The Hindu : Today's Paper / NATIONAL : Seven get ten years in jail for gang-rape
Sunday, February 24, 2013
INTERVIEW WITH MANIK SARKAR
INTERVIEW WITH MANIK SARKAR
“People Support Us from Core of their Hearts”
Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar is the lead campaigner for the Left Front in the assembly elections. With few days left for polling, he is addressing around two to three meetings a day across the state.
Manik Sarkar, who came into politics through the student movement, emerged as a key leader of the state after becoming chief minister for the first time in 1998 when Dasarath Deb stepped down due to old age. Since then Manik Sarkar's record as chief minister has been exceptional to say the least. Tripura today is a role model for not only entire North East but to many bigger states also in terms of pro-people governance.
In an interview to N S Arjun of People’s Democracy at the CPI(M) state committee office on February 7, Manik Sarkar expressed full confidence about forming the Seventh Left Front government after the polls as people were supporting the Left Front from the core of their hearts.
Below are excerpts from that interview:
(Q) With polling to take place in a week's time, what is your assessment of the election scenario?
Manik Sarkar: The response from the common masses to Left Front's election campaign has been unprecedented. Rival parties supporters and workers are coming and joining our Party in big numbers. Even today in Sabroom sub-division, 64 persons joined our Party, among whom included one PCC member. People are supporting us from the core of their hearts due to their own experiences in terms of bringing peace in the state, strengthening democracy by decentralisation, improvement in their quality of life etc. There is also their experience of the Congress-led UPA II government's anti-people, pro-rich policies. That is why they are responding positively to our appeal to vote for Left Front for peace, democracy and continuity of pro-people developmental works.
(Q) What are the major achievements of the Left Front government in the last five years?
Manik Sarkar: The most important achievement has been the complete restoration of peace that had been shattered due to extremism. At one point of time Tripura and terrorism were synonymous. People had lost confidence and those with ability were deserting the state by migrating to other states. It was a continuous and tough struggle. Many of our ministers, MLAs, block samithi chairpersons, Party cadre, sympathisers and also commoners lost their precious lives in this struggle. The vigorous development work undertaken by us even in interior tribal areas has helped in countering extremists with the help of people. Now, Tripura is identified as a state of peace in the entire North East. The President of India decorated Tripura Police with President's Colours for outstanding success in combating three-decade old insurgency and ensuring there were no human rights abuses. Tripura is only the fourth state to receive this honour since Independence. This successful overcoming of extremist problem has been possible because of the role played by common people, both tribals and non-tribals.
Another major achievement has been the protection of the secular fabric of our state. Although Tripura is a small state, it is home to people belonging to Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist religions apart from tribals. We have ensured people's right to free expression of their religious beliefs. The Left Front government has no religion and therefore it treats all religions equal. We try our best to help and cooperate with them during their functions. This is very important because today this sort of secularism is under attack at the national level.
(Q) During our tour in interior parts of Tripura, we found good infrastructure in terms of schools, health centres, office buildings, bio-gas plants etc. In many places, construction activity is going on. Being a small state, how has the Left Front government been able to achieve this?
Manik Sarkar: This has been possible due to strengthening of democracy by taking it to grassroots. We decentralised power which was concentrated at ministers and bureaucrats level and placed it in the hands of grassroots bodies. I can claim with humility that our 3-tier panchayat system is one of the best performing panchayat systems in the country. We have empowered people through decentralisation of power. Other than this, the formation of Tripura Tribal Autonomous District Council (TTADC) has been an important vehicle for empowerment of people at grassroots level. One can well understand the democratic atmosphere prevailing and the political consciousness of people by the fact that there is over 90 per cent polling during elections. In this the role of women has been very very important.
The quality of life of our people has been improving day by day due to the development work carried out by the Left Front government. We have made progress in agriculture and allied sectors, power generation, connectivity, health care and education, safe drinking water, modern sanitation etc. As per a survey conducted by union finance ministry and Central Statistical Office in 2004, the per capita income in Tripura was Rs 24,394. The same organisations in their survey in 2011 found that it had increased to Rs 50,750. This increased purchasing power of people is reflecting in different aspects of our society like trade, commerce, agriculture, food consumption etc. However, we are telling people that the state is developing fast but we are not yet satisfied with this. We need to improve further the quality of life of people, particularly the rural poor.
The disadvantaged sections of our society, the SC, ST, OBCs suffered the most during Congress regime. We have implemented special programmes to overcome their social, economic and cultural problems and these have yielded good results.
(Q) In the neo-liberal economic regime, the state governments have in general experienced a squeeze on their finances. In such a situation how has the Left Front government managed to achieve so much in terms of infrastructure development and welfare schemes for the people?
Manik Sarkar: The main reason is the Left Front government has ensured strict financial discipline.We are managing our finances and resources in a very cautious manner. We had austerity measures right from the beginning. Salaries of our ministers and MLAs are perhaps the lowest in the country. Whatever resources we have, we are utilising to the last penny with all seriousness. There is full transparency in spending and if there is any charge of corruption, we jump on it and take strict action if it is found true. Misuse of money is not tolerated. Empowerment of people through decentralisation has also helped in preventing leakages of scheme funds. Another important reason is that our good performance is helping us to force the central government to release our share of funds.
(Q) We found educated graduates without job in some of the villages we visited. With a vibrant education system in the state, how big is unemployment problem a challenge for the Left Front government?
Manik Sarkar: Generation of employment is a burning national problem now. Here in Tripura there was no development of infrastructure during Congress regimes and it set us back by many years. Without infrastructure in place, industrialisation that provides jobs cannot happen. And unemployment problem cannot be solved just by providing jobs in the government sector. As you know the centre has a ban on recruitment for many years and today there are over 40 lakh central government jobs lying vacant and which would lapse in the coming years. The Left Front government, despite pressure from centre against recruitment, has provided many jobs in the government sector. In the last four years alone we provided over 25,000 jobs. In 1972 at the formation of Tripura state, there were only 27,000 government jobs. Today, we have over 1,61,000 employed in government sector.
Apart from this, we are eagerly waiting for the road linkage to Chittagong port in Bangladesh from Sabroom in Tripura, which is a distance of around 70 km. Discussions are going on between governments of India and Bangladesh regarding this and we are hopeful it will fructify in the coming period. Once this access to port comes, it will be a big thing for Tripura. Discussions about the proposed 11 km rail linkage between Agartala and Akhaura in Bangladesh are also in final stages and will improve connectivity further. There is also a move to have air connectivity between Agartala and Dhaka. If all these things happen, and I am hopeful that they will happen, then all our locational disadvantages will be turned into advantages. Tripura will become the gateway to East Asia.
(Q) About the recent natural gas finds in Tripura, what is the situation?
Manik Sarkar: Tripura is a big reservoir of natural gas. ONGC, GAIL and one private corporation are currently carrying out further exploration work in the state. The quality of gas found here is also very good. On the basis of these gas finds, ONGC has set up a 730 MW power generation project. Some private parties have come forward to set up more gas-based power projects. But we are discouraging it as we want to use gas for fertiliser industry and other purposes also. When we combine these developments with the quality human resources, highest literacy rate and increased purchasing power among people, we have a strong basis for industrialisation in the state. Investors are now coming forward to set up industries in the state and this process will strengthen in the coming period.
(Q) Lastly, your comment on the recent incidents linking Congress to extremist elements in the effort to disrupt peace in the state.
Manik Sarkar: Well, you see Congress is getting isolated at national level and here in our state. They are unable to keep their house in order and at the same time they are unable to remain out of power for so many years. So, they tried to repeat what they did in 1988 election this time also by promoting extremists. But they have been caught red-handed trying to incite extremists to strike terror before elections. Their alliance with INPT, which is nothing but a political mask of extremists, also exposed their intention. After they have been caught red-handed, we are also keeping our people on high alert. There is no room for complacency in this regard.
On February 8, 2013, some national level organisations of women submitted a memorandum on the Budget 2013-14 to the union finance minister, P Chidambaram, putting forward their key concerns that need to be addressed in the annual budget from a gender perspective. The text of the memorandum is reproduced here.
CPI (M) On Helicopter Contract Bribery Case
On Helicopter Contract Bribery Case
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India
THE arrest of the CEO of the Finmeccanica company in Italy
Though the investigations in Italy UK and Italy
It is clear that the UPA government has failed to check high level corruption in defence contracts in the past eight years of its tenure. The helicopter deal is the latest instance.
The contract for the helicopters should be cancelled. The CBI investigation should be supervised by the Supreme Court; only then will people have confidence that we will get to the bottom of this affair.
AS the campaign for the elections to the Tripura state assembly was ending, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi thundered that CPI(M) will be ousted from 'Hindustan'. Indeed history is repeating itself. During the 1986 elections to the West Bengal state assembly, the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi notoriously declared that “Calcutta is a dying city”. Not only did the Left Front sweep those elections, but it continued to win the next four elections with a two-thirds majority.
Friday, February 22, 2013
THE Gender Council of the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) has condemned the attempt made by union minister Vayalar Ravi to browbeat a young woman reporter who asked him some questions regarding the Suryanelli rape case. The Gender Council pointed out that the minister’s aggressive counter questions to TV journalist Aishwarya Sumithran, were both personal and sexist. His apology that the remark was only a jest and that the journalist is like a granddaughter to him is, in itself, patronising, the council added.
IMAGES of the Delhi Police lobbing teargas shells and water canons at protesters at India gate agitating against the gang rape of a young girl on a Sunday, December 22 2012 are embedded deep in the nation’s psyche largely the courtesy of our omnipresent twenty four seven news networks, sharpened further by the ever-prescient discussions on the 9 p m Newshour. Police evacuated the agitated demonstrators as they marched to Raisina Hill and Sonia Gandhi’s residence in the best way they know how, and the nation bemoaned at the refusal of our political class to blink.
Below we publish the text of the message of greetings sent by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to the 15th congress of the Communist Party of Russian Federation (CPRF), to be held on February 23 and 24, 2013, in Moscow. Sitaram Yechury, Polit Bureau member, is attending the congress as a fraternal delegate from the CPI(M).
Left MPs Stage Dharna to Support Strike Members of parliament belonging to the Left parties staged a protest dharna in the Parliament House premises on February 21, the second day of the all-India strike. In protest, they also boycotted the president's customary address to the joint session of parliament on the first day of budget session.
WEST Bengal came to a halt on February 20th. It was the rejoinder by the people of this state on the most debated and opposed general strike of recent times. Dictatorial ultimatums of the state government found no shore on the day except popular denunciation. Every sounds and even silence of the people of the people proclaimed popular rejection of the anti-people, anti-labour agenda of the UPA-II government as they along with millions of others across the country participated in the first day of the Two-Day Nationwide General Strike on February 20th and 21st .
THE Left parties warmly congratulate the working class, employees and other sections of the working people who have made the two-day general strike on February 20 and 21 a magnificent success. The workers struck work in all industries and commercial sectors. The strike was effective in petroleum sector, coal, mining, port and dock, plantation, manufacturing, banking and insurance. State government offices were also affected by the strike. The participation of workers in the unorganised sectors and of scheme workers was also notable.
ON February 20, 2013, the central trade unions, viz the BMS, INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, AICCTU, UTUC, TUCC, SEWA and LPF, congratulated the working people of India for their overwhelming and magnificent response to the united call of two day countrywide general strike that commenced on the same morning. The joint statement issued by the trade unions on the day said, the “unprecedented response to the call of strike throughout the country, much beyond our expectations, reflects truly the anger of the people against the persistent increase in the prices of diesel, gas, coal, electricity and other essential goods for the bare need of the common people.” The trade unions also said the strike was also a protest against the total inaction of the government to address the basic problems of the workers arising out of the inflation and slowdown of the economy.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Withdraw Diesel Price Rise: CITU
Withdraw Diesel Price Rise: CITU
THROUGH a statement issued from New Delhi on January 24: the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) condemned the Congress-led UPA government’s policy of deregulation of petroleum products and that of forcing the parity of their pricing with the international prices.
The CITU pointed out that the government has mandated the oil companies to impose phased hikes in the price of diesel and that oil marketing companies have already imposed a 45 paise per litre hike for general consumption. However, a steep hike of Rs 11 per litre has been imposed on the bulk purchases by public utility services like state road transport, railways, power plants etc. the Railways use 2428 million tonnes of diesel annually and will now have to shell out Rs 2727 crore more per annum for fuel. State road transport undertakings will have to pay Rs 2462 crore more every year for fuel. Similar is the situation for power plants.
Obviously, the CITU said, this steep hike in diesel price for public utility services cannot but have a cascading effect and that the burden is being transferred on to the common people for rail and road transport services and on their consumption of electricity etc. Even before the budget next month, the railways minister has announced steep increases in rail fares. The rail budget is likely to impose another dose of burden.
The CITU also pointed out that all the state road transport undertakings are facing serious financial crises and that the additional burden of increased price of diesel plus a tax of 24.6 per cent would now cause huge problems for these undertakings, their workers and the people. On bulk purchases, including those for road transport, the diesel price was last increased on September 14, 2012 by six rupees per litre plus tax. Due to the central government’s decisions, a majority of the state transport corporations are already on the verge of closure. In many states, non-payment of salaries and pensions in time to road transport workers has led to some workers and pensioners committing suicide.
The CITU has therefore demanded immediate rollback of the hikes in diesel price, including the steep increase in its price for the public utility services.
The World’s Women- Trends and Statistics, Dept of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, NY, 2010.
On the Empowerment of Women - Prabhat Patnaik
EMPOWERMENT is a complex and multi-dimensional issue. There have been attempts to capture empowerment by constructing indices. One common index, for instance, is the Gender Gap Index. Though this index is open to all the usual objections one can raise against any such measure, what is remarkable is that India ranks low among the various countries in terms of the Gender Gap Index. This low level of women’s empowerment is also confirmed if we take another obvious measure, namely the sex ratio. Table 1 presents time-series data on the ratio of females to males in India’s population according to the various censuses. (Both Tables 1 and 2 are taken from a paper by Vibhuti Patel).
Table-1 Sex Ratio in India, 1901 to 2011
Year Number of Women
Per 1000 Men
1901 972
1911 964
1921 955
1931 950
1941 945
1951 946
1961 941
1971 930
1981 934
1991 927
2001 933
2011 940
Source: Census of India, 2011
These figures reveal an alarming picture of deterioration over time. The well-known statistician Ronald Fisher had argued in a paper in 1930 that the sex ratio would tend to be 1:1 among most species, including human beings. Some demographers have even argued that if equal care is bestowed on females and males in a human population, then the ratio of females to males should be 1.05:1. We therefore get a measure of “missing females”, to borrow Amartya Sen’s term, that amounts to anywhere between 6 to 11 per cent, which is an indicator of the extent of discrimination against women. A comparison of India’s sex ratio with those of other countries brings out the magnitude of the problem in India.
Table 2- Women per 100 men
Europe & North America 105
Latin America 100
Caribbean 103
Sub Saharan Africa 102
South East Asia 100
Central Asia 102
South Asia 95
China 92
India 94
Source: The World’s Women- Trends and Statistics, Dept of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, NY, 2010.
It is obvious from this table that discrimination against women, as reflected in the sex ratio, has little to do directly with poverty or underdevelopment or any such economic variable, since even sub-Saharan Africa which is among the poorest regions of the world, does better than either India or China, which are considered to be “emerging economic powers” and counted among the “high-fliers” in terms of GDP growth rates. The real reason has to do with a preference for male children which arises because of the deep-seated structures of patriarchy in these Asian societies, and which paradoxically has led to an increasing resort to the atrocious practice of female infanticide because of the technological innovation of pre-natal sex determination and because of voluntarily-accepted or State-enforced small-family norms.
Here again we find that as against what some consider to be a natural tendency for a sex-ratio-at-birth of 1.05 males to 1 female, countries like China and India recorded far higher figures. In fact the top seven countries in the world in order of birth-sex ratio in 2011 were: China 1.133, Armenia 1.124, India 1.12, Albania 1.118, Vietnam 1.117, Azerbaijan 1.116, and Georgia 1.113. There can be little doubt that female foeticide, and lack of care for female infants, played a major role in effecting such high ratios. It is worth noting that in many of the Central Asian Republics which were a part of the Soviet Union, the birth sex ratio moved sharply in favour of males after the break-up of the Soviet Union, which underscores the importance of social factors in determining the birth-sex ratio.
It follows then that even though there have been many obvious and visible signs of empowerment of women in India since independence, in terms of their entry into a number of spheres of activity that were earlier either the exclusive preserves of males or dominated by males, even after sixty five years of independence we have not succeeded in breaking the hold of patriarchy over our societies.
No doubt, we are not alone in this. Even advanced capitalist countries continue to be in the grip of patriarchal attitudes. But there are certain fundamental differences between advanced capitalist countries and countries like India with respect to women’s empowerment. Because of these, we face certain additional problems of a serious nature, quite apart from the ones that they as well as we face in common. Let us turn to these.
I
The development of capitalism in the advanced capitalist countries was accompanied by and large by a destruction of their pre-capitalist structures. Whether it was France and England where capitalism developed on the basis of a revolution through which the bourgeoisie effectively captured State power, or whether it was Germany where the bourgeoisie entered into an alliance with the landlords to develop what is often called “semi-feudal capitalism”, effective blows were dealt against the pre-capitalist structures in the entire “old world”. One of the main ways this was done was through the emigration of vast masses of the population into the “new world”, of temperate regions of white settlement, like America, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. During the nineteenth century, especially its second half, nearly 50 million Europeans migrated to the temperate regions of white settlement where they drove the local population off the land they had occupied till then and set themselves up as farmers.
Figures for Britain illustrate the scale of this emigration: between 1815 and 1910, 16 million persons migrated from Britain to the “new world”, whereas the entire population of Britain in 1815 was around 12 million. Looking at it differently, the annual out-migration from Britain during this entire period was roughly half of the annual addition to the British population. Emigration on such a scale, which became possible through the pursuit of imperialist policies by the ascendant bourgeoisie in the Metropolitan European countries, completely undermined the old pre-capitalist structure, which had provided the base for patriarchy. Of course patriarchal attitudes remained, but essentially as a part of the superstructure; but the base upon which patriarchy had been sustained, the old feudal structure, disintegrated.
The empowerment of women in the advanced capitalist countries therefore had two distinct aspects: overcoming the patriarchal attitudes that were a legacy of the old structure which itself had disintegrated; and overcoming the new forms of discrimination against women that capitalism unleashed. The latter for instance consisted in the denial of “equal pay for equal work”, and in the fact that periods of crisis, marked by increased unemployment, entailed a withdrawal of women from the work-force (the so-called “discouraged worker effect”), ie, the fact that women were disproportionately represented in the reserve army of labour. Women have struggled against all these forms of discrimination in the advanced capitalist countries, and have achieved major advances.
These problems also afflict our society; but there is something additional about the problem of women’s empowerment in our society that we have to bear in mind. And that consists in the fact that in societies like ours, while capitalist development does not itself create enough employment opportunities, the scope for emigration on the scale that European countries experienced simply does not exist. Just to put the issue in perspective, if India had to experience the scale of emigration that Britain managed over the period 1815-1910, then 40 crores of Indians should have emigrated between independence and now. This is simply not possible any longer; and it is not desirable either. Not surprisingly therefore, despite talk of India emerging as an “economic superpower”, despite the so-called high growth, nearly 50 per cent of India’s work-force is still engaged in agriculture which has languished precisely in this period of high growth.
The “old community” associated with our pre-capitalist structure, which was far from being idyllic and which was characterised by caste and patriarchy, thus continues to remain with us. The base for patriarchal attitudes therefore is not getting destroyed despite capitalist development, and cannot get destroyed in societies like ours through capitalist development, as it was in the advanced capitalist countries. In our case therefore it is not just a matter of struggling against “patriarchal attitudes”, a phenomenon of the superstructure alone; these attitudes are getting continuously reinforced by the actual existence of the base that underlies patriarchy.
This is the first difference between the advanced capitalist countries and societies like India. The second difference is closed linked to this, namely that the population migrating to the cities from the villages as a consequence of the agrarian crisis and the crisis of petty production unleashed in the countryside by the process of capitalist development, instead of getting absorbed into the capitalist sector as proletarians, can at best function as “informal sector workers”, doing casual work, or part-time work. This has a very important implication for the nature of capitalism that is developing in India.
II
Historically, capitalist development, while destroying the old “community” that existed under the feudal order, had also unwittingly created the basis for the formation of a new “community”. The workers whom it massed in factories came together in “combinations”, whose original aim was to struggle over wages and the conditions of work, but which, over time, became so precious per se to the workers that the maintenance of such “combinations” became their primary goal. Karl Marx had seen in these “combinations”, of which trade unions were the quintessential expression, the genesis of a new world of socialism. He had believed that workers would develop from mere trade union consciousness to class consciousness and overthrow the capitalist system to end all exploitation. But even though the advanced capitalist countries did not see the establishment of socialism, there can be little doubt that the working class, including the white collar workers, which constituted the bulk of the working population, developed a new “community” which infused a new way of collective life, a new moral sense, to the numerous individuals uprooted from their old community and thrown together. Classical capitalism, though unwittingly, had created a new “community”, which, even when it did not develop to the extent anticipated by Marx, constituted nonetheless a new secular and social universe with strong moral underpinnings.
But in societies like ours where workers are predominantly casual, where organising them in trade unions is extremely difficult, where, in other words, capitalist development is of a sort that does not allow scope for “combinations”, the possibility of the formation of such a “new community” is thwarted. In our case in other words neither is the “old community destroyed”, nor is a “new community” created. Instead of a new “community” we have a massive group of uprooted and alienated individuals, who have lost their moral moorings by migrating out of the old “community” but who do not acquire any new moral moorings through enrollment into any organisation of the working class. We have in other words a huge group of lumpen- proletariat, whose relative size far exceeds that of the proletariat. The capitalism that produces this vast lumpen-proletariat is what I would call “lumpen capitalism”. What we are seeing today in India, behind the façade of high growth, is the rapid development of a “lumpen capitalism”, which is what the era of neo-liberalism that reflects the hegemony of finance capital engenders.
There are at least three ways in which neo-liberal policies produce “lumpen capitalism”: the first is through the relative decline of the public sector, the second is through the relative decline of material commodity producing sectors, and the third is through a rampant process of what Marx had called “primitive accumulation of capital” (of which what we call “corruption” is an off-shoot). Let me examine each of these ways.
The public sector is usually looked upon only in terms of its economic rationale. But it has a fundamental social role, which arises from the fact that public sector workers, for reasons we need not go into here, are usually far more unionised than those employed by the capitalists; and their unionisation in turn keeps alive the tradition of unionism in the society at large. Even today in the United States, only 7 per cent of private sector workers are unionised compared to around 33 per cent in the public sector (including teachers and other white collar workers). And one reason why France continues to have strong trade unions to this day, despite the decline of trade unions elsewhere in the advanced capitalist world, is because of the weight of the public sector in the French economy. The decline of the public sector under the neo-liberal regime has therefore the effect of weakening the trade union movement in the economy as a whole and hence preventing the emergence of an alternative new “community” with an alternative moral universe based on non-religious, ie, secular, principles.
Likewise, modern manufacturing brings large numbers of workers together, enables them to “combine” to defend their rights and engenders a new culture through such “combinations”. True, manufacturing in today’s world often means breaking up the production process and entrusting a segment of it to domestic workers; but even so, the phenomenon of manufacturing being carried out in large-scale units where workers are massed together has not lost relevance. In India during the recent period of high growth, while agricultural growth has been sluggish, even manufacturing has grown no faster than in the pre-liberalisation period, especially compared to the currently much- reviled “Nehruvian” years of the fifties and early sixties. The real acceleration in growth has occurred in the services sector, where a vast chunk of the “informal sector” workers are concentrated who are intrinsically difficult to unionise, and also where, even within the organised segment, the domination of MNCs and the need to cater to the export market, acts as a coercive force against unionisation. Besides, the service sector boom is also fed to a significant extent by speculation, where fly-by-night operators thrive and act as a source of corruption of the political system.
To be sure, it is not only speculative activities where the breed of fly-by-night operators thrives. Other service sector activities too are marked by their pervasive presence; an obvious example is transport where privatisation has brought into the business a whole lot of people with shady and criminal backgrounds whose real “asset” is their proximity to local politicians through the development of a relationship of mutual assistance.
The most potent of source of “corruption” of course is the process of primitive accumulation of capital, ie, the acquisition of either publicly-owned, or community-owned, or petty-proprietor-owned, property by private individuals gratis, or at best “for a song”. What we call “corruption” is nothing else but a share of this appropriation that is extracted by the ruling class politicians and bureaucrats for making this possible. “Corruption” in short is a levy imposed by the ruling class politicians and bureaucrats for enabling the bourgeoisie to amass property through primitive accumulation of capital. And it plays a significant role in reconciling traditional ruling class politicians to the neo-liberal regime where the levers of decision-making are increasingly not controlled by them but are left in the hands of a new breed of bureaucrats and technocrats who are acceptable to globalised finance capital (who have been, usually, employees of the World Bank or the IMF or some multinational banks).
The upshot of this entire phenomenon that I have been discussing is that the development of capitalism in our society, instead of creating conditions for the coming into being of a new “community” through the process of “combination” of workers, engenders a substantial lumpen-proletariat, incapable of “combining” together for united actions, and hence incapable of developing an alternative morality in the place of that which characterised the old “community” which it has left behind. This capitalism which I have called “lumpen capitalism” is the product of the period of hegemony of globalised finance capital in late-capitalist societies. To be sure, this hegemony produces similar results even in advanced capitalist countries, where too there is a clear setback to trade unionism and working class influence in the economy and the polity, but because of the legacy of the past history of working class politics and trade unionism, the damage to the social fabric is less than in late-capitalist societies like ours.
Let me sum up this part of my argument. Unlike the classical case of capitalist development, capitalist development in India neither breaks the old “community” which provides the base for patriarchy and the caste system, nor creates, anywhere to the same degree, the basis for the formation of a new “community”. We have therefore a combination of khap panchayats on the one hand and a substantial lumpen-proletariat on the other.
III
What, it may be asked, is the relevance of all this for women’s empowerment? Women’s empowerment which had been a part of the anti-colonial struggle, receives a setback because of both these phenomena, viz. the continuation of the old “community” that underlies patriarchy, and the development of a vast lumpen-proletariat that breeds criminal behaviour generally in society and especially towards women. There is, as in other spheres, a counter-revolution in the sphere of women’s empowerment too, against the emancipatory process unleashed by the anti-colonial struggle that was carried forward in the immediate aftermath of independence.
What is more, there is a dialectical relationship between these two phenomena, of the lack of destruction of the old “community” and the weakness in the formation of the new “community”. The assault in the urban spaces by elements of this lumpen-proletariat on the rights and dignity of those women who have broken out of the straitjacket of patriarchy and chosen independent careers of their own, is used to decry their breaking out of the patriarchal mould, to force them back into patriarchy, to curb their freedom and choices. This is what we observed recently in the wake of the horrendous incident of the rape and murder of a young girl in Delhi. Indeed many among the protesters demanding capital punishment for the perpetrators of the crime were implicitly subscribing to the patriarchal argument that a “violated woman” is like a “living corpse”, a point explicitly expressed by a senior woman politician as well.
This dialectic has to be fought if the project of women’s empowerment is to be carried forward. The point of my underscoring the political economy roots of the counter-revolutionary tendency against women’s empowerment is not to spread any fatalistic despondency about the success of the project; it is merely to suggest that the cause of women’s empowerment in our country is linked to the broader cause of people’s emancipation. It may be fought on its own terrain, but this link should not be lost sight of. In fact, the struggle for women’s emancipation will gain greatly in momentum if it gets linked to other struggles as well.
Historian Suvira Jaiswal of my university has argued that the struggle against caste oppression can succeed only if it is accompanied by women’s emancipation; I believe that the opposite can also be said: the struggle for women’s emancipation can succeed only if it is accompanied by a struggle against caste oppression. Besides, the very process of struggle, and that too on a wide front, as an existential fact, is what would break the vicious dialectic let loose by neo-liberal capitalism in societies like ours, because of which the process of empowerment of women receives a setback.
Act Now on the Verma Committee Recommendations - Brinda Karat
Act Now on the Verma Committee Recommendations - Brinda Karat
THE Justice Verma Committee through its wide ranging and insightful report has provided an opportunity for the government to initiate a series of reforms in the legal, social and educational fields on the issues of sexual violence against women. An action taken report on the suggestions should be placed in the forthcoming session of parliament. However the deafening silence from official circles on the contents of the report are an indication that the intention of the government in setting up the committee was to buy time and take the heat off in the wake of the nationwide protests following the horrific Delhi gang rape case. It is now known that the government, churlishly, did not even provide the necessary infrastructure to help the committee in its work. But in the event, the committee set up its own framework and completed the work within one month.
STRONG INDICTMENT
Through the over 600 pages of the report, with the marshalling of irrefutable evidence, what emerges is a strong indictment of governments at the centre and the states for their criminal callousness in ignoring the earlier recommendations of measures to prevent sexual violence against women. In section after section, the committee quotes from reports from 1980 onwards of Law Commissions, of earlier judgements and directions of the Supreme Court, of earlier notifications and circulars of the home ministry, which have never been implemented. It blasts governments for lack of accountability of public servants stressing the importance of making dereliction of duty a punishable offence. In the context of the refusal of the central government to act against Delhi’s top police officials including the police commissioner, the committee’s proposal is particularly relevant.
STATE CULPABILITY
It also proposes to include the concept of command responsibility in the law, holding superior officers responsible for the acts of their juniors when the circumstances show that the crime could have been prevented had the superior acted. In fact, the Parliamentary Select Committee headed by the present union law minister set up several years ago to examine the flawed official Bill against torture discussed this issue in detail and recommended the inclusion of command responsibility. But the committee’s recommendations have been in cold storage. Similarly, the Parliamentary Committee on Women’s Empowerment had made a strong recommendation to bring the armed forces and the para military forces under the purview of criminal law, but the aggressive opposition of defence service chiefs was the convenient reason that it was not accepted. The Verma committee takes this forward by its concrete amendment to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act to prevent it from being used as a shield to protect the criminals in uniform and also significantly it suggests the appointment of special commissioners in all conflict zones to monitor women’s security. It is well known how women, like the adivasi teacher Soni Sori, tortured and languishing in Chattisgarh’s jails, become the targets, caught between militants and the security forces. The recommendations on the culpability of the State on a range of issues pinpointed in the report are most welcome.
ISSUE OF DEATH PENALTY
In the wake of the brutal gang rape there was a spontaneous demand from many young people for the death penalty for rape reflecting the anger against the savagery of the crime against the young woman. The committee considered this demand but has made out a welcome and reasoned argument as to why it would be counterproductive. In fact, it is the low rates of conviction, in other words the uncertainty of punishment and the confidence in no punishment, that subverts the processes of justice. For example in 2011, in 74 per cent of cases the rapists walked free. The committee has made some important recommendations on the procedures to ensure better investigation and follow up. It has also suggested enhancement of the sentences in rape cases including life sentence without remission in cases of rape and grievous injuries. Justice Verma has further clarified that in a brutal case of rape and murder, where Sec 302 is proved, then the rarest of rare category for death penalty could be used. The committee itself indicates that it is for the abolition of the death penalty per se, though it has not made any such concrete recommendation.
VIOLATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
The report locates violence against women and children in a broader framework of violation of constitutional guarantees demolishing self-serving arguments that governments cannot be held responsible for individual acts of violence. At a time when market based ideologies so close to the hearts and minds of those in power promote the retreat of the government from its fundamental social responsibilities, the report reminds governments of their primary responsibility in ensuring through preventive and deterrent measures a secure environment for its citizens. The report says, ‘The failure of good governance is the obvious root cause for the current unsafe environment eroding the rule of law...” Indeed the direction of governance in the last decade or so has been dominated by a promotion of corporate led growth, the “unleashing of animal spirits in the economy” with no concern of its impact on increasing social inequalities and subverting the constitutional and fundamental rights of the Indian people.
CLASS & CASTE DIMENSIONS OF VIOLENCE
The statistics of increasing violence against women tell their own story. In 2011 alone, there were 24,206 registered cases of rape of which 2579 were registered in the 89 listed cities. There were as many as 51,538 cases of sexual harassment of which around 25 per cent took place in the cities. Thus a majority of rape and sexual harassment victims are from the rural and mofussil areas, of whom a substantial number are of the poorer sections of women and children who live and work in insecure environments. All the child rape cases in Haryana for example in the last few months, occurred because there was no crèche or safe place where the working mother could leave the child.
The changing nature of labour contracts, from permanent workers to casual or contract daily workers, makes women workers, particularly migrant women workers vulnerable to the exploitation of employers, landlords, contractors and supervisors. Privatisation of essential services has resulted in lack of accountability in public transport, of no electricity, of absence of public toilets, all of which are directly related to government policies creating insecurity for women. The report comments, “We believe that fundamental rights must not be ignored by the State on a specious argument of paucity of resources when the rich continue to thrive and the wasteful expenditure of public monies is more then evident.” The report also mentions critical issues such as food security and malnutrition. These are welcome as they do take into account the experience of millions of poor women across the country who face daily sexual harassment arising out of their economic conditions which are worsening by the day.
GAPS IN THE REPORT
It is therefore inexplicable why the committee recommendations for amendments in the criminal laws omit a crucial one which women’s organisations had got successfully included in the official Bill in the section on aggravated sexual assault which includes rape committed by a person “being in a position of economic, social or political dominance” with a higher sentence. While the committee has commented that the caste system and poverty add to the crime of rape against these sections, it has omitted the long pending demand to consider crimes on the basis of caste against dalit and adivasi women or against women on the basis of communal considerations as crimes which will invite an enhanced punishment. It is well documented how women face intense insecurity because of dominant caste hostility or communal violence. Such crimes should be put in a special category and considered as aggravated sexual assault.
NO REHAB RELATED RECOMMENDATIONS
In this context there is an important demand made by rape survivors from economically and socially exploited sections for a comprehensive rehabilitation package. Some have mocked this as compensation for rape. In fact, it is virtually impossible for a working class or rural working poor woman rape survivor or if her child has been the victim, to bear the expenses of the legal process. It is not enough for the State to provide a lawyer. The question of loss of work, of sometimes having to shift residence, of frequent consultations with lawyers and trips to the court, incurring expenses and losing a day’s income are critical issues in the decision of whether or not to fight for justice or just give up. It is puzzling why the report should not have any mention of a mandatory rehabilitation package. The only mention is that the perpetrator should pay for her medical expenses. The victim might find that abhorrent and demeaning, and in any case what if the accused proves he has no funds? If the court wishes to fine the accused there is a legal provision for that and hefty fines can and should be imposed. But it is the State which must take the responsibility for medical expenses and rehabilitation.
NO TIMEBOUND PROCEDURES
One of the most widely supported demands of the nationwide protests was for time bound procedures in cases of rape. Today a rape victim including a child victim may have to wait even ten years or more for the judgement. The report recognises the large number of pending cases with the courts and calls for an end to frequent adjournments in rape cases. It suggests as a way out the recruitment of retired judges, of extending the age of retirement of judges at the lower levels and so on. But disappointingly, there is no concrete recommendation regarding a time bound procedure for cases of rape or of the setting up of fast track courts. The three months time frame suggested by a large number of organisations could have been accepted, as lengthy judicial procedures lead to gross injustice to rape victims.
But these omissions do not absolve the government from addressing them nor from acting with urgency.
GOVERNMENTS RECORD
The record of governments does not inspire confidence. India has been among the few countries, which had no specific laws and protocols against child sexual abuse. Following a widespread campaign in the early nineties, an assurance was made on the floor of parliament by the Narsimha Rao government, but it took eighteen years before the legislation on child sexual abuse was adopted. Again, it took fifteen years for the Supreme Court judgement given by a bench headed by Justice Verma on Prevention of Sexual Harassment at the Workplace to be translated into a Bill which is still pending in the Rajya Sabha but which, as the Verma Committee rightly points out, has clauses which are against the spirit of the judgement. During the UPA- 1 regime, parliament had discussed the need for a stand-alone law against so-called honour crimes. Unfortunately, even though women’s organisations like AIDWA have given a draft Bill to the government, no action has been taken.
VOTE BANKS AND IDEOLOGIES
The lack of political will on important women’s issues is also reflective of a dominant brand of politics which only sees vote banks, not people. Since women, in this perception, do not constitute a vote bank, their issues can be safely neglected, in contrast to considerations based on a narrow reading of caste and community. This gets reflected in parliamentary priorities too.
There is an ideological aspect also. Orthodoxy and conservatism on gender issues runs deep among many of our parliamentarians, men or women. There are undoubtedly honourable exceptions, but India’s parliament has abandoned the eloquent defence and promotion of women’s rights that marked the early decades of India’s Independence. Not only is India’s parliament unable to keep up with the assertion of women for independence and freedom from patriarchal controls, more worrying, it sometimes acts as a block to women’s advance such as on the issue of the Women’s Reservation Bill.
ROLE OF ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES
The committee’s suggestion, driven no doubt by a sense of urgency, to push its recommendations through the ordinance route, will not work. It is parliament with all its weaknesses, which will have to debate and finally adopt the amendments suggested in the report. It is the responsibility of the ruling alliance to take forward these reform agendas in parliament including on the welcome, radical analysis of the Verma report on women’s sexual autonomy, which it links with recommendations to prohibit dictates of khap panchayats against self choice partnerships, to recognition of marital rape as a crime and to support the rights of gay and transgender communities. Equally important is for public representatives to understand the committee's emphasis to change social attitudes to women including prevailing concepts of masculinity linked to aggressive misogynistic behaviour. Son preference cultures which dominate the upbringing of children need to be challenged and changed by the inclusion of relevant curricula in schools and colleges.
The report also makes a scathing indictment of the hypocritical stance of blaming the victim and pushing her into a shame/ honour trap - the victim's shame and her community/family honor being defiled, thus further intensifying mental and psychological violence on her. It criticises and names political leaders from across the spectrum who have made sexist and demeaning comments. This section of the report at least should be compulsory reading for all elected representatives.
In this context, there is a recommendation from the Committee to amend the Peoples Representative Act to disqualify an accused in a case of sexual violence from contesting elections, once the magistrate takes cognizance of the charge sheet. The CPI(M) has opposed the disqualification merely on the basis of charge sheets, because it could and has been used by ruling parties and economically and socially dominant forces to put false charges of rape against a political opponent to disqualify him from the contest. In the light of the Verma Committee report, the issue can be further discussed.
FORCE GOVERNMENT TO ACT
Today the only lobbies to be seen in the corridors of power are the corporate lobbies. The voices on the street are heard but faintly by those in high office. The nationwide protests showed the potential to change this. Justice Verma and his equally eminent colleague, Justice Leila Seth and former Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium have given the country an instrument to take that struggle forward. The country must force a reluctant government to act.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
AARON Swartz, an activist for free information, a precocious talent who had designed and developed a whole host of tools that we all use today, committed suicide on January 11. He was facing 35 years in jail and One million dollars in fines. Incidentally, David Hadley being tried in the US also faces a similar length of sentence that Aaron was facing. Killing hundreds or freeing information that is being privatised by big corporations are seen by the US government as similar crimes.
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