SACW | 8 Nov 2004

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire   |  8 November,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] The Morning After:  The Bitter Pill Of "American Democracy" (Vinay Lal)
[2] Sri Lanka: Torture Still Instilled in Police Culture (Aaron Goodman)
[3] Pakistan: Open letter to the prime minister (Feryal Ali Gauhar)
[4] India: May be the UPA government should learn from China (Daya Varma)
[5] India: Sorry, you're not part of the plan (Siddharth Varadarajan)
[6] India: Gujarat Genocide Trials - Appeal for the Protection of 
Witnesses (Mukul Dube, Harsh Kapoor)
[7] India:  Let us not manipulate Zahira Shaikh (Rajdeep Sardesai)
[8]  Upcoming events:
- A dance recital by Tekrik-e-Niswan, Karachi - Director: Sheema Khermani.
and A play by Interactive Resource Centre - Director: Mohammad Waseem
(Calcutta, November 19, 2004)


--------------

[1]

THE MORNING AFTER:  THE BITTER PILL OF "AMERICAN DEMOCRACY"
Vinay Lal


The recently concluded American elections, which have given George W. 
Bush the victorious verdict that he so vigorously sought, are already 
being touted as the most marvelous demonstration of the success and 
robustness of American democracy.  The lines to vote were reported to 
be unusually long in many places around the country, the prolific 
predictions about fraud, voting irregularities, and the unreliability 
of electronic voting machines nearly all fell flat, a record number 
of new (mostly young) voters made their presence felt at the polls, 
and more Americans cast their vote than at any time since 1968.  The 
usual platitudes, calling upon all Americans to "unite" after a 
bitterly divisive election campaign, were heard from Senator Kerry in 
his concession speech, and once again Bush, that archangel of 
"compassionate conservatism", has promised his opponent's supporters 
that he will attempt to win their trust.  Only the future lies ahead 
of this, as Bush puts it, "amazing country". 

Quite to the contrary, these elections furnish the most decisive 
illustration of the sheer mockery that electoral democracy has become 
in America. The iconoclastic American thinker, Paul Goodman, observed 
four decades ago in Compulsory Miseducation that American democracy 
serves no other purpose than to help citizens distinguish between 
"indistinguishable candidates".  Both parties are utterly beholden to 
the culture of the corporation and what used to be called "monied 
interests", and both have contributed to bloated military budgets; 
besides, however short the memory of those who fetishize Democrats as 
paragons of liberalism, decency, and civility, Democratic 
administrations have been scarcely reticent in exercising military 
power to subjugate enemies or ensure American dominance.  Many 
Democrats held Ralph Nader, who understands better than most people 
the elaborate hoax by means of which one party has been masquerading 
as two for a very long time, responsible for sprinting votes away 
from Al Gore in 2000.  This served as one long-lasting excuse to 
which the Democrats could resort to explain why Gore was unable to 
prevail at the polls, and also explains why they went to 
extraordinary lengths to keep him from appearing on ballots in 2004; 
the other excuse originated in the circumstances under which a 
tenacious Bush, whose ambition for power is just as ruthless as his 
ignorance and arrogance are colossal, was able to get his brother Jeb 
Bush and the Supreme Court to hand over the White House to him.  The 
dictators who run banana republics were doubtless imbibing a very 
different meaning from the axiom that America leads the way.

The present elections have blown these excuses, under which the 
Democrats have been sheltering and smoldering, to smithereens. 
Bush's victory margin, by the standards of democracy, is very large. 
Nader, the so-called "spoiler and traitor", won a mere few hundred 
thousand votes, and his presence doubtless even emboldened more 
Democrats to go to the polls.  If Americans could not much 
distinguish between Bush and Kerry, and indeed how could they when 
Kerry, with his promise to "hunt down" the terrorists and wipe them 
from the face of this earth, sounded entirely like his opponent, the 
Democrats must ponder how they could have moved so far to the right 
and thus surrendered what little remains of their identity. 
Considering the horrendous record that Bush has compiled in nearly 
every domain of national life -- an illegal war of aggression against 
Iraq, the occupation of a sovereign nation, the strident embrace of 
militarism, the reckless disregard for the environment, the shameless 
pandering to the wealthy, the transformation of a 5-trillion dollar 
surplus into a 400-billion dollar deficit, the erosion of civil 
liberties, and much else -- one cannot but conclude that the American 
people have given Bush carte blanche to do more of the same.   Even 
the English language has not been spared by the Butcher of Crawford. 
Bush's election means, in stark terms, that the majority of Americans 
condone the torture and indefinite confinement of suspects, the 
abrogation of international conventions, and an indefinite war -- of 
terror, not just on terror -- against nameless and numberless 
suspects.  No extenuating circumstances can be pleaded on behalf of 
Americans, however much progressive intellectuals might like to think 
that Americans are fundamentally "good and merely "misinformed" by 
the corporate media.

It is no secret that the defeat of George Bush was, from the 
standpoint of the world, a consummation devoutly to be wished for. 
Many well-meaning Americans deride Bush as an "embarrassment".  Used 
with reference to him, the word sounds like an encomium.  The best of 
peoples are embarrassed by their own actions at times, and 
embarrassment can, at least on occasion, be read in the register of 
modesty, awkwardness, and innocent virtue.  'Embarrassment' seems 
wholly inadequate as an expression of the visceral anger and hatred 
Bush unleashes among some of his detractors.  Those even more 
critical of Bush are inclined to view him as a liar.  There is, 
however, scarcely any politician in the world who does not lie, 
though one can say of Bush that he almost always lies.  But what if 
the American electorate understood his lies to be desirable, 
necessary, and premonitions of truth?  Bush lied to the world about 
the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he lied about 
the purported imminence of a threat against the United States from 
Iraq, and he falsely claimed a link between the al-Qaeda network and 
Iraq.  Yet none of these revelations about the insidious modes in 
which consent is manufactured made an iota of difference, and Bush 
charged ahead with insistent reiterations of the same falsehoods.

Consequently, more arresting clues to the danger that Bush poses to 
the world must be located elsewhere.  A very substantial number of 
Americans have declared that they found Bush to embody "moral 
values", presumably the same moral values that they hold sacrosanct. 
Bush's moral vision, as is well-known, extends to clear and 
unambiguous distinctions between "good and evil", and he is emphatic 
in his pronounced belief that "those who are not for us, are against 
USA".  The success of Bush points, in other words, to something much 
more ominous, namely the sheer inability of Americans to comprehend 
complexity and retain some degree of moral ambivalence.  The fear 
that Bush is charged with exploiting, namely the fear of terrorism, 
is more broadly the fear of the unknown, the fear of ambiguity.  Such 
exhortations to simplicity and unadorned moral fervor, and clear 
invocations of authoritarianism, couched as messages to people to 
entrust themselves into the hands of tried leaders who are hard on 
crime and terror, have in the past unfailingly furnished the recipe 
for transition to anti-democratic, even totalitarian, regimes.

Elections in India have consequences mainly for the Indian 
sub-continent, just as those in Australia largely impact Australia. 
But the American elections impact every person in the world, and 
there are clearly compelling reasons why every adult in the world 
should be allowed to vote in an American presidential election. 
However much every American might balk at this suggestion, it is 
indisputable, as the striking examples of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, 
Nicaragua, El Salvador, Afghanistan, and Iraq so vividly demonstrate, 
that the United States has never considered sovereignty an inviolable 
fact of international politics.  We shall, then, have to radically 
rethink the received notions of the nation-state, sovereignty, 
democracy, and internationalism.   These elections will widen the 
gulf between Americans, ensconced in their gigantic Hummers and 
endlessly adrift in the aisles of Cosco and Walmart, and most of the 
rest of the "civilized world".  One nonviolent way of moving the 
world towards a new conception of ecumenical cosmopolitanism is to 
allow every adult an involvement in the affairs of a nation that 
exercises an irrepressible influence on their lives.



______


[2]

Inter Press Service - November 2, 2004

RIGHTS-SRI LANKA:
Torture Still Instilled in Police Culture

Aaron Goodman

COLOMBO, Nov 2 (IPS) - When Anthony Michael Fernando, a 50 year-old 
trade union secretary in Sri Lanka, was sentenced to a year in prison 
for contempt of court, he thought his life could not get any worse.
But four days after being sent to jail in February 2003 on charges 
later criticised by the U.N. Special Representative on the 
Independence of the Judiciary and Lawyers as an injustice done by the 
courts, he suffered a massive asthma attack.
While being treated in hospital, he had another attack, fell and 
injured his spine. And as he was being escorted back to prison, he 
says he was beaten and tortured by police. ''Two police officers were 
carrying me in a stretcher to the prison van,'' recalls Fernando at a 
church in Sri Lanka's capital that works to defend torture victims.
''The police officers ordered me to stand up and walk. I told them I 
was having a spinal problem, and they threw me into the van like 
dirt. And while the van was moving, one of the officers in civilian 
clothes beat and kicked me on my spine and all over my body,'' he 
tells IPS.
For the next 104 days, Fernando was hospitalised. After serving 10 
months of his jail term, he was finally freed. But when he got home, 
he started receiving death threats by telephone demanding that he 
withdraw the complaints he had filed against the police officers who 
allegedly tortured him. Shortly thereafter, the threats took on much 
more serious proportions.
''On February 2 (this year) I was coming out of a friend's house and 
there was a vehicle parked opposite his gate,'' explains Fernando. 
''Someone opened the sliding door and jumped out and sprayed some 
kind of gas onto my face. It didn't work because I started coughing. 
He tried to put a handkerchief and cover my mouth, but because that 
failed, I dodged and ran to the closest tailor shop.''
For most of the last 30 years, Sri Lanka has been gripped by internal 
conflict and civil war. Over 60,000 people have died in fighting 
between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam 
(LTTE). The Tigers have been fighting for a separate homeland for 
minority Tamils in the north and east of the largely Buddhist country 
since 1983.
A 32 month-old ceasefire currently hangs in the balance. Fighting 
between rival factions of the Tamil Tigers, and alleged support from 
the state for breakaway Tiger leader Venayagamoorthy Muralitharan, 
best known by his alias, Colonel Karuna Amman, threatens to draw the 
country back into war.
Meanwhile, a number of prominent civil society organisations and 
human rights groups, both in Sri Lanka and internationally, continue 
to make ending police torture their foremost priority.
In 2001, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) based in Hong Kong 
began documenting police torture in Sri Lanka. In doing so, they and 
other groups that focused on the issue broke a longstanding taboo 
about the subject.
Yet in spite of near-daily reports by the country's media about 
police torture, and international pressure placed on the government 
to try to stop the abuses, torture remains a widespread form of 
police investigation in Sri Lanka.
Last year, the AHRC documented 31 cases of torture committed by 
police involving 46 victims at 29 police stations. Meanwhile, the 
group claims the numbers are much higher.
''There are many reasons for it, but torture is widespread,'' says 
Ali Saleem, a representative of the AHRC in Sri Lanka.
"It is just part of normal day-to-day business for police. We have 
been trying to make sure that it stops, but it seems to be beyond 
state control to stop it,'' he says in an interview.
Saleem points to the militarisation of the police over the last 30 
years as it moved from a crime detection and law enforcement agency 
to an insurgency suppression body. He attributes that role change as 
the root cause of such high rates of torture in police stations.
Yet in spite of its lobbying efforts, Saleem argues the state has not 
taken the steps that are required in order to end torture. ''There is 
a legal framework to try to stop torture, but it's not being 
implemented,'' says Saleem.
''The government isn't doing anything. Secondly, institutions fail to 
respond to victims of human rights violations. There are no witness 
protection arrangements. If you submit a human rights complaint 
against police, you are re-victimised, harassed, and sometimes 
attempts are made to kill you,'' he adds.
Rohan Edrisinha is director of the legal unit at the Centre for 
Policy Alternatives in Colombo. For the last five years, he and a 
number of other organisations have led a campaign to try to pressure 
the government to repeal the country's Prevention of Terrorism Act 
(PTA). According to Edrisinha, the PTA and other emergency measures, 
implemented by the state beginning in 1979, need to be abolished in 
order to stop torture.
''Repealing the PTA is important in order to eradicate torture, and 
also to eradicate impunity which has developed in Sri Lanka as a 
result of Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict,'' says Edrisinha. "The PTA, 
Emergency Regulations, and other pieces of legislation have given 
sweeping powers to the armed forces which sometimes result in human 
rights violations of a very serious nature.''
In spite of a million signatures collected by the campaign to try to 
repeal the PTA, as well as widespread protests against the act since 
its inception, the country's own minister of justice and judicial 
reforms, John Seneviratne, dismisses the existence of any legitimate 
lobbying efforts related to this issue.
''I should say that as a responsible minister of this country, that 
there has not been a campaign to repeal the PTA,'' states the 
minister. ''There may have been some sporadic requests to repeal this 
PTA, but these requests are engineered by these NGOs who are engaged 
in really the provoking the minds of the people in their favour.''
Although Sri Lanka signed the Convention Against Torture in 1994 that 
prescribes a mandatory seven-year sentence, only two people have been 
successfully convicted under the act. Among 59 other cases, only 10 
have been filed in the courts. The rest remain with the attorney 
general's department. This leaves most torture victims, including 
Anthony Fernando, to file fundamental rights cases before the Supreme 
Court. In these cases, compensation is sometimes awarded, but jail 
terms for perpetrators are never applied.
The country's own Human Rights Commission chaired by the 
well-respected former U.N. special representative on violence against 
women, Radhika Coomaraswamy, recently implemented a zero-tolerance 
policy on torture. The commission established a special torture unit 
to investigate torture cases, began visiting police stations around 
the country as a preventive measure, and is coordinating training 
sessions for police on human rights and alternative methods of 
investigation.
''Due to rapid recruitment into the police force, the police force 
has not been thoroughly trained in how to do investigations properly, 
so that as a practice they engage in torture as a first means of 
getting information,'' argues Coomaraswamy.
''Frequently, the police pick up an informant and beat him up to get 
the information they are looking for, especially if he's lower class 
and doesn't have access to the relief that people of upper classes 
have,'' she tells IPS. ''This is a structural problem, in that this 
is about everyday policing and the need is to change the way police 
do investigations and deal with the community.'' (END/2004)

______


[3]

DAWN
06 November 2004

OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz,
Prime Minister's House, Islamabad
Dear Sir,
I write to you today after many long days of serious consideration, 
wondering whether it was worth the effort, even worth the paper I 
write on, to speak to you about the things which trouble me, which 
keep me awake at night, pulsing like a river whose banks will surely 
collapse with the weight of the water which gathers bit by bit, even 
in this barren, desert landscape which stretches before me.
Two months ago I began another letter to you, congratulating you on 
your achievement of the highest office in the land and asking you the 
questions I have asked each time I have had the privilege to meet you.
These were questions the answers to which had been deferred by you, 
questions leading perhaps to further questions, enquiring about the 
desperate times we have entered, demanding resolutions.
I never finished that letter, Sir, because at a certain point I lost 
all hope, and even as I saw the smart, young armies of adolescent 
ministers swell the ranks of your stately cabinet, I feared the 
terrible disaster which awaits us, sharpening its claws on the flesh 
of my beloved homeland, smacking its purple lips in smug anticipation 
of the feast which awaits.
Sir, it appears to me that the method one adopts to seek solutions 
should reflect the nature of the problem itself. In other words, in 
terms of state craft, the policies which are formulated in order to 
redress issues and grievances must take into consideration causality.
Obviously, in order to understand the essential relationship between 
cause and effect, it is necessary to first understand the cause 
itself, and for this one needs to be informed, one needs to peel off 
the layers of acquired meaning and to seek the source of the rot 
which besets us.
For some reason, Sir, it appears to me that this most evident, simple 
truth has been obfuscated by insidious design, intended perhaps to 
skirt around the issue and to beat a drum which no one hears, 
promising to lead us further into dangerous complacency.
What is of grave concern, Sir, is the state's perilous effort to 
cling on to some vague notions of modernization and development which 
came into vogue following the decolonization of what is now known as 
the less developed world.
At that time in history, the armies of the newly independent states 
were considered to be the forces of modernization. Given that 
military officers often received their training within the various 
institutions of the colonial administrative structure, it was 
considered that this training would serve to create a new paradigm of 
development, new ways of thinking and moving forward.
And so we saw the emergence of military juntas in much of the 
decolonized world, stretching from Argentina to Indonesia, uniformed 
men wielding power and preening their moustaches meaningfully, 
comfortable in the knowledge of their supposed infallibility.
Along with military rule came military hardware and the consultants 
who drew up the long list of demands to further enrich the depots 
where our nation's security supposedly lay, safe beneath weapons 
intended to annihilate the enemy.
We were told that our borders were not safe, that we needed to invest 
in armaments in order to protect the fragile state. We were told that 
Harvard educated economists would draw up development plans so that 
our country can achieve its fullest potential, so that our people can 
enjoy the benefits of independence.
And so we saw the men with the Mont Blanc pens flourishing signatures 
on pieces of paper which have held us hostage to international 
lending institutions for half a century.
Exactly 50 years ago, Sir, our government signed a joint 
Pakistan-American communique announcing a grant of $105 million in 
economic aid, representing an increase of $80 million over the 
previous programme.
At the signing of this agreement, the US government announced that it 
will "endeavour to accelerate the substantial military aid programmes 
for Pakistan" which began in October 1954 and lasted till 1965. By 
the mid-1960s, the focus of US policy was shifting on South Asia.
A US arms embargo was imposed in 1965 which lasted for ten years. The 
period of relative neglect by the US ended abruptly with the Soviet 
invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.
Pakistan was hailed as an indispensable ally of America, and over the 
next eight years its military dictator, General Ziaul Haq, received 
some $7 billion in military and economic aid from the US.
These loans, contracted by an undemocratic government and devoted to 
unproductive ends, formed the nub of a debt burden that would be 
serviced far into the future by the poor of Pakistan.
Three years ago, our position as a state of geo-political 
significance was given a massive shot in the arm. After 14 years on 
the sidelines, in September 2001, Pakistan once again assumed a 
position of great strategic importance to the US, this time as a 
crucial ally in the West's so-called "war against terror".
This unenviable role has placed huge additional demands on the 
country's economy at the end of a period which had already witnessed 
a steady increase in poverty. By 1999 some 47 million people were 
living below the poverty line, and the incidence is now estimated to 
be significantly higher.
During this period the servicing of Pakistan's escalating external 
debt, which by 2000-01 amounted to 54.9 per cent of the country's 
GDP, had severely curtailed pro-poor policies, and the costly support 
now required by the US makes it all the more imperative that this 
unsustainable burden be properly addressed.
Sir, I need not remind you that the current war into which we have 
been subsumed is a war created by the policies of the United States 
in this region. It seems ironic that the poor in our country should 
be made to foot the bill for US foreign policy objectives.
It is also ironic that the louder the talk about our economy "taking 
off", the shallower and more insidious the argument for increasing 
foreign interference in our policies.
It is beyond dispute that conditions have worsened for the poor of 
Pakistan over the last decade. The Asian Development Bank in its 
Poverty Assessment Report of 2002 observes that "since 1999, growth 
has slowed down even further, the fiscal squeeze has intensified, 
development spending has declined, and the country has experienced 
severe drought...the incidence of poverty in Pakistan is now 
significantly higher than in 1999".
While admitting that exogenous shocks such as drought and global 
recession have adversely affected the economy, the country's western 
creditors and their institutions typically conclude that bad 
governance and political instability lie at the root of the problem.
They assert that if these were rectified, the usual package of 
macro-economic stabilization and structural reforms would lead to 
growth and a general increase in prosperity.
Sir, I have heard this argument countless times, and I have heard the 
refrain about the enriching effect that this supposed growth will 
bring to the poor of our country.
I have been distressed at the ease with which this mythology has been 
created and then perpetuated, spoken eloquently through the mouths of 
the scions and heiresses of feudal lords who have taken it upon 
themselves to become Their Master's Voices raised in unison. I have 
been even more disturbed by the bandying about of figures which would 
make any economist worth her salt cringe.
Sir, it is absolutely not true that with a growth rate of 6.7 per 
cent the poor of our country shall be pulled out of the poverty trap. 
The "trickle down" effect spoken about ad nauseam does not occur 
until an economy has achieved a 13-14 per cent growth rate, which is, 
in most cases, unsustainable.
In any case, Sir, the very same theorists who came up with the rather 
patronizing concept of "trickle down" have reconsidered it and thrown 
it out of the proverbial window.
I believe even at the premier international lending institute, 
poverty is being examined for structural causes, not for symptoms, 
but for the very root of deprivation and inequity.
The economic legacy inherited from General Zia in 1988 already 
consisted of a huge and escalating external debt burden, including 
military loans, and was further marked by a neglect of development 
expenditure.
The IFI-led stabilization and reform policies in the decade following 
General Zia's death simply led to an increase in the debt, and 
inherently required continued cuts in development expenditure in 
order to transfer assets to creditors.
Over this time, real wages fell, inequality and unemployment 
increased, and Human Development Indicators lagged behind those of 
comparably low-income developing countries in South Asia.
Moreover, although fiscal austerity measures impacted adversely on 
the poor, debt servicing and defence spending requirements prevented 
the fiscal deficit from falling in any substantial way.
Sir, it is my humble submission that the reality of poverty in our 
country needs to be looked at through the eyes of the poor, not 
through the designer-bespectacled gaze of the privileged elite which 
make up your cabinet.
It is not possible for one who has not known hunger to eradicate it, 
it is not possible for one who has not known injustice to deliver 
justice. It is not possible for one who has been fattened on the 
wealth of the land to know the deprivation of land and one's 
intrinsic connection to it.
And it is certainly paradoxical to expect genuine land reforms if 
parliament is populated with feudal lords and ladies whose primary 
interest would appear to be the perpetuation of the oppression which 
enriches them and which allows them the privilege of "representing" 
their constituencies.
Perhaps it is time to take a long, hard look at our country's 
reality, at the lives of the poor who have never been called to the 
table when decisions regarding their lives have been formulated.
Perhaps it is time to consider that it is not only bad governance and 
tempestuous politics which are not conducive to a thriving economy. 
It is time, Sir, to recognize that poverty in our country has 
increased to a large extent as a result of IFI funded stabilization 
and structural adjustment programmes, the very policies which were 
meant to dig us out of the quagmire which threatens to suffocate 
progress and prosperity for all.
And it is time to take cognizance of the fact that unless resources 
are shared equitably, in particular land, hunger shall claim our 
people while suited booted charlatans beam and amuse themselves with 
meaningless portfolios and empty rhetoric.
It is a fact, Sir, that while the rulers of our country speak in 
glowing terms of the "progress" we have supposedly made in the past 
five years, thousands of rural poor are borrowing money to take a bus 
ride into the cities, in the hope of employment, in search of a life.
Listen to their voices, Sir, if you genuinely wish to rectify the 
wrong done to our people for over 50 years. Listen, for they shall 
show you something different from either your shadow at morning 
striding behind you; or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; 
they will show you fear in a handful of dust...
Yours truly,
Feryal Ali Gauhar


______


[4]

insaf Bulletin [31]
November, 2004

MAY BE THE UPA GOVERNMENT SHOULD LEARN FROM CHINA
Daya Varma

The October 23 edition  of the Globe and Mail (Canada's New York 
Times) displayed on the entire front page three lines of large 
Chinese characters. On the top of each set of these characters was 
written in English: "If, you can't read these words, better start 
brushing up. A profound global shift has begun, the kind that occurs 
once every few lifetimes. Don't be left behind. CHINA RISING". The 
inside cover page had the Letter from the Editor titled "Witnessing 
the birth of a superpower".  The next 18 pages described one thing or 
the other about China.
  I  feel immensely happy at the prospect of  a brighter future for 
former colonies and neo-colonies, long dominated by  the West and 
lately  by the rogue United States. So looking at the Globe and Mail 
was so refreshing despite its hostile attitude and the West's fear of 
an Eastern "Empire".
I wonder if late Chairman Mao Zedong was aware of this when he 
pronounced on October 1, 1949 from Tiananmen Square that China has 
stood up. I am inclined to feel he did.
  So why can India not become like China? India was in every which way 
far ahead of China on August 15, 1947, two years before China was 
liberated. India too has progressed. The life expectancy has 
approximately doubled during these 50 odd years, which is only 
possible if there has been an all round progress.  But Indian 
progress is small compared with that of China. Our snail-pace 
progress  can only partly be explained by the chaotic period under 
anybody-or-everybody-but-not-Congress governments and disastrous rule 
by the fascist Sangh Parivar.  The significant part of the answer 
lies elsewhere. But where?
Usually a political formation which assumes power begins to develop a 
comprehensive economic and political plan. The Chinese Communist 
Party had one, which gave rise to several transformations but all 
planned. The Indian National Congress began to develop basic economic 
and political framework for India in 1930's. The Communist Party of 
India (CPI) was the only alternative major political formation before 
and for quite some time after the independence; however, its vision 
was that of the Soviet kind of socialism. Because socialism required 
revolution, there was no need for any interim economic plan. So it 
entered the Indian Parliament in a surprisingly robust way in 1952 
only as a critic rather than  with an alternative economic plan 
within a capitalist framework.
Most non-Marxist economists think that Indian economy is  less 
integrated with global capital than is that of China. In some small 
way the economic journey of both countries has something in common. 
Both started with greater state control. In both cases the economic 
foundation which the state-led development created led to the opening 
of the economy. Nehru-Mahalanobis framework led to the Rajiv-Manmohan 
Singh approach. Mao's approach was replaced by that of Deng 
Tsao-Peng. This shift was forced by what preceded it.     
Can there be an economy outside the international financial 
institutions? Or the global capitalist framework? North Korea may be 
an exception. But India can hardly afford to become a North Korea 
although it can aspire to become a China.
The task before a  government like that of India is  to formulate 
policies and  ensure that they are implemented judiciously. Indian 
economy is big enough to ensure that its dealings with the developed 
capitalist countries are not detrimental to India's progress and any 
disinvestment of the public sector does not jeopardize the interest 
of workers.
The 14th Parliamentary election in India brought the left parties 
into the circle of decision-makers in a rather big way. Not only this 
but more. Every body who is any body is somehow in the inner or 
almost inner circle of governance. This is more than what ever 
happened during the Nehru-Indira Gandhi period. Can the Indian left 
try to learn from the Chinese model of economic reforms?

______


[5]

The Hindu
Oct 06, 2004

SORRY, YOU'RE NOT PART OF THE PLAN
By Siddharth Varadarajan

The debate over the composition of the Planning Commission panels was 
really a battle over the direction of the economy. And the outcome 
suggests the electorate's concerns do not count.

RIGHT IN the midst of the high-profile controversy over the inclusion 
of representatives of the World Bank and McKinsey in the formal 
deliberative process of the Planning Commission, an act of exclusion 
was being played out in distant Noamundi, a part of Jharkhand's West 
Singhbhum district that is rich in iron ore. Several hundred 
villagers who wished to take part in a public hearing on the proposed 
expansion of mining leases were not allowed inside to air their views.

In New Delhi, it is comforting to know that Montek Singh Ahluwalia 
believes in keeping the Government's "doors and windows open" to all 
influences. But at the grassroots, where the struggle for economic 
betterment is being waged, the gates are usually tightly bolted for 
all those who are poor or landless or tribal or likely to be 
displaced by some big project or the other. In Noamundi, the 
September 25 public hearing was held inside the premises of the Tata 
Iron and Steel Company - something which was a violation of the 
Environment Ministry's statutory norms. According to Chokro Khandait 
of the Chaibasa-based Jharkhand Organisation for Human Rights 
(JOHAR), the villagers fear TISCO's expanded mining operations will 
lead to the loss of their lands. They wanted to speak out in the 
public hearing, to air their views, he told me. "But the police 
stopped us before we could come near the premises." Asked who were 
the "300 people from nearby villages" who attended the hearing - as 
claimed in the official Tata press release - Mr. Khandait, whose 
organisation now plans to move the High Court, alleges they were 
mostly TISCO employees.

So there we have it: At the very moment when Dr. Ahluwalia was 
elegantly arguing that World Bank and McKinsey people had to be part 
of Yojana Bhavan's planning process because of the "perspective on 
global practice" these agencies would bring to the table, another 
more local argument over planning and perspective was being settled 
with the help of bamboo staves and Section 144. In India, 
multinational consulting companies and banks have a right to full 
representation in public bodies but the public has no right to attend 
public hearings, especially since they tend to be held inside private 
premises.

Though cast in the unfortunate form of a debate over sovereignty and 
the propriety of "foreign" experts serving on quasi-official panels, 
the question at hand was never really about their ethnicity or 
domicile but the utility and quality of the advice they brought with 
them. During the early days of Planning, nobody objected to the Dutch 
economist Jan Tinbergen (who was actually on the Dutch Government's 
planning board at the time), the Norwegian Ragnar Frisch or the 
Polish-American Paul Rosenstein-Rodan being regularly consulted. 
Under P.C. Mahalanobis, the Indian Statistical Institute and its 
journal, Sankhya - which provided crucial intellectual inputs to 
planning in India - opened their doors to economists like Oskar 
Lange, Michal Kalecki, N. Georgescu-Roegen and Branko Horvat. The 
econometric model for India's fourth Five Year Plan drew heavily upon 
the `consistency model' of Alan S. Manne of M.I.T. and Ashok Rudra. 
And the Ministry of Finance threw open its most confidential files 
for Nicholas Kaldor to produce his 1956 report on Indian Tax Reform.

Nobody objected to "foreigners" then and with good reason. For none 
of them allowed the advice they proffered to be weighed down by any 
institutional or corporate baggage. This does not mean their advice 
was always correct but it was delivered without the slightest trace 
of an ulterior motive. If Prof. Frisch influenced Indian planners 
with his export pessimism - something the young Manmohan Singh took 
on in his D.Phil - this was not because he had shares in a South 
Korean export house and wanted to leave the trading field open for 
his clients. In some cases, the advice was so good, Indian 
policymakers baulked at implementation: The "philosophy of taxation" 
Prof. Kaldor developed to deal with India's resource imbalance was 
described by Sukhamoy Chakravarti in the Cambridge Journal of 
Economics more than 30 years later as "fully relevant today."

If Mahalanobis' "foreigners" had no ideological or vested interest to 
promote and no great institutional backing behind them, what of the 
expertise Dr. Ahluwalia wanted to foist on the Planning Commission? 
When multinational management consulting companies like McKinsey and 
the Boston Consulting Group push a certain policy or outlook, can we 
really be confident that this is disinterested advice? Or that when 
an ideologue like John Briscoe, the World Bank's senior water 
adviser, pushes one-size-fits-all schemes of water privatisation, the 
fact that he is from a key donor agency like the World Bank will not 
give his views undue weightage and influence in any deliberative 
process?

Though the Left was right to object to the inclusion of such 
individuals in the Planning Commission's consultative groups, the 
retort that State Governments like West Bengal regularly employ 
McKinsey and others to produce vision documents and reports did catch 
them a little off balance. Objections to the World Bank or McKinsey 
cannot be confined to the formal or legalistic domain; what has to be 
challenged is our tendency to let institutions like these provide us 
with `visions' of where we want to be as a nation 10 or 20 years from 
now. Whether he attends a Yojana Bhavan panel or not, do we really 
want Mr. Briscoe - who told the Third Water Forum in Kyoto last year 
that it was a "fantasy" to say water is a human right - influencing 
the direction of our economy? Or McKinsey, whose dystopic Vision 
20-20 plan for a privatised Andhra Pradesh has put that State in the 
`Bimaru' category as far as its peasant population is concerned?

On the issue of water, there is need for a broad reform of the entire 
system of water resource management in India. Most of our urban water 
authorities are inefficient and corrupt, leading to excessive ground 
water depletion and high costs for the poor, who must depend on 
private water tankers for their daily needs. There is need for 
greater public investment in water, as well as for decentralisation 
and democratic accountability of the jal boards at the local level. 
Instead of going down this route, however, there is a danger that 
politicians will look at privatisation as a quick fix, in part 
because of World Bank pressure. In Chhattisgarh, a 23.6-km stretch of 
the Sheonath river has been `privatised', creating problems for the 
communities which live alongside its banks. "We lent Jordan money to 
improve the water sector," Mr. Briscoe said a few years ago, adding 
that the World Bank told Jordan "it must bring someone else" (i.e. a 
private company) to run the water rehabilitation programme of the 
Greater Amman municipality. Of course, once private companies come 
in, water prices tend to rise well beyond the reach of the poor - as 
in Cochabamba in Bolivia, Ghana and South Africa.

The defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic 
Alliance at the polls earlier this year has been read by different 
political parties differently. But there can be no denying the fact 
that the verdict reflected, at least in part, the growing public 
uneasiness over the economic policies followed by the Vajpayee 
Government. The election saw the electorate in virtually every major 
urban centre voting in favour of parties that either openly 
criticised privatisation and fiscal cutbacks or promised reforms 
"with a human face." In rural areas, the fact that inequality has 
either not fallen as dramatically in the reform years as the BJP 
claimed or has even increased is now fairly well established (See 
Abhijit Sen and Himanshu, `Poverty and Inequality in India, I and 
II', in Economic and Political Weekly, September 18 and 25, 2004, for 
the most comprehensive and thorough review of the statistical 
evidence so far).

Against this backdrop, it is unfair for the Left parties to be 
pilloried for demanding that the Manmohan Singh Government pay 
attention to the electorate's fears and concerns in drawing up its 
policies, even if their mode of argumentation has not been the most 
effective.

The debate over "foreign experts" has now been aborted by a clever if 
shabby compromise in which Dr. Ahluwalia has scrapped the 
consultative process altogether. It is almost as if the Government 
feels that if the World Bank does not get a say, neither should 
anyone else. Of course, this controversy was only a `proxy war' in 
the larger battle over the direction of the economy. The electorate 
voted for the parties that today form the United Progressive Alliance 
because of the economic promises made during the campaign. Some of 
these promises - such as the right to employment - have already been 
watered down, but the fact that the Prime Minister has made a 
commitment to begin its phased implementation in the country's 
poorest districts suggests it is possible for social movements and 
Left parties to influence policy, if only partially. But that is not 
enough. What is needed is an acknowledgement of the fact that in a 
democracy, it is the aspirations of ordinary people - and their 
vision of what they want their lives to be - which should guide 
economic policy. India needs to stop listening to the McKinseys of 
the world. And start tuning in to what people in Noamundi are saying.

______


[6]


[Sign on Online Petition]

To:  President of the Republic of India, to the Prime Minister, to 
the Minister for Home, and to the National Human Rights Commission

GUJARAT GENOCIDE TRIALS: APPEAL FOR THE PROTECTION OF WITNESSES
Initiated by Mukul Dube and Harsh Kapoor

http://www.petitiononline.com/gapw/



______



[7]

Gulf News - November 7, 2004

Let us not manipulate Zahira Shaikh
By Rajdeep Sardesai
Special to Gulf News
Zahira Shaikh was perhaps just another victim of the Gujarat violence 
till a year go. The power of the media and the protection of a 
non-governmental organisation (NGO) transformed a gaunt teenaged girl 
into the face of the failure of the Gujarat government to provide 
justice to the victims of the riots.

Now, after having retracted her statement identifying the accused in 
the Best Bakery case in which 14 people were burnt alive, the 
20-year-old is being used by the Gujarat government to try and 
tarnish the media and the NGOs as anti-Gujarat, anti-Hindu, and 
anti-Narendra Modi.

It's no coincidence that Zahira, who till only days ago was being 
targeted by the Gujarat government as a "liar", is now being offered 
complete state protection and five-star treatment.

It is a classic case of an individual being manipulated by a system 
that has failed to provide justice to the families of hundreds of 
victims of the Gujarat violence. While the focus of the media might 
be on Zahira once again, the larger issues which the case raises 
should lead to introspection. Let's start with the NGOs since it is 
their role which has come under scrutiny. Did the NGOs invest too 
much in one individual Zahira at the cost of the wider issue of 
providing justice to all the victims of Gujarat?

Yet, to question an NGO's motives and those of an incredibly 
committed individual like Teesta Setalvad would be to completely 
falsify reality. If Teesta and her NGO stepped in to offer support to 
Zahira, it was obvious that they did so because the Gujarat 
government was unable to provide protection.

When the 21 accused were let off by a Vadodra court in the Best 
Bakery case for want of "evidence", it was apparent that the legal 
system and its political patrons were not willing to encourage 
witnesses to reveal the truth.

Instead of asking for Setalvad's role to be investigated, should not 
the role of the police be investigated in Gujarat? Why did they file 
faulty First Information Reports, why did they do little to provide 
protection to witnesses? What kind of a state system would appoint a 
public prosecutor who is a member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the 
group which was blamed for the post-Godhra violence?

Already, Modi's propaganda machine has been busy labelling Setalvad 
and her NGO, Citizens for Justice and Peace, as a Muslim NGO. The 
accusation is that NGOs have only taken up the cause of members of 
minorities. Few remember, however, that at least three of those who 
died in Best Bakery were poor Hindu labourers.

Ironically, Setalvad and her NGO are not just fighting the case of 
the Best Bakery case. They are also involved in the process of 
providing justice to the families of those who were killed in the 
Godhra train carnage. They have taken up the case of five families of 
those killed in the Sabarmati Express because the state government 
was lethargic.

A victim of bloodletting has no religious identity, he is a citizen 
of this country first. When will this distasteful propaganda aimed at 
promoting a cycle of hatred and retribution ever end?

After all, Gujarat 2002 mirrors Delhi 1984 which in turn mirrors 
Mumbai '92-'93. Then, it was a Congress government, now it is a BJP 
government. In the anti-Sikh riots of '84 only nine people were 
convicted after more than 3,000 people were killed.

In Mumbai, not a single person has been convicted for his role in the 
violence in which more than 800 people were killed.

In Gujarat, there hasn't been a single conviction even though more 
than a 1,000 people died. This is not, therefore, about Gujarat and 
Narendra Modi. The larger issue must remain that of a system that has 
repeatedly failed to provide justice to its citizens. There are 
several other politicians belonging to the Congress who have also 
failed to act responsibly in cases of mass violence.

If the Congress wants to retain the moral high ground on Gujarat, 
they must first make sure that those indicted by various commissions 
of inquiries into the 1984 riots are kept away from public office. 
Justice demands those in power implement the rule of law. Not try and 
manipulate the Zahira Shaikhs.

The writer is Managing Editor, New Delhi Television,



______


[7]

PAKISTAN  CULTURAL NITE

Pakistan India peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy
And Prbha Khaitan Foundation invite you to

A dance recital by Tekrik-e-Niswan, Karachi
Director :  Sheema Khermani.
and
A play by Interactive Resource Centre
Director : Mohammad Waseem

  Venue: Rabindra Sadan    [Calcutta]    Date: November 19, 2004 
Time: 6 pm

Pranab Ghosh 
Sundeep Bhutoria
President 
Hon. Trustee
PIPFPD, west 
Bengal Chapter                                     Prabha Khaitan 
Foundation

Sheema Kermani & Tehrik-e-Niswan

  Internationally acclaimed Pakistani dancer, Sheema Kermani started
Tehrik-e-Niswan, a cultural group to create greater
  awareness about women's rights.. This was during the military dictatorship 
of General Zia-ul-Haq (1977-88),a period often regarded as the darkest 
period in the country's history. The State's major institutions, especially
the judiciary, education and the media were under attack. One of the social 
groups most affected by General Zia's Islamisation policy was women, who 
were made the targets of discriminatory laws and practices.

Sheema Kermani was the only dancer during General Zia's martial law when 
dance came to be seen as an activity highly disliked by the state and the 
clergy. She stood up against great opposition and continued with her efforts 
to establish classical dance as a respectable medium.

Through Tehrik, Sheema started a series of Tele-films on socially 
relevant topics such as on women's health,  education and marriage. 
Through the use of dance, drama and music Tehrik  takes socially 
relevant plays to slums and villages. Sheema has organised  women 
workers to form trade unions and brings this experience and 
consciousness into performing arts.

  Sheema has been teaching classical dance for the last 20 years. After the 
1988 general elections when Benazir Bhutto came to power Sheema came to 
India on an ICCR scholarship to study dance. Her efforts have helped in the
awareness and acceptance of dance as a respectable medium. She has also
directed documentaries, music- videos, teleplays and dramas.

In 1989 Sheema was invited to the prestigious American Dance Festival held 
at Duke University, North Carolina. In 1997 she was invited to the Hamburg 
Theatre Festival, and in 1999 to the Nandikar Festival in Calcutta. Sheema
has performed in many countries of the world including China, Egypt, 
Indonesia, U.S.A., U.K., Germany, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and 
the Netherlands.

Sheema is a peace activist and is an active member of the Pakistan India 
People's Forum for Peace and Democracy and in the forefront of the women's 
movement in Pakistan.



Md.Waseem and Interactive Resource Center

The well-known Interactive Resource Center (IRC) in Pakistan was formed in 
December2000 as an initiative to explore new avenues for community 
mobilization and awareness in order to assist people in their struggles to 
retrieve collective power and strength. IRC strives to employ interactive 
theatre for development and human rights struggle of marginalized 
communities in Pakistan.

The issues pertaining to gender, political education, minority rights, 
education etc are addressed by IRC using Interactive Theatre Technique, 
altogether a new form, as it goes beyond the cultural stereotypes and 
societal taboos.

IRC has organized interactive theatre workshops and performances in 87 
districts of Pakistan. The performances are more commonly classed as 
'Theatre of The Oppressed'. In December 2003 IRC organized a theatre 
festival titled as " Journey through the lives of courageous women" to 
highlight success stories of the courageous struggling women.

The father figure of IRC, Mohammed Waseem started his career as a sale's 
personnel. Waseem got involved in alternative theatre in the 1980s. But his 
pursuit for making theatre more communicative and interactive made him leave 
his well-paid job and set up IRC. Under the leadership of Mohammed Waseem, 
IRC has become a phenomenon receiving many accolades in national and 
international level.


_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

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