Thursday, March 14, 2019
The RSS/BJP fears critical thinking. Instead, it wants to build an Indian nation on the basis of hatred and fear. Their attempt is to identify only the Hindus with India and exclude minorities as outsiders. Even when they have been here for a thousand years; or two thousand. The problem that they have is not just excluding minorities; using religion for defining exclusions demand that they need to overlook the caste system and the internal exclusions within Hindu society. A critical and a scientific examination of the past would raise all these issues. Therefore the need to jettison science and reason. Just as it wants to borrow ideology from abroad, the RSS/BJP wants to import advanced technology without the scientific capacity to develop it in India. This is the difference between the self-reliance of Made in India, and the shallowness of Modi’s Make in India. In one, we had to absorb and develop technology. In the other, we expect foreign capital to come to India, and manufacture goods without parting with their technology: a policy for perpetual dependence on the west. Both in mind and body.
नोटबंदी को लेकर आरटीआई के जरिये हुआ नया खुलासा कई सवाल खड़े करता है। इसी मुद्दे पर हमने बात की न्यूज़क्लिक के एडिटर इन चीफ प्रबीर पुरकायस्थ से जिनका कहना है कि अब सबकुछ जनता की अदालत में है और वह ही फैसला करना है। नोटबंदी को लेकर आरटीआई के जरिये हुआ नया खुलासा कई सवाल खड़े करता है। सबसे बड़ा सवाल तो यही है कि आखिरकार वह क्या कारण था कि आरबीआई डायरेक्टरों की राय को नज़रअंदाज़ कर नोटबंदी का लाभ लिया गया। आरटीआई कार्यकर्ता वेंकटेशेक को सूचना के अधिकार के तहत नोटबंदी के 28 महीने बाद मिली जानकारी के मुताबिक आरबीआई की दिशा केंद्रीय बोर्ड की बैठक में नोटबंदी से कालाधन पर किसी तरह का असर न पड़ने की बात कही गयी थी। साथ ही कहा गया था कि देश और दुनिया के बाजार में फर्जी नोटों के संचालन पर भी कोई असर नहीं पड़ने जा रहा है। इसके अलावा बैठक में अर्थव्यवस्था के कैशलेस होने की बात को भी खारिज कर दिया गया था। वेंकटेश ने यह जानकारी कॉमनवेल्थ ह्यूमन राईट इनिशियन को दी (सीएचआरआई) की वेबसाइट पर रखा गया है।
Satyapal Singh, the Minister of State for Human Resources Development (HRD), and a former police officer, while speaking at the All India Vaidik Sammelan attacked the theory of evolution – which he foolishly calls Darwinism – asking that it be removed from school and college education. In this, he has been backed by Ram Madhav, the General Secretary of the BJP, who has quoted the Christian Right on creationism -- now called “intelligent design” -- being a substitute for the theory of evolution. They join a growing tribe of BJP leaders and ideologues, who argue that myth – or as YS Rao, the ICHR Chairperson termed as collective memory – must supersede any scientific study of history. It is on the basis of unreason and mythology that the BJP wants to build a modern India.
The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) released the Swachh Survekshan 2019 Report at the beginning of the current month. Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) did an independent analysis of the report, and found the survey to be full of loopholes. The analysis said that a number of anomalies in the way the survey was conducted and its results, threatened the otherwise excellent initiative. In the survey, 75 per cent of the score was dependent on information collected through a third-party certifier, direct observation by a survey agency and citizen feedback. According to CSE, this methodology demands a strict protocol to ensure that the best practices are followed by the agencies during the survey and certification. Unfortunately, the ministry did not keep this in mind during the process.
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
With or without support of the opposition grand alliance, the CPI will field former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar from Begusarai seat to contest Lok Sabha polls, and party will not make any compromise over it. “Kanhaiya will be the party candidate. We are ready for it. Party will not compromise on it,” Satyanarayan Singh, state secretary of CPI, told Newsclick here on Wednesday. Singh expressed displeasure at Left parties not being invited for the grand alliance meeting attended by RJD, Congress, RLSP, HAM and VIP to finalise seat sharing arrangement. He said CPI will finally decide on whether to contest alone or with the grand alliance at a meeting on March 17 in Patna. Singh hinted that CPI will contest from at least 4 or 5 seats.
Touted as the tallest in the world at a height of 182 feet, the Statue of Unity- the tribute to Sardar Patel- which was built post protests from the poorest districts in the state of Narmada and the alleged use of funds from the Public Sector Undertakings, is back in the spotlight over the non-payment of workers employed in its maintenance. Over 100 employees at the site have reportedly not been paid for the past three months and are now resorting to a strike this week to draw the attention of the apathetic state government. The employees, who work for a company named Updater Services Ltd (UDS), including security guards, gardeners, sweepers, liftmen, ticket checkers, are dependent purely on their daily wages.
Modi claimed that 4.25 crore first-timers got loans but he clarified that there is no job data. Then why give the number of first-timer loanees? Obviously, he wants to imply that they are fresh entrants. But just because somebody takes a loan for the first time, it doesn’t mean that he/she was starting to work for the first time! He/she could have been doing some other work earlier. In fact, Mudra loans do not indicate any job creation in itself. The amounts per loanee are also too meagre to imagine this. According to the most recent data on January 25 (Rajya Sabha Question No. 170 and 189), a total of 15.59 crore persons have been given loans worth Rs. 2.75 lakh crore. Which works out to a mere Rs.17,582 per loanee. What can be expected to happen with this amount! Besides these myths, the Prime Minister also referred to assorted “job creating” phenomena like cab aggregators and common service centres. Again, the question is – are these people getting jobs for the first time?
Modi claimed that there was a 50% hike in approval of hotels and went on to assert that 1.5 crore new jobs were created in the tourism sector. Again, the problem with this is – are they new jobs or are people moving from one job to another? Nobody knows, least of all Modi himself. Regulatory approvals for new hotels do not show anything because you need to show how many hotels closed down to get a picture of employment.
Modi claimed that since 2014, 36 lakh new trucks or commercial vehicles, 1.5 crore passenger vehicles and 27 lakh autos have been purchased. On this basis, he said that 1.25 crore jobs were created in the transport sector. Is there any record or proof that those persons who are driving these new vehicles were doing nothing before that? Maybe they were driving old vehicles, maybe they were working in the fields or as manual labourers or in some office. There is no reason to believe that they are getting a job for the first time.
Modi claimed that 6.35 lakh new professionals, such as doctors, were added to the category of non-corporate tax payers implying thereby that these are new jobs. All those who start paying tax are not new job entrants. And, even if this was the case, the total number of such jobs adds up to 6.35 lakh in nearly five years? That is a rather pathetic record for even the middle class.
When the Bourbon dynasty of France was restored after Napoleon, it was famously said that they never learnt anything, never forgot anything. Albert Einstein said a similar thing about insanity – that you keep on doing the same thing again and again, expecting different results. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech in Parliament on Thursday was like that. He has learnt nothing and repeated the same dodgy numbers on job creation to somehow wish away one of the most severe jobs crisis the country has seen in recent decades. Remember: latest CMIE data shows that the unemployment rate in India was 8.2% in February 2019. Recently, a leaked report of the first annual employment survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) had shown that joblessness was at a 45-year high in 2017-18.
With weeks to go before the Lok Sabha elections, the single biggest challenge to Modi is coming from his government’s failure to address the raging jobs crisis. Recent opinion polls, including one by a TV news channel that is otherwise quite sympathetic to the Modi government, show that employment is identified as the single biggest issue by voters across the country. While air strikes and the project inauguration blitz of PM Modi – 157 projects “launched” between February 8 and March 7 – has hogged media space, the unaddressed issue of joblessness is continuing to worry most people. And, it is bound to affect voting behaviour in the coming weeks.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
At least two people, engaged in illegal mining, allegedly died at Kapasara mines under Nirsa Police Station in Dhanbad. Several others are still feared to be trapped after the mine caved in during the hours of Wednesday. "One dead body has been recovered so far from the debris of the coal mine which caved in early in the morning on Wednesday," confirmed Dhanbad SP Kaushal Kisore. He, however, couldn't give the exact number of people trapped or killed under the debris.
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