Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Manipur. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Manipur. Sort by date Show all posts

Sunday, April 21, 2013

DISGUSTING BUSINESS - 'CURSE OF THE RHINO HORNS'

By Kajol Singh, Sandeep Muzkala / Dispur

Soaring prices of rhino horns have led to a new spurt of poaching in the Kaziranga National Park, Assam. Once heralded as a conservation success story, the park is now being held hostage by poachers. INN travels to the park to investigate and find answers to the conservation riddle.


Many emotions flit across Kartik Pegu’s face when he talks about his exploits. Only one emotion is missing—remorse. Each time Kartik mentions killing a rhino and chopping off its horn his face lights up with enthusiasm. He curls up the fingers of his right hand around an imaginary trigger; the same hand is used to show a make-believe barrel.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

WHY INDIA IS LOSING ITS WAR AGAINST NAXALITES?

By M H Ahssan / Hyderabad

Five decades ago, the special forces officer Roger Trinquier set about understanding why his nation losing to enemies it outgunned and outmanned. France, he wrote, was  “in studying a type of warfare that no longer exists and that we shall never fight again, while we pay only passing attention to the war we lost in Indochina and the one we are about to lose in Algeria.  The result of this shortcoming is that the army is not prepared to confront an adversary employing arms and methods the army itself ignores. It has, therefore, no chance of winning”.

Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Liberals Are Making The War Against Jihadi Terror

If Akbaruddin Owaisi, who had been arrested and subsequently released on bail for making a hate speech in December 2012, is to be believed, there would have been no jihadi terrorism in India if the Babri Masjid had not been demolished or Muslims massacred or raped in Gujarat.

Many Muslim organisations, including Owaisi’s Majlis Ittehad-e-Muslimeen, allege that many Muslim youths are being routinely arrested and tortured even though they are later discharged for want of evidence, and this is a theory that the Indian liberal elite has been willing to buy.

Earlier this month, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) decided not to charge charge three suspects in the Bangalore jihad case registered late last year: among them, defence scientist Aijaz Ahmad Mirza and journalist Mati-ur-Rahman Siddiqui. The fate of the three men has been widely read as part of a police-led persecution of Muslims. Indians liberals have tended to agree.

The facts, however, suggest the need for a more nuanced reading of these instances of Muslims who are released for want of evidence.  In fact, the liberal elite assumption that these are really instances of discriminatory police attitudes is imposing serious costs on India’s ability to frame a serious response to jihadi terrorism.

Let’s test the assumptions against the facts in the Bangalore case. Focused on the release of Mirza and Siddiqui, media accounts have mostly skimmed over the fact that 12 of the 15 alleged Bangalore jihad conspirators held have actually been charged. The NIA’s charge-sheet outlines perhaps the most ambitious jihadist project since 26/11, and the first Indian case involving online self-radicalisation.

In 2011-2012, it alleges, Bangalore residents Abdul Hakeem Jamadar and Zafar Iqbal Sholapur visited Pakistan, drawn by online jihadist literature to join the jihad in Afghanistan.  In Karachi, though, fugitive jihad organiser Farhatullah Ghauri persuaded them to fight against India.  The two men, the NIA says, were then introduced to operatives of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate and the Lashkar, who trained them in “intelligence, cyber-crime, handling and shooting of weapons”.

The NIA alleges that the Bangalore jihad cell plotted to assassinate a string of figures associated with the Hindu-right wing, as well as journalists and police officers. Its members, the NIA says, also planned to conduct armed robberies to fund its jihadist plans, and conduct espionage for Pakistan.

No evidence was found to link Aijaz Mirza, Siddiqui and Yusuf Nalaband to this plot – but was it unreasonable to hold them on suspicion? The men shared the very room from where Shoaib Mirza is alleged to have used his laptop to stitch together the plot. Jamadar and Sholapur are alleged to have been tasked with conducting intelligence operations; Aijaz Mirza had access to sensitive information. Siddiqui visited jihadist websites.

It is true this writer and every other journalist covering national security issues also does this regularly – but then, no terrorist plot is being planned from my room. Put together, these surely constitute questions for investigation.

The NIA and the Bangalore Police did the right thing: they arrested suspects, examined the evidence, and decided not to prosecute men against whom there was none.  They did not fabricate evidence or coerce confessions.

Incarceration indeed caused harm to three men, as it would to any innocent caught up in the criminal justice system. Mirza has given a heart-wrenching account of the hardship caused to his family.  However, the harm caused to him has to be read against the possible harm to the community caused by the investigators’  failure to arrest – which in this case, might have been several deaths.  This is precisely why police forces across the world are allowed, by law, to arrest suspects during investigation. No demand of pre-arrest certitude is made in other kinds of cases, notably last year’s Delhi rape-murder: the suspects were held long before forensic evidence became available.

Eyes wide shut: So, why are élite liberals so reluctant to maintain an open mind on the NIA case? For one, they argue that investigations are driven by anti-Muslim bias. It is simply untrue, though, to argue – as Siddiqui has done – that the police would not have carried out the arrests “if I was not a Muslim”. Last year, in June, Lokender Sharma and Devender Gupta were granted bail  in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blasts case because  the NIA failed to file a charge- sheet against them in the prescribed time. Bharat Rateshwar, accused in the Mecca Masjid bombing, was also granted bail for the same reason. There are several similar cases from the NIA’s north-east investigations.

Police forces across the world face this dilemma.  In the United Kingdom, over two-thirds of suspects arrested in terrorism investigations were let off without being charged; only 14 percent of those arrested, or less than 50 percent of those charged, were eventually convicted.

The claim that the police targeted Muslims for the Mecca Masjid bombing has been repeated so often as to become received truth. Journalist Sagarika Ghose, not unfairly, tells the graphic story of “Imran Syed, a Hyderabad student arrested for the Mecca Masjid blasts in 2007, given third degree torture and electric shocks”.  Kuldip Nayyar accused the police of “tormenting Muslims”, pointing again to the fact that “21 Muslim youth from Hyderabad were wrongly implicated in the Mecca Masjid blast”.

The truth is that 22 Muslim men were indeed arrested, and found innocent during trial. However, anyone who has takes the trouble to read First Information Report 198 filed at the Gopalapuram Police Station in 2007 knows not one of the arrests had anything to do with the Mecca Masjid case.

Police officers driven by malice, or seeking to cover-up their incompetence, could have initiated false prosecutions linking these men to the Mecca Masjid attack.  They did not – and went on to uncover the Hindutva terrorist network now blamed for the attack.

There’s no doubt, of course, India’s overstretched and under-resourced police forces get it wrong plenty of times.  It is worth noting, though, that the sword of incompetence cuts in all directions.  I haven’t, for example, heard any outrage from Delhi-based human rights groups about the case of Hindutva hardliner Pragya Thakur – charged by the Madhya Pradesh Police with having murdered alleged Samjhauta Express bomber Sunil Joshi, and allegedly tortured.  The case was handed over to the NIA in 2011, and is now focused on different suspects. 

Yet, police don’t get it wrong as often as most people assume. Last year, the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Association, a human rights lobbying group, published an apparently damning study of 16 prosecutions brought by the Delhi Police’s elite counter-terrorism Special Cell, showing that each case ended in acquittal amidst charges of illegal detention, fabricated evidence and torture. The Delhi Police, however, pointed out that they secured convictions in 68 percent of terrorism cases – and, notably, had done so in six of the 16 cases the JTSA flagged.  In the US, with enormously better-resourced police, the figure is around 87 percent

This writer has argued elsewhere that Indian police forces have a poor conviction record for serious crimes, due to poor training, bad forensic resources and human resource shortages. Conviction rates for murder have hovered around 40 percent, and rape at below a third. They’re even more abysmal for kidnapping. There is no reason to believe that conviction rates for terrorism will be higher.

Failing prosecutions, thus, are a cause for concern for everyone – but not evidence that the police are out to get Muslims, or Hindus, or anyone else. It is entirely possible that police officers share the same biases which suffuse our society. Look through the authoritative South Asia Terrorism Portal, though, and one fact is evident: a lot more Hindus, Christians and animist tribals are being arrested on terrorism charges than Muslims.

In 2012, 914 Maoists were arrested; less than a tenth of that number were held in cases related to Islamist terrorism.  This isn’t even counting-in arrests in two states where there are mainly Hindu-led insurgencies, Assam and Manipur.

Police, politics, and ideology: The problem isn’t, however, that élite liberals haven’t stumbled on the data. It is, rather, that their ideological blinkers have led them to reject their import. Part of the problem may be that our intellectual life has moved, too easily, from primitive fable to post-modern text, bypassing the stage of evidence-based appraisals altogether.

More important, though, this apparent position of dissent fits well with powerful establishmentarian tendencies. Congress leader Digvijaya Singh is one such pole; his hangers-on include Feroze Mithibhorwala, who alleged that the role of the “CIA, FBI & Mossad in fomenting and planning the Mumbai 26/11 terror attacks are proved beyond doubt”. The Congress’ view is that the kinds of Muslims Owaisi represents will be drawn to its ranks by this kind of drivel. Left-liberals who loathe the Hindutva movement – people not unlike me – thus see assaulting the police on jihad-related issues as a defence of secularism.

This is perverse politics, which has had the signal consequence of communalising our national conversation on terrorism.  There is, indeed, a serious national conversation to be had on investigative incompetence, deficits in police capacities and the breakdown of the criminal justice system – crises which gave birth to prison torture and a culture of casual extrajudicial execution. Liberal critiques of India’s struggle to contain jihadi terrorism rarely engage with this challenge.

I’ve sometimes wondered if the problem isn’t deeper: whether the cultural memes inherited by English-medium liberals, including myself, cloud our judgment. The figure of the martyr Christ, rebel against tyrannical power, is profoundly seductive; it is the the unacknowledged foundation-stone for the western human rights movements. Yet, the Romans were right to caution against the seduction of the martyrs’ voice.

There is a real threat to this country of a communal conflict that could tear it apart along its faultlines. Keeping our eyes wide shut to the reality will ensure the secular-liberal state loses.

Saturday, March 07, 2009

“A Prime Minister must have numbers, not qualities”

By M H Ahssan & Prithvi Saxena

With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in a stupor and the Congress hesitant, the Third Front is trying to get its act together for the summer General Election. Propelled by the Left, the Front is looking to get Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on its side by the time the next government is in place.

Communist Party of India (CPI) General Secretary AB Bardhan, 83, is probably India’s most senior active Left politician. He is actively cobbling the Third Front together. Bardhan was elected as an MLA to the Mumbai province in 1957. He has been CPI General Secretary since 1997. His recent interventions were in the choice of Pratibha Patil as the presidential nominee and the positioning of Mayawati as a possible Prime Ministerial candidate.

Bardhan is famous for his statement when the Sensex fell in 2004, after the Left announced it was supporting the UPA Government. “Sensex gaya bhaad mein (To hell with the Sensex)”, he snapped when asked what he thought of it. Here, Bardhan spoke to HNN extensively on how the Third Front Government would be structured, if formed, and what policy changes it would affect. Excerpts from the interview:

How do you think this election will change anything?
People will vote in such a way that a new alternative to the Congress-led UPA and the BJP-led NDA will be in place. This alternative government will be based on a more Left democratic programme.

Are you saying that the new government would necessarily have to be a friend of the Left?
It will have to be. Nowadays, barring the extreme rightists and communal parties like the BJP, all other parties want to be close to the Left.

Why do you think other parties are looking to the Left?
This is because everybody recognises that the Left is closer to the people. The Left fights for the poor, fights for the interests of the nation and its people, and is generally free of corruption. For all these reasons, the Left has a certain acceptance in the country.

It is possible that the Left will not be in the equation after the election.
I don’t see such a possibility. I don’t think that the Congress or the BJP will gain in this election. They will be the losers and other parties will relatively gain more. That will create conditions for the formation of another alternative government.

How would this alternative government be structured?
The Left parties rule three states. We expect good results there. In Tamil Nadu, the Left parties have entered into an alliance with the AIADMK. We hope to broaden that front with the possible inclusion of the PMK in the coming days. That will be a formidable front. In Andhra Pradesh, the Left has entered into an alliance with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS). That also is a formidable combination. In Karnataka, we have come to an agreement with the Janata Dal (S). In Assam and Manipur, we have arrangements with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and local outfits like the Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF). Similar arrangements, I hope, will be reached in some other states before and after the polls.

In which states do you see these developments taking place?
Talks are going on in other states. In the coming days, you may see the some arrangements maturing before the polls in states where regional parties are anti-Congress and anti-BJP. In other states they may be willing to join the formation of an alternative government after the election.

You mentioned arrangements with the NCP, AIADMK, JD(S) and the TRS. The NCP is in talks with the Shiv Sena and the Congress. The AIADMK, JD(S) and TRS are also talking with the Congress-led UPA. How do you reconcile that?
These are state-specific arrangements. We have a very specific non-Congress, non-BJP agenda. Some of the other secular parties may not have exactly the same agenda. That is why I said that in some cases it might be a post-poll arrangement.

Bihar and Orissa are led by the Janata Dal (United) and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD). Are they parties you might work with?
We are certainly in touch with them.

Has the centre of political gravity in India shifted from bigger to smaller parties?
Nothing of that sort has happened. Regional parties have come up because the bigger parties have failed in their task, particularly the Congress. The Left has not been able to extend its base particularly in the Hindi area. It has now woken up to that task but it will take time. Meanwhile, we have to reckon with the reality that regional parties exist.

How would this alternative be different from similar alternatives in the past?
India is different now. The situation is also different. Similar alternatives in the past did not have a clear picture about domestic, economic and foreign policy. Now we do. Moreover, the parties are far more experienced now than what they were. It is not merely a question of power now. It is a question of power for what and for whom.

An issue that confuses voters is the number of people who want to be Prime Minister in the third alternative. Could you clarify this?
Everyone knows that becoming a Prime Minister is not a joke. There have to be numbers. Anybody can dream of being a Prime Minister. Nobody can take away the right to dream. There have to be numbers. There has to be a basis. And then, it ultimately comes down to one or two people whom you can think of as Prime Minister. Only when an alternative is capable of taking over reins of the government does the question of becoming Prime Minister come up. Till then, there are a number of people who go on projecting themselves. They are free to do so. I don’t think that people will be fooled by it.

Are there some basic things you would look for in a Prime Minister apart from just numbers?
I am not looking to any qualities of the person who can be Prime Minister. Obviously, it has to be from a party that has the required numbers in a coalition. In that case, it becomes easy as to who should be the Prime Minister.

Say the numbers look good for the Left. Is the Left in a position to project a candidate of its own?
The Left is the only group which is not immediately thinking of that. We have the required patience. We have fought all these years for socialism. We can afford to wait till our base spreads.

So, the Left will not have a candidate for the Prime Minister’s post.
We don’t have one at the moment.

Have things gone so bad that you will not support a Congress government after this election?
We broke with them on the issue of policy. Not on the issue of this election or that. I’ll prefer to sit in the opposition than support or participate in a Congress government, which will carry on the same policies. What would be the point in it?

Would you be agreeable if the Congress agrees to be part of a government it is not leading?
Don’t think a leopard suddenly changes its spots. Even today, the Congress is saying we are the only national party that exists in the country. Let us see what happens to them when they have such megalomaniac traits, forgetting the reality in the country today.

How different would your non-Congress, non-BJP government, assuming it is formed, be in terms of policy?
In economic policy we would like to give up the neoliberal capitalist path, which has brought disaster. The economic slowdown started from the US, but it has affected other developing countries also, including India. Therefore, we want changes in economic policy. We would like to see policies being undertaken based first on agriculture, which is the major industry in India. We want the domestic market to be built on the basis of employment-oriented industries, rather than only technology and capital-intensive industries. That will create a market in our country. It will put money in the pockets of our people.

The fast economic growth of the past five years has put money in the hands of a few and deprived the masses. We have an ocean of poverty with a few jutting out as billionaires, like rocks in a sea. We don’t want that type of development. The dalits, the adivasis, the minorities, Muslims in particular, have been excluded from economic, educational and social growth. We want these people, who add up to 40 percent of the country, to be part of development.

We also look forward to changes in foreign policy. We would like to see an independent foreign policy being pursued by our country and not a policy that is aligned with the US, the strongest imperialist power in the world today. We have seen the effect of the policies pursued by George W Bush. There is no sign as yet that the current president of the US will change this policy.

Would the third alternative create the state of Telangana?
That is a commitment we have given to the people of Andhra Pradesh. It is immaterial how many months this takes, but steps will have to be taken. It is a commitment. We must fulfil it immediately. Otherwise, we will lose credibility.

Would you make similar commitments elsewhere? Say, for instance, Vidarbha and other places?
No no. Those issues have not come up. We are not opening a Pandora’s box. That is one reason why we have not talked of a second states reorganisation commission. The Congress has talked of it because it wants to drown the specific by talking of generalities. They learnt it from the British who put off solutions by setting up committees and commissions.

But it won’t stop with Telangana. There are demands from other places also.

There are demands everywhere. Telangana is not merely a demand. It is a movement. There is a struggle.

Would the third alternative seek a reversal of the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement?
It is not an equal deal. It affects our sovereignty and self-reliance in nuclear energy. But I don’t know how a reversal will take place. We have to examine this question now that the deal has been signed. The point is how far to go with the agreement even if you don’t reverse it. The latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has pointed out that we have uranium reserves. Who says that we don’t have? The government has deliberately created a scarcity of uranium to be able to justify going to the US and other countries. We could’ve used our uranium. We have indigenous development of atomic energy that could be further developed. But it has come to a halt precisely because we’ve been going elsewhere and trying to import their uranium, technology and reactors. In the process we have accepted so many conditions in the Indo-US nuclear deal.

What judicial reform would the third alternative bring?
These are all issues that will find a place in our election manifesto. Talk of judicial accountability involves the question of a judicial commission and how judges are to be recruited and removed. How judges are to be made accountable to the people. There is the question of quick justice. Imagine, for instance, Sukhram has been sentenced now after 15 years. (Sukhram is a former communications minister found guilty, from a case in the mid-1990s, of amassing wealth disproportionate to known income).

Would you expect a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative to have caste-based reservation in the private sector as well?
Sure. Affirmative action has to draw in the masses in our country that have been excluded for centuries. Reservation is a must, and not only in the public sector, but particularly at a time when the government is privatising the public sector more and more. Therefore reservation has to be there in the private sector as well if it has to continue.

There’s a tax practically on everything barring breathing. What changes in the taxation structure would the third alternative propose?
The trouble is that this government is relying more and more on indirect taxes rather than direct taxes. Indirect taxes, particularly on all types of commodities including water, lead to a situation where the burden falls on the common people. Remember the tax on salt for which Gandhi had to fight a battle? He was one of the first who indicated that this kind of indirect tax is at the root of exploitation of the masses. We have been struggling for direct taxes that can be in a progressive manner, so that those who are the wealthiest pay the most. We have been telling the government to strengthen direct taxes on the rich, like capital gains tax and wealth tax. These should be added up and all sorts on taxes on commodities should be cut.

Then the question of oil prices comes up. We demanded that the customs duties on oil be brought down. It was more than the price for crude oil that we were paying for our imports. These taxes constitute more than 50 percent of the price structure. What is the point in the government saying it is subsiding when it is actually earning more. More over, these taxes are ad valorem. This means that as prices go up, the taxes to the government also go up.

Do you expect the alternative you are working for to do all these things?
Of course. Any government will require some time, but the steps will have to be taken. The steps a government takes is the most important thing in determining whether the government is going in the right direction.

The largest chunk of money in Swiss banks is from India. Would you expect the third alternative to take steps to get this back?
The Deputy General Secretary of our party, Sudhakar Reddy, has asked that the government make an official effort to find out deposits from India in Swiss banks. They are black money deposits, made by all sorts of manoeuvres by robbing the exchequer and exploiting the people. The amount of money lying in Swiss banks is many times the GDP of our country. If that money is brought it can tackle at one go the question of food security, education and healthcare to the masses. The government must find out. Many things are also being done brazenly through the tax haven of Mauritius. That also has to be put an end to.

What steps should the non-Congress, non-BJP alternative take on this?
The Swiss banks can be compelled to reveal only if the government makes an effort. Individual efforts don’t succeed in these cases because of a certain amount of confidentiality. Why is the government of India dragging its feet? Why is it afraid of exposing all this? Is it because it is running the country on behalf of those people who have stacked money in the Swiss banks?

What about the thousands of crores of loans that Indian banks have given businessmen and industrialists? How does the third alternative propose to recover these?
These so-called non-performing assets are in lakhs of crores. This money has been taken on loan and not repaid. If a rickshawaalah takes a loan to purchase a rickshaw, we know how he is harassed if he doesn’t pay an instalment or two. Steps will have to be taken on these issues while ensuring the stability of the government and economic prosperity of the nation. These steps will have to be taken in due course.

You mentioned giving up the neoliberal path. Are there sectors where you want the third alternative to reverse the steps taken by the UPA Government?
Both in India and the US, money was pumped into the automobile sector recently. They say it is for public transport. I am not sure of that. They seek to keep the automobile industry up. There are far more basic industries. What are they doing for that? In our country, food security has to be one of the priority issues.

What about privatisation of the electricity sector? There is a big energy crisis looming.
The big energy crisis will become deeper if energy is privatised. What is the result of the 2003 Electricity Act (privatising state electricity boards)? The energy crisis has worsened. Energy has to be with the public sector. The Electricity Act has corporatised state boards by making companies. It is easy to privatise these companies. That is the ultimate goal for which the UPA government is striving. We are opposed to it and will reverse it.

Centre-State relations are a big issue for the third alternative. What will it do about Governors?
Basically we have been against the institution of the Governor. But it is easier said than done. You can’t remove all of them tomorrow. There are short-term issues, there are medium-term issues and there are long-term issues. We are not discussing long-term issues now. Not a single step has gone ahead after we gave our views on the Governor’s office to the government.

Would the third alternative act on the issue of Governors?
Let us see. There are priorities for any government. The priority is the economy and getting over the economic crisis. The priority is foreign policy.

How does the third alternative propose to deal with agricultural distress and its fallout?
We need thorough land reforms. A new class of landowners is being created with the so-called Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Plenty of real estate is being given to them. These SEZs are becoming a weapon for the capitalist and monopolist class. Thousands of hectares are being grabbed. What for? What industry requires so much of land? What project needs so much of land? All this is leading to real estate speculation. We cannot allow that.

So SEZs would not be encouraged.

Certainly not. We are fighting even today. Whatever we will try to undertake tomorrow will follow from what we are fighting for today.

You are saying the system has become immune to integrity. How does the third alternative propose to change that?
This is one of the more serious charges that I have against this government. Corruption is only a consequence of all this. You end up this way if you don’t take pro-people measures. This is creating a lot of frustration. People talk of terrorism, extremism and financial ruin in this country. All this is a consequence of the frustration that has crept in.

How would the non-Congress, non-BJP alternative open the system to integrity? How will you make it answerable?
These are not things that can be done in one election or one five-year term of a government. I’m saying that this path has to change if you look at the future. One has to start somewhere. We think that an alternative to the Congress and the BJP will be a starting point. You are talking to a person who believes in socialism. We think many of the problems will be solved only then. After the fall of the Soviet Union, a triumphant message was sent out that socialism has failed and that Marxism is dead. Some people talked of the end of history as if neocapitalism is the last word. We have seen what happened.

Has anyone plumbed the depths of the crisis that has come about, a crisis that will last at least two years? Not even the most optimistic person is talking of the crisis coming to an end immediately, except some fools in our government who make statements as if we are either immune or will be tomorrow. This is when our people in the export industry are facing layoffs and unemployment, and when suicides have started. The truth is that capitalism has no solution to the problem of ending poverty and unemployment.

How would the new alternative deal with Pakistan?
When there is a terrorist attack it has to be met. Our intelligence and security system has to be such that most of the time it is able to anticipate and prevent. But if a terrorist attack still takes place, it has to be met as in the Mumbai attack. But the important thing is to see that democracy grows in Pakistan also. We should not talk of a war because that will again drive Pakistan to a military takeover. Pakistan is very weak democracy. They have only recently got an elected government. It is good if that democratic government strengthens. It has to deal with many problems including the Taliban.

And the Taliban is the creation of the US. This fact must be hammered home in the minds of the Indian people. The US created the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan because they thought it was necessary to fight the Soviet Union. They created this Frankenstein that is becoming a problem even for Pakistan. We have to adopt a policy that could lead to peace and good neighbourliness between India and Pakistan. We should do it with every neighbouring country.

Nobody seems to know what this peace policy should be like. This is a clear and current issue.
Are there no problems in our country? People talk of Naxalism and this and that. So there are problems in our country and in neighbouring countries. The way to solve them is not by working at cross-purposes and spreading hatred and hostility towards each other. That will only exaggerate the problems further.

Even if we don’t talk in hostile terms, Pakistan’s deal with the Taliban is seen as supping with the devil. India now has a big worry.
Who created the devil? This is what we have come to. If we are not careful, today they are in Swat valley, tomorrow they will be in Islamabad, in Lahore. And where will we be? And mind you, as against that Taliban, Hindu Talibanisation is taking place in our country. Fortunately we are country that is so deeply rooted in democracy and secularism that these groups have not been able to flourish as yet. But they can blossom if we pursue a policy based on hatred and hostility.

What about Bangladesh and the mutiny there? What would it imply for the next government in India?
We have to be friends with them as well. Bangladesh has just had an election after two years. It is good that the worst communal force, the Jamaat-e-Islami, has been defeated there. They were playing an unfortunate role and Khaleda Zia’s BNP was patronising them. Even Hasina was hobnobbing with them to some extent. Let us give time to the forces that have come up. The extent of the problems in Bangladesh can be seen in the BDR mutiny. Therefore, let us be patient. Let us cooperate, rather than worsen issues.

What about Sri Lanka? The third alternative involves parties with a deep stake in the affairs of Sri Lanka. What would the third alternative do?
The only solution is political. There has to be devolution of power. They are avoiding using the word autonomy. There are Tamil majority areas in the north and east of Sri Lanka. We have been saying that within a united Sri Lanka, these areas have to be given autonomy. So that they can develop on their own. Unfortunately, the government of Sri Lanka is indulging in arms confrontation. A military solution cannot be brought about. You can finish off the LTTE and win the battle in a positional war. But what will happen tomorrow? They will resort to all types of suicide bombings and terrorism. Will guerrilla warfare solve the issue? The issue has to be solved politically.

A few Islamist terrorist groups have drawn the India-US-Israel as a foe. What should the third alternative’s steps be towards Israel?
The India-US-Israel axis was spelt out during the days of the NDA. Advani had visited Israel; he was a great friend of the US. He started all this. The NDA’s National Security Adviser Brijesh Mishra spoke of India-US-Israel in a major speech. This will be a disaster in the Asian continent. What is Israel? How did it come into being? We are prepared to see Israel coexist with the state of Palestine. But they are not allowing this. Palestine is not the problem; Israel is the problem. The Americans fully back Israel by giving it financial support, arms and equipment.

So will India be a friend of Israel under the third alternative?
Israel is indulging in genocide against the Palestinians. That does not mean I am saying that we become an enemy of Israel. We are saying that you will have to take steps to see that it stops. At this moment, we have become the biggest arms purchaser from Israel. What does this mean? We are entering into all sorts of military deals with Israel. Whom does it help? Whom does it harm? With the money that it gets from us, Israel is escalating the war against the Palestinian people. Israel has violated every UN resolution on the Palestinian homeland, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. And the hawks have come to power again in Israel. We have encouraged them. We have played a role that is not what India has traditionally been playing towards Palestine.

Are you saying that the third alternative would nullify the deals with Israel?
They have to cancel the deals.

Which countries would the third alternative seek to befriend?
It is very important that India, China, Russia and Brazil, the BRIC countries, should come together. Along with South Africa, they will form a formidable force for peace and development. The centre of political gravity has shifted east. Europe has ceased to be the centre of gravity. America will in the course of a few years lose the centre of gravity they have tried to assume, about which George Bush once said this is the American century. The American century has lost out even before it matured.

We are entering a period where Asia, with India and China in the lead, will play a big role. Therefore, India, China, Russia and Brazil will have to come together. We also have to target our attention a good deal towards events in Latin America. It is no longer the backyard of the US. They have broken through and are putting forward the slogan that another world is possible. The other world may not be clear yet as to what it should be, but there is no doubt that it will be a new world that will shift away from capitalism.

Do you expect the TDP, AIADMK, TRS, NCP and maybe the Bahujan Samaj Party, to back all these policies with a clear understanding?
Even today they are taking positions on many of these issues which we think are correct. They will have to go a long way, but I think experience will drive them towards that end. It is a daunting task but with patience and plenty of goodwill, we will be able to bring them all together.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Exclusive: How ULFA Strongholds Are Falling To The Reds?

By Akshaye Mahapatro / Guwahati

Maoists in Assam tap ethnic discontent to make inroads into an already volatile region. n April, Assam Governor JB Patnaik summoned all top officials of the state’s insurgency-hit Tinsukia district to the Raj Bhawan in Guwahati. He was keen to know about the development work in the state’s eastern-most sub-division, which is part of the district. Cut off from the rest of the district by the Brahmaputra, Sadiya, 60 km from Tinsukia, has turned into a cradle for the Maoists who are trying to make inroads into the Northeast. That is why the governor wants to keep an eye on this remote area.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

DEADLY 'PARTY DRUGS' IS NEW CRAZE IN DELHI

By Kajol Singh / New Delhi

India's capital hits a new high as seizure of party drugs such as ecstasy and speed shows a fivefold increase. Delhi's party circuit is perched high on cloud amphetamine. The Capital has emerged as a major supplier of pseudoephedrine, the key raw material for manufacturing Amphetamine Type Stimulant ( ATS), whose variants are popularly known as ecstasy, speed, base and ice in party drug circles.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

HONOUR FATIGUE - SOLDIERS OF MISFORTUNE

By M H Ahssan

BEFORE THE HOME MINISTRY RAISES NEW PARAMILITARY BATTALIONS, IT NEEDS TO ASK WHY THE OLD ONES ARE QUITTING IN DROVES.

Surinder Kang joined the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) as a constable in 1990. Twenty years later, he’s risen no more than just one rank: he’s a havaldar now. What has risen dangerously over the years, though, are his chances of dying on duty.

So Kang, at 40, has sought voluntary retirement. He wants his pension (even if it is just 2/3rd of what he would otherwise get), an easier job — and he does not want to die. Needless to say, Surinder Kang has a different real name.

What makes Kang’s story extremely disturbing is that it is not an individual story of disillusionment: it is symptomatic of a rampant and growing feeling in the paramilitary. At a time when the Home Minister is speaking of raising dozens of new paramilitary battalions, apart from Kang, hundreds of other men with real names and real fears and real grievances are queuing up to quit the services. In fact, according to official data, an unprecedented 14,422 jawans applied for premature voluntary retirement from service (VRS) in 2009 — up 85 percent from the previous year and 112 percent from 2007. Compare this with the fact that only 4,622 soldiers sought voluntary retirement from the Indian Army — which is three times larger than all the paramilitary forces put together — in the same period, and the contrast becomes painfully stark.

So, why the exodus?
A few days ago, EN Rammohan, former Director General of the Border Security Force (BSF), submitted his one-man enquiry report to Home Minister P Chidambaram on what went wrong in the recent Dantewada massacre, in which Maoists ambushed and killed 76 CRPF jawans. Predictably, the report blamed “leadership failure” and “a lack of coordination between the CRPF and the state police”. Based on this, a few individual heads down the ranks will roll. But if the government stops at that, it will have misread the crisis and lose a crucial opportunity for introspection and drastic overhaul.

The truth is the Dantewada massacre is only one kind of cautionary tale about what ails the Indian paramilitary. The cautionary tale of Surinder Kang runs much deeper and is more alarming.

IF ONE were merely to read the surface signs, it might seem a fear of dying is propelling the exodus. The year 2010 has barely begun and already 79 CRPF men have died.

The number was 58 in 2009. The stark contrast with Indian Army VRS figures also seems to suggest that battling one’s own countrymen has become much tougher and more wearisome than battling enemies outside — both physically and psychologically. As Gautam Kaul, a retired IPS officer who served as Additional Director General of CRPF in 1997-98, says, “Both death in action and voluntary retirement are higher in the CRPF and BSF than in the Army. The spurt in political and civil unrest in the country does not match [the] planning and preparedness of these paramilitary forces. The demand is massive and the paramilitary forces just can’t meet the demand.”
But fear of dying does not seem to be the key reason Surinder Kang wants to leave the CRPF. Something deeper nags him. Kang has 20 long years of fighting guerilla wars and insurgencies. He has been posted thrice in Jammu and Kashmir, twice in the Northeast, and two times each in Lalgarh and Bastar.

Besides this, he has been on election duty in Gujarat, Bihar, Delhi, West Bengal and Orissa. Kang is 40 now and has grayed a little. He is extremely fit and no amount of training can bring you his experience. But Kang has queued up for VRS. He is resolved to leave the forces and work as a small-time private guard at some ATM or private industry. Kang has realised the country does not honour those who serve it. Now, he wants to be with his family at any cost.

“I spent one third of my 20 years in the CRPF just travelling. Of these 20 years, I could spend only three years with my children. I took medical leave to get married. I could only reach my village five days after I received news of my father passing away. I am the eldest in my family but I couldn’t even perform the last rites. I couldn’t COVERSTORY attend three of my four sisters’ marriages. I had to arrange a separate house for my wife and kids after my father’s death because my brother threw them out from the joint family house. But if you take any of these problems to your officers, they just shoo you away.”

Kang is not the only one. Disillusion is simmering like an epidemic beneath the disciplined skin of the paramilitary, and its reasons straddle a wide spectrum: poor work conditions; demeaning terms of service; long years away from families; arbitrary orders and a niggling sense that their life is cheap and death would come without honour.

Just walk around the paramilitary headquarters in Delhi and this honour fatigue begins to unravel. Talk to a constable under a tree and word spreads that someone is asking about their troubles. The jawan inside the canteen, the jawan walking with heaps of files to the grievance department, the jawan loading trucks, all stop to listen in. Everyone wants your number on a scrap of paper. They can’t talk now, but they all have a story to tell.

Of how they have lived in torn tents with no drinking water. Of how the holes were big enough for heat waves and pouring rain. Of how the officers live in concrete houses with three servants. Of how it’s not the government, but their own departments that ensure the welfare schemes never reach them. Of how salaries are cut even when they are injured on duty. Of how a jawan does not get paid if he is in hospital for more than six months. The recurring theme is “pressure: — of how there is too much “dabav” from commanders to blindly follow orders. Of how most of these orders are things that fall outside the purview of duty. Of how they are never consulted even while their lives are at stake. Of how they all plan to take voluntary retirement as soon as they complete 20 years of service.

There’s a jawan from Uttaranchal who has been trying to get a transfer to his home state of Gujarat for the last five years. His wife is mentally ill and unable to look after his three young children. “The officers tell me to get my wife treated in Uttaranchal,” says he. “But our camp is in the mountains, in the middle of a jungle. How is this possible?” Once he returned a few days late from a visit home. His wife’s ill-health was not a good enough shield. He lost an entire month’s pay.
Another jawan has spent 16 years in the CRPF — six in Jammu and Kashmir, three in Assam, three in Tripura, and three in Manipur. Too scared to talk at the CRPF headquarters, he calls late at night to share his story.

During a posting in Srinagar, he was charged with indiscipline and lost 15 days of pay for daring to complain about inedible food and cockroaches in his dal. When he fell sick in Tripura, he couldn’t get a car to get to hospital. “I had to hire a jeep,” says he. “Only if 15-20 constables fall sick and need a car together, there’s a chance of us getting it. Otherwise the cars are busy ferrying the officers’ children. This country got independence in 1947, but we still live like slaves. Our officers order us to do unauthorised things; we have no right to express ourselves. They tell us to barge into people’s homes and pick up bricks and cement and construct our quarters. They pocket lakhs of welfare money; they take commissions from ration shops.

We pay Rs 1,326 per month for food. The bills are for A-grade rations but we get C-grade food. The commander is like the king of a battalion. He runs it the way he wants. As a driver, I am sent all the time for unauthorised pick ups. All the risk of being caught is on me. You live under so much pressure, you either shoot yourself or shoot someone else. I am just waiting to complete 20 years so I can get a part of my pension and then I’ll quit."

The angry stories duplicate endlessly. A jawan from Gorakhpur with 17 years of service behind him speaks of how he was not granted leave to be in time for his first child’s delivery, though he was posted just a few hours away in Allahabad. When he reached a week later, his son was dead. “After the 6th Pay Commission, we were supposed to be given Rs 2,000 education allowance and a travel allowance, but I haven’t got it yet,” says he. “The officers find ways to make sure we don’t get this education allowance. Just a school certificate is not enough. They ask for bills for the child’s uniform, shoes, notebooks. How are we going to run around getting all this when we barely get leave?”

(A jawan is entitled to two months of earned leave in a year but they rarely get leave on time. “A battalion has seven companies and all the seven companies are located at different locations. The battalion commandant sits at Chandigarh. How can a jawan get leave on time if he is located in Dantewada and his commandant is in Chandigarh,” says Gautam Kaul. “Better systems have to be thought through.”)

Clearly, the issue of family — and an inability to provide adequately for them — looms large for the jawan. “We had witnessed an exodus in the paramilitary forces in 1991 too when violence had escalated in Jammu and Kashmir,” says Prakash Belgamkar, retired DIG (Operations), CRPF. “We had discovered then that a soldier’s motivation revolves around his family. But he becomes a nomad after joining the forces. The nucleus of his nuclear family goes away. He has no fixed address, his life gets fragmented.”

But no lessons seem to have been learnt since 1991. Far from any internal memos in the Home Ministry sounding alarm signals about the surge in VRS applications, or directives in paramilitary headquarters urging officers to motivate jawans, the dominant mood seems to be callous complacency: there’s more where those came from. “Yes, we have seen a spurt in voluntary retirements,” says CRPF spokesperson Ajay Chaturvedi. “But there are enough applications coming in of boys who want to join. We have filled in the vacancies. We have raised six new battalions in a year. We don’t have a crunch anymore. There’s nothing to worry.”

A wise administration would stop men like Kang, if it could. Their experience is hard won, and no training course can duplicate that. But the official position seems to be just about numbers. Building morale, quality and pride in work is not on the radar. Retaining experience seems unnecessary. In a poor country, there will always be replacements. There will always be fresh fodder for all cannons.

To get a real sense of the implications of the diving morale of the paramilitary jawan, one needs to understand first the nature and work of the paramilitary forces. India has about 7 lakh paramilitary forces which include the Central Reserve Police Force (strength 2.30 lakh); Border Security Force (strength 2.15 lakh); Central Industrial Security Force (strength 1.12 lakh); Assam Rifle (strength 50,000); Indo- Tibetan Border Police (strength 74,000) and a Sashastra Seema Bal (strength 29,000). The tasks of these battalions range across fighting internal counter-insurgencies, protecting heritage sites and national installations, providing relief during calamities, controlling riots, providing VIP security and executing election duties. (Their motto is ‘Any Task, Any Time, Any Where’ and ‘Duty unto Death’ — as opposed to the army’s which is ‘Shoot to Kill’. But far from pride, this seems to evoke cynical scorn in jawans now.)

Though law and order are State subjects that, ideally, should be handled by the State police, the National Crime Record Bureau confirms there is a shortage of two lakh policemen in the country. This places an added burden on the paramilitary forces. As former Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta says, “There is a diversity of challenges from terrorism to insurgency today, which has affected rotation and training of these paramilitary forces. This does lead to stress. The private security business has also attracted them away from the forces.

This is an evolving situation and the government has to take major initiatives to improve things.” The story about the diving morale of the jawan then is not just a story about individual griping. It should be of national concern. The jawan is the primary interface between civilians and the State in a conflict zone. Their conduct is crucial to the history of these conflicts. They need to be sensitised not brutalised. Kashmir, the Northeast, Chhattisgarh, Lalgarh (in West Bengal), Narayanpatna (in Orissa) are all rife with stories of malafide behaviour by jawans. But how can any virtuous cycles set in? As a jawan in Lalgarh says after his friend was refused a visit to his pregnant wife, “I was so angry, I wanted to shoot someone.”

Difficulty in getting leave and family anxieties though are not the only reasons jawans are quitting in droves. The terms of service, over all, seem to need a major revision. A retired IPS officer who has served in the CRPF, ITBP and CISF in different capacities says, “Why shouldn’t the paramilitary jawans leave? I pity them for sacrificing their lives when our pay commissions do not even recognise them as ‘skilled’ workers.”

This seems merely the tip of a huge iceberg of service dissatisfactions. Army men are considered skilled workers, while paramilitary jawans trained to fight in some of the most dangerous and difficult circumstances are not considered “skilled” enough. A jawan gets a salary ranging from Rs 12,000 to Rs 15,000 (same as a civilian clerk); and an additional Rs 3,000 if he is on a ‘hard posting’ in a ‘difficult area’. (It is typical of Indian bureaucracy that while J&K and the Northeast are considered ‘difficult areas’, Chhattisgarh, Bastar and Lalgarh are yet to feature in this category though many more jawans have been killed in service here than elsewhere.) A jawan also gets Rs 1,100 — Rs 1,300 for rations but has to pay for his own mess expenses on the field, often having to find rations and cook for themselves.

Apart from these living conditions, many veterans say the essential command structure of the paramilitary forces is flawed. Kaul believes too many agencies have authority over a jawan and that contributes hugely to the low morale. “As director general of a paramilitary force, I am only entitled to perform house-keeping jobs for a jawan. I can train him and monitor his service record, but I have no powers to decide on his battalion movement and deployment,” says he. Only Home Ministry officials perform this critical job: they have the list of battalions, they assess the demand and assign locations.

This can lead to many Kafkaesque situations. One retired jawan remembers a tortuous journey in 2004 that stretched 8,000 kilometers over two months as the Home Ministry ordered his company like a pawn to move from Agartala to Gujarat via Bangladesh, Delhi, Kashmir and back to Agartala. Crowded trains, no reservations, no accommodations, no sense of why they were being deployed anywhere, and, most of all — no sense of respect. “I have fought insurgents for 20 years,” says the jawan bitterly, “but this one journey showed me my standing in my country’s eyes. How can you fool around with so many human beings on the pretext of an emergency situation?” Other jawans speak of being summoned to places for six months and being asked to stay for six years.

“Battalion movements are very frequent in the CRPF and this often leads to individual hardship. The very nature of their duty is temporary and is bound to dislocate them constantly. In the army, soldiers undertake an operation then go back to the base camp; the CRPF jawans have no fixed place to return. They are always on the move,’’ says Kaul.

This sense of the ad-hoc permeates every aspect of their lives. (For instance, it appears the Home Ministry had no idea that the CRPF had only three satellite phones till former Home Minister Shivraj PatilShivraj Patil went to Amarnath and had a sudden desire to speak to his family from the shrine. A phone was found with great difficulty for him. This is the only reason he came back to Delhi and remembered to sanction 68 satellite phones for the CRPF and an equal number for other paramilitary battalions.)

But often, this can have much more ominous implications. Kang speaks of his dread in being asked to go on an ‘area domination’ exercise in Chhattisgarh. “We hadn’t slept for days. We landed, and our induction was cut short midway, because there were no policemen for patrolling. We had no clue about the local language, culture, terrain, and most importantly, we had no intelligence about the enemy. We were there physically but had to rely on local intelligence. The paramilitary does not even have its own intelligence. So if the input is good, we succeed; if not, we become sitting ducks.”

This idea of being a ‘sitting duck’ is a powerful and repetitive leitmotif. Another retired jawan who has seen service in J&K, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand, says, “Naxalites fight with military precision. They commit mistakes but they never repeat them.” He recalls an incident in Erabore in 2005 when 200 Naxalites tried to bomb a police armory and the CRPF bunker near it. The jawans resisted the attack and informed their base camp. Help came quickly and the Naxals were repulsed.

Three months later, the CRPF battalion raided a Naxal hideout and found a document titled: Why we failed in the Erabore Police Armory Operation. The document said they had failed because they had underestimated the strength of the armory and bunker wall, and so had taken insufficient explosives, and, secondly, they had not anticipated that the CRPF’s base camp could send help that fast. A few months later, Naxals killed 23 CRPF jawans in a landmine attack. The jawans were on their way to rescue policemen trapped in an attack: the Naxals had anticipated this and laid landmines to blow the vehicle.

“We are never debriefed so thoroughly,” says the jawan. “We are constantly pushed into mindless ‘area domination’ exercises without any intelligence. We never seem to learn from our mistakes.”

What can reverse the tide then? What can stop the attrition and turn this force into a humane, yet proud and efficient line of defence? Former Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta says some initiatives were underway in his time: raising more police force, providing housing, reducing telephone rates for calls home, and counselling (when more than 10 jawans from a company apply for VRS). Prakash Belgamkar re-emphasises the need for this: “A jawan has other alternatives today. If the State wants to retain him, it has to free him of his worries about his family. If this is done, he’ll be yours for the rest of his life.” That might be only the first of many urgent correctives. The most primary one will have to be an essential change of attitude — wherein retaining men begins to matter more than merely replacing them.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Plugging The Leaks, North-East India And Development

By Syed Sultan Kazi (Guest Writer)

For over a decade there have been reports of central funds meant for the north-eastern region going into the wrong hands. The Government of India has proposed creation of the post of joint director in the Central Bureau of Investigation exclusively for the north-east to check the leakage of development funds. Though late in coming, this is a welcome move.

The Government of India’s (GoI)proposal (25 March 2013) to create the post of joint director in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) exclusively for north-east India to check the unabated leakage of development funds in the region is a right move though it has been late in coming. For over a decade now, there have been reports of central funds going into the wrong hands in the north-eastern region (NER). 

Thursday, March 19, 2015

How Private Enterprise Is Changing Non-Cricket Sports?

India Inc has entered the country's sporting arena, and is changing the way the nation plays.

There was a time, not too long ago, when it was taken for granted that an aspiring sportsperson in India would have to do any or all of the following: 
  • Secure a job in a public sector company, or a large private sector one, for a regular income.
  • Scramble for corporate sponsorship to be able to compete at international or even national tournaments.

Sunday, May 03, 2009

STUDENT SUICIDES - Pushed over the edge

By M H Ahssan

A spate of suicides by students in Lucknow has parents and school administrators equally worried. HNN reports on the reasons behind this alarming trend.
Priya Bose (14), Pinki Lal (17), Abhishek Tiwari (18) and Karvesh Choudhary (19) today exist only as impersonal case numbers in police diaries. Not too long ago, all four were teenagers with dreams and hopes. But varying degrees of stress pushed them over the edge last month, adding to the alarming numbers of young Indians who are killing themselves.

Bose was the first to go. A student of Lucknow's City Montessori School (CMS), she was driven to anxiety over her performance in the class eight final examination. Three months earlier, she had performed poorly in the half-yearly exams. Though she had been absent from school when the final exam answer sheets were shown to students (the school has a policy of showing these to the students before report cards are made, so that any discrepancies can be pointed out), she must have guessed that she wouldn't make it. So on March 30th this year, after having a cup of tea with her mother, she went up to her room, bolted herself in and used a bed sheet to hang herself by the ceiling fan. The stunned mother, who discovered the body, found a suicide note that read: "I am doing this because I am fed up and irritated with my life. Nobody but I am to be held responsible. Sorry Ma."

A day later, Lal, who had just finished giving her board examinations at New Public School, was found hanging from a fan in her room. Her parents told the police that she feared the ridicule that would follow in case her board results were poor. Two days after that, Tiwari, a class 11 student of a different branch of CMS, killed himself because he had successively failed in his science practical exams. Choudhary, a first year BTech student of the Saroj Institute of Management and Technology, hanged himself on the eve of his second semester engineering exams on April 8. He had failed in four papers in the first semester and had been denied re-examination. Lonely and away from his family, he made one final phone call to his father in Faizabad before hanging himself from the fan of his rented one-room accommodation.

Since then, 18 other young adults have taken their lives in Lucknow, throwing into disquiet school administrators, teachers, parents, counsellors and the government. According to the city's police, only five of these are clearly attributable to academic stress, a neat categorisation that falters when considering a case such as that of Pushpendra Kumar.

A class 11 student of Dayanand Inter College, Kumar hanged himself over his parents' refusal to allow him to attend his elder sister's pre-wedding ceremony. By his parents' own admission, Kumar was an outstanding student who had topped his class in the last exams. On April 16, he had a science practical exam but tried to convince his parents that he was well-prepared and hence should be allowed to be part of the ceremonies. When they refused, he hanged himself from an iron railing around the stairs in his double-storeyed home. Was Kumar then a victim of a family argument or academic stress? According to RC Jiloha, professor and head of the psychiatry department at Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital, New Delhi, "While the main cause for suicide is frustration, a belief that this life is not worth living, there may be a number of reasons that contribute to that feeling. Any one incident can act as a trigger."

SUICIDE WARNING SIGNS

- Radical change in daily routine
- Withdrawal from family and friends
- Sleeping too much or too little
- Any mention of suicide
- Loss of interest in everyday activities
- No sense of humour
- Feelings of excessive guilt or fault finding
- Being preoccupied with death or dying
- Neglecting personal appearance
- Performing poorly at work or in school
- Becoming too philosophical
- Making statements such as these:

'I cannot go on any longer'
'I hate this life'
There is no point in living anymore'
'Everyone would be better off without me'
'Nothing matters anymore' and
'I do not care about anything'

The Lucknow cases are worrying for two reasons. One, because overall, the incidence of suicides in Uttar Pradesh (UP) is low compared to most other states. According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) (http://ncrb.nic.in/ADSI2006/home.htm), of the 1,18,112 people who committed suicide in 2006, only 3,070 came from the country's most populated state, making it 20th in the aforementioned list. Two, while the national average is 10.5 suicides per lakh of population, the state's average is still less, standing at just 1.7. Only Manipur, Nagaland and Bihar report lower suicide rates than UP.

Yet, between 2002 and 2007, the state saw high numbers of suicides due to academic stress. In this period, the figures were 91, 105, 143, 93, 121 and 95 for each year respectively, making "failure in exams" the sixth most common reason for suicides in a list of 22 offered by the state's police department, alongside other grounds such as illness and family problems. While only two percent of suicides all over India are because of poor performance in exams, in UP this figure is almost double (lower only than West Bengal, where the rate is 4.4 percent). This could stem from the fact that in this Hindi heartland state, low on industrialisation, success lies only with those who become doctors, engineers or bureaucrats.

Perhaps the starkest note on the fragile mental health of the country's young is made by the NCRB. Till 1998, the bureau did not have a separate category of "persons under the age of 14" committing suicide, owing to the negligible numbers. But the numbers in this new category have steadily grown as have entries under the "failure in exams" head. In 2006-07, the number of deaths attributable to failure in exams across all age groups stood at 2,378. Of the 2,464 youngsters under the age of 14 who gave up on life, 512 were driven by failure in exams.

Worrying as these figures are, they might just be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Suicide identification is a problem due to non-reporting, which in turn exists because of the social and legal consequences of such deaths, and is compounded by inefficient municipal registration systems. Conversely, suicides due to other reasons might also be tagged in the "failure in exam" category due to its comparative social acceptance over reasons such as failed loved affairs or teen pregnancies.

Understanding suicides is difficult as studies are based on assessments of survivors, not victims. While most teen suicides are impulsive acts, spurred on by feelings of absolute helplessness in the here and now, the reasons themselves could be deep standing. Thus the teen who kills himself or herself over a bad examination result will probably have a history of low self-worth, marginalisation by the peer group, lack of communication with parents and the like, all of which will be magnified by an upsetting event.

While growing up was always serious business, in today's India, an erosion of buffers and growing levels of competition have made it an even more complicated issue. The emphasis on success at all costs means that even five-year olds are being coached to clear entrance exams to prestigious schools. Parents who cough up the high fees for these schools in turn pressurise children to do well and get into colleges or professional courses of repute. Add to that the demise of the joint family, a lack of interest in sports and co-curricular activities, and the increasing isolation of the nuclear family, and what remains is a situation fraught with the possibility of mental and emotional breakdown. Moreover, while a galloping economy means a proliferation of opportunities, it also translates into a growing disconnect between abilities and aspirations. Being second best is no longer an option.

Instant gratification is another reason why children find it difficult to cope with life's disappointments. Pressed for time, parents try to compensate with pocket money and immediate fulfillment of children's demands, some of which are often unreasonable. A study conducted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India's (Assocham) Social Development Foundation, titled 'Plight of Working Parents Towards their Children' and released earlier this year, concluded from a sample of 3,000 working couples that parents who work full time spend only 30 minutes with their children.

Another Assocham study of 2,500 children between the ages of 10-17, titled 'Trends of Pocket Money in Urban India', also released earlier this year, fills in the other dots. According to it, with the rise in income levels of parents, pocket money has risen by about six times to Rs 1,800 per month from Rs 300 per month over the past 10 years. The majority of this money goes towards fast food, soft drinks, clothing, gift articles, mobile recharge coupons, chocolates, cosmetics, magazines, computer games and movies. A related statistic is provided by a June 2006 study of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), according to which 58 percent of the teenagers who own mobiles spent between Rs 3,000 to Rs 7,500 on a handset, putting them only behind the 35-49 year age group.

Reena Tiwari, a resident of Lucknow and the mother of a bright 18-year-old who has recently given his class 12 exams from St Paul's School, provides the illustration to this statistic. "My son, otherwise a good student, would spend hours on the Internet looking up high-end mobile handsets. He never said he wanted one, but often spoke of peers who had brought the latest models. For all our belief in the virtues of waiting, we finally got him a handset worth Rs 15,000 to steer him back to his books," she says. It is reasonable to conclude that when such children, used to having their way within the cocoon of the family, face life's hard knocks, they find it difficult to handle the situation. Overall, this suggests a systematic failure of the family, the education system and the society at large.

On April 16, JS Rajput, former director of National Council of Educational Research and Training, tried to explain the problems in an article in the widely circulated Hindi daily Dainik Jagran: "A failure in examination is not a failure of the child, it is a failure of the whole system," he wrote.

Prabhat Sitholey, professor and head, department of psychiatry, Chattrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University (CSMMU), Lucknow, avers that the black hole in parental pressure is the belief that education is a one size fit all. "Just like genes for height and complexion are distributed normally within a given population, so is intelligence. We are wrong in believing that each child must at least pass class 10. Even within this framework, we are promoting an education that does not encourage the asking of questions or creativity. It is sheer drudgery. Each child is gifted separately and the educational system must define capabilities and strengths. Parental love should not depend on examination marks," he says. He also blames the media for sensationalising suicides. However, Jiloha from Delhi's Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital cautions against whipping the media. "Media reports will adversely affect only those who are gullible, they will appear suggestive only to those in a particular frame of mind," he says.

Krishna Dutt, clinical psychologist at CSMMU, whittles down the reasons behind teen suicides to the I's of impatience and individualism. "There is no time to wait and watch as patience levels are falling across generations. While individualism leads to growth and development, it also causes us not to learn from the experiences of others," he says. On the day Dutt speaks to us, he is counselling a 19-year-old, who is so unnerved about her engineering exams that she cries when asked to speak.

Tears are just one sign that something is drastically wrong. Most cues tend to be more muted and easy to miss (also see box alongside). So easily missed in fact that even traditional psychology held that a child was essentially incapable of depression. Modern psychology, however, holds that signs of depression in a child are merely different from those in adults. Thus a child who is consistently irritable or aggressive, prone to behavioural problems such as constantly seeking attention, or addiction to something, is crying for help and is not simply a 'problem' child.

"Parents are too wrapped in their expectations to notice what a child really needs and often the child blurs the distinction between himself and the parents thinking of himself as merely an extension of his parents and a tool to further their ambitions," says Nalini Sharad, principal of CMS. She illustrates her contention with the example of a class 10 student who despite being severely sick ignored the advice of doctors and came to write her board exams with a drip attached to her. "She threatened to commit suicide if not allowed to write the exams and the parents did not try to reason with her even once. In such a situation, what does the school do?" wonders Sharad.

Schools are also handicapped by the lack of access to child and educational psychologists, an issue that has to be looked at in conjunction with the low numbers of trained psychologists available in the country as a whole. According to the World Health Organization (Atlas: Country Profiles on Mental Health Resources 2001), India, which lacks a national policy on mental health, has just 0.4 psychiatrists, 0.04 psychiatric nurses, 0.02 psychologists and 0.02 social workers per 100,000 population. Moreover, the availability of mental health professionals is restricted to mostly the larger urban centres. Given this situation, it's not surprising schools do not have access to mental health services. The few schools that offer the services of counsellors do so only for career guidance.

Alok Sinha, psychologist and motivational trainer, points to a lack of understanding on the nature of counselling. "Receptionists at computer training institutes who provide information on courses are termed counsellors as are clerks who allot colleges on the basis of marks. A counsellor is a listener, not a provider of information. But even highly educated parents who approach us for counselling their children merely want us to make the children comply with the parents' wishes. Even when it comes to extra-curricular activities, all they want is for the child to be the best, and say, win a reality contest," he says.

Within the state's secondary education department, there is little acknowledgement of the department's own role and failings in making education the nightmarish experience that it is today. Stock replies about lack of staff and resources are given to explain why the department has not overhauled the board examination system that catered to 40 lakh students this year.

SUICIDE PREVENTION

- Remain calm
- Ask the child directly if s/he is thinking of committing suicide
- Focus your concern on their well-being and avoid being accusatory
- Listen
- Reassure them that there is help and they will not feel like this forever
- Do not judge
- Provide constant supervision. Do not leave the youth alone.
- Remove means for self-harm.
- Peers should not agree to keep the suicidal thoughts a secret and instead should tell an adult. Parents/school staff should seek help as soon as possible.

Sarvesh Kumar, an additional director at the department, is a rare voice of despair. "The government spends Rs 2,700 crores as salary for the staff of this department. Yet there are no measures of performance. The lone figure of students appearing for the board examination cannot be a criterion to judge our performance. We are least bothered about the quality of education being imparted and will resort to strikes at the least provocation. We are not expected to deliver, merely to keep the machinery functioning in its present state," he says.

Kumar's contention is borne out by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), brought out by the non-government organisation Pratham. According to the 2007 ASER (Rural) report (http://www.pratham.org/aser07/aser2007.php), in UP, 3 out of 10 children in class 1 to 8 cannot read capital letters, while 7 of 10 cannot recognise numbers between 1 and 99.

At a seminar on the causes of suicide, organised in the second week of April, principal secretary of secondary education, AK Misra, elaborated on the educational system's failure. "Of the 16,000 inter-colleges in UP, only 160 can lay claim to offering quality education. Thus only five percent of those with aspirations have access to quality resources. Private schooling has become completely profit- and result-oriented. The child is filled with worry about whether he will be allowed to write the board exam or will be held back so that the school's results are not affected negatively. By raising fees, the stakes have been artificially upped, as parents who are called upon to pay exorbitant amounts will expect their children to do well at any cost. There is no getting away from the fact that we need swift policy changes or our children will be driven to meltdown," he warned.

There are no easy answers on what these changes should be. As a first step, we need to talk about the issue and improve the systems of reporting and recording suicides. As part of its Suicide Prevention Programme, the World Health Organization suggests a comprehensive approach that involves the departments of health, police and education besides religious leaders, families and the media. This would be in addition to school-based interventions involving crisis management, self-esteem enhancement and the development of coping skills and healthy decision-making. Better communication within the family, greater acceptance of a child's abilities and a more flexible examination system would also help. Ultimately each one of us shares the responsibility to help the young around us cope with the turbulence of coming of age.

Friday, September 06, 2013

The Telangana Prophecy: Will More States Mean Conflict?

With the government clearing Telangana as India's 29th state, long-standing demands for separate states in other parts of the country have gained fresh momentum. This could be a foretelling of many more states to come, but would that necessarily augur ill for the unity of India? Noted historian Ramachandra Guha shares his thoughts.

Earlier in August, the UPA government decided to give the nod to India's 29th state Telangana, predictably setting in motion a spate of debates across the country.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Colours, Pride, Fervour Marks Indian Republic Day In India

By Likha Veer | INN Live

The 65th Republic Day was celebrated on Sunday across the country amid tight security and hoisting of the National Tricolour in different states.

West Bengal: In Kolkata Governor M K Narayanan presided over the marchpast of armed and police forces. Colourful parade  and procession with decorated tableaux portraying the state’s culture and heritage were highlights of the programme, which was attended by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Assam: Assam Governor Janaki Ballav Patnaik today appealed the underground militant groups to abjure violence and come to the discussion table to solve the issues for an overall development of the state. Hoisting the National Flag on the 65th Republic Day here, Patnaik also condemned the recent incidents of violence in many districts across the state.  Besides, various initiatives were started under the Multi Sectoral Development Plan in areas like agriculture, cottage industry, drinking water and education to uplift the minority communities.

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Starvation Politics: Kejriwal’s ‘Upvaas’ Vs Sharmila’s ‘Suicide Attempt’

Size zero came back in vogue in Indian politics thanks to the runaway success of Anna Hazare‘s hunger strike, until his magical malnourishment show grew dull with repetition. Starvation politics lost its sheen, and all of us went back to the business of eating as usual.

Now with Arvind Kejriwal planning a comeback, so is extreme undernourishment  Don’t worry, as Kejriwal assures us, this isn’t Grandpa Anna‘s hunger strike: “Those were anshans. We had certain demands from the government. This time, it is an upvaas. We don’t have any demand from the government. We are concerned only with the citizens.” He plans to hop from one supporter’s home to another to protest hikes in the prices of electricity and water. The starving just adds a little oomph to the proceedings.

Anorexia without a cause! When Bollywood starlets needlessly starve themselves, it’s a diet. When our leaders do the same, we call it satyagraha. Sorry, make that ‘upvaas.’ And when Irom Sharmila does it, our government calls it an “attempt to commit suicide.” Unlike Uma Bharti‘s intermittent —  now I eat, now I — ”indefinite fast,” Sharmila’s hunger strike has endured 12 years of force-feeding in police custody. She’s also facing charges in a Delhi court for declaring her intention fast unto death in 2006 during a protest in Jantar Mantar. Guess, that didn’t work out quite as well for her as Annaji, who was instead rewarded with a long line of UPA supplicants urging him to just eat something!

Hunger strikes are all about turnout — as Hazare well knows. Human rights violations in distant Manipur aren’t quite as popular as that big-C crowd-pleaser, Corruption. Anna tum sangharsh karo, Hum tumhare saath hain! Irom, not so much.

At the time, left-leaning intellectuals embraced the reverse double-standard. In a widely circulated essay, Shuddhabrata Sengupta thusly described Anna’s bourgeois ann-shan antics:

The current euphoria needs to be seen for what it is – a massive move towards legitimising a strategy of simple emotional blackmail – a (conveniently reversible) method of suicide bombing in slow motion. …The force of violence, whether it is inflicted on others, or on the self, or held out as a performance, can only act coercively. And coercion can never nourish democracy.

Other than rebuking middle class myopia for the absence of “a tele-visually orchestrated campaign against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act,” however, Sengupta remained wilfully silent as to whether Sharmila’s hunger strike qualifies as a “method of suicide bombing in slow motion.” In politics, satyagraha lies in the eyes of the beholder. It’s never about the fast, but the person fasting. And it’s always a person who matters.

Hunger strikes are the weapon of the important. They are less about suicide than wilfulness: I’m not going to eat! That kind of threat works only when it’s pulled by a toddler or a VIP.  It assumes the presence of an interested audience – be it of concerned parents, adoring supporters, or harried authorities — who care about when you had your last meal. Or in the case of Irom, a government that cares enough to feed you through a tube against your will. Lots of nameless people go hungry in India; a number of them even die. But no one cares about the death of statistics.

This is why ordinary people in dire circumstances rarely go on a hunger strike.  No one can summon up the interest to stand around watching them die, or rather threaten to maybe, possibly die — but only if everything goes terribly wrong, and as a very last resort. To merit any kind of attention, the common man has to go the whole hog and actually kill him or herself. Hence, while Kejriwal, Hazare et al threaten starve until death, a Tariq Ahmad Rather sets himself, his wife, two sons and mother on fire because his family is starving — and then is charged by the police for attempting suicide.

On the other hand, the mighty authorities can choose to ignore plebian suicides when required. Like those 19 farmers in the Cauvery Delta who — in the words of the Tamil Nadu government  — met an untimely death “due to a variety of reasons from old age, family problems to accidents.”

The good news for Kejriwal and his admirers is that his latest fast is unlikely to require such unseemly fudging of facts. While the hunger strike is “indefinite,” it is highly unlikely to prove fatal. The upvaas instead marks the birth of a new trend: fasting as political accoutrement, the must-have accessory to make your protest pop!