Prejudices can be hidden for political considerations, but they never entirely disappear. The last week has seen a violent resurrection of the old ‘Marathi Vs outsiders’ theme that has plagued Bombay for the last four decades. This time it’s a splinter of the original champion of the ‘Marathi Manoos’ (Marathi man) that has raised some pertinent questions in an imbecilic fashion.

Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navanirman Sena (MNS) assaulted several North Indians over the last one week. The primary targets of the MNS’s ire were cab drivers, milk vendors and panwallahs. In other words poor folk who have come to Mumbai to earn a living and support families back home in UP and Bihar. The provocation is the oft- repeated complaint in a rehashed form: the outsiders are flooding Mumbai and taking ‘our’ jobs; jobs that ‘belong’ to the Maharashtrians; ‘they’ don’t want to integrate with ‘our’ culture; ‘they’ live here and still dream of ‘their’ native lands and so on. The target this time are the ‘bhaiyyas’, a pejorative term for North Indians, particularly from UP and Bihar.

The Shiv Sena was the party that originally patented a politics of nativism in the ‘60s. The SS (note the similarity in name to Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, which means ‘Defence Squadron’. Coincidence?) claimed that the first call on Mumbai should rest with the Maharashtrians. The fact that the ‘sons of the soil’ did not control the city’s economy in any significant way added to the resentment. Over the years the SS targeted South Indians, Gujaratis, Muslims and now North Indians, violently in some cases.

Now the MNS has picked up the relay. Raj Thackrey says he will not allow commemoration of any other states’ other than Maharashtra, a reference to the fact that UPites were celebrating UP diwas in Mumbai. He says that if the bhaiyyas indulge in dadagiri they will be taught a lesson.

The latest round of bhaiyya bashing has raised bewildering questions about belonging, intra and transnational identity, allegiance, the nature and ownership of urban spaces and contestation of those spaces in the context of a rapidly globalizing world.

Ever since the demise of the textile mills in the ‘60s, a period that coincided with the rise of the SS, Mumbai has become more oriented towards a services economy, particularly financial services. The ‘Mumbai makeover’ over the last decade has resulted in the traditional chawls being replaced with highrise apartments. The chawls were living spaces conducive for community bonding by the very nature of their architecture: a slew of houses opened out to a common verandah where the residents had an opportunity to interact with each other on a personal basis, participate in each others festivals, bond over chai and drying laundry and where their kids played hide and seek and ‘verandah cricket’. Compare this to the more impersonal highrise towers, where you might live for 20 years and never get to know your neighbour.

Years ago, sixty to be precise, a ‘crazed madman’ entered an evening prayer meet with a revolver hidden in his clothes. His intention was to assassinate the man leading that prayer meet. Nathuram Godse believed that this man, whom some had foolishly dubbed ‘Mahatma’ was in fact just the opposite: a ‘moorkhatma’. He entertained foolish notions of Hindu-Muslim unity at a time when it was more profitable to make incendiary speeches baying for the other community’s blood. Worse, he was emasculating Hindus by publicly calling for restraint and forgiveness when Muslims were on the rampage demanding Pakistan. What was unforgivable was that he had demanded that the newly formed Indian government pay up the finances owed to the equally newly formed Pakistan government  which they had been holding back. This mad man had to be stopped at any cost.

On January 30, 1948 Nathuram Godse entered the Birla Bhavan grounds in Delhi and made his way through the crowd towards Gandhi. He touched his feet and pumped two bullets into him. As he fell the Mahatma uttered the name of Ram while Godse dropped his gun and surrendered himself to the mercy of the crowd. A shocked nation listened as Nehru tearfully said in a radio broadcast later that night that the ‘light has gone out of our lives’. 

The act of assassinating Gandhi, though a sad and unfortunate event, was nevertheless not surprising. Probably Gandhi himself realised his growing marginalisation in the political process as the independence movement reached its culmination in 1947. His protegees, Nehru and Patel had taken over the reins within the Congress party and Gandhi’s role became more of a spiritual guide and adviser. And Jinnah? Oh, that insufferable fellow-Gujarati had always been Gandhi’s photographic negative: immaculate, English educated, stiff and distant with a fondness for the finer things in life, secular, prim and proper. 

Nehru was the quintessential modernist: His feet were in India, his head in Russia and his heart in England. He believed in science and progress, big dams and rationality, scientific temper and education. As for Patel, he was the clear and level headed iron man of India, a believer in realpolitik who had begged, coerced and bulllied over 500 reluctant princes and petty royalty to join the new republic. Neither had time for the Mahatma’s vision for the newly formed nation. 

The Indian government is revising its Defense procurement policy yet again. The new policy is more complicated but more vendor-friendly. Earlier, vendors had to prove that 30 % of their order should come from India. The new rules would mean that if a contractor like Lockheed Martin has been sourcing parts for his civilian jets from India, then he can be waived off this 30 %. Similarly, if a contractor proves that in some other way, he has been doing technology transfer to India, he can be waived this requirement. On the face of it, this rule seems rational. But in reality, this is symbolic of the woes that have beset our procurement policy forever. We do not have sufficient transparency in defense procurement. Unless something turns up during a CAG audit, there is no way of finding what went on in a defence deal. The other extreme of such opaqueness is over-sensitivity to scrutiny.

For e.g. the Government is now relaunching the bid for artillery guns, since the contender who seemed ready to win on technical grounds, was the Swedish firm, Bofors. Unwilling to let itself be associated with the name, the government wants to relaunch the bid. This does not augur well for India. Defense procurements should be made on the basis of technical and to an extent financial considerations. (for e.g. with a 70-30 ration being given to technical and financial proposals). Politics should not be allowed to intervene. Though to the credit of our folks in Ministry of Defense, we have a comfortable hybrid of Russian, French, German, Czech, Israeli and now American weapons and our military capabilities are rated even par with the chinese by some experts, the procurement process is all too often doubted by any and every politician. for instance, some years ago, HD Devegowda who was in the opposition, raised a stink saying the T90S battle tanks from Russia were inferior in quality. Exactly how much does HDD know about battle tanks and who were his advisors. This kind of political mudslinging kills any room for bold and timely purchases. As a result, most of our hardware gets outdated before it is even procured.

Yet another problem is that due to the rules of the Indian civil services, no bureaucrat is allowed to spend more than 5 years with the Defence ministry. This is problematic in an area like defense procurement where it takes at least a few years to understand the dynamics of the international arms trade and the country’s requirements. Just when the bureaucrat gets a hang of the job, he is posted out. Since defense tender bidding processes can take up to 3 years, this means that often a bureaucrat in charge of a deal maybe posted out before the deal is signed thus killing continuity. Doesn’t altogether lend us a lot of confidence, right?

It’s time India’s defense ministry and the procurement policy underwent a major overhaul. What we need possibly is a separate service for the defense ministry, an IDS, and greater transparency through ombudsmen etc. Transparency without politicisation. A difficult balance but a necessary measure.

It is as if India is losing her humanity part by part. Coming close on the heels of the recent spate of reports on women molested in various parts of India is this horrific and tragic report from Surat about a brave man named Keshav Vishwakarma who tried to prevent a woman from being heckled. For being a good Samaritan, four hours later, he was doused with kerosene and put on fire. Incredibly, with 75% burn injuries he walked two kilometers to a police station to report the incident. Unfortunately, he later succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.

It is nothing new that women in India have a torrid time in public spaces. Even as a child I could not help but notice how careful my mother would be when she had to go out alone or with me to any public space, be it to the market or to the cinema or to drop me off at school. She would carefully wrap her pallu around herself completely so that no bare skin was visible anywhere between her face and feet. In the bus she always made sure that she sat as much in the front as possible, away from the men’s seats and on the road she would ask me to walk on the outer side so that I’d be shielding her from passing traffic (meaning the sundry Indian male who would not think twice about grabbing or groping a woman in public).

Later, when I was older, I’d listen in horror as my female friends recounted incident after incident about how disgusting and desperate the average Indian male is in public. I was ashamed and embarrassed that the freedom I took for granted came with so many reservations for them. To think that every time they were out in public they had to deal with innumerable snide comments which would range from ‘kya potti hai re’ to men in cars slowing down to ask ‘ati kya?’ showed me how different a world it is for an Indian woman compared to her male counterpart. They had to be on constant guard to not let men get too close in public spaces. For if men got too close more often than not their body parts would be groped, grabbed or pawed in the most obscene way. My friends often would not take it lying down if they were in a group and always tried to fight back. But they also knew that it was safer to keep quiet especially if they were alone. They knew from practical experience how unsafe it is for an Indian woman to walk on the street alone even in a big city like Hyderabad. And these were the so called elite upper middle class women who were confident, educated and unapologetic about what they wore or how they behaved and who therefore, according to some, are asking for such abuse by dressing or behaving unlike a ‘traditional Indian woman’. A male friend, upon listening to such incidents from my female friends, even had the gall to say that if they stopped wearing dresses befitting a whore they would be given more respect! If only the truth is so simple. Even women who wear ‘traditional’ Indian dresses are not spared such abuse. I recall a nonsensical dress code directive by Anna University along the very lines of such an argument about which I had blogged here.

So why do we Indian men behave like this? Many men would object perhaps saying that men are the same everywhere in the world. To a certain extent that is true. But I’ve observed how big a difference there is between the average European male and his Indian counterpart when it comes to women. Men defer to women here in public spaces. Although men do eye good looking women here it is limited to just that. There are no snide or obscene comments passed and in my four years here I’ve never ever seen a man behave obscenely towards a woman in public. Yes, there are occasionally teenagers who seem to tease women but they are more the exception than the rule.

I’ve had some interesting conversations about Nandigram with people in the last few days. Seeing for myself the ground realities there has given me a fresh perspective because no matter how much you read about it or view images on TV there is a certain emotional detachment. Actually visiting the site is an experience. A friend told me that this trip, if not anything else, would change my life. I suppose in a way it has. Nandigram is not just about industry and displacement. It is not even the name of a place in Purba Mednipore district, West Bengal anymore. ‘Nandigram’ is the name of a seismic shift in Indian politics; In future when Nandigram is talked about it will be in the sense of a ‘Before Nandigram’ and ‘After Nandigram’. ‘Before’ signifying a time when politics was more rigidly demarcated into left, centre and right. The battle lines were more clearly defined and people, depending upon their predilections, hunkered down behind the politcal frontlines and yelled abuses at each other. ‘After’ is a strangely disorienting time. The lines demarcating left from right are more nebulous. The ‘left movement’ has received a right hook to the head and is stagerring like a headless chicken.

Let us then take a look at who is saying what. Buddha babu is all set to woo big capital into West Bengal. His mentor, Jyoti Babu “wants capital, both domestic and foreign, after all we are working in a capitalist system. Socialism is not possible now.” Party apparatchik Nilotpal Basu has been tasked with the job of going to TV studios and yelling the opposition down while Big Brother Prakash Karat does the same in Parliament. Nandigram represents the social costs of a particular paradigm of development that a large section of the Indian middle class, political class and media have subscribed to: that of ‘development at any cost’. The human, social and environmental costs of this model of development are not taken into account.

In fact, the more strident the call for development the more of an authoritarian mind set that makes that call. Is it any coincidence that the middle class in the most urbanised and industrialised state, Gujarat, has subscribed to an ideology that blanks out all dissenting views: whether these pertain to the communal question or the Narmada issue. This class has overwhelmingly voted for Narendra Modi who projects an authoritarian figure and ‘development at all costs’ hardtalk. They now talk of him as a potential Prime Minister. Seems like even the organised left has succumbed to this rhetoric. The people who till yesterday cultivated working class militancy and championed peasant’s struggle are now falling over themselves to welcome the Salims and the Tatas. And both left and right use the bogey of ‘Maoist’ to demonise anyone who questions what the state is up to. You just have to look at the number of planted stories in the mainstream media that talk of ‘naxal terror’ to realise that today ‘Naxal/maoist’ has become a sort of code word to shut down voices that question our current model of development, raise issues of human rights or otherwise question the status-quo. So who speaks for the poor now? For clean rivers, for chock-free towns, for farmers, tribals and dalits, for the victims of police brutality and judicial overreach, for Bhopal, Godhra, Marichjhampi. For India. I don’t know.

In India, we believe in reincarnation. So it seems that the nuclear deal has found new life again after being throttled to death. This deal was supposed to be a triumph of Indian diplomacy and of lobbying by the Non-Resident Indian community. It would mean the symbolic acceptance of India as a member of the Nuclear Powers club – a rather parochial institution.

The deal assures that the US provides India nuclear fuel and allow for similar supplies from other nuclear suppliers to further India’s civilian nuclear program as long as IAEA safeguards are respected by India. Ok, all this is known. We also know how this has been opposed by Leftists in India, who threatened to bring down the UPA government and almost scuttled the deal. Now, perhaps due to the public fury generated by the Nandigram incidents, the Left has given its green signal to the deal albeit with silly caveats.

India’s Department of Atomic Energy is now negotiating with the IAEA for India-specific safeguards. Now the Left wants that post the negotiations, a report on the the list of IAEA safeguards agreed upon by India be submitted to a parliamentary committee led by them after which they will give the green signal. Since when have members of our polity become experts on nuclear security? Exactly what is accomplished by this roadblock except face-saving for the Left.

I recently spoke to a key US negotiator for the 123 agreement and I found him a worried man. Will the deal go ahead, he asked me given the political pressures in India? After all, he had spent months cobbling the agreement together along with India’s top diplomats such as Indian ambassador to US, Ronen Sen and Indian ambassador to Singapore, S.Jaishankar apart from officials of the US’ AEC and India’s Department of Atomic Energy. I told the Negotiator that the deal will go ahead, all the while hoping the Indian political system proves me right.

For the last 11 months the Nandigram saga has been unfolding. It is a fascinating insight into the use and deployment of power by a party that has lost its ‘radical’ moorings and now is THE establishment; The insidious ways in which power is deployed to maintain monopoly and crush dissent and the justification offered for the naked use of aggression.

A quick recap: the Communist Party of India (Marxist) led West Bengal government decided to acquire 25,000 acres of land in the Nandigram block a year ago to set up a chemical hub for the Salim group of Indonesia. A notification was issued to this effect without any formal communication, the worst possible way to go about it. Nandigram is prime agricultural land and around 8,000 families stood to lose their only source of livelihood. Naturally there was resentment, especially since there was no clarification from the government about compensation for land, alternative livelihoods etc. This resentment broke out into a full fledged ‘civil war’ when the local residents organised themselves into an organisation called the Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Samiti (BUPS) or Anti Land Acquisition Committee. The BUPS was a militant coalition of political and religious parties. Overnight, roads were dug up, blockades erected and CPI(M) supporters were driven out of their homes into refugee camps. Nandigram became a ‘no go’ area where the government’s writ ceased to function, a ‘liberated’ zone. This was an unprecedented challenge for the CPI(M). In the 30 years that it has ruled West Bengal, it has cultivated a strong network of cadres that have been deployed to ruthlessly crush all opposition within Bengal. The CPI(M) came to power riding on the back of classic Marxist rhetoric: power to the working classes and peasantry, treating the comprador industrial/capitalist class with suspicion and cultivated working class militancy. Never in its wildest dreams could it have imagined that the very political climate that it had cultivated could be used against it.

The matter got further politicised when the main opposition party, the Trinamul Congress, and a host of religious organisations led by the Jamiat-e-ulema hind sensed an opportunity to shore up their support base in what was considered a CPI(M) stronghold.

This volatile mix resulted in the inevitable political stalemate. Attempts to resolve the issue resulted in tragedy when police fired on a protesting crowd on March 14, 2007. Estimates of the number killed vary from 14 (official) to 19.

ICICI Bank has been fined Rs 50 lakh by the Delhi Consumer Commission for hiring goons to recover loans in a landmark ruling. Read more here.

The commission used strong language to condemn the flouting of rules by ICICI Bank by continuing to hire goons to recover a few thousand rupees. I hope this ruling will go a long way to reign these banks in who even after a Supreme Court ruling continue to employ these recovery agents who often use brutal and unlawful methods to recover the money. Until now the banks were washing their hands off by claiming that they were not responsible for the methods employed by the recovery agents. But the Consumer Commission categorically stated that it is the bank’s responsibility to make sure that the recovery agents do not resort to unlawful methods to recover loans.

This ruling should now prevent banks resorting to exploiting legal loopholes to get away with human rights abuses that often resulted in serious injury and tragically even drove some people at the receiving end of such forceful loan recovery tactics to suicide.

It looks as if some banks in India consider themselves above the law. In spite of a Supreme Court order to the contrary, banks such as the ICICI Bank continue to employ private agencies for debt recovery, which in turn employ goons and other anti-social elements to intimidate the defaulters and make them cough up the money. Recently, in Hyderabad, this has resulted in the tragic death of a government employee after he was allegedly held in confinement by debt recovery agents who worked for a loan recovery agency which had a tie up with ICICI Bank. The bank and the agency of course deny any wrong doing on their part.

Failure by the police to control these agencies has resulted in the banks blatantly ignoring the Supreme Court oder, which expressly forbids hiring goons and using force to recover defaulted loans. While the defaulter is at fault for not paying up on time the bank should not resort to illegal means to recover the money. Given India’s glacial judicial system where it takes years for a case to be resolved it is no wonder then that private banks are resorting to force and coercion to get back their money. However, this should be condemned and prevented as no bank can and should consider themselves above the law. If not anything this will lead to the strengthening of goons who might resort to other illegal activities given their patronage and protection by the banks.

The police should make sure that the guilty parties are brought to justice in the above case and make sure that the said bank/agency and others do not resort to using the same tactics again. Bank customers should also put pressure on their bank when they hear about such cases to desist from using such unlawful means. After all, the one thing these banks fear is bad publicity and that is a power bank customers can use to influence their banks to mend their ways.

The travesty of a Member of Parliament, Babubhai Katara, being arrested for people-trafficking is a sore reminder of the depravation that has permeated our lawmakers. That Babubhai was naive enough to believe that he could lead a lady in ghunghat masquerading as his wife through immigration in India and Canada, shows the level of (or lack of) intelligence that has become a hallmark of his peers.

What is worse is the decision of the Parliament’s Ethics committee to not take action against him as “charges against him were unrelated to his work in Parliament”.

It is appalling that 135 members of parliament have criminal cases pending against them.

In India, we have a tradition of declaration of assets etc. by candidates when they file their nomination for election. What is missing is a similar declaration once they have been elected. What we need is an annual declaration by all elected members of parliament, of their assets as well as the police record against them. Let the public then judge them.

The problem is such a practice can only be made mandatory by a law. But will the lawmaker be ready to make such a law?

One alternative could be that of an independent agency/NGO taking up this work and of publishing it at the year-end in the newspapers. The Right to Information Act can be very useful for this activity.

The people of India cannot afford to dismiss such crime with cynicism. It is our duty to act.