by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, News
Opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi expressed his concern on the “persecution” of Muslims, Dalits and tribals in India.
“The shameful truth is that many Indians don’t consider Dalits, Muslims and Tribals to be human”. He said in a tweet in reference to the recent gang-rape incident that took place in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district.
He slammed the Uttar Pradesh police for alleging that the girl was not raped. “The CM & his police say no one was raped because for them, and many other Indians, she was NO ONE,” the former Congress chief tweeted.
It is pertinent to note that the Uttar Pradesh police have said that the FSL report does not confirm the presence of sperm in the girl’s body, which is proof that she was not raped. However, the several doctors in Aligarh Muslim University’s J. N Medical have discredited the FSL report saying that the samples were taken almost 10 days after the incident while the government guidelines say to that the samples should be taken within 96 hours after the incident.
Dr Hamza Malik, president of the Resident Doctors’ Association at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, called the FSL report “unreliable”.
“How will the FSL team find evidence of rape 11 days later? Sperm doesn’t survive after 2-3 days. They took samples from hair, clothes, nail bed and vaginal-anal orifice; the samples may not show presence of semen because of urination, defecation and menstruation.”
The 19-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly gang-raped in Hathras by several men. She died at Delhi’s Safdarjung hospital on 29 September and her body was cremated by police officers, allegedly her family’s consent.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Hyderabad : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said attempts to provide reservation to minorities are betrayal with the nation and an insult to the framers of the Indian Constitution.
Addressing an election rally of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he called for defeating any such move to protect the country’s unity.
Hitting out at the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government for its move to increase reservation for minorities to 12 per cent, Modi said he was surprised how the power-hungry were pushing for religion-based quota for the sake of their family and to save their seats of power.
Stating that the issue of religion-based reservation was discussed in the Constituent Assembly, the Prime Minister said the great personalities framing the Constitution decided against it in the interest of the country’s unity.
Modi wondered from where the reservation for minorities would come when the Supreme Court had already fixed the upper limit of total reservation at 50 per cent.
“They will take away the rights of Dalits, STs and OBCs from backdoor. Will you allow this crime?” he asked the participants in the rally held at L.B. Stadium.
Telangana Assembly had last year passed a resolution to increase reservation for minorities in jobs and education from current 4 per cent to 12 per cent and the same was sent to the Centre. TRS had blamed Modi for the delay in implementing its poll promise made in 2014.
Modi also came down heavily on TRS, saying it destroyed Telangana the way Congress destroyed the nation.
Countering Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s allegation that TRS is ‘B’ team of BJP, Modi said TRS and the Congress had common nature, character, thinking and policies.
The Prime Minister recalled that during the Karnataka Assembly elections, Rahul Gandhi used to dub Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) as the ‘B’ team of BJP, but after the elections formed the government with the same party to keep the BJP out of power.
Branding the TRS and the Congress as the two sides of the same coin, he alleged that they have already started planning backdoor entry to prevent BJP from coming to power in Telangana.
Modi said both TRS president and Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu had their apprenticeship in the Congress and this made them natural friends.
He described dynasty politics as a threat to the democracy. He pointed out that barring the BJP, all major parties in fray in the Telangana elections were parties with dynasty politics and family rule.
He said the Congress, TRS, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) all were family-ruled parties. “All these parties are becoming threat to democracy,” he remarked.
Modi said Telangana had wasted its five years of welfare due to the arrogance of one family. He alleged that the KCR family exploited emotions of Telangana movement for itself. Stating that Telangana had huge potential, he said the state could not progress because of the kind of rulers it got.
“Why people of Telangana demanded a separate state? Why they suffered so long for separate Telangana. Why so many youth sacrificed their lives? They did it for a bright future of Telangana. One family was not to be given the right to loot Telangana.”
Referring to the TDP’s alliance with the Congress, Modi recalled that N.T. Rama Rao had formed the TDP for the self-respect of Telugu people after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had insulted them.
He alleged that TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu for the sake of power and vested interests put the entire party into the lap of Rahul Gandhi.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Sabina Alkire, Director of Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative
By Arul Louis,
United Nations : While India has taken tremendous strides in combating poverty in the past decade, Muslims, members of the Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Dalits saw the most progress in in reducing the impact of poverty, according to data compiled in a UN project.
The “very positive trend” during the decade between 2005-06 and 2015-16 in India is that “the poorest are catching up”, Sabina Alkire, Director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHDI), said on Thursday at the presentation of the 2018 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) here.
The MPI prepared by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the OPHDI, takes into account various indicators of development rather than just income and aligns them to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, while serving as a measure of the intensity of poverty felt by different groups.
While ST members were still the poorest group, they have seen the fastest reduction in MPI, as have the Dalits, Alkire said.
Explaining it, Diego Zavaleta Reyles from OPHDI told IANS that the average number of deprivations or “the intensity of their poverty” measured by the MPI fell for these groups even though the proportion of poor people in these categories was relatively the same or unchanged.
Between 2006 and 2016, the MPI of the STs came down from 0.447 to 0.229 even though the percentage had fallen only from 79.8 to 50 during the decade, according to OPHDI data.
During the same period, the MPI of Dalits fell from 0.338 to 0.145 while the percentage of poor came down from 65 to 32.9.
“If we look at the religious groups, the Muslims are the poorest and they again had the fastest reduction in MPI,” Alkire said.
While MPI for Muslims was 0.331 in 2006, it fell to 0.144 in 2016, and the percentage of the poor in the community came down from 60.3 per cent to 31.1 per cent.
Nationally, 54.7 per cent of the people in all groups taken together were poor in 2006, but only 27.5 per cent in 2016, and the MPI came down from 0.279 to 0.121, the data show.
In terms of numbers, 271 million people had moved out of poverty during the decade, with the number of poor people coming down 635 million in 2005-06 to 364 million according to the MPI standards.
But “we are seeing a shift of global proportions occurring in India over a ten-year period and that is really encouraging”, Alkire said.
India is the only country for which changes of this magnitude are taking place at this time, she added.
Bihar remains the poorest state, but along with other high-poverty states – Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Chhatisgarh – had the fastest reduction in multi-dimensional poverty, she said.
In spite of the progress, these states still remain the poorest.
Among age groups, children, who are still the poorest, saw the fastest reduction in MPI, she said.
Such reduction in poverty among these groups or states did had not happened in India in the earlier periods according to a previous study for the period 1998-1999 to 2005-06, she said.
UNDP Administrator Adam Steiner said that when governments start looking carefully at who the poor are and where they are, the analysis leads to programmes that help the poorest of the poor, whether by ethnicity, religion or geography, and results like those in India can be achieved.
Traditional poverty measures – often calculated by numbers of people who earn less than $1.90 a day – shed light on how little people earn but not on whether or how they experience poverty in their day-to-day lives, according to UNDP.
On the other hand, MPI takes into account health, education and living standards in areas like access to clean water, sanitation, nutrition and primary education, with those lacking in at least a third of these defined as multi-dimensionally poor.
According to the income-based measurement, only 270 million Indians are considered poor but according to the MPI standards a far larger number – 364 million — were categorised as multi-dimensionally poor in 2016.
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter at @arulouis)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
Rahul Gandhi has had another of his escape-velocity-of-Jupiter moments.
His reference to the massive gravitational force of the solar system’s largest planet was in the context of “explaining” how much velocity was required by a spacecraft to lift itself from the surface of Jupiter compared to what was required on earth — 60 km/sec against 11 km/sec.
According to him, this was the kind of stupendous “effort” which the Dalits needed to “escape” from their present lowly socio-economic conditions.
Following that foray into space science, the Congress president has now offered an economic “explanation” for the lynchings in India during a speech in Germany by arguing that the unemployment caused by demonetisation, which hit small businesses, is behind the mob violence.
Moreover, the traders and entrepreneurs have also experienced grave difficulties because of the “badly implemented” Goods and Services Tax (GST).
The link, however, between demonetisation and lynching is tenuous. For one thing, the people in general showed exemplary patience in lining up for hours before banks and ATMs after the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes were withdrawn from circulation.
For another, the cow-related lynchings of Muslims are widely believed to be the outcome of the atmosphere of hate created by the longstanding anti-minority propaganda of the saffron brotherhood, which has gained traction with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) assumption of power.
Demonetisation and GST have nothing to do with the attacks on Muslims for consuming beef or transporting cattle.
After this flawed interpretation of communal incidents, Rahul Gandhi ventured into another dicey area by linking the rise of the Islamic State in West Asia to the US intervention in Iraq and the resultant insurgency caused by the stalling of the “development process”.
If the Congress president’s point is that the absence of adequate economic opportunities for Muslims and Dalits can breed terrorism in India, he can only be said to be grossly exaggerating.
He had earlier acknowledged during a visit to the US that he is not as good a speaker as Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Now he has shown that his arguments are not always credible.
Little wonder that the BJP is cock-a-hoop with joy, for Rahul’s speech has reinforced, in its view, his Pappu image which he had been gradually shedding.
In the present highly charged political atmosphere, there is every need for public speakers to weigh their words with care lest the slightest slip enables their opponents to trip them up. No quarter is given at the moment, which is perhaps as it should be, for the age of gentlemanly parry and thrust in politics is over.
For Rahul Gandhi and the national opposition, there are any number of issues on which the BJP can be criticised. These include, among other things, the insecurity of the Muslims as a result of the lynchings and the perception among Dalits of being oppressed, which has been reinforced by the prolonged incarceration of one of their top-ranking leaders, Chandrashekhar Azad “Ravan”.
The fear among the Muslims and also peace-loving Hindus have also been heightened by the possibility of violence caused by various diktats of the Hindutva lobby such as banning animal slaughter on the occasion of Eid or the provocative shows of strength with the brandishing of arms by saffron groups during Navaratri which used to be earlier always observed peacefully.
Apart from these flashpoints, there are also the problems of unemployment and agrarian distress. There is no need, therefore, to range further afield by referring to the Islamic State, especially when the Muslim community in India has always shunned terrorism except for a few who have gone to Syria.
If anything is to be highlighted, it is this spirit of forbearance and tolerance for which the country has always been known rather than the possibility of deprivation leading to the adoption of extreme measures.
India is on the brink of a seminal change. The two opposing political forces facing each other — the BJP on one side and the Congress and the national opposition on the other — represent two virtually diametrically opposite “ideas” of India.
While one is avowedly Hindu-centric, the other emphasises the country’s composite culture.
As one of the leaders of the latter group, Rahul Gandhi has to demonstrate that he and his party are ready to put behind them the ignominious past of being able to win only 44 seats in the Lok Sabha and are ready to take on the BJP’s formidable election machinery and its highly articulate orator, Narendra Modi.
To do so, Rahul Gandhi has to choose his words with care whether speaking at home or abroad and concentrate on the BJP’s obvious weak points instead of looking for parallels from world events.
Since the BJP has the advantage of having a domineering “presidential” figure at its helm, it is keen on turning the next year’s general election into a one-to-one contest with Rahul Gandhi in mind since there is no other leader in the non-BJP camp with a pan-India appeal as his not inconsiderable 27 per cent approval rating compared to Modi’s much higher 49 per cent shows.
But to make it a battle of equals, Rahul Gandhi must not neglect his home work.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Hamburg (Germany) : Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday made a strong attack on the Narendra Modi government by referring to incidents of lynching and attacks on Dalits, saying people in India were angry and the ruling alliance was weakening support structures meant for the weaker sections.
Speaking at the Bucerius Summer School here in Germany, Gandhi also attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over attacks on women, “lack of jobs,” demonetisation and “flawed” implementation of the Goods and Services Tax and said corporates were being favoured over the rights of the marginalised communities.
Gandhi, who later took questions from the audience, also referred to his hugging the prime minister during the debate in parliament on the no-confidence motion, saying certain “hateful remarks” made against him by Modi prompted him to do so but “he (Modi) didn’t like and was upset by it”.
Gandhi is in Germany as part of reach out to the NRI community ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha elections. He will also go to the United Kingdom.
The Congress leader accused Modi government of not being keen on benefiting all sections from transformation taking place due to urbanisation.
“They do not feel that every single person in India should have access to fruits of transformation. They feel that tribal communities, poor farmers, Dalit, should not get the same benefits as the elite of the country gets. We feel everybody took the risk, everybody should get the reward,” Gandhi said.
“The other thing they have done is they have started attacking the support structures that were designed to help certain groups of people,” he added.
Gandhi said welfare measures of UPA government such as the right to food and the right to guaranteed employment had been weakened and money going into these schemes “is going into the hands of very few people, the largest corporates in the country.”
Gandhi alleged that demonetisation carried out by Modi had taken away lakhs of jobs as it had destroyed cash flow of small and medium businesses.
“China produces 50,000 jobs every 24 hours, India only 450,” Gandhi said, adding that bad implementation of GST had let to closure of thousands of businesses.
“These things are what has made people in India angry. That is what you get to read in the newspaper. When you hear about lynchings in India, when you hear about attacks on Dalits in India, when you hear about attacks on minorities in India, that is the reason for it,” Gandhi said.
He said the transition that is shaping the world requires certain protection for people. “That protection is being taken away and India is reacting to that. It is very dangerous in 21st century to exclude people. If you do not give people a vision in the 21st century, somebody else will which is not going to be good. That is the real risk of excluding large number of people from our development processes,” he said.
Gandhi said hate is a dangerous thing in a connected world and it is a choice. “I can fight you, take you on. I can compete with you but hating you is something I have to actively chose to do.”
Gandhi said his main complaint with Modi is that India has jobs problem but he does not say it and asked how it will be fixed if it is not even acknowledged.
Gandhi said level of violence is increasing in India and “women were getting a huge share of it.” He called for a change in the attitude of Indian men at the way they treated women.
He said non-violence in India was a foundational philosophy of India’s nationhood and noted violence can only be fought by non-violence.
Referring to assassinations of his grandmother Indira Gandhi and his father Rajiv Gandhi, he said the only way to move forward after violence is forgiveness.
Answering a question on the US and China, Gandhi said India’s role will be to balance like that of Europe.
He said India’s actions will be guided by self-interest and noted that it is closer to the US than to China.
Referring to Modi coming to power in India and “certain style” of leaders coming to power in the US and some European countries, he said the reason was failure of jobs, particularly to non-white collar persons.
“We are outcompeted by Chinese. That is creating a lot of anger,” he said.
He also said India was not in a race with China but was wanted to develop according to its values.
—IANS
