New Year thoughts...

What was 2007 for India?

New year brings different kinds of messages. There are doomsday predictors and optimists galore. The most striking greeting I received was one penned by Narmada Bachchao Aandalon, Ms. Medha Patkar and team, it articulated the helplessness felt by many groups and the need for such groups to stay together. There was also prediction of widespread social disturbance and food insecurity in 2008, higher inflation, etc. One news report mentioned that no less a person than the PM himself has acknowledged that 2008 could be a tough year.

On the optimistic side, there are many friends and organizations sending on-line and off-line greeting cards and wishes, perhaps oblivious to the lurking dangers of the year ahead. Their ignorance is the promise.

I think 2007 was a year that established few issues at the national level -
1) increase in anger among sections of society and actions, mostly violent, guided by them at the cost of everyone else.
2) divorce of the state from the affairs of people.
3) indifference towards immediate neighbourhood by a large section of greedy population (mostly middle class).

Whatever social discourse seems to happen is happening between an angry mob-minded and often isolated, but, active groups and individuals negotiating with a state machinery which is impotent to people and a inert third section of the population that would be admiring the cheese in its pizza even if bullets are flying all around.

How did no one in the neighbourhood know of the ghastly killings of Nithari?
How come people repeatedly restore to violence in every case of public expression of asserting either self-image or discontent all over the country - whether it be Dalits being beaten to death in Haryana, Tribals in Assam, Nandigram, ...and the growing and ever spreading Maoist popularity?
How come the perpetrators of the Gujarat on camera accept (indeed proclaim) their crime and their neighbours don't protest the next day?

Rage grew across the country in 2007. It became a social advantage. In individual lives too, we are becoming an enraged people. In a recent journey on an autorickshaw in chennai, the driver had to swerve suddenly to avoid a pot hole which disturbed the biker coming too close behind, the biker sped alongside (thanks to the very powerful bikes all the time being introduced in the market) within seconds and started shouting at the driver of the autorickshaw, the auto driver in response almost drove his vehicle (with poor me inside not still reconciled to what is happening) onto the biker and the abuse continued for the next one minute of the journey...neither wanting to dis-embark from the security of their respective vehicles to resolve the issue, both building up rage to a crescendo with no reason, neither having the humility to apologize nor the mind to realize that the problem was of the road to begin with...this is a daily show, played out in various ways by different players across India, but, neverthless, being played out to make a un-healthy nation.

The divorce of the state machinery from the people's agenda was best summarized this year by the statement of the civil servant, a secretary of the central government at that, who opined that as the price of land will be much higher with the growth of SEZ than what the farmer may ever earn in his life, it is better he sell it and move on, vacate his land and go other places, do other things. The state machinery has become a property of different corporate holders and their beneficiaries. It works for them and prefers to address its own votaries as customers of the corporate clients rather than citizens of an ancient civilization. Growth is the share market index and power is the amount of investment. Such indifference and insensitivity to people not even the Colonial masters would have imagined the state machinery they designed would be capable of delivering.

The growing middle class is the inert population that satisfies itself with the comfortable crumbs from the initiatives of the state machinery and stays away from the violence of a suppressed people while debouching its own discontent through extreme consumption.

Welcome 2008.

I am an optimist, maybe, this year will see fewer farmer deaths, maybe the state will change its thinking, maybe there will be fewer SEZs, maybe industries will suffer from bouts of guilt, maybe the middle class will look around and take note of what happens in its neighbourhood, maybe...India is too old and too wise, it will assert, hopefully without much violence. Maybe the enraged people and estranged nation state will come together in some sane platform for everlasting peace. Prayers, Peace and Wishes.

SEZ follow-up 2: 'Now you deal directly with the developer' says the Government

Even as we understand the significance of the ministerial statement on SEZ, comes the next news:

After the recent killings in Nandigram, the Centre announced changes in the rules and made developers solely responsible for rehabilitation of the displaced persons.

“The developer (of special economic zones) shall make adequate provision for rehabilitation of the displaced persons as per the relief and rehabilitation policy of the state government," a Commerce Ministry notification said.

The sudden change in rules by the Commerce Ministry, the nodal agency for approving SEZs, has even preceded the finalisation of the rehabilitation policy being worked out by the Ministry of Rural Development.

Now, the government cannot be blamed for Nandigrams. As it happened with the soft drink giant (the Benaras protest couple of years back in which protesters including Sandeep Pandey were reportedly beaten up by hired goons while the police looked the other way), corporate houses will be permitted to directly deal with the local communities.

Follow-up on SEZ

So now we know that Mr. Pillai was wrong after all. In his interview referred to in an earlier posting in this page, he had mentioned how the farmers are benefiting because of the sky rocketing prices, and how they can all sell their lands, take the money home and be happy ever after, blah-blah. But, no the area the farmers will have to sell is not that much says the minister now. Says he in the Parliament:

"In the 234 SEZs, given formal approvals, the total land acquired is 33,807 hectares. This extent of land would not hamper the agriculture production as the total land under cultivation in the country is over 100 million hectares," Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh told Rajya Sabha in a written reply to a question.

Of the total land, he said, needed for the SEZs, with formal approval around 17,800 hectares was already with state government agencies while the remaining land has been acquired by private developers. ...

There is enough land for everyone, blah-blah. The question is about the kinds of lands being acquired and compensation promised (read Medha Patkar on Singur)? But, Simple Ramesh is a technological-mathematical wizard, long before the GM technology was driving farmers to suicide he had predicted that this is the future of India. Writing on GM Rice as early as 2001, he wrote that GM-Rice is the Rice of the future ( India Today, 26 February 2001).

What if (as a friend suggested recently) all the farmers decide that 'we want to sell our lands for SEZ' and offer them to the Government? Why this discrimination against farmers, after all, Mr. Pillai did mention in his interview that the farmer will never get as much money as he would if he sold his land to SEZ. Let all farmers make money and whats more if we have so much lands for developing SEZs and that much of FDI flowing in, imagine the country will be prosperous in no time!?

Nandigram: What actually happened???

The influential English media which to a large extent is controlled by the left wing and people sympathetic to it has tried to centralize and objectivize what happened in Nandigram. The local media has finally made available some details, please checkup the Calcuttaweb (http://www.calcuttaweb.com/nandigram.shtml) for some of the worst details of the carnage:

"...Bands of CPM goons aided by platoons of Eastern Frontier Rifles and Commando forces were entering every village and paras [mahallas]. They brought the men out of home, they took no prisoners, no witnesses, they shot them, bayoneted them, ripped apart their stomachs and then laid them down the canal to the sea and confluence. They then brought out the young girls, gathered them in open space, raped them multiple times till the girls collapsed, they then tore their limbs, in some cases cut them to pieces and let them down the Haldi river and/or Talpati canal. They made sure that there were no witnesses. And even if there were some, they know that the young girls in traditional Medinipur would never come out to say what really happened and who will believe...."

I may be excused (and hopefully not clubbed as a right-winger) for remember Gujarat riots? Gujarat could be blamed on communal fanatics, what was this battle for at Nandigram? Reformed Communists wanting to become the new age Capitalists and butchering their people for that purpose? Reformed Communist fanatics?

In fact, since the carnage at Nandigram, more and more of the kind of 'admirable' rule by the CPI-M in W.Bengal largely through their goons is coming to light. Vir Sanghvi writing in the Hindustan Times a few days back writes about how the supposedly peaceful rule of W. Bengal was maintained by the iron fisted rule where the cadres maintained the law and order by being the law. He starts with a very pertinent question, "why is it that Bengalis all over the world are becoming prosperous whereas the bengalis in their home land despite having the longest single rule in the country remain poor and backward", that is an interesting question to ponder.

The role of english media is once again is to be questioned in this case. The sheer volume of the demand for Modi's resignations that came immediately after the Gujarat carnage and the willingness to cooperate line that is being adopted by the english media is adequate evidence that the left has been effective in silencing any kind of independent inquiry or understanding. I have heard it repeatedly that the English media in India is managed by different regional groups at different times and currently this is completely ruled by Bengalis. If this be true, it explains the attitude of the media on this issue.

Pray for Nandigram (or do something, sign a petition available, share this information with as many people as possible, amke others sign petition too) and all the other untold stories that are the victims of the SEZ, a greedy and unrealistic policy being promoted by a government that has no authority over how the projects will be implemented and is willing to allow the state governments to decide and manage the 'local' issues any which way they want to manage it. The entire SEZ initiative needs to be questioned and put on hold until there is clarity on who actually benefits.