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"Centre failed to mobilise the country for rehabilitation of Kashmir valley": CPA Fact finding team

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Srinagar_flood

The Centre for Policy Analysis organised a visit (September 27-29, 2014) to Jammu and Kashmir with the purpose of bringing out an interim report on the flood situation in the state. The team comprised Tushar Gandhi, Anand Sahay and Seema Mustafa, with Bula Devi, coordinating the visit. 

The team visited Srinagar that was worst affected in the Valley along with South Kashmir districts. The team visited the affected areas and spoke to residents, shopkeepers, the youth who had organised relief operations and journalists including the Editor of Rising Kashmir Shujaat Bukhari who has also taken up rescue and relief operations. The team also met the Chief Secretary and top officials of the state government as well as Congress party’s Ghulam Nabi Azad and Salman Soz, and Peoples Democratic Party leaders Mehbooba Mufti and Naeem Akhtar, Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, the Jamaat e Islami and its top leaders including the Amir and many others.

Serious trouble has many dimensions. In Kashmir, after the recent floods — the worst not only in the last one hundred years but probably of all times — which devastated not just the habitation of lakhs of people but also every aspect of the economy and an entire way of life, perhaps the most striking feature is the absence of any effort of mobilisation of the national will by the state government and the Centre.The government of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was caught unawares by nature’s fury and, as might well have happened in any state in India, its inefficiencies and incapacities to rush in relief or rehabilitation (after its initial failure to rescue) even several days after the flood waters rose up to 40 feet in some parts of the city (such as Ram Munshi Bagh) have left the people angry and disillusioned.

The three-member CPA team visiting the Kashmir Valley from September 27-29 heard elaborations of this all over Srinagar, from senior mainstream politicians and important separatist leaders, as well as ordinary people at relief camps and on the streets.

Hardly any less striking has been the failure of the Union government to provide moral support and material assistance on the scale required. High representatives of the Union government made pro forma flying visits. Exactly one month after large parts of Srinagar were submerged on September 7, 2014, following four days of frighteningly heavy and unseasonal rains, it is reasonable to assert that the Centre has failed to mobilise the country behind the gargantuan task of rehabilitation of Kashmir valley.

Immediately after much of the valley was marooned, Prime Minister Narendra Modi used appropriate words to describe the catastrophe.

He called it a “national disaster”. A month after, those words seem empty.There has been no move through radio and television to rally the nation behind Kashmir. Red tape has not been cut to rush finances to the beleaguered state under special dispensations or through special purpose vehicles devised to meet an unforeseen and extraordinary situation, which has negatively impacted lakhs of lives in a state which is routinely described as “sensitive” on account of its geostrategic position. Perhaps this is why the Prime Minister referred to the issue of relief for disaster-hit Kashmir in his speech in the United Nations at the end of September, but his words do not seem to have travelled beyond the four walls of the General Assembly.

In contrast, the promptness of voluntary aid — although this is bound to be a drop in the ocean in relation to the scale of the calamity — from all corners of India has been a touching demonstration of what the human heart is capable of and what individual will can achieve. In Srinagar, the CPA group came scores of relief teams from different parts of the country engaged in offering medical assistance to people at risk of contracting deadly diseases if not attended to with speed.

It is our heartfelt wish that political and social activists from all parts of India visit the Kashmir valley and the hill terrain of Jammu in Rajouri and Poonch to see how their fellow-citizens have suffered, and find ways to help them generously and with the utmost diligence.The state government is not sure even at this stage what exactly happened on the September 7 and 8, 2014 when much of Srinagar –the seat of government, the centres of business, trade and industry, and the tourist spots in Jammu and Kashmir’s capital city –capsized, parts of it such as Ram Munshi Bagh going under 40 feet of water.

The command and control locations and apparatus have not been struck by disaster in any other state capital before. This compounded the Kashmir tragedy in the wake of rain and flood and made the task of rescue, relief and rehabilitation incomparably complex.

The state Chief Secretary, Mr Iqbal Khandey and his senior officials told the CPA fact-finding team that a technical assessment will have to be made about what exactly happened. The Jhelum river snakes its way through the ancient city of Srinagar some 60 kilometres after it takes its rise in South Kashmir. Four days of blinding rain had caused the river to swell. It breached its banks at Kandizal in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district, some 15 kilometres from Srinagar.

This led to the initial assessment that Srinagar might be saved from what looked like certain disaster, the speed at which the water level was rising, as the water might now be discharged away from densely inhabited areas. But this was not to be.The senior officials said the flood refill channel running approximately parallel to the Jhelum in Srinagar had been built in 1902 on the assumption that the river, when in spate, would not be carrying more than 80,000 cusecs of water while passing through Srinagar, and some 35,000 cusecs of this would be discharged into the flood refill channel if need arose. The assumption had held for 112 years. Over the years, however, the flood channel has not been tested. Indeed, housing has come up on and around it and this was bound to impede water flow in an emergency. That emergency struck in the first week of September.

This year, say officials, the gauge stations, which are monitored hourly, went under. They estimate that 1,20,000 cusecs of water was coursing through Srinagar on September 7 and 8, the equivalent of the flow of three Jhelums in Srinagar. How this came to be is wholly unclear, especially after the breaching of the Jhelum banks at Kandizal. To explain this, the top officials say there might have been multiple cloud bursts on the night of September 6 around Srinagar, before the river enters the big city.

This is a completely untested hypothesis and may be a convenient and contrived explanation. Therefore, a thorough inquiry is in order.

In slightly more specific terms the team has attempted to segregate the areas of concern into the following, to give a more specific understanding of the situation on the ground today.

The Floods

Water levels rose alarmingly with the rains and flood waters rising to submerge districts in South Kashmir. The State government and the authorities were caught completely off guard even though the team was told by concerned officials that the water levels of the rivers were monitored almost hourly. However, there seems to have been no effort to warn the people in South Kashmir, and to evacuate the villages, many of them are reported to have been washed away by the torrential waters. People were rescued by the Army and by volunteers from their homes after days, with any number of stories narrated to the team members about the trauma and the suffering of the local residents who barely managed to escape with their lives.

Despite this, there seemed to be little understanding of how the South Kashmir deluge would move to impact on other parts of the State. Some effort — minimalist in our view — was made by the State government to ask the people to evacuate their homes. The radio and the loudspeakers on mosques were used as the communication system for this by the State government. However, no one not even the authorities took the warnings seriously with the government making no effort to evacuate the residents or even itself for that matter. The warnings thus remained at best a token response to the South Kashmir situation where the waters had risen dramatically and the rivers had already started flowing far over the danger mark. The State government in the little time it had made no effort to requisition boats, life jackets and prepare for rescue operations. An indication of the non preparedness comes from the fact that the government that is adept at moving its darbar to Jammu in the winter months, did not even lift a finger to move itself on to safe, dry land where it could remain in contact with the people. Despite the fact that floods hit the State every now and again — of course never as severe as this — there seems to be no disaster management protocol in place.

The result is that when the rivers breached the bands, and came rushing into the city everyone was caught unawares. Resident after resident told the team of how the waters moved from puddles outside on the roads to the second floor of houses with dramatic speed. One young man said that he was running down the street to his house with the waters literally roaring behind him as he ran.

Within hours Srinagar was literally drowning in the torrential flood waters that had acquired a high current. The Army cantonment was flooded as were all the officials, with the government having disappeared from sight.

All communications broke down, and the city blacked out as residents tried to save their lives in the dark. Many who spoke to us broke down in tears while narrating the trauma. They were trapped and were saved only because many of the houses have attics where the families took refuge as the waters swirled around them.

The Rescue

The State government and administration was caught unawares and once Srinagar was flooded under 20+ feet of water the State machinery officials, police and military were all submerged and paralysed. Victims cannot rescue nor can they provide relief and this is exactly what happened as officials, police and Army found themselves marooned and got into the victim frame of mind. So in the moment of crisis they were not able to perform their responsibility as saviours.

In the first stage even as the Army was marshalling boats and its resources, the youth started braving the waters to save their families, neighbours and themselves as the waters kept rising and many buildings were demolished in front of their eyes. To their credit the Kashmiri youth, condemned as rioters and stone pelters, rose to the occasion and became the heroic rescuers. If it was not for their very timely, heroic, innovative and tireless effort the tragedy would have been much more grim and the casualty figure in Srinagar much greater. The youth of Srinagar deserves commendation, congratulations and gratitude. When they extracted themselves from being victims the armed forces too performed commendably but it must be said that they too were absent at the grimmest initial hours.

The Kashmiri youth broke down furniture, water tanks and all they could find to put together rough boats to rescue the people. They were joined soon by the Army that did a great job but was bound to some extent by the protocol of saving VIPs , tourists, and then the civilians in that order. Besides the Army continued with the protocol of security with each rescue boat manned by at least five to six jawans, and therefore having little room for the civilians shouting for help. However, the soldiers worked day and night both in Srinagar and other affected parts of the State, with any number of Kashmiris praising the efforts. But as a journalist said, and it is a view with which this team agrees, the Army did its job with commendation but it was the Kashmiri youth — many of whom did not know how to swim — who were the unsung heroes of what had by then become a mammoth rescue operation.

Relief

Relief Operations perforce had to begin while the rescue was on as the lakhs of people marooned had run out of food and drinking water. The rescue boats started carrying water and food packets, with choppers being used to throw packets that fell into the waters instead of into the hands of the people. There is a six per cent higher than national average of diabetes in the State, with insulin and medicines becoming another essential need.

Again, the State government remained paralysed, and it was the youth, the journalists and others who came together to identify the immediate needs of the people, and send out help calls on the social media for the items required. They formed teams to distribute the relief material with the Army of course taking care of the larger operations on this front. However, the absence of the civilian administration hampered the work of the Army as well in the relief operations with serious problems of coordination that still do not seem to have been rectified.

Individuals and organisations from cities outside Jammu and Kashmir contributed greatly in sending across teams of doctors and volunteers as well as relief material. In fact very soon, because of coordination between civil society groups and the Kashmiris per se, the scarcity of medicines like insulin were overcome. Most Kashmiris spoken to said that there was sufficient material in the form of clothes, medicines, drinking water but the problem remained in the coordination, and the red tapism of the State government in allowing them to clear the material without the usual red tapism. The result was that large piles of relief material collected at the airport while the State government officials wrangled over the paper work. This has also led to a perception, right or wrong, that the National Conference and its government is trying to seize the goods meant for relief for others, and distribute it under its own banner for political mileage.

However, the government has been more visible in this field now than it was earlier and vaccination teams have been moving around the affected areas to prevent an epidemic. The swift clearance of the carcasses is a plus for the government and the local bodies, with the cold weather contributing to the fact that large scale disease has not engulfed the devastated State because of the stagnant water and the continuing rot. A major problem is the onsetting winter with blankets, warm clothes and shelters urgently required. Not much has moved on this front as well, with lakhs still homeless with their homes either washed away or in no state to be occupied because of the damp and the erosion by the flood waters that have rendered most of the houses unsafe.

Rehabilitation

The damage caused to government installations, official housing and infrastructure, public works such as roads, bridges, school and hospital buildings, administrative offices, electrical installations and electronic networks, besides severe damage to agriculture (rice crop) and horticulture (the apple crop this year) is being officially estimated at Rs. 30,000 crore. Unofficially political parties estimate the losses at Rs 100,000 crores.

This, however, seems a guess more than an approximation. If the severe losses sustained by private citizens — their homes, businesses, industries all gone — is considered, any considerably higher amount would seem plausible and the figure of Rs. 100,000 crore may not be extravagant, though this is also something of an educated guess. An urgent damage assessment conducted by top-flight professionals with relevant experience is, thus, strongly indicated.

Mr. Bashir Mir, the president of the apple growers’ association of Wagoora tehsil of Baramulla district, Kashmir’s most valuable apple region, informed the CPA team that approximately 25,000 apple-growing horticulturists of Baramulla district, would have been eligible for kisan loans from the banking sector of the order of rupees two to three lakhs each. They would not be able to repay the loan this year on account of gushing flood waters hitting the apple orchards. Prior to that the crop was already affected by a deadly pesticide. A similar number of horticulturists is likely to be adversely affected for the same reasons in the Pulwama and Shopian districts of South Kashmir. If the horticulturists’ loans are not waived this year, the apple farmers will be driven to rack and ruin.

Their incomes would be down to about 20 per cent of the norm while they would be obliged to pay seven per cent interest on their bank loans if the debt is not discharged within the year. It is situations similar to these that have led to farmers’ suicides in several states, including the well-to-do ones such as Punjab, Karnataka and Maharashtra.

The rehabilitation process is going to be a massive undertaking with conservative estimates putting the reconstruction of Kashmir at a minimum of five years. There is no indication that the government is even seized of this with Kashmiris all speaking of the urgency with which this should be tackled to prevent trauma, depression and of course, more deaths in the deadly winters. The Chief Secretary, however, said this would be done but the speed of governance, despite the urgency, seems to have hit an all time low.

Media

The role of the ‘national’ media television channels needs to be singled out in this report as the coverage has added to the chaos and the trauma of the floods. Most television anchors and editors were flown into Kashmir at military hospitality, were taken over the affected areas in choppers and put together a coverage exalting the role of the Army, as against that of the heroic youth. As senior politicians in Kashmir told the team, and there was rare unanimity in all on this, “if the media had not gone on and on about the role of the Army at the expense of all others, the rescue efforts would have actually brought the Army and the Kashmiris closer together.”

Instead the reverse happened. The insensitive questions while the flood waters were surging about how it felt being rescued by the “occupation” Army had no meaning for the Kashmiris striving to survive. And seeing themselves the bravery of the youth who had come together as never before. The anger spilled out as communications were restored and the news spread through the Valley. Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umer Farooq told the team that the Army had done good work of course and that everyone appreciated its efforts “but no one even bothered to report what our young people did, they really were the heroes of this calamity.”

Mehbooba Mufti was almost passionate in her anger with the media for creating severe complications when none needed to exist. She said that the one sided coverage had done immense damage in Jammu and Kashmir as it gave a lopsided and prejudiced view of the rescue operations. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad was also highly critical of the senior journalists staying away from the city, in sanitised surroundings, without bothering to report what was happening on the ground.

At a time when the media could have acted as a cementing factor, it created a chasm that has impacted heavily on the Kashmiri psyche in this hour of disaster.

The over reporting of a couple — the team could not document a third — of incidents of stone throwing at the helicopters have also added to the fury. One of these was as the chopper was stirring the waters below and the people in unstable boats were in fear of capsizing. So they picked up pebbles or whatever they could to get the helicopter to leave. The other, as the residents said, was in anger over the non visibility of the government that the Army officers themselves understood.

The media’s insistence on scoring brownie points over the separatists in the midst of disaster has not gone down well in Kashmir at all. JKLF leader Yasin Malik did not hijack a boat as was reported, but insisted that when the relief was distributed in his area he should be also part of it. Also the Army did not save Hurriyat leader Ali Shah Geelani from the floods as the Delhi media reported for the simple reason that there were no floods in Hyderpora, where he stays, to rescue him from.

Recommendations

  1. A judicial probe-based on well-grounded technical assessments –into the causes of the flood waters entering Srinagar. Its terms of reference should include the status of the State government’s preparedness to cope with such a situation, and its actual performance once tragedy struck since in the perception of most people the State government became “invisible”.

  2. A probe by appropriate authority into the rescue operations conducted by the military. Many in Srinagar attest to their effectiveness, but also complain about their prioritisation. The general belief is that the focus of rescue by the armed forces was not ordinary Kashmiris but tourists, select members of the Kashmiri elite, and migrant labourers who have been living in the valley over the years.

  3. The framework of the probe into the conduct of the armed forces should include the work of their PR department which seemed to have gone into overdrive, resulting in very skewed television coverage that has only succeeded in tilting the perception against the Army and the country. This could have security-related repercussions.

  4. The electronic media played a very disruptive and vitiating role and gave reason to the Kashmiris to be hurt and angry. The efficiency of the operations was impacted by the one sided reporting.

Media presence during relief and rescue operations should be sensitively handled as a policy.

  1. An independent enquiry by civil society — including individuals and groups within Kashmir that bravely rushed forward with assistance of their own accord, voluntary organisations from across the country that involved themselves in relief work in Jammu and Kashmir, State political parties, and technical experts of different kinds from State and other parts of the country to assess damage and financial costs that must be made good.

  2. An appeal to all sections of society to maintain calm in the face of this massive tragedy and focus on a constructive approach, rather than look for partisan political advantage.

  3. The government and administration with the help of civil society must create a disaster management protocol and chain of command so that the same mistakes that facilitated the calamity to turn into a disaster of such tragic magnitude will not occur again. A natural and organic chain of command must be established. Young men who performed so heroically and ingeniously must be made a part of a volunteer disaster rescue force. The bureaucracy must be trained to not remain captives of the rule book in times of calamity and work apart from the rule book and in an innovative manner. 8. The State Government must also have a protocol in place where a line of command is established so that in case a calamity incapacitates part of the government, there is a chain of command that can take control and coordinate the emergency response to the calamity.

  4. A national disaster response protocol must be established which intervenes in a tragedy without waiting for an appeal from the State in case of a calamity. One point that angered the people of Kashmir was that they found products which were much past their expiry dates. This must be avoided.

  5. Specifically in Srinagar the stalled proposals to create efficient flood drainage systems must be expeditiously revived and urgently implemented.

  6. A campaign must be urgently launched to provide blankets and warm clothing on a large scale; this should be a civil society initiative.

  7. When rebuilding is commenced after relief is provided there should be a watchdog committee in place which is non governmental and non political to ensure that the rebuilding effort both in Srinagar and in South Kashmir as well as affected parts of Jammu is done in a legal and ethical manner. There is a danger of the politician-official-builder mafia nexus exploiting the tragedy to profiteer and indulge in land grab and encroachment.

  8. It may be time for the army to reevaluate their establishments, too. With climate change the probability of such calamities becoming more frequent and progressively more severe is very likely. The military base was waterlogged even 15 days after the disaster. The initial flood marooned the Army base in Srinagar and rendered it inoperable. Such situation could be strategically disastrous. The Defence ministry will have to rethink about their location in Srinagar and may have to shift to higher elevation. The Army must not be rendered inoperable in an emergency.

When things return to normal in Kashmir the various socio political religious groups who acted responsibly immediately, compassionately and bravely to rescue and provide relief to the marooned and distressed populace must be commended and honoured for their actions.

All India Dawah Centres Association (AIDCA) launched in Mumbai

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At the launch of "All India Dawah Centres Association" on 10th Oct 2014, at Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh. From left: Imran Shaikh, Ashraf Mohamedy, Umar Shariff, Adv. Faiz Syed, Ashraf Motlekar, Mohsin Khan

At the launch of “All India Dawah Centres Association” on 10th Oct 2014, at Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh. From left: Imran Shaikh, Ashraf Mohamedy, Umar Shariff, Adv. Faiz Syed, Ashraf Motlekar, Mohsin Khan.

Mumbai: The All India Dawah Centres Association (AIDCA), an association of various Islamic organisations, from across the country was launched today in Mumbai, with the goal of “standing up for the rights and security of the Islamic organisations and its members”.

Addressing the press here at the Marathi Patrakar Sangh on the occasion of its launch, AIDCA’s goals and objectives were elaborated to the Media.

Mr. Umar Shariff, the Program Manager of AIDCA, expounded about working with people across the country, to work on social welfare activities.

Mr. Shariff said that, AIDCA was established this year, in the month of August, soon after the second summit which was attended by the members of 70 Islamic organisations from states across India. AIDCA, he said was setup with the intention of uniting the Ulama (Muslim scholars), and community leaders to unitedly address issues concerning the community in the country.

“AIDCA would stand up for the victimised members of the Muslim community, who are picked up by the intelligence and authorities on the basis of suspicion alone. We would engage through all legal actions that are necessary to contest the actions of the authorities who take undue advantage of the much vulnerable Muslim community of India. All our endeavour would be within the framework of the constitution of India,” said Mr. Shariff, who is the president of Discover Islam Education Trust (DIET), an educational institute, which operates a school under its aegis in Bangalore.

On being asked about whether AIDCA would work with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he replied that it would work with him in all the good work the PM does in the country, like ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ campaign. He said the Association would work not only with minorities but even with the majority community, to remove “misconceptions about Islam and Muslims from the minds of the people.”

Mr. Ashfaq Motlekar, the National Correspondent of AIDCA spoke of conducting regular training programs for the youth to train them in equipping themselves with the knowledge of law to pursue their legal rights when they are violated.

One such “Legal Aid Workshop” is to be organized on Saturday, wherein experts from legal fields are to conduct workshop at the city’s Best Western Hotel Sahil, said Mr. Ashraf Mohamedy, the National Spokesperson of AIDCA. “Participants from all over India are expected to benefit from the same,” he added.

The Members of the Representative Council of AIDCA are: Ashraf Mohamedy, Idafa, Mumbai, Ashfaq Motlekar, Mumbai, Zaid Patel, IIC, Mumbai, Imran Khalil, Al Birr, Mumbai, Dawood Vaid, Burooj Realization, Mumbai, Umar Shariff, DIET, Karnataka, Moinudeen, Gujarat, Adv. Faiz Syed, Aurangabad, Alam, Kolkata, Mohsin Khan, Mumbai and Mujeebur Rahmaan, Tamil Nadu.

The coordination office of the Association is located at Al Birr Foundation, Mumbai.

On being R.K. Narayan

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The following is an excerpt from a series of interviews Susan Ram and N. Ram of The Hindu did with R.K. Narayan for over a decade. The author, it is said never liked the concept of a formal interview, so what follows is the result of “indirect method of dropping in for a chat.”

“Don’t seek to interview him. Don’t turn on your tape recorder. Don’t ask direct questions or ask him to explain his work. Just chat with him. Talk about yourself when he asks you questions.”

RK Narayan

On writing

I had no difficulty in writing. I had difficulty in finding someone to publish what I wrote. I’ve always written without any strain whatever, you know, without any deliberate effort. But to get a thing printed or published was very difficult in those days. In those days the difficulty was that the type of stories I was writing made no sense to my readers. It was a very disappointing reading for most of them, but I persisted because I couldn’t write any other way.

They were used to things like romance and plot – and everything was abolished in my style of work. And most of them would say, “What’s there in that story? There’s something interesting that you’ve written, but there’s no ending, there’s no powerful climax or anything. What are you driving at?”

But now I think the critics and readers are able to see my point of view. And they get a lot more out of the stories that I would have suspected. Because a piece of writing is not a thing a writer can judge fully himself. It’s for others – the impact, what it stirs up in your mind. It’s all very different.

On writing in English

I was not aware that I was writing in a foreign language. All those books (indicating the bookcase), they’ve influenced me and they’re in English. I could write more easily in English and I was fascinated with the London literary life of those days, the Thirties, when Shaw and Belloc and Bennet and Chesterton and a whole lot of others had interesting encounters. News about them would always be there.

On the writer’s struggle

When I look back at it, I wonder at my foolhardiness in deciding to become a full-time writer (in 1930).

For almost all writers, it’s a struggle. Tamil writers are now in this condition…. In spite of your foolishness, you survive if you have to. And you write, whatever the quality of the writing. There is some drive; otherwise, why write?

You must write. It’s not enough to start by thinking. You become a writer by writing. It’s a yoga.

On the creation of Malgudi

I really can’t explain its persistence, you know. Because it was just a casual idea. It’s not a fixation, a fixed geography. It has grown, developed. I think it has very elastic borders, elastic frontiers, elastic everything – with a few fixed points, that’s all….

I had an idea of a railway station, a very small railway station. You’ve seen the kind of thing, with a platform and trees and a station-master. The railway station to which Swami goes to watch the trains arrive and depart: that was the original idea with which I started Swami and Friends. But in the actual book it comes last, it’s at the end of the story.

And then what happened was I was thinking of a name for the railway station. It should have a name-board. And I didn’t want to have an actual name which could be found in a railway time-table. I wanted to avoid that, because some busybody was likely to say, “This place is not there, that shop he has mentioned is not there.” If it’s a real town it’s a nuisance for a writer.

And while I was worrying about this problem, the idea came to me – Malgudi just seemed to hurl into view. It has no meaning. There is a place called Lalgudi near Trichy and a place called Mangudi near Kumbakonam or somewhere. But Malgudi is nowhere. So that was very helpful. It satisfied my requirement.

On change in Malgudi

Instead of listening to a temple piper, people probably have a transistor radio. And then, instead of a transistor they may have a three-in-one recorder and play cassettes. You can watch villagers playing cassettes in the fields nowadays. But people have not changed.

Human types have remained the same. So they remain, my characters. At least in Malgudi there can’t be much change. And there are hundreds of little places like Malgudi everywhere.

On how his writing has developed

The development of my writing? That I can’t very precisely analyse now. It’s not possible to give any accurate analysis. But I think it gains in depth as the years go and your experiences change. I won’t say it has gained in profundity or literary value, but in some sense, in depth, there is a little more in the recent stories than in the previous.

I don’t know if it’s a development or a retrograde step. I’m not sure. I’m really unselfconscious about my writing. It was really unconscious writing earlier. Even now, when I write, I’m not sure as to what’s coming. But technically I’ve a little more control over my writing now.

On ‘purposive’ writing

Everyone thinks he’s a writer with a mission. Myself, absolutely not. I write only because I’m interested in a type of character and I’m amused mostly by the seriousness with which each man takes himself. I try to write from the inside, of even a villain, and then see his point of view, that’s all. Some amount of identification… their identity is recognised. I can’t be hostile because I see it from his point of view. That’s why even if I write about a politician, it would be a justification for him (laughs).

Politics is the least interesting aspect of life, in my view. I don’t attach too much importance to it as literary material. Because most politically inspired novels die in good time. They don’t last. It’s only the human elements which last, not the political concepts or the pressures. They become just insignificant.

On Talkative Man

Talkative Man – he’s in many of the short stories: where some incredible experience has to be narrated, it’s the Talkative Man who talks. He’s a good link, he can link people up, he’s a man who goes through the city like a breeze everywhere, who knows lots of people. He links up a lot of background and personalities and landmarks very convincingly. Everybody is his friend.

On being around

You see, fifty years is nothing. It might look very big for you, who are quite young. But when fifty years end, you find it just the same – the illusion of time, you know. We are what we are. Whether you grow older, more decrepit, inside, the sense of awareness, of being is the same throughout.

I don’t see any difference between myself when I was seven years old in Madras and now here in Mysore. The chap inside is the same, unchanged. Others see a little baldness, a little stooping and say, how’d you manage to live at all?

Father, son buried alive as house collapses amid heavy rain and superstition

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bangalore-rain

Bangalore: A 37-year-old man and his son were buried alive after a two-storey house collapsed in Jogupalya in Ulsoor amid heavy rains.

The deceased — M. Sumbramani and his 10-year-old son — ran out of the house to safety when they heard the neighbouring building collapse, but went in again to take out a bike and a bicycle when the wall collapsed on them. Two residents of the building that collapsed – Komathi Devi (51) and her son Kiran (16) – escaped with minor injuries.

A police officer said, “It was a 60-year-old building and a creeper had grown along its wall till the terrace. The occupants of the house had refused to remove the creeper as they considered it sacred. The creeper had dampened the wall which made it feeble and weak.”

However, Komathi Devi was adamant about residing in the building, neighbours said.

In another incident, a 40-year-old priest at the Sri Sai Temple in Basaveshwara Nagar in West Bangalore was electrocuted on Thursday morning when he was trying to pump out water that had collected in the cellar of the temple due to heavy overnight rain. The priest Shankar stepped on a live electric wire in the cellar while pumping out water and was killed at the spot.

Silencing Caste, Sanitising Oppression – Understanding ’Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’

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– by Subhash Gatade

What is important to note that the Conference of the Untouchables which met in Mahad resolved that no untouchable shall skin the dead animals of the Hindus, shall carry it or eat the carrion. The object of these resolutions was twofold. The one object was to foster among the Untouchables self respect and self esteem. This was a minor object. The major object was to strike a blow at the Hindu Social Order.

The Hindu Social Order is based upon a division of labour which reserves for the Hindus clean and respectable jobs and assigns to the untouchables dirty and mean jobs and thereby clothes the Hindus with dignity and heaps ignominy upon the untouchables.

(The Revolt of the Untouchables, Excerpted from Essays on Untouchables and Untouchability : Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, Vol 5 (Mumbai : Govt of Maharashtra, 1989, 256-58)

  1. The inauguration of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, (Clean India Campaign) with much fanfare, with ministers, bureaucrats and others holding Jhadoos evoked an interesting reaction from a ragpicker Sanjay who lives in Mehrauli with his parents. “These are the same people from whose houses we pick up garbage every day. This is part of our life. We don’t really understand why they are making it such a big deal,” (PM’s Swachch Bharat Abhiyan has no place for Delhi’s 3 lakh rag pickers,Mallica Joshi , Hindustan Times New Delhi, October 03, 2014))

Sanjay happens to be one among a population of around 3,00,000 rag pickers (according to rough estimates) in Delhi, who are largely invisible and as expected live on the margins of society. It is a different matter that they play a major role in garbage management – right from collecting waste to segregating it for recycling. NGOs working with them feel that the city can easily come to a halt without them because they are the one ’who perform the basic task of taking garbage from people’s houses to dumps in most parts of the city.’ At the time of Commonwealth Games held in Delhi few years back, the then state government had even provided few hundred ragpickers with dress and safety equipment etc ’acknowledging’ the services they rendered to keep the city clean.

Time seems to have changed now. As the above mentioned report further adds :

’The government seems to be in complete denial of their presence even as they reap the benefits of their hard work.’ (-do-)

The complete marginalisation of the ragpickers from the much tommed tommed Swachh Bharat Abhiyan does not appear surprising. It is rather symptomatic of the many other ’silences’, ’erasures’ which accompanied its launching. While analysts have rightly pointed out the manner in which legacy of the Mahatma is being ’reduced’ to cleanliness obliterating his lifelong struggle against colonialism and communalisms of every kind and for an inclusive polity not much attention has been paid to the fact that the thrust of the campaign is to project a very samras (harmonious) picture of our society where cleanliness or the lack of it is connected with our ’duty’ (Kartavya) towards ’Bharat Mata’.

Perhaps one can have a look at the oath administered by the PM to everyone who joined this campaign.

“Ab hamara kartavya hain ki gandagi ko dhoor karke Bharat Mata ki sewa karein.” (Now, it is our duty to serve Mother India by removing the dirt.)

Did anyone hear any word about the pernicious ’caste system’ during all the media frenzy which witnessed its launching ? Definitely not. In fact caste and related discriminations have become so common and ingrained in our psyche that the media did not find anything newsworthy in it. Perhaps when every other officer was getting ready to have his/her own moment with a broom in hand the mediawallahs decided not to talk about this unique system of hierarchy – legitimised by the wider society and sanctified by religion -which has condemned a section of its own people to the ’profession’ of cleaning, sweeping and scavenging. What to tell the outside world that half of India still defecates in the open and there are lakhs of people who are still engaged in this ’profession’ of shit collection. In fact, we have designated communities who have been ’forced’ in this dehumanising work since centuries together

On closer look we can find that they go by many names in various parts of the country. As Gita Ramaswamy discusses in her book ’India Stinking’ (Navayana, 2007) : They are Bhangi, Valmiki, methar, chuhra in Delhi, Dhanuk in UP, han, hadi in Bengal; mehtar, bhangi in Assam; methar in Hyderabad; Paki in coastal Andhra ; thotti in Tamil Nadu; mira, lalbegi, chuhra, balashahi in Punjab. Names may be different but they share the same fate : they belong to the bottom of the Hindu social hierarchy and are untouchables. And under the caste hierarchy, castes that consider themselves superior does enjoy a wider range of choice of occupations but the erstwhile untouchables, today’s dalits have the least desirable occupations – removal of human excreta, cleaning, sweeping, leatherwork, skinning of dead animals, removal of human and cattle corpses, rearing of pigs etc.

We know that despite sixty plus years of independence, while moneybags here can easily compete with moneybags in the advanced world, while rulers of India yearn to make 21 st century as India’s century, there has not been any qualitative change in the lifeworlds of the majority of the dalits who are still lying at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Yes, a small section among them has definitely taken advantage of the affirmative action programme and is on the path of upward mobility, but for the majority amongst them, their is no qualitative change in their situation marked by deprivation and discrimination.

2. Interestingly in his hurry to ’do a Gandhi’ Mr Modi launched the campaign from the same Valmiki Basti where Gandhi had stayed for a while, without bothering that such a move would further stigmatise the community. And this at a time when there is a great churning going on within the community especially its youth to leave this ’profession’ and take up other dignified work. Not very many people outside the community are even aware that there is growing talk of ’Jhadu Chodo, Kalam Uthao ( Leave the Broom, Hold the Pen) reverberating within them. Organisations like Safai Karmachari Andolan and others have even undertaken the task of demolition of dry latrines at various places and there have been occasions when people have spontaneously come forward to collectively burn the broom and basket which is used in scavenging.

While media did not bother to question the venue chosen by PM to start his campaign, many close watchers of the situation did not feel surprised as they knew how Mr Modi, looks at this occupation, which finds mention in his book ’Karmyog’ where he calls it as some kind of “spiritual experience”.

Not very people know that it was the year 2007 when collection of Narendra Modi’s speeches to IAS officials at various points of time were compiled in a book form named ’Karmyog’ and were published by the Gujarat government. Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation, a top ranking PSU was roped in to fund 5,000 copies of the book. (http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/true-lies/entry/modi-s-spiritual-potion-to-woo-karmayogis). Sample one of his speech, where talking about the Safai Kamdars Modi exhorts:

“I do not believe that they have been doing this job just to sustain their livelihood. Had this been so, they would not have continued with this type of job generation after generation….At some point of time, somebody must have got the enlightenment that it is their (Valmikis’) duty to work for the happiness of the entire society and the Gods; that they have to do this job bestowed upon them by Gods; and that this job of cleaning up should continue as an internal spiritual activity for centuries. This should have continued generation after generation. It is impossible to believe that their ancestors did not have the choice of adopting any other work or business.” (Page 48-49, Karmyog)

Later Modi’s remark got published in the Times of India in mid-November 2007, which were translated and republished in few Tamil newspapers. There was a massive reaction of Dalits in Tamil Nadu for calling their menial job “spiritual experience”. Modi’s effigies were burnt in different parts of the state. Sensing trouble Modi immediately withdrew 5,000 copies of the book, but still sticked to his opinion. Two years later, addressing 9,000-odd safai karmacharis, (cleanliness workers) he likened the safai karmacharis’ job of cleaning up others dirt’ to that of a temple priest. He told them,

“A priest cleans a temple every day before prayers, you also clean the city like a temple. You and the temple priest work alike.”

It would have been enlightening for Mr Modi if he could have browsed through Dr Ambedkar’s writings just to know how he had reacted when Mahatma Gandhi had similarly praised ’scavenging as the noblest service to society’ and said ’How sacred is this work of cleanliness !’(Navajivan, 8 th January 1925)

To preach that poverty is good for the Shudra and for none else, to preach that scavenging is good for the untouchables and for none else and to make them accept these onerous impositions as voluntary purposes of life, by appeal to their failings is an outrage and a cruel joke on the helpless classes which none but Mr Gandhi can perpetuate with equanimity and impunity. In this connection one is reminded of the words of Voltaire ..:”Oh! mockery to say to people that the sufferings of some brings joy to others and works good to the whole. What solace is it to a dying man to know that from his decaying body a thousand worms will come into life.”

(What Congress and Gandhi have done to the Untouchables, Dr Ambedkar : Writings and Speeches, Vol 9, (Mumbai : Govt of Maharashtra, 1990) P. 290-93

3. The ’silencing’ or ’sanitising’ of the discourse of caste in the packaging and presentation of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or the dominant discourse around it reminds one of the persistence of untouchability in Gujarat and the manner in which it was made to ’disppear’ sometime back . (As an aside it may be mentioned here that Modi served as chief minister of Gujarat from the year 2001 to 2014.)

Appears unbelievable?

Perhaps you can have a look at a Gujarat government sponsored report titled “Impact of Caste Discrimination and Distinctions on Equal Opportunities: A Study of Gujarat”, authored by Centre for Environment Planning and Technology University (CEPT) University scholars led by Prof R Parthasarathy, which calls caste discrimination a matter of “perceptions”.

In his blog ’True Lies’ senior journalist Rajiv Shah (http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/true-lies/entry/untouchability-and-modi-s-babus) has provided detailed critique of this study.

To put in a nutshell this CEPT report was a governmental response to an exhaustive study titled ’Understanding Untouchability’ done by Ahmedabad based NGO ’Navsarjan Trust’ with the help of Robert F Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. (2009) which demonstrated with concrete data the wide prevalence of untouchability both in public and private spheres in interaction between scheduled castes (SCs) and non-scheduled castes (non-SCs), as well as within SCs: among the several jatis in rural Gujarat.

It is important to note that the results of the Navsarjan study were widely covered by the media .

Looking at the fact that the ongoing debate had the potential of putting a spanner in the well cultivated image of a Samras (harmonious) Gujarat under Modi, a panicky government asked CEPT to review and verify Navsarjan’s findings. In fact, the government seemed so keen to give a clean chit to itself that it adopted a two pronged approach to tackle the uncomfortable situation in which it found itself. Apart from commissioning the above mentioned study it constituted a committee under the chairmanship of the then minister for social justice, Fakirbhai Vaghela and secretaries of different concerned departments to refute the findings of the report. The government instructed its officers to get affidavits from scheduled caste village residents regarding non-existence of untouchability.

Commenting on the report Rajiv Shah says that

“[t]he nearly 300-page report, ..far from being a review of “Understanding Untouchability”, is more of an effort to justify the evil practice.”

As opposed to the survey of 1,589 villages done by Navsarjan, the CEPT team was made to survey just five villages, dig out a plethora of caste-wise data on agriculture, irrigation, employment and distribution of government schemes but were instructed not to collect any data on “”caste discrimination” – a term used by them in lieu of untouchability.

The reluctance of the scholars to even mention the U(ntouchability) word can be gauged from the observations made by leading sociologist Ghanshyam Shah as well, who has also written a critique of the CEPT report ’Understanding or ignoring untouchability? How Gujarat government-sponsored study examines discrimination in a ‘very casual way’’ (in www.counterview.org, Nov 13, 2013) :

..[i]n the scholars’ view (and that of the government) there is nothing wrong if the Dalits are forced to carry own vessels or are made to be served at fag end of the festivity. In fact, if the scholars are to be believed, Dalit elders advise the “younger ones” not to participate in village festivals like Navratri or Garba, celebrated in other localities, “for fear of possible quarrel with non-Dalits.” The youth agree in order to maintain social peace and order. To quote from the report, “Those Dalit youth who go there, do so as spectators and not participate in Garba…”

He also adds :

“CEPT has completely ignored to study the practice of untouchability. Perhaps for them like the Government of Gujarat it is a non-issue. And, they have carried out mainly a socio-economic survey in five villages. The authors do not feel the need to argue why they have confined their study to socio-economic survey. Why have they not correlated socio-economic data with the presence or absence of untouchability?”

While the CEPT experts could not discover untouchability in the five villages covered, the Navsarjan team which toured these villages in June 2013 found how the dalits live under subjugation and a state of helplessness as they know that the government would not protect them if they assert for their rights. Ghanshyam Shah adds:

In fact, an important omission from the CEPT report was that of Valmikis themselves, who are considered lowest in the social ladder under a Varnacracy. As opposed to these worst victims of untouchability, the report focuses on the Vankars, a “socially acceptable” Dalit community, a weaving class.

The omission of Valmikis in a report commissioned by the government cannot be considered inadvertent. Their still remaining confined largely to the work of sweeping and cleaning ; collecting and handling dust, garbage and filth of the cities, towns and villages to make them livable for other dwellers and in the process facing daily humiliations and even deaths by ’accidents’ or getting afflicted with occupational diseases is a reality which cannot be ignored anymore. Perhaps the scholars might have felt that their sheer presence in a governmental report was anachronous to the media propelled image of ’a best-governed state, occupying number one position in the country on ‘development’’.

4. Commenting on the ’Clean India Campaign’ Rohit Prajapati, an environmental activist from Gujarat, has raised an altogether different point in his writeup ’Mr. Modi Preaches a Clean India, But His Record on Waste management and Pollution in Gujarat is Dirty’ (http://sacw.net/article9679.html). He has discussed a similar campaign launched by him in 2007 calling it ’Nirmal Gujarat -2007’ and looked at the track record of his government in controlling pollution. According to him Modi similarly made ’..tall claims during that campaign. But reality is best seen in Ahmedabad at illegal solid waste dumping site, the ‘Gyaspur-Pirana Dumping Site’ – a Waste Mountain near Sabarmati River adjacent to the main road.’

The writeup discusses basic facts as they were revealed in the ‘Report of the Task Force on Waste to Energy’ dated 12 May 2014 by the Planning Commission of India which states

“As per CPCB report 2012 – 13 municipal areas in the country generate 1,33,760 metric tonnes per day of MSW, of which only 91,152 TPD waste is collected and 25,884 TPD treated.”..“Further, if the current 62 million tonnes annual generation of MSW continues to be dumped without treatment; it will need 3,40,000 cubic meter of landfill space everyday (1240 hectare per year). Considering the projected waste generation of 165 million tonnes by 2031, the requirement of land for setting up landfill for 20 years (considering 10 meter high waste pile) could be as high as 66 thousand hectares of precious land, which our country cannot afford to waste.”

It would be opportune here to quote a large extract from the said writeup here :

Mr. Modi, things are not as simple as you say. This waste generation figure covers only 31.15% population of India. Considering the waste generation figures of all of India, these figures will be even more daunting. The Planning Commission (which Mr. Modi wishes to abolish) of India’s report further states “A study, of the status of implementation of the MSW Rules 2000 by the mandated deadline by the States, was carried out in class 1 cities of the country. It revealed that in 128 cities except for street sweeping and transportation, compliance was less than 50% and in respect of disposal compliance was a dismal 1.4 %.”What about the government’s major role in policy making for the reduction of waste and implementation of ‘The Municipal Solid Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules 2000’? Your track record in the implementation of these rules in the Gujarat is worst.

The consistent follow up by the pollution-affected people, people’s organisations and NGOs regarding the increasing pollution levels in the industrial areas of India forced the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the State Pollution Control Board in 1989 to initiate the process of indexing the critically polluted areas. At that time 24 industrial areas, including Vapi, Ankleshwar, Ludhiana, were declared ‘critically polluted’. In 2009 the CPCB and IIT-Delhi, in consistence with the demands of the people’s organisation’s working on environmental issues decided to use a new method of ‘indexing the pollution levels’ of these areas, which is now known as the ‘Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index’ (CEPI). The CEPI includes air, water, land pollution and health risks to the people living in the area. However, our demand has been to include the health of the workers, productivity of land and quality of food / agriculture produce in the index since the presence of high levels of chemicals and heavy metals in food produce has severe health implications. This is affecting not only people living around the industrial area but anyone consuming it – hence not restricting the impact to the particular industrial area.

In December 2009 the CEPI of 88 polluted industrial clusters was measured; it was then that the CPCB and the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) of Government of India were forced to declare 43 of those as ‘critically polluted clusters’ and another 32 industrial areas as ‘severely polluted clusters’.[6] Following this study the MoEF on 13 January 2010 was forced to issue a moratorium (prohibition on opening new industries and/or increasing the production capacity of the existing industries) on the 43 critically polluted areas. Similar reports were prepared by CPCB in 2011 and 2013 but these reports are completely ignored by past government and also by Modi Government.

In the concluding part of the article the writer discusses how after assuming reins of power, Mr Modi instead of undertaking the task of improving environment of these 88 industrial clusters, the government led by him started ’lifting of the moratorium of industrial cluster like Ghaziabad (UP), Indore (M.P.), Jharsuguda (Orissa), Ludhiana (Punjab), Panipat (Haryana), Patancheru – Bollaram (A.P.), Singrauli (UP & MP) and Vapi (Gujarat) as a first order of business on 10 June 2014. He underlines Vapi’s track records which demand more ‘stringent action’ against the polluting industries of Vapi & concerned officers of Gujarat Pollution Control Board and definitely not lifting of moratorium from Vapi. According to him ’the murky politics and economics of ‘GDP growth’ continue to prevail over the cause of ‘life and livelihood’ of ordinary people and ‘environment & conservation.’

His write-up concludes with few more figures and a BIG question:

In 2009, the Ankleswar’s industrial area, with 88.50 CEPI, topped the list of ‘critically polluted areas’ of India.

In 2011 and 2013, Vapi industrial area, with CEPI of 85.31, topped this list.

Thus Gujarat is able to top in 2009 in ‘critically polluted areas’ in India and continues to maintain its position in 2011 & 2013.

The Government of Gujarat deliberately ignored to comment or engages ever on these issues.

Mr. Modi what about the clean up of these industrial clusters of India? Do you have any plan to clean up this CRITICALLY and SEVERELY POLLUTED INDUSTRIAL CLUSTERS OF INDIA?

5. To conclude, one can talk of similar silences, erasures if we probe further deep.

But that is not the aim of the article. The nationwide campaign which has been taken up is going to involve tremendous human as well as financial resources. We are being told that government employees are being exhorted to devote at least 100 hours every year – or two hours a week – to do this work and send proof to their seniors. It is going to cost 620 billion rupees ($10bn; £6.1bn) – the government has earmarked 146 m rupees and expects to get the remaining amount from the corporate sector, international development organisations and elsewhere. It is also being said that main goal of the programme, is to end open defecation in the country – as nearly half of India’s 1.2 billion people have no access to toilets.

All sounds good and especially very soothing to the ears of NRIs who seem to be worried over the image India carries in the comity of nations.

But all these efforts do not seem to go anywhere because as we already said there is a conscious attempt not to address the key issues.

It appears that Mr Modi seems to be in a big hurry to leave an impact on history.

He might be successful like his predecessors. If today we remember or associate Garibi Hatao with Ms Indira Gandhi or ’Age of Computers’ with Rajeev Gandhi, similarly future generations would remember or associate the ’Clean India Campaign’ with Modi while still debating the ’dirtiest country in the world’ tag associated with the country.

Subhash Gatade is the author of Pahad Se Uncha Aadmi (2010), Godse’s Children: Hindutva Terror in India,(2011) and The Saffron Condition: The Politics of Repression and Exclusion in Neoliberal India (2011). He is also the Convener of New Socialist Initiative.

Boy set ablaze by army men in Hyderabad dies

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army-ablaze-hyderabad

Hyderabad: An 11-year-old boy, who was set ablaze by unidentified military men, died at a hospital here Thursday, police said.

Sheikh Mustafauddin, who was found with critical burn injuries at garrison area in Mehdipatnam in the heart of the city Wednesday, died at DRDO Apollo Hospital.

The body was shifted to government-run Osmania General Hospital for autopsy. Police have tightened security around the military area to prevent any untoward incident.

The boy, a student of a madarsa, told a magistrate in his dying declaration that some army men poured kerosene over him and set him ablaze.

A resident of Siddiq Nagar, Sheikh was called inside the garrison area by two military men. They allegedly beat him and later set him ablaze. He sustained 90 percent burns and was found lying near the main gate of the garrison.

A case of attempt to murder was registered against unidentified military men at Humayunagar police station. It will now be turned into a murder case.

Police formed a special team to conduct the investigation. Hyderabad police commissioner Mahender Reddy said the guilty will not be spared.

The incident led to tension in the area as people came out on streets to stage a protest against the military personnel. Police used baton charge the protestors to disperse them.

The army authorities have denied involvement of any military man in the incident.

“On investigation, it is found that this allegation is absolutely false and no army personnel is involved in this incident. The army condemns this act. All necessary assistance is being provided to the police authorities to carry out a detailed investigation to arrive at the truth,” said a statement from the army authorities.

(IANS)

Israel’s occupation is more complex than a Genocide

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Israel-Genocide

– by Jonathan Cook

Israeli officials were caught in a revealing lie late last month as the country celebrated the Jewish New Year. Shortly after declaring the most popular boy’s name in Israel to be “Yosef”, the interior ministry was forced to concede that the top slot was actually filled by “Mohammed”.

That small deceit coincided with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the United Nations. He outraged Israelis by referring to Israel’s slaughter of more than 2,100 Palestinians – most of them civilians – in Gaza over the summer as “genocide”.

Both incidents served as a reminder of the tremendous power of a single word.

Most Israelis are barely able to contemplate the possibility that their Jewish state could be producing more Mohammeds than Moshes. At the same time, and paradoxically, Israel can point to the sheer number of “Mohammeds” to demonstrate that at worst it is eradicating the visibility of a Muslim name, certainly not its bearers.

As distressing as it is, hundreds of dead in Gaza is far from the industrial-scale murder of the Nazi Holocaust.

But the idea that Israel is committing genocide may not be quite as hyperbolic as is assumed. Last month a “jury” featuring international law experts at a people’s court, known as the Russell Tribunal, into Israel’s recent attack on Gaza concluded that Israel was guilty of “incitement to genocide”. The panel argued that Israel’s long-term collective punishment of Palestinians was designed to “inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the incremental destruction of the Palestinians as a group”.

The tribunal’s language intentionally echoed that of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew and lawyer who after fleeing Nazi Europe succeeded in introducing the term “genocide” into international law.

Lemkin and the UN convention’s drafters understood that genocide did not require death camps; it could also be achieved gradually through intentional and systematic abuse and neglect. Their definition raises troubling questions about Israel’s treatment of Gaza, aside from military attacks. Does, for example, forcing the enclave’s two million inhabitants to depend on acquifers polluted with seawater constitute genocide?

The real problem with Mr Abbas’s use of the term – given that it conflicts with popular notions of genocide – is that it made him an easy target for critics. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accused the Palestinian leader of “incitement”. The Israeli left, meanwhile, decried his wild and unhelpful exaggeration.

But the critics themselves have contributed more heat than light.

Not only do experts like Richard Falk and John Dugard view Israel’s actions in genocide-like terms, but notable Israeli scholars have done so too. The late Baruch Kimmerling invented a word, “politicide”, to convey more safely the idea of an Israeli genocide against Palestinians.

Israel has nonetheless successfully ring-fenced itself from the critical lexicon applied to comparable situations around the globe.

In conflicts where a mass expulsion of an ethnic or national group occurs, it is rightly identified as ethnic cleansing. In Israel’s case, however, respectable historians still equivocate over the events of 1948, even though more than 80 per cent of Palestinians were forced out by Israel as it established a Jewish state on their homeland.

Similarly with “apartheid”. For decades anyone who used the word about Israel was dismissed as an extremist or anti-Semite. Only in the last few years – and chiefly because of former US president Jimmy Carter – has the word gained a tentative foothold.

Even then, its main use is as a warning rather than a description of Israel’s behaviour: diehard adherents of two states aver that Israel is in danger of becoming an apartheid state at some indefinable moment if it does not separate from the Palestinians.

Instead, we are told to suffice with the label “occupation”. But that implies a temporary state of affairs, a transition before normality is restored – precisely the opposite of what is happening in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, where the occupation is entrenching, morphing and metastasising.

Those guarding the critical lexicon strip us of a terminology to convey the appalling reality faced by Palestinians, not just as individuals but as a national group. In truth, Israel’s strategy incorporates variants of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide.

Observers, including the European Union, concede that Israel continues with incremental ethnic cleansing – though they prefer the more obscure “forcible transfer” – of Palestinians from so-called Area C, nearly two-thirds of the West Bank.

Israel has mastered, too, a sophisticated apartheid – partly veiled by its avoidance of the more visual aspects of segregation associated with South Africa – that grabs resources, just like its famous cousin, for one ethnic-national group, Jews, at the expense of another, Palestinians.

But unlike South African apartheid, whose fixed legal and institutional systems of separation gradually became torpid and unwieldy, Israel’s remains dynamic and responsive. Few observers know, for example, that almost all residential land in Israel is off-limits to Palestinian citizens, enforced through vetting committees recently given sanction by the Israeli courts.

And what to make of a plan just disclosed by the Israeli media indicating that Mr Netanyahu and his allies have been secretly plotting to force many Palestinians into Sinai, with the US arm-twisting the Egyptians into agreement? If true, the bombing campaigns of the past six years may be better understood as softening-up operations before a mass expulsion from Gaza.

Such a policy would certainly satisfy Lemkin’s definition of genocide.

One day doubtless, a historian will coin a word to describe Israel’s unique strategy of incrementally destroying the Palestinian people. Sadly, by then it may be too late to help the Palestinians.

Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth- based journalist and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. http://www.jonathan-cook.net/

China just overtook the U.S as the World's largest Economy

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Photo: Reuters

Photo: Reuters

– by Mike Bird, Business Insider

Sorry, America. China just overtook the US to become the world’s largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Chris Giles at the Financial Times flagged up the change. He’d also alerted us back in April this year that it was all about to happen.

Basically, the method used by the IMF adjusts for purchasing power parity, explained here. The simple logic is that prices aren’t the same in each country: a shirt will cost you less in Shanghai than San Francisco, so it’s not entirely reasonable to compare countries without taking this into account. Though a typical person in China earns a lot less than the typical person in the US, simply converting a Chinese salary into dollars underestimates how much purchasing power that individual, and therefore that country, might have. The Economist’s Big Mac Index is a great example of these disparities.

So the IMF measures both GDP in market exchange terms, and in terms of purchasing power. On the purchasing power basis, China is overtaking the US right about now and becoming the world’s biggest economy.

We’ve just gone past that cross-over on the chart below, according to the IMF. By the end of 2014, China will make up 16.48% of the world’s purchasing-power adjusted GDP (or $17.632 trillion), and the US will make up just 16.28% (or $17.416 trillion):

IMF, Google Public Data Explorer

It’s not all sore news for the US. It’ll be some time yet until the lines cross over in raw terms, not adjusted for purchasing power. By that measure, China still sits more than $6.5 trillion lower than the US, and isn’t likely to overtake for quite some time:

IMF, Google Public Data Explorter

But in terms of the raw market value of China’s currency, it still has a long way to go.

Contractors ready to cash in on ISIS war

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Obama pledged that the war against ISIS won’t be fought with U.S. ground troops. He didn’t say anything about contractors, who see this as “the next big meal ticket.”

ISIS

– by Eli Lake, The Daily Beast

America’s rapidly-expanding war against ISIS won’t involve large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground, President Obama is promising. And it’s clear that airstrikes alone won’t beat back the extremist group. Which means that if the President wants to have any hope of meeting his far-reaching goal of destroying ISIS, he’s going to have to rely on private military contractors.

At least, that’s what the contractors are hoping.

At the height of the Iraq war, these firms hired hundreds of thousands of people: guns-for-hire, IT geeks, logistics specialists, interrogators, and short order cooks to ladle out the slop at the military cafeteria. Over time, some of those contractors became the symbol for everything that was wrong with the Iraq war: hugely expensive, ineffective, and indifferent to Iraqi life. Contractors were at the middle of the war’s biggest scandals, from Abu Ghraib to Nissour Square. And it was the abductions and murder of Blackwater contractors that sparked one of Iraq’s biggest battles.

None of the five current and former contractors who spoke with The Daily Beast expected a replay of last decade’s Iraq war. But they all said a major opportunity was coming—both for them, and for Obama, who could use the private armies as a way to conceal just how many people will be fighting in this new conflict.

“Iraq this time around is not going to be as big as it was before,” said Roger Carstens, a former special operations officer who has served as a contracted military adviser in Somalia and Afghanistan. “That said, this new war will present an opportunity for the companies that have a resident train and advising capability to contribute to this new effort.”

President Obama has asked Congress to authorize $500 million to train a new Syrian opposition out of Saudi Arabia. That money would be part of a $5 billion fund Obama requested this spring from Congress to help train and equip U.S. allies to fight terrorists.

One U.S. military contractor working in Iraq who asked not to be named said, “I can tell you the contractor-expat community is abuzz thinking this will lead to more work. We expect a much larger footprint than he is showing right now.”

Those expectations were whet earlier this summer, as ISIS was gaining ground in northern Iraq and the first U.S. special operations teams were arriving in Iraq, when the Pentagon asked military contractors to participate in two important surveys.

The first one, issued in July, asked the industry to give a rough estimate of the costs associated with building a new network of ten ground based communications satellite stations, known as VSATs in military lingo. VSATs were used by the U.S. military in the last decade throughout Iraq to provide forward operating bases with secure internet and voice communications.

The second one was more specific. It asked for estimates of the cost for “Security Assistance Mentors and Advisers” for Iraq’s ministry of defense and the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service.

A Pentagon spokeswoman told the Daily Beast that the notice was not meant to be a request for proposal or the formal opening of the bidding process, but rather a chance to gauge the interest and capabilities of contractors down the road.

But contractors tell The Daily Beast that these bureaucratic notices—plus a pledge from Obama to wage a long war against ISIS and train up Syrian and Iraqi fighters—represent a business opportunity for an industry that has shrunk in recent years.

In 2008 there were 242,558 contractors working in the countries for U.S. Central Command, the area that includes Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen, three countries where the United States has helped train local forces and conducted air strikes, according to the Pentagon’s official estimate.

That was during the height of the last round of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By this July, that number had shrunk to 66,123, according to the Pentagon’s latest estimate of military contractors working in the countries covered by Central Command, with only 14,634 contractors operating outside of Afghanistan.

But that’s only a fraction of America’s privatized security apparatus operating overseas. The State Department also offers billions of dollars to conduct security for diplomats and other officials.  In 2011, the State Department awarded Triple Canopy a four year deal worth up to $1.5 billion to provide security for the airport in Baghdad, U.S. diplomats and other Americans in the country. A State Department audit of the contract (PDF) found that at a minimum the State Department overpaid for those services by millions.

“There has been consolidation after conflicts,” said Doug Brooks, the president emeritus of the International Stability Operations Association, a trade association for professional military contractors. “There is going to be business, you could say these are shoes instead of boots on the ground. But as in most cases these are going to be local faces who will be hired by these companies, who bring professionalism and training. They have been there already helping to build up the air force in Iraq. It won’t be like the past ten years, but there will be growth in services.”

The shrinking market for military contractors led some of them to seek new patrons. In 2010, for example, an African based military contractor named Saracen began training an anti-piracy force in Somalia with funding from the United Arab Emirates. When this reporter visited the base in 2012, it was a privately-run outpost in Puntland with its own electricity generator, barracks, armory with former South African military officers giving basic training to locals.

But that experience led to some instability. After one of the South African trainers was murdered in 2012 by one of the recruits, the United Arab Emirates pulled out of the project.

One reason why the new war on ISIS won’t be like the old one against al Qaeda is because for now Obama has promised not to send ground forces to Iraq or Syria. The presence of U.S. forces overseas presents a number of opportunities for military contractors in providing everything from the dining facilities to the logistical transport for U.S. soldiers at war.

Also the budgets to fight al Qaeda and other groups expanded dramatically after 9/11 when many government institutions did not know exactly how to fight the new war. Blackwater—the private military firm founded by former NAVY SEAL Erik Prince—became a virtual extension of the CIA’s special activities division working to develop the deadly capability to target and kill al Qaeda operatives all over the world.

It was also Blackwater contractors working in Iraq to protect diplomatic convoys that shot what the Iraqi government said were 17 innocent protestors in the heart of Baghdad at Nisour Square. (This summer, in the U.S. trial of the contractors, former employees of the company said they were responding to fire from the crowd.)

The legacy of Nisour square contributed to the decision of the Iraqi government in 2011 to decline to offer legal immunity to U.S. soldiers and military contractors. Carstens said that any new military contracts for Iraq that would involve training units of soldiers would have to include iron-clad guarantees that the contractors themselves would not be targeted by Iraqi courts. “The companies will need to know that their contractors in Iraq and other places will have legal protections in case anything happens,” he said.

Iraq recently promised immunity for U.S. troops—and it’s likely Baghdad will do the same for contractors too. After all, Iraq’s government has also formally requested U.S. assistance in fighting ISIS and that help was clearly going to include military contractors.

“They are looking for the next big meal ticket and this could be it,” said Sean McFate, a former military contractor for Dyncorp and the author of The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order. “The things they will provide are logistical support, training or retraining security forces.”

McFate said contractors gave Obama the opportunity to accomplish tasks normally associated with the U.S. military without sending boots on the ground. He said the training missions in particular “would look like Iraqi military boots on the ground and not the U.S. military.” But he said, “It’s a political disguise. This is an industry that is a proxy, it is creating the environment of security and protection without too many U.S. soldiers on the ground.”

Key Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, leave no doubt that endless war is official U.S. doctrine

by

Photo: Reuters

Photo: Reuters

– by Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

Long before Americans were introduced to the new 9/11 era super-villains called ISIS and Khorasan, senior Obama officials were openly and explicitly stating that America’s “war on terror,” already 12 years old, would last at least another decade. At first, they injected these decrees only anonymously; in late 2012, The Washington Post – disclosing the administration’s secret creation of a “disposition matrix” to decide who should be killed, imprisoned without charges, or otherwise “disposed” of – reported these remarkable facts:

Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaida continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight. . . . That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.”

In May, 2013, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether it should revise the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). A committee member asked a senior Pentagon official, Assistant Secretary Michael Sheehan, how long the war on terror would last; his reply: “At least 10 to 20 years.” At least. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed afterward “that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today — atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted.” As Spencer Ackerman put it: “Welcome to America’s Thirty Years War,” one which – by the Obama administration’s own reasoning – has “no geographic limit.”

Listening to all this, Maine’s independent Sen. Angus King said: “This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I’ve been to since I’ve been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution today.” Former Bush DOJ lawyer Jack Goldsmith – himself an ardent advocate of broad presidential powers – was at the hearing and noted that nobody even knows against whom this endless war is being waged: “Amazingly, there is a very large question even in the Armed Services Committee about who the United States is at war against and where, and how those determinations are made.”

All of that received remarkably little attention given its obvious significance. But any doubts about whether Endless War – literally – is official American doctrine should be permanently erased by this week’s comments from two leading Democrats, both former top national security officials in the Obama administration, one of whom is likely to be the next American president.

Leon Panetta, the long-time Democratic Party operative who served as Obama’s Defense Secretary and CIA Director, said this week of Obama’s new bombing campaign: “I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war.” Only in America are new 30-year wars spoken of so casually, the way other countries speak of weather changes. He added that the war “will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.” And elsewhere: not just a new decades-long war with no temporal limits, but no geographic ones either. He criticized Obama – who has bombed 7 predominantly Muslim countries plus the Muslim minority in the Phillipines (almost double the number of countries Bush bombed) – for being insufficiently militaristic, despite the fact that Obama officials themselves have already instructed the public to think of The New War “in terms of years.”

Then we have Hillary Clinton (whom Panetta gushed would make a “great” president). At an event in Ottawa yesterday, she proclaimed that the fight against these “militants” will “be a long-term struggle” that should entail an “information war” as “well as an air war.” The new war, she said, is “essential” and the U.S. shies away from fighting it “at our peril.” Like Panetta (and most establishment Republicans), Clinton made clear in her book that virtually all of her disagreements with Obama’s foreign policy were the by-product of her view of Obama as insufficiently hawkish, militaristic and confrontational.

At this point, it is literally inconceivable to imagine the U.S. not at war. It would be shocking if that happened in our lifetime. U.S. officials are now all but openly saying this. “Endless War” is not dramatic rhetorical license but a precise description of America’s foreign policy.

It’s not hard to see why. A state of endless war justifies ever-increasing state power and secrecy and a further erosion of rights. It also entails a massive transfer of public wealth to the “homeland security” and weapons industry (which the US media deceptively calls the “defense sector”).

Just yesterday, Bloomberg reported: “Led by Lockheed Martin Group (LTM), the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world.” Particularly exciting is that “investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq”; moreover, “the U.S. also is the biggest foreign military supplier to Israel, which waged a 50-day offensive against the Hamas Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip.” ISIS is using U.S.-made ammunition and weapons, which means U.S. weapons companies get to supply all sides of The New Endless War; can you blame investors for being so giddy?

I vividly recall how, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing, Obama partisans triumphantly declared that this would finally usher in the winding down of the War on Terror. On one superficial level, that view was understandable: it made sense if one assumes that the U.S. has been waging this war for its stated reasons and that it hopes to vanquish The Enemy and end the war.

But that is not, and never was, the purpose of the War on Terror. It was designed from the start to be endless. Both Bush and Obama officials have explicitly said that the war will last at least a generation. The nature of the “war,” and the theories that have accompanied it, is that it has no discernible enemy and no identifiable limits. More significantly, this “war” fuels itself, provides its own inexhaustible purpose, as it is precisely the policies justified in the name of Stopping Terrorism that actually ensure its spread (note how Panetta said the new U.S. war would have to include Libya, presumably to fight against those empowered by the last U.S. war there just 3 years ago).

This war – in all its ever-changing permutations – thus enables an endless supply of power and profit to flow to those political and economic factions that control the government regardless of election outcomes. And that’s all independent of the vicarious sense of joy, purpose and fulfillment which the sociopathic Washington class derives from waging risk-free wars, as Adam Smith so perfectly described in Wealth of Nations 235 years ago:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace.They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war. 

The last thing the Washington political class and the economic elites who control it want is for this war to end. Anyone who doubts that should just look at the express statements from these leading Democrats, who wasted no time at all seizing on the latest Bad Guys to justify literally decades more of this profiteering and war-making.

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