ISLAMIC HERITAGE - PHOTO FEATURE

By M H Ahssan

From Kerala to Kashmir and from Tripura to Gujarat, India has a vast and rich heritage of Islamic architecture.



Taj Mahal, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, 17th century.

India is an enchanting land watered by the streams of compassionate philosophies since ancient times. Flourishing communities of the Islamic, Christian, Zoroastrian and Jewish faiths exist here. The Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina and Sikh faiths were born here. It has a great cosmopolitan heritage of culture and art.



The best-recognised monument in the Indian subcontinent is the Taj Mahal, the tomb of Arjumand Banu Begum (also known as Mumtaz Mahal), wife of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. He was also later laid to rest here. The pearly clarity of the white marble structure acquires different hues with the changing colour of light, from sunrise to sunset.

Although Mughal architecture of north India is famous, the fascinating richness of Islamic architectural heritage in other parts of the country is not so well known. The vastness of India's Islamic architectural heritage is unbelievable. India has more beautiful medieval Islamic architectural heritage than any other country. This is a fact which neither Indians nor the rest of the world is fully aware of.



QUTB MINAR, DELHI, early 13th century. In 1206, Mohammed Ghori was assassinated and his realm was divided among his slaves. One of them, Qutbuddin Aibak, assumed control over Delhi. He built the Qutb Minar near the Quwwat-ul-Islam ("might of Islam") mosque. One of the world's tallest minarets, it is 72.5 metres high.

It is a known fact that the most famous Islamic monument of the world, the Taj Mahal, is in India. But what is not equally well known is that one of the oldest mosques in the world is also in India, in Kerala. In fact, India has a vast and rich Islamic architectural heritage, from Kerala in the south to Kashmir in the north, from Tripura in the east to Gujarat in the west.



AGRA FORT, UTTAR Pradesh, 16th-17th century. Akbar, one of the greatest Mughal emperors (reign 1556-1605), was a brilliant intellectual and ruler. A remarkable monarch whose empire rivalled that of Asoka, he built a network of fortresses and palaces between 1565 and 1571. The first of these was the fort at Agra. His successors Jahangir and Shah Jahan added many sections within the fort. Here is a part of the white marble section of Agra Fort, which was built during the reign of Shah Jahan.

Islamic architecture is characterised by a few visible symbols. One is the arch, which frames the space; the second symbol is the dome, which looms over the skyscape; and the third is the minaret, which pierces the skies. Minarets were actually symbols in the middle of deserts. They represented fire, which was lit atop them to guide travellers. The dome represents the infinite and also the sky. As tomb architecture represents both the finite and the infinite, the dome has a very important role to play.



GATEWAY OF AKBAR'S Tomb, Sikandra, near Agra, Uttar Pradesh, 17th century. The impressive structure was built by his son Jahangir, who closely supervised the work, which was completed in 1613. Akbar did not impose his faith on his subjects. He forged matrimonial ties with Rajput rulers. Some of his closest confidants and advisers followed faiths other than his own.

Islam did not come to India from the north as is commonly believed. It came through Arab traders to the Malabar region in Kerala, and Muslims flourished as a trading community there. You can still see traces of that community amongst the Moplas of Kerala, who trace their ancestry to the Arabs.



ZIARAT OF SHAH Hamadan, Srinagar, Kashmir. In the mountainous kingdom of Kashmir, Islamic architecture was heavily influenced by ancient Hindu and Buddhist stone architecture. Wood was used extensively in the mosques and tombs of the Kashmir Valley. Shah Hamadan from Persia is known to have laid the foundations of Islam in the Kashmir Valley. The saint is deeply revered by the people. Built on the bank of the river Jhelum in Srinagar, the ziarat is a beautiful example of Kashmiri wooden architecture. It is in the ziarats of the saints of Kashmir that the people of the valley worship. Over the centuries, both Hindus and Muslims have equally revered the ziarats.

Since ancient times, India has had considerable trade contact with the Arab world. In the 1st century A.D., the Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote about the existing routes to India and the July monsoon winds that traders used to catch to reach the Indian coast. He spoke about a ship that left the coast of Arabia and took 40 days to reach Muziris, which was then the name of present-day Kodungalloor.



GOL GUMBAZ, BIJAPUR, Karnataka, 17th century. The Gol Gumbaz, literally meaning "Round Dome", is one of the most impressive monuments in India. Built during the reign of Muhammad Adil Shah in the mid-17th century, it is the mausoleum of the ruler. It is one of the largest domes ever made in the world.

With the advent of Islam, Arab traders became the carriers of the new faith. The first mosque in India was built at Kodungalloor by the Chera King Cheraman Perumal in A.D. 629, within the lifetime of the Prophet. This is one of the oldest mosques in the world.



TOMB OF SHER Shah Suri, Sasaram, Bihar, 16th century. Sher Shah Suri (1486-1545) defeated the Mughal emperor Humayun in 1537 and created an empire. Even though he reigned only for five years, he laid the foundations of an Indian empire for later Mughal emperors. His lasting legacy is the Grand Trunk Road that he laid from Sonagarh in Bangladesh to Peshawar in Pakistan. Of Afghan origin, Sher Shah was born in Sasaram. His tomb is situated at the centre of an artificial lake. The location of the tomb in the middle of the water is a reference to Paradise with its plentiful waters, as described in the Quran.

Kayalpattnam is an ancient town about a kilometre from the mouth of the Tamiraparani river. Arab traders built the Kodiakarai Mosque here as early as Hijri 12, or A.D. 633. It is the first mosque to be built in Tamil Nadu and ranks among the oldest mosques in the world. Kayalpattnam has many other early mosques. In fact, Kerala on the west coast of India and Tamil Nadu on the east coast have numerous mosques, made through the ages. At Nagore, on the east coast, is one of the grandest dargahs ever made.



HUMAYUN'S TOMB, DELHI. It was built in the 16th century by Haji Begum, the emperor's eldest widow. It is closely related to the previous architecture of Delhi, of the 14th and 15th centuries.

Islam came to the north of India through different invasions, starting with the invasion of Mahmud of Ghazni, who came as far as Gujarat. Thereafter, there was the peaceful contribution of different Sufi saints, traders and other individuals who moved to the northern region of India because of political instability or dynastic changes that were taking place in and around Central Asia and Afghanistan at that time. Gradually, a small community developed and increased its strength once Turkish rule was established in north India.


JAMI MASJID, CHAMPANER, Gujarat, 15th century. A new capital was built at Champaner by Sultan Mahmud Begarha towards the end of the 15th century. The Jami Masjid is one of the most striking buildings here. The symmetrical appearance of the whole is enhanced by the exquisite details of its parts. The surface is profusely decorated with fine carvings. It is one of the most exquisite monuments of Gujarat.

The Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque was the first mosque built in north India, in A.D. 1193. A number of Quranic verses are beautifully etched on the mosque. Some medieval writers say they are so beautifully carved that it looks as if they are written on wax.

MAHMUD GAWAN MADARSA, Bidar, Karnataka, 15th century. Founded in 1472 by Mahmud Gawan, the Persian minister of Muhammad Shah III, it was built by engineers and craftsmen from Gilan on the Caspian Sea. The structure closely resembles the madrassas of Persia and Uzbekistan.

The most impressive monument in the Qutb complex in present-day Delhi is the Qutb Minar itself. It was made in the early 13th century by Qutbuddin Aibak, the sultan of Delhi. At 72.5 metres, it is one of the tallest minarets in the world. The traveller Ibn Batuta, who came to India after journeying all over the Islamic empire, starting from Africa and covering Samarkand and Damascus, has recorded that nowhere in the world has there been a minaret as impressive as the Qutb Minar.



STONE JAALI, MOSQUE of Sidi Saiyyad, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, 16th century. One of the unique features of Islamic architecture in Gujarat is the use of intricate stone jaalis with exquisite carving. Naturalistic carvings of foliated designs with delicate leaves and shoots derive directly from earlier indigenous traditions.

Close to the Qutb complex is the tomb of Ghiyasuddin Balban, another 13th century ruler of Delhi. Balban ruled from 1266 to 1286. His tomb marks a very important development in the field of architecture. Before this tomb was built, a number of arches had been made in Indian Islamic buildings, but these were not “true arches”. In Balban's tomb, for the first time in India, a keystone, which is fundamental to the true load-bearing arch, was used at the top of the arch. Subsequently, the “true arch” began to be used in numerous structures across the country.



BIBI KA MAQBARA, Aurangabad, 17th century. The mausoleum of Emperor Aurangzeb's wife Rabia ul Daurani was built by her son Prince Azam Shah between 1651 and 1661. Set at the centre of a charbagh enclosure, the white marble mausoleum was inspired by the Taj Mahal. It is known as the `Taj Mahal of the Deccan'.

The Alai Darwaja was built by Allauddin Khilji as part of the extension of the Qutb complex in 1305. It is very fascinating from the point of view of architecture. In the 13th century, owing to Mongol attacks in West Asia and Central Asia, a large number of craftsmen had to flee from their lands. Many of them were given refuge in this part of India and were very fruitfully employed in the making of the Alai Darwaja. We see here the introduction of the horseshoe arch in Indian monuments.

The Deccan
Meanwhile, Islamic influence continued to grow further south, in the Deccan. The end of the 15th century saw the establishment of five sultanates in the Deccan: Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, Golconda, Bidar and Berar. The sultan of Bijapur was a descendant of the Ottoman dynasty of Istanbul. The sultan of Golconda was a Turkman prince who had taken refuge in India. The sultans were followers of the Shia sect of Islam and were close allies of the Safavid rulers of Iran. A distinct culture thus developed in the cosmopolitan community of the Deccan.


JAMA MASJID, JUNAGARH, Sourashtra, Gujarat, originally built in the 13th century. Junagarh is located at the foothills of the Girnar hills. The name literally means "old fort". The plan of this is in the Arab style, which was not repeated in Gujarat after its subsequent conquest by the Delhi Sultanate.
The streets of the Deccani sultanates were filled with Turks, Persians, Arabs and Africans. In India, the Deccan became the greatest centre of Arabic learning and literature. In fact, Iran and Central Asia only had single courts. If you were a soldier, a religious figure, an intellectual or an artistic person and you could not find a sponsor in what is now Iran or Uzbekistan, chances were that you could find some sort of patronage in the Deccan. Thus there was a continuous migration of people, ideas and artistic devices from the Near East to the Deccan.

A remarkable example of an architectural transplant from Central Asia is the madrassa of Mahmud Gawan, in Bidar, built at the end of the 15th century. It would be very hard to tell the difference between this and the madrassas of Uzbekistan or eastern Iran. The similarities between the two are not only in form or in other architectural elements such as corner minarets, the square courtyard in the middle and four great arched portals, but also in the decorations of the exterior with blue-and-white tiles.

Sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II ruled Bijapur from 1580 to 1627. He was a contemporary of the Mughal emperor Akbar. A visit to his rauza, or tomb, is a pilgrimage for someone deeply interested in Indian art, for some of the finest miniature paintings ever made in India were made during his rule.



IBRAHIM RAUZA COMPLEX, Bijapur, Karnataka, 17th century. The monumental heritage of the Deccan is distinctive and quite different from that of the Mughals. The architectural styles that are seen in Bijapur, Bidar, Gulbarga and Hyderabad are closely related to those of Persia and Turkey. Ibrahim Adil Shah II ruled the kingdom of Bijapur from 1580 to 1627. He was one of the most humane and cosmopolitan kings in history. He was a magnanimous patron of the arts. Painting, poetry and music flourished during his reign. In his autobiography, the great sultan calls himself the "son of Ganesa", a Hindu deity.
The Gol Gumbaz in Bijapur is the tomb of Sultan Muhammad Adil Shah, who ruled from A.D. 1627 to 1657. This is the largest dome ever built in the Islamic world. It is the second largest dome in the world, after the one at Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. It measures 37.92 metres on the inside.

The massive Bidar fort was built in the 14th and 15th centuries. It is one of the most formidable forts in the country. It has walls that run for 5.5 km around. Inside, it has beautiful palaces, two mosques, a madrassa, ornamental gardens and hamams.



TURKISH MAHAL, BIDAR Fort, Karnataka, 15th-16th century.
Timur, when he came to India, was struck by the beauty of its historical cities. In his autobiography, Malfujaate Taimoori, he says, “I ordered that all the artisans and clever mechanics who are masters of their respective crafts should be picked out from among the prisoners and set aside. And accordingly some thousands of craftsmen were selected to await my command. I had determined to build a Masjid-e-Jami in Samarkand, the seat of my empire, which should be without rival in any country. So I ordered that all the builders and stonemasons of India should be set apart for my own special service.” In some other records it is said that he took about 3,000 artisans from India and employed them in the construction of the Jami Masjid at Samarkand.

Mughal architecture
The dynasty founded by Babur became one of the greatest the world had seen. It ruled a vast empire whose fame spread far and wide. The culture and the art it created helped shape future developments in all spheres of life in the Indian subcontinent.

Humayun's Tomb, which might be considered the first great masterpiece of the Mughals, is very much related to the previous architecture of Delhi. It is closely linked to the Lodhi and Tuglaq architectures of the 14th and 15th centuries. Mughal architecture presents us with a fusion of local elements, building techniques, styles and traditions with imported traditions and styles. The genius of Mughal architecture is that it sustained this incredibly rich mingling of different traditions throughout its history.

Agra was the imperial capital of Akbar in the mid-16th century. The fort here was one of the most powerful in north India. In 1565, Emperor Akbar ordered the reconstruction of the fort. The fort has palaces of Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. The most prominent among all the structures are the white marble buildings of Shah Jahan. The Khas Mahal, made of pure marble, is one of these elegant buildings. It is flanked by the palaces of Shah Jahan's daughters Roshanara and Jahanara.



THE BIDAR FORT is one of the most impressive forts in the country. Completed in 1532, it was the largest architectural undertaking of the Bahamanid dynasty. It has palaces, two mosques, a madrassa and many royal tombs inside.

In 1571, Emperor Akbar decided to build a new capital city. And a magnificent city was built at a site not very far from Agra. It was called Fatehpur Sikri. This was Akbar's most ambitious architectural project. By the end of the 16th century, there were a quarter of a million people living in the new city.

In the building of Fatehpur Sikri, no cost was too much, no effort too great, for Akbar. He wished to build the city true to his conception. As a matter of fact, miniature paintings of that period show the emperor amidst the workers, supervising the construction of the city himself. Fatehpur Sikri is one of the best ordered and symmetrically laid-out cities of the entire medieval world.

The world's best-known tomb stands testimony to a timeless love story. The Taj Mahal was built in 1648 by the Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife Arjumand Banu Begum, known to the world as Mumtaz Mahal. The construction of the Taj Mahal was a stupendous engineering feat. It is built of marble and is finely inlaid with semi-precious stones. As many as 20,000 workers and master craftsmen laboured for 17 years to erect this magnificent edifice. Several hundreds of mosques and Islamic tombs of great beauty are spread throughout India.

Coming to the west of the country, in Gujarat is the World Heritage Site of Champaner of the 15th century. In the east there is the impressive Nakhoda Masjid and several others in Kolkata. There are famous dargahs in Hajo and other places in Assam. In the north-eastern region of India, in Agartala in Tripura is the beautiful Gedu Mia Ki Masjid.

In the mountainous State of Kashmir, Islamic architecture was influenced by ancient Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The resultant form was combined with influences from Persia and Turkistan. Wood was used extensively in the mosques and tombs of Kashmir.

India has a vast, living heritage of Islamic architecture. These monuments are a great treasure of India's culture and many of them are recognised as World Heritage Monuments. We see in these the confluence of local talent and inspiration from Iran, Arabia and Central Asia. These mosques, tombs, madrassas, palaces and fortresses are a unique heritage of Islamic architecture.

India’s Communist Parties Must Regain Lost Ground in the Next Elections

By Subhash Kapila

The current bleak Indian political landscape where the ruling Congress Party has miserably failed in governance in all fields despite a continuous six years in power and a listless, disunited and politically ineffective main Opposition Party, the BJP, unable to politically apply brakes on a wayward Congress Government leads one to a single inescapable conclusion.

In the first spell of Congress Government rule from 2004-2009 Congress Government’s waywardness was held in check by its compulsions to rely for political survival on the 60 odd votes of the Communist Parties which were then a part of the ruling UPA I Coalition. The ruling Congress Party was more mindful of the brakes that the Communist Parties would apply on its economic policies and personal foreign policy predilections of the Congress Prime Minister, than any opposition emerging from the BJP. The Congress Party’s unilateralism was therefore held in check by an in-house political equation within the UPA.

Regrettably, with the Communist Parties seats in Lok Sabha having been reduced considerably and the Communist Parties reluctance to unite with the BJP to present a united political opposition to Congress Government unilateralist policies, India stands robbed of any political mechanism to shackle the Congress Government’s political waywardness. The Prime Minister never tires from reeling off economic statistics of India’s economic growth but remains studiously silent on the back-breaking double digit inflation under which the lives of average Indians are reeling.

Since the BJP hardly provides any sense of optimism that it can resurrect itself to regain power in the General Elections in2014 and the Communist Parties political reluctance to be seen as one with the BJP, one can then only hope for that the Communist Parties once again regain their lost political space so that should the Congress Party once again comes into power they can only do so on the strength of a solid Communist Parties bloc.

A solid Communist Parties bloc of 60-70 seats in Parliament would also ensure that the motley collection of casteist parties from the Hindi heartland presently being exploited by the Congress Party to survive in power are not in a position to distort India’s electoral arithmetic. This political rump of casteist parties from the Hindi heartland have thrived on political corruption which provides the Congress Party to use state instruments of investigative agencies to politically coerce them to support the Government.

The Communist Parties to regain lost political space in the Parliament would have a lot of homework to do and it is not such a difficult task since there is adequate time available for the next elections and political circumstances currently obtaining can be exploited by them.

The Communist Parties need to get out of their traditional political groove of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura States and move to wider political fields all over India. There is enough economic misery and poverty in States like Assam, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Southern belt of Uttar Pradesh and even parts of Madhya Pradesh which provide fertile grounds for political expansion of Communist Parties. The strength of Communist Parties lies in their committed political cadres who can spearhead the widening of the Communist Parties political base in such areas.

The Communist Parties should adopt a cardinal principle that they would not go in for seat- sharing adjustments or support coalitions in which the Hindi belt casteist parties are involved. They have let down the Communist Parties in favor of the Congress Government to escape corruption persecutions.

The CPI (M) as the largest Communist Party has to take a lead in the direction of regaining the lost political space in Parliament. They have good educated, intelligent and articulate leaders like Prakash Karat, Brinda Karat and Sitaram Yechuri. All of them are relatively young and capable of sustained physical and mental election campaigns. What is required of them is to spend more time out of their offices in New Delhi and do political legwork in the areas mentioned above.

Needless to say that to achieve their political target of regaining lost political space would require a well-planned and co-coordinated political strategy to be sustained over a long period of time. Innovation would be required of them to catch the political imagination of a vast majority of Indians disgusted with lack of good governance by the ruling Congress Party and frustrated that the ‘Party with a Difference’ has failed to provide effective political opposition to checkmate the Congress Government’s political unilateralism.

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.

Rural Tourism: It’s A Niche That India Can Offer

By M H Ahssan

Rural India has much to offer to the world. Rich in traditions of arts, crafts and culture, rural India can emerge as important tourist spots. Those in the developed world who have a craze for knowledge about traditional ways of life, arts and crafts will be attracted to visit rural India if the concept of rural tourism is marketed well.

It is not that the concept is not workable. In absence of any promotional activity for rural tourism, thousands of foreign tourists visit rural areas in Rajasthan, Gujarat and south India every year. This itself is the proof of viability of the concept of rural tourism.

The government, of late, has realised what the rural India can offer to the world. The Tenth Plan has identified tourism as one of the major sources for generating employment and promoting sustainable livelihoods. The Union ministry of tourism in collaboration with UNDP has launched the Endogenous Tourism Project linked to the existing rural tourism scheme of the government. The UNDP has committed $ 2.5 million for the project. UNDP will help in areas of capacity building, involvement of NGOs, local communities and artisans, forge strong community-private and public sector partnerships. The the government has decided to develop necessary infrastructure for facilitating rural tourism.

So far the government has identified 31 villages across the country as tourist spots. These are - Pochampalli in Nalgonda district and Srikalahasti in Chittor district in Andhra Pradesh, Durgapur in Golaghat district and Sualkuchi in Kamrup district in Assam, Nepura in Nalanda district in Bihar, Chitrakote and Nagarnar in Bastar district in Chhattisgarh, Hodka in Kachchh district in Gujarat, Jyotisar in Kurukshetra district in Haryana, Naggar in Kullu district in Himachal Pradesh, Banavasi in Uttar Kannada district in Karnataka, Aranmulla in Pathanamthitta district and Kumbalanghi in Kochi district in Kerala, Chaugan in Mandla district and Pranpur in Ashok Nagar district in Madhya Pradesh, Sulibhanjan-Khultabad in Aurangabad district in Maharashtra, Pipili and Raghurajpur in Puri district in Orissa, Rajasansi in Amritsar district in Punjab, Neemrana in Alwar district, Samode in Jaipur district and Haldighati in Rajsamand district in Rajasthan, Lachen in North District in Sikkim, Karaikudi in Sivaganga district and Kazhugumalai in Thoothukudi district in Tamil Nadu, Kamlasagar in West Tripura district in Tripura, Bhaguwala in Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh, Jageshwar in Almora district and Mana in Chamoli district in Uttaranchal, Ballabhpur Danga in Birbhum district and Mukutmanipur in Bankura district in West Bengal.

This does not mean that India has only 31 potential tourist spots in rural areas. There are many more. These spots have been selected on pilot basis keeping in view available infrastructure. There are many other spots of potential tourist interest where adequate infrastructure needs to be developed.

Some state have by their own initiatives have begun promoting rural tourism. For instance the forest department of the Uttaranchal government has set up ‘Centre for Ecotourism and Sustainable Livelihoods’. This centre aims at capacity building of local communities and promotion of rural tourism.

The pilot project on endogenous tourism is rightly conceived with the involvement of central and state governments and all stakeholders. Concerned district administration and the local NGOs are partners. The central government has pledged assistance to the states amounting to Rs 0.5 million for developing a site for rural tourism.

The project conceives to establish common facility centres for craft persons and village ‘Kala Kendras’ (arts & craft centres) to showcase the arts and crafts, history and culture, nature and heritage of the identified sites. The project will facilitate construction of ‘Vishram Sthals’ (rest houses for tourists). These ‘Vishram Sthals’ will be made using locally available materials and traditional skills and knowledge of building and construction. With a view to provide services of global standards, local communities will be trained in different aspects of hospitability, lodging and cuisine.

Tourism is one of the major earner of foreign exchange for the country. Rural tourism will definitely add more to what we earn in foreign exchange. Rural tourism will hasten the process of development and give a chance to the village folks to interact with the outside world. It will also boost employment opportunities in rural areas and the products of rural artisan will find a ready market.

India resides in village and for the world to know the real spirit of India, it is essential to have a peep into the rural areas. The government had earlier conceived of a Buddhist Tourism Circuit comprising of places of pilgrim interest. This project is in progress. Rural India has a lot to offer to the world!

Pochampally - a hub of rural tourism: Pochampally, a village in Andhra Pradesh is today renowned worldwide for its beautiful weaves. The world knows this quaint town for its spectacular Ikkats. Spread over a charming part of the Deccan plateau, Pochampally is the largest centre for Ikkat. Tucked amid the beautiful hills, this is a result of the Bhoodan movement by Acharya Vinoba Bhave(1951) wherein land was donated by the erstwhile zamindars towards community welfare. Hence the name 'Bhoodan Pochampally', which is in fact the first village to be created by this movement. The place has been declared a Model Village due to its cleanliness and civic amenities.

‘Rural Tourism Will Succeed With Local Community Participation’
Jose Dominic, chairman, CGH Earth Group of Hotels speaks to HNN about his expansion plans and the concept of rural tourism.

CGH Earth has properties in Kerala and is now venturing into Karnataka too. Which other states are you looking at?
Jose Dominic: We are planning a 16-room heritage hotel in Karaikudi in Chettinad region of Tamil Nadu. This will be our foray into Tamil Nadu. We have taken a Chettiyar palace in a village, which will be converted into a heritage property celebrating the Chettiyar culture, their cuisine and architecture. CGH Earth believes in rural tourism, which is more authentic, more experiential and less touristic. When I say less touristic, I mean, nothing is made for the tourist. Whatever is perceived to be a tourist’s demand or need, be it architecture, food or lifestyle, is negated from the rural tourism concept. It is totally self-sufficient with the rural resources, its ideas and its character. We are also looking at Thanjavur and Madurai for expansion in Tamil Nadu.

What are your expansion strategies and investment plans?
Our strategy is to have about 12 properties in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala in the next 2-3 years. Most of them will be small properties with about 16-20 rooms. The investment towards our Karaikudi property would be about Rs 3.5 crore. For the upcoming projects, the scale could be different. A property could also cost about Rs 10-15 crore. We are in discussions with private equity funds and if it materialises, the scale will go up.

What about Andhra Pradesh?
I am yet to study the Andhra Pradesh market. If we go for a property in the state, it would definitely be near the coastline.

CGH Earth has been following the rural tourism path. What makes this segment unique?
The concept of rural tourism is not about escaping but that of fulfillment. Rural tourism has to be in small numbers because rural infrastructure cannot handle large numbers, which will end up in ruining the character of the place. The main factor for the success of rural tourism is the complete involvement of the local community. Until and unless there is total participation by the rural community along with their strong acceptance, the concept cannot survive. The entire concept has to reflect the local ethos and this is the unique bit of rural tourism.

What could be the estimated size of rural tourism in the country?
If one takes the pure leisure component leaving the MICE, VFR or business travel, then I feel, the rural tourism comprises about 60% of travellers.

A Magic Wand For Hungry Stomachs

By Sayantan Bera

NIKODAM TUTI owns a smallfarm in a village amid lush green forests, barely 50km from Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand. His one-acre land feeds five stomachs. Until two years ago, Tuti, who belongs to a tribe named Munda, grew rice, finger millets and pulses on the nonirrigated patches, yielding barely enough to feed his family for four months. He worked half the year as a construction labourer in Mumbai to make ends meet — purchasing food grains, meeting medical emergencies and affording private schooling for his two children.

Life was a continuous struggle. Crop failure or sudden illness would mean going hungry for days. But thanks to a simple process of rice cultivation introduced by an NGO in his village, Dulli, Tuti’s half acre of paddy now yields 16 quintals of rice opposed to less than three quintals earlier. In 2007, for the first time, he even managed to sell enough to repay debts.

“I now want to lease land and buy bullocks to plough my fields,” Tuti says, full of hope. His is a lesson worth emulating for India’s paddy farmers, 70 percent of whom have no access to either irrigation or mechanised inputs.

System of Rice Intensification (SRI) — the technology that has brought him the miraculous turnaround — was developed in 1983 in Madagascar. Initially, agricultural scientists shrugged off the practice saying it sounded “too good to be true”. For long, it was hard to make farmers understand that they could double their yield using one tenth the seeds and half the water in this technique. But slowly, that is changing.

The SRI is based on the principle that the rice plant doesn’t necessarily need to be submerged in water to grow. Traditionally, a nursery bed is first prepared, the seeds are sown, and the saplings are allowed to grow for 25 days, after which they are transplanted into the main field in bunches of six to seven, scattered six inches apart. But in SRI, 8-12-day-old saplings are transplanted — individually — and spaced 10 inches apart.

Young saplings adjust easily to the soil while the distance between them allows for more nutrition, unlike the traditional system which has them competing for nutrition. Less water and more spacing between plants create an ‘aerobic condition’ that promote better plant growth. SRI uses less seeds and chemical inputs, which promotes soil biotic activities in and around plant roots, making them more resistant to pests. A liberal application of compost, and weeding with a rotating hoe that aerates the soil, improve productivity with yields of eight tons per hectare — about double the present world average and thrice the Indian average.

While a kg of rice produced traditionally consumes anywhere between 3,000 to 5,000 litres of water, implementing SRI halves the requirement. Earlier considered unworkable without irrigation, SRI is now seeing results even in areas with highly sporadic rainfall and no irrigation. Recently, it was also researched that SRI can be extrapolated for sugarcane, millet and wheat. For most of India, this should be a magic wand.

In India, rice is the main agricultural crop. As much as 23 percent of the country’s total cropped area falls under rice cultivation. Therefore, at the macro level, the potential of SRI or adopting some of its ‘process’ features is immense.

“The first advantage of SRI is that a household of five to six is assured of food security round the year from less than an acre of land,” according to D Narendranath, the Program Director of PRADAN, the NGO that has been promoting SRI in eight states of eastern and central India. He says components of the technology have worked well in areas with rains but little or no access to irrigation. This, he says, is significant because as much as 44 percent of India’s rice growing areas remains non-irrigated.

PRACTICED SUCCESSFULLY in 34 countries, the potential of SRI is getting global. In India, its outreach has been steadily gaining foothold. North India has seen SRI implemented in parts of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab. In south and central India, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have adopted it quickly. In most areas farmers have been introduced to SRI primarily through NGO initiatives. Unfortunately, apart from in Bihar and Tripura, the participation of the state governments and departments of agriculture in promoting SRI has been negligible. A common reaction has been to dismiss it has a highly labour intensive and cumbersome process of cultivation. Yet, in comparison with India, the whole of Southeast Asia, as also China, has been aggressive in practicing SRI.

The District Agricultural Officer of Ranchi, Hemangini Kumar, is all praise for the new technology that her office demonstrated among 100 farmers in 2008 through the National Food Security Mission (NFSM), the Rs 4,800-crore Central scheme that aims to increase production of rice, wheat and pulses to bridge the country’s shortfall in basic foodgrain. “Extension to more farmers will take time as there is a staff shortage,” she says. “But this is the only cost-effective way to increase yields for small and marginal farmers.”

In a paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly [February 2009], noted development economists, Jean Dréze and Angus Deaton, estimate that 79.8 percent of India’s rural population does not get the prescribed norm of 2,400 calories per person per day. The statistics from the India State Hunger Index 2008, released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), shows that not a single Indian state is even ‘low’ or ‘moderate’ on the index score; most states have a serious hunger problem.

Since rice is India’s principal food crop, augmenting production can, therefore, go a long way to ensure year-round food security for rural households. Increasing the area under rice cultivation and achieving higher yields with improved methods like SRI is one way this can be accomplished.

Crucial Lok Sabha battle - A Hung House looms large

By M H Ahssan

By all accounts, Lok Sabha polls 2009 guarantee a totally fractured verdict that would make government-formation a most daunting task. The task will be daunting because the divisive process will then turn into a ruthless, remorseless numbers game.

The 15th Lok Sabha poll will go down in our parliamentary democracy's annals for the churning - that mythological amrit manthan - by the most divided polity since independence. What kind of visha the churning will produce is difficult to say. There is no Lord Shiva to consume it and save the nation. But this poll guarantees a totally fractured verdict that would make government-formation a most daunting task. The task will be daunting because the divisive process will then turn into a ruthless, remorseless numbers game.

What the country is witnessing in the run-up to the poll, which is most likely to continue post-poll, is amoral politics at its best. The Aya Ram Gaya Ram process that made the late 1960s notorious may well seems like juvenile pranks, what with money power now in full play.

Why is one compelled to draw such a gloomy picture? Not because of the emergence of the regional parties. Also, not because of the rise of the Dalits and those who have been denied their share of power. This twin process has to be accepted and respected.

What is difficult to digest is the approach to politics - of just about everyone demanding a pound of flesh of just every other satrap brazenly trying to be the king or the queen or kingmaker or queenmaker. All norms, all rules are being flouted. All values and virtues are being thrown to the winds as the country prepares to go to the polls.

This has fractured the polity. From a group of national parties, we have moved to two alliances led by national parties with regional allies. There is not even pretence of confidence in reaching out to the entire nation for votes. A party or alliance with nationwide reach and leaders with nationwide appeal is simply missing.

From single parties going to the polls, we are having alliances going to the polls. From two alliances we have witnessed a graduation of sorts to three alliances. And none of the three alliances has the nationwide sweep.

A vast country that once looked a single political entity seems like a conglomerate of states and regions with conflicting interests. People are sought to be divided as per their caste, religion and region. And none is sorry about it - not the players at least.

As the poll process began after the Budget Session of Parliament was completed, the first signs came from three states - Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal. In Orissa, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) ditched its senior partner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), giving a setback not only to the BJP but also to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

In Bihar, two of the staunchest constituents of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) of Lalu Prasad and Lok Janashakti Party (LJP) of Ram Vilas Paswan, cocked a snook at senior partner Congress. What happened to BJP and NDA in Orissa, happened to the Congress and the UPA in the more populous Bihar.

In West Bengal, the Congress finally decided to confront the Left Front. It struck an alliance with Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress, giving her double the number of seats and accepting her as the senior partner. The Congress move has two-fold consequence: it has reduced its own prospects of winning more seats in West Bengal and more important, it has made things more difficult for the Left Front. A Congress-Mamata alliance is a formidable one in terms of political support base and could hurt the Left. With only the tiny Tripura as a safe base, the Left cannot hope to repeat its performance of 2004 poll, since it has ruined its own chances in Kerala where in-fighting within the CPM is rampant and suicidal. This reduces chances of a post-poll alliance of the UPA (or whatever that will be left of it) with the Left parties. The Left support to any move to keep the NDA out of power shall remain crucial.

The NDA too loses out on many fronts - the loss of the Orissa bastion, the parting of ways with Mamata Banerjee and with Telugu Desam Party that supported it from outside.

The NDA, reduced from the mighty 24 constituents in 2004 to just ten, can have the consolation prizes like Ajit Singh in Uttar Pradesh and Asom Gana Parishad in Assam. But they could be crucial, provided they win, when each vote will matter after the poll.

As for the Third Front, the ragtag combine midwifed by the Left has been shunned by the likes of Mayawati and Jayalalithaa. For the rest, it remains a loose conglomerate of parties rejected by the electorates in their states and leaders with overarching ambitions.

Whoever said that it is never-saydie in politics must have meant the likes of Om Prakash Chautala and Bhajan Lal and above all, H D Deve Gowda, whose greed for power and love for his sons paved the way for the BJP rule in Karnataka.

The Left is running around like a chicken with its head cut off. It must oppose BJP/NDA ideologically, but must also oppose the Congress/UPA politically. The CPM manifesto promises to undo the defence relations with the US and review the civil nuclear treaty - further reducing its own acceptance at home and in the fast-moving globalised world community. The political travesty, if one may call it, is the statement of CPM leader Prakash Karat that post poll, the Congress can seek support from, or lend support to, the Third Front. This, when even Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu is not sure of its success.

Only the results will show who the dog is and who will wag its tail. If the CPM has to contend with serious infighting between Kerala Chief Minister Achuthanandan and Peenarayi Vijayan, the BJP had anxious moments when Arun Jaitley, assigned to coordinate the entire campaign, sulked and stayed away from meetings to display his unhappiness at the appointment of Sudhanshu Mittal, essentially a moneybag and a fixer, as coconvener for Northeast states. ThatJaitley had to climb down and Mittal did get the charge of the North-east assigned to him indicates that BJP has to contend with its dirty linen being washed in public.

BJP's woe became acute when Varun Gandhi who it hopes would some day take on cousin Rahul, botched up his electoral chances by making inflammatory speeches. The party had for long contended with the estranged 'bahu' of the Gandhi family, Maneka, but had to distance itself from Varun when the Election Commission took a serious view of his utterances.

Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav also had to contend with a recalcitrant Mohammed Azam Khan. So much so that Yadav had to publicly say that he would go and meet Khan to assuage his hurt feelings.

People switching sides when denied party nomination is the done thing in Indian politics.

Two of the more glaring examples were Nationalist Congress Party's Jaisingrao Gaekwad Patil, who joined Shiv Sena and Congress' Bhavsinh Rathod who joined BJP and got the ticket to contest the Patan seat.

There is a plethora of prime ministerial candidates. Sonia Gandhi has said that Dr Manmohan Singh would be the prime minister after the election. The BJP anointed L K Advani for the post many months ago.

An indication of Lalu Prasad- Paswan alliance was available when Paswan jauntily threw his hat in the prime ministerial ring and Lalu enthusiastically welcomed it. But the Congress, as Paswan later said, never took him seriously. That the two were moving to stall the rise of Mayawati was an open secret. This explains why Mayawati has stuck to her no-pre-poll alliance stand. She rejected overtures from the Third Front leaders like Chandrababu Naidu. This leaves a flicker of hope for Deve Gowda.

Sharad Pawar, the prime ministerial candidate since 1991 (he lost to P V Narasimha Rao) first got his party, NCP, to 'authorise' him to work for the top job. This got support from Shiv Sena that demanded a Maharashtrian prime minister. Both were playing up to their rivals: Pawar to the Congress and Bal Thackeray to the BJP. They succeeded in causing turmoil within both UPA and NDA. It was only after BJP stitched up its alliance with the Sena that Pawar changed the tune to say that he was aware of his 'limitations' and that anyone with a dozen MPs could not just catapult himself/herself to the prime minister's gaddi.

Another person with burning ambitions, but aware of her 'limitations' without admitting so, is Jayalalithaa. She does not have a single member in the 14th Lok Sabha and did not want to queer the pitch with her allies in her do-or-die fight with rival M. Karunanidhi. After the Third Front decided that it would go to the poll without a prime ministerial candidate, apparently a Left stipulation, Jayalalithaa said that she was not in the race "as of now."

The only person who has no qualms about being "in the race" is Mayawati who thinks she can do it single-handedly. A good omen for her was the break-down of the Congress-Samajwadi alliance in Uttar Pradesh. Much would depend on how many seats she gets in UP and how many more in other states where she is putting up a large number of candidates. For the moment, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party seems to be the only 'national' party ready to take on one and all. There is no sign of dissension and money is not a problem. How the one-woman army handles this battle in a vast terrain remains to be seen. The general perception is that, if not the queen herself, she may end up being the king/queen maker. Even that would give her a position of pre eminence.

Offer Valid Till Votes Last!

Hawala money. Benami deals. Cash for votes. Corporate payoffs. Everyone knows it is happening, even the Election Commission cannot control it. HNN maps the invisible funding of Indian elections.

FEROZESHAH ROAD is a quiet, tree-lined boulevard, in the heart of the Indian capital. Considered — by any standard — one of the finest addresses in the city, it houses political leaders and has a few select multi-storied buildings. Not the kind of place one expects surveillance to happen. But last week, intelligence officials — after a tip-off — kept watch on a third-floor flat at 34, Ferozeshah Road. They had reliable information that the occupants of the apartment were in the process of laundering — through hawala — a staggering Rs 380 crore from an undisclosed destination in south-east Asia (read: Singapore). The money, say intelligence officials, was meant for spending in the upcoming general election. Intelligence sources said that those involved included a wealthy businessman from Kolkata and his associate, a wellknown figure in Delhi’s illegal foreign liquor racket.

It may be the world’s largest democratic exercise, what the British weekly The Economist called India’s “jumbo election”. But it’s also one of the most expensive shows on earth. An Indian parliamentary general election is the ultimate political spending spree. And the fuel powering this frenetic activity is almost all black money. Like the proverbial iceberg, the official statistics of what candidates are spending — and therefore, announcing to the Election Commission (EC) — is just the tip. Nine-tenths of it lies beneath, silent, but powerful.

On the surface, everyone, candidates and political parties alike, toe the official code of the Election Commission. While submitting individual details, they offer proof that they are not crossing the commission’s stipulated limit of Rs 25 lakh per candidate.

Not that the commission is fooled, however. The presence of black money in the political arteries of the Indian economy is so overwhelming that the EC knows it plays a powerful role in an election. It has actually admitted it cannot control the deluge of money in election season. Election Commissioner SY Quraishi sounded exasperated when he told a television news channel in Delhi recently, “No, we have little control over money that flows underhand in the elections.” The next week, his office noted breaking news on television that an estimated Rs 10 lakh was found from the drawers of the offices of filmmaker Prakash Jha, who is contesting elections from Bettiah, Bihar on a Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) ticket. “The cash was meant to be distributed among the voters,” Bettiah superintendent of police KS Anupam told reporters.

WHETHER THE charge will be substantiated or not is to be seen. There’s no proof and the clout money has in an election is so routine, it’s accepted. “I am currently in Chennai and my conservative estimate for just three constituencies in Madurai alone is Rs 700 crores. The spending in South India is always higher than in North India,” former Finance Secretary S Narayan told TEHELKA this week. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held a twoday opinion poll in Gujarat on black money stashed by Indians in banks abroad in early April. Ordinarily the EC would have been expected to raise objections to this sort of grandstanding. The quiet joke in the capital was that the the hardworking election watchdog would have preferred to come to grips with the money political parties spend during the polls, estimated at over Rs 50,000 crore ($10 billion) by those entrenched in the electioneering proces. That figure, incidentally, is almost one fifth of the figure arrived at by a recent national survey.

The survey conducted by Centre for Media Studies (CMS), a Delhi-based think-tank, says that across the country, one-fifth of voters have said politicians or party workers offered them money to vote in the past decade. In some states like Karnataka, Tripura, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, says CMS, nearly half say they have been bribed. Even in the Indian capital, 25 percent of voters received money for their votes.

The organisation estimates that onequarter of the actual election budget is directed towards illicit activity. “For political parties in India, the main objective is to win at any cost. As a result, parties are opening up their purse strings for the polls,” says Jagdeep Chokkar, a former Indian Institute of Management (IIM) professor.

Raymond Baker, author of Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free Market, writes that, since 1970, at least $5 trillion has moved out of poorer countries to the banking systems of the West. But a portion of this black money comes back to India — election time. That the entire process is unofficial is certain: the transactions, both back and forth, involve hawala operators, sale of benami properties and bagloads of cash ferried to the party faithful for redistribution. And this money transfer operates more efficiently than India's official economy channels.

Informed sources told HNN that an estimated Rs 10-15,000 crores ($2-3 billion) has been earmarked by political parties for “unofficial” purchases of individual votes. Besides this, politicians in their effort to squeeze every last vote out of the world’s largest electorate — are criss-crossing the country’s 2.97 million square kilometre land mass, running up crores in air transport bills. With campaign costs virtually doubling every election, political observers feel the country’s democratic process is being hijacked by the kind of spendingpower politics that is more often associated with the US elections. Worse, it’s without the level of transparency in both collection and spending that is also associated with the US.

That the EC is troubled is understandable . The bulk of the money is transferred to the states even before the stringent EC code comes into force; more than 60 percent of corporate funding to all political parties is in the form of black money; on an average, a candidate spends anywhere between Rs 3-15 crore in a single constituency. Recently, Chandrababu Naidu, former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, was admonished by the EC for handing out colour televisions and announcing a ‘special’ cash scheme for voters. Code violations such as Naidu’s — cash distributed at rallies or offerings of gold chains or similiar bribes — are merely the infringements that are caught out. Most of the infringements happen before the EC code kicks in.

AS A result, odd stories float around the offices of political parties in Delhi: the capital is the hub for receiving funds from which payments are radiated to state units. Sources say a television channel received nearly Rs 200 crore for slanted publicity; that a top corporate chief visited the offices of the Left brigade with an offer of support to the Third Front with the explicit condition that a leading woman aspirant not become the prime minister; that the UP-based owners of tobaccolaced chewable products have become the conduits for money transfers to state units because of their huge cash reserves. Top Mumbai-based companies are now funding elections in states where they have big business interests.

“Perhaps this will be the election that will see an all-India display of money power as never before. It is only in the urban and better-educated areas — and if the younger people turn out to vote in large numbers — that one can see some hope for transparency, clean voting and genuine democratic selection,” said former Finance Secretary S Narayan in a newspaper column.

Insiders say receipts and payments have been at record levels for the last two months. A number of kickbacks offered by brokers in various deals have slowly found their way to the coffers of the parties in power in each state. “You will find nothing on paper but it is true that a portion of government tenders, running into thousands of crores, is routinely channelled back to the funds of the party in power,” says a corporate insider. He adds that there is also a serious drive in the states to pick up money through various means the moment elections are announced. It is unofficially called the Chief Minister’s slush fund. The fund takes care of the cash transactions of the state and — if required — sends to the party’s centralised funds for distribution to states where the party is not in power. “Besides Delhi, there are certain pockets that take care of the regions. It is like Maharashtra funding Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh unit of the party funding Karnataka, (where it is not in power)” adds the insider.

CONSIDER THE case of the general managers working in the Rural Road Development Agency (RRDA) in Madhya Pradesh districts who received calls from the offices of a minister, demanding Rs 5 lakh. Tired of the calls, they complained to the EC in writing last week. It will be interesting to see how the EC reacts to the complaint. Those in the know say the demands such as the ones faced by the RRDA managers are routine in almost all states. In fact, the Samajwadi Party made four campaign films about Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati, that portrayed the Dalit leader as having a penchant for erecting her own statues and demanding money from bureaucrats in her state. The EC rejected the films, but most people seem to agree with the content, ostensibly because similar reports have routinely filled the media about the UP chief minister and her way of operation.

State-owned companies are hardly the only ones tapped for funding — the country’s top corporate houses say the pressure from political parties for money is high indeed. Corporations want an immediate overhaul of the system, to bring in transparency to political funding. The issue cropped up during a Confederation of Indian Industry annual session meant to discuss the country’s troubled job market. Tata Communications chairman Subodh Bhargava and Bajaj Auto chairman Rahul Bajaj, also a Rajya Sabha MP, moaned about black money flowing into elections. “Clean money makes a difference. Currently, as much as 60 percent of companies are financing political parties with black money,” an enraged Bajaj told reporters.

Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) secretary- general Amit Mitra says the problem is not the politicians or industrialists. “We must fund elections and take a call on how much an individual can donate. India could either go the US way (of capping corporate contributions) or follow the European model and allow elections to be completely funded by the government,” he says.

Both suggestions are sound, legislatively speaking, but the question is whether any legislation can bring change to a system in which funds are both collected in the form of off-the-book payments and then paid out in silent backhanders.

Conglomerates like the Birlas and the Tatas have separate electoral trusts, through which they donate money to political parties. The Tata Electoral Trust does not distribute funds to individual candidates but to registered political parties, based on their number of elected members to the Lok Sabha. “I think there is obviously a case for laying down procedures for funding as it is at the heart of Indian democracy,” says Communist Party of India (CPI) deputy general secretary Sudhakar Reddy, who is trying to raise the issue of Indian deposits topping the list in secret Swiss Bank accounts. “Companies who fund political parties obviously see returns if the supported party comes to power,” he adds.

IT’S THE return on investment that fuels corporate funding of elections. But even for political parties, the need to increase spending exponentially with every election has become imperative. “Politics is actually a big game of money. Those spending heavily are doing so only as an investment and expect a ten-fold return on their money,” says Anil Bairwal, chief coordinator of the Association of Democratic Reforms. It’s an umbrella group of NGOs that launched the National Election Watch to keep an eye on party and individual campaign budgets and spending.

Bairwal says that in the past, candidates and parties organised mega events such as mass weddings, and handed out money there in return for votes, but patterns are constantly changing in the country’s political landscape. “From Rs 100 for a vote more than a decade ago, the rate has gone up to Rs 1,500-2,000 a vote. In fact, the cash-for-vote often works as a hit-and-miss syndrome in India because booth capturing is out and you actually do not know who’s doing what,” he told HNN.

The EC is aware of the money movement. “Our emphasis will be on controlling the money power in elections,” outgoing chief election commissioner N Gopalaswamy told reporters last week. He added that the EC has also deployed 2,000 observers — many of them senior tax revenue officials — with a special brief to keep tabs on all pollrelated spending.

IT’S A daunting task, because of the sheer numbers involved — both the number of candidates and the size of their funds. Very conservative estimates say the Congress will officially spend approximately Rs 1,500 crore — one expense is its Rs 1 crore ($200,000) blowout to acquire the rights to the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire song Jai Ho from its copyright holder, T-Series. The BJP’s official budget is estimated to be about Rs 1,000 crore: this includes a Rs 200 crore advertising fund.

The BSP has a kitty of Rs 700 crore, similar to that of the Nationalist Congress Party. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) — thanks to some recent fund-raising drives by Union Communications Minister A Raja — has a kitty of Rs 400 crores. The official budget of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) is close to Rs 300 crores. The CPM and its allies have a more modest Rs 250 crore budget.

Of course, not every outlay is about glad-handing and buying votes. Many of the expenses are legal though one could question the extravagance. One such is the cost of hiring choppers and executive jets by political parties. For this election the number of helicopters and small jets hired by the political parties have doubled since the last polls in 2004. Currently, political parties have hired an estimated 45 to 50 choppers — half of them from abroad — and 22 small jets. (Most are sixseater jets while some are 13-seaters.)

“The demand is sky-rocketing and political parties do not mind the cost,” says R Puri, who heads Air Charters India, which has rented out its entire fleet of helicopters and jets at prices that range between Rs 75,000 and Rs 1.5 lakh per hour. Hi Flying Aviation, India’s oldest air charter firm, also finds its order book full. Operators like the stateowned Pawan Hans have large fleets which are not allowed to rent out to political parties. However, the political companies are allowed to borrow Pawan Hans helicopters leased to corporations. During the elections, almost anyone and everyone pushes their choppers and planes towards the politicians.

And there are 16 private helicopter owners — read big corporate houses and five star hotel chains — who could spare a chopper to a friendly politico, of course with no financial consideration involved as per rules. In short, it means the favours would be asked for later. And finally, there are 17 state government choppers that can be used for campaigning purposes, in accordance with EC norms.

But flying high costs money. For India’s political leaders, who aim to fly very high indeed, the money to do so, it seems, is easily forthcoming.

Editorial: Changing Landscape

By M H Ahssan

Will the economic crisis affect the elections? Some sections of the electorate are in distress. They will vote in anger. However, the actual number of crisis victims is relatively small. They will affect outcomes mainly in some urban constituencies, hurting the BJP in some places like Surat and the Congress elsewhere. Hence, their net effect on electoral outcomes will be limited.

For the rest of the electorate, things are not too bad. Though the global economy is shrinking, India is still growing at over 6 per cent and inflation is very low. If anything, that should help the incumbent UPA government. However, the electoral value of economic performance is asymmetric in India. Incumbent governments are punished when economic conditions are bad, but electoral outcomes depend on other factors when there is low inflation and reasonable growth.

Typically, these other factors are driven by the divisive politics of identity. Parties have allocated seats based on the arithmetic of caste, religion and ethnicity, along with the candidate’s access to resources and muscle power in some cases. With neither the Congress nor the BJP likely to win a majority on its own, alliances will ultimately determine who will rule the country. However, the BJD has abandoned the BJP, and the latter is having a hard time attracting new partners. The Congress is having problems of its own. The Yadavs have dumped it and formed a separate coalition within the UPA. The pre-election alliance strategies of both the NDA and UPA having collapsed, a patchwork ruling coalition will emerge post-elections, based on electoral performance. Meanwhile, Mayawati and Jayalalithaa are competing to lead the Third Front.

Underlying this messy terrain, there are emerging symptoms of remarkable tectonic shifts that could permanently change the landscape of Indian democracy — if not in this election, then certainly by the next in 2014. The most important is the rise of regional parties. The era of coalition governments reflects the growing dependence of national parties like the Congress and the BJP, in their bid for power, on the vote banks of regional parties.

The Akalis in Punjab, Samajwadi Party in UP and the RJD, LJP or JD(U) in Bihar are all regional parties. Though the BSP now presents itself as a national party, its main base is still UP. Nor is this a specifically north Indian phenomenon. Politics in Assam, Orissa, Andhra, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu etc is now driven by regional parties. Even the CPM draws its strength not from its politburo members but from its regional political bases in Kerala,
Tripura and West Bengal.

One consequence is the emergence of regional factors and issues as drivers of national political trends. There is an interesting tension between centralised control of economic power on one hand, through the finance ministry, RBI, Planning Commission and central ministries, and increasing regional dispersal of political power on the other, a tension that the 13th Finance Commission may need to address.

Another consequence is the arrival of regional party leaders on the national stage. Unlike regional Congress bosses, always loyal to the ‘high command’, these regional leaders are people with political bases and ambitions of their own. Many of these new leaders are not the children of erstwhile royalty or scions of great political families. They have risen from the ‘aam aadmi’ ranks and honed their survival skills in the rough and tumble of politics from below. Scions of political families, raised in the belief that they were born to rule, may one day find themselves rudely pushed aside if the courtiers strategising for them fail to come to terms with these new realities. Sooner rather than later, ‘people like us’ in India may find that they are being ruled by ‘people like them’ from Bharat.

Another remarkable trend, though less visible, is the emergence of a new politics of performance challenging the old divisive politics of identity. In many conversations in the fields and mandi towns of Bharat, i have heard it said, ‘Is bar jo kaam karega usi ko vote milega’ — this time those who do the work will get the votes. I had not attached much significance to these remarks until a recent survey commissioned by the Times of India picked up exactly the same sentiment, though presumably from an urban sample in this case.

Initiatives launched by eminent persons in favour of elections for good governance, such as Messrs N R Narayana Murthy, E Sreedharan and others or Bimal Jalan and his associates, also reflect that sentiment. Perhaps below the surface there is a building voter revolt against the divisive politics of identity, vote buying and muscle power. It could fizzle out and come to nothing in the absence of a principal agent to nurture and channel this potentially earth-shaking force.

But, if properly channelled, such sentiments could gather momentum leading to a cathartic cleansing of Indian politics. Will it make a difference in these elections or perhaps in the next one? Much depends on the media. It has tremendous power that it can deploy to lead that cleansing process, especially television and the Indian language press that have the widest reach. Can we hope that the fourth estate will rise to play its historic role in changing the landscape of Indian politics? We shall just have to wait and see.