SACW | 5 Nov. 2003

[Harsh Kapoor]

SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WIRE   |  5 November,  2003

Notice:
The new redesigned South Asia Citizens Web web site is now 
definitively located at http://www.sacw.net/
The earlier URL for the South Asia Citizens Web web site 
<www.mnet.fr/aiindex> is no longer valid; Google cache may be used to 
trace pages held at the old location. 

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[1] The political economy of Bangladesh's external relations (Rehman Sobhan)
[2] Pakistan: Violent students attack 'un-Islamic' varsity show
[3] Indian Elite In Mammon's Grip - The Greed Creed's high costs 
(Praful Bidwai)
[4] India: BJP's Hindu nationalism thwarted in Rajasthan (Edward Luce)
[5] India: Poison myths - There's no correlation between religion and 
population growth (Anil Chamadia And Subhash Gatade)
[6] India: RSS appropriates credit for the liberation of Goa. 
(Prabhakar Sinari)
[7] India: Killers of Safdar Hashmir Convicted
- Hashmi wheel turns, 14 years on
- Judge to pronounce sentence today in Safdar Hashmi murder case
[8] Announcing: International South Asia Forum Bulletin [19], November 1, 2003

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[1]

The Daily Star, November 4, 2003

The political economy of Bangladesh's external relations

Rehman Sobhan

Within a unipolar world Bangladesh's foreign policy options have 
become increasingly constrained. This is not a new phenomenon since 
our options have been limited over many years by our dependence on 
aid. However, the nature of this dependence has in recent years 
changed from aid to trade. This may appear a positive development but 
it has imposed no less severe fetters on our external choices. We 
always recognised that our aid relations were driven by political 
factors. I wrote a book on the Crisis of External Dependence: The 
Political Economy of Foreign Aid to Bangladesh as far back as 1982. 
However, in today's world our trade relations are no less exposed to 
political influences so we need to understand the underlying 
political economy driving our external relations.

The changing dynamics of aid dependence

In 1980s Bangladesh's aid dependence was over 10 per cent of GDP and 
financed nearly 100 per cent of our Annual Development Plan (ADP). 
This meant that no Finance Minister could frame a budget without 
first being assured of aid pledged at the Paris Consortium meeting in 
April. This dependence on donors gave them a disproportionate 
leverage over our policies. The World Bank, in particular, used this 
leverage to impose an extensive programme of Structural Adjustment 
Reforms (SAR) on the Government of Bangladesh (GOB), based on the 
neo-liberal economic philosophy associated with the so called 
Washington Consensus. Bangladesh, readily accepted this advice though 
many of these reforms were unsatisfactorily implemented. This raised 
tensions with the donors but did not lead to any discontinuity in 
aid. The donors and successive governments played a discrete game 
where Bangladesh accepted and promised to implement all reforms 
whilst the donors turned a blind eye on our failure to do so. The era 
of aid dependence built up its own class of beneficiaries who 
prospered from aid and acquired a vested interest in its continuity. 
Aid dependence, thus, generated its own dynamics which influenced the 
political behaviour of successive regimes and the workings of the 
administrative as well as the business community. The SAR process 
impacted on the political economy of Bangladesh where new social 
forces were financially and politically empowered whilst large 
numbers of people, from desubsidised poor farmers to disemployed 
factory workers, became its victims.

The unsatisfactory and often unjust outcome from the SAR did not 
persuade donors to rethink their reforms. Rather it pushed them to 
increase the burden of reforms. The poor results from the reforms 
were now ascribed to poor governance. Thus, issues of governance, 
covering corruption, the judiciary, even the state of democracy were 
added to the ongoing need for structural adjustment reforms. In this 
new phase poverty reduction was prioritized over growth by both the 
World Bank and the IMF. The GOB was invited to prepare a Poverty 
Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) which was presented to the donors at 
the recent Aid Group meeting in Dhaka.

This rethinking of aid priorities by the donors did not extend to 
greater introspection over the impact which such aid dependence, 
which was dictating our policy choices, was having on the political 
economy of Bangladesh or other aid dependent countries.

I was, in the early 1990s, invited by SIDA, the Swedish Aid agency, 
to visit Tanzania to examine the consequences of their growing aid 
dependence and compare this with Bangladesh's experience. It was 
quite educational to see that many of the consequences of aid 
dependence which had affected Bangladesh were being replicated in 
Tanzania. I subsequently wrote a book on this subject. The pathology 
of aid dependence obviously transcends national boundaries and even 
cultures.

This policy influence of the donors over the GOB persists today, even 
though aid dependence has declined from over 10 per cent of GDP when 
Mr M Saifur Rahman was first Finance Minister in 1981 to under 3 per 
cent when he has become Finance Minister for the third time. However, 
we still seem to give the same regard to donor advice as we did when 
we were heavily aid dependent. Today, aid finances less than 50 per 
cent of the ADP so we are no longer totally dependent on aid to frame 
our budget. Nor are the donors regarded as the universal font of all 
wisdom. The Washington Consensus is heavily discredited whilst 
Structural Adjustment Reforms are seen to have brought neither 
sustained growth nor poverty reduction across much of the Third 
World. The increasing ferocity of the attacks on the global 
institutions such as World Bank, IMF and WTO, both on the streets and 
at a professional level, suggests that these organisations no longer 
command the credibility or authority they enjoyed in their golden age 
of the 1980's. In these changed circumstances there is scope for 
Bangladesh to forge an entirely new pattern of relations with its aid 
donors.

The GOB cannot begin to develop a more equal relation with its donors 
unless it is able to get its own house in order and design its own 
policy agenda. The donors themselves, in principle, encourage 
governments to make their own policy choices. However, the available 
experience suggests that the exercise of such policy independence by 
aid recipients is only welcome if countries such as Bangladesh choose 
policies which concur with donor policy advise. Thus even after 20 
years of unfruitful Structural Adjustment Reforms (SAR) few Third 
World governments have challenged the assumptions underlying the SAR. 
As a result even today the SAR remains at the core of the World 
Bank's Country Assistance Strategy to Bangladesh as also for most 
LDCs and has been incorporated into the PRSPs of virtually all these 
aid dependent countries.

Aid and foreign policy

Aid dependence under the tutelage of the World Bank should not have 
impacted on Bangladesh's foreign policy in the same way as it did on 
our economic policies. After all the World Bank is a multilateral 
organisation, which is supposed on have neither an ideology nor a 
political position. It was therefore noteworthy that a changed stance 
in the World Bank's lending philosophy in the early 1980s to push SAR 
coincided with an ideological change in the policy regimes of the US 
after President Reagan came into office in the US and Margarat 
Thacher became Prime Minister in the UK. These two leaders may be 
deemed as the political god-parents of the neo-liberal revolution 
across the world. The messianic commitment to a neo-liberal 
philosophy within the World Bank and IMF originates from this period.

The embrace by the World Bank and IMF of the political philosophy of 
some of its principal financiers encouraged the belief that what 
Washington thinks today the World Bank thinks tomorrow. As a result, 
successive governments in Bangladesh have come to believe that the 
World Bank and IMF are extensions of the US States Department and 
Treasury. This view gained currency when the United State intervened 
time and again on the Board of the World Bank and IMF to pressure 
them to participate in the bail out of strategically important 
countries such as Mexico, Russia and other victims of rapid 
globalisation deemed of strategic interest to the G-7 countries. 
Acceptance of Bank-IMF advice was thus believed by the policymakers 
of Bangladesh to have some approbation from the United States and 
even the European Union whose goodwill remained of importance to the 
GOB.

The US, which was once Bangladesh's principal donor through the 1960s 
and 70s is not even our principal bilateral donor, which today 
happens to be Japan. The GOB is however persuaded to believe that 
Bank/IMF largesse is contingent on good relations with the US 
government. This assumption is not entirely a fantasy. The Pakistanis 
have already noted that their alignment with US strategic interests 
in Afghanistan and provision of logistical support to the US invasion 
of Afghanistan won them significant collateral benefits from the IMF. 
The IMF, reaffirmed its credentials as a foreign policy instrument of 
the State Department by assuming a much more favourable perspective 
on Pakistan's policy reforms compared to the hard line taken prior to 
the change in Pakistan's external posture. The World Bank too has 
become much less jaundiced in their perception of Pakistan. The US 
has backed up the IMF's generous loans by enhancing their own 
bilateral aid commitments to Pakistan and rescheduling Pakistan's 
debts. The lesson from the recent experience of Pakistan suggests 
that aid commitments as well as their terms, even from multilateral 
bodies such as the World Bank and IMF, remain linked to foreign 
policy alignments with a superpower even where countries such 
Bangladesh and Pakistan remain far less dependent on aid.

The political economy of trade dependence

This paradox of genuflecting to aid donors, even as aid dependence 
declines, may be linked to the new trade dependence which is 
influencing the external relations of Bangladesh and many other Third 
World countries. In the case of Bangladesh the US remains our largest 
single market, absorbing around 40 per cent of our exports, mostly in 
the form of Readymade Garments (RMG). The EU accounts for a further 
40 per cent of our exports. Since Bangladesh's exports along with 
remittances currently finance over 80 per cent of our foreign 
exchange expenditures, our trade relations have a much stronger 
impact on our economy than does aid. Access to the US and EU market 
and the continuance of the absorption of our migrant labour in the 
Middle East, as also in East Asia and the United States, remains an 
important foreign policy objective for Bangladesh. As a result, RMG 
exports to the US and EU have acquired a special significance in our 
foreign policy choices.

At the same time we should also take note of the fact that India is 
the fastest growing and today the largest source of Bangladesh's 
imports (official and unofficial), closely followed by China. Whilst 
this growing import dependence on our two large neighbours is less 
concentrated than our export dependence and there is greater scope 
for diversifying our import sources than there is for exports, our 
import trends also remain relevant to the political economy of our 
external relations. Bangladesh's ongoing search for greater access to 
the Indian market is therefore not just an issue of commercial 
relations. The political economy of Indo-Bangladesh relations has its 
own special features which merits separate discussion.

What we are learning to our cost is that, as with aid, trade is also 
politicised. Once upon a time we were led to believe that trade 
relations were forged in the market place. Our own experience, as 
indeed our experience at the WTO jamborees in Doha and Cancun, have 
exposed us to the importance of political variables in determining 
trade relations. The notion of the WTO taking us towards a 
rule-based, market-driven, global trading regime has proved a fantasy 
as the major powers and even regional powers are increasingly 
responding to political stimuli to both deny and provide access to 
their markets.

The US, in particular, has discovered the strategic significance of 
its market since it presides over the world's largest market. The 
terms and conditions on which Bangladesh accesses this market can 
influence our economic fortunes as a country and can impact on the 
lives of a million poor families. If the US were to reduce our RMG 
export quota and continues to give trade preferences to our 
prospective rivals, as it has done to Sub-Saharan and the Caribbean 
countries, this could impose severe economic as well as social costs 
on Bangladesh which in turn could have a political fallout at home. 
If the US were today to give us duty and quota free access to their 
market, as they have done for Sub-Saharan Africa, this could possibly 
double our exports of RMG and provide additional jobs to a million 
poor women. Given the far reaching implications of its policy 
decisions, the US may expect to extract a significant political rent 
from Bangladesh for the privilege of providing enhanced market 
access. This rent may range from a demand that we let UNOCOL export 
the gas from its Bibiana fields to India, we send peace keeping 
troops to Iraq, we recognise Israel or we even abandon our commitment 
to the LDCs in regard to sensitive global issues such as agricultural 
subsidies and the so called Singapore issues. All such decisions 
involve serious political consequences for Bangladesh at home and in 
our relations with neighbouring or partner countries. Fortunately for 
Bangladesh, the US is not yet ready to recognise Bangladesh as a 
strategic partner with whom such political horse trading can be 
negotiated. But this day may not be far off and Bangladesh may well 
have its notions of foreign policy independence severely tested in 
the days ahead.


Asserting autonomy over foreign policy

The scope for countries such as Bangladesh's escaping from such 
strategic pressures exercised by its principal trading partners is 
limited. Such demonstrations of autonomy have not come easily even to 
big countries such as China and India. Even China has to calibrate 
its external relations with the US to take account of the fact that 
it provides the destination for over US$ 100 billion of Chinese 
exports. It is not surprising that even where China has strong 
disagreements with the US in the Security Council they have never 
exercised their veto to frustrate the strategic decisions of the US. 
China too has had to become aware of the political economy of its 
relations with the US.

In such an unequal world order countries such as Bangladesh have to 
rethink their notions of sovereignty and reassess their domestic 
policy options to see how far they can assume greater autonomy in 
their external relations. To be able to enhance our freedom of 
choice, we need to commit ourselves to a process of structural change 
not just in our economy but our politics. We would, thus, have to 
drastically diversify the composition and destination of our exports, 
enhance our domestic savings and significantly improve the quality of 
our policy making and governance. This will have significant social 
and political implications within Bangladesh.

To initiate all of the above changes and to then demonstrate policy 
independence vis-a-vis the US and other major trading partners would 
demand the building of a strong political consensus within Bangladesh 
underwritten by massive support from the common people. To develop 
such support will require a major structural adjustment in our 
politics as well as in the direction of our economy. We will have to 
begin to correct the deep injustices of our social orders so that 
ordinary people develop a stake in the growth of the economy. Only 
then will they provide the political support needed to assert 
autonomy in our external relations and to bear the short term costs 
of our search for policy change. Bangladesh will have many rivers to 
cross before we move from our state of political atrophy and 
structural stagnation to assume the trapping of a sovereign nation 
state.

Rehman Sobhan is Chairman, Centre for Policy Dialogue.

_____



[2]

The Daily Times
November 05, 2003

Violent students attack 'un-Islamic' varsity show

KARACHI: Arguing that display of "obscene" material and listening to 
music were against the teachings of Islam, a group of enraged 
students on Tuesday ransacked the Department of Visual Studies of the 
University of Karachi, destroying musical instruments, sculptures and 
paintings,
They said the practices were particularly offensive in the holy month 
of Ramazan.
The department was holding its "Degree Show 2003," its first-ever 
such event, displaying projects prepared by final year students. The 
projects include several graphical illustrations combined with music, 
a documentary on eunuchs and some paintings, posters and sculptures. 
The show was attacked after some students declared the exhibition a 
"display of obscene and objectionable material" in Ramazan. Personal 
computers were among the other things destroyed. According to some 
students, playing music and bringing musical instruments inside the 
university was strictly prohibited in accordance with the university 
notification. They said if the university administration was not 
willing to ban such activities, it was the right of the students to 
stop by force any activity which was against the teachings of Islam.
The chairperson, of the Department of Visual Studies, Dr Duriya Qazi, 
denied there was a display of obscene or objectionable material on 
the occasion.
"We hold such exhibitions and shows to attract employees and people 
associated with the fine arts to increase job prospects for our 
students." Admitting that music was being played at the department, 
Dr Qazi said nobody approached her or any of the department's other 
faculty members to express disapproval or reservations regarding the 
show. Later, a team of university officials, including the advisor on 
students' affairs and campus security officer visited the Department 
of Visual Studies, asked details of the incident and assured teachers 
and students about the provision of security. -Staff Report

_____


[3]

The Praful Bidwai Column
November 3, 2003

Indian Elite In Mammon's Grip
The Greed Creed's high costs
By Praful Bidwai

As we recover from another Diwali--and another high-decibel assault 
on our senses, which sent urban pollution indices spinning to levels 
several times higher than the permissible limits--, it's time to 
pause and reflect on the explosive growth of consumer spending and 
the aggressive culture of consumerism in India. Consumer spending has 
reached wholly unprecedented proportions. Most of our cities 
witnessed ugly traffic jams during last fortnight's frenzied Diwali 
shopping. As insatiable bands of people indulged themselves in a 
furious festival of consumption, the Deepawali-related buying spree 
spread to the South too, where the festival has been traditionally 
unimportant, unlike in the North. In city after city, there were gold 
festivals, diamond sales, and fairs and bazaars to sell pricey cars, 
especially SUVs (sport-utility vehicles). In this "festival season", 
stores could sell just almost anything to upper-income buyers with 
their infinitely flexible budgets.

At the centre of this consumerism is the metropolitan upper class, 
which comprises about 6 percent of the urban population, according to 
the National Council of Applied Economic Research, with annual 
incomes upwards of Rs. 105,000 per household. This class has never 
had it so good. Over the past decade, the number of double-income 
families in its ranks has grown hugely. It now stands at 13 percent 
of the total and is estimated to rise to 35 percent within eight 
years. Second, the disposable income of this group has doubled or 
trebled, partly due to the emergence of high-salary islands in the 
service sector, such as information technology, call centres, fabric 
design, banking and telecommunications.

And third, thanks to trade liberalisation and the free import of 
luxury goods, there is so much more to buy--from chocolates to 
footwear (e.g. LVMH shoes costing Rs. 35,000), lingerie to cosmetics, 
and kitchen gadgets to cars. Such a bewildering variety of gleaming 
goods has never before been available to the Indian consumer.

No wonder, consumer spending rose between 2001 and 2002 by an 
astounding 130 percent in respect of gifts, 116 percent on 
entertainment parks, 108 percent on mobile phones and 68 percent on 
movies and theatre. The Indian consumer spent 58 percent more on 
clothing, 55 percent more on eating and 22 percent on vacations--in a 
single year. This year, says consumer survey agency KSA Technopak, 42 
percent of those questioned intend to spend even more. The most 
visible expression of the new tawdry consumerism is to be found in 
glitzy chrome-and-glass, air-conditioned shopping malls, with 
boutiques, restaurants, discos, bars and cinema theatres all rolled 
into one complex. Some 240 mega-malls are under construction in the 
country, in addition to the existing 20-odd. In Mumbai alone, 22 will 
open by the end of the year. And in Gurgaon, Delhi's super-rich 
suburb--it's so rich it has no shanties and jhuggis--there are 21 
malls under construction, in addition to the huge ones that produce 
traffic jams every evening.

The fourth--and most important--ingredient of the new consumerism is 
the change in the values and attitudes of the elite, which has 
embraced hedonism, or the pursuit of pleasure, with singular zeal and 
dedication. The underlying philosophy is that pleasure is the 
greatest good, and the highest form of pleasure is found in consuming 
more--what I first called Acquisitive Hedonism 15 years ago. India's 
upper class is now firmly in the grip of this hedonism. Thus, many 
international brands like Christiane Dior, Chanel and Hugo Boss 
expect their Indian sales to grow by 40 percent or more a year! There 
are many rich Indians who are willing to buy an Omega watch for Rs. 
1.5 lakhs, a Cartier ring for Rs. 5 lakhs or a designer dress for Rs. 
65,000.

A striking feature of the consumer boom is its extremely uneven 
distribution as regards goods and income-classes. Thus, sales of 
air-conditioners, mid-sized cars (which, unlike a decade ago, lead 
the automobile boom today), colour television sets, washing machines, 
etc., are rising at 20 percent or more, whereas sales of 
mass-consumption items like textiles and footwear are relatively 
stagnant. This is explained in part by the decade-long lowering of 
duties and taxes on luxury goods, and in part by easy retail credit, 
which has expanded 35-fold in just two years! In other words, people 
are borrowing to spend more. When they use a credit card, they often 
pay an interest rate of 36 percent!

Even more skewed is income-class distribution. The top 5 percent of 
the population accounts for 30 to 35 percent of total consumer 
spending. The bottom three-fourths spend about the same total amount 
as them. This is a case of a privileged group building upon its 
privileges--thus increasing its distance from the bulk of the 
population. Such disparities are grotesque, indeed obscene, and 
socially disruptive and disastrous. The mass of the population is 
being left behind by a tiny minority of successful people who started 
with an unfair advantage of birth and hence opportunity in the first 
place. This is the greatest downside of the new consumerism.  It's 
not the only one.

However, some conservatives see absolute virtue in this consumerism. 
They argue that greater spending even by a small minority will lead 
to greater overall GDP growth--which will eventually trickle down at 
least to the lower middle class. So we should not complain too much 
about inequalities. This view is profoundly mistaken. Spending by 
itself does not bring about growth. Equally necessary is saving and 
investment. Thus, a striking feature of the Asian Tiger 
economies--the only ones to go up the development ladder over the 
last quarters-century--is their high savings, of the order of 25 to 
35 percent of GDP. 

In India, the elite is too small to pull the majority upwards. The 
top 10 percent can prosper without affecting the bulk of the people. 
Besides, experience everywhere shows there is no trickle-down; 
rather, there's trickle-up, even flood-up. Growth alone cannot 
eradicate poverty: you need public action--investment in people who 
had no social opportunity because they were born underprivileged.

That's not all. The negative consequences of the present worship of 
Mammon are repulsive. Consider just these. The Greed Creed is a form 
of aggressive behaviour against the rest of the community. People are 
driven to consume not because consumption is some basic need, but 
because it is a socially constructed drive fuelled by ostentation and 
exhibitionism. You show yourself off to make others feel small. Human 
beings have to be persuaded to consume--through advertising, sales 
promotion and marketing. As Nom Chomsky argues, some $2 trillion, or 
five times India's entire GDP, is spent annually to advertise and 
sell products in the United States. Often, the persuasion is subtle 
and the persuader hidden. Thus, hundreds of millions of people became 
smokers--and victims of cancer and other diseases--over three or four 
generations, because they were made to believe that smoking is 
"lifestyle-related", and has to do with "freedom", glamour, with 
being modern, liberated, "confident".

We have celebrated Dussehra, Diwali, Eid and Christmas for hundreds 
of years. But it's only in the last 10 to 20 years that these have 
become mammoth shopping festivals, as have Valentine's Day, Mother's 
Day, or Karwa Chauth. We are being made to believe that the festival 
spirit lies in revelry, and that means shopping, buying, acquiring, 
accumulating. At the base of this elite consumerism is utter 
insensitivity to a majority of our people, a celebration of 
privilege, an in-your-face kind of superciliousness. This can only 
further strengthen elite arrogance and reinforce hierarchies in this 
horrendously unequal society where the majority lacks the necessities 
of civilised life: half the people are illiterate, 70 percent don't 
even have bathrooms, only about a fifth have concrete roofs over 
their heads.

Rampant consumerism leads people to commit unspeakably brutal and 
evil acts: from bride-burning for dowry to female foeticide. The 
connection between consumerist aspirations and "dowry deaths" 
(rather, murder) is well established. This unacceptable perversion is 
now spreading to the lower middle classes and the poor. Again, the 
latest Census figures show that the practice of female foeticide is 
particularly strong among the most affluent classes. It is the 
richest localities of South Delhi and Mumbai that have the lowest 
sex-ratios in the 0-6 age-group. The case of a woman doctor who died 
after being forced to go through eight abortions because the foetus 
was female in each instance should be an eye-opener to all.

Consumerism's environmental costs are equally onerous. Imagine the 
consequences of a runaway increase in the growth of air-conditioners 
and automobiles, with their huge contributions to greenhouse gas 
emissions, waste and pollution. The country is already drowning 
itself in a sea of plastic waste. Matters will become much worse 
under unbridled consumerism. The Greed Creed may satisfy the lust and 
self-indulgence of a small minority. But it will visit untold 
devastation upon this society. Gandhi did not exaggerate when he said 
there is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not for a 
single person's greed. Responsible citizenship means prudence, 
equality, austerity and placing limits upon greed and avarice in the 
universal interest.-end--


_____



[4]

Financial Times, November 4 2003

BJP's Hindu nationalism thwarted in Rajasthan
By Edward Luce

Normally one can seeplenty of clearwater betweenthe policies of 
India's ruling Hindu nationalist BJP and the country's main 
opposition - and secular - Congress party. But in Rajasthan, one of 
India's poorest states, voters are having a hard time distinguishing 
between the two.

The state, which along with three others goes to the polls on 
December 1 in what has been billed as a dress rehearsal for national 
elections in 2004, has been ruled by Congress for the last five years 
under the widely respected leadership of Ashok Gehlot, its chief 
minister.

But unlike in neighbouring Gujarat, where the state's BJP government 
won a landslide victory last December following an overtly 
anti-Muslim campaign, Mr Gehlot's opponents in the Rajasthan BJP are 
finding it hard to rouse the electorate.

In Gujarat, anti-Muslim riots last year claimed up to 2,000 lives 
following an arson attack on a train in which 58 Hindus were killed. 
In contrast Rajasthan, where Muslims make up 8 per cent of the 50m 
population, has a relatively good record of communal harmony.

"There is very little communal sentiment in Rajasthan," says Ganshyam 
Tiwari, vice-president of the state BJP. "Instead the electorate is 
preoccupied with questions like power supply and drought relief."

Indeed, this overwhelmingly rural desert state has just emerged from 
four years of drought -its worst in living memory. Much to the relief 
of Mr Gehlot, who won plaudits for providing effective food-for-work 
programmes during the crisis years, this year's monsoon has been 
bountiful. "The rain gods have finally decided to be kind to Mr 
Gehlot," said one Congress party worker in Jaipur, Rajasthan's 
capital. "This has deprived the BJP of their biggest psychological 
weapon."

Mr Gehlot, whose BJP opponent, Vasundhara Raje, is a princess from 
the royal family of Gwalior and has far greater star quality than the 
chief minister, has taken pains to deprive the BJP of its other key 
trump card: communal sentiment.

Earlier this year, Mr Gehlot ordered the imprisonment of Praveen 
Togadia, one of India's most hardline Hindu nationalist agitators. Mr 
Togadia, who is alleged to have played a key role in the Gujarat 
riots, was travelling through Rajasthan on a speaking campaign seen 
as blatantly provocative.

Since his release from jail, Mr Togadia and most of his colleagues 
have avoided travelling through Rajasthan. "Mr Gehlot won enormous 
respect by taking such a tough line on Hindu nationalism," said K.L. 
Kamal, former vice-chancellor of Rajasthan University. "He has 
demonstrated that the best way to deal with these people is with the 
stick."

Partly as a result, the BJP is running a low-key campaign in which 
the caste identity of its candidates appears to be more important 
than the policies they espouse. Much the same can be said of the 
Congress election strategy.

Both parties, for example, are promising to expand India's extensive 
system for reserving public sector jobs to include the poor or 
"economically backward" members of the upper castes. India's quota 
system, which accounts for 50 per cent of government jobs, is meant 
exclusively for lower castes, or the "socially excluded".

But whichever party wins - recent opinion polls suggest Congress has 
the edge - it seems likely the next administration will push for the 
public sector quota to rise to 65 per cent of all state jobs. Those 
already in despair about the state government's low productivity will 
have more to complain about after the polls.

"We are living in an era where caste identity is dominating politics 
in India," said Gulab Kataria, leader of the Rajasthan BJP in the 
state assembly. "To be honest, both my party and Congress are 
choosing far too many candidates on the basis of their caste and not 
on their merit as individuals. It augurs badly for the future of 
politics."

Girija Vyas, president of Congress in Rajasthan, admits to much the 
same pressures. Her office in Jaipur throngs with hopeful candidates 
keen to secure a Congress ticket for the elections. Ms Vyas, a former 
professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, says about half 
of all seats will be allocated on the basis of caste since there are 
constituencies where one caste or another is preponderant.

"It is quite a demoralising process but that is what the electorate 
responds to nowadays," she says. "If you ignore caste then you ignore 
the electorate and you end up losing the election."

Such politics can wreak havoc with sensible governance. But it also 
has unexpected side-effects.

"We will be fielding at least five Muslim candidates," says Mr Tiwari 
of the BJP. "We have to tailor our strategy to each constituency."


_____


[5]

The Indian Express
November 05, 2003

Poison myths
There's no correlation between religion and population growth
ANIL CHAMADIA AND SUBHASH GATADE

The Hindutva Right sermonises to the minorities. It also propagates 
myths. The alleged link between religion and population growth is one 
such myth that has gained credence of late.

The latest revelation that the population growth rate in Nepal, the 
world's only Hindu rashtra, at 2.1, is more than that of Islamic 
Bangladesh (2 per cent) should put such myth-makers on the defensive. 
It may also shock them to know that the growth rate of Hindus in J&K 
is twice that of the Muslims there. But, sadly, the Sangh Parivar 
continues to flog its stereotypes. BJP General Secretary Mukhtar 
Abbas Naqvi, addressing a recent meeting of the party's minority 
cell, gave Muslims the unsolicited advice that they should adopt 
birth control measures urgently if they do not want to be left behind.

But what does the data reveal? It shows that the growth rate for 
different minorities remains almost the same. According to 1961 
figures, Muslims were 10.7 per cent of the then population, 
Christians were 2.4 per cent, Sikhs were 1.8 per cent and Jain and 
Buddhists were 0.5 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively. The 1991 
figures corresponding to these different communities were 11.67 per 
cent, 2.32 per cent, 1.99 per cent, 0.41 per cent and 0.77 per cent 
respectively. If one compares the growth rate of Hindus and Muslims 
then, one would find that in the year 1971 Hindus comprised 82.7 per 
cent of the population whereas Muslims were 11.2 per cent and the 
figures reached 82.6 per cent and 11.4 per cent, respectively, in the 
year 1991.

A comparison of growth rates reveals that while the population of 
Hindus increased from 23.71 to 24.42 during the year 1961-71 and 
1971-1981 the respective figures for Muslims were 30.85 and 30.20 
respectively. This means that the population of Muslims actually 
decreased as compared to Hindus. It is also incorrect to say that 
Muslims abstain from family planning. A report published by the 
Baroda-based Operations Research Group in 1981 found that the rates 
of contraceptive use between Hindus and Muslims were comparable.

The "Hum paanch, unke pachees" mythology also talks of polygamy among 
Muslims. First, think of the practicality of such a situation. 
Suppose every person in a particular community marries four wives, 
will there be an enough number of women for everyone? Clearly not. 
Coming to specifics, data shows that polygamous relations are more 
prevalent in communities other than Muslims. A recent survey in eight 
blocks of a Muslim majority area in Ahmedabad revealed that only two 
people had four wives, two other people had three wives and 279 
people had two wives. As opposed to this there were 20,950 cases of 
"Maitri Karar" (friendship agreement) registered by Hindus with the 
collector in this single district. This is a term specific to Gujarat 
and is essentially a method to bypass the stringent provisions of the 
Hindu Marriage Act and enter into an "undeclared second marriage".

It needs to be understood, then, that there is no correlation between 
the rate of growth of population and religion. Population growth 
rates are influenced by socio-economic and cultural factors.


_____


[6]

The Indian Express
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=34620

A liberation from lies

In a bid to rewrite history, the RSS appropriates credit for the 
liberation of Goa. But its role in the state's freedom struggle was 
only marginal

PRABHAKAR SINARI

A systematic campaign is underway to distort and rewrite the history 
of Goa's freedom movement. The RSS is trying to take belated credit 
for a struggle in which its role was, at best, marginal. This is 
being done with the patronage of the BJP-led governments in Delhi and 
Panaji. This 'spin' cannot go unchallenged.

The campaign began in 2001, with the Centre flouting rules to bring 
115 RSS men under the Swatantrata Sainik Samman Pension scheme. They 
were said to have liberated Dadra and Nagar Haveli, when historical 
records show underground groups from Goa and locals did so.

Yet Home Minister L.K. Advani and Petroleum Minister Ram Naik 
presided over a function at Pune on December 10, 2001, where it was 
projected that the 115 RSS beneficiaries were the only liberators of 
Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The fighters from Goa and Daman who captured 
larger Portuguese forces were ignored.

The honouring of these RSS workers contradicted the Indian 
government's affidavit in the International Court of Justice, the 
Hague, that no 'Indian nationals'  were involved in the Dadra and 
Nagar Haveli operation and that it was entirely an internal uprising 
against the Portuguese.

As a direct participant, I can say that Goans and Damanians, under 
the banner of the United Front of Goans, Azad Gomantak Dal (AGD) and 
Goan People's Party accomplished the mission.

Dadra was liberated on the night of July 21, 1954, by a group led by 
Francis Mascarenhas, Woman Sardesai and 10 others (none from the 
RSS). Thereafter, the process of liberating Nagar Haveli began, under 
the aegis of the Azad Gomantak Dal. I was part of that team.

We attacked the police post and the taluka headquarter on the night 
of July 28. We had 10 RSS volunteers with us. The AGD had worked out 
a clear understanding that the volunteers were participating as 
individuals and not RSS members.

We captured Naroli, Pimparia Post and then Silvassa. We learnt the 
administrator, Captain Virgilio Fidalgo and Lieutenant Falcao and 
Chefe Pegao had moved to Khandvel, on the southern side of Nagar 
Haveli, with a force of 150. While retreating to Khandvel, they were 
forced to halt at Rakholi for the night of August 2, since the 
Damanganga river was in spate. When the rains did not subside the 
next morning, they crossed all the same.

The Portuguese set up rearguard defences on the other bank, while we 
were faced with the flooded Damanganga. I formed a unit of eight Goan 
volunteers and two from Daman. Early on August 10, with the help of a 
local ferryman, we crossed the furiously swirling waters, two at a 
time.

By noon we arrived at the outskirts of Khandvel. Though moving under 
cover of bushes, we knew we were being monitored. So we were not 
surprised when a hail of bullets greeted us. One group under the 
leadership of Prabhakar Vaidya charged the enemy positions on the 
left flank. I headed for the police post.

When I saw Sub-Chefe Pereira firing at us, I took cover. At the 
appropriate moment, I pounced on him and snatched his stengun. He 
begged for his life. I stuck the stengun in Pereira's back and got 
him to order his soldiers to lay down their arms. It took us two 
hours to disarm around 80 members of the Portuguese force. Most of 
them were drunk, demoralised and mortally afraid.

Sub-Chefe Pereira was holding up the rear, while his seniors led by 
Captain Fidalgo, Lieutenant Falcao and Chefe Pegao were on the run, 
hoping to sneak into Daman. When they learnt of Khandvel's fall, they 
preferred to surrender to Indian authorities. Thus Dadra and Nagar 
Haveli were liberated.

There was not a single RSS volunteer with the United Front of Goans 
or the Goan People's Party. It's only the AGD that used their 
services. The number of such RSS volunteers would have been 40-45. Of 
these about 15, mostly from Talegaon arrived at Silvassa on August 3, 
1954, after its liberation. They dragged out the priest of Silvassa 
church, disgracing the movement.

Morarji Desai, then chief minister of Bombay state, sent John Lobo, 
then deputy commissioner of police, to Silvassa. On his report, most 
of the RSS volunteers were removed from Nagar Haveli. Now it's Goa's 
turn to face the RSS spin. It is learnt the Centre has decided to 
sanction the Samman Pension 4,000 persons from Maharashtra and 
another 6,000 from other states. The logic: they had offered 
satyagraha in Goa, 1954-55.

The reality is these 10,000 people were never actually able to 
participate in satyagraha in Goa. A few who could, like N.G. Gore and 
Shirubhau Limaye, are already recipients of pensions. The bulk of the 
satyagrahis could not even reach Goa's borders because of a Bombay 
government ban.

The Centre can at best give these people a special certificate, not 
push them into the lifelong Swatantrata Samman Scheme. That would 
bring a bad name to the entire liberation movement. Some 1,500 local 
Goan freedom fighters are being equated with 10,000 or even more from 
outside.

(The author took part in the liberation of Goa. He later joined the IPS)


_____


[7]


The Telegraph
November 05, 2003

Hashmi wheel turns, 14 years on

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Safdar Hashmi
New Delhi, Nov. 4: More than 14 years after theatre activist Safdar 
Hashmi was murdered, a Ghaziabad court has convicted the 12 accused.

Mukesh Sharma, Devi Saran Sharma, Jitendra, Ramautar, Ramesh, Karan 
Singh, Vinod Singh, Suresh, Yunus Ali and Tahir were found guilty of 
murdering Hashmi in January 1989.

The others convicted, Rakhi Ram and Surjit Singh Nagar, died while 
the trial was on.

Arguments on the sentence will be heard tomorrow.

Hashmi, a CPM member, was assaulted on January 1 while performing a 
street play, Halla Bol, near Ambedkar Park in Ghaziabad before a big 
audience as part of a municipal election campaign.

The play, organised under the banner of the Jan Natya Manch, was 
aimed at attracting voters for Ramanand Jha, who was Mukesh's rival 
for the mayor's post, Ghaziabad police had said. Jha was a candidate 
of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (Citu).

Around 11 am, Mukesh, the Congress candidate, arrived at the play 
venue in Jhandapur village leading an election procession. He asked 
the performers to make way for them to pass through.

Jha and Hashmi requested Mukesh to wait till the play was over or 
take another route, police had said. Mukesh retreated, only to return 
with 11 others, armed with lathis, iron rods and other weapons.

Both the performers and the audience were assaulted and pelted with 
stones, seriously injuring Hashmi, Jha, Chandra Dhan Rai, Yadumani 
Vohra and Pandit Singh.

Hashmi, Jha and the others ran for cover, police said. Mukesh chased 
Hashmi and Vohra and thrashed them in the local Citu office where 
they had ducked for cover.

Jha, who ran into the house of Ram Bahadur, was beaten there. 
According to the police, the mob shot Bahadur dead.

Hashmi was first rushed to Narendra Mohan Hospital in Ghaziabad, from 
where he was shifted to Irwin Hospital in Delhi. He died there the 
next day.

Additional district and sessions judge Chandra Deo Rai yesterday 
convicted the accused under the Indian Penal Code of murder (Section 
302), rioting (147), rioting and armed with deadly weapons (148), 
being member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence (149), 
voluntarily causing hurt (323) and trespassing into a house with the 
intention of assaulting people (452). All the accused were present in 
court.

Rajan Prasad of Sahmat, a Left cultural organisation Hashmi had set 
up, said: "Justice delayed is better than justice denied."

Public prosecutor Ved Pal Saini blamed the delay on the influential 
accused who he alleged had threatened witnesses.

"It is a welcome verdict, though belated," CPM general secretary 
Harkishen Singh Surjeet said.

o o o

The Hindu, November 5, 2003

Judge to pronounce sentence today in Safdar Hashmi murder case
http://www.thehindu.com/2003/11/05/stories/2003110511411100.htm


_____


[8]

International South Asia Forum. Bulletin [19], November 1, 2003
is now available
Postal address: Box 272, Westmount Stn., QC, Canada H3Z 2T2 (Tel. 514 346-9477)
(e-mail; insaf at insaf.net or visit our website http://www.insaf.net)



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