SACW | Oct. 26, 2006 | Death Rows; Dowry, Minority rights, domestic violence, SEZ's
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at mnet.fr
Wed Oct 25 20:22:28 CDT 2006
South Asia Citizens Wire | October 26, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2312
[1] We can do without the death rows (Zubeida Mustafa)
[2] Indian brides pay a high price (Amelia Gentleman)
[3] India: Imrana's dilemma (Imtiaz Ahmad)
[4] India: Minority rights & wrongs (Editorial, Hindustan Times)
[5] India Women's Actions and Legal Institutions in the Face of
Domestic Violence (A Suneetha, Vasudha Nagaraj)
[6] India: The Controversy Around Special Economic Zone's
- Another India is (not) ours (Sunita Narain)
- Land Grab and "Development" Fraud in India (Analytical Monthly Review)
[7] Is covering women's faces feminism? (Rosie Dimanno)
[8] Upcoming Events:
Seminar - Religious Absolutism / Antinomian Lives
perspectives on women, fundamentalism and freedom (London, 26 October 2006)
____
[1]
Dawn
25 October 2006
WE CAN DO WITHOUT THE DEATH ROWS
by Zubeida Mustafa
TWO high-profile executions - one in India and the other in Pakistan
- were stayed last week. Had they been carried out, both would have
created ripples beyond international borders. One was the hanging
scheduled for October 20 of a Kashmiri man in India, Mohammad Afzal
Guru, who had been convicted for his role in the storming of the
parliament house in New Delhi in 2001.
The other case was that of Mirza Tahir Hussain, a British national,
accused of murdering a taxi driver 18 years ago in Chakwal. These
hangings have not been set aside. They have only been postponed - the
first indefinitely and the second until December 31. In the coming
weeks human rights lobbies can be expected to mount pressure on the
governments in New Delhi and Islamabad to commute the sentences.
Guru's case has deep implications for India's politics and foreign
policy. It is highly political - the 2001 event brought India and
Pakistan to the brink of war and the opposition party, the BJP, is
baying for blood. Yet objective opinion believes that Guru's
conviction was flawed. As his mercy petition awaits a decision by the
president of India, his lawyers have said they will approach the
Supreme Court in an attempt to get the conviction overturned.
Mirza Tahir Hussain's case has a strong humanitarian dimension. The
intervention of the British government - earlier discreet and
behind-the-scenes and now more overt and vocal - has created
international interest. Both cases have once again brought into the
limelight the ongoing debate on capital punishment. Hussain's case
also raises questions about our legal system that has two parallel
strands running within it. Since Ziaul Haq proceeded to Islamise the
judiciary and the laws, judges and lawyers have encountered many
dichotomies that have made it difficult to dispense justice.
Take the case of Mirza Tahir Hussain. For 18 years it has woven its
way through both systems. First the sessions court convicted him in
1989. The Lahore High Court acquitted him in 1996 but withdrew its
jurisdiction soon thereafter and the case went to the Federal Shariat
Court which handed down a death sentence in 1998. The Supreme Court
upheld the verdict. Thereafter it has been left to the family of the
murdered man and the convict to negotiate compensation and
forgiveness under the Qisas and Diyat law. Hussain, who has spent
half his life in jail, says the cab driver was killed accidentally by
his own gun which went off in a scuffle. The driver had tried to
sexually assault Hussain, who had resisted. There were no witnesses
and Hussain has consistently pleaded not guilty. He himself took the
taxi and the gun to the police station and surrendered them there.
Is it not time for us now to ponder over the arguments advanced by
abolitionists against the death penalty? Since 1993, when Italy
launched a campaign to do away with capital punishment, 129 countries
have either abolished the death penalty altogether, or retained it
only for very grave crimes, or have not practised it for years. That
leaves only 68 which still execute their citizens. Unfortunately,
Pakistan happens to be one of them. According to the Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan, this year 253 people have been sentenced to
death in the country while 42 have actually been sent to the gallows.
In 2005, 477 received the death penalty out of which 52 were
executed. The year before that 394 were sentenced and 15 hanged.
These figures show that the courts are not as trigger happy as the
impression we have. All of those who get the death verdict are
allowed to fight their appeals and most of them do it for years.
Given the ineptitude and corruption of the police and the way the
prosecution works in this country, it is widely realised that the
chances of a miscarriage of justice are very high indeed. In fact,
there are always doubts about the guilt or innocence of a person
sentenced to death. In that case one may well ask, why don't we join
the ranks of the abolitionists?
It is now universally acknowledged that the two major justifications
for capital punishment - its deterrent and retributive character -
have lost ground. The rise in the crime rate is a clear evidence of
the failure of harsh punishments, including the death penalty, to
deter people from taking to crime. In fact, the psychological impact
of the death penalty has never been analysed in depth. As the Italian
prime minister in 2000, Giuliano Amato, observed, the death penalty
is "disgusting, particularly if it condemns an innocent". It is its
irrevocability that is so frightening. He added, "It remains an
injustice even when it falls on someone who is guilty of a crime."
This might sound strange to people whose concept of the ultimate
justice is that it should be retributive. An eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth is the conventional wisdom in this society.
But it is time that people were told that any penalty which
dehumanises and brutalises is an injustice to society itself.
Exposure to state terrorism, as an execution by the state amounts to,
affects the people's psyche. It desensitises them to violence and
aggression which they come to accept as normal behaviour. It
encourages them to use force, resort to human rights abuse and
violate the law. It is time the human dimension of the death penalty
- its impact on the psyche of individuals - was also taken into
consideration. The death penalty produces a negative impact on the
public mind.
In a study published in the Journal of Criminal Justice, two
sociologists citing cases of homicides in New York state in 1907-63
write that within a month following an execution two additional
murders (above the normal rates) occurred. In one case a 12-year-old
boy hanged himself after a well publicised execution. Publicity of
violence incites further violence, is the conclusion they reach. And
which hanging can be kept secret?
A picture of a public hanging in Tehran published by Amnesty
International in its annual report of 2003 focuses on the reaction of
the spectators. All of them are seen to be in a state of awe and
shock - while one young man is actually seen bursting into tears.
This picture alone should be a convincing case for abolishing the
death penalty and it must be done now, as I.A. Rehman, the director
of the HRCP, pleaded in his article last week. As a first step the
president could order a moratorium on capital punishment right away.
_____
[2]
International Herald Tribune
October 22, 2006
Indian brides pay a high price
by Amelia Gentleman
NEW DELHI Once the wedding guests were all assembled, the father of
the bride brought out a large metal tray on which he had piled up
51,000 rupees (in notes of 10 and 50 rupees, to make the heap look
larger) and handed it to the groom.
A new television and sofa were conspicuously displayed in the same
room, so that every member of the party could see what was being
offered from the bride's family to the groom as a dowry. A full list
of all the other items was copied out by hand and handed to five
witnesses - itemizing all the pieces of furniture, kitchen equipment
and jewelry that would be delivered in payment.
Unfortunately for Kamlesh, the 18-year-old bride, who uses only one
name, the payment from her father, Misrilal, was insufficient. Her
new husband had expected a scooter; his parents had wanted more than
the 51,000 rupees - about $1,100 - that they got. During three years
of marriage, the requests for an extended dowry settlement began to
be accompanied by worsening bouts of violence - until in August, he
beat her over the head with a wooden stick, tied her up and locked
her in the cow shed as she bled profusely.
Violent dowry harassment is an increasingly visible phenomenon in India.
An average of one dowry death is reported every 77 minutes according
to the National Crime Record Bureau and victim support groups say
complaints of dowry harassment are rising, fueled by a rising climate
of consumerism.
"Everyone is becoming more and more westernized - they want expensive
clothes, they want the consumer objects which are constantly
advertised on television. A dowry is seen as an easy way to get
them," said Varsha Jha, an official with the Delhi Commission for
Women.
Although the giving and taking of dowry is banned here under
legislation that threatens a five-year jail term, activists describe
the law as "ornamental" and point out that it is almost never
imposed. Dowry negotiations remain an integral part of wedding
arrangements, although, to avoid legal complications, the payments
are often referred to as wedding gifts.
Kamlesh has barely spoken since the attack and doctors are
investigating whether she suffered permanent brain damage. The Delhi
Commission for Women, a government-funded body, is helping her to
prosecute her husband, who is currently under arrest for the beating.
Officials at the commission see about 40 abused women every day, and
estimate that approximately 85 percent of these cases are related to
dowry demands, a figure that they say has grown over the past five
years.
"There has been a rise in the materialistic way of life across India
and dowry demands have risen to become more extravagant in line with
these materialistic needs," Kiran Walia, chairwoman of the group,
said. "It is one thing to give and take dowry. But what is really
obnoxious is the torture women undergo because the dowry is less than
expected."
Disputes over inadequate dowry split couples from every social
strata. This week the former Indian cricket player Manoj Prabhakar
was in court trying to settle a case of alleged harassment filed by
his estranged wife, Sandhya. She says that the Maruti car, jewelry,
television, fridge, sofa-set, double bed and cash handed over by her
family as dowry when they married were considered unsatisfactory by
her husband, and alleged that he harassed her for more from the start
of their marriage. He denies this.
"People are getting more greedy and aggressive in their dowry
demands," said Jha, of the Delhi Commission for Women. "You might
expect that as the country becomes more and more Westernized, this
traditional practice would be dying out, like other traditions, but
actually the reverse is true. The old habits remain."
"The men say, 'I'll just ask the girl's parents to get me a Honda.'
But they forget that then they have to buy the petrol, so they go
back to the bride's family to ask for the petrol money. It's not a
one- step system; it's a continuous process."
Kamlesh's father had been saving for his daughter's wedding and dowry
for 16 years before she married, and was squirreling away as much as
he could from his daily earnings as a carpenter of around 125 rupees.
The total cost of the wedding and dowry came to around 250,000
rupees, 60,000 of which he borrowed from his boss. When the demands
for further dowry payments from the groom's side began coming, it was
impossible for him to meet them.
Misrilal said his daughter was being bullied for an increased dowry
payment from the start. After her husband attacked her in August, he
left her, tied up, in the shed for several days, without food or
water, until relatives came to her rescue.
"Within a year of marriage he was beating her because of dowry,"
Misrilal said, sitting with his daughter in a hospital corridor,
waiting for her head wound to be examined.
The burden both of dowry payments and lavish weddings is one of the
main reasons why female feticide - the practice of aborting female
fetuses - remains widespread in India. Earlier this year a report in
The Lancet, a British medical journal, indicated that as many as 10
million female fetuses may have been aborted in India over the past
20 years by families trying to avoid the expense of having a daughter
and hoping to secure themselves a male heir.
"After all this torture, I feel that having a daughter is a curse,"
Misrilal said.
At the headquarters of the Delhi Commission for Women, the
chairwoman, Walia, was meeting relatives of a young woman, Kusum
Hardina, who set fire to herself a few weeks ago because she felt so
desperate at the constant pressure from her in-laws to extract a
higher dowry payment from her family.
On Sept. 22, she fought with her mother-in-law and brother-in-law
over the dowry and then in a fit of anger poured kerosene over
herself and set it alight. As she lay dying in hospital, she gave a
statement to the police saying she had done it because she was being
harassed for a dowry, Walia said.
She had tried to explain to her parents that she was being tormented,
but they told her to stick with her husband. When she told the
police, they sent around an officer who beat up her husband, which
did not calm relations.
"We gave 22,000 rupees when they got married. But they wanted a color
television, a motorcycle and a fridge as well," Asharam, the brother
of the dead woman, said. "Her husband doesn't earn much as a builder,
but he was greedy for possessions."
"Dowry should be stopped," he added. "Why should you give the
husband's family money when you are already giving them a girl?"
Walia has launched an awareness-raising campaign, sending counselors
to universities across the capital to alert students to the problem
of dowry violence. But she was not optimistic about it chances of
success.
"It is very unfortunate, but even educated boys are doing this. The
rich set standards for the rest of society. I have no hope that this
is coming to an end," she said.
_____
[3]
The Times of India
24 Oct, 2006
Imrana's dilemma
by Imtiaz Ahmad
The pronouncements of Muslim clerics following the conviction of
Imrana's father-in-law for rape are revealing in many respects. After
Imrana's alleged rape, Muslim clerics held that there had been no
rape and she continued to be her husband's wife.
Since the court verdict, they have hardened their position. They
aggressively assert that Imrana is barred by the Shariat (Islamic
canonical law) from her husband and cannot remain his wife.
The Muslim clerical mindset is remarkably patriarchal because
articulation of the Shariat took place at a time when patriarchy had
become deeply entrenched.
Perhaps, they wanted to protect Imrana's father-in-law and, by
offering her the sop that she could continue to live with her
husband, kept the door open for her to refrain from pressing her
allegation.
Since she refused to oblige, the clerics have taken a strongly
punitive stance, citing the Shariat as the basis of their opinion. A
clerical opinion allegedly based on the Shariat cannot be easily
challenged.
As a class, the clerics are not open to reasoned debate. By their
education and orientation, which allows no scope for critical
reflection, they are prone to repeating the texts as they have read
them, whether or not they are relevant to the issue at hand.
No point is likely to be served by pointing out that they are looking
at the entire Imrana episode from a mechanical mindset. Muslim
clerics commonly assert that the Qur'an is a complete text and
provides answers to all questions.
If this had indeed been the case, the crisis of legitimacy as to the
interpretation of the text would never have arisen.
It arose precisely because the Qur'an did not contain clear-cut
directions on many aspects of life and opinions arrived at through
extraneous processes had to be legitimised. This is a continuing
crisis and is amply demonstrated by the Imrana case.
A situation where a father-in-law rapes his son's wife was not
contemplated in the Qur'an or any of the legal texts from which the
Shariat is derived. In the absence of any such clear-cut direction on
what course of action should be taken to deal with such a situation,
two choices were open.
The first was to mechanically apply to the present a situation
described in the text that is remotely similar to it. This shuts the
mind to the uniqueness of the new situation, without asking whether
such blind application would be tenable.
The second was to construct a principle to deal with the new
situation, keeping the burden of the moral teachings of the Qur'an in
mind. Lacking inclination, training and expertise, the clerics were
incapable of such an inno-vative response.
Even if they were capable and inclined, it would have been difficult
for them to thrash out such a response. The clerics are a remarkably
divided lot and would have found it difficult to arrive at any
consensus.
It is, therefore, hardly surprising that they responded to a
situation not anticipated by the Qur'an by mechanically extending the
provision of the Shariat relating to the prohibited degrees of
marriage to a situation which developed long after the marriage.
What option does this leave for Imrana? Should she accept the
clerical verdict and part company with her husband? Or, should she
assert her right as an individual and demand that she should go on
living with her husband as his legitimate wife?
What option Imrana eventually chooses is an open question, but
central to her predicament is the distinction between collective and
individual rights.
Pursuing the hierarchical worldview of Islam, according to which the
individual stands in a subordinate position vis-a-vis the community,
the clerics insist that the collective right of the community to
adhere to the Shariat must override Imrana's individual right to
raise the rape issue without jeopardising her marital status.
It is possible that Imrana may succumb to social pressure and fear of
social ostracisation and may eventually accept defeat. However, the
issue of balance between collective versus individual rights would
still remain.
Muslim clerics, and Muslims generally, invoke democracy to demand
their right to abide by the Shariat, and democracy does grant them
this right. However, democracy equally demands that collective rights
do not trample upon individual rights.
If the contradiction between the two becomes too sharp, the state the
secular state at that will have to step in to restore the balance.
Muslim clerics must realise that the entitlement to live according to
the Shariat is not a licence to perpetuate oppression of an
individual member of the community.
Unless they are sensitive to this fine distinction, they would be
largely to blame if the state steps in to protect individuals, in
this case Imrana, against oppression and denial of legiti-mate rights
by a collectivity in the name of religion.
Clerics may not understand this discourse or may be indifferent to
it, but the state cannot afford to do so. If Imrana can muster
courage, she should pose what appears to be her personal predicament
as the predicament of the secular state.
The writer is a political scientist.
_____
[4]
Hindustan Times
October 25, 2006
Editorial
MINORITY RIGHTS & WRONGS
A simple compact has governed India's treatment of its minorities.
Given that the overwhelming majority of the country is Hindu, the
system has gone out of its way to reassure minorities that brute
majority in Parliament will not be used to compel them to change
their customary law. The early leaders of the country did not
hesitate to codify the personal laws of the majority community
through statutes like the Hindu Marriage Act, but steered clear of
doing the same for minorities. When, in a celebrated, if infamous
case, the Supreme Court insisted on providing maintenance to a
divorced Muslim woman, based on civil law, and against customary
Muslim law, the government of the day passed an act that nullified
the court's judgment. It was not as though the government was against
maintenance for the woman, but that it felt the need to reassure the
minority Muslims. The process of change, this secularist theory
insisted, would have to come from within the community in question,
even though there was wide acknowledgement that many of the customs
that the communities wanted to preserve were patriarchal and
discriminated against women.
While courts have managed to provide a measure of relief in some
cases, by and large women continue to suffer from the consequences of
personal laws. This is what brought about the multiple tragedies that
Imrana has had to suffer. She was raped by her father-in-law, an
act which local Muslim clerics decided, through an incredible
somersault of logic, nullified her marriage since she has become her
husband's mother. For Imrana, the conviction of her father-in-law for
rape has been less of a victory than a disaster - the judgment having
once again led to a clamour among Muslim clerics that her husband
abandon her.
How long should the Indian State, confronted with such levels of
obscurantism, suffer the insult to the rights that every Indian
should have under its Constitution? The Directive Principles of State
Policy have accepted the need for a uniform civil code and the
Supreme Court has sent repeated reminders through judgments of the
need for the code. The time has come to grasp this bull by its horns,
or face malign consequences.
_____
[5]
Economic and Political Weekly October 14, 2006
A Difficult Match
WOMEN'S ACTIONS AND LEGAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE FACE OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Over the last two decades, the discourse on domestic violence has
steadily moved into the
legal/institutional domain. Originating in the debates within the
women's movements on
structural inequalities in the family, where women's struggles had a
certain centrality, it has
become a legal/governmental category. Emblematic of most feminist
initiatives about
women's lives in our country, this shift is beset with its own
dilemmas and impasses. While
naming, categorising, enumerating and measuring violence as well as
efforts to make them
legally recognisable are imperative to any feminist politics, they
also generate their own
effects. These effects, while resulting in some well-needed
institutional solutions, also bring
in their wake, certain conceptual rigidities. There is a need to pay
attention to these
effects while rethinking the familiar demands in the arena of
domestic violence:
fool proof laws,sensitive institutions and better awareness among women.
By A Suneetha, Vasudha Nagaraj
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2006&leaf=10&filename=10661&filetype=pdf
_____
[6] India: THE CONTROVERSY AROUND SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE's
Down to Earth
31 October 2006
EDITORIAL: ANOTHER INDIA IS (NOT) OURS
by Sunita Narain
At a media-studded book release function, a leading editor was
recounting a recent incident. He was traveling with a top Uttar
Pradesh politician (who we will not name but call Mr A) in his brand
new plane. The politician told him that the plane was a gift from a
leading industrialist (who we will not name but call Mr AA). The
editor was then told that the return gift by the politician was not
meagre: it was 1,000 hectares (ha) of prime agricultural land for a
new special economic zone (SEZ). Hearing this tale, we in the
audience smiled wisely. This was titillating sleaze.
The idea of SEZs is borrowed from China, where zones are created to
facilitate manufacturing and business activity, which are special in
terms of labour and tax laws. These are countries within countries,
intended to expedite reform that cannot be done across board. With
the enactment of the SEZ Act 2005, the idea is catching on like
wildfire in India.
And why not? After all, which industrialist will turn down the chance
to get between 1,000-10,000 ha of prime land, for industrial and real
estate development? The land is acquired from farmers by government -
using all its persuasive and muscle power - and then handed over to
industry. Which industrialist will not cut many corners to ensure
that this scheme, which gives them not just exemption from custom
duties but also income and excise tax, is not expedited? It is only
incidental, they will say, that the scheme also allows them to build
hotels, schools, hospitals, houses, airports and ports. They will not
tell you that these mega-profit developments are carefully regulated
by some clumsy rules so that the 'real estate' purpose is assured.
Why should we be surprised then by the sleaze and scam stories that
surround these zones? These are the deals of modern India, in which
corruption comes in many colours and kinds.
Two key concerns have been raised: the fact that large areas of
cultivable lands are being acquired for industry and there is
inadequate compensation to farmers and others displaced. Two, that
there will be a substantial loss of revenue for government with
manufacturing and services moving to these tax-free havens. It is
also suggested in fact that these zones will not lead to a flood of
new investment, but indeed the flight of old investment, which will
want the tax-free status. The case of Korean giant Posco's mega steel
plant is a case in point. It 'managed' to get categorised as an SEZ,
well after it had already come into the country to set up shop.
But SEZ status is the ultimate development dream. I have no doubt
that in the current weak-political scenario industry will wriggle out
with some glib answers and some tall promises of providing employment
to the displaced.
I have also no doubt that SEZs are the beginning of the end of the
idea of one India.
The fact is that SEZs are not even about creating a few special
zones. They are about the abdication of responsibility to sort out
the underlying problems that plague the country as a whole. The fact
is that infrastructure, power, water, housing, education and health
services are in a mess. Over the past 50 years, we have tried in our
ham-handed socialist ways to find answers to provide services for
all. We don't know why, but this approach is not working. There is
growing impatience about growth. Therefore, the easier and much less
complicated answer is to let that part of India, which can provide
for itself, to prosper. The grandiose idea will be then the
government can take care of the needy with some sops and some more
developmental schemes. But we forget that the reason why the answers
of the past were not working was precisely because we ensured that
the rich were ecologically subsidised in the name of the poor. Now
this will get worse.
But in this way enclave India will grow. Water will come, not from
public municipal taps, which cannot be fixed, but from private
companies, who will purify it and supply it in bottles or colony
taps, for those who can pay. It is another matter that these
companies will not pay or pay a pittance for the same water they
consume. Power will come from electricity companies, who will produce
it exclusively for those who pay bills covering the cost, plus
profit, of its manufacture. Of course, there will be no garbage in
the colony as cleaners will come from outside - for a price - and
take it away. Where and how, it is best not to know. In this way,
infrastructure development is no longer a problem: it is built for
those who can pay. Flyovers can take people straight from the
company-run airport to their homes and work. Rich and poor India are
now separated at birth.
The fundamentally fatal flaws in this approach are many: first, let
us be clear, this rich and exclusive India will continue to be
subsidised to the hilt. Second, it will be built on the backs of the
poor using the might of the state. The land, for instance, is not
bought by the rich private sector paying the price the seller is
willing to sell on - the market price and above. This private
property will be acquired under the convenient cover of land
acquisition acts at discounted prices. Third, the resources for
development will be severely compromised, as growth will no longer
contribute to revenues of government.
Who said that civilised countries had to tax their rich to support
their poor? That was old India's baggage. This new India only dreams.
Nightmares are for others. This is another India. Here, everything is
possible. It is another matter that it is not ours.
---
LAND GRAB AND "DEVELOPMENT" FRAUD IN INDIA
by Analytical Monthly Review
Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal,
India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its September 2006
issue features the following editorial. -- ED.
The land question, the fundamental failure of independent India, has
again become one of the most debatable and controversial topics of
the day. Although the mass media and the dominant parliamentary
political leaders suppress any public mention of revolutionary land
reform, land to the tillers or abolition of feudal remnants, the
irrepressible reality raises the question in one or another form.
Today land grabbing by the private corporate sector, both Indian and
of foreign origin, in the name of so-called "development" and with
the aid of government agencies and state machinery, has become a
subject that cannot be avoided. The reason at base is sixty years of
failure to meet the legitimate demands of the many crore [tens of
millions of] citizens who depend on agricultural land for their
subsistence but have no claims deemed fully worthy by the judiciary,
still the firmest bastion of colonial mentality. With the
introduction of the new economic policy since 1991, what had been a
half century of localized injustice and repression became a
qualitatively different phenomenon: the theft of land on a scale that
could not be kept from public attention.
A few examples suffice to show the gravity of the issue:
The Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor project (BMICP) -- whose
MOU was signed in 1995 between the Government of Karnataka and Nandi
Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises (NICE), a consortium consisting
of Kalyani Group (Pune), SAB Engineering (Pennsylvania, USA) and
Vanasse Hangen Brustlin (VHB) (Boston, USA) -- is a vast land
scandal. 29,258 acres of land were notified for acquisition for the
project, an excess of 10,945 acres beyond what was needed. "Land
Acquisition notifications were issued based on the requirement
indicated by the promoter company and not on the basis of any
technical drawings/maps as approved by the Government in PWD [Public
Works Department]or the project report."1 NICE shall no doubt seek
to exploit commercially these highly valuable lands, obtained
courtesy of the Government of Karnataka at minimal cost, to their own
profit. Even assuming a nominal commercial value per current rates,
the excess acres handed over to NICE amount to a largesse of Rs.
[Rupies] 10,000 crores [1 trillion]. To this should be added the
benefits accrued by NICE on account of various tax and cess [tax]
exemptions, and the advantages gained in possession in perpetuity of
lands. These profits are not one time, but astonishingly large and
recurring. On the other hand, according to various reports, the
project will affect almost 200,000 people, mostly agricultural
laborers and farmers. Only those who can show proof of title will be
eligible for cash compensation, a minority of the total affected
population.
The Reliance Energy Group plans the world's largest gas based 3,500
MW power plant to be located not on waste or marginal land, but on
agricultural land considered to be among the most fertile on the
planet -- Dadri, Ghaziabad. REG has acquired over 2,100 acres of
land and is aggressively pursuing the acquisition of 400 more acres
in seven villages of Dhaulana; experts say 700-800 acres would be
sufficient. The 3,500 MW gas-based power generation project is
estimated eventually to cost over Rs 10,000 crore. The farmers to
whom the lands belong were totally unaware of the "acquisition" till
the foundation stone was unveiled.
Forces of the Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC)
brutally attacked residents of Bajhera Khurd in Dhaulana block of
Ghaziabad district in UP over a period of two days, July 7-8, 2006,
injuring many, including women, disabled, and old people and
vandalizing/looting property worth lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of
rupees. The apparent crime of the villagers, mostly middle-income
farmers, was their insistence on better compensation for the land
that is being acquired by the government to hand over to the Anil
Ambani-owned Reliance Energy Generation (REG).
While state-owned land was to be given to REG on a renewable lease
for a period of 99 years at minimal cost, the forced acquisition of
private land was to be paid for by the company. The state government
went about acquiring agricultural land under the Land Acquisition
Act. Significantly, the state government discounted nearly 40 per
cent of the land cost to REG as part of its industrial policy to
attract greater investments. While a subsidy was being given to REG,
the farmers whose land was being acquired by the state government
were told that they would be paid Rs 150 per square yard (1 acre =
4,840 square yards). The farmers demanded the market price,
reportedly Rs 500 per square yard, and agitated against the low
compensation package. After several months of protesting at the
offices of the local administration in vain, the farmers began a
hunger strike and dharna [a fast conducted at the door of an
offender] on the outskirts of Bajhera Khurd on November 25, 2005. In
July 2006, eight months into the dharna, a few were forced to accept
the meager compensation extended by the government for fear of the
threat held out by goons, police, and local administration.
Nonetheless most villagers, concluding "enough was enough," pulled
off the boundary fencing set up by REG and decided to plough their
land.
Reliance is also planning to set up a Special Economic Zone ("SEZ")
in small remote Pen Tehsil in Raigad in Maharashtra. Thousands of
farmers of this region are demonstrating against the land acquisition
by the state government for the Reliance Company for a 10,120-hectare
SEZ. Out of the 10,120 hectares of land earmarked for acquisition,
5,720 hectares are irrigated from Hetavane dam, and "large tracts
belong to the saltpans or wetlands, mangrove" essential to "carrying
capacity and sustainability of this area."2 The company plans to use
this area for activities like manufacturing, trading, services,
processing, logistics, repacking, warehousing, etc. There was a
police lathi [button] charge during a peaceful demonstration by local
farmers of the Pen Panchkroshi Sheti Bachao Samiti (Pen Area
Committee to Save the Farmland) on June 22, 2006.
Even in Left-ruled West Bengal, the state government will soon
acquire 43,028 acres of land, mostly agricultural, in different parts
of the state. The decision to acquire the land has been passed by
the Cabinet, and steps will be taken soon to implement it. At
Singur, 1,253 acres of land would be acquired to set up a small car
factory by Tata Motors. Another 2,000 acres will be needed in
Uluberia in Howrah district to set up a private two-wheeler factory.
The West Bengal Government has already signed an agreement with a
consortium led by Indonesia-based Salim Group to set up the largest
infrastructure project in the state on nearly 40,000 acres. The
Salim-Bengal Project includes a chemical SEZ on 10,000 acres in East
Midnapore district, bordering Haldia, as a joint venture, and a
multi-product SEZ on 12,500 acres in Haldia.
But land acquisition in West Bengal is not going to be smooth
sailing. Protests are mounting across the state in several areas
identified as land acquisition sites. Especially in the process of
acquiring 1,000-odd acres for Tata Motors' project at Singur
district, the government is facing stiff resistance from the farmers
as well as agricultural wage laborers, organized in their Krishi Jomi
Bachao Committee (Save Agricultural Land Committee). The media
reports that farmers there do not take any of the parliamentary
parties, both ruling and opposition, as their true representative and
are trying to gather forces among themselves. It is reported that
the land acquisition process received a setback as more than 100
residents of Santoshimatola area of Singur, including women,
prevented officials from entering their villages to serve notice to
acquire land on 1st September. Villagers lay on the ground after a
large police contingent reached the spot. Brandishing brooms and
sticks, they shouted slogans for hours and said they would fight land
acquisition to the last drop of their blood. The government is
expected to use Section 9 of the Colonial Bengal Land Acquisition Act
of 1894 to acquire the land. Section 9 gives the government the
power to acquire the land even if objections are filed. Earlier, on
22 August, some 5,000 Singur farmers gheraoed [encircled] the block
development officer's office and held up hearings on claims and
objections to acquisition of land for the Tata Motors car factory, by
first not allowing officials to proceed to the camp, and then
boycotting the hearing when the officers managed to get there under
police escort.
How does all this look from the perspective of imperial capital?
Merrill Lynch forecasts that the Indian realty sector will grow
from $12 billion in 2005 to $90 billion by 2015. "'India is the most
exciting real estate market in Asia," says Michael Smith, head of
Asian real estate investment banking at Goldman Sachs. "It's one of
the last major countries in Asia with an improving market."
The run-up in prices has attracted the likes of Morgan Stanley,
which has invested $68 million in Mantri Developers, a midsized
construction firm in Bangalore, and Merrill Lynch, which invested $50
million in Panchsheel Developers, a regional builder. Foreign
companies have also poured money into funds that invest in Indian
developers. GE Commercial Finance Real Estate, for example, has
invested $63 million in an $800 million fund that is building IT
parks.
Real estate funds set up to invest only in India have already
raised more than $2.7 billion. And new funds worth as much as $4
billion are being planned by J.P. Morgan, Britain's Knight Frank, and
other foreign investors. Warburg Pincus, the largest private-equity
investor in India, says it is spending nearly a third of its time
studying opportunities in this area.3
The use of Land Acquisition Acts to seize agricultural land for the
profit of imperial capital is indeed a scandal of the first order.
"Development" is here a case of fraud, pure and simple. The business
press makes clear that the forces of globalization see the Indian
real estate sector as a bonanza; land prices are by international
standards low, and now is the time to make sure that the future
increase in prices will benefit global capital -- not the residents.
Using "development" as dress, compliant state governments are put to
use, invoking colonial statutes to seize vast properties juridically.
In these obscene deals, for each lakh of Reliance or Tata or Goldman
Sachs future real estate profits, a thousand or more of poor rural
residents are driven from their lands into the slums. The resistance
of the victims of land grabs for private profit is growing, and, as
it becomes more visible, it shall encourage those who, thinking
themselves isolated, fear to defend their land in the face of the
police, the judiciary, the state governments, and global capital. In
West Bengal, it is on these plots of agricultural land that the left
government's deal with globalization faces an unavoidable
contradiction. Marxists must see this clearly, and from the
perspective of the victims.
1 "Return Excess Land Acquired for BMIC," The Hindu 31 March 2005.
2 Sanjay Sangvai, "Land-Grab by Rich: The Politics of SEZs in
India," The South Asian 5 July 2006
3 Yassir A. Pitalwalla, "Indian Real Estate: Boom or Bubble?
Property Prices Are Rising Fast as the Tech Boom Spreads across the
Country," Fortune 5 July 2006.
_____
[7]
Toronto Star
Oct. 25, 2006
IS COVERING WOMEN'S FACES FEMINISM?
Wearing the Muslim veil conveys exclusion
by Rosie Dimanno
Oh, this is rich: a defence of the veil as feminist prerogative.
What next - promotion of the chastity belt as post-feminist birth control?
Events thousands of miles away, in England, are resonating here in
Canada, in yet another round of politicized and polarizing debate
over the alleged "otherness" of pious Muslims, the purported
unwillingness of some to accept the secular status quo of the Western
societies in which they reside.
In this case, a young teaching assistant's refusal to remove her
niqab - the piece of cloth that some Muslim women wear to cover their
faces, hiding everything below the eyes - has triggered anew fierce
suspicions of multiculturalism accommodation run amok, demonstrating
again how damnably difficult it has become to separate isolated cases
from the larger context of political and ideological agendas.
What some frame as a religious obligation or simply esthetic choice
has been taken up by others as evidence of bigotry, on one side, and
self-imposed segregation on the other, an in-your-face rejection of
values held most dear by the dominant culture.
One value: We are our faces.
Individuals - not just part of various collectives as defined by
gender or faith, but each of us distinguishable by features that
express what's going on inside.
Identities - the openness of a society that's revealed in every
single countenance, reinforcing the central fact of diversity and
pluralism, our shared humanity.
In Western societies, indeed in most Islamic societies, too, we
relate to one another at least initially by what we can see: the
smile, the frown, what's crossing our minds crossing our faces, too.
The niqab, whatever its other messages may be, says: You can't see
and you must not see. What I have under here is so sacred, so
untouchable, that just your glance is contaminating. You are not to
be entrusted with the privilege of knowing me even so much as this.
I can think of no more insulating a statement than the veil. That one
small rectangle of fabric speaks volumes about separateness and
exclusion. It carries both an intrinsic sense of superiority (my
faith, which sets me apart) and inferiority (my gender, which renders
me de facto prey, thus requiring this protection, which just happens
to be the invention of males).
Humbleness versus arrogance.
From this hard knot of contradictions has unravelled a further
thread, a substrata string, and the most preposterous rationalization
of all, particularly coming out of the mouths of men - that the niqab
is a feminist declaration. This is so duplicitous a construct as to
be almost comical, if it weren't being seriously posed in some
quarters, and helpfully parroted by a small number of women who
apparently have no confidence in either their own character or the
ability of the opposite sex to control their beastly tendencies.
Really, we can be our own worst enemies sometimes. And, more
unforgivably, the enemy of other women.
There are, perhaps, legitimate reasons for asserting a woman's right
not to show anything other than her eyes to the world, and barely
that. In a free country, one would like to believe that women -
including Muslim women, in conservative communities - are making
independent choices, based on their own needs and wishes and comfort
zone.
But let's not be disingenuous here. There is ample evidence,
overwhelming evidence, of religious and cultural pressures, those
steeped in a firmly patriarchal code of conduct, for the
marginalizing of adult females, practices that are fundamentally at
odds with basic concepts of gender equality.
Ontario came alarmingly close to permitting the application of sharia
law in family arbitration matters - when multicultural sensitivities
almost trumped women's rights - before Premier Dalton McGuinty
stepped in and said "no," that's just not acceptable, however cloaked
in the disguise of ethnic and ethic reasoning. Sharia law works, is
made to work, by coercive imposition in Islamist countries where
women are chattels, and largely illegitimate governments rely on the
support of religious authorities for even the slimmest of mutually
satisfying endorsement.
In some Islamic jurisdictions - just as an example - rape cases can
only pass the trial test if four people come forward as witnesses to
the crime. How often do you think that occurs?
What was most disheartening to many of us about the barely averted
sharia threat here is that the proposal had been studied and advanced
by a woman, no less than the province's previous attorney general, in
an NDP government. This provided threadbare cover, deeply dishonest
on its merits, for an alliance of reactionaries and fundamentalists
(whether born-again or always-were) to justify treating Muslim women
as lesser beings. Sharia law would have exposed a palpably vulnerable
constituency to the paternalistic mercies of religious tribunals.
I do not trust the sophistry inherent in a pedantically twisted
intellectualization of the veil, as if it were something other than
what it demonstrably is: segregation of women by other means.
We have long progressed beyond the point where the Bible could be
used to justify misogyny. No sane person would quote from Scripture -
or be permitted to do so, in a mass-market general newspaper - those
anachronistic texts that sanction unequal treatment of women up to
and including the beating of a disobedient spouse or child.
Bible-thumping is repellent, whether applied to women or children or
homosexuals or any other group whose behaviour is construed as sinful.
Qu'ran-thumping should be no less unsavoury.
So spare me what that holy book has to say about veiling women,
especially when even Islamic scholars are divided on it. Like
Britain, ours is a secular society trying to cope with conflicting
demands; we protect the rights of people to be religious, as they see
fit, and not religious, as they see fit. What we've not done a very
good job of is protecting the dignity, sometimes the very lives, of
wives and daughters and sisters who are very much under the thumb of
fathers, husbands and brothers, viewed as property, a reflection on
their own paramount authority in the household.
It is not patronizing to acknowledge that many Muslim women who wear
the niqab - and they are themselves in a small minority - do so not
out of personal choice but because they are bullied, tacitly or
overtly, into doing so. They must hide their faces so that their men
don't lose face.
And I care a great deal more about their predicament than I do their
Islamist sisters who choose to veil under the rubric of feminism.
_____
[8] Events:
RELIGIOUS ABSOLUTISM / ANTINOMIAN LIVES
KEY PERSPECTIVES ON WOMEN, FUNDAMENTALISM AND FREEDOM - A SEMINAR
5.00pm, 26 October 2006, Room MB 137A
Goldsmiths College, New Cross, London SE14 6NW.
All welcome - please register and reserve a place by emailing
<mailto:xenos at gold.ac.uk>xenos at gold.ac.uk.
What's God got to do with it? Antinomian resistance and secular feminism
GITA SAHGAL, Women Against Fundamentalism
The Double Discourse: 'Moderate' Muslims and their audiences
CASSANDRA BALCHIN, Women Living Under Muslim Laws
Faith in the State? Multiculturalism and minority women's rights in the UK
PRAGNA PATEL, Southall Black Sisters
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/
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