GYANOPROBHA

THE TOUCHING FAITH OF LEFT LIBERALS IN THE STATE

Here is a good example of the kind of implicit and unqualified faith placed in the state by apparently left-leaning liberals. 

Sadanand Patwardhan appears to be a blogger with an interest in Chhattisgarh. Recently, he published the following open letter on the Chhattisgarh Net Yahoo group (membership required) from one Arun Agarwal to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with an introductory comment of his own. 

Unfortunately, we are not told what Agarwal's sources of information are. [My inquiries on the internet about Agarwal himself lead me to a PIL activist based in Bangalore, who has filed a petition in the Bangalore High Court urging that the state government be restrained from signing any further MoU's with private mining companies.] How does he arrive at his estimates of the private theft of public assets, and how does he compare the performance of the private companies with NMDC if the private balance sheets are not publicly available? However, having read elsewhere of loot on a similar scale from public resources, I do tend to give some credence to Agarwal's story. 

More substantively, I agree with Agarwal's contention that the extractive industries ought not to be in private hands, since they are essentially profiting from land-based wealth that, according to the Constitution and the Supreme Court judgment that Agarwal cites, is held by the state in trust on behalf of the public. But why this faith in a state that has done so little to protect the interest of the forest tribes and other poor (as Patwardhan himself notes), but has been so anxious to sell off national assets to private interests in the name of development? 

Instead of looking to either state-owned enterprises or private corportations, why not consider innovative forms of ownership and control that will give the people living on the land where the natural resources exist the dominant measure of control over their use and disposition, and a stake in their extraction so that the country as a whole could benefit? 

Of course, the immediate objection I can hear is: what do scheduled tribes living in subsistence forest-based economies know about modern methods of mining? What do they know about returns on investment, cost benefit calculations, project management, global pricing of natural resources, and other sorts of knowledge that have paid such rich dividends to the enterpreneurs and investors? 

This goes to the heart of the development debate: who benefits from this knowledge, and at whose cost? Why have not systems of knowledge been created that factor in the benefits to the people who live on the land from which the wealth will be extracted? The Indian state, despite constitutional obligations to the contrary, has throughout its history been wedded to a model of development that has prioritized the enrichment of the few at the cost of the bare subsistence of the many - never with as much dtermination as since the so-called neoliberal "reforms" of 1991, which has pulled some people out of poverty, accelerated the enrichment of the already wealthy middle and investor classes, and pushed many more down to levels of destitution that rival some of the poorest African countries. 

The question of ownership and control of national assets therefore ought to be at the forefront of social innovation if the country has to break out of the narrow range of choices along the state-private sector continuum. But from what I can tell, this is not part of any public debate or discussion. The increasing immiserization and polarization of Indian society into the rich and poor is apparently no one's urgent concern. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear friends,

The following letter from Arun Agrawal argues with remarkable cogency & with what appears to be firm hold over facts in favour of a policy that would entrust mining solely to public sector and have it rescued from the clutches of crony capitalists & robber barons. He cites the recent Supreme Court judgment over the Ambani Vs, Ambani fight for Krishna Godavari Natural Gas pricing to buttress his case. If his facts are correct about the mining practices of NMDC, then one would have to admit he makes a case that is iron clad. 

Its important deficiency is that it doesn't address the special needs of tribes & other poor, who would be dispossessed of their ancestral lands & livelihoods as they always have been since legends & histories took hold of human imagination, and therefore have to be compensated first with the lion's share of any "development" of mining that takes place in their territory, and part of that share has to go to them upfront even if that means sacrifices have to be made by rest of the Indians in the short run.

Secondly, it also doesn't account for the feasibility (or its absence) of over extending the current development model, which the policy changes he has advocated will still serve but for the hopeful removal of robbing & corruption that is currently rampant in the system, and the needs of harmonising human desire for "progress" with the limitations imposed by nature.

Having said that, kudos to Agrawal for a brilliant case.

Sadanand

From Arun Agrawal

To

The Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, 

Govt of India 

South Block,

New Delhi

6th August 2010

Re:Nationalisation/ Resumption of Iron Ore Mining valued at over Two Trillion

Dollars

Dear Hon'ble Prime Minister,

I write as a citizen, one among the 125 crores, for whose beneficiary

interest you are the trustee in chief, for the minerals resources in general

and iron resources in particular. 

That these resources are covered by the doctrine of public trust has been

clarified by the Supreme Court in RNRL vs RIL and others, (better known as

Anil Ambani vs Mukesh Ambani) . The court held: Our legal system - based on

English Common Law - includes the public trust doctrine as part of its

jurisprudence. The State is the trustee of all natural resources which are

by nature meant for public use and enjoyment. Public at large is beneficiary

of the seashore, running waters, airs, forests and ecologically fragile

lands. The State as a trustee is under a legal duty to protect the natural

resources. These resources meant for public use cannot be converted into

private ownership. This doctrine is part of Indian law and finds application

in the present case as well. It is thus the duty of the Government to

provide complete protection to the natural resources as a trustee of the

people at large.

It would therefore not be wrong to conclude that the doctrine of public

trust extended to natural gas also covers another natural resource - iron

ore- a resource that India is richly endowed with and probably is the

single largest source of mineral wealth. The Supreme Court further held that

it would be ideal for the PSU to handle such projects exclusively. In the

words of the Supreme Court: It is relevant to note that the Constitution

envisages exploration, extraction and supply of gas to be within the domain

of governmental functions. It is the duty of the Union to make sure that

these resources are used for the benefit of the citizens of this country.

Due to shortage of funds and technical know-how, the Government has

privatized such activities through the mechanism provided under the PSC. It

would have been ideal for the PSUs to handle such projects exclusively.

From the foregoing it would not be wrong to conclude that the natural

resource iron ore is covered by the doctrine of public trust, that the

ownership control and distribution of the iron ore should be done in a

manner so as to best subserve the common good ( Article 39(b) ) and that it

would be ideal for the PSU to handle such projects - exploitation of the

resources exclusively by the State. 

The reason for privatizing oil industry, as stated by the Hon'ble Court,

was shortage of funds and technology knowhow. Neither of these reasons are

applicable to iron ore. The PSU engaged in exploiting iron ore is the sixty

year old NMDC. It is 90% government owned. The operating profit margin for

the last three years has been 78%,78% and 80.5%.( after treating royalty

payment of 5% of turnover as expenses for the year 09-10). It has no

debt and has not paid a rupee as interest in the last eight years. It has

reserves of over 14,000 crores. Its one rupee share was recently subscribed

for Rs300/- when the government diluted its stake from 98% to 90%. It

neither needs money from the government nor the bank to make fresh

investments, and is financially and technologically capable of mining the

entire iron ore of the country, In other words it fully meets the mandate of

the Constitution and the Supreme Court judgment, in the above mentioned

case, to exploit the natural mineral resource of iron ore for the benefit of

the people of the country. It is ironic that while iron ore worth Rs 100

crores is being pilfered and looted by private interest each day in a cosy

crony capitalistic relationship, NMDC is looking for fresh investment for

iron ore in Australia! Add to that the proposed allotment of iron ore to

private barons worth trillion of dollars for petty royalty and not to NMDC,

the tragedy of a poor nation suffering at the hands of corrupt politicians

is complete. Unlike private miners NMDC does not indulge in slaughter

mining. It has the best equipment and their method of exploiting of the

minerals are not only better than any private miners but better than that of

the captive mines of SAIL and Tisco.

Both the conditions for privatization applicable to the gas sector, as

stated in the Supreme Court judgment, is not applicable in case of iron ore

There is no other company in the entire private sector which has a higher

operating profit margin than NMDC. It is also among the top ten companies in

terms of market capitalization. In contrast, the private sector companies

engaged in mining of iron ore are over mining , under invoicing the price,

mining without license or mining plan, under reporting their turnover,

paying a small fraction as taxes or royalties (1.5 %), generating large

amounts of profits in cash for pay-offs to various interests. The annual

loot from iron ore by private miners is around 50,000 crores and involves

around 150 families in a relationship which can be best described as crony

capitalism.. If their balance sheet is made public - which it should as they

are dealing with property belonging to the people- it will show that their

profitability ratios and efficiency is one fourth that of NMDC. More

important, almost all the profit goes to the private miners. The amount of

profits on account of illegal mining runs into tens of thousand crores each

year.

For every Rs 100 that NMDC earns, Rs 90 belongs to the government while for

every Rs100 that the private miners earn less than Rs 5 comes to the

government as royalty and tax. The illegal profits of the mining industry

has been used to purchase political power either by the miner barons

themselves or by the politicians who allot the mines. Every state is heavily

into illegal mining and most of them have non congress governments. The

sterling record of NMDC, the 60 year old PSU, engaged in the mining of iron

ore is being contrasted with that of the private sector to show that there

no justification for the government, which is a trustee of the mineral

wealth, not to nationalize ( in fact the mines are owned by the government

and therefore technically cannot be nationalized) / takeover the iron mines

leased to the private barons and earn thousand of crores for the benefit of

the people of the country on whose behalf the mines are held in trust by you

as the Prime Minister of the country. It cannot be the case of the

government or the private sector that the best of the companies in the

public sector cannot be better than the worst of the companies of the

private sector and there must be privitasation of national mineral resources

belonging to the people of the country because the government should not be

in the business of business especially if it is a profitable business and

the profits are used for the benefit of the people. 

Let FICCI, CII, ASSOCHAM and more important Federation of Indian Minerals

Association (FIMI ) who have hundreds of crores to lobby for policies in

their favour, show to the people of the country as to how the private miners

match upto even 30% the performance of the NMDC in terms of profitability,

price realization, royalty payment and income tax payment. This also

includes private steel mills who have been allotted captive mines. The

reason for addressing the issue of nationalization of the iron ore mines

urgently is the attempt made by the BJP government in Karnataka ( a government

by, of and for the mining lobby) to appropriate the entire iron ore wealth

of the State to private interests in perpetuity. The Government of

Karnataka has signed MOU's with various companies (ArcelorMittal , Posco,

Brahamani Industries, Hazira Steel, JSW Steel, Bhushan Steel) for setting up

steel plants of 6 million tonnes capacity each, at the Global Investors meet

on June 4 and June 5. In addition to the MOUs, other applications for

manufacture of steel pending with the government would take the total

capacity to be set up in the State to over 60 million tonnes. The proposed

production signed by GOK in a few months is in excess of the total existing

steel capacity of the country set up in the country in the last hundred

years starting from the first steel plant of Tisco set up in 1907. The

reasons for the iron rush of the state (which surpasses the gold rush) is

two fold : all the profit of iron ore of the state goes to private coffers

and not to the people, and to preempt policy and the provisions of the new

law relating to the allotment of the iron ore. The iron ore lobby knows that

the loot cannot continue indefinitely and it cannot suppress its production

and profits indefinitely. The only way to retain their standalone mines in

the future is to make them as suppliers to the integrated steel plants.

Hence the brilliant scheme to assure the steel barons of fifty percent iron

ore from captive mines on payment of token royalty of 1.5% and fifty percent

from privately leased. It is a win- win situation for everybody. Steel

producers get 50% raw material for free and the standalone mine owners get

to keep their mines and profits. Why the hurry? It is because the new MMRD

Act to be taken up by Parliament in the current session, compels competitive

bidding but exempts existing applicants from the provisions of competitive

bidding. Hence, the need to preempt the operation of the law.

60 million tonnes of steel capacity will require 3000 million tonnes of

iron ore valued at 15 lakh crores [15 trillion rupees, or 300 billion US dollars] 

at current international prices. The benefit of the iron ore will go to the steel 

producers and the private miners and the true owners of the mine-the people- 

will have to make do with the pittance of royalty of 1.5 %. These resources are of the value of over

15 lakh crores at current prices and belong to the people of the country and

cannot be made over to the likes of Mittals, Posco etc on payment of 1.5%

of market value as royalty. It will be a total betrayal of public trust

mentioned in the abovementioned judgment of the Supreme Court. It cannot be

the case of liberalization that when people buy steel capitalistic

principles are applied and they are made to pay international price, but

when the capitalist requires raw material socialistic principles are applied

and they are given the iron ore for almost free. It is pertinent to note

that no steel producers except TISCO, SAIL,JSPL, JSW Steel (in part through

MML a PSU) have captive mines and the rest of the producers purchase their

iron ore from NMDC and some of the private mine holders.. The NMDC price is

30 to 40% cheaper than international price. In spite of the purchase of iron

ore from NMDC, the steel manufacturers make substantial profits because

steel price is linked to international price and price has been decontrolled

and removed from the list of items on essential commodity list. Essar Steel

has steel capacity of over 5 million tonnes, purchases ore from NMDC and

makes substantial profit. If the iron ore is nationalized then the steel

production will not suffer on account of paucity of iron ore. It is a bogey

that the steel producers who have sighed MOUs with various State governments

- Madhu Khoda style- will raise against nationalization (apart from the

usual foreign investment will suffer) because of their MOUs for captive

mines. There will be no scarcity of iron ore because SAIL and Tata Steel,

JSPL and JSW Steel (in part) account for 25 million steel production for

which they have captive mines. NMDC current capacity of 30 to 35 million

tonnes of iron ore is sufficient to take care of another 20 million tonnes

of steel capacity which leaves a deficit of iron ore for around 10 million

tonnes. Steel production of six million tonnes is from scrap, imported and

domestic. The balance ore for 5 million tonnes can be easily provided from

the mines taken over by the government as these mines produce over 100

million tonnes of iron ore and the balance exported for profits to the

government. On economic consideration alone there is a strong case for

nationalization of the iron ore industry. The legal and the constitutional

consideration make it obligatory, more so when you are the chief trustee for

the mineral wealth.

However, it is the political consideration which should be of the greatest

concern to the Congress government. The BJP has reportedly amassed a war

chest of 10,000 crores for the next election through its rule in the mine

rich states and proposes to spend 30 crores in each of 300 constituency. For

thirty crores, three lac votes can be purchased at the rate of Rs 1000/vote

and with 7-8 lakh votes cast per constituency it will be victory for the BJP

and curtains for the Congress. Unfortunately it is the survival of the

corruptest. (sorry for the word which does not exist in the English

dictionary for obvious reason). The manner in which the valuable mineral

resources have been plundered in various states is the greatest economic

scandal of India which includes the period under which it was under colonial

rule. The British had to conquer the country to exploit its mineral resources, the

present day robber barons have to merely pay a small bribe to do so (refer

Madhu Khoda). It may be considered inappropriate to point out to the

greatest living Indian economist of our times, that the situation in India

is no different than that of African nations which are resource rich nations

with poor people. Should we then derive satisfaction from the fact that the

developmental index for eight of our states - mostly mineral rich states- is

worse than the 22 nations of Africa for similar reasons? 

I, therefore beseech you to do right by the people and the constitution

of the country and takeover all the iron ore mines in the private sector.

If you will not do it, who will?

Like the bank nationalization, it will be your legacy to the nation for

which the coming generation will be grateful.

With sincere regards

Arun Kumar Agrawal

([email protected])

THE SCIENCE OF STARVATION? OR THE STARVATION OF SCIENCE?

A few days ago, I watched an Al Jazeera news item about a sadhu named Prahlad Jani who had not eaten or drunk for seventy years, and was still alive. Moreover, the report asserted that he was being tested by doctors, who found his neurological condition to be the same as that of a 25 year old man. Naturally, they were unable to explain this phenomenon. One of them said, "We are witnessing a miracle in biology."

On researching this on the internet, several things about this report struck me as remarkable:

1. BBC reported this item on 29 April 2010 by video.

But it had also reported on this man in 2003.

Even then, the reports claimed that he had survived with food and drink for seventy years. So what was the point of recycling this same news seven years later?

2. Scientists seem to be interested in studying Jani to acquire knowledge about how the human body can stay without food and water for extended periods of time, so that they can use this knowledge to equip space travellers. Assuming that scientists have been studying this man since 2003, that's an awfully long time to study a single subject and get no closer to an answer. Jani is reportedly being studied in a lab run by the DRDO, whether with his consent or not is not known. Can you see the MBM (Mera Bharat Mahaan) types salivating at the propitious confluence of the ancient and the modern sciences. Yogbal for space explorers - the mind boggles!

3. A third of the Indian population suffers from chronic starvation. The reasons are well-known, and not matters of opinion. But with honourable exceptions like P Sainath and Jean Dreze, there's hardly anyone expressing concern about starvation deaths in the media. In fact, despite years of drawing attention to the problem, activists continue to face indifference to it on a scale that might even be called genocidal. When there are millions of lives at stake, and the facts are as widely available in the public domain as they are, what's the difference between prolonged and systematic neglect of relevant information, deliberate avoidance of action, and ıntentıonal design?

Yet what's the first thing our scientific community thinks of when the possibility presents itself to investigate the science underlying a painless form of starvation that doesn't cause needless suffering (assuming that there isn't something deeply deceptive and fraudulent going on)? Not the relief of human suffering, but the appropriation of knowledge for the glorification of the state.

4. Unless Jani can find a way of extracting enough energy from the air he inhales, his metabolic processes seem to defy a fundamental law of physics - specifically, the law of conservation of energy. Clearly, he is consuming energy to stay alive. So where is it coming from?

5. Given how dubious this entire phenomenon appears to be, can we afford to spend our scientific resources on studying the mysterious survival, despite prolonged starvation, of a solitary hermit, for possible applications to interplanetary travel, when the far more horrendous problem of chronic starvation continues to shame the country?

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM THAT KARAN THAPAR DOESN'T WANT TO SEE

FOR UPDATE DATED FEBRUARY 26, 2010, SEE BELOW

Just watched Karan Thapar interviewing Binayak Sen - an utterly frustrating experience. See  a transcript here.

Karan Thapar made the fundamental logical error of confusing an explanation with a moral justification. And Binayak should have pointed this distinction out to him immediately.

To say that the violence of forest tribals is a response to state violence that accompanies the predatory policies of so-called "development" that destroy the ecology on which the surivival of the forest dwellers depends is to propose part of an explanation. It does not morally justify the violence of the tribals. It does however need to be complemented with an explanation why non-violent strategies have failed.

For example, when a doctor attributes lung cancer to smoking, she is not claiming that lung cancer is what should happen, or that it is right that the patient is suffering from lung cancer. Karan Thapar would however claim that she is a supporter and sympathizer of lung cancer, and that she morally justifies the suffering of the patient.

Take another example. Historians might claim that the rise of Nazism in Germany was a response to the humiliation meted out to Germany by the treaty of Versailles after World War I. Can this explanation - a cause-effect linkage - be treated as a moral justification for the Holocaust? Or as "creating moral equivalence" between the Allied Powers and the perpetrators of the Holocaust? No to both questions.

Karan Thapar also made the mistake of associating Binayak with the maoist position. At one point he even claimed that Binayak had some influence over them. Where did that come from? The police tactic of smear by association, perhaps? Perhaps the entire reason why he was so anxious to side-track Binayak's central message - a warning against genocidal famine - is that he set out with an agenda of trying to entrap Binayak into making a sympathetic statement on behalf of the maoist cause. He is not the only media personality who does this.

I also do not understand how much more clearly Binayak and other human rights activists can express their condemnation of violence - whether of the state, the maoists, or of any other group. Why do their interlocutors not demand the same rapid response condemnation of all acts of state violence from those who support the violence of the state? Binayak tried to make this very point, but Karan Thapar seemed to confuse it with some other point which he had on his talking points agenda.

The elephant in the room to which Binayak tried to point again and again was the evidence of a famine of genocidal proportions. But Karan Thapar seemed to consider it less important than extracting a clear and unequivocal condemnation of the most recent maoist atrocity.

Look out for other signs of the mainstream media using the maoist violence as a distraction to draw attention away from the famine.

UPDATE DATED FEBRUARY 26, 2010

This interview generated very little comment in the mainstream media. One must infer that the genocide by silence of the chronically malnourished must continue for a while longer in this shining and incredible country.

But two powerful comments have appeared in the dissident media.

One is a comment by Sevanti Ninan in The Hoot which reinforces my observation that Karan Thapar's objective seemed to have been to extract from Binayak an admission of support for the maoists. "...[T]he Thapar inquisition  usually thrives on being single minded. Since he had someone who could be painted as a Maoist sympathizer on his show he was going to milk it for his upper middle class audience for all it was worth. And not just any small time Maoist sympathizer but a man who could be conveniently labeled the country's 'foremost human rights activist', a description Thapar would repeat every now and then with relish. If you succeeded in tarring him you achieved what has been an English TV anchor obsession since 'the Naxal Menace' became prime time fodder. You succeeded in tarring the tribe. Sen's assertion that 'we' (referring to  human rights workers) did not condone either the violence of the Maoists of the state, only brought more demands for an even clearer assertion."

The second comment is a longish reflection by Radha D'Souza on "The Economics, Politics and Ethics of Non-violence" that takes this interview as its starting point, and observes: "Paradoxically, the institutions founded on violence, the military-industrial-finance-media complexes, are the ones that preach the ideology of non-violence in unequivocal terms; and those who advocate peace with justice end up advocating violence. How are we to understand this paradox? We cannot say it is because the institutions are hypocrites because, if institutions are mindless, they cannot be hypocrites."

The entire political system is dependent on and sustained by violence, but only maoist violence is unacceptable. "This is the reason why we are unable to respond to the present crisis. The Maoist say: constitutionalism has failed our people, and we say, true it has failed, but what can we do, let us try once more. The Maoists say: India has become a violent society, forty percent of our parliamentarians have a track record of violence, our democratic political parties have their militias, we kill freely in the name of Ram, our army with its vast arsenal has waged war against our people for sixty-three years, and therefore, they say violence is the order of the day. We say: all this is true, but you Maoists should not be violent."

Quoting Buddha's response to the conflict between Ajatashatru and Prasenjit, she ends:

"We witness before our eyes the “killer begetting a killer”, and the “unfolding” of the karma of the conquerors and abusers and revilers and plunderers. But we live in strange times of equality, liberal rights, and individual freedoms, and somehow these lenses do not help us to see the difference between abuser and abused, between plunderer and plundered, between cause and effect, the begetter and the begotten."

BINAYAK SEN WARNS OF AN IMPENDING GENOCIDE

Dr. Binayak Sen has recently been touring the country, speaking to various audiences about a problem that has kept him pre-occupied for a number of years - the problem of chronic hunger and malnutrition, which has become more widespread since 1991, and has reached what Binayak regards (using UN criteria and definitions) as potentially genocidal proportions for vulnerable sections of the people, such as scheduled castes and tribes. They are related to a more recent concern of his since his release on bail: to highlight the need for a peaceful resolution to the problem of maoist and state violence. 

The problem of the enforced displacement of the most vulnerable people in terms of chronic hunger is seen at its most acute in districts like Dantewada in Chhattisgarh. This displacement has been taking place for some time - earlier under the Salwa Judum movement, now under the military Operation Green Hunt, ostensibly to combat maoist guerillas who have managed to establish bases among the tribal communities and instituted their own forms of governance in defiance of the state. Apparently it is not a coincidence that the most violent displacements have been occurring where international and domestic mining and mineral corporations have been interested in setting up operations.

In an interview with Norman Swan of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation at the time of his keynote address to an international symposium at CMC Vellore, Binayak speaks at length about his confluent concerns about displacement and hunger. He also reports on his still continuing trial, and the effect of his two year ordeal on his personal life.

DREAMS OF A GENTLE GIANT

There are a couple of Indian commentators who have been urging that the Indian government should send troops to Afghanistan to beef up the American/NATO fight against the Taliban. They argue that, from an Indian perspective, an American withdrawal from Afghanistan would be a catastrophic defeat in the so-called war on terror because it would encourage the Pakistani military-jihadi complex (PMJC) in its designs to keep mounting terrorist attacks in Indian cities and - their biggest prize - sever Kashmir from India as revenge for India's humanitarian intervention in the Bangladeshi independence war in 1971. Indian troops in Afghanistan would serve to keep the US focused in the region by relieving US and NATO troops, freeing them up to concentrate on defeating the Taliban militarily where the latter are strong. Indian troops could attend to peace-building and infrastructure development missions in which Indian security forces are already engaged. It would also serve to further strengthen the already friendly relations that India has historically enjoyed with Afghanistan, and give India the advantage of "strategic depth" in dealing with the terrorism unleashed on India by the MJC. If Indians engage the Taliban or PMJC militarily, it would entail higher costs for Indian people, not just in terms of casualties, but also in terms of civilians dead in terrorist counter-attacks on Indian cities which, as before, we would be powerless to entirely prevent. But these increased short term costs are, in the judgments of those making the case, offset by larger long term gains resulting from the destruction of the PMJC.

What this analysis assumes is that India is incapable of dealing with the PMJC on its own while the latter is being helped and aided by the US. Hence the need to ally itself with the US, as the alliance would grant some leverage with the US in efforts to choke off aid to the PMJC, and also destroy it militarily. If the Kerry Lugar bill is a sign of this leverage, my bet is that it will fail spectacularly, but quietly. US arms and aid will keep pouring in even while the suicide bombings in Pakistan and attacks on civilians (reported mendaciously in the western press as Pakistani or Afghan Taliban) keep mounting. Have any of the conditions of the bill actually been met by Pakistan? Has LeT or JeM been destroyed? Has Muridke been dismantled?

The analysis also assumes a much higher level of effectiveness for the US as an ally for Indian designs in Afghanistan, or for a fight against the PMJC and their allies across the Durand Line. But neither the US security apparatus (consisting of various intel agencies, the Defence Department and private military firms like Blackwater) nor the PMJC and its associates like the LeT and other outfits are interested in stopping the war on terror any time soon.

The PMJC is unfortunately playing a winning but deadly game. On the one hand its insatiable appetite for US money and arms is being fully satisfied, because the US MICTUM (military-industrial-congressional-thinktank-university-media) Complex continue to see the Government of Pakistan (in this context, essentially the ISI) as a useful ally, a needy customer for its weaponry, and a reliable catalyst in keeping the entire region inflamed in the war of terror and counter-terror. On the other hand, by killing large numbers of civilians in its hunt for the jihadis they are secretly NOT arming, as well as by allowing the US drones and Blackwater/Xe mercenaries to wreak havoc among the civilian populations in the various FATA districts of the NWFP and Balochistan in the ostensible search for a few hundred Al Qaeda, the PMJC is managing to maintain a superficial credibility among US opinion makers as a serious US ally against terrorism, which keeps the money and arms flowing.

A standard criticism of US policy in Afghanistan and indeed the entire Middle East is that it is creating more terrorists or potential terrorists very rapidly. This criticism flows from the tendency of the critics to take the statements of intent of the various parties at face value, ignoring the patterns and significance of their actions. The US government and its various agencies would like the world to think that they are engaged in a fight against terror to secure the safety of the Homeland. The Pakistani agencies such as the ISI similarly want the world to believe that they are motivated by the desire and need to protect the Pakistani people. But in neither case are their actions consistent with such declared aims. On the contrary, it is entirely possible that for the deeper players on both sides, viz, both the ISI and their US counterparts, the creation of more potential and real terrorists is not a mistake, but their true even if unstated intention. Their actions seem perfectly consistent with such an aim. They must be perfectly aware that their policy is ensuring a continuous supply of suicide terrorists and even more fanatic fighters who can be relied on to keep the threat of terrorism alive. Follow the money and watch their actions: they tell an entirely different tale. Both sides stand to gain money and power - more concretely, a continuous flow of lucrative no-bid contracts for supply of arms, material and serivces for themselves and their chums - just by keeping the adrenaline of terror pumping in the veins of the people they claim to be protecting. Of course, if pressed, they probably won't put it quite as baldly as this. They too will probably come out - like Rohit Pradhan in the link above - with some kind of cost-benefit justification: that the short run benefits of increased civilian fatalities will be offset by the long term victory over the terrorists.

Admittedly, the foregoing argument is devoid of any actual supporting evidence, but there seems to be a good case for looking for such evidence. But there is enough evidence (not supplied here) of a long-standing symbiotic relationship between the US and the Pakistani ISI. And unless this relationship is recognized, exposed and disrupted, terrorism will not cease in this region but continue to flourish. This is yet another instance of governments that claim to be protectors of their electorates ending up doing what is diametrically opposed to the interest and welfare of the vast majority of the people in their respective countries.

So what should the Indian government do?

Firstly, India needs to recognize that an alliance with an unreliable and decadent superpower like the US is a strategic stupidity. India and Pakistan need to find their own solutions to the problems between them. The US can only play a destructive role in this process, and has done so. It is notorious in the region for its ambitions to create markets for its weaponry and military expertise, and for its history of choosing violent interventions in the region in preference to peaceful ones. How much can the US be trusted as a staunch ally in the fight against its own pernicious creation - i.e., the Pakistani MJC - especially at a time when it has become even more dependent on it to deal with the situation in Afghanistan/Pakistan? How much freedom of action does the US government have when there are several major social, political and economic crises unfolding rapidly at home? If it wants a permanent end to jihadist tendencies on the subcontinent, then India would be much better off seeking allies in the immediate neighbourhood - China, Russia, and the central Asian states,

Secondly, training the Afghan troops and police on Indian soil is a much better way of using India's military prowess than by having Indians die in a war with no clear objectives. Britain and the US have already mooted the idea. It is not at all clear that sending troops to fight alongside the deeply unpopular American/NATO troops is the best way of destroying the PMJC. In fact, it's probably much more plausible that it will provide a fillip to the efforts of the PMJC to send in suicide bombers into Indian cities. With India training Afghan forces, there would be no direct attack on the PMJC, but the benefits of such a relationship would be greater access to intelligence and other networks that could help in undermining the PMJC.

Thirdly, the only sustainable way to de-fang the PMJC is to "drain the swamp" - change the ideological ecology in both India and Pakistan so that extremist ideologies in both countries are deprived of the niches in which they flourish. For India, the Hindu right-wing extremists are probably on their way out (no thanks at all to the Jihadis from across the borders, who in fact helped keep the Hindu right-wing on life support). Indians should now help Pakistanis rid themselves of their own religious right-wing extremists. Support democratic and secular forces within Pakistan as much as possible, and carry out intensive ideological and cultural propaganda against the jihadists of all religions in both countries. This is as much a task of quiet, persistent and professional spycraft, as it is of developing amicable relationships between the peoples of India and Pakistan through trade, tourism, cultural and educational contacts. To put it simply, bombard the Pakistanis with Indian love, but keep a watchful eye on both sides on who is likely to cause mischief, and deal with them firmly.

Fourthly, develop a solution to the Kashmir issue within the framework of a future South Asian Union of open trade and open borders, but ensure that the people in both Indian and Pakistani sides of Kashmir get an equal partnership and stake in the solution. In other words, a re-unified independent Republic of Kashmir, with both Muslim and non-Muslim inhabitants enjoying equal status as citizens, can be offered as a solution to the Kashmir issue, but only as a sequel to the creation of a South Asian Union.

Lastly, no country can act as an exact model to another. But to the extent possible, we should try and model equitable, people-friendly growth for the other South Asian neighbours, especially in Pakistan. This requires urgent attention to the several colossal problems among our own people, which are very similar to problems in Pakistan, in nature if not in scale: eliminating chronic hunger and malnutrition, developing equitable educational access through investments in infrastructure and educational quality, adopting a servant model of governance with participation of citizens in public decisions, accountability of government and businesses to all their stakeholders, responsibility of decision makers to those affected by their decisions, and transparency in all matters that concern the public.

None of these steps can be undertaken without considerable argument and opposition from the security establishment in India. They are also certain to be resisted by the Hindu right-wing now in opposition. But I believe that the five steps outlined here taken together represent an entirely fresh approach to what has so far proved to be an intractable problem.

THE LEGITIMATE CRIMINALITY OF THE STATE?

In the various discussions on the violence of the maoists that I have viewed on Indian TV, one red line that is never crossed is the unquestioned and unquestionable monopoly of the state on violence. This monopoly is supposed to be legitimate and exercised on behalf of the citizens, even if most citizens are unaware of it. Citizens who would not normally grant legitimacy to individuals to exact retribution by murder or torture are perfectly content to allow the state to make a virtue out of extrajudicial torture or killings. In the frighteningly short span of time since terrorism was inserted by supposedly democratic states and their supposedly free media into the public discourse in an attempt to drum up support for an all-out war on terrorism, citizens in democracies have become inured to states attacking entire countries on the basis of wholly manufactured suspicions, or to kidnapping innocent suspects for torture to extract information, or to attacking and killing civilians in supposedly friendly countries by means of remotely controlled drones in attempts to execute suspected terrorists. They are even prepared to remain silent in the face of the whittling away of constitutional rights guaranteed since the Magna Carta - such as a presumption of innocence till guilt is established in an open court in a fair trial, or the right of habeus corpus if arrested. The old rules are supposed to have changed. Democracies are supposed to be fighting a new kind of war, where the enemy the terrorist does not have any regard for life or for traditional rules of war, and recognizes no restraints on the taking of human life. In such a world - say the pundits of the war on terror - it makes sense to preserve democracies by sacrificing a little of the democratic freedoms in whose name the war on terror is being fought - part of the regrettable but inevitable collateral damage of this war.

Citizens in supposedly democratic countries need to become much more careful about what exactly they are signing up for when they implicitly grant the state a monopoly on violence. Unwittingly and implicitly, they not only grant the state the power to exercise violence on their behalf, but also against themselves. And since - at least initally - the state needs to preserve the figleaf of democratic legitimacy, openness and accountability in the exercise of violence, the legitimate monopoly of violence also demands a great deal more: a legitimate (but not necessarily monopolistic) right to opacity, deception and mendacity. Only occasionally do state criminals receive the punishment that is due under the law, long after the commission of the crime. Taken together with deception, mendacity and opacity, the state monopoly on violence amounts to the acceptance of a legitimate monopoly on criminality. What would be regarded as criminal behaviour among ordinary citizens becomes slightly less so when engaged in by corporate entities like companies, and is increasingly accepted as the justifiable and even virtuous protection of the national interest when the criminal is the state. And since the criminal actions of the state are usually beyond the legal reach of democratic scrutiny, there are rarely any means of knowing when the state has turned into a criminal enterprise, apart from tell-tale signs and anecdotal evidence. Why do citizens need to know this in advance, and not after it has happened? Because they need to arrest the growth of criminality before it becomes an irresistible force, as it has in Pakistan.

I may have created an impression in the foregoing that states start out clean, and only become secretly criminal in the rough and tumble of conducting the affairs of state. There may be good reason to believe that the reality is historically worse than that. I suspect a thorough study may reveal that at least some states were originally criminal enterprises that captured enough power to function as a protector, and over time societies may have evolved systems of laws to keep this genetic criminality in check. It may be that Mafia-like protection rackets are actually proto-states, as the maoists are demonstrating in those areas they control with impunity. Even if the state were not a originally a criminal enterprise, it had none of the attributes of wisdom and neutrality that people normally ascribe to a state. Take the Indian state. After 1947, what did Indian politicians do? Simply take over the instruments and structures of the colonial state that Indians fought for years to eject, change a few words, phrases and symbols, and introduce new commitments to democracy and public welfare that have seldom been taken seriously since they were written into the Constitution. The basic structures and mechanisms that allowed the colonial state to oppress its subjects remained largely in place, including the Penal Code of 1860. Would a more thoroughoing revision of the basic framework have dispensed with the legitimate monopoly on violence? Probably not, but many more safeguards would have been in place that allowed the state to deal with internal and external challenges to security without permanently undermining liberty or criminalizing the innocent. This does not mean that the freedom movement was entirely in vain. It certainly was not for the elites who took the places vacated by the British. But it's useful to recall how quickly it became apparent to the masses after 1947 that very little had changed in the terms of how much influence they had on the actual governance of the country, despite the power to elect their own oppressors, fraudsters and criminals, and occasionally, their own representative.

Citizens normally grant the state the exclusive right to exercise violence on their behalf, because they assume - with little thought - that this violence is necessary for their own security and well-being. This makes sense when the state is protecting its citizens from external attack, and especially when such attack is unprovoked. But what happens when the state ends up exercising violence on a section of its own citizens, supposedly to protect the interest of the entire nation? Or (to take the familiar US example) when the state engages in criminal operations abroad without the knowledge or permission of its citizens, who are later surprised when the criminality of their state "blows back" in their face?

Take, for instance, what is happening now in India with the civil war over natural resources, presented by the government and the media as a war against so-called maoists. Some citizens feel entitled to choose modes of well-being that depend on the violation of the well-being of other citizens, such as when forests and other natural resources need to be destroyed for mining, dams, roads, electricity generation and other infrastructure. This involves the wholesale, often violent removal of adivasis and others of the poorest and most powerless sections of our citizens from their traditional habitats. Furthermore, when they resist this violation - whether with violence or without - they are regarded as being anti-national or anti-development, as if all citizens subscribed to the same concept of national development.

The resistance of the destitute to further deprivation has become easier to present as a violent challenge to the state because of the rejuvenation of an armed peasant insurrection that was brutally suppressed in the 1970's. This movement lay dormant these past four decades in the forests of the most mineral-rich regions of the country, and has managed to successfully impose its leadership on the resistance of the deprived, by taking advantage of the colossal failure of the state to govern, or to learn any useful lessons from past resistance movements of peasants and adivasis. In its most active areas, this insurgency - now calling itself maoist - constitutes an alternative state bringing to the adivasis and poor peasants its own brutal version of justice, along with occasional rudimentary social services, and protection from the unwelcome attentions of the police and revenue officials, where formerly there was little other than the arbitrary violence and exploitation of the state. The maoists have been known to be unsparing and brutal in spreading terror both among people seen to represent the state, or people, including adivasis, suspected of collaboration with the state. Beyond the fact that they ultimately intend to capture state power, no one knows for certain what their vision of the good society is. They too, in their own way, claim a monopoly on violence in areas they control.

The term 'blowback' has been used in the US to refer to the unintended consequences of violent intervention by the US government in other countries, when the victims commit their own terrorism in US soil. 9/11 was the most dramatic example among many others. In India, we may be facing an internal blowback in the recrudescence of the maoist insurrection. Why Naxals, and why now? By brutally suppressing the naxalite insurrection in the 1970's, the state felt - mistakenly, as it turns out - that they had solved the problems that gave rise to the insurrection itself. Many commentators rightly trace it to lack of "development" and the failure of governance, but still seem unable to to make sense of this, and plaintively ask: why are they against development? Instead, what they should be asking is: what does development mean for them? And what options and stake do they have in our system of development? The fact is that what the Indian elite and middle classes have understood by development has offered very little by way of a viable stake to the masses.

This is what is happening in our country right now: One section of citizens feels entitled to flourish and prosper at the expense of another. The land, rivers, forests, lakes and other common property resources that made up the environment and source of livelihood of the second group now need to be appropriated even more aggressively than before by corporations to sustain the livelihoods, life-styles and wealth of the first. The fact that there are constitutional protections for the second group of citizens means nothing: contrast the tardiness and reluctance with which the state implements the fifth schedule to the Constitution, or the Directive Principles, with the speed with which laws are passed and implemented that enable SEZ's, set up MOU's, pass anti-terror legislation removing the most elementary democratic rights and allows the state to re-conceptualize any resistance to corporate resource-grabbing as terrorism, and implement other investor-friendly measures. In this, the entire legitimate criminal apparatus of the state is deployed to protect the interests of the elites and associated middle classes.

This is actually part of a larger pattern in which the state and its machinery is much more active and enabling when the interests of the rich and the powerful are concerned: contrast the relative neglect of public housing, public transportation, public security, public education and public health, with the efficiency, relative freedom from regulation and the huge scale of investment that enables the private sector in these areas to flourish while meeting the needs for housing, transportation, security, education, health and infrastructure for the tenuously prosperous middle classes and the more securely wealthy elites in our country. And compare how speedily the the state intervenes with its security forces and intelligence bureaus - i.e. its instruments of legitimate criminality - to protect the interests of the elite and middle classes, through measures such as Salwa Judum or Operation Green Hunt, compared to efficiently administering justice against real criminals when the victims are the poorest and the least powerful among the faceless "public". 

Indian democracy seems to be caught in a grim and seemingly unresolvable paradox: We need the guardianship of the state, but we also need to watch the guardians keenly. How does the public exercise control over the state's legitimate instruments of criminality so that they do not turn into full-fledged criminal enterprises?  Indians need to pinch themselves out of their complacency by looking at the suffering of our Pakistani neighbours and imagining their own potential future. It's true that our institutions are much stronger, and that the role of our military is still controlled by civilian authority. But part of the way that terrorism succeeds is by turning the instruments of liberal democracy against itself. It starts slowly, with corruption and venality gradually pervading all the state institutions, ensuring that their services are allocated to the highest bidder. In other words, the protectors of the public masses turn into defenders of private elite interests. When discontent reaches a sufficiently high pitch, the disaffected organize chaos through bombings and murders, through gangs and assassins. The country comes to the boil as the liberal democratic state turns into exactly what it claims to stand against. State terrorism and anti-state terorrism then compete against each other in a mutually self-reinforcing symbiosis.

How far down this road have we already travelled? Unless we are able to find peaceful resolutions to the range of problems that maoists and other extremists symptomatize, we are going to give an increasingly prominent role to our own legitimate criminals till they start operating free from civilian control in ways that we see in Pakistan. Remember, it almost happened in Punjab in the eighties and nineties before we managed to pull away from the brink. It's happening right now in Kashmir and the North-East, and in those states where maoism is rampant. We take state criminality for granted in a way that we do not for ordinary criminality. We know that the laws of the land exist to bring ordinary criminals to justice, even if in practice the laws may work only very imperfectly. But this assurance of the protection does not exist in the case of legitimate state criminality, because the expectation generally does not exist that the state may behave criminally for the public good. Therefore the need for extraordinary vigilance against state criminality is scarcely ever felt as urgently as it should be.

Apart from the slippery slope down which the legitimate monopoly of the state on criminality can take the country, there is another argument that needs to be considered: What would the defender of the state's monopoly on violence do if he or his family were to be attacked by state security forces? Presumably run away, protect himself or his family, or fight back - exactly what the adivasis are doing. But I would love to see him stand up defending the right of the state to exercise violence on his family. This might seem like an ad hominem attack on the defenders of the state monopoly on criminality, but it is not. I am merely suggesting that the concept of the state's monopoly on criminality may seem a necessary abstraction, but in practice it remains highly problematic. The practical problem remains the difficult one of how to constrain it, especially when the temptation to resort to it is the strongest, i.e., during times of political strife and stress. Our country has faced many terrorist attacks in the past, and will probably continue to face them in the future. How can we remain a democracy if we grant immunity and impunity to the legitimate criminals we have employed to protect us? The only permanent safeguard is a fair and speedy system of justice, and building a society based on values of social justice, equal human dignity and equal opportunity. Free market capitalism, unrestrained as it is by notions of social justice and incompatible with it, is inconsistent in the long run with democracy, peace and social justice. Which is precisely why state criminality is so necessary (and therefore 'legitimate') in free market democracies. The freer the market, the more the state needs its armoury of criminality.

Instead of taking such a dim view of legitimate state criminality performing its traditional mandate of protecting the elites against the uppity people, there may be another more "benign" way of seeing this: as a kind of Blairite public-private partnership. The private provisioning of essential services to the elites can be protected from the deprived and ignorant herd at public expense by the legitimate exercise of state criminality. If we can take an appropriately Brahma-like view of time and calmly absorb as the inevitable cost of progress the visions of a few burnt out villages, a few hundreds or thousands of broken, battered bodies each year, of people who will never know what killed them, or why...then there is no need to subtract the screams of burning mothers and their gasping children from the gains of gleaming trains, punctual airports and six-lane highways.

Perhaps in some not too distant future, we will enter a new phase of our politics when the Indian polity will be seen as a contestable market for the service of governance. Each political party could be regarded as a GSP (governance service provider). A coalition or cartel of GSP's could agree to share governance services in a variety of sectors - health, education, internal security, infrastructure, etc. to avail of economies of scale and information. But the competition between different monopolistic GSP's could always have room for the smaller, more agile and low-cost players such as the kind we now call maoists whose USP will always ensure their success in a niche market consisting of adivasis, dalits and poor peasants.

As the Koda scam illustrates, the resources for such GSP's could come from a variety of different channels. Instead of salting away the bribes from the mining companies into tax shelters all over the world, Koda should have set up private security firms like Blackwater or Executive Outcomes, besides investing in his own infrastructural and other enterprises. In fact, Koda would seem to have been a brilliant tax collector! He could even have created his own GSP for the benefit of the companies that paid him. The adivasis too could have been protected by the maoists more effectively, as the Koda revelations show that they too might be turning into another criminal enterprise with the resources to break the monopoly of the state. Perhaps we should not be speaking of criminal enterprises any more, but the markets for various GSP's.

"Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake!"

 

NITIN, ARE YOU READING THIS?

I have been following the debate on Acorn on the absent voter in the Indian elections. Those who insist that voting is a civic duty (and I agree that it is, but would assert that the conditions do not exist to make it meaningful) have yet to answer the question: How does voting for the least worst candidate between a bunch of thugs and goons help create the conditions for demanding greater accountability, responsiveness and transparency?

Dr. Binayak Sen's case is relevant here. Because he publicly criticized the approach of the Chhattisgarh government in dealing with the problem of maoist terror, he has been in jail for the last two years, despite the fact that (a) there is no difference between the argument he was making and that made by the Chief Justice of India; and (b) that in two years, despite more than eighty odd witnesses, the state has yet to establish its case. This is the BJP's idea of governance: pass a law which criminalizes peaceful public dissent, then throw the dissenters into jail, then throw away the key. Never mind Binayak's record of service to people neglected by everyone else, including the state. Never mind his public advocacy of the due process of law and of clean elections. His problem has been that he was critical of the ugly underbelly of the BJP's style of governance - funding civilians to function as security forces, human rights abuses, neglect of public health and education (to name just a few issues).

The questions of developing institutional mechanisms for fostering the four key P A R Ts of democracy (Participation of civil society in governance and decision-making (not just in elections once in five years), Accountability of the state to the people for its actions, Responsiveness of the state to the needs of the people, and Transparency of all processes of governance to the people who are affected by those processes) are too complex to be settled by means of a vote once in five years. What mechanisms exist for a vigilant citizenry playing an active role in public life? Carefully designed disincentives may discourage abstentions, but may still fail to encourage active participation beyond casting votes. Votes have to be seen to be meaningful, in a sense that has been brought out by this comment from Bobcat in the Acorn discussion:

There is a fundamental flaw in your analysis. You seem to believe that change happens when more people go to the polling booth to vote. There is no good reason to believe that. For one thing, the balance of power between urban and rural areas is dependant on the number of seats falling in each category which in turn is decided primarily by the size of the population in each, not the size of the voting population. So regardless of whether the turnout is 40% or 70%, the number of MLAs/MPs elected from either type of setting will be the same and their ability to influence the political arithmetic too will therefore stay unaltered.

You are right that by exercising their franchise, people can make a difference as to who wins from the constituency. But more people voting will only make a difference if an important condition is satisfied: increased voter turnout is a sign of specific voter expectations that are apparent to politicians and in turn, politicians/parties are distinguishable from one another in some way that makes this difference in voter turnout significant for some politicians/parties but not others. In an election such as the present one without significant issues, there is no telling how those who stayed home would have voted had they ventured to the booth. So loss of the additional 30% or so of voters may very well mean a general loss for all contestants and no particular loss for any single candidate or party. That leaves higher public participation no more effective than lower participation.

But these subtlelties seem to have been lost on other Acorn commenters.

So leaving serious discussion aside, let us read this hilarious comment on the same subject from Mayank Tiwari on the DNA Blog, making the same serious point with greater humour than I can muster (but can only appreciate).

They'll get you! You non-voting naxal
Sunday, May 3, 2009 4:46 IST

Dear Reader,

I am humbled.

Newspapers published detailed articles about the documents you need to have to be able to prove your identity and vote; we explained how the electronic voting machine works, (though they have been around for more than a decade now); we asked you for your opinions and the issues that are close to your heart. Hundreds of hours of sponsored television news debates and talk shows and live reports poured down the tube everyday, but you didn't vote!

Instead you showed us how passive aggressive you are!

Who are you Dear Reader?

Are you a naxal? Well, I think you are.

In India, the middle classes have no constitutional right to boredom or disgust with the system. They are too well fed for that.

The Naxals are the only people who have a right to boredom and disgust with the system (they have earned this right after four decades; the government denies this; says the right was stolen; dispute is on). So if you're bored and disgusted with the system and express it by not voting, then you have to be a naxal. Nothing else explains your behaviour.

You are as much a naxal as Dr Binayak Sen. Okay now don't be all coy. You know who he is. Like you, he is a sympathizer currently lodged in Raipur Jail, waiting to be tried for something that you too, dear reader, one day will be held guilty of --- talking too loudly about a democratic government failing its people.

Surprised? You thought we wouldn't catch on?

Dear Reader, I am no alien to your capricious ways, your sudden need for excitement, your false pretence of boredom; I have seen enough of you. But being in Mumbai only a few months and having seen you in droves holding candles at the gateway monument after 26/11, I confess, I fell into the 'times-they are-a-changing' trap.

And then, maybe a month or so before the D-D day, the incessant drone of the idiot box and the newspapers and the radio and the hoardings took over. Like most papers the DNA too ran campaigns (thankfully we didn't have leadership contests) exhorting you to exercise the one right that appears to be a notch higher than the right to life and liberty. But like a drunken elephant, you refused to move. The middle class is the same everywhere, I guess.

I am aware of your naxal leanings, Dear Reader; make no mistakes. And let me tell you, the government knows that too. They know how much you hate their lot. They know how desperate you are for a system overhaul and they are going to get you! You could have fooled them by keeping appearances and voting. But you did nothing. You showed us how 58 per cent of the voting population, (all of them middle class, secretly naxal, English speaking, anal retentive), can shake up the largest democracy in the world simply by doing nothing. But you haven't shaken anything, let us be clear on that point. You think too highly of yourself, Dear Reader, and you shall pay the price of being a tad too clever for your own good.

What's worse, you and your naxal agenda has been exposed.

The government doesn't need the intelligence bureau to figure out that unlike rural areas, where Naxals have to be physically present to stall the electoral process by violence, the naxal ideas are so deep rooted in urban centres like Mumbai, especially in the middle class pockets, that one doesn't need guns to get people to not vote.

As you read this, Dear Reader, someone somewhere, is making a list of all the times you've gotten drunk and wanted a dictatorship in the country. All the times you've secretly shared your frustrations with the political leadership with friends or colleagues and all the times you've dreamt of slapping a politician on a podium the way Sanjay Dutt slapped Paresh Rawal in Mahesh Bhatt's Kabza.

FYI, Dear Reader, the government may not be able to get you to vote, but it can prove that you're a naxal. The case may take a while to build, but rest assured, it would take less time than the Bandra-Worli sea link. (Visit www.binayaksen.net to know more)

And then, when you're incarcerated for talking too much, you'll have no one to blame, but yourself. No one will raise a voice for you, you middle-class naxal. Even your neighbours won't sign your bail bond (not that you're offence will be bailable in the first place).

You will sign affidavit after affidavit saying all you ever did was do your job but no one will believe you. You will ask your captors where in the world is a simple tax paying citizen a radical communist and they will point to the heart of India on the map.

Dear reader, slowly you will learn how important appearances are. Maybe the solitude of the cell will teach you how to play the game of the happy family in the largest democracy of the world.

Hopefully, the import of what I am saying now will slowly trickle in later. You will realize that in these times of hyper nationalism a naxal is not defined by who he is but by who he is not: a yes man in a capitalist democracy.

Please let me know what you think.

Sincerely,

Mayank

DOES VOTING CHANGE ANYTHING?

Head over to Nitin Pai's  Acorn to read the debate on why we should (or should not) vote.

I have much sympathy with the arguments by commenter TTG, despite his belief in that mythical entity he calls the "free" market.

Why on earth should people go on voting to sustain the pretence that we have a democracy? Well, look at how the BJP and assorted political pundits were caught completely by surprise by the electoral verdict in the 2004 elections. Wasn't that a brilliant example of democracy in action?

It was a brilliant example of elections in action. But what changed for the people who voted the BJP out? Chandra Babu Naidu was chosen Best Chief Minister by the great pundits at India Today right before the elections, where he was trounced convincingly by his rivals in the Congress. But what improved for the people who voted in the Congress? Not much! For the comfortable classes too, not much changed in the way the benefits of our system are routinely captured by them.

Not voting can also amount to expressing a political opinion - not just apathy. The opinion is that the democracy that we have is corrupt and desperately needs to change, before it can properly function to reflect the will of the people. But Pai and company would have us play the role of the useful idiot voter, so that the illusion that we are a democracy is sustained.

The other reason why the urban elite don't vote is also that they don't need to, precisely because the system is designed to take care of their interests through extra-parliamentary processes. Elections are like travelling by train - it is the only alternative for those who use it. Like the vast Indian railway system, which is generally not designed for speed and comfort, but gets passengers and goods to their destinations somehow,  the similarly vast Indian electoral system has many flaws, but does its job of reflecting the opinion of the politically powerless in the only legal way available to them. The only way the powerless in cities and villages of India can show their power is by voting. That is why they have displayed such faith in it, although how long they will continue to do so is an open question. The urban middle classes know better: the system is rigged to work for them, no matter who votes for which party. So why bother to vote?

The only signs of a democracy we have in our country are elections, but their credibility is undermined by rigging in some parts of the country (especially in West Bengal where over the last thirty-two years, it has been carried to a fine art by the con artists that constitute the parliamentary left wing in the country now). We also have a relatively free press, partly undermined by attempts to silence journalists who try and publish the truth. But we will never have a functioning democracy until we have a state that looks upon itself as the servant of the citizens that elect it to power. To exercise the power of government as the agent and trustee of the citizens, institutional mechanisms need to be devised that will promote the four PARTs of democracy - Participation of civil society in governance and decision-making (not just in elections once in five years), Accountability of the state to the people for its actions, Responsiveness of the state to the needs of the people, and Transparency of all processes of governance to the people who are affected by those processes. These four PARTs are currently either absent or utterly weak.

The changes that our democracy requires will not be brought in by the present crop of politicians, or through the ballot box, until the entire electoral system is reformed. I have said this before, and will do so again: we need a second non-violent independence movement for legal and constitutional reform. This time the struggle needs to be for independence from the criminals, thugs and the corporate and military interests that run our country, and who the Nitin Pais of the world insist are the only alternatives we have.  Of course, a second freedom movement, will not automatically solve anything. No system can be guaranteed to be perfect. But how - except through a political movement - can we get the reforms in the Constitution that are requred to prevent the abuses which are now rampant?

DIALOGUE ACROSS THE DIVIDE

Scanning the news channels during my trip home in the short vacation that we get at the end of January, I found this discussion on NDTV, with a group of Pakistani journalists and human rights workers.

Amidst all the other depressing news about Ram Sena and functionaries within the Indian judiciary publicly abjuring their duty to uphold the constitution by denying human rights to those accused of terrorism, this discussion affirmed my faith in the ability of people (as opposed to governments) to struggle for peace.

Many politicians and their disciples in the media nowadays seem to have the least interest in promoting positive peace. Why should they promote peace, when defending their countries to the last drop of someone else's blood pays such rich dividends for them - at least temporarily? The politicians are able to grandstand, and the media enjoy good circulation as their columns reverberate with the patriotic thunder of polarized opinion. Even though one can detect the influence of right-wing nationalist ideas on public opinion, it's clear from this discussion that the Indian government has not acted, as the US government did after 9/11, out of fear and rage. Indeed, it is constantly attacked in the press and media for showing restraint in the face of the gravest provocation. Perhaps this restraint is a virtue born out of necessity, as it comes from a sober assessment of our capacity to sustain a military confrontation with Pakistan. Army commanders in India apparently were wary of the battle readiness of the armies they command. But the restraint has actually allowed for a more successful and calibrated reaction to the Pakistani involvement in 26/11 than would have been possible if we had gone in for a precipitate military reaction.

The representatives of the right raise some sensible points as well. Chandan Mitra asks which Pakistan should the Indian government be negotiating with - the civilian government, or the military, or the ISI? It's clear from his reaction that if he were in power, he would assume that the Pakistani government is run by the Lashkar-e-Toiba, and act accordingly. And indeed, it's been clear at least since the Kargil confrontation that the Pakistani state does not speak with one voice, or even act as one agency, on matters concerning India.

Some of the most sensible and conciliatory comments in the discussion come from Air Marshal Tipnis, the former chief of the IAF at the time of Kargil. The spirit that prevails in the discussion, and that captures what I most remember about this discussion, is summarized by Mahesh Bhatt's declaration at the end. I was also impressed by the courage of the Pakistanis in speaking so critically of their own state in what their government, and much of Pakistani public opinion, still considers to be enemy territory.

View it, and hope that there are no more terrorist attacks from across the border.

IS CHHATTISGARH FEELING MORE SECURE WITH DR. BINAYAK SEN IN JAIL?

The Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram has been visiting Raipur. When Binayak's wife Ilina paid him a visit recently, he was sympathetic to her plight but pleaded inability to do anything to hasten his release.

As might be expected, he has come out strongly against maoist extremism and violence. "Squarely, boldly, firmly and decisively we have to deal with Left wing extremism. There will be some damage to civilian lives during confrontation, but we have to minimize it," the minister is reported to have declared to journalists.

So is Dr. Binayak Sen one of those "civilian lives" that have been damaged in the confrontation? What about his family? His patients? The lives he could have saved?

And how does Chidambaram wish to minimize the damage in their case? Or has he written Binayak off in the cost-benefit calculation in the so-called "war against terror"? Is his continued imprisonment bringing greater security to the people of Chhattisgarh?

If the government wants to demonstrate that they can be tough on terrorists and still be fair in their administration of justice, it needs to release Binayak - and all other undertrials against whom a case has not been established - on bail. The trial has so far failed to establish his guilt, and so under normal principles of justice, he must be presumed to be innocent. What reason is there to suspend this presumption of innocence in his case?

Without this demonstration of justice, there is no assurance that the system can be anything other than what it is already widely perceived to be: corrupt and unfair.

Laws against terrorism that harm the innocent undermine the legitimacy of the state by allowing it to act with impunity. How does this make the non-terrorist population more secure? That is why they need proper safeguards against state abuse. Where are these safeguards in my brother's case?

It is in this spirit that Vinay Sitapati again argues:

"...the high court, Supreme Court and NHRC all seem reluctant to play spoiler in a long drawn war against a dangerous enemy. To them, Binayak Sen is a war casualty: an enemy combatant at worst, collateral damage at best. Sen’s incarceration is a political question whose answer is best left to the judgment of the state executive. It would be deemed unpatriotic to do otherwise.

Binayak Sen is only one of 192 charged under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act; the Act only one of a slew of Indian anti-terror laws; and Naxalism only one (though perhaps most dangerous) of India’s million mutinies. But Binayak Sen symbolises a larger point: tough times may need tough responses, but require tough monitoring as well. Just as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo battered America’s sense of self more than Osama Bin Laden ever thought conceivable, misusing laws destroys the very ideals for which we battle against Al Qaeda and Naxalites. Institutional acquiescence of the “war on terror” did America great disservice. Will we too tell ourselves a generation later: that when faced with a good fight, we fought it the wrong way. And lost."