by S.N. Sahu

Late Madhusudan Das was an outstanding personality and influential leader of his time. Born in Odisha on April 28, 1848, he led an eventful life marked by manifold accomplishments in diverse fields. Widely acclaimed for exceptionally high standard of service and sacrifice for the cause of Odisha and India, he breathed his last on February 4, 1934. In 1903 he founded the Utkal Sammilani (Utkal Union Conference) which became the nucleus of the historic movement to unify the Odia-speaking areas and create a separate State of Odisha on the basis of language.

A celebrated lawyer, he is part of the folklore of Odisha for achieving extraordinary excellence in the field of law and jurisprudence. His entrepreneurial skills proved his credentials as a dynamic man with a proven legacy for harnessing the business acumen of the people and developing their skills for economically empowering them and enhancing their self-esteem. The Utkal Tannery he established in 1905 to manufacture shoes and use leather for other economic purposes made a profound impact on Mahatma Gandhi who repeatedly referred to it in many parts of India in the context of his arduous efforts for providing alternative occupations to village people who predominantly depended on agriculture to earn their livelihood. Affectionately hailed as Madhubabu in the annals of modern Odisha, a lot has been written and said about him. It is, therefore, important to throw light on some of the extremely critical and sensitive aspects of his remarkable life which have hardly been discussed and disseminated.

Women's Empowerment through Education

There is a significant gender dimension to one of the epoch-making events of his life. In the year 1848 in which he was born, Jyotiba Phule established the first ever school for girls in our country. It was in the same year that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, the revolutionary document which inspired generations of exploited people to unchain themselves from bondage, exploitation and servitude. The establishment of the first girls' school in 1848 by Jyotiba Phule was as revolutionary as the Communist Manifesto. Madhubabu, who was born in the year in which the first school for girls was established, took the initiative to establish the first women's college in Odisha in 1913. He named that college after his adopted daughter, Sailabala, and now it is known as the Sailabala Women's College enjoying high reputation as an educational institution of excellence. The fact that he founded that College in 1913 spoke volumes of his deep commitment to empower women through education and promote the cause of gender equality and women's empowerment. One may say that establishment of the Sailabala Women's College by Madhubabu was as revolutionary a step as the establishment of the first girls' school by Jyotiba Phule and publication of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels.

To further appreciate his decision to establish the first women's college in 1913, we need to understand the developments taking place then, both nationally and internationally, concerning women and their struggle for achieving equality and equal opportunity.

At that time in Odisha itself some of the great minds were exercised by the lack of opportu-nities for girls and women to have access to education. This was evident from a few of the articles written in the 1920s by none other than Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das on women's education in Odisha. In one such article, titled ‘Nari Siksha Brudhi Paiba Kipari'(How to Improve Women's Education), he regretted that social traditions and customs prescribing confinement of women to home for doing household and family work impeded the progress of women's education. He, therefore, advocated measures for removing such mindset to ensure women's access to education.

In 1913 at the international level a great churning was taking place for giving women equal legal rights. It is instructive to note that in 1913 when Madhubabu established the Sailabala College, American women in thousands organised a historic march demanding their right to vote which they eventually got in 1920. Similarly in the UK, the suffragette movement, started by women in the late 19th century, had become intense in 1913 inspired by the ideas of John Stuart Mill who advocated women's rights and demanded exten-sion of adult suffrage for establishing a better representative government. It is against that background that we need to understand the pioneering role played by Madhubabu to establish the first women's college in Odisha in 1913.

It is all the more significant to note that the decision of Madhubabu to establish the first ever women's college in Odisha in 1913 preceded the decision of Maharshi Danda Kishore Karve to establish the first ever women's college in erstwhile Bombay on July 2, 1916. That college eventually became the first women's university in the same year following the pattern of the Tokyo Women's University. Such historical back-drops concerning women's struggle for their legal rights and progress in education bring out the revolutionary significance of Madhubabu's decision to establish the first ever women's college in Odisha.

In the 21st century world gender equality, women's empowerment and equal status of women with men are considered as major factors for achieving the sustainable developmental goals and countering the ever increasing problems arising out of global warming and climate change. British women themselves issued a manifesto in May 2007, called Women's Manifesto on Climate Change,1 in which they stated: “We are also insufficiently empowered in taking action in our own homes to mitigate the effects of climate change”, and demanded more education and information so that they could be in a better position to deal with the menace of climate change. Against this background if we look at the decision of Madhu-babu to establish the Sailabala College, we gratefully acknowledge his farsighted approach in empowering women through education in the early part of the second decade of the twentieth century.

Madhubabu opened the Legal Profession to Women Lawyers of India

In the annals of the history for gender equality Madhusudan Das' name will shine forever for his exceptional struggle for allowing women law graduates to enter the law profession in 1923. Before 1923, women were not allowed to practice law in courts in spite of possessing valid law degrees on account of the Legal Practitioners Act which allowed only men with graduation degree in law to practise law in courts. When the adopted daughter of Madhu-babu, Ms Sudhansubala Hazra, finished her Bachelor of Law in 1921, she was asked by Madhubabu to apply to the Patna High Court for enrolment as a pleader. The matter was taken up by the full Bench of the Patna High Court which rejected it on November 20, 1921 on the ground of sex disqualification. The said Court held that the legal bar against women to do practice in law courts had to be removed by amending the Legal Practitioners' Act and till that was done the High Court had no power to allow her application. She was heartbroken and shattered as her cherished ambition to pursue the profession of law and do practice as a lawyer received a fatal blow. She lost all hope and took a decision not to fight any more. Madhubabu, who was at that time the Minister of Local Government, was determined not to give it up. He drafted a memorial for her and it was sent to the Viceroy in August 1922 seeking for amendment to the Legal Practitioners Act for enabling lady lawyers to enroll as pleaders. A copy of the memorial was sent to the President of the Central Legislative Assembly, Sir Fredrick Whyte, who was then the President of the Central Legislative Assembly. In the enclosed letter he wrote that hardly memorials affecting public interest reached the Viceroy on account of the strength of the cause contained in it and stated that the memorial submitted by Sudhansubala “represents the grievances of a class of women who live in seclusion...” and “This is eminently a case in which public naturally expect personal attention of a Viceroy who is also an eminent lawyer.” Then he added: “Half of the population of India do not enjoy rights of citizenship of the British Empire. This is due to custom and caste. Government cannot abolish caste and social custom, but it is the duty of legislatures to steer between Scylla of social custom on the one side and the Charybdis of neutral policy of British Indian administration to the harbor of free British citizenship.” In other words, he was stressing the point that it was the legislature which should be proactive in taking up issues concerning rights of women without waiting for support from the caste and custom which hindered their progress. He also asked her to appeal to the Privy Council in London.

Accordingly the appeal was filed and the Secretary of State for India was made a respondent. To the utter shock and surprise of Madhubabu, the Privy Council informed its decision that 4000 pounds (Rs 6000) had to be deposited as fees to meet the expenses of the affected party, that is, the Secretary of State for India. He wrote a letter to Mr William Duke, Member of the India Office, on February 8, 1923 seeking assistance in the matter to bring down the fees to be deposited. Inter alia he wrote: “The question relates to permission to Lady Lawyers to practice in Courts. If there is any country and where Lady legal practitioners are necessary, it is in India and specially in those Provinces in which the Purdah system is stringent and Purdah ladies are often parties to suits involving decision of rights to properties of immense value. They cannot instruct lawyers of the other sex and consequently they become victims to the dishonesty of unprincipled Gomastas.” On March 8, 1923 the agents of the Privy Council sent a letter to Ms Sudhansubala informing that the matter was treated as a public interest and, therefore, no expenses would be required to be paid. Apart from taking those measures Madhubabu took up the matter with a Member of the Central Assembly, Mr H.S. Gaur, and requested him to introduce a Resolution to nullify the prohibition on women to enter the legal profession. He asked Sudhansubala to visit Delhi and meet the President of the Central Legislative Assembly and the then Home Member to sensitise them about the gravity of the matter. She also sent a copy of the memorial to almost all Members of the Assembly in August 1923 to make them aware of the impor-tance of allowing women to become lawyers.

Eventually the Home Member introduced a Bill to amend the Legal Practitioners Act. The second reading of the Bill was completed in September 1923 and no Member opposed it. Ultimately it entered the statute book and became the law of the land empowering qualified women to practise law in the courts of India. Ms Sudhansu Bala enrolled herself as a lawyer on December 12, 1923 and appeared before the Patna High Court as the junior of Madhusudan Das who had by then resigned as the Minister of Local Government. It was because of the untiring efforts of Madhubabu that the women lawyers in India could remove an unjust barrier imposed against their entry into the legal profession. In the process he became the foremost champion of women's rights to become practicing lawyers enjoying equal standing with men lawyers.2

Mahatma Gandhi and Madhubabu

A better and deeper appreciation of Madhu-babu's life, work and worldview is possible by referring to Mahatma Gandhi who invoked Madhubabu's name in the context of the whole nation whenever issues concerning economic and intellectual upliftment of village people were taken up in numerous platforms centring on the freedom struggle. One comes across at least seven volumes of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi from 1932 to 1945 in which Madhubabu's name has been invoked by Gandhiji in the context of a variety of issues affecting our freedom movement.

One may refer to November 18, 1932 when Gandhiji sent a telegram to Madhubabu tendering apology to him for having sent a condolence letter when he was given the false information that Madhubabu had passed away. He began the telegram by stating: “Long live Madhusudan Das.”3 He went on to say that because of his stupidity he came to believe that Madhusudan was no more and added that God willed otherwise and it was proof enough that He would take more service from Madhusudan for long years to come.4 Gandhiji also issued a statement5 on Madhusudan Das tendering apology to him and it was published in the Bombay Chronicle on November 19, 1932. He did not live long and died in 1934. However, Gandhiji, having been deeply impacted by his exemplary ideas, reflected them in his writings and educated the whole nation for implementing them and reaping benefits for the long suffering people of our country.

Practice of Untouchability, Inferior Quality of Tanning and Economic Degradation

Mahatma Gandhi issued a statement on Untouchability on November 14, 1932 and it was published in Bombay Chronicle the next day, that is, on November 15. In that statement he referred to Madhubabu's name and described him as a great philanthropist. Gandhiji also wrote that Madhubabu learnt the modern process of tanning and statistically proved the enormous economic loss suffered annually by our country ‘owing to the superstition of untouchability masquerading under the name of religion'.6 It is well known that Mahatma Gandhi understood the human and moral degradation suffered by our people, particularly the so-called untouchables and the country as a whole, on account of the scourge of untouchability. However, he acknowledged that Madhusudan Das proved statistically the economic loss arising out of untouchability.7 He explained it by saying that the higher castes always looked down upon the so-called untouchables who dealt with dead animals and dressed their skin. It is because of that hatred and abhorrence of the high castes for people dealing with dead animals and their skin that adequate skill in that field could not be developed and in the process enormous economic wealth associated with leather and its by-products could not be tapped.8

The economic degradation of India on account of untouchability proved to be a bane on our village economy which always remained woven around agriculture without credible and viable alternative occupations as a source of livelihood for the rural population.

In a piece entitled ‘Advice to a Harijan Worker' 9 published in Harijan Bandhu on September 3, 1933 Mahatma Gandhi referred to the plan of some of the Harijan workers to take up leather work and stated that it was not enough to make slippers only. Stressing that the work of tanning assumed more importance for our villages than mere leather work, he asked a question: “What did Madhusudan Das do?”10 Answering it he stated: “He gathered the tanners of Utkal and studied how they did tanning.” Then Gandhiji observed that Madhusudan Das was dissatisfied with the level and quality of tanning and, therefore, sailed to Germany, learnt leather work there and brought an expert from that country and set up a factory in Cuttack. It is educative to learn from Gandhiji's writings that many so-called untouchables learnt the work of tanning because of the dedicated efforts of Madhusudan Das and wrote: “Like Madhusudan Das you should first master the craft. It cannot be done in one month's time. You can do very well, if you learn it properly. I can make arrangements for your training.”11

The narrative given by Gandhiji about Madhu-sudan Das testified to the deep impact of Madhubabu's ideas and activities on his mind. It is proved beyond doubt that he considered Madhubabu as a role model in the field of tanning and projected his Utkal Tannery as a fine example of an enterprise to develop the skills of the people, use animal hides for generating wealth and create a culture of quality consciousness for producing high standard leather products.

Skill Development and Building Human Resources

The entire gamut of work done by Madhubabu concerning tanning and so passionately and eloquently explained by Mahatma Gandhi clearly has significance for our time when so many flagship schemes of the government such as ‘skill development', ‘make in India', ‘quality consciousness' and ‘ease of doing business' have being launched.

In reaching out to a foreign country like Germany and bringing a German expert and enlisting his talent and expertise to develop skill in India, Madhubabu set an excellent example of an entrepreneur whose sole objective was to empower people with skills so that they could go beyond their traditional profession completely revolving around agriculture. It was indeed a bold and forward-looking vision to uplift the people from poverty as also economic and caste degradation and boost their self-esteem.

Utkal Tannery as an Educational Tannery

Madhubabu breathed his last on February 4, 1934. Seven months later, that is, on September 7, 1934 Mahatma Gandhi wrote a long article entitled ‘Village Tanning and its Possibilities'12 in Harijan. He explained in the article that “the criminal neglect of the peasants and artisans has reduced us to pauperism, dullness and habitual idleness”. He noted: “With her magnificent climate, lofty mountains, mighty rivers and extensive seaboard, India has limitless resources, whose full exploitation in our village should have prevented poverty and disease.”13 However, he regretted that the divorce of intellect from body (labour), made India “perhaps the shortest lived, most resourceless and most exploited nation on earth”.14 He then stated: “The state of village tanning is, perhaps, the best proof of my indictment.”15 In other words, the deplorable tanning industry of the villages was indicative of the decline of India's rural economy.

In the same article Gandhiji wrote: “It was late Madhusudan Das who opened my eyes in the great crime against a part of humanity. He sought to make reparation by opening what might be called an educational tannery. His enterprise did not come up to his expectations, but he was responsible for the livelihood of hundreds of shoemakers in Cuttack.”16 While doing so he drew parallel between the research done in Shantiniketan and Sabarmati Ashram in the field of tanning.17 It may be stated that Gandhiji could appreciate the diligence and creative effort of Madhubabu in the field of tanning because of his own effort in Sabarmati Ashram to do research on animal hides so that those natural productive assets could be put to good use.

Utkal Tannery was described by Gandhiji as an “educational tannery”. He did so after the sad demise of Madhubabu and put it in the pan-Indian context. Gandhiji, through his numerous writings, underlined the deeper and abiding relevance of Madhubabu's work and educated the rest of India to learn from his seminal contributions which were of significance for economic empower-ment of the underpriveleged. What is evident from all such narratives of Mahatma Gandhi about Madhubabu was the countrywide signifi-cance of his manifold activities encompassing in their scope the vital issues of India in the third decade of the twentieth century.

Too Much Preoccupation with Cattle breeds Bovine Intelligence

In twentyfirst century India the fraternity of farmers across the country is in despair on account of the appalling state of our agriculture which, due to many factors, has become unremunarative. The decline in agricultural productivity and suicide of farmers constitute a sad commentary on our society, governance and economy. The pitiable condition of agriculture was understood by Madhubabu and we find it in the account of Mahatma Gandhi who referred to the diminishing returns from agriculture and the concomitant misery of farmers working in the field with the cattle and remaining idle for half of the year because of the absence of any other occupation to eke out a living. Gandhiji was distressed at the miserable condition of people and wrote in 1934: “..in the words of Madhusudan Das” villagers working with cattle got “reduced to the level of the beast, and without proper nourishment, either of the mind or the body and, therefore, without joy and without hope”.18

In fact Madhubabu's economic activities centring on tanning enabled Mahatma Gandhi to promote the cause of the Swadeshi economy. Therefore, immediately after using the afore-mentioned observations of Madhubabu, Gandhiji wrote: “Here is work for the cent-per-cent swadeshi-lover and scope for harnessing of technical skill to the solution of a great problem.”

A month later, that is, on October 24, 1934,19 while delivering a speech at the Subjects Committee Meeting of the All India Congress Committee, Mahatma Gandhi commended a resolution for revival of village industries and again invoked the name of Madhubabu. He did so in the presence of other stalwarts of the freedom movement such as Rajendra Prasad and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. In what context did Gandhiji take the name of Madhubabu? He did so by referring to his Harijan tour in Utkal which he undertook on foot and had in his own words “an extraordinary experience”.21 He narrated with pain and anguish the plight of villagers whose sole source of living was agriculture. Stating that “...farmers do not produce enough even for the seeds”, he observed: “You can hardly find such poverty anywhere else.”22 He referred to the helplessness of village people in such a situation and noted: “Apart from India there is perhaps no other country where people depend so completely on agriculture.”23

It is against that backdrop that Gandhiji took the name of Madhubabu who had said that village people should be provided with some additional occupation. He also recalled Madhubabu's visit to Germany to learn leather work.24 And, above all, Gandhiji remembered Madhubabu coining a phrase called “bovine intelligence”25 and used it in his speech. “Bovine intelligence” was used by Madhubabu to refer to the dulled and stunted faculties of villagers on account of their continuous preoccupation with cattle to pursue the profession of agriculture. It will be appreciated better by referring to the words of Gandhiji who said: “I have always remembered his (Madhusudan Das') one remark that those who always work with oxen must have bovine intelligence. Our farmers lost their work and became dull-minded.”26

The unmistakable impact of persuasive ideas of Madhubabu on Mahatma Gandhi was clearly evident when he summoned Madhubabu's name in the presence of outstanding leaders of the struggle for independence and used his ideas in the context of the countrywide movement for a Swadeshi Economy based on indigenous resources of people for liberating India from colonial rule and exploitation.

On different occasions Gandhiji was sharing Madhubabu's ideas among the people of our country to sensitise them for developing the human resources of India so that we could boast of what he called the “living machines we have”.27 It was manifest in his speech28 delivered at a public meeting in Nagpur on February 23, 1935, slightly more than a year after the sad demise of Madhubabu. He said that during his Harijan tour in Odisha he walked in many parts of the State and it was brought home to him that revival of village industries was a categorical imperative to make Khadi universal. He acknowledged that he could not have realised it had he toured by rail or car. Then in his speech he added: “As the late Madhusudan Das had said, our villages were fast being reduced to the state of brutes with whom they worked and lived as a result of the forced idleness in which they passed their days.”“If they continued in that state,” he cautioned, “not even independence would improve the state of India”.29 Those cautionary words of Mahatma Gandhi have become grim realities for our farmers and village people sixtyeight years after our independence causing despair and hopelessness among them.

In the same speech Gandhiji said that no other country in the world except China could boast of the crores of living machines and stressed that India had to employ those human machines which remained idle and make them intelligent machines.30 It is instructive to note that Madhubabu's name and ideas were used by Gandhiji when he was articulating his thoughts on human resource development and improve-ment of intelligence of the village people in his speech delivered in Nagpur in 1935. In several other speeches delivered in other parts of India Gandhiji used to refer to the same ideas of Madhubabu to awaken the people and nation's consciousness to provide employment opport-unities to the people beyond the agricultural sector.

Bridging the Gap between Intellect and Hand

On March 14, 1940, slightly more than six years after the passing away of Madhubabu, Gandhiji, while delivering a speech at the Khadi and Village Industries Exhibition in Ramgarh, recalled the name of Madhubabu for bridging the gulf between intellect and hand.31 He stated that as compared to the modern city civilisation the handicraft civilisation would endure provided a correlation could be established between brain and brawn.

He then said: “The late Madhusudan Das used to say that our peasants and workers had, by reason of working with bullocks, become like bullocks; and he was right.”32 Adding further, he continued by saying: “We have to lift them from the estate of the brute to the estate of man and that we can do only by correlating the intellect with the hand.” Thereafter he observed: “Not until they learn to work intelligently and make something new every day, not until they are taught to know the joy of work, can we raise them from their low estate.”33

Madhubabu and Leo Tolstoy

It is rather revealing that on October 22, 1937, while speaking at an Educational Conference, Gandhiji drew a parallel between Madhubabu and Leo Tolstoy. He said in his speech: “The late Madhusudan Das was a lawyer, but he was convinced that without the use of our hands and feet our brain would be atrophied, and even if it worked it would be the home of Satan.” Then he stated that “Tolstoy had taught the same lesson through many of his tales”.34 All such pronounce-ments of the Father of our Nation brought out Madhubabu's high stature and profile and his far-reaching significance beyond the frontier of Odisha and India.

One finds that Gandhiji continued to invoke the name of Madhubabu till 1945. He did so while delivering his speech35 at the All India Spinners Association, organised in Sevagram on March 25, 1945, and that too in the context of his grand quest and plan for moving people from agriculture to other professions, such as spinning and khadi and village industries, for earning their livelihood and putting an end to the dichotomy between intellectual and physical work. He supported his stand and conviction in that regard by saying that “...agriculture by itself cannot develop the intellect as much as khadi and other village industries can.” He then added by stating: “As the late Madhusudan once said, constant company of bullocks turns men into bullocks.”36

The copious references made by the Father of our Nation to Madhubabu's contributions for educating the people and nation as a whole testify to the abiding relevance of his work for national reconstruction. In juxtaposing Madhubabu's name with the hallowed name of Leo Tolstoy, Gandhiji was underlining the former's global significance. All these bear testimony to his exceptional qualities and deeds which need to be reiterated for the benefit of the younger generation.

A Selfless Leader

To understand many other dimensions of Madhubabu which are of immense significance for India of the twentyfirst century, it is extremely essential to refer to a seminal article “The Oriya Movement”37, authored by Professor F.G. Bailley and published in The Economic Weekly on September 26, 1959. He has made a striking point concerning Madhubabu and other great leaders of the erstwhile Orissa whom he characterised as leaders with “missionary spirit”. He explained “missionary spirit” as that spirit which motivates leaders to sacrifice personal interest and comfort to achieve a goal which is regarded as a moral obligation.38 At that time any one in the erstwhile Orissa who embraced the Bengali language and culture was seen to have been in a superior position to pursue his/her interests. Therefore, Professor Bailley, while describing Madhubabu as “the prime mover of the whole campaign” of the Oriya movement, stated that if he had wanted to achieve his personal interest he was in a vantage position to do so because of his “adoption of Bengali language and culture” and “...need never have troubled himself about those of his countrymen who had neither the ability nor the opportunity to do the same”.39 Then the noted Professor concluded: “Yet he spent his life in fighting for Oriya culture and Oriya language”.40 It indeed constitutes a great tribute to Madhubabu's personality the defining feature of which was his exalted character and missionary spirit to render service at the cost of self.

Madhubabu adopted Constitutional Method to achieve his Goals

The manner in which Madhubabu and other leaders fought for the cause of the Odia language, culture, nationalism and identity is of great significance for our time. It was based on peaceful and lawful methods without inciting violence and disorder. It is noteworthy that Dr Ambedkar, in his last speech in the Constituent Assembly, had said that if any approach for redressal of grievances would be inconsistent with the Constitution it would result in “the grammar of anarchy”. In fact Professor Bailley referred to this point in his aforementioned article and wrote that “...Oriya Nationalism advanced its claims largely through diplomatic and constitutional means. There was no resort to violence and no attempt to force the Government's hand by ‘direct action'. The strength of the movement rested on the moderation of the leaders and their personal eminence.” 41

Madhubabu, as “the prime mover of the whole campaign”, was a shining example of the leader who held on to constitutional methods to pursue the goals many of which were taken up by Mahatma Gandhi till 1945 in his numerous writings and speeches. At a time when many States of our country, including Odisha, are facing the menace of Naxal violence threatening the constitutional method of governance, we need to stress on lawful means as also the “strength of moderation and personal eminence” which were amply displayed by Madhubabu and the leadership of that era. He is a role model for the present-day leadership who are responsible for governance of twentyfirst century India. The legacy of Utkal Gauraba Madhusudan Das endures and his life and work offers valuable lessons for human resource development, skill building and the adoption of the constitutional method to address the complex challenges confronted by our economy, society, nation and world as whole. 

Footnotes
1. http://www.wecf.eu/cms/download/2007/Womens_Manifesto_ ClimateChange.pdf

2. Sudhansubala Hazra, “How Women Got the Right to Practise in the Law Courts of India” in Madhusudan Das—The Man and his Mission (Ed.) by Debendra Das, (Pragati Utkal Sangha, Rourkela, 1998), pages 143-51.

3. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 58, p. 18.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., p. 19.

6. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 57, November 14, 1932, p. 413.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., p. 412.

9. Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 61, p. 360-361.

10. Ibid., p. 360.

11. Ibid., p. 360-361.

12. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 64, p. 407-410.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid., p. 407

17. Ibid., p. 408.

18. Ibid., p. 409.

19. Ibid., p. 409.

20. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 65, pages. 219-226.

21. Ibid., p. 220.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid.

27. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 66, p. 255.

28. Ibid., pp. 254-56.

29. Ibid., p. 255.

30. Ibid.

31. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 78, pp. 56-58.

32. Ibid., p. 57.

33. Ibid.

34. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 72, p. 361.

35. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 86, p. 103.

36. Ibid.

37. F.G. Bailley, “The Oriya Movement”, The Economic Weekly, September, 26, 1959. http://www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/1959_11/39/politics_in_orissaivthe_oriya_movement.pdf?0=ip_login_no_cach e%3D927e131d3e62db13b63 df53470ef549d

38. Ibid., p. 1335.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid., pp. 1334-35.

The author was an Officer on Special Duty and Press Secretary to late K.R. Narayanan when the latter was the President of India. He then served as a Director in the Prime Minister's Office. He is now serving as a Joint Secretary in the Rajya Sabha Secretariat. The views expressed in the article are personal and have nothing to do with the Rajya Sabha Secretariat.

by Seema Mustafa

“We had confirmed the involvement of the Sunil Joshi group in the Samjhauta explosion and the fact that no one from SIMI was involved,” was the categorical response of then Special Investigation Team chief, Vikash Narain Rai, an upright police officer, who had been entrusted with the enquiry of the train explosion in 2007.

In an exclusive interview to The Citizen Rai —former Director General of Police (Law and Order), Haryana—spoke of the painstaking investigation, the non-cooperation of agencies, and the fact that he and his team had zeroed in on Joshi and his group for planting the explosive that set the Samjhauta on fire. Joshi was an RSS pracharak and was killed in the winter of 2007 after the blasts by two men who are still absconding.

Rai, who was contacted by News X for his views on June 3, found that a 25-minute interview where he had stated the facts was not telecast by the channel that instead, as clearly part of its official policy, targeted another police officer on the show to take forward the claim that Muslim and not Hindu groups were involved in this case. “It was totally insane, unbelievable,” he said.

“I have been a police officer for 35 years,” said Rai still surprised at the levels to which the media has sunk now, “and this decision to black out my interview was clearly manipu-lated, either for money or under political pressure.” Or, although he did not say it, perhaps for both.

Rai speaks of a meticulous, step by step investigation. The explosives that had been put together to ensure that the fire would expand in a moving train, and not subside with one burst, were planted in suitcases. All of these had been destroyed but, as Rai recalls, “we were very lucky to find one such suitcase intact.”

The make of the suitcase took the investigators to Indore, to a Raghunandan attaché shop.

Rai pointed out that Indore immediately rung bells of SiMI terror as this was a strong base for the Muslim group, but by then reports of Hindu extremist groups operating out of the city were also known. The shop was owned by a Bohra Muslim and had two young employees, a Hindu and a Muslim.

The two boys were questioned intensively and recalled that two young men had come to their store to purchase the suitcase. And that they had returned later in the day to take away the suitcase in a loose cloth cover as they did not want to be seen with it. Rai said that the investigating team found that all the components that went into the explosives were also purchased in the radius of one kilometre from this shop.

He said that the first alarm bells went off for him when the two shop employees, interrogated separately, said that the two men appeared to be Hindus, spoke in a local Indori accent, and were clearly from the city itself.

Various names started surfacing during the course of the investigation but a major lead, Rai said, came from the murder of a local business-man, Sunil Joshi. He was reported to be close to Pragya Thakur. He was killed by two men who have still not been traced. Rai said it could not be confirmed at the time whether the two men, identified at the time, had been killed as well or had fled the country to Nepal or elsewhere. The name of Swami Aseemanand also emerged in the course of the investigation.

The investigating team had by this time established two facts as Rai put it: one, the Samjhauta case involved Sunil Joshi and his men; and two, there was no SIMI or Pakistan hand in this.

The investigation was unable to proceed further, Rai said, by complete non-cooperation from Madhya Pradesh and more specifically from Indore. He said that at one point he stationed himself for several days in Indore but was unable to get the police to cooperate. He said that several policemen told him privately that while he was on the right track there was little they would or could do to help.

Rai said that in meetings held by the Ministry of Home Affairs at the time the Investigating Officers of Malegaon, Ajmer and other such terror attacks would exchange notes pointing towards the involvement of Hindu groups. In Mecca Masjid, several Muslim youth were falsely accused by the invesitgators of that case, and were subsequently acquitted by the courts. Rai confirms this: “The investigators of the Mecca Masjid case had arrested wrong people even though the signatures of their case were exactly the same as the Samjhauta case. We did not believe them and subsequently the NIA got those arrested persons discharged/released.”

Interestingly Rai recalls a long conversation he had with the then Maharashtra ATS chief, Hemant Karkare. He said that Karkare, investigating the Malegaon blasts, also said that he had considerable evidence that the Hindu extre-mists were involved in this case as well. He told Rai that he was putting the evidence together and would get back to him with more details as soon as he had stitched the loose ends. Rai said that this did not happen as Karkare was murdered soon after in the Mumbai terror attack.

The lack of cooperation from the Madhya Pradesh Government brought Rai's investigation to a “dead end” and later it was passed on to the newly set-up NiA along with some of the other cases. Even here, he recalls, this was done not immediately and only after the second NIA chief had taken over.

The NIA had chargesheeted RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi with the Samjhauta Express train blast. He was considered an important link to the alleged acts of Hindu terror across the country at the time. He was shot dead on December 29, 2007 when he was walking back to his hideout in Chuna Khadan locality in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh. As Rai now said, the two assailants identified at the time are still absconding.

Instead the Sunil Joshi murder case, that was at the heart of the Samjhauta Express and other investigations, has been quietly shifted back to Madhya Pradesh with the NIA under the current government claiming it has found no evidence of a terror angle.

(Courtesy: thecitizen.in)

In the present atmosphere prevailing in the country, everything is being politicised, whether the dubious land deals or the racist attacks against African students. Unfortunately, truth is the casualty. Sonia Gandhi has said that the criticism of her son-in-law, Robert Vadra, is political and is directed against the Congress party she heads. Her love for the dynasty has made her ignore the facts.

Vadra got land papers changed when the Congress was in power in Haryana. The land was requisitioned for public interest in Gurgaon. And the then State Government in power gave it to Vadra who made crores of rupees by selling the land to the builders.

A bold IAS officer, Ashok Khemka, brought out the facts but he was punished with innumerable transfers. Now the question has been revived because of Vadra's reported link with an arms dealer in London where he reportedly owns a house. Both Vadra and Sonia Gandhi have denied the report and the latter has asked for an impartial, independent inquiry. There should be no hitch, because this is what her critics have been demanding.

The Supreme Court should appoint a special investigation team under its supervision to go into the matter. The investigation should be confined to Vadra's land deals and not spread to other things so that the probe is completed within a short time-frame.

Recently, the land deal by Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse and his family has come to light. In fact, land has become a commodity in the hands of political parties which distribute it among its members, judging on the basis of their loyalty to the leader. One common thing is that all political parties, whatever their ideology, are guilty.

When the Congress is in power, it ensures benefits to its own members and when the BJP is in the chair, the beneficiary is from that party. This is happening particularly in the States because land is a State subject. The Centre puts its hand in the till in the name of national interest. But ultimately the purpose remains the same: grabbing the land by hook or by crook.

Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj's defence that there was no racism in the land of Gandhi and Buddha is a strange observation to make in the wake of recent attacks on African students. In fact, we should admit that we are one of the most racist countries in the world. And we should do something concrete to fight against such discriminations.

The remark made by a spokesman of the African students that the Indians do not like Africans has a grain of truth in the sense that we are obsessed with the White. This was probably realised even during the independence struggle.

Jawaharlal Nehru had the vision to open the portals of educational institutions to the African students as soon as India won freedom. He hoped that some of them would occupy top positions in tomorrow's Africa, then casting off slavery. His reading turned out to be correct because some of them came to head governments in their respective countries.

Not only that, the African icons like Nelson Mandela personally thanked Nehru for having boycotted the South African Government for its apartheid policy. When I interviewed him at Cape Town many years ago, he said that their icons were Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru, who defeated the British rulers without firing a shot. The reverence that people had for India was visible as well as genuine.

I am shocked over the killing of a Congolese student on a street of Delhi. That the Indians are colour-conscious does not surprise me. Even today, we hail a beautiful woman as ‘mem', which literally means White. We go out of our way to please a White man but shun the Black. This is goes back to the British days when the White ruled us.

I recall an instance when I was studying at Foreman Christian College at Lahore. A History Professor from South India complained that the students bowed when the wife of his colleague, a White man, passed their way but did not even notice when his wife was around.

The colour-prejudice seems to be a part of the Hindu society from ancient times. The saints were conscious of that and would say that Lord Krishna was dark-skinned. This argument does not seem to have made much dent in the thinking of Hindus. Even today, they continue to be the most colour-conscious community.

The economic betterment seems to have made some difference as well. That may be one of the reasons for the instinctive respect that a White man gets because the West has developed economically. But the truth is that slavery at the hands of the White for more than 150 years has instilled an inferiority complex in us. The manner in which history has recorded the 150-year-old rule by the British, too, has made us lose confidence in ourselves.

When I was India's High Commissioner at London, many well-placed Britons asked me whether it was true that the people wanted them back. I told them that the manner in which we had made a mess of things exasperated the people and it made them think that things were better during the British days. But it did not mean that the people wanted the British back.

The British were among the many rulers that administered the country. Whether they did something good or bad, or both, is to be judged by the people of India. And they have done that in a way because after independence, the parliamentary system was adopted since this was what the British rulers practised, and not the presidential form of government.

That was 70 years ago. And we do feel today that probably the presidential form of govern-ment would have been better because the person in power would have planned his government's future in more secure conditions and with a fixed tenure. It would have meant transparency and would have lessened scams like land deals and racial discrimination.

The author is a veteran journalist renowned not only in this country but also in our neighbouring states of Pakistan and Bangladesh where his columns are widely read. His website is www.kuldipnayar.com

by V. Bijukumar

The election verdict of the Assam Assembly brought some dramatic developments in the politics of the State. It not only brought down the three consecutive Congress governments led by Tarun Gogoi but also consolidated the electoral base of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Assam. The BJP could form its first government in North-East India through the election in alliance with the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and Bodoland People's Front (BPF). The verdict also gave some solace to the ruling party at the Centre which failed to make much impact in the States like Kerala, West Bengal, Tamilnadu and Puducherry where Assembly elections were held along with Assam.

The BJP's entry into Assam helped to shed its image as a North Indian party and moved towards emerging as an all-India party. The party made its presence across the State, both in the Brahmaputra Valley and Barrak valley. In the Bengali-dominated Barrak valley, which comprises districts such as Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi, the BJP won eight out of 15 seats leaving the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) with four, and the Congress three. The BJP made inroads into the Muslim-dominated areas as it won 15 seats in 49 Muslim-dominated constituencies in the State.

Apart from winning all seats in Guwahati city, the BJP swept all seven seats in Dibrugarh and all three seats in Karbi Anglong. Moreover, the BJP was able to penetrate into the tea belt showcasing its impressive win. Interestingly, for the first time in the history of Dima Hasao, the BJP candidate, B.B. Hagjer, won the 16 Haflong (ST) constituency. In the Barrak valley, the BJP's lone Muslim winner, Aminul Haque Laskar, a businessman, scripted history by wining from the Sonai constituency.

In the 126 seats in the State, Assembly, the BJP won 60 seats with a vote-share of 42 per cent, its alliance partner AGP secured 14 seats with a vote-share of eight per cent. The BPF, another partner in the BJP alliance, won 12 seats with a vote-share of 3.9 per cent. The BPF, a former ally of the Congress, initially moved towards the BJP for the development of the Bodo Territorial Council (BTC). It has to be pointed out that the BPF ended its ties with the Congress and withdrew its Ministers from the Gogoi Government instigating Bodo tribals against Bangladeshi Muslim migration raising the bogey of threats from migrants. In the 2011 elections, the BPF won 12 seats and joined the Gogoi Govern-ment and broke its alliance with the Congress in 2014. Moreover, the anti-Muslim sentiment generated in the Bodo areas of Assam describing it as anti-Muslim went in favour of the BJP. The three-party pre-poll alliance thus bagged 86 seats with two-thirds majority in the Assembly.

The incumbent Congress party, however, could secure only 26 seats by winning 31 per cent vote-share. The AIUDF, which claimed its base in the Muslim community, won 13 seats with a vote-share of 13 per cent. It has to be reminded that in the 2011 Assembly elections the BJP won only five seats against the 78 seats of the ruling Congress party. The AGP won 10 seats, the AIUDF won 18 and the BPF only 12. By aligning with the BJP in the Assembly elections, the AGP strengthened its position in the State. The AGP President, Atul Bora, was elected to the Assembly in Bokakhat consti-tuency. However, the AIUDF chief, Dhubri, and present Lok Sabha MP lost to the Congress candidate, Wajed Ali Choudhury, from Salmara South constituency.

Electoral Performance Total Seats: 126

The BJP's surge in Assam in the Assembly elections can be analysed in the context of its strategic approach in the State. Firstly, the BJP could muster the tacit support of the Bodos, the Tiwas and the Rabhas which enabled the party to make inroads into the minority areas. Secondly, the election saw a strong Hindu consolidation behind the BJP as both Bengali Hindus and Assamese Hindus supported the party. However, the Muslim vote (both Assamese and Bengali Muslims) split between the Congress and AIUDF. Thirdly, the BJP's pre-poll alliance with the AGP and BPF consolidated anti- Congress votes in its favour. It has to be pointed out that just before the announcement of the elections the BJP sealed an alliance with the AGP and BPF. Initially there were local protests from both the BJP and AGP in certain regions like Bongaigaon, Sivasagar, Sonitpur, Amguri and Tezpur against the alliance. However, the BJP leadership could overcome the dissenting voices in forging the alliance. In the run-up to the election, the BJP sealed an agreement with the AGP and BPF to consolidate the Opposition vote against the ruling Congress dispensation.

In fact, such a realist strategy of alliance- building came in the context of two reasons. First, after it lost in the Bihar Assembly elections in October and November 2015, it reversed the party's stand of ‘going it alone' in the Assembly elections. Secondly, the realisation that the combined strength of the three-party alliance can combat the Congress. It has to be mentioned that in the 2011 Assembly elections, the BJP won five seats and the AGP got 10 and the BPF 12 altogether with a voting share of 33 per cent. The BJP hoped that a grand alliance can dislodge the Congress regime which wielded political power for three consecutive terms in the State. Perhaps, the reasons for making an alliance rather than going it alone in the State was the realisation of the party of the Bihar experience where it crumbled before a strong Janata Dal (United) [JD(U)] and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) alliance. Thirdly, the election verdict, however, proved that the alliance succeeded in preventing the splitting of anti-Congress votes. Fourthly, the BJP succeeded in bringing Tarun Gogoi's most trusted Himanta Biswa Sharma, who served as the Minister of Health and Education in the Gogoi Government, to the party; he in fact was the mastermind in the BJP's alliance with the other two regional parties in the State. The seven of the ten sitting Congress MLAs, who left the parent party, won on the BJP ticket.

Further, in spite of the above factors which went in favour of the BJP's fortunes in the State, the BJP's victory was related more to the systematic activities of the RSS in the State; that outfit has been quite systematically working in the tribal belt of the State for years. It has to be emphasised that in 1979, the RSS founded its first school, Shishu Shiksha Samiti, in the State and about 500 Ekal Vidyalayas were set up by the RSS in the State over time. The RSS for a long time spread its roots in the State by appro-priating Assam's medieval saint, Srimanta Sankardev, for political gains. Sankardev led a reformist neo-Vaishnavite movement against Brahmanism. (Bhattacharjee, 2016) It also actively supported the anti-infiltration of Bangladeshis in the Assam movement of 1979-84 as it believed that illegal infiltration is a threat to national security.

Mosaic of Cultural Diversity

Assam is a complex society which constitutes Assamese Hindus, Bengalis, migrant Bangla-deshis and tribal population considered to be a mosaic of ethno-cultural diversity. The Assamese Hindus are dominant in the Brahma-putra Valley and the Bengalis are dominant in the Barrak valley. Initially, the BJP's traditional stronghold was the Bengali-dominated Barrak valley. As Srikanth argues, “although the BJP did not initially get the support of the Assamese Hindus, as early as in 1991, it could make a dent into the Bengali-dominated Barrak valley region, where it won parliamentary seats from Silchar and Karimganj constituencies (in 1999)”. (Srikanth, 1999, p. 3413) However, in the recent past, in the Brahmaputra Valley too, the BJP wooed the Assamese Hindus by raking up the issue of illegal migration of Bengali Muslims and its impact on the Assamese society. It accused the Congress of playing vote-bank politics of Bengali migrants. In fact, the BJP's promise to check illegal immigration presumably gained wider acceptability among the Assamese elite.

Among all the States in the North-East, Assam is considered to be the gateway to the rest of the States in the region. For quite some time, the BJP is turning its attention to the political developments in Assam and trying to occupy the Opposition space vacated by the AGP. For instance, on December 29, 2014, Amit Shah constituted a five-member committee, headed by its senior leader, S.S. Ahluwalia, to visit and review the condition of tribal victims of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland- Songbijit (NDFB-S) violence in the Assam relief camps. More than seventy tribals were killed in the violence in Assam in attacks by the pro- Bodo militant groups in December 2014.

In fact, a few days before the visit of Shah in April, the BJP Government was contemplating to delink Assam from the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) with Bangladesh. The Protocol to the 1974 LBA, signed on September 6, 2011, paved the way for settlement of the outstanding land boundary issues between the two countries. The 2011 Protocol was prepared with the full support and concurrence of the State govern-ments concerned—Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and West Bengal. As agreed upon through several rounds of negotiations started during UPA-II, Assam is set to lose around 268.39 acres in the final arrangement with Bangladesh under the LBA, but does not get any land in return. West Bengal will lose 1957 acres, but get 2398 acres, while Meghalaya will lose 41 acres and get 250 acres in return from Bangladesh. Assam giving up land is part of settling a disputed 6.1 km stretch that's been with Bangladesh since Partition. For quite some time, this is an emotive issue in Assam's polarised and volatile politics and the BJP's Assam unit has always opposed the land loss. The BJP's top brass considered Assam a winning prospect and these poll calculations, it was thought, may result in delinking the LBA with Bangladesh for now. Due to the growing resentment against the LBA in Assam, the BJP is revising the actual plan and accordingly the Indo-Bangladesh LBA will now involve only West Bengal, Tripura and Meghalaya on the Indian side. The Constitution Amendment Bill to ratify the Indo-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement is likely to be introduced in Parlia-ment with a major change by delinking Assam.1

Emergence as a Political Alternative

Before 1991, the BJP was not a significant force in the electoral politics of Assam. In the 1991 Assembly elections, the BJP won 10 seats out of 48 Assembly seats it contested securing a vote-share of 6.4 per cent. In the 1991 general elections, the BJP won two seats with a vote-share of 9.6 per cent. In the 1996 general elections its vote-share went up to 15.9 per cent with one seat. However, in the Assembly elections in 1996 it could manage 10.4 per cent votes winning four seats. In the 2001 Assembly elections in alliance with the AGP the party bagged eight seats and 35.8 per cent votes. In the 2004 general elections the BJP won two seats and in the 2006 Assembly elections won 12 seats with a vote-share of 11.98 per cent. Like elsewhere in India, initially the BJP allied with the regional party, AGP, in the 2006 Assembly elections and 2009 general elections. In the 2014 general elections by winning seven seats (of the total 14 seats) and securing a vote-share of 36.86 per cent the BJP gradually emerged as a credible alternative to the Congress in the 2016 Assembly elections. In the February 2015 municipal polls the BJP made a clean sweep winning 21 municipal boards and 24 town committees compared to the 2009 elections when it won only five municipal boards and 11 town committees.

The BJP's growth in the State's politics can be seen in the context of the anti-incumbency against the three consecutive term of the Congress Government and the declining promi-nence of the AGP as an ethno-regional party. In the recent past the State witnessed the erosion of ethno-regional nationalism championed by the AGP in the eighties. It needs to be stated that the Assam movement (1979-84) sowed the seeds of ethno-regionalism which witnessed the emergence of the AGP making inroads into the State politics eroding the Congress' mass base. The AGP, which came to power with the cause of ‘Asomiya Nationality' and the issue of illegal migration, in course of time diluted its stand on Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983 due to the compulsions of electoral politics. As a result, there was growing disillusionment among the Hindus against the AGP; this created a fertile ground for the BJP in Assam. Over time, the BJP used the issue of illegal migration of Muslims for expanding its mass base in the State. As Srikanth argues, “the politics of regional identity had kept Hindutva at bay in Assam for over two decades. But the AGP Government's poor performance and the bogey of Muslim fundamentalism led Bengali and Assamese caste Hindus to the BJP.” (Srikanth, 1999, p. 3412) As a result, the AGP, the prominent regional political force, is declining in the State. Moreover, the AGP's alliance with the BJP in the 2006 Assembly and 2009 Lok Sabha elections cost more to the AGP. The BJP could grow at the expense of the declining political space of the AGP. It is argued that the traditional support-base of the AGP—the Assamese Hindus, the Assamese Muslim and tribals— gradually shifted their allegiance to other political parties. (Mahanta, 2014, p. 20) The regional agenda of the AGP, especially detection and deportation of illegal Bangladeshi migrants, was hijacked by the BJP. In the recent past, many leaders of the AGP joined the BJP adding further boost to the BJP in the State. In December 2015, the BJP constituted its campaign panel for the Assembly elections 2016 with a number of former All Assam Students Union (AASU), AGP leaders.

Diminution of the Congress

The three consecutive terms of the Tarun Gogoi Government witnessed a strong wave of anti-incumbency and charges of corruption. During the tenure of the Gogoi regime there were many clashes in the Bodo areas in the State, especially between the Bodos and Muslims. The growing resentment against the persisting frequent clashes and the civil administration's failure to rehabilitate the victims of clashes was a further blow to the Gogoi administration. When the Assembly elections were approaching and the BJP was chalking out its strategy to win the elections in the State, the Congress faced disarray within the party and government. In the recent past, many Congress legislators joined the BJP.

In August 2015, in a big embarrassment to the State Congress, former Minister Himanta Biswa Sharma joined the BJP. Himanta, who was Tarun Gogoi's trusted aide, was disillus-ioned with the Congress due the realisation that his political ambition to become the Chief Minister of the State was dashed by the Congress as Gogoi was promoting his son, Gaurav Gogoi. While contesting such an argument Assam Congress leader Kishore Bhattacharjee said that “Gaurav's entry into politics has no role in their differences. It started way back when (now Congress MLA) Pijush Hazarika was elected the Assam Pradesh Youth Congress President in June 2008. Then there were speculations in 2012 that Tarun Gogoi would resign as the Chief Minister and become the country's Vice-President. Sharma was really hoping to become the Chief Minister.”2 Further, a section of the Congress questioned Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi for promoting his son, the Lok Sabha MP, as his political heir in the State.

The Repeal of IM(DT) Act, 1983

The appointment of Sarbananda Sonowal, the Union Minister of State for Sports, as the President of the State BJP gave further boost to the saffron party. Sonowal, the former leader of the AASU and subsequently MLA of the AGP, switched over to the BJP some time back; he is a crusader against illegal migration of Bangladeshis in Assam. In 2012, he accused the illegal migrants of deteriorating the life of the indigenous people of Assam. He said that in the last 32 years the indigenous people of Assam have been cornered and pushed to the status of minority due to the huge influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.3

The illegal migration from Bangladesh is a sensitive issue in Assam as it had far-reaching consequences in the political, economic and socio-cultural life of the people. It was one fo the biggest issues in the Assam elections since 1985. As stated earlier, the Assam movement projected the demand for the detection and deportation of illegal migrants (often called ‘foreigners') in the State. In its effort to end the movement, the Indian Government formulated the IM(DT) Act 1983 to protect the interest of Assam. According to the Act, anybody settled in Assam before March 25, 1971 was a legal citizen. However, in the rest of India, the cut-off date for acquiring Indian citizenship is July 9, 1948. Further, the person accused had to do nothing to prove his/her citizenship whereas the complainant had to prove that someone was staying illegally. The Act also provides special protections against undue harassment to the minorities affected by Assam agitation. The Act is applicable only to Assam while the other States in India are covered by the Foreigners Act, 1946. The essential provision of the Act was designed to make it difficult for authorities to identify, leave alone deport, illegal Bangladeshi from Assam.

In a petition filed by Sarbananda Sonowal, who was with the AGP, it was contended that the IM(DT) is only encouraging vote-bank politics without addressing the problem of illegal migrants. In July 2005, the Supreme Court observed that the Act was the biggest barrier to deportation of the illegal migrants from the State. The Supreme Court, in its 114-page judgment, stated that “the Act has created the biggest hurdle and is the main impediment or barrier in the identification and deportation of illegal migrants”. Further, it observed that “the presence of such a large number of illegal migrants from Bangladesh, which runs into millions, in fact is an aggression on the State of Assam and also contributed significantly in causing serious internal disturbances in the shape of insurgency of alarming proportions”.4

The repeal of the IM(DT) Act by the Supreme Court in 2005 further communally polarised the State. While both the BJP and AGP welcomed the Court verdict, the Muslim communities expressed their anguish. The BJP claimed that ‘discriminatory' Act failed to effectively identify and deport illegal migrants in the State but the Supreme Court's observation was a setback to the Congress which was using this for vote-bank politics. After the Supreme Court verdict, the BJP took out a rally in Guwhati in July 2005 demanding the deportation of all illegal Bangladeshi nationals from Assam. It has to be recalled that the RSS and BJP supported the Assam movement to end the illegal migration in the State. Over a period of time, the party shared the sentiments of the AGP on the issue of illegal migration and supported this provision in the Assam Accord of 1984 between the AASU and the Rajiv Gandhi Government.

The Supreme Court's invalidation of the IM(DT) Act was viewed by the AIUDF as the inability of the Congress to defend the Act. However, foreseeing the possible minority resentment against the Congress which had to face the Assembly elections in 2006, the then Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, constituted a Group of Ministers to examine the fall-out of the repeal of the IM(DT) Act, particularly its impact on minorities. The BJP and AGP criticised this action and described it as the backdoor entry of the Act.

Even after ten years of repeal of the IM(DT) Act, the issue continues to haunt the politics of the State. The BJP accused the Congress of following a policy of appeasement which created grave security implications for the country. It said the large-scale intrusion of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants had significantly altered the demographic complexion of the North-Eastern States and had serious long-term political, social and economic implications.5 In September 2012, Ram Madhav, the RSS leader, said that “we need to detect and defranchise the Bangladeshi infiltrators from the country. There is very little done by the Central Government to deport them, just one per cent per five days, though the rate of infiltration is about 6000 per day”.6 The BJP's Vision Document released before the General Election 2014 contained a separate section on the North-East which promised to put an end to infiltration from Bangladesh and vigorously pursue the three D formula—Detect, Delete and Deport (illegal migrants from Assam).7 The BJP's Assam Vision Document for the 2016 Assembly elections also promised to crack down on infiltration and to seal the Indo-Bangla border. It accused the Congress of destroying and changing the demography of the State by encouraging infiltration. The document also promised stringent action against industries and businesses which employ illegal migrants.

In his visit to Assam on April 26, 2015, the BJP President asserted: “Bangladeshi infiltrators have taken away everything. They have taken away land of the Assamese people. They have taken away your jobs. They have eaten into the development funds. Yet the Congress Govern-ment does not have the guts to touch them. It is only the BJP which can free Assam from the clutches of the Bangladeshis.”8 He also took credit for the process of updating the National Register of Citizens currently going on in the State and said the NDA Government had earmarked Rs 140 crores to the State for this purpose. In his opinion, “once the NRC is revised and updated, all the Bangladeshi infiltrators will be exposed”. Accusing the Congress of not stopping illegal migration as it is playing vote-bank politics, the BJP President promised to stop illegal migration of Bangladeshis into Assam.9 Setting the agenda for the campaign for the elections, Shah was categorical that the “next elections will be fought on this issue. Assam polls will be for freeing the State of illegal Bangladeshi migrants. Assam polls will also be for development of Assam and North-East.”

The BJP often depicts a majority of the Muslims as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh who cause imbalance to the State's demography and socio-cultural mosaic of the State.

Setting aside its national agenda and issues, the BJP was able to rake up regional issues such as illegal migration, detection and deportation of foreigners which were once raised by the AGP. In fact, the BJP hijacked the regional agenda of the AGP, especially on the issue of illegal migrants. However, though the BJP rakes up the migration issue, it only focuses on the Muslims not the Bengali Hindus whom it considers as its support-base. The BJP, while criticising the illegal migration from Bangladesh, in the recent past took another turn on this issue. The party now welcomed the migration of Hindus from Bangladesh stating that those Hindus who face religious persecution in that country would be accommodated in India and given citizenship. Shah in his visit to the State even asserted that the BJP would provide all support to Hindus who came to India due to religious persecution and promised that the Hindu refugees from Bangladesh will be given Indian citizenship if the BJP came to power in Assam in the 2016 Assembly elections. The communal fervour of the BJP is explicat when it is a critic of the Muslim migrants, and takes the burden of supporting Hindus who came to India because of the so-called harassment and religious discrimination. The saffron party's surprise move, however, created certain resentment in the State when organisations such as the AASU and Assam Jatiyatabadi Yuva Saba Parishad (AJYCP) alleged that it was in fact diluting its stand on the Bangladeshi migration problem. However, some sections of the State BJP feel that this would lead to the alienation of educated and middle class Assamese away from the party.

For quite some time, Assam is passing through a critical political juncture in which the linguistic chauvinism and ethnic regiona-lism which dominated for decades were overshadowed by the growing tendencies of communal mobilisation. The growing communal polarisation between Bodos and the Muslim minority groups leads to frequent ethnic killings. The Bodo Kacharis, which constitute the largest tribal group in Assam and which account for 38 per cent of the total population of the State, were instigated against the Muslim population in the Bodo areas of the State. However, the BJP's communal polarisation between migrant Muslims and Assamese-speaking Hindus and the tribal communities and migrants paid political dividends to the party.

Conclusion

The astounding victory of the BJP in Assam gave some relief to the ruling dispensation at the Centre after its stunning defeats in the Delhi and Bihar Assembly elections. Rather than seeing it as a victory for Narendra Modi, the result can be viewed as the consequence of communal polarisation, strong anti-incumbency and the vacuum created by the absence of regional forces and secular alternatives in the State. In a closely fought election, regional issues rather than national issues figured throughout the election campaign. The emotive issue of illegal Bangladeshi migration once again assumed the centre-stage in the political domain and gave more political dividends to the BJP. However, the real challenge of the first ever BJP Government in the North-East depends on its approach towards preserving the cultural diversity of the State.

Endnotes

1. The Economic Times, April 13, 2015.

2. The Assam Tribune, August 28, 2014.

3. see Organiser September 16, 2012.

4. “IMDT Act is the biggest barrier to deportation, says Supreme Court”, The Hindu, July 14, 2005.

5. See BJP (2006), “Achievements and Looking Ahead; 1980- 2005", Vol. 9, New Delhi.

6. See Organiser, September 16, 2012.

7. See BJP (2014), Vision Document, 2014.

8. “Amit Shah in Guwahati: Get ready to ‘oust Congress' in 2016 Assam assembly polls”, The Indian Express, April 28, 2015.

9. “Only BJP can free Assam from illegal immigration, Amit Shah”, The Economic Times, April 27, 2015.

10. Ibid.

References

Bhattacharjee, Malini, 2016; ‘Tracing the Emergence and Consolidation of Hindutva in Assam', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. LI, No. 16, 30, 16 April, pp. 80-87.

Mahanta, Nani Gopal, 2014; ‘Lok Sabha Elections in Assam: Shifting of Traditional Vote Bases to BJP', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIX, No. 35, August 30, pp. 19-22.

Srikanth, H, 1999; ‘Communalising Assam: AGP's Loss Is BJP's Gain', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXIV, No. 49, December 4, pp. 3412-3414.

Dr V. Bijukumar is an Associate Professor, Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He can be contacted at vbiju@yahoo.co.in

by Saumitra Mohan

The just concluded elections to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly were unprecedented in more ways than one. While the popular mood of the electorate was more or less known to everyone as also corroborated by the various opinion and exit polls, but the same was overshadowed by the overpitched performances from all the stakeholders as the polls progressed. These elections saw the apex electoral body in a hyperactive avatar which at times appeared unwarranted to many observers. The elections also witnessed diminishing journalistic standards as a section of the media compromised its pro-fessional ethics by allegedly becoming interested players in the ensuing political game. But one clear winner out of this churning has been our democracy. The loud electoral verdict vindicated Abraham Lincoln who once said: “You can fool some people all the time, all the people some of the time but not all the people all the time.”

What was most surprising is the fact that the major discourse of the elections this time was dripping with negativity. So, while they kept debating certain negative developments and alleged scams, there was hardly any genuine attempt at dispassionate review of the perfor-mance of the reigning dispensation with respect to governance and development to vet and analyse the many developmental initiatives West Bengal saw during the last few years. So, notwithstanding a blinkered judgement about the government's performance and the conse-quent electoral outcome by a section of media, the same turned out to be hugely at a variance with the ‘General Will'.

Now with eggs all over their face, the same carping Cassandras have acknowledged the developmental coup d'état effected in West Bengal during the last five years. West Bengal experienced administrative initiatives such as creation of newer districts and police commissio-nerates, financial restructuring and rationali-sation by way of decentralisation of DDO administration and introduction of Financial Advisor system, introduction of Right to Service Act and Administrative Calendar to ensure time-bound service delivery and an accountable administration, revisitation of rules and laws including introduction of ‘self-attestation and self-declaration' to spare the citizens' running around for court affidavits or attestation by gazetted officers, improved revenue mobilisation and deepening citizen-government interface through creative e-Governance tools led to improved work culture. The same also became possible due to intensified supervision and monitoring at all levels.

West Bengal witnessed, perhaps for the first time, a slew of welfare schemes sponsored and funded solely by the State Government. Many of these initiatives, schemes and programmes turned out to be pioneering and path-breaking, earning kudos from national and international authorities. Be it agriculture, education, health, infrastructure, social welfare or any other sector, there was a customised scheme for any and every segment of the society thereby making West Bengal probably the lone State where the government benefits under-reached almost 100 per cent of the populace.

While the subsidised Rs 2/kg rice through its ‘Rajya Khadya Suraksha Yojana' helped it reach out to the socio-economically weaker sections, scholarship or financial support for the girl child through its ‘Kanyashree' scheme ensured that we have less and less girls dropping out of the formal education system as reflected in their improved enrolment. Distribution of free cycles, free textbooks and free shoes for the students, 100 per cent availability of girls' toilet in every school (from 49 per cent in 2011), 100 per cent coverage of MDM (from 65 per cent in 2011), an ITI or a polytechnic in almost every block, more and more primary, upper primary or high schools (six to ten times jump numeri-cally from 2011), establishment of newer colleges, universities, medical/engineering colleges and hospitality institutes are some of the shining examples of the interventions made in the education sector.

Health is another sector which saw massive interventions and infrastructural improvements through such programmes as special niche schemes for the children, for example, ‘Shishu Saathi', establishment of fair price medicine shops (where costly medicines are made available at almost half their prices), establish-ment of Sick Newborn Care Units or Sick Newborn Stabilising Units in almost every block, a number of super-speciality hospitals, Mother and Child Hubs, Intensive and Critical Care Units, Trauma Centres, free diagnostic and medical services for every segment of the society and overall improvement in all services also resulted in improvement of many health indicators including improved immunisation and institutional delivery (from 68 per cent in 2011 to over 90 per cent in 2016) as well as drastic decline in maternal and infant mortality rates.

The State saw introduction of innovative practices leading to increased agricultural productivity and yield through a well-coordi-nated backward-forward linkage programme. So while specially-trained manpower provided real-time expert advice to the farmers through a scheme of ‘online expertise sharing' via computer tablets, the government also came out with special schemes to encourage newer agricultural techniques and practices, resulting in an overall optimism among the farmers. The extension of ‘Kisan Credit Cards' to more than 80 per cent of the farmers was another extra-ordinary feat achieved by the state which made agricultural credit easily available to the needy farmers. Establishment of a number of Krishak Bazars or Farmers' Markets, water harvesting schemes like ‘Jal Dharo Jal Bharo', new agricultural colleges or more and more farmers' schools further helped the sector. Besides, the quick disbursal of crop compensation to the farmers who were distressed due to climatic vagaries also kept the agricultural sector buoyant. Similarly, the sector saw further expansion and extension of irrigation potential in the state.

Distribution of land to hundreds of thousands of landless through its ‘Nijo Griho, Nijo Bhumi' scheme, welfare schemes for minorities and underprivileged communities including un-skilled and semi-skilled labourers, scholarship programmes such as ‘Yuvashree' and ‘Shiksha-shree', a number of pension schemes for various segements, monthly honoraria for folk artists through its ‘Lok Prasar Prakalp' and many such schemes improved social security of the downtrodden. The State witnessed six times jump in the budgetary allocation for the infrastructural works thereby resulting in huge improvement in connectivity and power scenario of the State. Be it tourism, urban and rural development, animal husbandry, public health engineering, sports or industry, the state has done remarkably better than ever. Humongous amount of hard work has yielded rich dividends by way of greatly improved sanitation status, creation of skilled and unskilled employment for the people and manifold increase in the number of state beneficiaries in the social sector have all got reflected at the hustings.

But the most striking performance has definitely been in the State's success in changing the face of ‘junglemahal' or hills where militancy of the Naxals or the Statehood movement has been almost eliminated. Both the regions are not only peaceful but have also witnessed unprecedented development and improvement in all develop-ment indicators. The success of the government on these scores has been acknowledged and lauded by all and sundry. Kolkata, because of the good work done in the last few years, not only escaped the ignominy of inclusion in the negative list of dirtiest cities of India, but has also come to be recognised as a much better and more beautiful metropolis than it ever was.

As a result of improved revenue collection and financial discipline, the State's capital and agri-rural development expenditure jumped six fold, the plan, physical and social infrastructure expenditure more than trebled thereby making West Bengal clock an economic growth rate of almost 11 per cent, 3.5 per cent more than the national average. It is really surprising to note that financial support to the industrialists and entrepreneurs is termed ‘incentive', but expen-diture made on social welfare programmes is called ‘populism' or ‘dole'. Notwithstanding the negativism of the critics, one is sure that West Bengal shall continue to march on the path to development to reclaim its cherished place in the sun.

Dr Saumitra Mohan, IAS is the District Magistrate and Collector, Burdwan. The views expessed here are personal and don't reflect those of the government.

EDITORIAL

While there is no dearth of national issues hitting the headlines, the focus now has shifted to international affairs not only because PM Narendra Modi is currently in Washington D.C. holding substantive talks with US President Barack Obama on major subjects of special concern to New Delhi.

The latest information from the United States is that Hillary Clinton made history yesterday by winning the US presidential nomination from the side of the Democrats; she thus becomes the first American woman to contest for occupation of the White House, having defeated her Democrat rival Bernie Sanders in the race. However, Sanders has declared: “The struggle continues,” adding: “We will not allow Right-wing Republicans to control our government.”

As for Modi's trip to the US, the most noteworthy event in the US capital was his address to the US Congress today. As the fifth Indian PM to do so, he brought into prominence the urgency of enhancing the struggle against terrorism, underscoring the fact that “not just in Afghanistan, but elsewhere in South Asia and globally, terrorism remains the biggest threat”. In his opinion,

In the territory stretching from west of India's border to Africa, it may go by different names, from Lashkar-e-Taiba, to Taliban, to ISIS.

But its philosophy is common: of hate, murder and violence.

Although its shadow is spreading across the world, it is incubated in India's neighbourhood...

The need of the hour is for us to deepen our security cooperation.

And base it on a policy

• that isolates those who harbour, support and sponsor terrorists;

• that does not distinguish between “good” and “bad” terrorists; and

• that delinks religion from terrorism.

Well aware that several members of the US House of Representatives had conveyed their opposition to religious intolerance in India, Modi in the first half of his speech explicitly pointed out:

For my government, the Constitution is its real holy book.

And in that holy book, freedom of faith, speech and franchise, and equality of all citizens, regardless of background, are enshrined as fundamental rights.

And towards the end of the speech, he underlined:

As we deepen our partnership, there would be times when we would have differing perspectives.

But since our interests and concerns converge, the autonomy in decision-making and diversity in our perspectives can only add value to our partnership.

Needless to mention, Modi's hourlong extempore address to the US Congress was punctuated by frequent applause and standing ovations.

The address to the US Congress apart, there were major takeaways from the talks Modi had with Obama—the US extending support to India's bid to enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) while it was simultaneously disclosed that India had cleared all hurdles to become a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR); India and the US Exim Bank deciding to work out an attractive package for delivering AP 1000 nuclear reactors built by Westinghouse to this country; registering considerable forward movement in materialising the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) which will allow the militaries of the two countries to get access to each other's facilities; India declaring its preparedness to meet climate change commitments before Obama demits office.

June 8 S.C.

The following Manifesto of a United Anti-Fascist Democratic Front is drafted by Aurobindo Ghose, an economist formerly at the Delhi School of Economics. He is currently a practising lawyer and human rights activist. He has conveyed that he “remains open to further debate, discussion and even correction”. He can be contacted at e-mail: g_aurobindo@yahoo.com.

Today what India urgently needs is a democratic revolution, not a socialist one. This cannot be achieved by the Left forces alone, if by Left is meant only the existing, traditional Communist and Socialist parties and groups.

Even the intended democratic revolution has to be preceded by a strong, united anti-fascist movement which will challenge and defeat the Hindutva forces hell-bent upon achieving a Hindu Rashtra through both electoral and vigilante/ insurrectionary means. This will require very hard efforts to unite and form the broadest ‘rainbow' coalition across the country and all regions of all sections, representing various oppressed, exploited and minority people and nationalities and sub-nationalities. This anti-fascist movement has to be constituted by various democratic, progressive, Left and secular sects, sections, groups and parties irrespective of caste, tribe, creed, gender, class, ability, and language, representing different democratic secular ideas from Gandhian to Ambedkar-Perriyar-Phule-Kanshi Ram to Lohia and the Left etc.

This united front will also strive to fulfil the aspirations of a broad democratic secular culture and will have as its members poets, writers, artists, dramatists, singers and musicians etc. This has to be based on a very broad under-standing for attaining development with human dignity and a relentless fight against communalism and corruption. This will require a minimum working programme of land reforms, spatially widespread development of agriculture, industry, and services based on farmers and peasants, landless, small and medium-scale domestic businesses, entrepreneurs, traders, professionals, students and teachers, artisans and vendors assuring food, employment, housing and education to the masses.This has, it hardly needs to be mentioned, to be and must be based on socially egalitarian policies providing protection and encouragement to different faiths and communities, women, children, disabled, Dalits, adivasis, and religious and linguistic minorities as provided in the present Constitution of India.

Such efforts to build a strong, united, broad anti-fascist, secular, democratic front of the people and masses is only possible if they consciously strive to build on a historical understanding of the different trends in thought and ideology of the individuals, groups, parties and forces seeking to come together and uniting against what may be termed as the corporate, communal, feudal, patriarchal, Brahmanical fascist forces looming large before the Indian people and threatening to finish even the existing imperfect Democracy based on the present Constitution and replace it by a Hindu Rashtra based on a theocratic and autoritarian state. If we are clear, conscious, democratic, sensitive and determined, we, the people, shall overcome all odds and ultimately be victorious against the dark and evil forces facing, confronting and threatening us, the people of India.

by Santhoshkumar R.

Introduction

Our Public Service Commissions were established by the Constitution of India to select applicants for civil service jobs in the country, based on the merits of the applicants and reservation policies. The Public Service Commission advises the government on all matters connected to civil services referred to it under Article 320 (3) of the Indian Constitution, publishes notifications inviting applications for selection to various posts as per the requisitions of the appointing authorities, conducts written tests, practical tests, physical efficiency tests and interviews as per the requirements of the post and the number of vacancies. A rank-list based on the performance of the candidates is then prepared and the candidates selected are advised for appointment, strictly based on their merit and reservation criteria. Similarly, other agencies are conducting eligibility tests for the admission to Medical Science, Engineering and other professional courses. The mark normali-sation is one of the most difficult tasks in the cases, even in the examination conducted by Public Service Commissions or other examinations for professional courses. This article discusses the existing issues in relation to the mark normali-sation of various PSC examinations and suggests a suitable method to resolve them.

Present Problems and a New Method to overcome those

In the present scenario, examinations are conducted by the Public Service Commissions in the country in connection with vacancies in different departments of the government. The selection procedure varies according to the post, such as an annual examination for the selected post, district-level and Statewide selections, etc. District-level examinations, mainly for clerical posts at various departments of the government, are conducted at different dates and a separate rank-list is prepared for different districts and an advice memo is issued prior to the appointment. In Statewide selections, exami-nations are conducted at different centres in the State on a particular date, based on a single question-paper. A uniform and single rank-list is prepared and advised, based on the rank-list. For the Statewide selection, the number of candidates is comparatively less. So the selection-procedure is not complicated. This method is applicable only in the case of examinations for posts with a small number of applicants. However, these days the number of candidates is huge, and Public Service Commi-ssions find it difficult to conduct the examination on a single day regarding a particular post.

Similarly, other examinations, like the National Eligibility Entrance Test, will be conducted at different days with different question-papers. In this situation, the exami-nation-conducting agencies have difficulties for the normalisation of marks.

To overcome this problem, Public Service Commissions or any other agencies conducting eligibility-test at present adopt a selection procedure more or less on the following lines: written examinations are conducted at different centres on different dates, using different question-papers; after the written examination, a single rank-list is prepared. For this purpose, mark normalisation or deletion or subtraction processes are at times followed. The standard of question-papers may vary on different days or at various stages of the examination. For example, it takes four days to complete the written examination for a particular post or an entrance level in a Statewide selection or nationwide selection. On the first, second and fourth days, the question-papers are easy when compared with those on the third day. In this situation, Public Service Commissions or the examination-conducting agencies may apply a normalisation procedure for evaluation. A certain number of correct questions and their answers are deleted from the question-papers in particular on the first, second and fourth days. The marks obtained on all four days may then be compiled to prepare a single and uniform rank-list. In effect, this kind of normali-sation procedure is not completely accurate, as the level of the question-paper is not the concern of the candidates. The candidates come prepared for the examination and they may or may not give correct answers to the questions provided.

Right now, Public Service Commissions or other agencies have no alternative to overcome this hurdle. Here is a new and comparatively simple method to solve it. This includes separate evaluation and separate rank-lists for various days of the examination, without normalisation or any deletion, addition or subtraction. Let us assume that ten lakh candidates apply for the Secretariat services in a State or National Eligibility Entrance Test for admissions for medical courses. It is very difficult to conduct the examination on a single day. So the examinations will be conducted on four days with different question-papers. A cut-off mark will then be decided according to the rules and regulations. A separate rank-list may be published for four different stages or the different days of the examination, without any deletion or addition of marks. As a result, there is no confusion in connection with the pattern of question-papers on different days of the examination. After the four rank-lists are published, the advice memo or selection will be sent as per the normal procedure of the Public Service Commissions or the agencies for professional courses.

Let us say a hundred vacancies or seats are reported at the time of the preparation of the rank-list. In this situation, equal chances are given to all four rank-lists. First, the hundred vacancies are divided by four. The first twenty-five vacancies will be filled from the first rank- list, the next twentyfive from the second rank- list, the following twentyfive from the third rank-list and the final twentyfive from the fourth rank-list. That means the reported vacancies or seats may be divided by the number of rank-lists and then the vacancies distributed to the entire rank-list for the particular post in Statewide or nationwide selection. This method may help to overcome the issues faced in the normalisation of marks by the Public Service Commissions or other agencies engaged in conducting other eligibility examinations for various posts or the admission for professional courses and may do away with the confusion of the candidates appearing for competitive examinations conducted by various agencies.

The author is an Assistant Professor, Mahatma Gandhi College, Thiruvananthapuram. He can be contacted at email: santhoshkumar30576@gmail.com

by Arun Srivastava

Strange, it took not less than 70 years for the RSS to identify the real Babasaheb Ambedkar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief, Mohan Bhagwat, finally laid his claim that Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution, was a believer in the Sangh's ideology and had called its workers symbols of social unity and integrity. He came out with yet another revelation: that Ambedkar was not in favour of adopting the tricolour as the national flag of India; instead he wanted to adopt the saffron flag of the RSS as the national flag.

Bhagwat's deputy, Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi, even went farther to assert: “Dalit icon Baba-saheb Ambedkar was misconstrued as the leader of a particular section of society, and there was a need to delve deeper into his life to bring out his national persona.” The desperation of the RSS to appropriate Ambedkar could be realised from the simple move of Joshi to draw a parallel between Ambedkar and the RSS ideologue, K.B. Hedgewar.

It is indeed an example of classical paradox that an organisation surviving on the precept of ultra-Hinduism and committed to comunalise the Indian social ethics was trying to embrace a person who believed in annihilation of caste and never subscribed to the principles and tenets of Hinduism and Hindutva.

This is also for the first time that the realisation has dawned on the Sangh bosses that efforts should be made to “minimise the gap among social communities”. The RSS chief, without maintaining the minimum façade of hesitation, claimed that Ambedkar believed in the ideology of Hinduism and he worked in this direction. It is the same RSS which had severely criticised and despised him for presenting the final draft of the Indian Constitution. The RSS organ Organiser, in its editorial of November 30, 1949, criticised Ambedkar: ”The worst [thing] about the new Constitution of Bharat is that there is nothing Bharatiya about it... There is no trace of ancient Bharatiya constitutional laws, institutions, nomenclature and phraseo-logy in it. There was no mention of the unique constitutional developments in ancient Bharat. Manu's laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day his laws, as enunciated in the Manusmriti, excite the admiration of the world and elicit spon-taneous obedience and conformity [among Hindus in India]. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing.”

The RSS was highly critical of the personal law reforms proposed by Ambedkar. The RSS sarsanghchalak, M.S. Golwalkar, complained in a speech in August 1949 that the reforms piloted by Ambedkar “has nothing Bharatiya about it. The questions like those of marriage and divorce cannot be settled on the American or British model in this country. Marriage, according to Hindu culture and law, is a sanskar which cannot be changed even after death and not a ‘contract' which can be broken any time.” Golwalkar continued: “Of course, some lower castes in Hindu society in some parts of the country recognise and practise divorce by custom. But their practice cannot be treated as an ideal to be followed by all.” (Organiser, September 6, 1949)

In an article carried by Organiser, in its edition of November 2, 1949, the RSS characterised the Hindu Code Bill “as a direct invasion on the faith of the Hindus”. It said: “Its provisions empowering women to divorce is revolting to the Hindu ideology.” The RSS had opposed the Hindu Code Bill. “We oppose it because it is a derogatory measure based on alien and immoral principles. It is not a Hindu Code Bill. It is anything but Hindu. We condemn it because it is a cruel and ignorant libel on Hindu laws, Hindu culture and Hindu dharma,” said the Sangh. It targeted the two architects of the Bill and Organiser characterised them as “Rishi Ambedkar and Maharishi Nehru”.

Obviously the question arises: what made the RSS to change its approach and perception towards Ambedkar? True to speak, this transfortmation came barely six months back. This was not even visible on the eve of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections though during that period the RSS and BJP strove for inducting Dalit leaders like Udit Raj and Ramvilas Paswan as the members of the BJP-led NDA. In fact during the Bihar Assembly elections Bhagwat had opposed the reservation for the SCs and argued for its review. After the defeat of the Modi-led BJP, a section of the BJP had blamed this remark responsible for the defeat of the BJP in the elections.

Bhagwat's claim that Ambedkar believed in the RSS ideology is simply ridiculous and in fact is part of the design to appropriate the Dalits. How could Ambedkar subscribe to Hindu and Hindutva philosophy when he personally was opposed to it and believed that caste hierarchies are an intrinsic part of Hinduism? This was the primary reason why he converted to Buddhism. It is an open secret that the RSS does not subscribe to the political ideology of Ambedkar. If Ambedksar was really relevant then why was the RSS sitting idle and did not make any move earlier to appropriate him? What implies this sudden change of heart? It is also a known fact that the RSS has always stood by the feudal and oppressive landlords in their oppression against Dalits. An insight into the rural, and particularly agrarian, violence would reveal that the kulaks and rich, who form the core of the RSS, symbolised violence against the Dalits.

In a democratic country like any other organi-sation or individual the RSS too has the right to change its mind and approach about Ambedkar and project him as its ideological maharishi. But it must have some rationale. The way the Sangh and its Parivar members cele-brated the 125th birth anniversary of Ambedkar raises many questions and apprehensions about their real intentions.

After a year of the Modi Government in power, the RSS launched the scheme and design to accept and identify the Sangh with a number of modern political icons who do not even subscribe to the ideological orientation of the Sangh or have any connection with the BJP. The Sangh had to take this tactical line to confuse the people, particularly the secular people, and social forces of its real intentions. It identified with Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, and now Ambedkar. Even they mellowed down their attack on Indira Gandhi. The lone exception, however, was Jawaharlal Nehru as he symbo-lised secularism and secular forces opposed to the hegemony and communalism of the saffron in India.

Apparently this move of the RSS and BJP may not appear to be detrimental to the interest of the country and its people. But behind this façade there lurks the dangerous design to saffronise the most secular and pluralist ideals and concepts. Ambedkar, during his lifetime, never endorsed the saffron ideology, but the RSS—and particularly the Modi Government—has moved him to the centre-stage of national conversation. An effort is assiduously being made by the saffron outfit to bring about a confluence of the Left and Ambedkarite politics.

The political appropriation of an icon is not a new happening. But it is the manner of appropriation that matters. In the case of Ambedkar, the RSS and BJP have been ruthless. Their effort has purely been aimed at realigning the past figures to the contemporary political requirements and presents it as an innovative concept. But how the BJP encompasses this would be an exercise interesting to watch. Ambedkar has been a reformer, crusader and thinker who was for “annihilation of the caste” system, wanted to “restore the title deeds of humanity” to the untouchables, and strove to liberate India from “Dalit-hunting”. In sharp contrast the RSS stood for all the things which Ambedkar disliked and opposed. A look at the past incidents, particularly in the Hindi heartland, would reveal that the saffron leaders, intellectuals and supporters have always identified with the upper-caste and reactionary forces and endorsed their act of suppressing the Dalit voice and denying them the dignity they deserve.

The sudden resurrection of Ambedkar has been quite an interesting development. The RSS, which till recently despised Dalits and treated them as enemies, has suddenly started enticing them, speaking in terms of their social and economic empowerment. The Sangh has even outwitted the traditional Dalit organisations and forces. With some prominent political faces joining hands with the BJP, the stance of the RSS has been vindicated. The Sangh does not intend to allow the huge Dalit population and force to go closer to the secular forces. Besides it also conspires to blunt the Dalit movement.

Appropriation of Ambedkar would help the RSS to accomplish its task. This impression gained strength in the RSS and BJP particularly after the suicide of Rohith Vemula, the Dalit scholar of Hyderabad Central University. His suicide revived the national debate about the unresolved Dalit issue and the treatment meted out to the Dalit population, especially the aspiring younger generation. The manner in which Rohith was treated, even by the Union HRD Minister, raised the question whether the Indian state, the government and the Indian society was agile and responsive to the requirements and aspirations of the Dalits. Is it not a fact that even today the societal oppression on Dalits is more pronounced and gruesome?

The BJP, during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, had enrolled some prominent Dalit leaders as its fraternal members. The RSS nursed the hope that their induction will swing the Dalits towards the saffron and its politics of Hindutva. But that did not happen. Since then the RSS and BJP were in search for some meaningful association with the Dalits. The Rohith episode simply hastened the process. After losing their first bet, the failure of Ramvilas Paswan and Udit Raj to bring Dalits into the fold of the Sangh, the RSS was left with no other alternative but to usurp Ambedkar and his legacy.

It was indeed outlandish to watch Narendra Modi describing himself as the bhakta (devout) of Ambedkar. While delivering the Ambedkar Memorial Lecture after laying the foundation stone of the Ambedkar National Memorial, PM Modi called himself a ‘bhakt' of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar and said the “iconic leader was a ‘vishwa manav', not just the messiah of Dalits but someone who raised the voice for all the downtrodden and suppressed people”. Narendra Modi also assured the Dalits that he would never dilute reservations even if B.R. Ambedkar himself were to come back to life and demand their revocation. Shocking indeed, Modi was misrepresenting the facts and painting an absurd picture of Ambedksar. It would be wrong to say Modi committed a faux pass. Instead it was a deliberate move.

This revealed the desperation of the Hindutva forces to woo the Dalits by misrepresenting Ambedkar. He never advocated for reservation. Reservations, which are assumed to be a boon for Dalits, have actually been the tool of their enslavement. Modi must realise that his lies have cost the saffron party dearly. In fact he must not nurse the view that Dalits are naïve and would not make out the meaning and implication of his statement.

It is imperative to take a look at the direction of the Dalit movement in contemporary India. It cannot be denied that for the last three decades the Dalit movement has been in a state of confusion; it was at the crossroad: which way to go. The aspirational younger generation is not willing to follow in the footsteps of the previous leaders or pursue their political line. At the same time they also intend to share the contemporary gains of the reforms. At a time when the reforms have been virtually squeezing out the Dalits and turning them irrelevant, the fight against this tendency is gradually losing the connect.

The RSS and BJP are now considering the possibility of actively mobilising the Dalits, without losing the support base of the so-called upper castes. While the BSP resorted to the bottom-up strategy, moving from the Bahujan to the Sarvajan, the RSS is working on a strategy to move from the Sarvajan to Bahujan. The RSS wants to have Dalits as its strong support-base, but at the same time does not intend to antagonise or lose the main support base of the Hindus, and especially upper castes.

Obviously the question arises; where is Dalit politics heading in India today? Dalits seem to have come a full circle from the agenda of “annihilation of caste” to “secularisation of caste”, and conversion from Hinduism to actively claiming the Hindu identity. Mayawati's experiment with Dalit politics, of tagging in the upper castes, especially the Brahmins, with the Dalits, has exposed the weakness of the present Dalit movement.

The dynamics in Dalit politics appears to have made a paradigm shift, from challenging the upper-caste hegemony to becoming a part of the majoritarian polity. By resorting to this tactics the Dalit politicians and activists were trying to make them realise that while Dalits need their share of power, they also needed Dalit support for their political survival. They also intended to send the message that they were mutually interdependent. But this model of alliance failed to make any significant impact on the Indian political system and scenario. To some extent this worked in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014, but after that it lost its orientation and spirit. But it is true that Dalit politics could not make its independent assertion as it was plagued with conflicting interests which it borrowed during the phase of its alliance and entente with the upper-caste forces.

Since then Dalit politics has been in a state of confusion and disarray. Dalit identity is itself as internally fractured as the issue of conflicting interests. In the past, movements or reforms were undertaken for inclusive Dalit assertion and empowerment, but in the present scenario the creamy layer of the Dalits are using the Dalit force for their own benefits. They are least concerned of the socio-economic and political uplift or liberation of their community people.

Politically in the past Dalits were with the Congress. In the eighties they shifted to the BSP or other Dalit forums and parties. Obviously the mobilisation of Dalits by the Congress or other political parties had benefited certain Dalit sub-castes. Now in the present scenario those who nursed the sentiment of having lost the benefits are trying to rally behind the BJP. This has made the task of the RSS comparatively easy. The urge for economic empowerment and having their separate space has conjured the Dalits to seriously ponder over the relevance of maintaining their separate identity away from the Hindus. This section of the Dalits nurse the feeling that they can get their share of power and economic benefits only by aligning with the dominant Hindu religion. The weakness of size and social backwardness is sought to be overcome by accruing power by joining the majoritarian political formation.

Though some Dalit intellectuals disagree that Dalit politics today is taking a ‘Rightist shift', they have not been able to explain the present dynamics of Dalit politics. It would have been appropriate for the Dalit scholars to explain the reasons as to why the RSS has been carrying out Brahmanical propaganda against the Dalits and also desperately try to incorporate Dalits into their Hindutva agenda. It also ought to be answered in concrete terms why the Dalit leaders and masses have been showing their inclination towards the RSS.

The assumption that Dalit politics has taken a Right turn is also corroborated by the partici-pation of the Dalits in violent clashes against the Muslims at the instigation of the RSS. Besides the urgency of upholding the Hindu cause, the Dalits are told by the RSS and Hindu leaders that the Muslims have been grabbing the benefits which otherwise should have gone to them.

The Dalit movement is witnessing additional challenges through a Right-wing turn in its political leadership. The ideological and philosophical doctrine of Ambedkar, Phule and Shahu Maharaj has lost its relevance as well as control on the sensibilities of the Dalit leadership, which is why a Right-wing turn is being witnessed. The Dalit leadership is in fact in a state of utter confusion. This is a part of the national scenario. It is not in the position to chart out an independent movement for realising their requirements and needs. The inability of the Left forces to attract Dalits and build their confidence has been a major factor for detachment of the Left forces from the vast mass of the Dalits.

In the sixties and seventies a massive upsurge of the Dalit forces was witnessed all over India. In most of the States they constituted the main force, the vanguard of the Naxalite movement. The Bhojpur movement of Bihar symbolised and represented the pioneer agrarian struggle. The Dalits were the main force. But the difference was instead of leading the struggle as Dalits, they fought against the exploitation of the feudal and landlords as agricultural labourers or sharecroppers.

Incidentally in traditional Indian society, the Dalits are treated as a non-productive force, whereas the landless agricultural labourers, who are the Dalits and Scheduled Castes, represent the productive forces. Unfortunately the Indian Left did not adopt a scientific approach towards the vast population of the Dalits. Ironically they have still been simply adopting resolutions at their party Congresses to unite the Dalits and work amongst them. The possibility of alliance between them and the Communists was foiled by the impassive outlook of the Communists who refused even to take cognisance of the problem of castes. Their ostrich- like behaviour towards the land problem was out-an-out unMarxist.

Aversion of the Dalits to identify with the Left forces has strong polemical reasons. The Indian Left leaders never reached out to the Dalits on the ideological plane. They treated the Dalits as a caste conglomerate, not a class collection. Ambedkar too was not comfortable with the Leftists. Ambedkar's statement that mass struggles were the grammar of anarchy in the constitutional regime and should not have any place in a parliamentary democracy worked against the Left. It was argued that if the land question was at all important, it could have been taken up judicially in the Supreme Court of India. The Left-orientation was the prime reason that his close friend, Dadasaheb Gaikwad, could not gain complete acceptability amongst the Dalits. He had a Leftist orientation. Other leaders accused Gaikwad of being intellec-tually incapable of comprehending the subtleties of Ambedkar's ideology and hence unsuitable to step into his shoes. They disapproved of Gaikwad's struggle as being a Communist one and declared that it had no place in the Ambedkarian agenda.

Though Ambedkar shared substantial space with Marx, he was deliberately projected as anti-Marxist. Both had a firm commitment to the most oppressed people. But Ambedkar did not see the image of the working class in Dalits and any probability of its emergence until the castes were annihilated. Marxism did not have what he was looking for. Ambedkar's emphasis was eventually on organising Dalits around their social marginalisation and the various forms of exclusion that they face.

The emergence of a Dalit middle, neo-middle class and a neo-capitalist class is one of the crucial socio-economic phenomenon of globalised India. For this section of Dalits the element of cooperation was more important than confrontation. Actually the RSS is trying to use this contradiction and the prevailing psyche. It is already an organisation of upper- caste Hindus, who control and guide the fulcrum of the Indian economy. These upper-caste people have even come to accept the necessity for reservation in the jobs for them. The reason is: they know that jobs are few and their children in the present economic scenario are aiming for the corporate sector or migrating abroad. Obviously the possibilities of clash of interest are less. In fact, reservation is the only policy which has benefited the Dalits in any real sense.

The new generation of Dalit leadership, which emerged in the 1980s, was mainly drawn from the class of government employees and officials. With the shrinking space for reservation, Dalits have also started changing their approach. Dalits are no longer hesitant to collaborate and work with other castes for their respective political goals. Incidentally the Congress is no more the political forum which can be relied upon by them in their pursuit. True enough, the subjective condition favours the RSS. Appropriation of Ambedkar is an attempt to accelerate the process of Hinduisation of the Dalits. Dalit politics has a conflict with the Left on anti-capitalist issues. There is no denying the fact that Dalit politics is taking a Rightist turn.

The author is a senior journalist and can be contacted at sriv52@gmail.com

Scandalous, irresponsible and impervious to public interest—one would like to cry out at the situation where, as reported in the press, there are 458 vacancies out of 1074, the full strength of the High Court Judges in India. But one does not do so because of inborn partiality of one belonging to the same legal fraternity—if a similar situation had been prevailing in the executive, the wise and sensitive men and women of the legal fraternity would have shouted from the house-top of the inefficiencies and lack of sensitiveness on the part of politicians at violating public interest. So if now some in the executive sarcastically remind the judiciary (being wary of listening to the daily homilies from the Bench) “physician, heal thyself”, they could not be proceeded against for contempt for the simple reason “though the work of Judges is divine, the tragedy is that Judges have somehow started believing that they have become divine” apart from the fact that there are many High Courts have Acting Chief Justices. Is it any wonder, them, that arrears keep on mounting with the inevitable consequence of anger rising against the judiciary.

The tragedy is that in all this maligning of the judiciary, the legal fraternity, including the judiciary, have to share the blame also. No doubt the secrecy and no consultation with the public and the Bar were faults of the collegium system. But instead of the court itself doing this correction by administrative measures it chose to reopen the collegium system delivered earlier by a nine-Judge Bench decision.

It is correct that the situation was brought about by the unseemly action of the legislature and gleefully led by Ministers in the government to curtail and downgrade the effectiveness of the judiciary—the irony being that these worthies had earned their exalted position because of the impartiality and status of the judicial system. The legal fraternity was right in shouting: “Et tu Brutus”.

After the decision, the collegiums should have started the process of filling the vacancies, but still further to show that it is open to the suggestions from the Bar and public as to the methodology of not only selecting judges but also the process of making the process more transparent. It was expected that after further court hearings, it will come out with a Memo-randum of Procedure for selection. But surpri-singly after weeks of court hearing, it decided to avoid its responsibility and asked the govern-ment to frame the Memorandum of Procedure. I have still not understood the logic of this decision which was bound to be self-defeating —this naturally gave an opening which had been closed permanently by the Bench holding earlier that the last word in the selection of judges is that of the collegium.

So the government having got this golden opportunity unabashedly prepared a Mop (including the objectionable and illegal suggestion considered in the light of the decision of the Constitution Bench) that if the name of the Judge is not approved by the executive he will not be appointed. Another obnoxious suggestion by the Government Memo is that the Attorney General and Advocate Generals should, along with the judiciary, be on the selection of judges. How horrendous and openly objectionable this suggestion is that it had not found place even in the Judges Act which was passed by the legislature and which has been held to be unconstitutional. Are we then in a dark alley with no opening? No doubt this situation is greatly worrisome, but a quick solution has to be worked out.

I am, in this context, suggesting that it is the duty of the former Chief Justices and even the judges of the Supreme Court to involve themselves in this deadlock by openly coming out with their views. It is not a strange suggestion—when a five-Judge Bench invited suggestion from the public about the Memorandum of Procedure, some of the retired Supreme Court Judges and retired Chief Justices of the High Court sent a memo openly during the hearing giving their views of the matter. They had no embarrassment at sending suggestions which may have been rejected by the Bench, considering that some of the present judges at some point in the past might have been their juniors. At times like this notions of undue delicacy and aloofness should he given up because at stake is the independence of the judiciary—one of the sheet-anchors of our Constitution. The old lot needs to jump in the fight not on partisan but as a sobering effect of the stubborn stand being taken by the executive which is openly saying that it will not relent on its stand of not appointing a judge whom the executive disapproves—outrageously unconstitutional, but there it is.

Long ago Montesquieu saw this predicament and himself opined “that there can be no liberty if the power of judging be not separate from the legislative and executive powers”.

This conflict between the executive and judiciary has not been settled and will always remain a matter of debate. But it is well to remind the executive of certain postulates which are unalterable.

Thus even 400 years after the Magna Carta was signed, King James I of England felt unhappy when prerogative courts set up by him came in conflict with old courts applying the common law. King James I summoned the Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke to stop interfering with the prerogative courts. The King's will, James asserted, ‘was supreme'. Sir Edward Coke, the Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, responded that the judges must follow the common law, to which the King answered wrathfully, “then I am to be under the law—which it is treason to affirm.” Coke replied by quoting Brocton, a medieval scholar monk, Rex non debete sse sub homine sed sub deo et lege.—“The King ought not to be under any man, but under God and the law.” The story of this exchange has echoed down through the centuries.

In India similarly we have had the established principle that the King, though an absolute sovereign, must yet function within Dharma— which is another way of proclaiming the principle of the supremacy of law.

Wherever there is a written Constitution the Supreme law is the law of the Constitution and for even Parliament to accept that its powers are limited by the written Constitution is not in any manner to derogate from its sovereignty but only to accept that its sovereignty, like the sovereignty of the executive and the judiciary, is limited by the written Constitution.

Can one hope the executive to act with grace and accept that it is not the modern Henry VIII of England fame, because of the settled principle that the sovereignty vests in the people as expressed in our Constitution?

The author, a retired Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, was the Chairperson of the Prime Minister's high-level Committee on the Status of Muslims and the UN Special Rapporteur on Housing. A former President of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), he is a tireless champion of human rights. He can be contacted at e-mail: rsachar1@vsnl.net/rsachar23@bol.net.in

BOOK REVIEW

by Aejaz Ahmad Wani

Masters of Mankind by Noam Chomsky; Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, (Penguin), UK; 2015; pages 167 (paperback); Price: £ 8.99.

Introduction

If you wish to take your time off from the so-called “mainstream” political and economic discourses and try to surpass its boredom, there is perhaps none better than Noam Chomsky to look for. Beyond the world of ‘right' and ‘wrong', Chomsky, rightly described by Eduard Said as a “significant challenger of unjust power and delusions”, keeps people at the centre of all knowledge and discourses. Among his huge corpus of books, his latest book, Masters of Mankind, is yet another remarkable reflection on the nature of the American state, its power structures, democracy, culture and its place in global politics. Masters of Mankind is Chomsky's collection of seven ‘heavily loaded' essays and lectures from 1969 to 2013. Written by a person often referred to as the ‘father of modern linguistics', the crispness of its language is not to be judged. In fact, this album of seven essays does a job of ‘de-mainstreaming' of your knowledge about how the world politics works.

Elitist and Authoritarian Tendencies of Intellectuals: Need for a Relevant New Left Committed to Deliberativeness

Chomsky opens up the book with the role of the ‘intelligentsia' in preserving the interests of ‘significant classes' and the role that intellectuals should play in such circumstances. He notes that the power in economic life has shifted from land to capital and now more recently to the composite of knowledge and skills—comprising the techno-structure. Those who embrace this specialised knowledge are brought to the decision-making. This intelligentsia is committed to the “predatory solution of token reform at home and counterrevolutionary imperialism abroad”. Such a society is maintained only by the national mobilisation of fear and threat.

Traditionally, the intellectual is caught between the conflicting demands of truth and power. They may act in two ways. Firstly, they may seek to ascertain truth and act in collectivity or alone, outside the corridors of power. Secondly or alternatively, they may seek power to humanise the dominant classes invoking various rhetorical solutions—revolu-tionary socialism, welfare state etc. However, such efforts have more often than not led to the partisan state or a centraliser. Here lies Chomsky's unflinching faith in ‘horizontal democracy'. He doubts that unless the whole masses take part in the determination of all aspects of social and economic life, it will merely be a new form of repression. The role of the intellectuals and radical activists must be to assess and evaluate, to persuade, to organise, but not to seek power and rule. This remedy applies particularly to the dogmatism of the Left.

He notes that there has been a general decline of parliamentary institutions, noticeable in the Western countries with the potential threat to freedom. It has occurred in Asia also, where national governments are unable to cope up with the US-based subsidised private enter-prises. In India too, the governments have cut taxes to the prosperous farmers at a time when the incomes have been rising steadily. From a liberal technocratic perspective, it could be solved by the strengthening of the federal governments; however, the control must remain vested in the managers who are best suited to manage talents. The federal governments have done nothing but supported this private capital which ultimately benefits the technocratic elite. In a society where wealth and income becomes the overarching goal, it becomes impossible to challenge the prevailing ideology and mobilise the popular support for general welfare.

He argues, with considerable historical conviction, that intellectuals have inherent elitist and authoritarian tendencies which can be vigorously combated only if there is an active, untrammelled and energetic mass participation in planning, decision-making about recons-truction of social institutions. This alone can create a ‘spiritual transformation'.

Chomsky asserts that the Left is undergoing an intellectual bankruptcy in that they are apprehensive of confrontations that any effective political action may cause. To avoid political backlash, they delay a confrontation and essentially maintain elitist and authoritarian forms of organisation. Another such danger that Leftists are apprehensive of is co-optation, which they believe may cause integration of proletariats with the industrial society. If that be the case, then, Chomsky wonders, they are opposed to everything imaginable.

He argues that universities are the spaces where the transformation can be brought and an agency or base for social change. This alone can reinvigorate the New Left with some real intellectual skills committed to deliberativeness. The Left needs to understand the present badly and the possibilities of the alternatives. The authoritarian tendencies of intellectuals are deeply grounded but not inescapable.

Legitimate Wars: Debating Legitimacy of Pre-emptive Strikes

In the second essay, Chomsky revisits the standard rules of a just war, particularly Michael Walzer's views on ‘pre-emptive strikes' (right to strike if there is “a manifest intent to injure or a degree of active preparation...that greatly magnifies the risk”) which is being considered as a latest ‘morally justifiable' addition in the just war theory.

According to Chomsky, in a review of 2500 years, Walzer finds only a single example of aggression involving no direct use of force, that is, the Israeli pre-emptive strike of June 4, 1967 against Egypt. For Walzer, this constitutes a moral revision of the legalistic standard. Chomsky argues that such an argument is more than an academic one. First, Walzer's analysis is based on Israel's point of view; it squarely ignores the Egyptian side of the story, that an exchange of fire between them was followed by Israeli intervention. Walzer also ignores the Israeli attack on the Jordanian village, Es Samu, in November, 1966. Second, the commander of the Israeli Air Force of that time as well as the US intelligence reports indicated that there was no real threat that would have threatened the very existence of the state of Israel and no evidence that Egypt was planning an attack on Israel. Third, there was considerable agreement in the international community that Egypt's proposal to try Israel in the ICJ had more plausible weight. Thus if this example is removed, Walzer's extension withers away.

Furthermore, contrary to Walzer's point that terrorism as a wanton killing of people is a post-war phenomenon, Chomsky argues that it was prevalent well before that. He acknowledges Walzer's argument that contemporary terrorist campaigns focus more on those whose national existence has been devalued, but adds that it applies to Palestinians no less than the Jews of Israel. Israel forms the ‘'moral world” of Walzer's analysis and this reflects the pathology of intellectual and moral bankruptcy.

Divine License to Kill: Pathologies of Christian Realism

In the third essay, Divine License to Kill, Chomsky investigates the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, the famous American theologian who presented a ‘devastating' critique of idealism and introduced ‘Christian realism', a sort of realism based on Christian ideals. Niebuhr writes elsewhere: “Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” This understanding is conditioned by the “sinful nature of man” on earth and the “taint of sin on all historical achievements”, of ‘human possibilities' and ‘human finiteness'. Chomsky finds Niebuhr's ‘soothing doctrines' devoid of historical sensi-bilities and facts, based rather on professed ideals of Christianity. The implication of such a construction is that it not only messes up the history, society and politics of America, but also presents its enemies as ‘ruthless foes' (parti-cularly Lenin and Trotsky) who ‘swindle people by the romantic dream of ending all problems'.

Chomsky masterfully wraps up Niebuhr's Christian realism by commenting that Niebuhr's ‘contribution' taught Americans how to play the ‘hard ball' while maintaining their ‘faith'. Since the international system is anarchical in nature (given the evil nature of human beings), there is a pertinent need to make a ‘conscious choice of evil for the sake of good'. For Chomsky, this is a divine license to kill, to prescribe how to play in a criminal world without tainting oneself. This argument makes sense in the backdrop of Niebuhr's unflinching ideological support to America against the Soviet Union.

Consent without Consent: The Catch in American Democracy

In the fourth essay, Chomsky dissects the American democracy in theory and practice. That American democracy, Chomsky notes, is marked by a lag between public preferences and public policies. Contrary to the ideals of the founding fathers of America, it has ended up as a democracy controlled by the corporates who have carried on a significant depoliticisation of the American society. The citizens are supposed to be passive and their active avatar is deemed as ‘crisis of democracy'. This has led to the conflict between the government, the enemy, and those who are living the ‘American dream' because a majority of the people in the US believe that the economic system is ‘inherently unfair' and that rich are getting richer and poor poorer.

Contrary to what few may view the ‘welfare state' as a ‘correction' of the capitalism, Chomsky warns that if at all there are concerns regarding this lag in American democracy, it is just what he calls as “benevolent autocracy” that holds the power of “calling off the capitalist game” just to keep off the threats of democracy. In fact, the founder of modern political science, Harold Lasswell, urged policy-makers to devise means of new social control in order to control people whom he called ‘ignorant and stupid' and who needed to be tamed by ‘intelligent minorities'.

Thus, Chomsky concludes, the implementation of the corporate agendas and business policies against the will of the public takes the form of what he calls as “consent without consent”. Being in a state is taken as a tacit consent to mould the minds of the masses as per the dominant interests. For instance, the sale of arms to the undemocratic countries is opposed by around 96 per cent of the populace; yet, given the tacit consent available to the government at all times, this is portrayed as a ‘job programme' meant for profits. Notwithstanding this peril in today's American democracy, Chomsky is still optimistic of its slow progress.

Simple Truths and Hard Problems

In the 1990s some of the self-designated ‘enlightened states' unleashed a ‘normative revolution' in international affairs that goes by the name of ‘humanitarian intervention'—a ‘humanistic urge' to liberate the ‘oppressed people' from the clutches of diabolical rulers. However, Chomsky raises a pivotal question in the fifth essay: why did this ‘normative revolution' emerge in the 1990s and not in the 1970s when the fact is that the latter period was riper for it? He argues that this is a simple truth that the guiding factor for creating norms is that these are made by the powerful.

Two of the significant military interventions led by the US in Vietnam and Cambodia occurred in the 1970s but they simplistically overlooked the ‘awesome crimes' which explains why such a ‘normative revolution' didn't undergird the foreign policies of the states such as the US in the 1970s, which carry the ‘saintly glow' in popular discourse. The harder problem, as Chomsky notes, is that the definition of the phenomenon of terrorism is based on the convenience of the American foreign policy. Even then, by its own standards, Chomsky argues, by investigating some crucial cases that the US not only engenders but also engages in large scale inter-national terrorism.

Who will Bail you Out from Environmental Crisis?

In the sixth essay, Chomsky attempts to address the paradox that if the environmental crisis is lethal for the human beings at large (as we all know that), why is human intelligence focused on short-term benefits to the relegation of long- term ones? He acknowledges the ‘Third World Interest' that the developed world caused it in the first place but warns that it would be the developing world that would be hit hard. Apart from the Third World concerns, the role of America is huge in disrupting the global conferences on environmental issues. The fact of the matter is that the ideology of neoclassical economics breeds irrationalism by convincing people that climate change is not real. In case of the environmental crisis, there would no one to bail it out. Chomsky appreciates the fact that European countries and China are spending huge amounts on green technology but the US is merely importing them but not producing them. In fact, there is a reversing trend in that the US investors are investing in China's green technology ventures.

Can Civilisation Survive?

The last essay in the book is dedicated to the ultimate question: Can civilisation survive? Chomsky forcefully rips apart the practical logic of ‘free market capitalism', which he claims does not exist in practice. Instead what really exists is the monopoly of the top business enter-prises giving an oligopolistic character to the global economy. The untrammelled capitalism has wrecked havoc with the environment signalling the potential dangers on the human civilisation, but, as Chomsky believes, the urge for preservation of the planet is recurrent in countries which have huge tribal, indigenous, and aboriginal populations. The irony is that even though the concern of nature is stronger among the tribal and aboriginals, the ‘civilised and sophisticated world' laughs at their ‘silliness'.

In sum, Chomsky's masterful analysis forces readers to ‘think for themselves'. It is a robust people-centric critique of American state, its democracy and its hegemony.

The reviewer studied at the Political Science Department, University of Delhi. He has authored the book Political Process in India. He is also the contributing author of the forthcoming book Modern South Asian Thinkers being published by Sage. He has contributed to Economic and Political Weekly and Mainstream.

by JAYANTA KUMAR DAB

Introduction

However expensive and expansive a building may be, it gets old and dilapidated with the passage of time, with the plaster peeling off and the roof on the verge of carving in, endangering the lives beneath it. The same was the case with the Planning Commission or Yojana Aayog, the prestigious institution that stood tall amid all policy-making institutions for a long period of 65 years. Indeed, the Planning Commission was the brainchild of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, and it was the descendant of the National Planning Committee that Subhas Chandra Bose had set up at the suggestion of Meghnad Saha when he was the Congress President in 1938. Nehru was made its President. Two subsequent plan proposals were floated, one the Bombay plan prepared by the city's industrialists and the People's Plan modelled after the Soviet plan by M.N. Roy. The influence of Fabian collectivism and Soviet-style planning were writ large when independent India adopted a formal model of planning by establishing the Planning Commi-ssion on March 15, 1950 with the Prime Minister as its Chairman. The first of the Five-Year Plans was launched in 1951. Despite the economic liberalisation in 1991, the Planning Commission continued but since 1997, there was the realisation that planning ought to be indicative in nature.

However, in line with the Government of India's approach of less government and a move away from centralised planning, the NITI Aayog with a new structure and focus on policy, will replace the old Planning Commission, that has seen the ups and downs of the Indian economy. Nevertheless, while the working of the earlier plan body showed up shortcomings from time to time, it did sterling work from bottom up. It mapped the resources available in the country and pointed to the need for developing the physical and social infrastructure in an extremely poor society by sending resources in the direction in which they were needed.

The replacement of the Planning Commission with a new institution, more relevant and responsive to the present economic needs and climate in the country, had long been demanded and expected. This is not the first time that a government has been dismissive of the Commission. In fact, the utility and relevance of the Planning Commission had been questioned for long. Once Rajiv Gandhi had called the Commission members ‘a bunch of jokers'. But, he stopped short of dismantling it. On the other hand, former Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission K.C. Pant and even Dr Manmohan Singh made some attempts to explore changes. It was in 2009 that Dr Singh had alluded to the Planning Commission having outlived its utility and lost relevance in the present-day require-ments of the country in the global context and asked the members to consider changes to make it more relevant. A year later, Arun Maira, a former member of the Planning Commission, recommended the changes in its structure, role, functions and resources. Maira, who headed the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in India, reveals that in 2012, a Parliamentary Standing Committee also gave a report which said that it was time for an independent evaluation of the functioning of the Planning Commission. From a highly centralised planning system, the Indian economy is gradually moving towards indicative planning, since the advent of the Eighth Five-Year Plan, where the Commission's role is changing gradually.

Side by side, it is well known that the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was at loggerheads with the erstwhile Yojana Aayog when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat—a leading industrialised State of India. He has always criticised the role of the Yojana Aayog for its high-handedness in disbursing grants to the States. Invoking the words of national and spiritual leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda and B.R. Ambedkar, Modi tweeted on January 1, 2015 wherein he announced: ‘‘Through the NITI Aayog, we bid farewell to a ‘one-size-fits-all' approach towards development. The body celebrates India's diversity and plurality. The Aayog will foster a sprit of ‘cooperative federalism' with the sole principle of developing a pro-people, pro-active and participative development agenda stressing on empowerment and equality.” His dissent was also echoed by the Chief Ministers of other States from time to time though largely from the Opposition-ruled States. But with the new structure and role as evident so far, it appears that the creation of the NITI Aayog is more of the old wine in a new bottle with some cosmetic changes.

Section —I

NITI Aayog : Conceptual Understanding

In Sanskrit, NITI can mean morality, behaviour, guidance, politics, management and a dozen of other things. But, in the present context it means policy. On August 13, 2014 the Union Cabinet approved the repeal of the Cabinet resolution dated March 15, 1950 by which the Planning Commission was set up. NITI stands for National Institution for Transforming India. In countries such as the USA, think-tanks that function independently of the government have a major role in policy-making. In India, too, there is a great deal of economic activity that happens outside the government set-up, and there is a need to design policies for them as well.

The government plans to adopt a ‘Bharatiya' approach to development. India needs an administration paradigm in which the govern-ment is an enabler rather than a provider of the first and last resort. The institutions of gover-nance and policy have to adapt to new challenges and must be built on the founding principles of the Constitution. There is a need to separate the planning process from the strategy of gover-nance. Transforming India will involve changes of two types like consequences of market forces and those that would be planned. The maturing of our institutions and polity also entails a diminished role for centralised planning, which itself needs to be redefined. A state-of-the-art resource centre for good governance practices is also proposed.

The reborn and rechristened entity will be the ‘Policy Commission' for India to achieve its economic potential. This is where the role of the Vice-Chairperson—who will carry the Cabinet Minister's rank—is crucial. The Vice-Chairperson of NITI Aayog will have access to the Prime Minister, its Chairperson, and may thus have a realistic possibility of helping to shape the agenda. The name NITIAayog has both institution and commission in it. While Aayog stands for ‘commission', one of the ‘I's in NITI is for institution. The penchant for catchy abbre-viations seems to have overlooked the oddity. Now, either it is a commission or an institution. Though, both terms can be interchangeable, yet in that case, one of them would be redundant.

Section — II

Rationale for Setting up the NITI Aayog

According to the Cabinet resolution passed on January 7, 2015, the rationale for setting up the NITI Aayog is that the people had great expectations for progress and improvement in governance through their participation. This required institutional reforms in governance and dynamic policy-shifts that could seed and nurture large-scale change. The destiny of our country, from the time we achieved Indepen-dence, is now on a higher trajectory. The argu-ments for setting up the new body are as follows:

Firstly,

the centralised planning concept can- not work in the changed circumstances as the Commission is losing its relevance. Times have changed and issues have changed and Nehru himself would have been the first to say that the Commission needs a relook had he been alive. When private investment far exceeds public investment and Centre-State relations have changed considerably in a market economy, the planning process needs a different orien-tation and outlook. This is, of course, another way of saying that it is the market that will determine priorities and the allocation of resources to various sectors, and not any planning authority.

Secondly,

according to Bhaskar Dutta, quite apart from the growing irrelevance of the Planning Commission is the fact that there have been serious charges against its actual functioning. Perhaps the most important allegation is that the Commission has strayed a long distance away from the role that was initially visualised for it. There has been little attempt to ground the planning process within a consultative framework in which the States and the Central Government are equal partners. The Planning Commission has become increasingly autocratic and typically enforced its diktat over different States. ‘We know best' may well have become the slogan of the Commission. Not surprisingly, state inputs into Five-Year Plans have become perfunctory. Another equally serious charge is that the Commission has become an agent of the ruling political party or coalition at the Centre. In this context, Bhaskar Dutta has observed that there is overwhelming evidence that the Planning Commission has allowed itself to become an agency of the ruling party or coalition at the Centre, as a disproportionately large fraction of such discretionary grants went to those States that were politically aligned with the ruling party in New Delhi.

Thirdly,

in the changed scenario, the States want more say in a federal set-up. It is impossible for the nation to develop unless the States develop. The process of policy-planning also has to change from ‘top to bottom' to ‘bottom to top'. The new body will adopt a ‘bottom up' approach, where decisions will be taken at the local level and then endorsed at the Central level. The new body is envisaged to follow the norm of ‘cooperative federalism', giving room to States to tailor the schemes to suit their unique needs rather than be dictated to by the Centre. This is meant to be a recognition of the country's diversity. The needs of a State such as Kerala with its highly developed social indicators may not be the same as those of, say, Jharkhand, which scores relatively low on this count. If indeed the body does function as has been envisaged now, the States will, for the first time, have a say in setting their own development priorities. This is also reflected in one of the approaches which says, ‘to develop mechanisms to formulate credible plans at the village level and aggregate these progressively at higher levels of Government'. The States would have a key role in the new body with an effective mechanism to address inter-State disputes. The NITI Aayog aims to foster ‘cooperative federalism' through structured support initiatives and mechanisms with the States on a continuous basis, recognising that strong States make a strong nation. It promises to promote the spirit of federalism in both planning and the Centre's disbursal of funds to the States.

Fourthly,

the new institution needs to work in tandem with constitutional institutions such as the Finance Commission and the Inter-State Council if a new federal culture has to evolve. The former decides how national revenue, collected as tax revenue through Central taxes, should be shared with the States. With no strings attached, the Inter-State Council can be a deliberative body that sorts out the bargaining issues between States that are at different levels of development or have different economic structures. The NITI Aayog should plug into these discussions as an influential advisory body. The NITI Aayog can be a successful innovation as long as such details are tackled.

Fifthly

, the new India, for which the NITI Aayog has been set up, is a radically different country. The old assumptions about low domestic savings, foreign exchange constraints and shallow financial markets have withered away. The private sector had replaced the public sector as the main engine of investment many decades ago. The markets have a far greater role to play in mobilising savings and channelling them towards productive investments. The Planning Commission stared irrelevance in the face, even though it did try to reinvent itself as a manager of social sector schemes.

Sixthly,

the NITI Aayog will be better placed to be an adviser. The new institution should identify the binding constraints on economic development on a national scale: infrastructure, energy, water, education, environment and food production, for example.

Seventhly,

it is important to overcome institutional weaknesses that crept into the Yojana Aayog. The Niti Aayog should be given a specific time-bound mandate and direction for economic, social and political transformation of the country over the next two decades. It has to facilitate India's transition into a developed nation while strengthening her federal structure, her unique socio-cultural diversity and setting a global example of sustainable resource-use strategy. There is a need to make the Aayog into a Commission for development and governance reforms, with a mandate to bring about the required institutional reorganisation and policy reforms in public service delivery, including in areas of law and order, administration of justice, electoral reforms to deepen democracy, health, education, energy and environment management.

The body, rightly informed by the principle of the government being an ‘enabler rather than provider of first and last resort', has other messes to sort out. The paternalism of the Planning Commission has outlived its time. The NITI Aayog must live up to its name of handing out an even deal to all. The niyati of the NITI Aayog hinges vitally on how some of these concerns are addressed in the coming months/years.

Section — III

Attitude of the Opposition Parties towards the NITI Aayog

The government's move to replace the Planning Commission with a new institution called the NITI Aayog was criticised by the Opposition parties of India. These parties were not impressed, and called it ‘‘fluff'' and ‘‘gimmickry''. They said the new body cannot fulfil the Centre's promise of ‘cooperative federalism' and they feared that States will be discriminated by the new set-up. They also expressed their apprehension that the new body will pave the way for discrimination, as ‘‘corporates will call the shots'' in policy-making in the country.

The Congress said “anti-Nehruvianism” and “anti-Congressism” were behind the govern-ment's decision to rename the Planning Commission as the NITI Aayog. It is not objectionable if it is coupled with real reform, the party averred. Otherwise, it will be purely cosmetic like the earlier naming ceremonies. According to Congress leader Manish Tewari, “If the government wants to greet people with fluff and not substance on the first day of 2015, then there is nothing more that can be said... If the North Block or the Finance Ministry has a very short-term view of both fiscal and monetary objective, it is going to be the final arbiter between the States and the Centre. It being the stakeholder in the process, I am afraid, is going to discriminate against the State.” He also said that “it's not a question of fighting a war, it's a matter of principle. The Opposition BJP used to go to extra lengths talking about federalism and how the sanctity and sacrosanct of federalism has to be maintained. And how they are doing exactly the reverse.”

Side by side, regional parties urged the Centre to ensure that the new panel will have members specifically for States. It being a stakeholder in the process is going to discriminate against the States. The CPI-M Polit-Bureau member and MP, Sitaram Yechury, termed the renaming of the Planning Commission as aniti our durnity (no policy and bad policy). He also said just a change of nomenclature and gimmickry does not serve any purpose. Let us see what the government plans to do with it.

Veteran CPI leader and former MP Gurudas Dasgupta said that “dismantling of the Planning Commission and bringing in a new body in its place will lead to an unregulated economy. It is not a change of name. The Planning Commission is being abolished because they (government) don't believe in planning.” Dasgupta alleged that the BJP Government was out to dissolve the Planning Commission as it is more interested in giving importance to full-market economy, but that will create hurdles in the national economic development. If this becomes the policy of the government to not help advance the country, control inflation and create job opportunities, it will not be good for the country. The CPI leader felt that such a move would be detrimental to the country's overall development. It is noted that a section of the Opposition is still blinkered by the socialist ideology and that is long past its ‘best before' date.

However, the NITI Aayog is long on generalities and short on specifics. The working of a new institution can be judged only after it has functioned for a sufficiently long time. The ideas which are claimed to guide the NITI Aayog are sound, but it has to implement them well, and disprove criticism that it is a gimmick. The Opposition, especially the Congress, termed its formation a ‘dangerous' idea and ‘an attack on the federal structure' of India's polity, while the CPI-M said that this would spur ‘privatisation'.

Section —IV

Challenges Ahead

The new body might represent a turn towards genuine and comprehensive policy-reform. However, the government has been woefully short of solid technocratic advice. The Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council was disbanded early on, and not reconstituted. Even the think-tank element of the Planning Commission itself has not really been functional since the new government took over. Altogether, the economic policy advisory capacity within the government has been severely limited for some time. This has perhaps had an effect on some of the government's decisions. For example, there is an urgent need for coherent thinking on the subject of natural resources pricing. It is in such areas that the new NITI Aayog will have to make its mark. Much will depend on the personal relationship between the head of the revamped Commission and the Prime Minister. In this context, a few aspects regarding the new body need to be addressed. It is relevant to mention here the following:

I. The overall efficacy of the NITI Aayog will depend crucially on the quality of experts it can round up to be its members, and also the headroom and space the Prime Minister gives it to allow it to operate effectively.

II. The Aayog's structure will also be relevant. Any enhanced participation from the State Chief Ministers may help the government achieve the Prime Minister's stated goal of ‘cooperative federalism' but for that to happen the new Governing Council has to be more active, with regular consultations. The earlier equivalent federal consultative body was the National Development Council, and its meetings were far too infrequent.

III. Dr Bibek Debroy has raised seven questions about the new institution. He has questioned the multiplicity of the new body's objectives. There is a secretariat function for the National Development Council (NDC) and Inter-State Council (ISC). There is something akin to a National Advisory Council (NAC), in the so-called think-tank role. By bundling all of these together, the proposed structure of the NITI Aayog seems to have become unnecessarily cumbersome and complicated. He wanted to know who would lobby with the Finance Ministry to protect Plan expenditure (in the backdrop of lack of clarity on widening the role of the Finance Commission), determine transfers to Centrally sponsored schemes or assign special category status to some States in the absence of the Planning Commission. Who would now determine the special category status of States, as the Aayog has no such role? Another question was: whether the Commission factors Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan's report in determining the special category status of States.

IV. The NITI Aayog, like the Planning Commission, is not a constitutional body, which means it too is not accountable to Parliament. The Aayog is set up executively, rather than through a specific piece of legislation. The Vice-Chairman of the NITI Aayog is the executive head of the body, which also includes a Secretary-level position for a Chief Executive Officer.

V. Financial decentralisation to the lowest tiers of the government for improved efficiency in public goods delivery is essential. The question is: should this role be kept outside the purview of the NITI Aayog? The success of the NITI Aayog lies in restoring the balance between the technical and political (federal) drivers of the planning process. The allocative role that continues to be relevant for a federal entity cannot be entirely divorced from the political process. Planning cannot be reduced to a mechanical exercise of earmarking public expenditure across competing needs. It has to respond to the evolving needs and concerns, especially for a society in transition. By divorcing the allocative role from the agency's policy advisory functions will make that agency a toothless tiger.

VI. While doing away with the Five-Year Plans, the new body should focus on the micro-economics of specific sectors. There is a clear lack of information on this count, which has led to industry over-reaching itself in sectors such as coal, power, roads and aviation, and banks making wrong judgement calls. Resource allocation is an important function of the Planning Commission. The main problem is grants under Section 382. Who will administer that function?

VII. Like its predecessor, the NITI Aayog does not have any constitutional status and has been envisaged to function only as a think-tank of the government. In reality, however, it will operate as a political entity of the ruling dispensation. The lack of constitutional legitimacy, the absence of an accountability structure and the inherent political nature of the Aayog may impede its functioning. Arvind Panagariya will be expected to ensure that the NITI Aayog transcends these limitations and is truly perceived as an institution for generating ideas and innovations necessary for transforming a lower middle-income country into an upper middle-income one within the next decade. The bloated bureau-cratic machinery, that it has inherited from the Planning Commission, may prove to be dysfunctional unless trimmed.

VIII. There is no clarity or indication about how the objectives of the new body will be achieved and the nature of the institutional mechanisms necessary or the changes that need to be effected in order to achieve the goals. The only mechanism that has been hinted at is a Governing Council comprising Chief Ministers and Lieutenant-Governors of Union Territories. The proposed entity will automatically render the existing National Development Council (NDC) defunct. Regional Councils will be the more appropriate forum for evolving a consensus-based policy.

Given the complexity of the country, its federal structure, multi-party political system, the growing challenge of minority management and the issue of poverty before caste, religion, region and domicile considerations, it will be rather too early to predict Panagariya's ability to profile a Central policy framework that will create an effective roadmap to guide the political executives of the government. Eminent non-government economists, including Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, and critics among social scientists strongly doubt the usefulness of a blatant application of the principles of market economy at India's current level of development that require more attention to poverty alle-viation, gender inequality, education, healthcare, social justice and support to the old and handicapped. In this context, some questions arise in the minds of countrymen. These are as follows:

Firstly, will Panagariya's reputation as a staunch market economist who grew up under the shadow of Jagdish Bhagwati stand in the way of creating an effective Niti (policy) that will do Nyaya (justice) to the hitherto neglected foundation of development?

Secondly, will the Aayog be able to show the way to creating 100 million jobs by 2019 that the government has promised?

Thirdly,will the new Vice-Chairman of the supreme policy-making body be able to help the government implement its promises?

Fourthly,

will Panagariya and his whole-time team members be able to chalk out a blueprint for the promised administrative reforms?

Fifthly

, the government had said that the hallmarks of its governance model would be ‘people-centric, policy-driven, time-bound delivery, minimum government, maximum governance'. Will the NITI Aayog be able to create such a non-partisan model?

It would be unfair to the NITI Aayog to answer these questions and address its critics' concerns at this moment of time. Experts say that more clarity is needed to understand the role of the new body. Political analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta has observed that ‘a lot will depend on what use the Prime Minister, who heads the organisation, will put it to. We will also need to see what the new body does and how it relates to other parts like the role of the Finance Commission.'

Section — V

Concluding Comments

We are about to witness the launch of the second generation reforms, because we are now ready to make a break with the past. The end of the Planning Commission and the beginning of the NITI Aayog mark this departure. The Yojana Aayog's performance in the past two decades is, at best, a mixed one. There are several questions which need clarity. Once answers to these emerge, then the new body could function smoothly. But, care must be taken to ensure the independence of the new body. It should also remain apolitical to win the trust of the Chief Ministers. With the Prime Minister's weight behind it, it should be able attract the highest talents in the country. How far the government accepts its recommendations also depends on the Prime Minister. In short, the new body should be able to function smoothly and effectively without interference from the political class. What works out and what doesn't remains to be seen.

The biggest danger before us is not the allegedly ‘slow' rate of growth. The biggest danger is the potential disaffection of the people with the policies of the Central Government leading to the country's descent. The govern-ment's errors affect millions of people for no fault of their own, and hence must be avoided as far as possible. Churning the issues amongst thoughtful people is a way of identifying such errors, as also a way to achieving the objectives more quickly and economically. It is under-standable that the government wants to perform, achieve and leave a mark. It will need to look ahead and allocate scarce resources; some professional advice in doing so may make a better government. The main challenge would be to articulate the vision of the NITI Aayog and in a manner that it becomes relevant to changing times.

However, the success of this proposed structure lies in the implementation. It will need people who are good at designing partici-pative processes and practising them; else we will be back to square one. As in all such matters the devil lies in the detail. What sounds good does not always work out that way. What precisely will the new mechanism mean ‘on the ground'? The role of ‘professionals' would require careful monitoring: while it would be incorrect to automatically assume an approach favouring the corporate sector (crony capitalism?), any abandoning of a commitment to uplift the weaker sections could prove disastrous. A related worry would be whether the Prime Minister is taking on too much on himself. Efficient delegation of authority is not just critical to good governance, it is a hallmark of an inspirational leadership.

It is much too early to think or talk in terms of administrative capacities. Unless it trickles down, achche din will hardly be felt by the common man. Still, not to change is to decay and a fair chance should be given to prove that the government's initiatives will deliver. Niyat and niti are inextricably intertwined. The best that can be said for it, as for many other initiatives of the present regime, is that we should give it time to reveal itself and the out-comes contingent on it. The Aayog's functioning could make or break the economic development of India in future.

References

1. “Aayog will be an incubator of ideas” in The Times of India, January 2, 2015, p. 6.

2. “Anti-Nehruvianism behind rejig : Congress” in The Times of India, January 2, 2015, p. 1.

3. “Assessing Impact of NITI Aayog vs. Planning Commission”, accessed from http:// www.cppr.in/article/assessing-impact-niti-aayog-vs-planning-commission/Retrieved on March 10, 2015.

4. Badrinath, K.A. (2015). “NITI Aayog replaces Nehru era plan panel” in The Financial Chronicle, January 2, pp. 1 and 8.

5. “Bharatiya governance model unveiled” in The Hindu, January 2, 2015, p. 10.

6. Bhattacharjee, Govind (2015), “Planning techniques” in The Statesman, January 31, p. 6.

7. Dubhashi, P.R. (2015), “Abolition of the Planning Commission” in South Asia Politics, vol. 13, No. 10, February, pp. 9-11.

8. “Landmark change in Policy Making: Modi Sarkar Puts Bharat First with Plan Panel Heir” in The Economic Times, January 2, p. 1.

9. “Left parties slam Centre for renaming Plan panel” in The Statesman, January 2, 2015, p. 1.

10. Mehra, Puja (2015), “NITI Aayog is new policy body” in The Hindu, January 2, p. 1.

11. “Modi ends Nehru-era Plan Panel” in The Asian Age, January 2, 2015, p. 2.

12. “Modi's NITI Aayog will have a three-layer structure” in Business Line, January 2, 2015, p. 4.

13. “NITI Aayog—How it is different from Planning Commission”, accessed from http:// www.kothariinstitute.-com/campusfiles /165 current affairs 1.pdf. Retrieved on March 20, 2015.

14. “NITI Aayog replaces Planning Commission: Prime Minister Narenda Modi says it will benefit every individual”, accessed from http ://iIndianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/niti-aayog-replaces-planning-commission-prime-minister-to-be-chairperson/2/ Retrieved on March 20, 2015.

15. “NITI Aayog to replace Plan panel” in The Indian Express, January 2, 2015, p. 17.

16. “Opposition attacks government over Plan panel new avatar” in The Asian Age, January 2, 2015, p. 2.

17. Panda, Rasananda (2015), “NITI Aayog: Much Ado about Nothing”, in Mainstream, vol. LIII, No. 9, February 20-26, pp. 26-27.

18. Patnaik, Prabhat (2015), “From the Planning Commission to the NITI Aayog” in Economic and Political Weekly, vol. L, No. 4, January 24, pp. 10-12.

19. “Plan panel's New Avatar” in The Statesman, January 2, 2015, pp. 1 and 5.

20. “Planning Commission gives way to NITI Aayog” in Hindustan Times

,January 2, 2015, pp. 1 and 6.

21. “Planning Commission: Curtains drawn over 65-year-old legacy body” in The Indian Express, January 2, 2015, p. 1.

22. “PM Modi to head panel that will give strategic advice” in The Hindu, January 2, 2015, p. 1.

23. “Prime Minister to chair NITI Aayog: CMs to be part of it” in Business Standard, January 2, 2015, p. 4.

24. Ramaswamy, Sushila (2015). “Who plans the planners?”in The Statesman, January 21, p. 6.

25. Rajan, Mukesh (2015), “NITI Aayog to replace Plan panel” in The Asian Age, January 2, p. 2.

26. Rao, M. Govinda (2015), “Role and Functions of NITI Aayog” in Economic and Political Weekly, vol.L, No.4, January 24, pp. 13-16.

27. “Renaming of Plan panel due to anti-Nehruvianism“ in The Indian Express, January 2, 2015, p. 9.

28. Sharma, Sanjeev (2015), “NITI Aayog replaces plan panel: PM to be Chairman” in The Tribune, January 2, pp. 1 and 11.

29. Singh, Mahendra (2015). “PM :End of one-size-fits-all approach” in The Times of India, January 2, p. 8.

30. The Gazette of India, Extraordinary, part-1, section-1, Cabinet Secretariat Resolution, January 1, 2015, published by the Government of India, New Delhi, pp. 6-9. Accessed from http ://www.egazette.nic.in/Write Read Data/2015/162317.pdf. Retrieved on March 12, 2015.

Dr Jayanta Kumar Dab is an Assistant Professor of Political Science, Tamralipta Mahavidyalaya, Purba Medinipur (West Bengal). He can be contacted at e-mail: dab.jayanta@gmail.com

From N.C.'s Writings

A new Planning Commission has been announced with practically a combination of new and old members. Prof Madhu Dandavate is the new Deputy Chairman, as the Prime Minister continues to be the Chairman. When Narasimha Rao, by virtue of being the Prime Minister, was the Chairman of the Planning Commission, the post of the Deputy Chairman went to Pranab Mukherjee. That was more of a political appointment to find a respectable berth for a senior Congress leader although Pranab Babu can claim to have served as the Finance Minister in Indira Gandhi's last Cabinet.

His narrow political horizon was betrayed in his functioning at the Yojana Bhavan itself. In the second half of last year, when the Planning Commission prepared the draft of the Mid-term Appraisal of the Eighth Plan, it was taken up for discussion within the Commission because it was due to be formally placed before the full plenary of the Commission itself. The normal procedure for such important documents is that after it is cleared by the full meeting of the Planning Commission, it has to go before the National Development Council for perusal, critical examination and then approval. When the Mid-term Appraisal document of the Eighth Plan was taken up, the Deputy Chairman, that is, Pranab Mukherjee, got cold feet as the document had brought out the negative developments in most of the key sectors during the period under review, that is, the first half of the Eighth Plan, which so happened, coincided roughly with the first four years of the new economic reforms as laid down by Dr Manmohan Singh and his Finance Ministry whiz-kids.

So, instead of placing it before the National Development Council as an objective assessment of the effects of the economic reforms from within the government, Pranab Mukherjee decided to virtually make it a non-document because he seemed to have felt that its publication might badly affect the fortunes of the ruling Congress party in the general elections then due to come in a few months. Actually, it would have done the Congress Government a lot of good in the public eye if it had allowed the publication in due course of the Planning Commission's Mid-term Appraisal of the Eighth Plan. For one thing, it would have given the public a sense of confidence in the government's claim to transparency in its functioning. Secondly, a critical evaluation of the economic reforms from within the government would have enhanced the public confidence in the government's capacity and readiness not only to initiate the economic reforms programme but also to monitor its progress.

In the general elections, different issues cropped up at different places, but two issues were prominent throughout the general election campaign. Wherever the BJP stood, its opponent took up the question of communal harmony—secularism, as the cliché goes—and wherever the Congress candidate contested, he or she had to encounter sharp criticism about the condition of the common man. However, after the poll results were out, the convergence of political forces led to the isolation of the BJP and the coming together of all the others—whether in the United Front or as its fellow-traveller—and it was given out as if the verdict of the electorate was just against the BJP, while the differences over the economic reforms were more or less papered over.

As a matter of formally, of course, the Left parties and the Left-oriented section within the Janata Dal did say that they had serious objections to some of the features of Manmohan Singh's economic reforms programme, though they did not make that an issue in the matter of formation of the new government or in extending support to it. Rather they were content to thrash out their differences with other sections of the United Front at the meetings of the Steering Committee of the Front, which led ultimately to the drafting of the Common Minnimum Programme.

In practice, however, the balance has shifted quite perceptibly to the upholders of Manmoha-nomics, with very little room left for the critics of that line. This is mainly because the new Finance Minister is himself more committed to the free-market line than Manmohan Singh, and also because Chidambaram has retained the entire Manmohan menagerie in the Finance Ministry. Moreover, Prime Minister Deve Gowda himself was undoubtedly more inclined to opening up for multinationals when he was the Chief Minister of Karnataka. Obviously, he has become a pillar of support for Chidambaram's pro-market swing, including concessions to multi-nationals.

It is thus clear that the Planning Commission's original role, as laid down under Jawaharlal Nehru to set out the lines of the basic economic strategy, has been considerably eroded over the years. The first attack on this came in 1966 when Indira Gandhi was under the spell of Asok Mehta who had tried but could not fully succeed in subverting the basic approach of the mixed economy. From the eighties, however, one could notice a new trend in the name of pragmatism to open up the economy for foreign capital. Then came Manmohan Singh's blitz as per the World Bank dictates for Structural Adjustments. Most of these were accomplished outside the Planning Commission which was reduced to the status of a bystander under Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and Narasimha Rao.

In this background, Prof Madhu Dandavate with his new team would be undertaking a difficult venture indeed. In his very first interview on taking over charge, Prof Dandavate has announced that the approach to the Ninth Plan would concentrate on “employment generation, eradication of poverty and removal of regional imbalances”. He has talked about “positive state intervention” through planning. It is true that the new panel of members for the Planning Commission contain names who will go along with this line. Incidentally, one of the new members, S.P. Shukla, was the Finance Secretary whom Dr Manmohan Singh had removed in 1991 to make room for Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Shukla's mistake had been that he had fought the big powers in the GATT negotiations.

However, it is highly problematic that the present government in which the economic policy is decided by the Deve Gowda-Chidambaram combine would at all relent on their adherence to the basic principle of the market economy which hardly leaves any room for state intervention.

It is not just a question of semantics, whether a particular line violates or not a specific formulation in the Common Minimum Programme of the United Front Government. The litmus test for assessing the validity of any plan or programme in our country today is: does it help to alleviate the burden of poverty borne by the majority of the people? The price for modernising the economy has to be paid by the people of this country, but by whom, the rich who are out to grab its benefits, or the poor who are told to wait for the millennium? Our economists must decide this key issue while expatiating on today's buzzword: globalisation.

In any event, it would be interesting to watch how the Planning Commission is treated by the United Front Government. It would be important to watch whether the Planning Commission would be the vigilant watchdog, or a whimpering puppy. After all, the Deve Gowda Government has to keep up the facade of being Left-of-the-Centre, via the Common Minimum Programme.

[By arrangement with The Tribune]

(Mainstream, August 10, 1996)

The following is the text of the two letters sent by CPI General Secretary S. Sudhakar Reddy to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh on the police treatment meted out to a fact-finding team to Chhattisgarh.

I am writing to express my deep anxiety at the false charges that the Chhattisgarh Police is drumming up against a visiting delegation comprising CPI and CPM members, and professors from Delhi University and JNU.

A delegation, comprising Vineet Tiwari, Joshi-Adhikari Institute, a CPI member, New Delhi; Sanjay Parate, Chhattisgarh State Secretary, CPI-M; Archana Prasad, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and CC member, AIDWA; and Nandini Sundar, Professor, Delhi University who does not belong to any political party, visited the Bastar Division from May 12 to 16, 2016. The focus of the visit was to study the situation of ordinary villagers who are living through the conflict between the state and Maoists.

The group visited Nama and Kumakoleng villages on May 15 and interacted with the villagers, who complained of harassment by both Maoists and police. The group in its press release has faithfully reported whatever the villagers said, including criticism of the Maoists (copy of the press release attached).

However, the Chhattisgarh Police are falsely claiming that the delegation instigated villagers against the police and threatened them into supporting the Maoists. They have produced what is self-evidently a fake complaint in the names of the villagers, and also organised rallies with Samajik Ekta Manch-type vigilantes in front of the Darbha thana demanding that an FIR be registered against the group. Is it believable that some professors come from Delhi and threaten people in Bastar to join the Naxals? Why should people be afraid of somebody who come for a few hours to discuss with them and go? This apparently looks like a cock and bull story.

It seems that the District Collector of Bastar, Mr Amit Kataria, posted the so-called complaint of the villagers on his facebook without verification—is it the practice to post all unverified complaints received as part of his official work on his facebook? This is a highly irresponsible behaviour for a Collector, and is part of an effort to whip up hysteria against JNU and researchers in general.

The police have also been cross-questioning all those who interacted with the team, including the driver of the hired vehicle, in order to intimidate them.

It looks that the whole affair is part of the ongoing intimadtory tactics that the Bastar Police, especially the IGP, Mr S.R.P. Kalluri, have been employing against journalists, researchers, lawyers and others, to prevent them from visiting Bastar and reporting on violations of human rights.

The understanding that all those, who are not with the police, are pro-Naxalites is utter nonsense. Why are the police so touchy about anybody visiting Bastar and enquiring about the atrocities of the police and Naxalites over there? Why should people believe only the police version? Chhattisgarh is a part of India.

More than four journalists have been arrested and kept in jail. All the journalist unions all over India are agitating on it. Two innocent tribal boys were killed by the police while they were taking bath in the river. There is a feeling of police raj, it will tarnish the image of Chhattis-garh in India and abroad.

The CPI has been working in Bastar since many years, and our party members are under severe pressure from the Maoists and the police both. We have complained to you in the past about this. In a democracy, the law should not be used to harass political opponents.

The CPI and CPI-M ideologically, politically differ with the Naxalites. Our leaders and cadres are attacked by Naxals and killed in many places. There are some police officers who do not understand the difference between the CPI, CPI-M and Naxals. Surely we are the against killing innocents in the name of Naxalites. We fight against the Naxals‘ ideology. But we also fight against police atrocities and cold-blooded murders. This is irritating some police officers. The police is only a department that looks after Law and Order. They should not guide government policies. They can only advice. Unlimited power will cause damage to the democratic society.

I trust that you will rein in your adminis-tration and police and instruct them not to harass and falsely implicate our party members and independent researchers, journalists and others.

S. Sudhakar Reddy

[Former Member of Lok Sabha,

General Secretary, CPI]

DOCUMENT

The following is the Report of a Fact-finding Team on Chhattisgarh for which the Chhattisgarh Government is trying to harass the team members.

A delegation comprising Sanjay Parate, Secretary, State CPI-M; Vineet Tiwari, Joshi-Adhikari Institute, New Delhi; Archana Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru University and CC member, AIDWA; and Nandini Sundar, Delhi University visited the Bastar Division of Chhattisgarh from May 12 to 16, 2016. We visited the following districts: Bijapur, Sukma, Bastar and Kanker. The focus of the visit was on the situation of ordinary villagers who are living through the conflict between the state and Maoists.

The levels of Maoist presence and scale of state repression vary somewhat across the districts. The worst affected at the moment appear to be Sukma district and the Darbha/Tongpal block of Bastar district, but fake encounters and arrests are a problem everywhere. There are other common features:

Preliminary Observations

1. The whole district is heavily militarised with camps every 5 km, and in the villages around Raoghat, every 2 km. These are being set up in complete violation of the Fifth Schedule, PESA and the Forest Rights Act 2006. No gram sabha permission is sought, camps come up at night, and people's cultivation is taken over, without their rights being settled. There is massive destruction to the environment.

2. In some places the camps have created a sense of security, with the Maoists' presence coming down, but in most places they have enhanced the insecurity of the villagers. Civic action programme, organised by the security forces in which people are forced to participate, bring them into conflict with the Maoists.

3. Across the four districts, villagers said that people were being arrested in large numbers. The villagers, who have no understanding of the legal system, are forced to pay high fees to the lawyers, and their lives are ruined. The law is being used as an instrument of torture rather than of justice or peace-keeping.

4. There is almost no implementation of the NREGA despite this being a drought year. In many places we heard complaints that people had not been paid wages for the NREGA work done seven years ago.

5. The living conditions of villagers are at starvation levels. Average incomes are Rs 1000-2500 per household per month, with the maximum cash generated by tendu patta collection and wage labour in Andhra Pradesh.

6. In this context, the vast amounts of money being spent on militarisation, rewards to security forces, surrenders, and civic action spectacles amount to a criminal diversion of money from the welfare of the people. The Maoists also bear responsibility for not allowing work on roads, and use of panchayat funds, etc. but in areas where there are no Maoists, we found no evidence of the developmental state.

Demands

To Political Parties:

1. An all-party delegation should visit Bastar, especially some of the interior villages, and initiate conversation with a wide range of stakeholders to suggest measures for conflict resolution.

2. The parties should demand that the Centre and State Government initiate a dialogue with all political parties and the Naxalites, and come up with a comprehensive plan that recognises the rights and development needs of the people.

To the Central and State governments:

1. There should be a high-level judicial enquiry of all the encounters, arrests, surrenders and rapes and other atrocities by police, security forces and Naxalites since 2005.

2. There should be prosecution of all these cases and compensation should be paid regardless of the perpetrator.

3. The camps should be removed.

4. The forest rights, and land rights of the people should be recognised. No projects should be implemented, including mining, without the full knowledge and consent of the gram sabha.

5. There should be a full accounting with on—the-ground verification of all works done under government schemes. In particular the NREGA should be implemented, and all pending dues must be immediately paid.

To the Maoists:

1. The Maoists must allow all development works to take place.

2. They should allow political activity such as standing for elections.

3. They should stop beating people, and killing informers.

Specific Incidents

1. Marjum fake encounter.

2. Beating of villagers in Kumakoleng by Maoists following police arrests and mass surrender induced by police threats.

3. Arrests and alleged rape in Tadmendri.

4. Rape and sexual exploitation by BSF SPO in Etebalka.

5. Arrests in Tadmendri, Bastar, Antagarh (Badrangi).

Marjum fake encounter:

In first week of May, 2016, two police personnel died in a cross-firing incident near the Marjum village in Dantewada district between the police force and the Maoists. After a few days, on May 8, 2016, the villagers went to a nearby village to celebrate Beej Pandum, a traditional festival of the villagers. Two boys of the age around 17-18 years, namely, Markam Mangloo and Podiyam Vijja, went to take bath in the nearby river stream. The patrolling force found them alone, shot them there and declared them as Maoists. The villagers were informed at around 12 in the noon that there was some firing near the river. The villagers found the two boys missing and contacted the police who were informed about the death of the two boys. The newspapers were informed from the police that both the boys were Maoists and they were killed in the encounter.

On May 12, 2016, ex-MLAs of the CPI, Nanda Sori and Manish Kunjam, brought the villagers to Dantewada and organised a press conference where the villagers accused the police of the fake encounter and said that both the boys had no connection with Maoists at all. The Sarpanch of the village and the Anganwadi Karykarta were also present along with the family members, relatives and other villagers in the press conference who also confirmed that the police was making false allegations and these were nothing else but murders of the innocent tribal boys. The CPI announced that it would stage a protest demonstration for the fair enquiry of the incident on May 19, 2016.

The effect of staged surrenders, mass arrests and civic action programmes on villages—Maoist beatings, revival of Salwa Judum-style division of villages:

Kumakoleng: We visited Kumakoleng, thana Leda, Tongpal block, and found that the village was largely deserted, after the Maoists had beaten up villagers on April 17. Eight villagers had to be hospitalised, including two women. People were scared to return to the village for fear of being beaten by the Maoists. The sequence of events that we could piece together is as follows:

The Maoists came to this area in 2004. These villages were considered by the police as Maoist garhs. They beat up any villager who opposed them. But several people also joined the dalams and sanghams were formed.

There was a firing in Chintalnar near Kachiras, in which one of the dalam leaders, Sonadhar, left his diary (Sonadhar was later killed by the police in Odisha). The diary contained the names of many villagers who had contributed food etc. to the Maoists. The police put pressure on these villagers, threatening to arrest them. Therefore in March 2016, approxi-mately 50 people from Kumakoleng panchayat ‘surrendered' to the police; some of them were later brought around to identify others. The Maoists then put pressure on the villagers for surrendering. On April 15, the police held a camp in Kumakoleng and distributed sarees, vessels etc. This was attended by the Additional SP among others. At this shivir, some of the villagers, especially the non-adivasi castes which have traditionally not been so close to the Maoists, asked the police to set up a CRPF camp in their village. On April 17, the Maoists came looking for two people who had surrendered, Sukhman Yadav and Bhagirath, and beat up a large number of people in Kumakoleng, including those who had asked for a police camp. Only 35 out of 110 households are still left in the village.

In neighbouring Nama village, Soutnar panchayat, all the villagers have resolved to keep the Maoists out and have been patrolling the villages with bows and arrows and axes for the last three months. They have not given their initiative any formal name like a gram surakshadal and laughingly called themselves the ‘tangiya gang'. In their case too, tension with the Maoists was created after the surrender of a former Maoist, Shankar, who then identified the villagers. Under pressure from the Maoists for surrendering, the villagers asked for a CRPF camp. They were also put off by the beating and killing of a villager Somaru in 2010 on charges of being an informant, when the villagers felt he was innocent.

In Koleng the village, the police held a camp and distributed sarees, vessels, mobile phones etc. There too villagers think they will be safer with a camp.

In Darbha, the police arrested Bhadri Mahu villagers. Villagers were told to come to Darbha en masse to get the men released, but it turned out to be a staged spectacle in which the police distributed sarees etc. The men were not released. Instead, journalist Sabtosh Yadav, who came to report on the arrests, was arrested.

Arrests and Alleged Rape in Indrawati National Park area:

The villagers in Tadmendri village allege that the police is carrying out arrests in the name of anti-Naxal operations. During the time of the Salwa Judum, Mahendra Karma held a meeting in Koyenar and during the meeting a police jeep was burnt. Thereafter the Sarpanch was arrested. Recently three people have been arrested from Tadmendri on April 23, 2016 by the name of Aytu Kursum (23-24 years), Valle Vardam (19-20 years) and Dudda Vedke (28-29 years). They have been arrested in the Rani Bodli Murder Case and no investigations have started yet. The villagers have been in jail since this.

A rape case was also alleged in Chichkunta village where Phullu Devi was surrounded by SPOs while she was in the field and arrested on the pretext of being from Platoon 2 of the local area Dalam. She was raped by the two men from the security forces from the Farsegarh camp on January 17-18, 2016. She is now in Jagdalpur jail and the police deny that there has been any rape or illegal arrests in the case.

Rape and Sexual Exploitation by BSF SPO in Etebalka:

A visit to Etebalka resulted in the revelation of the case of a young girl being exploited by a BSF SPO, Budu Ram, s/o Phagu Ram. He regularly visited her house and raped the girl two-to-three times. When the girl protested, the SPO threatened her and said that “the reward for being a police informer and SPO is that he is free to do all these things”. The girl was married off to a third person by her family in June 2015 without any knowledge of this incident. Her in-laws discovered she was pregnant and she was sent home with a demand that the husband's family should be compensated. The SPO already had two wives. A Panchayat was called to settle the matter. It decided that the SPO should pay Rs 51,000 to the girl's family, but only Rs 25,000 has been so far paid. The girl wrote a complaint to the District Collector for which she has not got any response. There is no action by the BSF against the SPO.

The existence of such camps and the authority it gives jawans and SPOs/sahayak arakashak/DRG leads to sexual exploitation, and makes all women in the vicinity vulnerable. We also heard allegations of rapes in the vicinity of other BSF camps but the families were unwilling to talk.

Illegal Arrests at Badrangi Village:

Two brothers, Pinashi and Raju, have been picked up by the police on the pretext of being Naxals. Pinashi had been picked up twice before but he has now been in jail for the last one year. The villagers allege that a tiffin bomb was planted in his house to prove that he is a Naxal. When he was arrested earlier he was beaten up at the camp and told to give a bribe of Rs 20,000 to finish the case. Now he has taken a loan for that purpose but the villagers are not ready to repay the loan since Pinashi is in jail. Raju was picked up three months ago. His wife died and he has three small children, two of them girls, who have been left helpless. The villagers claim that he has nothing to do with Naxalites.

by Amitava Mukherjee

More than the party-wise tally and the installation of the BJP-led government in Dispur, the actual implications of the recently concluded Assam election results lie in the stark pointers to shifting social dynamics and the possibility of a mutual distrust in Indo-Bangladesh relations as Sarbananda Sonowal, the new Chief Minister of Assam, has vowed to completely seal the Indo-Bangladesh border within two years. No doubt Sonowal has a right to do so and reason may be on his side too on this issue. But his statement has generated mistrust across the border. On the whole the BJP's victory in Assam is being keenly watched by political observers as any maverick approach by the RSS-dominated Hindutva outfit may upset the fragile racial balance in at least five strategically important States of the North-East.

It will be interesting to watch how the Asom Gana Parishad(AGP) adjusts itself to the Central Government's decision to regularise the entry and stay of the minorities from Bangladesh and Pakistan on humanitarian grounds, meaning religious persecution in these countries. It is also a conundrum how the Assamese middle class in spite of its long history of chauvinism and little nationalism could embrace the BJP with open arms even as the latter starts exhibiting soft corners for a certain section of immigrants from Bangladesh.

Perhaps the Assam Congress had lost all credibility well before the elections and the shabby treatment that Himanta Biswa Sharma, the former Assam Congress leader, had received at the hands of the central leadership of the Congress, had dealt a blow to Assamese pride. It had become the talk of the town in Guwahati that Himanta was not only kept waiting for a long time when he had gone to Delhi with certain grievances against the Assam Pradesh Congress but a particular top functionary of the party had also rudely behaved with Himanta.

Although the pre-election atmosphere in Assam was too much sensitive this time, yet it has to be admitted that the minority community responded with restraint. Perhaps Tarun Gogoi had anticipated this and therefore he refrained from striking any alliance with the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) of Badruddin Ajmal. It is entirely a different thing that the Muslims, constituting 34 per cent of Assam's population, and the tea tribes, commanding nearly 35 lakh votes, have completely jettisoned the Congress and sided with the BJP in this year's Assembly elections.

The last parliamentary elections of 2014 had, however, left ample signs that the BJP will romp home in 2016. From one per cent vote in the 1985 Assembly elections, the BJP showed signs of ascendancy in the 2006 Assembly elections by capturing 12 per cent votes. In the 2009 Lok Sabha poll its share of vote jumped up to 16 per cent and the party captured four Lok Sabha seats. Although in the 2011 Assembly elections it experienced a slight reversal of fortune, the party came out with flying colours in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll when it captured 36 per cent votes and seven out of the 14 Lok Sabha seats from Assam.

Three factors—changing social dynamics of Assam leaving the Congress behind, the BJP's success in stitching up a coalition with the AGP and Bodo People's Front (BPF), and the all- pervasive threatening spectre of infiltration from Bangladesh—have combined to hand over a convincing win to the BJP-led conglomeration on a platter. Tarun Gogoi's failure to come to terms with the AGP has proved to be dear and the Congress may have to pay the price for a long time to come for this mistake. Although the AGP commanded only 3.7 per cent votes in the 2014 parliamentary poll, yet its relevance in Assam politics is immense. Still the AGP with its call for regionalism has a solid influence over the Assamese Hindu middle class which controls the politics of entire upper and central Assam. Moreover numerous indigenous communities living on both sides of the Brahmaputra river still consider the AGP as a sincere protector of their interests.

In this type of a situation the man who could have tilted the balance in favour of the Congress was Hiimanta Biswa Sharma. In his absence the Congress could not match the BJP's efficiency in seeking coalition partners. Although Tarun Gogoi had initially hooked a certain section of the AGP, led by its legislative party leader Phani-bhusan Chowdhury, yet the table was ultimately turned against the Congress by the more powerful section of the AGP, led by Atul Bora, who used to maintain good equations with the BJP.

The BJP's victory in Assam should not surprise the political watchers. It was on the cards. Having been used to winning consecutive Assam Assembly elections from 2001, the Congress became oblivious of some fundamental changes that had meanwhile occurred in Assam's body politic. One such factor is the growing urbanisation of the State during the last ten years. In the last parliamentary poll 45 per cent of urban voters voted for the BJP while only 18 per cent had voted for the Congress. This wide chasm has been repeated in this year's Assembly poll also. The electoral arithmetic is likely to reveal that the AIUDF, by contesting 60 odd seats, has ensured defeats of many Congress candidates. But a new feature of this year's elections is that a significant number of Muslim votes have been transferred to the BJP-led alliance. It is true that the Bengali-speaking Muslims of lower Assam have not supported the AIUDF the way it was expected and a good number of their votes have gone back to the Congress. But the same cannot be said about the Assamese-speaking Muslims of upper Assam although during the last parliamentary poll this section of minority voters had stood behind the Congress.

Tarun Gogoi is now over 80 years of age and if the Congress cannot put up a credible substitute to him in the near future then the party's future is bleak. During the run-up to the elections the Congress had floated the name of Pawan Singh Ghatowar, a leader from the tea tribe community, as the next Chief Minister if the party was voted to power. That Ghatowar's name cut no ice is borne out by the poll result. In all probability the Congress in Assam is heading towards a leadership crisis.

Whether one agrees with it or not, the BJP's victory in Assam is the result of a very mature political management. The BJP's task was made easier by the presence of the AGP and BPF in its fold. The BPF won 12 seats but influenced results in 30 other constituencies where the Bodos have votes ranging from 5000 to 50,000.

The author is a senior journalist and commentator.

by Sudhanshu Tripathi

The unfortunate event at Jawahar Bagh in Mathura killing a very fine, gentle and promising city SP Mukul Dwivedi sounds a very dark chapter in independent India's decaying politics where offenders and criminals rule the roost. Though a very young and perhaps deeply religious sub-inspector was also killed in the mayhem besides more than two dozens of the so-called satyagrahis united under the banner of the Swadhin Bharat Andolan in the name of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose led by one mastermind, Ram Vriksha Yadav, also killed in his self-prepared strategy to defeat the police force which was ordered by the High Court to get the public park vacated from the clutches of these anti-social elements illegally occupying it since 2014 under the pretext of fulfilling their irrational demands, the way the SP was brutally and mercilessly killed—almost unarmed and betrayed by his fellow policemen who ran away from the spot when he was overpowered by these criminals—raises many serious questions about the prevailing quality of governance and administration in the State of UP, being ruled by an equally young CM, Akhilesh Yadav. Further, even when the SP and the sub-inspector were being criminally assaulted by the goons of Ram Vriksha Yadav, the police party were denied permission to open fire at them which might have saved the precious lives of these two sincere officers.

Evidently, all this draws a clear line of indictment running from officials in Mathura to the State administration in Lucknow. If the life of a Superintendent of Police is not safe in the State, who had gone with few personnel in the park very peacefully on that fateful day (June 2) just to oversee or recce the area for the final operation to be carried out later, what about the security of common men and their lives? Why did these criminal-protestors act dispropor-tionately to commit unparalleled barbarity upon the hapless SP who was simply arguing and trying to convince them about their unlawful occupation of public land and their baseless demands for creating an ideal society. Was this only a coincidence or an act of preconceived and deliberate murder of the SP? In fact, the SP was said to be particularly concerned about this land-grabbing of the park by these criminal protesters and had also made efforts earlier to get the park vacated but was always discou-raged by his higher-ups and political masters on one pretext or the other in his endeavour. Indeed, the Ram Vrishka gang was highly organised, well prepared and having a big cache of arms and ammunitions that went unnoticed by the local intelligence. Only after the tragic incident did these facts gradually come out with each passing day. And the morale of the going was certainly very high because they were not afraid of the consequences of killing even a senior police officer of the Superintendent rank. The question is: how could they do all these illegal and nefarious acts just under the very nose of the district administration of Mathura?

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All indications gathered by information so far suggest that the deceased, Ram Vrishka Yadav, was enjoying a very strong and high level of political patronage of a senior Cabinet Minister of the ruling party in the State. Being a Yadav was an additional weight in his favour. He had developed a parallel government inside Jawahar Bagh of around 264 acres and got several of permanent cottages constructed for his followers. This speaks aloud about his mala-fide intentions of capturing forever the public park wherein he had entered into along with his followers two years ago having only two days of permission from the city authorities for retiring as they were on their way to Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, coming from Madhya Pradesh. Several Aadhar cards and id cards were also found during search operations carried out after the mayhem—these point towards the possibility of their misuse in the next elections of the State Assembly a few months ahead with a view to provide advantage to the ruling Samajwadi Party for ensuring it another full term of government.

In this scenario, how can sincere, dedicated and honest officers perform their duties well in the interest of society? Who will take care of common man and their woes? What will happen to the bereaved families of the killed SP and the sub-inspector? As it has a now emerged that a clear political protection was provided to the leader of this criminal group and also about the serious lapses in the police action, all these facts, obviously, need to be thoroughly investigated by none other than the CBI, as the State inquiry will not reveal the truth, and the culprits ought to be punished for their heinous crime of murdering the innocent police officers.

Dr Sudhanshu Tripathi is an Associate Professor, Political Science, MDPG College, Pratapgarh (UP).

IMPRESSIONS

The fall of the Congress is the principal reason for the rise of the BJP. This was clear in 2014 when the reticent, text-reading Sonia Gandhi was no match to the eloquent, conqui-stadorial Narendra Modi. It was reinforced in last month's five State elections when the Congress was decimated across the board. India's founding political party has reached a stage where it knows it has fallen, knows what it must do to get on its feet again, but has no guts to do it. The extent of this cadaverous state will be the determining factor again in the major State elections next year and the parliamentary elections in 2019. If the Congress does not rise from the mortuary at least in time for 2019, it might not get another chance.

With hindsight, Mahatma Gandhi's appeal for the winding up of the Congress upon independence now looks not only ethical but also wise. After all, the Indian National Congress was not a political party; it was a people's movement for independence. Jawaharlal Nehru defied Gandhi's advice and made the Congress a party. It gave the Congress a big advantage to begin with; as the saying went in those days, even a lamp-post put up by the Congress would get elected.

That was a short-term advantage because the idea was fundamentally flawed. A democracy needs two or three parties, competing on different ideological platforms. Nehru prevented other parties from coming up so that he could win easily. Despite his professed socialism, he engineered the fading away of even the Congress Socialists led by people like Jayaprakash Narayan. His Cabinet was a hotchpotch of conservatives, business tycoons, corporate executives, capitalists, Rightists, Leftists and plain camp-followers. If Gandhi's advice had been taken, there would have been a Leftist party under Nehru, a Rightist party under Sardar Patel, and probably a Hindu nationalist grouping under Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. That would have provided a healthy base for democracy to develop.

The multiplex character of the Congress prevented it from becoming a party with a defined ideology and a cadre of leaders committed to that ideology. It was left to Indira Gandhi to give the party what looked like an ideology—dynastic hegemony. The power of her personality ensured that Congress leaders not only accepted the anti-democratic concept but started justifying it with more loyalty than the King's. The Congress started losing its credentials.

Popular acceptance of the dynasty idea declined steadily after Indira, hitting rock-bottom with Rahul Gandhi. He created a bad first impression, appearing to be a part-time politician with frequent disappearances. We don't know if that phase has passed. What we know is that his big speeches in Parliament and many appearances with common people, students and Dalits have not made much of an impact. He looks amateurish and not grown up. He just doesn't have it in him.

The cronies who matter in the top-heavy Congress will argue that if he gives up his number two status and takes over the presidentship of the party from his mother, he will flower and all will be well. Indeed, in their desperate search for ways to make the party relevant again, Congressmen might try to make Rahul Gandhi the party President. That will be a move towards a Congress-mukt Bharat. For the Congress, Rahul Gandhi is not the solution. He is the problem.

If the Congress is to revive itself, Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi must leave the scene. For good. They must have nothing do with the party or with politics. Only then will the party get a chance to rebuild itself. The immediate

impact may be a spurt in factionalism. But the Congress has split before and regrouped. It must regroup now with a clear policy-platform and a leadership seen by the people as clean. That is the only way to become a democratic party with a fair chance to compete in the electoral field.

With the Gandhis must go every leader tainted with corruption. Fortunately for the party, there are leaders senior enough and capable enough who are untainted, Kapil Sibal and Jairam Ramesh, Mallikarjun Kharge and Ajay Maken. There are also younger men who have proved their mettle: Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Milind Deora. In the States there are a whole lot of thinking Congressmen, modernistic, socially aware, environment-and-climate-conscious. If these men and women take over with no High Command to constrict them, the Congress will live to see another day. If not, the High Command alone will fly high.

by Garima Mani Tripathi

Until a few years ago, Baba Ramdev and his Patanjali Yogpeeth were primarily into propa-gating and popularising yoga as a household practice. In the process, he gave a new lease of life to yoga, an ancient Indian method of physical discipline having meditative and spiritual elements. The Yogpeeth was hardly into any business and was limited to producing herbal and organic products for household require-ments. However, in the last few years, Patanjali's business turnover has increased manifold and today it is selling most items consumed in households on a daily basis. Suddenly, the Patanjali group is more of a business house than a Yoga school meant to popularise yoga.

When Baba Ramdev started popularising yoga through his morning TV shows and camps in different parts of the country, yoga was being touted not only as a remedy for many day-to-day lifestyle diseases, but also as a means towards an end, that is, liberation from all kinds of sufferings. In the classical Indian philosophical text, yoga is perceived as seeking a harmonious union of body and mind for perfection. Ancient Indian philosopher Patanjali, in his book Yoga Sutra, propagated Astang yoga that is about control over body, senses and mind. As per Astang yoga, the stages of liberation is from Yama (meaning abstention and five vows) through niyam (internal and external purification) to asana (discipline of body with right posture) and finally to pranayam (control of breath like inhalation, retention and exhalation).

However, Baba Ramdev and his school's emphasis is only on pranayam which is the fourth stage since it is very easy to practice. The objective could have been to make yoga popular among masses through the most practicable form without having to give up other comforts as emphasised in other stages. Therefore, the first three stages are never taught to the masses that Gandhiji practised in his daily life like adherence to vows like truth, non-violence, non-stealing, celibacy and giving up completely on avarice or insatiable greed for riches. Most intriguingly, the next four stages of pratyahara (control of senses), dharana (intermediate level of meditation), dhyana (higher form of meditation), and samadhi (highest form of meditation where external world is broken and leads to liberation) are never discussed in preaching yoga as a popular discourse.

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There is, therefore, a methodological and philo-sophical impurity in the contemporary preaching of yoga. Ramdev and company are selling only one stage of yoga that is pranayam as the ultimate and only form of liberation or Kaivalya. Philosopher Patanjali must be turning in his grave over omission of other seven stages. Clearly enough, the yoga that is being dished out to us is half-baked and not comprehensive since omission of other stages will not enable the body and mind to be in complete sync with each other and attain liberation. The essence of the first three stages of Astang Yoga is to prepare the body through a disciplined way of life and then indulge in a higher stage like pranayam. In order to meet this criticism, Ramdev's school has now proposed a hybrid version of yoga wherein all the stages would be taught in a one- -and-a-half hour module! It is debatable if this metamorphosis of yoga to suit the comfort-prone people will make any sense. The funnier part is that even out of this half-baked yoga delicacy, most people gather still less and do only their kind of yoga based on their selective learning. Visit any public park in the morning and evening and you will find people of all ages inhaling and exhaling in various modes! Kapalbharti pranayam is the core of asana that is touted to cure many diseases like heart disease, kidney problem, liver problem, hair fall, eye sight, and even cancer. Medically, evidences are yet to support such claims. Also, many ladies and gentlemen practising kapalbharti follow a lifestyle which is contrary to the various stages of Astang yoga—they follow a sedate lifestyle thinking that merely following tit-bits of pranayam would cure them of all their earthly diseases and enable them to wriggle out of all kinds of sufferings and seek perfection as enunciated in the ancient Indian philosophical tradition!

Ramdev's school is indulging in another flaw: rather than going to higher form of yoga that can help them attain liberation, the yoga practitioners are being encouraged to purchase branded products from its in-house production houses than from well-entrenched Indian and foreign companies selling the same. Enjoy, even children are spoilt for a choice: they have a desi and original choice of juice, maggi, pasta, ketchup, and choco-flakes! However, none of the product description are backed by scientific evidences. For example, the sale of youvan churna is being promoted under the pretext that it enables old men to feel young and increases their sperm count. But there are no scientific evidences furnished as support. Similarly, Patanjali's claim of kesh kanti oil giving relief from splitting, greying hair, hairfall are not substantiated with clinical evidences.

At the end of the day, it is not philosophy but market economics that dictates churning out of these households consumerist goods on a mass business scale. Rather than concentrating on the initial choice of popularising yoga, the sheer indulgence towards the production of consu-merist goods is bound to raise many an eyebrow. Are these schools really yoga schools or moksha factory promoting their own brands? Probably, the only thing left for these schools is to sell nectar (amrit) and a guided tour package to heaven!

Dr Garima Mani Tripathi is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Mata Sundri College for Women, University of Delhi.

If I were to award marks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his two-year governance, I would give him four out of 10. I wouldn't fail him because he did not officially pursue the Hindutva programme and yet allowed the RSS and Bajrang Dal, both extremist organisations, to have the run of the field.

I know that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was allowed to use Akashvani to purvey his parochial and extremist views. In the same manner other government-owned institutions, such as the Nehru Library, were asked to follow the words coming from the RSS headquarters at Nagpur, or Jhandewalan in New Delhi. Heads of different educational institutes with Nehru-vian leanings were dismissed.

The process is not yet complete. Even the Central institutions in the Congress-run States are being systematically saffronised. Modi doesn't have to give day-to-day instructions. The message has reached that the entire set-up will have to—willy-nilly—follow the Hindutva line of thinking, no matter how antediluvian.

Take the case of murder at Dadri, only 50 kilometres from Delhi. One Muslim was killed by fanatics simply because his family was suspected to have eaten beef. The extremists were not content with the killing of one person but wanted action against the whole family. They did not even raise their voice in protest. What kind of message must this have sent to the world about a nation which is capable of sending a man to the moon, when it is steeped in the antediluvian ideas that consider beef-eating as a sin?

What saddens one is the silence of those who claim to be secularists. Will these same chest-beating secularists also remain silent if Modi tomorrow permits his Foreign Minister to break ties with Japan because the Japanese are famous for producing their famous Kobe beef, which is considered one of the world's greatest delicacies?

Unfortunately, the Hindutva crowd does not realise that India is ruled by the Constitution and it is not a Hindu Rashtra. The Constitution gives equal rights to Hindus who are 80 per cent and the minorities who make up the remaining 20 per cent of the population. Together they constitute the republic.

Modi was right when he raised the slogan, sabka saath, sabka vikas, meaning thereby that we shall be all together and advance further hand- -in-hand. But subsequently he and his party, the BJP, appear to have lost the way and today, whether they like it or not, their government has come to represent a particular way of thinking—an intolerant India—which has the overtones of Hindutva.

Probably, the party's think-tank has come to believe that they can win more votes by dividing the society. With Assembly elections due in UP early next year, the Bajrang Dal has begun vitiating the atmosphere. They are holding more and more exercises in different cities where lathis and other weapons are used.

This is a kind of parallel police force and even UP, where a non-BJP government is currently in power, there are morning and evening parades of extremists to instruct the young recruits in the use of lathis. The same fear of Islamic domination, that is being exploited by Right-wing parties in the West, is being cunningly manipulated in India by the BJP and its allies. We forget that in the democratic structure we have, everyone is free to eat whatever he or she likes. Nothing can be enforced. In a vast country like India where food and dress change every 50 kilometres, diversity is inevitable. Indeed, this is India's strength. Respecting diversity keeps our different units together in a federal structure which we follow.

The BJP hardliners, who believe they have come to power because of a fundamental shift in national values, should think again. There is more than a grain of truth in the argument that voters gave them a chance because they had lost faith in the Congress and were looking for an alternative.

The Congress will be failing them if it persists with dynastic politics. The party must realise —if it has not done so far—that Rahul Gandhi does not sell. Sonia Gandhi herself will be a far better bet than the other leaders so far available in the party. The disadvantage of being an Italian has disappeared over the years and she is considered as much an Indian as anyone by birth.

But the problem is that she has very little chance to head the country because the Congress has lost its shine. No doubt, the BJP has Hinduised politics but that is the dominant thinking which has caught the public imagi-nation at present, thanks to Modi's leadership. This thinking may not last long since the Indian nation is basically pluralistic. The BJP itself seems to be conscious of this because there is some evidence that it is moving from the Right-of-the-Centre to the Centre.

The predicament that plagues the party is that its cadres come from the RSS. Maybe, that is the reason that there is no scam in the government. However one may dislike the RSS ideology, its emphasis on integrity cannot be doubted. Yet, there should be no misgiving on its interference in the governance. Even top bureaucrats are judged by their proximity to the Hindutva philosophy.

Modi himself was an RSS pracharak (preacher). Even now he is a regular visitor to Nagpur where he interacts with the RSS leadership. Some of the ideas he gathers from there are reflected in the policy which his government frames. This has torn asunder the fabric of the nation's secular temperament in the country and given rise to extremist groups in different regions.

I only hope that this is a passing phase. But as long as it lasts the preference for sons of the soil will be casting a shadow on the idea of India. This is unfortunate. I hope that the Prime Minister will rethink his policies so that the basic structure of the Constitution is in no way affected.

The author is a veteran journalist renowned not only in this country but also in our neighbouring states of Pakistan and Bangladesh where his columns are widely read. His website is www.kuldipnayar.com