From chandni_parekh at yahoo.com Wed Jun 1 10:06:02 2011 From: chandni_parekh at yahoo.com (Chandni Parekh) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 21:36:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Film Screenings in June Message-ID: <993440.27932.qm@web161405.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Hi all, Vikalp at Prithvi showed 'Charandas Chor' in collaboration with Children's Film Society, India to an almost packed auditorium on Monday. A lot of people told us they loved the film. Some posts on our Facebook Event page: "superb beautiful simple and yet so deep, what fun ! Thank you !" and "Attended yesterday at Prithvi. A simple masterpiece by a Master Shyam Benegal!!!!!!!!!" If you'd like to buy a copy of the film (DVD for Rs 150), visit http://cfsindia.org/marketing2.htm And now for some information on films that will be screened in India in the month of June: 'Apour ti Yapour. Na Jang na Aman. Yeti chu Talukpeth.' ('Between Border and the Fence. On Edge of a Map.') by Ajay Raina, June 1 and 8, 10:30 pm, Doordarshan News Channel http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/docuwallahs2/message/9707 'Muriel, or the Time of a Return' by Alain Resnais (French), June 1, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/3533 'Buntat na L.' ('L's Revolt') by Kiran Kolarov (Bulgarian), June 1, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/buntat-na-l.php 'Fresh Water Man' by Antonio Albanese (Italian), June 1 and 4, Delhi http://bit.ly/lr087L The Biodiversity Film Festival, June 1-4, Delhi http://cmsindia.org/biodiversity.php Short Films presented by Bombay Elektrik Projekt, June 2, Bombay http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=191550960892830 'Cinema City' - 7 Films curated by Madhusree Dutta, June 3, Chennai http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/docuwallahs2/message/9720 Short Films presented by Shamiana, June 3, Ahmedabad http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=147744261965266 'Laya Project' presented by The Root Reel, June 4, Bombay http://on.fb.me/iOl2Qr 'I Am' by Sonali Gulati, June 4, Chennai http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/docuwallahs2/message/9716 Films on Environment at EcoFestival 2011, June 5, Delhi http://krititeam.blogspot.com/2011/05/ecofestival-2011-program-schedule.html Films on Environment at the WED '11 Festival, June 5, Delhi http://wed11.eventbrite.com/ 'Still Life' by Jia Zhang Ke (Mandarin), June 7, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/still-life.php 'La Fille du RER' ('The Girl on the Train') by André Téchiné, June 8, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/3535 'That's Life' by Aldo and others (Italian), June 8 and 11, Delhi http://bit.ly/lr087L 'Winter Light' by Ingmar Bergman (Swedish), June 9, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/winter-light.php 'A Bout de Souffle' ('Breathless') by Jean Luc Godard (French), June 10, Delhi http://delhi.afindia.org/node/3655 'Cours du Soir' ('Evening Classes') and 'Parade' by Jacques Tati (French), June 15, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/3537 'Nanook of the North: A Story Of Life and Love In the Actual Arctic' by Robert Flaherty, June 15, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/nanook-of-the-north.php 'If I Were You' by Giulio Manfredonia (Italian), June 15 and 18, Delhi http://bit.ly/lr087L Vikalp at Alliance presents 'Partners in Crime' by Paromita Vohra, June 16, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/3539 Short Films presented by Friends of Cinema, June 16, Bombay http://www.ncpamumbai.com/event/kalpana-june-2011 'Les Diaboliques' ('Diabolique') by Henri Georges Clouzot (French), June 17, Delhi http://delhi.afindia.org/node/3657 'Les Meduses' ('Jellyfish') by Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret (French), June 21, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/3545 'L'Enfant Prodige' ('Child Prodigy') by Luc Dionne (French), June 22, Bombay http://www.ncpamumbai.com/event/child-prodigy 'French Cancan' ('Only the French Can') by Jean Renoir (French), June 24, Delhi http://delhi.afindia.org/node/3659 Short Films presented by Shamiana, June 25, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films.php Vikalp at Prithvi Screening of 'Arna's Children' by Juliano Mer Khamis, Monday, June 27, 7 pm, Prithvi House, Juhu, Bombay http://www.arna.info/Arna/movie.php 'Humain, Trop Humain' ('Human, Too Human') by Louis Malle (French), June 27, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/human-too-human.php 'An Inconvenient Truth' by Davis Guggenheim, June 28, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/inconvenient-truth.php French Film Festival, June 28-29, Delhi http://delhi.afindia.org/node/3666 Short Films presented by Shamiana, June 30, Pune http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19747943933 - Chandni From rohitrellan at aol.in Wed Jun 1 16:51:39 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:21:39 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Biodiversity Film Festival ,June 1-4,2011,New Delhi Message-ID: <8CDEE6536497050-6BC-36521@angweb-usd022.sysops.aol.com> Biodiversity Film Festival The Biodiversity Film Festival showcases best of films on biodiversity in India. It is being organized by MoEF and CMS Environment as part of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Global World Environment Day (WED) 2011. India is the global host country of WED 2011. Highlights June 1(9:30am - 11:30am) & (11:30am - 02:00pm): Screening for children, National Science Centre June 1(5:00pm - 7:00pm): Screening at ITBP Camp, Tigri June 2(5:30pm - 7:30pm): Inaugural ceremony at PVR Plaza June 3(3:00pm - 5:00pm): Screening at Tihar jail complex June 4(4:00pm - 6:00pm): Screening at Air Force Auditorium, Subroto Park Premier: Project Tiger - Ensuring Survival (June 02, PVR Plaza) Directed by Naresh Bedi the film looks at the prestigious Project Tiger which was launched in l973 to protect tigers from extinction. Filmed over several years across India the film for the first time covers splendid aerials of diverse tiger habitat and has rare and lively footage of tiger behavior. The key issues of village relocation, poaching, tourism, man & animal conflict and Government’s initiatives are intertwined with lively interviews of experts and locals. The film highlights the real challenges which Tiger conservation faces today and promises that India remains the tiger’s best chance for survival. Biodiversity Film Festival Media Kit (Downloads) Poster:http://cmsindia.org/bioposter.pdf Film Schedule:http://cmsindia.org/film_scheduler.pdf Pamphlet:http://cmsindia.org/pamphlet_bio.pdf Invite for June 1:http://cmsindia.org/invite1.pdf Invite for June 2: http://cmsindia.org/invite2.pdf For festival details, contact: Vishwajeet Ghoshal P: 0 98999 79159 E: vishwajeet at cmsindia.org For media queries, contact: Narender Yadav P: 0 98999 79160 E: narender at cmsindia.org. = From aswathypsenan at gmail.com Thu Jun 2 09:29:59 2011 From: aswathypsenan at gmail.com (Aswathy Senan) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2011 09:29:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Please Mend the Gap: Sign the Petition Message-ID: We, Please Mend the Gap, is absolutely thrilled to announce that we've finalised our petition to the DMRC. Take a few minutes to go through our list of demands, and if, like us, you support a safer, women-friendly Delhi Metro, please add your signature to the list. We'd like to get at least five thousand signatures. That's right, 5000! http://www.petitiononline.com/MendNow/petition.html Thanks Aswathy Senan From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Thu Jun 2 22:40:35 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2011 22:40:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Book Review: Studies in Economic Change Message-ID: http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/stories/20110617281207400.htm ______________________________________ Book Review: "Capitalism, Colonialism and Globalization: Studies in Economic Change" Shireen Moosvi (ed) Tulika'2011 Points to ponder C.T. KURIEN A critical discourse on the interconnectedness of capitalism, colonialism and globalisation with a well-defined focus. WHEN ‘globalisation' became a talking point a few decades ago, there was a lot of discussion and debate as to what it was. The difference of opinion was mainly between those who maintained that it was primarily a technological phenomenon and those who held that it was essentially caused by economic factors. By and large the latter position is now widely accepted. Most people have also come to accept that it is the latest manifestation of capitalism reflecting its innate propensity to go beyond national boundaries. Even for those who are fairly familiar with colonialism, though, the link between it and capitalism, on the one hand, and between it and globalisation, on the other, appears to be rather vague. A popular point of view is that colonialism is an old and globalisation the latest version of capitalism. Those who do not see this connection frequently maintain that the colonial era is over and that the present is the age of globalisation. Yet another position is that colonialism was a crude version of capitalism associated with political domination, but globalisation is quite refined and totally devoid of any colonial element. What the volume under review attempts is to make a critical evaluation of the interconnectedness of capitalism, colonialism and globalisation. It is a discourse among academics, the papers brought together having been originally presented at a panel on economic change organised by the Aligarh Historian Society in Delhi in May 2010. The papers in this volume are essentially exploratory in nature with a well-defined focus. The lead essay is by Irfan Habib on “Capitalism in History” and is a contribution towards the old and ongoing discussion (perhaps debate) on how capitalism emerged and what contributed to its early growth. A widely held view is that capitalism emerged because of the innate evolutionary proclivity of social systems. Those who hold this position may find Habib's categorical statement that “[t]he arrival of capitalism was not a natural, internal process. Subjugation of other economies was crucial to the formation of industrial capital within it” rather difficult to accept. But Habib is not making a glib statement; he has long historical research to support his position. He goes on to indicate that if the development of capitalism in a country depends on the flow of resources from other countries in its early stages, imperialism was and is a necessary element of capitalism after it has developed. That is how capitalism, colonialism and globalisation are interlinked, according to him. Utsa Patnaik supports the stand that external resources were an essential part of capitalist development. She contests the widely held view that industrial capitalism in England was based primarily, if not exclusively, on the agricultural revolution that had preceded it. Examining various estimates of agricultural output, especially of corn (wheat) in Britain and also of population during the period from the late 17th to the early 19th centuries, she shows that the per capita cereal output was declining. If so, it is not possible to maintain that a prosperous agriculture in the country was the basis of the Industrial Revolution. Putting forward this as a hypothesis that requires to be further explored, she suggests that the continuous transfer of wealth from the colonies was an essential part of the development of industrial capitalism in England. In a scathing review of the writings of many modern scholars, Indian as well as foreign, Surendra Rao shows that even those who condemn colonialism are comfortable with capitalism. One thing I found quite interesting in his paper is a quotation he gives from the Amrita Bazar Patrika in an issue way back in 1892: “It is not the scarcity of food, but inability to purchase food on account of poverty, which really constitutes what is called an Indian famine.” This was almost exactly a century before Amartya Sen made that the thesis of his celebrated work on famines. Raj Shekar Babu's paper on the conditions of low-caste workers in Tamil Nadu which questions the usual assumption that agrarian conditions were poor and that the lower castes did not have any economic standing during the colonial period and Sanjukta Das Gupta's account of colonial rule and tribal agriculture deserve attention. Amar Farooqui provides an informative and interesting account of how the opium cultivation and trade led to the growth of an Indian capitalist class and how the East India Company's opium trade with China provided considerable external resources for the growth of capitalism in England. Prabhat Patnaik expounds on how contemporary globalisation is different from all global outreaches of capitalism in the past. Contemporary globalisation has implied enormous increase in international trade, particularly the movement of manufactured goods and professional services from labour-intensive countries such as China and India to the Western world, especially the United States. As the workers in these richer countries compete with the workers of the Third World, their wages do not increase. At the same time, productivity in the labour-abundant countries is rising, but labour absorption is not increasing there so that globally there is an increase in the share of surplus in world output. Along with this, petty production is getting destroyed, especially in Third World countries, with producers getting progressively dispossessed and thus swelling the labour reserves. The net result is a general sluggishness of demand throughout the world. The global economic situation is made more complicated because the leading capitalist country in the world, the U.S., is not in a position to stimulate global demand without increasing its own indebtedness. Ironically, the U.S. can remain indebted thanks to the export surpluses that China is piling up, making industrial products available at relatively cheaper prices in the U.S. in return for American promises to pay later. This is the contemporary version of the older era when colonies were “markets on tap” for the imperial countries. Crisis of capitalism I shall defer discussion of two chapters that deal specifically with the impact of globalisation on India, and go on to the last one directly dealing with the main theme of the volume. It is the piece by Shireen Moosvi (who is also the editor of the volume) on crises under capitalism. The growth of capitalism has always been uneven. The latest crisis, the meltdown that started in 2008 and is still showing its impact in many parts of the advanced countries, has been the consequence of the concentration of capital in the hands of a few via the control they exercise on credit and the conversion of substantial extent of wealth into stocks. That involves the use of surplus for additional creation of wealth without increase in production and employment. The irony is that even poorer countries such as China come to hold part of this newly created paper (or even non-paper) wealth, at best in the form of the U.S. treasury's promise to pay. This situation cannot be avoided without rational social control over investment. Of the two papers that deal directly with India, the first is by Vamsi Vakulabharanam, who examines the nature of the widely recognised increase in income inequalities in the country after it opened its borders to large-scale flow of foreign private capital. The beneficiaries of this flow have been largely those engaged in information technology, biotechnology, finance, insurance, real estate, travel and tourism, and so forth finding expression in the bloating of the services sector. At the same time, the condition of workers at the lower end has been deteriorating. What Vakulabharanam has attempted to do is to provide a class analysis of this growing inequality. The methodology he uses for an empirical identification of classes and their relative performances will certainly attract the attention of researchers. Jayati Ghosh's paper, the longest in the collection, is a comprehensive analysis, supported by massive empirical material of what may be described as “the conditions of living of the people” since globalisation began to be a reality in India. On the one hand, people at all levels are being increasingly drawn into market transactions, but workers are systematically excluded from employment. She aptly designates this phenomenon as “exclusion through incorporation” and describes it thus: “The growing army of ‘self-employed' workers, who now account for more than half of our workforce, have been excluded from paid employment because of the sheer difficulty of finding jobs, but are nevertheless heavily involved in commercial activity and exposed to market uncertainties in the search for livelihood.” She then examines the long-term growth (from the early 1950s until 2008) in India, bringing out that the share of the primary sector fell sharply from around 60 per cent to just 16 per cent, that of the secondary sector increased from 13 to over 24 until the early 1990s and has remained the same since then, and that of the service sector went up from less than 30 to 60. Also, more than 60 per cent of the increment in the gross domestic product during the period from 1993-94 to 2004-05 was contributed by services. She deals with the crisis in the agrarian sector and shows that with respect to hunger India's performance has been abysmal, worse than that of all its Asian neighbours and only slightly better than Zimbabwe's, which is in the throes of hyperinflation and collapse of domestic food markets. _____________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From rohitrellan at aol.in Fri Jun 3 13:14:46 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2011 03:44:46 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] EcoFestival 3rd to 5th June 2011 at AFD,New Delhi In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CDEFD93E568C3F-7AC-1E2D5@Webmail-m122.sysops.aol.com> On the occasion of the World Environment Day Kriti teamin association with Alliance Française de Delhi, Veolia Water (India), EADS and AQM present: A film screening Oceans A never-seen before documentary, by Jacques Cluzaud and Jacques Perrin, that explores the many mysteries of our planet's oceans. With imagery captured by the latest underwater technologies, Oceans offers an unprecedented look beneath the sea in a powerful yet enchanting motion picture. On Friday 3rd June 2011 2 sessions: 5.30 pm and 7.30 pm At M.L Bhartia Auditorium Alliance Française de Delhi Free Admission. Open to all. and The 3rd Annual EcoFestival 2011 On Saturday 4th and Sunday5th June 2011 >From 11.00 am to 9.00 pm At Alliance française de Delhi 72, Lodi Estate, New Delhi-110003 Free Admission. Open to all. From rohitrellan at aol.in Fri Jun 3 13:31:07 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2011 04:01:07 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Instituto Cervantes Nueva Delhi: FESTIVAL DE CINE CHILENO/CHILEAN FILM FESTIVAL, New Delhi Message-ID: <8CDEFDB877C42D1-7AC-1E3AE@Webmail-m122.sysops.aol.com> La Embajada de Chile en la India y el Instituto Cervantes de Nueva Delhi tienen el placer de invitarle a la inauguración del:“Festival de Cine Chileno” The Embassy of Chile in India and the Instituto Cervantes of New Delhi cordially invite you to the opening of: "Chilean Film Festival". Tras la presentación a cargo del Embajador de Chile, Excmo. Sr. Don Cristian Barros, y del Director del Instituto Cervantes de Nueva Delhi, Òscar Pujol, se proyectará el documental “Calafate: Zoológicos Humanos”. The Ambassador of Chile, H.E. Mr. Cristian Barros, and the Director of the Instituto Cervantes of New Delhi, Òscar Pujol, are going to present the Cinema Cycle and afterwards “Calafate: Zoológicos Humanos” documentary is going to be screened. 2 de junio de 2011, a las 18:30hr. en el auditorio del Instituto Cervantes (48, Hanuman Rd. Nueva Delhi). 2nd of June 2011, at 6:30pm in the Auditorium of Instituto Cervantes (48, Hanuman Rd. New Delhi). Programación del Festival de Cine Chileno Chilean Film Festival Programme JUNIO/JUNE Jueves 2 de junio / Thursday June 2, 2011 Calafate: zoológicos humanos/ Calafate: human zoo El Documental “Calafate: zoológicos humanos”, da comienzo al Festival de Cine Chileno que tendrá lugar entre el 5 de junio y el 10 de julio. La película del director Hans Mülchi B cuenta la historia de la captura y padecimientos de que fueran víctimas cuatro etnias originarias del suelo chileno. En él veremos cómo mapuches, selk’nams, tehuelches y kawésqars (entre estos últimos podría haber algunos yaganes) fueron prácticamente “secuestrados” de sus tierras y llevados a Europa. “Varios de ellos murieron, ya sea en la travesía transatlántica o por las enfermedades y los malos tratos recibidos, que incluyeron violaciones”, cuenta Hans Mülchi, quien junto a su equipo han registrado esta travesía rodando parte de la historia en el continente viejo y por supuesto algunos rincones de Chile. The first film of the Chilean Film Festival taking place in the Instituto Cervantes from the 5th of June to the 10th of July is the documentary “Calafate: zoológicos humanos” directed by Hans Mülchi B. It tells the story of the suffered capture that 4 ethnic group originated on Chilean soil had to undergo. We will see how mapuches, selk’nams, tehuelches and kawésqars (amongst them it could be some yaganes) were almost kidnapped from their lands and carried to Europe. “Several of them died in the transatlantic crossing, due to sickness or the physical abuse, including rapes” – says Hans Mülchi – who together with his team has recorded this crossing. One part of the story was filmed in the old continent and some spots in Chile. Hora / Time: 18:30 hr. Lugar / Place: Auditorio / Auditorium Idioma / Language: Español con subtítulos en inglés / Spanish with English subtitles Entrada gratuita/ Free admission Domingo 5 de junio / Sunday June 5, 2011 Mocha "Mocha" es un premiado documental que narra desde un punto de vista poético y etnográfico la cotidianidad de los habitantes de una pequeña isla ubicada a 35 kilómetros de las costas de Arauco. Sus personajes cercanos y enigmáticos son capaces de sorprender al revelar la belleza de us forma de habitar y relacionarse con el territorio y el paisaje. El documental es una experiencia de viaje que va proponiendo distintas aristas y temáticas sobre la vida insular. “Mocha”, the awarded documentary relates with a poetic and ethnographic point of view, the everyday life of the inhabitants of a small island, located 35 kilometres from Arauco costs. These friendly and enigmatic characters' beauty of lifestyle and the way they relate to land and scenery surprises the audience. The documentary is a travel experience which proposes different thorny problems and matters of the insular life. Hora/Time: 16:30 hr. Lugar / Place: Auditorio / Auditorium Idioma / Language: Español con subtítulos en ingles / Spanish with English subtitles Entrada gratuita/Free admission Domingo 12 de junio / Sunday June 12, 2011 El Viaje de Emilio En esta película chilena, Claudio un joven de 28 años independiente y solitario, fletero de profesión. Debe trasportar a Emilio un músico ciego de 75 años, (Ernesto Malbrán) y a su piano hacia su pueblo natal. En el camino deben sobrellevar situaciones que ponen a prueba su convivencia y el logro de su cometido, a la vez se van encontrando con personas que al igual que ellos viven en soledad, los cuales ayudan a nuestros personajes a solucionar las dificultades que se les presentan. Ninguno de los dos, sospecha que su encuentro les dejará grandes aprendizajes que cambiarán sus vidas para siempre. In this Chilean movie Claudio, an independent and solitary 28-year-old freighter has to carry Emilio, a blind 75-year-old musician and his piano to his home town. On the way they have to bear with situations that will put their coexistence and the fulfilment of their mission to the test, at the same time, they will meet with who they have something in common: The loneliness. They will help the main characters to solve their troubles. None of them suspects this encounter will teach them things that will change their lives forever. Hora / Time: 16:30 hr. Lugar / Place: Auditorio / Audorium Idioma / Language: Español con subtítulo en inglés / Spanish with English subtitles Entrada gratuita /Free admission Domingo 19 de junio / Sunday June 19, 2011 Be Happy Kathy es una adolescente que vive con su hermano Danilo en un pequeño pueblo costero de Chile. Su vida está marcada por la ausencia de su padre, quien cumple condena por múltiples robos, y por las permanentes dificultades a las que ella debe hacer frente. En el Liceo, Kathy conoce a Chemo, un amable y sensible muchacho. Juntos, inician una intensa relación de mutuo descubrimiento. Mientras tanto, Kathy cae en depresión debido a la soledad que la rodea, cada vez mayor. Será un proceso doloroso, pero su fortaleza de espíritu y optimismo la llevarán a salir adelante. Kathy is a teenager who lives with her brother Danilo in a small Chilean town by the sea. Her life is marked by the absence of her father, who is in prison for several robberies, and the permanent difficulties she must overcome. In High school, Kathy meets Chemo, a handsome and sensitive boy. Together they begin an intensive relationship of mutual discovery. Meanwhile, Kathy is falling apart due to a sudden and growing loneliness. It will be a painful process, but her strength of spirit and unyielding optimism will get her threw. Hora / Time: 16:30 hr. Lugar / Place: Auditorio / Auditorium Idioma / Language: Español con subtítulos en ingles / Spanish with English subtitles Domingo 26 de junio de 2011 / Sunday June 26, 2011 La Sagrada Familia La historia de la Sagrada Familia ocurre en la casa de playa de una familia de arquitectos, durante el feriado de semana santa. Marco es estudiante de arquitectura y el hijo veinteañero de un destacado y egocéntrico arquitecto. La familia se mantiene en tensa espera por la llegada de Sofía, la primera novia oficial de Marco, una “niñita” de la que los padres saben muy poco y por la que Marco esta completamente loco de amor. Cuando llega Sofía se quiebran todos los equilibrios, y cómo no, es dueña de una perturbadora intensidad erótica que hará que para el domingo de resurrección, cuando la madre de Marco regrese, esa familia y el resto de los personajes ya nunca vuelvan a ser los mismos. The story of The Sacred Family takes place in the beach house of a family of architects during Easter. Marco is an architecture in his mid 20’s student and son of a famous and egocentric architect. The family tensely waits for Sofía’s arrival. She is Marco’s first official girlfriend and a “girl” of whom Marco’s parents know very little and who Marcos is madly in love with. At Sofiá’s arrival, all balances are put to risk. She has a disturbing erotic intensity and, of course, she’s bringing with her a big load of drugs, all of which will make, by the time Marco’s mother returns, on Easter Sunday, the whole family and the rest of the characters never be the same again. Hora / Time: 16:30 hr. Lugar / Place: Auditorio / Auditorium Idioma / Language: Español con subtítulos en ingles / Spanish with English subtitles Entrada gratuita/Free admission JULIO/JULY Domingo 3 de julio / Sunday July 3, 2011 Padre Nuestro “Niños, por favor sáquenme de aquí” (Caco). Ese parece ser el último deseo que Caco- un vividor empedernido, que abandonó a su familia 9 años atrás- les hace a Pedro, Meche y Roberto, sus hijos, mientras pasa su último día de vida en un hospital de Valparaíso. Ellos junto a Maite, la segunda mujer de Pedro, no sospechan que ese viejo divertido, alegre y excéntrico de antaño, esta vez habla en serio y va a hacer todo lo posible para reunir a su familia; aún cuándo esto lo lleve la vida. Una historia emocionante, llena de detalles de la vida común, que muestra que a pesar de todo, siempre hay una última oportunidad para reencontrase. “Boys, please take me out of here”(Caco). This seems to be the last wish that Caco- a scrounging man who abandoned his family 9 years ago- asks to Pedro, Meche and Roberto, his children, while he spends his last day of life at a hospital in Valparaíso. Them, next to Maite, Pedro´s second wife, do not suspect that the funny, happy and eccentric old man is speaking seriously this time and that he is willing to do anything to escape with his family, even at his own life´s expense. A beautiful story, full of common life details and black humour, that shows us that there is always a last chance to reconnect with the ones we love. Hora / Time: 16:30 hr. Lugar / Place: Auditorio / Auditorium Idioma / Language: Español con subtítulos en ingles / Spanish with English subtitles Entrada gratuita/Free admission Instituto Cervantes Nueva Delhi 48, Hanuman Road Connaught Place 110 001 Nueva Delhi India Tel.: 91 11 4368 19 00 Fax: 91 11 4356 86 92 cenndel at cervantes.es From rohitrellan at aol.in Fri Jun 3 15:17:54 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2011 05:47:54 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] RashmiRathi by Vachik Manchan , Bikaner, Rajasthan In-Reply-To: <20110602104640.1F3998E804D@mdreg-mst.qlc.co.in> References: <20110602104640.1F3998E804D@mdreg-mst.qlc.co.in> Message-ID: <8CDEFEA723B527F-174C-C20@webmail-d065.sysops.aol.com> Dear Friends, We are pleased to inform you that vachik abhinaya performance (Dir. Suresh Acharya) based on Rashmirathi, a poem written by eminent Hindi poet Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar' will have its premier show on June 6, 2011 (7.30 pm) at Town Hall, Bikaner (Rajasthan). The performance is a part of preparatory research and workshops undertaken by our theatre artists with the rammat artists of Bikaner and develop a script based on the poem. The work is supported under the New Performance programme of India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore. For more details please contact Ashish Purohit on 09314803355 From rohitrellan at aol.in Fri Jun 3 15:43:29 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2011 06:13:29 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Asmita Summer Theatre Festival 2011,New Delhi Message-ID: <8CDEFEE04F1F2BF-174C-EA7@webmail-d065.sysops.aol.com> Asmita Summer Theatre Festival 2011 5th June - 10th July 2011 Arvind Gaur's Drama festival , 9 plays at IHC & SRC ,5th June to 10th July 5th June at 7.30pm at IHC - Ashok Lal's "EK MAMOOLI AADMI" Music by Dr. Sangeeta Gaur India Habitat Centre.Lodhi Road,New Delhi About the play 'Ek Mamooli Aadmi' underlines those features of an urban middle class setting which make the yearning for real happiness an agonizing experience. The play also accentuates the contours of a system in which even biological relations are bound to breed loneliness and family becomes fatal to an individual. Ishwar Chand Awasthi, the protagonist, is to die soon and this fact makes him realise that it was not life that he led so far, it was death, unnoticed and unannounced. The perception of this death animates him and he turns to be the source of others' happiness- an extraordinary asset to life and society. ______________________________ 11th & 12th June at 7.30pm at IHC Swadesh Deepak's "COURT MARTIAL" India Habitat Centre,Lodhi Road,New Delhi About the play When respect is denied to a man for the only reason that he is borne by 'low-caste' parents, the offence cannot simply be termed as a social violence. It assumes larger proportions of crime against humanity and society at large. Yet by the turn in situation the murderer becomes a win...ner whereas the victim is unforgiving.The culprit may receive severe punishment at the hands of the law but, in fact, it is the society which is put in the docks. Court Martial, written by Swadesh Deepak, is a story of recruit Ram Chander who is tried for murdering one of his officers and injuring another. The Court Martial is presided by a war veteran. Col Surat Singh who has witnessed many 'life –and –death' situation. But this trial puts him in a queer position, so far unknown to him, and during the course of interrogation he realize that the issues at stake are much larger than what meets the eye. Realizing that the Indian army is the only government agency in which reservation on caste basis is not permissible. Court Martial presents a combination of legal and poetic justice. _________________________________________________________ Dario Fo's Comic-Satire "OPERATION THREE STAR" Lyrics By Piyush Mishra 18th June, 7:30 pm India Habitat Centre,Lodhi Road,New Delhi About The Play- Grounded in a very specific, disturbing political reality the Operation Three Star (Adaptaion of Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist ) offers a scathing comment the real events which are criminal and obscene in their brutality: Crimes of the state . With his seemingly insane logic the maniac is instrumental in unmasking the criminal folly of the law enforcing agency in its attempts to cover up heinous action. He persistently ridicules the police's shaky case and forces them to re-enact the situation in that led to the 'suicide' of a 'terrorist' under their custody. Subsequently, they contradict themselves to dismantle the whole issue of half-truths and non-sequiturs. An escalating series of impersonations and misunderstandings extend a particular viewpoint. The jerk from comic gags to a fuller awareness of serious issue becomes a potent device as the crude violence of the power-that-be is recognized. ________________________________________________________ 19th June at 7.30pm at IHC Harsh Mander's Book "Unheard Voices" UNSUNI Music by Dr. Sangeeta Gaur India Habitat Centre,Lodhi Road,New Delhi About The Play- Unsuni is a socially relevant and politically deep script by Mallika Sarabhai, based on the Novel "Unheard Voices" by Harsh Mander. In a Society where the success of a handful makes bigger news than the misery of millions, a s...et of 5 monologues dares to speak out for the mute, the desolate, the chronically ignored... a woefully unloved India, full of People but starved of life.Unsuni lifts the veil around harsh realities faced by the diversity afflicted people of our country. Street urchins abandoned by society to fend for themselves in the face of adversity; tribal people forced to surrender their honour to repacious land grabbers; scavengers and lepers who have never known the meaning of human dignity are some specific problems addressed by the play. The volatile nature of religious politics coupled with an incompetent judicial structure is also portrayed with grave honesty. In the depiction of all these causes is a common underlying plea for us to open our eyes to the bigger picture, to share that human worth which we for ourselves claim as a right, but deprive others of without justification.The play overall is an intense reminder of horrors towards which we voluntarily turn a deaf ear. It does not aim to downplay the success of those who do make it to the top, but is a call to the privileged to consider those who deserve equal rights, but lack equal opportunity _______________________________________________________ Musical satire Munshi Premchand's "MOTERAM KA SATYAGRAH" Adaptation by Habib Tanveer and Safdar Hashmi, Music: Dr. Sangeeta Gaur 25th June, 7:30 pm India Habitat Centre,Lodhi Road,New Delhi ________________________________________________________ 26th June, 7:00pm At Sri Ram Centre Bertolt Brecht 's "Ramkali " Adaptation of Bertolt Brecht 's play - "The Good Person of Szechwan" , Adapted in Hindi By Amitabh Srivastava, Lyrics By Piyush Mishra , Music by Dr.Sangeeta Gaur. Safdar Hashmi Marg, Mandi House,New Delhi. About play Ramkali- It raises core issues facing today’s world, of greed versus common good, of the value of right and wrong, of the pressures society puts on people which drive them to committing wrongs to keep up with expectations, the exploitation of goodness and of good people by an aspiring society, and the question of equating theft and wrong doing out of need with that done out of greed. Brecht used theatre to raise issues, as does Darpana and Asmita Theatre Group, Arvind Gaur’s company based in Delhi. Brecht, like Arvind Gaur and Mallika Sarabhai, believed in entertaining people with theatrics and songs to keep them engaged but watchful, planting seeds of doubt to shake complacency. __ It is said that between the battle of wrong and right, it is truth that wins, yet ladies and gentlemen, the truth in this play is yet to be discovered… so if you think it has been some time since you’ve done a good deed, think again… maybe not. May be we all have been Ramkali, doing “the right thing’ in the wrong place or vice versa ! Still having second thoughts? - To those born later You who will emerge from the flood Which we have gone under. Remember When you speak of our failings The dark time too Which you have escaped. For we went, changing countries oftener than our shoes Through the wars of the classes, despairing When there was injustice only, and no rebellion. Think of us… - Brecht __________________________________________________________ 3rd July, 7:00pm At Sri Ram Centre, Mahesh Bhatt' "THE LAST SALUTE" directed by Arvind Gaur Play written by Rajesh Kumar based on Muntadhar al-Zaidi's Book "The last salute to President Bush", Starring Imran Zahid. Music by Dr.Sangeeta Gaur Safdar Hashmi Marg, Mandi House,New Delhi. About The Play: The play explores facts of the gulf crisis and the US intervention which has been questioned by the civilized world time and again. The play is expected to attract the elite audience which is interested in global issues like this one. It explores emotions, talks about world peace and political orders of the day effect the common man. For More Information Visit http://thelastsalute.com/ .----------------------------------------------------------- 9th July, 7:00pm Sri Ram Centre, Mahesh Dattani's "FINAL SOLUTION" Translated by Shahid Anwar andi House,New Delhi About the Play "Final Solutions" has a powerful contemporary resonance as it addresses as issue of utmost concern to our society, i.e. the issue of communalism. The play presents different shades of the communalist attitude prevalent among Hindus and Muslims in its attempt to underline the stereotypes and clichés influencing the collective sensibility of one community against another. What distinguishes this work from other plays written on the subject is that it is neither sentimental in its appeal nor simplified in its approach. It advances the objective candour or a social scientist while presenting a mosaic of diverse attitudes towards religious identity that often plunges the country into inhuman strife. Yet the issue is not moralised, as the demons of communal hatred are located not out on the street but deep within us. The play moves from the partition to the present day communal riots. It probes into the religious bigotry by examining the attitudes of three generations of a middle-class Gujrati business family, Hardika, the grandmother, is obsessed with her father's murder during the partition turmoil and the betrayal by a Muslim friend, Zarine. Her son, Ramnik Gandhi, is haunted by the knowledge his fortunes were founded on a shop of Zarine's father, which was burnt down by his kinsmen. Hardika's daughter-in-law, Aruna, lives by the strict code of the Hindu Samskar and the granddaughter, Smita, cannot allow herself a relationship with a Muslim boy. The pulls and counter-pulls of the family are exposed when two Muslim boys, Babban and Javed, seek shelter in their house on being chased by a baying Hindu mob. Babban is a moderate while Javed is an aggressive youth. After a nightlong exchange of judgements and retorts between the characters, tolerance and forgetfulness emerge as the only possible solution of the crisis. Thus, the play becomes a timely reminder of the conflicts raging not only in India but in other parts of the world. _______________________________________________________ 10th July 7:00 at Sri Ram Centre Rajesh Kumar's "AMBEDKAR AUR GANDHI" Music by Dr. Sangeeta Gaur Mandi House,New Delhi ANDHI AND AMBEDKAR – REVIEWS “Ambedkar aur Gandhi” is one of Asmita’s classics…Asmita’s latest presentation, young playwright Rajesh Kumar’s “Ambedkar aur Gandhi” was marked for healthy audience response both for its content and the director Gaur’s overall production design… Never before have I seen such an intelligent post-presentation discussion between the audience and the director. It just goes to show if the theme is relevant and the presentation professionally good, the audience is waiting for it... The cast does full justice to the playwright and were true to what the director was trying to get out of them. Bajrang Bali Singh playing Ambedkar was excellent particularly in his last speech after Gandhiji’s death.Viren Basoya’s Gandhi, calm and collected throughout and yet emotional when he says he wants to be reborn as a Harijan. In response, the audience breaks out in a non-stop applause. Apart from the two lead players, others who stand out are Shilpi Marwah as Rama Bai, Pankaj Raj Yadav as Devdas Gandhi, Malay Garg as Kedarkar, Raj Sharma as Sadanand and Rahul Datta as Sardar Patel. To lend colour to the presentation, there was, as usual, excellent music by Sangeeta Gaur and some popular songs that brought back old memories. “Ambedkar aur Gandhi”, to my mind is one of Asmita’s classics and Gaur’s best-directed presentations that must be taken around the Hindi speaking States... -ROMESH CHANDER, The Hindu (An ongoing dialogue, 21 August, 2009) http://beta.thehindu.com/arts/theatre/article6277.ece Gandhi- Ambedkar debate moved, impressed the gathering …play succeeded in arousing the audience…debate received constant applause. - Rashtriya Sahara Politics takes centre stage...social political play about the geopolitical and social scenario in the country in 1930’s…reveals the two extreme thinking- Gandhi and Ambedkar …relation between the two despite their differences. - Hindustan Times (Live correspondent) Arvind Gaur’s 64th endeavour follows its predecessors- a social and political play… political dialogues on the social concerns of the time… antithetical views and the realisation that Gandhi Ambedkar’s vision was one, but means different — form the fabric of the play…issue of untouchability and the plight of the Dalits is a significant thread expressed in the play…….. - The Hindu (Preview) Gandhi and Ambedkar attacked caste system…to stop untouchability, terminate caste system- thought expressed lively in the debate between Gandhi and Ambedkar…arguments received constant applause…war of thoughts between Gandhi and Ambedkar stirred the audience…expresses the clash of thoughts…chorus gave the play a new height. - Dainik Hindustan ___________________________________________________________ All Plays Directed by ARVIND GAUR Tkt Rs. at IHC 50/- only At SRC 200/-, 100/- & 50/- Only For Info Contact: Arvind Gaur -09899650509, Shilpi Marwaha- 9540656537, Shiv Chauhan- 9958793683, Suraj Singh-9999692525, Rahul Khanna-9711188856, asmitatheatre at gmail.com From rohitrellan at aol.in Fri Jun 3 16:23:16 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2011 06:53:16 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Apply for IFA's New Performance Grants 2011-12 In-Reply-To: <20110523053124.371BF8E804D@mdreg-mst.qlc.co.in> References: <20110523053124.371BF8E804D@mdreg-mst.qlc.co.in> Message-ID: <8CDEFF3940438FF-174C-137A@webmail-d065.sysops.aol.com> New Performance IFA’s New Performance programme supports reflective performance practices that extend beyond prevailing idioms and forms of performance and/or create new modes of presentation. Performing arts groups and individuals working in or across music, dance, theatre and puppetry can apply keeping the broad thrust areas in mind. The programme is also open to light or set designers, puppeteers, sound artists and writers working in the area of performance. Pre-production: This programme supports performing artists to germinate and nurture fresh ideas and reflect on the immediate context of their practice. This may include researching towards a performance script and/or collaborative or improvisatory work towards creating a text or other resources and references for the proposed performance. Performance: Risk-taking and experimental performances that tackle unexplored themes or critically engages with changing contexts of performance will be supported. These productions could introduce fresh content, investigate unexplored but meaningful themes, or straddle different genres in the performing arts. These are only examples, however, and do not exhaust the possibilities offered by this programme. Dissemination: IFA grantees can apply for follow-up grants that will enable a wider public to critically engage with their IFA-supported work and the larger issues it throws up. This may include disseminating knowledge acquired and expertise gained with the grant in imaginative and innovative ways. Residencies/Workshops: Performance residencies and workshops are ideal environments for questioning and reflecting on contemporary performance practices. Innovatively modeled artist residencies and workshops that nurture emerging performing artists, encourage collaboration, and support dialogue with a wider field of practice may be considered under the programme. Workshops that focus on imparting new idioms and facilitating experimentation may be considered under the programme. We are particularly interested in supporting residencies and workshops hosted by emerging organisations in the early stages of institutional building. Public Platforms: Public platforms like conferences and seminars that bring together diverse stakeholders in the field of performance to discuss newly emerging and unconventional practices may be considered under the programme. Also, we encourage performing communities to engage in initiatives towards building a network of mutually supportive practitioners in the field. Initiatives that look to encourage dialogue and collaboration between performing artists working in different languages and regions may be considered under the programme. These are only examples, however, and do not exhaust the possibilities offered under this category. You are welcome to discuss your ideas and develop your proposal through dialogue and interaction with IFA staff. To apply, please send us a short note describing 1) your existing practice and your concerns and interests as a practioner and, 2) the nature of work for which you are seeking funding and how it addresses the programme. A budget should not exceed Rs 1,50,000 for pre-production work, Rs 3,00,000 for developing a production, and Rs 6,00,000 for a residency. The budget for seminars, conferences, network development and workshops may be developed in consultation with programme staff. APPLICATION Applications under this programme can be submitted for consideration at any time. You may write your proposal in any Indian language. Please ensure that we receive a draft proposal three months prior to your need for funds to support the project. You may email your queries on any matter pertaining to this programme to ashutoshpotdar at indiaifa.org or write to us at the following address: Programme Executive New Performance, India Foundation for the Arts, 'Apurva', Ground Floor, No 259, 4th Cross, Raj Mahal Vilas 2nd Stage, 2nd Block, Bangalore-560 094. Phone: 080-2341 4681 / 82 You can expect to receive a reply from us within ten days, indicating whether your proposal is being considered for support. ELIGIBILITY You are eligible to apply if you are an Indian national, a registered non-profit Indian organisation, or have been resident in India for at least five years. Your collaborators, if any, should also fall into one of the above categories. Translations of this circular are available in other Indian languages on request and can also be downloaded from www.indiaifa.org From rohitrellan at aol.in Sat Jun 4 11:03:29 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2011 01:33:29 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] IDPA Awards for Excellence 2010:ENTRY DATES Extended TO JUNE 30th, 2011 In-Reply-To: <806836.29653.qm@web110509.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <806836.29653.qm@web110509.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8CDF09011AFCED3-62C-142CD@webmail-d173.sysops.aol.com> GOOD NEWS !!! ENTRY DATES Extended TO JUNE 30th, 2011 Hi All, With the overwhelming response of entries, we have decided to extend the IDPA Awards for Excellence 2010 to June 30th. This is your last chance ... So hurry and send in your entries Special Categories Films on Environment Films on Disabilities Films Shot on Cell Phones IDPA members get a discount on entry fees For more info and details log on to www.idpaindia.org or Call Pooja 022-24920757 With every duly filled Entry form for IDPA AWARDS you need to send the following * DVD of entry. One DVD for every category. + Soft & Hard Copies of: 1) 100 & 200-word synopsis of the film 2) Two stills from the film 3) Vertical Format Photograph of Director of the film 4) 50 & 100-word Biography and Filmography of the Director 5) Each DVD must be labeled clearly, and must contain the film title. along with * Cheque/Demand Draft favouring “Indian Documentary Producers’ Association” to Indian Documentary Producers' Association 223 Famous Cine Building 20, Dr. E Moses Road Mahalaxmi Mumbai 400011 Phone 022-24920757 idpaindia at gmail.com www.idpaindia.org PLease download entry forms from the above mentioned website. From rohitrellan at aol.in Sat Jun 4 18:19:28 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2011 08:49:28 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Premiere of Short films, New Delhi / Filmbooth WED11 Festival - Films+Talks on World Environment Day Message-ID: <8CDF0CCF990DF19-1468-E1C0@webmail-m077.sysops.aol.com> Premiere of Short films Time Sunday, June 5 · 10:00am - 12:00pm Location Fun cinemas Old Natraj Cinema Complex, Moti Nagar Cine Darbaar in Association with Marwah Studio, Suncity World School and Fun Cinemas had organised 2nd Annual Summer Film Camp, 2011. With 23 children participating in the camp, children below the age 18 years have come up with some fine short films which will be premiered at Fun Cinemas. We also have certificate distribution ceremony and will be giving out certificates to best director, best screenplay and best actors. Join us to see what these children have done during the camp. RSVP: artisticdirector at cinedarba ar.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Filmbooth WED11 Festival - Films+Talks on World Environment Day Time Sunday, June 5 · 6:30pm - 10:00pm Location Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi (India) Filmbooth WED11 will play out short films and short documentaries juxtaposed with crisp 10-min talks by eminent personalities - all films & talks being related to various issues of environment, sustainability and climate change. We're delighted to have the following speakers: Rahul Ram (Vocalist & Bassist - Indian Ocean) Bahar Dutt (Environment Editor - CNN-IBN) Vimlendu Jha (Executive Director - Swechha) Jatin Singh (Founder & CEO - Skymet) The list of films we'd screen is as follows: Shores of Silence (Mike Pandey) First Period (Aditi Banerjee) Index (Bhardwaj Sundar) Do You? (Sanyog Mohite) Superhero (Nitin Das) Strangler Fig (David Attenborough) 300 Years of Fossil Fuel (Richard Hiegnberg) This mug for Hire (Robinder Uppal) Indian Mrityulok Series (Aditya Pundir) The Wild Meat Trail (Rita Banerji and Shilpi Sharma) Miracle Water Village (Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh) The Mountain (Terjes Sorgjerd) We look forward to see you. Team Filmbooth From nagraj.adve at gmail.com Sat Jun 4 23:22:49 2011 From: nagraj.adve at gmail.com (Nagraj Adve) Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 23:22:49 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: STOP FORCEFUL EVICTION AND WITHDRAW POSCO PROJECT ! Message-ID: From: Prashant Paikray Date: Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 8:25 PM Subject: STOP FORCEFUL EVICTION AND WITHDRAW POSCO PROJECT ! To: Prashant Paikray STOP FORCEFUL EVICTION AND WITHDRAW POSCO PROJECT 3rd June 2011 Dear Friends, On 3rd June 2011 (today), at around 9 am, the Odisha police and administration have brutally beaten villagers of Nuagoan who opposed the forceful acquision of their land to be handed over to the POSCO Company. Basu Behera, the Panchayat Samiti member of Gadkujang Panchayat and vice President of PPSS (POSCO Pratirodha Sangram Samiti) bled owing to the attack. The police destroyed their betel vines. 17 people including women and 6 children (5-12 years old) have been arrested. Police platoons, numbering about 20, are creating an atmosphere of fear to terrorise and force us to obey their dictates. Now the police is threatening, by using loud speakers, that if the villagers do not leave their betel vines voluntarily, then force will be used indiscriminately to destroy them. The administration incited pro-POSCO people to burn down the betel vines of Natha Samal, PPSS member from Nuagaon village. Our people are in high alert and have formed human barricade at Gobindapur village under Dhinkia gram panchayat to prevent entry of officials and police forces into our area. For the last one week, more than 2000 villagers both men and women are protesting day and night in the Govindpur and Dhinkia village boarder. As you know, from 18th of May 2011 onwards, the administration is acquiring the land of the few villagers who are supporting the POSCO project. Till now, the administration has acquired 38.69 acres of forest land by demolishing a total of 434 beetle vines. The government is creating an impression, using favourable (government support) media houses, that people are voluntarily giving their land. This is the well thought out strategy made by the government to confuse the public and mobilize public opinion in favour of the project. However the major protest is at Dhinkia Panchayat. Out of the 4004 acres of land requirement, major chunk of land falls under Dhinkia Panchayat. We are determined to fight against this illegal and unjust land acquisition process. On dated 17th May 2011 Nishakar Khatua and five others of our area filed the petition in the High Court praying for quashing forest clearance granted by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) for the project and to halt the land acquisition. Today i.e. on 3rd of June 2011, the High Court rescheduled the hearing of the petition challenging the land acquisition for POSCO. The state government in its affidavit had stated that the land acquisition was for public purpose and not for private purpose. This is a blatant lie as we all know that this land acquisition is for a private company like POSCO. The next hearing will be held on 8th of June 2011. At this juncture, we appeal to all our friends to raise the pitch of protest, visit our area and show solidarity to our people. We are continuing our Dharana on the boarder of Govindpur and Nuagaon villages. We are determined to fight till government withdraws the project from our area. Kindly widely circulate the appeal. In Solidarity, Prashant Paikray Spokesperson, POSCO Pratirodha Sangram Samiti Mobile no.- 09437571547 From arshad.mcrc at gmail.com Sat Jun 4 23:29:11 2011 From: arshad.mcrc at gmail.com (arshad amanullah) Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 23:29:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] =?windows-1252?q?The_Curious_Case_of_the_Inclusion_?= =?windows-1252?q?of_Upper_Caste_Syed_=91Mallicks=92_in_Bihar_Backw?= =?windows-1252?q?ard_Classes_List?= In-Reply-To: <000301cc22bb$10178f70$3046ae50$@com> References: <000301cc22bb$10178f70$3046ae50$@com> Message-ID: TRAVESTY of SOCIAL JUSTICE: The Curious Case of the Inclusion of Upper Caste Syed ‘Mallicks’ in Bihar Backward Classes List by: ASHOK YADAV & KHALID ANIS ANSARI It must, however, be noted that while Muslim masses are exceptionally hard pressed, the Muslims are not a totally 'depressed' community. There are large numbers of Muslim landlords and semi-capitalistic farmers (beneficiaries upto-medium-scale politically of the Green Revolution), merchants and industrialists, who dominate the Muslim community as the bulwark of reactionary forces within it, and often serve as agents of the Congress and other bourgeois-landlord parties (Habib, Khan, & Singh, 1976, p. 68). Thus, one can discern three groups among Muslims: (1) those without any social disabilities, the ashrafs; (2) those equivalent to Hindu OBCs, the ajlafs, and (3) those equivalent to Hindu SCs, the arzals. Those who are referred to as Muslim OBCs combine (2) and (3) (Rajindar Sachar et al, 2006, p. 193).  The two extracts reproduced above—one from the vantage point of ‘class’ and articulated by the Marxist historians from the Aligarh School and the other based on ‘caste’ and drawn from the Sachar Committee Report—indicate clearly that the entire Muslim community cannot be conceived as a backward class in India. Rather, as is the case with any other religious community obtained in India the Muslims too are a differentiated community and informed by variegated levels of marginalization. In the context of social policy caste has emerged as a major factor for determining the social backwardness of a group (including religious minorities) for purposes of affirmative action under the rubric Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (OBCs). In this context, Sachar Committee’s observations that the ashraf sections within the Muslim community, as opposed to the pasmanda muslims (OBC and Dalit Muslims), are ‘without any social disabilities’ is instructive. Despite this many spokespersons of Muslim politics, often informed by the interests of the upper caste Muslims, have demanded that all the Muslims be brought within the ambit of reservations in India. Quite clearly such a move will be benefitting the ashraf Muslims as they will corner a large proportion of employment and educational opportunities thus opened owing to their cultural capital. A related move by upper caste Muslim sections has been to negotiate with the dominant political powers and sneak into the existing OBC list. In our view both these moves are a travesty of social justice politics and must be contested by all democratic citizens and movements in this country.           In this context the inclusion of upper caste Syed Mallicks in the Backward Classes list (Annexure II) in Bihar by Nitish Kumar government in 2008, in a bid to appease the Muslim leadership and dilute the Saffron charge against himself due to his alliance with the right wing BJP, must be strongly interrogated. Especially, when the Mallicks who claim themselves to be the descendents of Syed Ibrahim Biya Mallick, the military chief of Muhammad Bin Tughlaq, have managed to get approval from the Union Cabinet  on recommendations from National Commission for Backward Classes for inclusion in the Central OBC list on June 2, 2011. We think this has been an unacceptable move by the institutions concerned as by no stretch of imagination can the Mallicks be considered an OBC group. All historical and sociological data that are presently available reveal without any doubt that they are an upper caste and prosperous Muslim group [See: Mallick Family; Mallick Tanzeem, 2008; Ahmed, 2009] and so must be immediately ejected from the Bihar State Backward Classes list and, moreover, no further action must be taken with respect to the notification pending in the Social Justice Ministry to include them in Central OBC list.           In fact, when Nitish Kumar led NDA government of Bihar included mallicks in BC category one respected commentator, himself belonging to the mallick community, vehemently opposed this move(Ahmed, 2009). The article that he circulated at that point of time establishes beyond doubt that the mallicks are a socially, educationally and economically advanced group. In fact, the first Chief Minister of Bihar, after elections were held by the British government in 1937, was Mohammad Younus, a mallick by caste and an owner of a bank and a railway line. The British held Census also upheld the status of mallicks as belonging to the privileged ashraf category within Muslims. During Partition many rich mallicks migrated to Pakistan and Bangladesh and rose to eminent positions there in military, bureaucracy and literary fields. The mallick diaspora scattered mainly in Gulf countries and USA is well-networked and emotionally attached to their roots in Bihar. There is no dearth of educated middle class among the mallicks.           However, despite these glaring facts a few notorious sections within the mallick community had been making consistent efforts for slipping into the BC list of Bihar since the 1990s. In fact, the State Commission of Backward Classes of Bihar (henceforth, SCBC) had rejected the application of mallicks for inclusion in BC list in 1999, and had appropriately conveyed the same to the government then headed by Laloo-Rabri Yadav. In this respect the SCBC had carried out field surveys and had found that the literacy rate in mallick dominated villages was around 90% and that most of the houses were pucca. It also found that the mallicks enjoyed the same social status as other Muslim upper castes like syeds, sheikhs and pathans. The mallicks were mainly found occupied in agriculture, services and business, and, moreover, they usually abstained from working in the field themselves and hired field laborers from other lower castes to get their agricultural work done. SCBC report also produced a litany of historical sources that suggested that mallicks and syeds were not different. The report also indicated at the fraudulence and slyness of the mallicks when it noted that in the photocopies of the historical sources that they submitted the word ‘syed’ was deleted for obvious reasons. Interestingly, while the applicants claimed that they were a socially exploited section, yet they also made the statement that no case of atrocities committed against them was pending in any court of law. As we know, the caste system is based on hereditary division of labor. Every backward caste has a certain caste occupation. But in the case of mallicks the applicant failed to name any specific caste occupation of theirs. In view of the overwhelming weight of evidence against them the commission appropriately rejected their claim(State Backward Class Commission of Bihar, 1999).           Yet, the rejection of their move in 1999 did not dampen the spirit of these sections of the mallick community. They soon found an opportunity when Nitish Kumar assumed the charge of Bihar in 2005. In the ecstasy of toppling the fifteen years long regime of Laloo Yadav, Nitish fell victim to historical amnesia and conveniently forgot that more than any other social group it were the lower caste pasmanda muslims who having shifted their allegiance from Laloo to Nitish had made his dream of becoming the CM of Bihar a reality. Moreover, he was actively hunting for new constituencies and was eager to demonstrate that despite being in alliance with the BJP he was secular and not anti-Muslim. The mallicks exploited these political infirmities of Nitish Kumar. They once again knocked the SCBC, only this time more stealthily. After having learnt a few lessons from their past failure, this time they posed themselves as telis (oil pressers), after Teli Malik’s of Uttar Pradesh with which they had no sociological or historical similarity. Thus, through fraudulent means they were able to contrive a caste occupation for themselves. As per the procedures the SCBC again undertook field surveys in the mallick dominated villages of Bihar. However, the SCBC had to write in the report that their claim of being oil pressers was wrong and could not be maintained. Yet, this time the SCBC, throwing all norms to the fire, instead of rejecting not only accepted the application but also recommended to the state government that the mallicks be included in the state BC list. No reference was made to the previous report of the SCBC on the same issue. The present SCBC report is also an exercise in falsehood. It has reported that as per procedure the advertisements and news to seek public opinion on the matter were sent to local newspapers, radio, television channels, etc. However, the SCBC has not mentioned any date of any newspaper for publication of the same in the report (State Backward Classes Commission of Bihar, 2008). Interestingly, the Imarat-e-Sharia, Bihar, which is a prominent religious body of Muslims and is expected to rise above partisan considerations, too became a party to this crime when its General Secretary wrote a congratulatory letter to Nitish Kumar for including the mallicks into the BC list and requested him to include the remaining three Muslims castes (i.e. Sheikh, Syed and Pathan) in the BC list as well (Qasmi, 2008). This letter by a key functionary of Imarat-e-Shariah also reveals the distorted notions of social justice that this organization holds and also foregrounds the upper-caste content of most prominent Muslim religious organizations (Ali, 2010). Subsequently, the backward class Hindu and Muslim sections have protested against the move to include the mallicks in the BC list (IANS, 2008; Yadav, 2008). Petitions were submitted in the SCBC for this purpose but it yielded no results. However, the sporadic protests continued. The tenure of all the members of the SCBC, except the Chairman, who were instrumental in including the mallicks in the BC list, has now ended. New members have taken charge. Very recently, emboldened by the success of the mallicks in entering the BC list, the upper caste Sheikh Muslims also made attempts and submitted an application before the SCBC. However, this time the rank and file of the backward caste Hindu and Muslim organizations was vigilant enough and they jointly protested against this move (AIPMM, 2010; Das, 2010; Rai, 2010). Consequently, their petition was rejected by the SCBC after due verification (Bihar State Backward Classes Commission, 2011). Also, the case of mallicks has been reopened recently by the SCBC after sustained protests by OBC Muslim and Hindu groups.  So when on June 2, 2011 the Union Cabinet has taken the decision to include the mallicks in the Central OBC list, scores of petitions against the inclusion of mallicks in BC list in Bihar by both Hindu and Muslim OBC organizations have already been filed before the SCBC. The SCBC has also held some rounds of hearing on this issue from June 1 to June 3, 2011. Hence, it is imperative that the Social Justice Ministry in the Centre should withhold its notification on the same and wait for the decision of the SCBC on this issue. Otherwise it will be a big mockery of social justice. The horizontal solidarity between Hindu and Muslim OBC groups is growing and translating fast into political action as their joint protests against the inclusion of sheikhs and mallicks in BC list indicates. The Congress Party and JD (U) must stop appeasing the Muslim ashraf castes now and take the concerns of pasmanda muslims seriously, not only because that is just in the context of social policy on affirmative action but also because that may affect the political fortunes of these parties drastically in the very near future, especially in UP where Congress is trying to regain lost ground and where JD (U) will be entering for the first time in 2012 assembly elections. [Ashok Yadav is a social commentator based in Patna (Bihar) and Khalid Anis Ansari is a social researcher based in New Delhi. They can be reached at ashokyadav at gmail.com and khalidanisansari at gmail.com.] WORKS CITED Ahmed, S. (2009, March 31). Divide And Rule: Bihar Government’s Latest Strategy on Muslims. Retrieved June 4, 2011, from http://www.pasmandamuslims.com/2009/03/divide-and-rule-bihar-governments.html AIPMM. (2010). CORRESPONDENCE: Pasmanda Mahaz (Salim Parvez faction) to Bihar BC Commision protesting deliberations on reservations for upper caste ‘Sheikh’ Muslims. Retrieved June 4, 2011, from pluralism.in: http://pluralism.in/2011/02/pasmanda-mahaz-salim-parvez-faction-letter-of-protest-on-sheikh-issue/ Ali, M. (2010, August 31). Bihar: Protests and politics over OBC status to “Ashraf Muslims”. Retrieved June 4, 2011, from TwoCircles.net: http://twocircles.net/2010aug30/bihar_protests_and_politics_over_obc_status_ashraf_muslims.html Bihar State Backward Classes Commission. (2011). Bihar State Backward Classes Resolution: Rejecting the Demand of Reservations for Muslim Upper Caste ‘Sheikhs’. Retrieved June 4, 2011, from pluralism.in: http://pluralism.in/2011/02/bihar-state-backward-classes-resolution-on-reservations-for-muslim-upper-caste-sheikhs/ Das, K. (2010). CORRESPONDENCE: An Extremely Backward Caste (EBC) organisation to Bihar BC Commission opposing reservations for upper caste ‘Sheikh’ Muslims. Retrieved June 4, 2011, from pluralism.in: http://pluralism.in/2011/02/letter-from-a-backward-caste-organisation-to-bihar-bc-commission-opposing-reservations-for-sheikh-muslims/ Habib, I., Khan, I. A., & Singh, K. P. (1976). Problems of the Muslim Minority in India. Social Scientist , 4 (11), 67-72. IANS. (2008). Withdraw Mallick Muslims from Bihar’s backward caste list. Retrieved June 4, 2011, from pluralism.in: http://pluralism.in/2011/02/%E2%80%98withdraw-mallick-muslims-from-bihar%E2%80%99s-backward-caste-list%E2%80%99/ Mallick Family. (n.d.). Retrieved June 4, 2011, from http://sites.google.com/site/mallickfamily/Home Mallick Tanzeem. (2008, August 20). History of Ibrahim Mallick Baya (Ra). Retrieved June 4, 2011, from http://www.mallicktanzeem.com/: http://www.mallicktanzeem.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5&Itemid=2 Qasmi, A. R. (2008). CORRESPONDENCE: Imarat-e-Shariah to Nitish Kumar demanding inclusion of Upper Caste Muslims in OBC List of Bihar. Retrieved June 4, 2011, from pluralism.in: http://pluralism.in/2011/02/imarat-e-shariah-letter-on-inclusion-of-upper-caste-muslims-in-obc-list-in-bihar/?s=imarat-e-shariah Rai, U. C. (2010). CORRESPONDENCE: Triveni Sangh to Bihar State BC Commission Protesting the deliberations on Reservations for Upper Caste Muslim ‘Sheikhs’. Retrieved June 4, 2011, from pluralism.in: http://pluralism.in/2011/02/triveni-sanghs-letter-on-the-sheikh-issue/ Rajindar Sachar et al. (2006). Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India: A Report. Government of India, Prime Minister's High Level Committee, Cabinet Secretariat . State Backward Class Commission of Bihar. (1999). Recommendations to the Bihar Government for not including Mallick Muslims in BC list. Patna. State Backward Classes Commission of Bihar. (2008). Recommendations to the Bihar Government for Including Mallick Muslims in BC List. Patna. Yadav, A. (2008). Question of reservation for ‘Mallicks’: State Government should Rethink (in Devnagari). Retrieved June 4, 2011, from pluralism.in: http://pluralism.in/wp-content/user_uploaded_content/2011/02/Yadav-Sawal-Malikon-ke-Arakshan-ka.pdf From kmvenuannur at gmail.com Sun Jun 5 10:55:34 2011 From: kmvenuannur at gmail.com (Venugopalan K M) Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2011 10:55:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Pranaayaam Was Never So Painful article by Shuddhabrata Sengupta In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "...Crowds are running helter-skelter. I can see an atmosphere of total chaos unfold before my eyes. I can hear the NDTV correspondent/commentator say, *“the police have not as yet hit anyone with sticks, but some supporters of the Baba have started pelting stones and bricks.”*. There is still no sign of Baba Ramdev. The NDTV voice says, it seems *“he has been whisked away”*. He asks someone who is referred to as a ‘senior aide’ – *“kya baba ko leke gaye” (“has Baba been taken away”)* – the man answers saying he does not know. The Baba has left the Shivir (camp). Ramdev came into our consciousness from nowhere, like Narad-Muni descending on hapless and puzzled mortals in the epics. He made his way into our TV screens, urged us to rub our fingernails and suck in our abdomens and steadily occupied the void, the lack of imagination, the absence of vision that tears right through our collective social, cultural and political space. He built his empire, pushed his dope, made his deals and caught us in the vice-like grip of an *‘asana’* (posture) that refuses to let go our minds..." http://kafila.org/2011/06/05/pranayam-was-never-so-painful/ From rohitrellan at aol.in Sun Jun 5 11:03:29 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Sun, 05 Jun 2011 01:33:29 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Calling All Student Filmmakers! In-Reply-To: <015901cc22d6$d2213880$7663a980$@org> References: <015901cc22d6$d2213880$7663a980$@org> Message-ID: <8CDF1593387D2A7-272C-21D9E@webmail-m147.sysops.aol.com> Calling All Student Filmmakers! ISFFH 2011 Call for Entries North Hollywood, CA – The International Student Film Festival Hollywood (ISFFH) is now accepting submissions for its 9th annual Film and Video Competition. The Festival will be held in the NoHo Arts District of North Hollywood, CA USA November 5 – 6, 2011. The competition is open to students of all ages and academic backgrounds. Submission deadline is August 31, 2011. More information and entry forms are available on the festival website www.isffhollywood.org. Participants must be registered in elementary, junior high or high school, community college, university, graduate or private film schools. Students compete with their own peers (i.e. high school students will only compete with other high school students) and the competition is open to students of all ages and academic backgrounds. Awards are presented to winners after their films are judged by a panel of professional filmmakers, writers, directors, producers, actors, distributors, agents, film critics and professors that comprise the jury. Films go through an initial screening, are separated into genres, go before a panel of preliminary judges, then on to the blue ribbon judges. Hollywood is the capital city of the entertainment world. The International Student Film Festival Hollywood is the only film festival that embraces all ages from around the world, offering students the unique opportunity to gain the recognition of film industry leaders creating career development opportunities in their home countries as well as the United States. The opportunities provided by the ISFFH not only benefit the students, but the world community by bringing together people of diverse cultures and differing viewpoints. ISFFH Founder and President, Robin Saban, has been spending time in Europe promoting the Festival. He is currently in collaboration with an International theatre in Vienna, Austria to screen ISFFH student films. The ISFFH is a non-profit organization that relies on the generosity of others. From kuhutanvir at gmail.com Sun Jun 5 15:24:25 2011 From: kuhutanvir at gmail.com (Kuhu Tanvir) Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2011 15:24:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] New Issue of Wide Screen Message-ID: Dear All We are delighted to announce that the new issue of Wide Screen is now online. Click on http://widescreenjournal.org/index.php/journal/issue/current to access the issue. Table of Contents Wide Screen Essays Militants and Cinema: Digital Attempts to Make the Multitude in Hunger, Che, Public Enemies Joshua Aaron Gooch Minnelli's Yellows: Illusion, Delusion and Impressionism on Film Kate Hext Trauma, Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction & the Post-Human Anirban Kapil Baishya Drôle de Félix : A Search for Cultural Identity on the Road Zélie Asava An Analysis of the Technoscientific Imaginary in the Remake of The Stepford Wives Jessica Johnston, Cornelia Sears Home Sweet Home: The Cautionary Prison/Fairy Tale Paul Tremblay Carryover from WS 2.2 Handling Financial and Creative Risk in German Film Production M. Bjørn von Rimscha Opening Pandora’s (Black) Box: Towards A Methodology Of Production Studies Graham Roberts Cinemas of the Arab World Introduction: Cinemas of the Arab World Latika Padgaonkar Cinema “Of” Yemen And Saudi Arabia: Narrative Strategies, Cultural Challenges, Contemporary Features Anne Ciecko Director Profile: Mai Masri Latika Padgaonkar Salah Abu Seif and Arab Neorealism Ouissal Mejri Review: London River Latika Padgaonkar Director in Focus Identity Construction and Ambiguity in Christopher Nolan’s Films Erin Hill-Parks Book Reviews Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro: Seriously Funny Since 1983 L Radha Dayal -- Wide Screen http://widescreenjournal.org/index.php/journal/index From shuddha at sarai.net Sun Jun 5 15:31:56 2011 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2011 15:31:56 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Pranayam Was Never So Painful Message-ID: <9DE2246B-1F57-4BC0-8442-75FE52BFD556@sarai.net> Dear All, Here is a text I posted very early this morning on kafila.org, apologies for cross posting here. You can find the post at - http://kafila.org/2011/06/05/pranayam-was-never-so-painful/ best regards, Shuddha ------------------ Pranayam Was Never So Painful Shuddhabrata Sengupta, 5th June 2011, Kafila.org I am watching the fog of tear gas shells descend on Ramlila Maidan on the live television feed on my computer. What was supposed to be a ‘yoga camp’ led by Baba Ramdev, and the fully-funded-free circus of his so-called ‘indefinite hunger strike’ against ‘Black Money’ has now turned into a tear-gas purgatory. It is midsummer, but inside that big tent it looks like a particularly foggy-smoggy night in a Delhi midwinter. It must hurt like hell, in the nostrils, in the lungs. With every breath that Ramdev’s disciples take (and how well they know the art and science of heavy breathing) their eyes must sting. Pranayam was never so painful. I hold my insomniac breath as I sit watching, riveted. Crowds are running helter-skelter. I can see an atmosphere of total chaos unfold before my eyes. I can hear the NDTV correspondent/commentator say, “the police have not as yet hit anyone with sticks, but some supporters of the Baba have started pelting stones and bricks.”. There is still no sign of Baba Ramdev. The NDTV voice says, it seems “he has been whisked away”. He asks someone who is referred to as a ‘senior aide’ – “kya baba ko leke gaye” (“has Baba been taken away”) – the man answers saying he does not know. The Baba has left the Shivir (camp). Ramdev came into our consciousness from nowhere, like Narad-Muni descending on hapless and puzzled mortals in the epics. He made his way into our TV screens, urged us to rub our fingernails and suck in our abdomens and steadily occupied the void, the lack of imagination, the absence of vision that tears right through our collective social, cultural and political space. He built his empire, pushed his dope, made his deals and caught us in the vice-like grip of an ‘asana’ (posture) that refuses to let go our minds. He played with the Congress, he played with the BJP and the Sangh-Parivar, and while on the stage with Anna Hazare he hobnobbed with the naive liberals and do-gooders too myopic to see the Frankenstein that they were manufacturing. A few days ago, we saw the obscene sight of four senior ministers, including Pranab Mukherjee, the de-facto number two man in the UPA cabinet, kow-towing to this charlatan (what else can we call a man who says he can cure cancer and AIDS with Pranayam/Breath Control) at the Delhi airport. Then, over the last two days, we witnessed the farce of negotiations, the slime and sleaze of the UPA being countered by the irrational grand-standing (“this is a systemic change” – as if a minor tweaking of double taxation avoidance treaties with Switzerland and Mauritius is the cornerstone of a social revolution in India) double-speak (“No, the PM should not be under the purview of the Lokpal” followed by “No, I never said that”, “the government has met 99% of our demands”, “we will now end our ‘tap’/meditation”, followed by – “no i never said that”) and chicanery of the Ramdev camp, constantly nudged along by the cloak and dagger departments of the RSS and the BJP. Even the so-called mainstream left, smarting from its humiliation in West Bengal, wanted a piece of the action. The gerontocracy of the CPI thought it fit to dignify this pathetic circus as a peoples’ struggle. The CPI(M), comatose, has so far chosen to stay silent. And now, finally, as tonight turns to morning, we are seeing the obscene sight of heavy handed police action, that will scar the memories of all those who walked into Ramlila Ground at Ramdev’s whistle. We even saw what threatens to become the ‘purloined letter’ – the note Kapil Sibal said had been drafted by Ramdev’s aide which commits to end the ‘fast’, which then prompted the greatest playground huff and turnabout in history that I have seen, as Ramdev angrily denied having ever made any such commitment, which in turn precipitated the crisis that resulted in the tear-gassing of the Ramlila Ground campsite. And then, all hell broke loose.This government effectively handed the gathering storm of the resurrected zombies of the till now dead far-right that is collecting around Baba Ramdev the stick with which they will beat their drum for the coming days, perhaps for the coming months, perhaps (I sincerely hope not) for coming years. Just when the idiocy of the Ayodhya movement had seemingly died its definitive death, here we go again. The same trade-mark Congress dithering – Indira & Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao style – first build up the fascists, talk to them (covertly, if not overtly), give them the issues and the platform, and then panic. Remember Bhindranwale, remember Shah-bano case, remember the ‘unlocking’ of the door of the Babri Masjid. And now watch the circus get going at Ramlila Ground. Nothing suits fancy-dress fascists, especially of the morally righteous variety that Ramdev represents better than the patina and glamour of martyrdom. In one stroke, the UPA government, with the aid of the Delhi Police, has offered them that halo. I can now see a man wearing blue fatigues (Rapid Action Force?) carrying a man in saffron robes, holding a tricolor flag, a Ramdev clone, as if he were carrying a sack of potatoes past a large backdrop featuring a pantheon of ‘patriots. A stoic Savarkar smirks on the plastic surface of the backdrop as blue man and saffron burden careen past him, with the ‘sant’ kicking the air, like a petulant child. The NDTV voice (Vishnu Som) says - “some reports say that Baba Ramdev has been whisked away by a helicopter…upward from 30,000 people were there…who took the operational decision ?” Who indeed ? Tejas Mehta, an NDTV correspondent, is speaking to some more people, a young man says – “this is like Jallianwala Bagh” (any fool can see that it is not, the police have not fired live bullets – but of course, now the righteous right will go to town saying exactly this sort of rubbish). A woman says, “the police crushed women at one’ o clock at night”, (she is probably right, there seems to have been unseemly pushing and shoving) the correspondent asks – “was there stone throwing?” – they say, “no, there was no stone throwing”. Suddenly one young man seizes this opportunity to make his piece to camera, he hyperventilates the words ‘Shahid’ (Martyrs) and ‘Kurbani’ (sacrifice). We will hear a lot more of these words in the coming days. And everytime I hear them, I feel sick at the pit of my stomach, because I know that they are the clarion calls of a creeping authoritarian consensus that always feeds off the pasturage of beaten and bludgeoned people. A post uploaded by me almost two months ago on Kafila had said - “…The current euphoria needs to be seen for what it is – a massive move towards legitimizing a strategy of simple emotional blackmail – a (conveniently reversible) method of suicide bombing in slow motion. There is no use dissenting against a pious worthy on a fast, because any effort to dissent will be immediately read as a callous indifference to his/her ‘sacrifice’ by the moral-earnestness brigade. Nothing can be more dangerous for democracy. Unrestrained debate and a fealty to accountable processes are the only means by which a democratic culture can sustain itself. The force of violence, whether it is inflicted on others, or on the self, or held out as a performance, can only act coercively. And coercion can never nourish democracy…. …The tragedy that we are facing today is that the legitimate public outrage against corruption is being channeled in a profoundly authoritarian direction that actually succeeds in creating a massive distraction.” I feel no pleasure in having the suspicions that I had then being confirmed. The first act of this tragedy/farce was performed on Jantar Mantar with Anna Hazare as its central character – to the fanfare of television. Then we had an intermission marked by some variety entertainment, fake or not so fake CDs, ego battles and backroom intrigue. Now, that interval is over, the second act has begun and the acrobat called Ramdev appeared on stage, performing his contortions, playing to the gallery, setting the stage for a hairy-happy-clappy fascism that brooks no doubts about itself. Ramdev, like all fascists, loves talking about ‘revolution-kranti’. He has himself photographed triumphantly in front of Bhagat Singh’s statue in Delhi, with a bronze ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ flag billowing sculpturally behind him, and it makes it to the front page of yesterday’s Indian Express. He is all image, all costume, all ready for the show. But no, this is not Tahrir square. Not yet. No matter what television tells you. And nor are homophobic hysterics who call for death sentences at every provocation the likely agents of democratic transformation. Corruption is only their fetish. Tomorrow it will be something else. As Hartosh Singh Bal of Open Magazine remarked recently on a discussion in Times Now, Ramdev had demanded a war against Pakistan in the wake of 26/11. Tomorrow, Ramdev, or someone like him, may well go on hunger strike again, demanding a war, or that homosexuals be castrated or sent to prison or (like in Iran) sentenced to death for ‘corruption’. When corruption becomes a fetish, then anything that anyone chooses to call corruption will do as the catalyst for any number indefinite feasts unto death. (These fasts are actually feasts, and should be called – ‘Amaran Mahabhoj’ not ‘Amaran Anashan’. He is not hungry, he is eating us alive.) A city where you cannot rent or buy the tiniest bit of shelter, without paying unaccounted for cash cannot pretend that its citizens are clean, no matter how often they vacuum their nostrils at their Baba’s bidding. A society where shopkeepers and traders smirk when you ask for a bill or a receipt cannot play-act at ethics, unless it wants to perform a charade. A country where every land deal, every dam, every road works and flyover, every arms deal is lubricated by kickbacks cannot afford to be selective about its villains. It cannot outsource them to Swiss bank accounts, pretending that the only villains were politicians and foreigners. Ramdev, and the entire ‘India Against Corruption’ movement talk a lot about a corrupt state (and no doubt it is a corrupt state) but they have nothing to say about the crony-Capitalists who actually run the show. They gun for the Rajas, the Kalmadis, the Hasan Alis, the Kanimozhis and the Marans, but the Tatas and the Ambanis who serve the volleys in the same game are passed over in silence. Perhaps there is a special asana – a pose that marks a great step forward in hatha-yoga as well as raja-yoga, especially attuned to selective hearing, selective vision, selective attention, selective chagrin, and selective menus for how and when and for what to stay hungry? Ramdev talks a lot about the “…crores of rupeers stashed away in foreign accounts”, and yet, he purveys ‘remedies’ for cancer and AIDS against hard cash – cash which comes his way through television appearances, corporate donations, endorsements and gifts. His business enterprise is built on this enormous exercise in fraud, on wilful, knowing mischief with a society that is sick to the core and desperately needs healing. And he, of all people, has the temerity to talk as if the colour of his money were as spotless as the milk he wants children to drink so that they can grow ‘oh so gora-fair and lovely‘. This is the savior we have given ourselves on this tear-gassed midnight. This is the lila unfolding on Ramlila ground as a battalion of Keystone Kops and a regiment of Saffron Scamsters contest the shape and meaning of our future. I am sad, angry, and my laughter is black and bitter with rage. And if I were in Ramlila Ground, instead of being awake writing this, I am sure there would be tears too. Tear-Gas can make them come, easily. Meanwhile, NDTV tells us that Baba Ramdev has been found, dressed in a sari (what a wonderful bearded lady he would have made). He is in police custody. He will be escorted, ‘externed’ to Haridwar. --------------------------------------------- Shuddhabrata Sengupta The Sarai Programme at CSDS Raqs Media Collective shuddha at sarai.net www.sarai.net www.raqsmediacollective.net From aliens at dataone.in Sun Jun 5 16:04:43 2011 From: aliens at dataone.in (aliens at dataone.in) Date: Sun, 05 Jun 2011 03:34:43 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] REMIND DAYS OF 1975 EMERGENCY In-Reply-To: <9DE2246B-1F57-4BC0-8442-75FE52BFD556@sarai.net> References: <9DE2246B-1F57-4BC0-8442-75FE52BFD556@sarai.net> Message-ID: Today govt. barbaric act to crush down peaceful violence of Baba can be described as unofficial emergency same as in 1975 Indira Gandhi crushed down Jayprakash Narayan movement and declared official emergency and that was black day on Indian democracy. So, now Sonia Gandhi (of course she is super PM) following the same path to turn down peaceful protest and we can describe this as grey day of Indian democracy. Shrud politician (khandhe rajkarni) manage to take baba in trap and able to make him fool and innocent (compared to shrud politician) baba become fool. Thanks Bipin Trivedi From ysaeed7 at yahoo.com Mon Jun 6 09:40:58 2011 From: ysaeed7 at yahoo.com (Yousuf) Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2011 21:10:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] A death in camera, not on camera Message-ID: <728399.3168.qm@web161218.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Interesting role of that elusive photograph! ------ A death in camera, not on camera Sadanand Menon A month after Osama bin Laden is said to have perished in the American stealth-raid, the event remains suspended in the space between fact and fiction. Not only was there no legal and live capture, no inquiry, no trial, no judgment, no detention, no post-mortem, no public burial, no due process and no Geneva Convention — there was not even a photograph. It was a death that happened in camera — not “on camera.” One of the most historic fugitive chases in history concluded last month without a photo-finish. Through the past decade, billions around the world were told their security was mortgaged to an apparition called Osama bin Laden, the only evidence of whose existence being the periodic video clips he so thoughtfully released himself to the media. Those images provided legitimacy to an unrestrained and ruthless war that affected hundreds of thousands, besides familiarising us [through unwitting leaks] with some exceptional visuals of reverse American savagery in the high security prisons in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Yet, the billions who were drawn into this “us” versus “them” war, have no clue of what happened on the night of May 2, in Abbottabad, when they were told this “threat to international security” had been eliminated. A month after bin Laden is said to have perished in the American stealth-raid deep inside Pakistani territory, we are still devoid of the evidentiary, memorialising photograph. It is a case of a man who “lost face” along with his life. The event remains suspended — akin to a photographic print incubating in developing solution — in the space between fact and fiction. The role of the photograph It is as if the U.S. establishment has suddenly turned coy. Can there be anything more damaging to their reputation as an administration that has historically preferred the use of arbitrary, lynch-mob justice than pictures from Hiroshima, Vietnam, Iraq or Gitmo? The sudden display of mock restraint even as they swagger and exult in their act of derring-do is disturbing. Their ostensible reasons for not releasing photos of the slain Osama, of course, are that the photos are “gruesome,” can be “inflammatory,” and “not in U.S. interest” — that the photos will be “used against us as propaganda.” To cap it all, was President Obama's pious proclamation, “We are not in the business of bringing out trophies.” This raises some interesting questions on the role of the photograph in contemporary discourses around death. Freddy Alborta's brutal photos of the slain Che Guevara, taken in 1967 in the laundry house of the hospital in Vallegrande in Bolivia, established that death. The 2004 pix of a slain Veerappan released by the Special Task Force, though controversial about the manner of his being killed, laid to rest any debate about his being alive. The 2009 Sri Lankan Army photos of Velupillai Prabhakaran's seemingly severed head obligingly being held against his torso were gruesome indeed, but did not cause much of an international ripple. In each of the above cases, the respective photos are suspected to have been manipulated. Yet, it is interesting that despite being notoriously doctorable, the photograph today constitutes the sign of the “clinching” evidence. Osama's death, however, seems to have been denied the historic necessity of the camera's intervention. At the same time, the image that is destined to be iconic and what the world was allowed to see was that of all the President's men (and women) gathered in the “Situation Room” of the White House, their eyes glued to the “live TV feed” of the Osama elimination as if it were home entertainment. This cluster of a dozen of the topmost CEOs of America Inc. obviously possessed the privilege to witness an action inaccessible to the eyes of the rest of the world. Besides being paternalistic, it is a clear statement of power — where powerlessness is the censored vision. Regulating the visual field It is a phenomenon that should alert us to two significant issues — one, the contemporary power of alpha states to effectively regulate the visual field and, two, what Roland Barthes called the relation between “photography and death.” Both these concerns have been brilliantly dealt with earlier. Susan Sontag reflected on the just released photos of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (torture) in Gitmo in “ Regarding the Torture of Others” ( NYT, May 23, 2004), which was probably her last piece before she passed away. Likewise, in an inspired analysis, Judith Butler examines “ Torture and the Ethics of Photography” in her book “ Frames of War” (Verso, 2010). They both refer to the concerted effort of the U.S. during the Bush period to “regulate the visual field” through offering photographers access to events on condition “their gaze remained restricted to established parameters of designated action.” In essence, this meant the effective control over “affect” by regulating the visual modes of participation in the war. Under conditions of modernity, the photograph has come to substitute for the event to such an extent that it is now not merely a visual image awaiting interpretation; it in fact, constitutes the interpretation itself. Critical issues In a conclusive way therefore, without photographic evidence today, there is no event, no atrocity. The evidentiary photograph is built into the notion of atrocity. The evidence constitutes the phenomenon. The circulated photograph becomes the public condition under which we feel outrage and construct political views to incorporate and articulate that outrage. Contrarily, transcending mechanisms of restrictions, photographs of lawless killings can also constitute a “disobedient act of seeing.” Many of these critical issues concerning the use of photographs are linked to the question of when and who we are permitted to grieve over and, conversely, when the loss of a life is designated ungrievable. It is related to notions of who is — or is not — deemed “human” and thus entitled to human rights. The age of the photograph has ‘parallelly' been an age of revolutions, assassinations and terrorisms of all kinds. Here, an “enemy” denied a “death by the photograph” is someone pushed out of the “frame” within which the state exercises its forcible dramaturgy of power. If there is a critical role for visual culture during times of war, it is to humanise pain and loss rather than memorialise triumph. Former U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, justifying censorship of pictures from Abu Ghraib, told CNN on May 8, 2004 that “publishing photos of torture and humiliation and rape would allow (the Taliban) to define us as Americans of a kind.” It is obviously a similar fear that now restrains Obama from releasing the images of an Osama “shot-through-the-face.” http://www.hindu.com/2011/06/06/stories/2011060652481100.htm From chintan.backups at gmail.com Mon Jun 6 22:57:29 2011 From: chintan.backups at gmail.com (Chintan Girish Modi) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 22:57:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Mahabharata: The Heroes Within, Workshop with Arshia Sattar in Pune Message-ID: >From http://www.openspaceindia.org/engage/current-events/item/716.html Mahabharata : The Heroes Within *Whatever is here, is found elsewhere. But what is not here, is nowhere else…* And so the Mahabharata begins to capture our imagination, to make an appearance in our films, on our TV and in our lives as we negotiate and battle the everyday… *Mahabharata: The Heroes Within* is an intensive six day workshop conducted by Dr Arshia Sattar at Open Space. Through modern films like *Rajneeti *and *Kalyug*, Dharamvir Bharati’s *Andha Yug *and Bhasa’s *Shattered Thigh*, and of course Peter Brook’s iconic * Mahabharata*, Arshia will look at the *Mahabharata* as the story of a journey, the story of love, the story of deceit and the epic story of brother fighting brother. Packed with readings, screenings and discussions, workshop participants will be expected to also read ahead of the workshop – so early registrations are encouraged. Reading material for the course will be provided by Open Space. The workshop schedule will be up on the website in a few days. *Arshia Sattar is an Advisor to Open Space. Arshia has a PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. She teaches courses on classical Indian literatures for various American universities and has recently begun teaching traditional narratives for screenwriting programmes. She has been closely associated with theatre in India over the last two decades. Arshia’s new book Lost Loves: Exploring Rama's Anguish is being published by Penguin and will be available later this year. * *Registration fee* (includes reading material): Rs. 2000 *Venue*: Open Space (Phone No: 020-25457371) *Time*: 4:30pm-7:30pm *Date*: 25th June-1st July *To register please get in touch with Imran at imranalikhan.os at gmail.com* From patrice at xs4all.nl Tue Jun 7 04:58:15 2011 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 01:28:15 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Ranjit Hoskote: Pavillion as Laboratory: Introduction to the Indian Pavillion at the current Venezia Biennale Message-ID: 54th Venezia Biennale http://www.labiennale.org/en/Home.html June 4th to November 27th, Venezia (Venice), Italy. page of the Indian pavillion: http://www.labiennale.org/en/art/exhibition/first-time/india.html India was represented by a national pavillion for the very first time. Curator Ranjit Hoskote, artists and team made for an exceptionaly unorthodox, thrilling, and yet subdued, unsensationalist display. This is the introductory text to the exhibition. From and by permission of the author. PAVILION AS LABORATORY A Tool Box for ‘Everyone Agrees: It’s About To Explode’ Ranjit Hoskote 1. The Logic of National Representation The national pavilion may no longer enjoy the same pre-eminence as it once did, as a node of location and unit of cultural measurement, on the global biennale circuit; but it retains its grandeur and centrality in the oldest and most auratic biennale of all, la Biennale di Venezia. And, while the nation-state is not the only or even the major locus of activity for many artists in our fluid, entangled and transcultural present, the national pavilion remains relevant as a site where the idea of the nation (and its relationship to culture) can be subjected to productive engagement, experiment and debate. The logic of a national pavilion at a biennale obliges us to attend to the question of how we can best represent a specific moment in the art-historical life of a nation. How do we arrive at a ‘national representation’ within the temporal framework of any edition of a biennale, which takes the 18-month period preceding it as its calendrical hinterland? What, to put it simply, can a national pavilion represent? The path of least resistance, for a curator confronted with these questions, is to reach for the most characteristic practices and most identifiable artists associated with a national art scene: to identify and throw into high contour the key tendencies and ascendancies that have dominated that scene. A variation on this approach would be to picture a national art scene as a balance of stakes, illustrating its various contending centres, its alternative subcultures. Or then, in defiance of such cautious or merely lazy metonymy, a curator might decide to mobilise a partisan counter-choice: to cast an emergent or contrarian position into the teeth of orthodox opinion. In all these cases, the source of value for the curatorial choice lies in a machinery of validation: whether platforms of circulation such as the gallery system or the museum circuit; venues of opinion such as journals; hierarchies of recognition that evolve around awards, fellowships, residencies and commissions; or a combination of all these. In the Indian context, the machinery of validation straddles three institutional frameworks: the gallery system and the auction-house circuit, as the principal manifestations of the art market; and an emergent network of residencies and fellowships, which is part of a global ecology of artistic exchanges and collaborative projects. A majority of the Indian viewing public looks to the art market to define excellence and relevance in art, and takes its cue from the galleries and the auctions. However, if we were to follow Arthur C. Danto in his celebrated description of the art world as being, above all, a conversation in which the rules of making and recognising art are continuously negotiated, we would see that the Indian art market is only the loudest circle of speech within a much larger conversation that includes critics, curators, theorists, historians, enthusiasts, and ordinary viewers and readers who participate in cultural life, rather than the economy of culture. In this loudest circle of speech, art is metered through a speculator’s enumeration of winners and losers, a guide to what’s hot and what’s not: nothing more complex than a Top Ten. Over a period of time, as this list-making reflex becomes entrenched, its expectations masquerade as criteria, and only those artists who meet them pass the test of relevance. Many of them become ‘names’, associated with the narratives of success: figures of arrival whose artistic gifts are eclipsed by the scale of their operations, their social saliency, the portability of their images, their ubiquity at home and overseas. And since the choice of artists for any major representation of Indian art tends to keep emerging from this list, it generates (among patrons) a self-perpetuating reassurance as to the rightness of the expectations it makes of artists, and (among artists) a complacent continuity with those expectations. When I was given the mandate of curating the India Pavilion for the 54th International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia, by the Lalit Kala Akademi, India’s National Academy of Art, my aim was to mark a sharp rupture with these pre-existing notions of how India’s national art scene should be represented. Since I have long argued that contemporary Indian art is defined by multiple horizons of value, I wished to take the emphasis away from the usual Top Ten. Instead, I wished to disclose artistic practices from locations other than those synonymous with the Indian art market: practices that transit among disparate economies of image-production, traverse asymmetric cultural and political situations; that are nourished by diverse circulations of philosophical ideas; and that grow, often, from improvisational forms of research and collaboration. Accordingly, as my rhetorical trope for this pavilion, I chose the non sequitur: that which does not necessarily follow from something said earlier in the conventional flow of conversation, an unprecedented suggestion that overturns the fixities of an existing language game. The non sequitur is a departure phrased at a deliberate tangent, a shifting of the coordinates, a calling of attention to alternative loci of significance. It was crucial that this non sequitur should make a strong symbolic statement about contemporary Indian art. And therefore, instead of presenting a large number of artists to illustrate India’s burgeoning art scene, I have chosen four powerful artistic positions, each of them conceptually rigorous, sophisticated in their aesthetic strategies, and robust in expressive power: all of them unexpected choices from the viewpoint of conventional wisdom. While some of these positions have been incorporated respectfully into the gallery system, both globally and in India, and have received the attention of museums, foundations and galleries, they have not been neutralised by the system’s embrace. Rather, they enjoy the critical acclaim that attends dynamic practices that keep transforming themselves instead of settling into anxious formulae. Zarina Hashmi, Praneet Soi, Gigi Scaria, and the Desire Machine Collective act as compass points for an alternative atlas of references. An idiosyncratic line of latitude connects them across the globe, running west-east to link their theatres of life and work across New York, Amsterdam/ Kolkata, New Delhi/ Kerala, and Guwahati. Since this is the first time in 117 years that India has its own curated national pavilion at the Venice Biennale—although, as I will remark presently, it has had occasional national representations in previous decades—it is vital to honour this historic occasion with a set of positions that incarnate the linkage between contemporary Indian art and the landscape of global art, while retaining the distinctiveness of sensibilities engaged with the South Asian predicament. 2. From Identity to Positionality My curatorial proposition is that the India Pavilion is a laboratory where the ‘idea of India’, to deploy a phrase made famous by the political scientist and essayist Sunil Khilnani, may be tested. Through the four artistic positions presented there, I bring into play some of the key propositions concerning the nature of contemporary India. I note, among these cultural practitioners, a shift from the emphasis on a fixed and a priori national identity to a positionality that extends itself across plural anchorages of belonging. Such a shift allows us to view India as a conceptual entity that is not territorially bounded, but which extends outward into a global space of the imagination, in the form of arguments, dreams, memories and visions. The artists I have chosen for the India Pavilion explore complex histories and volatile lifeworlds. Taken together, Hashmi, Soi, Scaria and the Desire Machine Collective embody impulses from diverse regional modernities, religious lineages, subcultural locations, aesthetic choices, and philosophical standpoints. Zarina Hashmi (born in Aligarh, 1937; lives in New York), works across printmaking and sculpture realised in various media. Her art emerges from the questing of a subjectivity profoundly shaped by the trauma of the 1947 Partition of British India. In a profound sense, it embodies India’s birth-moment, when Independence and Partition occurred together, producing lifelong questions of identity and belonging for South Asian Muslims. To this crisis of self-definition was added the experience of diaspora, as Zarina (she prefers to use her first name) embarked on a life of travel. The map, the architectural layout of a home, the border and the journey are her recurrent motifs, each austerely yet delicately delineated. The act of naming, and holding on to places, things, experiences and sensations by naming, occurs constantly in her art. She crosses uncertain terrain, looking for lost countries that might offer the nomad an oasis or anchorage. Her work also demonstrates a fascination with epiphany and illumination, whether these spring from the decipherment of calligraphy, a cascade of goldleaf-covered bulbs or a rosary, or a tablet woven from gold and light. I have chosen three of Zarina’s works for the India Pavilion: the major 36-piece Home is a Foreign Place (1997), Noor (2008), and Blinding Light (2010). Praneet Soi (born in Kolkata, 1971; lives in Amsterdam and Kolkata) is a painter, sculptor and mixed-media artist. His transcultural practice, based on engagements with both global and local economies of production, testifies to a significant transformation of the studio. Instead of a single fixed address, the studio, for Soi, is a series of fluid situations, organised around interactions with collaborators, assistants, technical specialists, and such interlocutors as architects and curators. His studio practice refers, also, to a series of open-ended researches expressed as drawings, photographic archives, notations, and preparatory layouts. In geographical terms, his studio can stretch from a biennale site in Europe to the small-scale industrial units of Kumartuli, northern Kolkata, where he works on projects with sculptors who make traditional festival icons, letterpress printers, and other entrepreneurs. Soi has been preoccupied with war as an existential condition, as manifested through his figures of refugees, people escaping catastrophe, and victims of bombardment: in his drawings and paintings, self-portraits are often wrapped around or inserted through these figures. In scale, Soi shuttles between the miniature and the mural, the drawing-as-memoir to the monument-as-trace. His contribution to the India Pavilion is a new recension of a slide-projection work, Kumartuli Printer (2010/ 2011), and a mural that he has painted onsite. Gigi Scaria (painter, sculptor and video artist, born in Kothanalloor, Kerala, 1973; now lives in New Delhi) reflects on the complexity of everyday life across social strata and political asymmetries in metropolitan India. Processing the architecture of housing and entertainment, probing the phantasmagoria thrown up by the real-estate boom and the fantasia of delusional urban planning, Scaria sets, within this larger armature, the intimate textures of personal life, as constructed by migrants and transients attracted by the promise of the metropolis. As a southerner long resident in the north of India, Scaria has a precise purchase on the sociological processes and psychological pressures of internal migration. In his video works, especially, he plays on the politics of everyday discourse as an exchange between dissimilars, a tangled conversation. The productive tension in Scaria’s art is that between discursivity and the visceral, things put into words and things that slip beneath the radar of language: the aspirations, anxieties, resentments and resignations that form the substance of much metropolitan existence. Scaria’s practice also attests to an expanded form of the studio, as when he works with a set of collaborators, ranging from software programmers to production engineers. He presents, in the India Pavilion, a 3-screen interactive video installation, Elevator from the Subcontinent (2011). The Desire Machine Collective (DMC) was established by Sonal Jain (born Shillong, 1975) and Mriganka Madhukaillya (born Jorhat, 1978). A media collective based in Guwahati, Assam, DMC works across film, installation and public space projects. While committing itself to the necessary interiority of its own art, it articulates a need for interlocution by organising workshops and conferences at Periferry, a residency platform based on a boat moored on the banks of the river Brahmaputra. DMC’s activity signals a vista of artistic production and critical energy in the north-east of India, a region that has suffered official neglect and is often regarded as separate from the mainstream. In a context where political conditions obtrude dramatically into everyday life, DMC bypasses the all-too-obvious choice of creating an art that is, in a generic sense, political. Instead, it chooses to layer the viewing encounter with intensities of awareness and sensation, inviting viewers to attend in a full-bodied manner to subtle shifts in a sensorial environment they are invited to occupy, whether this is a sound installation in a street or a film based in an abandoned thermal power plant. Indeed, the Desire Machine Collective is represented, in the India Pavilion, by a 35 mm realisation of the latter, the film Residue (2010/ 2011). As is evident, these artists do not guide us to an end-point or discursive destination called the ‘nation’, but rather, they return us to starting-points: to see if we can re-imagine what it means to belong to India. They achieve this by adding, to the figure of the citizen, the figures of the participant and the contributor: in a world that offers many alternative affiliations, they have chosen to remain connected to India, to take part in its ongoing theatre of self-definition, to contribute to its cultural life, without being conscripted into any narrow ideology of the nation. In the early 21st century, we must accept that the nation is not simply an apparatus of conscription or a synoptic totality that overrides its heterogeneous contents. It is, rather, the product of the political and cultural imagination: an administrative, juridical and territorial entity, to be sure, but also an entity materialised through the accretion of mythologies of identity and self-assertion. And increasingly, as diverse internal energies manifest themselves and a polyphony of voices begins to emerge from within the nation, it becomes transformed into an array of fragments, each casting illumination on a possible whole. Such is the understanding that informs the title of this exhibition, ‘Everyone Agrees: It’s About To Explode’. My eye fell on this sentence, from a text by an anonymous group of theorists called The Invisible Committee, which was shared with me by Mriganka Madhukaillya of the Desire Machine Collective. It was a fortuitous, magical moment; transposed to our predicament, this messianic sentence holds a reservoir of multiple meanings. It could speak of a society whose confident energies, simmering discontents, plural and productive articulations are all set to explode. It could speak of a national art world whose heterogeneities are on the point of bursting in all directions. It could speak, also, of a cluster of ideas about identity and subjectivity, post-postcolonial location and transcultural shape-shifting, whose time has irresistibly come. 3. The Roles of the India Pavilion On a research visit to Venice in the autumn of 2010, I chose the 250-square meter site for the India Pavilion in the Artiglierie section of the Arsenale. It occupies a salient position in the Arsenale, the former ship-building yard and weapons store of the navy of the Venetian Republic (15th-19th centuries), when it was a great trading and maritime power that dominated the Mediterranean, before it collapsed under Napoleon’s attacks and was eventually annexed into the newly formed nation-state of Italy in 1866. The Arsenale is a site of fantasia: gritty, redolent of history, its exposed concrete and unfaced brick walls eloquent, its huge columns and vast empty bays underwriting the magic of the Biennale. The constraints of the site summon forth a curatorial response that the cultural theorist and curator Nancy Adajania and I have designated as ‘ju-jitsu’, a working around rather than against the site, a mode of using the power of the site to coax it into cooperation. My first aim was to develop a conversational plan among the four artistic positions. I designed the pavilion along a quadrature, dividing the space into four quadrants of nearly equal quadrants: one diagonal connecting the open spaces and near-monochromatic, graphic programmes of Hashmi and Soi; the other diagonal connecting the enclosures of Scaria and DMC, Scaria invoking a visual stratigraphy of class with his elevator, DMC resonant with the aura of industrial ruin and the remainders of hubris. The quadrature itself is intended to relay the deep spatial archetypes indwelling in Indian culture: the mandala or universal map of Hindu-Buddhist sacred architecture, the chahar-bagh or quadrated garden of paradise from Islamic architecture. At its basic level, the India Pavilion has been designed as a cosmogram. Simultaneously, however, it is intended to act as a space for the release of various temporalities, the compressed histories of Partition, diaspora, travel, apprenticeship, conversation across borders; and, as it viscerally allows for this, the pavilion is also a chronogram. Beyond this spatial level, at the performative levels, the India Pavilion is intended to play the roles of a laboratory (as I have already indicated), a school, and a stage. As laboratory, it test-runs the idea of a non-territorial cultural citizenship (such as Homi K. Bhabha has been considering), under which a cultural practitioner may live away from India and yet belong to its extended national space in crucial ways, by affirmation and critical affiliation (Hashmi, Soi). The pavilion also test-runs the conception of a multi-local cosmopolitanism, one that is independent of a metropolitan basis (DMC); and in its acceptance of strangeness as a dynamic for creativity, whether in the form of encounters with other milieux, societies, discourses, disciplines and specialisations, it emphasises the need to re-draw the geographies within which we constitute our selfhood (Scaria, Soi). As a school, the pavilion has catalysed several forms of learning and extended pedagogy, parallel and sometimes convergent, for all participants: artists, curator, producer, collaborators, and assistants. The pavilion has acted as a production studio for various refinements of practice, the improvisation of new protocols and mechanisms, and extensions of various modes of research, design and delivery. As a stage, the India Pavilion marks India’s return to the Venice Biennale after a long absence; and, for the first time, with a professionally conceived and curated exhibition commissioned by the appropriate institution, the Lalit Kala Akademi, the National Academy of Art. This performative dimension of India’s presence is vital. It marks the renewal of an almost-forgotten internationalist momentum (India has had various forms of official exhibition presence at the 1954, 1956, 1958, 1962, 1966, 1978 and 1982 editions of la Biennale di Venezia, routed through the Embassy of India in Rome). It thus carries forward the desire to formulate a claim to assertive participation from the global South, which was embodied by the visionary Indian writer and cultural organiser, Mulk Raj Anand, in Triennale India, which he founded in New Delhi (1968) and of which the Lalit Kala Akademi has since hosted 11 editions. I have elsewhere referred to Triennale India as a major example of the ‘biennale of resistance’, and it is a matter of significance to Indian art that these two histories, those of Venice and of New Delhi, meet in this pavilion today. It is to be hoped that this encounter will produce fresh narratives, renewed conversations, and spirited exchanges of perspective. To conclude, I would suggest that this India Pavilion is what Nancy Adajania and I have elsewhere termed an nth field, a site of unexpected transcultural encounter and coproduction. In ‘Notes towards a Lexicon of Urgencies’ (October 2010: http://www.curatorsintl.org/index.php/dispatch/posts/notes_towards_a_lexicon_of_urgencies/), we write: “In structural terms, nth fields are receptive and internally flexible institutions, rhizomatic and self-sustaining associations, or periodic platforms. In spatial terms, these are either programmatically nomadic in the way they manifest themselves, or extend themselves through often unpredictable transregional initiatives, or are geographically situated in sites to which none (or few) of their participants are affiliated by citizenship or residence. Temporally, the rhythm of these engagements is varied: it traverses a range of untested encounters, from face-to-face meetings and discussions through email and Skype, and can integrate multiple time lines for conception and production. ‘These nth fields certainly throw into high relief the vexed questions that haunt the global system of cultural production: Who is the audience for contemporary global art? Is it possible to translate the intellectual sources of a regional modernity into globally comprehensible terms? What forms of critical engagement should artistic labour improvise, as it chooses to become complicit with aspirational and developmentalist capital and its managers across the world?” Thus the India Pavilion poses questions, not only to the nation-state, but also to the system of global art. +++++++++++++++++++++++++ Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and curator. He is the author of 20 books, including Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985-2005 (Penguin, 2006), Die Ankunft der Vögel (Carl Hanser Verlag, 2006), and I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Děd (Penguin Classics, 2011). He has authored nine artist monographs; most recently, Zinny & Maidagan: Compartment/ Das Abteil (Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/ Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2010). With Ilija Trojanow, Hoskote has co-authored Kampfabsage (Blessing Verlag, 2007), a critique of the ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis phrased from the perspective of cultural confluence. With Nancy Adajania, Hoskote is co-author of The Dialogues Series (Popular/ Foundation B&G, 2011), an unfolding programme of conversations with artists. Hoskote’s essays have appeared in numerous anthologies; most recently, ‘Biennials of Resistance’, in Elena Filipovic, Marieke van Hal and Solveig Øvstebo eds., The Biennial Reader (Hatje Cantz, 2010). Since 1993, Hoskote has curated more than 20 exhibitions of Indian and international contemporary art, both in India and overseas. In 2001, he curated ‘Bombay: Labyrinth/ Laboratory’, a mid-career survey of Atul Dodiya’s work (Japan Foundation, Tokyo), and in 2005, he curated a lifetime retrospective of Jehangir Sabavala (National Gallery of Modern Art, Bombay and New Delhi). Over 2000-2002, he co-curated the trans-Asian curatorial project, ‘Under Construction’ (Japan Foundation). Hoskote and Hyunjin Kim co-curated, with Artistic Director Okwui Enwezor, the 7th Gwangju Biennial (Korea, 2008). +++++++++++ From rohitrellan at aol.in Tue Jun 7 09:34:20 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:04:20 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] =?utf-8?q?Bharti_Airtel_to_offer_On-demand_online_m?= =?utf-8?q?ovie_viewing_services_-_launches_=E2=80=98airtel_Movies?= =?utf-8?b?4oCZ?= Message-ID: <8CDF2DF1CC1ACDA-62C-4801A@webmail-d173.sysops.aol.com> Digital video library with original DVD quality content powered by BigFlix • Now watch over 500 Movies, 100 TV shows and more @just INR 229/month on your computer/laptop/tablet • No additional bandwidth consumption charges • Easy payment through your Monthly Broadband Bill– no credit card/debit card required New Delhi, June 1, 2011: Redefining On-demand Home entertainment on Broadband, Bharti Airtel, India's leading telecommunications company today announced the launch of airtel Movies-a unique On-demand online movie viewing service. airtel Movies will be an On-demand digital video library with original DVD quality content that would be available exclusively to airtel broadband customers in the form of a unique add on monthly pack. 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Mr. Girish Mehta, Chief Marketing Officer, Telemedia Services, Bharti Airtel said, "The launch of ‘airtel Movies’ comes on the back of a rousing response to our recent offerings of airtel broadband TV and airtel Photos and is in line with our commitment of enabling our customers in doing more with the Internet. airtel has always led the way in bringing in innovative services through industry leading partnerships. We are confident that this service will enrich our customer´s lives and enable them to balance their work, family and entertainment needs by transforming their experience from appointment viewing to one of choice. We will look to continuously refresh content in response to feedback and customer needs." Mr. Manish Agarwal, Chief Operating Officer, Reliance Entertainment – Digital said, "The launch of airtel Movies powered by BigFlix is a novel association that will bring in an exciting package of on-demand entertainment content for the Indian broadband customer. It will allow consumers to watch movies & TV shows of their choice sitting in their homes through their airtel broadband connection that is free of advertisements. We at BigFlix believe that future of content lies in "on demand" nature of service and with partnership with airtel, BigFlix is able to provide millions of Indians a choice & convenience of content consumption and content owners a new way of reaching out to consumers at much cheaper cost." airtel broadband customers can now watch movies, full length TV shows and their archives across genres including Bollywood, regional, and Hollywood. In addition to this, customers can also enjoy the music (film and non-film) and trailer videos from recently released movies on www.airtelmovies.com without subscribing to any pack. ‘airtel Movies’ also works on Wi-Fi, offering the flexibility to multiple users to watch different movies at the same time. *The bandwidth consumption for watching ‘airtel Movies’ will not add to the customers' Broadband Plan data usage, except for users in Punjab. To avail this service all that airtel broadband customers need to do is visit www.airtelmovies.com or SMS "movie" to 53636, OR call 1800 200 3101 for information or subscription to airtel Movies. Watching ‘airtel Movies’ requires standard Macromedia Flash player version 10.2 and no other specific software. To know about other exciting services available on their broadband, airtel broadband users can visitwww.airtellive.com About Bharti Airtel Limited Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 19 countries across Asia and Africa. The company offers mobile voice & data services, fixed line, high speed broadband, IPTV, DTH, turnkey telecom solutions for enterprises and national & international long distance services to carriers. Bharti Airtel has been ranked among the six best performing technology companies in the world by BusinessWeek. Bharti Airtel had over 223 million customers across its operations at the end of April 2011. To know more please visit, www.airtel.in From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Tue Jun 7 19:54:48 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 19:54:48 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Meaning of Financial Liberalisation Message-ID: (from PD) The Meaning of Financial Liberalisation Prabhat Patnaik THE term financial liberalisation is used to cover a whole set of measures, such as the autonomy of the Central Bank from the government; the complete freedom of finance to move into and out of the economy, which implies the full convertibility of the currency; the abandonment of all “priority sector” lending targets; an end to government-imposed differential interest rate schemes; a freeing of interest rates; the complete freedom of banks to pursue profits unhindered by government directives; the removal of restrictions on the ownership of banks, which means de-nationalisation, full freedom for foreign ownership, and an end to “voting caps”; and so on. These measures are not necessarily presented as a package, and not always in their maximal form. The Narasimhan Committee in India for instance did not ask for a complete denationalisation of banks; it suggested that the government, the foreigners and the Indian private sector should have one-third equity each in the currently-nationalised banks. Nonetheless, no matter what the exact sequence, form and strategy through which financial liberalisation is sought to be ushered in, the objective ultimately is to realise the above set of measures. Since financial liberalisation is seen as consisting of these measures, the debate upon it gets fragmented into a debate upon the desirability of each of these measures, ie, whether central bank autonomy is desirable or not; whether the government should have exclusive equity ownership in banks or only a majority ownership, or not even that; whether priority sector lending targets serve the purpose they are meant to; whether control over interest rates has not understated the scarcity value of “capital” (a particularly silly debate this, based on a Hayekian assumption of full employment); and so on. Because of this fragmentation of issues, the process of financial liberalisation is never seen in its totality. This, by camouflaging the total impact of financial liberalisation, keeps the opposition to it enfeebled, and thereby helps the “liberalisers”. The question therefore arises: what is financial liberalization in its totality? STRANGLEHOLD OF FINANCE CAPITAL The essence of financial liberalisation, seen in its totality, is to ensure the stranglehold of finance capital over the State. This may appear paradoxical at first sight: as the term “liberalisation” appended to “financial” suggests, the basic aim of the process is to liberate finance from the shackles of the State, ie, to ensure not the control of finance over the State but the negation of the control of the State over finance. But the remarkable aspect of financial liberalisation consists precisely in this: what appears at first sight as the liberation of finance from the shackles of the State is nothing else but the acquisition by finance of control over the State. This is not just the outcome of the dialectics of a conflict situation. For instance, in a wrestling bout when each of two wrestlers is having a grip on the other, the liberation of one from the grip of the other may be said to mark simultaneously the ascendancy of the one so liberated over the other; in a similar fashion it may be argued that the liberation of finance from the State, and therefore from the possible control of other classes exerted through the State, marks simultaneously the acquisition of hegemony by finance over the State. The dialectics of class struggle in this case may thus be seen only as another instance of the dialectics of any struggle, of which the wrestling bout is just an example. This perception, though not wrong, is inadequate. Financial liberalisation does not just mean an inversion: the ascendancy of finance arising from the very fact of the social grip over it, exercised through the State, being loosened. Since we live in a world where the State remains a nation-State while finance is globalised, ie, is international in character, financial liberalisation is not just liberalisation; it is simultaneously a process of globalisation of finance, ie, the conversion of “national finance capital” into an integral element of international finance capital, and hence the acquisition on its part of enormous strength vis-à-vis the nation-State. To go back to the wrestling analogy, it is as if the loosening of grip over one wrestler makes the one so loosened multiply several times in size, and hence necessarily acquire ascendancy. It is within this specific global context that financial liberalisation necessarily marks the acquisition by finance capital of a stranglehold over the State. In countries like India where financial liberalisation has been kept in check to an extent because of the struggles of the trade unions and the Left, even this acquisition of stranglehold has as yet been kept in check; and much of the financial sector still remains nationalised despite the best efforts of the “liberalisers”. But this does not by any means alter the meaning of financial liberalisation. Every single one of the measures mentioned above as constituting financial liberalisation has the effect of strengthening the hegemony of finance over the State. Central Bank autonomy removes a host of policies, eg, monetary policy, exchange rate policy, and credit policy, from the purview of the democratically-elected government and entrusts them to the caprices of a bunch of financiers, or bureaucrats aligned to them, who exercise control over the so-called autonomous Central Bank. This restricts the domain of intervention of the State. In addition, since the target with regard to State borrowing from the Central Bank is fixed, an autonomous Central Bank simply pushes the State to the mercy of the financial market to meet its borrowing requirement above this limit. The State in short can spend only as much as finance capital allows it to. What is more, since being creditworthy in the eyes of finance capital becomes a matter of paramount importance for the State, it pursues only such policies as finance capital would like it to. A fully convertible currency, and freedom for financial flows into and out of the country, has exactly the same effect. Since the pursuit of policies that finance capital dislikes would give rise to a financial outflow with potentially disastrous consequences for the economy, the State becomes obliged to follow only those policies which keep up the “confidence” of finance in the economy; it is in short obliged to pursue only those policies which are to the liking of finance capital. Likewise, the freeing of finance capital from all social obligations like priority sector lending targets and differential interest rates, not only increases its profitability, even while pushing petty producers and small capitalists deeper into crisis, but also allows it to pursue its own profit-seeking ways over a global terrain, which has the effect of subjugating the State to the thralldom of internationalised finance capital. In short, financial liberalisation is the process through which a fundamental change is enforced on the bourgeois State: from being an entity apparently standing above society and intervening for the “social good”, which means keeping in check to some extent the rapacity of big capital, even while promoting it and defending its monopoly privileges, the State becomes exclusively dominated by financial interests (with which big corporate interests are closely enmeshed) and loses its relative autonomy vis-a-vis such interests. We have not the “rolling back” of the State as neo-liberal ideologues suggest, but State intervention in the exclusive interests of finance capital. PROFOUND IMPLICATIONS This change has profound implications, of which only three will be discussed here. The first which is obvious and need not be laboured here relates to the attenuation of democracy. As long as the economy is characterised by financial liberalisation and hence the stranglehold over the State by finance capital, any change of government effected through popular democratic intervention will make no difference to the condition of the people. Or putting it differently, any assertion of democracy necessarily requires a negation of the stranglehold of finance capital over the State (which financial liberalisation entails), and hence a reassertion of social control over finance effected through the State. (This in turn presupposes a change in the nature of the State itself). The defence of democracy in countries like India requires therefore a prevention of any further financial liberalisation and a reversal of the financial liberalisation that has already occurred. Secondly, capitalism requires some external prop to make it come out of crises. In the absence of such props the crises would get inordinately prolonged, imposing such heavy burdens on the working people that the social stability of the system would get jeopardised. Historically, colonialism played this role of providing an external prop to the system; and the fact that this prop had got more or less exhausted by then was the main reason behind the Great Depression of the thirties. In the post-war period, State intervention in demand management provided such an external prop. Such intervention could only happen however if the State had some autonomy, if it was not part of the “spontaneity” of the system, but represented an “external element” to such spontaneity. But if the State loses this autonomy, if its own actions are dictated by the caprices of finance capital, and hence by the spontaneity of the system itself, so that it ceases to be an “external element” in this sense, then it loses the capacity to intervene in situations of crisis. This necessarily makes the crises inordinately prolonged, with no clear end in sight, which not only imposes heavy burdens on the working people but also undermines the system’s social stability and legitimacy. Financial liberalisation sets the stage for social upheavals. Thirdly, the State’s inability to truncate crises is part of a wider phenomenon, namely its inability to rid the system of its obvious ills. John Maynard Keynes was aware of these ills and wanted a reform of the system to eliminate them, for otherwise he was afraid that the system would give way to socialism which he did not wish to happen. He was a Liberal but he advocated State intervention for he saw liberal capitalism as undermining the Liberal values he cherished which required a humane economic system. He saw the State as an embodiment of “social rationality” intervening in a capitalist system to make it function in a manner different from what its own spontaneity dictated. Underlying his reform agenda, and indeed any Liberal reform agenda, is the presumption that the State stands outside the “spontaneity” of the system, so that it can intervene in a “rational” manner. But if the State is under the hegemony of finance capital, and hence lacks the autonomy to intervene in any manner that does not meet with the approval of finance capital, then that puts paid to all agendas of Liberal reform of capitalism. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From nagraj.adve at gmail.com Tue Jun 7 22:41:24 2011 From: nagraj.adve at gmail.com (Nagraj Adve) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 22:41:24 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: WSS CONDEMNS POLICE ASSAULT ON PROTESTORS AT RAMLILA MAIDAN, DELHI (copy) Message-ID: Good statement by Women Against Sexual Violence and Stqte Repression. Naga * * * **Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression strongly condemns the midnight crackdown on thousands of people staging a ‘Satyagraha’ and hunger strike at Ramlila Maidan with Baba Ramdev for demands related to corruption and black money.* * * *We are astonished at Mr Manmohan Singh's defense of police action saying that there was no alternative. The attack on the protesters was absolutely unwarranted as the ‘satyagraha’ was neither causing any law and order problems nor was it disrupting the peace of the city in any manner. * * * *We are not supporters of Baba Ramdev but clearly see the role of dissent in upholding a democratic society. * *We also condemn the secret parleys between the government and Baba Ramdev as both parties are ready to compromise with each other and show no regard for the genuine mounting anger that people are feeling towards corruption and theft by those in power for personal and corporate gains. It is the breakdown of these parleys which prompted the attack on innocent satyagrahis.* * * *We also question BJP and Sangh Parivar's opposition to this act of repression. It is selective and opportunistic; whenever it has suited BJP it has deployed the same means to quash opposition and questioning. In Chhattisgarh, most recently, it is proposing to ban People's Union for Civil Liberties which has been an above board organization espousing the cause of civil liberties since the dark days of emergency leave alone frequent burning of villages, and violent attacks on the villagers. * * * *We wish to highlight that such attacks are an everyday occurrence in large areas of Adivasi and Dalit habitats where land is being grabbed to subserve corporate greed. Except that they are more vicious and batons are replaced by automatic rifles but unfortunately they do not make the headlines though they have rendered millions homeless.* Kalpana Mehta, Rinchin, Ranjana Padhi, Indira Chakravarthy, Sudha Bhardwaj, Geeta Charusivam, Lena Ganesh, Uma Chandru, Madhuri Krishnaswami and Others On Behalf of the WSS Network From rohitrellan at aol.in Wed Jun 8 15:13:54 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2011 05:43:54 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] =?utf-8?q?Theatre=3A_=22The_Dumb_Waiter=22_directed?= =?utf-8?q?_by_Shekhar_Murugan=2C_written_by_Harold_Pinter=2E/_Habib_Tanvi?= =?utf-8?q?r_ji_-_=E2=80=9CKUCH_YAADEIN=2C_KUCH_BAATEIN=E2=80=9D_on_8th_Ju?= =?utf-8?q?ne_=2C2011?= Message-ID: <8CDF3D7B70F6FB7-10A0-41FDB@webmail-d006.sysops.aol.com> "The Dumb Waiter" directed by Shekhar Murugan, written by Harold Pinter. Yatrik, one of the oldest surviving theatre groups in the capital presents as a a part of the dream theatre initiative inviting young theatre artists to showcase their plays in the form of dramatised readings at the basement audi of India Habitat Centre presents : "The Dumb Waiter" directed by Shekhar Murugan, written by Harold Pinter. Cast: Dhruv Jagasia – BEN ... Adhiraj Katoch - GUS Place : IHC Basement – 9th June, 2011 at 7.00 p.m.New Delhi, India In single act of 1 hour duration The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play by 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter written in 1957; it premiered at the Hampstead Theatre Club, on 21 January 1960. Synopsis: Two hit-men, Ben and Gus are waiting in a basement room for their assignment. Ben is the senior member of the team and is reading a newspaper when the action begins. Gus is the junior member and is tying his shoes as the play opens. Gus asks many questions of Ben as he gets ready for their job and tries to make tea, including questions about their job (Gus seems to be questioning the concept of being a hit-man). They argue over the semantics of "light the kettle" and "put on the kettle". Ben continues reading his paper most of the time, and reads excerpts of it to Gus sometimes, it seems, to change the topic of conversation. Ben gets increasingly more animated in his newspaper story-telling, and Gus's questions become more and more pointed, and at points nearly nonsensical. As the tension rises the physicality of the two players increases accordingly. In the back of the room is a dumbwaiter, which delivers occasional food orders. This is mysterious and both characters seem to be puzzled as to why these orders keep coming. At one point they send up some snack food that Gus had brought along. As these orders come in, the tension builds to the point where they even come to blows. Ben has to explain to the people above via the dumbwaiter's "speaking tube" that there is no food. This whole sequence is rather odd because the basement is clearly not outfitted for fulfillment of the orders. Gus leaves the room to get a drink of water in the bathroom, and the dumbwaiter's speaking tube whistles (a sign that there is a person on the other end who wishes to communicate). Ben listens carefully—we gather from his replies that their victim has arrived and is on his way to the room. Ben shouts for Gus, who is still out of the room. The door that the target is supposed to enter from flies open, Ben rounds on it with his gun, and Gus enters, stripped of his jacket, waistcoat, tie and gun. There is a long silence as the two stare at each other before the curtain comes down (the implication is that Gus is the person that Ben has been employed to kill ------------------------------------------------------ Habib Tanvir ji - “KUCH YAADEIN, KUCH BAATEIN” on 8th June ,2011 Habib Tanvir ji - “KUCH YAADEIN, KUCH BAATEIN” - Memorial meeting. Do join us ... In remembering the eminent playwright and theatre Director Habib Tanvir (1 September 1923 – 8 June 2009) 0n 8th June, 2011 at 6:30 pm- 7.30pm at Asmita rehearsal venue, Nav Shakti School , ITO, opposite Hindi Bhawan, New Delhi,India For more details please contact : Shilpi Marwaha -9540656537 Shiv Chauhan-9958793683, Arvind Gaur-9899650509, Suraj Singh-9999692525, From rohitrellan at aol.in Wed Jun 8 15:35:59 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2011 06:05:59 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] National Conference: Theatre for Young,New Delhi In-Reply-To: <108103.53885.qm@web30707.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <108103.53885.qm@web30707.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8CDF3DAC845DF5D-10A0-42121@webmail-d006.sysops.aol.com> NationalConference on Theatre for Young Audience Resource Centre for Elementary Education(RCEE) at the University of Delhi and ASSITEJ India are pleased to announce thefirst ever National Conference on “Theatre for Young Audience (TYA): Concept,Need and Possibilities”, in August this year. The three-day Conferencewill take place at the India International Centre, Lodhi Estate, NewDelhi-110003, on the 4th, 5th and 6th August,2011. The coming togetherof RCEE and ASSITEJ-India is unique in the background of increasing recognitionthat theatre arts and education are integrally related. Both are concerned withthe issues of growing up, arts intervention and introducing theatre arts toyoungsters. RCEE at Delhi University is conceptualised to create spaces andmechanisms that support the personal and professional development of the schoolteachers with the aim to institutionalise ideas and strategies for achievingequity and quality in education. ASSITEJ-India is member of a global networkspread in 83 countries to unite theatres, organisations and individuals engagedin theatre for the young for propagating artistic, humanitarian and educationalefforts. The Conferenceis aimed at bringing performing artists, educationists, teachers, playwrights,critics, and parents from all over the country to address some vital issues ofconcern. The three issues chosen are (1) Theatre Practices, (2) Theatre andEducation and (3) Writing for the Young. Every day one issue will bedeliberated through three modes of transaction: (A) Presentation of papers, (B)Workshops, and (3) Talking Circles. We hope to catalyse conversations on artsintervention through theatre, and on the art of theatre for children and young. Theconference is partially supported under the New Performance programme of IndiaFoundation for the Arts, Bangalore. Other supporters are Goethe-Institut, MaxMueller Bhavan, National Book Trust, India International Centre and UNESCO. Those who areinterested to know more/apply to participate in the conference sessions mayplease log on to www.assitejindia.org. Or contact: Dr. Ashish Ghosh (Mobile: 0-9868823526) Convenor, TYA Conference Secretariat: Resource Centre for Elementary Education (RCEE), Central Institute of Education, Room No. 106, CIE Annexe, 1st floor, Academic Research Centre, Guru Tegh Bahadur Marg, University of Delhi, Delhi- 110007 Tel: 011-27667434 E-mail: tya2011.con at gmail.com -- From rohitrellan at aol.in Wed Jun 8 20:14:49 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2011 10:44:49 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] =?utf-8?q?Invitation=3A_2nd_week_of_Strange_Places_?= =?utf-8?q?=E2=80=93_Strange_People_-_The_Documentaries_of_Werner_Herzog?= =?utf-8?q?=2CBangalore?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CDF401C08BEE11-1E40-6A24D@webmail-d126.sysops.aol.com> Greetings from the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan! This is a reminder not to miss the 2nd weekend of our film programme based on the documentaries of the inspired German film maker, Werner Herzog, curated by Mr. M.K. Raghavendra, Bangalore’s well-known film critic and cinephile, who will be present at a Q&A after the screening on June 11th. Event: Strange Places – Strange People The Documentaries of Werner Herzog Curated and introduced by M.K. Raghavendra Date: 10-11, 2011 Time: 6.30 p.m. Venue: Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan All are welcome! For further details, please call the Bhavan: 2520 5305/6/7/8 or visit our website: www.goethe.de/bangalore Friday June 10, 2011 6.30 p.m.: Land of Silence and Darkness (82 min.) Saturday June 11, 2011 6.30 p.m.: Fata Morgana (74 min.) Q & A session with M.K. Raghavendra About the films: Werner Herzog’s documentaries invite comparison with his fiction films because they deal with the same issues but they are also more successful (especially in his later work) because of the tendency in the fiction films for Herzog to solicit scornful responses out of the spectator. The documentaries selected for the screenings fall into three groups. The first group can be roughly categorised as ‘adventure’ films and these films include La Soufriere about a volcano which was about to erupt in the West Indies, but did not, The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1985) which is about mountaineer Reinhold Messner’s attempt to climb two peaks in the Karakoram Mountains and The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1973), a film about a ski-flier and an unabashed piece of hero-worship. The films in the second category can be classified as ‘parables of power’ and these include an astonishing film about a Los Angeles preacher - God’s Angry Soldier (1980). Another film (Echoes from a Sombre Empire, 1990) is about Jean-Bedel Bokassa a former captain in the French Army who crowned himself Emperor of the ‘Central African Empire’ until he was deposed and his country renamed the ‘Central African Republic’. There is only one film from the third category – films about the marginalised and the socially segregated. The Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) is a magnificent film because Herzog is not interested in ‘victims of apathy’ but in the cognition of the world through the senses. Herzog’s wanderings take him to the corners of the world and it may be expected that the filmmaker has a great formal sense of the landscape (e.g. Heart of Glass – 1976). The selection therefore concludes with Fata Morgana (1971) a mysterious film shot largely in the Sahara. About M.K.Raghavendra: A film and literary critic/scholar, M.K. Raghavendra is the recipient of the National Award (Swarna Kamal) for best film critic for the year 1996. He was awarded a two-year Homi Bhabha Fellowship in 2000-01 to research into Indian popular film narrative as well as a Goethe-Institut Fellowship in 2000 to study post-war German cinema. He has written extensively on European and Indian cinema for Indian and international publications as well as on literature. He has been on the film selection jury for both feature and non-feature film sections of the Indian Panorama at the International Film Festival of India. He has taught cinema in India and abroad and has also taught creative writing. He was one of the two India-based film critics invited in 2002 to participate in the Sight and Sound 'Ten Best Films' international poll conducted every ten years. He has just completed two books - Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema which attempts, among other things to interpret it in the context of Indian social history - and Fifty Indian films: Critical Studies, which brings together his critical essays on the most important Indian films, along with an appropriate introduction. The latter was published by Harper Collins India. We look forward to welcoming you at the Bhavan for the screenings. With best wishes, Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan 716 CMH Road Indiranagar 1st Stage Bangalore 560 038 Ph: +91 80 2520 5305/06/07/08-203 Fax: +91 80 2520 5309 arts at bangalore.goethe.org www.goethe.de/bangalore www.goethe.de/india From rohitrellan at aol.in Thu Jun 9 09:53:19 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:23:19 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Film Show at Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi Message-ID: <8CDF474187B9EA5-1538-1F3A@webmail-m157.sysops.aol.com> Lalit Kala Akademi New Delhi Cordially invites you to attend Film Show 09 ~ June, 2011 Great Artists: Rodin 23.00 mins, Seventh Art Production Painter’s Portrait: Amitava Das 29.00 mins, Cine Arts India Directed by K. Bikram Singh 23 ~ June, 2011 Great Artists: Constable 23.00 mins, Seventh Art Production Painter’s Portrait: Manu Parekh 28.00 mins, Cine Arts India Directed by K. Bikram Singh Kaustubh Auditorium: Rabindra Bhavan, 35, Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi - 110001 Screening time - 6.00 p.m. The Films will be screened for educational purpose = From khoj at dispatch.khojworkshop.org Sat Jun 4 15:08:05 2011 From: khoj at dispatch.khojworkshop.org (KHOJ) Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 15:08:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [KHOJ] Invitation for Peers 2011 Artists' Presentations Message-ID: <43D75896-F95A-47D8-8DD0-935DBBD4D93B@ab-a.net> KHOJ International Artists' Association & Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) present Art Talks @ FICA Reading Room, D-42 Defence Colony, New Delhi Friday, 10th June, 2011 5:00pm-6:30pm PEERS 2011 Artists' Presentation PEERS is a 4-week art laboratory for young artists shortlisted from around India. Every summer, five artists along with a critic work at the KHOJ Studios. For four weeks, these young artists shed the expectations and rigidity of a structured curriculum, working together in a discursive space that stresses the role of free experimentation and risk-taking in art practice. Artists-in-Residence Aarti Sunder (Academy of Fine Arts and Craft, Rachana Sansad, Mumbai) Kundo Yumnam (NIFT, New Delhi) Maripelly Praveen Goud (Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda) Muthiah Kasi (D J Academy of Design, Coimbatore) Pallavi Singh (College of Art, New Delhi) Moderated by: Critic-in-Residence- Aparna Singh (Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan) More Information: http://www.khojworkshop.org/project/peers_2011 PEERS is supported by the India Foundation for the Arts, Bengaluru. -------------- next part -------------- KHOJ International Artists' Association S-17, Khirkee Ext. New Delhi - 110017 Ph: 00-91-11-29545274 email: interact at khojworkshop.org http://khojworkshop.org From patrice at xs4all.nl Thu Jun 9 18:58:33 2011 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 15:28:33 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] A Luxury Villa on the Ganges - or: Globalisation in One Country ; -) Message-ID: <72ad226045a37eb9079ddf8252ba67f3.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> Original to The Wall Street Journal (what else?) http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2011/02/10/a-luxury-villa-on-the-ganges/ A Luxury Villa on the Ganges By Reenita Malhotra Hora Building beautiful homes has been part of property developer Aditya Lakhanpal’s life for some time. But a home on the Ganges River was something he always dreamed about. A few years ago, Mr. Lakhanpal got his chance. (See photos) ("Each villa at the Riverfront includes a living room with fireplace and a rooftop deck with hot tub") “There is only one Ganges in the world,” he says. “When I came across this pristine land on the banks of the river itself, I decided to build a home not just for myself but also for others who aspire to live in the proximity of this ancient place of pilgrimage.” Nestled between Rajaji National Park and the Chila hill range, about 230 kilometers northeast of New Delhi, sits the culmination of Mr. Lakhanpal’s dream — the Riverfront, a two-hectare lot with 12 private villas. Surrounded by trees, each villa has gardens landscaped with lily and lotus ponds and outdoor hot tubs. The property is the first of its kind along the Ganges — where there are mostly ashrams and resthouses — and is about 15 minutes by car from Harkipauri (sometimes spelled Hadkipaudi), the main bathing spot on the river. Nearby Rajaji National Park has a 34-kilometer nature trail accessible by Jeep or elephant ride. Also nearby is Asan Barrage, a birdwatcher’s paradise. Each three-bedroom, three-bath villa is built on two levels. The lower level includes a dining room with Spanish-tile floors and large living room with a fireplace and a family room, which opens up to a private courtyard and outdoor deck that leads to the garden. A staircase leads up to the second level, which includes wood-floored bedrooms, and rooftop decks with private hot tubs. The closest train station at Haridwar is a 20-minute drive, and the Dehradun Jolly Grant airport, which is served by most major commercial airlines in India, is about an hour’s drive. The property also has a helipad for residents who want to access it directly. Helicopter services from commercial providers are available from New Delhi and other cities. Mr. Lakhanpal and his wife, Priya, live in New Delhi, an hour away by plane, and make weekend trips to their Riverfront home with their 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son. “The kids love collecting pebbles by the riverbank or exploring the jungle trails in ATVs,” said Mr. Lakhanpal. “Last week, we saw the most beautiful Neelgai (a variety of antelope), on the riverbank. It was the perfect ending to our Republic Day holiday weekend.” Five villas are currently available within the community for a US$1 million each. They are listed by Saffronart, a Mumbai-based real-estate agent. From patrice at xs4all.nl Thu Jun 9 19:13:29 2011 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 15:43:29 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] =?iso-8859-1?q?Globalisation_in_One_Country_=2C_par?= =?iso-8859-1?q?t_II=3A_How_India=92s_Super-Rich_Spend_Their_Money?= Message-ID: <4c8dd18670a2fd8fe1becc2a7fb47399.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> The Wall Street Journal again (oeuf corse): http://on.wsj.com/kR5fGz How India’s Super-Rich Spend Their Money by Shefali Anand What do India’s super-rich like to buy with their buckets of money? Customized holiday packages, luxury watches, diamonds and jewelry, and home electronics (including fancy mobiles and high-end cameras) — in that order. They buy luxury cars, too, but not Ferraris and Lamborghinis as one would expect. More like Honda and Toyota, says a new study on the spending and investment patterns of India’s super-wealthy. The wealthy here are defined as households with a minimum average net worth of 250 million rupees ($5.6 million) for the financial year ended March 31, 2011. The study was conducted by Kotak Wealth Management and rating and research firm Crisil Ltd, and was released in Mumbai on Tuesday afternoon. Researchers interviewed 150 super-wealthy individuals in India’s major cities of Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, and others like Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Chennai. Senior personnel at major global luxury brands, art gallery owners, product dealers and industry body representatives were also interviewed. The study estimates that India has about 62,000 super-rich households, with a total wealth of around 45 trillion rupees ($1 trillion.) This is expected to grow to 235 trillion rupees ($5.3 trillion) in five years. “The fivefold increase in net worth and increasing propensity to spend could together have an explosive impact on (India’s) luxury goods market,” said Roopa Kudva, managing director and chief executive officer of Crisil in a press release. The study found that a significant portion of ultra-rich people’s expenditures goes to exclusive holiday packages, often for holidays abroad. However, this expenditure is typically planned in advance and the family plays a large role in deciding the holiday location and other details, the study said. The rich also spend heavily on jewelry and precious stones including three-carat solitaires. The luxury jewelry market is estimated to be worth 229 billion rupees ($5.1 billion), according to the report. Luxury cars, defined as those whose on-road price is 2.3 million rupees ($51,000) or above, are another favorite expenditure. The popular brands, besides Honda and Toyota, include Mercedes and BMW. “For regular use in cities, Japanese cars are preferred because they are trusted for Indian roads,” said the Kotak/Crisil report. The wealthy typically own two to four cars. Many wealthy look to sports utility vehicles as “aspirational cars.” Another major area of spending is electronics, such as home entertainment systems with television screens of 55 inches or more, custom-built entertainment rooms or theaters. More rich also are going for home automation, where appliances and gadgets at home can be operated through remote control, said the report. “Art” and “luxury writing instruments” get the smallest portion of spending from the super-rich, but these are usually the most impulsive buys. Interestingly, many of the rich fear buying goods, or even booking flights and holidays online because of potential credit card fraud. So, many of them tend to use their corporate credit cards rather than their personal cards. The study found that a vast chunk of the wealthy are entrepreneurs, but professionals in the fast-growing industries of technology and financial services have also been able to jump into the super-wealthy bracket. The study divided the respondents based on the source of their wealth, calling them “inheritors,” “self-made” (first-generation entrepreneurs,) and “professionals” (salaried individuals). Researchers found that the spending and investing patterns were slightly different for each of these categories. Of the three, professionals spend the largest proportion of their money – nearly 29% — perhaps partly because they don’t feel the need to leave a large inheritance, said the study. The inheritors and self-made rich spend 21.5% and 20% of their income respectively, putting a larger portion of their money into their businesses. All three categories have cash savings of at least a fifth of their total income and invest another one-fifth to multiply their personal wealth, according to the study. Professionals are most concerned about social inequality, and take time to give back to society. Meanwhile, the inheritors prefer to do their shopping for clothes and luxury items abroad. “The same international brands in India don’t have the same range, so I pick them up when I travel overseas,” said one “inheritor” respondent of the study. “Also, apparel, especially international, better to buy them abroad. The range, the cut, the finish, is better there, even the price.” Meanwhile, the self-made buy within India and they also travel the least abroad (relative to the other rich), “probably because they spend more time on business,” said the report. New areas of potential spending include destination weddings, such as one on a ship to Australia, or theme weddings like underwater wedding ceremonies. “Owning aircraft and yachts has also become popular, although teething infrastructural problems such as ports for berthing, and bureaucratic hassles are discouraging factors,” said the report. Earlier this year, a study from Citi Private Bank and Knight Frank said that Indians lead the world’s millionaires in wanting to spend on yachts and private jets. The Kotak/Crisil report noted that one of India’s billionaires owns four yachts. “Another is believed to have purchased some islands in Lakshwadeep, and a luxury mansion on a secluded island off the coast of Cannes,” said the report. Some study respondents said they had even spent a considerable sum of money on storing their stem cells. From rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com Thu Jun 9 20:29:10 2011 From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com (Rakesh Iyer) Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 20:29:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: The truth about Digvijay Singh (and the Madhya Pradesh BJP government also) Message-ID: Hi Please do read this article. This is a good description of what Mr. Digvijay Singh (along with BJP government in Madhya Pradesh) have been doing in Madhya Pradesh itself to ruin it. It can be a good understanding of what Mr. Singh actually has stood for, since the beginning itself when he was the Chief Minister. Link: http://www.indiatogether.org/2011/jun/gov-maheshwar.htm Article: HYDEL AT ANY COST *What Digvijay Singh forgot to tell the Prime Minister * Beneath Jairam Ramesh's recent turnaround on a 400 MW MP hydel project, was a series of interventions by Digivijay Singh with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.Himanshu Upadhyaya digs deeper. *6 June 2011* - On March 16th this year, Jairam Ramesh, the Union Minister of Environment and Forests released a report on water conflicts and underlined three incidents in his speech. One of the three confict situations was a controversial hydropower dam whose construction was stayed when his ministry issued stop work orders last year. The minister reiterated that he was compelled to stay the construction since the pari passu rehabilitation, which was one of the conditions attached to clearance, had not taken place and construction outpaced rehabilitation by leaps and bounds. Less than two months later, he reversed his earlier decision by lifting the stop work order. He posted the decision bearing his signature promptly on the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) website). It mentioned a series of review meetings convened by Prime Minister's office and the correspondence from the ex-chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Digvijay Singh. What happened? *Unconstitutional mediation* Welcome to the wonderland Manmohan Singh, the PM who is allowing the PMO to become an office of mediation that entertains the grievances of corporate which cite personal hurt more than any legally and constitutionally valid arguments. In early nineties, quizmasters often asked students to 'name the hydropower project which was scrapped when Prime Minister of India decided that the biodiversity rich rainforests of Kerala cannot be sacrificed at the altar of development'. In doing so they hoped that the environmental consciousness of a Prime Minister would register in young minds and stay there for a long time to come. However, quizmasters today have more reasons to ask this: name the unviable hydropower project which was allowed to go on despite complete failure of rehabilitation and resettlement and a maze of financial irregularities, because the Prime Minister decided to play a role of an office of mediation. Answer: The 400 MW Maheshwar Hydro-electric Project in Madhya Pradesh. Consider the plain facts. By the end of 2009, the S Kumars' company Shree Maheshwar Hydel Power Corporation Limited (SMHPCL) which owns the private sector Maheshwar Project in the Narmada valley had completed over 80% of the project work. However, not even 3% of the affected people had been rehabilitated and resettled by that date. No one had been provided agricultural land at all. The oustees were repeatedly questioning the governments on the continuing construction of the dam without rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R). Yet, there was a total silence about violations. In October 2009, Jairam Ramesh wrote a letter to the Chief Minister, Madhya Pradesh expressing his grave apprehension that oustees of the Maheshwar project would be left in the lurch without R&R. In November 2009, the Madhya Pradesh CM replied confirming that not more than 3% of the R&R measures had been completed. In this light, on the 17th February 2010, the MOEF issued a show cause notice under Section 5 of the Environment Protection Act to the company. After receiving their reply, on 23rd April 2010, the MoEF issued a direction to stop the ongoing construction. As soon as the process for enforcing rules regarding protection of the oustees began, political lobbyists became busy on behalf of the company. In March 2010, Congress leader Digvijay Singh met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and briefed him about the project. He wrote to the PM to �kindly intervene in the matter and prevail upon the Environment Ministry to withdraw their order of work suspension order, and allow the project to be completed at the earliest.� On December 9th 2010, the S Kumars represented by their head Mukul Kasliwal had written an urgent letter to Digvijay Singh. Digvijay Singh readily wrote a letter on the lines suggested by Kasliwal to the PM within just four days. Singh also reminded the PM in his letter that the project had been re-started in 2005 and the public financing of the project had been achieved in 2007, on the intervention of the PM. It must also be remembered that exactly a year before this, Shivraj Singh Chauhan had written to Jairam Ramesh promising: �In any case submergence would not take place and gates would not be lowered without prior consent of MoEF�. *What the Prime Minister 'did not know'* However, what Digvijay forgot to tell the Prime Minister is that it was during his regime as Madhya Pradesh CM, that the Madhya Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation (MPSIDC) gave Rs.44.75 crores to the S Kumars companies, in excess of the legally allowable limit of Rs.3 crores, and without proper securities. However, after having obtained the loan, the S Kumars defaulted on the repayment, or even to reply to the notices of the MPSIDC, despite being in profits. Cases were filed by the Economic Offences Wing of the State government against Mukul Kasliwal, under charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and fraud under Sections 420, 467, 120B of the IPC. The Comptroller and Auditor General severely censured this in 1999 report. When the S Kumars refused to pay back, in September 2001, the MPSIDC declared the S Kumars company - Induj Enertech alias Entegra as a willful defaulter, and took over the Maheshwar dam site lands and properties belonging to the S Kumars, thus bringing the work on the project to a complete halt for five years from 2001 up to November 2005. In July 2004, in order to take back their dam properties, the S Kumars agreed to a settlement with the MPSIDC. However, a few months and a few payments later, they reneged on the settlement. Again, in its 2005 report, the CAG pointed out that the MPSIDC sacrificed Rs.26 crores of public money in making the settlement with the S Kumars, and withdrew their revenue recovery proceedings. However, after the obtaining the settlement, the S Kumars did not honor it. *Digvijay Singh's letter to the Prime Minister dated May 03, 2010* (accessed from the PMO under RTI by the Narmada Bachao Andolan) "Prior to meeting with you in March, I had been speaking to Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Environment and Forests. I first spoke to him over the phone on the late evening on 16th February 2010, when I learnt that he is issuing a show cause notice for stopping the work. Despite assuring me that he will not do such a thing, he went ahead and issued a notice on 17th February 2010. The notice was replied to by the Project Company on 9th April 2010 and the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh took a meeting in Bhopal on 20th April 2010 to expedite the R&R works. As this had been brought to my knowledge, I mentioned this to Shri Jairam Ramesh on Thursday, 22nd April 2010 at 10.30 am when he came to see me at the AICC office. At that time he assured me that he would call all the parties concerned for a meeting on Wednesday, 28th April 2010 to resolve the matter. Surprisingly and contrary to the same, he issued a direction on the very next day, i.e. Friday 23rd April, 2010 evening to suspend the work immediately and circulated it to the media through the NBA activists� I would have spoken to Shri Jairam Ramesh and requested reversal of the order but he is neither returning my calls nor answering my e-mails." It was despite this track record, that in 2005, the public sector Power Finance Corporation was pressured to inject public funds into the project. That S Kumars was MPSIDC's single largest defaulter did not matter. The state government agreed to give a counter-guarantee to a guarantee to be issued by the Power Finance Corporation subject to the condition that the S Kumar�s would enter into a one-time settlement of its outstanding dues towards the MPSIDC. On 16th September 2005, the S Kumars signed a settlement with the MPSIDC by issuing post dated cheques amounting to Rs.55 crores, collected the settlement certificate from the MPSIDC, and the counter-guarantee from the GoMP. However, when the cheques were presented at the bank by the MPSIDC, they bounced and the bank wrote back saying that the company�s account had been closed. The MPSIDC has filed 20 cases against the bouncing of cheques, under Section 420, as well as under Sections 138 and 141 of the Negotiable Instruments Act. A few weeks back Madhya Pradesh assembly saw uproar when Congress MLAs asked questions on the MPSIDC scam and the state government�s decision to grant counter guarantee to the Maheshwar Project. What Digvijay Singh also forgot to tell the Prime Minister was that the Comptroller and Auditor General of India CAG had already indicted the PFC for having irregularly disbursed Rs.99.32 crores to the Maheshwar Project despite the non-fulfillment of pre-disbursement conditions. Yet, it is the PFC once again, which was bled, even after 2005, in order to benefit the S Kumars, despite the fact that it was the PFC�s largest defaulter. What Digvijay Singh also forgot to tell the Prime Minister was that at the same time the public financial institutions had placed an embargo on public lending to the Maheshwar project because the S.Kumars had diverted Rs.106.4 crores of project funds to its group companies and other persons who had no contracts for the project. In March 2000, the lead institution for Maheshwar Project � the IFCI stipulated that no further monies would be disbursed to the Maheshwar project until the entire Rs.106.4 crores was brought back with interest. Placing of public funds from public financial institutions into this project whose promoters are willful defaulters, and have charges of fraud, cheating and other serious financial charges against them is prohibited by the RBI. There's more. The project lands and properties purchased by the S Kumars from the state government and its agencies in 1992, are yet to be paid for. And despite repeated censure by the CAG, in 2007, without any payment, the state government mutated the dam site lands in the name of the S Kumars, which were then mortgaged by the S Kumars to third parties. In the backdrop admitted failture to resettle project oustees and massive financial irregularities, a stop order issued by the environment minister should have stayed on. Instead, "a series of review meetings convened by Prime Minister's office" ended it. *⊕* *Himanshu Upadhyaya* 6 Jun 2011 *Himanshu Upadhyaya is an independent researcher working on Public Finance and Accountability issues.* -- Rakesh Krishnamoorthy Iyer MM06B019 Final Year, Dual Degree Student Dept. of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering IIT Madras, Chennai - 600036 Phone no: +91-9444073884 E-mail ID: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com From patrice at xs4all.nl Thu Jun 9 21:24:45 2011 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 17:54:45 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] fwdfyi: Vasl Regional Residency 2011, Karachi, Pakistan: Deadline 15th June Message-ID: <4edec14254848e6a931fcc1aba616ef2.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> bwo Bricolist/ Atteqa Malik ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: VASL News Date: Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 12:20 PM Subject: Reminder: Deadline Approaching - Vasl Regional Residency 2011: Deadline 15th June To: vaslnewsletter at gmail.com [image: vasl-regional-residency-2011-invite.jpg] *State of being so divided: documents, memories and archives* *CALL FOR APPLICATIONS! APPLICATION DEADLINE: 15th* *June* *Vasl Artists’ Collective* and *Citizens Archive of Pakistan* announce a call for applications to the 2011 Regional Residency program to be held in Karachi between: 26th September to 5th November 2011 *State of being so divided** **will have a specific research focus, bringing the participating artists together with writers, archivists and historians to examine the events of 1947 and 1971, and conflict and civil war within the Indian Subcontinent since Partition.* We are especially interested in applications from artists whose work involves historical analysis (particularly of the South Asian region), practice-based research, and archival investigations – working in any medium, (including, for example, painting, video, performance, sculpture, writing and publishing). The Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP) archives will become the artists’ research studio and CAP and Vasl will support their research. The archives include oral histories, photographic documents, radio reports, and newspapers from around the world that cover significant events in Pakistan and South Asia. The artistic outcomes of this research will be displayed to the public at the end of the residency, through a gallery exhibition in Karachi, or via public interventions and performances. We particularly encourage applications from artists living and working in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. If any artists outside this region wish to apply, please indicate your interest in specifically examining South Asian history, (along with any precedents in your work for this), in your covering statement. Accommodation, flights, materials and per diems will be provided to artists, though any selected artists coming from Europe or North America will be requested to fund their own flights. *Applications must include:* *Completed application form (attached).* *Portfolio of images and/or links to video files.* *Complete CV including passport sized photograph.* *Covering statement (no more than 800 words) describing your interest in this project.* http://www.vaslart.org/ http://www.citizensarchive.org/ -- *Vasl Artists' Collective* *www.vaslart.org* *Tel: (92 21) 3588 9110** Fax: (92 21) 3538 3812 Karachi - Pakistan* *Subscribe Vasl Online Newsletter** **vaslnewsletter at gmail.com* From rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com Fri Jun 10 03:01:32 2011 From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com (Rakesh Iyer) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 03:01:32 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: 'Poriborton' in Bengal: Good or bad? Message-ID: Hi all A lot has been talked about 'poriborton' in Bengal. One example of this 'poriborton' is also there in the link given below: Link: http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=5345&mod=1&pg=1§ionId=5&valid=true Story: Journalism in Mamata land *Its not clear whether ‘Didi’, who had portrayed herself as a champion of democracy, approves of such behavior but it is obvious to the field reporters in Kolkata that the media is on its knees.* AJITHA MENON’s tales of the new media regime Posted Wednesday, Jun 08 22:09:25, 2011 West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee recently opened a new chapter in the media-government relationship when she publicly declared that she will “compensate” a news channel with a substitute story if they miss something. This was her official response to a question on why the State Higher Secondary Examination results were leaked by the concerned government department to a private news channel (Star Ananda), known for its close affiliation to the Trinamool Congress, ahead of the formal announcement. The entire media fraternity gathered at Writers’ Building, the state secretariat, responded to the statement with scattered laughter, almost condoning the fact that the government will play favourites with the media on official matters – even at the cost of institutional breach of trust - and in case of objection from someone, there will be “compensation” in the form of another story. First your turn, then my turn – wait for the handouts. The more serious issue of betrayal of trust by an institution reposed with the charge of conducting these examinations without bias and ensuring formal publication of results to the satisfaction of lakhs of students, their teachers and guardians, was ignored by the mainstream media almost as one. As any professional journalist will vouch – an exclusive will be carried if the source is credible and the facts verifiable. So, the channel which carried the results ahead of schedule can hardly be blamed for “scooping” their rivals. However, the responsibility for the leak should have been fixed on the government department responsible for the examinations – in this case the Bengal Higher Secondary Education Council. Not because the results were handed out ahead of time – though one doubts that a similar media compliance would be witnessed if the UPSC results were given to one particular channel before the merit list is officially posted – but because of the breach in security of the entire process of conducting exams, correcting answer sheets, tallying the marks, preparing the merit list and publishing the results. Interestingly, the Council President, Omkarsadhan Adhikary, when pushed to the wall on the issue admitted, “everything was done in accordance with the instructions of the state government”. He was mum on who in the state government ordered the disclosure. If a breach can happen in this case, why then not for influencing results, adding or deducting marks of certain candidates, for even changing the merit list? Since the weak link in the department is already exposed – a link which is susceptible to media glamour or political interference, whatever it maybe in this case - why can’t the weak link be exploited for perpetration of more nefarious designs? Or for that matter, why should this remain restricted to one government department only? After all, the Chief Minister herself has sanctioned the weak link now, refusing to order an enquiry into the matter! A pro-Left channel (Choubis Ghanta – Bengali) picked up the issue only to be categorically dismissed by the Chief Minister in the following words – “What can I do if a certain channel gets information. I can’t order an enquiry into what channels are doing. Choubis Ghanta is CPI(M)’ s channel. They are always saying bad things about me. Maybe they are sad that they missed the story. Don’t worry, I will give them another story to ‘compensate’.” A case of missing the forest, as well as the trees and offering bribes to media to boot? The denizens of the fourth pillar of democracy in Bengal seemed extremely subdued on the matter. ‘The Bengal Post’ story with the headline “HS council ‘fails’ as channel leaks results”, had some teeth, while the Kolkata edition of ‘The Hindu’ had a small paragraph on the matter. The CPI(M) mouthpiece ‘Ganashakti’ of course went to town about it and the Bengali ‘Bartaman’ also had a story stating the Chief Minister had refused to order an enquiry into the leak. It may be recalled that a similar leak of Secondary Board exam results ahead of the formal announcement had occurred in 2007 and the then government was forced to order an enquiry which led to the dismissal of the then President of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, Ujjwal Basu. The low key response from mainstream media this time is worrying in the context that a new era of total media obeisance to both the Chief Minister and her council of ministers has been ushered into the state post Assembly elections. That Mamata Banerjee has a select coterie of favourite journalists is common knowledge and acceptable in India where most politicians cultivate media persons to suit their ends, where journalists are more often than not “cultivable” and where “paid news” is norm. However, it is dangerous territory for democracy when journalists outside this coterie are not even allowed to ask questions – not just to any politician but even to the democratically elected Chief Minister in office. A young agency reporter, who had the “ temerity” to ask Bimal Gurung, the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha (GJMM) leader “Have you dropped the demand for a separate Gorkhaland?”, after his first meeting with the new Chief Minister, was shot down by the Chief Minister who did not allow Gurung to reply and instead said “don’t insist, that may deteriorate the situation ”! However, the matter was tolerable till after the press conference, when a trio of senior reporters converged on the rookie and demanded to know “why did you ask such a question? ‘Didi’ was offended”. The message was, don’t ask unpleasant questions, only ask what ‘didi’ wants to be asked, please her and her ministers at any cost. The media should in no way anger ‘didi’. Its not clear whether ‘didi’, who had portrayed herself as a champion of democracy, approves of such behavior but its obvious to the field reporters in Kolkata that the media is on its knees. Notably, when Mamata Banerjee finally announced a tentative agreement with the GJMM on Tuesday (June 7), she repeatedly said the “Darjeeling” problem has been settled. The media obliged, and the word “Gorkhaland” was not even whispered, and the GJMM representatives were not asked anything about their long pending demand for a separate state – it was as though it never existed! While giving an interview, Partha Chatterjee, the new industry minister, took it upon himself to order the ETV cameraman in the Assembly, “Keep us in two-frame” (meaning the newly elected Speaker Biman Banerjee and himself). When he realised that the cameraman had not kept a “two-frame”, zooming in to his own face alone, Chatterjee actually threatened “you think just because you hold the camera in your hand, you also hold your job? You think Hyderabad is far away? Don’t think that its that far”. In another instance, a young reporter with NE Bangla channel angered the Mayor Shovan Chattopadhyay, who was criticizing the condition of Subhas Sarovar Lake a few days after the new government took charge, by asking “but this lake comes under Kolkata Corporation, which has been with TMC for over two years now, so why hasn’t something been done yet?” . The Mayor walked off in a huff without replying, while other journalists from R Plus Channel and Mahua TV charged her with, “why do you ask such things. You angered him and we lost our chance. Because of you we could not ask our questions”. As the angry young reporter said, “their questions were, of course, of paramount importance as usual - how many bulbs will be put up to light the lake area and which other lake will you visit? This is what journalism has come to in Kolkata”! Television viewers across the country saw the lead anchor of a 24-hour Bengali news channel sitting behind Mamata Banerjee on the day the election results were announced, while she was giving an interview to Barkha Dutt of NDTV. Even, Dutt, a journalist of some stature, had not dared to ask the “in-coterie celebrity anchor” to move out of her frame! For young reporters working for the pro-Trinamool Channel 10, a nightmare is unfolding. One of them asked a question to the Mayor, which the later did not like. He picked up the phone and called the channel editor and complained. It was made clear to the hapless scribe, by his boss, that asking difficult questions to Trinamool leaders or ministers was a strict no-no. “Keep them happy. Anyway such stories will not be carried on our channel and you will surely lose your job”, the young reporter quoted his boss as saying. Most reporters of this channel admit that they are afraid of losing their jobs if Trinamool leaders complain to the editor. Mamata’s coterie journalists belonging to Star Ananda, *The Telegraph*, etc., also interface between her and other media persons. A reporter from Indiavision Channel, Kerala details his experience outside Mamata Banerjee’s house - “I waited for six hours for a sound bite from her. She came out and called one journalist inside. He came out after sometime and showed us all an sms on his mobile from her which said “I will not talk to any reporters today, please ask them all to leave!”. A Sahara TV reporter, who was desperately trying for a one-to-one interview with Mamata Banerjee on the day of the election results but categorically refused was told by a Star Ananda reporter, “You should have come to me. I would have fixed it up with her for you”. A broker? The Indiavision reporter’s final comment on the matter - “I had also tried for an interview when she visited West Midnapore. I waited outside for almost four hours and sent in messages through the security personal and other Trinamool leaders. She refused to talk to us but journalists from Star Ananda and some Bengali papers were with her throughout. How can a politician be selectively accessible? Aren’t we part of a democracy? If it is like this now, I wonder what will be situation when she becomes Chief Minister” - is currently echoing down the powers of corridor in Bengal! Besides interference in free and fair discharge of journalistic duties, stories of political leaders filling petrol/diesel for the cars owned by reporters, throwing parties for them and even paying EMI for their flats are doing the rounds now. A whole lot of journalists are also flexing their muscle now - showing off their closeness to ministers and the ability to save one from traffic fines, get a railway reservation at the nth hour, arrange school and college admissions, sanction the plan for a new house or extension, a government/railway job, a transfer to the preferred place of posting, a place on a committee etc – all with a mere telephone call. This culture is new to Bengal. Is it more power to journalists at the cost of democracy? -- Rakesh Krishnamoorthy Iyer MM06B019 Final Year, Dual Degree Student Dept. of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering IIT Madras, Chennai - 600036 Phone no: +91-9444073884 E-mail ID: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com From asit1917 at gmail.com Fri Jun 10 13:35:10 2011 From: asit1917 at gmail.com (asit das) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:35:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Urgent Intervention against imminent Police attack on the villagers in the Anti POSCO Struggle Area Message-ID: Dear Friends you must be all aware about the imminent Police action against the protesting villages in the Anti-POSCO struggle area of Jagat singh pur District Orissa. Since early morning today 10.06.2011, 20 Platoons of armed Police led by the Notorious DIG who had massacred 15 Adivasi’s in Kalinga Nagar January 2006 are ready to Swoop down on the unarmed peacefully protesting villagers in the Anti-POSCO struggle area. There had been a 24 hour vigil by the villagers since early morning today thousands of women and children are lying down in front of the Police. And the Police is threatening of action. There is a fear of severe Police repression any time today. We request all of you to call Orissa Governor, Chief Minister, Home Secretary, DGP immediately and ask them to withdraw the Police force from the area. Also please write to the national Human Commission request them to write to the Orissa Chief Minister to withdraw the Police Force immediately. Asit POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity Delhi 10.06.2001, Time: 01.30 P.M (Noon) *Police peoople Face to face in Dhinkia Panchayat* Update of anti-POSCO People’s movement as on 10th June 2011. 12.12 O clock (noon) · Police and protesting public are face to face now: Twenty platoon police forces with officers have already reached at the boarder of Govindpur village where more than 2000 villagers are protesting against the forceful land acquisition by government of Odisha for POSCO through 24X7 vigil. · Protesters are determined to resist any use of force by the government and police forces. Even women and children have come to the forefront as they form the first two shields of protection. · Senior police officers, with arms and weapons, are threatening people to dismantle through loud speakers. We will let you know the development here Kindly call to the following authorities to lodge your protest. In solidarity, Prashant Paikray Mobile – 09437571547 CALL: Naveen Patnaik Chief Minister, Odishas Tel. No.(O) 011 91 674 2531100,011 91 674 2535100, 011 91 674 2531500, Epbax 2163 Tel. No.(R) 011 91 674 2590299, 011 91 674 2591099, 011 91 674 2590844, 011 91 674 2591100, E Mail: cmo at ori.nic.in 2. Superintendent of Police, Debadutta Singh. Mobile no-09437094678 3. Dr Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India Tel no-+9111-23016857 e mail: manmohan at sansad.in -- Prasant Paikray Spokesperson Posco Pratirodh Sangram Saiti Mobile - 9437571547 From anivar at movingrepublic.org Fri Jun 10 18:49:44 2011 From: anivar at movingrepublic.org (Anivar Aravind) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:49:44 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Sign this petition:Condemn Assault on anti-POSCO Protesters Message-ID: we hope to release before it gets too late so the more signatures we get the better :). The petition can be signed here: http://www.petitiononline.com/posco/petition.html or by sending a mail endorsement (I am collecting them). Thanks a lot Shankar Gopalakrishnan Campaign for Survival and Dignity PETITION We condemn in the strongest possible terms the ongoing assault on the anti-POSCO protesters in Jagatsinghpur District, Orissa. After arresting and beating people last week, today more than one thousand police surrounded the area and laid siege to those protesting. Women, children and men spent the entire day in intense heat in order to stand vigil against the illegal attack on their lands. Both people and police officials have lost consciousness from the heat; the police snuck in from one direction and destroyed some vines. Dhinkia gram panchayat, where the crisis is occurring, contains around 2/3 of the land sought by the steel plant and the majority of those affected. This horrific attack comes at a time when two cases by the villagers are pending in the Orissa High Court, and when there is a criminal complaint against the District Collector for lying and fabricating the evidence that was the basis of the clearance to take the land. It also comes after three official committees found the land grab to be illegal and in violation of the Forest Rights Act, and after it was exposed by international experts that the project has no benefits for the local or national economy (while providing a minimum profit of Rs. 1,95,000 crores to POSCO). That the Orissa government itself sees no great urgency in this project can be seen from the fact that the MoU with POSCO has not been renewed for over a year, and its renewal was deferred again just three days ago. There is thus not even any agreement on what the project will be when it comes up. Why then this inhuman attack on those seeking to defend their rights? Can it be anything other than an attempt to terrorise the protesters and all others who may dare to oppose the crimes of the state? Clearly the State government, with the support of the Centre, is not concerned about the law, the people, the environment or development. Yet again we see the use of police terror to loot our people for private profit. No words of condemnation are sufficient for this heinous crime. Sincerely, The Undersigned From shuddha at sarai.net Fri Jun 10 18:59:09 2011 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:59:09 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Alvida Maqbool Fida: M.F.Husain, Free at Last Message-ID: <15B534DC-4446-4A6B-AEE4-70058DEC00F7@sarai.net> Dear friends, we have all been diminished by the death of M.F. Husain in exile. The loss of his almost centenarian presence will be felt keenly. Here's my attempt to account for the loss, uploaded recently on Kafila.org. Apologies for cross posting. The posting is at - http://kafila.org/2011/06/10/alvida-maqbool-fida-m-f-husain-free-at-last/ ---------- Alvida, Maqbool Fida : M.F.Husain, Free at Last Shuddhabrata Sengupta, on kafila.org, June 10, 2011 Like possibly several other children growing up in the kind of lower-middle class metropolitan households that attempted to reconcile their aspirations towards culture with their frugal habits in the 1970s and1980s in Delhi, my first introduction to the art of our time was the framed print of a Husain painting. We had no television. And my parents had no gods. The only icons in our modest house were two framed pictures – an inexpensive N.S. Bendre, (Lalit Kala Akademi) print of a few women at a well and the reproduction of a Husain painting, possibly detached lovingly and carefully from an Air India calendar, possibly featuring the kind of goddess image that incensed the zealots who made it impossible for M. F. Husain to live out his final years in India. The occasional bus ride to the National Gallery of Modern Art in the company of an enthusiastic (and wanting-to-be-enlightened parent) would yield a glimpses of more paintings, and then, again, there would be more Husains – bold, galloping horses, faceless angular, cheerful, dancers, myths, entire histories. My eyes would travel to odd corners of the paintings, where there were sometimes more interesting, if quieter things going on, at a slight remove from the central drama of the bold strokes that dominated the pictures. On one such trip, I think it was my mother who pointed out to me a gaily, madly painted fiat, with a jolly (but gaunt) Santa Claus at the wheel, turning the circle of India Gate. “Look”, she said, “there goes the artist – M.F. Husain, he drives his car without chapels and shoes on his feet.” I think I must have been ten, but at that time, it did feel to me that if this was an artist, then to live the life of art must be an incredible freedom, literally footloose and fancy-footwear-free. What a jolly, fantastic, cheerful, ramshackle car, what a great burst of light of a beard, what a halo of hair ! That combustible locomotion of form and colour seemed to transport M.F. Husain, even then, in and out of my understanding of liberty like an automobile turning circles on a roundabout, not necessarily going anywhere, just happy to be alive, excited to be well-fueled and mobile. Now, decades later, when I mumble ‘artist’ to the question ‘occupation ?’ asked curtly and almost invariably on arrival at airport immigration desks, that sense of liberty embodied in Husain’s drive-away grace, which made such a profound impression on my ten year old consciousness, still comes to the rescue of my ravaged forty-something mind under the bleak light of all those situations where one is asked to account for oneself under duress. I come away from all such encounters with my dignity intact. I never thought I would ever be an artist, but now that I am called out as one, I suppose one must make the best of being what it takes to be an artist. In my life-time Husain was one of those who invested the vocation of art with the artless grace of whimsy and liberty. For that alone, regardless of what I may think of the entire body of his work, I am grateful. I am sure I am not alone in my gratitude. Husain could only have become who he did in the world of art. Art and sport, and to a lesser degree film and politics (which are both heavily mired in dynastic compulsions) are perhaps the only spheres of activity in our harshly, pathetically hierarchical society where a young man or woman can come, literally out of nowhere, like Husain did, paint billboards for a living and still (very rarely) make it eventually into a sustained presence in the limelight, touching the eyes and minds and senses of millions of people. It tells us something about the world we live in when we realize that when all else has failed, it is Art, for whatever it is worth, that has sometimes lived up to its promise of being a tiny quasi-democratic, half-egalitarian island, where the wild-card of unexpected energy and talent can still upset the best laid plans of privilege and the easy habits of power. That is why we need art in our hollow society, to still keep a door half-ajar to the anonymous practitioners of today who might yet make us turn and think again about life tomorrow. Last morning, Husain turned the corner of mortal existence. He steered the wheel of the incredibly colorful automobile of his life down a one-way road where we can no longer see him, nor follow him. He is, in a sense, free at last. And we, the ungrateful people of the country which made it impossible for him to die with dignity and honor in the city he loved, should be grateful that he will no longer have reason to blame us for his humiliation. Now we have the opportunity, as a society, to think a little carefully, for a while, about what fools, what philistines we have been to have lost his company while he was alive. In my godless, unbelieving upbringing, the divine came calling, only occasionally, courtesy M. F. Husain. If there is a lasting, enduring affection that I have for the incredible vitality of the traditions that some people simplify by calling ‘Hindu’, it is to some measure the responsibility of Maqbool Fida Husain. His love for the stories of Ganesh and Durga, for the figures of the Puranas, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana took me into territories that the piety of countless Amar Chitra Kathas and the saccharine soap of Ramanand Sagar could never enter. He nudged me into an understanding of the fact that the traditions they call Hindu (because they are obsessed with names where the nameless is more appropriate) are richer, more ambiguous, laden with more secrets and stories and magic, laughter and desire than anything that any fart in saffron robes or khaki shorts and black cap can ever pretend to know or feel. He showed me lila, play, and made it the stuff of goddesses, and occasionally of gods. The goddess who rode the monkey’s tail, the resplendent but austere strength of the sky-clad goddess astride a tiger, these were worth more their weight in faith, fida, then the sermons of a million dharam sansads. He made me understand that one can say ‘maqbool’ (I accept) to ‘fida’ (faith) even when one is sustained most actively by doubt. My atheist soul’s abiding affection for the beauty of faith, and particularly for the faith of my ancestors, is partly by way of boyhood brushes with the reproductions of Maqbool Fida Husain. If today, I turn to the Mahabharata or the Ramayana like an automatic reflex when thinking of a difficult ethical question, it is thanks to artists like Husain, to poets like Michael Madhusudan Dutt, and to their affection for, claims on and deep, abiding, subversive respect for the dense forests of all our traditions. It is thanks in part to this barefoot farishta, this strange white bearded, halo-haired namesake of the martyred bride-groom of Karbala, that I made peace with being born, at least fractionally, nominally Hindu. And contrary to what the censors in saffron might think, it was this lesson in liberality that also made me think that Salman Rushdie has a right to be read, that Taslima Nasreen has a right to be listened to, and yes, that even those handful of moronic cartoonists of Denmark whose work says more about their limitations than it does about their sense of humor, have a right to be seen, and if necessary, laughed away. God, or the gods, if they are in heaven, must be laughing loudest at our reluctance to laugh with them. Husain, if he is in the corner of heaven specially reserved for those accused of heresy on earh, must be laughing too. In the end, Husain won his Karbala, even when he lost in battle. His horses, like the good horses of Imam Husain, will keep riding, even after their rider has dismounted. It is the VHP, the RSS, the BJP and every pompous holy-honcho who held forth on Husain’s heresies that stand defeated today. Their vision of culture, ‘samskruti’ ( to be said with a sufficiently upturned nasal twang) is in tatters and in need of having to be salvaged by a petulant contortionist with hunger-management issues and dreams of private militias. Their vision of politics is articulated by those who dance (and not, I have to say, very well) to display their mourning. Their morality is held hostage at the hands of mining mafias. Their poet-laureate is comatose and was never a good poet anyway, and he was a worse statesman than he ever was a poet. The fools who harangued Husain will fade into the obscurity of the footnotes of art-history text books as miserable examples of what a society should never do to artists. Among them will be people like a cardiac surgeon (Dr. Togadia, of the VHP) who saved fewer lives than he helped take away, a third rate painter of sentimental kitsch (Raghu Vyas) who stoked the early protests against M F Husain at Arpana Kaur’s gallery in the Siri Fort Institutional Area in Delhi (perhaps as a means to offload ballast from the sinking ship of his artistic career) , and the geriatric cartoonist-turned-cartoon (Bal Thackeray) with a reported taste for lukewarm beer (never trust a man who can’t take his beer cold !) Behind them will be the entire massed ranks of the Sangh Parivar, as faceless and featureless as figures in a Husain painting. Their contribution to culture, their addition to the sum total of intelligence, amply representable by the great Bharatiya contribution to Mathematics – zero. Paradoxically, In bidding farewell to M.F. Husain, we are also saying good riddance to those who baited him. Now that their object of hate has left the building, they don’t quite know what to do. Their harrumph and bluster has turned into a deflating whine. Some of them have even appeared on television to express their contrition, pretending that they meant him no harm, actually, while filing hundreds of cases in courts across the country. No, it wasn’t terrorism-by-court-notices, it was just a rash of art criticism, wrapped in the language of legalese. Central to their enterprise and their discomfort was the fact that Husain deployed a visuality and an iconicity that was instantly processable. Whether it was the vigorous Gaja-Gamini on the walls of the Azad Hind Dhaba on Ballygunge Circular Road in Calcutta or the murals on the interiors of an Airport, Husain’s images were never very demanding. They did not need much work to be done to be read by their viewers. They were deceptively simple, straightforward, often striking, sometimes banal. Even a fool in a pair of khaki shorts and indignation leaking from his groin could (mis)read them, easily. Unfortunately for the Hindutva with a hard-on brigade, contemporary art in India has moved on from where Husain Sa’ab stood, and stayed standing. This was more than evident in the last major survey exhibition of contemporary art from india featuring Husain’s work – the Indian Highway roller coaster that began its journey at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2009. There, Husain was represented by work that seemed both monumental and dated. Around him, was a plethora of work, some exceptional, mostly interesting, some indifferent, but all of which, spoke a language more reticent in terms of figuration than did Husain. The knikker-critic can neither get this language like he thinks he ‘gets’ Husain, nor is he capable of being provoked by it. It will seem way too distant and cold to him. Not enough images, not even gods, not even much by way of nakedness. Which is why, in a minor footnote to the Husain saga, we have seen a sad sunday painter called Dr. Pranav Prakash exhibit a set of embarrassing and cringe-worthy paintings featuring images of a ‘naked’ Husain, to the great delight of the fringe of the Hindutva warriors. (Some even rallied in support of his right to ‘freedom of expression’). Lest I be misunderstood, it needs to be said here that I would never grudge fools the right to express themselves, freely. How else would we know who they were? Prakash’s naked Husain painting is a strange mirror-pastiche of Husain’s style, revealing in all its mediocrity, how much in awe and debt it is to the very object of its derision. Contemporary Art is way too distant and aloof from the knicker-critic’s world. Husain got his goat, because in a sense Husain spoke his language, even if to turn his world upside down and inside out. Husain was his secret self. The one who actually enjoyed and loved the world of the puranas and the epics, rather than the one who merely took sterile pride in them. The Hindu far right hated Husain, because most of all it hated the delight of what it meant to be an inheritor of the Hindu worlds it ran away from. It hated its own humanity. Husain was a far better claimant to that magical legacy of a universe of colours, enigmas and stories than any Pracharak or Sarsanghchalak could ever be. Today, Husain has attained what the Sanskrit scriptures sometimes call ‘Kaivalya’ - that unique freedom, that exceptionality, that carries with it a tinge of isolation, a shade of autonomy, a sliver of loneliness. A trace of this radical autonomy is visible in an early photograph of Husain taken by the critic Richard Bartholomew, which came to light for a generation that had never known it in the exhibition of Bartholomew (Senior’s) work put together by his son, Pablo. In this photograph, Husain can be seen on a rooftop (is it the rooftop of the Naaz Hotel in Old Delhi?) with the domes of the Jame Masjid in the background. It seems to be a clear, Delhi winter morning. Husain is in his prime, a man possessed of his delight in what he is doing. In the company of a friend (Richard) in a context he loves, but somehow, detached, distant, at a slight remove. Like an angel on a rooftop, absorbed in Kaivalya. Who can touch that space ? No bigot can ever hope to grace a foothold in that sunshine. He is free of them, but they will be haunted by him, until their movement dies its necessary death. And yet, without him, culturally, they will be rudderless. They can never taste the Kaivalya, the radical autonomy that is Husain’s by right. They will no longer know what to hate, whom to harass, whom to harangue. And without being able to hate, harass and harangue, they will be nothing, mere shadows of their petty fitful selves. Husain never needed them, but they needed him. They needed him, ever so badly. That need will erode them like nothing else can. That is why Husain, our ever youthful bridegroom of many forms and colours, lost the battle, but won Karbala. Yazid is only a decrepit wall for pilgrims to throw stones at forever in a little known corner of Damascus. There will always be a conversation that you can kick-start with a Husain horse, just as soon, there will be a time when people will ask “Togadia ? Who ?” And now that we are no longer required to sign petitions to defend M.F. Husain, an honest and long overdue critical assessment of his work may actually begin. Now will be the time to think about how artists are trapped by repetition and the endless affirmation of themselves in their work. Now will be the time to understand and reflect on how a ‘star-system’ in matters of culture reduces even the most interesting artist to a cardboard cut-out. Now will be the opportunity to think about how and why we have elegies and obituaries aplenty, but so little by way of discursive and critical engagement. Now will be the time to remember that too great a proximity to power can distort the perceptions of the even those who appear as the most innocent and playful of artists. Now will be the time to recall the irony in the fact that Husain, who himself fell victim to the shenanigans of a fascist mindset, had at one time, during the nightmare called the Emergency, saw it necessary to paint Indira Gandhi, its architect, as Durga, the victorious goddess. Now is the time to understand that Husain’s innocence was not innocent. Now is the time to remember that Husain loved cinema, but made two incredibly bad feature films (‘Gaja Gamini’ and ‘Meenaxi’). Now is the time to reclaim M. F. Husain as a grandfather, as uncle, as the stranger you make friends with on a long train journey, as the man who tells you the most wonderful stories and then stumps you with the narrowness of his world. As the angel and the buffoon, the faristha and the funtoos, all at once. Now is also the time to remember that he was not the only Indian artist who felt compelled to leave India because of the images he had made. Few people, especially the kind of cultural liberals who signed endless petitions on his behalf ever remember that the coteries around Indira Gandhi that Husain painted as Durga made it virtually impossible for the Nirod Mazumdar who painted her astride a donkey to live and work in India for many years. Now is the time to acknowledge that when it comes to the humbug of censorious intentions, the RSS and the Sangh Parivar do not have any monopoly. The Congress, the Left, Gandhians, Muslim and Christian Zealots have all made calls for bans and harassed artists and writers. Perhaps it was this realization that ultimately made Husain choose the bleak freedom of exile over the fulsome humiliation of continuing to hold on to the fetish of Indian citizenship. He said it was because of ‘logistical reasons’, because of the way his work needed to be done, but no one could mistake the fact that what drove Husain away ultimately was not just the hatred of the Hindu far-right, but also the opportunistic and cynical indifference of the so called liberal centre, which in time honored Congressi fashion chose to buckle and prevaricate rather than take a clear stand. In doing so, it revealed a malaise that is deeper than the fissures of political divisions. The sickness of the compulsion to play safe rather than fair. In a delightfully mischievous poem called ‘Duronto Asha’ (Audacious Hope) another white haired, white bearded eminence, the other gaunt Santa Claus of my bilingual boyhood, Rabindranath Thakur, speaks of his impulsive desire to stop leading the sedentary, safe life of those accustomed to too much self-affirmation of their own identities. Rather than content with being a milksop bhadralok Bengali, Rabindranath, suddenly and impulsively declares his true desire by saying - ‘were I much rather an Arab Bedouin – lost under the desert’s open skies’. I am reminded of this as a way of squaring the circle of how we can reconcile ourselves to the fact that Husain, in his final years, in choosing to base himself in Qatar rather than Delhi or Mumbai, was perhaps exercising elements of the “were I much rather an Arab Bedouin option’. The only time I ever met Maqbool Fida Husain (spotting him from the window of DTC bus number 408 turning the circle of India Gate at the age of ten doesn’t really count as an encounter) was a few days before the opening of Indian Highway at the Serpentine Gallery in London in the early December of 2008. A large mural sized painting by him was being installed. He sat, with a tall thin paint-brush in his hands, adding the very last finishing touches. People went up to to him and made polite conversation. My comrades and I in the Raqs Media Collective, were installing not far away from him. We were introduced. There were ‘adaabs’, a few smiles. I took the pictures you see with this post. We went back to our work, he went back to his. Our fishing boat signalled to his Ocean Liner, like ships that cross each other in the ocean’s night. We acknowledged each other’s presence and drifted apart, as ships navigating entirely different courses must. Still, it was good to have seen the lights glitter on this nearly century old vessel. It was good to have sensed the rattle of its engines and turbines, to see its tall mast and take one’s bearing from its prow. A little later, his daughter, who was looking after him, asked us, and several others, whether we had seen him. Husain had disappeared. A search was quickly put together, and a little while later he was found, under the open sky of Kensington Gardens. His daughter was relieved. She told us, as a ninety something man, Husain was in good shape, sharp in all his responses, lucid. The only thing that worried her sometimes was the fact that he would sometimes get up and start moving, as if in a straight line, and walk as long as he could without getting tired, without stopping, and that this worried her about him getting lost, or hurt while absently crossing a busy road. When the news of his death sunk in. I was reminded of his walk-about ways. He just got up, left. Stretched his canvas. Sorted his paints, Started working, Stopped, and then got up and left again. The pettiness of nations, the smallness of the minds of those who speak loudly on behalf of nations, could never hold back his final moves. Or, as he said laughing, playfully invoking and twisting Iqbal in an television interview not so long ago when the interviewer painfully and persistently asked him yet again, why he had chosen Qatar over Hindustan, – “Hindi hain hum, vatan hai, sara jahaan hamara’. The canvas of the open sky was alway waiting for the bedouin with the paintbrush in his hand. Shuddhabrata Sengupta The Sarai Programme at CSDS Raqs Media Collective shuddha at sarai.net www.sarai.net www.raqsmediacollective.net From rohitrellan at aol.in Fri Jun 10 21:08:45 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:38:45 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Tumbhi & Anurag announces "Paanch": Phase-2 Message-ID: <8CDF59B9E9642F3-1F74-9A20@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> Tumbhi announces a short films making competition which will choose each and every member of its cast and crew from and among the registered artistes and technicians on Tumbhi. And, after the huge success of script writing competition we proudly announce the call for entries to submit your artworks under - performing arts, fashion, music & other categories to make these films under the tutelage of Anurag Kashyap, who will not only be actively taking all these aspirants under his wings but will also suggest, correct and mentor them. Tumbhi and Anurag Kashyap have joined hands to produce 5 Short Films of maximum 10 minutes duration. Submit your talent! act in it, make music for it or simply be part of its production and direction team. It will be a show reel for the young and bubbling art seekers who are always looking for the new talent and a milestone for art lovers like you too who will be part of it. For the short listing process, all the rights to access your artwork is with the Jury members of this competition and will be published on tumbhi.com for other opportunities. Submit your portfolio and art work also to be part of Cast and Crew in these films. Winning entry will be awarded with cash prizes and artists will be given a chance to act in it, make music for it or simply be part of its production and direction team of the making of the films. If you are unable to submit your artwork or portfolio, send us your query atsupport at tumbhi.com From rohitrellan at aol.in Fri Jun 10 21:32:24 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 12:02:24 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Fund a friend! =) [Documentary on Euthanasia] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CDF59EEC1CF0DB-1F74-9EA3@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> Hello! Below is a request from a couple of my friends who want to make a documentary on Euthanasia. Can anyone help out? Or can anyone help them out with contacts who can help out? They are based in Bangalore. Vandana is a student of Mass Communication in a central university, currently interning with Pedestrian Pictures, and Svati is journalist with a couple of years of experience in various television channels and newspapers, currently on a sabbatical. If anyone can help them, or give them more information which can further their cause - financially, technically, or content-wise - do contact Vandana (vandanakanak at gmail.com) and/or Svati (satishsvati at gmail.com). Thank you! Mohan -- ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Vandana Date: 10 June 2011 18:02 Subject: Fund a friend! =) Hi, Svati and I are making a documentary on the issue of Euthanasia titled Free will and the Modern State. We are looking for funds (of any sort =)) for our first documentary, as we do not want to approach our parents in this regard. We are open to anything and everything inclusive of encouragement. =D Waiting for a positive response. You can call or text us if you need more information. Below is the synopsis of our documentary. Euthanasia in India is not as debated a topic as it is in the western countries. The ignorance towards this issue in our country is evident from the very absence of laws regarding the same. It is only recently after the Supreme Court judgment of the Aruna Shanbaug case that Euthanasia has garnered the interest of a few. Free will and the Modern State intends to explore the various debates surrounding this contentious issue, especially in a country like India. Our aim is to understand the medical, social, legal and ethical arguments supporting and opposing active and passive euthanasia. And most importantly, is the Indian health and social system ready to accept euthanasia in all its dimensions? The documentary would include interviews with medical professionals, lawyers, civil society organisations, human rights activists, families who have opted for euthanasia and the opinion of the general populace. Regarding the budget for the documentary, here is a tentative structure: Tripod: Rs. 2000 Camera and DVD: Rs. 2000 (Our handicam is ancient, it still works on DVD, so we need atleast 10 DVDs (30mins each)) Mic: Rs. 1000 Transportation: Rs. 1000 (We also have to travel to dhavangre since our case study is from there). TOTAL: Rs. 6000 + miscellaneous. Plus, if we get more funding, then we would be able to do the documentary on a professsional camera which would cost us atleast Rs. 1500/day. So, there it is. Just let us know =) Thanks, Vandana Svati From taraprakash at gmail.com Sat Jun 11 03:02:15 2011 From: taraprakash at gmail.com (TaraPrakash) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:32:15 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Alvida Maqbool Fida: M.F.Husain, Free at Last References: <15B534DC-4446-4A6B-AEE4-70058DEC00F7@sarai.net> Message-ID: <0D8EF662F50641688B5064CCCA985D20@tara> Thanks for this sublime obituary. "he was not the only Indian artist who felt compelled to leave India because of the images he had made." If we go by an interview he gave to bBC Hindi, it was the immages that he would make which took Mr. Hussein to Katar. The kind of sponsorship needed for his work wasn't possible in India, is his reasoning. Best regards ----- Original Message ----- From: "Shuddhabrata Sengupta" To: Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 9:29 AM Subject: [Reader-list] Alvida Maqbool Fida: M.F.Husain, Free at Last > Dear friends, > > we have all been diminished by the death of M.F. Husain in exile. The loss > of his almost centenarian presence will be felt keenly. Here's my attempt > to account for the loss, uploaded recently on Kafila.org. Apologies for > cross posting. The posting is at - > http://kafila.org/2011/06/10/alvida-maqbool-fida-m-f-husain-free-at-last/ > ---------- > > Alvida, Maqbool Fida : M.F.Husain, Free at Last > > Shuddhabrata Sengupta, on kafila.org, June 10, 2011 > Like possibly several other children growing up in the kind of > lower-middle class metropolitan households that attempted to reconcile > their aspirations towards culture with their frugal habits in the 1970s > and1980s in Delhi, my first introduction to the art of our time was the > framed print of a Husain painting. We had no television. And my parents > had no gods. The only icons in our modest house were two framed pictures – > an inexpensive N.S. Bendre, (Lalit Kala Akademi) print of a few women at a > well and the reproduction of a Husain painting, possibly detached lovingly > and carefully from an Air India calendar, possibly featuring the kind of > goddess image that incensed the zealots who made it impossible for M. F. > Husain to live out his final years in India. > > The occasional bus ride to the National Gallery of Modern Art in the > company of an enthusiastic (and wanting-to-be-enlightened parent) would > yield a glimpses of more paintings, and then, again, there would be more > Husains – bold, galloping horses, faceless angular, cheerful, dancers, > myths, entire histories. My eyes would travel to odd corners of the > paintings, where there were sometimes more interesting, if quieter things > going on, at a slight remove from the central drama of the bold strokes > that dominated the pictures. > > On one such trip, I think it was my mother who pointed out to me a gaily, > madly painted fiat, with a jolly (but gaunt) Santa Claus at the wheel, > turning the circle of India Gate. “Look”, she said, “there goes the > artist – M.F. Husain, he drives his car without chapels and shoes on his > feet.” I think I must have been ten, but at that time, it did feel to me > that if this was an artist, then to live the life of art must be an > incredible freedom, literally footloose and fancy-footwear-free. What a > jolly, fantastic, cheerful, ramshackle car, what a great burst of light of > a beard, what a halo of hair ! That combustible locomotion of form and > colour seemed to transport M.F. Husain, even then, in and out of my > understanding of liberty like an automobile turning circles on a > roundabout, not necessarily going anywhere, just happy to be alive, > excited to be well-fueled and mobile. > > Now, decades later, when I mumble ‘artist’ to the question ‘occupation ?’ > asked curtly and almost invariably on arrival at airport immigration > desks, that sense of liberty embodied in Husain’s drive-away grace, which > made such a profound impression on my ten year old consciousness, still > comes to the rescue of my ravaged forty-something mind under the bleak > light of all those situations where one is asked to account for oneself > under duress. I come away from all such encounters with my dignity intact. > I never thought I would ever be an artist, but now that I am called out as > one, I suppose one must make the best of being what it takes to be an > artist. In my life-time Husain was one of those who invested the vocation > of art with the artless grace of whimsy and liberty. For that alone, > regardless of what I may think of the entire body of his work, I am > grateful. I am sure I am not alone in my gratitude. > > Husain could only have become who he did in the world of art. Art and > sport, and to a lesser degree film and politics (which are both heavily > mired in dynastic compulsions) are perhaps the only spheres of activity in > our harshly, pathetically hierarchical society where a young man or woman > can come, literally out of nowhere, like Husain did, paint billboards for > a living and still (very rarely) make it eventually into a sustained > presence in the limelight, touching the eyes and minds and senses of > millions of people. It tells us something about the world we live in when > we realize that when all else has failed, it is Art, for whatever it is > worth, that has sometimes lived up to its promise of being a tiny > quasi-democratic, half-egalitarian island, where the wild-card of > unexpected energy and talent can still upset the best laid plans of > privilege and the easy habits of power. That is why we need art in our > hollow society, to still keep a door half-ajar to the anonymous > practitioners of today who might yet make us turn and think again about > life tomorrow. > Last morning, Husain turned the corner of mortal existence. He steered the > wheel of the incredibly colorful automobile of his life down a one-way > road where we can no longer see him, nor follow him. He is, in a sense, > free at last. And we, the ungrateful people of the country which made it > impossible for him to die with dignity and honor in the city he loved, > should be grateful that he will no longer have reason to blame us for his > humiliation. Now we have the opportunity, as a society, to think a little > carefully, for a while, about what fools, what philistines we have been to > have lost his company while he was alive. > > In my godless, unbelieving upbringing, the divine came calling, only > occasionally, courtesy M. F. Husain. If there is a lasting, enduring > affection that I have for the incredible vitality of the traditions that > some people simplify by calling ‘Hindu’, it is to some measure the > responsibility of Maqbool Fida Husain. His love for the stories of Ganesh > and Durga, for the figures of the Puranas, the Mahabharata and the > Ramayana took me into territories that the piety of countless Amar Chitra > Kathas and the saccharine soap of Ramanand Sagar could never enter. He > nudged me into an understanding of the fact that the traditions they call > Hindu (because they are obsessed with names where the nameless is more > appropriate) are richer, more ambiguous, laden with more secrets and > stories and magic, laughter and desire than anything that any fart in > saffron robes or khaki shorts and black cap can ever pretend to know or > feel. He showed me lila, play, and made it the stuff of goddesses, and > occasionally of gods. The goddess who rode the monkey’s tail, the > resplendent but austere strength of the sky-clad goddess astride a tiger, > these were worth more their weight in faith, fida, then the sermons of a > million dharam sansads. He made me understand that one can say ‘maqbool’ > (I accept) to ‘fida’ (faith) even when one is sustained most actively by > doubt. My atheist soul’s abiding affection for the beauty of faith, and > particularly for the faith of my ancestors, is partly by way of boyhood > brushes with the reproductions of Maqbool Fida Husain. > > If today, I turn to the Mahabharata or the Ramayana like an automatic > reflex when thinking of a difficult ethical question, it is thanks to > artists like Husain, to poets like Michael Madhusudan Dutt, and to their > affection for, claims on and deep, abiding, subversive respect for the > dense forests of all our traditions. > > It is thanks in part to this barefoot farishta, this strange white > bearded, halo-haired namesake of the martyred bride-groom of Karbala, that > I made peace with being born, at least fractionally, nominally Hindu. And > contrary to what the censors in saffron might think, it was this lesson in > liberality that also made me think that Salman Rushdie has a right to be > read, that Taslima Nasreen has a right to be listened to, and yes, that > even those handful of moronic cartoonists of Denmark whose work says more > about their limitations than it does about their sense of humor, have a > right to be seen, and if necessary, laughed away. God, or the gods, if > they are in heaven, must be laughing loudest at our reluctance to laugh > with them. Husain, if he is in the corner of heaven specially reserved for > those accused of heresy on earh, must be laughing too. > > In the end, Husain won his Karbala, even when he lost in battle. His > horses, like the good horses of Imam Husain, will keep riding, even after > their rider has dismounted. It is the VHP, the RSS, the BJP and every > pompous holy-honcho who held forth on Husain’s heresies that stand > defeated today. Their vision of culture, ‘samskruti’ ( to be said with a > sufficiently upturned nasal twang) is in tatters and in need of having to > be salvaged by a petulant contortionist with hunger-management issues and > dreams of private militias. Their vision of politics is articulated by > those who dance (and not, I have to say, very well) to display their > mourning. Their morality is held hostage at the hands of mining mafias. > Their poet-laureate is comatose and was never a good poet anyway, and he > was a worse statesman than he ever was a poet. > > The fools who harangued Husain will fade into the obscurity of the > footnotes of art-history text books as miserable examples of what a > society should never do to artists. Among them will be people like a > cardiac surgeon (Dr. Togadia, of the VHP) who saved fewer lives than he > helped take away, a third rate painter of sentimental kitsch (Raghu Vyas) > who stoked the early protests against M F Husain at Arpana Kaur’s gallery > in the Siri Fort Institutional Area in Delhi (perhaps as a means to > offload ballast from the sinking ship of his artistic career) , and the > geriatric cartoonist-turned-cartoon (Bal Thackeray) with a reported taste > for lukewarm beer (never trust a man who can’t take his beer cold !) > > Behind them will be the entire massed ranks of the Sangh Parivar, as > faceless and featureless as figures in a Husain painting. Their > contribution to culture, their addition to the sum total of intelligence, > amply representable by the great Bharatiya contribution to Mathematics – > zero. Paradoxically, In bidding farewell to M.F. Husain, we are also > saying good riddance to those who baited him. Now that their object of > hate has left the building, they don’t quite know what to do. Their > harrumph and bluster has turned into a deflating whine. Some of them have > even appeared on television to express their contrition, pretending that > they meant him no harm, actually, while filing hundreds of cases in courts > across the country. No, it wasn’t terrorism-by-court-notices, it was just > a rash of art criticism, wrapped in the language of legalese. > > Central to their enterprise and their discomfort was the fact that Husain > deployed a visuality and an iconicity that was instantly processable. > Whether it was the vigorous Gaja-Gamini on the walls of the Azad Hind > Dhaba on Ballygunge Circular Road in Calcutta or the murals on the > interiors of an Airport, Husain’s images were never very demanding. They > did not need much work to be done to be read by their viewers. They were > deceptively simple, straightforward, often striking, sometimes banal. Even > a fool in a pair of khaki shorts and indignation leaking from his groin > could (mis)read them, easily. > > Unfortunately for the Hindutva with a hard-on brigade, contemporary art in > India has moved on from where Husain Sa’ab stood, and stayed standing. > This was more than evident in the last major survey exhibition of > contemporary art from india featuring Husain’s work – the Indian Highway > roller coaster that began its journey at the Serpentine Gallery in London > in 2009. There, Husain was represented by work that seemed both monumental > and dated. Around him, was a plethora of work, some exceptional, mostly > interesting, some indifferent, but all of which, spoke a language more > reticent in terms of figuration than did Husain. > > The knikker-critic can neither get this language like he thinks he ‘gets’ > Husain, nor is he capable of being provoked by it. It will seem way too > distant and cold to him. Not enough images, not even gods, not even much > by way of nakedness. Which is why, in a minor footnote to the Husain saga, > we have seen a sad sunday painter called Dr. Pranav Prakash exhibit a set > of embarrassing and cringe-worthy paintings featuring images of a ‘naked’ > Husain, to the great delight of the fringe of the Hindutva warriors. (Some > even rallied in support of his right to ‘freedom of expression’). Lest I > be misunderstood, it needs to be said here that I would never grudge fools > the right to express themselves, freely. How else would we know who they > were? Prakash’s naked Husain painting is a strange mirror-pastiche of > Husain’s style, revealing in all its mediocrity, how much in awe and debt > it is to the very object of its derision. > > Contemporary Art is way too distant and aloof from the knicker-critic’s > world. Husain got his goat, because in a sense Husain spoke his language, > even if to turn his world upside down and inside out. Husain was his > secret self. The one who actually enjoyed and loved the world of the > puranas and the epics, rather than the one who merely took sterile pride > in them. The Hindu far right hated Husain, because most of all it hated > the delight of what it meant to be an inheritor of the Hindu worlds it ran > away from. It hated its own humanity. Husain was a far better claimant to > that magical legacy of a universe of colours, enigmas and stories than any > Pracharak or Sarsanghchalak could ever be. > > Today, Husain has attained what the Sanskrit scriptures sometimes call > ‘Kaivalya’ - that unique freedom, that exceptionality, that carries with > it a tinge of isolation, a shade of autonomy, a sliver of loneliness. A > trace of this radical autonomy is visible in an early photograph of Husain > taken by the critic Richard Bartholomew, which came to light for a > generation that had never known it in the exhibition of Bartholomew > (Senior’s) work put together by his son, Pablo. In this photograph, Husain > can be seen on a rooftop (is it the rooftop of the Naaz Hotel in Old > Delhi?) with the domes of the Jame Masjid in the background. It seems to > be a clear, Delhi winter morning. Husain is in his prime, a man possessed > of his delight in what he is doing. In the company of a friend (Richard) > in a context he loves, but somehow, detached, distant, at a slight > remove. Like an angel on a rooftop, absorbed in Kaivalya. > > Who can touch that space ? No bigot can ever hope to grace a foothold in > that sunshine. He is free of them, but they will be haunted by him, until > their movement dies its necessary death. And yet, without him, culturally, > they will be rudderless. They can never taste the Kaivalya, the radical > autonomy that is Husain’s by right. They will no longer know what to hate, > whom to harass, whom to harangue. And without being able to hate, harass > and harangue, they will be nothing, mere shadows of their petty fitful > selves. Husain never needed them, but they needed him. They needed him, > ever so badly. That need will erode them like nothing else can. That is > why Husain, our ever youthful bridegroom of many forms and colours, lost > the battle, but won Karbala. Yazid is only a decrepit wall for pilgrims to > throw stones at forever in a little known corner of Damascus. There will > always be a conversation that you can kick-start with a Husain horse, just > as soon, there will be a time when people will ask “Togadia ? Who ?” > > And now that we are no longer required to sign petitions to defend M.F. > Husain, an honest and long overdue critical assessment of his work may > actually begin. Now will be the time to think about how artists are > trapped by repetition and the endless affirmation of themselves in their > work. Now will be the time to understand and reflect on how a ‘star-system’ > in matters of culture reduces even the most interesting artist to a > cardboard cut-out. Now will be the opportunity to think about how and why > we have elegies and obituaries aplenty, but so little by way of discursive > and critical engagement. Now will be the time to remember that too great > a proximity to power can distort the perceptions of the even those who > appear as the most innocent and playful of artists. Now will be the time > to recall the irony in the fact that Husain, who himself fell victim to > the shenanigans of a fascist mindset, had at one time, during the > nightmare called the Emergency, saw it necessary to paint Indira Gandhi, > its architect, as Durga, the victorious goddess. Now is the time to > understand that Husain’s innocence was not innocent. Now is the time to > remember that Husain loved cinema, but made two incredibly bad feature > films (‘Gaja Gamini’ and ‘Meenaxi’). Now is the time to reclaim M. F. > Husain as a grandfather, as uncle, as the stranger you make friends with > on a long train journey, as the man who tells you the most wonderful > stories and then stumps you with the narrowness of his world. As the angel > and the buffoon, the faristha and the funtoos, all at once. > > Now is also the time to remember that he was not the only Indian artist > who felt compelled to leave India because of the images he had made. Few > people, especially the kind of cultural liberals who signed endless > petitions on his behalf ever remember that the coteries around Indira > Gandhi that Husain painted as Durga made it virtually impossible for the > Nirod Mazumdar who painted her astride a donkey to live and work in India > for many years. Now is the time to acknowledge that when it comes to the > humbug of censorious intentions, the RSS and the Sangh Parivar do not have > any monopoly. The Congress, the Left, Gandhians, Muslim and Christian > Zealots have all made calls for bans and harassed artists and writers. > > Perhaps it was this realization that ultimately made Husain choose the > bleak freedom of exile over the fulsome humiliation of continuing to hold > on to the fetish of Indian citizenship. He said it was because of > ‘logistical reasons’, because of the way his work needed to be done, but > no one could mistake the fact that what drove Husain away ultimately was > not just the hatred of the Hindu far-right, but also the opportunistic and > cynical indifference of the so called liberal centre, which in time > honored Congressi fashion chose to buckle and prevaricate rather than take > a clear stand. In doing so, it revealed a malaise that is deeper than the > fissures of political divisions. The sickness of the compulsion to play > safe rather than fair. > > In a delightfully mischievous poem called ‘Duronto Asha’ (Audacious Hope) > another white haired, white bearded eminence, the other gaunt Santa Claus > of my bilingual boyhood, Rabindranath Thakur, speaks of his impulsive > desire to stop leading the sedentary, safe life of those accustomed to too > much self-affirmation of their own identities. Rather than content with > being a milksop bhadralok Bengali, Rabindranath, suddenly and impulsively > declares his true desire by saying - ‘were I much rather an Arab > Bedouin – lost under the desert’s open skies’. I am reminded of this as a > way of squaring the circle of how we can reconcile ourselves to the fact > that Husain, in his final years, in choosing to base himself in Qatar > rather than Delhi or Mumbai, was perhaps exercising elements of the “were > I much rather an Arab Bedouin option’. > > The only time I ever met Maqbool Fida Husain (spotting him from the window > of DTC bus number 408 turning the circle of India Gate at the age of ten > doesn’t really count as an encounter) was a few days before the opening of > Indian Highway at the Serpentine Gallery in London in the early December > of 2008. A large mural sized painting by him was being installed. He sat, > with a tall thin paint-brush in his hands, adding the very last finishing > touches. People went up to to him and made polite conversation. My > comrades and I in the Raqs Media Collective, were installing not far away > from him. We were introduced. There were ‘adaabs’, a few smiles. I took > the pictures you see with this post. We went back to our work, he went > back to his. Our fishing boat signalled to his Ocean Liner, like ships > that cross each other in the ocean’s night. We acknowledged each other’s > presence and drifted apart, as ships navigating entirely different courses > must. Still, it was good to have seen the lights glitter on this nearly > century old vessel. It was good to have sensed the rattle of its engines > and turbines, to see its tall mast and take one’s bearing from its prow. > > A little later, his daughter, who was looking after him, asked us, and > several others, whether we had seen him. Husain had disappeared. A search > was quickly put together, and a little while later he was found, under the > open sky of Kensington Gardens. His daughter was relieved. She told us, as > a ninety something man, Husain was in good shape, sharp in all his > responses, lucid. The only thing that worried her sometimes was the fact > that he would sometimes get up and start moving, as if in a straight line, > and walk as long as he could without getting tired, without stopping, and > that this worried her about him getting lost, or hurt while absently > crossing a busy road. > > When the news of his death sunk in. I was reminded of his walk-about ways. > He just got up, left. Stretched his canvas. Sorted his paints, Started > working, Stopped, and then got up and left again. The pettiness of > nations, the smallness of the minds of those who speak loudly on behalf of > nations, could never hold back his final moves. Or, as he said laughing, > playfully invoking and twisting Iqbal in an television interview not so > long ago when the interviewer painfully and persistently asked him yet > again, why he had chosen Qatar over Hindustan, – “Hindi hain hum, vatan > hai, sara jahaan hamara’. > > The canvas of the open sky was alway waiting for the bedouin with the > paintbrush in his hand. > > Shuddhabrata Sengupta > The Sarai Programme at CSDS > Raqs Media Collective > shuddha at sarai.net > www.sarai.net > www.raqsmediacollective.net > > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> From rohitrellan at aol.in Sat Jun 11 07:00:35 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 21:30:35 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Launch of DVD of film BHAGYAREKHA (1947), Mumbai / GARM CHAI - Series of Dramatic Readings, New Delhi Message-ID: <8CDF5EE4BFF7890-1D78-32205@webmail-d166.sysops.aol.com> Launch of DVD of film BHAGYAREKHA (1947) Time Sunday, June 12 · 5:00pm - 8:00pm Location Gyan Vihar Library, Prabodhankar Thakare Drama Complex, Borivali (west), Mumbai REMEMBERING PU LA Dedicating ‘Bhagyarekha’ On Pu La’s Eleventh Death Anniversary Pu La, two syllables which bring a smile to the face of any Maharashtrian. Pu La is the name by which the iconic P L Deshpande was popularly known. A writer, theatreperson, film director, musician and music connoisseur, Pu La was loved and respected by lakhs of Marathi speaking people the world over. June 12th this year marks his eleventh death anniversary. It is also a year since his first available film, the 1947 film ‘Bhagyarekha’ was rescued from oblivion and released on Home Video by Rudraa Entertainment. In the past year thousands of fans have appreciated a young bespectacled Pu La playing Shanta Apte’s brother in this film which was surprisingly on a subject that even Bollywood finds taboo today. Bhagyarekha is the story of Manik, a young Gandhian freedom fighter who has a child out of wedlock. Condemned by all the members of her family expect her mother, she battles on steadfastly, even after her lover dies in a police encounter leaving her to fend for herself. The film, directed by Shantaram Athavale, also stars Baburao Pendharkar, and harks back to an era when Marathi cinema tackled unconventional subjects. Keshavrao Bhole composed its music and Narayan Hari Apte wrote the songs, screenplay and dialogues. As the print of Kuber, Pu La’s first film, cannot be traced, this jewel unearthed by Rudraa Entertainment has found its place as Pu La’s first available film. On the Eleventh anniversary of Pu La’s death, Rudraa Entertainment rededicates the film to Pu La’s memory. Open to all --------------------------------------------------- GARM CHAI - Series of Dramatic Readings, New Delhi Time Sunday, June 12 · 6:30pm - 8:30pm Location Atelier Studio, 396, 2nd floor, Mukherjee Nagar New Delhi, India The first in the series is "Machhandar" by Kamal Pruthi & Kuljeet Singh Hindi title: Machhandar German to Hindi Translator: Kamal Pruthi Genre: Comedy/ Children‘s Theatre/Grips Tentative Duration: 2 hours 15 minutes Brief Synopsis: Machhandar is a story of a boy (8) and his elder sister (10), Cyrus and Sophia who have come to spend their summer vacations at their uncle & aunt Mr. & Mrs Kacharawala’s home. The two look for freedom by breaking the conventional and stereotype society rules created by the elders to control the activities of the children in the house. On the other hand the uncle and aunty try to control the situation by unnecessarily restricting the carefree behavior of the children and at the same time wooing the landlord by maintaining a peaceful environment, in spite of having two extremely young, naughty and creative kids at home. Sophia and Cyrus just want to play and have fun. But the uncreative, unimaginative world of older people is around them, who want to imprison them with conventional rules and disciplines of upbringing a child. Without attempting to create any awareness, the play talks about the ridiculous ways and conventional methods of raising children. About the Reader: Kamal Pruthi (28) is a professionally trained actor from SRC (Sri Ram Center for performing Arts, 2003), Delhi and Germany (2006) on an International Theatre Scholarship awarded by Goethe Institute. Being a linguist actor, he has acted in 4 languages i.e. Hindi, Punjabi, English and Urdu. In his 10 years of theatre career, he has worked with several renowned theatre groups as Stage Manager and actor in 3 cities i.e. Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata. He has been instrumental in forming literary forums in Kolkata and in Bangalore to promote new writers/playwrights & translators. From lalitambardar at hotmail.com Sat Jun 11 14:16:41 2011 From: lalitambardar at hotmail.com (Lalit Ambardar) Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2011 08:46:41 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: The truth about Digvijay Singh (and the Madhya Pradesh BJP government also) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Diggi baba is a multi 'tasking'/ 'talking' wizard.....RgdsLA--------------------------------------------------------------- > Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 20:29:10 +0530 > From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com > To: reader-list at sarai.net > Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: The truth about Digvijay Singh (and the Madhya Pradesh BJP government also) > > Hi > > Please do read this article. This is a good description of what Mr. Digvijay > Singh (along with BJP government in Madhya Pradesh) have been doing in > Madhya Pradesh itself to ruin it. It can be a good understanding of what Mr. > Singh actually has stood for, since the beginning itself when he was the > Chief Minister. > > Link: http://www.indiatogether.org/2011/jun/gov-maheshwar.htm > > Article: HYDEL AT ANY COST > *What Digvijay Singh forgot to tell the Prime Minister * > Beneath Jairam Ramesh's recent turnaround on a 400 MW MP hydel project, was > a series of interventions by Digivijay Singh with Prime Minister Manmohan > Singh.Himanshu Upadhyaya digs deeper. > > *6 June 2011* - On March 16th this year, Jairam Ramesh, the Union Minister > of Environment and Forests released a report on water conflicts and > underlined three incidents in his speech. One of the three confict > situations was a controversial hydropower dam whose construction was stayed > when his ministry issued stop work orders last year. > > The minister reiterated that he was compelled to stay the construction since > the pari passu rehabilitation, which was one of the conditions attached to > clearance, had not taken place and construction outpaced rehabilitation by > leaps and bounds. > > Less than two months later, he reversed his earlier decision by lifting the > stop work order. He posted the decision bearing his signature promptly on > the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) > website). > It mentioned a series of review meetings convened by Prime Minister's office > and the correspondence from the ex-chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Digvijay > Singh. > > What happened? > > *Unconstitutional mediation* > > Welcome to the wonderland Manmohan Singh, the PM who is allowing the PMO to > become an office of mediation that entertains the grievances of corporate > which cite personal hurt more than any legally and constitutionally valid > arguments. > > In early nineties, quizmasters often asked students to 'name the hydropower > project which was scrapped when Prime Minister of India decided that the > biodiversity rich rainforests of Kerala cannot be sacrificed at the altar of > development'. In doing so they hoped that the environmental consciousness of > a Prime Minister would register in young minds and stay there for a long > time to come. > > However, quizmasters today have more reasons to ask this: name the unviable > hydropower project which was allowed to go on despite complete failure of > rehabilitation and resettlement and a maze of financial irregularities, > because the Prime Minister decided to play a role of an office of mediation. > > Answer: The 400 MW Maheshwar Hydro-electric Project in Madhya Pradesh. > Consider the plain facts. > > By the end of 2009, the S Kumars' company Shree Maheshwar Hydel Power > Corporation Limited (SMHPCL) which owns the private sector Maheshwar Project > in the Narmada valley had completed over 80% of the project work. However, > not even 3% of the affected people had been rehabilitated and resettled by > that date. No one had been provided agricultural land at all. The oustees > were repeatedly questioning the governments on the continuing construction > of the dam without rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R). Yet, there was a > total silence about violations. > > In October 2009, Jairam Ramesh wrote a letter to the Chief Minister, Madhya > Pradesh expressing his grave apprehension that oustees of the Maheshwar > project would be left in the lurch without R&R. In November 2009, the Madhya > Pradesh CM replied confirming that not more than 3% of the R&R measures had > been completed. In this light, on the 17th February 2010, the MOEF issued a > show cause notice under Section 5 of the Environment Protection Act to the > company. After receiving their reply, on 23rd April 2010, the MoEF issued a > direction to stop the ongoing construction. > > As soon as the process for enforcing rules regarding protection of the > oustees began, political lobbyists became busy on behalf of the company. In > March 2010, Congress leader Digvijay Singh met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh > and briefed him about the project. He wrote to the PM to �kindly intervene > in the matter and prevail upon the Environment Ministry to withdraw their > order of work suspension order, and allow the project to be completed at the > earliest.� > > On December 9th 2010, the S Kumars represented by their head Mukul Kasliwal > had written an urgent letter to Digvijay Singh. Digvijay Singh readily wrote > a letter on the lines suggested by Kasliwal to the PM within just four days. > Singh also reminded the PM in his letter that the project had been > re-started in 2005 and the public financing of the project had been achieved > in 2007, on the intervention of the PM. > > It must also be remembered that exactly a year before this, Shivraj Singh > Chauhan had written to Jairam Ramesh promising: �In any case submergence > would not take place and gates would not be lowered without prior consent of > MoEF�. > > *What the Prime Minister 'did not know'* > > However, what Digvijay forgot to tell the Prime Minister is that it was > during his regime as Madhya Pradesh CM, that the Madhya Pradesh State > Industrial Development Corporation (MPSIDC) gave Rs.44.75 crores to the S > Kumars companies, in excess of the legally allowable limit of Rs.3 crores, > and without proper securities. However, after having obtained the loan, the > S Kumars defaulted on the repayment, or even to reply to the notices of the > MPSIDC, despite being in profits. > > Cases were filed by the Economic Offences Wing of the State government > against Mukul Kasliwal, under charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and > fraud under Sections 420, 467, 120B of the IPC. The Comptroller and Auditor > General severely censured this in 1999 report. When the S Kumars refused to > pay back, in September 2001, the MPSIDC declared the S Kumars company - > Induj Enertech alias Entegra as a willful defaulter, and took over the > Maheshwar dam site lands and properties belonging to the S Kumars, thus > bringing the work on the project to a complete halt for five years from 2001 > up to November 2005. > > In July 2004, in order to take back their dam properties, the S Kumars > agreed to a settlement with the MPSIDC. However, a few months and a few > payments later, they reneged on the settlement. Again, in its 2005 report, > the CAG pointed out that the MPSIDC sacrificed Rs.26 crores of public money > in making the settlement with the S Kumars, and withdrew their revenue > recovery proceedings. However, after the obtaining the settlement, the S > Kumars did not honor it. > > *Digvijay Singh's letter to the Prime Minister dated May 03, 2010* (accessed > from the PMO under RTI by the Narmada Bachao Andolan) > > "Prior to meeting with you in March, I had been speaking to Shri Jairam > Ramesh, Minister of State for Environment and Forests. I first spoke to him > over the phone on the late evening on 16th February 2010, when I learnt that > he is issuing a show cause notice for stopping the work. Despite assuring me > that he will not do such a thing, he went ahead and issued a notice on 17th > February 2010. The notice was replied to by the Project Company on 9th April > 2010 and the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh took a meeting in Bhopal on > 20th April 2010 to expedite the R&R works. > > As this had been brought to my knowledge, I mentioned this to Shri Jairam > Ramesh on Thursday, 22nd April 2010 at 10.30 am when he came to see me at > the AICC office. At that time he assured me that he would call all the > parties concerned for a meeting on Wednesday, 28th April 2010 to resolve the > matter. Surprisingly and contrary to the same, he issued a direction on the > very next day, i.e. Friday 23rd April, 2010 evening to suspend the work > immediately and circulated it to the media through the NBA activists� I > would have spoken to Shri Jairam Ramesh and requested reversal of the order > but he is neither returning my calls nor answering my e-mails." > > It was despite this track record, that in 2005, the public sector Power > Finance Corporation was pressured to inject public funds into the project. > That S Kumars was MPSIDC's single largest defaulter did not matter. The > state government agreed to give a counter-guarantee to a guarantee to be > issued by the Power Finance Corporation subject to the condition that the S > Kumar�s would enter into a one-time settlement of its outstanding dues > towards the MPSIDC. > > On 16th September 2005, the S Kumars signed a settlement with the MPSIDC by > issuing post dated cheques amounting to Rs.55 crores, collected the > settlement certificate from the MPSIDC, and the counter-guarantee from the > GoMP. However, when the cheques were presented at the bank by the MPSIDC, > they bounced and the bank wrote back saying that the company�s account had > been closed. The MPSIDC has filed 20 cases against the bouncing of cheques, > under Section 420, as well as under Sections 138 and 141 of the Negotiable > Instruments Act. A few weeks back Madhya Pradesh assembly saw uproar when > Congress MLAs asked questions on the MPSIDC scam and the state government�s > decision to grant counter guarantee to the Maheshwar Project. > > What Digvijay Singh also forgot to tell the Prime Minister was that the > Comptroller and Auditor General of India CAG had already indicted the PFC > for having irregularly disbursed Rs.99.32 crores to the Maheshwar Project > despite the non-fulfillment of pre-disbursement conditions. Yet, it is the > PFC once again, which was bled, even after 2005, in order to benefit the S > Kumars, despite the fact that it was the PFC�s largest defaulter. > > What Digvijay Singh also forgot to tell the Prime Minister was that at the > same time the public financial institutions had placed an embargo on public > lending to the Maheshwar project because the S.Kumars had diverted Rs.106.4 > crores of project funds to its group companies and other persons who had no > contracts for the project. In March 2000, the lead institution for Maheshwar > Project � the IFCI stipulated that no further monies would be disbursed to > the Maheshwar project until the entire Rs.106.4 crores was brought back with > interest. > > Placing of public funds from public financial institutions into this project > whose promoters are willful defaulters, and have charges of fraud, cheating > and other serious financial charges against them is prohibited by the RBI. > > There's more. The project lands and properties purchased by the S Kumars > from the state government and its agencies in 1992, are yet to be paid for. > And despite repeated censure by the CAG, in 2007, without any payment, the > state government mutated the dam site lands in the name of the S Kumars, > which were then mortgaged by the S Kumars to third parties. In the backdrop > admitted failture to resettle project oustees and massive financial > irregularities, a stop order issued by the environment minister should have > stayed on. Instead, "a series of review meetings convened by Prime > Minister's office" ended it. *⊕* > > *Himanshu Upadhyaya* > > 6 Jun 2011 > > *Himanshu Upadhyaya is an independent researcher working on Public Finance > and Accountability issues.* > > > > -- > Rakesh Krishnamoorthy Iyer > MM06B019 > Final Year, Dual Degree Student > Dept. of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering > IIT Madras, Chennai - 600036 > Phone no: +91-9444073884 > E-mail ID: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Sat Jun 11 22:18:15 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2011 22:18:15 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Politics in Indonesia, GRTV Message-ID: The US, some other western powers and the Australian Govt have always been brainless barbarians. This is the Indonesian part. (The GRTV site went online on the 6th of this month: http://tv.globalresearch.ca/) http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2011/01/death-nation-timor-conspiracy http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1075 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7915 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1187 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6380 http://www.antenna.nl/~fwillems/eng/ic/pki/index.html http://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1998/05/indonesia.htm Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Sat Jun 11 22:29:20 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2011 22:29:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Against Hate Message-ID: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/06/10/gay-rights-campaigners-call-for-mosques-to-ban-anti-gay-speakers/ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Mon Jun 13 08:41:14 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 08:41:14 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Media Lies on Projects Message-ID: Example: 10th + June'2011 "USE Group Chairman Prasoon Mukherjee meets CM for building environment friendly industry @Nayachar.Will build 10,000 MW thermal power plant(exporting high quality carbon from overseas)." Source : Many pro TMC propaganda channels including Star Ananda. But this is an old project already under implementation since 2008 http://www.usel.biz/power.html USE has signed an MOU with the Government of West Bengal in October 2008 for setting up 10,000MW thermal power plants at various locations in the state of West Bengal. The first utility coal based thermal power plant with ultimate capacity of 3x660 MW is coming up in the Nayachar Island to feed power to the Eco Industrial Park and to the state grid as well. The first phase is planned to consist of 2x660 MW Supercritical units. The specific site for the power plant within the island has already been identified and all preliminary exploratory work as well as the Detailed Project Report (DPR) has been completed. The EPC Contract is expected to be awarded in the second quarter of the year 2011. The first unit is planned to be commissioned by the year 2014. The necessary tie up for power off take is in place. Coal for the power plants shall be imported from Indonesia and Fuel Supply Agreement for supply of coal has been finalized. Tender for EPC Contract: http://www.usel.biz/NIT_Sagar_09.12.10.pdf Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From itsnishant at gmail.com Mon Jun 13 16:33:09 2011 From: itsnishant at gmail.com (Nishant Shah) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:33:09 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Locating Internets: Research training and curriculum workshop: Call for Participation Message-ID: Dear All, I am sure this will be of interest to some people on the list. Please distribute as you might feel appropriate. Apologies for cross-posting. Warmly Nishant *Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India* *Research training and curriculum workshop : Call for participation* *Deadline for submission:* 15th July 2011-06-08 *When: *19th - 22nd August, 2011 * * *Where:* Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) University, Ahmedabad *Organised by:* Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore and CEPT University, Ahmedabad. LOCATING INTERNETS is an innovative, multi-disciplinary, workshop that engages with some of the most crucial debates around Internet and Society within academic scholarship, discourse and practice in India. It explores the Where, When, How and What has changed with the emergence of Internet and Digital Technologies in the country. The Internet is not a singular monolithic entity but is articulated in various forms – sometimes materially, through accessing the web; at others, through our experiences; and yet others through imaginations of policy and law. Internets become a part of our everyday practice, from museums and archives, to school and university programmes, living rooms and public spaces, relationships and our bodily lived realities. It becomes necessary to reconfigure our existing concepts, frameworks and ideas to make sense of the rapidly digitising world around us. The Internet is no longer contained in niche disciplines or specialised everyday practices. LOCATING INTERNETS invites scholars, teachers, researchers, advanced research students and educationalists from any discipline to learn and discuss how to ask new questions and design innovative curricula in their discipline by introducing concepts and ideas from path-breaking research in India. Comprised of training, public lectures, open discussion spaces, and hands-on curriculum building exercises, this workshop will introduce the participants to contemporary debates, help them articulate concerns and problems from their own research and practice, and build knowledge clusters to develop innovative and open curricula which can be implemented in interdisciplinary undergraduate spaces in the country. It showcases the research outputs produced by The Centre for Internet and Society’s Researchers @ Work Programme, and brings together 9 researchers to talk about alternative histories, processes, and bodies of the Internets, and how they can be integrated into mainstream pedagogic practices and teaching environments. *Knowledge Clusters for the Workshop:* LOCATING INTERNETS is designed innovatively to accommodate for various intellectual and practice based needs of the participants. While the aim is to introduce the participants to a wide interdisciplinary range of scholarship, we also hope to address particular disciplinary and scholarly concerns of the participants. The workshop is further divided into three knowledge clusters which help the participants to focus their energies and ideas in the course of the four days. a. *Bridging the Gap:* This workshop seeks to break away from the utopian public discourse of the Internets as a-historical and completely dis-attached from existing technology ecologies in the country. This knowledge cluster intends to produce frameworks that help us contextualize the contemporary internet policy, discourse and practice within larger geo-political and socio-historical flows and continuities in Modern India. The first cluster chartsdifferent pre-histories of the Internets, mapping the continuities and ruptures through philosophy of techno-science, archiving practices, and electronifcation of governments,to develop new technology-society perspectives. b. *Paradigms of Practice:*One of the biggest concerns about internet studies in India and other similar developed contexts is the object oriented approach that looks largely at specific usages, access, infrastructure etc. However, it is necessary to understand that the Internet is not merely a tool or a gadget. The growth of Internets produces systemic changes at the level of process and thought. The technologies often get appropriated for governance both by the State and the Civil Society, producing new processes and dissonances which need to be charted. The second cluster looks at certain contemporary processes that the digital and internet technologies change drastically in order to recalibrate the relationship between the State, the Market and the Citizen. c. *Feet on the Ground: *The third cluster looks at contemporary practices of the Internet to understand the recent histories of movements, activism and cultural practices online. It offers an innovative way of understanding the physical objects and bodies that undergo dramatic transitions as digital technologies become pervasive, persuasive and ubiquitous. It draws upon historical discourse, every-day practices and cultural performances to form new ways of formulating and articulating the shapes and forms of social and cultural structures. *Workshop Outcomes:* The particpants are expected to engage with issue of Internet and it various systemic processes through their own discipiliniary interests. Apart from lectures and orientation sessions, the participants will actively workshop on their own project ideas during the period in groups and will be guided by experts. The final outcome of the workshops would be curriculum for undergraduate and graduate teaching space of various disciplines in the country * * *Participation Guidelines:* LOCATING INTERNETS is now accepting submissions from interested participants in the following format: 1. Name: 2. Institutional Affiliation and Title: 3. Address: 4. Email address: 5. Phone number: 6. A brief resume of work experience (max. 350 words) 7. Statement of Interest (max. 350 words) 8. Key concerns you want to address in the Internet and Society field (max. 350 words) 9. Identification with one Knowledge-cluster of the workshop and a Proposal for integrating it in your research/teaching practice (max. 500 words) 10. Current interface with technologies in your pedagogic practices (max. 350 words) 11. Additional information or relevant hyperlinks you might want to add (Max. 10 lines) *Notes:* · Submissions will be accepted only from participants in India, as attachments in .doc, .docx or .odt formats at locatingInternets at cis-india.org · Submissions made beyond 15th July 2011 may not be considered for participation. · Submissions will be scrutinised by the organisers and selected participants will be informed by the 20th July 2011, about their participation. · Selected participants will be required to make their own travel arrangements to the workshop. A 2nd A.C. return fare will be reimbursed to the participants. Shared accommodation and selected meals will be provided at the workshop. · A limited number of air-fare reimbursements will be available to participants in extraordinary circumstances. *Chairs*: Nishant Shah, Director-Research, Centre for Internet and Society Bangalore; Pratyush Shankar, Associate Professor & Head of Undergraduate Program, Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University * * *Supported by:* Kusuma Foundation, Hyderabad * * *Experts:*Anja Kovacs, Arun Menon, Asha Achuthan, Ashish Rajadhykasha, Aparna Balachandran, Namita Malhotra, Nithin Manayath, Nithya Vasudevan, Pratyush Shankar, Rochelle Pinto, Zainab Bawa -- Nishant Shah Doctoral Candidate, CSCS, Bangalore. Director (Research), Centre for Internet and Society,( www.cis-india.org ) Asia Awards Fellow, 2008-09 # 00-91-9740074884 From chintan.backups at gmail.com Mon Jun 13 20:27:01 2011 From: chintan.backups at gmail.com (Chintan Girish Modi) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 20:27:01 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Arka's piece on Khusrao and Nizamuddin Message-ID: >From http://www.openspaceindia.org/articles/item/725.html *The Bazaar of the Heart* By Arka Mukhopadhyay A journey into the courtyard of memory, where for the past seven centuries the *Qawwali *has been the bridge between Amir Khusrao and Nizamuddin Aulia *nami danam che manzil bood shab jaye ki man boodam* *baharsu raqs-e-bismil bood shab jaye ki man boodam* The first time I visited the shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi was on an early morning in summer. I was supposed to go with friends who knew the place well, but I reached early and decided to go in ahead of them. I had perhaps expected a walled compound of tall minarets and stately domes, like the Jama Masjid in the northern part of the city. But there was nothing of the sort -- the tarred road changed almost imperceptibly into a labyrinthine paved walkway lined on either side by eateries and shops selling flowers, *chaddars*, CDs and other paraphernalia. I remember stumbling along this walkway, feeling a little dazed from the constant verbal assault of the shopkeepers on either side of me, hounding me to buy this or that, or leave my shoes in their safekeeping, until I suddenly found myself in the courtyard of the Beloved of God -- *Mehboob-e-Ilaahi- -* for so they call the man who has bestowed his enigma upon this place. It is a walk that I have taken hundreds of times since then, like a personal ritual that affirms itself by its very immutability. Those of us who are in the performing arts -- we are forever seeking newness. What is old is also staid, is dying or already dead. In theatre, which is my domain, we are always looking for fresh, contemporary articulations of old texts -- newer experiments with space, new languages of the body, new metaphors. And this is as it should be, for otherwise a thing loses its vitality, its inner stream of life, and becomes a mere corpse. Yet there are human actions -- the steps of Kalaripayattu, a gesture of Kutiyattam, the choreography of a Santhali dance -- these things find flight liberation within structure. By their very precision, their repeatability, they continuously re-affirm their vitality, continuously renew that inner life stream. What sets these two dimensions apart? What connects them? That which seems a paradox -- is it really so? Or is that which I call new, merely a yearning to re-connect, re-member (as opposed to dismember) a connection with something that is so old, so ancient, that it is almost (but not entirely) forgotten? *pari paikar nigaar-e sarw qadde laala rukhsaare* *sarapa aafat-e-dil bood shab jaye ki man boodam* *Khuda khud meer-e majlis bood andar laamakan Khusrau;* *Muhammad shamm-e mehfil bood shab jaay ki man boodam.* What is this place, amidst the urban sprawl of present-day Delhi, with its shops selling cheap VCDs of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, its illegal money changers and travel agents? Its rosaries, basket upon basket of roses, rose-coloured slabs of meat, skull caps, *ittar*? Its impossibly narrow bylanes with their dark, angular corners and sudden turns, with offal strewn about and the crumbling multi-storied tenements on either side almost leaning into each other overhead? The little shops at every conceivable corner selling sickly-sweet tumblers of tea at all hours of day and night? More than anything else, this place is a marketplace. Here you won’t find any of the verticality, the clinical coldness of that modern-day temple -- the shopping mall, where everything has a fixed, labelled price tag which brooks no argument. In this horizontal marketplace, stories and insults are exchanged, it’s still possible to bargain, to hear the other person breathe, and things are bought and sold according to an ancient ledger book of commerce, kept in a dialect of camel trains and trade winds. In this marketplace you remember that even before the days of the Prophet (PBUH), Mecca was a caravan town with the Ka’abah as its warm stone heart, where the hagglings over silk and salt under the midday sun gave way to evening-song, the lashing of glances and the ululating voices of storytellers which drew the desert djinns closer to the human circle around the fires. Here is the bazaar of the heart, and here, in its centre, is the courtyard of memory. *Navishta bardar-e-jannat bakhatt-e-sabz-o-jaleel* *shafi-e-roz-e-qayamat Muhammed-e-Arabi* *Ali Imam-e-manasto manam ghulam-e-Ali* *Hazaar jaan-e-girami fida ba naam-e-Ali* On one side of the courtyard lies the tomb of the Sheikh, and on the other, that of his *murid, *Hazrat Amir Khusrao -- poet, musician, diplomat, warrior, linguist, saint, and somewhere in the crowd of all those epithets, also a lover -- an *ashiq*. In between them, forever separating and forever uniting master and disciple, Lover and Beloved, lies the courtyard of memory where for the past seven centuries music, in the form of *Qawwali, *has been the bridge between Khusrao and Nizam, bringing the one eternally close to the other. No Keatsian frozen immortality, this, but a living, breathing, dynamic bridge over the river of humanity that has been flowing between them for all these centuries, through all the ebb and flow of history. The songs piped here are forever new, yes, but forever old, also. For Qawwali, a genre fashioned by Hazrat Amir Khusrao, derives its name from ‘Qaul’, which means, the words of another (specifically those of the Prophet of Islam), and a Qawwal is one who utters old words of memory, the words of others, remembering them through his breath, renewing them on his tongue. He gives up his own self, becomes only a medium, a container for the endless flow of stories, a conduit through which words flow from lips long stilled, to ears that are still listening, hearts that are still beating. It is this act of telling the story, of immersing in it, that is called Qawwali. This then, is music as memory-making. Admittedly, it is a bit of an acquired taste. Though based on the same *raga * syestem as Hindustani classical music, the form has a unique, earthy structure that to some ears can sound raucous, maybe even cacophonous. Songs are like places, perhaps -- some are ancient forests, some windswept mountain peaks, while some are dark alcoves for quiet contemplation. Qawwali, then, is a marketplace -- a *bazaar, *with the pulse of give-and-take, call and answer. Delicate slivers of sound are what the Qawwals trade in, bargaining with each other over shape and texture, bringing out the inner luminescence of a phrase, by turning it round and round, from one tongue to another, much as caravan traders might hold up this precious jewel or that exotic rug for the buyers’ inspection. Like the bazaar, the music has its little alleyways and deviations, hidden passages of magic. But always, always, there is the straight path that returns to the heart of the music, a swirling, spiralling, upward motion that leads to the courtyard of the Beloved. *mohe apni hee rang mein rang de nizaam* *tu saahib mora, main toree ghulaam* It is said the Hazrat Amir Khusrao formed the first ever group of Qawwals in the world, comprising a few youngsters he had personally trained -- the *qawwal bachchein.* A direct blood-descendant of one of these youngsters was Ustad Tanras Khan, the court-musician of Bahadur Shah Zafar II, and founder of what is known as the Delhi Gharana. Today, his mantle rests on the frail, octogenarian shoulders of Ustaad Meraaj Ahmad Nizaami, four generations down from the Mughal court musician. Ustaad Meraaj lives in a one-room shack somewhere inside the labyrinth, with three of his sons who have also followed in his footsteps. Your first impression of the Ustaad might be that of a slightly dotty old man, perched in a cot while the family goes about its daily business of living within the cramped confines of the room. His eyes don’t see too well, or perhaps they don’t see the inconsequential, the mundane that’s around him, fixed as they are on the unseen. The reins of his family are slipping through his twitching fingers -- he is no longer the one in charge, though they defer to him. He tries to keep a tab on what’s going on, from his corner -- his voice is quavering and can sound a little petulant, somewhat like a child’s who’s figured out that things are being kept from him. Now and then, you can hear him unabashedly break wind. Yet when they take him, even now, to concerts, a different, remembered body emerges. The eyes are now sharp, focussed, the voice still a little wobbly but precise, showering quicksilver bursts of repartee, in a mixture of Hindustani, stylised Urdu and classical Persian. Old stories crowd into his head, the long-stilled voices begin to whisper. Memory speaks, the notes swirls upwards -- he is now a Performer. *Arka Mukhopadhyay is a writer, theatre person and Sufi-practitioner, currently based in New Delhi. * From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Mon Jun 13 21:16:24 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:16:24 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Derivative Problem Message-ID: >From http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25089 Also see : http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/06/01/the-next-financial-crisis-will-be-hellish-and-its-on-its-way http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/6/1/business/8805487&sec=business _________________________________________________________________ The greatest depression in human history is still in its starting stages. What the media and many officials often refer to as the "hangover" from the global financial crisis is in fact the end of the beginning. Originating in 2008, the global economic crisis took the world by storm: banks collapsed, the "too big to fail" became bigger by consolidating the rest, governments bailed out their financial industries, masses of people lost their jobs, the 'developing' world was plunged into a deep systemic crisis, food prices rose, which in time spurred social unrest; and the Western nations that took on the bad debts of the big banks are on the precipice of a great global debt crisis, originating in Europe, hitting Greece and Spain, but destined to consume the industrialized world itself. Though many claim that we are in a "recovery," things could not be further from the truth. As the mainstream media is finally catching on to the reality of the mirage of the so-called "recovery", reports are surfacing about a dire global economic situation: "Evidence of a deterioration of global manufacturing growth and renewed weakness in job creation in the United States emerged Wednesday, two reversals that have markets bracing for an economic pause, or worse... Add to that a daunting list of aggravating factors: the continued implosion of the U.S. housing market, an outbreak of worldwide risk aversion, high crude-oil and gas prices pinching consumer demand, further tightening in China and other emerging-market economies, stock market losses, lack of credit growth, the looming end to the Fed’s monetary stimulus, weak business capital spending, and the still-unfolding sovereign debt crisis in Europe." And now top financial experts are warning of a new financial crisis altogether, since the monstrous derivatives market that played such a nefarious role in the preceding crisis has not been altered, nor have its systemic risks been addressed. The derivatives market - essentially a fictional electronic market of high-stakes gambling - has a value ten times that of the entire global gross national product of the world's countries combined. This market is dominated by hedge funds and the "too big to fail" banks, who in fact created the derivatives trading schemes. As one leading hedge fund manager recently stated, "There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner... because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis." The market for derivatives is somewhere in the realm of $600 trillion. .... Read more at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25089 ___________________________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From pbkasturi at usermail.com Mon Jun 13 21:33:07 2011 From: pbkasturi at usermail.com (Poonam Bir Kasturi) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:33:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Trash Trail - What you don't know is harming you In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Daily Dump - Compost at Home invites you to this Trash Trail in Bangalore Do write to us in case you are interested. The next trip is on the 25th June 2011. Regards Poonam Poonam Bir Kasturi Compostwalli Daily Dump - Compost at Home www.dailydump.org pbkasturi at usermail.com 2992, 12 A Main, HAL IInd Stage, Bangalore 560 008 INDIA +91 99164 26660 http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001883944835 From meeta_sol at hotmail.com Tue Jun 14 15:31:51 2011 From: meeta_sol at hotmail.com (meeta singh) Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:31:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Gandhi, The Mahatma! Message-ID: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/thrill-of-the-chaste-the-truth-about-gandhis-sex-life-1937411.html Best, Manmeet. From rohitrellan at aol.in Tue Jun 14 18:55:19 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 09:25:19 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Food in Focus - A National Level Video competition to highlight the impact of our food choice on the environment Message-ID: <8CDF8ADA42A3310-FE4-E3F4@Webmail-m107.sysops.aol.com> The Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN) with the support of Humane Society International (HSI) is launching its National Video Competition-“Food in Focus” on food processing cycle and animal farming. This competition is being organized to raise awareness about the sources of our food and how it affects our environment. Modern consumption patterns are resulting in wastage of natural resources across the world. Deforestation has risen to extreme levels to support our diets and this is now beginning to alter our climate and exacerbate global warming. It has been scientifically proven by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization that our global livestock is responsible for 18 percent of green house gas emissions. Our environment needs immediate attention. We all need to understand it’s a serious problem and it will hamper India’s plans for sustainable development. The competition is open for both amateur and professional film makers alike and everybody can be a part of this innovative video making competition which is happening for the first time in India. Can you make a video with a mobile phone ? We accept that as well as a valid entry. What really matters is the content! It sure does sound exciting, doesn’t it? Video Submission Dates: Open till July 31st. Log on to www.foodinfocus.in Write your queries to video at iycn.in or contact on 91 9985247744. From member at linkedin.com Wed Jun 15 10:12:06 2011 From: member at linkedin.com (Gustaff Harriman Iskandar via LinkedIn) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 04:42:06 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Reader-list] Invitation to connect on LinkedIn Message-ID: <2084607256.49159.1308112926020.JavaMail.app@ela4-bed80.prod> LinkedIn ------------ Gustaff Harriman Iskandar requested to add you as a connection on LinkedIn: ------------------------------------------ Anuradha, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. - Gustaff Harriman Accept invitation from Gustaff Harriman Iskandar http://www.linkedin.com/e/5l2h9f-goxsntj5-3/u-6BBwpbUgB_dFU59yC_yGTbG_b_X5ohl2/blk/I118675941_15/1BpC5vrmRLoRZcjkkZt5YCpnlOt3RApnhMpmdzgmhxrSNBszYRclYNd3ARdPoUcj59bS4RcT5dsAJibPsRczcNdzANczcLrCBxbOYWrSlI/EML_comm_afe/ View invitation from Gustaff Harriman Iskandar http://www.linkedin.com/e/5l2h9f-goxsntj5-3/u-6BBwpbUgB_dFU59yC_yGTbG_b_X5ohl2/blk/I118675941_15/3kNnP4QejkTdzwNckALqnpPbOYWrSlI/svi/ ------------------------------------------ Why might connecting with Gustaff Harriman Iskandar be a good idea? Gustaff Harriman Iskandar's connections could be useful to you: After accepting Gustaff Harriman Iskandar's invitation, check Gustaff Harriman Iskandar's connections to see who else you may know and who you might want an introduction to. Building these connections can create opportunities in the future. -- (c) 2011, LinkedIn Corporation From chintan.backups at gmail.com Wed Jun 15 11:29:51 2011 From: chintan.backups at gmail.com (Chintan Girish Modi) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 11:29:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Scholarship for young photojournalists In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: altaf makhiawala Date: Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 7:41 PM Subject: [Opportunity2361] Scholarship for young photojournalists To: Opportunities Full-time photography students and photographers 24 or under can apply for a scholarship. The Ian Parry Scholarship is designed to help young documentary photographers undertake a chosen project and raise their profile in the international photography community. It is named for photographer Ian Parry, who died on assignment in Romania at the age of 24. The top prize is UK£3,000 (about US$4900) and UK£500 (about US$820) for runners-up. The *Sunday Times Magazine* publishes a selection of images from the competition and World Press Photo automatically nominates the winner for the Joop Swart Masterclass . For more information and to apply, click here . Source: http://ijnet.org/opportunities/scholarship-young-photojournalists-accepting-applications-worldwide -- To share opportunities on this group, please send email to: options-unlimited at googlegroups.com From nagraj.adve at gmail.com Wed Jun 15 17:12:56 2011 From: nagraj.adve at gmail.com (Nagraj Adve) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:12:56 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: STRIKE AT MARUTI SUZUKI, MANESAR In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >From Nayanjyoti. Nagraj These are some preliminary observations from the site of the ongoing strike in Maruti Suzuki Industries Ltd in IMT Manesar. A further analysis of the situation can be attempted later as the movement unfolds. > STRIKE AT MARUTI SUZUKI, MANESAR > > 15th June, 2011 > - Hide quoted text - > > The government, even having resorted to its usual use of brute force > has proved to be far more benign towards demands of Herculean > proportions such as the eradication of corruption from the country > than to the formation of one factory union. And not surprisingly, > given that at stake is not just the ambition of a baba or an Anna but > a very important section of the working class, which forms the > foundation of one of the country's most important industries, i.e. > Automobile. The implications of the ongoing strike in the Manesar > plant of Maruti Suzuki are manifold, the impact it is sure to have on > the state of the larger working class movement in the > Gurgaon-Manesar-Bawal industrial belt being its most crucial aspect. > > The strike begun on the 4th of June in response to the management’s > attempts at arm twisting the workers into signing a blank sheet of > paper a day after they filed for registration of a new union the > Maruti Suzuki Employees Union. This was done primarily to force > workers to vouch allegiance to the already existing Maruti Suzuki > Kamgar Union instituted in the factory as an extension of the Union in > the the company's Gurgaon unit. The said union is fully controlled by > the management and was formed after the brutal crushing down of the > two month strike of workers in the Gurgaon unit of Maruti Udyog > Limited in 2000. Given the complete absence of elections in the plant > and the openly anti-worker nature of its very constitution, the > existing union allowed the workers no real representation and > bargaining power and remains a rankling reminder of the high handed > treatment of the workers at the hands of the management. > Maruti Suzuki India Ltd is the biggest automobile producer in the > country and holds a significant share in the export market as well. > Recently, the MD of the company proudly announced the company's plans > for expanding the capacity of the Manesar plant by a whooping 2,50,000 > units per annum. In the same speech, he also announced the > corporation's crossing the one million per annum production and sale > landmark in the last fiscal year and a profit increase of 19.5%. It > need not be mentioned that this laudable "achievement" has come at the > expense of increasing work pressure on the workers and significant > automation and labour reducing drives. > > It is evident that the company, known as having the most > uncompromising management in all of Manesar, staunchly believes in > squeezing out the very last possible profit that each of its worker's > might bring to it. Moreover, it has the audacity to shamelessly > acknowledge its exploitative extractive work processes on its official > website, hailing workers working on the line as being instrumental to > its cost cutting measures, invoking them as the real "cost-managers" > of the company!! The "cost-managers" however hardly seem to take an > equal pride in their designation and openly condemn the increasing > pace of production and the dismal working conditions and wage > structure as being absolutely insufferable. > > The management's high flying claims of its workers being one of the > best paid and treated in the entire industrial area falls flat on its > face at even the most superficial investigation into ground reality. > The Manesar plant, the site for the ongoing agitation, employs around > 3,000 workers working in three shifts round the clock, about half of > whom are hired through contractors. The factory producing around 1,100 > cars per day has in the past year paced up its production to about > 1,250 units per day. This implies that the factory churns out one car > per 40 sec!! Such mind boggling productivity demands that the lines do > not stop for a single minute, allowing the workers absolutely no > respite, leaving no space for human fatigue or even a moment's slowing > down or rest. The half an hour lunch break and 7 min tea break can > hardly be counted as "breaks" given that the workers have to walk half > a kilometer to the canteen and back for food before the bell rings and > work resumes. The "above market rate" salaries are calculated using > the minimum wage of the Haryana govt. (ranging from Rs 173- Rs 198 > depending on the level of skill) as its basic wage with the rest of > the salary derived from production incentives. While the base remains > the same for both permanent and contract based employees the > incentives differ, including which the monthly wage of a contract > worker comes to about Rs 6-7,000 and that of a permanent worker to > about Rs 17,000. The company however penalizes a day's leave with a > deduction of more than Rs 1,500 from a workers salary leaving anyone > who meets the misfortune of missing a week's work with little above > the minimum wage. > > The current strike while primarily raising the demand for a new union > has to be seen as a response to such abominable practices of the > factory's management. The unyielding and relentless attitude of the > management was further evidenced in its immediate dismissal of the 11 > workers including the elected representatives of the new union, while the > complicity of the > > state and its sympathies with the corporates was made obvious in the > Haryana Minister of State for Labour and Employment Shiv Charan Lal > Sharma's announcement banning the strike. Further, the Labour > Commissioner visiting the strike site declared the matter to be > “internal” to Maruti Suzuki and its workers and therefore refrained > from taking any position! > > Workers and unions of other factories in the automobile industry in > the area however seem to have felt little need for taking such dubious > (non?)positions and have extended unequivocal support to the striking > workers. About 60 unions in the automobile sector, including those of > big "mother" plants like Honda (IMT Manesar) and Hero Honda > (Dharuhera) as well as those of auto parts manufacturers like Rico > (Dharuhera) and FCC-Rico (Manesar) have come out in open support of > the movement. Also unprecedented, is the extension of support from > the workers of another 60 factories in the area many of which do not > > themselves have unions. Leaders of the above mentioned unions together > with representatives from central trade unions like AITUC, CITU and > HMS in the area have formed a 5 member committee to coordinate with > the leaders of the proposed Maruti-Suzuki Employees Union and organize > support from outside. This show of solidarity included the > organization of food supplies to the workers, kept starving for an > entire day by the management after the factory canteen was closed down > and food being brought from their homes refused at he gate. A one day > demonstration was organised at the factory gate on the 9th which saw > representatives of most of the unions in the area and about 2,500 > workers demonstrating in front of Maruti Suzuki's factory gates; the > > enthusiastic slogans from one side of the gate meeting equally > energetic and militant responses from the other. There was a set of > gate meetings in major factories in the area organised on the 13th to > garner further support for the strike amongst other workers and a > possibility of a two hour tools-down also being debated, among other > actions. All > attempts at negotiation between the workers and the management as of yet > have come to naught, with the management trying desperately to force a > compromise on the workers, ready to enquire into taking back the 11 > suspended workers with 'requisite' disciplinary action, 'relaxing' the > company policy of cutting 8days wage for every day's strike to 4days > wage-cut for 1 day's strike, and forcing clauses of a possible 'recognition' > of the union only as an appendage to the management-appointed union in the > gurgaon plant both being subordinate to a highger committee managing both > the unions, and an additional ulterior clause of it not being affiliated to > any 'outside' or central trade union. it is needless to mention that all > these moves are completely in disregard to any established trade union > rights under the law. So law is either transgressed or modified accordingly, > with willful compliance of the State machinery. > > As is apparent in the above description of the solidarity shown towards > workers of Maruti Suzuki by that of other factories, the conclusions of the > Labour Commissioner seem likely to be belied with the strike appearing all > set to snowball into a wider movement encompassing the entire auto industry > in the Manesar-Gurgaon-Bawal industrial belt. This is further suggested by > much talk of the possibility of intensification of the struggle in the > region if the > management remains obstinate in its stance, which might also see > mobilization from the surrounding villages. One should remember that the > region is no stranger to massive mobilization of workers from different > factories for struggles apparently pertaining to a single company. > - Show quoted text - > > > The history of working class militancy in Gurgaon, relatively recent in its > development as an industrial center as compared to Faridabad etc, stretches > back to the strike at the Gurgaon plant of the same company, then known as > Maruti Udyog Ltd in 2000. The three month long struggle hinged on a proposed > revision of the incentive plan, shifting the premise of calculating the > incentive bonus from the volume of production to the volume of sale and > worker's attendance, directly transferring the uncertainty of an open market > on the workers. The agitation led by Maruti Udyog Employees Union was > brutally crushed down with the termination of more than 82 workers and the > eventual dissolution of the union and the formation of the present union, > openly run by the management itself. The failure proved decisive not only in > that workers of Maruti Suzuki still remain throttled and unrepresented under > the union formed then, but also in that the unfair and anti worker incentive > plan executed then has stuck and is still a raw nerve with workers in the > company. Further, the failure of the movement saw extensive retrenchment in > the factory which was paralleled with the hiring of mostly contract based > workers. The > discontent of the workers reared its head again in 2005 when workers of > Honda Motorcycle and Scooters India, Manesar raised a demand similar to the > one being fought for by workers of Maruti Suzuki today, i.e. formation of a > Union. The demand of a new union was finally met by the administration and > the govt. after a long struggle and a major clash between the workers and > police forces where about 15o workers got injured. The victory also marked > the beginning of a high phase in the trade union movement in the area which > however came to an > unfortunate end in the terrible failure of the long and fierce movement in > Rico Auto (Gurgaon) around wage increase, union formation and bad working > conditions. The Rico movement saw the working class > of the area emerge as one concerted force with workers from 50 other > factories joining the strike and bringing all of Gurgaon and Manesar to a > standstill in response to the killing of a striking worker by the police. > The movement however ended at a dismal note with the union leaders striking > a compromise with the management and going in for a half baked > reconciliation leaving the agitating workers feeling let down and skeptical. > The demoralization that the Rico struggle had left workers of the area with > seems to be finally wearing away in the face of the development of the > ongoing strike which has seen even greater and more enthusiastic > participation of other unions. A success for the workers of Maruti Suzuki > might therefore play a significant role in reviving the militancy of the > working class in the entire belt. > > Another, hope inspiring aspect of the ongoing agitation is the strong > unity that has been forged between permanent and contract based > sections of the workers. Much over half the workforce in the Gurgaon > industrial belt is hired on contract basis. While the nature of the > job for such workers is mostly the same as that of the permanents, the > difference in wages remains staggering, creating a clear divide > between the two. This has been cleverly used by the management at > various occasions to hold the permanents at ransom during strikes and > agitations. this difference and division is further reinforced by the > different ways in which these two sections of workers are described > under labour law, which makes the official unions almost redundant to > the contract based labourer within the legal frame work. Most unions > while also negotiating with the management on behalf of the contract > workers do not allow them a vote or formal membership, leaving them > more or less unrepresented and unorganised. These differences however > were blurred to a great extent during the Rico movement where both > contract and permanent workers remained outside the gate. Even the > Honda movement did see an initial unity between the two which however > eventually collapsed post the establishment of the union. The workers > at Maruti Suzuki have all these examples before them and might be able > to better address some of the points of contention that previous > movements. Their ability to do so might prove decisive to the > creation of a united working class consciousness. > > There are many such possibilities and promises to the workers and as > many threats to the management and the owners that the ongoing > movement holds out. The unyielding hand with which the company and the > state is trying to crush it only serves as further proof of its > militant potential. While the state uses the Babas and the Annas as > ready diversions from the real question of how those mounds of black or > white > > money were created in the first place and at whose expense, the > workers of Maruti Suzuki carry on the fight, at the very core of the > matter, where it obviously hurts the most. > subhashini, amit, nayan -- "nothing is stable, except instability; nothing is immovable, except movement." engels, 1853 From cubbykabi at yahoo.com Wed Jun 15 17:51:02 2011 From: cubbykabi at yahoo.com (kabi cubby sherman) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:51:02 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] Fw: [faowmeetings] Call for submissions: Anthology Of South Asian Queer Erotica [1 Attachment] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <779791.84329.qm@web94706.mail.in2.yahoo.com> for all those who feel this call...... kabi Meter Down - काली पीली की कहानी blog: http://meterdown.wordpress.com podcast: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/meterdown ----- Forwarded Message ---- From: shruti . To: queerotic.stories at gmail.com Sent: Wed, 15 June, 2011 5:35:46 PM Subject: [faowmeetings] Call for submissions: Anthology Of South Asian Queer Erotica [1 Attachment] [Attachment(s) from shruti . included below] Please circulate widely Call for submissions: Anthology Of South Asian Queer Erotica [title forthcoming] To be published by Tranquebar Press in 2012 The spaces for expressing queer concerns have increased across South Asia in the last decade. Much is being written about sexuality, rights and queer lives. Yet, in all of this, sex itself doesn't get written about very much and there is a dearth of queer erotica from South Asia. Contemporary queer erotica with a South Asian focus would make these queer lives apparent in newer and compelling ways. This anthology is an attempt to present queer, sexual, regional literature that pleasures and satisfies. It is about queer sex lives, erotic experiences and passions. Queer in this anthology represents non-normative genders, sexualities, lives and perspectives. It aims to bring out voices that have been limited to smaller groups or never heard before. What we want: We want stories of queer love, lust and craving. Sex, however you may define it, should be a big part of the story. We want gender play, auto-eroticism, dark fantasies, monogamous and non-monogamous sex, stories of bondage, domination, sadism and masochism. We are looking for stories of deep passions, stories that complicate sex. We want stories of desire, fulfilled and unfulfilled. Stories that defy the gender binary. Stories of how you sexed up your aids and appliances. Stories on masturbation or the pleasures of paid sex. Stories of how you steamed up a bus ride, ended a clandestine affair or fucked with sex toys. Share with us stories that confront, redefine, dispute and reclaim what sex is. Let your stories queer erotica itself. We invite you to write short stories with South Asian themes, characters and places reflected in them. We are looking for a wide expression of experiences across age, region, class, ability, gender and sexual identities. Stories can be fictional, semi-fictional and non-fiction, but we are not looking for academic or solely autobiographical writing on sexuality. Your stories will shatter the silences around queer erotic lives and encompass their diversities, so let us have them. Who can write: We want to foreground the queer voices of people living in or originally from South Asia. Queer includes but is not restricted to identities like lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, intersex, hijra, kothi, questioning, genderqueer, genderfluid and pansexual. Authors do not necessarily have to identify with one or more of these identities but the stories they submit should reflect non-normative genders, sexualities, lives and perspectives. How to submit: · We are looking for short stories with a word limit of no less than 3000 words. We regret that we are unable to include poetry. · All submissions should be in English. Translations from other languages are allowed as long as the author owns the rights to the translation as well. · Please submit the story as an email attachment on a word document. Please include a title and word count. · Do not include your name or any other identifiers in the word document. As weare using a blind submissions process, we will have to reject submissions that indicate the author’s identity in the body of the story. · Authors will be informed whether their work is selected by mid-October. At that time, we will request you to provide a name under which you wish to be published and a short bio. · All selected authors will receive a one-time payment. The copyright of the story will remain with the author. · The deadline for submission is 15th September 2011. · Send your stories to queerotic.stories at gmail.com Now get writing about the kind of sex you have wanted to read about. And get us swooning! About the editors: Meenu is a queer feminist activist. She has been involved with issues of gender and sexuality through women’s rights organisations and autonomous collectives for the last six years. She lives in Delhi and is an avid reader of erotica. Shruti is currently based in Bombay. In the last eight years, she has actively engaged with the women’s and queer movements in the country. Over the years, she has worked as a researcher, social worker and counsellor. -- __._,_.___Attachment(s) from shruti . 1 of 1 File(s) call for submissions- anthology of south asian queer erotica.doc Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post | Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) Recent Activity: Visit Your Group MARKETPLACE Find useful articles and helpful tips on living with Fibromyalgia. Visit the Fibromyalgia Zone today! ________________________________ Stay on top of your group activity without leaving the page you're on - Get the Yahoo! Toolbar now. Switch to: Text-Only, Daily Digest • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use . __,_._,___ From rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com Thu Jun 16 01:02:32 2011 From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com (Rakesh Iyer) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 01:02:32 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: NAC: Needed or not? Message-ID: Hi all This is also an entry in my blog which I would like to put here for the sake of (hopefully) a debate on the larger issue of NAC as to whether it's required or not, and my views on it as the beginning. I hope it would be responded to, at least by a few concerned people. *NAC: Needed or not?* The political drama over the issue of corruption and tackling it has taken a new turn since the police assault on innocents at Ramlila maidan. The Congress has become belligerent (expected by Shuddhabrata and many others based on the history of Congress) and an attempt has been made to turn it into a political football, a game political parties at centre are usually adept at playing. Focus however must be played out also on another issue which has been raised quite a lot in times, namely the issue of who has the right to formulate laws and apply them in this country, and the limits placed on civil society, notwithstanding the differences of opinion on the definition of the very term 'civil society'. In particular, questions have been raised about the existence of NAC and opinions against its very existence have been seen among certain sections of our media (Swapan Dasgupta and Pratap Bhanu Mehta in particular, but not limited to these). Therefore, there has to be a genuine debate over whether a NAC is needed or not. The National Advisory Council, or NAC was created as an institution under UPA - I to act as an advisory body which could suggest the government on various policies which had a connection with the vast majority of people in our country, who are not only poor, but are also socially and politically powerless. One must realize though that the NAC itself consisted of two different sections. While one can wonder why the NAC may have been thought to be created, a possible reason, at least for the Congress, would have been to work for the 'aam aadmi' in whose name they had asked for votes in the 2004 general elections. By creation of the NAC and passing legislations which could be termed pro-people, the Congress (or at least Sonia Gandhi) thought that they would be able to gain votes and respectability among the masses. On the other hand, the activists who joined NAC, or at least some of them, had distinguished career records. Be it Aruna Roy, Jean Dreze, Madhav Gadgil, M.S. Swaminathan, A.K. Shivakumar or Jayaprakash Narayan or even N.C. Saxena, one cannot doubt that they are people who can be trusted for their honesty or integrity. Most of these had been working even without government support in their relentless agitations and struggles for securing justice for people in their respective ways.. For them, the NAC provided a mechanism to formulate pro-poor laws, something which was badly missing particularly during the NDA rule and even during regimes prior to it. The NAC continues to have people with distinguished records (some of them repeated and others such as Harsh Mander and Farah Naqvi also taken in the NAC -II). So when one traces the reason for NAC to be formed, it was not one but two: one, to ensure electoral victory for the Congress through implementing pro-poor policies, and secondly to ensure betterment of Indian society. But the creation of NAC did and still does raise questions.And it's extremely important to answer these. *1) Why was the NAC the only way out to create such pro-poor policies? Were the ministries not competent enough? Was it not possible for the Parliament to have been able to actually debate and legislate such acts? Are our political parties so incompetent that they can't come up with these?* Firstly, the NAC may not have been the only way to create these policies. In fact, such a body may not have been required in the first place itself, had our democracy been functioning, had our systems been functioning as they were planned. The lack of democracy in the Indian society found its reflection in the Indian political life also, and the complete inter-mixing of politics, society and economics ensured that the people supposed to be powerful as per democratic norms were actually powerless, with the only right possessed being the right to vote after every 5 years and then to sleep and wait for the next elections. The political parties in general had become corrupt and incompetent to such a degree that either they became family-led firms, or in cases where they were cadre-based, the cadre lost touch with the people, in particular the poor. In sum, the Indian politician represented the worst of the Indian society in all possible ways. If an Indian could be bad, the Indian politician represented the worst lot of Indians, be it on corruption, nepotism, criminal history or even politics. If actually these were not so, may be the activists who are currently in NAC may have been doing something else, like say pursuing their careers somewhere else. With concerns of politicians shifting over only to dominant sections of our population (be it corporates, a set of caste panchayats and others who could swing votes in their favor or against it) our politics became more and more exclusive (contrary to the stated aim of achieving 'inclusive growth'). And this was only to spread among ministers and within politicians of all hues. While the Left parties in India can claim to support more pro-poor policies, even they were found to be rooting for mindless industrialization when it came to Singur and Nandigram. And with policy framework shifting to practice of neo-liberalism and support of capitalism and withdrawal of state from areas relevant to poor, like ensuring food, basic education and health to all, the government and the Parliament became more a tool for the Rich. In fact, it came to the point where it did not even matter which government came to power either at the Centre or at the states; the government worked mostly for those whom it deemed powerful enough to create troubles. Those who could not do so, could never make their voices heard, even if those voices were genuine. The results could only have been disastrous. Not only politicians, even bureaucrats and planners had lost touch with how India functioned at the ground and hence had no idea of how their policies would really function, if at all they did. When a planner does not know that women farmers can exist, how can he/she know that their suicides can be counted as 'farm suicides'? When a planner does not know how his/her policy actually works on the ground, it is very obvious that the effects of those would be extremely different from what was intended. At such times, what is needed are not theoretical economists (of which there is abundance, be it Swapan Dasgupta, Surjit Bhalla and of course our very own PM). What is required are those who have worked on the ground, who know how policies can be manipulated, and therefore what can be legally done to tackle them. And our ministries and policy makers are incompetent (or even corrupt) to tackle them. The NAC therefore was not only born out of a party's desire to credit itself with introducing 'goody-goody' acts, it was also in part due to the fact that our politicians, our middle class (to whom bureaucrats belong to mostly) and our policy makers had completely lost touch with the India which still needs the state very much in their lives, as a welfare state. When Sonia Gandhi had to choose its members, she chose such people over those with their own stupid theories and powerpoint presentations. After all, she couldn't choose the same set which would make up rubbish policies with no possible implementation and being finally criticized, when she wanted to be credited for these. For the NAC members, it was a case of being heard since the head of NAC was the most powerful politician in the nation. *2) Is the NAC allowed to make laws when it is not given the mandate by the Constitution to do so? * Efforts have been made to portray that the NAC is acting as an extra-constitutional body. One must understand that firstly, this is not possible because the NAC can't dictate laws as to how they will be. At best, it can force the Cabinet into ensuring that its draft legislations are considered the draft legislations of the government, and that too because of its head. Secondly, any bill, particularly on important issues that the NAC deals with, has to pass through the Standing Committees of Parliament, which allow views to be expressed on these through inviting public views and discussions on them. Thirdly, the Parliament is the final authority to pass these laws, and while most of our Parliamentarians are incompetent to even understand these, a few do understand legal implications of them and can attack them. An example is Arun Jaitley's criticism of the Draft of Prevention of Communal Violence Bill by the NAC. *3) Why is the NAC hated so much? * The NAC is hated by two different classes of people. On one hand stand those who are against Left's idea of heavy state intervention in the interest of the poor, since as per their ideology, it is anti-poor and against making people work hard to gain success and prosperity. Such people (including crony capitalists) would like the govt. to spend resources obtained from growth to be spent only on measures which can promote further growth, even at the expense of equity many a times. These people have issues with Dreze, Roy, Swaminathan or even others. The other class consists of people who have issues not with them but its head: Sonia Gandhi. Through the NAC, she gains importance in formulating policies of the government while not having any responsibilities for their success or failure, either in terms of legal wording or implementation, and hence a body which should be advisory in character becomes extra-constitutional in their eyes since it reduces the PM to a paper figure. And some of course, have problems with both Sonia and the other NAC members, like Swapan Dasgupta. Interestingly, some people feel the NAC runs the country, which seems strange, since if that were so, the Right to Food bill would have been implemented in the nation by now. The fact that even things slow up there does show up the fact that they don't. And its important not to confuse the power of Sonia Gandhi with that of NAC or its members. *4) Finally, is the NAC needed or not? * The NAC is a good short-term solution, since it does bring about a policy shift. But in the long term, whether such a body really helps or not is the question we must think about. The need for NAC would depend on how our political and executive institutions perform in the long term. If our politicians, bureaucrats, policy makers and other important leading lights move away from our problems and only indulge in political football, mudslinging and selfish fulfillment of their own deeds while overlooking the vast majority, then the NAC would be required even more and more. Consequently, a reversal in this trend will make the NAC less important, though the activist work carried out by many people from among the NAC would still be required for effective monitoring of various socially relevant legislations. The real danger however lies in the members constituting it. A NAC with current members may be ok, but one with corporates or politicians only involved could lead to potential disasters also, and such a possibility therefore demands that these institutions do reform, or our democracy is at peril. Even the NAC does require checks and balances in the long run, even with the current members around. -- Rakesh Krishnamoorthy Iyer MM06B019 Final Year, Dual Degree Student Dept. of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering IIT Madras, Chennai - 600036 Phone no: +91-9444073884 E-mail ID: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com From rohitrellan at aol.in Thu Jun 16 14:47:15 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 05:17:15 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] KATYAYANI presents an English play `TATTOO', on June 19th, 7: 30 p.m., at the Epicentre, Gurgaon. Message-ID: <8CDFA1D510CE2D5-1D34-136D1@webmail-m026.sysops.aol.com> KATYAYANI presents an English play `TATTOO', on June 19th, 7: 30 p.m., at the Epicentre, Gurgaon. Tattoo is the story of the imprisonment of the human spirit. Of incarceration that occurs in the home and through loved and trusted people. Based on real life stories, the play, written by German playwright Dea Loher, adapted and directed by Sohaila Kapur, exposes a hidden and shocking aspect of human society. `Tattoo' is also about the subjugation of women in a patriarchal world. "It was a subject so disturbing that director Sohaila Kapur waited five years before putting Tattoo, a German play about incest, on stage. The play is two hours of grim intensity. Kapur has added a few strains of music but it only adds to the tension"---Indian Express Cast: Ramesh Thakur, Sohaila Kapur, Jyotsna Sharma, Sonali Sharma & Pankaj Jha Tickets: 350, 250 & 150, at the venue. Recommended for ages 15 and above For more info about the play Log on to http://theatretime.wordpress.c om/tattoo/ EPICENTRE At Apparel House, Sector 44, Gurgaon T: 91 124 2715000 F: 91 124 2715050 E: info at epicentre.co.in From rohitrellan at aol.in Thu Jun 16 15:41:59 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 06:11:59 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] A Tribute - to the life & art of Maqbool Fida Husain, New Delhi/ SHAMIANA in BLUE FROG, Mumbai/ Narmad International Film Festival, Surat Message-ID: <8CDFA24F69AD1D4-1D34-13DB4@webmail-m026.sysops.aol.com> Lalit Kala Akademi New Delhi A Tribute To the Life and Art of Maqbool Fida Husain Friday 17th June 2011 at 6:30 pm S. H. Raza, Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna, Vivan Sundaram & K. Bikram Singh will speak. The Akademi will screen a film, titled ‘Husain – The Barefoot Pilgrim’ produced by Lalit Kala Akademi and directed by Laurent Bregeat venue: Multipurpose Hall, New Building India International Centre 40, Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi – 110003 RSVP: 011 23009200 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SHAMIANA in BLUE FROG,Mumbai , Thursday, June 16 · 8:00pm - 9:30pm It's the SHAMIANA Anniversary guys! And we're doing it this month with some of the best short films from our bag. Wud luvvv to everyone there... for the movies AND for the B'day cake ! Location Mathuradas Mill Compound Lower Parel ENTRY CHARGES ~~ Rs. 100/- per person ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Narmad International Film Festival, Surat Film is a highly universal medium that connects diverse set of people across nationalities, cultures and languages. Films, not only entertain us, but help us understand how uniquely different our perspectives of the world are. It is a perfect platform for film makers and film enthusiasts to come under one roof to enjoy good cinema! Though Surat which is the second largest city of Gujarat and one of the fastest growing cities in India, there is no Film Festival that justifies and truly represents its diverse culture and passion for cinema. Therefore, there is a need to create a platform for the people of Surat to Celebrate Cinema to its fullest!. Narmad International Film Festival (NIFF Surat 2011) is a first-of-its-kind international film festival to be held in Surat, Gujarat. This 4-day Film Festival will commence on16th June, 2011 and will close on 19th June, 2011. From rohitrellan at aol.in Thu Jun 16 22:31:59 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:01:59 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Tehelka Presents The Music Project In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CDFA5E3DA4EA74-E64-170AE@webmail-d071.sysops.aol.com> Tehelka Presents The Music Project The Music Project is a series of video portraits, documenting independent music in the country. The show is small, intimate, and features a host of artists from a range of genres. The aim is to capture a distinctly spontaneous flavor that reveals itself in single takes and live environments. And to take musicians outside of studio spaces to record wholly raw, acoustic, unplugged versions of their original compositions. We have, so far, featured The Mekaal Hasan Band, Jazmine, Adil and Vasundhara,Fire Exit, Rushnaf Wadud, Imphal Talkies, Jordan Johnson and Barefaced Liars. Get in touch if you know musicians who would want to feature with us and locations where you would what to see The Music Project shot. Contact: andrew at tehelka.com Also share your thoughts on the initiative. Please join our facebook page to view the videos: http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php?fcode=b416b8b3b&f=662272900#!/pages/Tehelka-presents-The-Music-Project/176864789036465 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJQRctFXLo8 From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Fri Jun 17 03:15:04 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2011 03:15:04 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Low Cost Campaign Against Corruption Message-ID: "In May, Samudaya organised a 15-day campaign travelling to schools, colleges and public spaces in villages, towns and cities, to talk about the C-word. However, not limiting its discourse to simple bribe-taking, the campaign's discourse was rooted in the need to establish links between the culture of 'crony capitalism' that has provided fertile ground for corruption over the last decade. Through posters, publicity material, booklets, music and theatre, these complex linkages were demystified. For instance, a simple poster charted how the reported Net Profits of Reliance Industries Limited (excluding the younger Ambani's ventures) grew from Rs. 212 Crore in 1980 to Rs. 1,994 Crore in 1992 to Rs. 8,405 in 1995-96 (less than half a decade after economic liberalisation) to a whopping, mind-boggling Rs. 89,124 Crore in 2005-2006. The bustling neo-liberal economy saw this figure rise to Rs. 258,651 Crore in 2010-2011. Posters highlighting the growth in income of politicians and businessmen, while contrasting this with the swelling woes of the working class, not only drove home the message that corruption is not an issue to be seen in isolation, but also located it in the larger quagmire of the growing nexus between global capital and neo-liberal economics."... Read more at http://www.pragoti.in/node/4433 Fighting Corruption or Politics of Narcissism http://www.pragoti.in/node/4430 Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From rohitrellan at aol.in Sat Jun 18 09:03:00 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2011 23:33:00 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Shaan-e-awadh International Film Festival 2011: Call for Entries Message-ID: <8CDFB7F8ED04923-239C-5B97@webmail-m066.sysops.aol.com> The “Shaan-e-awadh International Film Festival” is promoted by “Splash Etcetra”, a group of young and energetic film enthusiasts. Primarily an advertising & consulting firm, we also deal in production, promotion and distribution of short films, documentaries and films. Splash Etcetra was established by some professionals of the Indian Film and Television industry in 2007. From the time of its inception, we have done several projects for social causes under our in house production. Today, Splash Etcetra has completed 3 successful years. After being a part of such a glorious industry like ours, we as film lovers wish to do something that would encourage our youth to learn about the art of film making, the fraternity and eventually join the film industry to make some quality cinema for the society. A quote said “Cinema can change a hairstyle but can’t change the society”. It is about time we change this view. Indian cinema has a glorious history and we strongly believe that the youth of this country is very talented can change the way people think about our cinema. It has the power to change the society and that is what we want our youth to know and probe them to prove it to the rest of the world. The “Shaan-e-awadh International Film Festival” is an initiative towards this effort, organised by “Awadh Art Society (India)” in association with “World Homeland Security (Canada)”. FILM SUBMISSION We invite all short fiction & non- fiction film, documentary, animation, music videos and experimental features at Shaan-e-awadh international film festival 2011. For more information, please contact us at; submission at saiff.in Film categories include all short fiction & non- fiction films, documentary, animation, music videos and experimental features. Festival entries are open to all films regardless of origin, content and genre. To be eligible for short film category competition section, a film must be 1 minute and less than 30 minutes in duration Non- fiction, documentary competition section must not exceed duration of more than 30 minutes Animation film competition section must not exceed duration of more than 10 minutes. Experimental films in competition section must not exceed duration of more than 10 minutes. If a film is not eligible to be entered in any category will be eligible for Critic Film and non competition section. OFFICIALSELECTIONS Official selections include all films selected to be screened during the festival. Special presentations include films invited by SAIFF to fortify our program. The films in competition represent the official selections chosen by our selection committee to go through the award jury process. AWARD CATEGORIES Best Film Best Director Best Photography Best Editing Best Sound Best production design Best story/screenplay Jury Critic award Prizes Participation certificate to all film makers who submitted their films in SAIFF 2011. Winning Films will get A Trophy with cash prize and certificate. Click Here To Download Entry Form.http://www.saiff.in/SAIFF%20Entry%20Form%202011.pdf Click Here To See Rules & Regulations. http://www.saiff.in/SAIFF-2011%20Rule%20and%20Regulation.pdf Shaan-e-awadh International Film Festival Awadh Art Society, 31, Jeevan Plaza, Vikram Khand-5, Gomati Nagar, Lucknow-226 010 Uttar Pradesh, India, Contact No. +91 522 4104319 +91 9022191040 From rohitrellan at aol.in Sat Jun 18 10:54:09 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Sat, 18 Jun 2011 01:24:09 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] CALL FOR PROPOSALS & 2011 HASTAC CONFERENCE DETAILS Message-ID: <8CDFB8F15DDEF32-239C-61F7@webmail-m066.sysops.aol.com> The University of Michigan will be hosting the 2011 annual HASTAC Conference on its Ann Arbor campus December 2 and 3, 2011. We invite proposals for presentations on the general theme of Digital Scholarly Communication. Deadline for submission is July 1, 2011. Proposals can be submitted here: http://tinyurl.com/HASTAC2011-Proposal We seek topics which may range over but need not be restricted to the role of digital technologies in: Reformulating scholarly projects and products. (This might include questions of narration and argumentation, evidence and epistemology, interactivity, and/or text/visual presentation.) Re-mapping the routes through which scholarly products circulate. Expanding the digital arts to include the humanities and vice versa. Reshaping the global system of knowledge production in the humanities in terms of access, circulation, exchange and equity within the global north and between the global north and south. Generating new kinds of research and teaching partnerships. Topics may also include: Copyright challenges and strategies for digital scholarly communication. Web design and digitization of archives for multiple and different constituencies (local communities, global peers). New forms of research, digitally based, in the humanities. The middle part of the day on both December 2 and 3 will be given over to concurrent sessions. People may present in the following formats: A ten minute lecture/talk with visual aids (power point etc...). A poster project uploaded to a relevant You Tube site which will then be discussed by the presenter(s). A poster project demonstrated in U Michigan's digital studio with discussion by the presenter(s). Presenters will have the option of pre-circulating materials on the website before and during the conference. From patrice at xs4all.nl Sat Jun 18 12:26:47 2011 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Sat, 18 Jun 2011 08:56:47 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Slash and Burn: Sven Lutticken on the budgetary cut-backs on the arts in the Netherlands Message-ID: <3a866f19eae056309ebc778e18e33935.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> Thought the Dutch art & culture landscape is a very convoluted one, with a high (too high, iyam) degree of institutionalisation, the policy followed by the current government borders on the berzek, undoubtedly influenced by the 'hot breath in the neck' of the populist 'People's Party for Freedom', a kind of Berlusconian clone supporting, but not participating in the governing (minority) coalition. And though it also derives most of its ideological rhetorics (and practices) from the UK Torry-LibDem alliance, with which it shares a lot, both in terms of political context (minus the populism) and demographics (the revolt of the rightist young professionals against the leftist ageing baby-boomers), it still is interesting to check out - was it only for its propagation potential to other places and climes ... Cheers from Italy, where 'il Cavaliere' has already succesfully killed the arts - and all kind of new ones are arising... patrizio + Diiiinooos! original to: http://svenlutticken.blogspot.com/2011/06/slash-burn.html (with pics) Slash & Burn The Dutch secretary of state for culture, Halbe Zijlstra, has published his policy plan for coming years. In contrast to the official recommendations given to him by the Raad voor Cultuur (an advisory body), the cutbacks will not be spread out over a number of years, but will take immediate effect in 2013. The budget for visual art will shrink from 53,3 to 31 million. If Dutch politics is marked by a tension between populist rhetoric and neoliberal dreams of market-driven excellence, this paper is dominated squarely by the latter, though it takes the form of a kind of scorched earth politics that will find the approval of Zijlstra’s de facto coalition partner, Geert Wilders’ PVV. Among the more damaging and destructive decisions is the complete cutting of funding for the following (which in most cases will mean their disappearance): -The so-called post-academic art schools; these include the De Ateliers, the Rijksakademie and the Jan van Eyck Academie. These institutions have been instrumental in fostering international exchange among young artists and a less anti-intellectual, more discursive culture in the Dutch art world. They offer a number of young artists (and, in the case of the Jan van Eyck, theorists) a stimulating context for residencies during which they can continue to develop their practice. Their disappearance would leave a gaping hole. -The NIMK (formerly Montevideo), an institution for video and media art. It seems that museums should simply take over the collection. Media art as a field with specific requirements is history—a history that will of course not be written, for the happy people of Polderland under VVD, CDA and PVV have no need for history. A national canon is more than enough. -All but six “presentation institutions” (as local jargon has it). To be precise, six of these institutions will be allowed into the “Basisinfrastructuur” and get structural funding. Others will be left to fend for themselves (for specific projects, they may be able to get incidental funding from a diminished Mondriaan Fonds—the merged Mondriaan Stichting and Fonds BKVB). On the Metropolis M website, Dominiek Ruyters speculates that these six institutions will be Witte de With, de Appel, BAK, Marres, Noorderlicht, De Vleeshal. Some of these names would seem to be on the list mainly because of a holy cow called “cultuurspreiding” (spread of culture). This cow is worshiped with particular zeal by Zijlstra’s Christian democratic collation partners of the CDA. In short: art for the provinces, where the CDA’s remaining voters reside. Hence (supposedly) Noorderlicht in Groningen, De Vleeshal in Middelburg and Marres in Maastricht. That the first two in particular are far less relevant than a number of institutions based in the main cities is irrelevant. It has also been decided that each of the main cities can only have one institution in the Basisinfrastructuur, so if De Appel is in this means automatically that no other Amsterdam-based institution can be, for that reason alone. What was that thing about excellence again? -SKOR, the Dutch foundation for public art and its journal Open. The Sekula and Burch film the Forgotten Space, which I review in the new Texte zur Kunst, would not exist without SKOR. While I have been extremely critical of the Dutch tradition of "public art" in which art is often supposed to stand in for the social, in recent years SKOR has started to develop in an interesting way. It is now called "Foundation for Art and Public Domain," indicating the transition from a narrow understanding of “public art” to a more fundamental engagement with the notion of publicness in different fields, virtual as well as physical. Open, published by SKOR, spearheaded this transition under Jorinde Seijdel’s editorship, and it has been a rare local publication (published in a Dutch and an English edition) that can articulate important issues and shape debates in a way that goes beyond the horizon of neo-provincialism. The Dutch art world is marked by a plethora of frequently complacent institutions and an arcane array of subsidy channels, so some downsizing need not be disastrous. However, almost halving the budget is patently disproportionate and wantonly destructive. What's more, in many ways this plan is an unholy alliance of ideological dogmatism and cowardly compromises. Excellence and the market, yes, but let’s not forget about the people in the province of Zeeland. Let’s glorify international success as the ultimate proof of excellence while abolishing the Rijksakademie and the Jan Van Eyck and turn Holland into a stagnant backwater. Let’s claim to be confident that “the market” can fix things on short notice and stand by the dogma that noble private patrons are just itching to support the arts while showing our contempt for these arts with every gesture and every utterance, suggesting that potential patrons would really be better off buying a yacht. There is an odd proposal in Zijlstra’s plan to offer support for fifty “top talents,” again using the language of excellence; but if these are the top talents, shouldn’t they of all people be able to fend for themselves, according to Zijlstra’s logic? And where will these talents be allowed to develop if not at the Jan van Eyck or the Rijksakademie? Far from stemming purely from the need for financial cutbacks, these are punitive and vindictive measures that appear to be designed to destroy all that stands in the way the reduction of art to mind-numbing blockbuster events and glossy decoration. Nothing could be more political and ideological than this brand of economism. Meanwhile, the situation at the universities is hardly less grim. Suddenly notions such as "the knowledge economy" and "creative industries," which have been crucial shibboleths of the Dutch version of social-democratically inflected neoliberal politicy-making, don’t seem to be worth a penny. Or rather, they show their true face: they always were at the service of imposing a relentlessly economistic logic on education and art, resulting in a re-establishment of strong class divisions. Either you can afford education and art or be educated in the arts), or you can’t. Bright young art and humanities students today face becoming a lost generation. That’s the culture of excellence for you: social engineering under the guise of letting “the market” take its "natural" course. Dominiek Ruyters' Metropolis M article, with some interesting responses, is here (in Dutch). A joint public response to Zijlstra's plans by various institutions and organizations is here (again in Dutch). An online petition is at http://petities.nl/petitie/bezuinigen-op-cultuur-zonder-alle-feiten-nooit From patrice at xs4all.nl Sat Jun 18 14:06:44 2011 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Sat, 18 Jun 2011 10:36:44 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] =?iso-8859-1?q?Osama_Manzar=3A_India=92s_poverty_in?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_the_virtual_world?= Message-ID: <8cdead70e2b30f51b18ddd8437e493db.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> bwo Frederick Noronha/ Bytesforall readers list India’s poverty in the virtual world It is the world’s largest democracy and has the world’s second largest population, but its Internet population is one of the lowest. It is a global leader in information technology , but has an extremely poor information and communication technology infrastructure Digital World | Osama Manzar (original: http://bit.ly/mJ9swK) Let’s suppose Facebook is a nation. It is then the world’s third most populous nation, after China and India. It is perhaps the only nation whose citizens come from all parts of the world—where everyone lives harmoniously, meets and corresponds with each other seamlessly, shares information, thoughts and ideas openly. Everyone wants to be in this virtual nation. Here, you do not have to pay for your space, as you have to in your real country of domicile. No country gives you free space, free art and photo gallery, free postal service, free parking area, free entertainment and free space for a business office. Facebook does all of these. It has almost become an imperative of life today to be on Facebook. If you aren’t already there, better to hurry up, acquire your space and, if you want, create your own estate, business or community. The popularity of Facebook leads me to believe that the future of any nation will depend on how much digital content it produces and makes available on the Internet—particularly in oral form. While India’s standing among digital content producers is abysmally low, the good news is that India has one of the highest penetrations of mobile devices, enabling the country to go beyond the literacy barrier and create more oral digital content. There is a caveat though: we need the Internet on all devices, preferably broadband. As is well known, India is a country of extremes, with the best of certain things and the worst of others. Let’s look at some more paradoxes. India has almost 1.6 million schools, mostly located in rural areas, but not more than 100,000 schools have computer centres or labs. Internet connectivity would be in less than 0.5% schools, and not more than 10% have websites. If every school was to have its own website, we would not only have so many .in domains, but would also enrich the cyberspace with multilingual content, localized culture and creative content produced by children and teachers. India also has more than 26 million registered micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) employing over 60 million people. But not more than 30% of these MSMEs are online. Ours is primarily a producers’ country and our economy thrives at the grassroots level. Websites would give our MSMEs national and global reach; their absence means foreign products find it easier to enter the local market than vice versa. Like MSMEs, cooperatives are a great means of conducting business at the bottom of the pyramid. There are more than 500,000 cooperatives in India, most of which deal in products and services relating to rural areas, such as agriculture, dairy farming and so on. When I tried to find out the level of digital inclusion among the cooperatives, the National Cooperative Union of India could not come up with a definite number. All they said was that there would be no more than few thousand online. We are a country of more than 3.3 million non-governmental organisations, or NGOs. But 70% of them have no web presence. Most of them are located at the grassroots level. At the Digital Empowerment Foundation, we have created 500 individual websites for such organisations in the last two years, an exercise that has made us realise that each NGO is a well of information and knowledge. But they need to share this knowledge, and the Web is the best means of doing so. If we look at elective governance, we have 245,445 *panchayat* constituencies, 4,011 assembly constituencies and 543 parliamentary constituencies. Barring the *panchayats* in Kerala and a couple of hundred *panchayat* websites that we have created at *http://epanchayat.in*, there are no official websites for any elected constituency. But the Right To Information Act says all elected members of the government should furnish relevant information to citizens—and once again the Web could be the best platform for them to share information about their activities and responsibilities. In all, we are short of some 23 million business, organizational, educational and governmental websites, and therefore, as many domain names. Considering that there are around 255 million websites worldwide, India’s presence on the Web would significantly increase if all these institutions go online. This would not only make the country digitally enriched, but it would also attract markets to India and allow Indian producers to go global. Moreover, it will help achieve transparency and a networked knowledge society. *Osama Manzar is director of Digital Empowerment Foundation and curator, mBillionth Award. He is also member of working group for Internet governance at the ministry of IT. From anoopkheri at gmail.com Sat Jun 18 16:13:50 2011 From: anoopkheri at gmail.com (anoop kumar) Date: Sat, 18 Jun 2011 16:13:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Outlook Piece On Dalit Students' Suicide Message-ID: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?277215 DALIT STUDENTS A Dissonance In Saraswati’s Divine Veena The spectre of caste prejudice lingers on even in our most prized institutions CHANDRANI BANERJEE There are no happy endings in this tale, only tragedy. A series of heartrending stories have shone the spotlight on the plight of Dalit students in some of India’s premium educational institutions. According to a recent report prepared by Insight Foundation, around 18 students belonging to the scheduled caste scheduled tribe (SC/ST) and other backward classes (OBCs) have committed suicide in institutes of higher learning across the country in the past four years. Senthil Kumar’s parents are agricultural labourers and constantly on the move, managing to barely eke out a semi-decent living. Theirs was a life grounded in hope. Hope that their son will do them proud by becoming the first person from their village to obtain a PhD after completing his doctoral dissertation in physics from Hyderabad Central University. But even that flicker of a hope was abruptly extinguished when Senthil took his own life in 2008—unable, allegedly, to bear the discrimination that was meted out to him at the university. Faculty members, students and members of the Dalit Solidarity group—S. Anand, Ravi Kumar and Suneetha Achyut—brought the matter to the attention of the authorities. Subsequently, a fact-finding committee was formed to conduct an inquiry. Its findings pointed to a lack of sensitivity on part of the institute. The inquiry’s report states: “Inconsistency and subjectivity in the standards applied for coursework and for allocation of supervisors in the 2006 batch led to an understandable perception that has gained among the SC/ST students in the school of physics, that they are being discriminated against on the basis of their caste.” Suneetha, who was actively involved in mobilising the students to attract the attention of the authorities, doesn’t mince words: “The fact-finding committee clearly mentioned in its report that inconsistency and subjectivity in the standards led to an understandable perception among the Dalit students that they are being discriminated against. Now, we believe the hint alone is enough, but if they’re bent on overlooking it, then no one can actually be of any help.” Suneetha says Senthil’s parents are still in a state of shock. They have received some compensation from the university—after the intervention of the activists. In that, they’re one of the lucky ones. The larger point that the activists are looking to make is that there are cases where the parents have no idea that they can do something to get justice if their ward meets with a similar fate. “The bigger issue is that the authorities responsible are yet to even acknowledge that there is a problem. Looking for solutions comes after,” says Suneetha. Professor Vinod Parvala of Hyderabad Central University chaired the inquiry into Senthil’s death. Speaking to *Outlook*, he says: “There is a need for social sensitivity, for sure. Even in our fact-finding report, we have pointed out some issues. The university’s faculty is a class apart as far as their respective subjects are concerned, but they have no idea about the changes that’ve taken place in society. So they need to be sensitised.” He adds that while some steps have been taken, there’s more that needs doing. “The university has already issued some guidelines, but the age-old divides will only truly disappear once the thought process has been changed.” *Seeking Answers* Manish Kumar’s parents want to know why. (Photograph by Nirala Tripathi) In a more recent case, Manish Kumar, a student of IIT-Roorkee, reportedly faced a similar situation. The third-year student allegedly could not cope with being the butt of both the faculty’s and the students’ constant taunts and belittlement. He committed suicide in February 2011. “From day one, they made him feel inferior and attempted to convince him that he was unfit to be a student at such a premier institute. The students used to tell him that he should leave the institute and go somewhere else because he had a lower IQ,” says Rajendra Kumar, Manish’s father. “Institutions have to form social environs within which their dalit students don’t feel alienated from the other students.”Narendra Jhadav, Member, Planning Commission “We had taken the matter up with the warden and the college assured us that proper action would be taken. The warden knows the names of the students who had troubled him (Manish),” he says. Frustrated with the lack of interest and action taken by IIT-Roorkee, Kumar filed a FIR with the Roorkee police. And even that hasn’t been easy—the apathy shown by the police in registering a case forced him to go to court. Only after the court’s intervention did the FIR get registered. However, there has been no progress in the investigation. And then there’s the story of Bal Mukund, a third-year All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) student from the Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh, who committed suicide in March 2010 after allegedly being a constant victim of the biases of the AIIMS faculty. He told his parents about the alleged discrimination and filed a complaint with the authorities in Delhi—there’s no record of such a complaint. His father had sold his ancestral land to finance his son’s studies. After Bal Mukund’s death, his family has been left devastated and debt-ridden. “The authorities claimed he was depressed. I want to know why (they made this contention). He wanted to study medicine and had gotten admitted into AIIMS. He was extremely happy and had been doing well in his initial years. What had happened to him, all of a sudden, that he felt he had to take this extreme step? We are shattered. I want the CBI to investigate the matter,” says Gulab Chand Ahirwal, Bal Mukund’s father. Tragedies like these spurred a group of Dalit professionals and students to help create awareness. The group also aims to set up a round-the-clock helpline to foster awareness among the students that suicide is never an option—not even as a last resort. Anoop Kumar, an advocate and activist who leads the group, is meeting with the parents of the students who committed suicide. He explains, “We are not doing this to get compensation. This is an awareness campaign that will help people deal with the situation. Parents can come and use this platform to talk to various authorities and check on the situation before it gets worse.” The authorities, too, have taken some interest. Both the home ministry and the ministry of social justice and empowerment have given verbal assurances that they will look into the matter and say an inquiry may be ordered soon—though nothing has happened as yet. The director of the Indian Institute of Dalit studies, Rajendra P. Mamgain, says, “The long history of such incidents have shown that this is a very real problem. Sensitivity is required at every level and students need to be included in the activities of the institutes they are associated with. Their confidence goes down when they are being left out. The ‘mainstream’ students have to understand that their attitude can contribute to bettering the social fabric. We all have to work towards fostering a positive attitude among Dalit students.” Narendra Jhadav, a member of the planning commission and an activist who has long been working towards bringing the OBCs into—and feel like they are a part of—the mainstream, says, “Integration is required and institutes have to, through their governing bodies, create social environments in which the students don’t feel left out. This is needed at each step. The situation needs to be looked into and addressed.” By spotlighting such incidents, some of which are in court, the activists hope to douse the fires of prejudice raging on Indian campuses. If the list of Dalit student suicides is to stop growing, admitting the problem is the first step to solving it. -- "Rosa sat so Martin could walk; Martin walked so Obama could run, Obama ran so your children can fly" From peter.ksmtf at gmail.com Sat Jun 18 17:33:42 2011 From: peter.ksmtf at gmail.com (T Peter) Date: Sat, 18 Jun 2011 17:33:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] CRZ notification:Fish workers warn of agitation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: CRZ notification:Fish workers warn of agitation Published: June 18, 2011 00:00 IST | Updated: June 18, 2011 04:11 IST Thiruvananthapuram, June 18, 2011 Special Correspondent The National Fishworkers Forum (NFF) and the Kerala Swathatra Matsya Thozhilali Federation (KSMTF) have urged the government to revise the Coastal Regulation Zone notification 2011 issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, with provisions that would benefit the coastal communities. Addressing reporters here on Friday, NFF secretary T. Peter and KSMTF general secretary P.P. John alleged that the Union government scheme to map the near-shore sea and coastal areas for the coastal management project would alienate the fisherfolk community. They said the government was going ahead with the construction of atomic power plants along the coast and laying submarine pipelines for transport of natural gas without consulting the coastal communities or compensating them for the loss of livelihood. The leaders said the proposed establishment of marine parks, ship-breaking units and marine protected zones would ultimately affect fisherfolk. They feared that fishing operations would be restricted to breeding zones, forcing them to seek other means of livelihood. These moves, they alleged, were designed to open up large tracts of coastal land for tourist resorts, construction companies, industries and real estate developers. Mr. Peter called on the government to ensure proper representation for fish workers in the national and State committees for coastal zone management. The NFF and KSMTF would join the nation-wide agitation by fish workers on August 9 to highlight their demands. Mr. Peter said fish workers would take out demonstrations and stage dharna before Central and State government offices in all coastal States. They would also participate in district-level campaigns. The NFF would send letters to the Prime Minister, UPA convener and Minister for Environment and Forests to press the demands. From lalitambardar at hotmail.com Sun Jun 19 12:18:14 2011 From: lalitambardar at hotmail.com (Lalit Ambardar) Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 06:48:14 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Jashn-e-Kabul.......Jashn-e-azadi............Jashn -e- barbadi...???...... Message-ID: Apologists for Kashmiri Islamists, who peddle 'azadi' on their behalf will feel satisfied that they are collaborating,after all for a cause..... “Ham Jashn-e-Kabul mana chukay, ab aao chalo Kashmir chalain” (We have celebrated our victory in Kabul, Let’s go to Kashmir) http://www.dawn.com/2011/06/07/death-of-a-quintessential-jihadi.html .........Jashn-e-Kabul.......Jashn-e-azadi............Jashn -e- barbadi...???...... Sad death & destruction at core of the pan Islamism driven Kashmiri scessionist movement is conspicoulsly overlooked. Rgds all LA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From kmvenuannur at gmail.com Sun Jun 19 13:00:17 2011 From: kmvenuannur at gmail.com (Venugopalan K M) Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 13:00:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Dimitrov vs Goebbels (Excerpts from documents) Message-ID: *Dimitrov: *Is it true that the National Socialist Government has granted a pardon to all terrorist acts carried out to further the aims of the National Socialist movement? *Goebbels: *The National Socialist Government could not leave in prisons people who, risking their lives and health, had fought against the Communist peril. *President: *Did you hear, Dimitrov? *Dimitrov: *I did hear very well! So far as I know, Mr. President, four or five political murders are well known in Germany. The Communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered... *President: *That's enough! (*Dimitrov: *After that...) The question goes very far. We have to clarify who set the Reichstag on fire. We cannot go back here to the distant past. *Goebbels: *It might perhaps be more expedient if we started from Adam and Eve. At the time of these murders the National Socialist movement did not vet exist. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1933/reich/ch06.htm -- You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole. -AMBEDKAR http://venukm.blogspot.com http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com -- You received this message because you are added to the googlegroup "Kerala feminists". The aspiration is creating a space to come together, and in turn work together in addressing women's concerns. The effort undoubtedly requires culmination and debates of varying thoughts and ideas, of agreements and disagreements. To post to this group, send email to feminists-kerala at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to feminists-kerala-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com -- You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole. -AMBEDKAR http://venukm.blogspot.com http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Sun Jun 19 15:56:33 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 15:56:33 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] More on radhasoami satsang Message-ID: as usual ... http://radhasoamis.freeyellow.com/index.html http://rssbdata.i8.com/ http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2010/09/is-radha-soami-satsang-beas-a-scam.html Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Sun Jun 19 18:58:56 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 18:58:56 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] MSP FOR KHARIF CROPS 2011-12 Message-ID: MSP FOR KHARIF CROPS 2011-12 Govt Makes Mockery of Farmers’ Plight THROUGH a statement issued from New Delhi on June 11, the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) has condemned the insensitive manner in which the central government has come up with the announcement of the minimum support prices (MSP) for kharif crops of 2011-12 season on June 9, 2011. The announcement has been made without taking into consideration the suggestions of the AIKS and other representatives of the farming community placed before the Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP). The Kisan Sabha is of the opinion that the MSP announced by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs is far below the expectations of the peasantry and provides no incentive for continued engagement with cultivation. It is notable that the CACP report on price policy for kharif crops for 2010-11 had pointed out that the all-India projected cost of production (C2) of paddy was Rs 766 per quintal. This is far below the cost of production arrived at by even the state governments and representatives of the peasantry. By the CACP’s own admission, the MSP of paddy in 2009 at Rs 1,000 covered only the cost of production in 16 out of 18 states. The Swaminathan commission recommendation of fixing MSP at C2+50 per cent has been totally ignored by the Congress-led government. Had the government adhered to this, even with such conservative estimation the MSP of paddy (common) should have been at least Rs 1,149 in 2010-11. Now a full 12 months after that the government has come with an announcement of Rs 1,080 and Rs 1,110 per quintal of paddy common and grade A respectively, which is a meagre increase of Rs 80 per quintal only. It is to be noted that the AIKS had demanded Rs 1,500 per quintal and Rs 1,600 per quintal for paddy (common) and paddy (grade A) respectively. The state of Kerala under the LDF government had already announced Rs 1,400 per quintal for paddy (common) along with other production incentives as well as effective procurement. The Kisan Sabha has also noted that the procurement facilities are at best skeletal in most of the states. Due to the absence of assured procurement, farmers in many states are being forced to sell at as low as Rs 600 per quintal and commission agents are making huge profits at the expense of the poor farmers. The government has, on the other hand, not done anything to address this problem; it is further taking steps towards privatisation and opening up this sector for agribusinesses. The peasantry will be entirely at the mercy of such companies in future, the Kisan Sabha has warned. Despite the assessment of the CACP that in the case of coarse cereals like ragi and jowar there was a significant rise in cost of production of 30 per cent and 21 per cent respectively over 2009-10 and further increases in input costs later on, the government has not paid any heed to the demands for remunerative prices for coarse cereals produced mostly by small and marginal farmers, many of whom are tribal people. No effective procurement of these cereals is taking place either. A meagre increase of Rs 85 and Rs 100 per quintal has been announced for these crops. The MSP of pulses like arhar (turi) and urad have been fixed at Rs 3,200 and Rs 3,300 per quintal respectively. These are much lower than what the Kisan Sabha had proposed for these crops --- Rs 4,000 per quintal for arhar (tur) and Rs 3,800 for urad respectively at the CACP meeting. The organisation has termed as ironical the fact there was no increase at all in prices of cotton from 2008-09 onwards despite studies by reputed institutions like the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Notably, these studies have cited the exorbitant input costs and unremunerative returns for cotton farmers as the single largest cause of suicides in Vidarbha, parts of Andhra Pradesh and other places. Now the government has announced Rs 2,800 and Rs 3,400 respectively for medium staple and long staple varieties respectively, which are way below the expectations of the peasantry and the Kisan Sabha’s proposal of Rs 4,500 and Rs 5,000 per quintal respectively. The MSP of groundnut and sunflower at Rs 2,700 and Rs 2,800 and of soyabean’s black and yellow varieties at Rs 1,650 and Rs 1,690 respectively are also far below the expectations of farmers. The AIKS had proposed Rs 3,500 for groundnut and sunflower and Rs 2,500 and Rs 3,000 respectively for soyabean’s black and yellow varieties respectively. The announcement of MSP for kharif crops 2011-12 does not take into account the exorbitant increases in input costs, especially the increase in prices of urea and fertilisers like MoP and DAP as well as increase in the petrol and diesel prices. According to the AIKS, the government’s announcement has made a mockery of the plight of farmers who are increasingly on the verge of quitting agriculture due to unviable and unremunerative prices. The organisation has demanded that the government come up with revised MSPs in line with the realistic proposals put forward by the Kisan Sabha and also hold a consultation involving the state governments, representatives of the peasantry and experts to arrive at a consensus on the method of calculating the costs of production. _______________________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From rohitrellan at aol.in Sun Jun 19 21:10:04 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 11:40:04 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for Entries: The Hindu Literary Prize for Best Fiction Message-ID: <8CDFCAE4B071B11-DB8-11A8C@webmail-d138.sysops.aol.com> Deadline: 25 June 2011 The Hindu Literary Review completes two decades promoting good literature - both in English and in the Indian languages. As part of this commitment, and to recognise and reward outstanding literary talent in Indian Writing in English and works in translation, The Hindu Literary Review has instituted The Hindu Literary Prize for Best Fiction. How to enter Publishers can submit books published between July 2010 and June 2011. Publishers with more than one imprint can submit books from each imprint. Publishers must send eight copies of each book. Only hard copies will be allowed. Electronic copies will not be accepted. All entries must reach The Hindu on or before June 25, 2011. All entries should be addressed to: The Hindu Literary Prize, Literary Review Desk The Hindu, Kasturi Buildings, 859-960, Anna Salai Chennai 600 002 Eligibility criteria The author must be an Indian citizen or a NRI holding a valid Indian passport. It is the publisher's responsibility to verify this before submitting the book for consideration. Works in English and translations from Indian languages are eligible. Entries must be in prose and can be full length novels or a collection of short stories. Self-published or electronically published books will not be eligible. Children's fiction or teenage fiction will not be eligible. Books of authors who are on the panel of judges will not be eligible. Employees of The Hindu and their family members are not eligible to participate. The award consists of a cash prize of Rs. 5 lakhs and a citation. The entries will be assessed by an independent panel of judges comprising critics and authors. A shortlist will be announced at our literary conclave Lit for Life in Delhi in September 2011. The prize will be given away at the Lit for Life in Chennai in October 2011. For more details contact Subash at 044-28576337 or subash at thehindu.co.in From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Mon Jun 20 08:34:05 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 08:34:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [issuesonline_worldwide] MSP FOR KHARIF CROPS 2011-12 In-Reply-To: <916113.4091.qm@web65602.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <916113.4091.qm@web65602.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: The private sector cannot handle storage and will only end up aggravating the crisis. Already they are having a field day exploiting the farmers. Studies show that cooperatives can help partially, but they do not scale up. Contract farming will ruin the entire agricultural and food sector. It should be obvious that the Govt is playing into the hands of the MNCs and rich farmers. Their strategy is to force all smaller farmers to quit in favour of the MNCs ... once the market is 'captured' .. the MNCs lobby will force you to pay Rs1000 per kg of rice :) and the Govt will suddenly start giving liberal subsidies to the corporate farmers (only). Removing restrictions on grain movement can hardly help. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 8:58 PM, S kumar wrote: > > > > What I do not understand is why should the Govt. procure the grains if they do > not have the infra-structure to store them properly? We find several visual > reports how lakhs of mt. of wheat and rice are damaged in open storage on Railay > platforms and outside the FCI godowns- strangelky the godowns intended for > storing grains were rented out to private Co-s for soft drink storages!! > > The Supreme Court told UPA to distribute the grains rotting and getting damaged > by open storage in millions of MT, free to those below poverty line, and Sharad > Pawar replies the rules do not allow free supplies to the poor, preferring the > rotting grains bursting the seams of the bags and spilling out and the Cattle > and birds having a feast!! > > In today's Kerala TV news, the TV crew was shown visiting an FCI godown to show > that there was no space even in the veranda-s of the godown to store the grains > and it was being stacked outside the godown and covered with tarpaulins and most > of the grains stored poutside became wet by the rains. The local Manager of the > FCI godown was seen assaulting the Camera crew of Amritha TV and they had to be > admitted in the hospital and one of the Cameras was damaged. Indeed the Central > Minister of State Thomas has ordered an enquiry but the fact remains that the > GOI is least bothered about proper storage of the procured grain in many parts > of India. > > > Only a week earlier similar problem in Bhopal came up and huge stacks of grains > stored in open were drenched by the premonsoon showers. > > Is there no accountability of the officials and Minister in such wilfful > negligence of duty? > > Why not remove all restrictions on the movement of grains within the Country > when there is surplus that cannot be procured and stored, and allow the demand > supply modus play in the market with good returns for the farmer? > > ________________________________ > From: A. Mani > To: sarai list ; The Moderates > ; issuesonline_worldwide at yahoogroups.com > Sent: Sun, June 19, 2011 6:58:56 PM > Subject: [issuesonline_worldwide] MSP FOR KHARIF CROPS 2011-12 > > MSP FOR KHARIF CROPS 2011-12 > > Govt Makes Mockery of Farmers’ Plight > > THROUGH a statement issued from New Delhi on June 11, the All India > Kisan Sabha (AIKS) has condemned the insensitive manner in which the > central government has come up with the announcement of the minimum > support prices (MSP) for kharif crops of 2011-12 season on June 9, > 2011. The announcement has been made without taking into consideration > the suggestions of the AIKS and other representatives of the farming > community placed before the Commission on Agricultural Costs and > Prices (CACP). The Kisan Sabha is of the opinion that the MSP > announced by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs is far below > the expectations of the peasantry and provides no incentive for > continued engagement with cultivation. > > It is notable that the CACP report on price policy for kharif crops > for 2010-11 had pointed out that the all-India projected cost of > production (C2) of paddy was Rs 766 per quintal. This is far below the > cost of production arrived at by even the state governments and > representatives of the peasantry. By the CACP’s own admission, the MSP > of paddy in 2009 at Rs 1,000 covered only the cost of production in 16 > out of 18 states. The Swaminathan commission recommendation of fixing > MSP at C2+50 per cent has been totally ignored by the Congress-led > government. Had the government adhered to this, even with such > conservative estimation the MSP of paddy (common) should have been at > least Rs 1,149 in 2010-11. Now a full 12 months after that the > government has come with an announcement of Rs 1,080 and Rs 1,110 per > quintal of paddy common and grade A respectively, which is a meagre > increase of Rs 80 per quintal only. It is to be noted that the AIKS > had demanded Rs 1,500 per quintal and Rs 1,600 per quintal for paddy > (common) and paddy (grade A) respectively. The state of Kerala under > the LDF government had already announced Rs 1,400 per quintal for > paddy (common) along with other production incentives as well as > effective procurement. > > The Kisan Sabha has also noted that the procurement facilities are at > best skeletal in most of the states. Due to the absence of assured > procurement, farmers in many states are being forced to sell at as low > as Rs 600 per quintal and commission agents are making huge profits at > the expense of the poor farmers. The government has, on the other > hand, not done anything to address this problem; it is further taking > steps towards privatisation and opening up this sector for > agribusinesses. The peasantry will be entirely at the mercy of such > companies in future, the Kisan Sabha has warned. > > Despite the assessment of the CACP that in the case of coarse cereals > like ragi and jowar there was a significant rise in cost of production > of 30 per cent and 21 per cent respectively over 2009-10 and further > increases in input costs later on, the government has not paid any > heed to the demands for remunerative prices for coarse cereals > produced mostly by small and marginal farmers, many of whom are tribal > people. No effective procurement of these cereals is taking place > either. A meagre increase of Rs 85 and Rs 100 per quintal has been > announced for these crops. The MSP of pulses like arhar (turi) and > urad have been fixed at Rs 3,200 and Rs 3,300 per quintal > respectively. These are much lower than what the Kisan Sabha had > proposed for these crops --- Rs 4,000 per quintal for arhar (tur) and > Rs 3,800 for urad respectively at the CACP meeting. > > The organisation has termed as ironical the fact there was no increase > at all in prices of cotton from 2008-09 onwards despite studies by > reputed institutions like the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. > Notably, these studies have cited the exorbitant input costs and > unremunerative returns for cotton farmers as the single largest cause > of suicides in Vidarbha, parts of Andhra Pradesh and other places. Now > the government has announced Rs 2,800 and Rs 3,400 respectively for > medium staple and long staple varieties respectively, which are way > below the expectations of the peasantry and the Kisan Sabha’s proposal > of Rs 4,500 and Rs 5,000 per quintal respectively. > > The MSP of groundnut and sunflower at Rs 2,700 and Rs 2,800 and of > soyabean’s black and yellow varieties at Rs 1,650 and Rs 1,690 > respectively are also far below the expectations of farmers. The AIKS > had proposed Rs 3,500 for groundnut and sunflower and Rs 2,500 and Rs > 3,000 respectively for soyabean’s black and yellow varieties > respectively. The announcement of MSP for kharif crops 2011-12 does > not take into account the exorbitant increases in input costs, > especially the increase in prices of urea and fertilisers like MoP and > DAP as well as increase in the petrol and diesel prices. > > According to the AIKS, the government’s announcement has made a > mockery of the plight of farmers who are increasingly on the verge of > quitting agriculture due to unviable and unremunerative prices. The > organisation has demanded that the government come up with revised > MSPs in line with the realistic proposals put forward by the Kisan > Sabha and also hold a consultation involving the state governments, > representatives of the peasantry and experts to arrive at a consensus > on the method of calculating the costs of production. > > __________________________________________________________ > > Best > > A. Mani > > -- > A. Mani > ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS > http://www.logicamani.co.cc > > ------------------------------------ > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > __._,_.___ > Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post | Start a New Topic > Messages in this topic (2) > Recent Activity: > > New Members 1 > > Visit Your Group > Switch to: Text-Only, Daily Digest • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use > . > __,_._,___ From rohitrellan at aol.in Mon Jun 20 11:06:13 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 01:36:13 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Submissions open for first Jaipur Animation Film Festival Message-ID: <8CDFD231A45856F-239C-17885@webmail-m066.sysops.aol.com> The 1st Jaipur Animation Film Festival will be held from the 12th -13th October 2011 in the world’s most beautiful city in the state of Rajasthan, PINK CITY Jaipur, INDIA. Objective : Promotion of animation films, young animation film makers and the industry. The purpose of this film festival is to promote newer animators, exchange of knowledge, information, ideas & culture between India & other nations in context of their social and cultural ethos. JAFF also promotes friendship and co-operation among people of the world through the medium of animation films. In JAFF festival there will be a lot of Workshops and Seminars about the animation films and the field, case studies about the animation films, many sessions will be provided to the film lovers. Almost 8-10 different category awards would be distributed to the films and the film makers. JAFF is a platform for animation and VFX film makers from all around the world, to come together and showcase their work. Who we are ? We believe in cinema development. We, in Jaipur want to create a world class platform for animation film makers and cinema lovers from all around the world in famous Pink City and culturally colorful and vibrant Rajasthan. JAFF is organized by 'Jaipur International Film Festival Trust ' - www.jiffindia.org ENTRY FORM: http://www.jaffindia.org/documents/entry%20form-Animation.doc ONLINE SUBMISSION: http://www.jaffindia.org/entryform.php# From aswathypsenan at gmail.com Mon Jun 20 12:16:10 2011 From: aswathypsenan at gmail.com (Aswathy Senan) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:16:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Submissions open for first Jaipur Animation Film Festival In-Reply-To: <8CDFD231A45856F-239C-17885@webmail-m066.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CDFD231A45856F-239C-17885@webmail-m066.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: Hi, I checked the website. But there seems to be no information on the Animation Section. Could you send me more information on this? Thanks and regards Aswathy Senan Editor Campfire Graphic Novels http://www.campfire.co.in/ On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 11:06 AM, wrote: > > > > > > > > > The 1st Jaipur Animation Film Festival will be held from the 12th -13th > October 2011 in the world’s most beautiful city in the state of Rajasthan, > PINK CITY Jaipur, INDIA. > > Objective : > > Promotion of animation films, young animation film makers and the industry. > The purpose of this film festival is to promote newer animators, exchange > of knowledge, information, ideas & culture between India & other nations in > context of their social and cultural ethos. JAFF also promotes friendship > and co-operation among people of the world through the medium of animation > films. > In JAFF festival there will be a lot of Workshops and Seminars about the > animation films and the field, case studies about the animation films, many > sessions will be provided to the film lovers. Almost 8-10 different category > awards would be distributed to the films and the film makers. JAFF is a > platform for animation and VFX film makers from all around the world, to > come together and showcase their work. > Who we are ? > > We believe in cinema development. We, in Jaipur want to create a world > class platform for animation film makers and cinema lovers from all around > the world in famous Pink City and culturally colorful and vibrant Rajasthan. > JAFF is organized by 'Jaipur International Film Festival Trust ' - > www.jiffindia.org > > > > > > > > ENTRY FORM: http://www.jaffindia.org/documents/entry%20form-Animation.doc > > ONLINE SUBMISSION: http://www.jaffindia.org/entryform.php# > > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> From rohitrellan at aol.in Mon Jun 20 18:51:22 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:21:22 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] AUDITIONS - ALMOST, MAINE by John Cariani, New Delhi / Gargi College ECA Trials Message-ID: <8CDFD64153E9DB1-7B8-BE2F@webmail-d179.sysops.aol.com> AUDITIONS - ALMOST, MAINE by John Cariani Cathaayatra invites actors and practitioners for its latest play Almost, Maine by John Cariani Supported by The American Center, New Delhi About the Play: Do we wait for our lives to happen to us, or must we make choices and choose to engage? Does love happen to us, or do we create it? We often sucker ourselves into believing that it’s only the first half of that equation. The characters in Almost, Maine take risks for what they want, and deal with the consequences. As a result this play provides the opportunity to discuss the moments of choice and fundamental risks that we regularly take in our relationships – romantic or otherwise – every time we communicate, or fail to communicate, our needs and wishes. To speak up or stay silent? To conceal or confess? To give or to take? Watching for those risks can be a fruitful avenue to discuss theme and character. And by asking the corollary question – “What would I do in that situation?” – we can begin to discover resonances and connections in our own lives. What is it that makes a risk worth taking? Where is Almost? Almost, Maine introduces 19 characters at crucial moments of choice in their relationships with one another. As mirrors to our own lives, the 8 scenes in 2 acts occur in different locations around the imaginary town of Almost, and each has its own crisis, its own emotional fragility, and its own stakes. And in each, there’s an element of wonder or “magic”, where a universal metaphor is expressed as a literal situation. 8 scenes imagined to be happening at the same time and connected by the phenomenon of the northern lights in a remote imaginary town weave a real and often funny story of finding, rediscovering and losing love. We are looking for: Actors - 2 male & 2 female to play characters between 25 and 50 years. Clear English diction and a quirky sense of humour will be requisites. Everything else - we can work on together. Rehearsals start 1st August and end 20th September 2011. Current Confirmed Shows schedule ( At American Center): Delhi / Gurgaon - 22, 23, 24,25 Sept 2011 Mumbai - 1st October 2011 Goa - 13th Oct 2011 We'll try to fix box office shows around the above dates. **THIS IS A RESIDENTIAL repeat RESIDENTIAL project in GOA repeat GOA! If you're not from Goa or have no friends, we'll give you a place to live. If you're not already grateful for this opportunity, we'll pay you some. Lots of bonding and card games in trains / airports assured. Get ready to be monsooned too. Nature at its best comes as a perk. We may pay for chai, samosas, vada pavs for the odd BYOB party.We no pay for booz or other substances. Rehearsals will include volunteer community work and playshops. If you have workshop facilitation skills, we'll find you some more work. Enthusiasts willing to be non-paid understudies in acting / lighting / production roles are more than welcome. To be part of this, first write to us why you would do something crazy like this weare at cathaayatra.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gargi College ECA Trials Gargi College ECA trials for DRAMATICS will be held on 22nd and 23rd June, 9 am onwards. The form for the same can be taken either from college or the link posted below. The form has to be submitted in college latest by 20th June. The timings for registration on 22nd and 23rd are from 9am to 10.30am. Form :http://gargicollege.in/UserFiles/File/ECA_form.pdf From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Mon Jun 20 19:47:12 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:47:12 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [issuesonline_worldwide] MSP FOR KHARIF CROPS 2011-12 In-Reply-To: <650758.58861.qm@web65610.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <916113.4091.qm@web65602.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <650758.58861.qm@web65610.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: The solution would be to improve the distribution, storage and procurement system Universal PDS is certainly essential (as everybody must have food security) and can also ease the pressure on storage (plagued by stock-build up problem). The gap between 'supply for universal PDS' and current procurement levels is quite small. Targeting is done by the central Govt to deprive most of the poor.. there are a number of studies on this aspect. ~90+% of the nation should be regarded as BPL, rice @ Rs2 is rice@ Rs 2. To speak of 'excessive Government subsidies' in a country with no sane concept of social security for the people is abomination. The restriction on movement on food grains was also aimed at curbing black-marketing and hoarding by wholesalers. They are very capable of creating famines for both monetary gains and political games. It can argued that given the changing nature of market players that such restrictions actually help potential monopolists. But that is not ground reality. The bigger issues also relate to FDI and futures trading in agriculture. This article (http://www.macroscan.org/anl/may11/pdf/Food_Flows.pdf ) has much to say on the 'concepts' used by the corporate media for their vested interests. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC, AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 9:32 AM, S kumar wrote: > ** > > > You might recall the strict rationing system and the restrictions on > movement of > foodgrains from one State to other during the time of Nehru and Rafi Ahmed > Kidwai was the Union Minister for food. > > Against Nehru's caution, Kidwai took the bold step of freeing all > restrictions > on the movement of foodgrains and within a few months the shortages > disappeared > and grain was available at reasonable rates in open market. However later > Govts. > under Indira Gandhi reintroduced such restrictions and there was a time > when the > ban on movement of grains was there, people made Chapati-s in Punjab and > Haryana > and sold the same in neighbouring States!! > > Again the Re.1 or 2 per Kg. is a gimmick allowing huge illegal movement of > rice > from States like TM to Kerala- a deficit State, enabling the corrutpion at > several levels including check-posts. If a family could accept paying Rs.70 > per > liter of petrol for the two wheelers mostly ubiquitous, obviously they > could pay > the market price for rice which could stabilise around Rs.10 per Kg. if > free > movement is allowed. > > In the past three years we have seen the gross mismanagement of grain > production, procurement and distribution, throughout the Country. The FCI > releases the oldest stocks- usually 3-4 years old for PDF and perennially, > the > poor/middle class getting rice pay for the stale and stinking rice since > the PDF > was introduced. it is like you consume the overripe banana and leave the > rest > again toi be consumes after it is overripe. Are not the policies foolish > and FCI > acts only on political influences by not releasing stocks when demanded by > deficit States and allow the stocks to rot? > > There have been cases of entire rake loads of wheat sent in open wagons, > sprouting through the sacking and unfit for anything at the destination!! > There > is no accountability. > > When the journalists went to the Alappuzha FCI godown to see the grains > stacked > in the open and getting wet, the FCI manager snatched the Camera and > slapped the > TV Crew? Would Food Minister take action? No. Since all of them are > colluded in > the nefarious activities of disposing procured stocks and writing off good > grains as damaged and discarded!! > > If the market is opened, the grains would be stocked by the whole-salers as > > their money is involved, and market demand/supply forces will work and > consumers > will get good grains and not 3 years old stocks released by FCI. The cross > border smuggling of rice or wheat could also be stopped when restrictions > are > removed. The supply of Rs.1 and 2 Kg. rice should stop and as Jayalalitha > did, > the poorer would be given free rice, 20Kg. per family, as recorded in the > voters' list or Ration Card under Food Security implemented by her now. > > > ________________________________ > From: A. Mani > To: issuesonline_worldwide at yahoogroups.com; sarai list < > reader-list at sarai.net>; > The Moderates > Sent: Mon, June 20, 2011 8:34:05 AM > Subject: Re: [issuesonline_worldwide] MSP FOR KHARIF CROPS 2011-12 > > > The private sector cannot handle storage and will only end up > aggravating the crisis. > Already they are having a field day exploiting the farmers. > Studies show that cooperatives can help partially, but they do not scale > up. > > Contract farming will ruin the entire agricultural and food sector. > It should be obvious that the Govt is playing into the hands of the > MNCs and rich farmers. > Their strategy is to force all smaller farmers to quit in favour of > the MNCs ... once the market is 'captured' .. the MNCs lobby will > force you to pay Rs1000 per kg of rice :) and the Govt will suddenly > start giving liberal subsidies to the corporate farmers (only). > > Removing restrictions on grain movement can hardly help. > > Best > > A. Mani > > -- > A. Mani > ASL, CLC, AMS, CMS > http://www.logicamani.co.cc > > On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 8:58 PM, S kumar wrote: > > > > > > > > What I do not understand is why should the Govt. procure the grains if > they do > > not have the infra-structure to store them properly? We find several > visual > > reports how lakhs of mt. of wheat and rice are damaged in open storage on > > >Railay > > platforms and outside the FCI godowns- strangelky the godowns intended > for > > storing grains were rented out to private Co-s for soft drink storages!! > > > > The Supreme Court told UPA to distribute the grains rotting and getting > damaged > > by open storage in millions of MT, free to those below poverty line, and > Sharad > > Pawar replies the rules do not allow free supplies to the poor, > preferring the > > rotting grains bursting the seams of the bags and spilling out and the > Cattle > > and birds having a feast!! > > > > In today's Kerala TV news, the TV crew was shown visiting an FCI godown > to > show > > that there was no space even in the veranda-s of the godown to store the > grains > > and it was being stacked outside the godown and covered with tarpaulins > and > >most > > of the grains stored poutside became wet by the rains. The local Manager > of > the > > FCI godown was seen assaulting the Camera crew of Amritha TV and they had > to > be > > admitted in the hospital and one of the Cameras was damaged. Indeed the > Central > > Minister of State Thomas has ordered an enquiry but the fact remains that > the > > GOI is least bothered about proper storage of the procured grain in many > parts > > of India. > > > > > > Only a week earlier similar problem in Bhopal came up and huge stacks of > grains > > stored in open were drenched by the premonsoon showers. > > > > Is there no accountability of the officials and Minister in such wilfful > > negligence of duty? > > > > Why not remove all restrictions on the movement of grains within the > Country > > when there is surplus that cannot be procured and stored, and allow the > demand > > supply modus play in the market with good returns for the farmer? > > > > ________________________________ > > From: A. Mani > > To: sarai list ; The Moderates > > ; issuesonline_worldwide at yahoogroups.com > > Sent: Sun, June 19, 2011 6:58:56 PM > > Subject: [issuesonline_worldwide] MSP FOR KHARIF CROPS 2011-12 > > > > MSP FOR KHARIF CROPS 2011-12 > > > > Govt Makes Mockery of Farmers’ Plight > > > > THROUGH a statement issued from New Delhi on June 11, the All India > > Kisan Sabha (AIKS) has condemned the insensitive manner in which the > > central government has come up with the announcement of the minimum > > support prices (MSP) for kharif crops of 2011-12 season on June 9, > > 2011. The announcement has been made without taking into consideration > > the suggestions of the AIKS and other representatives of the farming > > community placed before the Commission on Agricultural Costs and > > Prices (CACP). The Kisan Sabha is of the opinion that the MSP > > announced by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs is far below > > the expectations of the peasantry and provides no incentive for > > continued engagement with cultivation. > > > > It is notable that the CACP report on price policy for kharif crops > > for 2010-11 had pointed out that the all-India projected cost of > > production (C2) of paddy was Rs 766 per quintal. This is far below the > > cost of production arrived at by even the state governments and > > representatives of the peasantry. By the CACP’s own admission, the MSP > > of paddy in 2009 at Rs 1,000 covered only the cost of production in 16 > > out of 18 states. The Swaminathan commission recommendation of fixing > > MSP at C2+50 per cent has been totally ignored by the Congress-led > > government. Had the government adhered to this, even with such > > conservative estimation the MSP of paddy (common) should have been at > > least Rs 1,149 in 2010-11. Now a full 12 months after that the > > government has come with an announcement of Rs 1,080 and Rs 1,110 per > > quintal of paddy common and grade A respectively, which is a meagre > > increase of Rs 80 per quintal only. It is to be noted that the AIKS > > had demanded Rs 1,500 per quintal and Rs 1,600 per quintal for paddy > > (common) and paddy (grade A) respectively. The state of Kerala under > > the LDF government had already announced Rs 1,400 per quintal for > > paddy (common) along with other production incentives as well as > > effective procurement. > > > > The Kisan Sabha has also noted that the procurement facilities are at > > best skeletal in most of the states. Due to the absence of assured > > procurement, farmers in many states are being forced to sell at as low > > as Rs 600 per quintal and commission agents are making huge profits at > > the expense of the poor farmers. The government has, on the other > > hand, not done anything to address this problem; it is further taking > > steps towards privatisation and opening up this sector for > > agribusinesses. The peasantry will be entirely at the mercy of such > > companies in future, the Kisan Sabha has warned. > > > > Despite the assessment of the CACP that in the case of coarse cereals > > like ragi and jowar there was a significant rise in cost of production > > of 30 per cent and 21 per cent respectively over 2009-10 and further > > increases in input costs later on, the government has not paid any > > heed to the demands for remunerative prices for coarse cereals > > produced mostly by small and marginal farmers, many of whom are tribal > > people. No effective procurement of these cereals is taking place > > either. A meagre increase of Rs 85 and Rs 100 per quintal has been > > announced for these crops. The MSP of pulses like arhar (turi) and > > urad have been fixed at Rs 3,200 and Rs 3,300 per quintal > > respectively. These are much lower than what the Kisan Sabha had > > proposed for these crops --- Rs 4,000 per quintal for arhar (tur) and > > Rs 3,800 for urad respectively at the CACP meeting. > > > > The organisation has termed as ironical the fact there was no increase > > at all in prices of cotton from 2008-09 onwards despite studies by > > reputed institutions like the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. > > Notably, these studies have cited the exorbitant input costs and > > unremunerative returns for cotton farmers as the single largest cause > > of suicides in Vidarbha, parts of Andhra Pradesh and other places. Now > > the government has announced Rs 2,800 and Rs 3,400 respectively for > > medium staple and long staple varieties respectively, which are way > > below the expectations of the peasantry and the Kisan Sabha’s proposal > > of Rs 4,500 and Rs 5,000 per quintal respectively. > > > > The MSP of groundnut and sunflower at Rs 2,700 and Rs 2,800 and of > > soyabean’s black and yellow varieties at Rs 1,650 and Rs 1,690 > > respectively are also far below the expectations of farmers. The AIKS > > had proposed Rs 3,500 for groundnut and sunflower and Rs 2,500 and Rs > > 3,000 respectively for soyabean’s black and yellow varieties > > respectively. The announcement of MSP for kharif crops 2011-12 does > > not take into account the exorbitant increases in input costs, > > especially the increase in prices of urea and fertilisers like MoP and > > DAP as well as increase in the petrol and diesel prices. > > > > According to the AIKS, the government’s announcement has made a > > mockery of the plight of farmers who are increasingly on the verge of > > quitting agriculture due to unviable and unremunerative prices. The > > organisation has demanded that the government come up with revised > > MSPs in line with the realistic proposals put forward by the Kisan > > Sabha and also hold a consultation involving the state governments, > > representatives of the peasantry and experts to arrive at a consensus > > on the method of calculating the costs of production. > > > > __________________________________________________________ > > > > Best > > > > A. Mani > > > > -- > > A. Mani > > ASL, CLC, AMS, CMS > > http://www.logicamani.co.cc > > > > ------------------------------------ > > > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > > > > ------------------------------------ > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > __._,_.___ > Reply to sender| Reply > to group| Reply > via web post| Start > a New Topic > Messages in this topic( > 4) > Recent Activity: > > - New Members > 1 > > Visit Your Group > [image: Yahoo! Groups] > Switch to: Text-Only, > Daily Digest• > Unsubscribe• Terms > of Use > . > > __,_._,___ > From kmvenuannur at gmail.com Tue Jun 21 08:14:18 2011 From: kmvenuannur at gmail.com (Venugopalan K M) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 08:14:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 2011: An Arab Springtime? Samir Amin Message-ID: Sunday June 19th, 2011 Custom Search Web Loading... 2011: An Arab Springtime? Samir Amin "....They are in reality a component of the comprador bourgeoisie. They have taken their stand against large strikes by the working class and against the struggles of poor peasants to hold on to their lands. So the Muslim Brotherhood are “moderate” only in the double sense that they refuse to present any sort of economic and social program, thus in fact accepting without question reactionary neoliberal policies, and that they are submissive *de facto* to the enforcement of U.S, control over the region and the world. They thus are useful allies for Washington (and does the U.S. have a better ally than their patron, the Saudis?) which now vouches for their “democratic credentials.... ”...Political Islam throughout the Muslim world is quite assuredly a strategic ally of the United States and its NATO minority partners. Washington armed and financed the Taliban, who they called “Freedom Fighters,” in their war against the national/popular regime (termed “communist”) in Afghanistan before, during, and after the Soviet intervention. When the Taliban shut the girls’ schools created by the “communists” there were “democrats” and even “feminists” at hand to claim that it was necessary to “respect traditions!”...." ...."Finally. some words about “corruption.” Most speech from the “transition regime” concentrates on denouncing it and threatening prosecution (Mubarak, his wife, and some others arrested, but what will actually happen remaining to be seen). This discourse is certainly well received, especially by the major part of naïve public opinion. But they take care not to analyze its deeper causes and to teach that “corruption” (presented in the moralizing style of American speech as individual immorality) is an organic and necessary component in the formation of the bourgeoisie. And not merely in the case of Egypt and of the Southern countries in general, where if a comprador bourgeoisie is to be formed the sole way for that to take place is in association with the state apparatus. I maintain that at the stage of generalized monopoly capitalism corruption has become a basic organic component in the reproduction of its accumulation model: rent-seeking monopolies require the active complicity of the State. Its ideological discourse (the “liberal virus”) proclaims “state hands off the economy” while its practice is “state in service to the monopolies.”... ".. The ongoing U.S. project of military control over the planet by its armed forces, supported by their NATO lieutenants, the erosion of democracy in the imperialist core countries, and the medievalistical rejection of democracy within Southern countries in revolt (taking the form of “fundamentalist” semi-religious delusions disseminated by political Islam, political Hinduism, political Buddhism) all work together toward that dreadful outcome. At the current time the struggle for secularist democratization is crucial for the perspective of popular emancipation, crucial for opposition to the perspective of generalized barbarism." You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole. -AMBEDKAR http://venukm.blogspot.com http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com From jeebesh at sarai.net Tue Jun 21 13:16:15 2011 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:16:15 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] On Singur Bill Message-ID: <124C36EB-1F54-442F-B854-38937ED4C191@sarai.net> dear All, Here is Partha Chaterjee on the Singur Bill. http://telegraphindia.com/1110619/jsp/opinion/story_14121137.jsp warmly jeebesh From rohitrellan at aol.in Tue Jun 21 13:43:20 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 04:13:20 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] =?utf-8?q?Cannes_2011_Prediction_Reel=E2=80=99_cont?= =?utf-8?q?est_/_Piya_Bawari_-_Auditions?= Message-ID: <8CDFE0237AA445A-B80-31EA@webmail-d127.sysops.aol.com> Cannes 2011 Prediction Reel’ contest Leo Burnett’s annual Cannes Predictions Reel is culled from award-winning commercials and campaigns from the top advertising award shows each year. For over two decades, the reel has been prescient in identifying Grand Prix winners, while highlighting some of the best new work produced by the global marketing industry. Leo Burnett India has associated with Campaign India to organise the ‘Cannes 2011 Prediction Reel’ contest through which the agency wants to share the shortlisted commercials with everyone in the industry. Donald Gunn, former director of creative resources at Leo Burnett Worldwide, created the reel in 1987 as the basis for internal prediction contests for Leo Burnett employees. In the reel’s first year, Gunn accurately predicted the Cannes Lions Film Grand Prix. This year, a team of researchers from Leo Burnett Worldwide compiled the reel. Several hundred entries were considered before narrowing down the list to 40 contenders. The Cannes 2011 Predictions reel features work from 14 countries, spread across multiple product categories and media channels. This year, through the contest, the agency is sharing the reel with the industry and urging participants to predict 15 winners from the list. Based on their predictions and the metals these commercials win at Cannes 2011, three lucky contestants will win the prizes. The rules for Cannes Prediction are simple. You will see 40 entries on the reel. You select the 15 that you consider most likely to be awarded a Lion by the Cannes juries. Mark your 15 choices in the circles provided in the form that will be mailed to you (Mail here to receive your form, ci.leoburnett at gmail.com). The scoring system works like this: if one of your 15 choices wins a Grand Prix, it earns 100 points. For every Gold Lion you choose, you receive 75 points; for every Silver Lion, 50 points, and for every Bronze, 25 points. If one of your selections win multiple Lions, such as Bronze in TV and a Gold for Craft, you will receive one score (the 75 points for Gold) for the highest award the piece received. For any choice you select that wins three or more Lions, in any category, you will receive 70 additional points. Cannes Lions winners will be announced on the evening of Saturday June 25, 2011. The Cannes Predictions Reel contest winners will be announced on June 30, 2011. Three winners will get prizes sponsored by Leo Burnett. Disclaimer: The Leo Burnett Cannes 2011 Prediction Reel contest in association with Campaign India is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Votes cast bear no influence whatsoever on the decisions made by the Cannes Lions jury. Click here to mails us for any queries. ci.leoburnett at gmail.com WATCH ten films that made it to the showreel here: http://www.campaignindia.in/Article/261251,leo-burnett-and-campaign-india-presents-8216cannes-2011-prediction-reel8217-contest.aspx --------------------------------------------- Piya Bawari - Auditions Be part of the journey to Eternal Love....... Piya Bawari the Indian contemporary dance ballet Based on the love story of Radha Krishna and Meera. Calling all candidates with experience in dance and/or drama If you think you have the talent to go on professional stage, The experience to be a part of an international dance company Or have enough passion for dance and drama Be a part of this first of its kind Indian dance production Audition details: July 1st (11am – 4pm) at Voltas Studio, Dubai Community Theatre and Arts Center, Ductac, 2nd Floor, Mall Of The Emirates. July 2nd (11am – 4pm) Roof Studio, Obaidulla Bldg., Murraquabad Street, Above Soofi Persian Restaurant, Deira. (Registration starts at 10.30am. Please ensure punctuality) Age group: 15 - 35 yrs (male and female) Additional Information: Although the dance style for this ballet is Indian semi-classical, we invite and welcome all dancers who have experience in dance and drama aspects. The candidates will be required to perform for, maximum of 2 mins duration. (Kindly carry your required music in audio CD format) Once candidates are selected for the show, they will be required to participate in the Workshops which we will be conducting during the months of July and August culminating in a grand show to be staged at Center Point Theatre, Ductac in September 2011. Register with us online at www.maayavi.com From rohitrellan at aol.in Tue Jun 21 16:52:25 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 07:22:25 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] 13th Mumbai Film Festival -- Call For Entries In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CDFE1CA1D6075A-B80-58D8@webmail-d127.sysops.aol.com> 13th Mumbai Film Festival October 13-20, 2011 Call for Entries The festival accepts feature-length films for its various competitive and non- competitive sections. NO ENTRY FEE Entry forms and screeners for selection must reach the festival office before August 1st, 2011 International Competition for the First Feature film of directors Cash Awards: US$ 100,000 for the Best Film and US $ 50,000 for the Grand Prize Audience Choice Award: US$ 20,000 awarded to any film voted by the audience from any section of the festival (excepting retrospectives / tributes) 10% of the cash award goes to the Sales Agents / distributors who enter the award winning films in the Festival Sections: I. International Competition for the First Feature Films of Directors More 2. Above the Cut (First Feature Films which could not be included in the competition Section) More 3. World Cinema (Award Winning, Critically acclaimed feature films produced during the one year period after the last edition of the Festival) More 4. Dimensions Mumbai (A short film competition for the youth of Mumbai). More 5. Harmony Celebrate Age (International Competition for films dealing with the concerns, spice, fun and adventure of growing older) More 6. Real Reel (A selection of feature length documentaries) 7. Indian Frame (A selection of high quality Indian Films) More 8. New Faces in Indian Cinema (first or second films of directors) More 9. Retrospectives / Tributes / Master Classes More Film Business Centre is a B2B networking platform and provides opportunities for the buyers, sellers and co-producers to come together. More Mumbai Film Festival showcases the best of contemporary world cinema, Indian cinema and feature length documentaries. The Festival is a highly regarded and anticipated event in Mumbai’s cultural calendar, attracting leading international filmmakers, industry professionals, together with large public audiences. Mumbai Film Festival, organized by MAMI is a Reliance Big Entertainment Ltd. (RBEL) initiative which is the flagship media and entertainment arm of India's Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. For more information please log on to www.mumbaifilmfest.com We look forward to welcoming you and your films in Mumbai! Mumbai Film festival is also on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/mumbaifilmfest and Twitter: http://twitter.com/mumbaifilmfest 13th Mumbai Film Festival Mumbai Academy of Moving Image(MAMI) 49/50, Maruti Chambers, 3rd Floor, Fun Republic Lane, Off Veera Desai Extn. Road, Andheri (W), Mumbai - 400 053, INDIA. T : +91-22-4016 8223 (Board) / 4016 8221, F : +91-22-4016 8222 E: info at mumbaifilmfest.com | mumbaifilmfest at gmail.com W: www.mumbaifilmfest.com From swadhin_sen at yahoo.com Wed Jun 22 01:57:57 2011 From: swadhin_sen at yahoo.com (Swadhin Sen) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:27:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] On Singur Bill In-Reply-To: <124C36EB-1F54-442F-B854-38937ED4C191@sarai.net> References: <124C36EB-1F54-442F-B854-38937ED4C191@sarai.net> Message-ID: <1308688077.789.YahooMailRC@web130204.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Dear all Are there any other inputs on the Singur Bill? Bests, Swadhin Swadhin Sen Archaeologist - Associate Professor Dept.of Archaeology Tel: +88 02 779 10 45-51 Ext. 1326 JahangirnagarUniversity Mobile: +88 0172 019 61 76 Savar,Dhaka. Bangladesh Fax: +88 02 779 10 52 swadhin_sen at yahoo.com; swadhinsen at hotmail.com www.juniv.edu ________________________________ From: Jeebesh To: Reader List Sent: Tue, June 21, 2011 1:46:15 PM Subject: [Reader-list] On Singur Bill dear All, Here is Partha Chaterjee on the Singur Bill. http://telegraphindia.com/1110619/jsp/opinion/story_14121137.jsp warmly jeebesh _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> From siddharth at videovolunteers.org Wed Jun 22 12:07:14 2011 From: siddharth at videovolunteers.org (Siddharth Pillai) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:07:14 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for IndiaUnheard Community Correspondents: Nominate Your Candidates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Friends, Can you help us identify a new group of IndiaUnheard Community Correspondents? We're looking for passionate community members whom we can train to become the voice of their communities. As you may know, Video Volunteers launched its community news service, IndiaUnheard, on 3rd of May 2010. Since then, we have trained 45 people to be community correspondents; together these people have produced 275 videos. You can see the videos on our website http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/, where we are currently releasing one video per day. VV's goal is to eventually have one "Community Correspondent" in each of India's 645+ districts. So it's time for us to recruit the next batch of correspondents! Can you help? Since you are associated with grassroots communities in India, we are asking you once again for nominations from your circle. Please take a moment to think of people who would benefit from this opportunity, and who could become skilled communicators of the social causes we are fighting for. *Here are the criteria for candidates we will accept. They must be:* · From disadvantaged backgrounds or marginalized communities · Creative, intelligent and enterprising · Involved in social movements or NGOs · Speak, read and write either Hindi or English They do not need any media or journalism experience. VV will provide them equipment, training and a stipend. As community correspondents, their job will be to produce a minimum of two short videos a month on different community issues, as part of a large network of community correspondents, from every state in India. *We are particularly looking for women.* The applications must reach us by 10th July 2011. Read the overview of the program HERE Fill out the application HEREalong with the activist you are nominating Read the FAQ, and get all your questions about the program answered Once again, here's a chance to offer a new direction to the grassroots activists you know. It's a chance to equip the communities you work in with relevant communication tools and enable them to report on everything from rights violations to successful struggles against oppression. Looking forward to your help and solidarity in finding the right people. With many thanks, Stalin K., Jessica Mayberry and the Video Volunteers team http://videovolunteers.org email: info at videovolunteers.org From nagraj.adve at gmail.com Wed Jun 22 12:12:25 2011 From: nagraj.adve at gmail.com (Nagraj Adve) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:12:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: mass extinctions in the seas In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: In one Modesty Blaise novel, a baddie makes a small animal eat its own limbs. That, more or less, is what we are doing to ourselves. Problem is, we are doing a lot else to other species. Naga 'Shocking' state of seas threatens mass extinction, say marine experts Overfishing and pollution putting fish, sharks and whales in extreme danger – with extinction 'inevitable', study finds Fiona Harvey , environment correspondent - guardian.co.uk , Monday 20 June 2011 19.21 BST - Article history [image: Coral Reef, Raja Ampat, West Papua, Indonesia] [image: View larger picture] Record high temperatures during 1998 wiped out 16% of all tropical coral reefs. Photograph: Darryl Leniuk/Radius Images/Corbis Fish, sharks, whales and other marine species are in imminent danger of an "unprecedented" and catastrophic extinction event at the hands of humankind, and are disappearing at a far faster rate than anyone had predicted, a study of the world's oceanshas found. Mass extinction of species will be "inevitable" if current trends continue, researchers said. Overfishing, pollution , run-off of fertilisers from farming and the acidification of the seas caused by increasing carbon dioxide emissions are combining to put marine creatures in extreme danger, according to the report from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (Ipso), prepared at the first international workshop to consider all of the cumulative stresses affecting the oceansat Oxford University. The international panel of marine experts said there was a "high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history". They said the challenges facing the oceans created "the conditions associated with every previous major extinction of species in Earth's history". "The findings are shocking," said Alex Rogers, scientific director of Ipso. "As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the ocean, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised. This is a very serious situation demanding unequivocal action at every level. We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime, and worse, our children's and generations beyond that." The flow of soil nutrients into the oceans is creating huge "dead zones", where anoxia - the absence of oxygen - and hypoxia - low oxygen levels - mean fish and other marine lifeare unable to survive there. Hypoxia and anoxia, warming and acidificationare factors present in every mass extinction event in the oceans over the Earth's history, according to scientific research. About 55m years ago, as much as half of some species of deep-sea creatures were wiped out when atmospheric changes created similar conditions. In recent years, human effects on the oceanshave increased significantly. Overfishing has cut some fish populations by more than 90%. Pollutants, including flame-retardant chemicals and detergents are absorbed into particles of plastic waste in the sea, which are then ingested by marine creatures. Millions of fish, birds and other forms of life are choked or suffer internal ruptures from ingesting plastic waste. During 1998, record high temperatures wiped out about 16% of the world's tropical coral reefs . The scientists called on the United Nations and governments to bring in measures to conserve marine ecosystems. Dan Laffoley, of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, said: "The world's leading experts on oceans are surprised by the rate and magnitude of changes we are seeing. The challenges for the future of the oceans are vast, but unlike previous generations we know what now needs to happen. The time to protect the blue heart of our planet is now, today and urgent". From rohitrellan at aol.in Thu Jun 23 07:27:11 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 21:57:11 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Dramatech presents Repeat Shows HAZARON KHWAHISHEN AISI 3 one-act plays 25-26 June. BHOOT, DO BEHNEN & Monkey's Paw: 7pm Alliance Francaise In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CDFF60002AB35E-FA4-6F56F@webmail-m004.sysops.aol.com> DRAMATECH PRESENTS HAZARONKHWAHISHEN AISI An evening of 3 one-act plays inHindi. Based on the theme of Temptation. Premchand's BHOOT A classic story by the master,with a strong moral, delivered in his lively, engaging and insightful manner. Dramatised & Directed bySunil Chaudhary Premchand's DOBEHNEN Witty characterisation of twosisters pursuing their separate lives that are destined to clash. Again inthe inimitable humorous, sarcastic style of the author. Dramatised by Tarun Dangwal Directed by Saurav Padhi W W Jacob's THEMONKEY'S PAW (in Hindi) A college classic, a horror storythat defines the price of interfering with fate Adapted by Vivek Shrivastava Directed by Tuhin Dates: Sat-Sun 18,19,25,26 June2011 Venue: Alliance Francaise, LodhiRoad, New Delhi Tickets: Rs. 200 available at venue on show days from 4pm. For clips from previous plays: www.dramatech.in For more information: Tel7838369717 -- dramatech - a tradition of good theatre From itsnishant at gmail.com Thu Jun 23 17:43:42 2011 From: itsnishant at gmail.com (Nishant Shah) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 17:43:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Internet Surveillance Policy: "...the second time as farce?"; Public lecture by Caspar Bowden Message-ID: Dear All, I am sure this is going to be of interest to a lot of people on the group. Please do come for the lecture if you are in Bangalore. Also, feel free to distribute this widely to people and communities that you think might find this interesting. I apologies for cross-posting. Warmly Nishant *Internet Surveillance Policy: “…the second time as farce?” – A Public Lecture by Caspar Bowden * *The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, invites you to a public lecture by Caspar Bowden*, the Chief Privacy Adviser of Microsoft’s Worldwide Technology Office, on Internet Surveillance Policy: “…the second time as farce?* Abstract In 2000, as Director of the independent think-tank, "Foundation for Information Policy Research", Caspar led a campaign to revise several aspects of a new comprehensive UK law governing electronic surveillance ("the RIP Act"). UK legislated in this area many years before most other countries, and the approach was widely criticized although some amendments were achieved. After a hiatus of a decade, many Commonwealth countries are now copying the RIP law (evidently unaware of the original controversies over its defects). Caspar will discuss the legal-technical intricacies of such legislation, the underlying policy dilemmas, the background context of the failed 1990s policy of “key escrow”, and the subsequent privacy catastrophe of blanket retention of the “traffic data” of all of the 500m citizens of the EU. Caspar Bowden Caspar Bowden is Microsoft's Worldwide Technology Officer for Privacy, providing advice on technology policy matters concerning privacy in over 40 countries, with particular focus on Europe and regions with horizontal privacy law. His goal is to ensure that users of Microsoft products and services are in control of their personal data and that fair information practices are respected. He is a specialist in data protection policy, privacy enhancing technology research, identity management and authentication. Earlier he was the director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research and was also an expert adviser to the UK Parliament for the passage of three bills concerning privacy issues, and was co-organizer of the influential Scrambling for Safety public conferences on UK encryption and surveillance policy. His previous career over two decades ranged from investment banking (proprietary trading risk-management for option arbitrage), to software engineering (graphics engines and cryptography), including work for Goldman Sachs, Microsoft Consulting Services, Acorn, Research Machines, and IBM. Who should attend? This public talk aims to engage in a dialogue with anybody interested in questions of technology, surveillance, policy and the politics of Internet based governance. Students, research scholars, academics, practitioners, those in the business of technology development, design and study, are invited to attend the lecture that approaches the issue from different angles of technology, society and politics. Entry: Free; Limited Seating Registration recommended: prasad at cis-india.org * *Caspar is speaking in his private capacity and his remarks do not necessarily reflect any official Microsoft position* Date: Jun 27, 2011 Venue: TERI Complex, Domlur 2nd Stage, Bangalore Time: 5.00 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. -- Nishant Shah Doctoral Candidate, CSCS, Bangalore. Director (Research), Centre for Internet and Society,( www.cis-india.org ) Asia Awards Fellow, 2008-09 # 00-91-9740074884 From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Thu Jun 23 18:58:32 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:58:32 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Hazare - an Evaluation Message-ID: ___________________________________________ >From pragoti.org Why Anna is not Gandhi Awanish As concerned leftists, we must defend important national-bourgeois thinkers of modern persuasion. When I see Anna Hazare being transformed into Gandhi, I feel the need to rescue Gandhi. I have many fundamental disagreements with Gandhi and his politics. In fact, I see little point in Gandhism in all its political variants and believe that it has committed much harm to Indian society in many crucial respects. Nevertheless, Anna is not Gandhi because his movement is not based on a coherent critique of the capitalist system. Gandhi’s approach to economics dealt with the “ethical” aspects of economic behaviour. Corruption, then, is a violation of this ethical code pertaining to consumption and accumulation. While it is correct to say that many of his ideas were result of his idiosyncratic insistence at individual levels, it certainly had a systemic element against “industrial modernity” following, among others, Tolstoy and Ruskin. Anna’s politics is woven around corruption but does not make any such connection between ethics and economics, leave alone presenting a critique of neoliberal capitalism which thrives on corruption of “moral” and (extra) legal varieties. Secondly, Gandhi believed in “political action” where truth is negotiated between individuals. In this respect, it is obvious that even when he pretended to invoke his “inner voice”, he was not deceitful or misleading in propagation of his political project. Even his strongest adversaries were aware of his political goals and methods. Everybody, hence, dealt with Gandhi in their own respective ways. Anna, on the other hand, is fraudulent since nobody (not even his supporters like Mallika Sarabhai and Prashant Bhushan) knows his alignments with RSS, Ramdev, Ravi Shankar and BJP. Thirdly, Gandhi, in his utopia, believed in a stateless society. Modern states, according to him, were founded and maintained not through “soul-force” but “brute-force”. The individual, in his/her capacity of a satyagrahi, was given some agency as the arbiter of moral and political action. This transformation of authority from an abstract absolutism to the sphere of individual action, at least, constituted a modern approach to political action. Since every individual is entitled to his own truth and he/she can base his actions on it, religious or such authority is then reduced to “pure ethics”. On the contrary, Anna’s soldiers are steeped in “brute force” and far from integrated into the politics of our times. The mobilisation and public posturing in this movement circle around religious symbols and fake sadhus. Their political project, by their own admission now, is based on a Hitler-type dictatorship. Fourthly, Gandhian mobilisation was reasonably successful because it had some basis in the economic struggles of its time (see Habib 1995). The popularity of Gandhi among peasants was a result of his consistent upholding of certain immediate issues concerning them. Anna’s movement is based on “immoral” class basis. Its goal is to enable accumulation at the altar of neoliberalism by cleaning up the base. Finally, Gandhi’s moral authority, at least, in his last days flowed from his brave personal acts of fighting “communalism”. It can be argued that he laid his life fighting communalism in its worst forms. Anna’s authority, even in his small village, comes from fear and force. His views about caste and democracy are fascist, as is clear from his recent pronouncements on electoral politics and Modi. In his article, Mukul Sharma quotes Anna as saying this about Dalits in his village, ...we started telling them the reasons why people kept them at a distance. We said that the society condemns you because your way of living is dirty, your food habits are dirty, and your thinking is dirty. Therefore, you have to change. With such constant hammering, the dalits were also made vegetarian (Sharma 2006, p. 1984, emphasis added). Also, The integration of dalits into an ideal village has two components in Ralegan. One is to assume that they were always there to perform some duties and necessary services and that their usefulness justifies their existence in the present...(T)he other component is hegemonic, designed to get dalits into a brahaminical fold (ibid., p. 1986). The villagers are beaten up, publicly flogged and serve under a controlled regime under Anna Hazare. Even when that is not the case, it is anti-democratic and has no place for social-economic mobility of Dalits. Anna Hazare is casteist and fascist, that too slyly in his public and political life. All references to previous political movements and personalities are mistaken. He does not deserve to be compared to Gandhi or anybody else. References Habib, Irfan (1995). “Gandhi and the National Movement”, Social Scientist, Vol. 23, No. 4/6, pp. 3-15. Sharma, Mukul (2006). “The Making of Moral Authority: Anna Hazare and Watershed Management Programme in Ralegan Siddhi”, Economic and Political Weekly, May 20, pp. 1981-88. ______________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Fri Jun 24 07:54:39 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 07:54:39 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] WB: Struggle against eviction of ~ 30000 villagers Message-ID: ___________________________________________________ CITU Denounces Police Atrocity THE Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) has denounced the brutal lathicharge by police on a peaceful demonstration of around 15,000 villagers and coalmine workers who were opposing the eviction of the villagers and contract workers residing and cultivating in the land adjoining the coalmines of Eastern Coalfields Ltd in Pandabeswar area of West Bengal. The police lathicharge on the villagers and workers who were peacefully squatting since the last few days against the eviction order issued by Eastern Coalfields Ltd has left several people severely injured. These include the CITU leader and local MLA, Gauranga Chatterjee, who received severe head injuries and was admitted to a hospital in serious condition. In a statement issued on June 22, the CITU described as shocking as well as deplorable the fact that the management of a central government company like Eastern Coal Fields (ECL) sought to evict around 30,000 poor villagers and contract workers from 11 villages adjoining Pandabeswar just to hand over the area to private mining contractors. The threatened villagers include peasants, bargadars, agricultural workers etc, apart from mine workers. The Colliery Mazdoor Sabha of India (CITU) had already lodged their protest against the ECL’s eviction order in favour of a few private contractors and joined the villagers in protest programmes. While protesting against the police atrocities, the All India Coal Workers Federation of India has decided to hold a protest demonstration in all the collieries throughout the country on 24th June 2011 and urged all the coal workers’ unions irrespective of affiliations to join the protest action. While condemning the police atrocity as well as the evil ploy of ECL management to oblige the private contractors by forcibly dislodging more than 30,000 villagers, that too without any appropriate compensation and rehabilitation covering all affected people, the CITU has demanded that the government of India and the coal minister in particular must restrain the ECL management from such this forcible eviction drive. It has also urged upon the state government to take action against the police officials responsible for the barbaric lathicharge on a peaceful democratic protest. __________________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Fri Jun 24 08:06:27 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 08:06:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Debunking Western Propaganda on China Message-ID: Revisiting Alleged 30 Million Famine Deaths during China’s Great Leap Utsa Patnaik THIRTY years ago, a highly successful vilification campaign was launched against Mao Zedong, saying that a massive famine in which 27 to 30 million people died in China took place during the Great Leap period, 1958 to 1961, which marked the formation of the people’s communes under his leadership. The main basis of this assertion was, first, the population deficit in China during 1958 to 1961 and, second, the work of two North American demographers, A J Coale (Rapid Population Change in China 1952-1982, 1982) and Judith Banister (China’s Changing Population, 1987). No one bothered to look at the highly dubious method through which these demographers had arrived at their apocalyptic figures. The ‘estimate’ was later widely publicised by Amartya K Sen who built an entire theory, saying that democratic freedom, especially press freedom, in India meant that famine was avoided while its absence in China explains why the world did not know that such a massive famine had taken place until as much as a quarter century later when the North American demographers painstakingly uncovered it. The capitalist press was happy to reciprocate the compliment by repeatedly writing of “30 million famine deaths,” to the extent that a fiction was established as historical fact in readers’ minds. The London Economist had a special issue on China some years ago, which repeated the allegation of 30 million deaths in three separate articles and refused to publish the Letter to the Editor this author sent contradicting the claim. More recently, in his Introduction to the book Mao Zedong on Practice and Contradiction, which he edited and published in 2006, Slavoj Zizek also mentioned the figure of 30 millions as though it were a given fact. Well known intellectuals have to be taken seriously and the claim examined. TWO ROUTES There are two routes through which very large ‘famine deaths’ have been claimed --- firstly, population deficit and, secondly, imputing births and deaths which did not actually take place. Looking at China’s official population data from its 1953 and 1964 censuses, we see that if the rate of population increase up to 1958 had been maintained, the population should have been 27 million higher over the period over 1959-1961 than it actually was. This population deficit is also discussed by the demographers Pravin Visaria and Leela Visaria. The population deficit was widely equated with ‘famine deaths.’ But 18 million of the people alleged to have died in a famine were not born in the first place. The decline in the birth rate from 29 in 1958 to 18 in 1961 is being counted as famine deaths. The Chinese are a highly talented people, but they have not learnt the art of dying without being born. There is a basic responsibility that everyone, and more particularly academics, has to be clear and precise about. To say or write that “27 million people died in the famine in China” conveys to the reader that people who were actually present and alive, starved to death. But this did not actually happen and the statement that it did is false. China had lowered it death rate sharply from 20 to 12 per thousand between 1953 and 1958. (India did not reach the latter level until over a quarter century later.) After the radical land reforms and the formation of rural cooperatives, there were mass campaigns to clean up the environment and do away with disease bearing pests while a basic rural health care system was put in place. That a dramatic reduction in the rural death rate was achieved, is not disputed by anyone. During the early commune formation from 1958, there was a massive mobilisation of peasants for a stupendous construction effort, which completely altered for a few years the normal patterns of peasant family life. Women were drawn into the workforce, communal kitchens were established and children looked after in crèches as most of the able-bodied population moved to irrigation and other work sites during the slack season. We find a graphic description of this period of mass mobilisation in Wiliam Hinton’s Shenfan. When this author spent three weeks in China in 1983, visiting several communes --- which still existed at that time --- she was told every time that “we built our water conservation system during the Great Leap.” The birth rate fall from 1959 had to do with labour mobilisation, and not low nutrition since the 1958 foodgrain output was exceptionally good at 200 million tons (mt). HOLES IN THE ARGUMENT There was excess mortality compared to the 1958 level over the next three years, of a much smaller order. Let us be clear on the basic facts about what did happen: there was a run of three years of bad harvests in China --- drought in some parts, floods in others, and pest attacks. Foodgrain output fell from the 1958 good harvest of 200 mt to 170 mt in 1959 and further to 143.5 mt in 1960, with 1961 registering a small recovery to 147 million tons. This was a one-third decline, larger than the one-quarter decline India saw during its mid-1960s drought and food crisis. Grain output drop coincided in time with the formation of the communes, and this lent itself to a fallacious causal link being argued by the academics who were inclined to do so, and they blamed the commune formation for the output decline. One can much more plausibly argue precisely the opposite --- that without the egalitarian distribution that the communes practised, the impact on people of the output decline, which arose for independent reasons and would have taken place anyway, would have been far worse. Further, without the 46,000 reservoirs built with collective labour on the communes up to 1980, the effects of later droughts would have been very severe. Recovery to the 200 million ton level took place only by 1965. Throughout, however, the per capita foodgrain output in China even during the worst year, 1960, remained substantially above that in India. As output declined from 1959, there was a rise in the officially measured death rate from 12 in 1958 to 14.6 in 1959, followed by a sharp rise in 1960 to 25.4 per thousand, falling the next year to 14.2 and further to 10 in 1962. While, clearly, 1960 was an abnormal year with about 8 million deaths in excess of the 1958 level, note that this peak official ‘famine’ death rate of 25.4 per thousand in China was little different from India’s 24.8 death rate in the same year which was considered quite normal and attracted no criticism. If we take the remarkably low death rate of 12 per thousand that China had achieved by 1958 as the benchmark, and calculate the deaths in excess of this over the period 1959 to 1961, it totals 11.5 million. This is the maximal estimate of possible ‘famine deaths.’ Even this order of excess deaths is puzzling given the egalitarian distribution in China, since its average grain output per head was considerably above India’s level even in the worst year, and India saw no generalised famine in the mid-1960s. IDEOLOGICAL BIAS Relative to China’s population, this figure of plausible excess mortality is low and it did not satisfy the academics in northern universities who have been always strongly opposed to socialised production. Coale’s and Banister’s estimates gave them the ammunition they were looking for to attack the communes. How exactly do Coale and Banister reach a figure of ‘famine deaths’ which is three times higher than the maximal plausible estimate? Examining carefully how they arrived at 30 million ‘famine deaths’ estimate, we find that the figure was manufactured by using indefensible assumptions, and has had no scholarly basis. In the 1982 census, there was a survey on fertility covering one million persons or a mere 0.1 per cent sample of the population, who were asked about births and deaths from the early 1950s onwards. The very high total fertility rate obtained from this 1982 survey is used by them to say that millions more were actually born between the two census years, 1953 and 1964, than were officially recorded. They ignore the birth rate of 37 per thousand derived from a very much larger 1953 sample which had covered five per cent of all households and was specially designed to collect the information on births and deaths used in the official estimates. Instead, they impute birth rates of 43 to 44 per thousand to the 1950s, using the 1982 survey. There is no justification for such an arbitrary procedure of using a much later reported high fertility rate for a long distant past. We know that a distant recall period makes responses inaccurate. These imputed extra births between 1953 and 1964 total a massive 50 million but according to them did not increase by an iota the 1964 population total, 694.6 million, the official figure which they assume as correct. Thus, although all official birth and death rates are rejected by them, the official population totals are accepted. This opportunistic assumption is clearly necessary for their purpose because it allows them to assert that the same number of extra people died between 1953 and 1964, as the extra people they claim were born. FALLACIOUS CLAIMS But the demographers are still not satisfied with the 50 million extra births and deaths that they have conjured up. Fitting a linear time trend to the falling death rate of the early fifties is done to say that deaths should have continued to decline steeply after 1958 and since it did not, the difference from the trend meant additional ‘famine deaths.’ Such straight-line trend fitting is a senseless procedure since the death rate necessarily shows non-linear behaviour. It cannot continue falling at the same steep rate; it has to flatten out and cannot reach zero in any population --- not even the inimitable Chinese people could hope to become immortal. The final estimate of extra deaths in both authors is raised thereby to a massive 60 million, a heroic 65 per cent higher than the official total of deaths over the inter-censal period. Having created these 60 million extra deaths at their own sweet will out of nothing, the authors then proceed to allocate them over the years 1953 to 1964, arbitrarily attributing a higher portion to the great leap years in particular. The arbitrariness is clear from the variation in their own manipulations of the figures. Coale’s allocation raises his peak death rate in 1960 to 38.8 per thousand while Banister is bolder and raises it to 44.6 compared to the official 25.4 for that year, and 30 million ‘famine deaths’ are claimed over the Great Leap years after all this smart legerdemain. Having violated every tenet of reason, these ‘academics’ may as well have allocated all their imaginary deaths to the Great Leap years and claimed that 60 million died --- why hang themselves only for a lamb rather than for a sheep! Seldom have we seen basic norms of academic probity and honesty being more blatantly violated, than in this travesty of statistical ‘estimates.’ And seldom have noted intellectuals, who might have been expected to show more common sense, shown instead more credulous naivete and irresponsibility, by accepting without investigation and propagating such nonsensical ‘estimates,’ giving them the status of historical fact. In the process, they have libelled and continue to libel Mao Zedong, a great patriot and revolutionary. They have unwittingly confirmed the principle attributed to Goebbels --- that a lie has to be a really big lie and be endlessly repeated; then it is bound to be believed. Thirty million or three crores is not a small figure. When one million people died in Britain’s colony, Ireland, in 1846-47, the world knew about it. When three million people died in the 1943-44 Bengal famine, the fact that a famine occurred was known. Yet 30 million people are supposed to have died in China without anyone knowing at that time that a famine took place. The reason no one knew about it is simple, for a massive famine did not take place at all. The intellectuals who quote the massive famine deaths figure of 30 million today, are no doubt outstandingly clever in the small, im kleinen, but are proving themselves to be rather foolish im grossen, in the large. A person has to be very foolhardy indeed to say that 30 million people died in a famine without anyone including the foreign diplomats in China and the China-watchers abroad having the slightest inkling of it. And those who credulously believe this claim and uncritically repeat it show an even greater folly than the originators of the claim. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From tapasrayx at gmail.com Fri Jun 24 09:39:23 2011 From: tapasrayx at gmail.com (Tapas Ray [Gmail]) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 09:39:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Another nail ... Message-ID: http://www.hindu.com/2011/06/24/stories/2011062465271700.htm Jairam loses “no-go” battle, allows coal mining in forested Hasdeo Arand Special Correspondent Blocks not actually within the biodiversity-rich region, he says Stage-I forest clearance granted to three blocks in the region Ramesh over-ruled advice of his own Forest Advisory Committee to grant approval NEW DELHI: The bastion of Hasdeo-Arand has finally been broken. One year after saying that the coalfields of this heavily-forested, mineral rich region of Chhattisgarh would never be open to miners, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has finally granted a stage-I forest clearance to three blocks in the region: Tara, Parsa East and Kante Basan. “Yes, these are the first Hasdeo-Arand blocks to be opened up,” Mr. Ramesh told The Hindu, adding that the blocks are “clearly on the fringe” and not actually within the biodiversity-rich region. He had declared the region a “no-go” zone last year. “But they are the first and the last,” he vowed. Minister's assurance The approval is contingent on the Chhattisgarh government not coming up with fresh applications for opening up the main Hasdeo-Arand area, and the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister has reportedly given such an assurance. In return, Mr. Ramesh is proposing a “green bonus” – either in cash or electricity – to be given to the State as compensation for not developing the coal-rich area. The approval is also contingent on full compliance with the Forest Rights Act, which means that any dwellers in the area must have their forest land rights settled, and accept the mining projects. Mr. Ramesh over-ruled the recommendations of his own Forest Advisory Committee to grant the approval. He had rejected the proposals three times – in January, July and October 2010 – but came under intense pressure from other Ministries, the State governments involved, and the Prime Minister's Office this time around, according to sources in his Ministry. The decision comes after an 18 month-long battle waged between the Coal and Power Ministries on the one hand, and the Environment Ministry on the other. While the underlying debate revolved around the key issues of industrial development and growth versus environment and sustainability, the immediate battlefield was the “go” and “no-go” zones devised to prevent coal-mining in the heavily forested regions of Central India. Hasdeo-Arand was a poster case. Below the thick forest cover lie billions of tonnes of coal reserves, much of which has already been allotted to various private and government applicants by the Coal Ministry. However, without the Environment Ministry's nod, in accordance with the Forest Conservation Act [FCA], none of the applicants can actually start mining their blocks. For months, Mr. Ramesh has held that the FCA's provisions do not allow a clearance for Hasdeo-Arand. He now says he has changed his mind based on a set of reasons. The first is that these blocks are “in the fringe” of the area, separated by a hilly ridge, creating a different watershed. He also acknowledged compromises made by the miners in order to reduce the number of trees cut and the number of years of mining operations, and to protect wildlife. “When the project proponent is prepared to demonstrate some flexibility to accommodate our concerns, I think we should also reciprocate,” he said. Mr. Ramesh also invoked the “broader developmental picture,” and argued that since the coal-blocks are linked to supercritical thermal power plants – which emit less greenhouse gases to produce more power than their smaller counterparts – they should be approved. Printer friendly page Send this article to Friends by E-Mail From chiarapassa at gmail.com Fri Jun 24 13:25:42 2011 From: chiarapassa at gmail.com (Chiara Passa) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 09:55:42 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] "Tales form space" OUT NOW! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear friends, I'm glad to share with you my latest artwork: "Tales from space", a generative video-installation based on the theory of the quantum mechanics. "Tales from Space" develops in a hollow space or under a dome. The viewer is surrounded by the projections and listens to short sentences about the concept of multidimensional-space. The words, generating a barrage of random points, blacks holes, micro-flash-dimensions and macro forms of light that intersect each other; envelope themselves, double back, widen and shrink, depending on the spectrum modulation of the sound narrative that is based on the concept of quantum mechanics. Demo video extract: http://www.chiarapassa.it/videoenglish.html Images: http://www.chiarapassa.it/talesfromspaceimages.html Best regards, Chiara -- Chiara Passa chiarapassa at gmail.com http://www.chiarapassa.it http://www.ideasonair.net http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiara_Passa (ita) Skype: ideasonair From nagraj.adve at gmail.com Fri Jun 24 15:22:35 2011 From: nagraj.adve at gmail.com (Nagraj Adve) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:22:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Ramesh Agrawal's Bail Rejected in High Court. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sagar Dhara Date: 23 June 2011 13:32 Subject: Re: [Opposingcoalpower] Ramesh Agrawal's Bail Rejected in High Court. To: opposingcoalpower at googlegroups.com Very shocking and sad news indeed. We have already begun translating the FIR and will send out a short note by tomorrow morning covering the facts as we have gathered them from Raigarh in our recent visit. I am in Delhi Mon thru Thu next week and have been talking to several friends there to set up a platform and hold a meeting Tue or Wed evening. We intend writing a longer report later next week. Meanwhile, please think of ways and means of highlighting this issue in public platforms. Peace. Sagar On 23 June 2011 13:05, Ramesh Agrawal wrote: > Dear All, > > shockingly, even the bilaspur High Court has rejected the bail of Ramesh > Agarwal. The court observed that the session judge has rejected the bail on > technical ground of not mentioning the fact of pendency of anticipatory > bail, so bail not rejected on merits. Phathetically, the high court judge > observed that first get the matter decided by the session court again on > merits, then if he again rejects the bail - come to high court. But, we > insisted to decided on merits for substantial justice. Ultimately the bail > application was rejected on technical ground, as well some observations on > merits. > Regards > Raman > 9827470660 > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "opposingcoalpower" group. > To post to this group, send an email to opposingcoalpower at googlegroups.com . > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > opposingcoalpower+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/opposingcoalpower?hl=en-GB. > From chiarapassa at gmail.com Fri Jun 24 16:14:46 2011 From: chiarapassa at gmail.com (Chiara Passa) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:44:46 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] "Tales form space" OUT NOW! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear friends, I'm glad to share with you my latest artwork: "Tales from space", a generative video-installation based on the theory of the quantum mechanics. "Tales from Space" develops in a hollow space or under a dome. The viewer is surrounded by the projections and listens to short sentences about the concept of multidimensional-space. The words, generating a barrage of random points, blacks holes, micro-flash-dimensions and macro forms of light that intersect each other; envelope themselves, double back, widen and shrink, depending on the spectrum modulation of the sound narrative that is based on the concept of quantum mechanics. Demo video extract: http://www.chiarapassa.it/videoenglish.html Images: http://www.chiarapassa.it/talesfromspaceimages.html Best regards, Chiara -- Chiara Passa chiarapassa at gmail.com http://www.chiarapassa.it http://www.ideasonair.net http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiara_Passa (ita) Skype: ideasonair From ujwala at openspaceindia.org Fri Jun 24 19:02:24 2011 From: ujwala at openspaceindia.org (Ujwala Samarth) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:02:24 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Learning and unlearning Message-ID: A young american woman walked into our office one morning, and before we knew it, we were trading 'school stories'... here's hers: * Walking Out To Be A Swapthagami * http://www.openspaceindia.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=732&Itemid=149 -- Ujwala Samarth (Programme Coordinator, Open Space) www.openspaceindia.org www.infochangeindia.org http://www.facebook.com/pages/Open-Space/116557125037041 B-301, Kanchanjunga Building, Kanchan Lane, Off Law College Rd,, Pune 411004 (020-25457371) From rohitrellan at aol.in Fri Jun 24 21:00:13 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 11:30:13 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Screening of the dialogue between Octavio Paz and Raimon Panikkar, New Delhi/ "The Red Sufi" at RAI Film Festival London/ Documentry Screening on 26th June, Jalandhar, Punjab Message-ID: <8CE009ABF04E5AD-16C8-39CE@Webmail-m121.sysops.aol.com> Screening of the dialogue between Octavio Paz and Raimon Panikkar The screening of the dialogue between the Mexican poet Octavio Paz, and the Indo-Catalan theologian Raimon Panikkar, please note, will be on Tuesday 28th June at 6:30PM. Location: Instituto Cervantes,48,Hanuman Road,Connaught Place,New Delhi-58, Tel:011-43681900 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Red Sufi" at RAI Film Festival London Dear friends and colleagues, Martin Weinhart’s documentary The Red Sufi which covers my pilgrimage experiences in Sehwan Sharif (Sindh/Pakistan) will be shown on Sunday, 26th June, in London during the 12th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film: http://raifilmfest.org.uk/film/festival/2011/home/programme-237 The film had been inspired by the narrative At the Shrine of the Red Sufi (http://www.oup.com.pk/shopexd.asp?id=2013). Would be great if you would circulate this message among your friends and acquaintances. With best wishes and my humble salaam, Wasim ---------- Prof Dr Juergen Wasim Frembgen Munich State Museum of Ethnology Institute of Near and Middle Eastern Studies/University of Munich ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Documentry Screening on 26th June,Jalandhar,Punjab People's Voice presents a documentray show Waves of Revolution Prisoners of Conscience Directed by Anand Patwardhan Venue: Desh Bhagat Yadgar Hall, Jalandhar Date & Time: June 26th, 2011 at 5.00 P.M All are cordly invited From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Sat Jun 25 03:07:34 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 03:07:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Slave labour in US Prisons Message-ID: The Pentagon and Slave Labor in U.S. Prisons by Sara Flounders Prisoners earning 23 cents an hour in U.S. federal prisons are manufacturing high-tech electronic components for Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles, launchers for TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles, and other guided missile systems. A March article by journalist and financial researcher Justin Rohrlich of World in Review is worth a closer look at the full implications of this ominous development. (minyanville.com) The expanding use of prison industries, which pay slave wages, as a way to increase profits for giant military corporations, is a frontal attack on the rights of all workers. Prison labor — with no union protection, overtime pay, vacation days, pensions, benefits, health and safety protection, or Social Security withholding — also makes complex components for McDonnell Douglas/Boeing’s F-15 fighter aircraft, the General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin F-16, and Bell/Textron’s Cobra helicopter. Prison labor produces night-vision goggles, body armor, camouflage uniforms, radio and communication devices, and lighting systems and components for 30-mm to 300-mm battleship anti-aircraft guns, along with land mine sweepers and electro-optical equipment for the BAE Systems Bradley Fighting Vehicle’s laser rangefinder. Prisoners recycle toxic electronic equipment and overhaul military vehicles. Labor in federal prisons is contracted out by UNICOR, previously known as Federal Prison Industries, a quasi-public, for-profit corporation run by the Bureau of Prisons. In 14 prison factories, more than 3,000 prisoners manufacture electronic equipment for land, sea and airborne communication. UNICOR is now the U.S. government’s 39th largest contractor, with 110 factories at 79 federal penitentiaries. The majority of UNICOR’s products and services are on contract to orders from the Department of Defense. Giant multinational corporations purchase parts assembled at some of the lowest labor rates in the world, then resell the finished weapons components at the highest rates of profit. For example, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Corporation subcontract components, then assemble and sell advanced weapons systems to the Pentagon. Increased profits, unhealthy workplaces However, the Pentagon is not the only buyer. U.S. corporations are the world’s largest arms dealers, while weapons and aircraft are the largest U.S. export. The U.S. State Department, Department of Defense and diplomats pressure NATO members and dependent countries around the world into multibillion-dollar weapons purchases that generate further corporate profits, often leaving many countries mired in enormous debt. But the fact that the capitalist state has found yet another way to drastically undercut union workers’ wages and ensure still higher profits to military corporations — whose weapons wreak such havoc around the world — is an ominous development. According to CNN Money, the U.S. highly skilled and well-paid “aerospace workforce has shrunk by 40 percent in the past 20 years. Like many other industries, the defense sector has been quietly outsourcing production (and jobs) to cheaper labor markets overseas.” (Feb. 24) It seems that with prison labor, these jobs are also being outsourced domestically. Meanwhile, dividends and options to a handful of top stockholders and CEO compensation packages at top military corporations exceed the total payment of wages to the more than 23,000 imprisoned workers who produce UNICOR parts. The prison work is often dangerous, toxic and unprotected. At FCC Victorville, a federal prison located at an old U.S. airbase, prisoners clean, overhaul and reassemble tanks and military vehicles returned from combat and coated in toxic spent ammunition, depleted uranium dust and chemicals. A federal lawsuit by prisoners, food service workers and family members at FCI Marianna, a minimum security women’s prison in Florida, cited that toxic dust containing lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic poisoned those who worked at UNICOR’s computer and electronic recycling factory. Prisoners there worked covered in dust, without safety equipment, protective gear, air filtration or masks. The suit explained that the toxic dust caused severe damage to nervous and reproductive systems, lung damage, bone disease, kidney failure, blood clots, cancers, anxiety, headaches, fatigue, memory lapses, skin lesions, and circulatory and respiratory problems. This is one of eight federal prison recycling facilities — employing 1,200 prisoners — run by UNICOR. After years of complaints the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General and the Federal Occupational Health Service concurred in October 2008 that UNICOR has jeopardized the lives and safety of untold numbers of prisoners and staff. (Prison Legal News, Feb. 17, 2009) Racism & U.S. prisons The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any country in the world. With less than 5 percent of the world population, the U.S. imprisons more than 25 percent of all people imprisoned in the world. There are more than 2.3 million prisoners in federal, state and local prisons in the U.S. Twice as many people are under probation and parole. Many tens of thousands of other prisoners include undocumented immigrants facing deportation, prisoners awaiting sentencing and youthful offenders in categories considered reform or detention. The racism that pervades every aspect of life in capitalist society — from jobs, income and housing to education and opportunity — is most brutally reflected by who is caught up in the U.S. prison system. More than 60 percent of U.S. prisoners are people of color. Seventy percent of those being sentenced under the three strikes law in California — which requires mandatory sentences of 25 years to life after three felony convictions — are people of color. Nationally, 39 percent of African-American men in their 20s are in prison, on probation or on parole. The U.S. imprisons more people than South Africa did under apartheid. (Linn Washington, “Incarceration Nation”) The U.S. prison population is not only the largest in the world — it is relentlessly growing. The U.S. prison population is more than five times what it was 30 years ago. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan became president, there were 400,000 prisoners in the U.S. Today the number exceeds 2.3 million. In California the prison population soared from 23,264 in 1980 to 170,000 in 2010. The Pennsylvania prison population climbed from 8,243 to 51,487 in those same years. There are now more African-American men in prison, on probation or on parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began, according to Law Professor Michelle Alexander in the book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” Today a staggering 1-in-100 adults in the U.S. are living behind bars. But this crime, which breaks families and destroys lives, is not evenly distributed. In major urban areas one-half of Black men have criminal records. This means life-long, legalized discrimination in student loans, financial assistance, access to public housing, mortgages, the right to vote and, of course, the possibility of being hired for a job. State Prisons contracting slave labor It is not only federal prisons that contract out prison labor to top corporations. State prisons that used forced prison labor in plantations, laundries and highway chain gangs increasingly seek to sell prison labor to corporations trolling the globe in search of the cheapest possible labor. One agency asks: “Are you experiencing high employee turnover? Worried about the costs of employee benefits? Unhappy with out-of-state or offshore suppliers? Getting hit by overseas competition? Having trouble motivating your workforce? Thinking about expansion space? Then Washington State Department of Corrections Private Sector Partnerships is for you.” (educate-yourself.org, July 25, 2005) Major corporations profiting from the slave labor of prisoners include Motorola, Compaq, Honeywell, Microsoft, Boeing, Revlon, Chevron, TWA, Victoria’s Secret and Eddie Bauer. IBM, Texas Instruments and Dell get circuit boards made by Texas prisoners. Tennessee inmates sew jeans for Kmart and JCPenney. Tens of thousands of youth flipping hamburgers for minimum wages at McDonald’s wear uniforms sewn by prison workers, who are forced to work for much less. In California, as in many states, prisoners who refuse to work are moved to disciplinary housing and lose canteen privileges as well as “good time” credit, which slices hard time off their sentences. Systematic abuse, beatings, prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation, and lack of medical care make U.S. prison conditions among the worst in the world. Ironically, working under grueling conditions for pennies an hour is treated as a “perk” for good behavior. In December, Georgia inmates went on strike and refused to leave their cells at six prisons for more than a week. In one of the largest prison protests in U.S. history, prisoners spoke of being forced to work seven days a week for no pay. Prisoners were beaten if they refused to work. Private prisons for profit In the ruthless search to maximize profits and grab hold of every possible source of income, almost every public agency and social service is being outsourced to private for-profit contractors. In the U.S. military this means there are now more private contractors and mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan than there are U.S. or NATO soldiers. In cities and states across the U.S., hospitals, medical care facilities, schools, cafeterias, road maintenance, water supply services, sewage departments, sanitation, airports and tens of thousands of social programs that receive public funding are being contracted out to for-profit corporations. Anything publicly owned and paid for by generations of past workers’ taxes — from libraries to concert halls and parks — is being sold or leased at fire sale prices. All this is motivated and lobbied for by right-wing think tanks like that set up by Koch Industries and their owners, Charles and David Koch, as a way to cut costs, lower wages and pensions, and undercut public service unions. The most gruesome privatizations are the hundreds of for-profit prisons being established. The inmate population in private for-profit prisons tripled between 1987 and 2007. By 2007 there were 264 such prison facilities, housing almost 99,000 adult prisoners. (house.leg.state.mn.us, Feb. 24, 2009) Companies operating such facilities include the Corrections Corporation of America, the GEO Group Inc. and Community Education Centers. Prison bonds provide a lucrative return for capitalist investors such as Merrill-Lynch, Shearson Lehman, American Express and Allstate. Prisoners are traded from one state to another based on the most profitable arrangements. Militarism and prisons Hand in hand with the military-industrial complex, U.S. imperialism has created a massive prison-industrial complex that generates billions of dollars annually for businesses and industries profiting from mass incarceration. For decades workers in the U.S. have been assured that they also benefit from imperialist looting by the giant multinational corporations. But today more than half the federal budget is absorbed by the costs of maintaining the military machine and the corporations who are guaranteed profits for equipping the Pentagon. That is the only budget category in federal spending that is guaranteed to increase by at least 5 percent a year — at a time when every social program is being cut to the bone. The sheer economic weight of militarism seeps into the fabric of society at every level. It fuels racism and reaction. The political influence of the Pentagon and the giant military and oil corporations — with their thousands of high-paid lobbyists, media pundits and network of links into every police force in the country — fuels growing repression and an expanding prison population. The military, oil and banking conglomerates, interlinked with the police and prisons, have a stranglehold on the U.S. capitalist economy and reins of political power, regardless of who is president or what political party is in office. The very survival of these global corporations is based on immediate maximization of profits. They are driven to seize every resource and source of potential profits. Thoroughly rational solutions are proposed whenever the human and economic cost of militarism and repression is discussed. The billions spent for war and fantastically destructive weapons systems could provide five to seven times more jobs if spent on desperately needed social services, education and rebuilding essential infrastructure. Or it could provide free university education, considering the fact that it costs far more to imprison people than to educate them. Why aren’t such reasonable solutions ever chosen? Because military contracts generate far larger guaranteed profits to the military and the oil industries, which have a decisive influence on the U.S. economy. The prison-industrial complex — including the prison system, prison labor, private prisons, police and repressive apparatus, and their continuing expansion — are a greater source of profit and are reinforced by the climate of racism and reaction. Most rational and socially useful solutions are not considered viable options. ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Sat Jun 25 03:16:17 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 03:16:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Brainwashing the Corporate Way Message-ID: Brainwashing the Corporate Way by John Pilger Global Research, June 24, 2011 JohnPilger.com One of the most original and provocative books of the past decade is Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt (Rowman & Littlefield). “A critical look at salaried professionals,” says the cover, “and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives.” Its theme is postmodern America but also applies to Britain, where the corporate state has bred a new class of Americanised manager to run the private and public sectors: the banks, the main parties, corporations, important committees, the BBC. Professionals are said to be meritorious and non-ideological. Yet, in spite of their education, writes Schmidt, they think less independently than non-professionals. They use corporate jargon – “model”, “performance”, “targets”, “strategic oversight”. In Disciplined Minds, Schmidt argues that what makes the modern professional is not technical knowledge but “ideological discipline”. Those in higher education and the media do “political work” but in a way that is not seen as political. Listen to a senior BBC person sincerely describe the nirvana of neutrality to which he or she has risen. “Taking sides” is anathema; and yet the modern professional knows never to challenge the “built-in ideology of the status quo”. What matters is the "right attitude". A key to training professionals is what Schmidt calls “assignable curiosity”. Children are naturally curious, but along the way to becoming a professional they learn that curiosity is a series of tasks assigned by others. On entering training, students are optimistic and idealistic. On leaving, they are “pressured and troubled” because they realise that “the primary goal for many is getting compensated sufficiently for sidelining their original goals”. I have met many young people, especially budding journalists, who would recognise themselves in this description. For no matter how indirect its effect, the primary influence of professional managers is the extreme political cult of money worship and inequality known as neoliberalism. The ultimate professional manager is Bob Diamond, the CEO of Barclays Bank in London, who got a £6.5m bonus in March. More than 200 Barclays managers took home £554m in total last year. In January, Diamond told the Commons Treasury select committee that “the time for remorse is over”. He was referring to the £1trn of public money handed unconditionally to corrupted banks by a Labour government whose leader, Gordon Brown, had described such “financiers” as his personal “inspiration”. This was the final act of corporate coup d’état, now disguised by a specious debate about “cuts” and a “national deficit”. The most humane premises of British life are to be eliminated. The “value” of the cuts is said to be £83bn, almost exactly the amount of tax legally avoided by the banks and corporations. That the British public continues to give the banks an additional annual subsidy of £100bn in free insurance and guarantees – a figure that would fund the entire National Health Service – is suppressed. So, too, is the absurdity of the very notion of “cuts”. When Britain was officially bankrupt following the Second World War, there was full employment and some of its greatest public institutions, such as the Health Service, were built. Yet “cuts” are managed by those who say they oppose them and manufacture consent for their wider acceptance. This is the role of the Labour Party’s professional managers. In matters of war and peace, Schmidt’s disciplined minds promote violence, death and mayhem on a scale still unrecognised in Britain. In spite of damning evidence to the Chilcot inquiry by the former intelligence chief Major General Michael Laurie, the “core business” manager, Alastair Campbell, remains at large, as do all the other war managers who toiled with Blair and at the Foreign Office to justify and sell the beckoning bloodbath in Iraq. The reputable media play a critical often subtle role. Frederick Ogilvie, who succeeded the BBC’s founder, Lord Reith, as director general, wrote that his goal was to turn the BBC into a “fully effective instrument of war”. Ogilvie would have been delighted with his 21st-century managers. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, the BBC’s coverage overwhelmingly echoed the government’s mendacious position, as studies by the University of Wales and Media Tenor show. However, the great Arab uprising cannot be easily managed, or appropriated, with omissions and caveats, as an exchange on the BBC’s Today programme on 16 May made clear. With his celebrated professionalism, honed in corporate speeches, John Humphrys interviewed a Palestinian spokesman, Husam Zomlot, following Israel’s massacre of unarmed demonstrators on the 63rd anniversary of the illegal expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes. Humphrys: . . . it’s not surprising that Israel reacted the way it did, is it? Zomlot: . . . I am very proud and glad [they were] peacefully marching only to . . . really to draw attention to their 63-year plight. Humphrys: But they did not march peacefully, that’s my point . . . Zomlot: None of them . . . was armed . . . [They were] opposed to Israeli tanks and helicopters and F-16s. You cannot even start to compare the violence . . . This is not a security matter . . . [the Israelis] always fail to deal with such a purely political, humanitarian, legal matter . . . Humphrys: Sorry to interrupt you there but . . . if I marched into your house waving a club and throwing a stone at you then it would be a security matter, wouldn’t it? Zomlot: I beg your pardon. According to the United Nations Security Council resolutions, those people are marching to their homes; they have the deeds of their homes; it’s their private property. So let’s set the record right once and for all . . . It was a rare moment. Setting the record straight is not a managerial “target”. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From rohitrellan at aol.in Sat Jun 25 07:24:49 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:54:49 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Entries and registrations for SHORT+SWEET DELHI 2011 are now OPEN! Message-ID: <8CE00F2004486B7-1AAC-1007C@webmail-d165.sysops.aol.com> SHORT+SWEET DELHI In November 2010 Short+Sweet, the largest ten minute play festival in the world that is already established throughout Australia and in Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand, entered another exciting new chapter with the launch of the first everShort+Sweet Delhi. It was huge success and firmly established itself on the annual Delhi theatre calendar. Short+Sweet Delhi 2011 will run from 16 - 26 November, again at Habitat and Epicentre in Gurgaon, and for the first time will feature a Wildcards program. You can register below… View youtube clip - If you’re not entirely sure about how Short+Sweet works, this video might shed some light, or then it might not…http://www.shortandsweet.org/shortsweet-theatre/delhi Entries and registrations for SHORT+SWEET DELHI2011 are now OPEN! To register as a DIRECTOR CLICK HERE (DIRECTORREGISTRATIONS CLOSE 5pm 1 AUGUST 2011)http://newtown.eventix.com.au/form.htm?formid=1434 To submit a proposal for an INDEPENDENT THEATRE COMPANY CLICK HERE (ITC PROPOSALS CLOSE 5pm 1 AUGUST 2011)http://newtown.eventix.com.au/form.htm?formid=1436 WRITERS BASED IN INDIA: To enter a SCRIPT CLICK HERE (SCRIPT ENTRIES CLOSE 5pm 1 AUGUST 2011) 
*Local submissions only*http://newtown.eventix.com.au/form.htm?formid=1435 WRITERS BASED OUTSIDE INDIA: To enter aSCRIPT CLICK HERE (SCRIPT ENTRIES CLOSE 5pm 1AUGUST 2011)
http://newtown.eventix.com.au/form.htm?formid=1384 To register as an ACTOR CLICK HERE (ACTORREGISTRATIONS CLOSE 5pm 18 AUGUST 2011)http://newtown.eventix.com.au/form.htm?formid=1433 Short+Sweet Delhi is supported by The Habitat Centre, Epicentre and Akshara Theatre. For more information on Short+Sweet Delhi email theFestival Producer of Short+Sweet Delhi, Mike Wood, at shortandsweetdelhi at gmail.com From asit1917 at gmail.com Sat Jun 25 15:04:01 2011 From: asit1917 at gmail.com (asit das) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 15:04:01 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Join the dharna in Dhinkia against POSCO Message-ID: The struggle against displacement and land acquisition rammed through the POSCO project in Jagatsinghpur, Orissa continues unabated. In the past half a month, peasants and working people in the area have been relentlessly resisting the repressive state police action and threats, barricading with their bodies and will. We request activists, political and human rights and students’ organisations, democratic-minded individuals to join the dharna in Dhinkia and Gobindpur in Jagatsighpur district, Orissa in solidarity with the resisting masses. * * *Asit (9873748177)* *Posco- Pratirodh Solidarity, Delhi* * * * * *Prashant Paikray* *Spokesperson,* *Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS)* *09437571547* From jeebesh at sarai.net Sat Jun 25 15:35:16 2011 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 15:35:16 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] ARTBOMB Message-ID: friends forwarded this initiative against the cuts in the netherlands: Please forward ! ARTBOMB - JOIN THE GROWING INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IN AN ACTION TO SAVE THE ARTS Dear art friend, Express the value of art! Show your support for culture! On Friday the 24th June at noon local time, we need you to join this initiative in shrouding art locations across the world incoloured smoke. This visual act will be a sign of resistance against the growing disdain for the arts within societies and governments worldwide, and a sign of support for colleagues who face major cutbacks. Now is the time to act to show your appreciation and the necessity of the arts! ARTBOMB is a peaceful art intervention initiated in The Netherlands. The Dutch Government is about to cut 40% of all cultural funding. This will result in the disappearance of a multitude of organizations that excel internationally in their field. This loss will be felt not only by the Dutch public but by the international community. One signal, one moment, one act to show support. You can contribute visual ammunition against the disproportionate cuts to the arts budget. This visible intervention will rise up around the world where people value the arts and want to express their support for artists and cultural organizations. Everybody who joins the ARTBOMB intervention will become part of this chain reaction and is invited to upload the photos and films of their own intervention to the website www.artbomb.nl as a token of solidarity and a symbol of strength. WHAT IGNITE COLOURED SMOKE AND DOCUMENT THE EVENT WHEN 12 NOON LOCAL TIME, FRIDAY 24th JUNE WHERE ART LOCATION OF YOUR CHOICE AFTER UPLOAD YOUR IMAGES/FOOTAGE TO www.artbomb.nl Information about ARTBOMB and how to join: www.artbomb.nl Email: artbombnow at gmail.com SEND THIS EMAIL TO ALL YOUR COLLEGUES AND FRIENDS IN THE CULTURE SECTOR!! From asit1917 at gmail.com Sat Jun 25 17:42:47 2011 From: asit1917 at gmail.com (asit das) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 17:42:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] online petition to the pm on posco issue Message-ID: Dear all Please find below a petition some of us are circulating, calling upon the Centre to stop playing games in the name of electoral benefit on large projects. Instead, we demand that they follow the law and institute democratic practices in all land takeovers in the country. The petition can be signed online here: http://www.petitiononline.com/indialan/petition.html The text of the petition is below. Thanks Shankar To: Dr. Manmohan Singh Prime Minister of India New Delhi Sub: Demand that Central government stop playing double games with people's lives in POSCO and other large projects; enforce laws relating to people's rights Dear Dr. Singh As concerned citizens of this country, we are appalled at the callous and cynical manner in which the Central government is seeking to exploit people's struggles for short term political gain. Rather than enforce the law as it stands, the government is playing both sides of the fence. On the one hand it violates the law to favour companies, and on the other it seeks electoral mileage by loud declarations of sympathy when people rise to fight these illegalities. We refer to the recent statements by Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and by other leaders in connection with the POSCO project in Orissa, wherein the Minister, for instance, has asked the State government to follow "democratic practices" and engage in "dialogue and discussion." But, under the Forest Rights Act, it was the Environment Ministry's duty to engage in precisely such "democratic practices" before it handed over forest land to POSCO. Meanwhile, long before any process of any kind was complete, you and your office, as well as the Steel Ministry, were making public commitments to POSCO and the South Korean government that the project will be carried out. If the Central government and the ruling party really believe in democracy and dialogue, why have they systematically violated required democratic procedures when handing over land - and forest land in particular - in the first place? Under the law, forest land cannot be taken until people's rights over it are fully recorded, and the government must respect forest dwellers' power to protect and manage their forests. On July 30, 2009, the Ministry itself recognised this when it issued an order explicitly stating that no clearance for diversion of forest land will be given without a gram sabha resolution - i.e. a majority vote at an assembly of the village - that their rights have been respected and that they consent to the takeover. Yet the Ministry broke the law and gave clearance to the POSCO project without a single majority resolution from any village in the area. Indeed, the Minister questioned the majority resolutions actually passed against the project and asked for action against the elected sarpanch, while ignoring the fact that his State government and the Ministry were the ones actually breaking the law. The same gross illegality is happening in projects across the country. Till date there has not been a single case known of a project being rejected on the basis of a gram sabha resolution - a basic "democratic practice" that the Minister is now advertising. The Minister meanwhile stated in an interview on June 5th that he plans to amend this order because it has become too difficult for the Ministry to comply with the law. Now, as children, women and men form human barricades to save their lands from POSCO, the very same Minister who violated every tenet of both law and democracy declares that democracy should be respected. Will your government wait, as it did in Sompeta, Srikakulam and elsewhere, for people to die before it remembers its legal duties? Do you seek another Bhatta Parsaul for electoral benefit? Your government is playing a cynical game with people's lives to benefit corporate profits on the one hand and it's "aam aadmi" image on the other. We demand that your government immediately cancel all illegal forest and environment clearances to projects, uphold the Forest Rights Act and the democratic process it requires, and ensure that all land acquisition in non-forest areas too is made legally and practically subject to a democratic decision making process. The government cannot be allowed to continue playing games with the blood of innocent people. From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Sun Jun 26 02:50:23 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2011 02:50:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] IndiaBulls : Company Profile Message-ID: _________________________________________________ Farmers Take the Bull by Horns Uday Narkar THE company under the name Indiabulls is virtually a bull let loose in the china shop of super profits. The aim of the company, founded by some Indians in collaboration with a few foreigners, is to loot the Indians. The company has begun an enterprise to earn super profits by trampling the rights and livelihood of workers, farmers and agricultural workers. The governments, both at the centre and in the state of Maharashtra, have been more than benign towards the company's deeds of commission and omission. Peasants and agricultural workers in the Nashik district of Maharashtra have risen spontaneously against the oppression of this company. The police have happily come ahead to protect the vested interests of this company: 105 villagers, along with their woman sarpanch (president of village panchayat), Saralatai Sanap, were incarcerated in the Nashik jail. To protest this oppression, thousands of farmers of the village Gulwanch and the surrounding villages came together and formed a ‘Shetkari Sangharsh Samiti’ (Farmers’ Struggle Committee). They organised a march to the Nashik Collectorate in which farmers and agricultural workers participated in thousands. The march was led by CPI(M) state secretary Dr Ashok Dhawale, secretariat member Dr D L Karad, former CPI(M) MLA Jiva Pandu Gavit, AIAWU joint secretary Kumar Shiralkar, AIKS state secretary Kisan Gujar, former High Court judge Justice Kolse-Patil, Haribhau Tambe, Haribhau Shinde, Advocate Ugale, Deshmukh and others. The agitation originated in the Sinnar taluq of Nashik is likely to spread to the others parts of the district and beyond into the districts of Dhule, Nandurbar and Amaravati because the ambitious Indiabulls company is very much eager to spread its tentacles to other areas. GENESIS OF INDIABULLS Two young men from Delhi, Samir Gehlot and Rajiv Rattan jointly took over, in 1999, a defunct finance company and started trading in shares under its auspices. One Saurabh Mittal joined them in a few months. It was the first share broking company in the country that traded on the internet. They started, in January 2000, a company called “Indiaulls Financial Services.” L N Mittal and Harish Fabiani supplied capital to the company in June the same year. The company started a subsidiary, Indiabulls Securities, towards the end of 2000. By 2003, they had opened their offices in many cities in the country. Their internet broking trade grew in geometric proportions. The Indiabulls Financial Services introduced its shares in the market for a price of Rs 19 per share. The company also entered the consumer loan market and poured huge funds into it. Realising that low aim is a crime, the company started looking for greener pastures. The government of Maharashtra was inviting any number of bulls to ransack the desolate lands of the closed textile mills of Mumbai. No surprise that this bull was drawn to it. It formed a company, Indiabulls Properties Private Limited, to purchase textile mill land that is being auctioned. The National Textile Corporation (NTC) has a lot of land which belongs to the mills that it has taken over. It decided to auction 11 acres of Jupiter Mills in Lower Parel area of the metropolis. By the way, the Lower Parel, which prided itself as a working class district for ages, is now fast becoming a swanky township. The workers, who gave glory to the city of Mumbai, are being thrown, bag and baggage, into oblivion in the neo-liberal India. It is the same area where Mukesh Ambani of the Reliance has constructed his 28-storey palace. Anyway, the Indiabulls purchased these 11 acres of the Jupiter Mills in auction. The company lost no time to enter the lucrative business of the real estate. It formed the Indiabulls Real Estate Company Pvt Ltd which bought the land of the Elphinstone Mill as well, that belonged to the same NTC. The Indiabulls paid a huge amount of Rs 2,150 crore to grab the land of the Bharat and Poddar Mills. Well, they were not doing anything out of the ordinary. The business of buying land on the pretext of development and then selling it for super profits is rampant all over the country. The Indiabulls are just following the suit. Well, not exactly. It is actually one of those who are leading the pack. The company has purchased 2.4 million sq ft in the last three months alone (supposedly for development)! It has acquired not less than 6 crore sq ft of prime land so far. DEVELOPING LAND: AT WHOSE COST? What, however, is their idea of developing land? It is simply to level down all existing structures and build in their place monstrous malls, ugly palaces for the equally obscene rich and five-star hotels --- actually black-holes where black money is sucked in. All these are further embellished with designer gardens, Olympic-style swimming pools and multiplexes. Their advertisements promise no less than American dream-world amidst the squalor of migrant populace. The Indiabulls have been displaying the ad, ad nauseum, of their paradise constructed at Gurgaon near Delhi. The Indiabulls walks an extra mile to welcome the ministers, highly placed bureaucrats, mafia dons and sundry capitalists who have all amassed huge amounts of money by dodging tax authorities in creative ways. These people don’t have to go to Swiss banks to seek tax havens now. Moreover, the Indiabulls readily supplies loans to those who deal in developed properties too. The central government’s policies of privatisation and liberalisation come in handy to the ones like the Indiabulls who are looking to make quick bucks. The government detests putting any controls on these companies. It also becomes generous enough to dole them out huge tax concessions. The companies thus amass wealth on an unprecedented scale. As if this were not enough, the government has come forward to award a special economic zone (SEZ) to this company. The Indiabulls is thus grabbing agricultural land to promote their SEZs. It has already announced the selling price of such land --- from Rs 2,500 to 20,000 per sq ft. These are the prices before the land was developed. It is anybody’s guess what the actual price of the developed land will be. One need not guess who the buyers of this land would be. The Adarsh scam has already revealed who these super rich are. Just cast a glance at the people who are displacing those who have built Mumbai by their toil: Morgan Stanley (yes, you are right, the infamous American thug company), Bloomberg, Bain, Marsh – Mclennan, Deloitte, Reliance, Birla, NDTV, Yes Bank etc. These are the elite customers who are buying land from the Indiabulls. BULL ADDS TO ITS (MUSCLE) POWER In 2007 the company opened a new venture: Indiabulls Power. It decided to install two thermal power plants, one each in Nashik and Amaravati districts, totalling 5400 MW of electricity. The Indiabulls Power company entered the share market in September 2009. After having purchased land in the metros of Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, it has now turned to the hinterlands of Maharashtra. It set its eyes on the fertile land in Sinnar taluq of Nashik district. It identified 2,500 acres of agricultural land from village Gulvanchi; 900 acres of this land is reserved for its power plant. It tried to trap farmers with attractive words such as construction of a ‘golden corridor’ connecting Delhi – Mumbai – Nashik for the sole benefit of the farmers! The trap will further extend to engulf the farmers of Dhule, Nandurbar and Amaravati districts. The Indiabulls is supposedly operating on two terrains --- an industrial region and an investment region. But it has now become as clear as sunlight that this company is not established to either bring in industrial development to the region or create jobs. The Maharashtra government has loyally pursued the same neo-liberal policy of deindustrialisation and, to use Professor Utsa Patnaik’s words, “job-loss growth.” We are all too aware as to how the land is being given away to capitalists for a pittance. The union government is out to disinvest to the tune of Rs 40,000 crore in the public sector. This is the solemn promise given by our finance minister to the capitalists in his budget speech. More than 31,000 small scale industries are closed in Maharashtra and 1,60,000 workers have lost their jobs. Rubbing salt into their wounds, the state government has submitted 233 SEZ proposals to the central government. The latter has sanctioned 143 and has readily notified 63 SEZs. The Congress-NCP government in the state is no fool to truthfully explain to farmers the implications of the SEZ. Cultivation of land is the sole source of livelihood for farmers. Land is the only source of employment for the rural population. Apart from farmers, the livelihood of rural workers depends on agriculture only. Not only that; the livelihood of village craftsmen and petty traders too is organically attached to farming activity. It is more than obvious that productivity of land should be enhanced if the life of this populace is to be improved. Rural development is in all respects connected to the uses of land and water. In rural areas employment can be generated only on the basis scientific and equitable, people oriented watershed development strategy. Adequate supply of drinking water, roads, sewage, sanitary facilities, education and public health are the indices of real human development. It is imperative for a government to invest in these. It is also incumbent on a government to facilitate decentralised industrialisation by encouraging small-scale industries. For this, the villagers should be taken into confidence and plan accordingly. The planned and proper development cannot come about unless people’s participation is ensured. RENEGING ON PROMISES The state of Maharashtra was formed in 1960 as a result of the people’s successful agitation for the united linguistic state. The first steps that the early administration took were substantially in consonance with the people’s developmental aspirations. The concept behind establishing the Maharashtra State Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) was to achieve such decentralised industrial development. However, the objectives of MIDC underwent drastic changes in the wake of the onslaught of imperialist globalisation. The shadows of finance capital started blackening the industrial horizons of the state. The MIDC shamelessly started consorting with finance capital like that of Indiabulls. The MIDC thus, at the behest of the Indiabulls, buys land from farmers for meagre Rs 2 lakh an acre and earns thirty crores by selling it to the Bulls. The Bulls, in their turn, ‘develop’ that land and charge about Rs 2 crore per acre from the prospective buyers. The MIDC lied to the farmers saying that it needs this land to establish small scale industries which would ensure employment for them. The ‘political touts’ of the bourgeois parties saw to it that the farmers did not see through these lies. The gullible farmers lost the land that would give them at least roti for generations together. They lost land and did not get jobs. The Bull expelled the tiller from their land into a virtually no man’s land! Now they had nowhere to go. The SEZ has pushed the villages of Gulwanch and Musalgaon into an enclosure, hanging in a limbo. Now the railway ministry is acquiring land to lay a new railway track solely for the Indiabulls. One used to read, as a child, a slogan on the train compartments: ‘Indian Railways – People’s Property.’ Well, no more in the era of imperialist globalisation. Railways and electricity are in fact infrastructural facilities essential for development. The policy of investing in these from the government treasury, adopted precisely after independence, was given a go bye in the nineties. Privatisation became the buzzword. Monopoly capital was allowed to enter the sector of power generation. It is true that the private capital has always been given concession by the railways for cheap transport. Even so, the railways helped a great deal to strengthen the public sector. Now the central government has taken upon itself the task of providing the rail services for power generation of the Indiabulls. The government of Maharashtra has taken the responsibility of acquiring land from Sinnar, Niphad and Nashik taluqs for laying railway tracks. For its thermal power project, the Bulls have managed a too willing central government to sign a contract to supply coal at a cheap price. The Water Resource Department at Nashik has already granted the use of water for the project and the Nashik Municipal Corporation is giving away its waste water. The company has already pocketed all the necessary no-objection certificates (NOCs). How has the company managed to get this done so quickly? Raising such a question is an affront to the integrity of the corrupt administration! GROWING STRENGTH OF THE BULLS The Indiabulls are also constructing a 1,350 MW power plant (phase I) in Amaravati district. The Bulls are the biggest private sector company who have bought machinery for power generation from Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd (BHEL). There are about 4,000 workers working on the plants at Sinnar and Amaravati. Since both the plants fall within SEZ areas, no labour laws are applicable. Worker get neither minimum wages nor any welfare benefits. They have no right to form their trade union. Although the workers are Indian citizens, they do not have civil rights on a piece of land that falls within the sovereignty of India. Farmers might have owned in the past the land that the Bulls now lord over. But by the virtue of the ownership of the Bulls, it has become a ‘foreign’ territory. And which are the companies that have been given contracts to supply machinery? They are Gannon Dunkerley, L&T, ABB and Areva. The last named is the apple of the government of India’s eye. It is to sell untested nuclear reactors for the Jaitapur power plant, the biggest nuclear plant in the world. The Indiabulls will sell its electricity thus generated. The profit, at the rate of one rupee per unit, that the company will earn in the year 2013-14 will be a whopping 60 crore US dollars. Anybody is free to buy this costly electricity. But Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company has already given a guarantee that it will take the responsibility of distributing it. Indiabulls Power Limited Company has applied to Maharashtra Electricity Controlling Authority for a distribution license. It has asked for permission to distribute electricity in the suburbs of Mumbai. What the company says in the application is very revealing: Indiabulls Power Ltd (IPL) is a front ranking company of the Indiabulls Group looking after power industry. The company is indexed at both NSE and BSE. The company is developing two thermal power projects of a total 5400 MW capacity at Nashik and Amaravati. The Indiabulls Group has shown, several times, its skill in erecting industries and executing projects. With a substantial investment in immovable properties, infrastructure and power and a long experience of providing financial and other services to petty customers, the company is capable of facing the challenge in Mumbai..... This clearly shows that Indiabulls is not a power generating company. It has not provided a single proof of exhibiting a skill of erecting an industry and executing a project. It is a company of financial agents. It has not contributed, anywhere in the world, to the people’s welfare by generating even one MW of electricity. They are a group of thugs, looting gullible people in the free market, in the garb of gentlemen. The anti-people governments, in the state and at the centre, are protecting their interests and giving them a free hand to grab the sources of livelihood of thousands of farmers and workers. The Bulls are allowed to roam unhindered in search of super profits, ignoring efficient public sector power industry (The seven thermal power plants in Maharashtra are under public sector undertaking) and the proven skill and knowledge of technicians, engineers and workers. Moreover, the government is unleashing repression to thwart popular agitation for asserting democratic rights. One wonders whether we are living in a sovereign, independent country or in a banana republic under imperial dominion. Indiabulls is a glaring example of how big finance capital in India is joining hands with imperialist capital. Take a look at the list of the friends of Indiabulls. FRIENDS OF INDIABULLS The total number of shares that Indiabulls group possesses is 202.30 crores. Out of them, 118.50 crores, i.e. 58.58 per cent, belong to the Indiabulls Real Estate. Financial institutions and banks own 1.64 crore (0.81 per cent), foreign institutional investors own 22.19 crore (10.97 per cent) and foreign speculative capital investors own 26.27 crore (12.99 per cent). The finance and loans are provided to the Indiabulls by 20 nationalised banks as well as 9 Indian and foreign banks, mutual funds, provident funds, pension funds and insurance companies. The meaning of all this is more than clear. Indiabulls is completely tied to international finance capital. The very nature of finance capital is to make quick bucks in speculative investment. The shareholders of Indiabulls do not have an iota of interest in promoting the welfare of Indian farmers, farm labourers, workers, artisans or small traders. On the contrary, they are anxious to rob people’s livelihood and natural resources of our country. Indiabulls are working as a promoter of the vagrant free market. PEASANTS RISE IN UNISON It is against this backdrop that the peasants and labourers, workers and artisans, men and women have risen to protect the source of their livelihood. The struggle waged by the farmers of Sinnar is not a small one. It is a struggle against the powerful owners of finance capital. It is a struggle against neo-colonisation being imposed on Indian peoples by imperialism. It is a struggle against the anti-people and pro-big bourgeoisie, Indian and foreign, policies of the government of India. This is a struggle in the interests of all toiling people. It is struggle to defend independence and sovereignty of India. The fighting villagers are determined to take this struggle to other areas, to the districts of Dhule, Nandurbar, Amaravati and beyond. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From arshad.mcrc at gmail.com Sun Jun 26 07:44:50 2011 From: arshad.mcrc at gmail.com (arshad amanullah) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2011 07:44:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Notes on the Forbesganj Violence Message-ID: NOTES On The FORBESGANJ VIOLENCE By: Ashok Yadav & Khalid Anis Ansari The police firing and subsequent killing of five OBC Muslims in Bhajanpur village in Forbesganj of Araria district in Bihar on June 3, 2011 has been analyzed in most reports in the public sphere through the frame of ‘communalism’ and there has been little effort to grapple with the other dimensions that the event entails. Increasingly, it is being felt that the discourse around secularism/communalism is being employed to reinforce the restorative politics of Indian ruling elite, broadly the upper caste sections of all religious identities, and is working as an instrument to subvert the counter-hegemonic peoples’ solidarity at large. While the normative understanding of secularism is under pressure in almost all jurisdictions, for all practical purposes secularism in India has been thoroughly trivialized and reduced to the stand one takes with regards to the ‘Indian Muslim’. So any formation which takes a pro-Muslim stand, even for the sake of public consumption, is paraded as secular. On the other hand those formations that publicly interrogate or abuse the Muslim identity are communal. Thus, the Congress Party is ‘secular’ even when there is overwhelming historical evidence that implicates it in numerous riots against Muslims in the post-independence period simply because it never mouths anti-Muslim jargon. In contrast the BJP is undisputedly ‘communal’ because its growth as a political party has so far depended on its anti-Muslim rhetoric. >The Changing Nature of Political Space< In the last two decades the political space in India has transformed drastically. One of the most significant fallouts of the Mandal moment, especially since the report included both Hindu and Muslim lower castes in the OBC list, has been the fissure in the naturalized notion of the Hindu and Muslim monolith. Consequently, while on the one hand the Hindutva forces are facing sustained challenges in manufacturing an overarching Hindu vote-bank, on the other the enactment of the ‘pasmanda’ identity (OBC/Dalit Muslims) within Indian Muslims has interrogated the notion of Muslim unity in interesting ways. Hence, due to the counter-hegemonic identity politics of the lower castes as opposed to the entrenched politics of religious identity controlled by the upper caste elites, it has become increasingly difficult to consolidate the Hindu or Muslim vote-bank. The saffron brigade has so much weakened that it has to bank upon OBC leaders like Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar, that too from outside the RSS-BJP fold, in order to conduct its politics. In a similar vein the Muslim upper caste elite sections too are experimenting with the Peace Party, by foregrounding a pasmanda Dr. Ayub, in North India.             Broadly, the constitutional and policy consensus on social justice (affirmative action) and minority rights is under pressure from various quarters. In this respect, the Mala-Madiga contradiction in Andhra Pradesh or the enactment of mahadalit identity in Bihar recently, the emergence of EBC/MBC (Extremely or Most Backward Castes) politics, the challenges to minority religious identities from pasmanda Muslims, dalit Christians or dalit Sikhs, and the growing assertion of women generally, have all contributed to destabilizing the dominant imagination of dalit, OBC or minority identities. While on the one hand such fragmentation and multiplicity is a sign of penetration of Indian democracy, on the other hand this differentiation has to be arrested at some point and some broad-based political principles need to be evolved that could enable subaltern solidarities in order to tackle the increasing crisis of representative democracy (the gap between the leaders and the lead). In the absence of the latter the popular issues like corruption, electricity, education, health, employment, etc. will eventually be taken up by populist movements led by the elite which will only go on to construct a false ‘we’ that reflects the most powerful. In recent times both Anna Hazare’s and Baba Ramdev’s movements indicate towards this crisis badly. Both movements have hijacked the peoples’ legitimate anger that could have been channelized in reforming the actually-existing Indian democracy by debating on the pitfalls of First-Past-the-Post electoral system (in contrast to a Proportional Electoral System), Right to Recall, deepening of the Right to Information, and other such relevant issues so necessary to unleash the next phase of people-led democratization in India. More pertinent to this essay is the manner in which the dynamics of the changing nature of political space have parochialized the received politics around the axes of secularism-communalism. If we look at the moves by pasmanda politicians in Bihar then in the assembly elections of 2005 they took a decision to reject Laloo Yadav led secular RJD alliance and opted to vote for Nitish Kumar led NDA with the communal BJP as an important ally. Nitish Kumar had later credited the support of pasmanda sections for ensuring his victory. Obviously, the preference of the pasmanda sections for a non-BJP government had not dwindled but at the same time they had stopped thinking in terms of the restricted options which secular-communal axis provided. Their support to JD (U)-BJP alliance was mostly driven by the fact that Laloo Yadav, under the influence of ashrafia politicians, had refused to acknowledge them. However, at that point of time it must be remarked that in the absence of non-BJP leaders like Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav, the pasmanda sections would have probably never voted for the NDA. In terms of discourse, the pasmanda have claimed that they are one of the indigenous bahujan sections of India who in historical times converted to Islam due to various reasons. However, caste discrimination continued to be practiced against them within the Muslim body politic even after conversion despite the egalitarian teachings of Islam. Consequently, there is a serious discomfort in pasmanda discourse with the minority tag as it is seen to be inhabited predominantly by the upper caste ashrafiya sections who utilize it to bargain for privileges from the state. The overall focus is on discounting the emotive issues and addressing the basic issues of bread-and-butter by democratizing the state and community structures. In strategic terms the pasmanda sections are keen to develop a horizontal unity with the lower caste sections of the so-called majority (and other minority) communities. Afterall, if caste is the primary basis of Indian society then the concept of ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ is irrelevant because no caste in India is numerically so strong that it may claim to be a majority community. Hence, the pasmanda movement is fast rendering the hegemonic Muslim-centric secular politics irrelevant and forcing us to rethink secularism in a new light. In liberating themselves from the minority psyche, the pasmanda movement is also attempting to liberate the country from religious conflicts which have so far frequently rocked India. It is in this context that we will read the tragic incident that happened at Forbesgunj recently. >Forbesgunj Violence: A Brief Recapitulation< As we mentioned earlier the lower caste pasmanda muslims, the victims in this incident, had greatly facilitated the formation of JD (U) led NDA government in Bihar in 2005 as well as in 2010. It is no wonder then that the entire opposition politics in Bihar and the ‘secular parivar’ sees the event as an opportunity to beat the NDA with the secular stick so as to send a strong message to the pasmanda social block that their security is guaranteed only in a non-NDA regime. It also goes without saying that the interests, electoral and otherwise, of the Congress and its cronies goad them to capture the entire Forbesganj episode in a monochromatic frame: the epic battle between the BJP, the eternal communal evil and the Muslim, the good and hapless victim. This version of the event is further reinforced by the involvement of a BJP politician in the actual facts of this case and the visit of the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar from BJP to the spot five days prior to the event. While one cannot discount this take considering the brutality of violence that foregrounded the deep rooted hatred of the perpetrators of the violence for the victims, one will also have to explore other dimensions of the issue for the truth of social events is seldom one-dimensional.             The background of Forbesganj incident in short is that some sixty years ago the villagers of Bhajanpur and Rampur, the twin adjoining villages predominantly populated by socially backward pasmanda (OBC-dalit) muslims, donated their land, money and labor to build a road that reduced the distance from their villages to the main Forbesganj market from eight to one kilometer. ANHAD has reported that in 1984 Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority acquired 105 acres of agricultural land from the villagers which was meagerly compensated resulting in the pauperization of farmers from small land holders to agricultural laborers.  Very recently, in 2010, the Bihar Cabinet approved an industrial unit for the manufacturing of starches from maize to M/S Auro Sundaram International Company. Incidentally, one of the directors in the Board of this company is the son of a BJP politician. The road that the villagers had themselves built on their land with their money and labor was given away to the company. This was understandably resisted by the villagers. On June 1, 2011 in a tripartite meeting between the company, the villagers and the administration, the villagers showed their accommodative spirit by agreeing to forgo their right over the village road provided an alternate road was built. The three parties agreed to this. However, on June 3 the company, in connivance with the local administration, breached the compromise formula and without providing for the alternate road began to raise a wall on the existing road. Consequently, the villagers after returning from the Friday prayers protested against this breach of trust. The administration in collusion with the Company opened indiscriminate firing on the hapless villagers. A reign of terror was let loose on the poor villagers by the police. Five people were killed including a pregnant woman and fifteen persons were grievously injured. A petty police official kicked and danced on the injured and unconscious body of a young boy. The still alive boy was sent for postmortem where the doctor noticed life in the body. However, he later succumbed to the injury. >The Question of Developmental Violence< Since the occurrence of this macabre incident the secular brigade has been campaigning and working overtime against the state government which is a joint collaboration of JD (U) and the saffron BJP. Political figures like Ram Vilas Paswan, who once sang the song of Muslim CM so much that Bihar slipped into the hands of NDA, and Laloo Prasad Yadav, who enjoyed power for fifteen long years by flaunting the so-called MY (Muslim-Yadav) equation, are still to visit the spot. What is striking is that the entire campaign of the opposition parties/voices is being run around the anti-minority character of the state government with no mention of developmental violence whatsoever. The opposition parties have conveniently chosen to underplay the link of this event with the chain of developmental violence in other jurisdictions (Singur, Nandigram, Bhatta-Parsaul, etc.). In our view, this is yet another example where the dominant discourse of communalism feeds into a hegemonic identity politics than informing any processes of a counter-hegemonic peoples’ solidarity. Very recently, we witnessed the strange use of the discourse of communalism again when the Congress suddenly discovered that Baba Ramdev was an RSS agent and the news that RSS was conspiring to burn the camp in the midnight hours and foment nationwide riots was broken not by the government and intelligence agencies but by a famous Muslim secular operator. While we have no sympathies with Ramdev’s or Hazare’s movement but the way the discourse of communalism was skillfully employed to polarize public opinion on this issue and further to elide the problems with actually-existing Indian democracy from the public discourse was indeed remarkable. In a similar vein, in the case of Forbesganj violence the fact that the land and road of the village were forcibly grabbed by the capitalist raiders has been reduced to a non-issue and the religious identity of the victims (why not caste?) has been continuously foregrounded. The spree of land grabbing of the poor and the marginalized by the powerful corporate and business houses in India and the crushing of subsequent peoples’ resistance with brutality by the state in collusion with capitalist raiders has become the order of the day. It would be too simplistic and opportunistic to define the Forbesgunj violence in terms of religious communalism alone. > Foot Soldiers in, Masterminds out!< Moreover, the state government has lodged a murder case against the petty police official who danced on the unconscious body of the young boy. The state government has been forced to do this because the video clip of Suneel Kumar Yadav, the police officer in question here, kicking and dancing on the body has been uploaded on YouTube and a few TV channels have been broadcasting this continuously. It is indeed incomprehensible that while Suneel Kumar Yadav has been slapped with a murder case, no case has been lodged against the senior police/administrative officials or the company management who were present on the spot and who bear primary responsibility for the firing. But there is also a historical and sociological background to such selective action by the state machinery. Nitish Kumar, who succeeded Laloo Yadav with the support of the BJP, also ordered enquiry into Bhagalpur riots earlier. While the report of the Bhagalpur riots enquiry commission instituted by Nitish Kumar is not known but what is fairly clear is that the entire blame was sought to be imposed on Kameshwar Yadav, without mention of any action against the masterminds of the riots. The news portal thebihar.com had reported on April, 13, 2010 that: “The only thing the Nitish Kumar government could do is to get Kameshwar Yadav, a local goon, arrested and jailed. However, the big fish in the Bhagalpur riots are still free…” [http://www.thebihar.com/bihar-news/five-commissions-crores-of-rupees-no-result/]. In another related judgment fourteen persons were convicted of rioting and murdering Muslims at Sabour near Bhagalpur. Of these fourteen persons twelve were reported to be belonging to the lower-caste kushwaha community. The same news portal had reported on September 2, 2010 about the award of rigorous imprisonment for attack on a police party during the days of Bhagalpur riots. The news report has reproduced the names of all the ten accused and all of them are OBCs [http://www.thebihar.com/bihar-news/10-sentenced-to-ri-in-bhagalpur-riot-case/]. There is remarkable consistency in these cases where the masterminds of violence against minorities are never brought to justice and it is only the lower-caste foot soldiers from the majority community that are routinely axed. Neither Laloo Yadav nor Nitish Kumar could muster courage to lay their hands on the masterminds of the riots. The dalits and OBCs are selectively punished in symbolic actions to appease the hurt feelings of the Muslims and ultimately to get their votes. Moreover, this selective handpicking of the accused belonging to the dalit-OBC sections for punishment also symbolically subverts the attempts of horizontal consolidation of lower castes across religious affiliations. This becomes an important dimension as since the inauguration of Pasmanda Movement in the post-Mandal phase the attempts of lower castes to make inter-religious horizontal unity has gathered momentum. >The Silence of Pasmanda Politicians< Lastly, the reluctance of Pasmanda political leaders in different political parties to come out openly against the killing of their brothers and sisters in Forbesganj throws up another crisis of Indian politics (though a few pasmanda figures like Noor Hasan Azad, Dawood Ansari, Hishamuddin Ansari and Mohd. Hasnain did visit the spot and spoke against it openly). The political line of respective parties which is nothing but the dictate of the party boss has a stifling effect upon the leaders of subaltern groups. The politicians belonging to subaltern groups prefer to show their allegiance to their party boss rather than to their caste or community in whose name they get the political opportunities in the first place. Even where the party bosses themselves belong to subordinated groups they prefer not to rake up radical issues and generally align with the status quo. For example, the main opposition party of Bihar, Laloo Yadav led RJD, is still not recognizing the victims of Forbesganj violence as belonging to the lower caste pasmanda muslim group. They are still comfortable in playing the old minority card and do not wish to subvert the Muslim monolith. While the pasmanda are claiming that they are primarily Bahujan, the RJD and other secular parties are still pushing them into the quagmire of Muslim politics and learning nothing from the debacle of 2005 and 2010 in Bihar. The RJD is still under the impression that the Pasmanda movement is at the best an aberration and that majority of Pasmanda populations are still under the influence of religious Muslim leaders. In time it is hoped that with the increasing sedimentation of the pasmanda discourse they will be forced to do a reality check once again. [The authors can be reached at ashokyadav2007 at gmail.com and khalidanisansari at gmail.com] From taraprakash at gmail.com Sun Jun 26 08:06:02 2011 From: taraprakash at gmail.com (Tara Prakash Tripathi) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 22:36:02 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Notes on the Forbesganj Violence References: Message-ID: <73D71E466A1B4C439C78C29E2466C70C@tara> Wonderful article on the sad incident of FORBESGANJ VIOLENCE and a great commentary on political hypocrisy of homogenization. I wonder if the authors of this article have writen something on the communal violence bill the government is working on? I would be interested in reading their views. I am copying them both on this email. Best regards TaraPrakash ----- Original Message ----- From: "arshad amanullah" To: Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2011 10:14 PM Subject: [Reader-list] Notes on the Forbesganj Violence > NOTES On The FORBESGANJ VIOLENCE > > By: Ashok Yadav & Khalid Anis Ansari > > The police firing and subsequent killing of five OBC Muslims in > Bhajanpur village in Forbesganj of Araria district in Bihar on June 3, > 2011 has been analyzed in most reports in the public sphere through > the frame of ‘communalism’ and there has been little effort to grapple > with the other dimensions that the event entails. Increasingly, it is > being felt that the discourse around secularism/communalism is being > employed to reinforce the restorative politics of Indian ruling elite, > broadly the upper caste sections of all religious identities, and is > working as an instrument to subvert the counter-hegemonic peoples’ > solidarity at large. While the normative understanding of secularism > is under pressure in almost all jurisdictions, for all practical > purposes secularism in India has been thoroughly trivialized and > reduced to the stand one takes with regards to the ‘Indian Muslim’. So > any formation which takes a pro-Muslim stand, even for the sake of > public consumption, is paraded as secular. On the other hand those > formations that publicly interrogate or abuse the Muslim identity are > communal. Thus, the Congress Party is ‘secular’ even when there is > overwhelming historical evidence that implicates it in numerous riots > against Muslims in the post-independence period simply because it > never mouths anti-Muslim jargon. In contrast the BJP is undisputedly > ‘communal’ because its growth as a political party has so far depended > on its anti-Muslim rhetoric. > >>The Changing Nature of Political Space< > > In the last two decades the political space in India has transformed > drastically. One of the most significant fallouts of the Mandal > moment, especially since the report included both Hindu and Muslim > lower castes in the OBC list, has been the fissure in the naturalized > notion of the Hindu and Muslim monolith. Consequently, while on the > one hand the Hindutva forces are facing sustained challenges in > manufacturing an overarching Hindu vote-bank, on the other the > enactment of the ‘pasmanda’ identity (OBC/Dalit Muslims) within Indian > Muslims has interrogated the notion of Muslim unity in interesting > ways. Hence, due to the counter-hegemonic identity politics of the > lower castes as opposed to the entrenched politics of religious > identity controlled by the upper caste elites, it has become > increasingly difficult to consolidate the Hindu or Muslim vote-bank. > The saffron brigade has so much weakened that it has to bank upon OBC > leaders like Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar, that too from outside the > RSS-BJP fold, in order to conduct its politics. In a similar vein the > Muslim upper caste elite sections too are experimenting with the Peace > Party, by foregrounding a pasmanda Dr. Ayub, in North India. > > Broadly, the constitutional and policy consensus on social > justice (affirmative action) and minority rights is under pressure > from various quarters. In this respect, the Mala-Madiga contradiction > in Andhra Pradesh or the enactment of mahadalit identity in Bihar > recently, the emergence of EBC/MBC (Extremely or Most Backward Castes) > politics, the challenges to minority religious identities from > pasmanda Muslims, dalit Christians or dalit Sikhs, and the growing > assertion of women generally, have all contributed to destabilizing > the dominant imagination of dalit, OBC or minority identities. While > on the one hand such fragmentation and multiplicity is a sign of > penetration of Indian democracy, on the other hand this > differentiation has to be arrested at some point and some broad-based > political principles need to be evolved that could enable subaltern > solidarities in order to tackle the increasing crisis of > representative democracy (the gap between the leaders and the lead). > In the absence of the latter the popular issues like corruption, > electricity, education, health, employment, etc. will eventually be > taken up by populist movements led by the elite which will only go on > to construct a false ‘we’ that reflects the most powerful. In recent > times both Anna Hazare’s and Baba Ramdev’s movements indicate towards > this crisis badly. Both movements have hijacked the peoples’ > legitimate anger that could have been channelized in reforming the > actually-existing Indian democracy by debating on the pitfalls of > First-Past-the-Post electoral system (in contrast to a Proportional > Electoral System), Right to Recall, deepening of the Right to > Information, and other such relevant issues so necessary to unleash > the next phase of people-led democratization in India. > > More pertinent to this essay is the manner in which the dynamics of > the changing nature of political space have parochialized the received > politics around the axes of secularism-communalism. If we look at the > moves by pasmanda politicians in Bihar then in the assembly elections > of 2005 they took a decision to reject Laloo Yadav led secular RJD > alliance and opted to vote for Nitish Kumar led NDA with the communal > BJP as an important ally. Nitish Kumar had later credited the support > of pasmanda sections for ensuring his victory. Obviously, the > preference of the pasmanda sections for a non-BJP government had not > dwindled but at the same time they had stopped thinking in terms of > the restricted options which secular-communal axis provided. Their > support to JD (U)-BJP alliance was mostly driven by the fact that > Laloo Yadav, under the influence of ashrafia politicians, had refused > to acknowledge them. However, at that point of time it must be > remarked that in the absence of non-BJP leaders like Nitish Kumar and > Sharad Yadav, the pasmanda sections would have probably never voted > for the NDA. > > In terms of discourse, the pasmanda have claimed that they are one of > the indigenous bahujan sections of India who in historical times > converted to Islam due to various reasons. However, caste > discrimination continued to be practiced against them within the > Muslim body politic even after conversion despite the egalitarian > teachings of Islam. Consequently, there is a serious discomfort in > pasmanda discourse with the minority tag as it is seen to be inhabited > predominantly by the upper caste ashrafiya sections who utilize it to > bargain for privileges from the state. The overall focus is on > discounting the emotive issues and addressing the basic issues of > bread-and-butter by democratizing the state and community structures. > In strategic terms the pasmanda sections are keen to develop a > horizontal unity with the lower caste sections of the so-called > majority (and other minority) communities. Afterall, if caste is the > primary basis of Indian society then the concept of ‘minority’ and > ‘majority’ is irrelevant because no caste in India is numerically so > strong that it may claim to be a majority community. Hence, the > pasmanda movement is fast rendering the hegemonic Muslim-centric > secular politics irrelevant and forcing us to rethink secularism in a > new light. In liberating themselves from the minority psyche, the > pasmanda movement is also attempting to liberate the country from > religious conflicts which have so far frequently rocked India. It is > in this context that we will read the tragic incident that happened at > Forbesgunj recently. > >>Forbesgunj Violence: A Brief Recapitulation< > > As we mentioned earlier the lower caste pasmanda muslims, the victims > in this incident, had greatly facilitated the formation of JD (U) led > NDA government in Bihar in 2005 as well as in 2010. It is no wonder > then that the entire opposition politics in Bihar and the ‘secular > parivar’ sees the event as an opportunity to beat the NDA with the > secular stick so as to send a strong message to the pasmanda social > block that their security is guaranteed only in a non-NDA regime. It > also goes without saying that the interests, electoral and otherwise, > of the Congress and its cronies goad them to capture the entire > Forbesganj episode in a monochromatic frame: the epic battle between > the BJP, the eternal communal evil and the Muslim, the good and > hapless victim. This version of the event is further reinforced by the > involvement of a BJP politician in the actual facts of this case and > the visit of the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar from BJP to the spot > five days prior to the event. While one cannot discount this take > considering the brutality of violence that foregrounded the deep > rooted hatred of the perpetrators of the violence for the victims, one > will also have to explore other dimensions of the issue for the truth > of social events is seldom one-dimensional. > > The background of Forbesganj incident in short is that > some sixty years ago the villagers of Bhajanpur and Rampur, the twin > adjoining villages predominantly populated by socially backward > pasmanda (OBC-dalit) muslims, donated their land, money and labor to > build a road that reduced the distance from their villages to the main > Forbesganj market from eight to one kilometer. ANHAD has reported that > in 1984 Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority acquired 105 acres > of agricultural land from the villagers which was meagerly compensated > resulting in the pauperization of farmers from small land holders to > agricultural laborers. Very recently, in 2010, the Bihar Cabinet > approved an industrial unit for the manufacturing of starches from > maize to M/S Auro Sundaram International Company. Incidentally, one of > the directors in the Board of this company is the son of a BJP > politician. The road that the villagers had themselves built on their > land with their money and labor was given away to the company. This > was understandably resisted by the villagers. On June 1, 2011 in a > tripartite meeting between the company, the villagers and the > administration, the villagers showed their accommodative spirit by > agreeing to forgo their right over the village road provided an > alternate road was built. The three parties agreed to this. However, > on June 3 the company, in connivance with the local administration, > breached the compromise formula and without providing for the > alternate road began to raise a wall on the existing road. > Consequently, the villagers after returning from the Friday prayers > protested against this breach of trust. The administration in > collusion with the Company opened indiscriminate firing on the hapless > villagers. A reign of terror was let loose on the poor villagers by > the police. Five people were killed including a pregnant woman and > fifteen persons were grievously injured. A petty police official > kicked and danced on the injured and unconscious body of a young boy. > The still alive boy was sent for postmortem where the doctor noticed > life in the body. However, he later succumbed to the injury. > >>The Question of Developmental Violence< > > Since the occurrence of this macabre incident the secular brigade has > been campaigning and working overtime against the state government > which is a joint collaboration of JD (U) and the saffron BJP. > Political figures like Ram Vilas Paswan, who once sang the song of > Muslim CM so much that Bihar slipped into the hands of NDA, and Laloo > Prasad Yadav, who enjoyed power for fifteen long years by flaunting > the so-called MY (Muslim-Yadav) equation, are still to visit the spot. > What is striking is that the entire campaign of the opposition > parties/voices is being run around the anti-minority character of the > state government with no mention of developmental violence whatsoever. > The opposition parties have conveniently chosen to underplay the link > of this event with the chain of developmental violence in other > jurisdictions (Singur, Nandigram, Bhatta-Parsaul, etc.). In our view, > this is yet another example where the dominant discourse of > communalism feeds into a hegemonic identity politics than informing > any processes of a counter-hegemonic peoples’ solidarity. Very > recently, we witnessed the strange use of the discourse of communalism > again when the Congress suddenly discovered that Baba Ramdev was an > RSS agent and the news that RSS was conspiring to burn the camp in the > midnight hours and foment nationwide riots was broken not by the > government and intelligence agencies but by a famous Muslim secular > operator. While we have no sympathies with Ramdev’s or Hazare’s > movement but the way the discourse of communalism was skillfully > employed to polarize public opinion on this issue and further to elide > the problems with actually-existing Indian democracy from the public > discourse was indeed remarkable. In a similar vein, in the case of > Forbesganj violence the fact that the land and road of the village > were forcibly grabbed by the capitalist raiders has been reduced to a > non-issue and the religious identity of the victims (why not caste?) > has been continuously foregrounded. The spree of land grabbing of the > poor and the marginalized by the powerful corporate and business > houses in India and the crushing of subsequent peoples’ resistance > with brutality by the state in collusion with capitalist raiders has > become the order of the day. It would be too simplistic and > opportunistic to define the Forbesgunj violence in terms of religious > communalism alone. > >> Foot Soldiers in, Masterminds out!< > > Moreover, the state government has lodged a murder case against the > petty police official who danced on the unconscious body of the young > boy. The state government has been forced to do this because the video > clip of Suneel Kumar Yadav, the police officer in question here, > kicking and dancing on the body has been uploaded on YouTube and a few > TV channels have been broadcasting this continuously. It is indeed > incomprehensible that while Suneel Kumar Yadav has been slapped with a > murder case, no case has been lodged against the senior > police/administrative officials or the company management who were > present on the spot and who bear primary responsibility for the > firing. But there is also a historical and sociological background to > such selective action by the state machinery. Nitish Kumar, who > succeeded Laloo Yadav with the support of the BJP, also ordered > enquiry into Bhagalpur riots earlier. While the report of the > Bhagalpur riots enquiry commission instituted by Nitish Kumar is not > known but what is fairly clear is that the entire blame was sought to > be imposed on Kameshwar Yadav, without mention of any action against > the masterminds of the riots. The news portal thebihar.com had > reported on April, 13, 2010 that: “The only thing the Nitish Kumar > government could do is to get Kameshwar Yadav, a local goon, arrested > and jailed. However, the big fish in the Bhagalpur riots are still > free…” > [http://www.thebihar.com/bihar-news/five-commissions-crores-of-rupees-no-result/]. > In another related judgment fourteen persons were convicted of rioting > and murdering Muslims at Sabour near Bhagalpur. Of these fourteen > persons twelve were reported to be belonging to the lower-caste > kushwaha community. The same news portal had reported on September 2, > 2010 about the award of rigorous imprisonment for attack on a police > party during the days of Bhagalpur riots. The news report has > reproduced the names of all the ten accused and all of them are OBCs > [http://www.thebihar.com/bihar-news/10-sentenced-to-ri-in-bhagalpur-riot-case/]. > There is remarkable consistency in these cases where the masterminds > of violence against minorities are never brought to justice and it is > only the lower-caste foot soldiers from the majority community that > are routinely axed. Neither Laloo Yadav nor Nitish Kumar could muster > courage to lay their hands on the masterminds of the riots. The dalits > and OBCs are selectively punished in symbolic actions to appease the > hurt feelings of the Muslims and ultimately to get their votes. > Moreover, this selective handpicking of the accused belonging to the > dalit-OBC sections for punishment also symbolically subverts the > attempts of horizontal consolidation of lower castes across religious > affiliations. This becomes an important dimension as since the > inauguration of Pasmanda Movement in the post-Mandal phase the > attempts of lower castes to make inter-religious horizontal unity has > gathered momentum. > >>The Silence of Pasmanda Politicians< > > Lastly, the reluctance of Pasmanda political leaders in different > political parties to come out openly against the killing of their > brothers and sisters in Forbesganj throws up another crisis of Indian > politics (though a few pasmanda figures like Noor Hasan Azad, Dawood > Ansari, Hishamuddin Ansari and Mohd. Hasnain did visit the spot and > spoke against it openly). The political line of respective parties > which is nothing but the dictate of the party boss has a stifling > effect upon the leaders of subaltern groups. The politicians belonging > to subaltern groups prefer to show their allegiance to their party > boss rather than to their caste or community in whose name they get > the political opportunities in the first place. Even where the party > bosses themselves belong to subordinated groups they prefer not to > rake up radical issues and generally align with the status quo. For > example, the main opposition party of Bihar, Laloo Yadav led RJD, is > still not recognizing the victims of Forbesganj violence as belonging > to the lower caste pasmanda muslim group. They are still comfortable > in playing the old minority card and do not wish to subvert the Muslim > monolith. While the pasmanda are claiming that they are primarily > Bahujan, the RJD and other secular parties are still pushing them into > the quagmire of Muslim politics and learning nothing from the debacle > of 2005 and 2010 in Bihar. The RJD is still under the impression that > the Pasmanda movement is at the best an aberration and that majority > of Pasmanda populations are still under the influence of religious > Muslim leaders. In time it is hoped that with the increasing > sedimentation of the pasmanda discourse they will be forced to do a > reality check once again. > > [The authors can be reached at ashokyadav2007 at gmail.com and > khalidanisansari at gmail.com] > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> From khalidanisansari at gmail.com Sun Jun 26 11:49:52 2011 From: khalidanisansari at gmail.com (Khalid Anis Ansari) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2011 11:49:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Notes on the Forbesganj Violence In-Reply-To: <73D71E466A1B4C439C78C29E2466C70C@tara> References: <73D71E466A1B4C439C78C29E2466C70C@tara> Message-ID: <000301cc33c9$12ad92b0$3808b810$@com> Dear Mr. Tara Prakash, Many thanks for appreciating our efforts in making some sense of Forbesganj violence. As far as the communal violence bill is concerned we have not written anything so far but our discomfort with the way the debate is proceeding grows with each passing day. If we write something we will surely circulate it in the sarai reader list. Best regards, Khalid Anis Ansari and Ashok Yadav -----Original Message----- From: Tara Prakash Tripathi [mailto:taraprakash at gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2011 8:06 AM To: arshad amanullah; reader-list at sarai.net Cc: ashokyadav2007 at gmail.com; khalidanisansari at gmail.com Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Notes on the Forbesganj Violence Wonderful article on the sad incident of FORBESGANJ VIOLENCE and a great commentary on political hypocrisy of homogenization. I wonder if the authors of this article have writen something on the communal violence bill the government is working on? I would be interested in reading their views. I am copying them both on this email. Best regards TaraPrakash ----- Original Message ----- From: "arshad amanullah" To: Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2011 10:14 PM Subject: [Reader-list] Notes on the Forbesganj Violence > NOTES On The FORBESGANJ VIOLENCE > > By: Ashok Yadav & Khalid Anis Ansari > > The police firing and subsequent killing of five OBC Muslims in > Bhajanpur village in Forbesganj of Araria district in Bihar on June 3, > 2011 has been analyzed in most reports in the public sphere through > the frame of ‘communalism’ and there has been little effort to grapple > with the other dimensions that the event entails. Increasingly, it is > being felt that the discourse around secularism/communalism is being > employed to reinforce the restorative politics of Indian ruling elite, > broadly the upper caste sections of all religious identities, and is > working as an instrument to subvert the counter-hegemonic peoples’ > solidarity at large. While the normative understanding of secularism > is under pressure in almost all jurisdictions, for all practical > purposes secularism in India has been thoroughly trivialized and > reduced to the stand one takes with regards to the ‘Indian Muslim’. So > any formation which takes a pro-Muslim stand, even for the sake of > public consumption, is paraded as secular. On the other hand those > formations that publicly interrogate or abuse the Muslim identity are > communal. Thus, the Congress Party is ‘secular’ even when there is > overwhelming historical evidence that implicates it in numerous riots > against Muslims in the post-independence period simply because it > never mouths anti-Muslim jargon. In contrast the BJP is undisputedly > ‘communal’ because its growth as a political party has so far depended > on its anti-Muslim rhetoric. > >>The Changing Nature of Political Space< > > In the last two decades the political space in India has transformed > drastically. One of the most significant fallouts of the Mandal > moment, especially since the report included both Hindu and Muslim > lower castes in the OBC list, has been the fissure in the naturalized > notion of the Hindu and Muslim monolith. Consequently, while on the > one hand the Hindutva forces are facing sustained challenges in > manufacturing an overarching Hindu vote-bank, on the other the > enactment of the ‘pasmanda’ identity (OBC/Dalit Muslims) within Indian > Muslims has interrogated the notion of Muslim unity in interesting > ways. Hence, due to the counter-hegemonic identity politics of the > lower castes as opposed to the entrenched politics of religious > identity controlled by the upper caste elites, it has become > increasingly difficult to consolidate the Hindu or Muslim vote-bank. > The saffron brigade has so much weakened that it has to bank upon OBC > leaders like Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar, that too from outside the > RSS-BJP fold, in order to conduct its politics. In a similar vein the > Muslim upper caste elite sections too are experimenting with the Peace > Party, by foregrounding a pasmanda Dr. Ayub, in North India. > > Broadly, the constitutional and policy consensus on social > justice (affirmative action) and minority rights is under pressure > from various quarters. In this respect, the Mala-Madiga contradiction > in Andhra Pradesh or the enactment of mahadalit identity in Bihar > recently, the emergence of EBC/MBC (Extremely or Most Backward Castes) > politics, the challenges to minority religious identities from > pasmanda Muslims, dalit Christians or dalit Sikhs, and the growing > assertion of women generally, have all contributed to destabilizing > the dominant imagination of dalit, OBC or minority identities. While > on the one hand such fragmentation and multiplicity is a sign of > penetration of Indian democracy, on the other hand this > differentiation has to be arrested at some point and some broad-based > political principles need to be evolved that could enable subaltern > solidarities in order to tackle the increasing crisis of > representative democracy (the gap between the leaders and the lead). > In the absence of the latter the popular issues like corruption, > electricity, education, health, employment, etc. will eventually be > taken up by populist movements led by the elite which will only go on > to construct a false ‘we’ that reflects the most powerful. In recent > times both Anna Hazare’s and Baba Ramdev’s movements indicate towards > this crisis badly. Both movements have hijacked the peoples’ > legitimate anger that could have been channelized in reforming the > actually-existing Indian democracy by debating on the pitfalls of > First-Past-the-Post electoral system (in contrast to a Proportional > Electoral System), Right to Recall, deepening of the Right to > Information, and other such relevant issues so necessary to unleash > the next phase of people-led democratization in India. > > More pertinent to this essay is the manner in which the dynamics of > the changing nature of political space have parochialized the received > politics around the axes of secularism-communalism. If we look at the > moves by pasmanda politicians in Bihar then in the assembly elections > of 2005 they took a decision to reject Laloo Yadav led secular RJD > alliance and opted to vote for Nitish Kumar led NDA with the communal > BJP as an important ally. Nitish Kumar had later credited the support > of pasmanda sections for ensuring his victory. Obviously, the > preference of the pasmanda sections for a non-BJP government had not > dwindled but at the same time they had stopped thinking in terms of > the restricted options which secular-communal axis provided. Their > support to JD (U)-BJP alliance was mostly driven by the fact that > Laloo Yadav, under the influence of ashrafia politicians, had refused > to acknowledge them. However, at that point of time it must be > remarked that in the absence of non-BJP leaders like Nitish Kumar and > Sharad Yadav, the pasmanda sections would have probably never voted > for the NDA. > > In terms of discourse, the pasmanda have claimed that they are one of > the indigenous bahujan sections of India who in historical times > converted to Islam due to various reasons. However, caste > discrimination continued to be practiced against them within the > Muslim body politic even after conversion despite the egalitarian > teachings of Islam. Consequently, there is a serious discomfort in > pasmanda discourse with the minority tag as it is seen to be inhabited > predominantly by the upper caste ashrafiya sections who utilize it to > bargain for privileges from the state. The overall focus is on > discounting the emotive issues and addressing the basic issues of > bread-and-butter by democratizing the state and community structures. > In strategic terms the pasmanda sections are keen to develop a > horizontal unity with the lower caste sections of the so-called > majority (and other minority) communities. Afterall, if caste is the > primary basis of Indian society then the concept of ‘minority’ and > ‘majority’ is irrelevant because no caste in India is numerically so > strong that it may claim to be a majority community. Hence, the > pasmanda movement is fast rendering the hegemonic Muslim-centric > secular politics irrelevant and forcing us to rethink secularism in a > new light. In liberating themselves from the minority psyche, the > pasmanda movement is also attempting to liberate the country from > religious conflicts which have so far frequently rocked India. It is > in this context that we will read the tragic incident that happened at > Forbesgunj recently. > >>Forbesgunj Violence: A Brief Recapitulation< > > As we mentioned earlier the lower caste pasmanda muslims, the victims > in this incident, had greatly facilitated the formation of JD (U) led > NDA government in Bihar in 2005 as well as in 2010. It is no wonder > then that the entire opposition politics in Bihar and the ‘secular > parivar’ sees the event as an opportunity to beat the NDA with the > secular stick so as to send a strong message to the pasmanda social > block that their security is guaranteed only in a non-NDA regime. It > also goes without saying that the interests, electoral and otherwise, > of the Congress and its cronies goad them to capture the entire > Forbesganj episode in a monochromatic frame: the epic battle between > the BJP, the eternal communal evil and the Muslim, the good and > hapless victim. This version of the event is further reinforced by the > involvement of a BJP politician in the actual facts of this case and > the visit of the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar from BJP to the spot > five days prior to the event. While one cannot discount this take > considering the brutality of violence that foregrounded the deep > rooted hatred of the perpetrators of the violence for the victims, one > will also have to explore other dimensions of the issue for the truth > of social events is seldom one-dimensional. > > The background of Forbesganj incident in short is that > some sixty years ago the villagers of Bhajanpur and Rampur, the twin > adjoining villages predominantly populated by socially backward > pasmanda (OBC-dalit) muslims, donated their land, money and labor to > build a road that reduced the distance from their villages to the main > Forbesganj market from eight to one kilometer. ANHAD has reported that > in 1984 Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority acquired 105 acres > of agricultural land from the villagers which was meagerly compensated > resulting in the pauperization of farmers from small land holders to > agricultural laborers. Very recently, in 2010, the Bihar Cabinet > approved an industrial unit for the manufacturing of starches from > maize to M/S Auro Sundaram International Company. Incidentally, one of > the directors in the Board of this company is the son of a BJP > politician. The road that the villagers had themselves built on their > land with their money and labor was given away to the company. This > was understandably resisted by the villagers. On June 1, 2011 in a > tripartite meeting between the company, the villagers and the > administration, the villagers showed their accommodative spirit by > agreeing to forgo their right over the village road provided an > alternate road was built. The three parties agreed to this. However, > on June 3 the company, in connivance with the local administration, > breached the compromise formula and without providing for the > alternate road began to raise a wall on the existing road. > Consequently, the villagers after returning from the Friday prayers > protested against this breach of trust. The administration in > collusion with the Company opened indiscriminate firing on the hapless > villagers. A reign of terror was let loose on the poor villagers by > the police. Five people were killed including a pregnant woman and > fifteen persons were grievously injured. A petty police official > kicked and danced on the injured and unconscious body of a young boy. > The still alive boy was sent for postmortem where the doctor noticed > life in the body. However, he later succumbed to the injury. > >>The Question of Developmental Violence< > > Since the occurrence of this macabre incident the secular brigade has > been campaigning and working overtime against the state government > which is a joint collaboration of JD (U) and the saffron BJP. > Political figures like Ram Vilas Paswan, who once sang the song of > Muslim CM so much that Bihar slipped into the hands of NDA, and Laloo > Prasad Yadav, who enjoyed power for fifteen long years by flaunting > the so-called MY (Muslim-Yadav) equation, are still to visit the spot. > What is striking is that the entire campaign of the opposition > parties/voices is being run around the anti-minority character of the > state government with no mention of developmental violence whatsoever. > The opposition parties have conveniently chosen to underplay the link > of this event with the chain of developmental violence in other > jurisdictions (Singur, Nandigram, Bhatta-Parsaul, etc.). In our view, > this is yet another example where the dominant discourse of > communalism feeds into a hegemonic identity politics than informing > any processes of a counter-hegemonic peoples’ solidarity. Very > recently, we witnessed the strange use of the discourse of communalism > again when the Congress suddenly discovered that Baba Ramdev was an > RSS agent and the news that RSS was conspiring to burn the camp in the > midnight hours and foment nationwide riots was broken not by the > government and intelligence agencies but by a famous Muslim secular > operator. While we have no sympathies with Ramdev’s or Hazare’s > movement but the way the discourse of communalism was skillfully > employed to polarize public opinion on this issue and further to elide > the problems with actually-existing Indian democracy from the public > discourse was indeed remarkable. In a similar vein, in the case of > Forbesganj violence the fact that the land and road of the village > were forcibly grabbed by the capitalist raiders has been reduced to a > non-issue and the religious identity of the victims (why not caste?) > has been continuously foregrounded. The spree of land grabbing of the > poor and the marginalized by the powerful corporate and business > houses in India and the crushing of subsequent peoples’ resistance > with brutality by the state in collusion with capitalist raiders has > become the order of the day. It would be too simplistic and > opportunistic to define the Forbesgunj violence in terms of religious > communalism alone. > >> Foot Soldiers in, Masterminds out!< > > Moreover, the state government has lodged a murder case against the > petty police official who danced on the unconscious body of the young > boy. The state government has been forced to do this because the video > clip of Suneel Kumar Yadav, the police officer in question here, > kicking and dancing on the body has been uploaded on YouTube and a few > TV channels have been broadcasting this continuously. It is indeed > incomprehensible that while Suneel Kumar Yadav has been slapped with a > murder case, no case has been lodged against the senior > police/administrative officials or the company management who were > present on the spot and who bear primary responsibility for the > firing. But there is also a historical and sociological background to > such selective action by the state machinery. Nitish Kumar, who > succeeded Laloo Yadav with the support of the BJP, also ordered > enquiry into Bhagalpur riots earlier. While the report of the > Bhagalpur riots enquiry commission instituted by Nitish Kumar is not > known but what is fairly clear is that the entire blame was sought to > be imposed on Kameshwar Yadav, without mention of any action against > the masterminds of the riots. The news portal thebihar.com had > reported on April, 13, 2010 that: “The only thing the Nitish Kumar > government could do is to get Kameshwar Yadav, a local goon, arrested > and jailed. However, the big fish in the Bhagalpur riots are still > free…” > [http://www.thebihar.com/bihar-news/five-commissions-crores-of-rupees-no-result/]. > In another related judgment fourteen persons were convicted of rioting > and murdering Muslims at Sabour near Bhagalpur. Of these fourteen > persons twelve were reported to be belonging to the lower-caste > kushwaha community. The same news portal had reported on September 2, > 2010 about the award of rigorous imprisonment for attack on a police > party during the days of Bhagalpur riots. The news report has > reproduced the names of all the ten accused and all of them are OBCs > [http://www.thebihar.com/bihar-news/10-sentenced-to-ri-in-bhagalpur-riot-case/]. > There is remarkable consistency in these cases where the masterminds > of violence against minorities are never brought to justice and it is > only the lower-caste foot soldiers from the majority community that > are routinely axed. Neither Laloo Yadav nor Nitish Kumar could muster > courage to lay their hands on the masterminds of the riots. The dalits > and OBCs are selectively punished in symbolic actions to appease the > hurt feelings of the Muslims and ultimately to get their votes. > Moreover, this selective handpicking of the accused belonging to the > dalit-OBC sections for punishment also symbolically subverts the > attempts of horizontal consolidation of lower castes across religious > affiliations. This becomes an important dimension as since the > inauguration of Pasmanda Movement in the post-Mandal phase the > attempts of lower castes to make inter-religious horizontal unity has > gathered momentum. > >>The Silence of Pasmanda Politicians< > > Lastly, the reluctance of Pasmanda political leaders in different > political parties to come out openly against the killing of their > brothers and sisters in Forbesganj throws up another crisis of Indian > politics (though a few pasmanda figures like Noor Hasan Azad, Dawood > Ansari, Hishamuddin Ansari and Mohd. Hasnain did visit the spot and > spoke against it openly). The political line of respective parties > which is nothing but the dictate of the party boss has a stifling > effect upon the leaders of subaltern groups. The politicians belonging > to subaltern groups prefer to show their allegiance to their party > boss rather than to their caste or community in whose name they get > the political opportunities in the first place. Even where the party > bosses themselves belong to subordinated groups they prefer not to > rake up radical issues and generally align with the status quo. For > example, the main opposition party of Bihar, Laloo Yadav led RJD, is > still not recognizing the victims of Forbesganj violence as belonging > to the lower caste pasmanda muslim group. They are still comfortable > in playing the old minority card and do not wish to subvert the Muslim > monolith. While the pasmanda are claiming that they are primarily > Bahujan, the RJD and other secular parties are still pushing them into > the quagmire of Muslim politics and learning nothing from the debacle > of 2005 and 2010 in Bihar. The RJD is still under the impression that > the Pasmanda movement is at the best an aberration and that majority > of Pasmanda populations are still under the influence of religious > Muslim leaders. In time it is hoped that with the increasing > sedimentation of the pasmanda discourse they will be forced to do a > reality check once again. > > [The authors can be reached at ashokyadav2007 at gmail.com and > khalidanisansari at gmail.com] > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> From aliens at dataone.in Sun Jun 26 13:17:47 2011 From: aliens at dataone.in (Bipin Trivedi) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2011 13:17:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] COMMUNAL VIOLANCE BILL WILL INCREASE COMMUNAL ATMOSPHERE Message-ID: <002401cc33d5$57fde750$07f9b5f0$@in> Every 3/4 years congress takes some step to appease minor. They create show that they are much worry for minority but with such step actually minor community remain/feel alienated and never merge with the other community and blocks their progress. So, actually this is real communalism. Recent communal violence bill is also one more such step. This is shear vote bank politics by congress and they does since independence to wow minor but without their actual upliftment. So, can you say who is actually communal? Thanks Bipin Trivedi From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Sun Jun 26 19:56:56 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2011 19:56:56 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Free Knowledge requires FOSS Message-ID: >From the wikipedia founder's blog (http://jimmywales.com/2004/10/21/free-knowledge-requires-free-software-and-free-file-formats/ ) Free Knowledge requires Free Software and Free File Formats By Jimmy Wales People sometimes ask me why I’m so adamant that Wikipedia must always use free software, even when in some cases it might be the case that proprietary software might be more convenient or better suited for some particular need that we have. After all, the argument goes, our primary mission is to produce free knowledge, not to promote free software, and whlie we might prefer free software on practical grounds (since it is generally best of breed for webserving applications), we should not be sticklers about it. I believe this argument is seriously mistaken, and not on merely practical grounds, but on grounds of principle. Free knowledge requires free software. It is a conceptual error to think about our mission as being somehow separate from that. What is free knowledge? What is a free encyclopedia? The essence is something that anyone who understands free software can immediately grasp. A free encylopedia, or any other free knowledge, can be freely read, without getting permission from anyone. Free knowledge can be freely shared with others. Free knowledge can be adapted to your own needs. And your adapted versions can be freely shared with others. We produce a massive website filled with an astounding variety of knowledge. If we were to produce this website using proprietary software, we would place potentially insurmountable obstacles in front of those who would like to take our knowledge and do the same thing that we are doing. If you need to get permission from a proprietary software vendor in order to create your own copy of our works, then you are not really free. For the case of proprietary file formats, the situation is even worse. It could be argued, though not persuasively I think, that as long as Wikimedia content can be loaded into some existing free software easily enough, then our internal use of proprietary software is not so bad. For proprietary formats, even this seductive fallacy does not apply. If we offer information in a proprietary or patent-encumbered format, then we are not just violating our own commitment to freedom, we are forcing others who want to use our allegedly free knowledge to themselves use proprietary software. Finally, we should never forget as a community that we are the vanguard of a knowledge revolution that will transform the world. We are the leading edge innovators and leaders of what is becoming a global movement to free knowledge from proprietary constraints. 100 years from now, the idea of a proprietary textbook or encyclopedia will sound as quaint and remote as we now think of the use of leeches in medical science. Through our work, every single person on the planet will have easy low cost access to free knowledge to empower them to do whatever it is that they want to do. And my point here is that this is not some idle fantasy, but something that we are already accomplishing. We have become one of the largest websites in the world using a model of love and co-operation that is still almost completely unknown to the wider world. But we are becoming known, and we will be known, for both our principles and achievements — because it is the principles that make the achievements possible. Toward that end, it should be a strong point of pride to us that the Wikimedia Foundation always uses free software on all computers that we own, and that we always put forward our best effort to ensure that our free knowledge really _is_ free, in that people are not forced to use proprietary software in order to read, modify, and redistribute it as they see fit. _________________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Mon Jun 27 03:36:06 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 03:36:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Some Human Rights in Europe : Study Message-ID: Detailed report on a 2-year study on "Discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity in Europe" According to the study, Sweden, The Netherlands and Denmark are relatively better off than others. http://www.coe.int/t/Commissioner/Source/LGBT/LGBTStudy2011_en.pdf (~ 40 MB) Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com Mon Jun 27 11:38:04 2011 From: mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com (mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 06:08:04 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Fw: Do you have a screenplay almost ready? Message-ID: <602366785-1309154720-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-604402478-@b18.c3.bise7.blackberry> Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel -----Original Message----- From: "Rohit Khattar" Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 11:11:12 To: Reply-To: "Rohit Khattar" Subject: Do you have a screenplay almost ready? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mumbai Mantra | Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab to be held in India in March 2012 Here's an incredible opportunity for all aspiring Indian scriptwriters. Mumbai Mantra Media Limited, the media and entertainment division of the Mahindra Group has collaborated with Sundance Institute, founded by Robert Redford, to organize the first Screenwriter's Lab in India which will be entirely modelled on the Sundance Lab which is held in Park City, Utah every year. The Lab (planned in March 2012) will be a 5-day workshop that will give screenwriters an opportunity to work intensively on their script with Creative Advisors, who would be established screenwriters and filmmakers from around the world. Scripts could be in any Indian language including English. However, the application for the Lab will only be accepted in English. The last date for open submissions is approaching if people wish to apply. After this the applicants have at least 3 more months to send in their complete script. Only 6-8 screenwriters will be selected for this workshop. Please note that there is no submission/ registration fee involved in this. Application details and a detailed FAQ is available on www.mumbaimantra.com This is a non-profit initiative of the Mahindra Group which we hope shall help the Indian Film industry as a whole. If this email is not displayed correctly, please click here From rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com Mon Jun 27 13:42:23 2011 From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com (Rakesh Iyer) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:42:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: Right to Food - Set 1 - Re-entry Message-ID: Article : 1 Link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100828/jsp/opinion/story_12863166.jsp Article: HOW TO BE A LITTLE LESS UNJUST The current debate on food security pays little attention to questions of justice, fairness and dignity, writes *Ananya Mukherjee-Reed * There is surely something grossly amiss in this acclaimed theatre of democracy when a handful of people get to decide how much or how little the hungry should eat at what price. This begs a rather fundamental question of justice. Yet, while we hear endlessly about ‘efficiency’ and ‘affordability’ in connection to food security, we hear little about the underlying criteria of justice. The (implicit) assumption is that the institutionalization of food security itself is an act of rendering justice. But is it so? According to whose notion of justice? As Amartya Sen has warned, there can be no consensus on a single ideal of justice. We should eschew that pursuit and ask instead how we can make the world “a little less unjust”. But who determines what is less unjust? Sen argues that the key here is reasoned public discussion. Current discussions on food and hunger, however, appear hardly “public” or “reasoned”. What they reflect are the vastly unequal power relations among the various stakeholders. Consider, for example, the ‘failed’ food summit in Rome in 2009. It failed in that the Food and Agriculture Organization failed to raise the $44 billion it needed (no more than $41 per person for the 1.07 billion hungry). Startling as that is, there is much more at stake in this ‘failure’. In the lead up to the summit, the FAO undertook consultations with major stakeholders in order to arrive at a consensus strategy for combating hunger. A “civil society forum” was organized to “ensure that the aspirations of the poor, the disadvantaged, the marginalized and the hungry are successfully voiced”. Simultaneously, a private-sector forum was held in Milan, where the largest agribusiness corporations participated. The aim of the latter was to secure “a vital link with the private sector” which would be “a key to improving the food security of one billion people”. Farmers, labourers, indigenous communities — who are the real producers of food — were not recognized as an equally “vital link” in this key United Nations forum. They were simply “civil society”. Their agenda of food sovereignty has found no place in the summit declaration (or in any policy discourse around hunger). Put simply, “food sovereignty is the right of peoples, communities, and countries to define their own agricultural, labour, fishing, food and land policies which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances”. It has four non-negotiable elements: the right to food, the right to produce food; the right to determine how food is going to be produced, and the right to food-producing resources. Accordingly, it is against all forms of corporate intervention in food and, more generally, against mechanisms that allow profiteering from food and hunger. In India, the Right to Food Campaign set out with a very similar set of “essential demands”: “[Right to Food] requires... sufficient availability of food, which in turn calls for strengthening of sustainable agricultural production systems, with special focus on the small rain fed farmer. It requires that land and water must never be forcibly diverted away from food production for cash crops or industrial use. It also requires effective systems of minimum support prices, price stabilisation, effective grain movement and storage, as well as strict regulation of speculation and trade.” In Haiti, mobilizations for food sovereignty began even before Haitians had recovered their loved ones from the rubble of the January earthquake. In Bangladesh, the Nayakrishi Andolon has long argued that food security cannot be guaranteed without guaranteeing the security of the food producing households. From Bangladesh to Bolivia to Mali, social struggles are calling for food sovereignty as the only substantive solution to endemic hunger. At the heart of this struggle is the wish to redress one injustice: that the majority of the world’s hungry are those who produce food — but are powerless to determine how it is produced or consumed. Seen in this light, food entitlements, however ‘generous’ they are, can make only highly tenuous, emaciated claims to justice, if at all. As conceived in the current framework of the Food Security Act, they can, at best, only impact distribution while keeping the undemocratic productive structures — which generate hunger in the first place — untouched. Could it then stand to reason that we try to limit — rather than maximize — even that impact on distribution? That we render the entitlements of the hungry entirely negotiable and dependent on ‘hard’ evidence of their depravation? Surely, such an approach risks even greater injustice? Also, as a recent news story illustrated, it may have the potential for further assaulting the human dignity of our fellow citizens. In Seoni, Madhya Pradesh, a hundred families woke up to see ‘I am poor’ marked on their doors. Apparently, *panchayat* officials were trying to perfect their BPL count. “It is very painful to be branded like this,” said Bheekham, whose door was so marked. The affected families have filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission. Bheekham’s pain reveals something endemic to deeply unequal societies claiming to be ‘democracies’ — that those who make policies to ‘benefit’ the poor or the hungry have little patience for what their beneficiaries value or demand, or what constitutes justice from their perspective. This is why the demand for democratizing food production is off the table; and the goal of universal right to food — which could guarantee not only food but also some dignity — can so easily be substituted with a watered-down, undemocratically determined notion of food security. For a society that makes tall claims for its representativeness, this constitutes a double failure of justice and democracy. -- Rakesh Krishnamoorthy Iyer MM06B019 Final Year, Dual Degree Student Dept. of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering IIT Madras, Chennai - 600036 Phone no: +91-9444073884 E-mail ID: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com From rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com Mon Jun 27 13:49:08 2011 From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com (Rakesh Iyer) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:49:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: Right to Food - Set 1 - Re-entry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Article 2: Link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090708/jsp/opinion/story_11209738.jsp Article: Food, glorious food! The proposed National Food Security Act promises to deliver the poor from hunger. But the legislation will be effective only if the public distribution system is toned up, argues *Shabina Akhtar * Selima Bibi, a resident of a shanty in central Calcutta, ignores her five-year-old son when he cries for food. She is going to boil some rice in a while but there’s precious little else that she can give him to eat. The malnourished boy, with a swollen belly and rickety legs, slinks off whimpering, perhaps to forage for food somewhere else. Selima Bibi and her family are among millions of people in India who do not get enough to eat. In fact, if the latest survey by the ministry of rural development is to be believed, about 50 per cent of India’s population suffers from malnutrition. However, that may change soon. The United Progressive Alliance government has promised to come up with the National Food Security Act (NFSA). This will provide a statutory framework to ensure food security for all. The proposed law is to be drafted by the ministry of food and public distribution in consultation with several non-governmental organisations and the Supreme Court Commissioners (SCC), a body formed by the apex court in 2001 to address the problem of hunger. The NFSA will entitle every family below the poverty line (BPL) in rural and urban areas to 25 kg of rice or wheat a month at a subsidised rate of Rs 3 per kg. Targeted identification cards will be issued to people who fall below the poverty line. The delivery monitoring unit in the Prime Minister’s Office will be overseeing the project. Yet despite the laudable objectives of the law, many feel that it would actually be a step back from what the government is providing now. “Given that India has a very high percentage of people suffering from hunger and malnutrition, we do require such a law. However, 2.5 crore BPL cardholders are already getting food grains at the rate of Rs 2 per kg. Besides, each BPL household is entitled to 35 kg of rice or wheat a month. If the government plans to reduce entitlements in the name of food security and ask the beneficiaries to pay a rupee extra per kg, then what kind of food security is this,” asks Member of Parliament and CPI(M) politbureau member Brinda Karat. Karat has a point. Under existing schemes like the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) each BPL household is entitled to 35 kg of food grains a month at the rate of Rs 2 per kg. Then why bring in such a law at all? Says Biraj Patnaik, principal advisor, SCC, “Both the Supreme Court and the high courts have repeatedly interpreted the right to food and shelter as a fundamental right. But unless a right is clearly explicated and broken down into solid entitlement, it fails to deliver. Schemes such as the AAY are there, but they can be done away with any time. Once the National Food Security Act comes into force, however, it would require an amendment to be passed in Parliament to make any changes to its entitlements.” Patnaik feels that schemes such as the AAY will probably be merged with the new law eventually. However, he also says that the government may have to raise the entitlement to 35 kg of rice a month per BPL household in the draft bill, in keeping with what poor families are already getting under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana scheme. Another critical issue is the assessment of those who will benefit from it. The Planning Commission report of 2002 made 65 million people beneficiaries of the AAY schemes. Yet the state governments have already issued BPL cards to over a 100 million households. But if one goes by the recent survey by the ministry of rural development, as many as 50 per cent of the Indian population is likely to benefit from the law. N.C. Saxena, a former secretary of the Planning Commission, who conducted the survey at the behest of the ministry of rural development, says, “The analysis shows that the percentage of rural population unable to satisfy the minimum calorie requirements is far greater than the present 28.3 per cent of the total population. I have recommended that the percentage of people entitled to BPL status should be increased to at least 50 per cent.” Others say that the law will be futile if it does not tone up the public distribution system (PDS). Devinder Sharma, chairman of the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, a collective of scientists, economists, farmers and policymakers, says that what plagues the proper implementation of existing schemes is the not-so-transparent PDS. “The Act should try and reform the public distribution system. It is one of the most corrupt systems in the country,” he says. Saxena agrees. “Many policies have failed because of the deficiencies in the public distribution system. The government procures 40 million tonnes of food grains from farmers. And this amount needs a market so it needs to be given to the poor at a subsidised rate. So the PDS needs massive reform.” Experts also suggest that the law ought to look at the idea of direct cash transfer, that is, providing cash in lieu of the amount of food grains a family is entitled to. “As I have mentioned in my paper, one needs to experiment with the idea of direct cash transfer in places where there is a good banking facility. You can then see what people prefer — PDS or direct cash transfer.” Right now, there is every indication that the government means business when it comes to the NFSA. It has expressed its desire to work closely with activists in order to come up with a draft bill that is satisfactory to all. “Apart from securing entitlements, the legislation should also have provisions for vulnerable groups. We have come up with a draft that will be submitted to the ministry after our July 11 meeting in Delhi,” reveals Trilochan Pandey, secretariat, Right to Food Campaign, New Delhi. Activists who have been campaigning hard to ensure food security for India’s toiling masses feel that the law is long overdue. “The government should have brought in such a law earlier. But it’s better late than never. Now the policymakers should think of policies that will ensure the judicious implementation of the law,” says Sharma. From rajkamalgoswami at gmail.com Mon Jun 27 13:52:57 2011 From: rajkamalgoswami at gmail.com (Rajkamal Goswami) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:52:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: Right to Food - Set 1 - Re-entry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear All, read and let me know how you true intellectuals feel about it. http://rkgoswami.blogspot.com/2011/06/lost-highway-rajkamal-i-am-always.html http://rkgoswami.blogspot.com/ guys do read this ok rajkamal On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 1:49 PM, Rakesh Iyer wrote: > Article 2: > > Link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090708/jsp/opinion/story_11209738.jsp > > Article: > > Food, glorious food! > The proposed National Food Security Act promises to deliver the poor from > hunger. But the legislation will be effective only if the public > distribution system is toned up, argues *Shabina Akhtar > > * > > Selima Bibi, a resident of a shanty in central Calcutta, ignores her > five-year-old son when he cries for food. She is going to boil some rice in > a while but there’s precious little else that she can give him to eat. The > malnourished boy, with a swollen belly and rickety legs, slinks off > whimpering, perhaps to forage for food somewhere else. > > Selima Bibi and her family are among millions of people in India who do not > get enough to eat. In fact, if the latest survey by the ministry of rural > development is to be believed, about 50 per cent of India’s population > suffers from malnutrition. However, that may change soon. > > The United Progressive Alliance government has promised to come up with the > National Food Security Act (NFSA). This will provide a statutory framework > to ensure food security for all. The proposed law is to be drafted by the > ministry of food and public distribution in consultation with several > non-governmental organisations and the Supreme Court Commissioners (SCC), a > body formed by the apex court in 2001 to address the problem of hunger. > > The NFSA will entitle every family below the poverty line (BPL) in rural > and > urban areas to 25 kg of rice or wheat a month at a subsidised rate of Rs 3 > per kg. Targeted identification cards will be issued to people who fall > below the poverty line. The delivery monitoring unit in the Prime > Minister’s > Office will be overseeing the project. > > Yet despite the laudable objectives of the law, many feel that it would > actually be a step back from what the government is providing now. “Given > that India has a very high percentage of people suffering from hunger and > malnutrition, we do require such a law. However, 2.5 crore BPL cardholders > are already getting food grains at the rate of Rs 2 per kg. Besides, each > BPL household is entitled to 35 kg of rice or wheat a month. If the > government plans to reduce entitlements in the name of food security and > ask > the beneficiaries to pay a rupee extra per kg, then what kind of food > security is this,” asks Member of Parliament and CPI(M) politbureau member > Brinda Karat. > > Karat has a point. Under existing schemes like the Antyodaya Anna Yojana > (AAY) each BPL household is entitled to 35 kg of food grains a month at the > rate of Rs 2 per kg. Then why bring in such a law at all? > > Says Biraj Patnaik, principal advisor, SCC, “Both the Supreme Court and the > high courts have repeatedly interpreted the right to food and shelter as a > fundamental right. But unless a right is clearly explicated and broken down > into solid entitlement, it fails to deliver. Schemes such as the AAY are > there, but they can be done away with any time. Once the National Food > Security Act comes into force, however, it would require an amendment to be > passed in Parliament to make any changes to its entitlements.” > > Patnaik feels that schemes such as the AAY will probably be merged with the > new law eventually. However, he also says that the government may have to > raise the entitlement to 35 kg of rice a month per BPL household in the > draft bill, in keeping with what poor families are already getting under > the > Antyodaya Anna Yojana scheme. > > Another critical issue is the assessment of those who will benefit from it. > The Planning Commission report of 2002 made 65 million people beneficiaries > of the AAY schemes. Yet the state governments have already issued BPL cards > to over a 100 million households. But if one goes by the recent survey by > the ministry of rural development, as many as 50 per cent of the Indian > population is likely to benefit from the law. > > N.C. Saxena, a former secretary of the Planning Commission, who conducted > the survey at the behest of the ministry of rural development, says, “The > analysis shows that the percentage of rural population unable to satisfy > the > minimum calorie requirements is far greater than the present 28.3 per cent > of the total population. I have recommended that the percentage of people > entitled to BPL status should be increased to at least 50 per cent.” > > Others say that the law will be futile if it does not tone up the public > distribution system (PDS). Devinder Sharma, chairman of the Forum for > Biotechnology and Food Security, a collective of scientists, economists, > farmers and policymakers, says that what plagues the proper implementation > of existing schemes is the not-so-transparent PDS. “The Act should try and > reform the public distribution system. It is one of the most corrupt > systems > in the country,” he says. > > Saxena agrees. “Many policies have failed because of the deficiencies in > the > public distribution system. The government procures 40 million tonnes of > food grains from farmers. And this amount needs a market so it needs to be > given to the poor at a subsidised rate. So the PDS needs massive reform.” > > Experts also suggest that the law ought to look at the idea of direct cash > transfer, that is, providing cash in lieu of the amount of food grains a > family is entitled to. “As I have mentioned in my paper, one needs to > experiment with the idea of direct cash transfer in places where there is a > good banking facility. You can then see what people prefer — PDS or direct > cash transfer.” > > Right now, there is every indication that the government means business > when > it comes to the NFSA. It has expressed its desire to work closely with > activists in order to come up with a draft bill that is satisfactory to > all. > “Apart from securing entitlements, the legislation should also have > provisions for vulnerable groups. We have come up with a draft that will be > submitted to the ministry after our July 11 meeting in Delhi,” reveals > Trilochan Pandey, secretariat, Right to Food Campaign, New Delhi. > > Activists who have been campaigning hard to ensure food security for > India’s > toiling masses feel that the law is long overdue. “The government should > have brought in such a law earlier. But it’s better late than never. Now > the > policymakers should think of policies that will ensure the judicious > implementation of the law,” says Sharma. > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> > -- Rajkamal From rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com Mon Jun 27 13:56:09 2011 From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com (Rakesh Iyer) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:56:09 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: Right to Food - Set 1 - Re-entry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Article 3: Link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100506/jsp/jharkhand/story_12417696.jsp Article: Food forum punches holes in child scheme - Joint body of social activists & NGOs decides to keep tab on anganwadi centres OUR CORRESPONDENT *Ranchi, May 5:* There are large-scale irregularities in implementation of Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) in Jharkhand, Right to Food Campaign — a joint body of social activists and NGOs working on issues related to food security — has found out. The forum, which held a review meeting today, decided to start a community-level monitoring system for ICDS schemes to stem the rot and ensure that children and girls got the right amount and quality of food as provided to them by the government. “The food served to children at anganwadi centres is substandard though the government has made sufficient monetary allocation for each centre,” said Balram, a member of Right to Food Campaign and adviser to Supreme Court Commissioners on Food Security. The forum also discussed implementation of other programmes like public distribution system, MGNREGA, mid-day meal and the like. Noted economist and MGNREGA activist Jean Dreze took part in the meeting. Each anganwadi centre is given a sum of Rs 10,200 to buy foodgrain and other cooking stuff for children, women and girls of its area. Till December 2009, this amount was Rs 5,200. An anganwadi centre has to buy rice, *masoor dal*, soya bean, refined oil and sugar with this money and prepare *khichdi *to feed the children (six months to three years). The other group — three to six years — get the same meal. Only, green vegetable is a must for them. “During my field visits, I did not see any centre serving nutritious food. Green vegetables can hardly be spotted in the meal. The consistency of *dal*is very thin,” Balram said, alleging huge irregularities to the tune of Rs 6,000 per month at each anganwadi centre.. The Right to Food Campaign will now regularly monitor the food served to check this financial irregularities perpetrated at the bureaucratic level. The body also plans to hold public hearings on the issues in regular intervals, Balram said. The body has also decided to hold a meeting with the legislators in July to make them aware of the importance of the schemes. “We will also also ask the MLAs to include all rural and urban slum households in the BPL category as the existing list is faulty,” said Gurjit Singh, a member of the body. From rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com Mon Jun 27 13:58:57 2011 From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com (Rakesh Iyer) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:58:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: Right to Food - Set 1 - Re-entry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Article 4: Link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081017/jsp/jharkhand/story_9979819.jsp Article: Hunger death report to reach SC SANTOSH K. KIRO *Ranchi, Oct. 16: *The Jharkhand adviser to N.C. Saxena, Supreme Court commissioner for food security, would send his report on the alleged hunger death of eight Birhors in Chatra district to the apex court on Friday. “I have given the details of my findings in the report,” said Balram, the state adviser of the apex court’s commissioner on the right to food issues. Besides sending the report to the SC, Balram has also prepared a list of suggestions for the state government to avoid hunger deaths. “However rich a district may be, there are some specific pockets which go through food insecurity. The government should come out with a list of such areas and focus for food supply,” Balram suggested. The Jharkhand advisor of the apex court’s commissioner on the right to food issues had visited Hindaikala village of Pratapur block in Chatra on October 5 after the death of eight Birhors there. Claiming that the Birhors died of “hunger”, he trashed the administration’s stand that they died of some health problems. Noted economist and National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) activist Jean Dreze, meanwhile, is expected to arrive here tomorrow to discuss the deaths of the Birhors and other hunger deaths in the state. He would hold a meeting with other right to food activists of the state and chalk out a strategy to mount pressure on the state government to ensure that no one dies due to lack of food. “We will call for a state-wide meet to discuss the issues of hunger death in Jharkhand soon,” said Gurjit, a member of the Jharkhand NREGA watch body. From rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com Mon Jun 27 14:00:02 2011 From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com (Rakesh Iyer) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:00:02 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: Right to Food - Set 1 - Re-entry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Article 5: Link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061101/asp/northeast/story_6942356.asp Article: Dispur has let poor down: apex court P. BRAHMA CHOUDHURY *Kokrajhar, Oct. 31:* The Supreme Court has found Dispur guilty of denying basic rights to the poorest of the poor, exposing in the process the hollowness of the ruling Congress’s *garibi hatao *slogan. In a letter to chief secretary S. Kabilan, the Supreme Court’s special commissioner Harsh Mander and commissioner N.C. Saxena have pointed out Dispur’s failure to address the issues of food security, right to food and right to work. The letter dated October 20 — The Telegraph has a copy — states that Assam has been ignoring directives from the Supreme Court on implementing schemes for the poor. “Based on our sixth report submitted to the Supreme Court in December 2005, following issues have emerged with regard to the state of Assam, which demands immediate intervention by the state government. Many of the Supreme Court orders are not complied with in the state, which essentially means denial of their basic rights to the poorest,” the letter says. The missive from the Supreme Court mentions lacunae in the implementation of centrally-sponsored programmes like the Integrated Child Development Services, the midday meal scheme, Sampoorn Grameen Rozgar Yojana, National Social Assistance Programme and Annapurna, national maternity benefit schemes and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Quoting from an annual report of the department of women and child development, the letter says only 24 per cent of the sanctioned *Anganwadis *are operational in Assam. “This is a grave violation of the Supreme Court order dated 29.04.04, which clearly stated that all the sanctioned AWCs were to be made fully operational by 30.04.04.” The letter also states that since January 2005, cooked meals under the midday meal scheme have been provided to students in schools of Dhubri for merely 15 days and only two days each in Udalguri and Darrang districts. The programme has not been implemented in Chirang and Bongaigaon at all. “In the districts of Bongaigaon and Chirang, teachers have been officially told to sell three days worth of rations every month in order to pay the cooking staff,” the letter points out. “Although it is astounding that as per the Food Grain Bulletin of the ministry of food and public distribution, the rice allocated to Assam for midday meal scheme was 101.63 thousand tonnes and the offtake was as high as 87.28 thousand tonnes, thereby indicating 86 per cent offtake of grains for the schemes in the year 2004-05… implementation of the scheme in the state leaves gaps that need explanation.” Kabilan said the state planning and development department had begun implementing remedial steps. From rajkamalgoswami at gmail.com Mon Jun 27 15:14:01 2011 From: rajkamalgoswami at gmail.com (Rajkamal Goswami) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:14:01 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: Right to Food - Set 1 - Re-entry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear All http://rkgoswami.blogspot.com/ tell me what you think about it. On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 2:00 PM, Rakesh Iyer wrote: > Article 5: > > Link: > http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061101/asp/northeast/story_6942356.asp > > Article: > > Dispur has let poor down: apex court > P. BRAHMA CHOUDHURY > > *Kokrajhar, Oct. 31:* The Supreme Court has found Dispur guilty of denying > basic rights to the poorest of the poor, exposing in the process the > hollowness of the ruling Congress’s *garibi hatao *slogan. > > In a letter to chief secretary S. Kabilan, the Supreme Court’s special > commissioner Harsh Mander and commissioner N.C. Saxena have pointed out > Dispur’s failure to address the issues of food security, right to food and > right to work. > > The letter dated October 20 — The Telegraph has a copy — states that Assam > has been ignoring directives from the Supreme Court on implementing schemes > for the poor. > > “Based on our sixth report submitted to the Supreme Court in December 2005, > following issues have emerged with regard to the state of Assam, which > demands immediate intervention by the state government. Many of the Supreme > Court orders are not complied with in the state, which essentially means > denial of their basic rights to the poorest,” the letter says. > > The missive from the Supreme Court mentions lacunae in the implementation > of > centrally-sponsored programmes like the Integrated Child Development > Services, the midday meal scheme, Sampoorn Grameen Rozgar Yojana, National > Social Assistance Programme and Annapurna, national maternity benefit > schemes and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. > > Quoting from an annual report of the department of women and child > development, the letter says only 24 per cent of the sanctioned *Anganwadis > *are operational in Assam. “This is a grave violation of the Supreme Court > order dated 29.04.04, which clearly stated that all the sanctioned AWCs > were > to be made fully operational by 30.04.04.” > > The letter also states that since January 2005, cooked meals under the > midday meal scheme have been provided to students in schools of Dhubri for > merely 15 days and only two days each in Udalguri and Darrang districts. > The > programme has not been implemented in Chirang and Bongaigaon at all. > > “In the districts of Bongaigaon and Chirang, teachers have been officially > told to sell three days worth of rations every month in order to pay the > cooking staff,” the letter points out. “Although it is astounding that as > per the Food Grain Bulletin of the ministry of food and public > distribution, > the rice allocated to Assam for midday meal scheme was 101.63 thousand > tonnes and the offtake was as high as 87.28 thousand tonnes, thereby > indicating 86 per cent offtake of grains for the schemes in the year > 2004-05… implementation of the scheme in the state leaves gaps that need > explanation.” > > Kabilan said the state planning and development department had begun > implementing remedial steps. > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> > -- Rajkamal From rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com Mon Jun 27 16:37:53 2011 From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com (Rakesh Iyer) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:37:53 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: Article on sanitation - How things can go wrong Message-ID: Link: http://southasia.oneworld.net/opinioncomment/the-dirty-truth-behind-community-led-sanitation-in-india Article: The dirty truth behind community-led sanitation in India * Liz Chatterjee * 14 June 2011 The community-led scheme for sanitation often uses extremes of coercion to encourage toilet use. Researcher *Liz Chatterjee* finds that the name and shame tactics might meet the statistical targets but fails to educate the locals on its health gains. Robert Chambers recently wrote that community-led total sanitation is leading to a development revolution, especially in south Asia. I agree with his assessment of sanitation's importance. In practice, however, the success of community-led efforts often hinges on the use of outright coercion. In my experience, the measures used to encourage the use of toilets range from stone-throwing and public humiliation to bizarre scare stories about congenital abnormalities. Last summer, I travelled to a semi-rural district in the southern Indian state of Karnataka as part of a four-strong group. India's national Total Sanitation Campaign had led to an astonishing rise from 20% toilet usage in the area to almost 100% in just two years. We planned to produce a case study of success for project sponsors Unicef from which lessons for best practice could be drawn for the benefit of other parts of the country. "Best practice" turned out to be slightly alarming. The toilets had indeed been constructed, local officials had made superhuman efforts, and people of all classes and castes were using the facilities regularly. But we weren't prepared for the degree of (often community-backed) coercion used to get the job done. *Emotional barriers* Previous efforts to build toilets in the area failed to ensure actual use. They were often used to store firewood or chickens while families continued to defecate outdoors. Most people in a district only 40 miles from the IT metropolis of Bangalore didn't see the attraction of investing in a toilet, preferring televisions and mobile phones. The barriers to toilet usage were often emotional as much as practical. A Rajasthani once waxed lyrical to me on the joys of open defecation: "I used to go out into the desert with all my friends. We had our favourite spot - it was very beautiful and clean. Afterwards we'd all play games together, and then go again." Contrast this experience with the foul toilets at bus stations and hospitals, many people's only experience of defecating indoors, and you get some idea of why officials and community leaders were united in viewing emotions as the key battleground for improved sanitation. From our very first meeting, everyone from senior bureaucrats to local kindergarten teachers talked proudly of their innovative approach to "persuading" the more reluctant members of the community to construct a toilet. *Name and shame tactics * At its mildest, this meant squads of teachers and youths, who patrolled the fields and blew whistles when they spotted people defecating. Schoolchildren whose families did not have toilets were humiliated in the classroom. Men followed women - and vice versa - all day, denying people the opportunity even to urinate. These strategies are the norm, not the exception, and have also been deployed in Nepal and Bangladesh. Equally common, though, were more questionable tactics. Squads threw stones at people defecating. Women were photographed and their pictures displayed publicly. The local government institution, the gram panchayat, threatened to cut off households' water and electricity supplies until their owners had signed contracts promising to build latrines. A handful of very poor people reported that a toilet had been hastily constructed in their yards without their consent. A local official proudly testified to the extremes of the coercion. He had personally locked up houses when people were out defecating, forcing them to come to his office and sign a contract to build a toilet before he would give them the keys. Another time, he had collected a woman's faeces and dumped them on her kitchen table. *Health benefits ignored* These tactics of public shaming bore little relationship to the "good" shame and fear that community-led total sanitation relies on in its participatory analysis of how "we are eating one another's shit". People praised toilets for their convenience and not their health benefits, about which many were sceptical - including some of the teachers charged with carrying the campaign forward in the community. Several described toilets as dirtier than the fields. The vast majority of facilities did not have soap for hand washing, which meant the expected health gains were lost. This lack of knowledge testifies to the failure of the education programme that makes up a critical component of the campaign. Most people did not realise that microscopic pathogens cause disease. NGOs and officials have taken the path of least resistance: it is much easier to convince people of the more tangible evils of mosquitoes or unpleasant smells than to teach them about invisible germs. In fact, often the education campaign devolved into sensationalist scare tactics, consciously intended to shock and terrify. These included graphic media stories on the rape-murders of women, and dramas about the dangers of child-snatching, robbery and snakebites while openly defecating (all rare in the area). In one village, a Unicef-sponsored NGO had even been showing people grotesque pictures of vast tumours and conjoined twins, suggesting they were the result of poor sanitation. How should we feel about this? We concluded that humiliation and fear are strikingly effective tools. What's the objection, given that the emotional coercion has been spearheaded by the local community itself? Improved sanitation is an undeniably great good, especially for women and children. But we need to stop pretending that decentralised development is necessarily the ultra-democratic panacea it's often made out to be. As we told Unicef, the ultimate success of the project in Karnataka was founded on community-led coercion - not a utopian democratic upsurge. If we think the ends justify the means, we ought to be honest about it. *Liz Chatterjee is a DPhil candidate in international development at the University of Oxford* -- Rakesh Krishnamoorthy Iyer MM06B019 Final Year, Dual Degree Student Dept. of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering IIT Madras, Chennai - 600036 Phone no: +91-9444073884 E-mail ID: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com From rohitrellan at aol.in Tue Jun 28 07:23:23 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:53:23 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Tamasha Na Hua - A Play by Bhanu Bharti, New Delhi/ CASTING CALL FOR THREE SHORT FILMS, DELHI, M/F ARTISTES NEEDED Message-ID: <8CE034D4C17F866-1F3C-CB9E@webmail-m022.sysops.aol.com> Tamasha Na Hua - A Play by Bhanu Bharti Tamasha Na Hua - Play. Written & Directed By Bhanu Bharti And Presented By AAYAM. At Sri Ram Center on 28th, 29th and 30th June 2011 at 6:30 PM. For tickets call 09990756476. Tickets will be available at the venue. Tamasha Na Hua depicts a group of theatre actors rehearsing one of Tagore's most popular works - Muktdhara. The narrative is essentially a discussion among the actors on the relevance of the play which leads to a serious debate about the freedom of men in the present political, technological and cultural context. Needless to say, the debate remains inconclusive and the play unperformed. While dealing with the issues of freedom in the present times, the play also gives voice to the problems, practical as well as conceptual, that theatre faces in the present times. Even as the audience is bound to leave with more questions than answers, the play is above all, a tribute to the thought-provoking words of the poet who continues to live on in our angst, hopes and dreams. About the director: Bhanu Bharti One of the most eminent Indian theatre directors, who created a niche for himself and Indian theatre on the world arena, Bhanu Bharti was born in 1947 in Ajmer, Rajasthan. He graduated from NSD in 1973, bagging the Best all Round student and the Best Director awards. Later he studied traditional theatre of Japan at the University of Tokyo. Bhanu Bharti has over fifty productions to his credit. His major works are “Chandrama Singh urf Chamku”, “Ras Gandharva”, Azar Ka Khawab and Yamgatha. His productions like Pashu Gayatri, Kal Katha and Amar Beej are based on his study of the performances and rituals of the Bheel tribe of the Mewar region of Rajasthan. He has also directed a film on Gavari, the dance theatre of the Bheels. Bhanu Bharti headed the Drama Department of Rajasthan University, Jaipur, from its inception in 1976 till 1978. He has also taught dramatic literature, scenic design and acting in many institutions, including the NSD. He has served as Director of the Shri Ram Centre for Art and Culture, Delhi and headed Bharatiya Lok Kola Manda, Udaipur. He was also the Chairman of Rajathan Sangeet Natak Akademi. Bhanu Bharti has been honoured with many prestigious Nations Awards for his exclusive contribution to the field of theatre including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and Rajasthan Sahitya Akademi Award. ----------------------------------------------------- CASTING CALL FOR THREE SHORT FILMS, DELHI, M/F ARTISTES NEEDED The films will be directed by student filmmakers participating in Impulse Filmmaking Programme 2011. DATES: Artistes will be needed for 1-2 days of shooting any day between 1st and 8th July 2011 (final dates to be decided). Plus some additional time for preparatory work, rehearsals etc. MORE INFO AND PH NOS BELOW ------------------- FILM 01: Working Title: AKELAPAN; Short Fiction. Synopsis: In the hubbub of the city, an old couple yearn for their family. ARTISTES REQUIRED: Main Character – OLD MAN 50 to 60 years. Expressive. (Brief Dialogue) Must be fluent in Hindi. MAIN Character – OLD WOMAN 50 to 60 years. Expressive. (Brief Dialogue) Must be fluent in Hindi. Featured Other Characters An old man – 50-60 yrs. 1 boy – 8 to 10yrs 1 Girl – 8 to 10 yrs Middle aged woman – 30’s – 40’s Interested actors may contact: Anirudh: +91 - 99710 32264 -------------------------- --------- FILM 02: Working Title: Do Not Disturb; Short Fiction. Synopsis: A young man, a middle aged woman, a teenage girl, a phone call and city life. ARTISTES REQUIRED: Main Character – Middle aged woman 35 - 45 years. Healthy, North Indian looking. Must be fluent in Hindi. Will speak dialogues. Supporting Character – Young man 19 - 25 years. Medium height, and average / lanky build preferred. (Brief dialogue) Featured – Teenage girl 16-18 years old. Slender. Interested actors may contact: Hari Krishna: +91 – 99104 11393 -------------------------- ------------- FILM 03: Working Title: Beauty in Confusion; Short Fiction. Synopsis: A film that explores the perception of beauty among young urban women. ARTISTES REQUIRED Main Character – YOUNG WOMAN 17-23 Years. Slender and trendy looking. Wheatish to dusky complexion preferred. Expressive. Main Character- YOUNG WOMAN 17-23 Years. Plump. Pleasant to look at. Expressive. Supporting Character- YOUNG WOMAN 17-23 years. Slim to average build. Expressive. Should look like an aspiring air hostess. Interested actors may contact: Abhinava Bhattacharyya : (+91) 99 100 76685 -------------------------- -------- Please note that these are student films, made on very limited financial resources. -------------------------E ND------------------------ - From sanchiadesouza at gmail.com Tue Jun 28 12:15:15 2011 From: sanchiadesouza at gmail.com (Sanchia de Souza) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:15:15 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] One-day conference, Bangalore, 19 July -- "Oral History and the Sense of Legacy" Message-ID: The Centre for Public History, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, in association with the British Council, is pleased to announce a one-day conference titled "Oral History and the Sense of Legacy" to be held at the National Gallery of Modern Art Auditorium, Palace Road, Vasanthnagar, Bangalore, on 19 July 2011 (9 am - 5 pm). The conference will have invited presentations by experienced practitioners on key issues with regard to Oral History and its uses. These will be followed by discussions. Our speakers include Dr Robert Perks (Director and Lead Curator) and Ms Mary Stewart (Deputy Director) of the National Life Stories Programme of the British Library, London; Dr CS Lakshmi, SPARROW, Mumbai; Dr Suroopa Mukherjee, University of Delhi; Urvashi Butalia, Zubaan Books; and Dr Indira Chowdhury, Centre for Public History, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore. The presenters will, in discussing their different areas of research interest and experience, highlight some of the opportunities and challenges associated with using oral history as a methodology in the specific context of India. The conference is open for a public audience. There will be a registration fee of Rs 1000 for delegates from corporate houses and Rs 750 for delegates from academic institutions, NGOs or individuals, which will cover conference material, lunch and tea. A concessional rate of Rs 500 is available for students and research scholars. Please register early to reserve your space in the audience. On-the-spot registrations at the venue will be subject to availability. To register, and for more information, contact the Centre for Public History. Phone: 080-49000808/809 Email: cph at srishti.ac.in -- Centre for Public History Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology Bangalore www.srishti.ac.in From rohitrellan at aol.in Tue Jun 28 17:47:17 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:17:17 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] International Folk Music Film Feastival -Nepal 2011 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CE03A474AF0F6E-E18-AE37@webmail-d156.sysops.aol.com> InternationalFolk Music Film Festival- Nepal 2011 ‘Music for life, Music for survival’ Hosted by- Music Museumof Nepal, 25-27 November inKathmandu and Nepal Sanskritik Sansthan, Nepal Cultural Corporation. Dear Friend, Namaste, Don’t be left out! The deadline for film entries, which is fastapproaching, has been extendedby specialrequest until August 15th 2011. The venue has now been announced as thesuperb Rastriya Naach Ghar, National Dance Theatre, in Jamal, central Kathmanduand the three-day festival is being dedicated to three prominent past andpresent musicologists namely Arnold A. Bake, Mireille Helffer and Carol Tingeyfor their outstanding contributions to conservation of Nepal’s folk musicalheritage. We inviteentries of short films (3-15mins) or longer films (up to 90mins) pertaining toany aspect of folk (traditional) music/dance culture of any country and believe that screening films from around the globe willfoster cross-cultural understanding and give us the opportunity to learn fromeach other’s musical heritages and experiences. For the Festival Programme,Entry Form, full Terms and Conditions, list of supporters and collaboratorsetc. etc. please visit. www.nepalfolkmusicfilmfestival.com http://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Folk-Music-Film-Festival-Nepal/127259700678968 The Festival will be the first of its kindin Nepal and so far we have entries from India, France, Brittany, Bengal,Northern Ireland, England (featuring Afghanistan and Nepal), Scotland, Wales,Israel (featuring Azerbaijan) and Argentina as well as those from our ownnational artists. Our objective is to be as inclusive as possible so to help usbroaden our reach we would be grateful if you could please pass thisinformation to friends and colleagues in your contact sphere. Music Museum of Nepal is a registered charity and The Folk Music Film Festivalis a strictly non-commercial and unfunded enterprise, any revenue generated bythe Festival will be used for on-going folk music research, for collection,conservation, recording and raising awareness of Nepal’s disappearing musical heritageand also improving the social status of our folk musicians. The Entry fee hasbeen set at £35 to enable us to subsidise entries from poorer Third Worldfilmmakers who might not normally be able to participate in such anInternational event. The fee can be negotiated in cases of difficulty. If yourequire any more information please get in touch with Homenath Bhandari, thefilm festival’s secretary lokbaja at btinternet.comor myself, Norma Blackstock normacwm at btinternet.com. We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you in Kathmandu. Best regards, Norma (Dr Norma Blackstock,Overseas coordinator, International Folk Music Film Festival) From indersalim at gmail.com Tue Jun 28 22:14:46 2011 From: indersalim at gmail.com (Inder Salim) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 22:14:46 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] on performance art in India Message-ID: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=130d3c0c6703b77e&mt=application/pdf&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui%3D2%26ik%3D81929458de%26view%3Datt%26th%3D130d3c0c6703b77e%26attid%3D0.1%26disp%3Dsafe%26realattid%3Df_gpfhs6vc0%26zw&sig=AHIEtbQU7uWUJZqQJ_2_wJbrzOyKsqnehg&pli=1 From rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com Wed Jun 29 14:33:49 2011 From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com (Rakesh Iyer) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 02:03:49 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: Right to Food - Set 2 Message-ID: Link: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/against-the-foodgrain/803727/0 Article: Against the foodgrain *N K Singh **Tags : n k singh , columnist , indian express , indian express oped , Against the foodgrain **Posted: Wed Jun 15 2011, 03:26 hrs** **The UPA 2 government has completed its first two years in office. The Food Security Bill continues to elude consensus. Every now and then there is a new announcement that a comprehensive bill is round the corner. In the meantime, foodgrain rots and hunger remains unabated. Uncertainty surrounds even the existing unsatisfactory arrangements. So, what are the key issues that need to be resolved? First and foremost, the scope of the bill. Should this only cover those who are below poverty line (BPL) or should it also cover the above poverty line (APL) families? After all, the right to food is the universal right of every citizen. It is true that those who are BPL, who are on the edge of hunger, must be our overriding priority. But how can we call something a “right” if everyone does not have it? Second, what is the methodology which should be used to define BPL? Should this only be based on minimum calorific intake without regard to nutritional efficiencies? It is well-recognised that unless the entitlement covers clean drinking water, sanitation, hygiene and primary healthcare, along with deficiencies of micro nutrients, the absorptive capacity for food would be seriously compromised. So the question is, what do we want to achieve from the Food Security Bill? After all, it must enable every child, woman and man to have an opportunity for a healthy and productive life beyond mere access to calories required for existence. Therefore, the food security legislation should aim at overcoming the challenges of food security without losing sight of the broad definition and components of food security that have come to be accepted across the world. The interrelation between food and social security cannot be ignored and any effort of guaranteeing one without the rest will render food security ineffective Third, even in the traditional sense in which poverty has been imperfectly defined, there are widely varying estimates of the number of poor people. As far as the number of BPL families are concerned, the Wadhwa committee estimates the number to be 20 crore, the state governments estimate the number as 10.5 crore, the Tendulkar committee put it as 9.5 crore, Arjun Sengupta committee 20 crore, N.C. Saxena 12.5 crore and the Planning Commission puts the figure at 7 crore. Recently, of course, the Planning Commission is inclined to accept the Tendulkar committee report which is half of the number suggested by the Wadhwa committee and is slightly below the state government estimates. Of course, the financial implications vary dramatically from Rs 82,000 crore under the Wadhwa committee to Rs 18,000 crore under the Tendulkar committee, over and above the present allocations for subsidies. Until recently, poverty was estimated in India by measuring calorie intake, though the Tendulkar committee moved away from that to a broader definition. Methodology for the computation of poverty needs to be restructured by taking into account the new multi-dimensional approach of estimating poverty. Fourth, related to the above is the issue of whether the entitlement should be 25 kg or 35 kg of foodgrain a month. There could also be a differentiated approach in which only those in the BPL category receive 35 kg, others like APL families receive the lower entitlement of 25 kg only. Price, no doubt, everyone has assumed, should be Rs 3 per kg. Fifth, a major unresolved issue is the distribution modality since the bill will entail a massive increase in the quantum of foodgrain. Reliance on the public distribution system alone may prove inadequate. Everyone is familiar with the inherent leakages in the existing PDS in terms of quality of foodgrain, bogus ration cards, hoarding, profiteering and multiple ways of denying food to the powerless and disadvantaged. Of course, if the current PDS is to be continued, it will also entail enormous problems of food procurement, storage, transportation and all the other attendant evils we are fully familiar with. So should we not think of more innovative ways of administering food subsidy? Two types of schemes are being increasingly mentioned. The first is a coupon system in which the intended beneficiary receives a food coupon which carries money value and gives him the option to buy foodgrain from any shop which gives him satisfaction. This creates competition between different outlets and will certainly improve the quality and enlarge consumer choice, minimise misuse and improve productivity. There is the second approach, that is, direct cash transfer by opening a bank account in the name of the intended beneficiary and transferring the money directly to the bank account. Countries like Brazil, which have experimented with conditional cash transfer, have achieved success in administering such schemes more efficiently. Sixth, production and livelihood of food producers, from the household to the national level, constitute the core element of food security. You cannot provide food to people if you do not first ensure that food is produced in adequate quantities. And to ensure adequate food production, the livelihood of food producers must be ensured. With continuing high growth in population and the stagnant area under foodgrain production, the right to food can only be ensured with a sustained growth in productivity levels, increased food procurement and by containing the colossal wastage of food. Enacting a Food Security Act cannot be postponed. What kind of superpower can India hope to be if it cannot address the basic issue of starvation and hunger? We cannot afford to hasten slowly. The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP * -- Rakesh Krishnamoorthy Iyer MM06B019 Final Year, Dual Degree Student Dept. of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering IIT Madras, Chennai - 600036 Phone no: +91-9444073884 E-mail ID: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com From rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com Wed Jun 29 14:36:11 2011 From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com (Rakesh Iyer) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 02:06:11 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: Right to Food - Set 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Link: Article: Right to food: ‘Authorities look to hide poverty, not address it’ *Atikh Rashid **Tags : Poverty , Right to Food , R K Gaikwad , Anant Phadke , BPL **Posted: Fri Jun 17 2011, 02:38 hrs**Pune:** ** Right to Food activists have alleged that the government was, in the garb of ‘Garibi hatao’, pursuing the agenda of ‘Garibi Chhupao’. They said the assumption that only those having a spending ability of Rs 20 a day in urban areas and Rs 15 a day in rural areas are poor was a cruel joke. They have demanded implementation of the Wadhwa Committee recommendations. Right to Food Campaign, Pune district, (Ann Adhikar Abhiyan), on Thursday staged a demonstration in front of the Collector’s office. A delegation from the RFC met additional collector R K Gaikwad, who assured them that local issues about the rationing system would be solved in the next two-three months and a followup of the Jan-Sunwai (public hearing) organised by the RFC will be done. He also promised a joint meeting with the District Supply Officer and Food Distribution Officer. Dr Anant Phadke of Right to Food Campaign said, “When various surveys conducted by government itself are coming up with results indicating fragile health of women and saying that every year about 100 children die due to malnutrition, the government’s stubbornness to show the world that there is no poverty in the country is ridiculous.” An affidavit filed by the Planning Commission in the Supreme Court defined a BPL family as one that spends less than Rs 779 a month in urban areas and Rs 447 a month in rural areas. A family spending above this limit is considered above poverty line. In the given spending limits, is it not possible to live, forget about living honorably. Activists said if this was the criterion to decide poverty, then surely it would throw crores of poor families out of the BPL cover. RFC activists demanded that the guiding principles for allotment of the fair price shops be revised, a vigilance committee should be formed at every fair price shop with mandatory representation of women in them, ensure that the ration reaches the fair price shops at the beginning of every month besides an SMS to beneficiaries that the ration has arrived in the shops. * From rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com Wed Jun 29 14:45:12 2011 From: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com (Rakesh Iyer) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 02:15:12 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Reg: Right to Food - Set 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Views of two officers on Right to Food. Link: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/is-universal-pds-a-good-idea/742837/0 Article: Is universal PDS a good idea? *THIRUVOIPATI NANDAKUMAR **Tags : GDP growth , foodgrain distribution , Food Security Act , National Advisory Council **Posted: Fri Jan 28 2011, 22:53 hrs** **How is better delivery expected by allocating more foodgrains, when the system is not equipped to handle even the current level of allocation? The debate about the proposed national food security act seems to be centred on the magnitude of the allocation of food grains. But the issue is far beyond only foodgrains. It is about improving health, sanitation and nutrition standards so that India’s human development goals can be achieved. Before enacting the Food Security Act, the government must ensure that the existing mechanisms for the implementation of the targeted public distribution system (TPDS), mid-day meal scheme, integrated child development scheme and other related social schemes are improved upon. The governments, both at the Centre and state, must ensure that deficiencies in the delivery of these schemes are addressed before enacting the Food Security Act. Even the current debate is mostly silent on these aspects. Under the current system, are we delivering what we aim to? Are foodgrains reaching the deserved population? Most of the time, the off take of foodgrains by the states have been inefficient and far below allocation. How is better delivery expected by allocating more foodgrains, when the system is not equipped to handle even the current level of allocation? There need of the hour is to empower the gram panchayats, district administrations and state governments so the existing TPDS is implemented efficiently. First, measures must be taken to curb leakages in foodgrains as the current level of pilferage at 40-50% is unacceptable and unsustainable. If the system doesn’t improve, what is the point of putting more foodgrains under the same inefficient system? Does the Act take into account these issues of malpractices in TPDS, where foodgrains allocated to poor families enter the market illegally? Another grey area is whether higher procurement by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) for meeting the food security needs would lead to rise in prices of rice and wheat in the open market. If the National Advisory Council’s suggestion for higher procurement is implemented, in case of drought year or a year during which there are inefficient rains, will the government import to give subsidised foodgrains? Particularly in the regions such as Northeast, Jammu & Kashmir and Kerala, which are not self-sufficient, what would be the impact on sourcing foodgrains? These factors need to debated, discussed and studied before finalising the Act. Besides, the Act’s impact on the overall agricultural production is another key issue that has not been given enough attention. With the majority of villagers receiving subsidised food grains, would farmers have enough incentive to produce more when they are aware that getting highly subsidised food grains is their right? It may have an adverse impact on the overall agricultural production. There have been reports about shortage of workforces during sowing and harvesting seasons because of the MGNREGA. The Food Security Act, in its current form, may have similar adverse consequence on the agricultural sector. Pushing for a rights-based approach often obligates the state without looking at the adverse consequences on the market. The government is already grappling with rising inflation and any further increases in food prices of the Act would be bad for the overall economy. Thus, the need of the hour is to look at aspects to increase the overall human development index rather narrowing the debate on only foodgrain allocation. —The author is former secretary, department of agriculture and cooperation, ministry of agriculture (As told to Sandip Das) ------------------------------ Alok Sinha Suppose the Act envisages an annual distribution of 60 mt of foodgrain. Even if 20% is misused through ghost ration cards, about 50 mt will reach the needy India has seen rapid GDP growth in the last 5 to 10 years and the country seems to be shining, with the growth rate approaching 9%. The middle-class is smiling because, for them, the prices of the items they buy are not going up at the same rate as the essential commodities needed by the majority of the population. Now, if we say that the middle-class constitutes about 25% of the population, then the rest coincides with the 77% that the Arjun Sengupta commission said exists on less than $1 a day. There is no doubt that as far as three-quarters of the population is concerned, we are malnourished. Therefore, the National Advisory Council did the right thing in declaring six to eight months back that there should be food security for everyone. Since then, there has been intellectual quibbling on how many Indians are poor—whether it is 30% or 37% or 50%—and how many should be covered under the food security legislation. Second, there has been a great amount of intellectual quibbling on how much food is required through the public distribution system (PDS) to feed this large segment of the population. Food Corporation of India (FCI) procures 55-60 million tonnes (mt) of foodgrains per year. If we have 60-70% of the population under the Food Security Act, as some members of the NAC want, then what we need is about 65 mt of foodgrains—which means a shortfall of 5-10 mt a year. Now, looking at the fact that our tax collections are jumping by leaps and bounds, our GDP growth rate is approaching 9%, and foreign investment is also on the rise, there is no doubt that government treasuries have the money and strength to import 5-10 mt of foodgrains per year. Therefore, both in terms of the quantity of foodgrains and the money required, it is not a hopeless task; it can be done. If we have a food security system, then it is of prime importance that we should have a good PDS. The PDS in many parts of the country is in shambles. It is in shambles because wherever the Panchayati Raj system hasn’t taken root, there is no way for cardholders to keep an eye on where the fair price shops (FPS) is, how much grain it is getting, does it have ghost ration cards and are the foodgrains received from the state food department via FCI being distributed fairly and ethically. One way to ensure this would be to make the gram sabha fully accountable and responsible to see that the FPSs work well. If that happens, then, suppose the Food Security Act envisages an annual distribution of 60 mt of foodgrain and of that 20% is misused through ghost ration cards, even then about 50 mt will have been distributed to the needy and the country’s malnourishment levels would be reduced. We should not shy away from food security, we should not keep tom-toming that subsidising is bad because we have had economic liberalisation since 1991. Because wheat and rice have been subsidised, procured by FCI and distributed through PDS, the price curve of wheat and rice has not been zig-zag as in the case of vegetables and fruits. It has had a steady rise in the same way that our wages have had a steady rise. Subsidised procurement and distribution of foodgrains would ultimately lead to a healthy economy for everyone concerned, not merely for the middle class. —The author is former chairman and managing director, Food Corporation of India (As told to Chanpreet Khurana) * On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 2:06 AM, Rakesh Iyer wrote: > Link: > > Article: > > Right to food: ‘Authorities look to hide poverty, not address it’ > > *Atikh Rashid **Tags > : Poverty , Right > to Food , R K > Gaikwad , Anant > Phadke , BPL > **Posted: Fri Jun 17 2011, 02:38 hrs**Pune:** > ** > > Right to Food activists have alleged that the government was, in the garb > of ‘Garibi hatao’, pursuing the agenda of ‘Garibi Chhupao’. They said the > assumption that only those having a spending ability of Rs 20 a day in urban > areas and Rs 15 a day in rural areas are poor was a cruel joke. They have > demanded implementation of the Wadhwa Committee recommendations. > > Right to Food Campaign, Pune district, (Ann Adhikar Abhiyan), on Thursday > staged a demonstration in front of the Collector’s office. A delegation from > the RFC met additional collector R K Gaikwad, who assured them that local > issues about the rationing system would be solved in the next two-three > months and a followup of the Jan-Sunwai (public hearing) organised by the > RFC will be done. He also promised a joint meeting with the District Supply > Officer and Food Distribution Officer. > > Dr Anant Phadke of Right to Food Campaign said, “When various surveys > conducted by government itself are coming up with results indicating fragile > health of women and saying that every year about 100 children die due to > malnutrition, the government’s stubbornness to show the world that there is > no poverty in the country is ridiculous.” > > An affidavit filed by the Planning Commission in the Supreme Court > defined a BPL family as one that spends less than Rs 779 a month in urban > areas and Rs 447 a month in rural areas. A family spending above this limit > is considered above poverty line. In the given spending limits, is it not > possible to live, forget about living honorably. Activists said if this was > the criterion to decide poverty, then surely it would throw crores of poor > families out of the BPL cover. RFC activists demanded that the guiding > principles for allotment of the fair price shops be revised, a vigilance > committee should be formed at every fair price shop with mandatory > representation of women in them, ensure that the ration reaches the fair > price shops at the beginning of every month besides an SMS to beneficiaries > that the ration has arrived in the shops. > > * > -- Rakesh Krishnamoorthy Iyer MM06B019 Final Year, Dual Degree Student Dept. of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering IIT Madras, Chennai - 600036 Phone no: +91-9444073884 E-mail ID: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Wed Jun 29 21:04:22 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:04:22 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Ramchandra Guha is Wrong Message-ID: >From http://www.pragoti.in/node/4442 Ramchandra Guha is Wrong Subhanil Ramchandra Guha is undoubtedly a very popular historian within the English speaking classes in India. He is at the same time a public intellectual who participates in debates on contemporary issues of national importance, giving many interesting perspectives. Recently, his attention has fallen on the Left and particularly the CPI(M), after the defeat of the Left in Kerala and West Bengal. He has tried to analyze the defeat of the Left Front in West Bengal in an article published in the magazine Caravan, dated June 1, 2011. This is an attempt to refute the position of Ramchandra Guha on the politics and ideology of CPI(M), as articulated in the above-mentioned article. Guha, in his article, makes many important and unimportant points. What we will do is to mainly try and capture the ideological points that he is making vis-a-vis Marxism in general and CPI(M) in particular and show the vacuity of his arguments. Untruth No. 1: Ram Guha: “Marxists are as much in thrall to the printed word, or Word, as are fundamentalist Muslims or Christians. True, their God had more than one Messenger, and these messengers wrote multiple Holy Books. Withal, like Christianity and Islam, Marxism is a faith whose practice is very heavily determined by its texts. Thus, communists the world over justify their actions on the basis of this or that passage in the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin or Mao.” The above-mentioned quote from Guha's article can hardly be called a specimen of scientific writing at all. He is just giving his opinion, as if it is his 'Word' which is the gospel and should be taken at face value, and the readers as mere mortals have to accept his 'Word'. It is however the case that his prejudice needs to be challenged and falsified. Religion is the ultimate justification of the status quo of the world as it exists with all its injustice and inequality. To equate Religion and fundamentalism with the theory whose premise is changing the world is nothing short of intellectual dishonesty. It is not the case that Ram Guha is not aware of this. But he deliberately wants to belittle the ideology of Marxism. Secondly, it has always been the case that Marxism has evolved through the process of challenging conventional wisdom and the written Word. If Lenin had not challenged the established Marxist intellectual like Kautsky, the book Imperialism would never have been written. If Mao Tse Tung had mechanically adopted the Soviet route to revolution then there would never have been a Chinese Revolution. Even in India, there have been many debates within Marxists on the road to revolution, on the correct path to take in Indian context and so on. Each time, the leading communists in India, particularly the CPI(M), came up with this position that the Indian revolution must follow an Indian path and not the Soviet or the Chinese path. In doing so, the CPI(M) was criticized both by the CPSU as well as the CPC. But the party steadfastly defended its position in spite of being isolated at the international level. If Marxism was a religion then such application of the Marxist principle in a country like India would have been impossible, since the Indian communists then would have to choose either the 'Lenin God' of Soviet Russia or the 'Mao God' of China. Ram Guha believes that such application is like religious fundamentalism! One can only say that either he is being naive or it is his prejudice that is speaking not his historian self. Untruth No. 2 Ram Guha writes that the CPI(M) basically believes in one party rule and it is averse to multi-party democracy. This is again a complete falsification of historical facts. The Indian Left has the history of leading the first democratically elected communist government in the world in 1957, much before Salvadore Allende was elected in Chile. In fact, the CPI(M) has the unique experience of evolving as a communist party, leading movements and forming governments in a parliamentary democratic set up. Moreover, the CPI(M) believes that the parliamentary system existing in India is an advancement for the working people. The Party programme of the CPI(M) says: “Although a form of class rule of the bourgeoisie, India's present parliamentary system also embodies an advance for the people. It affords certain opportunities for them to defend their interests, intervene in the affairs of the State to a certain extent and mobilise them to carry forward the struggle for democracy and social progress.” (para 5.22) Further, the CPI(M) programme goes on to argue: The threat to the parliamentary system and to democracy comes not from the working people and the parties which represent their interests. The threat comes from the exploiting classes. It is they who undermine the parliamentary system both from within and without by making it an instrument to defend their narrow interests. When the people begin to use parliamentary institutions for advancing their cause and then move away from the influence of the big bourgeoisie and landlords, these classes do not hesitate to trample underfoot parliamentary democracy as has been done many times in the dismissal of elected state governments by the Centre. The semi-fascist terror in West Bengal and Tripura and the naked violation of all constitutional provisions in these states provide vivid examples of the vicious extent to which the ruling classes can go. The talk of adopting a Presidential form of government and truncating parliamentary democracy are authoritarian symptoms which have grown with the regime of liberalisation and the increasing pressure of international finance capital. It is of utmost importance that parliamentary and democratic institutions are defended in the interests of the people against such threats and that such institutions are skillfully utilised in combination with extra parliamentary activities.(para 5.23) (Emphasis mine) To argue that a party which thinks that 'parliamentary democratic institutions' should be 'defended in the interests of the people', as a party that does not believe in multi-party democracy is blatantly false and deliberately misleading. It is unfortunate that a historian like Ram Guha has succumbed to his prejudices rather than relying on facts. It is true that in the CPI(M) party programme adopted in 1964, it was mentioned that the People's Democratic State will be run on the basis of Democratic Centralism. But in the updated party programme of 2000, this was dropped. In the words of Com. Harkishan Singh Surjeet, “Another provision made in the updated programme concerns the multi-party system and the right to form political parties and associations in the peoples’ democratic stage. It is a new idea that has been added, particularly the right to form political parties and associations, freedom of movement and occupation, right to dissent. These shall be ensured. ” Ram Guha is busy debating an article written by Com. BTR in 1978, but has no time to read something that Com. HKS wrote in 2000 and the updated programme of the party adopted in 2000. It surely does not befit an historian of Ram Guha's stature. Untruth No. 3 Ram Guha: “Bengal was once ahead of the rest of India. India’s first modern social reformers, first modern entrepreneurs, first scientists of world class, first globally influential writers and filmmakers, all came from Bengal. On the other hand, Marxism’s sense of its own superiority is harder to accept. Our scepticism is mandated not so much by the fall of the Berlin Wall, or by the barbarism and brutality of communist regimes before the Wall fell, but by domestic and provincial events. If, after all the advantages that West Bengal started with, it still lags behind the more advanced parts of India, surely the blame lies to a large extent with the party that ruled the state for the past three-and-a-half decades?” Ram Guha is an historian. But the above quoted passage is an example of how such reputed historians can completely close their eyes to historical facts due to their prejudices. Bengal was the first colony to be set up by the British in India. As a result, Bengal got the first taste of modernity and capitalism, as a result of which the first bourgeois values in India, developed in Bengal. This is why the first social reformers, modern entrepreneurs came from the state. But what lies beneath this story is a complete pauperization of the peasantry, resulting in massive famines killing millions of people. Amartya Sen was witness to one such famine in 1943, which was one of his major motivations to write the book Poverty and Famine. Even as late as 1960s, there was a food crisis in West Bengal, resulting in the historic food movement led by the Left and CPI(M). All this resulted in huge poverty in West Bengal. According to the poverty estimates of the Planning Commission rural poverty in West Bengal was 73.2% in 1973-74, which declined to 28.6% in 2004-05, as against the decline of poverty at the all-India level from 56.4% in 1973-74 to 28.3% in 2004-05. Urban poverty in West Bengal declined from 34.7% in 1973-74 to 14.8% in 2004-05, as against the decline of urban poverty at the all-India level from 49% in 1973-74 to 25.7% in 2004-05. In other words, the Left Front Government in West Bengal reduced rural poverty by 50 percentage points and urban poverty by 16 percentage points. This achievement has been noted positively even by the Planning Commission of India. But Ram Guha is completely silent on this. Additionally, there was the problem of the partition of India and a huge influx of refugees to the state. It is the CPI(M) and the Left Front who fought for the rights of these refugees, who were pushed to utter destitution. Which past glory of West Bengal is he talking about? The 1960s and 1970s were witness to massive unemployment, agrarian impasse, complete break down of educational system. It was essentially an attack on the working people of West Bengal. The Left Front Government came into being fighting these attacks. Has he forgotten these facts? The past glory of West Bengal that he is referring to is only the glory of the elites and the rich. Ram Guha by praising such past glory is essentially articulating the angst of the elites, whose interests were surely harmed by the Left Front Government. This is not to argue that West Bengal emerged as the best state in India, under the leadership of the Left Front. Obviously, there were faults and problems with the government as well as the party, which has been accepted by the CPI(M) and Left Front. There was much to be desired in the performance of West Bengal in education, health, revenue mobilization, employment etc. However, this should not also blind a historian from the achievements under the Left Front government. Moreover, this portrayal of a golden past in West Bengal before the Left Front came to power exists only in the imagination of the rich and their spokespersons. For vast majority of the poor people of the state, the reign of the Left Front was empowering both politically and economically. Untruth No. 4 Ram Guha being a historian and public intellectual cannot resist the temptation of giving some advice to the CPI(M) after the defeat. His advice is plain and simple-become revisionist, embrace Bernstein! In other words, the CPI(M) should forget Lenin and go for a social democratic path. Prof. Prabhat Patnaik has already written about the vacuity of this advice. Let me therefore not go into this. Rather, what I would like to do is to point towards some other problems of Ram Guha's advice. What does Ram Guha mean when he suggests that the CPI(M) should embrace revisionism? He says that the CPI(M) should get rid of the idea of one party rule, embrace the market logic and debunk the myth of any transition to socialism and rely on the ballot instead. In other words (since we have already demolished the myth of the CPI(M)'s belief in one party rule), the basic appeal of revisionism is to accept the market logic and embrace globalization, albeit with some riders here and there. Secondly, any idea of a revolution should not be entertained and only the ballot should be relied upon for any change. He condemns CPI(M) for being anti-foreign capital and for not being market friendly. In the same breath he also condemns the CPI(M) for not being sensitive to the environmental issues raised by Medha Patkar and Sunderlal Bahuguna. What he does not understand is that the environmental issues that are being raised in India (even granting that the Left might had problems in aligning with them) are a result of corporate capitalism that exists in the country. The unbridled urge for higher profit of MNCs and Indian corporates is destroying our natural resources. Therefore, the fight for environmental protection and regulation is incomplete if it is not linked with the fight against neo-liberalism. Ram Guha wants the CPI(M) to become revisionist and thereby compromise its stand against neo-liberalism, while on the other hand, he also wants the CPI(M) to resist environmental degradation. To argue for both is fundamentally contradictory. This sort of contradiction arises in people like Ram Guha because at a theoretical level they simply have no alternative to capitalism. However, they are liberals and hence they want the capitalist development in the country to be more humane. This is not possible under neo-liberalism. The CPI(M) and the organized left represent the most stringent critique of neo-liberalism in the country. But Ram Guha also does not want it that way. He wants the CPI(M) to become revisionist and abandon its positions against corporate led capitalism. In essence then people like Ram Guha end up siding with the ruling classes while making noises here and there about the rapaciousness of corporate capital. It is precisely such theoretical ambiguities that the Left does not have because of its rooting in Marxism. Ram Guha's call therefore should not only be rejected but Marxism should be practised more vigorously by the Left and CPI(M) in India to emancipate people from the bondage of neo-liberal capitalism. Secondly, what Ram Guha wants the CPI(M) to do is to forget about any project of transcending capitalism and rely on multi-party democracy under a bourgeois parliamentary set up to do whatever can be done for the people. While it is true that parliamentary democracy does mark an advancement of the people, the CPI(M) and the Marxists are aware of the fact that the situation of the people cannot alter fundamentally without changing the basic class relations in India. This change cannot be brought about without a project for transcending capitalism. Ram Guha accuses that Com. BTR and the CPI(M) believe in violent overthrow of the regime and is against a peaceful transition. This is however incorrect. The CPI(M) is clear about the mode of bringing this change. The Party programme says, “The Communist Party of India (Marxist) strives to achieve the establishment of people's democracy and socialist transformation through peaceful means. By developing a powerful mass revolutionary movement, by combining parliamentary and extra parliamentary forms of struggle, the working class and its allies will try their utmost to overcome the resistance of the forces of reaction and to bring about these transformations through peaceful means. However, it needs always to be borne in mind that the ruling classes never relinquish their power voluntarily. They seek to defy the will of the people and seek to reverse it by lawlessness and violence. It is, therefore, necessary for the revolutionary forces to be vigilant and so orient their work that they can face up to all contingencies, to any twist and turn in the political life of the country.” (para 7.18) (Emphasis mine) Conclusion In the aftermath of the defeat of the Left in the West Bengal and Kerala Assembly elections, attempts are being made to not only discredit the record of the Left governments but also to prove that the basic politics and ideology of the Left and CPI(M), in relying on Marxism is wrong. Ram Guha's article falls in the second category. When such intellectuals take up the cudgel of advising the left to become revisionists, it is essential to reassert the revolutionary legacy of Marxism and expose the prejudices of these intellectuals against the Left. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Wed Jun 29 21:09:27 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:09:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [untouchabilityeradicationfront] your intervention In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ______________ Forwarded message_________________________ From: Ravichandaran Bathran Date: Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 3:54 PM Subject: [untouchabilityeradicationfront] your intervention To: Dear Sir/Madam, Recently a Dalit women panchayat president(Mrs. Krishnaveni) in Tamil Nadu was stabbed by a member of 4 people (Caste Hindus). She sustained serious injuries (15 stabs, Her right hear was cut, both the ankel and the knee was hit by the knife. She has to undergo 3 operations)  and admitted in the Hospital. She belongs to the arunthathiyar community (scavenger/bhangi community). In Tamil Nadu it has been a history of panchayat president being physically manhandled, harassed, or killed. Till now 5 Dalit panchayat president have been killed and get unnoticed by anyone. Therefore there must be a serious engagement with the caste prevalent in the rural areas, especially the panchayat president. In relation to Mrs. Krishnavenis case the media did not publish a news, most of the published newspaper article are within the district page. I request you to do anything to stop the caste based discrimination on dalit panchayat president, which is claimed by the Indian government that the back bone of the democracy system. The mainstream media give atrocity news from UP, where the Chief Minister is Mayawathi (a dalit women). But never gives anything in relation to caste atrocities in Tamil Nadu. The Hindu has published a news the abstracts are below; "....The report(fact finding), which was released here on Tuesday, says that Ms. Krishnaveni had been facing discrimination right from the day of her announcement to contest elections. She was not allowed to sit in the chair that was allotted for the elected president. Since May, 2007, she had filed 12 complaints with the police and district administration about the discrimination and on her right to function independently but no action was taken.The fact-finding team has found that Ms. Krishnaveni had to seek the help of District Collector to execute her duties as the vice-president had been thwarting all attempts made by her to work independently..." "...Irrespective of caste affiliation, she had functioned in an unbiased way, stated the villagers. She had taken many decisions in a bold manner which had invited the wrath of a few sections of the dominant castes. The team also came to know that Dalit presidents belonging to 125 panchayats in the district were subject to one form of discrimination or the other..." "...The team also came to know that Dalit presidents belonging to 125 panchayats in the district were subject to one form of discrimination or the other..." http://www.hindu.com/2011/06/22/stories/2011062264900700.htm Video taken while she is in Hospital http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFwcUcwdc9Y Picture taken while she is in hospital https://picasaweb.google.com/103899441250371448511/MsKrishnaveniADalitPanchayatPresidentWhoWasStabbedAndNowInTheHospital?authkey=Gv1sRgCMep9dSO2PnOYg&feat=email With Regards Ravichandran http://tamilnadudalits.blogspot.com/ ______________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From nagraj.adve at gmail.com Thu Jun 30 10:44:38 2011 From: nagraj.adve at gmail.com (Nagraj Adve) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:44:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Pani Hakk Abhiyan Message-ID: *PANI HAKK ABHIYAN* 29 June 2011 Friends, The corporate takeover of people’s resources has been intensifying; in recent weeks, there have been a number by moves by the Delhi government to further the privatization of water in Delhi. Water distribution, metering, billing, etc is all being handed over to large corporations. We believe this undermines people’s basic right to water, and is detrimental to the working poor in Delhi. In order to resist this takeover of the most precious commons resource, over 35 organizations – unions, student groups, democratic rights, and women’s organizations, other collectives – have recently come together under the banner Pani Hakk Abhiyan. Two formative meetings have taken place, and a parcha has been drafted towards charting out a campaign. The next meeting is on 1 July. We invite you to participate in the meeting and campaign. *Venue*: Indian Social Institute, Lodhi Road *Date*: 1 July (Friday), 2 pm onwards *PANI HAKK ABHIYAN* * * For any further information, please contact 9868940920, 43098327, 9560756628, 9818065092. From rohitrellan at aol.in Thu Jun 30 18:31:30 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:01:30 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Screening of 'The Killing Fields' at Twilight Film Club, New Delhi Message-ID: <8CE053CF7071364-1D70-651FA@webmail-m157.sysops.aol.com> The Killing Fields (1984), a remarkable and deeply affecting film, is based upon a true story of friendship, loyalty, the horrors of war and survival, while following the historical events surrounding the US evacuation from Vietnam in 1975. The authentic-looking, unforgettable epic film, directed by Roland Joffe (his first feature film) and produced by David Puttnam (the Oscar victor three years earlier for Chariots of Fire (1981)), was shot on location in Thailand (and Canada). Cambodian doctor, non-actor Haing Ngor, in his film debut, was an actual survivor of the Cambodian holocaust. He was tortured and experienced the starvation and death of his real-life family during the actual historical events revisited in this film. The film's screenplay, by first-time scripter Bruce Robinson, was adapted from Pulitzer Prize-winning NY Times reporter Sydney Schanberg's The Death and Life of Dith Pran from The NY Times Magazine. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Sam Waterston), Best Director (first-timer Roland Joffe), and Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Bruce Robinson) and won three Oscars: Best Supporting Actor (Haing S. Ngor), Best Cinematography (Chris Menges), and Best Film Editing (Jim Clark). The film will be presented by Anupama Chandra. Anupama Chandra is a film editor, with a diploma in film editing from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, India. She also has a Masters in English Literature from the University of Oxford. Over the last ten years she has been working as an editor on several documentary films. Time Saturday, July 2 · 6:30pm - 9:30pm Location Hall of Life Devine, Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts & Communication New Mehrauli Road, Adchini, New Delhi - 110 017 From anilncr at gmail.com Thu Jun 30 19:41:46 2011 From: anilncr at gmail.com (Anil Bhatia) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:41:46 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [The Moderates] Ramchandra Guha is Wrong In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Mani sir, Not sure about the other points, but for sure, the 3rd point is true - West Bengal remains one amongst the most backward states. As I sit typing this in Kolkata, I can't wait to get back to Mumbai, a city I otherwise despise, being from Delhi. But Kolkata makes Mumbai look remarkably good. It is ironical that history would record Left Front's biggest achievement as land reforms (Operation Barga), and record its biggest failure as forced land grab (Singur, Nandigram). While it is stupid of mainstream media to write off Left post the last West Bengal elections, it indeed would take a bit of 'revisionism' on part of the Left to bounce back. Regards, Anil On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 9:04 PM, A. Mani wrote: > From http://www.pragoti.in/node/4442 > > Ramchandra Guha is Wrong > > Subhanil > > > Ramchandra Guha is undoubtedly a very popular historian within the > English speaking classes in India. He is at the same time a public > intellectual who participates in debates on contemporary issues of > national importance, giving many interesting perspectives. Recently, > his attention has fallen on the Left and particularly the CPI(M), > after the defeat of the Left in Kerala and West Bengal. He has tried > to analyze the defeat of the Left Front in West Bengal in an article > published in the magazine Caravan, dated June 1, 2011. This is an > attempt to refute the position of Ramchandra Guha on the politics and > ideology of CPI(M), as articulated in the above-mentioned article. > > > > Guha, in his article, makes many important and unimportant points. > What we will do is to mainly try and capture the ideological points > that he is making vis-a-vis Marxism in general and CPI(M) in > particular and show the vacuity of his arguments. > > > > Untruth No. 1: > > > > Ram Guha: “Marxists are as much in thrall to the printed word, or > Word, as are fundamentalist Muslims or Christians. True, their God had > more than one Messenger, and these messengers wrote multiple Holy > Books. Withal, like Christianity and Islam, Marxism is a faith whose > practice is very heavily determined by its texts. Thus, communists the > world over justify their actions on the basis of this or that passage > in the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin or Mao.” > > > > The above-mentioned quote from Guha's article can hardly be called a > specimen of scientific writing at all. He is just giving his opinion, > as if it is his 'Word' which is the gospel and should be taken at face > value, and the readers as mere mortals have to accept his 'Word'. It > is however the case that his prejudice needs to be challenged and > falsified. Religion is the ultimate justification of the status quo of > the world as it exists with all its injustice and inequality. To > equate Religion and fundamentalism with the theory whose premise is > changing the world is nothing short of intellectual dishonesty. It is > not the case that Ram Guha is not aware of this. But he deliberately > wants to belittle the ideology of Marxism. Secondly, it has always > been the case that Marxism has evolved through the process of > challenging conventional wisdom and the written Word. If Lenin had not > challenged the established Marxist intellectual like Kautsky, the book > Imperialism would never have been written. If Mao Tse Tung had > mechanically adopted the Soviet route to revolution then there would > never have been a Chinese Revolution. > > > > Even in India, there have been many debates within Marxists on the > road to revolution, on the correct path to take in Indian context and > so on. Each time, the leading communists in India, particularly the > CPI(M), came up with this position that the Indian revolution must > follow an Indian path and not the Soviet or the Chinese path. In doing > so, the CPI(M) was criticized both by the CPSU as well as the CPC. But > the party steadfastly defended its position in spite of being isolated > at the international level. If Marxism was a religion then such > application of the Marxist principle in a country like India would > have been impossible, since the Indian communists then would have to > choose either the 'Lenin God' of Soviet Russia or the 'Mao God' of > China. Ram Guha believes that such application is like religious > fundamentalism! One can only say that either he is being naive or it > is his prejudice that is speaking not his historian self. > > > > Untruth No. 2 > > > > Ram Guha writes that the CPI(M) basically believes in one party rule > and it is averse to multi-party democracy. > > > > This is again a complete falsification of historical facts. The Indian > Left has the history of leading the first democratically elected > communist government in the world in 1957, much before Salvadore > Allende was elected in Chile. In fact, the CPI(M) has the unique > experience of evolving as a communist party, leading movements and > forming governments in a parliamentary democratic set up. Moreover, > the CPI(M) believes that the parliamentary system existing in India is > an advancement for the working people. The Party programme of the > CPI(M) says: > > > > “Although a form of class rule of the bourgeoisie, India's present > parliamentary system also embodies an advance for the people. It > affords certain opportunities for them to defend their interests, > intervene in the affairs of the State to a certain extent and mobilise > them to carry forward the struggle for democracy and social progress.” > (para 5.22) > > > > Further, the CPI(M) programme goes on to argue: > > > > The threat to the parliamentary system and to democracy comes not from > the working people and the parties which represent their interests. > The threat comes from the exploiting classes. It is they who undermine > the parliamentary system both from within and without by making it an > instrument to defend their narrow interests. When the people begin to > use parliamentary institutions for advancing their cause and then move > away from the influence of the big bourgeoisie and landlords, these > classes do not hesitate to trample underfoot parliamentary democracy > as has been done many times in the dismissal of elected state > governments by the Centre. The semi-fascist terror in West Bengal and > Tripura and the naked violation of all constitutional provisions in > these states provide vivid examples of the vicious extent to which the > ruling classes can go. The talk of adopting a Presidential form of > government and truncating parliamentary democracy are authoritarian > symptoms which have grown with the regime of liberalisation and the > increasing pressure of international finance capital. It is of utmost > importance that parliamentary and democratic institutions are defended > in the interests of the people against such threats and that such > institutions are skillfully utilised in combination with extra > parliamentary activities.(para 5.23) (Emphasis mine) > > > > > To argue that a party which thinks that 'parliamentary democratic > institutions' should be 'defended in the interests of the people', as > a party that does not believe in multi-party democracy is blatantly > false and deliberately misleading. It is unfortunate that a historian > like Ram Guha has succumbed to his prejudices rather than relying on > facts. > > > > It is true that in the CPI(M) party programme adopted in 1964, it was > mentioned that the People's Democratic State will be run on the basis > of Democratic Centralism. But in the updated party programme of 2000, > this was dropped. In the words of Com. Harkishan Singh Surjeet, > > > > “Another provision made in the updated programme concerns the > multi-party system and the right to form political parties and > associations in the peoples’ democratic stage. It is a new idea that > has been added, particularly the right to form political parties and > associations, freedom of movement and occupation, right to dissent. > These shall be ensured. ” > > > > Ram Guha is busy debating an article written by Com. BTR in 1978, but > has no time to read something that Com. HKS wrote in 2000 and the > updated programme of the party adopted in 2000. It surely does not > befit an historian of Ram Guha's stature. > > > > Untruth No. 3 > > Ram Guha: “Bengal was once ahead of the rest of India. India’s first > modern social reformers, first modern entrepreneurs, first scientists > of world class, first globally influential writers and filmmakers, all > came from Bengal. On the other hand, Marxism’s sense of its own > superiority is harder to accept. Our scepticism is mandated not so > much by the fall of the Berlin Wall, or by the barbarism and brutality > of communist regimes before the Wall fell, but by domestic and > provincial events. If, after all the advantages that West Bengal > started with, it still lags behind the more advanced parts of India, > surely the blame lies to a large extent with the party that ruled the > state for the past three-and-a-half decades?” > > > > Ram Guha is an historian. But the above quoted passage is an example > of how such reputed historians can completely close their eyes to > historical facts due to their prejudices. Bengal was the first colony > to be set up by the British in India. As a result, Bengal got the > first taste of modernity and capitalism, as a result of which the > first bourgeois values in India, developed in Bengal. This is why the > first social reformers, modern entrepreneurs came from the state. But > what lies beneath this story is a complete pauperization of the > peasantry, resulting in massive famines killing millions of people. > Amartya Sen was witness to one such famine in 1943, which was one of > his major motivations to write the book Poverty and Famine. Even as > late as 1960s, there was a food crisis in West Bengal, resulting in > the historic food movement led by the Left and CPI(M). > > > > All this resulted in huge poverty in West Bengal. According to the > poverty estimates of the Planning Commission rural poverty in West > Bengal was 73.2% in 1973-74, which declined to 28.6% in 2004-05, as > against the decline of poverty at the all-India level from 56.4% in > 1973-74 to 28.3% in 2004-05. Urban poverty in West Bengal declined > from 34.7% in 1973-74 to 14.8% in 2004-05, as against the decline of > urban poverty at the all-India level from 49% in 1973-74 to 25.7% in > 2004-05. In other words, the Left Front Government in West Bengal > reduced rural poverty by 50 percentage points and urban poverty by 16 > percentage points. This achievement has been noted positively even by > the Planning Commission of India. But Ram Guha is completely silent on > this. > > > > Additionally, there was the problem of the partition of India and a > huge influx of refugees to the state. It is the CPI(M) and the Left > Front who fought for the rights of these refugees, who were pushed to > utter destitution. Which past glory of West Bengal is he talking > about? The 1960s and 1970s were witness to massive unemployment, > agrarian impasse, complete break down of educational system. It was > essentially an attack on the working people of West Bengal. The Left > Front Government came into being fighting these attacks. Has he > forgotten these facts? The past glory of West Bengal that he is > referring to is only the glory of the elites and the rich. Ram Guha by > praising such past glory is essentially articulating the angst of the > elites, whose interests were surely harmed by the Left Front > Government. > > > > This is not to argue that West Bengal emerged as the best state in > India, under the leadership of the Left Front. Obviously, there were > faults and problems with the government as well as the party, which > has been accepted by the CPI(M) and Left Front. There was much to be > desired in the performance of West Bengal in education, health, > revenue mobilization, employment etc. However, this should not also > blind a historian from the achievements under the Left Front > government. Moreover, this portrayal of a golden past in West Bengal > before the Left Front came to power exists only in the imagination of > the rich and their spokespersons. For vast majority of the poor people > of the state, the reign of the Left Front was empowering both > politically and economically. > > > > Untruth No. 4 > > Ram Guha being a historian and public intellectual cannot resist the > temptation of giving some advice to the CPI(M) after the defeat. His > advice is plain and simple-become revisionist, embrace Bernstein! In > other words, the CPI(M) should forget Lenin and go for a social > democratic path. > > > > Prof. Prabhat Patnaik has already written about the vacuity of this > advice. Let me therefore not go into this. Rather, what I would like > to do is to point towards some other problems of Ram Guha's advice. > > > > What does Ram Guha mean when he suggests that the CPI(M) should > embrace revisionism? He says that the CPI(M) should get rid of the > idea of one party rule, embrace the market logic and debunk the myth > of any transition to socialism and rely on the ballot instead. In > other words (since we have already demolished the myth of the CPI(M)'s > belief in one party rule), the basic appeal of revisionism is to > accept the market logic and embrace globalization, albeit with some > riders here and there. Secondly, any idea of a revolution should not > be entertained and only the ballot should be relied upon for any > change. > > > > He condemns CPI(M) for being anti-foreign capital and for not being > market friendly. In the same breath he also condemns the CPI(M) for > not being sensitive to the environmental issues raised by Medha Patkar > and Sunderlal Bahuguna. What he does not understand is that the > environmental issues that are being raised in India (even granting > that the Left might had problems in aligning with them) are a result > of corporate capitalism that exists in the country. The unbridled urge > for higher profit of MNCs and Indian corporates is destroying our > natural resources. Therefore, the fight for environmental protection > and regulation is incomplete if it is not linked with the fight > against neo-liberalism. Ram Guha wants the CPI(M) to become > revisionist and thereby compromise its stand against neo-liberalism, > while on the other hand, he also wants the CPI(M) to resist > environmental degradation. To argue for both is fundamentally > contradictory. > > > > This sort of contradiction arises in people like Ram Guha because at a > theoretical level they simply have no alternative to capitalism. > However, they are liberals and hence they want the capitalist > development in the country to be more humane. This is not possible > under neo-liberalism. The CPI(M) and the organized left represent the > most stringent critique of neo-liberalism in the country. But Ram Guha > also does not want it that way. He wants the CPI(M) to become > revisionist and abandon its positions against corporate led > capitalism. In essence then people like Ram Guha end up siding with > the ruling classes while making noises here and there about the > rapaciousness of corporate capital. It is precisely such theoretical > ambiguities that the Left does not have because of its rooting in > Marxism. Ram Guha's call therefore should not only be rejected but > Marxism should be practised more vigorously by the Left and CPI(M) in > India to emancipate people from the bondage of neo-liberal capitalism. > > > > Secondly, what Ram Guha wants the CPI(M) to do is to forget about any > project of transcending capitalism and rely on multi-party democracy > under a bourgeois parliamentary set up to do whatever can be done for > the people. While it is true that parliamentary democracy does mark an > advancement of the people, the CPI(M) and the Marxists are aware of > the fact that the situation of the people cannot alter fundamentally > without changing the basic class relations in India. This change > cannot be brought about without a project for transcending capitalism. > Ram Guha accuses that Com. BTR and the CPI(M) believe in violent > overthrow of the regime and is against a peaceful transition. This is > however incorrect. The CPI(M) is clear about the mode of bringing this > change. The Party programme says, > > > > “The Communist Party of India (Marxist) strives to achieve the > establishment of people's democracy and socialist transformation > through peaceful means. By developing a powerful mass revolutionary > movement, by combining parliamentary and extra parliamentary forms of > struggle, the working class and its allies will try their utmost to > overcome the resistance of the forces of reaction and to bring about > these transformations through peaceful means. However, it needs always > to be borne in mind that the ruling classes never relinquish their > power voluntarily. They seek to defy the will of the people and seek > to reverse it by lawlessness and violence. It is, therefore, necessary > for the revolutionary forces to be vigilant and so orient their work > that they can face up to all contingencies, to any twist and turn in > the political life of the country.” (para 7.18) (Emphasis mine) > > > > Conclusion > > In the aftermath of the defeat of the Left in the West Bengal and > Kerala Assembly elections, attempts are being made to not only > discredit the record of the Left governments but also to prove that > the basic politics and ideology of the Left and CPI(M), in relying on > Marxism is wrong. Ram Guha's article falls in the second category. > When such intellectuals take up the cudgel of advising the left to > become revisionists, it is essential to reassert the revolutionary > legacy of Marxism and expose the prejudices of these intellectuals > against the Left. > > ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ > > > Best > > A. Mani > > > > -- > A. Mani > ASL, CLC, AMS, CMS > http://www.logicamani.co.cc > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Moderates" group. > To post to this group, send email to the-moderates at googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > the-moderates+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/the-moderates?hl=en. > >