India’s villages are beginning to smile | Deccan Chronicle

India’s villages are beginning to smile | Deccan Chronicle:

India’s villages are beginning to smile

Kancha Ilaiah | 21st Aug 2013

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So far the impact of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and its implementation, however tar­dy, in the Indian rural setting has been discussed in terms of wage and work availability.

Various agencies have doled out statistics of the number of people who have benefited and the amount of money flowing into the hands of the rural poor. Even the team that put this act in place may not have fully realised its effect on India’s rural poor, and its social, cultural and political impact.

For example, the latest National Sample Survey Organisation data has shown a drastic reduction in po­verty levels of many states and that must be seen in the backdrop of implementation of this progra­mme.

The reduction in the number of poor people in Andhra Pradesh within just two years was drastic — from 176 lakh to 80 lakh. The impact of this programme on hea­l­th and empowerment is very much visible across the rural landscape of An­dhra Pradesh.

The socio-cultural impact of the programme is more significant than the physical im­pa­ct, and it cannot be measured in nu­mbers. It has to be seen and sensed.

The Indian caste system and hierarchical relations, under­pinned by the practice of untouchability, have historically endorsed barbaric human relationships in our villages. Feudal ca­s­te­ism coupled with superstitions have been used for centuries to con­trol the labour, i.e. the poor.

The poor — men, women and children — were treated as virtual sla­v­es of the landlords. Doing whatever work was assigned, taking whatever wage — both in kind and coin — given by the landlord was the only option. The dalit population in particular was vulnerable to exploitation, and their women were under the grip of landlords.

This system did not even give the option of school to children belonging to the SC, ST and OBC castes, leave alone thinking of compulsory education. Even after we abolished child labour, insufficient work days in the fields and a “feudal wage system” continued in our villages.

This forced poor families to pull their children out of school and make them work as labourers, often at the command of the landlords during peak work season, and sometimes out of their own necessity. The so-called Land Reforms Act hardly changed this relationship.

But the MGNREGA has changed the situation considerably. For the first time in history the state has asked rural people to take up agrarian developmental work — digging or repairing tanks, canals, laying roads or soil bunds on their own agricultural lands — and it pays wage through a bank.

This dignifi­ed assured income, at least for 100 da­ys per annum, undercutting all feudal-caste cultural relations, has enco­uraged parents in villages to send their children to school, re­sul­­ting in considerable reduction of sc­hool dropout rates in rural areas.

There is a qualitative difference between earning wage and earning dignified, unconditional wage. Dignified wage for work, hitherto unknown in Indian villages, has, thus, energised the spirit of the rural poor.

Though it requires them to learn the nitty-gritty of the banking system, the very act of interacting with a bank has changed their lives. This mode of earning wage abolishes feudal indignities that were, till now,  interwoven with rural poverty. The Indian state did not know how to work for abolition of these indignities. The MGNREGA has initiated this process.

The labouring lower castes, by acquiring relative economic autonomy, are slowly becoming free voters. When they were dependent on the landlord wage system alone, they could not even exercise their right to vote.

Though the pro-landlord economists call the Indian la­n­d­lords “farmers”, the Indian landed gentry has not yet become capitalist cultivators or farmers leaving their caste-feudal cultural heritage behind.

In fact, the landlord class, which was earlier living as a “drink and en­j­oy” class, has been forced to soil their hands as the former bonded labour is now em­pl­oyed elsewhere. Slowly but surely, MGNREGA is injecting some amount of dignity of labour among the lazy, up­per-caste landed gentry.

No wonder, the landlord lobby is very unhappy with MGNREGA. They are not used to labour not being available at their beck and call. They, therefore, talk of the la­bour class becoming lazy and greedy because of this progra­m­me. This is absurd.

Fact is that MGNREGA has empowered the rural poor. It has, for example, changed the condition of women. For centuries, a poor woman’s sexuality was under the control of the landlord because of lack of employment opportunities. They had no choice but to work in the fields of the landlords.

Untouchability, of course, did not extend to dalit women, who have always been vulnerable to sexual exploitation by the landlords. Dalit and other lower-caste women would silently surrender to their landlords’ whims and fancies.

Culturally, poor rural women hate the landlords. But because th­ey need to feed their children they silently suffer sexual abuse. Once the state steps in with an alternative dignified wage-earning mechanism like MGNREGA, the da­lit/tribal/OBC women are bound to challe­nge the landlords more and more.

The alternative wage under MGNREGA has emboldened the women. Now the poorest of poor woman is not surrendering. They are resisting and in case of rape they are reporting.

Finally, it is important to understand the role an assured, dignified wa­ge plays in a family. MGNREGA has brought a se­nse of happiness into the lives of the rural poor and herein lies the essence of change in India.

The Bharatiya Janata Party and its leader Narendra Modi have been attacking this programme as uneconomical. Tho­u­gh Modi is being supported by a large section of monopoly capitalists, large number of landlords are also with that party. They are opposing this programme in various ways. But no one is suggesting an alternative to this programme. They probably don’t want one.

(The writer is director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad)

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After the inferno - South Asia Citizens Web

After the inferno - South Asia Citizens Web:

After the inferno

by Harsh Mander, 24 August

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 other articles by the author

The Hindustan Times
August 20, 2013
One year has passed since the monsoon of 2012, which witnessed, in Assam, the country’s largest displacement caused by ethnic and communal mass violence after the Partition riots of 1947-48. Half a million people were uprooted from their villages because their homes were looted and set ablaze, or simply for fear of their lives. It is extraordinary how easily the rest of the country has forgotten the carnage and the mass suffering it engendered. Part of the reason for this national amnesia is that this violence scarred India’s distant north-eastern frontiers, and the survivors were either indigenous Bodo tribals or Bengali Muslims.
The puzzle of Assam’s endemic cycles of violence is that — unlike the more familiar national paradigm of mass violence inflicted by people of dominant castes and faiths against minorities and disadvantaged castes — Assam’s bloody conflicts often rage between various oppressed minorities. Each embattled impoverished minority is burdened by legitimate anxieties, but the fulfilment of the defensible claims of one seems to make impossible the resolution of the just grievances of the other.
Last monsoon, a series of local skirmishes and murders grew into a raging inferno, which rapidly engulfed several districts of Lower Assam: Kokrajhar, Dhubri and Chirang. The homes and fields of Bengali Muslims, who lived in enclaves surrounded by Bodo majority settlements, were torched and their livestock and belongings looted. In areas where Bodos were in a minority, they faced identical arson and looting by the majority Bengali Muslim population. Fear swept both populations, and the terrified people fled their homes, desperately traversing flooded rivers and kilometres of forests to reach areas where their respective communities were in the majority.
Both fugitive populations took refuge in the grounds of schools and colleges. Unlike in Gujarat a decade earlier, the state government assumed charge of all (over 1,000) relief camps, housing five lakh people. People slept under plastic sheets on bare ground for several months, surviving on the rough frugal diet supplied by the government. The facilities in these camps were primitive, but to the credit of the state, there were no epidemics. Schooling was disrupted, both of the refugee children and youth, but also of students of the educational institutions where most camps were located.
The state government disbanded the camps in a few months, forcing people to return to their homes. But the hatred and fear has not abated, and in many villages, people now live in makeshift camps outside their villages, still finding safety in numbers. A further problem is that the state government agreed to pay a modest compensation for houses that were damaged only to those affected persons who had valid records of agricultural land. This was obviously a ploy to target Bengali Muslims widely believed to be illegal encroachers. But this was a patently unjust policy, because a large number of legal residents were landless, tenants or artisans who owned no land. The situation was aggravated by the open call for the economic boycott of Bengali Muslims, and posters came up announcing a fine on Bodo people who employed them. This unofficial boycott is still in force, and deepens further the fractures between the two communities. In my many visits to Assam in the past year, I found scores of dispirited young Bengali Muslim men sitting idle in the makeshift camps, unable to restart life because of the boycott, compounded by fear and compensation denial. The government could have mitigated the situation by opening large-scale public works under the MGNREGA, but has not done so.
On the other hand, the requirement of land records for compensation unintentionally disqualified many Bodos as well, who also did not have a legal title to their agricultural land. Thus the state government recently took the decision to give an ad hoc grant of Rs. 50,000 to those without land records, but this will only temporarily mitigate their suffering.
There is no move to initiate reconciliation between the bitterly estranged communities. Small but significant fringes of both are radicalised. Both the RSS and Jamiat Islami are active among the affected populations. There is also fear and sullen anger among the third large minority in the Bodo region, the Adivasi descendants of tea garden workers brought into Assam as tea garden labour centuries back.
Moreover, there is no significant political initiative to address the legitimate fears of the disaffected communities. There has been enormous land alienation of the Bodos inhabiting the plains, and they understandably fear the submergence of their culture. On the other hand, demographers confirm that 90% of the Bengali Muslims in Assam are legal residents, and yet they are stigmatised and persecuted as ‘foreigners’. There has been no serious attempt to identify the small ‘illegal’ population and thereby restore the dignity and security of equal legal citizenship to the rest; or to effectively seal the borders to prevent further migration of economic refugees from Bangladesh.
The region is dangerously rife with militant identity-based politics, open trade in illegal arms, state policies that tacitly encourage violence, and runaway corruption. In this smouldering political and social cauldron, peace is chronically fragile. I still found hope in that although the majority of student groups representing both communities remain restive, they do not believe in violence. Also, economic compulsions have led to small ruptures in boycott, as some Bodos employ Bengali Muslims as farm workers, tenants or house builders. Our call from Aman Biradari for Bodo and Bengali Muslim youth to work together for peace and reconciliation found an encouraging response. I see young people slowly recognising that the politics of hate and difference can lead only to a precipice. I find despite continuing rage, hurt and distrust, despite unresolved disputes, a longing for peace with dignity. Even as the rest of the country has already forgotten the carnage.
Harsh Mander is convenor of Aman Biradari
The views expressed by the author are personal

P.S.

The above article is reproduced here from Hindustan Times for educational and non commercial use

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Center for Security Policy | Don’t rescue the Muslim Brotherhood

Center for Security Policy | Don’t rescue the Muslim Brotherhood:

Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Don’t rescue the Muslim Brotherhood

Frank Gaffney's OpEds | August 19, 2013 | The Muslim Brotherhood in America, Understanding the Shariah Threat Doctrine

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Highlights

• Insisting on the restoration of the Muslim Brotherhoodto power will be perilous for America - via @securefreedom |
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• The Muslim Brotherhood has as its mission the worldwide imposition of the brutally repressive shariah doctrine |
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Ever since President Obama came to office, hisadministration has cultivated relations with, legitimated, emboldened, empowered, funded and even armed the Muslim Brotherhood.  This policy has amounted to our changing sides in what is best described as the War for the Free World.

As documented in a free online, video-based course I produced last year (www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com), one of the factors behind this strategically disastrous – and largely unnoted – reversal is the success the Brotherhood has had, going back at least to theClinton administration, in penetrating and running influence operations against our country.  The Brothers call it “civilization jihad.”  And it has enabled them to establish not only an array of front groups to insinuate themselves into American civil society institutions and governing agencies.  It has also largely obscured the true nature of this organization and the threat it poses to our nation, allies and interests.

The success of such patient, stealthy subversion is much in evidence at the moment in the response to events in Egypt on the part of some prominent Democrats and Republicans, alike.  In recent days, President Obama and Senators like Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Republicans John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Kelly Ayotte of Arizona, South Carolina and New Hampshire, respectively, have discussed the need to cut off assistance to those in Egypt now battling the Muslim Brotherhood.

The principal justification offered for doing so is that the Egyptian people elected the Brotherhood to run their country after America’s longtime ally, Hosni Mubarak, was overthrown, with the support of the Obama administration.  It is further being intensified by the Brothers’ success in forcing the government to resort to violence to establish order throughout Cairo and other cities.

The trouble is that the bloodshed now taking place in Egypt – including that of Christians at the hands of Islamists who have torched or otherwise damaged more than eighty churches in recent days – is just a foretaste of what is to come if we do as the aforementioned leaders have in mind and rescue the Muslim Brotherhood.  And some of that blood will inevitably be ours.

This unhappy prospect is inevitable because of a fact obscured by the Brotherhood’s successful influence operations, and ignored at our peril:  We know for a fact that the Muslim Brotherhood has as its mission the worldwide imposition of Islam’s toxic, brutally repressive and anti-constitutional supremacist doctrine known as shariah.  And yes, it means here, too.

Lest there be any confusion on that point, consider the 1991 mission statement of the Muslim Brotherhood in America: “It is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within…sabotaging its miserable house from within…by [our] hands and the hands of the believers so that God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”  The strategic plan from which this passage comes was introduced into evidence during the successful 2008 federal prosecution of Muslim Brotherhood operatives in Dallas, Texas in connection with their fundraising in this country for the organization’s Palestinian franchise: the designated terrorist organization known as Hamas.

Senators McCain and Graham have also provided bipartisan political cover to the Islamists’ efforts to takeover other countries, as well.  These include, notably, Libya and Syria.  The former has been a debacle of the first order; the murderous attack on our missions and personnel in Benghazi is but a taste of what is to come there and beyond.  And these lawmakers are working with Team Obama to inject the United States into the latter’s civil war, with the predictable practical effect of helping the Brotherhood and/or al Qaeda take over that country next.

As in these other places, if the Muslim Brotherhood’s American friends have their way in Egypt – most immediately, by cutting off U.S. aid or other ties to its military – the killing will not stop.  It will, instead, mean those dying will increasingly be people who have historically looked to us as allies and partners.  And they will be dispatched by jihadists bent on our destruction, as well.

It seems the military and tens of millions of ordinary citizens in Egypt have no intention of rolling over, as their counterparts have done in Turkey.  In that case, an Islamist regime has used elections to destroy democracy and institute an increasingly shariah-compliant order – complete with the incarceration on trumped-up charges of much of the leadership of the Turkish armed forces.  Having tried and failed to effect a similar transformation in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood seems now determined to crush its opponents through full-scale civil war.  Were the United States to cut off Egypt’s military, it would simply encourage and perhaps enable the Muslim Brotherhood to pursue that course.

Even worse from our point of view, the United States will likely drive the Egyptian military back into the arms of the Russians – and possibly this time the Chinese – folks who would love to displace us and secure close relations with a nation that sits astride the strategic Suez Canal.  These are, after all, countries now seen, unlike America, to be reliable allies, not fair-weather friends.

The Muslim Brotherhood is our enemy.  Insisting on its restoration to power – either immediately or through another round of premature elections – will be perilous for this country and for people in Egypt and elsewhere who do not want to submit to the Islamists and their anti-freedom shariah agenda.

TAGGED WITH → Egypt • Muslim Brotherhood • Shariah • Shariah Threats to American Law • The Muslim Brotherhood in America • Turkey • Understanding the Shariah Threat Doctrine 

AUTHOR

Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Frank Gaffney is the Founder and President of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. Under Mr. Gaffney's leadership, the Center has been nationally and internationally recognized as a resource for timely, informed and penetrating analyses of foreign and defense policy matters. Mr. Gaffney formerly acted as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy during the Reagan Administration, following four years of service as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy. Previously, he was a professional staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee under the chairmanship of the late Senator John Tower, and a national security legislative aide to the late Senator Henry M. Jackson.

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Pheku.in » What Will Modi Do Now? Have R A Mehta Encountered?

Pheku.in » What Will Modi Do Now? Have R A Mehta Encountered?:

Scams/Blunders

Published on August 20th, 2013 | by Pheku India

16

What Will Modi Do Now? Have R A Mehta Encountered?

On July 19th the Modi government suffered a serious set back as the SC dismissed its Curative Petition seeking control over the appointment of Justice (retd) R A Mehta as the Lokayukta of Gujarat. With this, Modi has no further choice left but to appoint Mehta as the Lokayukta, an appointment he has staved off for over three years.

The following is the timeline of events:

• 2004 – 2011        For seven years the position of Lokayukta remains vacant.
• June 2011            The Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court Recommends the appointment of Justice (retd) R A Mehta as Lokayukta of Gujarat
• Aug-Sept 2011   Gujarat High Court issues a show-cause notice to the Modi government seeking clarification as to why the government was not moving forward with the appointment of Justice Mehta. The Court issues this notice in response to a PIL filed. The Governor intervenes and appoints Justice Mehta bypassing the government.
• Oct ’11–Jan ’12    The Modi government goes to court against the appointment of Justice Mehta by the Governor. In Jan 2012, the High Court rules by majority decision that the appointment of Mehta was valid. The Modi government goes to the Supreme Court seeking a review.
• Jan 2013               The Supreme Court upholds the Gujarat High Court decision to appoint Justice Mehta as Lokayukta
• Marc-Apr ’13      Facing defeat the Modi government changes strategy.It passes a new Lokayulta Bill that will give the Chief Minister sweeping powers and weaken the institution of Lokayukta. Passes the new Act in April 2013. More details of the new Gujarat Lokayukta Act will follow soon on pheku.in
• July 2013              Having passed a new Act that gives new powers on Lokayukta to the Chief Minister and the State government, the Modi government moves the SC with a Curative Petition. The SC dismisses the petition and reaffirms the appointment of Justice Mehta.

Why is Pheku so determinedly against the appointment of an independent Lokayukta? Either he has much to hide or he is just a megalomaniac who hates democratic processes. Either case, Pheku just seems to hate democratic scrutiny!

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Pheku.in » RIP Ishrat/Long Live Ishrat

Pheku.in » RIP Ishrat/Long Live Ishrat:

Communalism/Hatred

Published on August 22nd, 2013 | by Pheku India

28

RIP Ishrat/Long Live Ishrat

They killed you and then called you a terrorist. That’s why the RIP – they wouldn’t let you be even after they killed you.

But something about you inspired the nation to question the official version – the phek, so to speak. Something about you kep thousands pushing for the truth. That’s why Long Live.

You died in Pheku’s charge.

The facts are as follows:

• Ishrat was a young lower-middle class/working class girl who normally taught tuitions to pay for her college.
• During the vacation when she could not earn from tuitions she took on another job for a month. That job is when she ended up with a bullet in her heart.
• She was picked up by the Gujarat police, held, and killed in cold blood and then her body was tossed into the car with the others.
• Apart from senior Gujarat police officers, including Pheku confidant Vanzara, also involved are P P Pandey and Rajinder Kumar
• There is clear evidence of permissions and clearances, expectations and report backs that involve ‘kali dadi’ and ‘safed dadi’. The needle of suspicion does point in the direction of Amit Shah and Pheku.

All of Pheku’s fanboys have some mantras they jhappo all the time. That he is a statesman. That he is incorruptible. That he is a man of vision and perspective. If he is all this, then why is not stepping down and out of the way to ensure a fair process. Why is he instead resisting the investigation so systematically?

I am sorry. Pheku is no statesman. No moral beacon. He is the exact opposite. A man of smallness without a moral compass. For him, the fact that his State murdered Ishrat and others in cold blood is of no consequence. If there is a beacon in this story, it is Ishrat.

Ishrat is my hero. I have an image of her – her gentle face determined – at the moment of her death.

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