by P.C. Jain

It has been a special characteristic of the BJP that it has been surviving and seeking power through the catch phrases or slogans on which they become fetish and aggressive from time to time. At one time it was protection of cow (Gau-mata), at a later stage it was Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. Now it is Bharat Mata ki Jai. Nationalism and patriotism of their concept are being thrust upon the people and those who do not agree with their interpretation are dubbed as anti-national and unpatriotic.

In ancient Hindu or Aryan culture forces of nature, including epidemics, were personified in various gods and goddesses and they were held in awe and worshipped. Moreover, there are hundreds and thousands of Matas in the Hindu religion and are worshipped in temples spread across the country. Durga, Kali, Bhawani, Saraswati, Lakshmi are the main goddesses. In the same vein the country as a nation has been personified as the Bharat Mata. If followers of Islam do not subscribe to this cult of the Hindu religion they cannot be branded as anti-national and unpatriotic. Apart from Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, Parsees, Sikhs and atheists also do not subscribe to this particular Hindu view. It is similar to not agreeing to call the cow as Gau-mata.

It is also not certain whether a country or a nation should be symbolic as a male or female. It is interesting that the icon of the Bhagwa Parivar, V.D. Savarkar, called the country as “Pitribhu” and “Punyabhu”. In no other country of the world, the nation, country or state is called the mother. In the erstwhile Soviet Union, the state was called the “Fatherland” in the constituent states, now it is all over. Moreover, the mother denotes that our society is matriarchal whereas our society is patriarchal with the exception of certain tribes in Kerala. It is also of importance that India has a pluralistic society consisting of different races, languages, religion and culture but they constitute a nation as all of them desire to live as one political entity.

This type of motivated campaigning with official backing produces hot-headed maniacs like Baba Ramdev who declared that had it been permissible under the law he would have chopped off the heads of hundreds and thousands of people who refused to chant

Bharat Mata ki Jai.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Maharaj of the Art of Living Movement, has also declared that those who do not chant Bharat Mata ki Jai should leave this country. Maharashtra Chief Minister Fadnavis too has spoken in the same language.

The RSS and other saffron outfits enjoy immunity. They can say anything—RSS General Secretary Bhayyaji Joshi could dare to raise his finger on the national anthem. He clearly indicated his preference for Bande Mataram as the national anthem in place of Jana Gana Mana Adhinanayaka Jaya Hey. He had also the audacity to say that the Bhagwa flag has the same place as the tricolour and should be equally respected. According to him, the Bhagwa flag represents the cultural unity as a nation. Sometimes back the RSS Pramukh, Mohan Bhagwat, had said that reservation should be done away with. Later on when there was an uproar against this and for fear of losing Dalit votes they backed out of it. Had these words been uttered by any other person outside the privileged and charmed circle of the saffron brigade he or she would have been immediately declared as anti-national. Prime Minister Modi and his team have not spoken a single word against these utterances. This shows their acquiescence and complicity. Is it not inciting people to resort to violence and communal conflagration?

As a matter of fact such slogans and catch phrases are being raised to divert the attention of the people from the utter failures of the Narendra Modi's Government on social and economic fronts. His promise to create two crore jobs has not materialised. Unemployment has hit a new six-year low. Real income has registered a downward trend in view of the escalating inflation. The benefits of falling crude oil prices have not been passed on to the consumers. The Aam Aadmi has not been given any tax relief whereas bountiful concessions have been given to the corporate sector. In spite of rhetorics in the Budget 2016-17 a concession of Rs 1060 crores in direct taxes has been given and in the case of indirect taxation the burden has been increased by Rs 20,670 crores. Service Tax has proliferated. More freedom and scope have been provided to direct foreign investment and big business has been awarded huge concessions. A six-month moratorium has been given to big business to declare their black money. The Finance Minister announced that 100 per cent foreign direct investment will be allowed in the food sector. Next will be other sectors.

The picture on the agriculture front too is gloomy. Agricultural production has come down by one per cent. The peasants' frustration is resulting in increasing number of suicides. There is a downslide in the prices of agricultural produce and this is leading to their gnawing impove-rishment. Drought is causing a calamitous situation.

Manufacturing is also not in good health. The prices of capital goods are becoming uneco-nomical. Recession is eating into the vitals of industry. No capital goods industry has been planned or projected since Modi has come to power.

In spite of a plethora foreign tours and the huge money wasted on them, the situation in the field of foreign policy is far from being satisfactory. Efforts to woo Nepal have failed. Similar is the case of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, China and Pakistan. Relations with them are not very friendly. Modi's initiative to negotiate with Pakistan on the Pathankot terror attack has failed. Even Bhutan is getting nearer to China. Though we have given up our independent foreign policy and have joined the American bandwagon, America is helping Pakistan in all possible ways including the supply of sophisticated military hardware.

In 2014 during the election campaign, Narendra Modi promised to root out corruption for which the Congress was accused but on the other hand this is increasing day in and day out. Modi's electoral promise was that he would launch a frontal attack on the black money menance and would put Rs 15 lakhs in the pocket of every Indian. Amit Shah said that it was only an election “zumla”. Does this hold good for other electoral promises as well? Rs 3.60 lakh crores have been taken as loan from the nationalised banks by businessmen and industrial tycoons and they are not returning the same to the banks. This is called non-performing assets. Out of it Rs 95,000 crores have been given between April 15 and December 2015. What is Modiji doing about it? Then came the Panama Papers which listed several industrialists, businessmen, politicians and artists. Here also no tangible steps have been taken to bring the culprits to book. Brijesh Upadhaya, National General Secretary of Bhartiya Majdoor Sangh observed that “all economic policies favour business by and large”.

Though Modiji has been talking with foreign governments and seeking their cooperation to fight terrorism, ulterances and actions of his followers in the country are creating social insecurity, conflicts and bitterness. Opposition party leaders are being harassed and retribution and intolerance are the hall-marks of the policy of the neo-fascists in power. The Sangh Parivar goons have been let loose to terrorise all those who dissent. The number of RSS shakhas trebled from 10,000 in 1977 to almost 30,000 in 1994. The number will be much more now. In the BJP governments in States and administration in institutes, including universities, both employees and students are being encouraged to join these shakhas. Let the Left take lessons from it.

Instead of Bharat Mata ki Jai why not only have Jai Hind which was adopted by the Azad Hind Fauj under the leadership of Subhash Chandra Bose and was well accepted by almost all irrespective of caste, creed and race? It was highly inspiring and connotes supreme and sublime nationalism and patriotism.

The author is an Associate Professor (Retired), Department of Political Science, Bundelkhand College, Jhansi.

A party which expects everyone to wear nationalism on one's sleeves made the most anti-national statement. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said that the Kohinoor diamond was “offered” by Dalip Singh, Maharaja Ranjit Singh's son, to Lord Dalhousie and it belongs to Britain.

The angry comments following the statement made the party realise its mistake and it changed its stand abruptly. It said that the Kohinoor belonged to India and would be brought back through talks with the British.

The question is about the facts, not how London would feel. True, there are two factions within the BJP, one for bringing back the diamond and the other believing that the Kohinoor was a British possession. The party should know the facts and not say what one of its factions feels.

Lord Dalhousie, the Viceroy, was keen to please his masters, the East India Company and Queen Victoria. He also wanted to further his career. Dalip Singh, a minor, was under his charge because he was the Viceroy after the British had defeated the Sikhs to annex Punjab. Lord Dalhousie not only took Dalip Singh to Britain after converting him but also appropriated the Kohinoor as the possession of the British. He was so careful about the protection of the diamond that he did not take the usual Suez Canal route to London but went around South Africa, nearly twice the distance.

The Kohinoor was, no doubt, worth thousands of crores but it gave identity to India and, with it in possession, the authority. Ahmed Shah Abdali, one of our rulers, forcibly exchanged the turban with Nadir Shah when he came to know that the latter had tucked the Kohinoor under his turban.

Oblivious of all these facts, the BJP first washed its hands off from the Kohinoor. But when it faced spontaneous angry comments, it went back on its original stand. Even if the Kohinoor was “offered” to the British—the BJP's first stand—the party must realise that the “offer” by the country which was Britain's colony, meant nothing. It was not an offer of an elected government. The slave nations have no choice of their own.

I am, however, reminded of the discussion which I had initiated in the Rajya Sabha when I was its member in the late 1990s. After having vainly raised the issue with the British, when I was India's High Commissioner, I thought Parliament would see the wrong done to the country.

The debate had hardly taken off when the then Foreign Minister, Jaswant Singh, requested me not to pursue the matter. I was aghast when he said that the debate on the Kohinoor could affect relations adversely between India and Great Britain. Till today, I have not been able to get the answer to my question: How?

Even according to a UNESCO resolution, all the artefacts obtained by the rulers during their governance should be returned to the original owners. New Delhi, for reasons best known to it, has not raised the matter citing the UNESCO resolution. A country, which had colonies, has reasons to be reluctant. Why should India which has been a colony itself have any hesitation?

In fact, the British Government had even questioned the ownership of the Kohinoor. It said that after the birth of Pakistan, the ownership of Kohinoor vested not only on India but on two countries: India and Pakistan. At London, one Foreign Office high-up had defended its decision not to return on the ground that the Kohinoor belonged to Pakistan. I told him that let them return it to Islamabad. It would at least come back to the subcontinent and then we shall take up the matter with them.

It is clear that the British have no intention of returning the diamond or, for that matter, tonnes of material stored in the basement of Victoria and Albert Museums at London. Though there was no response from England, France complied with the UNESCO resolution and gave up the relics which it had in their possession during their rule.

When the Nehru Corner was opened at London, I asked the curator how much of material from the basement they had put on display. Her reply was: five per cent. Even then the entire expense was borne by India. I requested her for the display of other possessions at the Indian Government's expense. She curtly said no. She also rejected my proposal that we display the material in the basement in our country at our own expense and then return them to the Museum. The material of India at the basement includes manuscripts, books, maps, posters and such other material. People of India may never see that material since the government is reluctant to take up the subject.

The British establishment must have prevailed upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to mention the Kohinoor during his official visit to the United Kingdom some time back. Otherwise, it is not understandable why he did not refer to the subject even once directly or indirectly.

The Modi Government should reopen the question of relics with London. This may embarrass the previous Congress Government for not having acted during its rule. But the country's interest demands that what is part of its history when the events took place should be in India. The British establishment should appreciate the feelings of Indians.

The UK had done well not to display the Kohinoor in the yearly exhibition of diamonds. Probably it had dawned on the Cameron Government that every time the Kohinoor is put to public gaze there is a demand from India that it should be returned to it. And it once again confirmed the fact that the diamond actually belonged to India and that Lord Dalhousie had fraudulently taken it to London.

My impression is that when it comes to their empire, the British cannot be objective. There is pride, no humility, self-righteousness and no introspection. The British are proud, nostalgic but annoyingly patronising about their connection. The new generation should have been different and given a new message instead of plugging the same old line.

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

“[W]hen we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the ‘division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.”— Simone de Beauvoir1

The age of consent in rape cases in India was raised from 16 years to 18 years through the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013. It led to many eyebrows being raised and not surpri-singly so since the global average of the age of consent still remains at 16 years and the legal age of marriage for girls in India is 18 years. Lack of consent is the basis on which rape is defined. Consent or the lack of it is the basis of judicial decisions in rape cases. Consent is a major legal issue in trafficking and sex work. As against traditional values, consent among partners in marriage is considered a must in the modern parlance. Today, we have also come to view moral policing of sex among consenting adults as intrusive and obnoxious. Consent, however, is not merely an issue of sexual consent. It can be considered a major gender issue with respect to decision-making within the family, especially concerning issues of reproduction in general, and pregnancy and contraception in particular. On Women's Day, 2015, “Perspectives on ‘Consent''' was aptly chosen as the topic for a panel discussion at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.

Perceptions of Sexual Consent

In the international discussions on sexual consent, there are now accepted principles that past consent is not an indicator of present consent and that consent to one kind of intimacy does not mean consent to other kinds of intimacies. The right against sexual harassment is conceptualised as a right to one's self-integrity. “Sexual consent is an understudied and undertheorised concept despite its importance ....”2 even in the West. Studies in the West in the heterosexual context point out that “young adults use more nonverbal signals and cues during sexual encounters than verbal ones”. The traditional sexual role for men has it that they should initiate sexual activity; verbally asking for consent is considered unromantic by men as well as women. On the other hand, women are “[s]ocialised to be limit-setters of relationships” and are more cautious and guarded about sexual consent as they are “more likely to be victims if these situations turn coercive.”3 Another empirical study points out that although there are possibilities for miscommunication of sexual consent, they are minimal since both men and women consider that “direct refusal is an unambiguous signal”. “Thus, it is unlikely that miscommunication about consent is a major contributing factor to acquaintance rape.” Miscommunication may, however, be used as an excuse for sexual aggression.4 Yet another study on sexual communication endorses this finding, “Males and females ... do not differ significantly with regard to perceived consent or rape.”5

In India, sexual harassment is viewed as a violation of the fundamental rights of gender equality under Article 14 and the ‘fundamental right to life and personal liberty' under Article 19 of the Constitution and the right against sexual harassment is visualised as a ‘protec-tionist' measure so as to ensure the right to equal participation as is implied in the legislative advances from the Vishaka vs. State of Rajasthan judgment in 1997 to the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013.

Empirical Evidence from Delhi

There has been an interesting empirical study on rape cases for the year 2013, conducted by TheHindu newspaper, in Delhi which is designated as the ‘rape capital' of the country. It dealt with all 583 cases during the year 2013 decided by Delhi's district courts—the first level at which rape cases are tried in India. Twenty per cent of the trials ended because the complainant did not appear or turned hostile. Of the remaining 460 cases fully tried, over 40 per cent dealt with consensual sex, usually involving young couples eloping and the girl's parents subsequently charging the boy with rape. “This was especially true for inter-caste and inter-religious couples.” Another 25 per cent dealt with “breach of promise to marry”. Of the 162 remaining cases, men preying on little children in slums was the most common type of offence. These also included rare incidents of stranger rape cases such as the Nirbhaya case which were only 1/12 of the total number of cases.6

Going by this study, in an overwhelming 40 per cent of the cases fully tried, the mutual consent of the couple was overruled by the girl's parents. These include many cases of teenage love often getting reported as rape thus curbing self-choice partnerships in ‘our cruel and dysfunctional society'. It is most unfortunate that with the raising of the age of consent in rape cases, the possibility of cases of teenage love getting reported as rape only go up. In cases of “breach of promise to marry” which constitute 25 per cent of the cases fully tried, the original consent from the woman, which is supposed to have been conditional, gets withdrawn with retrospective effect. “Frankly I think this shouldn't be counted as rape. It comes from a patriarchal context, from the premium placed on a woman's chastity. But if we want to talk of women's agency, we cannot have it both ways,” says lawyer and leading women's rights activist Ms Vrinda Grover, reflecting a sentiment shared by several other women's rights lawyers.7 Following the Nirbhaya case of gangrape in Delhi in December 2012, a large number of cases of “breach of promise to marry” have been filed in the nearby Vasant Vihar Police Station by the girl students of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Light of Reason from the Courts

The Bombay High Court judgment by a woman judge, Mridula Bhatkar, in Mahesh Balkrishna Dandane vs State of Maharashtra 8has been very significant in such cases as mentioned above:“Today the law acknowledges live-in relation-ship(s). The law also acknowledges a woman's right to have sex, a woman's right to be a mother or a woman's right to say no to motherhood.”“A couple in love may be having sexual relationship and realise they are not compatible, and sometimes love between the parties is lost and their relationship dries gradually, then earlier physical contacts cannot be said as rape. A marriage cannot be imposed.” Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code relating to rape applies to breach of promise to marry in cases of an uneducated poor girl being induced into a sexual relationship after promise of marriage or a man suppressing information on his first marriage to have sexual relations with a girl.

The aforementioned empirical evidence from Delhi shows that there is diversity in rape cases and in a majority of the cases studied, the charges have not been genuine. However, it is devastating for those falsely implicated of this most hated crime. In the police stations and jails, patriarchal justice is meted out to the rape accused from underprivileged backgrounds, often in the form of third degree torture. It is relatively easy for a woman to legally harass or trap a man in a false case but the streets and homes still remain unsafe places for women. Enlarging the scope for false cases, however, is clearly not a solution to this dilemma. Raising the age of consent could have the unfortunate consequence of enlarging the scope for girls' parents to frame teenaged boys involved in consensual relationships. However, if so many false cases are allowed to crop up, how can women having genuine cases lodge them fearlessly? In recent times, courts have expressed disgust at the large number of false cases of rape and have coined the term, ‘rape case survivors' and even initiated perjury proceedings against those lodging false cases. Delhi High Court in 2013 expressed annoyance at rape cases being used as “a weapon for vengeance and vendetta”. This is not to deny that many a time, courts have demonstrated patriarchal attitudes in dealing with genuine charges of sexual violence.

Consent under the Brahminical Social System

Most of the panelists in the panel discussion at the CDS spoke of the power relations that operate in the process of generating consent: as social structures are imbued with power relations, there is inequality of power in relationships and consent is viewed with suspicion, as it may be induced. Neo-classical economists would speak of the problem of information asymmetry in this context. On the other hand, there was also the important argument that consent is not really something which is socially acceptable in Indian society and that it had to be given its rightful place. “The gift of a daughter” (by her father)9 in keeping with caste norms has been the accepted norm for marriage under the Brahminical social system of South Asia that overruled consent. Manusmriti denigrates relationships based on consent as based on mere infatuation, “The voluntary union of a maiden and her lover one must know (to be) the Gandharva rite, which springs from desire and has sexual intercourse for its purpose.”10

Another major dimension undermining consent was that historically, in the Brahminical social system of South Asia, the consent of women from the vast majority of the ‘Dalit-bahujans' (to use the term employed by Kancha Ilaiah) was taken for granted. These women were left vulnerable to sexual assaults of men from the privileged castes that is, the twice-born castes, as these were considered anuloma [sexual relations] that were permissible (though strongly discouraged as a “folly” and cause of ‘degradation') in the Manusmriti.11 This historical fact could also explain the silence of mainstream feminists about sexual violence against women of underprivileged castes as they consider it a caste/class issue rather than a gender issue. On the other hand, our Smritis awarded the severest of punishments like the most painful death penalty to men of the Dalitbahujan castes even for minor sexual offences against a woman of twice-born castes, as it was considered a pratiloma [sexual relation] that was most offensive. Manusmriti (VIII: 374) rules, “A Sudra who has intercourse with a woman of a twice-born caste (varna), guarded or unguarded, (shall be punished in the following manner): if she was unguarded, he loses the part (offending) and all his property; if she was guarded, everything (even his life).” On the other hand, “A Brahmana who approaches unguarded females (of the) Kshatriya or Vaisya (castes), or a Sudra female, shall be fined five hundred (panas); but (for intercourse with) a female (of the) lowest (castes), one thousand.”12 In the Brahminical eugenics, such penalties could have been a means to prevent “the confusion of the castes (varna)”13 but if we consider the historically penurious status of the Dalitbahujan women in the social hierarchy, these penalties could have made little difference to their vulnerable condition.

The Brahminical social system fiercely guarded the honour of the women of privileged castes and as a result, a false sense of honour was instilled into their minds. Bheem's ravages against Duhsasana whose chest was ripped apart and against Jarasandha who was torn apart by his legs were supposed to have been done for the sake of the honour of Draupadi. These images being so well embedded in popular culture, we also come across the Draupadi-brand feminism even today invoking the excesses of patriarchal justice. A fundamental shift from the historically hegemonic norm of anulomas and pratilomas14 has not taken place despite the arrival of top-down transformations through colonial modernity and a liberal democratic state on the one hand and bottom-up transformations through social and political movements on the other.

Mainstream feminism in India gives a lot of emphasis to sexual self-determination entailing control over one's body and would be averse to a casteist reading of the gender issue. Although this argument rightly opposes a reduction of gender issues to a caste angle, it overlooks the crucial fact that majority of the women in India who hail from the Dalitbahujan castes did not, historically, have control over their bodies as men from the privileged castes had almost unhindered access to their bodies.

As a concluding note, it is agreed that genuine consent is possible only in a society where substantive equality exists. This, in turn, is a powerful argument in favour of socialist feminism. The struggle for socialism is bound to be a protracted one, given the contemporary world scenario. In the interim period, if we are to move towards the goal of democratic gender relationships, it is very important to give consent its due place in a society such as ours where as of now consent is not a socially accepted norm and measures like raising the age of consent thus criminalising teenage love, is quite contrary to achieving this end. Relationships based on consent are gaining ever greater legitimacy in India today. In this social context, enlarging the scope for false cases of rape whether from the girl's parents or from women themselves can, by no means, be a solution to making the streets and homes safer places for women. It also needs to be added that in contrast to the international context, the crucial specificity of legal permissiveness to anuloma sexual relations and violent prohibition of pratiloma sexual relations under the Brahminical patriarchy cannot be overlooked in any discussion on consent in our country.

[The author thanks the panelists, especially, T.K. Sundari, J. Devika, and A.S. Ray and the participants in the discussion, ‘Perspectives on Consent' held at the CDS on the Women's Day 2015.

He also thanks Mythri Prasad for critical comments on an earlier draft.]

End-notes

1 Simone de Beauvoir, 1993: The Second Sex, David Campbell Publishers Ltd., London, first pub. 1949, p. 767.

2 Melanie A. Beres, 2007: “‘Spontaneous' Sexual Consent: An Analysis of Sexual Consent Literature”,

Feminism and Psychology, vol. 17, no. 1, February, pp. 93-108.

3 Terry Humphreys, 2007: “Perceptions of Sexual Consent: The Impact of Relationship History and Gender”, Journal of Sex Research, vol. 44, no. 4, December, pp. 307-15.

4 Susan E. Hickman and Charlene L. Muehlenhard, 1999: “By the Semi-Mystical Appearance of a Condom: How Young Women and Men Communicate Sexual Consent in Heterosexual Situations”, Journal of Sex Research, vol. 36, no. 3, August, pp. 258-272.

5 Grace Y. Lima and Michael E. Roloff, 1999: “Attributing sexual consent”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 1-23.

6 Rukmini S., 2014: ‘The many shades of rape cases in Delhi', The Hindu, July 29-31.

7 Rukmini S., 2014.

8 Bombay High Court, Criminal Anticipatory Bail Application no. 27 of 2014.

9 Manusmriti: The Laws of Manu (1500 BC) translated by G. Buhler http://sanskritdocuments.org/all_pdf/manusmriti.pdf, III: 28-30.

10 Manusmriti, III: 32.

11 Manusmriti (III: 15) says: “Twice-born men who, in their folly, wed wives of the low (Sudra) caste, soon degrade their families and their children to the state of Sudras.”

12 Manusmriti, VIII: 385.

13 Manusmriti, VIII: 172, IX: 67, X: 12, 24, 40.

14 Manusmriti, X: 25.

The author is an independent researcher resident at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram.

West Bengal is witnessing Assembly elections in a novel perspective. The CPI-M-Congress alliance is the main contender of the TMC in the present elections. Rather than making a critique of their past deeds, the CPI-M has left no stone unturned in forging an alliance with the Congress for electoral gains. Other than ousting the Mamata Banerjee-led government, the CPI-M has not offered any substantial argument in support of the alliance. The most blatant thing they did was to give the pre-alliance call of making padayatra from Singur to Salboni in support of industrialisation in West Bengal. Even a man in the street knows the state violence associated with the indus-trialisation drive of the Left Front Government in the two above-mentioned regions. The agenda of industrialisation promised by the Left testifies that they still support the neo-liberal paradigm of industrialisation, which played a big role in the demise of the more than the three-decade-long rule of the Left Front Government in West Bengal.

The proponents of the Left-Congress alliance cite criminalisation of the public sphere and politicisation of the police as two major pillars of the paradigm of governance pursued by the TMC Government. To speak the truth, both the Congress and the CPI-M were the architects of this paradigm of governance in their respective years of rule in West Bengal.

From N.C.'s Writings

Now that elections to the West Bengal State Assembly are in full swing, it is a ‘moment of truth' for the present ruling party there, the Trinamul Congress, led by CM Mamata Banerji. It is thus instructive to ponder over what N.C. had written about the erstwhile ruling party in the State, the CPI-M, headed by the late CM, Jyoti Basu, and its functioning more those 25 years ago. Incidentally, the same CPI-M now has an electoral understanding with the Congress, reportedly forged under popular pressure, to oust the Trinamul Congress from power in West Bengal and prevent the BJP from exploiting the anti-incumbency factor to its benefit.

CPM in West Bengal: A Moment of Truth

It's time to pause and ponder for the CPI-M in West Bengal. I would not use the hackneyed cliché of “self-criticism”—much abused in Communist circles. It has been shown up as a means to force a sort of confession in Catholic terms. What's wanted is self-introspection. Let the leaders of the Left, particularly the wise and the perceptive, think over what's happening and how to get back to the road to a purposeful future.

I happened to be in Calcutta on the day of the Congress-I called bandh on August 16, 1990. For quite sometime past, the Congress-I leaders in West Bengal, reduced to a state of ramshackle for various reasons, were striving hard to activate their ranks and thereby keep the party going. Their main fare has been the discontent and hardship of the people as a result of the rising prices. A natural occupation for a party in Opposition in search of an agenda. Inevitably, there was a touch of rowdyism, but that has been the tradition of West Bengal politics and the Left in its turn was not immune from it in the past. As a crescendo of that agitation came the Congress-I call for the bandh on August 16. It was concentrated in Calcutta though the call extended to the districts of West Bengal as well.

What brought into the limelight was the CPI-M's decision to pick up the gauntlet. So long it was just an Opposition agitation against the government, but once the CPI-M challenge came it was made into a trial of strength, a prestige issue. Some of the more aggressive CPI-M leaders threatened to bring their cadres out on the street to confront the Congress-I and to see that the bandh failed, that the Congress-I failed to bring about a standstill to normal life. Some of the Left allies of the CPI-M objected to such a move as they feared this would lead to clashes which would not help the mass movement at all. But the CPI-M leaders persisted.

What surprised everybody was the stand of Chief Minister Jyoti Basu. At first he was understood to be in favour of tackling the Congress bandh by administrative measures, what's called the law-and-order machinery. But to the surprise of all, Jyoti Basu changed his position and came out with the statement that “our boys” would come out and deal with the Congress bandh. From that point, it became a case of angry confrontation.

Many theories are current in Calcutta about this angry stance of the Chief Minister, and most of the speculations I picked up was from circles close to the CPI-M, from the party's fellow-travellers and those who naturally vote for it. There was one theory that Basu was fed up with the Congress-I rowdyism and felt that enough was enough and the Congress-I agitators must be put on their place—rather unlikely for a Chief Minister known to be unruffled, a sort of an elder figure in West Bengal politics. The other theory is that he found some of his party colleagues—those holding the apparatus—itching for a showdown and Basu conceded to their clamour.

And so the CPI-M cadres were ordered to come out on the street and foil the Congress-I call for the bandh. What was the upshot? The trams and buses were ordered to run. Government offices were kept open, the CPI-M cadres, with Red Flag in hand at street corners, standing alongwith police pickets. But the streets were deserted, the buses and trams were empty and even the Government Secretariat could hardly function. From the point of view of rallying the public to defeat the bandh, it did not succeed at all. Even the Police Commissioner of Calcutta—no friend of the Congress-I, rather conscious of the need not rub the ruling party up the wrong way—stated that the bandh was complete. Whatever little I could see, I was convinced that in terms of cessation of public activity (which is what a bandh is all about), it was a complete success, and one has to acknowledge that in my 47 years as a reporter, I have seen not a few hartals, strikes and bandhs. It is to be noted that some of the Left parties, the CPI and the RSP in particular, as also individual Left leaders, frankly acknow-ledged that the bandh was complete.

How does one account for this bandh which was a demonstration against a government which has an overwhelming majority in the legislature ruling the State for 12 long years and has at its back a well-knit ruling party? Jyoti Basu has observed that the poor turnout at places of work has been due to “the fear psychosis” created by the Congress-I agitation. No doubt a good number of people did not come out because of the fear of violent clashes. It would, however, be a half-truth to say that this fear of large-scale violence became widespread when it was known that the CPI-M cadres would be out on the streets to settle scores. Let us be frank about it, the CPI-M boys are not known as docile Gandhian satyagrahis and so the fear of violent clashes was not surprising. This was borne out by what actually happened on the bandh day. Particularly the incident in which the Congress-I leader, Mamata Banerjee, was the target of the murderous assault by the CPI-M boys. The press photographers bear out the identity of these boys, and one of them found to be rushing to attack her with a rod happened to be a Calcutta party activist's brother, notorious for his strong-arm methods in his locality, particularly during election seasons. So, the Chief Minister's diagnosis of a “fear psychosis” has to be taken in its totality, embracing the record of the two sides in confrontation, and not of one side alone.

More importantly, the poor turn-out on the bandh day has brought into sharp relief the fact that the CPI-M, despite its challenge, could not mobilise the public to come out in the street and chase away the Congress-I agitators. If the CPI-M leaders' constant claim that the people were on their side were true, then there was no reason why the CPI-M could not mobilise against the Congress-I agitation a large section of the public—the huge numbers who generally come to their meetings to hear Jyoti Basu. It needs to be noted that despite a very powerful employees' union movement under the CPI-M's control, the office staff, both government and non-govern-ment, hardly came.

It is this conspicuous public apathy, bordering on sulkiness, about the CPI-M-led government's challenge that is the most significant factor in the entire episode. It was not just a case of rising prices that has created annoyance, because the State Government on its own is not responsible for the rising prices, and the CPI-M leaders could have been spared any blame for it. What has been annoying to the public is that in the matter of the public distribution system, whether it was kerosene or edible oil or rice, there has grown an entire network of party favourites, and everything is sought to be managed through the party channels. Apart from the narrow sectarian approach involved in such functioning, there is no gainsaying that corruption has entered into it which can hardly be overlooked.

There is resentment at the steep rise in bus and tram fares. Apart from the fact that it was the CPI-M which in the past had campaigned against such a fare-hike when it was in the Opposition, the public is also resentful of the fact very widely known that the transport sector of the State Government is riddled with mismanagement and it was but natural that corruption should enter it. Far from coming anywhere near Bombay's BEST in efficiency and service, the West Bengal transport system comes out way down in the list when compared to counterpart bodies in other States. The excess of manpower and enormity of idle capacity is just appalling in West Bengal.

The biggest public resentment is over the chronic power shortage in West Bengal. When the Left from came to power in 1977, it ascribed all the ills of the power sector to what it had inherited from the Congress Government: it was given out that because the power plants had been recklessly used during the Emergency, there was dislocation in the plants and it would take a little time to sort them out. Next came the Chief Minister's much publicised visit to the UK in search of gas turbine to augment power supply. But little was heard later about that adventure. After 12 years, what is the West Bengal Government's record on this score? Not only has the power shortage continued but it is becoming worse and worse and today the government has cast away any pretence of holding out any hopes of improvement. Rather the State Power Minister has recently said that this year the loadshedding would be heavier during the Puja festival days than last year—and he said this without any sign of worry. Not even a serious diagnosis is made of what has gone wrong, why less than 40 per cent of the installed capacity is utilised. Even the bluff that the city consumer is denied power because of industrial growth no longer works. It is a scandalous situation—perhaps the biggest blot for any State Government since independence that it has not been able to meet the power demands of the State even after having been in office for 12 long years.

All these have their cumulative effect on the public mind. Nobody denies that the Congress-I is a discredited outfit in West Bengal. But this by no means indicates a growing swing to the Left. Rather there is not only disenchantment but rumblings of discontent at the ground level. In this context, a ruling party can gain if is displays humility and an eagerness to interact with all, to listen to criticisms and patiently respond to even its adversaries. But the CPI-M leaders seem to take the position that if one is not with them, then he or she must be regarded as being against them. There is no spirit of give-and-take. The public in West Bengal still took upto Jyoti Basu, and it is for him to see that his party pulls itself out of the morass of intolerance in which it is fast getting bogged. A moment of truth.

(Mainstream, August 25, 1990)

DOCUMENT

The Team:

1. Prakash Dubey, General Secretary

2. Seema Chishti, Executive Committee Member

3. Vinod Verma, Executive Committee Member

Places of Travel:

Jagdalpur, Bastar and Raipur.

Dates of Travel:

March 13 to 15, 2016.

Terms of reference:

To verify and assess:

• Recent reports of the arrests of journalists in Chhattisgarh;

• The threats and challenges faced by journalists in the State;

• The challenges to the profession of journalism.

Summary

The Bastar division of Chhattisgarh State is fast becoming a conflict zone. There is a constant battle on between the security forces and the Maoists. Journalists, caught in the middle, are under attack by both the state and non-state actors. Several incidents have been reported over the past few months of attacks on journalists. At least two, according to the reports, were arrested and imprisoned and others threatened and intimidated to a point where they had to leave Bastar for fear of their lives. The residence of at least one journalist, according to the information, was also attacked.

The Editors Guild of India constituted a three- member Fact Finding Team to look into these reported incidents. Since Seema Chishti was unable to travel, Prakash Dubey and Vinod Verma travelled to Raipur/Jagdalpur on of March 13, 14 and 15, 2016.

The fact finding committee members met a number of journalists and government officials in Jagdalpur. In Raipur the team met Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh and all top officials of the State, several Editors and some senior journalists.

The team recorded the statements of journa-lists Malini Subramaniam and Alok Putul. It also visited the Central Jail to meet journalist Santosh Yadav.

The fact finding team came to the conclusion that the media reports of threats to journalists are true. The media in Chhattisgarh is working under tremendous pressure. In Jagdalpur and the remote tribal areas the journalists find it even more difficult to gather and disseminate news. There is pressure from the State adminis-tration, especially the police, on journalists to write what they want or not to publish reports that the administration sees as hostile. There is pressure from Maoists as well on the journalists working in the area.

There is a general perception that every single journalist is under the government scanner and all their activities are under surveillance. They hesitate to discuss anything over the phone because, as they say, “the police is listening to every word we speak”. Several senior journalists confirmed that a controversial citizens' group, ‘Samajik Ekta Manch', is funded and run by the police headquarters in Bastar. According to them, it is a reincarnation of Salwa Judum.

Challenges to Journalists: Some Cases

Challenges of writing for the newspapers are not new in the Bastar division of Chhattisgarh. A journalist, Premraj, who was representing the Deshbandhu newspaper in Kanker, was booked under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activity (Prevention) Act (TADA) in the year 1991-92 when the undivided Madhya Pradesh State was ruled by the BJP. He was charged with being close to the Maoists. He was later acquitted by the courts for want of evidence.

In December 2013, a rural journalist, Sai Reddy, was killed by the rebels in a village near Bijapur. According to the police, a group of Maoists attacked him with sharp edged-weapons near the market and fled from the spot.

Bastar Journalist Association President S. Karimuddin told the fact finding team that in the year 2008, Sai Reddy was arrested by the police and kept in jail under the controversial Chhattisgarh Special Security Act, accusing him of having links with the Maoists. On the other hand, the Maoists suspected him to be loyal to the security forces and set his house ablaze and killed him later.

In February, 2013 one more rural journalist, Nemi Chand Jain, was also killed by the rebels in Sukma. Rebels were under the impression that he was passing messages to the security forces. Fortyfive days after his murder, the Maoists apologised for his killing.

Last year, in 2015, police arrested two news- persons under the same controversial law for allegedly having connections with the Maoists. One of them, Santosh Yadav, was arrested in September. He was a stringer for at least two Raipur based newspapers, Navbharat and Dainik Chhattisgarh. The editors of both the newspapers have owned the journalist. The fact finding team met Santosh Yadav in the Jagdalpur Central Jail, where he said that he is also suspected by both the sides of being close to the other side.

A second journalist, Somaru Nag, was arrested in July, 2015. He was also a stringer and news agent for a Raipur based newspaper, but that newspaper never came forward to own him as their employee.

Charge-sheets in both the cases have been filed and the matter is pending in the courts.

On February 8, 2016, the residence of Malini Subramaniam was attacked by some unidenti-fied people. She is a contributor for Scroll.in and the former head of the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC). As Malini told the fact finding team, her house was attacked in the early hours of the morning. Malini found stones scattered around her Jagdalpur residence and the window of her car shattered. According to her, around 20 men gathered around her house a few hours before the attack, shouting slogans like “Naxali Samarthak Bastar Chhoro”, “Malini Subramaniam Murdabad”. She suspected that the same people must have been involved in the attack. According to the local administration, “her writing is one-sided and she always sympathises with the Maoists” .

The same allegation was made by the Samajik Ekta Manch. According to the local adminis-tration, the Manch is being run by citizens opposed to the Maoists. However, the journalists in Jagdalpur and Raipur said that it was supported and financed by the police. A few of them said that the Inspector General of Police, S.R.P. Kalluri, is directly involved in this.

The latest case was reported by the BBC Hindi journalist, Alok Putul, who was forced to leave Bastar after he received threats. According to his statement, recorded by the FFT (fact finding team), before these threats Alok received messages from the IG and SP who refused to meet him maintaining that they preferred to deal with “nationalist and patriotic journalists”.

Fear Factors

The FFT could not find a single journalist who could claim with confidence that he/she was working without fear or pressure. The journa-lists posted in Bastar and the journalists working in Raipur—all of them spoke of pressure from both sides. They said that the journalists have to work between the security forces and Maoists, and both sides do not trust journalists at all.

All of them complained about their phone- calls being tapped by the administration, and being kept under undeclared surveillance. The government officials categorically denied these charges. Principal Secretary (Home) B.V.K. Sumbramiam said: “I have to sanction every single request for surveillance and I can say this with authority that no government department has been authorised to tap phone calls of any of the journalists.”

The journalists posted in Bastar said that they cannot dare to travel to the conflict zone to report because they cannot report the facts on the ground. Although the Collector, Jagdalpur, Amit Kataria, told the fact finding team that the whole of Bastar is now open for everyone, including journalists.

The President of the Divisional Journalists Association of Bastar, S. Karimuddin, said: “I have not visited any place outside Jagdalpur for the last six years, simply because I am not supposed to write the truth and if one cannot write what one sees, then there is no point going out to gather information.” He represents the UNI in Bastar for more than three decades.

A similar claim was made by the Editor of a local newspaper, Dilshad Niyazi, who said that he had not visited the neighbouring district of Bijapur for the last eight years out of fear. Another senior local journalist, Hemant Kashyap, well-travelled in the area, said he knew Bastar like the back of his hand but that now journalists had stopped travelling. “All the journalists have now stopped going inside the forests because of the fear of police as well as Maoists,” he said. “Now we ask Maoist organi-sations to send photographs and press releases. We publish them as we receive them because we don't want to explain every single line we are writing to them. Similarly the police expect us to publish its version; so most of the journalists print their press releases as well without asking any questions,” Kashyap said.

Malini Subramaniam told the FFT that even if someone dares to go out to gather information, one is not supposed to talk to the people. She said: “Police officials expect journalists to believe and publish whatever they claim. They don't like it if someone wants to walk an extra mile for finding the facts. In one case of surrender, when I tried talking to a couple of people, they asked me to identify the persons I wished to talk and then they briefed them before I could reach them.”

The fact finding team found that this fear is not confined to the tribal areas only, but is there in the capital city Raipur too, 280 kilometres away from Jagdalpur. All the reporters working in Raipur also said that their telephones were tapped. Some of them shared incidents that confirmed this. A very senior journalist, who is considered to have a cordial relationship with the Raman Singh Government, said: “No one is spared, not even me. They have been tapping my phone calls too.” Government officials denied this charge as reported earlier and claimed that not a single journalist is under surveillance. They said that there was a perception gap and they would try to change this.

Chief Editor of an old and reputed newspaper Lalit Surjan said that it had become extremely difficult for a journalist to do his/her job. During his meeting with the FFT, he said: “If you want to analyse anything independently, you cannot do it because they can question your intentions and can ask bluntly, ‘Are you with the government or with the Maoists?‘” He admitted that this problem was not only with the govern-ment, but also with the Maoists. He said: “Both sides feel that what you are writing is wrong.”

Surjan said that it was becoming increasingly difficult to work in areas like Bastar as the journalists cannot avoid meeting Maoists, and the government is not prepared to give them even the benefit of doubt. ”The government should respect democratic rights and should give benefit of doubt to the journalists,” he said. He questioned the arrest of the two journalists, Santosh Yadav and Somaru Nag, and remembered Sai Reddy, who was killed by the Naxals, as a fine reporter.

Challenges faced by Journalism

A journalist working in Bastar expects to be asked: “Which side of journalism?” This question appears a bit odd but in Bastar it comes naturally. As the local journalists put it, there are three categories of journalists in Bastar:

1. Pro-government, 2. Not so pro-government, and 3. Pro Maoists or Maoist sympathisers.

The FFT found that there are nearly 125 journalists working in Jagdalpur alone. They can be divided in four categories:

Journalist by profession: There are only a few in this category. They are generally represen-tatives of the newspapers published from Raipur. Some newspapers have editions in Bastar; so heads of those editions can also be counted in this category. Journalists of this category are on the pay roll of the newspaper or news agency.

Part-time journalists: Dozens of journalists belong to this category in Jagdalpur (or in other cities of tribal division of Bastar). Journalism is not their main occupation. They have to take government contracts, work as builders or property dealers, traders, hoteliers or directors of NGOs etc. Apart from their business interests they have become printers and publishers of a newspaper or a periodical magazine, work as correspondent of some unknown or little known publication. Journalism is not their principal vocation. So-called journalists of this category did not seem to be at all concerned about the salary they received from the publication they were working for, they don't bother about the circulation of the publication they own and are least bothered about the reputation of the same. Their money comes from somewhere else. The fact finding team was told that many of them use journalistic influence for getting business, government contract, advertisements and some- time extortion money from government officials and businessmen. Most of the time they are pro- government for obvious reasons and senior journalists sitting in Raipur introduce/identify them as journalists on the ‘government pay roll'. Since corruption is rampant in Bastar, they are earning more money for not publishing a news item, than for publishing it. In a conflict zone like Bastar, they are the favourites of the local police and other officials.

Stringers and Newsagents: They are the backbone of journalism in Bastar. Posted in remote areas of the conflict zone known as stringers, newsagents or even hawkers. They collect news and send it to the Jagdalpur bureau or to the head office directly. They don't have any formal appointment with the newspaper nor do they get remuneration for their work. They get a letter from the newspapers or news agencies they represent that authorises them to collect news and advertisements. Some might have been issued a press card that the organi-sation rarely bothers to renew after it has expired. To the surprise of the FFT many of the stringers in the remote areas are carrying a press card issued by some national television channels too. Their money either comes from advertisement commission or from some other business they are involved in. In case of television sometimes they get paid if the video footage is used, but it happens very rarely and the payment is very low.

Visiting Journalists: They are the journalists representing national or international media. They come from either Raipur, where they are generally posted or from the head offices like Delhi and Mumbai. Police and local adminis-tration dislike them the most because they ask many questions, insist on getting the facts and try to visit the affected areas. They are generally seen as Maoist sympathisers or pro-Maoists.

As one senior editor in Raipur puts it, “their reports seem pro-Maoist because they go inside and talk to the people and anything coming from the people usually contradicts the govern-ment's version and hence it is labelled as pro-Maoist or anti-government. “The problem with this lot is, they cannot stay for a long time in Bastar; so their reportage is not sustained. Secondly, they come with an assignment and they end up looking for a particular story. Third, they cannot access most of Bastar because they are not allowed to visit many parts of the tribal areas, on the ground that it is not ‘safe'. Four, they don't understand the local language/dialact and hence are dependent on what the interpreter is telling them. It could be a local journalist from the above described category no. 2. There are some exceptions like Scroll contributor Malini Subramaniam who was staying in Jagdalpur and visiting remote places for gathering news, but she could not stay there for a long time for obvious reasons.

Language and Class

There are only a few journalists who can understand the language/dialect the tribal people speak, whether it is Gondi or Halbi or some other dialect. There is not a single full-time journalist who comes from one the tribes. Most of the journalists belong to a different class and speak some other language. Their mother tongue could be Chhattisgarhi, Marwari, Hindi, Telugu, Bangla or Hindi but not the one in which local villagers speak. Language constraints are a problem.

Difficult Terrain

A major part of the conflict zone is in Abujhmarh, which means ‘unknown hills'. It is a hilly forest area which is home for many tribes. The population in this area is very thin. According to the 2011 census, India's average population density is 382 persons per square kilometres but in this part of the country the population density is 10 persons only. Then it is one of those areas of the country where Malaria is common. Because it is also the so- called liberated zone of the Maoists, it is very difficult to go inside the jungle to gather reports.

Government's Response

The FFT met Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh Dr Raman Singh at his residence. All top bureaucrats of the State were also present in the meeting. Editors Guild's Executive Committee member Ruchir Garg and editor of a local daily, Sunil Kumar, were also present in the meeting.

The Chief Minister said that he is aware of most of the incidents and he is concerned about them. He said that his government is in favour of a free and fair media. He informed the fact finding team that after the controversy over the arrest of journalist Santosh Yadav he had called a meeting of top officials and some editors and formed a monitoring committee which will be consulted for any cases related to the media and journalists.

About the phone-tapping and surveillance allegations, the Principal Secretary (Home) assured the team that he is the authority for sanctioning surveillance and he could say that not a single journalist is under surveillance. The Principal Secretary to the CM admitted that there is a perception gap and said it was the government's responsibility to change this perception.

The attitude of Bastar IG S.R.P. Kalluri towards the press also came up in the meeting. The CM instructed the officials that the behaviour of one officer should not take away all the credit of the good job the government is doing in the Maoist area. Some senior police official with credibility should be authorised to talk to the press, he said. Principal Secretary (Home) should visit Jagdalpur and interact with the media, the Chief Minister instructed.

CM Dr Singh assured the FFT that his government has no prejudice against anyone and he will personally take all necessary steps required to make the media free of any kind of fear.

Samajik Ekta Manch

This is an informal but controversial organi-sation in Jagdalpur. The administration calls it a citizen's forum and claims that people from all walks of life are members of this organisation. The Collector of Jagdalpur, Amit Kataria, said that many religious organisations are also part of it and they are against the Maoists. But many journalists call it the urban version of Salwa Judum. They, however, did not want to oppose it openly. They said off the record that the Manch is sponsored by the police and it takes its orders from the police headquarters.

The FFT met one of the coordinators of this organisation, Subba Rao, to understand the working of the Samajik Ekta Manch. He introduced himself as the editor of two dailies, one morninger and the other published in the evening. When asked whether his main occupation is journalism, Subba Rao was candid enough to explain that he is basically a civil contractor and he is working on some govern-ment contracts. The FFT met more than a dozen journalists in Jagdalpur, but he was the only (so-called) journalist who claimed that he had never experienced any pressure from the administration.

His statements about the arrested journalists were the same as the administration's. He termed Santosh Yadav and Somaru Nag as informers for the Maoists. He said that what Malini Subramaniam was reporting was very biased. “Malini was glorifying Maoists and painting a picture of police like exploiters,” he said. He denied that the Samajik Ekta Manch was behind the attack at Malini's residence.

Cases and the Findings

Santosh Yadav/ Somaru Nag

Santosh was arrested by the police on September 29, 2015. The police charged him for working as a courier for the Maoists and taking money from them. Government officials claim that Santosh Yadav is not a journalist and they don't know which newspaper he was working for. The FFT met Santosh Yadav in the Central Jail in Jagdalpur and discussed the case with him. He claimed that he had been working for at least two newspapers, Navbharat and Chhattisgarh. (Editors of both the newspapers confirmed that Santosh Yadav was working for them and they own him as a journalist working for their newspapers.)

Santosh Yadav admitted that he had been attending calls from the Maoist leaders because of the nature of his job but he had never passed any information to them. He also admitted that he had been occasionally dropping packets between Darbha and Jagdalpur. Sometimes it was bundle of newspapers or magazines and sometimes some other papers he did not know anything about. He said that anyone who lives in a remote area of conflict zone cannot risk his life by refusing the Maoists to carry a bundle of papers from one place to another.

The Chief Editor of the newspaper group the Deshbandhu, Lalit Surjan, said during his discussion with the fact finding team: “Santosh Yadav and many other journalists working in the remote area of Bastar should be given the benefit of doubt because they have been talking to Maoists as part of their job. They don't have any choice.” He said that journalists of those remote areas are also talking to the police as part of their job and become victims of Maoist anger.

Santosh Yadav told the FFT that he had been given money by a senior police officer and he was expected to pass information about the Maoists' movements around the area, but did not do so. He claimed that after some news items published in the newspapers, he was called by the local police station and tortured for three days. Somaru Nag was also arrested last year. He was basically a newspaper agent for a newspaper and also gathering news for the same. But the newspaper doesn't own him now. The charges are the same for him too.

Malini Subramaniam

Malini is a contributor for the website the Scroll.in. She was living in Jagdalpur and collecting news for the website. She was working for the Scroll for nearly one year. Before that she was the head of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC). She was first threatened by a group of people, then her house was attacked in the wee hours of February 8, 2016. Then she was compelled to vacate her rented accommo-dation in Jagdalpur.

When the team was in Jagdalpur she was in Hyderabad. The FFT discussed the case with her over the phone. The local authorities claim that they were not aware that someone is contri-buting for the Scroll from Jagdalpur. As the collector of Jagdalpur put it, “which is not even mainstream media”.

Local journalists say that even they were not aware that Malini Subramaniam was writing for Scroll before the whole controversy came up. Malini admitted that she never bothered to enroll herself as a journalist with the local government's Public Relations Department, as she was not covering day-to-day events.

The government officials admit that they are not happy with Malini's writing because ‘it is always one-sided and sympathises with the Maoists.' The Collector of Jagdalpur, Amit Kataria, told the FFT: “Even her questions in the press conferences used to be pro-Maoist.” Malini, in her testimony to the FFT, denied this and said: “Despite my limitations, I have been travelling to remote areas, meeting local people and writing about them. That is something the police don't want any journalist to do. They want journalists to write what they say or what their press releases say.” (Malini told the team that when she was trying to meet some tribal people, the police objected to it and they picked up a couple of tribal people, briefed them first, and then only did the police allow her to interact with them.)

Malini said that the objection to her writings came from a newly formed organisation, ‘Samajik Ekta Manch'. Her impression is that this organisation is supported by the local police and they take orders from the police only. She told the team that during the day a few dozen people gathered in front of her house and shouted slogans against her and then after mid-night her house was attacked.

The fact finding team asked many govern-ment officials if they have issued any denial or contradiction notice against the Scroll report; the answer was negative. Malini said that the local police is becoming intolerant and doesn't want any voice of dissent to be present in Bastar.

Alok Putul

He is a contributor for the BBC Hindi from Chhattisgarh. He was in Bastar for gathering news and was trying to meet the Bastar IG, S.R.P. Kalluri, and SP, Narayan Das. After many attempts he received this reply from the IG: ”Your reporting is highly prejudiced and biased. There is no point in wasting my time in journalists like you. I have a nationalist and patriotic section of the media and press which staunchly supports me. I would rather spend time with them. Thanks.”

The SP sent a similar message: “Hi, Alok, I have lot of things to do for the cause of nation. I have no time for journalists like you who report in biased way. Do not wait for me.” In his testimony before the team, Alok Putul explained that this message was unexpected from the police officers from whom he was trying to take their quotes on the Naxal surrender and law and order situation story he was trying to do.

As Alok explains, “This message was the beginning. After these messages, one local person, known to me, came and advised me to leave the area as some people were looking for me. Initially I was taking it lightly and travelled to another area; there one more person came to me to give me the same information. Then I had no other choice but to leave the area imme-diately.”

Alok told the FTT: “The first thing I did was to inform the BBC office in Delhi and some journalist friends in Raipur and then I came back to Raipur.” The Jagdalpur Collector, Amit Kataria, when asked about this by the team, laughed and then said: “There was some communication gap between Alok Putul and IG, nothing else.” After several messages and phone calls, the team could not get a chance to meet the IG, S.R.P. Kalluri. When the team left Delhi, he had assured that he would give an appointment, but stopped responding when the FTT reached there.

Conclusions

1. Santosh Yadav is a journalist and he has been writing for at least two newspapers of Raipur. Both the newspapers have owned him. So the government's claim that he is not a journalist is baseless.

2. Authorities claim that they have enough evidence about Yadav's links with the Maoists. It is now for the court of law to decide where these evidences will be produced. But senior journalists in Raipur feel that he has been a victim of circumstances and he should be given the benefit of doubt.

3. It is clear from the on-record statements made by the authorities that the administration was not comfortable with the reports Malini Subramaniam was sending to Scroll.in. And instead of putting their side of the story, the so-called citizens' forum ‘Samajik Ekta Manch', was incited to attack Malini's house and compelled her to leave the city and even the State.

4. Alok Putul was in Bastar to gather some news about the law and order situation for the BBC. Instead of meeting him or talking to him, the two top officials of Bastar sent him messages questioning his nationalism and patriotism. Later he came to know that a few people were looking for him, so he had to leave the place to save himself. Police officials were not available to meet the FFT. The DM dismissed the threats to the journalist as a “communication gap”.

5. There is a sense of fear in Bastar. Every journalist who is working in Bastar feels that he/she is not safe. On the one hand, they have to deal with the Maoists who are becoming more and more sensitive about the reports appearing in the media, and on the other hand, the police wants the media to report as and what they want.

6. As one Senior Editor, Lalit Surjan, puts it, “If you wish to analyse anything independently then you can be judged whether you are with the government or with the Maoists. The democratic space for journalism is shrinking.”

7. There is a general feeling (in government) in Chhattisgarh that a large section of the national media is pro-Maoist. One senior editor, who is perceived as close to the government, said this.

8. Newspapers and other media houses are appointing journalists as stringers in the remote areas without any formalities. These journalists gather news, collect advertisements and arrange the distribution of the newspapers too. They generally survive on the commission they get from advertisement collections or they rely on other professions for the same. A separate and detailed report on stringers is recommended.

9. There is no mechanism in place for accreditation of those journalists who are working beyond the district headquarters. So when the question of identity arises, the government conveniently denies that someone is/was a journalist. Media houses also disown them because they see them as a liability beyond a point.

10. The State Government wants the media to see its fight with the Maoists as a fight for the nation and expects the media to treat it as a national security issue, and not raise any questions about it.

11. The Chief Minister instructed the adminis-tration for better coordination and cooperation. A journalist was arrested shortly after the FFT's meeting with him, suggesting that there is no shift in policy.

12. The FFT is of the view that newspaper organisations should take care while appointing stringers and give them adequate protection.

Vinod Verma Seema Chishti

(Member, Executive (Member, Executive
Committee) Committee)

Prakash Dubey

(General Secretary)

EDITORS GUILD OF INDIA

List of People the Fact Finding Team Met

1. CM Dr Raman Singh

2. Leader of Opposition T.S. Singhdeo

3. Pradesh Congress Committee Chief Bhupesh Baghel

4. ACS Baijendra Kumar

5. Special DG (Naxal Oprations) D.M. Awasthy

6. Principal Secretary to CM Aman Singh

7. Principal Secretary (Home) B.V.R. Subrama-niam

8. DG Upadhyay

9. ADG, Intelligence Ashok Juneja

10. DPR Rajesh Toppo

11. Collector, Jagdalpur Amit Kataria

12. President, Bastar Divisional Journalist Association and UNI correspondent S. Karimuddin

13. Subba Rao, coordinator of Samajik Ekta Manch, Jagdalpur

14. Manish Gupta, Chief of Bureau, Navbharat, Jagdalpur

15. Hemant Kashyap, Nai Dunia, Jagdalpur

16. Satyanarayan Pathak, Bhaskar, Jagdalpur

17. Naresh Mishra, reporter, IBC 24

18. Santosh Singh, Navbharat, Jagdalpur

19. Lalit Surjan, Chief Editor, Deshbandhu, Raipur

20. Ramesh Nayyar, Former Editor, Raipur

21. Sunil Kumar, Editor, Chhattisgarh

22. Alok Putul, Contributor, BBC Hindi, Raipur

23. Malini Subramaniam, Contributor Scroll.in (Over phone from Hyderabad)

24. Santosh Yadav, Arrested journalist, in Central Jail, Jagdalpur

May 1 is the International Workers' Day. The following two articles are being published on that occasion.

Climate Change and Workers

by Bharat Dogra

It is now well known that life in the near future can be acutely and adversely affected by climate change. Despite this, very few efforts have been made to have an understanding of the impact of climate change on various sections of vulnerable workers. Here an attempt is being made to form a preliminary understanding of the impact of climate change on a few vulnerable groups of workers.

1. Mining and Stone Crusher Workers—

India has a large number of workers in mining and stone crushing units who have been often found to be employed in very difficult conditions in extremely hot weather. If their working conditions, which are already known to be hazardous, are not improved in the coming phase of global warming, the health of these workers can deteriorate very fast.

2. Construction Workers—

India has a very large number of construction workers who have to do most of their work in the open. Sometimes even basic facilities like clean drinking water are not available. The accident rate in this sector is known to be quite high, particularly in the construction of sky-scrapers and dams. In times of climate change, exposure to intense heat and other extremes of weather can increase the health problems for workers resulting in increase in the possibilities of accidents. Hence relief needs to be provided to workers in the form of longer afternoon lunch break-cum-rest period, better provision of cool and clean drinking water, ORS and first aid facilities at work sites apart from overall improvement in working conditions.

3. Domestic Workers—

India has a large and increasing number of domestic workers, particularly in urban areas. These domestic workers often work in a number of homes. Even now they frequently face exhaustion due to hard work in many homes and their poor nutrition. Their problems can increase greatly in heat wave conditions as they go to many houses for work, apart from commuting from their own home. Helpful laws should be enacted so that their working conditions, nutrition and income can improve. With some educational inputs, they can help in energy conservation and reducing GHG emissions in many homes.

4. NREGA Workers—

Workers employed under the rural employment guarantee legislation are often called NREGA workers in short. Although this law enables them to get their employment near home, they often have to do earth-digging and carry on work in intense heat. The exposure to extreme heat can increase with global warming. They can be helped by regulating the work-hours, avoiding hours of extreme heat and providing better water and care facilities near the work sites.

5. Industrial Workers with Heavy Thermal Stress—

Many industrial workers—such as steel and iron workers, other metal workers, glass workers and others—are exposed to heavy thermal stress. Protective covers should be provided to these workers in times of climate change and resultant heat waves.

Bharat Dogra is a free-lance journalist who has been involved with several social initiatives and movements.

Push for Labour Law Reforms—Intelligent Market Arguments, but Poor Social Sense!

by K.R. Shyam Sundar

The Economic Survey 2015-16 is arguably a work of tremendous industry and intelligence and seeks to push for “reforms” of various types to perhaps ensure achievement of projected impressive growth rates. One of the reform exercises carried out is with respect to labour market reforms on the proposition that slow or absence of labour law reforms hurt the prospects of creating “good” jobs, meaning jobs embedding good labour standards obviously existent in the “formal” labour market. The Survey, among others, argues that competitive federalism in terms of introducing labour law and governance reforms is a good initiative and payroll taxes, such as Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) contributions, actually benefit the “rich” and rob the lower waged workers of “choices” of saving (employee earnings rigidity) and thus making the funds markets less competitive.

The competitive federalism argument is built on a new flavour in that it is not for mere growth and employment that State governments relax labour laws but to provide opportunities for firms to travel beyond these market metrics (that is, scale) from low-technology embedded products (say, cables) to high-value-added products (say, cell phones) like in China. There are some problems here. Even operating in the supposedly rigid labour market firms in India have changed the export basket significantly from dominantly primary to engineering and electronic goods. Secondly, labour regulations and trade unions have not opposed innovations in the product so long the employment interests are not hurt, which stance cannot be ignored easily in the name of accrual of economic benefits in future. Further, ILO research has shown that social dialogue, if used wisely by the social actors and actively enabled by the government, make things easier for introducing several measures in many firms which cannot be even assured by labour laws. In other words, there is not much support for the implicit argument flagged by the Survey to justify reforms to enhance value-addition-driven prospects.

Though the Survey recognises the possibility of “race to bottom” inherent in competitive federalism of providing “too many concessions” to attract capital, it argues that “India seems far from such a situation” and justifies this by a simplistic and convenient citation of reforms in labour administration such as e-maintenance of labour records and rationalisation of forms, etc. which are cosmetic examples. The real burning controversy surrounds radical amendments made or proposed to be made by several States to the Factories Act, Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act and Industrial Disputes Act which basically in differing margins remove firms from the regulatory framework which is weakened by three arguments. One, a lion's share of the economic enterprises employs less than 10 workers and it would take a long time for them to travel to the threshold of Chapter V-B. Two, contract workers are majorly exploited primarily due to small-sized ones and relaxations in thres-hold ignore this. Three, workers employed in micro and small enterprises are far more vulnerable than those in the medium and large organisations due to limited presence of trade unions and access to labour judiciary in the latter.

The basic argument here is that these reforms will lead the firms to pursue the “low road to development” by cutting primarily labour costs —which militates against the high-flown “what-you-export” argument. Again, the labour standards made or unmade at the State level may not conform to the ILO-standards-framework as, say, the inspection reforms which will only invite global scrutiny. ILO research has shown that capital ideally chases good labour standards and not vice-versa.

Another twist from the Survey is to challenge a social security law. According to the EPF Act, workers (earning less than INR 15,000) must legally (hence involuntarily) contribute 12 per cent of their basic salary and the employer concerned makes matching contribution apart from bearing the administrative costs of running the EPF scheme. The law also allows workers earning more than INR 15,000 to voluntarily access the scheme. The Survey argues for releasing the employees' contribution while retaining the employers' contribution on four grounds, namely, significant number of employees especially lowly-paid and flexi-workers like contract workers do not value the EPF and prefer “more take-home pay”(as they want more liquidity and are impatient, due to high trans-action costs and uncertainty in accessing EPF accounts)—this is testified by the highly inoperative EPF accounts; it means lessening of transaction costs for firms and higher adminis-trative costs for the government; the EPF scheme “benefits” the rich (that is, the non-covered employees) and worse so the “covered” workers will not fall in the income tax net to avail multi-fold exemptions from taxes; and it widens “investment choices” of workers and hence making the funds market more competitive. This move is expected to incentivise on both supply and demand fronts which will lead to more formalisation of jobs.

These are contestable. Highly inoperative accounts are mostly due to governance failure. If the contract workers do not appreciate the EPF, it is due to the fraudulent behaviour of the contractors and utter failure of the inspection and governance system and absence of a portable and simple EPF governance system. It is a case for administrative reform (which has been initiated). Secondly, since when has the government started “listening” to the workers' concerns as in this case to push a dubious reform measure! Social security as an institutional measure that promotes labour commitment which through longer employment tenure is a win-win-win solution for workers, firms, and the government—for firms by increasing productivity and reaping returns of capital invested in workers; the government because the social security burden is borne by the two parties mostly. Thirdly, there is enough evidence that “capital” received through voluntary retirement schemes have almost always been squandered by workers and to expect them to take rational choices in investment would be foolish. Coerced saving is “bad” in macro-economic terms but individually and conventionally speaking it is a virtue. Again, numerous uncovered employees and their employers access the EPF system voluntarily because there already exists a “system” which can be accessed with “zero fixed costs”. Finally, if the EPF is aiding the so-called “rich” (uncovered) workers, then there are alternatives for it.

However, it is not clear how uncovered workers could be deemed to be rich. Secondly, in a country that does not boast of any old-age assistance schemes for any person, the dubious distinction of poor and rich is simply untenable. But the solution provided by the Budget, which is yet to be clarified, is perverse in character. Is this measure to divert the salaried classes to turn to NPS which is partly on investment in equity away from the EPF which is based on investments in secure instruments.

The government's thinking on reforms is widening radically as it is going beyond the simplistic procedural reforms to flexibility reforms to dismantling social security systems, the latter being the last frontier of workers' rights. Last year it was with the employees' health insurance and this year it is with the EPF. Notwithstanding intelligent arguments in the Survey, the government is rooting for hurting not only contemporaneous but also future rights and even the securities of workers.

Dr K.R. Shyam Sundar is a Professor, HRM Area, XLRI, Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur.

by Hasan Hamidullah

Moscow is seeking to decrease the dependence of its oil and gas industry on the West and for that purpose Russian energy companies are in search of new reliable partners and investors. The principal objective of the visit of the head of Russia's major national oil giant, Rosneft, to India has been to tie up the OVL, Oil India Limited, Indian Oil Corporation and Bharat Petroleum in drilling operations in the zone of the Russian Arctic.

Western sanctions against Russia have provided a unique chance to Indian oil and gas companies to gain a foothold in projects that were previously inaccessible. And this gives the Government of India the rare possibility to ensure energy security.

This also opens up before Indian companies a real opportunity to get a lead in the race with China for the Arctic minerals and hydrocarbons. What cannot be overlooked is the fact that while New Delhi is still cogitating over whether or not to collaborate with Moscow on this score—perhaps out of deference to Western (read US) “sensitivities”—Beijing is busy stealing a march over this country by entering all the major Russian regional oil and gas projects thereby reaping considerable benefits from Western sanctions.

There is also another prospect for India: it could support Russian claims to the 1250-mile underwater Lomonosov Ridge in the United Nations Commission on Limitation of Conti-nental Shelf (CLCS) and other international organisations for the vast span of the Arctic Ocean which has 40 per cent of confirmed oil and gas deposits. For India, this will unveil first-hand exploration of these resources.

EDITORIAL

The fifth phase of the West Bengal State Assembly elections is taking place day after tomorrow, that is, on Saturday, April 30, and the campaign for that phase of polling has come to an end this evening. The most significant event in the last few days in the Bengal polls has been a joint public meeting in Kolkata's Park Circus Maidan yesterday addressed, inter alia, by Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi and former West Bengal CM and CPM leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. This is the most striking consequence of the Left-Congress seat-adjustment in the State—something really unique considering the fact that the Left and Congress are engaged in a bitter fight in the Kerala Assembly polls being held simultaneously this time around. Both Rahul and Buddha concentrated their attacks on the ruling Trinamul Congress with Rahul highlighting the alleged underhand collaboration between the TMC and BJP and Buddha urging the electorate not to vote for the BJP as that would in effect help the Trinamul. These were by and large unconvincing; what was underscored more effectively was by Congress MP Sachin Pilot in Kolkata today—he pointed out that the BJP was contesting a large number of constituencies in order to cut the (anti-TMC) votes of the Left-Congress combine and help the TMC in the process.

The coming together of the Left and Congress has definitely affected the chances of the TMC's return to power; yet the TMC, rather CM Mamata Banerjee's personal prestige and popularity should not be overlooked. Despite a series of scams that have hit it badly, the ruling party in the State still retains public support especially in the countryside where it has indeed done some development work which cannot be characterised as inconsequential—Mamata's road-show in South Kolkata today was doubtless impressive, having been attended by all sections. The BJP too is actively campaigning in several areas for its candidates among whom Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's grand nephew, Chandra Bose, has a fighting chance against Mamata in her Bhowanipur seat where Mamata's one-time mentor Priya Ranjan Das Munshi's wife, Deepa, is also contesting and can take away a big chunk of votes. West Bengal once again is in the throes of a political upheaval—whether it can lead to a change in governance will be known only on May 19 with the counting of votes.

Meanwhile the second phase of Parliament's Budget session got off to an anticipated stormy start on April 25 with the issue of imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand stalling the proceedings of the Rajya Sabha for two consecutive days mainly by the Opposition Congress which was incidentally backed by the Left, Samajwadi Party and BSP—all of them demanded an immediate debate on the subject. The Treasury Benches, and Leader of the House of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in particular, stoutly defended the Centre's action while opposing a debate on the plea that the matter was pending in the Supreme Court.

Then yesterday came the Supreme Court verdict on the issue. While ruling out a floor test in the Uttarakhand Assembly on April 29 (as directed by the State High Court) in a bid to ascertain if the CM continued to enjoy majority support, the Apex Court asked if the Centre could consider the reported failure of the passage of the appropriation bill, disqualification of MLAs by the Speaker and delay in the floor test as valid reasons for imposing President's Rule. While extending its stay on the High Court's order of lifting President's Rule, it said it would take a decision on the Centre's appeal against quashing President's Rule by May 13. The SC, quite appropriately, maintained: “Article 356 is a rare phenomenon... if a government is in minority, floor test has to happen as a natural corollary...ultimately, if we sustain President's Rule, then also floor test will have to happen.”

Thereafter came the news report of an Italian Court of Appeals order naming former IAF Chief S.P. Tyagi as allegedly having received bribes for the purchase of 12 AgustaWestland helicopters during the tenure of the UPA Government, and referring to Congress President Sonia Gandhi and other top Congress functionaries; the Court had handed prison terms to former chiefs of AgustaWestland's parent company Finmeccanica and AgustaWestland. This reised a storm in Parliament yesterday with Subramanian Swamy, the newly-nominated member of the Upper House, naming Sonia Gandhi and linking her to the AgustaWestland deal by mentioning the allegations made by middleman Christian Michel. Swamy's statement in the Rajya Sabha infuriated the Congress members so much that some of them menacingly rushed towards the Treasury Benches. Marshals promptly stepped in and positioned themselves between the two sides to prevent any untoward incident and the Deputy Chairman instantly adjourned the House.

Outside the Parliament House, Sonia said:

I am not afraid of anyone cornering me as there is no basis to that. All accusations they are throwing at us are false. Where is the proof? They are lying... this is part of a strategy of character assassination which we have known these people to indulge in. The government is there for the last two years. What are they doing? Inquiry is there, why don't they complete it? Complete it as soon as possible, impartially, so that the truth will come out.

And former Defence Minister A.K. Antony pointed out:

We had initiated the process to blacklist AgustaWestland, its parent company Finmeccanica and all its subsidiaries. We also initiated proceedings for encashing bank guarantees and recovered an amount of Rs 2068 crores. Three helicopters of AgustaWestland have remained confiscated with us.

However, as Antony charged, the Narendra Modi Government took a different course: it invited the company to participate in Make in India events and even allowed it to bid for contracts.

Indeed the Rs 3600 crore AW 101 helicopter deal for VVIP choppers was annulled by the UPA Government in 2014 and the guarantee money confiscated after allegations of payoffs ran into hundreds of crores. The UPA dispensation did take a firm stand in the matter and the allegation against Sonia Gandhi does not carry conviction. Moreover, as The Times of India has editorially observed,

The tragedy is that if Courts of Appeal in Milan had not taken up the matter, it could easily have been swept under the carpet. The Italian court has sentenced Giuseppe Orsi, chief of AgustaWestland's parent company Finmeccanica, to a four-and-a-half year jail term. In stark contrast, the NDA Government claims that investigations are now at an advanced stage, but it doesn't appear close to finding the guilty even after two years in office.

In the meantime several major developments have taken place—the India-Pakistan Foreign Secretary-level talks in New Delhi on April 26 wherein the discussions were expectedly frosty (even if the two sides decided to remain in touch) with Pakistan raising Kashmir, terror and accusing India of seeking to defame Islamabad in international fora over Masood Azhar; the strong action taken by the JNU authorities against those students who had been charged with sedition and suffered imprisonment following the February 9 meeting held in the University on the anniversary of Afzal Guru's execution; and the hideously flawed investigation into the 2006 Malegaon bombings that has raised seriously uncomfortable questions following the release of the “guilty”.

All these are highly disturbing; no less disturbing than what happened in Uttarakhand and the slugfest over the AgustaWestland chopper deal.

April 28 S.C.

May 9, 2016 marks the seventy-first anniversary of Victory over Fascism; and on May 8 falls the one hundred and fifty-fifth birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. As our homage to Gurudev on this occasion we are reproducing this letter written by him to Amiya Chakravarty from Gauripur Bhavan, Kalimpong on June 20, 1940. —Editor

by Rabindranath Tagore

A few centuries back European civilisation had suddenly started to hatch a large brood of vaishyar1children. Eager for profit these creatures had begn to prowl and menace Asia and Africa; some of them had gulped large quantities and varieties of flesh and other tasty stuff. The betwitching smell of this flesh feast had reached the nostrils of Europe. The little ones whose tongues were watering with greed, but who had perforce to go without a bite, their stomachs had recorded the enforced privation. At last between those who had a bite and those who hadn't, there began an open conflict. At one time the game had been between the hunter and the hunted, now it is between different groups of hunters. For Mother Europe this is no doubt a melancholy experience. She is crying piteously for peace. But peace does not come from the outside, its cource is within. Those whose habitual greed has forced them to a regular meat-diet their murderous habits can never cease. For long many of them have been growing, openly or in secret, large front or canine teeth. Today as they have opened their mouths wide that awful truth has revealed itself in all its nakedness. This was bound to happen. If teeth are necessary to devour one's quarry they will be equally necessary to amke faces at one's rival. And he who wins in today's combat must, in order to forestall tomorrow's danger, start a cult of rabid scientific destintry. In the educational institutions of a competitive civilisation the pursuit of largescale suicidal policies is likely to flourish. This wild dance of mutual slaughter will go on without end, and those who, instead of themselves being able to bite, have been bitten will soon be obliged to open schools of the Art of Biting. In the northern parts of Europe a noble civilisation, based on the ways of peace, had lasted for long. But today they have been bitten by rabid dogs. How can you keep them quiet tomorrow? Then, in this huge animal world, where will you find Man? According to Darwin, the apes evolved into men. But in what creature will man evolve and manifest his true nature and destiny? In the primal age of the animal world creature, large and laden with armours and thick coatings of flesh, had, with much bravado, dominated the earth. But they proved to be insufferable and could not last—in creation's laboratory has the memory of that futile experiment been totally lost? Once again the weight of armaments is crushing our humanity out of existence. In the midst of all this can be heard the creator's voice: This will not do. The shield on their backs has been taken down, but it has now found shelter in their minds. This is not a sign of life or growth. The battlefields of today are the modern playground of ancient dinosaurs. Their ghosts have come back, and the road along which they had once disappeared they are again pointing their fingers towards that exit.

Yet the mind refuses to belive that it is for these sheild-bearing animals to point the future to man. In the heart of all conflicts. I have seen Man, eternal, unvanquished. Statistically speaking, they may be few, but a few of them are enough to save Svalpamapyasya trayate mahato bhayat. Exploiting the brahmin's knowledge, the kshatriya's arms and the shudra's service today's commercially-minded Europe has grown irresistible. But I can see its feet resting on the downward slope—towards extinction. This is not the energy that will or can endure, that strength belongs only to those who are without greed, who are modest, quiet and trusting. They are there to prove that our manhood depends not on the ability to gobble up each other but through mutual aid and a coming together. they do not belong to any particular nation. In every nation they form the obscure hard core. I have faith in Man. His road lies through death, yet he will prove his deathless destiny and one day win.

The Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) Executive, in its meeting held on April 27, 2016, discussed the matter of Dr G.N. Saibaba, Associate Professor, RLA College. The DUTA Executive condemns the attacks on Dr G.N. Saibaba and other teachers of the college and the failure of the administration in preventing such incidents.

The DUTA finds it unfortunate and unacceptable that, instead of taking responsibility for maintaining law and order in the College, the administration has asked Dr G.N. Saibaba not to come to the college because of the law and order situation. Instead, trumped-up charges are being levelled against him and misinformation being spread regarding the conditions of his bail. The DUTA noted that Dr G.N. Saibaba has been granted unconditional bail by the Supreme Court.

The DUTA is of the view that the Governing Body meeting of the college held on April 21, 2016 is patently illegal as the teacher representatives' term had ended and the new teacher representatives were not invited to the meeting. The DUTA demands that the meeting be reconvened in a proper manner.

The DUTA also condemns the harassment meted out to Dr G.N. Saibaba by the one-member committee set up by the college in demanding documents not relevant to the case at hand.

The DUTA demands an immediate end to the persecution and harassment of Dr Saibaba and his suspension be revoked immediately and he be allowed to rejoin duty with immediate effect as per rules.

Nandita Narain, President Sandeep, Secretary

by Bhat Rasif Manzoor and Mohammad Yousuf Dar

Legal justice looks utopian, rather invisible, in societies with big chunks of poor and illiterate population unless the government and its flawless delivery system steps in with probable remedies. Rich people generally seek privilege through courts when they are involved in suits with the poor as the latter can hardly afford the court fee and wakil fee required for pleading their cases. The result is in the form of injustice and exploitation meted out to the poor.

India, by having more than 30 per cent of the poor strata, is not unaffected by legal injustice. In order to tap the menace, the GOI carried out the groundwork during 1980s by starting the programme of legal services so that the downtrodden strata may not suffer. In 1980, the CILAS (Committee for Implementing Legal Aid Schemes) was constituted under the chairmanship of Justice P.N. Bhagwati and in 1987, the Legal Services Authority Act was enacted by Parliament under which the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) was set up by the GOI in 1995. According to Section (12) of the Legal Services Authority Act, 1987, legal services will be assured to SCs, STs, victims of human trafficking, women, children, disabled, mentally ill, victims of mass disaster, ethnic violence, casteism, natural disaster, prisoners, industrial work, etc. Section 2(1)(c) of the Act provides that the legal services involve the rendering of any service in the conduct of legal proceedings before any court/authority/tribunal and the giving out of advice on legal matters. The authority will provide a counsel at state expense, pay the required court fee and bear all the expenses related to the case. The person need not spend anything on litigation once it is supported by the Legal Services Authority.

The legal aid services are mentioned in the Constitution of India under Part III and Part IV: Article 14 and Article 22,(1) under Part III of the Constitution make it obligatory for the state to ensure equality before law and a legal system based on justice available to all including the poor and downtrodden. Article 39 (A) under Part IV of the Constitution directs the state to promote legal justice based on equality of opportunity and to provide free legal aid through suitable legislation /schemes so that the opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizen by reason of economic or any other disability.

The sole superior authority which backs, promotes and implements legal services is NALSA. NALSA is an apex body which frames policies and chalks out plans to provide free legal services and free legal awareness to the disadvantaged sections of the society and to the people residing in tribal, backward and far-flung areas. It organises Lok Adalats across the country and stresses on them for amicable settlement of disputes. It is bringing legal awareness through seminars and conferences and is keen to develop and promote a culture of conciliation instead of litigation so that the citizens resolve their differences in a spirit of goodwill. It supports cost-free adjudication through Lok Adalats so that even the poorest of the poor doesn't suffer injustice arising out of any abrasive action on the part of the state/private person. The Chief Justice of India is the patron-in-chief and the seniormost judge of the Supreme Court is the Executive Chairman of the authority. At the State level, the State Legal Services Authority under the Chief Justice of respective High Courts and at District level District Legal Services Authority under the respective District Judge work and act to give effect to the policies of NALSA.

According to statistical estimates, 15 lakh Lok Adalats have delivered justice to about 8.5 crore people till now and the movement needs to be taken forward for better accomplishment. The Department of Justice in the Ministry of Law informed Parliament on March 2012 that 2,68,51,766 cases were pending in subordinate courts. The number of cases pending in all the courts is established to be more three crores. Concerned over a backlog of more than three crore cases in courts in India, H.L. Dattu on December 6, 2014 has asked the Chief Justices of all courts to ensure expeditious disposal of cases pending for five years or more. The present Chief Justice of India, T.S. Thakur, on December 3, 2015, also said on the issue of pending cases: “We can announce that 2016 will be the year for cleaning arrears.” He too estimated that 30 million cases are pending across various courts. While highlighting the need for legal services in India where most of the poor and illiterate suffer injustice owing to the negligible access to courts, Narendra Modi spoke about “Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas and Sabka Nyay” on November 9, 2015. According to the Chief Justice of India, Justice Thakur, NALSA is now planning to involve Bollywood actors, who are very sympathetic to the social cause, in promoting legal awareness of the poor through the audio-visual medium. This is an improvement and will help to counter the loopholes by reaching out to the poor people living in every nook and corner of the country. Moreover, Nyaya Deep, the official newsletter of NALSA, which promotes a healthy working relationship between legal service functionaries, needs to gain more circulation for making the project a successful accomplishment. In order to provide free and competent legal service, the NALSA has framed the National Legal Service Authority (Free and Competent Legal Service) Regulations, 2010. The salient feature of the Regulations is engaging senior competent lawyers on payment of regular fees in special cases like where the life and liberty of a person are in jeopardy.

Legal aid is not a charity or bounty, but is an obligation of the state and right of the citizens. The prime object of the state should be¯equal justice for all. Thus, legal aid strives to ensure that the constitutional pledge is fulfilled in its letter and spirit and equal justice is made available to the downtrodden and weaker sections of the society. But in spite of the fact that free legal aid has been held to be a necessary adjunct of the rule of law, the legal aid movement has not achieved its goal. There is a wide gap between the goals set and met. The major obstacle to the legal aid movement in India is the lack of legal awareness. People are still not aware of their basic rights due to which the legal aid movement has not achieved its goal yet. It is the absence of legal awareness which leads to exploitation and deprivation of rights and benefits of the poor.

Bhat Rasif Manzoor is a Lecturer in Political Science at Government model BHSS, Anantnag and Mohammad Yousuf Dar is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science, University of Kashmir.

The Western governments and NATO members are now regretting the war they had launched on oil-rich Libya, where the situation is becoming uncontrollable, because its warring governments are not willing to come together and Islamic State elements controlling its coastline are able to infiltrate from there into African countries, including Niger and Chad, to enlarge the conflict.

Libya's fourth government took office in Tripoli on March 30. Called the Government of National Accord, it was created in Skhirat in Morocco on December 17. Its members had to arrive from next-door Tunisia by boat because of the fear of the plane being shot down if they came by air. In it was the new Prime Minister, Fayez al-Serraj, and six of its nine Ministers. It took up residence in a heavily-fortified naval base. Though called the Government of National Accord, it did not have the support of other governments already in the country. Those controlling parts of the country are in Tripoli, the capital in the west, and Beida in the east. These have been fighting for two years over a disputed election. That fight enabled the Islamic State, the third contender, to take over 290 kilometres of the country's coastline around Sirte, between the two. This fourth government was formed as a result of a UN-sponsored deal.

It is yet uncertain if the two old governments in Tripoli and Beida will stand down in favour of the new one. It is also uncertain if the members of the old Islamist-tinged parliament in Tripoli will join a new advisory body in Tripoli called the State Council, set up under the new agreement. Some in Libya think the deal made in Morocco to create the new government has legitimacy. That view is shared in the east, where the internationally recognised House of Representatives, slated to become Libya's legislature, is located. None of its two governments in Tripoli and Beida have yet accepted the new Government of National Accord set up with Western efforts.

European sanctions on Libya are meant to speed up the process of the country's east-west unity. The sanctions, however, do not cover the Libyan Army General in the east, Khalifa Haffar, who is waging a brutal campaign against his oppo-nents, many of whom he calls “terrorists”. He is supported by foreign powers like Egypt and United Arab Emirates. Article 8 of the Skhirat Agreement brings the Army under the control of the new government. There are suggestions that eastern Libya will be given a measure of autonomy and will be allowed to have its own regional army, led by General Haffar, under a central command. The General harbours national ambitions. One of his commanders has promised to “clear out Sirte and then Tripoli and Misrata”, home of dozens of militias.

The Prime Minister of the new government was a businessman, with hardly any political experience. He has received pledges of support from some militias and municipalities. He manages to control the state's only functioning institutions: the national oil firm, the country's sovereign wealth fund and the central bank. The economic situation meanwhile has worsened. Most banks are closed and those open allow limited withdrawals. They are all short of cash. The new Prime Minister has frozen bank accounts and Libyans have now to rely on the black market to trade currency. Militia commanders however have funds and they drive around with cash to pay their fighters. Inflation is very high and the country has to import staples. Not much cash is available. The country is likely to run out of money by 2019, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Once an oil rich country, its oil output has fallen from 1.6 million barrels a day in 2011, the beginning of its strife, to less than a quarter of that. Besides, the price of oil has crashed. The new government that has moved in has received support from Ibrahim al-Jathran, leader of the semi-official Petroleum Facilities Guard, aligned to the eastern government. Jathran has promised to reopen installations that his forces had blockaded because of disputes.

Militias from Zintan in the west are blockading the main oil pipeline. Islamic State fighters continue to attack oilfields.

NATO countries, including Americans, are now saying that they had committed a mistake by declaring a war on Libya. The situation there is getting out of their control, with the Islamic State fighters from there infiltrating into other African countries. The Western countries, which brought about the Skhirat Agreement, are worried about the working of the government they had helped to set up.

The author is a veteran journalist who has written extensively on West and Central Asian developments.

May 5 this year marks Karl Marx's 198th birth anniversary. On that occasion we are carrying the following article.

Karl Marx made great discoveries regarding fictitious capital and the money form of capital. They are of seminal importance to understand the contemporary contradictions between finance and productive/industrial capital. The references to fictitious capital can be found in Chapter 29 of Volume III of his great work Capital and in his Theories of Surplus Value, Part III. Marx has described fictitious capital as opposed to productive capital. The discovery helps us understand finance capital and its split from productive capital, which is the main contradiction of contemporary capitalism and imperialism today.

Analysis of Fictitious Capital

Karl Marx counterposes fictitious capital to ‘real capital', which is one invested in the production process. This clearly means fictitious capital is one which is not in production, is away from it. Stocks, securities, shares and bonds traded on the stock market are the forms of fictitious capital. Claims on the present and future profits, legal claims, accumulated claims and legal titles to future production etc. represent unreal capital.

Fictitious capital is money thrown into circulation as capital without any productive material base, simply a paper claim to wealth.

Karl Marx made a simple yet profound discovery in the course of his critique of the contemporary political economy. He pointed out that money is not capital; it is only capital's representation. It is a real representation only when and till there is continuous creation of capital during the production process. Money unrelated to the production process is fictitious as it is valueless.

In the course of its development, a section of capital splits off from its production form and takes on an independent form in the stock exchange, joint stock companies and circulation. A growing number of powerful joint stock companies came into being in the second half of the 19th century.

Discoveries in Capital and Theories of Surplus Value

The concept of non-productive capital explains the separation of Finance capital from production related capital. In his notes on interest-bearing capital in relation to industrial capital in Vol III of Capital and Part III of Theories of Surplus Value, Marx describes how industrial capitalism evolves into banking and financial systems. According to him, the historical task of industrial capital was to rescue society from usurious money lending, replacing parasitic tendencies of banking by steering credit to finance productive investment. Industrial capital subjugates these forms as its own derivatives. Marx describes how industrial capital encounters these older forms in the epoch of its formation and development. (Theories of Surplus Value, Part III) Where capitalist production has become the dominant mode of production, interest-bearing capital is dominated by industrial capital, and commercial capital becomes merely a form of industrial capital, derived from the circulation process.

Marx thus traces the very dialectics of motion of capital from commercial (circulating) to industrial and then to the transformation of a section of it into speculative finance capital. This latter part is developed more by Lenin.

Capital, Vol III says that it was the great achievement of industrial capital to mobilise credit to finance production, subordinating hitherto usurious interest-bearing capital to “the conditions and requirements of the capitalist mode of production”.

Tangible and non-tangible capital: Industrial capital is basically the tangible means of production, contrasted with the intangible or fictitious capital in form of bank loans, stocks and bonds. The intangible, fictitious forms of capital do not create surplus but are like sponges absorbing the income and property of debtors. Marx makes a profound statement in Capital III: “Usury centralises money wealth.”“It does not alter the mode of production, but attaches itself to it as a parasite and makes it miserable. It sucks its blood, kills its nerve, and compels reproduction to proceed under even more disheartening conditions. ... usurer's capital does not confront the labourer as industrial capital,” but “impove-rishes this mode of production, paralyses the productive forces instead of developing them.”

Marx called money lent out at interest an “imaginary” or “void form of capital.” (Capital, Volume III) He characterised finance as based on “fictitious” claims for payment because it consists not of means of production, but of bonds, mortgages, bank loans and other ‘claims on the means of production'. Instead of creating value, bank credit absorbs value.

Marx and Lenin

The great merit of Lenin was that he carried forward the analyses of Marx in the era of imperialism and finance capital. It was Lenin who showed that finance capital has common origins in both industrial production and banking spheres, and simultaneously negates them by evolving independent of them. Finance capital becomes a massive growth over and above entire capitalism, in opposition to productive capita-lism, surviving more and more as a parasite on it.

Lenin was proved correct by the split between financial and production capital and the consequent crises of the early 20th century. The Great Financial Crisis of 1907 in the USA was one of the first reflections of this split. It signified the entry of the American capital into the financial age, with an attempt to subordinate industrial capital. President Theodore Roosevelt represented the industrial and anti-trust lobby, which led to his subsequent defeat.

In his theory of imperialism, Lenin describes its five features on the basis of new factual data. The theory shows that capital in far excess of productive needs moves all over the globe, enslaving and subjugating various economies, particularly the backward ones. Consequently, big capital alienates all other capital including the small-scale ones, petty production, non-monopoly sections etc. Finance capital does not allow productive capital itself to grow. Hence its reactionary nature.

This goes against the whole of society and economy, and an anti-imperialist economic front comes into being, objectively speaking. This is the higher phase of capital.

Opposition between Industrial/Productive and Finance Capital

Crisis in the US beginning in 2008 shows a new feature of imperialism. Despite huge amounts of wealth, the US economy suffers from severe lack of productive investments. Wealth is there but not capital! As a result, the growth of industries there and in many other advanced countries is suffering severe dearth of capital.

Marx‘s forecast came true. His analyses on money capital provide key to understand the present crisis. The economy may have huge amounts of money (fictitious capital), yet it suffers from serious lack of capital!

Finance capital threatens the very productive base of the society. And therefore is a hurdle to social development. Today, the main source of the world crisis is that parasitic finance capital is dominating productive capital increasingly.

Various terms are being used to denote the phenomenon. The domination is being termed ‘casino' capitalism, ‘parasitic' capitalism, ‘money' capitalism etc. They are various aspects to the same thing, that is, fictitious or finance in opposition to productive capital.

The key problem is to restore productive capital to its dominant position. It is the key to the contemporary worldwide democratic revolution.

‘Money Manager Capitalism'

The term ‘money manager capitalism' is used by Hyman P. Minsky (2010) to describe the domination of the excess of money (‘finance capital'). Capitalism in the United States is now at a new stage, money manager capitalism, in which the owners of a vast proportion of financial instruments are mutual and pension funds. The total return on the portfolio is the only criteria used for judging the performance of the managers of these funds, which translates into an emphasis upon the management of business organisations. Financial managers have taken over industrial companies to create what Minsky has called “money manager capitalism”.

Describing the 1857 financial crisis in Volume III of Capital, Marx showed that “The entire artificial system of forced expansion of the reproduction process cannot, of course, be remedied by having some bank, like the Bank of England, give to all the swindlers the deficient capital by means of its paper and having it buy up all the depreciated commodities at their old nominal values.”

Marx was profoundly correct. As four financial giants collapsed in the US in 2008, the US Government came forward in a series of strategic ‘bail-outs'. Since then, bail-out has become the form of state intervention in favour of finance capital (not productive or industrial). It has not solved most of the problems because it is not a bail-out favouring for industrial capital except on occasions.

In autumn 2008 the US Treasury paid off all of AIG's gambles and other counterparty “casino capitalist” losses at taxpayers' expense, followed by the Federal Reserve buying junk mortgage packages at par. That is how ‘casino capitalism' has come into being at the cost of productive and industrial capitalism.

In Capital, Volume III and in Theories of Surplus Value, Part III, Marx described how industrial capital makes profits through the formula M-C-M'. Money (M) is invested to produce commodities (C) that sell for yet more money (M') by making labour power produce more than its own value. Contemporary finance and ‘casino' capital (contrast with industrial capital) seeks to make money in “sterile” ways, characterised by the M-M', using money to make money, which simply is not possible! Finance capital takes on a life of its own, flying away from production.

Contemporary Task

Financial engineering aims not at industrial engineering to increase output or cut the costs of production, but at M-M', that is, at making money from money, in itself an sterile attempt to garner ‘profits'. Once subordinate to productive capital, finance capital today tries to subordinate it to itself. Hence the worldwide crisis.

Consequently, the main task of the democratic forces is to restore productive capital to the commanding position of world economy and society. This is the key to the contemporary democratic revolution.

The author is a Marxist ideologue.

by Debarati Sarkar

Development is incomplete without expansion of the physical infrastructure of any country. India has re-emerged as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. In India, the infrastructure sector currently accounts for 26.7 percentage of the country's industrial output and thus remains a useful tool to balance the economy. According to Assocham-Ernst and Young, infrastructure, including roads, bridge, power, highways, airports and railways, have emerged as an asset class with long-term growth. Hence, the Indian Government's first priority is to maintain and manage high growth through investment in the infrastructure sector as India is home to about 1.21 billion people, one of the most densely populated areas in the world with a high rate of urbanisation. To meet these challenges in urban places, governments of various States are taking up projects for improving the delivery of urban amenities.

Generally, adequate infrastructure facilities are like the wheels of urban life. One aspect of development is the never-ending construction of flyovers. Nonetheless, it not only promotes sustainable economic growth but also improves the living standards. Even as today the flyover and its functions have taken on the speed and efficiency characteristic of transportation arteries, the people and activities underneath portray an alternative narrative. On the other hand, while poor urban infrastructural development leads to losses of lives of innocent human beings, becoming a monumental tragic incident subsequently, it raises the question: do such developments symbolise public interest and improve their living standards?

Of late people witnessed a historic incident, on March 31, 2016, when a part of the under-construction Vivekananda flyover in the Girish Park neighbourhood of Kolkata, collapsed. The fall of a large section of giant steel frames and concrete slabs led to twenty-seven deaths while injuring more than eighty people. The pedestrians, the passengers in taxis and cyclists on the move were all crushed under the unimaginable weight of a large part of the flyover, which did not spare anything that came into its path the moment it collapsed. Later, of course, the rescue teams and local residents desperately made attempts to save the people and remove the debris. The bodies were covered in blood and sandwiched. A bloody hand from under a girder gestured for help as people handed over water bottles to survivors pinned underneath. Generally, death occurs due to disease, injuries or any natural calamity but in this case, death occurred due to man-made reasons, not because of natural calamities like earthquake or flood.

Why did the urban cataclysm happen in Kolkata? Who are responsible for those dead and decomposed bodies? Is it because of construction of the flyover? Not merely so. While political players and corrupt company both come in one line and start playing in favour of each other, subsequently the common person has nothing to do and is left to her/his fate. The reasons for this manmade accident: the geographical location was not at all suitable for such type of construction because the settlements in this particular place were highly congested and fell in the alignment line of the bridge. Even people of this area were not happy with this construction due to disruption of residential and living spaces, and they made an appeal to the High Court; but even then the project was not stopped and the local peoples' will bypassed. In a democratic country, the government is by the people and for the people but this is not applicable in the real scenario. This is indeed a severe limitation of the experience of Indian democracy.

The design of this flyover was robust and changed several times. Infrastructure demands strong planning, coordination, decentralisation. Poor design and other flaws in the planning phase of the project itself can be a cause for damage and disaster. The construction of the Vivekananda flyover began in 2009; it was entrusted to the Hyderabad-based construction company, IVRCL, which was already on the watch-list of the Indian Railways, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh. The construction company missed so many deadlines and it became the death-line for the common people. The major deterrents in the quality of such a project were unethical practices and usage of sub-standard materials of inferior quality to maximise profits for the nexus of developers and the political representatives. This project was unduly delayed in the completion of infrastructure work but elections around the corner had made the West Bengal party in power speed up work without any quality check or precautionary measures in order to score brownie points. Often the decisions taken in India are seen from the political lens with scant regard to the security of the people. Nowhere in the world does construction work take place in the daytime when people are on the road for their daily chores. The construction team and the government did not check the safety of the common people and neglected human life.

The impact of the fall was massive. People did not get a fraction of a second before they could react to those who were crushed under the bridge. Those men and women might not have thought that morning that it would be the end of their journey and they would not be able to fulfil their desires. The injured persons were saved from death but sometimes even injury results in long-term or permanent disabilities. The local residents were scared of the thundering noise at that time. They may not forget it in future as well. Meanwhile, the political game began. The Chief Minister of the State rushed to the spot and announced compensation worth Rs 5 lakhs for the deceased victims and Rs 3 lakhs for the injured. Can life be calculated by compensation? How can one's entire life and worth be translated into monetary value? She was quick to blame the Left Front Government as the project was sanctioned in 2007 during the Left Front regime. The former Municipal Affairs and Urban Development Minister said that the work was at the preliminary stage in 2008. Babul Supriyo, MoS, Union Urban Development, claimed that “the flyover was being built in violation of rules, without any proper planning and the State administration did not take any lesson even after the collapse of the Ultadanga flyover three years ago”. Kailash Vijayvargiya, the National General Secretary of the BJP, said: “This is pure corruption. The construction material was sub-standard.” Member of Parliament Sudip Bandyopadhyay, under whose jurisdiction the Assembly falls, said: ”There were flaws in the design from the inception and the locals had even complained” which he had conveyed to the State Government. No one was ready to take the responsibility; all were busy accusing their political opponents. In reality, however, all political leaders always forget the nature of Indian democracy where the Opposition's main role is to question the government of the day and hold them accountable to the public. The Opposition is equally responsible for upholding the best interests of the people of the country. They have to ensure that the government does not take any steps which might have negative implications on the people. How can they ignore such construction work, which was going on for a long period?

Is it not the duty of the ruling party member to take action against such corruption, when he comes to know of it? Is not the government's duty to provide safety, wellbeing to the citizens? The government, in its effort to save face, had immediately ordered an investigation into the incident and detained officials from IVRCL in connection with the accident. The spokesperson of the company, K. Panduranga Rao, first explained that it was an “act of God”. Faced with severe criticism for his evasive remark, he came out with another idea: it was a ‘blast' that had caused the collapse, he said, without furnishing evidence. How could a weak construction of flyover that collapsed and killed many people in Kolkata be an act of god?

On April 4, 2016, the police arrested four more people in connection with the Kolkata flyover collapse case. The investigation and court procedures will go on for a long time. However, there is no existence of any strong law in our country to stop such corruption. Generally, it is said that weak laws are never able to give strong judgements. For example, the Uphaar Cinema Case, where the Supreme Court of India imposed a fine of Rs 30 cores on the Ansal brothers after 18 years! Is it not the government's duty to check the proper back-ground of a company before giving the contract to it? Such incidents can be avoided in future if proper measures like close monitoring of projects, increasing accountability of officials, on-the-spot supervision by officials, reducing corruption are taken up by the authorities. This accident has brought new grist to the mill of the Opposition political parties for vote-bank politics.

It is not only the story of Kolkata. Such type of manmade accidents have occurred across urban India. In 2007, at least 15 people died and 20 others were injured after a portion of the flyover which was under construction at Panjagutta, in the busy corridor connecting Begumpet to the upscale of the Banjara Hills, collapsed. In 2008, at least five people were killed and 25 injured when an under-construction flyover at the Faizabad and Lucknow corridor collapsed. In Bihar, six people died and 26 were injured when an old bridge collapsed in 2009. In 2010, a year-old bridge collapsed near Shimla. Six labourers died and 36 others were injured when an under-construction bridge collapsed at Chauraas in Pauri Garhwal, Uttarakhand in 2012. Unplanned city development is rapidly on the rise as the number of urban citizens is mounting. We, the citizens of India, need to open our eyes and must be aware of the rules and regulations of urban planning and construction, instead of being ‘happy' that our city is going to attain world class standard. These examples of accidents show how dangerous the situation in India is in terms of infrastructure development when our country has latest projects like AMRUT and SMART cities.

The author is a Research Scholar, Delhi School of Economics. She can be contacted at e-mail: debaratisarkar2006@gmail.com

BOOK REVIEW

by Aejaz Ahmad

Offend, Shock, or Disturb: Free Speech under the Indian Constitution by Gautam Bhatia; Oxford University Press; 2016; pages: 347 (Hardcover); Price: 750.

Gautam Bhatia's magnum opus Offend, Shock or Disturb is the most comprehensive examination of the free speech discourse in the Indian Constitution from the doctrinal, comparative and philosophical vantage points. Notwithstanding his legal background, the author has masterfully avoided legal bias around an issue that is political and social in nature. The book is divided into twelve chapters, covering the major philosophical debates around the meaning and nature of right to free speech, the evolution of the constitutional free speech discourse in India, the controversial issues around free speech such as public order, sedition, obscenity, pornography, hate speech, film and internet censorship, defamation, privacy, contempt of court, corporate challenges on free speech and lastly the latest free speech issues such as surveillance, net neutrality, shield laws and copyright. The versatility and beauty of this work is that each chapter is given relevant philosophical, comparative and case-study treatment—all embedded in one highly readable text.

As challenges to free speech in India mount from parochial, social and religious quarters on a daily basis resulting in the charging of public sphere by the communal and conservative elements, Bhatia's book is a timely reminder that free speech cannot be dealt with in rambling debates and discussions but in a meaningful exercise by courts to rely on egalitarian resources within the Indian Constitution per se, supplemented by rich philosophical lessons from foreign courts to keep with the changing times. To understand the underlying foundations of free speech, our dependence on theories is inevitable.

Theoretical Approaches in the Book

The author makes the Indian Constitution itself as a hub of resources that can be used to deal with the free speech problems, but also suggests to recognise and acknowledge the experiences of the free speech jurisprudence of other countries. The fall of timeless morality and the emerging challenge of moral relativism, especially in multicultural society like India, have made it increasingly difficult to solve the collective problems. Recognising this challenge, the approach adopted in the book is grounded in the Indian Constitution itself also called Constitutional Morality. The author does explore the plausibility of individual and public moralities in India to deal with free speech issues. But finds both of them wedded to serious problems. India is, after all, not an individualistic society. Can then public morality be taken up as the fulcrum? Certain not! First, society per se is dynamic and this dynamism is unreliable. Second, there is nothing called ‘the Indian morality'. Third, at no point of time of history is morality independent, it favours the morality of one over the other.

The author assumes the non-controversial nature of the precepts of equality in the Indian Constitution, which combines both colour blindness with correction of historical discrimi-nation that could well be used as a ground to test. For instance, pornography and obscenity are wrong not because of some moral problem, but because it both subordinates women and cause silencing, stripping of their agency. He calls this approach as anti-subordination. However, the problem with this approach is that it treats constitutional morality as complete and total, independent of outside influence. Living constitutionalism takes influence from the outside world and accordingly modifies the Constitution per se.

The government cannot indulge, the author argues, in paternalism because liberalism cannot claim moral purity for its own sake. If I use the existing political power to undermine the very foundation of the very institutions, then there is nothing within liberalism that deems it illegitimate. It ultimately boils down to the paradox of tolerance. Should the tolerant tolerate the intolerant? This has been recognised by the US courts. Germany has adopted ‘militant demo-cracy' that refuses to tolerate speeches that are illiberal and undemocratic. Moreover the principle of autonomy has also been recognised as a plausible principle—that is, coercion in any form is unreasonable if it leads to loss of autonomy. Indian courts, the author argues, are still unable to incorporate these developments.

Inbuilt Problems in Free Speech Jurisprudence

The author seeks to highlight the role of theories in court judgments in India related to free speech. Judgments thus made do resolve some issues but expose several others. When courts subscribe to one theory rather than the other, other possible eloquent views are unintentionally avoided. For instance, in Khushboo versus Kanniammal Case (2010), the court pronounced that freedom of speech doesn't just imply political dissent but also cultural dissent or it is not simply an individual issue but a social issue as well.

Such kinds or arguments are predicated on the view that free speech promotes a democratic culture to which everyone has an equal claim of participation. Bhatia shows that though this view settles one issue, it complicates the others. It puts the copyright issue within the domain of free speech. Thus, while net neutrality is normally a technological issue, the cultural democratic argument used in this case squarely puts it in the domain of free speech.

Historical Paradox

In tracing the genealogy of free speech in India, the author amazes the reader by directing the focus on a historical paradox in terms of the role reversal of the Indian nationalist leaders with respect to free speech. Ironically, the national movement favoured an unrestricted freedom of speech and expression during the freedom struggle but wanted to restrict it in post-independent India perhaps because of the urgency of ensuring unity. But the question is: what explains its persistence now? He carefully examines the wording in 19 (1,a,) to which 19(2) is subjected to. To understand how it changed from ‘undermining/overthrowing the public order with incitement of an offence to the late introduction of reasonable requirement.

General Problems in Indian Free Speech Jurisprudence

Over-breadth, Vagueness, and Chilling Effect:

In the first five chapters, the author anatomises controversial issues such as sedition, public order, anti-terror, and national security and argues that their enshrinement in the Indian Constitution is marked by over-breadth,vagueness, and chilling effect. Firstly, the over-broadness gives ample scope to the government to throttle both speech and its expression. For example, ‘reasonable restrictions' was bound to be misused in coercive legislations such as TADA and POTA because of this over-broadness. Bhatia explores Section 295 (A) of IPC which criminalises insulting of religious beliefs when such insult is deliberate and malicious. In a case like Ram Lal Modi versus State of UP, the court said that it covered all issues where the acts have a calculated tendency to cause public disorder. Bhatia argues that the problem with such statistical probabilities is that it provides state privilege to anyone who has the capacity to break the law with impunity. Often people resort to violence on the pretext of hurt which frequently goes unheeded.

Second, statutes suffer from vagueness in that common people remain ignorant about what is allowed and what is permitted. Third, it sometimes runs the risk of arbitrary application of laws by non-elected police like in the Kartar Singh versus State of Punjab case. Fourth, the jurisprudence problematic has caused chilling effect on speeches. It pushes one into self-surveillance or self-censorship to make sure that the law is not crossed which consequently causes chilling effect even on a legitimate speech. These are some of the inward problems in the provisions and the way courts pursue them.

Passive Role of Indian Courts and the Malicious Interests of the Governments:

The author also notes that the government too has an interest in throttling certain speeches. Because of the judicial deference, the government acts as its own judge and it is the likely that the biases, interests in self-preservation and limited fore-sight it has got, the government would exaggerate or overestimate the threat. In Other case, Vijendra versus State of Punjab, the court creates the requirement of ‘prior restraint' and pre-emptive ban. Using this excuse, a number of books, films have been banned. Due to judicial deference, this problem has been justified over time. The author notes that when the state punishes for the considered actions of another autonomous individual, it mis-attributes responsibility. The responsibility for committing an attack on the person is put on the person who incites, not the one who actually commits it!

The author highlights some other problems like the existing approaches to hate speech. If a book is banned, the burden of proving its plausibility is placed on the individual who wrote it, and not those who oppose it or the state per se. Even the courts of India shy away from actual interrogation of its plausibility. This has seriously harmed free speech and expression in India. In the absence of any reasonable standard, over time, judges have added their own opinions in an otherwise empty vessel of subjectivity. What is even more reprehensible is that it privileges religious believers and their sentiments over those of non-religious, atheists or agnostics whose ‘sentiments' are relegated to secondary importance. In such cases, Indian courts have failed to ensure equality before the law to prevent such discrimination.

In one of the provoking analysis, the author examines the controversial nature of sedition which has been used by governments in India not just to kill political dissent, but also clear the meaning opposition to large scale projects. While the issue of sedition was mooted in the Constituent Assembly debates, there was no particular intention to continue it. Eventually, courts rested on public disorder and reasonable anticipation of it as the gist of it. As the High Court decisions on sedition had ranged from narrow to broader views, the Supreme Court ultimately decided that any law that is in the interest of all shall continue thereby failing the tests of causation and proximity. In assessing its possibility of repealing, the author suggests that unless courts depart from passive deference to an active interrogation of the reasonableness, there would no respite from such controversies in the future especially when Parliament is reluctant to repeal the law per se. Moreover, it will continue to be used in undemocratic ways.

Corporate/Economic Challenges to Free Speech in India:

If the Constitution is an overtly liberal individua-listic one as in the US or Britain, the question of its substantiveness is not expected, but if the Constitution envisages a substantive vision of democracy on strictly egalitarian principles as is the case in India, then the question of who determines the access to an infrastructure of speech is inevitable. The author raises this question by focusing on economic factors that influence the freedom of speech which ultimately has pellucid bearing on substantive democracy with equal access of all to the very infrastructure of speech. Given the concentration of the media in fewer hands, the very access is determined by those who eventually have this monopoly such as Network 18. This question still goes unanswered in India in both the Supreme Court and Parliament.

Newly Emerging Issues:

The book also explores in its last chapters the newly emerging issues such as net neutrality, surveillance, copyright laws, and shield laws that generally belong to the free speech domain, but are treated with respect to other laws perhaps because they have emerged quite recently in the legal and political realm. However, these issues are still in their embryonic forms.

Conclusion

In sum, from a constitutionalist parlance, Offend, Shock or Disturb is exposition of engagement between Originalist and Living schools of constitutionalism in India. The author acknowledges that as the question of what constitutes free speech remains wedded to perennial ambiguity, the test of a meaningful speech is not its intuitive understanding but what it objectively contributes to the public sphere or social discourse. Without this acknowledgement, as the author rightly warns, the recurrent issues in India such as flying a flag, doctor-patient relationship, consumer protection laws will continue to remain unrelated to free speech questions and hence the unnecessary ruckus around them.

However, the problem of what constitutes objective contribution as different from the subjective one in the post-modern age of ours has not been addressed. It can arguably be said that the challenge of subjectivism in a multi-cultural society will persist.

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

by Ishrat Jahan

Introduction

The planet earth is endowed with a number of marvellous natural forces and natural resources as well. Each of these forces has a specific role. Of these forces water, wind, fire, ether, sunshine, moonlight, earth etc. are functioning eternally ever since the Universe was born. The watery world covers nearly three quarters of the earth's surface. The under- water world is still a mystery and an abode of at least 20,000 species of fishes, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, worms, insects, underwater plants and so on. If someone names the water- world as the keeper of human species and the entire nature, it will not be an exaggeration. From ancient time countless humans found their living by fishing. Humans and many wild animals depend a lot on fishes of the water- world. Fishes of water is one of the richest sources of animal protein and the water-world is the habitat of unique marine creatures. The connection between men and water as a natural resource is structured. The ocean, bay, river, lake, lagoon, stream, waterfall, delta and other water forms, for example, the rain, spring, brook etc. have been an inspiration and evolved the human imagination over the ages and its reflection came out in legends, myths of different cultures. Rain forests, which are the site of amazing plants and wildlife, is the gift of heavy rainfall. Rain forests cover six per cent of the earth's surface. Almost 30 million species of plants and animals live in the tropical rains forests.

If we think about the atmosphere, it arouses the realisation that it is the existence of water which is responsible for the misty weather, cloudy day, rainy day or in the winter snowfall in some parts of the earth, dampness of objects due to moisture—all these are related to the functions of water and its scientific quality.

The mysterious quality of water raised a question to philosopher Sophie: is there a basic substance that everything is made of? The earliest Greek philosophers asked themselves: where does everything come from? They assumed that something had always existed on the planet earth. By their questions and assumptions the philosophers wanted to mean the existence of water. The water molecule (H2O) in its three forms, that is, liquid water, vapour and ice, have been shaping the earth ever since its journey began. No other planet has the privilege of transforming itself for lack of water. Survival of plants, animals, insects and human beings are largely dependent on the availability of water. On an average the amount of water in the human body is 65 per cent. The human body and other living organisms are largely built with water. When a man loses only five per cent of his normal body water, his skin will shrink, his mouth and tongue will go dry and he may face hallucinations.

The Jordan river,Zamzam well, river Ganga and the worldview concerning these water sources are believed as sacred respectively by the Catholic Christians, the Muslims in the Middle East and the faith holders of Hinduism.

Water contributed to building human civili-sations through its varied use; for instance,

a) Water for domestic activities and maintaining hygiene,

b) Water for irrigation,

c) Water for industries,

d) Water for producing electricity,

e) Water for transportation,

f) Water for building structure,

g) Water for fish cultivation and fisheries,

(h) Water as fire extinguisher,

(i) water for mankind, other species of nature, and for the earth as well.

However firstly, the key objectives of the proposed topic are to reveal the extraordinary functions of water in its different entities.

Secondly, to define spirituality from the perspective of Buddhism, Sufism, Hinduism and Chinese Philosophy,

Thirdly, the discourse focuses on the underlying reasons why the river Ganga, Kailash Mountain and Mount Fuji are believed as sacred.

Fourthly, to explore causality between water and spirituality in accordance with the cultural system.

The discourse ahead is divided into four parts.

Part-one

Extraordinary Role of Water in its Different Form or Entities

Water as a Chemical Compound and Motion:

The physical and chemical attributes of water transformed the world's landscape, the contours of hill, valley, sand, upstream valleys with the assistance of the wind. From the beginning till today water is constantly reshaping the earth.

The motion in water is defined precisely as water current observable in sea, river, water- fall, rainwater, stream and so on. The water current, in particular the oceanic current, is influenced by tides, winds and gravity which maintain the balance of life on earth; at the same time it could be disastrous to nature as well as human life. Tide is an oceanic phenomenon exerted by the sun, the moon and effects of the gravitational forces in a combined effort. The ocean current is a continuous force and work from great distances by influencing climate in many parts on earth. For example, the Gulf stream. When water turns into ice, it expands and becomes lighter; thus it floats on heavier liquid. Water in the form of vapour largely exists in the climate and influences the weather system.

The Hydrologic Cycle:

The tremendous engineering of water is known as the hydrologic cycle. The prodigious force of the sun evaporates the ocean water and releases it into the air as vapour. Water, in the form of vapour, is soon re-condensed and released as rain, hailstorm or snowflakes to the earth by the force of gravity. Scientists presume because of the water cycle there is as much water today as there ever was. But there is no equal distribution of water on earth on every part of the planet earth; eventually the deserts are barren land.

The Poles:

The marvellous two poles, namely, the Arctic and Antarctic, keep our planet cool and contribute to the world's climate. Geologists assume that the glaciers in the polar region are the remnants of the ice age. Despite inhospitable weather, the Arctic is blessed with natural beauty. Surprisingly, the position of the Arctic is amidst a pack of ice of the ice world that is mostly glacial ice. The glacier ice flows down- hill like rivers. It took millions of years to form these glaciers. Despite severe cold in the two poles, they are the habitat of humans, polar animals, marine animals and marine birds.

Marine World:

Men have considerable experience of spectacular ocean current and the mysterious sound by the motion of current.

The marine world comprised of oceans or seas. This world has 300 times more space than on land. In the oceanic habitat varieties of sea creatures live and the ocean is a place of abundance of food source for marine animals, birds and humans as well. In fact the contri-bution of water to the mankind and natural world is beyond measure.

Part-two

Water-related Thoughts

Water has been all along a source of inspiration to the creative agents as well as the mystics. Some mystics explained their spiritual experi-ences about water by referring to a drop of water that loses its identity after mingling with the ocean. In other words, the mystics experience being one with God or merging with him. A mystic of the seventeenth century, Angelus Silesius, interpreted from a different view: thus every drop becomes the sea when it flows ocean ward, just as at last the soul ascends and thus becomes the Lord. In traditional religion, the concept of water is used as a metaphor. Baptism in the Catholic Church symbolises washing away of the original sin from the individual. Today there is a ritual in the Catholic Church: pouring water three times a day. To Muslims, water is a symbol of purity. From the comparative outlook Taoists regard water as the symbol of humility because it always flows to the lowest place.

Defining Spirituality:

The term spirituality we find in differing meanings in different historical eras. According to Harriet Mowat, spirituality is the search for the meaning through the inner journey which is mediated sometimes with each other, some-times with nature, and sometimes with god.

In the beginning of social life, phenomena in Nature associated with intellect and speculation of men heralded the feeling of spirituality. In the absence of scientific knowledge the early man defined some events in nature as magical, and some as miracle. For instance, natural forces like floods, gusty winds, volcanic eruptions, and the clouds that create the atmosphere follow the law of nature. Some search of man was related to the beliefs and practices concerning the super-natural order or power, for example, Allah/ God/Bhagavan/Atman/spirit, universal soul, or the entire nature, specific natural forces, cosmic spirit according to the cultural belief system. For some people, spirituality is engendered with their search to the mystery of the natural world, its creation and its functions wherein man is an agent of questioning. Having watched the wonder of nature many primitive men felt a kind of dissonance. Naturally the quest arose in them: who created the nature? Spirituality is also a sort of consciousness for some to communicate with the supernatural or natural forces while for others spirituality is of profound faith concerning nature or higher power believed to have the power to control events of human life. Spirituality can also be an intended effort to listen to one's inner voice. Spiritual searches depend on personal interest or motives as well. Many ancient religions have the belief in nature's action as the cause of life's happenings. Spiritual practices of a person generally takes shape according to cultural beliefs. The individual's belief system or religion reveals through cultural practices. People's faith in the existence of powers and processes cannot be proved by simple observation. But these faiths are still continuing over the ages. Sometimes the individuals faith also transforms as experience changes with the change of the life situation. Now the question comes: why do people take refuge in the spiritual journey? Spirituality is mostly a private effort while religion is mostly organised and likewise tends to be believed by its followers. According to William James, spiritualism in Indian philosophy means the affirmation of an eternal moral order and letting loose of hopes.

Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski explained that religion is a bridge to fill the gap between human aspirations and abilities of life. Sociologists of the functionalist approach generally comment that in cases of immature death, accidents and failure despite hard efforts of individuals result in a spiritual journey that may be the search for the meaning of life events and some guidelines for actions that religion provides to humans.

It also teaches individuals to adjust with a given situation. As mentioned earlier, spiri-tuality is associated with some practices or rituals according to the teaching of the cultural system. In this sense spirituality indicates particular behaviours, that is, prayer, meditation etc. in some cultures. Spiritual practice ensures that supernatural orders are concerned with the humans' problems and resolve difficulties of life if the means of communication are proper. Spirituality in one sense is a psychological state of surrendering oneself to the universal soul with devotion. The spiritual pursuit ensures some sort of confidence on the part of the individual.

I have made an attempt to understand spirituality from the perspective of eastern philosophy. In my discourse I have not intended to distinguish between spirituality and religion. Generally religion tends to be institutionalised but spirituality is a natural process which may come to a person from his environment or it may be the person's need to know something that the person has inquired into from a few past happenings. Spirituality in eastern philo-sophy, in particular Buddhism and Jainism, is a logical search about life and its misery, a path to salvation through meditation and right action as the functionalists describe the aim of religion in human life. Spiritual practices in the modern era are often a path to release stress and negative feelings. For some people, the spiritual path is a search for liberty. Traditional religions place high value and hope of after-life with the concept of reward or punishment that leads many of its followers to observe rituals to make connection with the divinity.

Hindusim:

The concept of devotion or Bhakti is primary to understand Hinduism. Krisna Sharma writes about

bhakti in general and relative terms which can be used in a wide range of contexts, secular as well as religious. It can assume particularity only when it is used in connection with its objects. Hence the use of phrases like guru-bhakti, desa-bhakti etc. is quite common. Bhakti can mean devotion to God in a general sense. Hindus conceive God in different forms, personal as well as impersonal, Bhakti in the sense of religious devotion common to all. However, variations can be caused in its character and overexpression on account of the pluralistic character of the Hindu religious tradition, The notion of devotion in Hinduism reveals an evolutionary process of flexibility and adaptability. The foundation of Hinduism lies in mythology. Here one finds the idea of the trinity of Gods, for example, Brahma (the creator of the world), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer of the Universe). Besides paying devotion to these three Gods, ancient Hinduism prescribes to pay devotion to the river Ganga, the planets, namely, the sun and the moon, the mountains and even animals like the cow.

In the Upanishads the link between a devotee and Brahma is interpreted thus—as flowing rivers disappear into the sea losing their iden-tity, name and form, likewise a wise man, freed from the name and form, ultimately goes to the divine who is beyond all.

Despite multiplicity of cults and beliefs Hinduism also reveals the philosophy of monism—the South Indian philosopher Shankara-charya preached a monism that was un-comprising, absolute and idealistic.

The Philosophy of Gautama Buddha:

The founder of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha, was awakened to a consciousness of human suffering from his observation of birth, the will to be born (rebirth), pain, disease, old age, death and other miseries to which man is subjected. Buddha always tried to answer questions regarding the origin of sorrow, its cessation and the path that leads to supreme wisdom and Nirvana. Spirituality in Buddha's philosophy is getting used to reduce attachment towards worldly life and objects. According to Buddha's philosophy, the origin of human suffering is attachment. The practice regarding attaining Nirvana may dissolve human miseries. Nirvana does not mean end of existence for a lifetime: rather it ceases rebirth and introduces spiritual bliss and a state of serenity. In China, the Buddha statue symbolises a spiritual force.

During funerals there is a rite of pouring water into a bowl before the monks and the dead body which symbolises that as the rain- water fills the river and overflows towards the ocean, the water ritual of the funeral likewise functions in the case of the deceased.

Feng Shui Philosophy:

The Chinese philosophy of Feng Shui depicts a theory of five aspects which says that we are the combination of all the aspects or elements, namely, fire, water, wood, metal and earth. According to the Feng Shui philosophy water and wind possess ch's. By the notion ch's the followers mean universal energy. Feng Shui means wind and water. Wind persists every-where in the earth but if water is introduced it brings wildlife in the garden. Here the Feng Shui philosophy speaks of the water's ability about creation.

Sufism:

It signifies Islamic mysticism. Some of the Sufis themselves associate it with the Arabic safa which means (purity). Sufism explains that the goal of human life should not be directed to avoidance of hell and wish for heaven but to merge into the universal soul. According to Sufism, the departed souls of the Sufi Saints have the potential to influence the living human beings.

Sufism in India is popularly known by many as the Islamic Bhakti movement. The Sufis in India preached liberal religious beliefs and practices. They tended to be more rational than being fanatic. In India they also confronted the challenge of the Ulema (Muslim theologians).

Among the various orders of Sufism in India, the Chishti order became very popular because this order assimilated local beliefs and practices from India. Khawaja Moinddin Chishti, Abu Ishaq, has been regarded by several writers as the founder of the Chishti order.

Liberal Sufis of this order consider music as a medium of attaining spiritual union with god. But they did not approve every kind of music. Music for entertainment was not sanctioned by them. They approved only Sama.

The Sama, signifies a circular dance and Qawwali (congregational singing) which is performed with a view to induce a state of ecstasy in Sufis. In India it is popularly called Qawwali and the singer is known as the Qawwal.

Sufism, particularly the Chishti order, became popular among the masses not only for its liberal philosophy but due to the mystic songs of the Sufis. In each mosque and Sufi shrine there remain a number of water sources like fountain, water pipe or water pool for the devotees to be cleaned prior to prayer. This signifies preparation to sit for meditation of the Almighty. In every Sufi shrine in India one will observe that before prayer, washing the external parts of the body is a compulsory ritual. The ritual relating to water is the manifestation of symbolic value. According to the Sufi order, the Almighty likes those who live clean. Secondly, cleaning before the prayer gives the believers some sort of psychological preparation and energy to sit for meditation. One of the main aspects of the eastern religions is the concept of reaching the mystical experience. But the question is: what should be the medium to attain that experience? Water has got such a potential by which the human being can reach the mystical experience he wishes to attain. The inherent quality of water, its vastness, its presence in varying forms, its life-giving potential provide the idea and inspiration to think it as a medium of making spiritual connection with the spiritual path-holders. My objective here is to analyse the rituals and faith concerning what the mystics and the common people perform, what exactly is the relation of such rites and what those rites have to do with the cultural system.

Part-Three

It has been an age-old tradition in many cultures to offer devotion to River Ganga, Mount Kailash and Mount Fuji (in the latter case by the Japanese).

River Ganga:

Ganga originated in the Gangotri glacier of the Tibetan frontier. Far up on the glacier's face snow melts in the summer sun and seeps downwards. Rivulets merge underneath the cracks and crevices. Finally the River Ganga appears like a gushing river that emerges from the bottom of the ice-wall cave (popularly known Gaumukh or cow's mouth) where the pilgrims bathe out of their profound faith.

The River Ganga is conceived as sacred to the Hindu community. The river seems to them like a goddess. It is believed that the water of Ganga has the power of purifying human souls. Believers take ritual bath in the river keeping in mind that sins will be washed away by the water and life will be transformed. In Hinduism the concept of sin is violation of moral and ethical codes which results in negative actions and consequences.

Sociologist Emile Durkheim's notion is that the sacred is potentially dangerous as well as beneficent. The sacred things could be a rock, a spring, gods, spirit, a house or any material thing but the thing must bear a symbolic value. The sacred thing at the same time means god and the society. In the study of the Australian aborigine's belief system, Sociologist Durkheim explained so. Sacred imposes certain ethical imperatives and moral obligations on the believers. Worshiping the sacred object means worshipping the society. Rituals concerning the sacred objects are the expression of common feelings and sentiments of a particular group and its identity. Similarly among the believers of Hinduism the river Ganga and rites concerning the river serve the same purpose as the sacred object does to the aborigines of Australia.

Mount Kailash:

A peak in the Gangdise mountain which is a part of the Himalayas in Tibet, it lies near the source of some of the longest rivers in Asia, namely, the Indus river, the Sutlej river, the Brahmaputra river and the Karnali river. The mountain lies near Lake Mansarovar and Lake Rakshastal in Tibet and the peak is covered with glacier. Among the local Tibetans, the mount is also known as the water peak or river peak. Mount Kailash is the most significant peak in the world to the believers of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and some sects in Tibet.

There are a number of legends regarding Mount Kailash in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The Jain belief system perceives it as astapada and a site of attaining nirvana. In Hinduism Mount Kailash is conceived to be the habitat of Lord Shiva.

The Kailash Mountain is considered as mythical and sacred to the Buddhist monks in Tibet because it has got many faces. Sacred rituals are performed to pay devotion to the mountain by the pilgrimage to wipe out sin and attain nirvana by the Buddhist monks as well as the Hindus. As the glacier melts, waters fall from the Tibetan plateau flowing into India, Pakistan, China, Vietnam, Phnom Penh, Burma, and contributing to enriching vegetation, economic life and social life of these lands over ages.

Water-related Japanese faith:

Shinto is Japan's indigenous religion. Here the water fall and Mount Fuji are considered sacred.

Every year during summer the glacier of Mount Fuji starts to melt. The water that melts from the glacier of Mount Fuji is considered sacred to the Japanese as it has created eight springs. That is why drinking spring water in surrounding shrines is a widely practised ritual from ancient times till today for the contem-porary Japanese. In the early days Japanese also used the spring water of Mount Fuji to purify themselves. Even in modern times shrines around the mountain and its keepers maintain the belief system concerning Mount Fuji as the spontaneity of age-old traditional belief. Worshipping any natural force by any group lies in the collective cultural belief which developed from experience gathered the way the natural object the people use and conse-quently the benefit they receive from it. Some-times the quality inherent in any natural substance/object can arouse spiritual feelings. Melting waters that flow from Mount Fuji also contribute to the irrigation of the farmers surrounding the mountain habitat and sustain the eco-diversity. Therefore not only the humans but also farming largely depends on the mercy of the glacier of Mount Fuji and its springs.

Even in the contemporary era taking a bath with cold water for half-an-hour is a technique to control the brain and a path to attain nirvana in which many Japanese monks have profound faith. Water is perceived as the water God to the traditional Japanese belief-holders.

It is not only Asia but Africa is also blessed with water.

Zambezi is a river between Zambia and Zimbabwe. This river water created the biggest fall, named Victoria, which is the nature's wonder for us. The tremendous river current also contributes to producing electricity in Africa. During the rainy season flash floods caused by massive rain lead to the overflow of the water in the river reaching the surrounding valley. But at the same time water-borne earth and minerals become a blessing for the land of the valley which results in good cultivation. The Zambezi river also contributes to the fishermen making their living by the abundance of fishing.

Apart from the positive functions of water it sometimes poses a big fear before the humans due to water-related natural calamities like floods.

The humans always have the fear of devas-tation by flood waters. But over the ages floods have been shaping the land of the subcontinent into different forms. The floods caused by the River Ganga and incessant rains bring blessings for the farmers in India. Each year the flooded plain contributes to the cultivation of a parti-cular type of rice. In 1957, 2.5 million Indian farmers were affected by drought for lack of flood and timely monsoon rain. A documentary, named failure of Nile flood, on Discovery Channel revealed the fact that over 4000 years ago lack of food caused catastrophe of the ancient Egyptian civilisation.

Part-four

Causality of Water and Spirituality

Water itself is a self-governing natural resource and life-giving element. The humans have experienced that water functions with its innate nature. Water follows its own law. Moving water creates such sounds which lead some humans to express dream-like experience, some say other-worldly feeling.

Following the line of discourse I find it relevant to give some possible explanations as to why the River Ganga, Mount Kailash and Mount Fuji are considered sacred. Spiritual connection to water alongside some mountains to which believers of eastern religious traditions hold such belief and experience is largely shared by the Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, Chinese, and Japanese. Their beliefs are an indispensable part of eastern cultures as well. Eastern religious traditions have one thing in common: paying devotion to natural forces, in particular water and huge mountains.

If sociologically explained, any big-sized mountain, river, waterfall appear mysterious to the humans, for many reasons: first, these are not humanly created. Secondly, nature remains before humans eternally a site of questioning and knowing more and more and also a subject of dependence. Quests regarding nature remain an unresolved matter to the inquisitive minds timelessly.

However, if we look into the social life of the Indian communities it gives enough solid evidences that over the ages the water of the Ganges is adequately serving Indians in the cultural, social and economic spheres.

Sidney Dillon Riplay writes—in India the arrival of the monsoon brings joy. The land is watered, the spirit seems to come back into all living things—along the Ganges the faithful flock to bathe in the rain—sweetened waters, believing that they can wash away 10 sins from 10 previous lives. In this season the Hindus observe fasting. 85 per cent of the rain that falls on India comes from the monsoons. Tossing coconut into the monsoon flood is also practised by many in honour of the god Varuna.

Similarly the abundance of moving water flow from Mount Kailash gradually advances across from its origin sustaining social life, economic activities and wild life of many lands. The bottom-line is: Mystics lead simple life wherein offerings of nature are more valuable to them than worldly and material gains. To explain the eastern religion, distinguished Danish philosopher Herald Hoffding said: religion here is the belief in the conservation of values. Mystics realise living in harmony within the forces of nature retain the energy of healthy life. Dynamism, innate quality of transforming into varied entity such astounding nature of water bolsters to view water in other eyes. Any spiritual action initiates with the cleansing of a particular body part in many eastern belief systems actually admit the power of water and its necessity as a life-sustaining element. In the beginning of life and the end of life water plays an important role. In eastern belief systems water serves a role that is of symbolic value. Besides, the rite of throwing remains of the dead into the River Ganga, prevalent among the Hindus, denotes that there is a connection of water even after life and water is a passage to the heaven.

The history of indigenous and traditional religion unravels the truth that any natural force/energy, which serves human necessity, is understood like a spiritual entity and considered as sacred. Water and its transforming capacity are beyond the human imagination. Any natural disaster related to water happens so quickly where the humans are helpless. This also is a message that water alongwith its potential is beyond our control.

In 2013 the cyclone Mahasen was supposed to strike Bangladesh badly, according to the weather message at that time. According to the Holy Quran, Allah created the whole nature. Hence if prayer to Allah is accepted by Him man can remain safe from the danger of any natural disaster. Out of such belief people of Bangladesh observed the collective ritual to their utmost. At last the tremendous cyclone slowed down by heavy rainfall with slight devastation. People thought it was the manifestation of the mercy of Allah. The expressive mass said that it was Allah who listened to their prayers and controlled the natural phenomenon.

Therefore, we can interpret that human perception and utilitarian consideration of any natural substance also construct the beliefs and rituals of a culture.

When any natural substance is assocated with life-saving element, devotion comes out of gratitude.

Sometimes the huge size, vastness of any natural object and its beauty also arouse special inner feelings, evoke positive energy and thought in the humans. The history of the ancient cult reveals that the sun, the moon, the wind, the rain have been matters of worship due to services these forces provide to the humans and to the whole nature. In this connection water is considered as a spiritual entity. As water is considered metaphoric by the mystics, such metaphorical expression helps to find out more truths about the substance as well. Everyone knows scarcity of water means the end of all living organism.

Fromthe sociological viewpoint, considering some natural resources as sacred is inherent in the cultural beliefs of particular social groups. Sacredness is a tendency valuing something that is related to the conservation of the natural resource and at the same time survival of the human species.

Summary

Despite water being a spiritual element in the mystic's watery world, nowadays it is threa-tened by irresponsible human activities. Water pollution by men has already caused demise of many marine animals and water birds. Oil-spill is also a big threat to the watery world including the plants and insects of water. Glaciers are melting due to global warming all over the world. It is evident that the sea level is rising. Today's climate clearly indicates that there lies unseen catastrophe in the near future for the humans as well as the planet Earth if urgent measures are not undertaken seriously. If the unconsciousness of the humans about water continues for long, the whole nature as well as human society may confront unimaginable consequences.

References

Brittain, Robert, River, Man and Myths, Longmans, 1958.

Craze, Richard, Feng Shui, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 2003.

Chatterjee, S. and Dhirendramohan Datta An Introduction to Indian Philosophy, University of Calcutta. 1960.

Durkhiem, Emile, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, J.W. Swain (trans.), Free Press, 1947.

King,Thomson, Water Miracle of Nature, Collier-Macmillan, 1961.

Robert, Keith, A, Religion in Sociological Perspective, the Dorsy Press, 1984.

Renou, Loise, (edited by). Hinduism, George Braziller Inc.,1961.

Subhan, J.A., Sufism: Its Saints and Shrines, Cosmo Publications, 1990.

Dr Ishrat Jahan is an academic at Bangladesh University, Dhaka in the Department of Sociology. Besides, she is a highly acclaimed vocalist of Hindustani classical music.

Our real problem is population, I told this to an American Nobel Prize winner. He contradicted me and said: “Your problem is going to be water.” We were discussing the ordeals that India would face in the years to come. Our views did not tally even after a long discussion.

What has happened at Latur, in a better-off State like Maharashtra, has renewed the American's warning. Section 144 had to be clamped down to ensure that pots and pans were in an orderly queue to receive water from a tanker and it brought back my memory to the warning.

The American had also given me an optimistic side: there is an ocean of water under the Yamuna-Gangetic plain waiting to be tapped. I wonder if this is true. Had it been so, the government would have done a scientific study by this time to estimate the collected water. I have not heard of any such plan so far.

Maharashtra may be the worst hit State this year. There were some other States last year. The economy of most States or, for that matter, the country is very much dependent on the monsoon. We would continue to scan the sky for the dark clouds. Water means so much to us for growing crops and drinking purposes.

The Bhakra Dam in Punjab-Himachal Pradesh has converted the entire area, including Haryana, into India's granary. India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, hailed the Bhakra Dam as a temple. He said at that time that India's traditional temples, meaning the dams and industrial projects, would be there but new temples have to be built for our economic development.

This Bhakra Dam alone can feed the entire population of the country. However, it is not necessary to build big dams which creates the problem of rehabilitating people uprooted from their hearths and homes. Small, satellite dams can probably serve the same purpose well, if not better.

This was the genesis of the agitation led by social activist Medha Patkar over the height of the dam on River Narmada. She could not succeed even though the government-sponsored report by Saifuddin Soz, the then Water Resources Minister, said that the gain from the dam would be far less than the loss from the ousting of people who had been living in the area for many years.

However, the dam came to be built several years later when Gujarat gave an undertaking that it would give land to compensate farmers and others who got uprooted. It is another matter that the State Government could not fulfil its promise because there was not enough land to go around.

India has seven major rivers—the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Indus, Narmadha, Krishna, Godavari and Cauveri—and numerous tribu-taries. New Delhi has set up a Central Water and Power Commission to have a systematic plan to harness not only water but also generate power. This has worked to a large extent but in certain parts of India the fallout has been a series of disputes which even after decades remain unsolved.

This situation has also led to estrangement between people of one State and the other. For example, the sharing of Cauvery water between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu has been hanging fire for several years now. This is despite the Supreme Court's verdict to release a certain amount of water to Tamil Nadu.

Nearer home, Punjab has refused to release water to Rajasthan. This goes contrary to the stand New Delhi had taken during the Indus Water Treaty. At that time, to claim more water from the Indus India argued before the World Bank, which was funding the project, that it required a large quantity of water to irrigate the sandy area of Rajasthan.

It's comical that Punjab has now refused to release water to Rajasthan which got a favou-rable verdict from New Delhi. The World Bank then accepted the argument that India could not give Pakistan water because it needed to retrieve the land from the sand dunes in Rajasthan. What explanation do we have when Punjab goes back on its undertaking to give water to Rajasthan?

It is conceded that water reaching Rajasthan would help grow numerous crops but some land in Punjab and Haryana, already under irrigation, would have to be denied water. Such incongruities are responsible for inter-State water disputes. Even after 70 years of indepen-dence, the disputes are far from settled. When the Congress ruled both at the Centre and in the States, the problems never assumed an ugly shape. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which then only commanded a few Lok Sabha members, did not count much. It is a different scenario today. Now that it has a majority in Parliament, the party sees to it that the States run by it get the maximum benefit, rules or no rules.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi did declare from the ramparts of the Red Fort soon after taking over that India was one and there would be no discrimination against States on the basis of their affiliation to different parties. But this is not true on the ground. The Congress party, which is now in the Opposition, does not allow even Parliament to function.

The Rajya Sabha stayed adjourned for several sessions till the party itself realised that differences would be better highlighted if there was a discussion in the House. At present it seems that all political parties have come to an understanding that Parliament should be allowed to function. One hopes that all parties will stick to the consensus they have reached and discuss the matters in right earnest as it used to happen.

If that spirit is translated into action, there would be no disturbance in Parliament and the elected representatives, who have exasperated the public by their boisterous behaviour, will be able to devote their attention to what ails the country. Then no dispute will stall a session, be it over water or other issues.

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

Today we are facing a frenzied furore on issues such as nationalism and patriotism artificially manufactured by the ruling dispensation which has created a vicious ambience whipping up divisiveness within our society. This recent trend to incite people with jingoistic ultra-nationalist feelings with a definite aim to target certain sections, mainly minorities, has bewildered the saner sections of our country. And precisely for this reason, we go back for solace to Rabindranath Tagore whose poems and songs keep on reveberating in our minds with the messages of universalism and humanism.

Being born and brought up in the cosmo-politan city of Kolkata in the post-independence era, I was imbued with ideas of internationalism and humanism of Rabindranath, with Swami Vivekananda's preachings of Karma Yoga (selfless service), with the unitarian ideas of Raja Rammohan Roy and other Brahmo Samaj stalwarts and with works of the Missionaries of Charity of Mother Teresa etc. It was spontaneous and natural for our generation not only to celebrate the week-long Durga Puja festival but also to attend Christmas Mass at St. Paul's Cathedral or to visit Muslim friends on Eid. I still remember the massive impact the Tagore Centenary Celebrations, organised by the West Bengal Peace Committee, had on the common people who thronged to the Park Circus Maidan in November 1961 from far-off places. They were enthralled by the perfor-mances of the artistes in that weeklong festival. In fact, after the Tagore Centenary in 1961, Rabindrasangeet became a popular catalyst to bind all of us irrespective of religion, caste, class and even political affiliation into a distinct cultural and aesthetic category. On the 25th day of Boishakh (8th May or 9th May), Tagore's birthday, year after year, since then men, women, children come from even suburbs to Jorasanko (his birthplace) or the Rabindra Sadan complex to listen to Rabindrasangeet recitals and poem recitations performed by distingui-shed artistes, known or less known young ones. Similarly Dhaka also grooms up for that day, even for a whole month, as a cultural hub, and presently many of the Bangladeshi artistes are some of the best exponents of Rabindrasangeet. Rabindranath's concept of Viswamanab and Jibandevata echoing through his verses creates a space for universal love for humanity and that goes deep into our heart.

Rabindranath set up a university at Santi-niketan with this concept of universalism and named it Visva-Bharati which was an effort to establish an international ensemble of cultural exchange. On 22nd December, 1918, he at a meeting placed this idea and the University was formally inaugurated in 1921. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan aptly explained Rabindranath's vision of Visva-Bharati in the following words: “His Visva-Bharati is an international university where the whole world has become a single nest: yatra visvam bhavati ekanidam. In this institution he tried to impart the background of internationalism and help the students to realise ‘the true character of our interlinked humanity and deep unities of our civilisation in the West and the East'.“1

Rabindranath had a wide vision of humanity and in that perspective nationalism for him tended to have been a narrow creed. He even said: “I love India but my India is an idea and not a geographical expression. Therefore I am not a patriot. I shall seek my compatriots all over the world.”2 Rabindranath's lecture in Seattle in USA in 1916 was later published in 1917 under the title Nationalism, where he said ‘India has never had a real sense of nationalism. Even though from childhood I had been taught that idolatry of the nation is almost better than reverence for God and humanity, I believe I have outgrown that teaching, and it is my conviction that my countrymen will truly gain their India by fighting against the education which teaches them a country is greater than the ideas of humanity.'3 Rabindranath strongly believed in the ‘unity in human society, regardless of race, colour and creed'.4 He once told Gandhi: ‘The whole world is suffering from a cult of selfish and short-sighted nationalism.'5

Rabindranath's warning against the fascist onslaught of Europe is relevant for all time to come. At the fag end of his life, he witnessed the holocaust of the Second World War and fascist onslaught of Hitler and Mussolini which made him write his famous booklet titled Crisis in Civilisation. He was extremely disturbed at the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany on 22 June, 1941. Even at his deathbed he was keen to know the course of the war, as has been narrated by Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in the Visva-Bharati journal.6 Even in his last days his concern for humanity, writ large on his face, was noticed by the writer of the article who called it as Tagore's Visva Vandana.

Today we are extremely disturbed to watch the tsunami of exclusive nationalism creating hatred towards ‘the other', ‘the enemy' and thereby imposing majoritarianism, mainly Brahmanical hegemony, in the name of cultural nationalism. Any note of dissent from the views of the ruling party is often being misconstrued as ‘anti-national' or ‘unpatriotic'. Why do we have to be so defensive like Javed Akhtar and a few others to chant vociferously slogans imposed on us just to placate or appease a handful of leaders ruling the country? Why should we bow down to the dictat of a few autocrats and fall in their trap? Today when a Dalit woman embraces Buddhism to become free from the clutches of an unequal social system based on age-old caste discrimination, one wonders how can she connect herself to an artificially manufactured nationhood, deifying as Bharat Mata, where she has no space of her own? She will rather be able to connect herself with the agony and distress of an oppressed woman, a victim of apartheid and similar social exploitation from any part of the world. In the vast ocean of humanity and universalism, we need to rise above the narrow creed of ultra-nationalism.

Let us strive to build a world free of exploitation and discrimination, a world free of conflict and war and an egalitarian society. Let the voice of sanity prevail over madness. Let us remember our universal poet Rabindranath, his repeated appeal to the conscience of humanity when he wrote: ‘Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; where knowledge is free; where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;......” Increasing madness in the name of cultural nationalism knows no bound. We need to break our silence and remember Rabindranath's prolific words —‘Anyay je kare ar anyay je sahe, taba ghrina tare jeno trinasama dahe. (Those who commit wrongs and those who accept them, O Lord, let your wrath smite them as fire engulfs a blade of grass.)'

Endnotes

1. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, ‘Most Dear to All Muses' in Rabindranath Tagore: A Centenary Volume, 1861-1961, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1986, p. xxiii.

2. Ibid., p. xxii.

3. Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism, Macmillan, 1976, p. 64.

4. Richard Church, ‘The Universal Man', Rabindranath Tagore: A Centenary Volume,op.cit, p. 130.

5. Ibid.

6. Chinmohan Sehanavis, Rabindranather Antarjatik Chinta (in Bengali), Nabhana, Kolkata, 1983, pp. 115-116.

Gargi Chakravarttty, an activist in the women's movement, is the Vice-President of the National Federation of Indian Women.

by Jayanta Kumar Ghosal

The fierce aggression of consumerism is causing huge damage to ecology and environ-ment. The concern for protecting them has also gained momentum these days. Unrestricted misuse and exploitation of natural resources, in the name of ‘development'(actually mal-development) has led towards destruction of the world's habitat. The natural world has been totally altered by the new and improved methods of production. Present-day mankind is being confronted by serious crises due to the depletion of natural resources and environ-mental degradation causing great damage to human sensibility, man's harmonious relation-ship with nature.

Tagore, as a humanist and political prophet, all through his life fought against economic exploitation and political subjugation, social injustice and religious intolerance. Realising the danger of consumerism he was convinced that the environmental situation was worsening and ever deteriorating. Though in his time the environmental problems were not properly addressed, Tagore with his prophetic mind and vision was able to understand the problem and expressed his concern about this. Erosion of values, unbridled consumerism and impending ecological crises—all were properly noticed by this ‘myriad-minded genius'.

Though Tagore never stood against social progress based on modern scientific technology, he was very much alert about the ills of rampant industrialisation, destruction of nature in the name of development and the consequent crises generated by capitalist countries which ulti-mately affected mankind.

Ancient Indian thoughts and civilisation developed the culture of worshipping nature. There was a tradition of environmental conser-vation through a natural way, and this is embedded in different religious and cultural practices. Indian tradition down the centuries recognised five elemental forces and their contribution to the existence of life in this system. When the rampant exploitation of nature goes beyond the tolerable limit, the resilience of the system is injured and the balance is lost.

In his time problems like water and air pollution, problems of development waste, habitat destruction, threats to bio-diversity, resource depletion and global green house problems were not properly understood and recognised. Tagore with his sensitive farsighted-ness realised the basic links between industria-lism, consumerism and militarism and properly felt that the success of growth ulti-mately would lead to its own demise. Tagore in many of his writings portrayed these issues.The attempt he tried to make at Sriniketan and Santiniketan highlighted his ideas.

Muktadhara portrays the evils of big dams. Tagore did not oppose small dams and use of modern technique of production but he always raised his voice against the rampant unrestricted use of technology leading towards the damage of the ecological system. Boundless and mindless growth will ultimately lead towards total destruction—it was his firm belief.

Raktakarabi (The Red Oleanders) truly depicts the industrial society which turn an individual into a mere number and there he only ‘survives' not ‘lives', being totally alienated from nature. In many of his poems, essays, dramas and stories Tagore's concept about the relationship between nature and man has been reflected. His desire for returning to the forest from urban life mirrors his temperament.

Tagore's philosophical foundation on ecology was neither totally Oriental nor Occidental. Mixing both he tried to synthesise Indian cultural attitudes and the natural world with a heightened sense of unity with nature. He stood against total renunciation and tried to find his place among minute details of the worldly matters. As a true poet, philosopher, and the creator of a new world, he had set examples. Having complete acquaintance with the social and economic conditions of the Indian rural society, he attempted to make the cooperative-based, ecologically harmonious social order a reality. On environment he felt increasingly convinced that “..Owing to defores-tation a calamity is imminent”.

In all his activities on rural reconstruction and development at Santiniketan through gardening, plantation, ploughing etc. he kept the issue of environment first. Even in the construction of houses at Santiniketan his love for nature was manifest. The architecture of the buildings depicted the mixing of modern technique and traditional approach. Nature occupied a special role behind the construction of Shyamali, Konark, Udichi and others. The planning of the garden at Uttarayan brings out Tagore's thoughts on environment and its conservation.

He thought on prevention of soil erosion, increase of soil fertility for the sake of the poor peasants; and he experimented about this and succeeded in many cases. In Robbery of Soil Tagore cleared his views. He invited a lot of environmentalists, agriculture experts, architects and others and sought their help for making his ideas of rural reconstruction a reality.

At Visva-Bharati, Tagore tried to impart his educational philosophy leading towards the understanding that there was an inseparable link between man and nature. Expressing his ideas on education, Tagore wrote: “Education divorced from nature has brought untold harm to young children. The sense of isolation that is generated through the separation has caused great evil to mankind. The misfortune has been caused to the world since a long time. That is why I thought of creating a field which would facilitate contact with the world of nature.”

As a sensitive poet, creator, his perception of the relationship between man and nature was not dry and barren but had an infusion of the will and affection and never allowed his thoughts and ideas to be captured in the cobweb of dogmas and traditions. He understood the forms of the phenomenon and traced it to its secret nature and inner essence. In literature he not only depicted nature in the photographic way, but an exposition of objective nature through our emotions. He was able to compre-hend the contemporary reality and tried to develop the philosophy, while preparing an international and intercultural programme for unleashing creative and humanistic attitudes and values leading toward totality so as to become more and more relevant today.

The author is a social activist associated with the literacy movement.