The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | Opinion | A grand old man
A GRAND OLD MAN
- How a fun-loving barrister became a devout Gandhian
Malavika Karlekar
By the 1870s, the camera entered the lives of the Indian landed elite and the growing middle class; it was invaluable in the depiction of family life and newly-acquired professional roles where it became de rigueur for men with or without their families to be framed for posterity. Elaborate formal attire, the pose and the positioning of persons, were of vital importance; in the case of a married couple, how each spouse was seated or standing individually and in relation to one another often indicated relative status within the marital bond. Individuals or families in groups stood or sat elaborately dressed, framed against the backdrop of phantasmic studio sets — distant lakes, castles, tropical forests — that looked beyond everyday realities. This juxtaposition of the mundane with the imagined can be viewed as an image of the colonial encounter, where both ruler and ruled were involved in the intricate practice of redefining themselves; make-believe too had a role in this complex process.
In time, better-placed families preferred to ask photographic studios for a home shoot. Today, in the digital age of instant production, the performative function of such an event that involved the movement and setting up of equipment, handlers and, of course, the photographer, can hardly be comprehended. Apart from the sheer convenience of not having to make a trip to the studio when large numbers were to be photographed, to afford the luxury of being photographed at home was an affirmation of status.
Some families, more than others, have been conscientious in the preservation of family photographs, diaries, memoirs and other random writings, a case in point being that of the Sulemaini Bohra Tyabjis of Gujarat. Family archivist Salima Tyabji has painstakingly organized, arranged and curated the many photographs of this amazing family (most of which are in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library); it is almost possible to reconstruct a family history and indicate social change on the basis of these visuals alone. For instance, several document Abbas Tyabji’s metamorphosis from a Western-educated fun-loving professional to a devout Gandhian, the camera zeroing in infallibly on changed dress codes, demeanour and pose. The recently published biography by the historian, Aparna Basu, brought out by the National Book Trust, tells us about this metamorphosis of the by-then-elderly Abbas. This informative little text recounts how he came to be referred to as the ‘chhota Gandhi’ — an ironic epithet, as Tyabji was 17 years older than the Mahatma.
Basu has relied on his diaries and public papers held by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library as well as published and unpublished biographies, and “an unending stream of letters” between him and M.K. Gandhi. The present photograph that Basu uses in her book clearly belongs to Abbas’s pre-Gandhian phase (picture). In this family photograph taken at Abbas Tyabji’s Bombay home, the photographic establishment has almost re-created a theatrical set, the central characters being Abbas (seated in the middle without head gear), and wife Ameena who is next to him. As the photograph was being taken at home, the photographer was able to devote more time to its composition, very likely with inputs from the family.
What is particularly interesting is that nobody engages with the camera: not one of the 17 people looks straight at it — and yet there is a certain dynamism in the visual. The photograph forces the viewer to give it more than a passing glance. Abbas’s head is almost at right angles while Ameena looks askance, with somewhat downcast eyes. A close examination of each person’s pose indicates that there is nothing accidental about any of them. Generations and genders are mixed, clothes, postures, demeanours composed — if not dictated — and arranged to give it a certain dramatic quality. There is movement in stasis and several sub-groups within the larger assemblage in this conversation piece, that is like many group portraits by the 18th-century British painter, William Hogarth, with all the “atmospherics of a domestic drama”. Clearly considerable thought — if not debate — ensued before the shot was taken. And as it is likely to have been taken in the 1880s, if not the 1870s, the entire event would have taken quite some time, perhaps even half a day.
The Tyabji family had known great wealth, penury and then a steady ascent into professional recognition and stability. In 1803, after a fire devastated their home, shop and belongings, Bhai Miyan and his wife, Hurmat Ali, moved to Baroda. Their son, Tyab Ali, started life as a hawker and peddler in Bombay, and when his peregrinations took him to the elite Malabar Hill area, he was fortunate enough to meet a Parsi who loaned him enough money to set up a shop. He soon became a wealthy man, now known as Tyabji, a name that has remained that of the family. One of his sons, Badruddin, became a president of the Indian National Congress and a leading barrister of his time.
Born in 1854, Abbas was Tyab’s eldest grandson and, his father, Shamsuddin, having joined the family business, continued to live in Bombay like “a merchant prince”. Abbas was initially educated by private tutors at home, and as he kept indifferent health, was sent to England with his uncle, Badruddin, who was going to eat his dinners at the Inns of Court. His nephew too went on to study law and became a barrister in 1875. He “left for India a very loyal subject of Queen Victoria, impressed by British institutions, Western life and thought and joined the Bombay bar”, moving on to Baroda at the invitation of the Maharaja’s dewan. After the death of his first wife, he married his cousin, Ameena, and the couple was quickly integrated into the social scene in Baroda, the food at their table much the delight of the city. With the active encouragement of Maharaja Siyajirao and his wife, Maharani Chimnabai, Ameena gave up purdah and adapted fast to the hybridized life of the Indian elite: her daughter, Raihana, recalled how “Parsi and Hindu friends would request mother to teach their daughters how to eat with knives and forks and spoons. Other friends would ask her to teach their daughters to speak and converse in English”.
Abbas had become a member of the INC in 1885 and, interestingly, in the same year became a judge of the Baroda high court. He retired in 1913 and, by 1920 (when he was almost 70), had re-invented himself. Jallianwala Bagh had greatly disillusioned him about the British whom he had so long admired, and the turning point came when he was introduced to Gujarat politics at the invitation of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Soon, the Mahatma took note of the man whose impassioned speeches he felt influenced Gujarat’s early acceptance of non-cooperation. He became an active campaigner and wrote to Gandhi that “the khaddar adopted at Bezwada has simply made me twenty years younger”.
It did not take him long to set fire to the expensive clothes belonging to his earlier life, persuading many others to do the same. Abbas Tyabji became a frequent visitor to Sabarmati Ashram and, as a 76-year-old, joined the historic Salt March to Dandi in 1930 — the oldest member of the group and the one who took over leadership of the movement after Gandhi was arrested. Soon, together with 58 others, he too was charged under Section 143 of the Indian Penal Code with unlawful assembly and breaking the provisions of the Salt Law.
On his release from six months’ rigorous imprisonment, he continued to work for khadi, and both he and Ameena sold Rs 1,500 worth of material in 1933. Not long before his death in 1936, in the heat of the Gujarat summer, the couple had gone around in a bullock cart propagating the homespun cause. When he died, Gandhi publicly mourned the “Grand Old Man of Gujarat”. In private, he must surely have grieved for his good friend, Bhurr: Basu quotes Tyabji’s daughter, Sohela, as saying that the two men called each other “Bhurr” in memory of a cold night they had spent together in the now infamous Godhra station, bhurring and chatting to keep the cold at bay.
karlekars@gmail.com
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
Supreme Court to Bush: You Are Not Above the Law, Gitmo Detainees Have Right to Habeas Corpus | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet
Supreme Court to Bush: You Are Not Above the Law, Gitmo Detainees Have Right to Habeas Corpus | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet
Rights and Liberties
Supreme Court to Bush: You Are Not Above the Law, Gitmo Detainees Have Right to Habeas Corpus
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted June 13, 2008.
After a six-year battle that cut to the Constitution's core, a look at how advocates for Gitmo prisoners won a major victory against Bush.
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Former Gitmo Prisoners: "You Should Struggle Against Any Government That Abuses Human Rights"
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In perhaps its most significant ruling in the so-called War on Terror, the Supreme Court resurrected the ancient writ of habeas corpus on Thursday, ruling that the prisoners being held at Guantánamo Bay have the right to challenge their imprisonment in U.S. courts.
"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times," Justice Anthony Kennedy said, writing for the majority in Boumediene v. Bush. "Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law."
Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner, who has spearheaded the legal defense of the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, called the decision a "vindication," telling reporters in a conference call hours after the ruling that he was "incredibly thrilled and moved" by the 5-4 decision, which, for CCR, marked the culmination of over half a decade of fighting for the legal rights of the men at Guantánamo, some 270 of who have still not been charged.
"It's been a long struggle," Ratner said, "We were out there alone in the beginning." Indeed, the CCR filed the first lawsuit on behalf of a Guantánamo prisoner in February 2002, in the case Rasul v. Bush, on behalf of prisoners David Hicks, Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal. It was an act of moral and professional courage at a time when the country found itself paralyzed by the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Today, six and a half years after the first hooded "detainees" were brought to Gitmo's Camp X Ray, there are hundreds of lawyers representing the prisoners in Cuba. Many of them will likely be filing habeas petitions in the name of their clients in a matter of days.
"I suspect that things are going to move quite rapidly," Ratner said, in large part because of the Court's concern, expressed repeatedly throughout the ruling, that Guantánamo's prisoners have been in legal limbo for far too long.
"In some of these cases, six years have elapsed without the judicial oversight that habeas corpus or an adequate substitute demands," wrote Justice Kennedy. "... While some delay in fashioning new procedures is unavoidable, the costs of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody. The detainees in these cases are entitled to a prompt habeas corpus hearing."
"A Six-Year Nightmare"
From the beginning, the fight over Guantánamo has been one of law versus politics. Thursday's ruling was the third time the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration's handling of suspects at Guantánamo Bay. But the story of Guantánamo reaches back further than the Court's 2004 ruling in Rasul. The history goes back, of course, to 9/11.
One week after the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Congress passed the Authorization to Use Military Force Against Terrorists, which declared that the president "is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks ... or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States." The resolution passed 420 to 1 in the House (with 10 not voting) and 98-0 in the Senate (with two no-votes). (The "AUMF" would later be used to try to justify not only the Bush administration's controversial military commissions, but the White House's warrantless wiretaps as well.)
On November 13, 2001, President Bush took this mandate and issued a military order titled "Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism," which laid out the need for military commission trials for any such suspects. In January of 2002, Bush officially declared these suspects "enemy combatants."
"The U.S. government refuses to classify the detainees officially as POWs," CNN reported on January 23, 2002, noting that the identities of those held was being kept secret. "Officials suggest the Taliban and al Qaeda members don't deserve that designation." The designation, after all, would mean that the anonymous prisoners had rights under the Geneva Conventions -- a claim denied by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
"These people are committed terrorists," Rumsfeld said. "We are keeping them off the street and out of the airlines and out of nuclear power plants and out of ports ... and it seems to me a perfectly reasonable thing to do." Days later, Vice President Cheney called the men held at Guantánamo "the worst of a very bad lot. They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans." The next month, on February 18, 2002, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration.
Rasul v. Bush
The first ruling by the Supreme Court over the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay was decided in June 2004, in the case Rasul v. Bush. The ruling threw a wrench in Bush's proclamation that, as commander-in-chief, he had the power to determine who was and who was not an "enemy combatant." Indefatigable Guantánamo lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, head of the UK-based legal non-profit, Reprieve, and one of the attorneys who brought forth the lawsuit, described the development in his book, The Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side (Nation Books):
Prior to June 28, 2004, assessing guilt had been easy. President Bush had conclusively determined that all the prisoners were "bad people" and designated them enemy combatants. The military did not give them any opportunities to contest their status. They had, we were told, been "through multiple layers of review" before they reached Guantánamo and everyone had been captured on the battlefield. What more did anyone want?
What the Court wanted was something more than executive reassurance that the process being undertaken at Guantánamo was legally sound. As it turns out, it wasn't. The justices' 6-3 ruling in Rasul held that U.S. courts had the jurisdiction to decide whether non-U.S. citizens were being rightfully held, granting prisoners the right to bring forth habeas challenges despite the fact that they were "aliens in a territory over which the United States exercises plenary and exclusive jurisdiction, but not 'ultimate sovereignty.'"
The Bush administration's creative response to this legal defeat was the creation of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT), which Stafford Smith described as "the diminutive cousin of the (military) commission." (The commissions, it bears noting, were themselves unaffected by the Court's ruling on Thursday.)
"[T]here are no formal charges; [the prisoner] is presumed 'guilty' of being an enemy combatant, even though there is no clear definition of what that means; a panel of three military officers serves as judge and jury; the prisoner is allowed no lawyer, only a 'Personal Representative' from the military who reports everything the prisoner says back to his superiors; the prisoner is not allowed to know what the classified evidence is against him and so forth."
The ultimate point of the CSRT was to grant legal cover to the Bush administration's designation of suspects "enemy combatants" (Supreme Court ruling be damned). What's more, in the unlikely event that a prisoner was found not to be an enemy combatant, a second CSRT could be brought forth.
The CSRTs were officially established on July 7, 2004. That day, a senior defense official told reporters at a Pentagon press briefing that the CSRTs would "consist of three neutral military officers." "And by neutral, I mean military officers who have not previously been involved with the detainee either in his capture or in any either battlefield determination or subsequent review of his status as a detainee, or any interrogation, for example." The explanation ignored the fact that a military officer participating in a "war on terror" was, by definition, not a "neutral" party.
"It's a streamlined process," the senior defense official went on. When a reporter asked whether "lawyers will have access to people down at GTMO for purpose of habeas challenges," the defense official responded, that was "subject to security arrangements and other arrangements that need to be worked out." "I mean, all the precise details of that would have to be worked out in the future," added a Department of Justice official, standing alongside his Pentagon colleague.
The CSRTs started later that summer. In August 2004, Gita Gutierrez of the Center for Constitutional Rights became the first civilian lawyer to visit Guantánamo Bay.
Torture and the Detainee Treatment Act
As legal wrangling continued over the rights of the prisoners at Guantánamo, rumors of torture became louder and, eventually, substantiated claims. In July of 2004, a Red Cross report (leaked to the New York Times in November 2004) described "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, (and) use of forced positions" against prisoners. Gutierrez, defending Mohammed al-Qahtani, known as the "20th hijacker," would later describe the torture inflicted upon her client in a sworn declaration:
"Mr. al-Qahtani was subjected to a regime of aggressive interrogation techniques, known as the 'First Special Interrogation Plan.' Those techniques were implemented under the supervision and guidance of [former Defense] Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld and the commander of Guantánamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller.
"These methods included, but were not limited to, 48 days of severe sleep deprivation and 20-hour interrogations, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, physical force, prolonged stress positions and prolonged sensory over-stimulation, and threats with military dogs."
Compounded by revelations in the spring of 2004 of the sadistic torture at Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration found itself barraged with accusations of torture by critics inside and outside government. Meanwhile, hunger strikes began among the prisoners at Guantánamo, followed by forced feeding (itself a form of torture).
Ostensibly meant to address concerns over torture, in 2005, the Detainee Treatment Act passed the House and Senate by overwhelming margin. It was signed in as part of the 2006 Defense Authorization Act, and Sen. John McCain (before he made his peace with torturing suspects), was praised for his effort to codify humane treatment of the men held at Guantánamo, which was laid out as such: "No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment." Such treatment was defined as anything prohibited under the "Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution."
Crucially, however, the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) also included a clause stating that prisoners held at Guantánamo did not have the right to bring forth habeas appeals in U.S. courts, critically undermining the Supreme Court's ruling in Rasul. "In short, the amendment is aimed at limiting detainees' access to courts," Yale Law professor Judith Resnik concluded. Indeed, "within days of the passage of the DTA, the federal government relied on the law to seek dismissals of some 160 lower-court cases involving detainees at Guantánamo." In addition, based on the DTA, the Bush administration tried to get another case thrown out: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the Bush administration's system of military tribunals was unconstitutional, going back and revisiting their original foundation in the fall of 2001. "Brushing aside administration pleas not to second-guess the commander in chief during wartime," the Washington Post reported, "a five-justice majority ruled that the commissions, which were outlined by Bush in a military order on Nov. 13, 2001, were neither authorized by federal law nor required by military necessity, and ran afoul of the Geneva Conventions."
It was a major victory for the rule of law, and a huge setback for the Bush administration. Not that the prisoners held at Guantánamo would be closer to release. ("The American people need to know that this ruling, as I understand it, won't cause killers to be put out on the street," President Bush said.) But with the November mid-term elections approaching, the Bush administration responded with typical hubris: It decided to change the law.
The Military Commissions Act
On September 6, 2006, Bush gave a speech in which he announced his intention to send Congress a bill to revive the military commissions system. "We're now approaching the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks," he said. "And the families of those murdered that day have waited patiently for justice. ...They should have to wait no longer."
He announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, "and eleven other terrorists" suspected in the 9/11 attacks had been transferred to Guantánamo Bay. "As soon as Congress acts to authorize the military commissions I have proposed, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001 can face justice." The bill was called the Military Commissions Act, and over the protests of many, it passed Congress, in a politically-charged atmosphere, and was signed into law on October 17th. The law broadly defined an "unlawful enemy combatant" as anyone "engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States," and dramatically rolled back the legal gains represented by Hamdan, most crucially, suspending the writ of habeas corpus.
A week after Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, on October 4 Michael Ratner published an article in The Nation addressing the full implications of Congress' playing politics with the Constitution. "Our loss in Congress last week has consequences for citizens, as well as for legal permanent residents (green card holders) and noncitizens anywhere -- and consequences for the rule of law in this country," he wrote.
Habeas corpus, which has its origins in the Magna Carta of 1215, is the 'Great Writ' protecting people from arbitrary detention, disappearance and indefinite detention without charges. The cornerstone of Western justice, it is essential to the idea that laws -- not individuals, be they kings or Presidents -- govern a land.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, along with lawyers of all political backgrounds from some of the country's largest law firms, has filed habeas corpus petitions for nearly 500 detainees at Guantánamo -- none of whom have yet had their day in court. Twice in the past five years the Supreme Court has insisted that habeas corpus applies to these prisoners and ruled that the Bush Administration must apply the law. Yet last week Congress buckled in the face of election-year rhetoric about "terrorism" from the White House and passed new legislation denying our clients the right to challenge their detentions, or even to see the evidence against them. While I'm convinced that this law will not stand in court, we are still facing at least a year of challenges before it is declared unconstitutional.
"The Administration's fear-mongering and electioneering may have prevailed in the short term," he concluded, "but a growing number of people are unwilling to accept the destruction of our democracy."
"A Historic Victory for the Rule of Law"
Thanks to those people, a year and eight months later, yesterday's ruling in Boumediene v. Bush, which defines the right to habeas corpus as a constitutional right to be applied to foreign nationals -- no matter what their "enemy combatant" designation, marked the end of "a six-year nightmare" -- a "final vindication," according to Ratner, who recalled the extraordinary challenge of taking on the Guantánamo cases back in the fall of 2001. "We made a decision ... in very difficult times," he said. "The Supreme Court has acknowledged what we've been saying all along," said CCR executive director Vince Warren, who called the decision "the first step ... in reversing a dangerous and overzealous set of policies by the Bush administration."
"Today, unambiguously the rule of law prevailed," said Gita Gutierrez. The Bush administration, she said, can no longer treat Guantánamo as a "no-law zone." Indeed, as Justice Kennedy wrote in the decision, "the Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply." What's more, "the political branches," he said do not "have the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will."
There were dissenters, of course, on and off the bench, who, with wild-eyed fervor, took the now-familiar Bush administration line. "America is at war with radical Islamists," declared Justice Antonin Scalia, who went so far as to say that the ruling "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
Presidential nominee John McCain, when asked what he thought of the Supreme Court ruling, told reporters that he had not yet had a chance to read the opinion. "It obviously concerns me," he said. "These are unlawful combatants, they are not American citizens." He said it was important to "pay attention to Justice Roberts" who also dissented. But he maintained that he believes Guantánamo should be closed. Obama, once a vocal critic of the Military Commissions Act who has since been largely silent on his intentions when it comes to Guantánamo, labeled the decision a rejection of "yet another failed policy supported by John McCain" and described it as "an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law."
Meanwhile, President Bush, on his "farewell" tour of Europe, said that, although this was a Supreme Court ruling, "that doesn't mean I have to agree with it." "I strongly agree with those who dissented," he said. "... The dissent was based upon their serious concerns about U.S. national security." He also hinted that, as he has done for six years, he would consider his legislative options.
But as far as the CCR is concerned, Bush cannot change the law this time. This is a constitutional ruling, not a statutory one. The legislative options are virtually nonexistent. "The decision," according to Gutierrez, represents "finality that we have not had in the last six years."
While this ruling grants the handful of prisoners who have already been charged and are being tried under military commissions little immediate assistance, the vast majority of prisoners at Gitmo -- some 270 men -- now have the right to have their attorneys bring forth habeas appeals to Washington. The burden of proof will be on the government to establish that there is a legal and factual basis for the suspects' detention. Although the implications vary for each defendant, depending on the state of his case, Ratner said, "My deeper belief is that a lot of these cases are just going to be gone."
"I've never said this before," he said, but this could mean "a death knell for Guantánamo."
Rights and Liberties
Supreme Court to Bush: You Are Not Above the Law, Gitmo Detainees Have Right to Habeas Corpus
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted June 13, 2008.
After a six-year battle that cut to the Constitution's core, a look at how advocates for Gitmo prisoners won a major victory against Bush.
Tools
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print PRINT
100 COMMENTS
gitmoatcourt
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Also in Rights and Liberties
What the Supreme Court's Habeas Decision Means
Andy Worthington
"Angola is Still a Plantation": Fighting Back Against Legacies of Slavery
Jordan Flaherty
Worse Than Fascists: Christian Political Group 'The Family' Openly Reveres Hitler
Lindsay Beyerstein
Former Gitmo Prisoners: "You Should Struggle Against Any Government That Abuses Human Rights"
Sharon Stello
The "War on Terror" Hits the Web
Jessica Lee
More stories by Liliana Segura
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In perhaps its most significant ruling in the so-called War on Terror, the Supreme Court resurrected the ancient writ of habeas corpus on Thursday, ruling that the prisoners being held at Guantánamo Bay have the right to challenge their imprisonment in U.S. courts.
"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times," Justice Anthony Kennedy said, writing for the majority in Boumediene v. Bush. "Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law."
Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner, who has spearheaded the legal defense of the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, called the decision a "vindication," telling reporters in a conference call hours after the ruling that he was "incredibly thrilled and moved" by the 5-4 decision, which, for CCR, marked the culmination of over half a decade of fighting for the legal rights of the men at Guantánamo, some 270 of who have still not been charged.
"It's been a long struggle," Ratner said, "We were out there alone in the beginning." Indeed, the CCR filed the first lawsuit on behalf of a Guantánamo prisoner in February 2002, in the case Rasul v. Bush, on behalf of prisoners David Hicks, Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal. It was an act of moral and professional courage at a time when the country found itself paralyzed by the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Today, six and a half years after the first hooded "detainees" were brought to Gitmo's Camp X Ray, there are hundreds of lawyers representing the prisoners in Cuba. Many of them will likely be filing habeas petitions in the name of their clients in a matter of days.
"I suspect that things are going to move quite rapidly," Ratner said, in large part because of the Court's concern, expressed repeatedly throughout the ruling, that Guantánamo's prisoners have been in legal limbo for far too long.
"In some of these cases, six years have elapsed without the judicial oversight that habeas corpus or an adequate substitute demands," wrote Justice Kennedy. "... While some delay in fashioning new procedures is unavoidable, the costs of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody. The detainees in these cases are entitled to a prompt habeas corpus hearing."
"A Six-Year Nightmare"
From the beginning, the fight over Guantánamo has been one of law versus politics. Thursday's ruling was the third time the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration's handling of suspects at Guantánamo Bay. But the story of Guantánamo reaches back further than the Court's 2004 ruling in Rasul. The history goes back, of course, to 9/11.
One week after the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Congress passed the Authorization to Use Military Force Against Terrorists, which declared that the president "is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks ... or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States." The resolution passed 420 to 1 in the House (with 10 not voting) and 98-0 in the Senate (with two no-votes). (The "AUMF" would later be used to try to justify not only the Bush administration's controversial military commissions, but the White House's warrantless wiretaps as well.)
On November 13, 2001, President Bush took this mandate and issued a military order titled "Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism," which laid out the need for military commission trials for any such suspects. In January of 2002, Bush officially declared these suspects "enemy combatants."
"The U.S. government refuses to classify the detainees officially as POWs," CNN reported on January 23, 2002, noting that the identities of those held was being kept secret. "Officials suggest the Taliban and al Qaeda members don't deserve that designation." The designation, after all, would mean that the anonymous prisoners had rights under the Geneva Conventions -- a claim denied by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
"These people are committed terrorists," Rumsfeld said. "We are keeping them off the street and out of the airlines and out of nuclear power plants and out of ports ... and it seems to me a perfectly reasonable thing to do." Days later, Vice President Cheney called the men held at Guantánamo "the worst of a very bad lot. They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans." The next month, on February 18, 2002, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration.
Rasul v. Bush
The first ruling by the Supreme Court over the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay was decided in June 2004, in the case Rasul v. Bush. The ruling threw a wrench in Bush's proclamation that, as commander-in-chief, he had the power to determine who was and who was not an "enemy combatant." Indefatigable Guantánamo lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, head of the UK-based legal non-profit, Reprieve, and one of the attorneys who brought forth the lawsuit, described the development in his book, The Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side (Nation Books):
Prior to June 28, 2004, assessing guilt had been easy. President Bush had conclusively determined that all the prisoners were "bad people" and designated them enemy combatants. The military did not give them any opportunities to contest their status. They had, we were told, been "through multiple layers of review" before they reached Guantánamo and everyone had been captured on the battlefield. What more did anyone want?
What the Court wanted was something more than executive reassurance that the process being undertaken at Guantánamo was legally sound. As it turns out, it wasn't. The justices' 6-3 ruling in Rasul held that U.S. courts had the jurisdiction to decide whether non-U.S. citizens were being rightfully held, granting prisoners the right to bring forth habeas challenges despite the fact that they were "aliens in a territory over which the United States exercises plenary and exclusive jurisdiction, but not 'ultimate sovereignty.'"
The Bush administration's creative response to this legal defeat was the creation of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT), which Stafford Smith described as "the diminutive cousin of the (military) commission." (The commissions, it bears noting, were themselves unaffected by the Court's ruling on Thursday.)
"[T]here are no formal charges; [the prisoner] is presumed 'guilty' of being an enemy combatant, even though there is no clear definition of what that means; a panel of three military officers serves as judge and jury; the prisoner is allowed no lawyer, only a 'Personal Representative' from the military who reports everything the prisoner says back to his superiors; the prisoner is not allowed to know what the classified evidence is against him and so forth."
The ultimate point of the CSRT was to grant legal cover to the Bush administration's designation of suspects "enemy combatants" (Supreme Court ruling be damned). What's more, in the unlikely event that a prisoner was found not to be an enemy combatant, a second CSRT could be brought forth.
The CSRTs were officially established on July 7, 2004. That day, a senior defense official told reporters at a Pentagon press briefing that the CSRTs would "consist of three neutral military officers." "And by neutral, I mean military officers who have not previously been involved with the detainee either in his capture or in any either battlefield determination or subsequent review of his status as a detainee, or any interrogation, for example." The explanation ignored the fact that a military officer participating in a "war on terror" was, by definition, not a "neutral" party.
"It's a streamlined process," the senior defense official went on. When a reporter asked whether "lawyers will have access to people down at GTMO for purpose of habeas challenges," the defense official responded, that was "subject to security arrangements and other arrangements that need to be worked out." "I mean, all the precise details of that would have to be worked out in the future," added a Department of Justice official, standing alongside his Pentagon colleague.
The CSRTs started later that summer. In August 2004, Gita Gutierrez of the Center for Constitutional Rights became the first civilian lawyer to visit Guantánamo Bay.
Torture and the Detainee Treatment Act
As legal wrangling continued over the rights of the prisoners at Guantánamo, rumors of torture became louder and, eventually, substantiated claims. In July of 2004, a Red Cross report (leaked to the New York Times in November 2004) described "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, (and) use of forced positions" against prisoners. Gutierrez, defending Mohammed al-Qahtani, known as the "20th hijacker," would later describe the torture inflicted upon her client in a sworn declaration:
"Mr. al-Qahtani was subjected to a regime of aggressive interrogation techniques, known as the 'First Special Interrogation Plan.' Those techniques were implemented under the supervision and guidance of [former Defense] Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld and the commander of Guantánamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller.
"These methods included, but were not limited to, 48 days of severe sleep deprivation and 20-hour interrogations, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, physical force, prolonged stress positions and prolonged sensory over-stimulation, and threats with military dogs."
Compounded by revelations in the spring of 2004 of the sadistic torture at Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration found itself barraged with accusations of torture by critics inside and outside government. Meanwhile, hunger strikes began among the prisoners at Guantánamo, followed by forced feeding (itself a form of torture).
Ostensibly meant to address concerns over torture, in 2005, the Detainee Treatment Act passed the House and Senate by overwhelming margin. It was signed in as part of the 2006 Defense Authorization Act, and Sen. John McCain (before he made his peace with torturing suspects), was praised for his effort to codify humane treatment of the men held at Guantánamo, which was laid out as such: "No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment." Such treatment was defined as anything prohibited under the "Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution."
Crucially, however, the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) also included a clause stating that prisoners held at Guantánamo did not have the right to bring forth habeas appeals in U.S. courts, critically undermining the Supreme Court's ruling in Rasul. "In short, the amendment is aimed at limiting detainees' access to courts," Yale Law professor Judith Resnik concluded. Indeed, "within days of the passage of the DTA, the federal government relied on the law to seek dismissals of some 160 lower-court cases involving detainees at Guantánamo." In addition, based on the DTA, the Bush administration tried to get another case thrown out: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the Bush administration's system of military tribunals was unconstitutional, going back and revisiting their original foundation in the fall of 2001. "Brushing aside administration pleas not to second-guess the commander in chief during wartime," the Washington Post reported, "a five-justice majority ruled that the commissions, which were outlined by Bush in a military order on Nov. 13, 2001, were neither authorized by federal law nor required by military necessity, and ran afoul of the Geneva Conventions."
It was a major victory for the rule of law, and a huge setback for the Bush administration. Not that the prisoners held at Guantánamo would be closer to release. ("The American people need to know that this ruling, as I understand it, won't cause killers to be put out on the street," President Bush said.) But with the November mid-term elections approaching, the Bush administration responded with typical hubris: It decided to change the law.
The Military Commissions Act
On September 6, 2006, Bush gave a speech in which he announced his intention to send Congress a bill to revive the military commissions system. "We're now approaching the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks," he said. "And the families of those murdered that day have waited patiently for justice. ...They should have to wait no longer."
He announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, "and eleven other terrorists" suspected in the 9/11 attacks had been transferred to Guantánamo Bay. "As soon as Congress acts to authorize the military commissions I have proposed, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001 can face justice." The bill was called the Military Commissions Act, and over the protests of many, it passed Congress, in a politically-charged atmosphere, and was signed into law on October 17th. The law broadly defined an "unlawful enemy combatant" as anyone "engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States," and dramatically rolled back the legal gains represented by Hamdan, most crucially, suspending the writ of habeas corpus.
A week after Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, on October 4 Michael Ratner published an article in The Nation addressing the full implications of Congress' playing politics with the Constitution. "Our loss in Congress last week has consequences for citizens, as well as for legal permanent residents (green card holders) and noncitizens anywhere -- and consequences for the rule of law in this country," he wrote.
Habeas corpus, which has its origins in the Magna Carta of 1215, is the 'Great Writ' protecting people from arbitrary detention, disappearance and indefinite detention without charges. The cornerstone of Western justice, it is essential to the idea that laws -- not individuals, be they kings or Presidents -- govern a land.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, along with lawyers of all political backgrounds from some of the country's largest law firms, has filed habeas corpus petitions for nearly 500 detainees at Guantánamo -- none of whom have yet had their day in court. Twice in the past five years the Supreme Court has insisted that habeas corpus applies to these prisoners and ruled that the Bush Administration must apply the law. Yet last week Congress buckled in the face of election-year rhetoric about "terrorism" from the White House and passed new legislation denying our clients the right to challenge their detentions, or even to see the evidence against them. While I'm convinced that this law will not stand in court, we are still facing at least a year of challenges before it is declared unconstitutional.
"The Administration's fear-mongering and electioneering may have prevailed in the short term," he concluded, "but a growing number of people are unwilling to accept the destruction of our democracy."
"A Historic Victory for the Rule of Law"
Thanks to those people, a year and eight months later, yesterday's ruling in Boumediene v. Bush, which defines the right to habeas corpus as a constitutional right to be applied to foreign nationals -- no matter what their "enemy combatant" designation, marked the end of "a six-year nightmare" -- a "final vindication," according to Ratner, who recalled the extraordinary challenge of taking on the Guantánamo cases back in the fall of 2001. "We made a decision ... in very difficult times," he said. "The Supreme Court has acknowledged what we've been saying all along," said CCR executive director Vince Warren, who called the decision "the first step ... in reversing a dangerous and overzealous set of policies by the Bush administration."
"Today, unambiguously the rule of law prevailed," said Gita Gutierrez. The Bush administration, she said, can no longer treat Guantánamo as a "no-law zone." Indeed, as Justice Kennedy wrote in the decision, "the Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply." What's more, "the political branches," he said do not "have the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will."
There were dissenters, of course, on and off the bench, who, with wild-eyed fervor, took the now-familiar Bush administration line. "America is at war with radical Islamists," declared Justice Antonin Scalia, who went so far as to say that the ruling "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
Presidential nominee John McCain, when asked what he thought of the Supreme Court ruling, told reporters that he had not yet had a chance to read the opinion. "It obviously concerns me," he said. "These are unlawful combatants, they are not American citizens." He said it was important to "pay attention to Justice Roberts" who also dissented. But he maintained that he believes Guantánamo should be closed. Obama, once a vocal critic of the Military Commissions Act who has since been largely silent on his intentions when it comes to Guantánamo, labeled the decision a rejection of "yet another failed policy supported by John McCain" and described it as "an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law."
Meanwhile, President Bush, on his "farewell" tour of Europe, said that, although this was a Supreme Court ruling, "that doesn't mean I have to agree with it." "I strongly agree with those who dissented," he said. "... The dissent was based upon their serious concerns about U.S. national security." He also hinted that, as he has done for six years, he would consider his legislative options.
But as far as the CCR is concerned, Bush cannot change the law this time. This is a constitutional ruling, not a statutory one. The legislative options are virtually nonexistent. "The decision," according to Gutierrez, represents "finality that we have not had in the last six years."
While this ruling grants the handful of prisoners who have already been charged and are being tried under military commissions little immediate assistance, the vast majority of prisoners at Gitmo -- some 270 men -- now have the right to have their attorneys bring forth habeas appeals to Washington. The burden of proof will be on the government to establish that there is a legal and factual basis for the suspects' detention. Although the implications vary for each defendant, depending on the state of his case, Ratner said, "My deeper belief is that a lot of these cases are just going to be gone."
"I've never said this before," he said, but this could mean "a death knell for Guantánamo."
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Pleasantly Surprised, In Islamabad By Yoginder Sikand
Islamabad is surely the most well-organised, picturesque and endearing city in all of South Asia. Few Indians would, however, know this, or, if they did, would admit it. After all, the Indian media never highlights anything positive about Pakistan, because for it only “bad” news about the country appears to be considered “newsworthy” That realization hit me as a rude shock the moment I stepped out of the plane and entered Islamabads plush International Airport, easily far more efficient, modern and better maintained than any of its counterparts in India. And right through my week-long stay in the city, I could not help comparing Islamabad favourably with every other South Asian city that I have visited.
That week in Islamabad consisted essentially of a long string of pleasant surprises, for I had expected Islamabad to be everything that the Indian media so uncharitably and erroneously depicts Pakistan as. The immigration counter was staffed by a smart young woman, whose endearing cheerfulness was a refreshing contrast to the grave, somber and unwelcoming looks that one is generally met with at immigration counters across the world that make visitors to a new country feel instantly unwelcome. Outside the airport, Nadeem, a driver sent to pick me up, gave me a warm handshake, and when, shortly after, he learnt that my grandfather was born in his own native Abbotabad, a town not far from the Afghan frontier, he pressed on me a hearty, sweaty hug.
“Bhai Sahib, This is the land of your ancestors!, Nadeem beamed. He insisted that I travel with him to Abbotabad and stay with him in his home and try and search for the house where my grandfather had lived before the Partition. I seriously wished I could, I told him, but the vexing visa regime between India and Pakistan strictly forbids citizens of both countries from stepping out of the cities for which they have been granted permission to visit.
No sooner has the visitor stepped off the plane in Islamabad and drives into the city than he is forced to realize that whatever the Indian media says about Pakistan and its people is basically bogus. No, Pakistan is not a “fundamentalist” country, teetering on the verge of a take-over by “religious radicals. No, Pakistan is not a “prison-house of Muslim women, who are allegedly forced into wearing tent-like burkhas. No, Pakistan is not a “failed state” that produces nothing. Flowing beards and skull-caps are conspicuous by their rarity in Islamabad as are burkhas. Women drive and shop and work in government and private offices. Most basic consumer items are produced within the country. And, as in India, despite government ineptitude and convoluted elite politics, the country survives and is not on the verge of total collapse, contrary to what Indians are made to believe.
The Islamabad Club, where the organizers of the conference I had come to attend had put me up, seems like a relic from colonial times, only that it was built much after the British departed. It is the favourite haunt of Islamabad-based bureaucrats, army officers and landlords, heavily subsidized for their benefit, as in the case of similarly stuffy elite watering holes in India. I would have actually preferred to stay in much more austere surroundings”after all our conference was all about democracy and social justice in South Asia, but I comforted myself with the thought that a bit of luxury for just a few days would not do me major harm.
Islamabad, in some senses, is like Chandigarh: a new, planned, modern city, set up on decidedly Western lines. It was founded in the 1960s when the capital of Pakistan was shifted from Karachi. It straddles the foothills of the Margalla range, which leads on to Kashmir in the north-east and the North-West Frontier Province, near Afghanistan, in the west. It is divided into numerous zones, each having its own markets, schools and other such institutions. The citys roads are fantastically smooth and wide and enclosed by broad grassy banks. Carefully manicured gardens and thickly wooded parks stretch for miles. Cobbled paths lead up to trekking trails in the nearby mountains and enormous bungalows enclosed in private gardens line the streets. The air is remarkably clean and crisp, traffic jams are rare, and one can reach one end of the city from the other within just half an hour.
Since Islamabad is a new city, it boasts no historical monuments worth seeing. Yet, the city has its own share of attractions for the visitor. The massive Pakistan National Monument atop a hill that commands a majestic view of Islamabad is an architectural marvel, and so is the massive Faisal Mosque, one of the largest mosques in Asia, so expansive that it accommodates an entire university in its basement. Equally bold and striking are the Pakistan National Assembly, the Presidents House, the Prime Ministers Secretariat, the Supreme Court and a host of other swank buildings housing government offices that line the main Constitution Avenue. The Rawal lake on the outskirts of the town extends far into the distance till it meets the horizon, and, like the rest of Islamabad, it is clean to the point of appearing thoroughly sanitized, at least to the Indian eye. On the banks of the lake are a number of welcoming restaurants, and a small, whitewashed temple, a testimony to the times when, before the Partition, there was a sizeable Hindu community in the area. Nestled on the other side of the lake is the glamorous Daman-e Koh or “The Lap of the Mountains, a thickly forested valley, and the best way to spend an evening in Islamabad is to drive up there for the icy breeze, a dinner of biryani and an assortment of kababs, a live band singing melancholic Hindi film numbers from the 1960s and a panoramic view of the city below.
The suave and gracious Kamran Lashari, head of the Capital Development Authority (CDA), the body entrusted with developing Islamabad, was our host one night, having invited us to a sumptuous dinner at the fabulous Lake View Park, a large expanse of green located on the banks of a placid lake at the edge of town. I tell him, and I hope he knows I am serious, that Islamabad is the best city I have ever seen in South Asia and remark on how well-managed it is. And so do the other Indians who have also been invited that evening, fellow participants in the conference.
Lashari tells us, and he has every right to beam with pride at this, that till he took over his present position some four years ago, the annual budget of the CDA was a billion rupees, with some eight-tenths of this being funded by the Government and the remainder being self-generated. Today, the CDAs budget has increased twenty-five fold, and the ratios for government and self-generated funds have been reversed. He talks excitedly of his future plans, of the many new architects, designers and construction companies that have come up in Pakistan in recent years and about how he hopes to work with some of them for projects that he has conceived.
For fellow Punjabis like myself, Islamabad feels just like home. Most of the citys inhabitants, as indeed most Pakistanis, are Punjabis, and are essentially no different from fellow Punjabis across the border in India, although, I personally feel, perhaps a shade better looking! And, as an employee of the Indian High Commission in Pakistan, who travelled in the same plane as myself on my return, also a fellow Punjabi, quite rightly remarked, “If you want to learn etiquette, learn it from the Islamabadis.
But then, Islamabad is as representative or otherwise of Pakistan as posh South Delhi or any other similar elite-inhabited part of any other Indian city is of India as a whole. Islamabad is decidedly elitist, the poor, mainly people who work in the homes of the rich and for the CDA, being confined to a few anonymous working class localities in the city or commuting everyday from neighbouring Rawalpindi. As Zaman Khan, a burly, friendly worker in a posh restaurant quipped when we got down to talking about mounting inflation and rapidly expanding socio-economic inequalities in India and Pakistan, “Theres hardly any difference between our two countries. I am sure you have fancy quarters in cities in India that are reserved just for the rich, just as Islamabad has. What difference does it make if the houses and localities of the rich are so beautiful and comfortable? The rich here and in India as well must be equally indifferent to poor people like us.
True enough, and yet another thing of the many things that India and Pakistan have in common. But notwithstanding Zaman Khans astute observation, Islamabad, I must admit, excited me in a special way, and I long to return soon.
Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye
The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping
That week in Islamabad consisted essentially of a long string of pleasant surprises, for I had expected Islamabad to be everything that the Indian media so uncharitably and erroneously depicts Pakistan as. The immigration counter was staffed by a smart young woman, whose endearing cheerfulness was a refreshing contrast to the grave, somber and unwelcoming looks that one is generally met with at immigration counters across the world that make visitors to a new country feel instantly unwelcome. Outside the airport, Nadeem, a driver sent to pick me up, gave me a warm handshake, and when, shortly after, he learnt that my grandfather was born in his own native Abbotabad, a town not far from the Afghan frontier, he pressed on me a hearty, sweaty hug.
“Bhai Sahib, This is the land of your ancestors!, Nadeem beamed. He insisted that I travel with him to Abbotabad and stay with him in his home and try and search for the house where my grandfather had lived before the Partition. I seriously wished I could, I told him, but the vexing visa regime between India and Pakistan strictly forbids citizens of both countries from stepping out of the cities for which they have been granted permission to visit.
No sooner has the visitor stepped off the plane in Islamabad and drives into the city than he is forced to realize that whatever the Indian media says about Pakistan and its people is basically bogus. No, Pakistan is not a “fundamentalist” country, teetering on the verge of a take-over by “religious radicals. No, Pakistan is not a “prison-house of Muslim women, who are allegedly forced into wearing tent-like burkhas. No, Pakistan is not a “failed state” that produces nothing. Flowing beards and skull-caps are conspicuous by their rarity in Islamabad as are burkhas. Women drive and shop and work in government and private offices. Most basic consumer items are produced within the country. And, as in India, despite government ineptitude and convoluted elite politics, the country survives and is not on the verge of total collapse, contrary to what Indians are made to believe.
The Islamabad Club, where the organizers of the conference I had come to attend had put me up, seems like a relic from colonial times, only that it was built much after the British departed. It is the favourite haunt of Islamabad-based bureaucrats, army officers and landlords, heavily subsidized for their benefit, as in the case of similarly stuffy elite watering holes in India. I would have actually preferred to stay in much more austere surroundings”after all our conference was all about democracy and social justice in South Asia, but I comforted myself with the thought that a bit of luxury for just a few days would not do me major harm.
Islamabad, in some senses, is like Chandigarh: a new, planned, modern city, set up on decidedly Western lines. It was founded in the 1960s when the capital of Pakistan was shifted from Karachi. It straddles the foothills of the Margalla range, which leads on to Kashmir in the north-east and the North-West Frontier Province, near Afghanistan, in the west. It is divided into numerous zones, each having its own markets, schools and other such institutions. The citys roads are fantastically smooth and wide and enclosed by broad grassy banks. Carefully manicured gardens and thickly wooded parks stretch for miles. Cobbled paths lead up to trekking trails in the nearby mountains and enormous bungalows enclosed in private gardens line the streets. The air is remarkably clean and crisp, traffic jams are rare, and one can reach one end of the city from the other within just half an hour.
Since Islamabad is a new city, it boasts no historical monuments worth seeing. Yet, the city has its own share of attractions for the visitor. The massive Pakistan National Monument atop a hill that commands a majestic view of Islamabad is an architectural marvel, and so is the massive Faisal Mosque, one of the largest mosques in Asia, so expansive that it accommodates an entire university in its basement. Equally bold and striking are the Pakistan National Assembly, the Presidents House, the Prime Ministers Secretariat, the Supreme Court and a host of other swank buildings housing government offices that line the main Constitution Avenue. The Rawal lake on the outskirts of the town extends far into the distance till it meets the horizon, and, like the rest of Islamabad, it is clean to the point of appearing thoroughly sanitized, at least to the Indian eye. On the banks of the lake are a number of welcoming restaurants, and a small, whitewashed temple, a testimony to the times when, before the Partition, there was a sizeable Hindu community in the area. Nestled on the other side of the lake is the glamorous Daman-e Koh or “The Lap of the Mountains, a thickly forested valley, and the best way to spend an evening in Islamabad is to drive up there for the icy breeze, a dinner of biryani and an assortment of kababs, a live band singing melancholic Hindi film numbers from the 1960s and a panoramic view of the city below.
The suave and gracious Kamran Lashari, head of the Capital Development Authority (CDA), the body entrusted with developing Islamabad, was our host one night, having invited us to a sumptuous dinner at the fabulous Lake View Park, a large expanse of green located on the banks of a placid lake at the edge of town. I tell him, and I hope he knows I am serious, that Islamabad is the best city I have ever seen in South Asia and remark on how well-managed it is. And so do the other Indians who have also been invited that evening, fellow participants in the conference.
Lashari tells us, and he has every right to beam with pride at this, that till he took over his present position some four years ago, the annual budget of the CDA was a billion rupees, with some eight-tenths of this being funded by the Government and the remainder being self-generated. Today, the CDAs budget has increased twenty-five fold, and the ratios for government and self-generated funds have been reversed. He talks excitedly of his future plans, of the many new architects, designers and construction companies that have come up in Pakistan in recent years and about how he hopes to work with some of them for projects that he has conceived.
For fellow Punjabis like myself, Islamabad feels just like home. Most of the citys inhabitants, as indeed most Pakistanis, are Punjabis, and are essentially no different from fellow Punjabis across the border in India, although, I personally feel, perhaps a shade better looking! And, as an employee of the Indian High Commission in Pakistan, who travelled in the same plane as myself on my return, also a fellow Punjabi, quite rightly remarked, “If you want to learn etiquette, learn it from the Islamabadis.
But then, Islamabad is as representative or otherwise of Pakistan as posh South Delhi or any other similar elite-inhabited part of any other Indian city is of India as a whole. Islamabad is decidedly elitist, the poor, mainly people who work in the homes of the rich and for the CDA, being confined to a few anonymous working class localities in the city or commuting everyday from neighbouring Rawalpindi. As Zaman Khan, a burly, friendly worker in a posh restaurant quipped when we got down to talking about mounting inflation and rapidly expanding socio-economic inequalities in India and Pakistan, “Theres hardly any difference between our two countries. I am sure you have fancy quarters in cities in India that are reserved just for the rich, just as Islamabad has. What difference does it make if the houses and localities of the rich are so beautiful and comfortable? The rich here and in India as well must be equally indifferent to poor people like us.
True enough, and yet another thing of the many things that India and Pakistan have in common. But notwithstanding Zaman Khans astute observation, Islamabad, I must admit, excited me in a special way, and I long to return soon.
Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye
The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Dan Rather Slams Corporate News at National Conference for Media Reform | Free Press
Dan Rather Slams Corporate News at National Conference for Media Reform | Free Press
Dan Rather Slams Corporate News at National Conference for Media Reform
Free Press, June 7, 2008
By Dan Rather
Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather delivered a blistering critique of corporate news on Saturday night at the National Conference for Media Reform hosted by Free Press.
The following are Dan Rather's prepared remarks:
I am grateful to be here and I am, most of all, gratified by the energy I have seen tonight and at this conference. It will take this kind of energy — and more — to sustain what is good in our news media... to improve what is deficient... and to push back against the forces and the trends that imperil journalism and that — by immediate extension — imperil democracy itself.
The Framers of our Constitution enshrined freedom of the press in the very first Amendment, up at the top of the Bill of Rights, not because they were great fans of journalists — like many politicians, then and now, they were not — but rather because they knew, as Thomas Jefferson put it, that, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was and never will be."
And it is because of this Constitutionally-protected role that I still prefer to use the word "press" over the word "media." If nothing else, it serves as a subtle reminder that — along with newspapers — radio, television, and, now, the Internet, carry the same Constitutional rights, mandates, and responsibilities that the founders guaranteed for those who plied their trade solely in print.
So when you hear me talk about the press, please know that I am talking about all the ways that news can be transmitted. And when you hear me criticize and critique the press, please know that I do not exempt myself from these criticisms.
In our efforts to take back the American press for the American people, we are blessed this weekend with the gift of good timing. For anyone who may have been inclined to ask if there really is a problem with the news media, or wonder if the task of media reform is, indeed, an urgent one... recent days have brought an inescapable answer, from a most unlikely source.
A source who decided to tell everyone, quote, "what happened."
I know I can't be the first person this weekend to reference the recent book by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, but, having interviewed him this past week, I think there are some very important points to be made from the things he says in his book, and the questions his statements raise.
I'm sure all of you took special notice of what he had to say about the role of the press corps, in the run-up to the war in Iraq. In the government's selling of the war, he said they were — or, I should say, we were "complicit enablers" and "overly deferential."
These are interesting statements, especially considering their source. As one tries to wrap one's mind around them, the phrase "cognitive dissonance" comes to mind.
The first reaction, a visceral one, is: Whatever his motives for saying these things, he's right — and we didn't need Scott McClellan to tell us so.
But the second reaction is: Wait a minute... I do remember at least some reporters, and some news organizations, asking tough questions — asking them of the president, of those in his administration, of White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and — oh yes — of Scott McClellan himself, once he took over for Mr. Fleischer a few months after the invasion.
So how do we reconcile these competing reactions? Well, we need to pull back for what we in television call the wide shot.
If we look at the wide shot, we can see, in one corner of our screen, the White House briefing room filled with the White House press corps... and, filling the rest of the screen, the finite but disproportionately powerful universe that has become known as "mainstream media" — the newspapers and news programs, real and alleged, that employ these White House correspondents — the news organizations that are, in turn, owned by a shockingly few, much larger corporations, for which news is but a miniscule part of their overall business interests.
In the wake of 9/11 and in the run-up to Iraq, these news organizations made a decision — consciously or unconsciously, but unquestionably in a climate of fear — to accept the overall narrative frame given them by the White House, a narrative that went like this: Saddam Hussein, brutal dictator, harbored weapons of mass destruction and, because of his supposed links to al Qaeda, this could not be tolerated in a post-9/11 world.
In the news and on the news, one could, to be sure, find persons and views that did not agree with all or parts of this official narrative. Hans Blix, the former U.N. chief weapons inspector, comes to mind as an example. But the burden of proof, implicitly or explicitly, was put on these dissenting views and persons... the burden of proof was not put on an administration that was demonstrably moving towards a large-scale military action that would represent a break with American precedent and stated policy of how, when, and under what circumstances this nation goes to war.
So with this in mind, we look back to the corner of our screen where the White House Press Corps is asking their questions. I have been a White House correspondent myself, and I have worked with some of the best in the business. You have an incentive, when you are in that briefing room, to ask the good, tough questions: If nothing else, that is how you get in the paper, or on the air. There is more to it than that, and things have changed since I was a White House correspondent — something I want to talk about in a minute. But the correspondents — the really good ones — these correspondents ask their tough questions.
And these questions are met with what is now called, euphemistically and much too kindly, what is now called "message discipline."
Well, we used to have a better and more accurate term for "message discipline." We called it "stonewalling."
Now, cut back to your evening news, or your daily newspaper... where that White House Correspondent dutifully repeats the question he asked of the president or his press secretary, and dutifully relates the answer he was given — the same non-answer we've already heard dozens of times, which amounts to a pitch for the administration's point of view, whether or NOT the answer had anything to do with the actual question that was asked.
And then: "Thank you Jack. In other news today... ."
And we're off on a whole new story.
In our news media, in our press, those who wield power were, in the lead-up to Iraq, given the opportunity to present their views as a coherent whole, to connect the dots, as they saw the dots and the connections... no matter how much these views may have flown in the face of precedent, established practice — or, indeed, the facts (as we are reminded, yet again, by the just-released Senate report on the administration's use of pre-war intelligence). The powerful are given this opportunity still, in ways big and small, despite what you may hear about the "post-Katrina" press.
But when a tough question is asked and not answered, when reputable people come before the public and say, "wait a minute, something's not right here," the press has treated them like voices crying in the wilderness. These views, though they might be given air time, become lone dots — dots that journalists don't dare connect, even if the connections are obvious, even if people on the Internet and in the independent press are making these very same connections. The mainstream press doesn't connect these dots because someone might then accuse them of editorializing, or of being the, quote, "liberal media."
But connecting these dots — making disparate facts make sense — is a big part of the real work of journalism.
So how does this happen? Why does this happen?
Let me say, by way of answering, that quality news of integrity starts with an owner who has guts.
In a news organization with an owner who has guts, there is an incentive to ask the tough questions, and there is an incentive to pull together the facts — to connect the dots — in a way that makes coherent sense to the news audience.
I mentioned a moment ago that things have changed since I was a White House correspondent. Yes, presidential administrations have become more adept at holding "access" over the heads of reporters — ask too tough a question, or too many of them, so the implicit threat goes, and you're not going to get any more interviews with high-ranking members of the administration, let alone the president. But I was covering Presidents Johnson and Nixon — men not exactly known as pushovers. No, what has changed, even more than the nature of the presidency, is the character of news ownership. I only found out years after the fact, for example, about the pressure that the Nixon White House put on my then-bosses, during Watergate — pressure to cut down my pieces, to call me off the story, and so on... because, back then, my bosses took the heat, so I didn't have to. They did this so the story could get told, and so the public could be informed.
But it is rare, now, to find a major news organization owned by an individual, someone who can say, in effect, "The buck stops here." The more likely motto now is: "The news stops... with making bucks."
America's biggest, most important news organizations have, over the past 25 years, fallen prey to merger after merger, acquisition after acquisition... to the point where they are, now, tiny parts of immeasurably larger corporate entities — entities whose primary business often has nothing to do with news. Entities that may, at any given time, have literally hundreds of regulatory issues before multiple arms of the government concerning a vast array of business interests.
These are entities that, as publicly-held and traded corporations, have as their overall, reigning mandate: Provide a return on shareholder value. Increase profits. And not over time, not over the long haul, but quarterly.
One might ask just where the news fits into this model. And if you really need an answer, you can turn on your television, where you will see the following:
Political analysis reduced to in-studio shouting matches between partisans armed with little more than the day's talking points.
Precious time and resources wasted on so-called human-interest stories, celebrity fluff, sensationalist trials, and gossip.
A proliferation of "news you can use" that amounts to thinly-disguised press releases for the latest consumer products.
And, though this doesn't get said enough, local news, which is where most Americans get their news, that seems not to change no matter what town or what city you're in... so slavish is its adherence to the "happy talk" formula and the dictum that, "If it bleeds, it leads."
I could continue for hours, cataloging journalistic sins of which I know you are all too aware. But, as the time grows late, let me say that almost all of these failings come down to this: In the current model of corporate news ownership, the incentive to produce good and valuable news is simply not there.
Good news, quality news of integrity, requires resources and it requires talent. These things are expensive, these things eat away at the bottom line.
Years ago, in the eighties and the nineties, when the implications of these cost-trimming measures were becoming impossible to ignore, and the quality of the news was clearly threatened, I spoke out against this cutting of news operations to the bone and beyond. Even then, though, I couldn't have imagined that the cost-cutting imperatives would go as far as they have today — deep into the marrow of what was once considered a public trust.
But since the financial resources always seem to be available for entertainment, promotion, and — last but not least — for lobbying... perhaps there is an even more important reason why the incentive to produce quality news is absent, and that is: quality news of integrity, by its very nature, is sure to rock the boat now and then. Good, responsible news worthy of its Constitutional protections will, in that famous phrase, afflict the powerful and comfort the afflicted.
And that, when one feels the need to deliver shareholder value above all, means that good news... may not always mean good business — or so goes the fear, a fear that filters down into just about every big newsroom in this country.
Now, I have spent my entire life in for-profit news, and I happen to think that it does not have to be this way. I have worked for news owners who, while they may have regarded their news divisions as an occasional irritant, chose to turn that irritant into a pearl of public trust. But today, sadly, it seems that the conglomerates that have control over some of the biggest pieces of this public trust would just as soon spit that irritant out.
So what does this mean for us tonight, and what is to be done?
It means that we need to be on the alert for where, when, and how our news media bows to undue government influence. And you need to let news organizations know, in no uncertain terms, that you won't stand for it... that you, as news consumers, are capable of exerting pressure of your own.
It means that we need to continue to let our government know that, when it comes to media consolidation, enough is enough. Too few voices are dominating, homogenizing, and marginalizing the news. We need to demand that the American people get something in exchange for the use of airwaves that belong, after all, to the people.
It means that we need to ensure that the Internet, where free speech reigns and where journalism does not have to pass through a corporate filter... remains free.
We need to say, loud and clear, that we don't want big corporations enjoying preferred access to — or government acting as the gatekeeper for — this unique platform for independent journalism.
And it means that we need to hold the government to its mandate to protect the freedom of the press, including independent and non-commercial news media.
The stakes could not possibly be higher. Scott McClellan's book serves as a reminder, and the current election season, not to mention the gathering clouds of conflict with Iran, will both serve as tests of whether lessons have truly been learned from past experience. Ensuring that a free press remains free will require vigilance, and it will require work.
Please, take tonight's energy and inspiration home with you. Take it back to your desks and your workplaces, to your colleagues and your fellow citizens. magnify it, multiply it, and spread it. Make it viral. Make it something that cannot be ignored — not by the powers in Washington, not by the owners and executives of media companies. Write these people. Call them. Send them the message that you know your rights, you know that you are entitled to news media as diverse and varied as the American people... and that you deserve a press that provides the raw material of democracy, the good information that Americans need to be full participants in our government of, by, and for the people.
There is energy here, that can be equal to that task, but this energy must be maintained... if the press — if democracy — is to be preserved.
Thank you very much, and good night.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
The World - Royal Care for Some of India’s Patients, Neglect for Others - NYTimes.com
The World - Royal Care for Some of India’s Patients, Neglect for Others - NYTimes.com
Royal Care for Some of India’s Patients, Neglect for Others
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
WHAT MONEY BUYS Robin Steeles of Alabama was pampered during his 10 days at the private hospital in Bangalore, where he underwent heart surgery.
BANGALORE, India — “To get the best care,” Robin Steeles said gamely, “you gotta pay for it.”
Skip to next paragraph 
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
WHAT BEING POOR MEANS A government hospital in Banglaore that treated poisoning victims lacked equipment that might have saved lives.
Mr. Steeles, 60, a car dealer from Daphne, Ala., had flown halfway around the world last month to save his heart, at a price he could pay. He had a mitral valve repaired at a state-of-the-art private hospital here, called Wockhardt, and for 10 days, he was recuperating in a carpeted, wood-paneled room, with a view of a leafy green courtyard.
A dietician helped select his meals. A dermatologist came as soon as he complained of an itch. His Royal Suite had cable TV, a computer, a minirefrigerator, where an attendant that afternoon stashed some ice cream, for when he felt hungry later. Three days after surgery, he was sitting in a chair, smiling, chattering, thrilled to be alive.
On his bed lay the morning’s paper. Dominating its front page was the story of other men, many of them day laborers who laid bricks and mixed cement for Bangalore’s construction boom, who had fallen gravely ill after drinking illegally brewed liquor. All told, more than 150 died that week, here and in neighboring Tamil Nadu State.
Not for them the care of India’s best private hospitals. They had been wheeled in by wives and brothers to the overstretched government-run Bowring Hospital, on the other side of town. Bowring had no intensive care unit, no ventilators, no dialysis machine. Dinner was a stack of white bread, on which a healthy cockroach crawled while a patient, named Yelappa, slept.
Wockhardt has 30 ventilators, including some that are noninvasive, so the patient does not have to have a tube rammed down his throat. At any one time, a half-dozen are in use. An elderly woman had been in its intensive care unit for a week, on dialysis; her family wanted to do whatever possible to keep her alive, no matter the cost.
At Bowring, one of the young doctors, named Harish, said a ventilator and a dialysis machine would have allowed him to keep half of his patients alive. The most severe case, Mohammed Amin, was breathing with the aid of a hand pump that his wife squeezed silently. Dr. Harish sent the relative of one man to get blood tests done at the nearest private hospital; there was no equipment to do the test here. Then the doctor rushed to the triage section in Bowring’s lobby, where the newest patient, writhing, resisting, disoriented from the poison in his gut, had to be tied down with bedsheets.
Where you stand on the Indian social ladder shapes to a large degree what kind of health you’re in, and what kind of health care you receive. The beds in Bowring were taken up by small skinny men. One of Wockhardt’s most popular offerings is a weight loss program, and the majority of walk-ins at its outpatient clinic suffer from diabetes, closely linked to obesity.
This is no anomaly. A government-sponsored National Family Health Survey released last fall says a woman born in the poorest 20 percent of the population is more than twice as likely to be underweight than one in the richest quintile, and 50 percent more likely to be anemic.
For children, the gap is equally stark. The poorest quintile is more than twice as likely to be stunted, a function of chronic malnutrition, and nearly three times less likely to be fully immunized.
It is not as if the poor do not seek treatment, Jishnu Das, an economist who studies health and poverty for the World Bank, points out. They do, and sometimes more often than the rich. It is just that they are more likely, Mr. Das says, to land at the doorstep of a caregiver who is incompetent, ill-trained or indifferent to their needs.
“The poor are not dying and sick because they do not go to seek medical care,” he said. “In fact, the poor are going to doctors in droves. There are no good options for the poor. The private hospitals and care they are able to access is of very low quality, and when they try and access government care, they receive no attention whatsoever.”
The survey found that two-thirds of Indian households rely on private medical care when sick, a preference that cuts across class. Asked why they don’t use public facilities, the most common answer was poor care.
India has a countrywide network of government-funded primary health centers and hospitals, but staffing, medicines and resources vary widely. Some, especially in rural India, are notorious for having staff doctors on paper at best. This is only beginning to change. The government has increased health spending in recent years, and this year began a health insurance program that would allow people in poverty access to a hospital of their choice.
The Planning Commission of India this year found that in government-run health centers, 45 percent of gynecologist posts and 53 percent of pediatric posts went unfilled, and that salaries for government doctors are a fraction of those at new private hospitals like Wockhardt.
Wockhardt struggles to fill its slots, too, but its facilities allow it to aggressively recruit, including from among Indian doctors who have worked abroad for years.
The morning papers did not let Mr. Steeles forget the vast gulf between his predicament and that of the hooch drinkers fighting for life at Bowring. Yet as far apart as they were, their tales followed a somewhat parallel plot. The American health care system could no more care for Mr. Steeles than the Indian system could for Mr. Amin.
Mr. Steeles came here because he is uninsured, and could not afford heart surgery in the United States, he said, without liquidating most of his assets. After five months of research and e-mail messages to doctors worldwide, he chose a heart surgeon here in Bangalore. “I’m over here for a fraction of what I would have paid in the United States,” he said. “In my personal situation, I’m just delighted I took the road that I did.”
Mr. Steele’s Royal Suite, incidentally, is available to anyone, Indian or foreigner, who can pay for it. After his stay here, he would move to a room at a private club for 16 days of further recovery, before flying home. All told, he said it cost him about $20,000, a tenth of what he would have paid at a private American hospital.
Across town, among the hooch drinkers, a few of the worst cases had been transferred to private hospitals that had agreed to take them, at the government’s expense.
Mr. Amin was too frail to be transferred. He died at Bowring, leaving behind a wife and two young children.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The real radicalism of NREGA - Mihir Shah
The real radicalism of NREGA Mihir Shah
The brutal murder of young Jharkhand activist Lalit Mehta exposes the violent opposition of vested interests deeply threatened by the radical provisions of NREGA.
Lalit Kumar Mehta, full-time activist of Vikas Sahyog Kendra (VSK), was brutally murdered on the 14th of May 2008, on his way home through the Kandra forest. He was 36. Lalit leaves behind his 28-year-old Adivasi wife and their two babies, aged one and three.
The VSK is an Adivasi-led organisation whose activists have worked over the last 15 years in the Palamu district of Jharkhand for secure rights over natural resources and sustainable livelihoods. Palamu typifies the most backward Adivasi hinterlands of India, whose incredible wealth of natural resources is matched only by the deep distress of its people. Drought, poverty and hunger stalk a land where they can easily be overcome. This requires a people-centred, nature-nourishing approach to development, fine-tuned to the needs of each location. For the VSK, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) holds out precisely such a promise.
Young VSK activists like Lalit have been working hard to make NREGA realise its potential. At the time of his murder, Lalit was busy organising social audits of NREGA works. He was murdered just the day before a major audit was scheduled to take place. A CBI enquiry into the death, bringing his assailants to justice and compensation for Lalit's family are the least the government must do to compensate for this incalculable loss. Meanwhile, it would be instructive to try and understand why NREGA work can turn out to be so fraught with danger. The answer lies in the real radicalism of NREGA.
Mainstream discussions on the employment guarantee have been largely dismissive, left, right and centre. The political right views it as yet another meaningless palliative, a relief programme wasting its time on agriculture and rural development, while unnecessarily burdening the fiscal deficit. For it, the answer lies in getting people out of rural areas by focussing on urbanisation and industrialisation. Completely forgetting that these remedies have failed, despite having been tried for over 50 years now. Others, who occupy the centre of the debate, consider it important to address rural distress, especially in view of growing farmers' suicides but suggest that the much more effective way would be direct cash transfers. They argue that the NREGA needlessly complicates mechanisms of delivery. How much simpler it would be to just hand out doles.
As Lalit's tragic death has shown, these observers completely miss the wood for the trees, ignoring the much larger challenge NREGA poses to governance structures in India's hinterlands. For it is a programme based on a constitutional right to demand work, not dependent on the whimsical largesse of the state. At the extreme left of the political spectrum, there are those who suggest that the NREGA is one big conspiracy, a pain-killer so to speak, that seeks only to legitimise the dominant market-based policies of our time. What they fail to see is that the struggle to deepen democracy at the grass-roots must always imaginatively take advantage of spaces opened up by the state, whatever may or may not have been the compulsions or motivation for them to be created in the first place.
Lalit and his work, now much more eloquently before us, help shake off each of these anti-NREGA misconceptions. By revealing the heinous opposition of threatened vested interests, his ultimate sacrifice teaches us a great deal about the massive transformatory potential inherent in the Act. For NREGA programmes visualise a decisive break with the past. Ever since independence, rural development has largely been the monopoly of local contractors, who have emerged as major agents of exploitation of the rural poor, especially women. Almost every aspect of these programmes, including the schedule of rates that is used to measure and value work done, has been tailor-made for local contractors. These people invariably tend to be local power brokers. They implement programmes in a top-down manner, run roughshod over basic human rights, pay workers a pittance and use labour-displacing machinery.
NREGA is poised to change all that. It places a ban on contractors and their machines. It mandates payment of statutory minimum wages and provides various legal entitlements to workers. It visualises the involvement of local people in every decision — whether it be the selection of works and work-sites, the implementation of projects or their social audit. All of this is obviously incompatible with programmes where the main goal was, in effect, the maximisation of profits of the contractor. But even after the enactment of NREGA, things have been slow to change at the grass-roots. Displaying remarkable ingenuity, the old order is already finding ways to sidestep the radical provisions of the Act. Contractors deploy machines with impunity, even as forged muster rolls are filled up with fictitious names and thumb-marks of workers, to show as if the work was done by labour. This is especially the case in States like Jharkhand, which still do not have elected Gram Panchayats.
It is in this context that activists like Lalit become a major threat for local vested interests, all part of the long chain of recipients of sleaze-money siphoned out of NREGA. Jean Dreze, one of the architects of NREGA, who was with him just hours before he died, says that Lalit's work "revealed high levels of corruption involving people in high places." It is evident that these people were sufficiently threatened to feel compelled to silence Lalit's voice. Even as we struggle to come to terms with the immediate loss of a young life full of adventure and exciting possibilities, this is also a moment of deep reflection for all those who continue to believe in the huge change NREGA can bring to rural India.
The question Lalit's death should pose to us is: have we done enough to make it possible for NREGA to realise its enormous potential? Or will the forces of change represented by people like Lalit continue to hopelessly battle the powers-that-be who want business-as-usual in India's rural hinterlands, especially our Adivasi forest areas?
The problem NREGA faces can be stated in very simple terms. Its ostensible purpose is to overthrow the old contractor-raj but it has done little to offer an adequate replacement. Gram Panchayats have been designated the chief implementing agency but they have not been provided with the support structure required to execute the programme. A new bottom-up, people-centred approach to planning of works and social audit is spoken of but the social mobilisers and technical personnel required to make this a reality have not been supplied. The biggest employment programme ever undertaken in human history faces a huge crunch of quality human resources. This calls for a massive national campaign for capacity building of grass-roots workers. The Schedules of Rates remain the same that the contractor-raj used. They underpay labour, especially in earthen watershed works, making a mockery of statutory minimum wages, a legal entitlement under NREGA. They discriminate against women by underpaying or not even recognising specific work done by them.
Development initiativeThe sooner the government realises the anachronism of "new wine in old bottles" that the NREGA has become, the better. This is not an old-style famine relief kind of welfare programme. This is a development initiative, chipping in with crucial public investments for creation of durable assets, which can provide the much-needed impetus to private investment in the most backward regions of India. The thrust is on construction of earthen dams, bunds and ponds as part of a watershed development strategy. On this foundation of water security, can be built a sustainable village development plan that includes a rejuvenated agriculture and allied rural livelihoods. For such a programme to be successful needs a new professional support structure. This structure must be mainstreamed within the government system.
Wherever possible, it can also be provided by civil society. Lalit Mehta's organisation Vikas Sahyog Kendra is part of a National Consortium of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) initiated in 2007. These CSOs, working across 34 districts in 8 States of India, have committed themselves to supporting gram panchayats (GPs) to implement NREGA. They have been formally invited by GPs to help them plan, implement and social audit NREGA work. Consortium partners have worked to create awareness among people about the Act and its provisions, built a dialogue with GP leadership, filled lacunae in the planning process and ensured greater participation of rural people in the functioning of the employment guarantee. Of course, in Jharkhand the absence of GPs is itself the real weakness. But a clear mandate from the government supporting CSOs working on NREGA would provide the much-needed protection to thousands of unsung activists like Lalit Mehta, who in their undiminished optimism about India's future, continue to risk their lives to make initiatives like NREGA a success.
(The writer is co-founder, National Consortium of Civil Society Organisations supporting Gram Panchayats in planning, implementation and social audit of NREGA works.)
The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : Set Binayak free
The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : Set Binayak free
Set Binayak free
Set Binayak free
It’s been a whole year since Binayak Sen was arrested on charges of conspiracy to wage war against the Indian state and commit other crimes. The general secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties is being held under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Chhhatisgarh Special Public Security Act, which make the grant of bail extremely difficult. The principal case stems from a ‘confession’ made by a Kolkata-based businessman named Piyush Guha relating to three unsigned letters, purportedly written by the jailed Maoist leader Narayan Sanyal, recovered from his possession; the letters were allegedly handed over to Mr. Guha by Dr. Sen. This, the police say, is evidence of Dr. Sen’s deep involvement with the Maoists. Mr. Sanyal has been in jail in Raipur since 2006. Dr. Sen visited him 33 times as general secretary of the PUCL and in his capacity as a physician since the 70-year-old Maoist leader had a medical condition requiring surgery. The police accuse Dr. Sen of being a courier for Mr. Sanyal. Dr. Sen’s lawyers strenuously contest this allegation and it is surely relevant that Mr. Guha told a magistrate at the first opportunity that he made no confession and was made to sign blank papers under duress.
The case throws up a number of disturbing issues. First, given Dr. Sen’s impeccable record of working for and defending the health and human rights of the poor, especially adivasis, and the nature of the evidence tying him to a banned organisation, the authorities certainly abused their powers under a draconian law to object to the grant of bail.There was neither risk of flight nor any question of Dr. Sen using his freedom to interfere with the investigation. Secondly, while the Bharatiya Janata Party government of Chhattisgarh might have its reasons for wanting Dr. Sen behind bars, the reluctance of the judiciary, including the Supreme Court — the principal institutional guarantor of citizens’ fundamental rights — to grant bail in this case has been disappointing. Thirdly, the arrest under the PSA of another PUCL activist in Chhattisgarh, the filmmaker Ajay T.G., suggests that the local authorities are gunning for those opposed to Salwa Judum, the brutal counter-insurgency campaign run by the authorities. The manifest injustice in Dr. Sen’s case has triggered an international campaign demanding his release and also that he be allowed to travel to Washington to receive the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights on May 29. The Chhattisgarh authorities should abandon their shameful vendetta and the central government should do whatever is in its power to ensure that Dr. Sen and Ajay T.G. are set free immediately.
The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles - by P. Sainath: Of loan waivers and tax waivers
The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Of loan waivers and tax waivers
Of loan waivers and tax waivers P. Sainath
Of loan waivers and tax waivers P. Sainath
| An overwhelming majority of Vidharbha’s farmers do not gain from the farm loan waiver because they are too “big.” But the IPL waiver goes to some of India’s richest millionaires and billionaires. They aren’t too big. |
In Maharashtra, where the nation’s most distressed farmers have been denied the benefit of the ‘farm loan waiver,’ the government is said to waive crores in entertainment tax that the Indian Premier League cricket matches would normally attract. Media reports in Mumbai on this score reckon that means a loss of up to Rs.10 crore in revenue. As even the pro-corporate newspapers of the city point out, the direct beneficiaries would be Mumbai’s millionaires and billionaires. Film stars and corporate bosses who did not find it difficult to spend crores on buying teams and players. That too, for what the media are fond of calling “the world’s richest cricket tournament.” Simply put, if it goes through, they’ll be getting tax waivers on the hiring of cheerleaders, among other things.
True, this is not the first time that entertainment tax has been waived on cricket matches in Mumbai or elsewhere. The BCCI and its affiliates have always enjoyed political patronage. The difference, which has got even members of the ruling front worked up, is that those raking in the crores in exemptions are for-profit-only groups and individuals. By law, any event, musical or cultural, performance or other, staged for profit must pay entertainment tax. But not the IPL, which will have held 10 matches in Mumbai including the Final.
It’s an odd situation. The overwhelming majority of Vidharbha’s farmers do not gain from the farm loan waiver — because they are too “big.” That is, they hold more than two hectares of land. But the IPL waiver goes to some of India’s richest millionaires and billionaires. They aren’t too big. And the only reason Vidharbha’s farmers have holdings that exceed the loan waiver’s two-hectare cut-off is because they are dry-land farmers. Their fields are poor, un-irrigated and less productive.
The IPL waiver reports come within three weeks of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report on “Farmer’s Packages” in the State. A performance audit the government of Maharashtra chose to present to the Assembly on April 27, the last day of the session. A day on which, as MLAs say, “there isn’t enough time to count the pages, let alone read the many documents they push at that time.” Clearly, they were not eager on a discussion of the contents.
The very first page of the CAG report tells us why. Despite the State government’s Rs.1075-crore “package” for farmers “the suicides, however, continued unabated and the number increased to 1414 during 2006-07.” The Prime Minister’s visit in mid-2006 and the Centre’s Rs.3750-crore package that followed in July also came the year the suicides increased. As we know from earlier reports, including some in this newspaper, they actually went up in the second half of that year.
Erratic spendingHere is the CAG on the official response: “No evaluation of the implementation of the packages, in terms of reduction in agrarian distress, was made.” We also learn that tens of crores of rupees aimed at reducing farmer distress were, in fact, never spent. The value of the packages themselves was exaggerated by over Rs.200 crore. Crores were released under some heads with no reference at all to the actual requirement of funds.
Other funds, such as those meant “for increase in production,” were released late. Cheques given to some ‘beneficiaries’ “were dishonoured for want of cash in the bank.” The “self-help groups were paid subsidies in excess of admissible norms.” Parts of other funds were not released at all. In head after head, funds were underutilised. This is how lackadaisical the governments were with packages worth a total of Rs.4,825 crore. So what’s Rs.10 crore for the IPL?
But the CAG report, which is devastating from start to finish, does not stop at that. It has a clear premonition of things to come. On the “interest waiver” that followed the Prime Minister’s visit, it says: “While reimbursing banks for interest waived on loans, sanction of fresh loans was not ensured.”
That is exactly where most farmers now find themselves again after the “massive farm loan waiver.” Fresh credit is very hard to come by. Distress has not come down. There have been over 360 farm suicides since January this year, about 200 of them post-loan waiver. In the official count, there were 153 in January and February. And of these, only 18 were considered “eligible suicides.” That is, only 18 families had any hope of being compensated for losing a breadwinner. The figures for March and April will turn out to be much worse.
There was a hope, after Rahul Gandhi’s plea in Parliament, that the two-hectare cut-off point would not be imposed on dry-land farmers in places such as Vidharbha and Anantapur. But it was. The very places whose misery had sparked the idea of a loan waiver now stand mostly excluded from it.
There is a very important point the CAG report brings out that tends to get glossed over most of the time. That the farmer’s world is not driven by agriculture alone. Farmers, whose incomes have been plummeting, have been hammered by education and health costs. The commercialisation of those sectors has hurt them, as it has countless millions of other Indians, very badly. That is on top of the stick they’ve taken in agriculture.
“Distress amongst farmers on account of cost of education was not measured.” The “allocation of funds (Rs.3 crore at Rs.50 lakh per district) for health was meagre ...” It mentions the government’s own survey showing that the health issues were huge and required much larger action.
One of the most important things the CAG points to is the State government evading its own findings. In mid-2006, the government organised what was the biggest door-to-door survey of farm households ever done. It covered over 17 lakh households, that is, all farming households in the six “crisis districts” of Washim, Akola, Yavatmal, Buldhana, Wardha and Amravati. Over a fourth of those families — that is, more than two million people — were found to be in “maximum distress.” And more than three quarters of the rest were in what the report called medium distress.
In other words, close to seven million people were in distress in just six districts. That was the finding of the most massive study, powered by over 10,000 field workers. And a report of the State government itself, at that. (See: The Hindu, November 22, 2006)
Yet, says the CAG, “the selection of beneficiaries … had no relation to the departmental survey conducted for the assessment of distress. As a result, the prioritisation of relief and rehabilitation works considering the distress level of farmers could not be ensured.” Why did the State government ignore its own study? Because the results of that huge survey are, to this day, explosive. Also, de-linking the distress survey from the packages meant you could reward your friends who might never have been in crisis.
Catalogue of failureOne line recurs in different ways through the CAG report: “Authenticity of reported expenditure was doubtful in the absence of proper classification of accounts.” Throughout, the report is a catalogue of failure too serious to be written off as “error.” On inputs, which farmers were desperate to get at reasonable prices, there was poor assistance. Farmers were hit hard by a poor supply of seed when they needed it most. Seed requirements for several crops, suggests the CAG, were simply not taken seriously. “The estimates were not realistic as these were made based on the amount allocated to this component and not based on actual requirement.”
The CAG report captures at the top end, the state of things on the ground. Being a performance audit, it confines itself to that task. It is not a field report. However, the portrait it presents of the government’s performance is a sharply accurate one. A picture that sits perfectly with the chaos at the receiving end below.
In the end, this is more than just a report. It is a snapshot, or a series of snapshots, of how governments, particularly the one in Maharashtra, are responding to agrarian distress. The complete apathy, the corruption, the cover-ups, even the contempt for the farmer, that come across. This is a State where all the attention is on the brilliantly-lit, power-guzzling matches of the IPL. It is also a State where many regions face power cuts ranging from 3-16 hours each day. And countless children have completed their examinations without being able to study much. The huge power cuts meant darkness in their homes when they returned from school.
The report is about the packages in this State. But if we extend our thinking a bit, it should lead us to reflect on things much larger. On the crisis in the countryside, on those being marginalised or just driven away. On regions beyond this one and on our attitude towards those who grow our food but can less and less afford to eat it themselves.
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About Me
- Sandip K. Dasverma
- Arise Awake Stop not till the goal is reached. - Swami Vivekananda Swami ji is my inspiration, not as a monk but as a social reformer and for his universal-ism.