[sacw] sacw dispatch 15Sept.99

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
15 September 1999
--------------------------------------------------------
#1. Diplomatic row over Indian maid in Paris
#1.1. Contact details of the French Organisation Against Modern Slavery
#2. URL of the US govt report International Religious Freedom for1999 whose
India section has much irked the 'Sangh Parivar' in India
#3. An Indian Activist responds to an article Big Dams & Displacement
#4. An Indian Newpaper Edit on Bonded Labour
#5. Indian Catholics statement on Foreign funds of the Hindu Far Right
--------------------------------------------------------

#1.
Times of India
15 September 1999
http://www.timesofindia.com/

Diplomatic row over Indian maid in Paris
The Times of India News Service and AFP

NEW DELHI: Indian and French officials moved swiftly on Tuesday to
defuse an ugly incident that the French media has dubbed as a ``sex
slave scandal'' involving an Indian embassy official.

A young Indian maid on Sunday walked away from the home of her diplomat
employer, Amrit Lugun, first secretary in the Indian embassy in Paris,
for alleged ill treatment. An anti-slavery group said she had been
overworked by her employer, and a French doctor, who also attends
President Jacques Chirac, has said she had been sexually mutilated.

The incident has the potential of blowing into a major diplomatic tussle
between India and France as the French media expressed outrage at the
treatment of the maid, Lalita Oraon. However, officials in both
countries are eager to ensure the matter does not threaten the growing
warmth in Indo-French relations.

Late on Tuesday, officials were working on ways to bring back the
diplomat to India, though the French have not formally insisted on this
yet. However, the report of the doctor appears far too damaging to be
ignored. The move to bring back Ms Oraon has angered a section of Indian
diplomats.

``If the French should insist, then someone of equivalent rank would
have to be declared persona non grata,'' an Indian official said. But
the prevailing view, as another official said, is ``to put the matter
quickly behind us''.

=46rench news agency AFP quoted Philippe Boudin, director of the Committee
against Modern- day Slavery (CCEM), as saying that the Indian woman
``fled her employer's Paris home on Sunday, September 5. She was found
the same day wandering the streets, carrying a knife, by a man who
looked Indian and to whom she said she wanted to commit suicide.''

Boudin said the woman was subsequently questioned by a special police
squad in charge of minors and, through an interpreter, she said she was
from Bihar. Boudin said she had alleged that she was forced by the
diplomat to work from six in the morning to midnight and that she slept
on a carpet. He said the diplomat had told police that she was paid in
India - 300 francs ($50, about Rs 2,000) a month - and that a diplomatic
passport in her name mentioned her age as 19-and-a-half.

After being taken by police to a monastery for shelter, she threw
herself off the high wall of the building two days later and had to be
rushed to hospital suffering from fractures in the ankle and the
vertebra.

She was also operated for serious injuries to her genitals. French
urologist Bernard Debre who conducted the operation told AFP: ``I had
never seen anything like it in my whole life.'' ``She was suffering from
blood-poisoning from wounds apparently caused by a blade that dated back
several days.'' Debre said the wounds ``could not have been accidental
or self-inflicted''.

In a statement Monday, the Indian embassy said allegations of
maltreatment by her employer ``are false and are strongly denied''. It
said it holds the French authorities responsible for the welfare of the
woman and ``the injuries Ms Oraon has suffered in the custody of French
authorities are a matter of serious concern''.

The statement said Ms Oraon had not been working satisfactorily and that
she had probably fled when she overheard plans to send her back to
India. It said that by keeping her away from embassy officials, the
=46rench police ``wittingly or unwittingly, have abetted in the campaign
of disinformation and defamation that has begun against the embassy's
diplomat''. It said that when the embassy's diplomat visited Ms Oraon in
a French police station on September 5, ``the girl was in normal health
and there was no indication of any physical problem''.

# 1.1.
The following French organisation is currently defending the case of Lalita
Oraon:
Comit=E9 contre l'Esclavage Moderne (CCEM)
Address: 4 Place Valois, Paris 75001, France
Phone: (33) 1 42 60 73 77
Contact Person: Philippe Boudin

Website: http://www.orange-art.fr/esclave/
---------------------------------------------------------------------

#2.
US government's Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 1999:
India.
http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/irf/irf_rpt/index.html

----------------------------
#3.
Go forth and multiply!
A response to Surjit Bhalla's numbers for displacement by dams

by Sanjay Kak

The Indian Express has chosen a curiously prescient title for Surjit
Bhalla's article (Going wrong with figures in a Big Dam way, 6/9/99),
advertised as an attack on the displacement figures offered in the essay
"The Greater Common Good" by Arundhati Roy. As a documentary film-maker with
an interest in the political economy of the Narmada issue, I was relieved to
hear that a distinguished economist was joining issue, writing by his own
assertion "in the interests of an academic and policy debate". A welcome
voice when we are overwhelmed by a mass of superficial, star-struck,
factually incorrect - even biased - writing, on what is emerging as one of
the more serious issues of our time. Surjit Bhalla's piece promises us a
review of numbers, in particular the figure of 50 million displaced people,
which he says has made "everybody in the chattering class" an expert on big
dams.
Unfortunately he belies that welcome, and doesn't even get past the first
commandment of getting elementary facts right, leave alone convince us with
what the blurb to his article calls "six different methodologies".

Let's begin with the section dealing with the "most studied" Sardar Sarovar
Project (SSP), and the displacement figure of 150,000 people, estimated in
the World Bank appointed Morse Commission report. This figure is accepted in
the article, then mysteriously divided by 30, since Surjit Bhalla has reason
to believe that the SSP contains "one very large dam and 29 other Big Dams".
This is an astonishing error, for not only is this simply not true, it
confuses the displacement figure for one large dam (SSP) with that of all
the 30 major dams that will eventually form the much more grandiose idea of
the Narmada Valley Project (NVP).

Is this confusion between the SSP and the NVP an accident, a slip? Perhaps.
But the disregard for factual detail is consistent in the whole section.
"Whose figures does one believe - the government (about 40,000) or the NBA
(about 415,000) ?" he asks. Since these figures are uniquely free of what
they refer to, the casual reader is left innocent of the fact that the
Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) estimate refers to individuals, while the
government estimate is for 40,000 households (approximately 200,000 people)
whether you refer to the Morse Committee report or any other recent
government statistic.
It's the embarrassing inattention to figures in this section which really
prompted me to read (and then re-read) the piece for it's consistent
disregard for facts. Let me amplify.

The article "quotes" us six different methods. These turn out to be six
different averages, culled from different sources. The method is the same,
although some mathematically disadvantaged sub-editor has gone so far as to
call these "methodologies".

The first of these, the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA)
figure of 44,000 , is an estimate of the average displaced figure per dam,
based on a study of 54 Large dams in India. Surjit Bhalla then multiplies
this figure with the 3300 Big dams constructed since Independence, and the
incredibly large figure of 145 million obtained by the IIPA method (his
name) is incredulously - and perhaps rightly - dismissed.

As I read this, I looked forward to a critique of the crudeness of such
research-by-arithmetic. This seems an urgent need, because we are otherwise
left to multiply with averages, apparent as analytical tools of a fairly low
level of sophistication, even to the statistically opaque like myself.

Or perhaps Surjit Bhalla could scrutinise the methodology by which the
figures of the IIPA study have been obtained. We may still find ourselves
forced to use the methods of brute multiplication, but by refining the
fairly massive average figure of 44,000 offered by IIPA we would have a
figure for displacement more sane than the "hysterical" 50 million
attributed to a former Secretary of the Planning Commission.
Neither is forthcoming. Instead he goes on to use the same method with five
different averages.

The Greater Common Good method (based on the IIPA average, but factored down
by Arundhati Roy to 10,000, what she calls "abundant caution" and he calls
"gracious pyrotechnics"). A closer look at the IIPA study of 54 dams tells
me that since only two of these dams have displaced less than 10,000 people,
the abundantly cautious figure of 10,000 per dam - leading to 33 million
for those displaced by Big dams - a reasonable one. But this is summarily
dismissed.

The Sardar Sarovar Project method (where he takes the Morse Committee
average of 150,000), is more approvingly cited since Surjit Bhalla's own
arithmetic with this figure yields a lower figure of 17 million displaced.
Provided, as I have pointed out, you ignore the fact that he mistakes
figures for one dam for thirty dams. (If he had got his number of Big Dams
right he would have a very inconvenient total of 480 million)

The World Bank Projects method based on a worldwide survey of 146 World
bank projects. We are cautioned that these are not figures for dams alone
but "all projects (dams, power, transport, etc.)". To the uncertainties this
caveat introduces - do power/transport/etc. projects tend to displace as
many people as dams? - we can add some of our own. For example, these may
also not be sensitive to the particularities of Indian terrain and
topography, population densities, etc. But since this yields a displacement
figure of 14 million, it is offered without censure.

The Movement Against Big Dams method. By now diligent to the need for
suitable averages, Bhalla is even led to an "anti-dam organisation", the
International Rivers Network. Emerging out of a broad assessment of
displacement caused by 40,000 big dams worldwide, their estimate of between
30 - 60 million is averaged out by Bhalla as 45 million; then divided by
40,000 to give us a global working average of 1125 people. This is lower
than the IIPA figure (40,000) or the Morse figure (150,000). So then: go
forth and multiply - 1125 X 3200 dams and Dr Bhalla has a suitably modest
figure of 3.7 million, extracted he would have us know, from the jaws of the
anti-dam movement.

(At this point, I would imagine a puzzled graduate student of economics
putting aside her assignment to try and make some sense of this incredible
ping-pong of millions. These are after all people, if only millions of
people. Which is a reasonable average - the IIPA figure (sample study of 54
Large dams in India)? The Morse Committee figure (detailed study of one
Sardar Sarovar dam)? The arithmetic based on 146 World Bank projects (not
all dams)? Or the 40,000 Big dams assessed by the International Rivers
Network? I see the student stopping to consult with her tutor before
searching for new averages, since multiplication seems to be leading nowhere
in particular).

But we still have one final one on offer, the Economic method where Surjit
Bhalla takes the money spent on the SSP (Rs 8125 crore) the number of people
displaced (150,000) and works out a new formula - 18,500 people displaced
per 1000 crores ("all figures, 1999 prices"). So if India has since
Independence spent 185,000 crores on "major and minor" irrigation projects,
then it must mean that we have displaced 3.4 million people. (Go on, whip
out your calculators ...).

Having traveled all this way to get away from "gracious pyrotechnics" this
calculation takes my breath away, and not just with it's bland assumptions
[people displaced =3D money spent]. After all it's telling us that the avera=
ge
displacement per dam for the 3300 Big Dams constructed since Independence is
just over a 1000. How do we reconcile this with the Sardar Sarovar Dam
estimate of 150,000 ? When the IIPA study - which rather conservatively only
counts displacement due to submergence, and not by irrigation canals,
project areas, etc - has told us that it is likely to be 44,000? I'm just a
documentary film-maker with an undergraduate degree in Economics, but I look
forward to the reactions amongst Dr Bhalla's peers in the discipline.

It's when we reach the more manageable figure of 3.4 million people by this
last "method", that the whole piece suddenly began to fall into place for
me. The intervention is made in the name of academics, but without the
rigour, care for factual correctness, or close examination of source
materials that one expects from academic research. Instead I can only sense
a visceral urge to deny the magnitude of numbers suggested in "The Greater
Common Good". In it's place we are offered an urgent shuffling of numbers to
suggest that things are not as bad as they seem, just that we don't know
what they are.

Holding true to the "method" of multiplication with averages, the variations
pose no problems to the writer. Instead, he notices "the striking
correspondence between the anti-dam movement estimate and an estimate based
on irrigation expenditure". To a mind untrained to think in such optimistic
ways, this seemed only a numerical coincidence.

Then turning back to the early part of the essay, I notice this optimism as
infecting his reading of many statistics: "Foodgrain yields have gone up by
140 percent (coincidentally matching the increase in irrigation)". In
neither case is there a direct relationship established - just
correspondences, coincidences. An increase of 140% in irrigated land, and a
(coincidental) increase of 140% in foodgrain yields lead us to the conclude
that there is "fiction" in the claim of more drought areas, or declining
yields in India in the 1990s. I would have thought it possible for the two
to co-exist.

A little later he trots out a series of figures for per capita increase in
consumption figures (food- up 15%; edible oil and sugar - up 3 fold;
clothing - more than double; electricity consumption - up 25 times). There
are no mitigating details of the distribution of this increase. There is no
mention of the fact that in the same period while the number of people below
the poverty line has dropped in percentage terms, we have probably added
another 100 million people in absolute numbers to this humiliating
statistic.

"So much for the pop fiction of more poverty" - I think Dr Surjit Bhalla is
going wrong with figures in a damn big way.

He is sceptical of the pop-fiction of more poverty. He is sceptical that
the Indian State (in collusion, let it be said, with the middle/upper
classes of the country) could have possibly displaced 33 million people. He
is sceptical that people in a democracy can ever be consulted in any real
way. But what does he offer us in place of that scepticism? Some muddied
numbers as far as I could make out. No new analytical insights.

Underlying the entire piece I see conflicting emotions (yes, that very
un-academic word) about the power of the State, and the corresponding
powerlessness of the mass of its people. My hunch is strengthened when I
read Surjit Bhalla's reaction to the need for consultation with people
affected by Large dams. ("How many times has the Government consulted
people? Did they consult us on the nuclear explosion? ... when they impose
licensing laws, or new taxations, or new rip-off schemes"). Does he approve
of this ? Probably not, since in the same paragraph he has also just
asserted that the Indian State has been oppressive vis-=E0-vis the economic
rights of its citizens.

Where does this ambivalence come from? Let me hazard a guess: underlying
this particular reading of Indian society (and statistics) is a deeply
defensive, conservative impulse. At the end of the piece Dr Surjit Bhalla
tells us that those who believe that dams are not socially profitable will
now have to weigh the benefits of the dams against the considerably lower
costs of 3 to 4 million displaced rather than decide on the virtues of dams
on the basis of costs of a hysterical 50 million.

These are still people, as I have said, if only millions of people. Would
the Holocaust, allusions to which he finds deeply offensive, be less
horrible if only 20,000 people had been exterminated?

I still await that disciplined intervention from the world of scholarship,
one that truly comes out in the interests of an academic and policy debate.
Not one that seems to emerge out of a whirlwind romance with the average.

September 14, 1999

------------------------------------------------
#4.
Indian Express
Wednesday, September 15, 1999
Editorial

A twenty-year saga of bondage

Has the Supreme Court [of India] failed its people in ensuring the
constitutional
charter of freedom promised since 1950? The charter of negatives
promised include no bonded labour, no trafficking in human beings and no
child labour. The charter of positives promised free primary education,
children getting the fullest opportunity for their development and a
fair distribution of the country's resources for the good of the
majority.

A look at the history of the Bandhua Mukti Morcha case pending in the
Supreme Court is revealing. It is about bonded labour and children in
=46aridabad which, ironically enough, lies just 12 km from the apex court.
The case has been pending for almost twenty years. It has passed through
the hands of several Chief Justices of India and judges, including those
who were the loudest in advocating a proactive court and legal aid.

Swami Agnivesh, with touching faith in the system, knocked at the doors
of the apex court with a petition pointing out the horrendous state of
affairs that prevailed in the Faridabad mines. A procession of advocate
commissioners followed to collect the facts for the helpless and
voiceless poor. Report after report before the court told it that not
only the Constitution but every conceivable Act of Parliament -- on
bonded labour, child labour, mining, crimes against the human body
especially of women and children, minimum wages, explosives and
environment -- was being violated.

The facts moved several benches of judges to give grand lectures from
the judicial podium about human rights. On this basis some of these
judges entered international human rights shops and were proclaimed
India's voice of human rights without bothering to see that their
judicial power had not made a whit of a difference to the cruel misery
of the bonded.

Supreme Court lawyers, especially senior advocates, jumped on this
judicial bandwagon to acquire international profiles. Geneva, London
Bangkok or the United Nations at New York became their human rights
hunting grounds.

However when others in the profession, outraged at this chastising
lesson on human rights lawyering, started pressing sharply for quick
remedial action, they were met with a judicial rebuff. Under the Bonded
Labour Act the collector, the district supremo of the elite IAS, was
specifically responsible for identifying and rehabilitating bonded
labour.

A centrally funded scheme for rehabilitation was available. Read with
the Supreme Court's own judgement that even payment below the minimum
wage constituted the offence of bonded labour, the collector was guilty
of a cognisable offence. Hence the district supremo of the elite Indian
Police Service, the superintendent of police, was bound to register
criminal cases against such erring collectors and have them tried
swiftly.

The denial of the negative charter of freedoms was a national problem
and a message was required to be sent to collectors and SPs that the
apex court would not tolerate their shirking of their statutory duties.
The answer was a judicial rebuff in the form of a smile. A new date was
set and there was an adjournment of suffering. Meanwhile in a case on
the trafficking of women, an SP's affidavit cried out for help. It said
that in the Dholpur area there was a regular market where women were put
on sale and he could do nothing about it by himself. As in the Faridabad
case, no effective judical help came.

Concerned lawyers and commissioners changed strategy. They started
pointing to the human face of the tragedy -- living bodies maimed by the
explosives used for blasting the rock, the absence of medical care, the
total lack of drinking water, children scarred by disease, terrorised
women living in hovels where no human being could stand erect.

The argument now was, don't send any official to jail but at least
implement judicially the detailed environmentally integrated
rehabilitation programme on the site, since under the Bonded Labour Act
the bonded labourers were entitled to their homesteads. No one from the
Central government was called to account for the non-implementation of
Central laws. An encouraged Haryana government filed an affidavit that
mocked at the demand for legal rights by stating that ice boxes had been
provided for clean and pure drinking water supplied through tankers.
Judges laughed at the affidavit, threatened to visit the site
themselves, but nothing happened. The sun continued to beat down on the
bonded labourer.

There was the spark of Parliament-funded legal aid run by judges from
the apex court to the district court. The constitutional charter floated
on the hope of spiritual judges heading legal aid initiatives to deal
with the problems facing the families of bonded labour and maybe even
implementing the positive charter of freedom. But the living gods of the
spiritual never called their faithful to account in terms of the use of
judicial and legal aid power. The gods had indeed forsaken the poor.

Time, of course, is a great healer of uncomfortable legal problems faced
by the apex court. Many of the bonded families at Faridabad just
disappeared -- claimed either by death or desperation. The case is still
pending before the apex court, even as one of its committees secretly
cogitates on how to spend the crores of public money given to the
Supreme Court by the government for its golden jubilee celebrations. If
the constitutional order breaks down in the apex court itself what is
there to celebrate after all? Ironically, for the bonded, the Supreme
Court is still the last court of hope for justice.

Copyright =A9 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
------------------------------------------------------

#5.
ALL INDIA CHRISTIAN COUNCIL
Logos Bhawan,Medchal Road, Jeedimatla, Secundarabad, Andhra Pradesh, [India=
]
Tele 91-40-7861 =20

PRESS STATEMENT =20
How the Parivar gets its dollar funds from Innocent and no so innocent
organisations abroad Church funds too find their way to killers of
Christians The following is the Text of the statement issued by Dr Joseph
de' Souza, President, All India Christian Council and Mr. John Dayal,
Executive member, All India Christian Council and National Secretary, All
India Catholic Union Secunderabad, India, September 14, 1999
Indian Union minister for Home Affairs, Mr. Lal Krishna Advani, has in
recent months made it a habit to allege that the Christian community is
the biggest recipient of foreign funds. He does not spell out, but many in
the press believe, that no other religious community or other groups get
foreign funds, and that the funds earmarked for the Indian Church or its
organisations are firstly tainted, and secondly and more important, that
the money is meant to finance a sinister and well-oiled conversion
machinery.
Mr. Advani has persisted with this campaign despite repeated challenge by
the All India Christian Council, the All India Catholic Union, and the
United Christian Forum for Human Rights, among others, that the Home
minister publish the entire file on Foreign Contributions, a file
maintained by his department under the Foreign Contributions Regulation
Act. Mr. Advani and his political colleagues have refused to do so, for
they know fully well that among those receiving funds are organisations
belonging to all religions, the government of India and its organs, and
more important, many if not most of the frontal organisations of the
Hindutva Parivar.
The Parivar leaders cannot risk exposure that they too are funded by the
many foreign agencies. Ironically, many innocent Christian NGOs and other
funding agencies >from the US and Europe same organisations that fund the
Christian NGOs. And while the Christian NGOs are pumping all this money,
and much of the money raised from Indians in India, into social
development and uplift work among the rural and urban poor, the tribals
and the Dalits, the Parivar is using its money to train killer gangs who
wreak murder on the minorities, torture and rape the Dalits, and otherwise
work very hard to demolish the plural heritage of the country and the
secular character of its democratic Constitution.
It is now an established fact that of all the funds that come from the
European Union countries to India, a mere four per cent come to Christian
NGOs. Among the rest are several organisations with links to the Parivar
or other Right wing majority community organisations.
Earlier this year, in the United Nations, I was told that the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad and several other Hindutva organisations were seeking
accreditation in the international body and its sectoral units as a
'cultural organisation.' Such international accreditation would have gone a
long way in helping the killer goons of the Parivar escape international
scrutiny by hiding under the 'ghoonghat' or cloak of a 'socio-cultural'
organisation. Mercifully, people have seen through this charade.
Many in India now know that the frontal organisations of the Parivar get
hundreds of millions of dollars, not just from 'patriotic' and nostalgic
Right wing Non-Resident Indians, but manage to hoodwink other
organisations, including those belonging to various denominations of the
Church, into financing these wings of the Parivar.
The VHP-America became a registered non-profit organisation in the US
during the late 1970's. Their Internal Revenue Service code is ID
051-0156325. The VHP-America also has a charity arm "Seva" and Hindu
University of America. They have actively collected money from US
corporations, local governments, non-profit organisations, and individuals
for the past 15 years. Just for the record, we give here a very truncated
list of some of the funding agencies that the Parivar has managed to fool
into financing its work. I have this list from the highest sources. We
wonder if these organisations know to what use the Parivar is putting
their money.
Major donors include: Salvation Army, California Culture Realization
=46ellowship, Connecticut Culture, Connecticut Valley Temple Society,
American Cancer Society, Connecticut Health & Welfare, Laryngectomy
club-New Britain Connecticut Health & Welfare, Yale Hospital - New Haven
Connecticut Edu & Soc, Salvation Army, Connecticut Edu & Soc Conn
Community College - Tuition Asst, Florida Edu & Soc Yoga Research
=46oundation, Illinois Edu & Soc, Vivekanand Vedanta Society, India
Development Service, Massachusetts Culture, Chinmaya Mission, Massachusetts
Edu Soc, Saraswati Arts, Kripalu Ashram, Maryland Edu & Soc, India Develop
& Relief Fund, Michigan Culture, Bhartiya Temple, New York Culture, Arya
Samaj, Vaishnav Temple, New York Edu & Soc, Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, New
York Hlth & Wlf, India Abroad - Hepatitis fund, Covenant House, India
=46estival Committee, Heart & Hands for Handicapped, Federation of Indian
Association, Maharashtra Mandal, New York Edu & Soc, Sindhu Sangam, New
York Edu & Soc, Kannad Koota, New York, BSS Assam Relief Fund, New Jersey
Hlth & Wlf, Hindu Swayam Sevak Sangh, New Jersey Edu & Soc, India House of
Worship, Share & Care Foundation, New Jersey Edu & Soc, Gujarati Literacy
Academy, Ved Mandir, India Culture Society, New Jersey Culture,
International Mahavir Jain Mission, Pennsylvania Culture, Raj Rajeswari
Pitham, Pennsylvania Culture, PMVS Vraj Temple, Arsh Vidya Gurukulam,
Virginia Edu & Soc, United Way - Alexandria Virginia Edu Soc,
Satchidanand Ashram, Wisconsin Hlth & Wlf, Combat Blindness, West Virginia
Culture, Isckon.
Most of these are extremely reputable societies, totally innocent of
anything evil. The organisations receiving their dollars are not. We call
on foreign governments, international funding agencies and Christian and
other NGOs to stop funding organisations that are indicted in the
violation of fundamental and constitutional human and civil rights,
including the freedom of religion. We call on all funding agencies to
immediately stop funding all frontal organisations of the Sangh parivar
which has been indicted in more than half a dozen Judicial commission of
enquiry for its role in the violence against Muslims and Christians. =20