http://www.counterpunch.org/toussaint10212008.html October 21, 2008
Time to Delink
The Economic Crisis and Latin America
By ERIC TOUSSAINT
T he economic and financial crisis, whose epicentre is found in the United States, has to be utilised by Latin American countries to build an integration favourable to the peoples and at the same initiate a partial delinking.
We need to learn the lessons of the 20th century in order to apply them at the beginning of this century. During the decade of the 1930s, that followed the crisis that exploded on Wall Street in 1929, 12 countries in Latin America suspended for a prolonged time the repayment of their foreign debt, prinicipally to North American and Western European bankers. Some of them, such as Brazil and Mexico, imposed on their creditors a reduction of between 50% and 90% of their debt some 10 years later. Mexico was the one that went the furthest with their economic and social reforms. During the government of Lazaro Cardenas, the petroleum industry was completely nationalised without any compensation for the North American monopolies. Moreover, 16 million hectares were also nationalised and in large part handed over to the indigenous population in the form of comunal goods (“el ejido”). During the thirties and up until the middle of the sixties, various Latin American governments carried out very active public policies with the aim of seeking a partially self-centred development, known later by the name of the model of industrialisation via substitution of importations (ISI). On the other hand, beginning in 1959, the Cuban revolution attempted to give a socialist content to the Bolivarian project of Latin American integration. This socialist content began to appear in the Bolivian revolution of 1952. Brutal US intervention, backed by the dominant classes and the local armed forces, was necessary to put an end to the ascending cycle of social emancipation during this period. The blockade of Cuba since 1962, military junta in Brazil from 1964, US intervention in Santo Domingo in 1965, the Banzer dictatorship in Bolivia in 1971, the Pinochet coup in Chile in 1973, installing of dictatorships in Uruguay and Argentina. The neoliberal model was put in practice first in Chile with Pinochet, and with the intellectual guidance of the Chicago Boys of Milton Friedman, and afterwards was imposed on all the continent, aided by the debt crisis that exploded in 1982. With the fall of the dictatorships in the eighties, the neoliberal model continued in force, principally through the application of structural adjustments programs and the Washington Consensus. The governments of Latin America were incapable of forming a common front, and the majority applied the recipes dictated by the World Bank and the IMF in a docile manner. This ended up producing a large popular discontent and a recomposition of popular forces that led to a new cycle of elections of left or centre left governments, beginning with Chavez in 1998, who committed himself to installing a different model based on social justice.
There is a dispute between two projects of integration
At the beginning of this century, the Bolivarian[3] project of integration of the peoples of the region has gain new momentum. If we want this new ascending cycle to go further it is necessary to learn the lessons of the past. What was particularly missing in Latin America during the decades of the 1940s to the 1970s was an authentic project of integration of economies and peoples, combined with a real redistribution of wealth in favor of the working classes. We need to be conscious of the fact that in Latin America today there is a dispute between two projects of integration, that have an antagonist class content. The capitalist classes of Brazil and Argentina (the two principal economies of South America) are partisans of an integration based on their economic domination over the rest of the region. The interests of Brazilian companies, above all, as well as Argentine ones, are very important in all the region: oil and gas, large infrastructure works, mining, metallurgy, agrobusiness, food industries, etc. The European construction, based on a single market dominated by big capital is the model that they want to follow. The Brazilian and Argentine capitalist classes want the workers of the different countries in the region to compete amongst themselves in order to obtain maximum benefit and be competitive on the world market. From the point of view of the left, it would be a tragic error to fallback on a policy of stages: support a model of Latin American integration according to the European model, dominated by big capital, with the illusionary hope of giving it a socially emancipatory content later on. Such support implies putting oneself at the service of capitalist interests. We do not have to involve ourselves in the capitalist’s games, trying to be more astute and letting them dictate the rules.
The other project of integration, that falls within Bolivarian framework, wants to given a social justice content to integration. This implies the recuperation of public control over natural resources in the region and over large means of production, credit and commercialisation. The levelling from above of the social conquests of the workers and small producers, at the same time as reducing the asymetries between the economies in the region. The substantial improval of paths of communication between countries of the region, rigourously respecting the environment (for example, developing railway lines and other means of collective transport before highways). Support for small private producers in numerous activities, agriculture, artisan, trade, services, etc. The process of social emancipation that the bolivarian project of the 21st century is pursuing aims to liberate society from capitalist domination supporting forms of property that have a social function: small private property, public property, cooperative property, comunal and collective property, etc. At the same time, Latin American integration implies equiping oneself with a common financial, judicial and political architecture.
Latin American is losing precious time
The current international conjuncture, favorable for developing countries that export primary products, needs to be utilised before the situation changes. The countries of Latin America have accumulated close to US$400,000 million in reserves. This is no small figure, in the hands of Latin American Central Banks and which needs to be utilised at an opportune moment in order to help regional integration and shield the continent in the face of the effects of the economic and financial crisis that is unfolding in North America and Europe and that threatens the whole planet. Unfortunately, we should not create illusions: Latin American is on the path to losing precious time, while the governments, beyond the rhetoric, pursue a traditional policy: signing of bilateral agreements on investment, acceptance or continuation of negotiations over certain free trade agreements, utilisation of reserves to buy bonds from the US Treasury (that is, lending capital to the dominant power) or credit default swaps whose markets have collapsed with Lehman Brothers, AIG etc, advance payments to the IMF, World Bank and the Paris Club, acceptance of the World Bank Tribunal (ICSID) as a way to resolve differences with transnationals, continuation of trade negotiations within the framework of the agenda of Doha, maintainance of the military occupation of Haiti. Following a loud and promising start in 2007, the initiatives announced in regards to Latin American integration seem to have come to a halt in 2008.
Bank of the South
In regards to the launching of the Bank of the South, this has already been delayed quite a bit. Discussions have not progressed. We have to get rid off any confusion and give a clearly progressive content to this new institution, whose creation was decided upon in December 2007 by seven countries in South America. The Bank of the South has to be a democratic institution (one country, one vote) and transparent (external auditing). Before using public money to finance large infrastructure project that don’t respect the environment and which are carried out by private companies whose objectives are to obtain maximum benefit, we have to support the efforts of the public powers to promote policies such as food sovereignty, agrarian reform, the development of studies in the field of health and the establishment of a pharmaceutical industry that produces high quality generic medication, reinforce collective rail-based means of transport, utilize alternative energies to limit the impact on depleted natural resources, protect the environment, develop the integration of education systems….
Debt
Contrary to what many think, the problem of the public debt has not been resolved. It is true that the external public debt has been reduced, but it has been replaced by an internal public debt that, in certain countries, has acquired totally huge proportions (Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Guatemala) to the point that it derails a considerable part of the state budget towards parasitically financial capital. It is very worthwhile following the example of Ecuador, which established an integral auditing commission to study the external and internal public debt, with the aim of determining the illegitimate, illicit and illegal parts of the debt. At a time when, following a series of adventurous operations, the large banks and other private financial institutions of the United States and Europe are wiping out dubious debts with an amount that by far surpasses the external public debt that Latin America owes them, we have to constitute a united front of indebted countries in order to obtain the cancellation of the debt.
Nationalisation of the banks without paying compensation and exercising the right of reparations
Private banks need to audited and strictly controlled, because they run the risk of being dragged down with the international financial crisis. We have to avoid a situation where the state ends up nationalising the losses of the banks, as has happened many times before (Chile under Pinochet, Mexico in 1995, Ecuador in 1999-2000, etc). If some banks on the brink of bankruptcy have to be nationalised, this should be done without paying compensation and exercising the right of reparations over the patrimony of their owners.
Moreover, numerous litigation cases have emerged in the last few years between the states of the region and multinationals, from the North and the South. Rather that taking them to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which is part of the World Bank, dominated by a handful of industrialised countries, the countries of the region should follow the example of Bolivia, which has pulled out of the organisation. They should create a regional organism for the resolution of litigation cases initiated by other countries or private companies. How can we continue to sign loan contracts or trade contracts that state that, in the case of litigation, the only jurisdictions that are valid are those of the US, United Kingdom or other countries of the North? We are dealing here with an inadmissible renouncement of the exercising of sovereignty.
It is worthwhile establishing a strict control over capital movements and exchange rates, with the goal of avoiding capital flight and speculative attacks against currencies in the region. For the states that want to make the Bolivarian project of Latin American integration for greater social justice a reality, it is necessary to advance towards a common currency.
Integration has a political dimension
Naturally, integration has to have a political dimension: a Latin American parliament elected by universal suffrage in each one of the member countries, equipped with a real legislative power. Within the framework of political construction, we have to avoid repeating the bad example of Europe, where the European Commission (that is, the European government) has exaggerated powers in regards to the parliament. We have to move towards a democratic constituent process with the goal of adopting a common political constitution. We also have to avoid reproducing the anti-democratic procedure followed by the European Commission that attempts to impose a constitutional treaty elaborated without the active participation of citizens and without submitting it to a referendum in each member country. On the contrary, we have to follow the example of the constituent assemblies of Venezuela (1999), Bolivia (2007) and Ecuador (2007-8). The important democratic advances achieved in the course of these three processes will have to be integrated into the Bolivarian constituent process.
Likewise, it is necessary to strengthen the powers of the Latin American Court of Justice, particularly in matters regarding the guaranteeing for the respect of inalienable human rights.
Until now, various processes of integration coexist: the Community of Andean Nations, Mercosur, Unasur, Caricom, Alba….It is important to avoid dispersion and adopt a integration process with a social-political definition based on social justice. This Bolivarian process should bring together all the countries in Latin America (South America, Central America and the Caribbean) that adhere themselves to this orientation. It is preferable to commence this common construction with a reduced and coherent nucleus, rather than with a heterogeneous set of states whose governments follow contradictory, if not antagonistic, social policies.
Partial delinking from the world capitalist market
Bolivarian integration should be accompanied with a partial delinking from the world capitalist market. We are dealing with trying to progressively erase the borders that separate the states that participate in the project, reducing the asymmetries between the member countries especially thanks to a mechanism of transfer of wealth from the “richer” states to the “poorer”. This will allow for the considerable expansion of the internal market and will favour the development of local producers under different forms of property. It will allow for the putting into action of a process of development (not only industrialisation) with substitution of importations. Of course, this implies the development, for example, of a policy of food sovereignty. At the same time, the Bolivarian project made up of various member countries will partially delink itself from the world capitalist market. This means in particular the repealing of bilateral treaties in areas of investment and trade. The member countries of the Bolivarian group should also pull out of institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, at the same time as promoting the creation of new democratic global institutions that respect inalienable human rights.
As was mentioned before, the member state of the new Bolivarian group would equip itself with new regional institutions, such as the Bank of the South, which would develop collaborative relations with other similar institutions made up by states from other regions in the world.
The member states of the new Bolivarian group will act with the maximum number of third states in favour of a radical democratic reform of the United Nations, with the objective of ensuring compliance with the United Nations Charter and the numerous international instruments that defend human rights, such as the international pact on economic, social and cultural rights (1996), the charter on the rights and responsibilities of states (1974), the declaration on the right to development (1986), the resolution on the rights of indigenous people (2007). Equally, it would lend support to the activities of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It would act in favour of reaching understandings between states and the peoples with the goal of acting in order to limit climate change as much as possible, given that this represents a terrible danger for humanity.
Eric Toussaint, president of the Committee for the Cancellation of Third World Debt – Belgium www.cadtm.org , author of The World Bank: A Critical Primer, Pluto, London, 2008. Translated by Fred Fuentes
" We may elect representatives to Congress to end the war in Iraq, but the war goes on. We may plead with these representatives to halt Bush's illegal wiretapping but the telecommunications lobbyists make sure it remains in place. We may beg them not to pass the bailout but 850 billion taxpayer dollars are funneled upward to the elites on Wall Street. We may want single-payer, not-for-profit health care but it is not even discussed as a possibility in presidential debates. We, as individuals in this system, are irrelevant. "
Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in "the experts." They still believe in themselves. They are clustered like flies swarming around John McCain and Barack Obama. It is only when these elites are exposed as incompetent parasites and dethroned that we will have any hope of restoring social, economic and political order.
"Their inability to see the human as anything more than interest driven made it impossible for them to imagine an actively organized pool of disinterest called the public good," said the Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul, whose books "The Unconscious Civilization" and "Voltaire's Bastards" excoriates our oligarchic elites. "It is as if the Industrial Revolution had caused a severe mental trauma, one that still reaches out and extinguishes the memory of certain people. For them, modern history begins from a big explosion—the Industrial Revolution. This is a standard ideological approach: a star crosses the sky, a meteor explodes, and history begins anew."
Our elites—the ones in Congress, the ones on Wall Street and the ones being produced at prestigious universities and business schools—do not have the capacity to fix our financial mess. Indeed, they will make it worse. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good. They are stunted, timid and uncreative bureaucrats who are trained to carry out systems management. They see only piecemeal solutions which will satisfy the corporate structure. They are about numbers, profits and personal advancement. They are as able to deny gravely ill people medical coverage to increase company profits as they are able to use taxpayer dollars to peddle costly weapons systems to blood-soaked dictatorships. The human consequences never figure into their balance sheets. The democratic system, they think, is a secondary product of the free market. And they slavishly serve the market.
Andrew Lahde, the Santa Monica, Calif., hedge fund manager who made an 870 percent gain last year by betting on the subprime mortgage collapse, has abruptly shut down his fund, citing the risk of trading with faltering banks. In his farewell letter to his investors he excoriated the elites who run our investment houses, banks and government.
"The low-hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking," he said of our oligarchic class. "These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America."
"On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to make a modest proposal," he went on. "First, I point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have [reined] in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. Since Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith passed, I would argue that there has been a dearth of worthy philosophers in this country, at least ones focused on improving government."
Democracy is not an outgrowth of free markets. Democracy and capitalism are antagonistic entities. Democracy, like individualism, is not based on personal gain but on self-sacrifice. A functioning democracy must defy the economic interests of elites on behalf of citizens. This is not happening. The corporate managers and government officials trying to fix the economic meltdown are pouring money and resources into the financial sector because they only know how to manage and sustain established systems, not change them. Financial systems, however, are not pure scientific and numerical abstractions that exist independently from human beings.
"When the elite begin to think that money is real, the crash is coming," Saul said in a telephone interview. "That is just a given in history. Because what they've done is pull themselves out of the possibility of looking in the mirror and thinking, this is inflation, speculation, this is fluff. They can't do it. And when you say to them, gosh, this is not real. And they say, oh, you don't understand, you're so old-fashioned, you still think this is about manufacturing. And of course, it's basic economics. And that's what happens every single time.
"The difficulty is you have a collapse, you have a loss of face by the people who are there, and it's not just George Bush, it's very, very deep," Saul said. "What we're talking about is the need to rethink the departments of economics, of political science. Then you have to rethink the whole analytic method of the World Bank. If I'm the secretary of the treasury, and not a guy like [Henry] Paulson, but I mean a sort of normal secretary of the treasury or minister of finance, and I say, OK, we've got a real problem, let's get the senior civil servants in here. Gentlemen, ladies, OK, clearly we have to go in another direction, give me some ideas. Well, those people don't have any other ideas because at this point they're about the fourth generation of what you might call neoconservative globalist managers, unfairly summarized. So they then go to the people who work for them, and you work down; there's no one in there with an alternate approach. I mean they'll have little alternatives, but no basic differences in opinion. And so it's very difficult to turn anything around because they've eliminated all opposing ideas inside. I mean it's the problem of the Soviet Union, right?"
Saul pointed out that the first three aims of the corporatist movement in Germany, Italy and France during the 1920s, those that went on to become part of the Fascist experience, were "to shift power directly to economic and social interest groups, to push entrepreneurial initiative in areas normally reserved for public bodies" and to "obliterate the boundaries between public and private interest—that is, challenge the idea of the public interest."
Sound familiar?
"There are a handful of people who haven't been published in mainstream journals, who haven't been listened to, who have been marginalized in every way," Saul said. "There are a couple of them and you could turn to them. But then who do you give the orders to? And the people you give the orders to, they are not going to understand the orders because it hasn't been a part of their education. So it's a real problem of a good general who suddenly finds that his junior generals and brigadiers and corporals, you want them to do irregular warfare and they only know how to do trenches. And so how the hell do you get them to do this thing which they've never been trained to do? And so you get this kind of disorder, confusion inside, and the danger of what rises up there is populism; we've already had populism in a way, but we could get more populism, more fear and anger."
We may elect representatives to Congress to end the war in Iraq, but the war goes on. We may plead with these representatives to halt Bush's illegal wiretapping but the telecommunications lobbyists make sure it remains in place. We may beg them not to pass the bailout but 850 billion taxpayer dollars are funneled upward to the elites on Wall Street. We may want single-payer, not-for-profit health care but it is not even discussed as a possibility in presidential debates. We, as individuals in this system, are irrelevant.
"I've talked to several Supreme Court justices, several times in several countries," Saul told me, "and I say, look, in your rulings, can you differentiate easily in cases between the social contract and the commercial contract, and to which the answer is, we can no longer differentiate. And that lies at the heart of the problem. You don't have the concept of the other, and of obligation of the individual leading to individualism. You can't have that if the whole legal system has slipped over the last, really, 50 years, increasingly, to a confusion between the social contract and the commercial contract. Because they are two completely different things. The social contract is about the public good, responsible individualism, imagining the other. The commercial contract is a commercial contract. They're not supposed to be confused. They don't actually fit together. The commercial contract only works properly when the social contract works in a democracy."
The working class, which has desperately borrowed money to stay afloat as real wages have dropped, now face years, maybe decades, of stagnant or declining incomes without access to new credit. The national treasury meanwhile is being drained on behalf of speculative commercial interests. The government—the only institution citizens have that is big enough and powerful enough to protect their rights—is becoming weaker, more anemic and less able to help the mass of Americans who are embarking on a period of deprivation and suffering unseen in this country since the 1930s. Consumption, the profligate engine of the U.S. economy, is withering. September retail sales across the U.S. fell 1.2 percent. The decline was almost double the 0.7 percent drop analysts expected from consumers, whose spending represents two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. There were 160,000 jobs lost last month and three-quarters of a million jobs lost this year. The reverberations of the economic meltdown are only beginning.
I do not think George W. Bush or Barack Obama or John McCain or Henry Paulson are fascists. Rather, they are part of a cabal of naive, mediocre and self-deluded capitalists who are steadily weakening political and economic structures to a point where our democracy will become so impotent that it can be blown aside, probably with broad popular support. The only question is how this will happen. Will there be a steady and slow decline as in the late Roman Empire when the Senate ended as a farce? Will we see a powerful right-wing backlash from those outside the mainstream political system, as we did in Yugoslavia, and the rise of a militant Christian fascism? Will there be a national crisis that allows those in power to instantly sweep away all constitutional rights in the name of national security?
I do not know. But I do know that what is coming, as long as our oligarchy remains in charge, will not be good. We will either recover the concept of the public good, and this means a revolt against our bankrupt elite and the dynamiting of the corporatist structure, or we will extinguish our democracy.
'Media-police collusion is a threat to society'
CNN-IBN
Karan Thapar Hello and welcome to Devil's Advocate. Why is Arundhati Roy angry with the police and upset with the press? That's the key issue I shall explore today. Arundhati Roy, let's start with the recent encounter in Jamia Nagar in New Delhi. You've called for an independent judicial enquiry headed by a Supreme Court judge. Why do you involve yourself into this work? What's your locus standi?
Arundhati Roy: Well, I am just one of those thousands of people who are asking some very serious questions of the police. The trouble is that you know, even if you wanted to believe this police version, you so know which police version to believe…the Bombay police, the UP police, the Gujarat police or the Delhi police. All of them have different versions. There's a blizzard of masterminds. The Additional Commissioner of Mumbai police, Rakesh Maria recently said that Tauqeer, who is the Delhi police's mastermind of Indian Mujahideen, is a media creation. The point is who creates the media creations…is it the media or the police or do they work together?
Karan Thapar So you are motivated by these contradictions? Is that the sole reason you need a judicial enquiry headed by a Supreme Court judge?<0/i>
Arundhati Roy: Again, it is not just me. It was thousands of people who are saying one thing, you know. When the police have killed people, it ceases to be a neutral party. It cannot have an impartial investigation in its own actions. And there are so many serious questions about what happened at Batla House.
Karan Thapar But before we come to those questions, let me point out what many people will be thinking at this moment. They are going to why do you think will an encounter, when a senior police officer like M C Sharma is killed and another injured would be fake. The police would not endanger themselves in a fake and fraudulent incident.
Arundhati Roy: Well, historically the police and security agencies the world over have done things like that. I am not saying it is fake. I am saying lets have an enquiry because…this matter of M C Sharma, for instance would be cleared up if they would only produce the post mortem report. Instead the post mortem report is leaked in various ways and Mail Today says that he was shot from behind. (Journalist) Praveen Swami (of the daily The Hindu) says he was shot from two sides. The residents say that the police arrived and that there were drills and that they are making holes in the flat now. Why cannot all this be cleared up if they would just produce the reports, which even the Magistrate asked for the report and has put out a warrant for investigating officer for the investigating officer and they still haven't produced it.
Karan Thapar As you speak, I get the impression that your whole premise is that you don't trust the police. Millions of Indians do. Is it fitting and fair that you should question their veracity in this way when you know that it would not just demoralize them but it would seriously undermine their struggle to contain terror?
Arundhati Roy: Well. Millions of Indians do not trust the police. Is our choice not to question them because here we are talking about the communal profiling of a hundred and fifty million people, demoralising them, radicalizing a whole generation and asking serious questions of a story that is told to us that is full of holes? Especially because such a senior police officer died in the incident, why should we not clear it up for the sake of police itself?
Karan Thapar Let me for a moment play Devil's Advocate and point out to you evidence that you are deliberately ignoring. AK-47s were found in Batla House, so were two pistols. Policemen were shot at, policemen were killed. Atif's name appears in the Ahmedabad, Mumbai and UP police findings. Now, most recently, it transpires that Atif's degree from Allahabad is a fake. Why aren't you giving the police, as anyone else will, the benefit of the doubt? The evidence suggests that there is something suspicious, that there is a case. Why do you doubt it?
Arundhati Roy: Let enquiry clear it up. Even in the case of these recoveries, you know, there is a serious procedural lapse. When the police make recoveries at the scene of the crime, they should have independent witnesses corroborating it. They didn't, like in the case of the Parliament attack.
Karan Thapar Isn't it possible that people are scared to come forth?
Arundhati Roy: No, but they have to get the seizure memo signed, right? And even the magistrate is asking for all these documents…for the FIR, the post mortem report, for the case diary not being produced. Now, let me ask some questions about Atif. The reports in the media given out by the police say that they have had him under surveillance since July 17. If so, then how was he allowed to plant these bombs in September? And even when they say that they had him under surveillance, they say that his number was called by a number, which was called by another number…I mean, c'mon, that's a lead, not proof that someone is a terrorist.
Karan Thapar Maybe the surveillance wasn't effective. Maybe the police are exaggerating that they had him under surveillance. What about the other evidence that the police have brought into the public domain? It transpires that clips of the car that was used in the Ahmedabad bombings were found inside Atif's mobile, it transpires that literature of Al Qaeda was found at Batla House. It seems that even Saif has been using an assumed name. He has been travelling under a false identity calling himself Rohan Sharma. He even had that gentleman's voter identity card with him. None of these is suggestive or corroborated but you are dismissing it as otherwise.
Arundhati Roy: I am not dismissing it. If there is an enquiry, all this will also be a part of it. I am not dismissing they may be real terrorists. There are real terrorists; who are they; are these boys the real ones? While the police are giving us evidence, there are also strange stories floating around. The police have been using the media to put out stories. All this is very disturbing and all this could be cleared out.
Karan Thapar See, if I understand you correctly, there are two things you want clarified. One is that you want the questions and the inconsistencies in the police stories clarified because they suggest that the police hadn't got a clear cut case. And the second thing is that you want to try and get at the proof that establishes that the police had good reason to suspicious of the people.
Arundhati Roy: Exactly! Even their own versions are contradicting each other. On the one hand they say that you know, we did not know that they were terrorists and that is why we went in, in this casual manner. But the minute something came up they come out and say that these were the masterminds. There are so many things, you know. They say that people were killed in the crossfire but the proof is that these two men were killed while they were kneeling with shots in their head.
Karan Thapar That's an assumption, I must point out!
Arundhati Roy: No, there are pictures.
Karan Thapar Suggested. But we do not have the corroboration from the police.
Arundhati Roy: The police should show the post mortem report but we see it from the photographs.
Karan Thapar You know what listening to you, people will say? And I am repeating what I have said to you earlier! They will say that her problem arises from the fact that she does not trust the police. Is it right that you should have such serious doubts about them?
Arundhati Roy: Not just rights, I think its our duty to have serious doubts and especially today, when we are sliding quickly into fascism and terrorism. It's our business as members of civil society to ask hard questions.
Karan Thapar In which case, what are you suspecting the police…or let me put me more strongly and bluntly…what are you accusing the police of, on this issue?
Arundhati Roy: Well, primarily of giving us a story that doesn't hold together and insults our intelligence.
Karan Thapar Why would they do this?
Arundhati Roy: I don't know. That's what we would like to know.
Karan Thapar Is it not possible that they have got it right and you have doubts about them?
Arundhati Roy: Maybe! But an enquiry would show that, wouldn't it? The more they block it, refuse to produce the post mortem…the more they subterfuge and obfuscate their way through this, the more people will get suspicious of them.
Karan Thapar An enquiry at the end of the day, would be in their benefit as well! Is that what you are arguing?
Arundhati Roy: Absolutely!
Karan Thapar What then do you say of people who argue that this is typical Arundhati Roy. She's been against dams and developments; she's in favour of cessation of Kashmir. She's attacked nuclear weapons and is now she is defending terrorists?
Arundhati Roy: Well, to being accused of being typically oneself is not an accusation. But if you are accusing me of having a world view that I do not believe in…I mean I do not believe in neo colonial military occupation, I don't believe in nuclear weapons and I don't believe in ecological destruction; then I am guilty as accused. Raising questions does not amount to supporting terrorism. I raised questions on the Parliament attack along with the people; we want to know who the terrorists are. We don't know. Now, of the people we defended, two of the four 'masterminds' of the case were released. Afzal has been convicted by the Supreme Court which says that says that we have no evidence to prove that he is attached to any terrorist groups but in order to satisfy the collective conscience of society, he is being sentenced to death. Excuse me Karan, its my case that the collective conscience of society is also a part of media construct and a part of the judicial imagination constructed by these stories that being put out.
Karan Thapar So, you are saying to me that as a citizen, as a conscientious democrat, it is your duty to question. And if the questions are awkward and unsettling, so be it and that they must be answered, none the less?
Arundhati Roy: Yes, absolutely!
Karan Thapar Arundhati Roy, lets come to the wider issue about how the police treats the people it has arrested and it is holding in detention. You are extremely upset by the fact that India Today journalists were given an access to the young men arrested at Batla House so that interviews could be done. Why do you call this a terrible thing?
Arundhati Roy: Well, look this phenomenon of media confessions is becoming a standard operating procedure with the Special cell and the Delhi police. The point is that neither the courts nor any kind of international law allows you to say that people who are being held in police custody under torture…
Karan Thapar How do you know that they are being held under torture?
Arundhati Roy: Well, the possibility of torture…maybe that day, they were not tortured…it was the first day…
Karan Thapar You are saying that Human Rights laws and values do not permit people under detention to be interviewed when they are not willing to be interviewed?
Arundhati Roy: Yes! And even the courts do not accept these as confessions or evidence. But the reason these are done is because they have a propaganda value.
Karan Thapar The assumption when you say that such incidences have propaganda value is that these are forced confessions…that the young men interviewed did not give the answers they did, willingly and voluntarily. How can you conclude that that's the case?
Arundhati Roy: In this case it is very easy to be sure. Those young men, before they were caught, Zeeshan went to Headlines Today, Saquib went to Mail Today…both these (media units) are owned by the India Today, as you know. They were all people who came out in support of Atif and Saquib and said, look we know this guy. We know who he is.
Karan Thapar Then how come you are calling those so called confessions when they are incriminating themselves and that when they went willingly to Mail Today or India Today, there are inconsistencies.
Arundhati Roy: Yes, so which version are we supposed to believe? The custodial one or the non-custodial one?
Karan Thapar All the three men named by India Today and I will name them, Zia-ur-rehman, Saquib Insaar and Shakil admitted to planting bombs. You are denying or doubting the veracity of the so called confessions.
Arundhati Roy: Obviously! Its absurd not to, because they are in police custody. The same guys, Saquib went to Mail Today saying that I have known Atif for years…I got him this house. I mean it's hardly the behaviour of terrorists.
Karan Thapar I assume that the point you are making is that any interview that is granted in police custody is not a willing and voluntary one and therefore any confession made in that interview is a forced confession and not acceptable?
Arundhati Roy: Well, it is not admitted. Even in the Parliament case, the courts admonished the police for parading these people before the media and giving these media confessions. They didn't do anything to the police which is why the same police ; in fact Mohan Chand Sharma was a part of that cell, that same cell did it to theses people and it served the purpose. The propaganda value has been achieved.
Karan Thapar You are saying that the Courts had admonished the police at the time the Parliament attack had happened for arranging such alleged false confessions and the police disregarded that admonishing and did the same thing again.
Arundhati Roy: That's right.
Karan Thapar In your eyes, is the police guilty of violating fundamental human rights by arranging what you call false confessions to be made in forced interviews? Is this a violation of basic human rights?
Arundhati Roy: It is a violation of all kinds of rights. I say it again, that in this atmosphere of communal profiling, this kind of propaganda is essential for them. It is the keystone to this whole enterprise. They have achieved what they set out to, regardless of what the court says.
Karan Thapar The police have made a habit of this. It happened under circumstances, in the Arushi murder case, practically everyday. They hold press briefings, where half baked theories or at least unconfirmed details they are repeated and revealed to the press. The press then prints them as facts. The readers and the viewers of television then accept it as the truth. Are you disconcerted by this?
Arundhati Roy: I am utterly disconcerted by this because now it is the combination of the media and the police…you do not know which ends where and which begins where. In a situation where these encounter specialists are going out and summarily executing thirty people, calling them terrorists…No one asks questions once they are dead. We just accept it.
Karan Thapar Just a moment ago, you spoke about the collusion between the media and the police. Are you saying that the press is itself in error when it accepts what is given by the police and publishes it without verifying or double checking it?
Arundhati Roy: It is not just an error. It is outrageous to do something like this.
Karan Thapar So the press' behaviour is outrageous?
Arundhati Roy: It is outrageous. There are statements like…and this man looked at me and he looked like a human bomb…I mean what kind of journalism is that?
Karan Thapar So when as a result, like many people have said, this collusion between the police and the press leads to Jamia Nagar or to Azamgarh being thought as terrorist hubs or breeding grounds for terrorism, how unfortunate is that?
Arundhati Roy: It is not just unfortunate, its very dangerous. We now have a situation where a hundred and fifty Muslims and an equal number of Dalits and Adivasis in a different set of circumstances are being targeted in this way. Even if half a per cent of them decide to stop putting their heads down and decide to hit back, life as we knew it is over. A whole generation is radicalised and India becomes a threat to not just itself, but to the whole world.
Karan Thapar This is something very important that you are saying. You mean that this behaviour of the police and the uncritical reporting by the press is going to end up in alienation and breeding the terrorism that we think we are controlling.
Arundhati Roy: Yes, that and also that this is a recipe for sliding into fascism. And we are bang in the middle of it now and this is how it works.
Karan Thapar Why does the Indian middle class society that is so proud of calling itself a liberal democracy, accept this?
Arundhati Roy: Well, I don't think we are anymore proud of this. We have increasingly accepted that we are a police state and there is a sort of sliding of the democracy into majority into fascism that is a real danger now.
Karan Thapar So you are saying that the middle class no more stands up for the liberal values it believes in. It is actually in a sense accepting the horrible shortcuts and therefore colluding. It's a very strong criticism, do you really mean it?
Arundhati Roy: I do. In fact, I feel that some day like the Nazis in Germany, we will be called upon to answer for what we have done and why we kept quiet while this was happening.
Karan Thapar I get the feel that you are deeply disillusioned with the Indian middle classes.
Arundhati Roy: It is not just the middle classes, you know. It is the framework that we are putting into action these days. I have spent ten years writing about it. We are in a very serious situation. If we are to right it, all of us should ask ourselves very serious questions about when we chose to speak up and when we chose to stay quiet.
Karan Thapar But in keeping quiet, as you say suggesting, Indians today are prepared to do, they are not just betraying essential values that they claim they believe in, they are actually betraying themselves and letting down their country. That's the case you are making.
Arundhati Roy: I am making that case and I am saying that with these policies that we are persuing, today every ordinary Indian's life is going to be at risk and we will pay very heavily for the consequences of what is going on now.
Karan Thapar So it is virtually the last moment to stand up and be identified with the values that we claim to believe in otherwise those values are gone and with that our lives are gone.
Arundhati Roy: Absolutely!
Karan Thapar And that's not an exaggeration?
Arundhati Roy: Nope! Absolutely not!
Karan Thapar Arundhati Roy, a pleasure talking to you on Devil's Advocate
A global financial meltdown of this magnitude has inevitably prompted an explosion of black humour. My personal favourite centres on Iceland, the small North European country whose currency has collapsed and where the stock market index fell by 70% on October 14. Question: What is the capital of Iceland? Answer: $3.50.
India, mercifully, is not about to go the way of Iceland. Nor are there descriptions of India as the new Burkina Faso with nuclear weapons. Yet, there is a deepening realisation that no amount of reassuring platitudes delivered in slow, loud and impeccable diction by the finance minister is going to prevent the Incredible India dream from turning into a nightmare. The ideologically-inclined may direct their ire at smug investment bankers and hedge fund managers who descended on India to educate the natives on modern capitalism. However, to the new middle classes that extricated themselves from the shortage economy, enjoyed the benefits of housing, car and education loans, a rising stock market and surfeit of consumer goods, the party-poopers are at home.
The outrage over Jet Airways' proposed job cuts was a revelation. At one level, it symbolised the end of hope in the New Economy. But it also suggested that even impeccably groomed kids, trained in hospitality, will not hesitate to kick butts and even solicit the help of Raj Thackeray to safeguard their future. Politically, all this is bad news for the government. Regardless of who was really to blame, the ultimate responsibility for things going wrong is invariably pinned on incumbent administrations.
For governments it's a no-win situation. Adopting a hands-off approach is impossible because the mismanagement of private greed has a knock-on effect on the whole economy and mar people's lives. At the same time, bail-out packages (including nationalisation) invite charges of cosy stitch-ups - in a Vanity Fair article Christopher Hitchens described them as privatisation of profits and socialising of debts.
Electorates need someone to pillory and governments are first in the retribution queue. In the US, the sub-prime crisis sealed the fate of John McCain because he is the nearest thing to a President Bush proxy. If the Republican still pulls off a miraculous win it is because the White working class is wary of a Black president. In Britain, opinion polls suggest that despite some imaginative crisis management, Gordon Brown is being considered for a place in a chamber of horrors.
The implications for the Manmohan Singh government are ominous. A few months ago it had banked on an overall mood of optimism and some populist gestures to see it through. Now, with elections only a few months away, it is sandwiched between two different impulses. Conservatives charge it on financial profligacy, high inflation, spending inefficiently beyond its means on gimmicky schemes and burdening the future with a fiscal deficit that could touch 10% of GDP. The remaining socialists charge the regime with being enticed by the glitz of consumerism and encouraging reckless speculation. They would rather sacrifice rapid growth for a life of secure stodginess and modest expectations.
In today's climate of uncertainty, the government can hardly be expected to mount a credible campaign based on the appealing but intangible spin-offs from the Indo-US nuclear agreement. Nor will the invocation of a non-productive NREG galvanise the poor into believing that a distant Sonia Gandhi is a reincarnation of the combative Indira Gandhi. Middle India is both fearful and angry. It knows what it doesn't want: terrorist attacks, job insecurity, dwindling purchasing power and political chaos. It is less sure how the goals can be achieved.
In moments like these, the temptation to look for a strong, no-nonsense leader who can offer a lifeline is irresistible. Controversy is no deterrent. An exasperated industry said so after the tomfoolery in Singur and the sacked Jet Airways staff said so in Mumbai.
CPM Alleges Breach of Parliamentary Prvilege on 123 Agreement (in line with the cue prvided by CNDP)
I/II.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/CPM_moves_privilege_motion_against_PM/rssarticleshow/3609399.cms
CPM moves privilege motion against PM
17 Oct 2008, 1815 hrs IST,PTI
NEW DELHI: The CPM on Friday moved a breach of privilege motion against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for "violating" the promise he made in Lok Sabha that he would come back to Parliament before operationalising the Indo-US nuclear deal.
"We have submitted the breach of privilege motion with the Speaker. It will come up before the House on Monday. Let's see what decision the Speaker takes on the issue," CPM Parliamentary Party leader Basudev Acharia said.
Acharia said the Prime Minister, during the trust vote debate in Lok Sabha on July 22, has assured that he will bring back the 123 Agreement to the House after securing clearance from IAEA and NSG and before signing the deal.
The CPM leader said Singh has not kept his word and went ahead with signing the agreement with the United States which is a "breach of privilege" of the House.
He pointed out that the Prime Minister has given nine assurances to House with regard to the nuclear deal on fuel supply assurances, reprocessing rights and other issues.
II.
October 8 2008
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/india-unity/message/27921
The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP)
Demands
Parliamentary Review before Signing of 123 Agreement
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) notes with great concern various reports to the effect that the government of India is to sign the "123 Agreement" with the US as regards civilian nuclear trade between the two countries anytime now. In fact the signing of the agreement appears to be overdue in that it has reportedly already been twice postponed for certain reasons. And a similar agreement has already been signed with the French government.
This does clearly contradict the solemn promise made by the Indian Prime Minister on the floor of the parliament on July 22 last in his concluding reply to the debate on the confidence motion moved by him a day earlier. He then had categorically assured: "I have said on several occasions that our nuclear agreement after being endorsed by the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group would be submitted to this august House for expressing its view."
While the CNDP desists from speculating whether going ahead with signing of bilateral agreements with foreign nations pursuant to the waivers granted by the NSG and the IAEA constitutes a breach of parliamentary privilege, it emphatically demands that before taking up any such bilateral agreement the GoI must come back to the parliament to obtain its view on the whole gamut of issues and the momentous developments since July 22 as per the solemn commitment made by the Indian Prime Minister.
The CNDP takes this opportunity also to reiterate its firm, consistent and principled opposition to the "nuclear deal" as it surely undermines the prospects of global nuclear disarmament, promotes the cause of nuclear militarism and nuclear-weapon build-up in India, threatens to intensify the arms race between India and Pakistan , carries forward the perilous US-India "strategic partnership", and seriously distorts India's energy priorities.
Arundhati Roy: Nope! Absolutely not!
Karan Thapar Arundhati Roy, a pleasure talking to you on Devil's Advocate
A global financial meltdown of this magnitude has inevitably prompted an explosion of black humour. My personal favourite centres on Iceland, the small North European country whose currency has collapsed and where the stock market index fell by 70% on October 14. Question: What is the capital of Iceland? Answer: $3.50.
India, mercifully, is not about to go the way of Iceland. Nor are there descriptions of India as the new Burkina Faso with nuclear weapons. Yet, there is a deepening realisation that no amount of reassuring platitudes delivered in slow, loud and impeccable diction by the finance minister is going to prevent the Incredible India dream from turning into a nightmare. The ideologically-inclined may direct their ire at smug investment bankers and hedge fund managers who descended on India to educate the natives on modern capitalism. However, to the new middle classes that extricated themselves from the shortage economy, enjoyed the benefits of housing, car and education loans, a rising stock market and surfeit of consumer goods, the party-poopers are at home.
The outrage over Jet Airways' proposed job cuts was a revelation. At one level, it symbolised the end of hope in the New Economy. But it also suggested that even impeccably groomed kids, trained in hospitality, will not hesitate to kick butts and even solicit the help of Raj Thackeray to safeguard their future. Politically, all this is bad news for the government. Regardless of who was really to blame, the ultimate responsibility for things going wrong is invariably pinned on incumbent administrations.
For governments it's a no-win situation. Adopting a hands-off approach is impossible because the mismanagement of private greed has a knock-on effect on the whole economy and mar people's lives. At the same time, bail-out packages (including nationalisation) invite charges of cosy stitch-ups - in a Vanity Fair article Christopher Hitchens described them as privatisation of profits and socialising of debts.
Electorates need someone to pillory and governments are first in the retribution queue. In the US, the sub-prime crisis sealed the fate of John McCain because he is the nearest thing to a President Bush proxy. If the Republican still pulls off a miraculous win it is because the White working class is wary of a Black president. In Britain, opinion polls suggest that despite some imaginative crisis management, Gordon Brown is being considered for a place in a chamber of horrors.
The implications for the Manmohan Singh government are ominous. A few months ago it had banked on an overall mood of optimism and some populist gestures to see it through. Now, with elections only a few months away, it is sandwiched between two different impulses. Conservatives charge it on financial profligacy, high inflation, spending inefficiently beyond its means on gimmicky schemes and burdening the future with a fiscal deficit that could touch 10% of GDP. The remaining socialists charge the regime with being enticed by the glitz of consumerism and encouraging reckless speculation. They would rather sacrifice rapid growth for a life of secure stodginess and modest expectations.
In today's climate of uncertainty, the government can hardly be expected to mount a credible campaign based on the appealing but intangible spin-offs from the Indo-US nuclear agreement. Nor will the invocation of a non-productive NREG galvanise the poor into believing that a distant Sonia Gandhi is a reincarnation of the combative Indira Gandhi. Middle India is both fearful and angry. It knows what it doesn't want: terrorist attacks, job insecurity, dwindling purchasing power and political chaos. It is less sure how the goals can be achieved.
In moments like these, the temptation to look for a strong, no-nonsense leader who can offer a lifeline is irresistible. Controversy is no deterrent. An exasperated industry said so after the tomfoolery in Singur and the sacked Jet Airways staff said so in Mumbai.
CPM Alleges Breach of Parliamentary Prvilege on 123 Agreement (in line with the cue prvided by CNDP)
I/II.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/CPM_moves_privilege_motion_against_PM/rssarticleshow/3609399.cms
CPM moves privilege motion against PM
17 Oct 2008, 1815 hrs IST,PTI
NEW DELHI: The CPM on Friday moved a breach of privilege motion against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for "violating" the promise he made in Lok Sabha that he would come back to Parliament before operationalising the Indo-US nuclear deal.
"We have submitted the breach of privilege motion with the Speaker. It will come up before the House on Monday. Let's see what decision the Speaker takes on the issue," CPM Parliamentary Party leader Basudev Acharia said.
Acharia said the Prime Minister, during the trust vote debate in Lok Sabha on July 22, has assured that he will bring back the 123 Agreement to the House after securing clearance from IAEA and NSG and before signing the deal.
The CPM leader said Singh has not kept his word and went ahead with signing the agreement with the United States which is a "breach of privilege" of the House.
He pointed out that the Prime Minister has given nine assurances to House with regard to the nuclear deal on fuel supply assurances, reprocessing rights and other issues.
II.
October 8 2008
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/india-unity/message/27921
The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP)
Demands
Parliamentary Review before Signing of 123 Agreement
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) notes with great concern various reports to the effect that the government of India is to sign the "123 Agreement" with the US as regards civilian nuclear trade between the two countries anytime now. In fact the signing of the agreement appears to be overdue in that it has reportedly already been twice postponed for certain reasons. And a similar agreement has already been signed with the French government.
This does clearly contradict the solemn promise made by the Indian Prime Minister on the floor of the parliament on July 22 last in his concluding reply to the debate on the confidence motion moved by him a day earlier. He then had categorically assured: "I have said on several occasions that our nuclear agreement after being endorsed by the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group would be submitted to this august House for expressing its view."
While the CNDP desists from speculating whether going ahead with signing of bilateral agreements with foreign nations pursuant to the waivers granted by the NSG and the IAEA constitutes a breach of parliamentary privilege, it emphatically demands that before taking up any such bilateral agreement the GoI must come back to the parliament to obtain its view on the whole gamut of issues and the momentous developments since July 22 as per the solemn commitment made by the Indian Prime Minister.
The CNDP takes this opportunity also to reiterate its firm, consistent and principled opposition to the "nuclear deal" as it surely undermines the prospects of global nuclear disarmament, promotes the cause of nuclear militarism and nuclear-weapon build-up in India, threatens to intensify the arms race between India and Pakistan , carries forward the perilous US-India "strategic partnership", and seriously distorts India's energy priorities.
__________________________________________________________________________
Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace â€" CNDP
A â€" 124 / 6, 1st Floor, Katwaria Sarai
New Delhi â€" 110016,
telefax - 011-26517814
e mail â€" cndpindia@gmail.com
Three sons murdered, she seeks protection for the rest
Font Size -A +A
Express news service
Posted: Oct 21, 2008 at 0316 hrs IST
Lucknow, October 20 A Dalit woman from Allahabad, who has taken to arms to protect her family, visited the state capital on Monday to meet Director General of Police Vikram Singh.
Vidhyawati (45) from Allahabad, was seeking protection from the men accused of murdering her three sons. They were threatening to kill her and her family, she said.
Armed with a licensed gun, she, however, could not meet the police chief. The police took her application and assured her that it would be forwarded to Singh.
In her application, Vidhyawati named former village pradhan Manik Chand Patel, his son Doodhnath and cousin Rakesh Patel. She accused them of murdering her son and now forcing her not to give statement against them in court.
The men had been released on bail a week ago from the Allahabad District Jail.
The Deputy Inspector General, Allahabad Range, MK Prasad, said: "We provided an arms license to her after she complained about the threat to her family.
Security has been arranged for her when she visits the court for hearings."
Two of Vidhyawati's sons were allegedly poisoned in 2003 and 2004. A third was killed brutally in 2006 and his body was found on the railway tracks.
The murders took place after she staked claim on her father's land following his demise.
No FIR was lodged in this connection.
"My rivals were trying to capture my land and when I opposed it, they beat me up. Because of the threat I left the village but did not let them capture the land," said Vidhyawati, who is currently living in Soran with a physically-handicapped husband and two children.
--
Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Visit my blog at
www.manukhsi.blogspot.com
Chengara's Dalit-Adivasis call to restore their fundamental rights
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Bharathi Sreedharan could not resist taking risk on her life through dense forest as her children suffered in hunger and starvation in the Chengara village which has been unconstitutionally and unethically blocked by the trade union gangs of all the political parties including the ruling CPI(M) in Kerala. Her agonizing face reflected the happenings inside the village as for more than two months; it is completely cut off from rest of the country. No outsider is allowed to venture into the village and no villager is allowed to come out of it. CPM's goons attack people from the buses once they recognize that they have sympathies with Chengara people. Many families are on the verge of hunger death if in the next few days no arrangement of food supply is done. 'They want us to get out of the place but we are determined, says Bharathi, we won't allow them to take over the place. We are ready to face any eventuality'. We are ready to die for the cause of our children'.
Bharathi came hiding to get some ration from her brother. When the road is blocked from all the way, it is possible only through walking around 10 kilometers in the forest to come and reach the office and wait for him to be there at Laha Gopalan's office who is the leader of ' Sadhu Jan Vimoc-hana Samyukta Vedi', the organization fighting for the land and livelihood rights of the Dalits and Adivasis in Chengara. It is remarkable that people have united in this struggle and are determined to sacrifice their lives for the land. Interestingly, it is for the first time, that Kerala is witnessing an assertive emerging Dalit Adivasi struggle independent of the influence of dominating communities irrespective of religion.
Gopalan hails from a trade union back ground as he worked in Electricity department and now swears by the legacy of both Baba Saheb Ambedkar and Ayyankali, another Dalit revolutionary from Kerala. The semi constructed office in Pattthanamthittha is a place where all the Dalit-Advasis in the Chengara struggle come and stay. According to Laha Gopalan, they ventured into the area some fourteen months back, as it was legally a government land which should have gone to the landless Dalit-Adivasis of Kerala. The government of Kerala was never interested in the land reform and whatever happened in the name of land reform was eyewash. The tragedy is that there are villages where the Dalits do not have land for even cremating their people. The issue of Dalits and tribal has been neglected by the national and state level parties and hence we decided to make our own destiny.
About 10 kilometer away towards Tiruwala lives the big family of Sabu who are five brothers. Each brother has a big family of his own to support. They have no land. Sabu and his wife have small tea shop. The number of children in the family and the small kitchen that they have for their survival tell the story as how the successive Kerala governments failed to give land to the Dalits. ' Sabu was happy that Chengara's vast track could have provided him a source of independent living and some land for agriculture work. He went there with other families. The real assault came from the trade unions this year when people refused to leave their land. ' The union felt that they can coerce us to accept their issues but at the moment people are ready to die. They will commit mass suicide if police and other forces are sending to evict them. We are not ready to accept anything less than a decent land package for our children', say Sabu. He adds that situation is worsening as there is no food, no water and no sanitation in the entire area. Particularly, it is becoming difficult for children and elderly people to stay. Because of the blockade, we can not provide emergency treatment to any of the villagers as vehicles are not allowed and there is every chance of a bloody fight if we come in touch with the trade union people. Children are facing the malnutrition as there is nothing to eat and drink. We can not go to market to buy milk and rice. Moreover, because of no work in the past two months, there is no money to buy anything'.
How come he is here in the village. ' Sir, the union people allowed us 5 days leaves during the Onam festivities. We were allowed to move in and out and hence I came here. I have overstayed here and hence it is difficult to go there because of blockade'. I can not speak to my relatives and friends there, I am really worried as if food is not provided to people soon, they will start dying soon. I am concerned about children and elderly people. They are completely cut off from the rest of the world. It is shameful.'
The seize of Chengara went off well until one day the government which was keen to revive its lease to Harrison Plantation decided that the Dalit and Adivasis could only be evicted if they push it through other routs which is 'right to live' issue of the 70 odd plantation workers who were working there. The issue is the Chengara's tea plantation was already defunct years ago and hence to blame the current situation for the crisis is absolutely wrong. Harrison Plantation cannot use these 70 workers as a shield to deny land rights of the people. The tactics they adopted are fascistic in nature as from the August this year, the situation worsened after the plantation trade union and CPM in particular started blockade. Now the parties have not only used the local tea plantation trade unions but people have been invited from other parts of the state also against the landless people. All the ways going to Chengara were blocked by the party men and no material including medical aid was allowed to go into the village. Only allowance given to people was during ONAM festivities when the blockade was lifted for 5 days to let the people celebrate the festival. But after that the blockade has become functional and harsher and it might turn into a bloody war. Now the situation has gone out of hand. People inside the Chengara area have no source of livelihood; there is no supply of food and water. Some Muslim youth organizations of the area wanted to send rice for the families but but never allowed to do so. It is violation of their rights to food and free from hunger. The state government has shamelessly allowed the situation to go out of hand which has given strength to the trade unions.
It is unfortunate that in this war against their Dalits and tribal the organized gang of the trade union is taking action irrespective of ideology. It is a rare combination of how the upper caste communists and the Hindutva people can come together to wipe out the legitimate demands of the Dalits and tribals. The duplicity of the CPM's idea comes that the same party launch movement for restoration of land in Andhra Pradesh but want to say that all the Dalits and tribals who have now settled in Chengara are encroachers. Perhaps they have forgotten their own slogan of ' Jo jameen sarkari hai, woh jameen hamari hai ( the government land is our land. Land struggles historically invoked this slogan. Harrison Plantation Company did not have legal rights to the acquired land. The lease expired long back. The dalits and tribal who did not get benefited under any programme of the government rightfully acquired the land and asked the government to redistribute it to them. How come the communist government of Kerala kept quiet and turned hostile to Dalits who have just extended the slogan what the communist parties have been raising every where else except in the states they have been ruling. Is it because this land struggle is first of its kind being led by the Dalits and have organized both the Dalits and tribal together in the state.
Dalits have been asking the government to allot them land. In 2006 in the Patthanamthitta district after five days struggle in the government land of rubber plantation area, the land was given to the Dalits on the papers only. Many people are still trying to find where there land is which was given to them on papers by the state government. Says, Raghu, one of the members of the Solidarity Committee, 'we do not want papers, we want land'.
Patthanamthitta is a district about 60 kilometers from Kottayam, the heart of the Syrian Christian, the original brahmanical convert to Christianity. About 40 kilometer from the town is the heart of Ayappa, the Hindu God. The land relations here are different as the dominant community here is the upper caste Christians. What their role is in the entire struggle of the Dalits, I ask Raghu. ' Oh, like any other feudal, the Syrian Christians also are not interested in the battle of Dalits. Dalits here have separate churches for them.' The Solidarity Committee members like Simon John, who is also Chairman of Backward People Development Corporation, Kerala concede that the original Brahmin converts to Christianity have not left their old prejudices in the Church and therefore are not very keen in supporting the movement of the Dalits and tribal in Chengara. Like the CPM cadre, many of them too feel that the Dalits and tribal have 'encroached' the government land, though it is another matter that they all forgot that Harrison Plantation has been the biggest encroacher and was overstaying at the place. It is also shocking that Kerala did not have substantial land reform and all talks of a Kerala module in the developmental text books are big farce if one visit the rural areas of Kerala and speak to Dalits and tribals. A lot is written about Kerala model as a state. Recently a friend wrote to me from London about casteless, dowerless society in Kerala. Yes, I said, Kerala's caste prejudices are hidden underneath like West Bengal since the first thing the communist regime does is to stop the export of information to outside world. More importantly since a large number of writers and authors actually have been sympathetic to the CPM's policies with upper caste mindset, they do not really expose the Kerala myth. It was not just Bengal, Tatas have huge track of land in Kerala in the name of tea gardens and plantation. One should not forget that great Dalit revolutionary Ayyankali emerged in Kerala to fight for the rights of Dalits. It is not for nothing that both Patthanmthitta and Trivendram represent two different kind of dominations that Kerala has : the Christian domination and the Hindu domination. Both these upper elites interest are against the rights of the Dalits and other marginalized communities. They remain caged to their old prejudiced worldview.
Laha Gopalan is a determined man. He has seen the traumas of the Dalit communities in the villages where they do not even have land for funeral leave alone for education and houses. ' The political parties, both at the national and state level have betrayed the cause of the Dalits and tribal,' he says. ' We started our struggle when people failed to get land by any request. We found that there is no land to them and the government wanted to further the lease at the area which was being used by the Dalits and tribal. Our historic struggle started last year as 7000 people captured the area and started living there. One should have expected that the communist parties which have raised the slogans of ' jo jameen sarkari hai, wo jameen hamari hai, ( Government land is our land) today are strangely at the other end. There is no hope in the sight as the trade unions are determined to take law in their own hand and kill people with chief minister virtually becoming a 'Dhritrastra'.
Says Laha Gopalan, ' when we started our first struggle the government termed that they were genuine demands. In June 2006 about 5000 families were living in another plantation area when the revenue minister interfered and promised them land. Chief Minister Achutanandan promised about 1 acre land to each family of the landless but nothing happened. Since August 4, 2007, there are over 7000 families and the government has so far neglected their demand. The unions have surrounded the area and are beating people who are showing solidarity. The lives of the solidarity committee members are in deep threat in the area. They are being identified in the buses, taxis and even in the press conferences and targeted.'
' Even in the war zones people allow doctors and medical teams to visit the victims but here the goons of CPM and other trade unions have denied that too to the people,' says Simon John. They are not allowing the food supply in the village. There is a hunger and starvation situation prevailing in the 'samarbhoomi' and one person is already dead due to hunger. It is violation of people's right to life', add John. ' We are deeply disturbed at the turn of events as government and political parties led by the upper castes are not at all bothered about the growing marginalization of the communities says another activist in Patthanamthittha.
Is it not strange and ironical that CPM and other communist parties who have been in the forefront of agitation against any kind of exploitation in the organized sector do not find that the landless people in Chengara are struggling for a genuine cause? The party leaders termed the entire struggle as unwanted and felt that the local goons and land mafias have taken over the Chengara land struggle. Ofcourse, Party's anti Dalit stand is visible anywhere. One does not blame the top leadership of the party for being anti Dalit as it would be too much to blame but definitely party's local leaders are not really that radical Dalit supporters as they should have been. CPM for that matter is like any other political party ( we wanted it remained a different political party) whose cadres hail from dominant communities and serve their local interest as we have seen in West Bengal and how the party remained mute to the displacement of about 700 Valmiki families in Belilius Park in Howarah several years back. Today, party's proud MPs have made use of the entire space for private properties and shops. Ofcourse, the poor Balmikis never got support from any other Bhadralok parties in Bengal and living in Bengal in highly uncivilized and unacceptable conditions near the waste-mountains, on sewerage lines and on the railway tracks. Similar thing happen in Kerala where the Dalits and Adivasis of Chengara have not got support from any other political outfits. That gives strength to fascistic tendencies of the ruling party and their leaders. But the fact is this nationalism of the communist parties is more dangerous. Our problems with the Hindutva fascist is that we know that they are against the people but when the so called leaders of the proliterariat start behaving neo Hindutvavadis then situation need special remedial measures otherwise people's frustration would explode soon.
Chengara's land struggle is historical. It shows that people can not really depend on government dole out for land. Political parties in connivance with the defunct industrial houses are keeping people landless. New landlessness is on the rise. Courts are being used as an excuse to evict people. The marginalized have understood this and are ready to fight till end. If the government of Kerala think it is wrong, let it come out in open and say that they oppose people's movement for land right. The government cannot use trade unions and other goons to threaten people and evict them. Life in Chengara has become miserable and any further delay will turn Chengara into another Nandigram. The situation in Chengara would become more dangerous and bloody if the government does not behave responsibly. All national and international rights bodies should take care of this note that denying people free movement is denying them right to choice and livelihood. Kerala government has failed to protect Chengara's Dalits and Adivasis right to move free from one place and other. The inhuman blockade has created unprecedented situation where children and elderly people in Chengara are suffering. Any further delay would escalate the crisis and only government of Kerala would be held responsible for this. The government must act fast and negotiate with the struggling masses of Chengara. The trade union blockade is unconstitutional and illegal and must be removed immediately as it violate the fundamental rights of the people living there who are victim of the criminal silence of the government and civil society.
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Vidya Bhushan Rawat
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