‘If Digged, 'Big Dam Scams' Could Be As Big As Coalgate’

By Uday Thakur / INN Live

Environmental journalist Urmi Bhattacharjee has released a research guide on dam-building in India. The report details the whole process of building dams on rivers, including their sanction and impact on life and livelihood. In conversation with INN Live, Bhattacharjee explains the politics of dams and the risks of building big dams without proper assessments.

Edited excerpts from an exclusive interview:

UPA Anti-Terror ‘Strategy’: When Doing Nothing Looks Like Success

According to the South Asia Terrorism expertise database, terrorism and insurgency-related fatalities in India have fallen from a peak of 5,839 in 2001 to 804 in 2012. Indeed, the decline has been sustained in each year since 2001, with a significant reversal of the trend only in 2005, and a marginal reversal in 2008.

The most dramatic drop has, of course, been in Jammu and Kashmir, for long the country’s worst insurgency, which witnessed a collapse from 4,507 fatalities in 2001 to 117 in 2012 (down from 183 in 2011, and 375 in 2010).

For a while, it appeared that a rampaging Maoist rebellion would escalate to fill up the gap, as fatalities surged from 675 in 2005 to 1,180 in 2010. Worse, the Maoists appeared to be expanding their theatres of operation at an unprecedented pace, confronting India with the most widespread insurgency of its Independent history. By 2010, 223 districts (out of a total of 636) in 20 states were thought to be affected by varying levels of Maoist ‘activity’, though only some 65 of these witnessed any recurrent violence. But the Maoist insurgency also appears to be in retreat. Total fatalities in Maoist violence dropped to 367 in 2012, even as the number of afflicted districts shrank to 173.

The broad trends in the chronically-troubled North-east have also been salubrious, with total fatalities declining from a recent peak of 1,051 in 2005 to 317 in 2012. Disturbing proclivities, however, do persist. The Maoists have extended their presence into this unstable region and are creating new partnerships with its fractious and collapsing insurgencies.

Some states, most prominently including Manipur, see a cyclical trend in violence. So, while fatalities were down to 190 in 2002, they rose almost steadily thereafter, to 485 in 2008, dropping to just 65 in 2011, and rising, again, to 111 in 2012. Fratricidal turf wars between various rebel Naga factions have also seen a spike in killings in this state, from 15 in 2011, to 65 in 2012.

Attacks by Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorists across India recorded a remarkable decline, with just one incident in 2012 outside J&K – a low intensity blast in Pune. 2011 had registered three such attacks outside J&K, with at least 42 killed. 2008, of course, saw such incidents peaking, with seven attacks, and 364 fatalities, of which 195 (166 civilians, 20 SF personnel and nine terrorists) were accounted for by the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack alone.

It is natural, in the present circumstances, to attribute this broad trend towards internal security stabilisation – at least in part – to state policy. The argument, crudely put, is that the government must be doing something that is right if all our insurgencies are collapsing, and Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorists are in evident retreat, both in J&K and across the rest of the country. Such an assessment, the argument goes, cannot be undermined by an occasional attack, such as the 21 February 2013, twin blasts in Hyderabad, which killed 16.

Indeed, some supporters of the present United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime have sought to interpret the contrast between insurgency-terrorism-related fatalities under the preceding National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and the current trend as evidence of the great sagacity of strategy and policy that the former has brought to internal security management.

Curiously, as an aside, it is interesting to notice that, on the one hand, the government and its supporters argue that declines in violence are the result of the ‘success’ of ‘policies’ and ‘strategies’ (neither of which appear to have been defined in any distinctive terms, or to have been implemented on any measurable parameters); on the other, at the first sign of trouble – the Hyderabad blasts, for instance – they insist that it is necessary to create the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) if terrorism has to be fought successfully.

But if recent improvements in trends are the consequences of ‘good policies and strategies’ – obviously implemented by existing institutions – the NCTC is, evidently, not necessary. On the other hand, if the NCTC is, indeed, necessary, then the declines in terrorist violence would need to be attributed, not to any great strategic coherence or operational effectiveness, but to extraneous factors for which the government cannot claim credit.

The Hyderabad blasts, in fact, tell us precisely that our vulnerabilities remain undiminished, and that it is in a wide range of other factors – and not in any spectacular augmentation of state capacities and capabilities, or any impressive evolution of national strategy – that we would find explanations of the broad decline of insurgent and terrorist violence in India.

This is not to say that the state and its agencies have done nothing, or that there has been no capacity augmentation. Rather, what is being done does not constitute any radical departure from what was being done earlier – with very limited impact – and capacity augmentations have been far too modest to register any remarkable improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of CI-CT capabilities and responses.

To take one obvious and visible parameter, between 2008 (the year of the 26/11 attacks) and 2011 (the last year for which credible data is available) the police-population ratio rose from 128 to just 137; significant, of course, but nowhere near the strengths required even for peacetime policing – which, on international estimates, should range well above 220 per 100,000.

Various institutional innovations, prominently including the Multi Agency Centre (MAC) and the Joint Task Force on Intelligence (JTFI) in the IB, and the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS), which were to provide the core of augmented CI-CT capabilities, remain mere shells, years after they were sanctioned, with no measurable impact on ground level capabilities of the state.

Of course, state and central agencies have made continuous arrests and have successfully identified and neutralised a wide range of the state’s enemies on a fairly regular basis. However, such preventive operations and arrests were also carried out when violence was rising, and there is no evidence to suggest that the plummeting trends in insurgent and terrorist violence are the consequence of extraordinary operational efficacy.

It is, indeed, safe to say that, in the main – though not in their entirety – the improvements in India’s internal security environment are consequences of factors extraneous to the strategies, policies and actions of the state and its agencies; unless, of course, an attitude of majestic indolence can be regarded as ‘strategy’, ‘policy’ or ‘action’. It would, in fact, not be far from the truth to say that India has, more often than not, simply worn out its enemies by its indifference, than defeated them by the vigour and sagacity of its responses.

There are, of course, exceptions to this broad observation – Punjab, Tripura and Andhra Pradesh provide dramatic examples of what the state and its agencies can do when they actually find the clarity of purpose and the determination. But the lessons of these theatres have largely been ignored in a muddled discourse on ‘developmental’ and ‘political’ solutions, and by those who have given vent to immature anti-Maoist fantasies on ‘clear, hold and develop’, or to theatrical institutional innovations such as the NCTC, to the abiding neglect of the nuts and bolts of capacities and capabilities of the country’s intelligence and policing apparatus on the ground.

It is not a coincidence that the sustained reversal in terrorism-insurgency trends commenced after 2001. The 9/11 attacks in the US signalled the beginning of a new age in which the opportunistic ‘tolerance of terrorism’ that had marked the attitudes of the West was brought to an end. The enveloping global environment became abruptly hostile to those who used extreme violence to secure their political ends, and to the states that sponsored them.

The attacks of 9/11 also brought the massive US-led Western intervention in Afghanistan, and its gradual impact on the wider AfPak region. The result was progressively rising pressure on the Pakistani covert establishment to end at least visible levels of support to terrorism on India soil, as well as the impact of escalating domestic destabilisation that came to afflict Pakistan as a result of the ‘blowback’ of its support to international terrorism and its campaigns in Afghanistan.

A shift in Pakistan’s strategic priorities, towards the more urgent imperatives of its campaigns in Afghanistan, and away from Kashmir and India, further weakened India-directed terrorist impulses, providing tremendous relief, particularly in J&K. It remains the case, however, that Pakistan has kept anti-India terrorist formations of various hues alive and in reserve, hoping that a Western withdrawal from the region will reopen opportunities for a renewal of its Indian campaign.

The collapse of the regime of ‘tolerance of terrorism’ had it wider impact on other insurgencies in India. It was in December 2003 that the multiple insurgencies of India’s North-east received their first body blow, when the groups – led by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) – were expelled from Bhutanese soil, where they had received safe haven for years. After 2007, the environment became hostile in Bangladesh as well, and after the Sheikh Hasina Wajed government came to power in 2009, Bangladesh intensified action against the North-east insurgent groups and even dismantled the structure of Islamist extremist and terrorist groupings that had crystallised on its soil.

Large proportions of the North-east insurgent leadership were simply handed over to Indian authorities. Others found surrender or negotiations with the state more attractive, against the now-rising uncertainties of a fugitive life. The degraded insurgencies of the North-east are now also afflicted by an exhaustion brought about by the protracted and ponderous insensitivities of the Indian state.

Significantly, as the West grew more intolerant of their antics, insurgent groupings have been finding it difficult to secure some measure of political and propaganda space abroad, even as many of their domestic apologists have started running out of enthusiasm in the face of rising criticism. This has certainly blunted recruitment potential and the political space for extremism, once again, eroding prospects of insurgent mobilisation.

The Maoists remained substantially insulated from these developments. Reinvigorated by the merger of the People’s War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre in September 2004, the newly formed Communist Party of India – Maoist (CPI-Maoist) embarked on an ambitious adventure to “extend the people’s war throughout the country”. Over the succeeding six years, they expanded into regions that were far from the population, geographical, administrative and developmental profile of the Red Corridor areas where they had found their natural habitat.

This was a tremendous strategic miscalculation, exposing them to the obvious risks of penetration during a phase of rapid expansion, compounded by the fact that these regions were much better connected, better serviced and (relatively) better administered. The result was that the Maoists suffered massive leadership losses – for instance, at least 18 members of the 39-member Central Committee of 2007 were arrested or killed during this phase. An overwhelming proportion of these losses were far afield, in urban centres and in states where the Maoists were making tentative forays to set up their networks, and not, with only occasion exception, as a result of the vaunting ‘clear, hold and develop’, or ‘cordon and search’ operations that the Centre launched in 2009 – and that came to a virtual and abrupt end with the Chintalnar massacre of April 2010.

Much of the Maoist escalation during the 2009-10 phase was, in fact, a retaliation against the Centre’s decision to challenge them in their areas of strength, though the pre-election mischief in West Bengal also gave them space for dramatic intensification in that state. Nevertheless, it is the leadership losses that have now forced the Maoists into a tactical retreat and an effort to reconsolidate their bases in their areas of strength – the Red Corridor.

Right to the end of his tenure as Union Home Minister, P Chidambaram had repeatedly stated that, despite the enormous investments and institutional transformations he took credit for, “all of India’s cities” remained vulnerable to terrorist attack. This would be a fairly correct assessment of the overall situation even now – we remain as vulnerable today as we were on 26/11, or as our forces were at Chintalnar.

It is true that our enemies have weakened – some temporarily, some more permanently; but it would be wrong to believe that we have become significantly stronger.

Indian Democracy - Towards Positive Change

By M H Ahssan

The the machinery and conduct of elections, is robust and intact. But the 'software' of democracy, the processes by which we are governed in-between elections, is corrupt and corroded.

In India, astrologers are paid much better and respected far more than historians. But their profession is altogether more risky. Who, when the people of India went to the polls in the winter of 1951-2, could ever have predicted that this general election would be the first of very many? Not a respected Madras editor, who dismissed India's tryst with electoral democracy as the "biggest gamble in history". Not an Oxford-educated civil servant, who, when asked to supervise the polls in Manipur, wrote to his father that "a future and more enlightened age will view with astonishment the absurd farce of recording the votes of millions of illiterate people".

Nor the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, whose journal, the Organiser, was certain that Jawaharlal Nehru "would live to confess the failure of universal adult franchise in India". Sceptical about this "leap in the dark", this "precipitate dose of democracy", the Organiser complained that Nehru, "who has all along lived by slogans and stunts, would not listen".

As it happens, Nehru's faith was shared by millions of ordinary Indians. They chose to disregard the warnings of Hindu reactionaries, Oxford scholars, and English-speaking editors. A staggering 107 million Indians cast their franchise in the 1952 elections, this by far the greatest exercise of democratic will in human history. The record set then has been beaten 13 times - each time by Indians. And in the summer of 2009 the record will be superseded once more.

Before India, no society steeped in poverty and illiteracy had ever experimented with electoral democracy. Before India, no polity, large or small, had granted adults of both genders the vote at one fell swoop. In older democracies such as France, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, the privilege was first extended to rich men, later to educated men, then to all men, and finally, after a very long struggle, to women as well. Even a supposedly 'advanced' country such as Switzerland permitted its women citizens to vote only as late as 1971.

On the other hand, in independent India the franchise was immediately granted to all adults, regardless of education, wealth, gender or caste. The American constitution was adopted in 1787, but people of colour have effectively had the right to vote only since the 1960s. However, Dalits in India voted, and Dalit candidates were elected to Parliament, within two years of the writing of our own Constitution.

Electoral democracy in India was an act of faith, a challenge to logic and the received wisdom, perhaps even the biggest gamble in history. That it has now gone through so many iterations should be a matter of pride for Indians. Not least because our elections are free and fair. The Election Commission of India enjoys an enviable reputation for efficiency and neutrality. As recently as 2000, an American presidential election was decided by faulty balloting and biased judges. But we can be certain that the 2009 general election in India will more reliably reflect the will of the people.

Who will this verdict favour? Even the most trained psephologist (or astrologer) will not, I think, go so far as to offer an unambiguous answer to this question, to thus make himself hostage to a prediction that may go horribly wrong. For all one can safely say about the next general elections is that, like the six that immediately preceded it, no single party will get a majority in Parliament. Three options present themselves - first, that the Congress and its allies will somehow cobble together a majority; second, that the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies shall beat them to the magic figure of 272; third, that neither alliance will achieve its aim, thus making room for a minority 'third front' government propped up by either the BJP or the Congress.

The rise of coalition governments is a product of the deepening of Indian democracy. Our country is too large and too diverse to be adequately represented by a single party, or to be ruled in turn by two rival 'national' parties either. Thus communities that claim disadvantage on the basis of region, language or caste have articulated their grievances through political parties set up to represent their interests. At the local level, these identity-based parties have sometimes promoted a more inclusive politics, by giving space to groups previously left out of governance and administration.

However, when aggregated at the level of the nation, these regional diversities lead to irrational and excessively short-term outcomes. Despite their grand-sounding names, neither the United Progressive Alliance nor the National Democratic Alliance has a coherent ideology that serves to bind the alliance's partners. Smaller parties join the BJP or the Congress on a purely opportunistic basis, seeking to extract profitable ministerships or subsidies to vote banks in exchange for political support.

This historian is hesitant to assume the role of an astrologer, but less hesitant to stake his claim to be a citizen. As I said, we should all take pride in the fact that after 60 testing years of freedom we are still somewhat united and somewhat democratic. But we might take less pride in the conduct of our political parties and politicians. The 'hardware' of Indian democracy, by which I mean the machinery and conduct of elections, is robust and intact. The 'software' of democracy, by which I mean the processes by which we are governed in-between elections, is corrupt and corroded.

What might be done to redeem this? How might the political process be made more efficient and more sensitive to the needs of the citizens? Here are a few concrete suggestions for how we may improve Indian politics in the year 2009 and beyond:

First, promote bipartisanship on issues of national security and foreign policy. The Congress and the BJP are equally guilty here. When Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited Srinagar, as the first prime minister to do so in more than a decade, Sonia Gandhi asked the Congress ministers in the state government to boycott his speech. More recently, when several years of peace were threatened by the Amarnath controversy, L K Advani worked to intensify the conflicts between Jammu and the Kashmir valley, when he could have instead chosen to collaborate with the government to resolve them. On the question of terrorism, too, the BJP and the Congress seek to wound the other party rather than to make common cause in the national interest. When the idea of India is itself in peril, there must be no place for the politics of vindictive opposition.

Second, promote lateral entry into government. One reason Western states are better run than ours is that top jobs are not a monopoly of party apparatchiks and civil servants. Rather, qualified technologists, lawyers, entrepreneurs and journalists are encouraged to enter government in posts suited to their skills. Why should a successful businessman not be eligible to be made commerce secretary, or a brilliant scientist education secretary?

Third, restore Parliament as a theatre for reasoned debate, which it indeed was for the first quarter-century of its existence. The first few Lok Sabhas met for some 150 times a year; now, we are lucky if Parliament convenes for 80 days a year. And when they are not on holiday, the members of parliament seek not to speak themselves but to stop others from speaking.

Fourth, put pressure on political parties to voluntarily adopt a retirement age. No one more than 70 years of age should be permitted by their party to contest elections or hold office. In a young country and fast-moving world, to have octogenerians running state governments or seeking to be prime minister simply won't do.

Fifth, act on the EC's suggestion and include, on the ballot paper, the category "None of the above", to be inserted after the list of candidates for each constituency. The right not to vote, and to make it known that an individual will not vote , is a natural extension of the democratic right to choose a particular candidate or party to represent oneself.

As the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks has underlined, the disenchantment with politicians runs deep in India. However, the slogans that currently express this disgust - "Jail all corrupt politicians", "Do not pay your taxes", and so on - are either wholly negative, or wholly impractical, or both. On the other hand, the proposals outlined above are both positive as well as realistic. They are intended to make Indian democracy something more than the periodic exercise of the popular right to vote.

That right is, of course, indispensable - and we should be thankful that, unlike some other countries in our neighbourhood, we can exercise it yet again in 2009. But we cannot be content with this. And so, in the interval between the 15th and the 16th general elections, let us promote bipartisanship in foreign policy, encourage talented professionals to enter government, restore the integrity of Parliament, send old politicians into a dignified retirement, and add, to the right to vote, the right not to vote as well.

Focus: Why India Should Stop Celebrating Teacher’s Day?

By RAGINI KHANNA | INNLIVE

We have all had great teachers who have shaped our lives. Yet, we can’t pretend that India’s education system is not broken. Most of it has to do with teachers. Indian school students famously don’t ask questions in class. If you ask questions, you are a problem child. When there is rote learning to see you through examinations, why do you need to ask questions?

Terrorism in India: An Uncertain Relief

By M H Ahssan

While India's relations with most of her neighbours remain fraught with tensions, her most urgent security crises remain overwhelmingly internal. Indeed, even international friction increasingly articulates itself through sub-conventional and terrorist wars that are predominantly internal, in that they manifest themselves principally on Indian soil. Islamist extremist terrorism sourced from Pakistan and, over the past few years, increasingly from Bangladesh, falls into this category.

A relief, in numbers
The recent trajectory of internal conflicts in India has been mixed. Overall, fatalities connected with terrorism and insurgency declined marginally from 2,765 in 2006 to 2,598 in 2007, and dramatically, from their peak at 5,839 in 2001.

In Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), for over a decade and a half the bloodiest theatre of terrorism in the country, there was strong relief, with terrorism-related fatalities – at 777 – falling below the 'high intensity conflict' mark of a thousand deaths for the first time since 1990. At peak in 2001, fatalities in J&K had risen to 4,507. Clearly, 2007 brought tremendous relief to the people of the state, but a great deal remains to be achieved before normalcy is restored.

In India's troubled Northeast, wracked by multiple insurgencies, the situation worsened considerably, with fatalities more than doubling, from 427 in 2006 to 1,019 in 2007, principally because of a dramatic escalation in terrorist activities in Assam and Manipur.

Effects of the war on terror
The numbers alone, however, do not give a clear picture of the magnitude of the challenges confronting New Delhi. Indeed, the sheer spread of Islamist terrorist incidents across India – linked to groups that originally operated exclusively within J&K – is now astonishing, with incidents having been engineered in widely dispersed theatres virtually across the country.

The trend in J&K has little correlation with specific changes in operational strategies or tactics, or with the range of 'peace initiatives' the Government has undertaken domestically and with Pakistan. This is demonstrated by the fact that the downward trend in violence has been consistently sustained since 2001, irrespective of the transient character of relationships between India and Pakistan, or any escalation or decline of operations within J&K, and has been maintained even through periods of escalating tension and provocative political rhetoric. This trend commenced immediately after the 9/11 attacks in the US and the subsequent threat by the US for Pakistan to "be prepared to be bombed back into the Stone Age."

It was this threat, a steady build-up of international pressure, and intense international media focus on Pakistan's role in the sponsorship of terrorism, which combined to force Pakistan to execute a U-turn in its policy on Afghanistan, and dilute visible support to terrorism in J&K. Thereafter, the unrelenting succession of crises in Pakistan have undermined the country's capacities to sustain past levels of terrorism in J&K – particularly since a large proportion of troops had to be pulled back from the Line of Control and International Border for deployment in increasingly violent theatres in Balochistan, NWFP and the FATA areas. Pakistan's creeping implosion has undermined the establishment's capacities to sustain the 'proxy war' against India at earlier levels.

Regrettably, if Western attention is diverted from the region, or if the Islamists in Pakistan are able to carve out autonomous capacities and regions, free of their dependence on the state's covert agencies, or if there is a radical escalation in the 'global jihad' in the wake of the proposed US withdrawal from Iraq in the foreseeable future, the 'jihad' in Kashmir and across India could, once again, intensify dramatically.

Bad governance and marginalization
Similarly, there is overwhelming evidence that the limited 'gains' in terms of declining Maoist violence outside Andhra Pradesh, are the result, not of any significant initiatives on the part of the state's agencies, but rather, of a Maoist decision to focus on political and mass mobilisation in order to "intensify the people's war throughout the country, intending to cumulatively cover virtually the length and breadth of India.

Far from confronting this subversive onslaught, the incompetence of Governments – most dramatically the West Bengal Government and its actions in Nandigram, but less visibly in several other States – has presented the Maoists with proliferating opportunities to deepen subversive mobilization and recruitment.

Despite the dramatic macroeconomic growth experienced over the past decade and a half, vast populations have remained outside the scope of minimal standards on a wide range of developmental indices. Indeed, the processes of 'development' have themselves been severely disruptive; what we are witnessing today is at once a process of globalisation and marginalisation; the rise of oppressed castes through political processes, and parallel increases in the intensity of oppression; unimagined wealth and distressing poverty.

Need stronger political mandate
Nevertheless, in at least two major theatres of insurgency, Tripura in the Northeast and Andhra Pradesh in the South, local administrations have backed the police to execute extraordinarily successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Clearly, where the will and the vision exist, the Indian state has the capacity to combat violence and terrorism.

Unfortunately, a widening crisis of governance afflicts much of India today, with a continuous erosion of administrative capacities across wide areas. There is, moreover, an insufficient understanding within the security establishment of the details of insurgent strategy and tactics, and the imperatives of the character of response. The deficiencies of perspective and design are visible in the fact that no comprehensive strategy has yet been articulated to deal with insurgency and terrorism. The security forces have, at great cost in lives, made dramatic gains from time to time, but there have been continuous reverses, usually as a result of repeated political miscalculations and the refusal to provide the necessary mandate to the forces operating against the extremists.

Burning Issue: How Exactly Does The Indian Media Define A Terrorist?

By M H AHSSAN | INNLIVE

The English-language media's use of the term seems to be dictated by muscular nationalism and an anti-Kashmir bias rather than any objective parameters.

On July 10, India woke up to startling pictures of massive crowds at the funeral of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in Tral, Kashmir.

Anna Hazare's Confused 'Gandhism' On 'Land Ordinance'

The Land Acquisition Ordinance has been a subject of much debate. There are differences between the government and the opposition over the finer nuances of the bill. 

However, instead of a reasoned debate and discussion which can result in a compromise, the opposition is piggybacking on the agitation started by Anna Hazare. This is wrong and dangerous. 

A natural question that arises is: why is Anna wrong now and why wasn’t he wrong when he started his agitation for the Jan Lokpal Bill? The answer is simple. Corruption is a plague that no one in their right minds would support.

TERROR HAVEN: THE NASTY AND THE NORTHEAST

By M H Ahssan / Shillong

Manir Khan's 'operational area' was Assam. The sub-inspector with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence had executed two 'assignments' in the state. But he was third time unlucky, as Indian sleuths nabbed him from west Tripura in July 2010. 

Khan told interrogators that his duty was to ferry back “quality information” for better “tactical appreciation” of cross-national issues to his masters in Pakistan. In his initial visits, Khan had carried out “feasibility recces” of the Tripura corridor connecting Bangladesh-Tripura and Assam, says an interrogation report. 

India 2009 Elections - Information

The 15th Lok Sabha Election of India is scheduled to be held by the month of May 2009. The maximum strength of Lok Sabha or the lower house of the Indian Parliament is 552, comprising 530 members who represent the States, up to 20 members who stand for the Union Territories and not more than 2 members from the Anglo-Indian Community who are nominated by the President.

The India Election 2009 will be contested on new constituency boundaries for the first time in over 30 years and the change was implemented on the findings of the Delimitation Commission.

Some of the major changes include merging of areas of various constituencies to eradicate population inconsistencies between different seats and reservation and de-reservation of seats. But, for the time being, the Government of India has postponed delimitation in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Jharkhand, Manipur and Nagaland.

The National Democratic Alliance comprising the BJP and its allies officially elected L. K. Advani as their candidate for Prime Ministership for general election 2009 on January 23rd, 2008.

The Indian National Congress (INC) and its allies though haven�t officially announced their candidate for Prime Ministership for India Election 2009; one speculation is Rahul Gandhi, the son of the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

Apart from them, the other political parties haven't yet officially announced their Prime Ministerial candidates for the 2009 India election.

Genetic Isolation in Casteist India Could Could Render Some People More Vulnerable to Disease

There is reduced genetic variation among the people of some subpopulations because they have been genetically isolated due to various factors – such as caste.

The occurrence of genetic diseases in certain subpopulations in India and other countries in South Asia is well known. Indian scientists now suspect that this could be due to genetic isolation caused by endogamous marriages over generations.

Security Personnel: The Planning For A 'Safe' Elections

By Likha Veer | INNLIVE Bureau

Politicians are busy either lauding or criticising Mr. Narendra Modi. We, the junta, are busy clicking selfies at poll booths. And the media is busy deciding if NDA will win over 300 seats or will AAP spoil everyone’s party. Amidst the entire hullabaloo what all of us have overlooked is the contribution of the security personnel deployed across the country.

The voting for 16th Lok Sabha elections has been split into 9 phases for a reason. This is arguably the largest democratic exercise in the entire planet, and ensuring it is safe and secure is a gargantuan challenge.

Naxal Corridor Becomes Suicide Zone For Security Forces

By Mithilesh Mishra | Raipur

India's Red Corridor has turned into a suicide zone for our security personnel fighting Maoists of central and south-central India. Death can surprise our soldiers any time as rebels in the Red zone are inducting experts to carry out explosions in the most innovative ways. The terrain of the area itself poses extreme danger as the rebels manage to operate from deep inside the jungles.

Rebels in the Red zone are killing more soldiers than are dying in all insurgency-hit areas put together. A soldier fighting Maoists deep inside the jungles of central and south-central India is far more likely to be killed than his uniformed brothers taking on militants in Jammu and Kashmir or insurgents in the North-East. 

Telangana: Politically Critical And Constitutionally Complex

By Madabhushi Sridhar (Guest Writer)

High command, Core Committee, Congress Working Committee, Amendment to the Constitution…etc are being discussed to find a solution to crisis around Telangana.  Congress is struggling to come out of killing indecision and unending assement of its prospects in coming elections.  The possible advancing of elections is another factor which makes ‘high command’ to act quickly. Not only for Congress for almost all main parties in Andhra Pradesh Telangana is a complex political issue. It is also Constitutionally complex problem for Union Government.

Hyderabad Exhibition Blues: A Mishmash Called 'Numaish'

What Sunburn is to Goa, Numaish is to Hyderabad. Numaish, or the All India Industrial Exhibition, is an event to be reckoned with. This annual exhibition that started in 1938 has touched the life of every Hyderabadi and has formed a bond which is, it can only be said, everlasting.

Hyderabad, which is all about Nizam and Numaish, wears a festive look during this season. The calendars for January and February are booked and plans are made, budgets are saved, leaves are spared to visit the All India Industrial Exhibition.

India 2009 Elections - Information

The 15th Lok Sabha Election of India is scheduled to be held by the month of May 2009. The maximum strength of Lok Sabha or the lower house of the Indian Parliament is 552, comprising 530 members who represent the States, up to 20 members who stand for the Union Territories and not more than 2 members from the Anglo-Indian Community who are nominated by the President.

The India Election 2009 will be contested on new constituency boundaries for the first time in over 30 years and the change was implemented on the findings of the Delimitation Commission.

Some of the major changes include merging of areas of various constituencies to eradicate population inconsistencies between different seats and reservation and de-reservation of seats. But, for the time being, the Government of India has postponed delimitation in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Jharkhand, Manipur and Nagaland.

The National Democratic Alliance comprising the BJP and its allies officially elected L. K. Advani as their candidate for Prime Ministership for general election 2009 on January 23rd, 2008.

The Indian National Congress (INC) and its allies though haven�t officially announced their candidate for Prime Ministership for India Election 2009; one speculation is Rahul Gandhi, the son of the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

Apart from them, the other political parties haven't yet officially announced their Prime Ministerial candidates for the 2009 India election.

Why Indian police fails at crowd control?

The Delhi high court on Wednesday slammed Delhi Police for imposing Section 144 CrPC during the Nirbhaya rape protests instead of handling law and order. On December 22 and 23, cops had used batoncharge, teargas and water cannons on people who had gathered at India Gate to protest. Around the same time, police in Manipur opened fire at protesters demanding the arrest of an NSCN (IM) commander. A journalist was killed in the firing. 

 Clearly, police in India are inept at crowd control. They resort to brutal methods at the slightest provocation. Why? 
    
Experts say the issue could be about not putting the right people in charge. “Training has always been a lacuna, but it’s also about putting the wrong people on the job. Units trained in hardcore anti-insurgency operations are put in charge of crowd control all of a sudden. These men are trained to use their firearms, not batons. The policeman does what he is trained to do; he may not always know what he is supposed to do under the given circumstances,” said a senior officer of Assam police, requesting anonymity. 
    
The crisis at India Gate could have been averted by using mounted police, aver officials from other forces. But additional DCP and PRO of Delhi Police Rajan Bhagat clarified, “We didn’t use our mounted unit as that would have put our animals at risk. The crowd was violent and hurling stones and brickbats. Many of our colleagues were injured and one of them died.” 
    
An officer in the elite President’s Bodyguard added that the presence of a horse “may deter a crowd from getting violent; but if it does, the horse could get fidgety and bolt, resulting in a stampede. You don’t want that in a civilian situation, do you?” 
    
Cops abroad, though, use their mounted units to break up protests. They have also been taking lessons from history. The ‘shield wall’ or ‘phalanx formation’, a battle tactic used by the Persian Sparabara, Greek hoplites and Roman legions inancient times, has been a favourite among riot police in advanced countries. London police, in particular, experimented with the Anglo-Saxon shield wall, which had troubled the Vikings at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. In a simulation attack, cops found that even heavily armed protesters couldn’t break past this wall.
    
They are also looking for ‘less lethal’ weapons of riot control. For instance, the British Home Office is focusing on a new chemical called ‘discriminating irritant projectile’ or Dip, which would be loaded with CS gas, pepper spray or another irritant. Another interesting weapon is “skunk oil” — foul-smelling liquids fired in the form of pellets. So intense would be the odour that anyone hit by such a pellet would want to go home and change. 
    
Perhaps it’s time police in India followed their example. But there are hurdles here. 
    
“Many proposals for modernization got caught in red tape. Our riot gear isn’t anything to write home about. That’s why so many policemen were hurt in Delhi. We are still using archaic rubber bullets or baton rounds and are yet to use plastic bullets,” said an IPS officer in charge of riot training.

EXCLUSIVE: 'India Is Less Hungry Now'

An NSS survey shows that almost all people are now reporting eating two square meals a day. So why then do we need a universal Food Security Bill? In what could further roil the bitter poverty debate in India, a government survey shows that close to 99 percent of Indians say they are getting two square meals a day.

This could also beg the question – is there a need for a universal food security legislation, as the UPA seems so keen on legislating?

The National Sample Survey on Perceived Adequacy of Food Consumption in Indian Households shows that the proportion of rural households saying they are getting two square meals a day throughout the year has increased from 94.5 percent to 98.9 percent between 1993-94 and 2009-10. The proportion of urban households saying the same increased from 98.1 percent to 99.6 percent.

Correspondingly, there has been a decline in the proportion of households saying they did not get two square meals in any month or got it only in some months. Only 0.2 percent of rural households said that they did not get two square meals in any month in 2009-10, against 0.9 percent in 1993-94. In the urban areas, no household said it did not get adequate meals in any month in 2009-10, against 0.5 percent in 1993-94.

These figures will be laughed out by all of us who know that there are a lot of people going hungry out there. If the survey is right, we may well ask, how come India ranks 65th in the Global Hunger Index, below Sudan, Rwanda and Burkina Faso? Can 355 million people who get to spend less than Rs 30 a day on food, medicines and education actually say they get adequate food?

Let’s get things in perspective. One, the survey isn’t about any income or poverty line drawn arbitrarily by economists ensconced in ivory towers. Nor is it based on hard data on certain indicators, as in the case of the Global Hunger Index. It is a perception-based survey. That is, households were asked whether they had two square meals a day every day throughout the year.

The survey, the report points out, did not set any standards of food adequacy.  “How much and what kind of food should be considered as adequate was left to the informant’s judgment.” So it is possible that for some people, just two dry rotis with an onion could be one square meal. Getting this twice a day will be two square meals. So let’s factor that skew in.

Two, this is a sample survey covering a little over one lakh households across different income and social groups in rural and urban India, and not a census, where each and every household is covered. So it’s quite possible for 99 percent households to say that they are getting two square meals a day and for large numbers to face near-starvation conditions.

The right way to look at the survey is to see it as the trend over different time periods. The increase in the number of people reporting that they get adequate food throughout the year and the decline in those who say they don’t is steady. So in each survey, the first category has increased and the second decreased bit by bit.

It is this that is important, regardless of what the poverty industry would like us to believe – that we are going downhill. Just as it is important to see that irrespective of the formula used to estimate poverty, there has been a significant reduction in poverty levels in recent years.

Disaggregated data in the survey shows that some sections are still not better off than others. In rural areas, agricultural and other labour accounted for a higher share of those saying they did not get adequate meals all through the year. In the urban areas, casual labour and the self-employed (hawkers, rickshaw pullers, cobblers etc) accounted for a larger share of the same category. Similarly, scheduled castes and tribes form a larger proportion of this category in both the rural and urban areas.

Wouldn’t, then, it be better for any food security legislation to focus on these categories rather than including people who may be getting more than two proper square meals a day?

In four states – Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu – more rural households than urban households said they got two square meals a day throughout the year. The report doesn’t give any reasons for this, but this could be either because people may be growing their own food in rural areas or social support systems are more robust in villages than in towns.

There’s a wake up call in the report for those ruing the dismantling of the socialist-influenced economic management in 1991. West Bengal, with its three uninterrupted decades of communist rule, had the lowest number of rural households saying they got adequate food through the year – 95.4 percent. Even Odisha did better with 96 percent. The proportion of agricultural labour households in West Bengal reporting that they did not get adequate food was 6.9 percent. Only Manipur and Odisha did worse in this respect.

The states with the highest proportion of families saying they got adequate meals through the year are, predictably, the high growth, investment friendly states – Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan (where 99.8 per cent of rural households and 100 percent of urban households said they were satisfied) and Tamil Nadu.

There’s a lesson in this, isn’t there?

Kashmir Unrest: Why Are The Crowd Control Failures Of 2010 Being Repeated In 2016?

By LIKHAVEER } INNLIVE

Despite scores of casualties six years ago, the forces continue to use pellet guns that can blind, maim and kill.

“Despite the curtailment of militant activities in Jammu & Kashmir, the public order dimension in the state has become a cause for serious concern. We need to revisit standard operating procedures and crowd control measures to deal with public agitations with non-lethal, yet effective and more focused measures.”

Focus: Crisis For India's Orphans As Adoption Is Being Abandoned By Parents And Neglected By Government

Abandoned by their parents and now neglected by governments — there is no end to the suffering of over 50,000 orphans in India. 

The adoption rate within the country as well as those by foreign nationals in India has gone down by nearly 50 per cent in the last five years. 

What adds to the grim situation is the disparity between South Indian states and the rest of the country in terms of adoption of children. 

The Draft Wetlands Rules a Aim To Protect India's Wetlands, Is This The Best Way?

By M H AHSSAN | INNLIVE

The "fishing cat" is a lesser-known, small wild cat. As its name suggests, it feeds on fish - primarily found in water bodies like wetlands, swamps, rivers etc. Already classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the fishing cat - and several other species - could be severely imperiled if the proposed Draft Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2016, replacing the previous Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2010, is implemented by the Ministry of Environment , Forests and Climate Change.