by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday reminded people on the occasion of Independence Day that no religion teaches animosity.
As he and his deputy greeted the people on the occasion, Manish Sisodia told them to aspire for freedom from the shackles of caste, religion and narrow outlook.
Sharing a couplet from Urdu poet Muhammad Iqbal’s patriotic song “Sare Jahan Se Accha”, Kejriwal wished that there be all around development in the country and peace should prevail.
“Religion does not teach us animosity… We are of Hind, our homeland is Hindustan,” he tweeted.
Sisodia said only political freedom does not make a country free.
“Let’s remind ourselves on the occasion that a free country is not made up of only political freedom. Freedom from the struggles over caste and religion, and narrow outlook towards women ensures that a country is truly free,” he said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : In a virtual election speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday projected himself as an impatient agent of change against the backdrop of “docile and inefficient” governance during the Congress-led UPA rule and promised housing, power, water, sanitation and healthcare for all in his mission to take the country to new heights.
He also announced that the ambitious Prime Minister’s Jan Aarogya Abhiyan (PMJAA), dubbed “Modicare”, for health insurance coverage of Rs 5 lakh each to 10 crore families will be launched on September 25 on the 102nd birth anniversary of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, the founder of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the BJP’s predecessor.
Making his last Independence Day address to the nation ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Modi said there was “senseless” criticism against him but asserted he was impatient and restless to take the country ahead of many others which had overtaken India.
And breaking his silence in the context of recent cases of rape and sexual exploitation in welfare homes in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, Modi said there was a need to attack such a mindset by putting the fear of the law that had been made stringent. He said law was supreme and no one could take it into their hands.
Referring to Jammu and Kashmir, Modi repeated the lines from his last year’s August 15 speech that the Kashmir problem can be resolved only by embracing its people, not with bullets or abuses. He recalled former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s line `Kashmiriyat, Jamhooriyat, Insaniyat’ (eclectic Kahmiri culture, democracy and humaneness) and said this was the only way forward.
Reaffirming his mantra of “sabka saath, sabka vikas” (take everyone along, development for all), the Prime Minister said there would be no discrimination against any section and there would be no nepotism and favouritism.
“I want to reiterate my pledges – housing for all, power for all, cooking (gas) for all, water for all, sanitation for all, skills for all, insurance for all, connectivity for all. We want to go ahead with these programmes.
“People make senseless criticism against me. But whatever may be said, I want to publicly acknowledge that I am restless because several countries have marched ahead and I want to take the country ahead of them. I am impatient because children are still suffering from malnutrition. I am eager to provide quality of life and ease of living to country men. I am impatient to provide health cover to each of the poor so that they can fight against diseases. I am eager because we have to lead knowledge-based fourth industrial revolution,” he said.
Modi turned poetic before winding up his nearly 80-minute speech, saying that the country’s fortunes were being transformed.
“We have to make a new dawn and create a new India. We want to move ahead with the dream of reaching the crescendo of development.”
Attacking the Congress but not by name, he said if comparison was made of the speed of governance in the last four years, people would be surprised.
“If toilets were built at the speed of 2013, several decades would have gone to reach the present stage. Rural electrification would have taken two decades. Taking LPG connection to poor women would have taken 100 years. Generations would have gone to take optical fibre to its present levels. There are a lot of expectations, a lot of needs. The country is feeling a change in the last four years. There is new awareness, new enthusiasm.”
He said four times more rural houses had been built, there was a record number of mobile manufacturers, record number of aeroplanes had been procured and record number of tractors sold.
“The demand for higher MSP (minimum support price) for farmers was pending for years. From farmers to political parties to agriculture experts, everybody was asking about it but nothing happened. The decision was taken by our government to provide the MSP of 1.5 times of production cost.”
Modi said the Army, which reaches out to people in case of natural calamities, also conducts surgical strikes to give a befitting replies to its enemies, an apparent reference to the surgical strike conducted on terror launch pads across Line of Control in 2016.
In a strong election pitch, Modi reached out to Dalits, poor, youth, farmers, women, fishermen, security forces, middle class and upper middle class by referring to the work done by his government and his endeavour to improve their lives.
Modi also attacked the opposition over the non-passage of triple talaq bill in the just-concluded monsoon session of Parliament and promised to do justice to Muslim women by getting it passed early.
Alleging that the previous governments had allowed a climate of corruption to thrive, the Prime Minister said his government had eliminated power brokers from Delhi and plugged loopholes in various schemes like Public Distribution System that had led to savings of Rs 90,000 crore. “The corrupt will not be forgiven.”
The measures initiated by the government had also led to near doubling of direct tax assesses from nearly four crore to 6.75 crore and indirect tax assesses from 75 lakh to 1.16 crore on account of introduction of GST apart from barring over three lakh suspicious companies in the anti-black money drive.
He announced that India would launch a manned mission in space by 2022 — it could be a man or woman — and a satellite dedicated to help fishermen.
The Prime Minister said India was earlier seen among the fragile five nations because of policy paralysis but now it had turned itself into a “land of reform, perform and transform”.
“We are all set for record economic growth. India’s voice is being heard effectively at the world stage. We are integral parts of forums whose doors were earlier closed for us.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By C. Uday Bhaskar,
August 15 this year marks the 71st anniversary of Indian independence. As the Prime Minister unfurls the national flag at the Red Fort, it is a celebratory moment; yet, a certain sense of bleakness and despondency is palpable. There is a deeply ingrained perception that anarchy is spreading in the country and that the state has abdicated in its primary responsibility of ensuring the safety and security of every citizen, irrespective of religion, caste, class and gender. Recent events bear testimony to this mood.
In an unprecedented development, the Attorney General (AG) of India K.K. Venugopal informed the Supreme Court in an anguished manner that there was an incident of major rioting every week in different parts of the country and that they often go unpunished. The AG noted: “Kanwarias (a sect of Hindu pilgrims) are overturning vehicles in Delhi…There is an incident of major rioting every week, even by educated groups. Marathas in Maharashtra, SC/ST (scheduled caste/scheduled tribe)… nothing is done.”
Earlier, a former Chief Justice of India, T.S. Thakur, asked a very pertinent question: “When we see day in and day out, mobs lynching people, it’s a complete failure of rule of law. If a mob can take the law into its hands and administer summary justice, what kind of rule of law is this?”
The sub-text in both cases is that the Indian State has become selective in how it applies the law and that there is a tacit indifference to the safety and welfare of the minority citizenry.
Thus what is disturbing is the pattern that emerges in the disaggregation of the violence that is ostensibly spontaneous — be it the rioting mob, the beef-lynchings or now the Kanwarias, the annual north Indian ritual of carrying water from the Ganga to one’s home.
Thousands of Hindu devotees walk long distances in July-August to collect the sacred water and, over the years, the numbers have been swelling and the entire event has acquired a huge carnival profile with music, dancing, et al. Given the religious significance attached to the event and the majority Hindu sentiment nurtured by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Kanwaria pilgrimage also has an electoral relevance. This has clearly become more acute in the run-up to the 2019 national election.
Indian politics and the gradual absorption of the religious leader to high office is exemplified by the election of Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk, as the Chief Minister of India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh in March 2017. This was a significant development at the time for South Asia, for not even Pakistan, which was created on the basis of religion, had appointed an Islamic cleric to such office.
Thus, in August, India witnessed an unusual spectacle — that of Kanwarias being showered with rose petals from a helicopter by none less than the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and senior police officials. That some of these Kanwarias have become a law unto themselves has been brought to the attention of the courts – but as the AG noted, “nothing is done”.
The ascendancy of religious orientation in Indian politics and the BJP’s empathy for unbridled Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) fervour has an electoral dimension to it. Uttar Pradesh is the swing state that will shape the outcome at the in 2019 elections. Thus the pandering to the majority community is predictable — but this comes with a very heavy price.
Citizenship in India is no longer equal and the law, alas, is not applied equitably. On its 71st independence anniversary, one cannot ignore the conjecture that India, which had determinedly rejected the two-nation theory in August 1947, is now moving towards it in a visible manner. The question whether the silent Indian majority, that is Hindu, subscribes to the ugly manifestation of Hindutva and the violence associated with it, remains moot. But the state cannot abdicate and the exhortation of the Attorney General should not be ignored.
(The author is Director, Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi. The article is in special arrangement with South Asia Monitor)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Frank F. Islam,
As India approaches Independence Day on August 15, it is an appropriate time to celebrate the past and Indian democracy. It is also a time to contemplate the future and the democracy that India should become. India has the opportunity, the responsibility, and the capacity to be a global beacon of hope for democracy. There is a critical need for India to become that beacon.
Freedom House, the organisation that looks at the quality of freedom in countries around the world, titled its 2018 Annual Report, Democracy in Crisis. The opening sentence of that report reads: “Political rights and civil liberties around the world deteriorated to their lowest point in more than a decade in 2017, extending a period characterised by emboldened autocrats, beleaguered democracies, and the United States withdrawal from its leadership role in the global struggle for human freedom.”
There is a vacuum. And, India — which is by-far the world’s largest democracy with a democratic system that is still young and maturing — is positioned to fill that vacuum.
India’s democracy is far from perfect, however, The Economist acknowledged many of India’s deficiencies in an article in its June 2 issue, pointing out numerous attempts recently to “game the system” through “horse trading and bald-faced influence peddling”. Combine this with undemocratic actions such as the recent spate of mob lynchings across the country and it becomes obvious that India has much work to do.
There are three key areas in which action must be taken for India to be able to shine its light of and for democracy world-wide:
* Ensure effective civic education for younger students.
* Pursue an intensified agenda of inclusiveness and economic equality and opportunity for all.
* Free the free press.
Of all the the most critical, in my opinion, for enhancing Indian democracy is universal and effective civic education for youth.
I put this at the top of the list because a 2017 Pew Research Center survey of citizens in 38 nations revealed that only eight percent of the Indian respondents were fully committed to a representative democracy. This response ranked at the very bottom for the nations studied.
A strong democracy demands a full-throated commitment to democracy and a complete understanding of one’s obligations as a citizen. That commitment and those obligations are learned through effective civic education in the younger years.
The youth of today are the citizens of tomorrow. There is something that can be learned from the US about the impact of the presence or absence of that education for youth.
Historically, for much of the 20th century, the US placed emphasis on civic education for school students in the earlier school years. This emphasis has declined substantially in the 21st century and the focus has been placed on science-technology-engineering-math (STEM) education and teaching to the test on those subjects. This shift and its negative impact on support for American democracy — especially among youth — has troubled both citizens and academics alike.
That is why nearly 90 percent of poll respondents to a national survey conducted recently by The Democracy Project reacted favorably to a proposal to “ensure that schools make civic education a bigger part of the curriculum”. In the US, in March of this year, the National Council of Social Studies issued a positioning statement recommending that effective civic education “should target the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary to ensure that young people are truly capable of becoming active and engaged participants in civic life”.
An educational initiative in India that has this targeted focus is the Children’s Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA). Its programmes are designed to “empower children and youth with knowledge, skills and competencies for active citizenship”.
India’s political, business, civic and educational leaders should collaborate in looking at CMCA and similar programmes in India to develop an effective civic education approach to be implemented in classrooms across the country to prepare all its youth to discharge their civic responsibilities. A comprehensive programme of this type could be transformative.
The Sage Handbook of Education for Citizenship and Democracy, published in 2008, titled its chapter on India, “Citizenship Education in India: From Colonial Subjugation to Radical Possibilities”. If India is to become a global beacon of hope for democracy, imagining will not make it so. But failing to imagine it will make it impossible.
(Frank F. Islam is an entrepreneur, civic and thought Leader based in Washington, DC. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at ffislam@verizon.net)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Author Sujatha Gidla
By Saket Suman,
New Delhi : The nation has just celebrated Independence Day with great pomp and fervour — but does this special occasion evoke similar sentiments among the Dalits living in the country? No, contends author Sujatha Gidla, who was born an “untouchable” and is now creating waves in US literary circles with a provocative memoir capturing the life of her community in India.
Until recently, Gidla was just another New Yorker, working as a conductor on the city Subway. But her recent memoir, “Ants among Elephants”, which not only details her memories of growing up as a Dalit woman in India but also lists the many instances of “discrimination and humiliation” that she and her family were customarily subjected to, has thrust her into the limelight.
On how she responds to special occasions like Independence Day, the author said that, as children, they would admire iconic figures like Gandhi and Nehru, and celebrate the day — but things changed gradually as they become more aware.
“When I joined the RSU (Radical Students Union) we were told that (this) Independence was not real independence, that it was only transfer of power. And now we don’t feel anything because we are not made to feel that we are Indians like other Indians.
“It is the same thing in the universities where I studied. I don’t have that pride of my alma mater because we were not treated as equals. None of us have that pride, not even my mother,” Gidla told IANS in an email interview from New York.
The author further quipped that, by and large, “this is not independence” for members of her community.
“There have been many types of discrimination in various parts of the world. As far as I know, caste-based discrimination is uniquely cruel. There is racism in America, but I will never compare it with caste and rather say that caste is much worse.
“I will also say this: Blacks here are murdered, they have been lynched. But I have never read about another place where untouchables are fed excreta, made to drink urine and paraded naked. Even under slavery, the slave owners took care to feed their slaves in order to keep them fit to work. Untouchables in India never even had that,” Gidla said.
She reiterated that untouchability is neither a religious nor a cultural problem. It is rather a social problem and that there has to be “some sort of fundamental change”; otherwise the Dalits will “continue to suffer”.
Elaborating on the “suffering” that she repeatedly mentions in the book, Gidla said most Dalits in India, particularly those trying to fight against the caste system, live under constant duress due to verbal attacks and the threat of physical violence.
“Our neighbours in India have been actively trying to kick my mom out of her apartment. Her (upper) caste colleagues hate the fact that her daughter wrote a successful book.
“That is the irony; we cannot even celebrate the publication of the book because we are afraid that it will make people around us unhappy. Even fellow untouchables are not posting it on social media for fear of being exposed to their colleagues and (upper) caste friends as untouchables,” she elaborated.
Gidla’s grandparents converted to Christianity at the onset of the 20th century and were educated at Canadian missionary schools. She too, with the help of Canadian missionaries, studied physics at the Regional Engineering College in Warangal, in what is Telangana today. She was also a researcher in applied physics at IIT-Madras.
Gidla initially worked as a developer in software design, then moved to banking but lost her job in 2009 during the economic crisis. Finally, she took up the job of a conductor at the New York Subway.
This book, Gidla said, initially began as an investigation into the caste system but finally took the shape of a memoir as her family members also enriched its pages with their personal experiences and reflections.
So what would bring “freedom” in the true sense to Gidla and her family, as also to over 300 million Dalits in India?
“True freedom is equal access to everything in society — education, jobs, etc, etc. When that is achieved, the prejudices will begin to disappear, but only gradually, not instantaneously. Without having equal access to economic betterment all these words about caste being an evil practice or we should treat untouchables with respect are meaningless,” she maintained.
The book has been published in the US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, an imprint of Macmillan publishers, and is yet to hit the Indian market.
(Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in)
—IANS
