glitz from yet another set of obsessions of the Indian public: the entertainment industry (Mumbai film personalities) plus the new consumerism of the middle classes. Now this potent mix was bound to churn out golden eggs from the cricket goose and the Indian cricket board only had to release its employees to partake in the process. The BCCI had the advantage of running the game in the second largest populace in the world and it was only natural that it could influence other boards in releasing its own players for the jamboree that the IPL was. Ergo, the league got an international flavour adding more golden eggs and more value.

This bonanza for cricketers in a formal sense is a huge progressive step. Earlier, players were stuck in an atmosphere where the board decided their allowances and pay – even after substantial raises in recent years – which were commensurate with the semi-egalitarian economic environment of the past. So, a cricketer despite his performance and the attention that he received was paid a pittance and the only recompense he had was that he was playing for “national pride” that sat well with the politico-economic story after independence.

Qualitative Difference

Commercialisation of sport is a reality that has existed all across the world. But there is a qualitative difference between the forms of commercial sport that exist in mature capitalist and developed countries and what is taking shape in India in the form of the IPL. In the US, for example, major leagues have been established for four main sports – baseball, basketball, American football and ice hockey (a league exists for soccer too). These sports are played seasonally as a well integrated market that cohabits with a regulated structure.

Participation is guaranteed for interested sections through feeder units in colleges and schools and infrastructure is established through community ownership and city planning administrations. In other words, a fully fledged sport environment with corporate ownership and state and community support exists, transacting action in the various leagues.

In Japan, professional baseball leagues involve corporate owned city-based teams too. Sports persons are fed to these leagues from the school and college levels (the extremely popular Koshien school baseball tournament for example) and athlete development programmes are coalesced with youth development activity driven by the state. In Spain, club football acts as an avenue for passionate local nationalism (Spain is a composite country with different autonomous regions) to be channelised into sporting competition. The local governments play an important role in youth and skill development initiatives. The clubs and cities have also diversified into other sports such as basketball and tennis (polideportivos) thus opening avenues for sports persons who are not footballers alone. Market driven competition has not diluted the essence of the sport either. In nations where the state predominates in planning and administration of sports, such as in Cuba and China, emphasis on youth development and participation in amateur sports is given very high priority.

In India, the growth of cricket at the expense of other sports derives from the lack of a participatory sporting culture. Sport, traditionally viewed as leisure activity has been shunned by governing institutions and there has been virtually no focus on youth development and infrastructure building from village to city levels. The reduced emphasis on youth and skill development for sport in general ensures that the process of bringing up talent remains anarchic and only cricket with its relatively more mature feeder systems of age group tournaments, clubs and state boards remains the dominant form of sport activity.

Cricket’s thriving, in contrast, has been limited to urban and semi-urban areas and has been driven purely by popularity. The rural masses hardly have any hope of getting through to such tournaments without state intervention in grooming talent in these areas.

Anarchic Nature

The anarchic nature of market-driven sport also ensures that only a small coterie of readily recognisable talent gets attention. Those slogging it out in domestic cricket with skill levels say suited more for the more rigorous 5-day Test cricket would pale in comparison to the players getting to play in the IPL Twenty20s. The IPL is bound to skew and distort cricket as it is today a jamboree that is not so much balanced in its recognition of skills as much as it values brands. The IPL itself was a response to the Indian Cricket League (ICL). The ICL was started by the Essel group to operate outside the purview of the BCCI, and weaned away domestic players disenchanted with playing conditions and lured by the money offered by the corporate owners of the league.

Seen from a larger perspective on sports management and administration in the country, the IPL becomes a distorted money-spinning exercise devoid of substantial participative value. Thus a cricketer like Ishant Sharma would earn $ 9,50,000 over three years for merely bowling four overs each in about 16 games in each year and for endorsing a brand while other sports persons such as hockey players suffer from lack of compensation and training facilities. Reliance on corporate bodies alone to promote sports would only help bring in so much benefits of commercialisation-inflated value for the commodified participant and exclusive pandering to the voyeuristic desires of the consumerised spectator.

The corporates themselves realise that they are unlikely to earn any money in the initial years; returns, if any, will come later. Why then were some of the biggest names in the business? There could be many reasons. The professed ones are related to brand building. The more accurate explanations are of two kinds. One is plain vainty – as expressed in the money poured out by the likes of Vijay Mallya, Mukesh Ambani and the filmstar Shahrukh Khan. They can indulge in this vanity because business has never been so good in India. The second reason is that it is a sign of excess all around that this finds its expression in many areas – excess in the lifestyles of the rich, excess in consumerism, excess in business endeavours and excess in “bidding” for team licences and players. History tells us that the period of excess is followed by a period of collapse. The only unknown is how long it would take.

Utsa Patnaik’s Article ( The Death Knell to the pro-reformer in me):

I had attended Prof Utsa Patnaik’s lecture on the agrarian sector’s travails during the times of economic reforms from the early 90s to the present, almost 4 months ago. She had then eloquently talked about how, poverty measures, based on per capita calorie intake of the populace, had shown that, owing to less purchasing power in the rural areas, there was a severe drop in calorie intake. This had resulted in a situation which entailed wide spread hunger and hence the entire episode of widespread farmer suicides in various rural areas in the country. At that time, I wasn’t good enough to understand the linkages between economic reforms, structural macroeconomic policies and spending in the social sector by government. Thankfully, some kind of sporadic but dedicated reading the past few months have educated me to a decent extent and to confirm my understanding, Prof Patnaik herself came up with a well written passionate essay, "Its time for Kumbakarna to wake up", elucidating the exact point mentioned above and exhorting the existing UPA dispensation to work toward ameliorating the fast deteriorating economic conditions of the rural poor.

Prof Zoya Hasan, who teaches Political Science and the erstwhile Chairperson of our department, was also cogent in her exposition of the repercussions of the economic reforms of 1991 in our country. While alluding to the fact that despite some economists saying that the economic reforms of 1991 were inevitable, there existed others who doubted whether we required such measures of opening up the floodgates of the erstwhile semi-closed economy; she also explained how concomitantly the economic reforms brought in dichotomous results: High Growth Rates ranging from 6 to 7% while at the same time exacerbating the disparities in our society.

She went on to quote the Prof Utsa Patnaik findings on the effects on the rural sector; asserted how economic problems faced by the rural poor were one particular reason apart from the Gujarat Riots for the fall of the NDA Government and also talked about in length about the political economy of the 1990s in India. Particular notice was mentioned on the astonishing finding that there was a stockpile of food grains in government godowns despite fall in food grain productivity (for the first time since 1962) during the NDA regime; yet millions of people were starving due to lack of purchasing power (because of the State’s withdrawal from managing the agrarian sector; this in turn being so due to the increased marketization of India’s economy).

She then hopped on to the current hot topic, National Rural Employee Guarantee Act, as to how this act is seen widely as a panacea to the problems of Rural India and how it could act as a much needed tonic to the unemployment problems of our country. Universal NREGA, as opposed to Targetted NREGA, with its side-by-side existence with the Right to Information Act and implementation by Panchayats constituted by the Panchayati Raj doctrine (Third Governance) was what was the need of the hour, several economists concurred, she said. She also mentioned about how certain newspapers took it their brief to scuttle this ambitious plan (the first of its kind in India to serve the interests of its own suffering citizens) by alluding that it was a fiscally imprudent exercise, despite assurance by several eminent economists about its overwhelming feasibility; its clone’s (in Maharashtra) successes, etc.

On the repercussions of Economic Reforms (personalized):

The bright side of Economic Reforms: Sep 2001: My dad got his wish fulfilled. He got his car, his son had bought for him (in a way), by sending him the first remittance at his NRI account from Japan. My mother gets a watch she never expected to be that miniature. She could wear it as a ring and she went about telling her friends proudly that her son got it for her while working in Japan. Those Japanese chocolates that melted in the mouth and those smiles on those swollen mouths filled with chocolate....what else would express satisfaction and pride better in a middle class family.

The dirty side of Economic Reforms: 25th July 2005. Its 12:00 Midnight. I am attending a meeting called by students giving a farewell to a former JNUSU (JNU Students' Union) President, Com. Vijoo Krishnan. I hear murmurs by my side. One friend says that he has heard about serious worker unrest in Gurgaon and severe police reprisal in retaliation. Another says that nearly 500 odd workers were brutally lathi charged and there were graphic pictures being shown on TV. The organizers of the meeting, call an end to the meeting and all of us symbolically troop on to Ganga Dhaba (another of JNU's aithihaasik sthals), where we all order chai and biscuit and call a toast to Com. Vijoo's future. As we are doing so, the murmurs have been raised to a din where all "comrade" students have been outraged by the serious assault on workers. The organizers of the meeting regroup and tell us that they have planned a march to Haryana Bhavan to protest against the police oppression. I join in, partly because I am appalled by what I hear and partly because I feel this is the right time for me to show solidarity to the cause of workers as a student-intellectual.

I retire back to my hostel room, in the way, going to the TV room to check out what is the hullabaloo all about. I find horror on screen. Workers being beaten up black and blue as if they were ordinary criminals by policemen wielding lathis as if they were wreaking havoc on dogs. One worker is beaten simultaneously by nearly 5 constables mercilessly without a regard for the fact that this worker is unarmed, is wafer thin in structure and he is protesting innocence while being in excruciating pain. I ponder again. Whatever happened to the State, the annadaatha, who is supposed to care for its workers?
The next day, I wake up early (for a change). I gulp up whatever every newspaper that comes to my hostel offers: The Hindu, TOI, HT, Indian Express, and The Asian Age. All of these papers express angst at the police action as if by rote. Photos on the papers are graphic. My classmate (who was with me the whole time the previous day) and me pick up the papers and prepare for the pamphlet of the day protesting against Police Atrocities in Gurgaon. We cut off the photos and hand them over to the artist-friend of ours to complete the pamphlet. We then take the bus to Haryana Bhavan.

In the road adjoining Haryana Bhavan, we find representatives from Trade Unions, Leftist workers already in "attire" (flags, et al). We bide our time. One "leader" says that other "comrades" were not allowed by the Police to join this congregation and therefore "we" would have to block traffic in the adjoining road so that the police co-operates and lets the other representatives come over. The congregation rushes to the road and blocks traffic for a full 5 minutes, before the police relents and assures that no vehicle carrying representatives shall be blocked. The funny thing is that even while the traffic was stopped for a while, the people inconvenienced do not bark on their horns and are rather amused but at the same time watching the whole episode earnestly. Once "we" receive the assurance, the congregation then starts marching toward Haryana Bhavan. It encounters a barricade and overcomes the same. Before it encounters the second barricade, yet another congregation of a "friendly" trade union joins hands and together we stand before the second barricade. Here we face trouble, the police have mobilized water cannons on the marching brigade and soon most of the brigade is drenched with water and 2 of these are injured. All these for making a symbolic gesture against the action taken by the police against those workers in neighboring Gurgaon.

Two days later: Articles galore in The Hindu. Harish Khare condemns the behavior of the Haryana Police and alleges that the State acted in Cahoots with the Honda Management. He points out his accusing finger at the apathy of the State owing to its disposition toward the capitalist class in the so called Investment Haven in Gurgaon. P.Sainath is more scathing. He explains the dichotomy between the Mall and the Chawl and how the structural economic policies of the Indian State have created such a malodorous environment for most in a majority and piquant pleasure for others in a minority.

Yet, the other Bourgeois Media papers change tack. The Indian Express' lead headline is a statement from a West Bengal Left Minister who says what happened in Gurgaon would not happen in Bengal. The TOI alludes to a militant section in the workers' procession starting the entire episode of violence and counter violence. Reports are then published about how a Japanese minister says that FDI to India could be affected due to such labour related issues. The TOI then asks its readers whether Gurgaon's reputation as a investment location will be tarnished by the incidents.

Crocodile tears for the sufferings of the workers for a few days and then reverting to the management's story about the entire incident and putting the blame on the accursed leftists...that’s the take of the bourgeois media on La Affaire Gurgaon.

No mention of the fact that if such a labour dispute happened in Honda Company in Japan, a) the State would have enforced penalties on the Management, b) the Workers of the company would never have allowed such a dispute to occur first place!.

The Dirty side of the economic reforms is indeed revealed. To make life easier for management, labour laws are diluted by the State. Flouting of rules by management is condoned. Honda workers complain that female workers are not given closed toilet rooms in their work areas. Unionization of workers is prevented and arbitrary action is taken against those who demand labour law implementations. Employees are fired en masse. The media raises no noise over these serious problems faced by the workers. The focus is still on FDI and the Malls. Not the Chawls.

Which face should I see and interpret? The face of my parents who were proud of their son's so called achievements in a foreign country (where all he did was write a few bytes of code for some bloody program that was part of a huge set of 10000 programs) or the face of those workers beaten up by the police ostensibly to keep intact the Investment friendly face of Gurgaon? I am still deeply troubled. A crisis engulfs me.