[{"content":" Navodaya Networks Forum is a registered non-profit organization under Section 8 of the Indian Companies Act 2013.\nWho are we? We are networking with artists, lawyers, educationists, activists, scientists, farmers, soldiers, parents, workers … . Please see our Pathfinders.\nKnow more from the following links FAQ Frequently Asked Questions Who is who Blog Donate Privacy Policy Terms of Use Cancellation and Refund Policy Contact If you need any further information, contact us by writing an email to office@navodaya.online\n","date":"January 6, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/about/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"Navodaya Networks Forum is a registered non-profit organization under Section 8 of the Indian Companies Act 2013. Who are we? We are networking with artists, lawyers, educationists, activists, scientists, farmers, soldiers, parents, workers … . Please see our Pathfinders . Know…","title":"About","type":"page"},{"content":" Our Vision: A society, that –\nPromotes equality for all, across the divides of gender, caste, religion and region. Ensures and promotes human dignity, justice and freedom of thought, expression, identity and action. Seeks to maintain peace and amity for all, within the country and across the world. Our Mission: Navodaya supports social and ecological justice, and equality for all, across the gender and economic spectrum. Navodaya opposes discriminatory economic, patriarchal and misogynistic forces**.** Navodaya provides creative and critical engagement to collaboratively explore channels for conversations. ","date":"April 4, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/our-vision-and-mission/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"Our Vision: A society, that – Promotes equality for all, across the divides of gender, caste, religion and region. Ensures and promotes human dignity, justice and freedom of thought, expression, identity and action. Seeks to maintain peace and amity for all, within the country…","title":"Our Vision and Mission","type":"page"},{"content":" We are collaboratively exploring the pathways for a better world. The initiators of this collaboration are introduced below.\nLalita Ramdas Lalita Ramdas\nLalita Ramdas, born Feb 4, 1940, is a woman, citizen, feminist, daughter, wife, mother, lover. Who loves life, people, music, food, cooking, theatre, puzzles, and travel. Subversive educator at large and believes the personal is the political. Fights for gender rights, against caste, no nukes, end militarism, work for peace in our neighborhood, and a vision of a secular, socialist India\nRadha Gopalan Radha Gopalan\nRadha Gopalan is an Environmental Scientist with a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering. After a 20 year career in environmental consulting, she began using her field experience to make learning more practical and meaningful for children and young people. Radha is actively engaged in exploring transformative education approaches towards strengthening ecological and social justice so that all life can flourish.\nAnuradha Bhasin Anuradha Bhasin\nAnuradha Bhasin is a journalist and Executive Editor of Kashmir Times. She has also written for various Indian and international newspapers, magazines, periodicals, and anthologies. She is a Commonwealth fellow 2016.\nAdmiral Ramdas Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas\nBorn Sep 5 1933, Served 44 years in uniform, retired as Chief of the Naval Staff in Sept 1993. Journeyed from a ‘Man o’ War’ to a , ‘Peace Monger’! A Citizen, a Farmer, A Defender of the Constitution, and one seeks to speak Truth to Power.\nVickram Crishna Vickram Crishna\nVickram Crishna is a qualified engineer with a post-graduate degree in management. He has a string of technology innovations, discoveries, and implementations to his credit, accomplished wholly in India and accorded global recognition, and is an active civil rights campaigner for the appropriate use of technology in civil space.\nColonel Pavan Nair Col Pavan Nair\nCol Pavan Nair retired from the army corps of engineers in 1997. He participated in the Bangladesh war and served in Sri Lanka and Kashmir. He has been associated with a Pune-based NGO, Jagruti Seva Sanstha for twenty years.\nDarab Farooqui Darab Farooqui\nDarab Farooqui is a columnist and acclaimed screenwriter (Victory, Dedh Ishqiya, Tigers, Notebook). His writing, in both Hindi and English, appears in The Wire.\nMaj Gen Sudhir Vombatkere Maj Gen Sudhir Vombatkere\nMaj Gen Sudhir Vombatkere retired from military service in 1996. He participated in the 1965 war against Pakistan, and served all over the country, including 5-years in Ladakh. He holds a Ph.D. in Civil Structural Dynamics from I.I.T, Madras. Since retirement, he has been engaged in activism with NAPM and PUCL, with an ideology based on the Constitution of India. He has over 800 published papers in the areas of human rights, development, and strategy. He is a Fellow of the Indian Social Science Academy.\nTM. Krishna T.M. Krishna\nTM Krishna is among India’s most renowned Carnatic musicians, with a large number of album releases to his credit, marked by his unique approach to the genre, which leads to his equally well-regarded reputation as a World Music performer. He is a social commentator and an author of note. Awarded the Magsaysay Award in 2016, his unswerving devotion to a future of hope and fulfillment for all persons materializes through his dedication of numerous concerts and events to the cause of social upliftment.\nMihir Desai Mihir Desai\nMihir Desai is a Senior Advocate in the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court of India. His work has been dedicated to the development of Constitutional justice, in the defense of both causes and people. He is a regular author and speaker at public events concerning state overreach into civil rights.\nReyme Kaur Reyme Kaur\nReyme K is the Managing Director of One Voice Alberta, focusing on international students. She is a peace ambassador, feminist, social activist, motivational speaker, philanthropist, and a free lance journalist. She was awarded the title, the positive voice of the South Asian community award.\nOmair Ahmad Omair Ahmad\nOmair Ahmad is the South Asia editor of The Third Pole, which reports on the transboundary river basins of the Himalayan region, as well as the editor of the Environment of India newsletter. He writes extensively on social and political issues, which have also been the focus of his novels and non-fiction.\nPrasanna S Prasanna S\nPrasanna S. is a Delhi-based lawyer. Prior to commencing his law practice, he worked for nearly 10 years as an engineering professional writing, designing, and architecting software. His law practice has included being part of litigations in the Supreme Court such as the Aadhaar case (which upheld the right to privacy as a fundamental right of all Indians) and the pending challenge against Article 370 abrogation.\nSushant Singh Sushant Singh\nSushant Singh’s acting career in film and television makes him a familiar figure to a wide range of people, and he is as well known for his devotion to social causes. His voice helps to bring together large numbers of people to both inform themselves on issues at hand, and to reach out to put resources within reach of others in need.\nNagarjuna (GN) Nagarjuna (GN)\nNagarjuna (GN) is a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) educationist with roots in biology and philosophy. Seeking freedom, truth, and justice in diverse, decentralized, and distributed structures in codified and real life. Former Professor at HBCSE, TIFR\nPlace Holder\nplace Holder\n","date":"February 5, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/pathfinders/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"We are collaboratively exploring the pathways for a better world. The initiators of this collaboration are introduced below. Lalita Ramdas Lalita Ramdas 1200×1600 480 KB Lalita Ramdas Lalita Ramdas, born Feb 4, 1940, is a woman, citizen, feminist, daughter, wife, mother, lover.…","title":"Pathfinders","type":"page"},{"content":" Frequently asked questions\nWhat are the core principles of Navodaya? Navodaya is founded on rediscovering the essential idea of India as conceptualised in the Constitution.\nWhat is the vision of Navodaya? Navodaya expects to encourage and support all individuals and networks of individuals who are committed to working toward realising the vision expressed in the Constitution.\nWith whom does Navodaya engage? Navodaya will engage with anyone who believes in and is working toward realising the vision expressed in the Constitution.\nHow is Navodaya funded? Navodaya is a network of individuals, and will register formal entities as required to be able to accept donations towards supporting the organisation achieve its goals.\nIs Navodaya organised as a trust? Who are the Trustees of Navodaya? While Navodaya itself is a network of individuals, it has registered (in order to open an account with the bank and similar formalities) as a public service company in India, commonly referred to as a sec 8 company.\nWho is the owner of Navodaya? Who is the leader of Navodaya? The people involved with Navodaya are listed on the Pathfinders page on this website. There is no leader, it is a team.\nWhat facilities can Navodaya provide me or my organization in order to network? We offer contacts and infrastructural support to initiate and continue a range of activities that continue to achieve the idea of India.\nWhy should I join Navodaya? You should, if you believe that the idea of India as expressed in the Constitution, transforming a feudal and tribal set of colonised regions into a cohesive and unique electorally representative democratic republic, that values and enshrines the independent human spirit of equality, is worth striving to achieve. You may prefer to work independently within that same thought, and welcome associating with Navodaya as a network partner.\n**Which organizations is Navodaya already networking with?**We have and will work with any individual, association of individuals, or formal bodies corporate, who serve the idea of India, and are not operating within the framework of a formal political party.\nWill Navodaya discuss or comment upon the aims and objectives of organizations with which it networks? Navodaya has a strong framework for internal discussion of a wide range of subjects, some of which may include defining synergies with current or future network partners.\nWill I come under official security watch or surveillance because of my engaging with Navodaya? No more than you would for believing in freedom, the Constitution, and equality.\nWhat kind of contribution is expected from me if I join Navodaya? All members and network partners of Navodaya are committed to actively furthering the ideals, objectives and commitments expressed in the Constitution, and devote whatever time, resources and effort is available to them.\n","date":"November 27, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/faqs/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"Frequently asked questions What are the core principles of Navodaya? Navodaya is founded on rediscovering the essential idea of India as conceptualised in the Constitution. What is the vision of Navodaya? Navodaya expects to encourage and support all individuals and networks of…","title":"FAQs","type":"page"},{"content":" You may write to us through email at office @ navodaya.online, which is the preferred mode of contacting us.\nIf contacting us through a call is necessary, you can call us at +91 9821550469. Please note the following before making a call:\nWe will not pick up calls from an unknown number. Please send an email, which is a preferable way of reaching us. Or else send a message seeking an appointment before calling if a phone call is necessary.\nAddress: Navodaya Networks Forum E/3, FLT NO. 14, SALUNKE VIHAR SOCIETY, SALUNKE VIHAR ROAD, KONDHWA, PUNE 411022\n","date":"January 6, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/contact/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"You may write to us through email at office @ navodaya.online, which is the preferred mode of contacting us. If contacting us through a call is necessary, you can call us at +91 9821550469. Please note the following before making a call: We will not pick up calls from an…","title":"Contact","type":"page"},{"content":" These terms govern the use of the Internet website at www.Navodaya.world. To use this or the other Websites hosted under the navodaya.world domain, you must agree to these terms with Navodaya Networks Forum, which runs the Website. Navodaya Networks Forum, a registered as a non-profit under Section 8 of the Indian Companies Act 2013, is referred to henceforth as the “Forum” in this document. The Forum may offer other products and services, under different terms. These terms apply only to the use of the Website.\nImportant Terms These terms include a number of important provisions that affect your rights and responsibilities, such as the disclaimers in Disclaimers, limits on the Forum’s liability to you in Limits on Liability, your agreement to cover the Forum for damages caused by your misuse of the Website in Responsibility for Your Use, and an agreement to arbitrate disputes in Disputes.\nYour Permission to Use the Website Subject to these terms, the Forum gives you permission to use the Website. Everyone needs to agree to these terms to use the Website.\nConditions for Use of the Website Your permission to use the Website is subject to the following conditions:\nYou must be at least thirteen years old. Users below thirteen years can access the website in the presence of an adult. You may no longer use the Website if the Forum contacts you directly to say that you may not. You must use the Website in accordance with Acceptable Use and Content Standards. Acceptable Use You may not break the law using the Website. You may not use or try to use another’s account on the Website without their specific permission. You may not buy, sell, or otherwise trade in user names or other unique identifiers on the Website. You may not send advertisements, chain letters, or other solicitations through the Website, or use the Website to gather addresses or other personal data for commercial mailing lists or databases. You may not automate access to the Website, or monitor the Website, such as with a web crawler, browser plug-in or add-on, or other computer program that is not a web browser. You may crawl the Website to index it for a publicly available search engine, if you run one. You may not use the Website to send e-mail to distribution lists, newsgroups, or group mail aliases. You may not falsely imply that you’re affiliated with or endorsed by the Trust. You may not hyperlink to images or other non-hypertext content on the Website on other webpages. You may not remove any marks showing proprietary ownership from materials you download from the Website. You may not show any part of the Website on other websites with ","date":"April 4, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/terms-of-use/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"These terms govern the use of the Internet website at www.Navodaya.world . To use this or the other Websites hosted under the navodaya.world domain, you must agree to these terms with Navodaya Networks Forum, which runs the Website. Navodaya Networks Forum, a registered as a…","title":"Terms of Use","type":"page"},{"content":" What information do we collect? We collect information from you when you register on our site and gather data when you participate in the forum by reading, writing, and evaluating the content shared here.\nWhen registering on our site, you may be asked to enter your name and e-mail address. You may, however, visit our site without registering. Your e-mail address will be verified by an email containing a unique link. If that link is visited, we know that you control the e-mail address.\nWhen registered and posting, we record the IP address that the post originated from. We also may retain server logs which include the IP address of every request to our server.\nWhat do we use your information for? Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:\nTo personalize your experience — your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs. To improve our site — we continually strive to improve our site offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you. To improve customer service — your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs. To send periodic emails — The email address you provide may be used to send you information, notifications that you request about changes to topics or in response to your user name, respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions. How do we protect your information? We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you enter, submit, or access your personal information.\nWhat is your data retention policy? We will make a good faith effort to:\nRetain server logs containing the IP address of all requests to this server no more than 90 days. Retain the IP addresses associated with registered users and their posts no more than 5 years. Do we use cookies? Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow). These cookies enable the site to recognize your browser and, if you have a registered account, associate it with your registered account.\nWe use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business.\nDo we disclose any information to outside parties? We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our site, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.\nThird party links Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third party products or services on our site. These third party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback about these sites.\nChildren’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance Our site, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older. If this server is in the USA, and you are under the age of 13, per the requirements of COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), do not use this site.\nOnline Privacy Policy Only This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our site and not to information collected offline.\nYour Consent By using our site, you consent to our web site privacy policy.\nChanges to our Privacy Policy If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.\nThis document is CC-BY-SA. It was last updated March 1, 2022\n","date":"January 6, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/privacy-policy/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"What information do we collect? We collect information from you when you register on our site and gather data when you participate in the forum by reading, writing, and evaluating the content shared here. When registering on our site, you may be asked to enter your name and…","title":"Privacy Policy","type":"page"},{"content":" Navodaya Networks Forum expects that the donors will exercise due care and diligence while making donations. In case of an unintended donation made by mistake or change of mind, we can process refund requests of donation if the requests reach us with all the details within 30days of the transaction, and in any case not later than 20th March of the same financial year. We must have received a request preferably through email addressed to office@navodaya.online with all the details: Name of the donor, date/time of the transaction, transaction ID, bank details, and PAN number, with a clearly specified reason on why a refund is requested. In case the transaction charges for the refund are more than Rs.50/-, we shall deduct the amount from the refund.\nIf you have ordered any subscriptions, goods, or services from Navodaya Networks Forum, you may cancel the order before it is dispatched. The refund will be initiated within seven days after the cancellation request reaches us. Cancellation requests should reach us with full details at Office@navodaya.online.\n","date":"April 4, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/cancellation-and-refund-policy/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"Navodaya Networks Forum expects that the donors will exercise due care and diligence while making donations. In case of an unintended donation made by mistake or change of mind, we can process refund requests of donation if the requests reach us with all the details within…","title":"Cancellation and Refund Policy","type":"page"},{"content":" You may access the links to official notices/documents below:\nAGM Notice 2023\nDirector’s Report 2023\nDirector’s Report 2022-23\nDirector’s Report 2021-22\n","date":"September 27, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/statutory-notices/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"You may access the links to official notices/documents below: AGM Notice 2023 Director’s Report 2023 Director’s Report 2022-23 Director’s Report 2021-22","title":"Statutory Notices","type":"page"},{"content":" Please donate to our cause.\nWe are accepting donations to pay our way. Separately, we will be announcing from time to time specific campaigns and initiatives to support deserving causes.\nDonation eligible for exemption under section 80G of the Income Tax Act 1961 vide Unique Registration Number AAICN0103CF2022101, provisional approval dated 22nd October, 2022. Please ensure to provide donor’s PAN number to claim the rebate.\nWe have two methods of routing donation transactions.\nWe work with Razorpay to accept donations online. Click the following button to donate.\nDonations can be made by bank transfer to HDFC Bank, Salunke Vihar Road Branch, Pune.\nName of account beneficiary: Navodaya Networks Forum Current Account No 502 0006 723 5232 IFSC Code HDFC 000 4187 ( please note that blanks/spaces in the numbers above are provided for clarity, and must not be used for actually filling in deposit forms)\nCheques may be deposited in any HDFC ATM or branch giving these details. Please send us an email with contact details and PAN number to office@navodaya.online, so that we can issue a receipt.\n","date":"January 20, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/donate/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"Please donate to our cause. We are accepting donations to pay our way. Separately, we will be announcing from time to time specific campaigns and initiatives to support deserving causes. Donation eligible for exemption under section 80G of the Income Tax Act 1961 vide Unique…","title":"Donate","type":"page"},{"content":"","date":"May 5, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/article/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Article","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"May 5, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/","section":"Blog","summary":"","title":"Blog","type":"blog"},{"content":"","date":"May 5, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/climate/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Climate","type":"tags"},{"content":" S G Vombatkere\nOn World Earth Day 2023, a few dozen members of the 8-billion-and-counting Homo Sapiens species, met in an insignificantly tiny spot on Planet Earth – the premises of The Institution of Engineers (India), Mysore, to discuss and think about Global Warming (GW) and Climate Change (CC).\nClimate Change gains respectability\nEARTHDAY.ORG recognises 23rd April as World Earth Day, and suggested the 2023 theme “Invest in Our Planet”. World Economic Forum (WEF) suggests staving off climate disaster, using innovative green technologies to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C. WTO, World Bank and WEF launched “Action on Climate and Trade” to leverage opportunities for climate action and trade growth. [Global Assessment Report 2022 (GAR2022) of United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)] (GAR2022: Our World at Risk (GAR) | UNDRR) warns of the collapse of ecosystems and biospheres. It recommends “transforming governance”, and states: “Despite commitments to build resilience, tackle climate change and create sustainable development pathways, current societal, political and economic choices are doing the reverse“. Encyclopedia Brittanica’s “Saving the Earth” states: “… human activities have disrupted the natural order of the environment by depopulating and eliminating species and adding harmful chemicals to the air, water, and soil—activities that are changing the climate and the structure and function of ecosystems , as well as the biological communities they contain”. Homo Sapiens’ investment in Planet Earth\nWell-considered investment in human systems, like money in the stockmarket, or time and resources in children’s education, or purchasing tools to improve or increase production, can have positive or beneficial outcomes. Likewise, the theme “Invest in Our Planet”, implies investment for beneficial outcomes. However, before making fresh investment, it is necessary to see what investment has been made so far, and what are its outcomes. Let us recall that Homo Sapiens population has grown to 8-billion-and-counting, because we have learned to extract and use Earth’s (natural capital) material and energy resources.\nThe Global Economy\nOur industrialised civilisation has created a system for large-scale exploitation-extraction-use of Earth’s natural resources. This structured system is the Global Economy.\nThe Global Economy operates on the basis of unending and compounded year-on-year economic growth, with unending production and consumption of industrial products by exploitation of natural capital. This is made possible by money as the enabler, to measure growth and drive the economic “machine” of resource extraction, manufacture and production, and purchase and consumption, with transportation at every stage. The growth of money supply as the size of the economy grows, causes financial debt – this will bear separate discussion.\nThe unending industrial-scale cycles of extraction, production and consumption lead to depletion of natural capital on the one hand, and accumulating pollution on the other. Thus, the Planet, which circumscribes the Global Economy, serves as both Source and Sink, with the source getting depleted and the sink getting overloaded.\nIndustrial products and processes\nIt is not commonly appreciated that every industrially manufactured product – plastics, paper, pins, pens, phones, laptops, cars, airplanes, ships, you-name-it – is finally waste/garbage/junk (WGJ). The fuel and materials consumed at various stages of manufacture and use of every single product, show up as WGJ. They remain unwanted or toxic for periods ranging from weeks to hundreds of years, and for nuclear radioactive wastes, thousands of years. The least recognised source of WGJ is military-based industrial production, with WGJ magnified during destructive armed combat.\nIndustrialized production draws natural material resources – especially including oil for transportation – from Earth, in continuing cycles of resource depletion and increasing environmental pollution and ecological destruction. Re-cycling the WGJ produced also draws on natural resources and energy and produces WGJ, precisely like the WGJ first produced. Re-using waste – e.g., plastics in concrete for road construction – barely touches the fringe of the problem.\nIndustrial-scale carbon (carbon dioxide) capture from the atmosphere and its geological sequestration is not unlike re-cycling, inasmuch as it also consumes natural resources and generates WJG. In any case, it can handle only a small fraction of the global warming gases (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere, while carbon dioxide generated by the Global Economy is itself a fraction of the total of waste gases. There are other over-the-top ideas, like projecting chemicals into the stratosphere to reflect away solar heat and reduce GW. These demonstrate ignorance of energy audit, and the simplistic view that technology can solve GW, and also neglects consideration of problems it may cause. This approach fails to appreciate that a problem cannot be solved using the tools that created the problem.\nMaterials, energy and the Global Economy\nEconomics and technology experts trained in the school of market economics, hold that the “innovative green technologies” of non-conventional energy sources (solar, wind, ocean wave, ocean tidal, ocean thermal, geo-thermal, are NCES) can solve our energy problems.\nHydrogen generated by electrolysis of ocean water, with energy for electrolysis provided by solar/ wind/ocean energy, is particularly attractive. The technologies for the system of hydrogen production, storage, handling, bulk-transportation and consumer-level storage and use, are reportedly in an advanced stage. The “hydrogen economy” is expected to replace the oil-based economy, and serve to keep the wheels of economic activity within the Global Economy, moving.\nHowever, the hardware needed for harnessing of low-flux energy sources and hydrogen, can only be produced-transported-deployed-consumed by using the present sources of energy, namely, oil – and to a lesser extent, coal – and sourcing materials from Earth’s natural capital.\nThus, utilizing NCES is dependent upon the functioning of the Global Economy, and will add to the WJG on land, in oceans and inland water bodies, and the atmosphere.\nNuclear energy\nNuclear energy is in a separate class. Proponents claim that it will reduce carbon emissions. However, carbon dioxide and other gases are produced by the industrial processes of raw material acquisiton, Refining, transportation, construction-assembly, etc., for the nuclear cycle infrastructure, all with non- nuclear energy.\nIt is little known that nuclear power plants (NPPs), when shut down for maintenance, safety or decommissioning, require substantial external power sources to keep stored nuclear material from overheating and melting down. All this accounts for conventional energy required to produce nuclear energy, and keep NPPs operating. Thus NPPs directly and indirectly produce gaseous wastes including carbon dioxide, besides toxic solid and liquid WGJ. The nuclear industry’s low-carbon claim is unsubstantiated.\nNuclear energy is dependent upon oil and materials drawn from natural capital, for precisely the same reasons as NCES. Nuclear radioactive waste disposal – especially including decommissioned reactors and high-level radioactive materials – undoubtedly add to the WGJ on the Planet. In the event of nuclear accident the WGJ problem is hugely magnified. Notice how USSR and Japan – and the international nuclear industry – downplayed the Chernonbyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011) disasters.\nThus, nuclear energy is dependent upon the functioning of the Global Economy. It adds to the WJG on land, in oceans and inland water bodies, and in the atmosphere, although differently than other energy production methods.\nThe engines of economic growth\nThe critical sectors of governance which drive the growth of every national economy, and which draw resources and energy from, and discharge WGJ into, the Planet’s ecosystems and biosphere, are: Oil and energy, Banking-finance-trade-commerce, Natural resource extraction, Manufacturing and production, Transportation, Services including tourism-and-hospitality, and Agriculture.\nThe budget allocations to People-related sectors such as education, health, social welfare, family welfare, labour, small-and-medium scale industry, are minuscule compared to the main drivers of economic growth. Economic growth has been the priority of successive Indian governments beginning with economic reforms of NEP-1991.\nInconvenient facts\nEvery industry uses resources and energy extracted from the Planet to produce goods and services. Every manufacturing process of goods and services, and transportation (including vehicle manufacture for transportation) between stages of manufacture and consumption, generate wastes. Every industrial product is junk at some time in the future, beginning on the day following production (like a newspaper). All wastes and junk are on or in the land, water and air of our Planet. The investments of the Global Economy\nEconomics includes audit processes, especially for financial audit. However, contemporary economics fails to conduct audit to include material-and-energy used in the processes of the Global Economy. The reason for this shortcoming is that the value of natural capital sourced by the Global Economy, and the consequent WGJ on land, water and atmosphere, are treated as externalities, and therefore fail to figure in a holistic energy balance sheet. Indeed, economics or technology experts are unlikely to have considered costed energy audit.\nFundamentally, contemporary economics fails to recognize that unending (exponential) growth, driven by unending consumption of finite natural capital, and cumulative dumping of WGJ into the Planet’s environment-ecology, through advertisement-driven consumption of industrial goods and services, is the “investment” of and by the Global Economy in our Planet.\nThe opinion of economist, educator and interdisciplinary philosopher Kenneth Ewart Boulding, is apt: “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist”.\nThe Elephant in the Room, and ‘Saving the Planet’\nThe Global Economy is the “elephant in the room” – it is not understood as the problem. World leaders over decades have unquestioningly accepted economic growth as a cardinal principle of development. When persons in positions of power define economic policy and derive material or monetary benefit from the economy (in a self-serving loop), they would have little reason to question it. Many persons and organizations have written and spoken about “Saving our Planet”. However, entertaining the idea of “Saving our Planet” displays ignorance that our species is part of and dependent upon our Planet. Our Planet does not need “saving”. It is industrialized civilization, the “investment” of Homo Sapiens, which is under existential threat, along with humongous numbers of our species and other life-forms.\nHumanity’s investment in our Planet by creating, building and operating the Global Economy, has caused negative outcomes on societies (unrest due to growing economic inequality), on global environment- ecology, and on the biosphere. It has impacted all forms of life on our Planet, and drives many species to extinction.\nReverting to Climate Change\nThe highlights of India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) – strangely undated – accessed in 2023 and presumably current, are:\nSustain rapid economic growth while dealing with the global threat of climate change. Maintain a high growth rate, to increase living standards. Promote natural resource conservation, understanding climate change adaptation and mitigation, and energy efficiency. Implementation of the eight Missions with PPP and involvement of civil society. Clearly, all governments including ours, prioritise economic growth over addressing the effects of climate change. There is little if any realisation, or understanding, that continuing with business-as-usual of unending economic growth, which depletes rather than conserves natural resources, will exacerbate GW and CC. The rationality that Homo Sapiens credits itself with, is in question.\nParadoxically, while NAPCC envisages involvement of civil society, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF\u0026amp;CC) [prevents civil society from getting information concerning environmental impact of projects](Centre stops sharing information on environmental impact of projects on its Parivesh website on-its-parivesh-website). Government’s dichotomous approach to climate change may indicate confusion on a vital issue.\nInvesting wisely\nAs UNDRR advises, governance needs transformation, so as to convert the current exploitative, unsustainable economic paradigm of unending economic growth, to People-centred economics. Governance policies need to be socially responsible, environmentally-ecologically sound, and economically sustainable. This may stave off collapse of ecological systems and the biosphere. No single idea, no single leader, no single expert group, can provide a solution or even a viable way forward. Investing in technologies which exploit the Planet and its living species, will be wrong and counter-productive.\nDemocratic and informed discussion, and People-oriented (not Corporate-oriented) fast-track decision- making mode of governance, will bear active and immediate consideration. In default, there will be irreversible and unaffordable social, economic, environmental-ecological costs to living species, including humanity.\nWanted!\nHumanity needs thought-leaders in societies and nations, who have understanding, imagination and vision transcending the Global Economy’s destructive dogma of unending economic growth.\n","date":"May 5, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/climate-change-conundrum-humanity-s-bad-investment/","section":"Blog","summary":"999×750 169 KB S G Vombatkere On World Earth Day 2023, a few dozen members of the 8-billion-and-counting Homo Sapiens species, met in an insignificantly tiny spot on Planet Earth – the premises of The Institution of Engineers (India), Mysore, to discuss and think about Global…","title":"Climate Change Conundrum: Humanity’s bad investment","type":"blog"},{"content":"","date":"May 5, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/environment/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Environment","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"May 5, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tags","type":"tags"},{"content":" Some truths need to be stated, otherwise we will continue to only talk-talk-talk Lt. General VIJAY OBEROI As we complete another year, there is once again a reflection on the year that is ending. Tied with the same is what one expects from the next year, both about what needs to be done to ameliorate the negatives of the year that is ending and what all needs to be done to cut the negatives and increase the positives.\nIt is my intention in this piece, to touch on what all went wrong in 2022 and what needs to be done to rectify and restore. And finally, to plan changes that will keep the military focused on its professionalism and ethos and not succumb to the powers that be, who have been forcing the military to carry out ill-conceived tasks that emanate without taking professional advice and which are meant to achieve non-military objectives.\nThe intention is that the Indian Military retains its professionalism, ethos and culture that have made us such a successful military in the world.\nThe first among a number of issues I plan to discuss in this article relates to the policy responses and no strategy to the existential threat posed by China in many facets. The immediate ones being our complete lack of a coherent policy for dealing with actions that China has been taking along our northern land borders, especially since the major occupation of Eastern Ladakh by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China in Apr-May 2020.\nI am afraid the political leadership and our diplomats continue to act as they did since the mid-Fifties. Resultantly, we are losing territory, but more importantly becoming a passive state in the eyes of not only our neighbours or regional countries, but also globally.\nWe boast of having the third largest Army, the fourth largest Air Force and the sixth largest Navy, but when push comes to shove, we only make inane noises and feel happy that the world applauds our so-called ‘restraint’, although behind the façade they view us as unable to defend ourselves. This has major repercussions on our empty political statements that keep boasting of India’s rise!\nSome truths need to be stated, otherwise we will continue to only talk-talk-talk, while China makes itself stronger by the day, on and beyond the Line of Control (LAC). At this rate, there eventually will be a ‘fait accompli’ in favour of China and only crumbs will be left for us. This is despite a number of available examples where the Indian Military has acted offensively and beat the Chinaman at his own game.\nMany well-fought battles of 1962, where the Indian Army displayed its bravery and halted China’s push, come to mind straightaway, despite artificially created narratives to the contrary. These include the Nathu La action of 1967; the Sumdrong Chu speedy riposte and more recently the actions at Yangtse in the Tawang Sector of Arunachal Pradesh, in December 2022.\nYet, all we do is organise yet another military level conference that has yielded nothing worthwhile, along with periodic diplomatic discussions, where China dictates and our diplomats listen. The way we deal with such important issues as sovereignty must change, otherwise we are bound to lose everything. We need to wake up and bite the bullet.\nIt is a shame that we are sitting in a defensive mode along the Line of Control (LC) in J\u0026amp;K since 1949; on the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) in Siachen since 1984; along the border with China in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh since the 1980’s and now with boosted troops since 2020; and not forgetting the huge deployment in Eastern Ladakh since the major incursion by the PLA since 2020. Why are our leaders so shaky and devoid of any thinking, or have they abrogated their responsibilities? If so, to whom?\nThis is in stark contrast to the 1971 war when the Indian Military went on the offensive and produced startling results. This was due to unambiguous policy decisions of the then government, led by tall leaders. The Indian Military repeated it in the 1999 Kargil Border War, but due to placing embargos by the then government, not to cross the LC (reasons still unexplained), despite the then Army Chief advising that it should be done, the Army had to resort to frontal attacks on sheer cliffs.\nThe result was highly excessive casualties incurred on account of frontal attacks in the most difficult terrain imaginable. One analyst had rightly called the Kargil War as ‘the last battle of World War I’!\nThe Indian Military thereafter has been awaiting a similar grand strategy, but alas our leaders are so immersed in electoral and internal battles; spreading hatred among communities and collecting funds by all means,that our political leadership and their ill-chosen advisers have forgotten about the nefarious activities of our adversaries, who continue to delay if not stop India’s rise.\nIn Ladakh, despite the poor performance of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) in 2020, it has again been deployed on the LAC as the lead force and the dual control, which is the worst policy one can adopt in securing borders, continues. Not permitting patrols to carry weapons has resulted in the Army and ITBP personnel resorting to pushing and shoving, like the police.\nThis is a sure way of turning the Army to a constabulary and affecting the pride of Army personnel. That it goes against the grain of training of Army personnel need not be stated, as it is well-known.\nLet me remind our policy makers that among the four operations of war; Advance; Defence; Offence; and Retrograde Operations (the last one was taken away from our military manuals after 1962). Defence is always a temporary phase for securing firm bases, dumping warlike stores and supplies; training for the offensive tasks, rehearsals and getting ready for the offensives. Wars are won by joint offensive actions and not by pussyfooting (being cautious or non-committal).\nThe bottom line is that unless we get our act together and formulate a workable National Security Strategy, we will continue to stagnate in the defensive mode in bunkers in hostile terrain and weather, because the policy makers are pre-occupied by their personal agendas. Let us not be dubbed by future generations that our policy makers and their advisors acted like the well-known proverb: “Nero fiddled while Rome burned!”\nA country like China understands the use of power and when an adversary shies away from it, the aggression increases.\nThis brings me to the next important issue, which is that the starvation of the Indian Armed Forces continues, with the defence budget at such a historically low level that we should stop calling it a budget and rename it as ‘subsidy’ or ‘dole’!\nThe few statements in the media recently, stating that new procurements of fighting platforms and weapons are coming in the future are purely Public Relations exercises, which may satisfy the naïve but as far as the professional armed forces are concerned, we are rapidly becoming obsolescent, if not obsolete.\nI now move to my third point, which is the so-called ‘deep selection’ that has been imposed by the political leadership on the armed forces at the behest of the ‘darbaris’, who have no or little knowledge of ‘matters military’. They may technically be able to pass muster, but it is patently wrong to impose it on the senior hierarchy of the armed forces.\nIt needs to be appreciated that seniority in the Services is of great importance, both for smooth command and control and maintenance of morale. Deep selection was discussed many times in the past by the Army hierarchy, and every time it was found that the weeding out process can be carried out at middle or higher middle levels, provided detailed rules are formulated and the environment is informed about them at least three to five years in advance.\nHowever, doing so at the levels of C’s-in-C and above is patently incorrect. It is highly unfortunate that the present government has again done so and this time at the level of the three service chiefs, by appointing a retired GOC-in-C as the CDS and making a mockery of the highest ranks and appointments of the Indian Military.\nThe naive and the ‘bhagats’ may well say so what? So let me explain briefly.\nWhen a C-in-C is elevated to the level of a Chief, there is immediately a major change in his span of command and control and he commences dealing and interacting with new political and administrative personalities, as well as very senior counterparts from abroad.\nTaking the example of the Army, a GOC-in-C usually commands three corps, perhaps an Area Headquarters or an Independent Sub Area Headquarters and maybe the odd reserve division or independent brigade group/task force, allotted for a specific purpose from Army Headquarters reserves, and some static units/formations.\nOn elevation to Chief, the span of command of the incumbent not only increases manifold, but to such increases one has to add entities like manpower policies, provisioning of operational logistical requirements including procuring/production of modern weapon platforms, training policies and training institutions, all aspects of budgeting, interactions with those who deal with foreign policy, internal security, formulating short and long-term military strategic policies, contributing to joint endeavours and numerous other tasks and policies that fall under the rubric of military plans and strategies.\nUnlike a C-in-C, the Chief plays a major role in formulation of national strategic plans and policies too, provided he is in the loop for such formulations. Unfortunately, our present structures of Higher Control of Defence have been allowed to languish and in brief, we continue to deal with such vital subjects of sovereignty and border security in a cavalier manner, to put it mildly.\nI would like to urge the political leadership to consign the so-called deep selection for the very senior hierarchy of the armed forces to the dustbin. If it still enamours them, then let them try out such experiments with others.\nThe above somewhat long explanation is to remind our ‘hukmaran’ that it was a blunder to appoint an already retired GOC-in-C to be the nations CDS on grounds that can be called highly non-professional, but the real reasons come under the labels of personal loyalty, ethnicity, favouritism and nepotism, not to also imply politicisation of the Armed Forces!\nThis epistle will be incomplete if mention is not made again and of the major blunder called the Agnipath Scheme, whereby to meet political ends/goals, the guillotine has fallen on the humblest, but the most important peg of the warriors of the Indian Army known as the Jawan. TheJawan has been diminished by giving a fancy name to temporary inductees, three-fourth of which will be demobilised after four years.\nDespite reiterating that suitable jobs will be found for them outside the Armed Forces, in a country that has reached epidemic levels of unemployment and underemployment, this is pure fiction. What is most likely is that these semi-trained individuals, but nonetheless trained in handling firearms will add to the existing worsening law and order situation and become a sheer major liability.\nI have nothing more to say on this particular blunder foisted on the Armed Forces, but specifically the Army, which will henceforth always have less than authorised number of Jawans. This will be yet another challenge for the Army as if at all it goes into battle, it will fight with diminished manpower at the business end.\nOn account of the Army’s ethos of training its command and keeping it at fully trained levels, the so-called Agniveers will get all chances for becoming robust soldiers, but even then when a person knows that his job may well end soon, his output is unlikely to be as good or sustained as the regular Jawans.\nI would like to suggest to our ‘hukmarans’ to dissolve this scheme as soon as possible after the initial induction and revert to the status quo. Let our commanding officers function as they should and not be burdened by training temporary inductees.\nLt General VIJAY OBEROI is a former Vice Chief of the Indian Army. This opinion piece was first published on The Citizen on January 1, 2023, and the views expressed are the writer’s own. The original article can be found here.\n","date":"January 2, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/a-relook-at-2022-was-it-good-for-the-indian-military/","section":"Blog","summary":"2560×1707 106 KB Some truths need to be stated, otherwise we will continue to only talk-talk-talk Lt. General VIJAY OBEROI As we complete another year, there is once again a reflection on the year that is ending. Tied with the same is what one expects from the next year, both…","title":"A Relook at 2022: Was it good for the Indian Military?","type":"blog"},{"content":"","date":"January 2, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/army/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Army","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"January 2, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/column/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Column","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"January 2, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/indian-army/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Indian-Army","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"January 2, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/opinion/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Opinion","type":"tags"},{"content":" We invite you to take this pledge to the preamble to our constitution, with us, to remember and cherish our unity and our integrity as a nation. We share with you a sense of dignity , happiness and worth that it has always given so many of us.\nWE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:\nJUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;\nEQUALITY of status and of opportunity;\nand to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;\nIN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION\nWe believe that we shall overcome the indignities that the nation is being buffeted with. We believe that it is possible for justice and equality to prevail. We pledge to nourish and strengthen that faith, to the India of the great collective dream – the Constitution.\nCreated by MKSS , School for Democracy \u0026amp; Aruna Roy\n","date":"November 30, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/the-pledge-we-take-everyday/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"We invite you to take this pledge to the preamble to our constitution, with us, to remember and cherish our unity and our integrity as a nation. We share with you a sense of dignity , happiness and worth that it has always given so many of us. WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having…","title":"The Pledge we take everyday","type":"page"},{"content":"","date":"November 27, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/constitution/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Constitution","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"November 27, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/constitution-day/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Constitution-Day","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"November 27, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/idea-of-india/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Idea-of-India","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"November 27, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/india/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"India","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"November 27, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/navodaya/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Navodaya","type":"tags"},{"content":" S.G.Vombatkere Nation = People + Country + Constitution\nA nation is the synergetic sum of a country’s people with their social and cultural resources, who live within the boundaries of the country with its natural and economic resources, and the rules by which the people live and work. The “rule book” for India is the Constitution of India. It was the product of a solemn resolution of the people of newly-independent India. It defined Independent India as a sovereign, democratic Republic. The Constitution assures justice, liberty and equality to all India’s citizens, and exhorts them to promote fraternity, to assure dignity to individuals and the integrity of the nation.\nThe Constitution sets out the laws and rules according to which We the People and all the creatures of the Constitution – principally, but not limited to, the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary – must conduct themselves in all aspects of the affairs of the nation.\nThe Constitution is a living document. In keeping with changing times and circumstances, it needs to be amended without interfering with its basic structure, to suit the dynamics of societies, as the needs, wants and aspirations of the people change.\nThe Constitution, which was Independent India’s primary document, remains so. It directs our nation’s strategy to provide all its citizens with the primary needs of food, water, shelter, clothing, education, work, health-care and security, through the instrumentality of justice, liberty and equality. Thus the Constitution is, and must continue as, the fountain-head of all laws, codes, rules, regulations, doctrines and policies which guide the governance of the social, economic and political life of our nation.\nBirth of a nation\nThere were many individual and joint initiatives and efforts made sequentially and in parallel, to create the document which we know as the Constitution of India, which was promulgated on 26 January 1950, the date when our Republic was “born”. It is therefore not possible to trace it from conception to birth strictly adhering to a time-line.\nThe leaders of our struggle for freedom from British rule and political independence, conceived the need for such a document long before Independence. Perhaps the first mention of a Constitution was by M.K.Gandhi, writing on Parliamentary Democracy in his weekly journal “Young India” dated 10 September 1931 (p.255): “I shall strive for a constitution, which will release India from all thralldom and patronage…”. The instrument with which to create a Constitution was a Constituent Assembly, a body of persons representing as wide a range of interests as possible. The formation of a Constituent Assembly was proposed in 1934. It was actually founded in November 1946, and assembled for the first time on 9 December 1946.\nOn 13 December 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru moved an “Objective resolution” which outlined the objectives of the Constitution. These were meant to assure to the People, the democratic trio of Justice, Liberty and Equality. To these objectives, Fraternity, was added by B.R.Ambedkar on 21 February 1948, to maintain the unity and integrity of the nation. All four are incorporated into the Preamble to the Constitution.\nThe 299-member Constituent Assembly comprised persons representing different backgrounds of caste, region, religion and gender. There were 166 meetings of the Constituent Assembly between 9 December 1946 and 24 January 1950, 114 of which were devoted to discussion, debate and amendment to, prepare the Final Draft Constitution of India.\nAt various points during the constitution-making process, the Constituent Assembly appointed a number of Committees on different aspects of the Constitution to conduct preliminary research and deliberations within smaller groups. The work of these Committees took the form of reports, which were discussed in the Constituent Assembly.\nB.N Rau, who had already prepared a paper titled “Outline of a New Constitution” in January 1946, was appointed Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly. He compiled the reports of various committees to prepare a Draft Constitution which he submitted to the Drafting Committee in October 1947. It contained 243 Articles and 13 Schedules.\nOn 29 August 1947, the Constituent Assembly appointed a 7-member Drafting Committee from among its members. They were Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar, N.Gopalaswamy Ayyangar, B.R.Ambedkar, K.M.Munshi, Mohammad Saadulla, B.L.Mitter (later resigned due to ill-health, replaced by N.Madhava Rau) and D.P.Khaitan (died in 1948, replaced by T.T.Krishnamachari). On 30 August 1947, the Drafting Committee elected B.R.Ambedkar as its Chairman.\nBeginning with B.N.Rau’s first Draft, the Constituent Assembly, first under Provisional Chairman Sachidananda Sinha, and later under Chairman Rajendra Prasad, moved and debated 2,473 amendments. The Final Draft Constitution presented to the Constituent Assembly for approval, had 395 Articles and 8 Schedules. The Draft Constitution was approved on 26 November 1949. The full transcripts of the Constituent Assembly proceedings are recorded in 12 volumes.\nFrom the status of a British colony, on Independence Day 15 August 1947, India became a British Dominion, with the Constituent Assembly functioning as its Provisional Parliament, even while continuing apace with its primary task of creating the Constitution. When the Constitution of India was promulgated on 26 January 1950, India became a sovereign Republic, finally breaking free of the British yoke.\nThe Constitution of India set the stage for India’s first general elections, which were held between 25 October 1951 and 21 February 1952. India’s First Parliament was constituted on 17 April 1952, and held its first session on 13 May 1952.\nSelected highlights\nThe objectives of the Constitution are for the State to secure for all citizens: (1) Social, economic and political Justice; (2) Liberty of thought, belief, expression, faith and worship; and (3) Equality of status and of opportunity. These were based on the ‘Objectives Resolution’, drafted and moved before the Constituent Assembly by Jawaharlal Nehru on 13 December 1946. The Constituent Assembly included it in the Preamble of the Constitution.\nThe members of the Constituent Assembly set aside the caste and class differences which were undoubtedly present. Notable evidence of this is, the Drafting Committee consisted of five “upper caste” persons including two South Indian brahmins, one Muslim and one “untouchable” person. Merit trumping caste prejudices, they elected the “untouchable” person, B.R.Ambedkar, as its Chairman.\nThe Constitution is the outcome of clear-eyed determination of the members of the Constituent Assembly to sit together to create a document to build an inclusive nation. The sage advice of Provisional Chairman Sachidananda Sinha to move forward with “reasonable agreements and judicious compromises“, set the tone for debating 2,473 motions.\nJawaharlal Nehru, speaking in the Constituent Assembly, said: “The first task of this Assembly is to free India through a new constitution, to feed the starving people, and to clothe the naked masses, and to give every Indian the fullest opportunity to develop himself according to his capacity. This is certainly a great task. Look at India today. We are sitting here and there in despair in many places, and unrest in many cities. The atmosphere is surcharged with these quarrels and feuds which are called communal disturbances, and unfortunately we sometimes cannot avoid them. But at present the greatest and most important question in India is how to solve the problem of the poor and the starving. Wherever we turn, we are confronted with this problem. If we cannot solve this problem soon, all our paper constitutions will become useless and purposeless”.\nThe Drafting Committee obtained and studied all known Constitutions of the world, notably, those of USA, Ireland, Australia, France and Switzerland. Based upon his study of these Constitutions and the rulings of the respective Apex Courts, B.R.Ambedkar played a central role in the debates of the hundreds of suggested amendments to B.N.Rau’s First Draft.\nThe Draft Constitution provided safeguards for minorities. This was strongly opposed by some members of the Constituent Assembly. Defending the safeguards, B.R.Ambedkar had this to say: “In this country both the minorities and the majorities have followed a wrong path. It is wrong for the majority to deny the existence of minorities. It is equally wrong for the minorities to perpetuate themselves…. [minorities] have loyally accepted the rule of the majority, which is basically a communal majority and not a political majority”.\nRegarding Fundamental Rights in the Draft Constitution, critics held that Fundamental Rights are not Fundamental Rights unless they are also absolute rights. They gave the example of the US Constitution and the American Bill of Rights, in which they believed that Fundamental Rights were not subject to limitations or exceptions. B.R.Ambedkar, with his study, grasp and understanding of the issues involved, cogently argued thus: “… it is wrong to say that Fundamental Rights in America are absolute. The difference between the position under the American Constitution and the Draft Constitution is one of form, not of substance … In support of every exception to the Fundamental Rights set out in the Draft Constitution one can refer to at least one judgment of the United States Supreme Court…”, and went on to quote a United States Supreme Court judgment in ‘Gitlow vs. New York’, which denied an absolute right to speak or publish, without responsibility.\nRegarding the Draft Constitution’s inclusion of Directive Principles, critics held that they are merely pious declarations with no binding force, and should be omitted. B.R.Ambedkar argued: “I am prepared to admit that the Directive Principles have no legal force behind them. But I am not prepared to admit that they have no sort of binding force at all. Nor am I prepared to concede that they are useless because they have no binding force in law. … [T]hey are instructions to the legislature and the executive … Wherever there is grant of power in general terms for peace, order and good government, it is necessary that it should be accompanied by instructions regulating its exercise. … whoever captures power will not be free to do what he likes with it. In the exercise of it, he will have to respect these instruments of instructions which are called Directive Principles… He may not have to answer for their breach in a court of law … but he will certainly have to answer them before the electorate at election time”. The Directive Principles of State Policy were retained.\nThe building blocks of the Constitution If two individuals at the core of creating the Constitution are to be named, they are B.N.Rau and B.R.Ambedkar. Both were talented, multi-faceted men of learning, with political foresight and a strong yearning for India’s nationhood. By sheer chance, the former was member of a community at the very peak of the brahminical caste system, while the latter was an “untouchable”, outside the caste system. The former started life with social, economic and educational advantage, while the latter started out without any of these and worked his way to his position of eminence.\nIf one can liken the Constitution to a brick structure, every brick of the structure was meticulously prepared by the Constituent Assembly. Thereafter, every brick was lifted and reverently put in place with two hands – one hand was B.N.Rau and the other hand was B.R.Ambedkar. The Constitution of India is the outcome of a labour of love, and the wisdom of our founding fathers in the sacred task of nation building.\nThe Constituent Assembly\nThe Constituent Assembly held 166 sessions in all, and 114 of these were detailed debates focused on the text of the Draft Constitution. The balance 52 sessions were concerned with the business of the Constituent Assembly such as appointing Committees and deciding on working rules. Full transcripts of the Constituent Assembly Debates are available at \u0026lt;https://www.constitutionofindia.net/constitution_assembly_debates\u0026gt; in 12 volumes, conveniently numbered for reference or for citing by legal professionals, academics or interested laypersons.\nThe transcripts of the debates reveal some salient points:\nIn the inaugural session of the Constituent Assembly on 9 December 1946, Provisional Chairman Sachidananda Sinha made two important observations, namely, that having a Constitution would be “… the final settlement of the problem of all problems, and the issue of all issues, namely, the political independence of India, and her economic freedom”, and that “reasonable agreements and judicious compromises are nowhere more called for than in framing a Constitution for a country like India”. The Constituent Assembly Chairman was Rajendra Prasad. He conducted the proceedings of the Assembly with dignity, never losing focus, and always giving full opportunity to every member within the working rules of the Assembly. Several members of the Constituent Assembly mention the extremely difficult political situation unfolding due to the horrific violence of Partition. They therefore urge that the work of the Constituent Assembly should proceed without delay, so that the Draft Constitution could be finalized for adoption by the Constituent Assembly. Members were seriously concerned about and acutely aware of the socially tense situation due to religious, linguistic and caste based differences. B.R. Ambedkar urged that the Constitution should strive towards the creation of unity among citizens by improving relations between different castes and religious communities. This is the reason for Fraternity “assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation”, finding a place in the Preamble. Each provision of the Draft Constitution was studied by members, who argued the implications of sentences and even particular words, and debated with well considered arguments, for their change, retention or removal. This indicated the members’ deep involvement in their onerous responsibility, their determination to produce a Constitution acceptable to all sections of opinion and interest, and their daily detailed study and hard work to prepare for the debates. Members with strongly opposing views argued their points passionately, but always couched in temperate language and always with dignity, respectful towards the member whom they were opposing, and accepting the decisions taken by the Chairman conducting the proceedings. By producing a unique Constitution, the Constituent Assembly raised the status of India’s fledgling Republic on the international stage. By transacting the business of the Constituent Assembly with dignity, the members set the tone for the conduct of the First Parliament of our Republic. Our First Parliament gave India the much-needed balance, strength and stability in the crucial years immediately following the violent Partition.\nStructure of the Constitution\nThe Constitution is our national document. It is a living, speaking document, which mandates, directs and guides the system of governance.\nThe ‘basic structure’ of the Constitution is its ideals, principles, spirit and philosophy, which include: (1) Supremacy of “We the People”; (2) Primacy of the Constitution and its unitary nature; (3) The sovereignty of the Nation and the State; (4) The republican, democratic, parliamentary form of government; (5) Separation of powers between the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary, the three primary branches of governance; and (6) Its federal character.\nThe core values of the Constitution stated in the Preamble, are: (1) Social, economic and political Justice; (2) Liberty of thought, belief, expression, faith and worship; and (3) Equality of status and of opportunity. To these are added Fraternity, which must be promoted to assure individual dignity, and the unity and integrity of the Nation. Without Fraternity, the core values lose their practical meaning.\nJustice, Liberty and Equality are for the State to provide to citizens and for citizens to demand, whereas Fraternity is for the State to promote, and a duty for citizens.\nThe ideals, principles, spirit, philosophy and values are expressed in 448 Articles of the Constitution which are numbered serially, and logically documented into 25 Parts, each with Chapters, and 12 Schedules containing additional details pertaining to specific Articles.\nThe Constituent Assembly created our Constitution by selectively adopting principles from the constitutions of over 60 countries, skilfully adapting them to Indian conditions, and inserting provisions which are peculiar to India’s diversities. The continued relevance of the Constitution to changing social and economic conditions, needs and circumstances, is evidenced by the fact that during the seven decades since its first promulgation, there have been 104 amendments enacted by 17 elected Parliaments. However, in making constitutional amendments in accordance with Article 368, Parliament does not have the power to interfere with, modify, alter or change the basic structure of the Constitution.\nParts of the Constitution\nThe Parts of the Constitution are concerned with the following wide range of matters: Defining the extent of the Union and the formation of states within the Union; Defining the criteria for citizenship for a people in the throes of Partition; Laying down the fundamental rights and freedoms, even specifying women and children; Laying down the fundamental duties of its citizens; Laying down directive principles which are fundamental in the governance of the country and the duty of the State to apply these principles in making laws; Giving equal rights to all people and universal adult franchise; Setting limitations on governments’ power, and establishing checks and balances between the organs of the Constitution; Defining three (centre, state and district) levels of government, legislature and judiciary; Defining the legislative, governance and administrative powers between the Union and the States; Setting up constitutional institutions such as an Election Commission to conduct elections, and a Finance Commission to regulate taxes and public funds.\nThe range of matters covered within the Constitution demonstrates the breadth of vision and the attention to detail of our founding fathers, who sat together in the Constituent Assembly. However, that has made our Constitution the world’s longest, and it has been criticized for that reason.\nCriticism and comparison\nThe phrase “comparisons are odious” suggests that to compare two different things is unhelpful or misleading. One Jhelum Chowdhary has done precisely that. He has criticized the Indian Constitution for its length, at the 2019 World Economic Forum. He likens it to the proverbial elephant touched in different parts by blind men, each interpreting the creature in his own way, without understanding the nature of the whole. He has compared it unfavourably with the 30-times-shorter US Constitution. [“India’s constitution is 30 times longer than America’s – and still growing”; \u0026lt;https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/10/india-constitution-over-30-times-long-us/\u0026gt;].\nAlthough India became a Republic only in 1950, it is and has been a socio-cultural entity with a distinctive civilizational identity for over four millennia. At Independence, India was a country of amazing complexity of cultures, languages, customs, religions, ethnicities, and an ancient caste system. The large majority of India’s people lived in rural areas with a significant percentage beingforest-dwellers of many diverse tribes (adivasis). Further, the vast majority of people were economically and educationally backward. This is still true, although to a lesser extent.\nThe Constituent Assembly understood this complex socio-economic-cultural diversity, and was sensitive to the extremely difficult situation faced by the people at Partition. The Constituent Assembly also appreciated the needs of a new Republic, as shown by the wide range of matters in the Parts of the Constitution. Thus, although lengthy, the Constitution touches every aspect of the life of India’s people.\nOn the other hand, in 1767 when the American Constitution was drafted, times were different. It had less socio-cultural complexity or diversity with which to deal, since the rights of ethnic American tribes whose lands were forcibly appropriated, and of African people forcibly taken into slavery, were not even considered in its drafting. Indeed, issues such as civic rights became law only in 1964, and even today American women continue to agitate for equal rights. Additionally, each state in USA has its own Constitution, and citizens have to contend with two Constitutions. Thus, although the American Constitution is much shorter than India’s, that does not make it better.\nJhelum Chowdhary’s criticism and comparison are misplaced, and possibly indicates a lack of both knowledge and comprehension.\nUnderstanding the Constitution\nThere is really no substitute for reading the Constitution to understand it, just as one may do for any subject whatsoever, even including novels. It does not require any special training to understand it, since it is logically documented and subtitled for ease of reference. It only calls for motivation to read and understand its details.\nAs the layperson comes across discussions and articles on constitutional and legal matters, he/she may refer to the text of the Constitution and the laws, to form his/her own understanding. The text of the Constitution and the laws in .PDF format, are readily available on the internet, free of charge.\nHowever, on the assumption that Fundamental Rights, Fundamental Duties and Directive Principles of State Policy would interest most readers, only these are discussed briefly in succeeding paragraphs, hopefully to motivate further reading.\nFundamental rights\nPart III of the Constitution assures the following fundamental rights to citizens: Right to Equality (Articles 14 to 18); Right to Freedom (Articles 19 to 22); Right against Exploitation (Articles 23 to 24); Right to Freedom of Religion (Articles 25 to 28); Cultural and Educational Rights (Articles 29 to 31); and Right to Constitutional Remedies (Articles 32 to 35).\nEach of these broad heads of fundamental rights include other specific rights. However, fundamental rights are not absolute, and have certain restrictions or limitations. Over the years, there have been many instances of citizens seeking intervention of the Courts, to protect or restore their fundamental rights which were violated or forfeited by state or central governments.\nAs part of India’s constitutional history, following the Constitution coming into force on 26 January 1950, the first landmark instance of courts upholding fundamental rights, is the 14 September 1950 Madras High Court ruling in ‘V.G.Row vs. State of Madras’, upheld by the Supreme Court on 31 March 1952 in ‘State of Madras vs. V.G.Row’.\nThe Directive Principles of State policy\nPart IV of the Constitution concerns what the State is obliged to do as a duty, in the governance of the country. Regarding the application of the principles contained in this part, Article 37 reads: “The provisions contained in this Part shall not be enforceable by any court, but the principles therein laid down are nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country and it shall be the duty of the State to apply these principles in making laws”. The Article directs that the principles, even though not justiciable, are fundamental in nature, and it is the duty of the State to apply them in the process of enacting laws.\nThe Directive Principles essentially reflect the core values of Justice, Liberty and Equality. They place a great responsibility on the State Executive and Legislature, since even though these duties cannot be enforced by a Court, the State is still obliged to do them in the interest of the people. This Part recognizes that the State has great power even while it is unaccountable in the strictly legal sense. It is only the People who can call the State to account through their representatives in Legislatures, and during elections, by changing governments.\nOne of the primary roles of the State Executive and Legislature is making laws. The Directive Principles of State Policy mandate that it is a fundamental duty of the State to apply these principles when making laws.\nThe more important of these ‘duty-principles’ are: Create a social order to promote the welfare of the people; Ensure equal justice and free legal aid; Organize village panchayats; Provide people with public assistance and the means to secure work; Provide for just and humane working conditions and maternity leave; Provide a living wage for workers; Enable the participation of workers in the management of industries and promote cooperative societies; Provide a uniform civil code; Provide for free and compulsory education for children; Promote educational and economic interests of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and other weaker sections; Treat raising the level of nutrition and improvement of public health as among its primary duties; Protect and improve the environment including safeguarding forests and wildlife.\nFundamental duties\nPart IV-A of the Constitution, “Fundamental duties”, has only one Article 51-A, which reads: “It shall be the duty of every citizen of India …”, and the first duty it prescribes is, “to abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem“. It is also a fundamental duty*“to uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India“. There are nine other duties prescribed in this Article, importantly including,“to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women“*. This is in consonance with Fraternity mentioned in the Preamble.\nThe fundamental duties are for every citizen of India in every walk of life. This is especially applicable to every elected representative in the States and Union Territories, and the Union government, who swears a solemn oath to “bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India” and to “faithfully discharge the duty” on assuming public office.\nConclusion\nOurs is a very diverse country. It has great geo-climatic diversity – the Himalayan and trans-Himalayan mountains, the Indo-Gangetic plains, deserts, the peninsular plateau with mountain ranges, and riverine and coastal plains. People who live in different geo-climatic regions have different ways of living. They speak, eat, dress differently, and have different customs and cultures, sometimes even among co-religionists. Even within these geo-climatic regions, they may be from different ethnicities with entirely different external appearance, and be adherents of different religions. India has more than 120 languages (22 languages notified in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution) and nearly 20,000 mother-tongues or dialects.\nThe Constitution of India has unified these diverse communities, and is a source of strength to the people and their nation. The Constitution unifies the people through citizenship of the Union of India, making us all Indians first and foremost, regardless of our regional, linguistic, religious, ethnic, or other differences. The Constitution is the reason for the phrase “Unity in diversity” to describe India.\nThe Song of India is its Constitution. Its melody is Democracy. The lyrics of the song are about Justice, Liberty, and Equality for all its diverse people. Fraternity among all the people of this proud nation provides the harmony.\nIt behoves every Indian to make efforts to read and understand the Constitution in his/her own way. This article will hopefully serve as an introduction to enthuse readers to make a more careful reading of our nation’s primary document.\nJai Hind!\nReproduced from Countercurrents.org with the author's permission. S.G.Vombatkere is an Indian Army Veteran who retired in the rank of Major General in 1996, after 35 years in uniform, from the post of Addl DG (Discipline \u0026amp; Vigilance) in Army HQ. ","date":"November 27, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/our-nation-our-constitution-a-layperson-s-understanding/","section":"Blog","summary":"1810×2560 2.05 MB S.G.Vombatkere Nation = People + Country + Constitution A nation is the synergetic sum of a country’s people with their social and cultural resources, who live within the boundaries of the country with its natural and economic resources, and the rules by which…","title":"Our Nation, Our Constitution: A Layperson’s understanding","type":"blog"},{"content":"","date":"November 25, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/education/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Education","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"November 25, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/scientific-temper/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Scientific-Temper","type":"tags"},{"content":" Dr Ravi Sinha\n[I must begin with a “thank you” to the Indian Diaspora of Washington DC* and to Razi Saheb for letting me say a few words here. It is an honour for me to share the dais, even if virtually, with Gauhar Raza and Pervez Hoodbhoy. I was stressed about Razi Saheb being a stern time-keeper. So, I decided to jot down what I have to say. But the flip side is that I did not know at the time of preparing these notes what Gauhar and Pervez would say. Please bear with me if what I say turns out to be redundant in the light of what has already been said, or if it appears tangential to the concerns of the organizers or of the other two speakers.]\nLet me first get some elementary considerations out of the way. The title refers to the land of Bose, Raman and Salam, which might betray an assumption that a scientist is guaranteed to possess scientific temper and he is influential enough to leave an imprint on the society. In an ideal world, perhaps, that ought to be the case. But even scientists do not live in an ideal world.\nTake the example of Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest icon of science, whose genius did put its final and authoritative seal on the Scientific Revolution. Running away from plague in Cambridge to his native village, the young and solitary scholar single-handedly laid the foundation of modern science. He accomplished this during a mere 18 months of his anni mirabiles of 1665-66 when he formulated his laws of motion and his theory of gravitation. In addition, he also invented calculus during the same months. But, after that, he devoted a large part of his long life to the practice of alchemy and to the theological labours of interpreting the Bible. He denounced what he thought were corruptions of Christianity – such as trinitarianism – and adopted a radically puritanical version of Arianism that considered the Bible as an exact Revelation about the future. Nothing in Newton was of normal proportions – neither his scientific genius nor his rigid dogmatism and confident superstitions.\nIf you think I am being unfair to Newton – after all he could only be a product of his times – you are already conceding part of the point I am driving at. But let me cite a few examples from more recent times before I try to peep into the relationship between Science and Scientific Temper. Pascual Jordan, a pioneer of Quantum Mechanics, was an active Nazi who continued to hold his fascist views even after his rehabilitation in post-war Germany. Physics Nobel laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark too were active Nazis and confirmed anti-Semites. A little earlier, the great mathematician, Emmy Noether, had been prevented from becoming a faculty in the mathematics department of the University of Gottingen just because she was a woman. An exasperated David Hilbert famously said, “I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as a privatdozent. After all, we are a university, not a bathhouse.” And a scientist friend of mine reminded me the other day that our own Sir C V Raman, one in the title of this program, was opposed to a woman being admitted as a Ph.D. student, because, in his views, women were unfit to do science.\nI am not here to withhold the certificate of scientific temper from being awarded to eminent scientists. My purpose is to examine whether lack of scientific temper comes in the way of doing good science. Pervez Hoodbhoy wrote a book some thirty years ago. The book is called “Islam and Science”, and the subtitle is “Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality”. In the book he cites a telling example. Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam – the same Salam who too is in the title of this program – came up with one of the greatest physical theories of 20th century – the unified quantum theory of electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force. They invented this theory independently of each other and shared the Nobel Prize for it. Weinberg was an avowed atheist; Salam was self-confessedly a believer. Salam wrote the foreword to Pervez’s book in which he concurs with the author that being a believer made no difference, one way or the other, to his coming up with the theory. There you have it from the horse’s mouth. What, then, is the relationship between science and scientific temper?\nThe scientist does not live by science alone. Even a scientist’s mind is not entirely colonised by Scientific Reason. I do not know if, like the brain, the mind too has two separate but interconnected lobes. But allow me to use a simple-minded metaphor. Scientific temper, it seems to me, has something to do with the rational side of the mind trying to influence the emotional side. This may give rise to a reasonable and cultivated individual, but it can also result in disaster. With the rational side meddling too much with the emotional side, it may give rise to a rather childish adult, if not a veritable Dr Strangelove.\nScientific temper is a tricky business. It involves a very intricate game between Reason and Culture. Neither side of the game we understand very well. There are those who think that Reason is transparent, whereas Culture harbours dark corners. The opposing side points out that this is a false picture. It labours to show that Reason has murky origins – it did not result from an immaculate conception. And, it is not at all self-aware – it does not know that it is inextricably entangled in structures of power.\nWhich side is more important for a successful and at the same time a meaningful life? Which side should sit in judgement? It is a debate that is hard to settle. There are funny episodes, for example, of scientists sitting in judgment over poetry. Paul Dirac, one of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century once told J R Oppenheimer, another great scientist and a polymath, “I don’t see how you can work on physics and write poetry at the same time. In science, you want to say something nobody knew before, in words everyone can understand. In poetry, you are bound to say something that everybody knows already, in words that nobody can understand.” The judgements of poets about science, on the other hand, are usually not so funny. They are often much darker – prone to denouncing the supposed soullessness of science or mocking it as one mocks the childishness of a grown-up.\nWith this much as a background, let me now come to the topic of the day. I do agree with the assertion that scientific temper is largely missing from the societies and cultures that form a distinct civilisation on the subcontinent. But, I am less surprised that it is missing despite scientists likes of Bose, Raman and Salam. I am more surprised that it is missing despite someone like Jawaharlal Nehru. To my mind, Nehru was the best and the wisest proponent of the desirability of scientific temper. Let me quote a passage from The Discovery of India even if it consumes a precious minute,\n“Science deals with the domain of positive knowledge but the temper which it should produce goes beyond that domain. The ultimate purposes of man may be said to be to gain knowledge, to realize truth, to appreciate goodness and beauty. The scientific method of objective inquiry is not applicable to all these, and much that is vital in life seems to lie beyond its scope – the sensitiveness to art and poetry, the emotion that beauty produces, the inner recognition of goodness. The botanist and the zoologist may never experience the charm and beauty of nature; the sociologist may be wholly lacking in love for humanity. But even when we visit the mountain tops where philosophy dwells and high emotions fill us, or gaze at the immensity beyond, that approach and temper are still necessary.”\nI might also add that the Indian Constitution is the only Constitution in the world which prescribes developing “scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform” as a fundamental duty of every citizen.\nAll this, however, may sound too philosophical and too idealistic. How can one be sure that scientific temper really matters to a society or a civilisation? I think history has provided a very real example. Let me dwell on it for a minute.\nPervez’s book that I have already mentioned opens with a parable of “a team of Martian anthropologists visiting Earth sometime between the 9th and 13th centuries”. They find that “the civilization with greatest promise is the Islamic civilization with its Bait-ul-Hikmah, astronomical observatories, hospitals and schools”. Then they visit again towards the end of 20th century and find that “their earlier prediction had turned out to be wrong. The part of humanity which once seemed to offer the greatest promise now appears inescapably trapped in a state of frozen medievalism, rejecting the new and clinging desperately to the old. On the other hand, the former retrogrades have climbed the evolutionary ladder and are now aiming for the stars. Was this stunning reversal of roles, ask the visitors, the mere misfortune of one and the good fortune of the other? Was it due to invasions and military defeats? Or was it the result of a fundamental shift in outlook and attitudes?”\nWith minor variations the parable may apply equally well to the fate of the subcontinent. If the Martians were to visit here sometime during the 17th century, they would be dazzled by the Navratnas (nine jewels) in Akbar’s court and they would marvel at the fact that the subcontinent accounted for nearly one third of the total world production. However, on their second visit at the turn of the millennium, they would be equally disappointed with this civilisation.\nPerhaps the real question to ask is: why and how did the West pull ahead? That may shed easy light on why everyone else got left behind. The answer is obvious, but, like the case of the elephant in the room, there have been reasons for ignoring the obvious. Looking for deeper causalities behind the long trajectories of history may no longer be the intellectual flavour of the day. After all, this is the era of suspicions about grand narratives. We who got left behind can derive satisfaction from the all-round denunciations of colonialism and imperialism and attribute all that we suffer from to their crimes. We may rejoice that those in the high chairs of western academia are raising an intellectual storm against science and modernity which, supposedly, have been nothing but handmaidens of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism. The postcolonial theorist may continue to uncover sinister doings of the long dead colonialism. But someday we will have to ask – what is in it for us on the subcontinent? These critics are definitely making the western societies better, more cultivated, more democratic and more multicultural. But they already had science and modernity; they had already pulled ahead. How should we find our path out of poverty and superstition? What kind of future should we visualize for ourselves?\nExplanations about why and how did the West pull ahead fill entire libraries. But, in some ways, the answer is too obvious: West did it with the help of science and modernity. Of course, both were born along with capitalism and colonialism. But one should not throw the baby with the bathwater. It is truly astonishing that there exist high theories declaring that all claims of science about universal truths, objectivity and uniqueness of scientific method are false; that all cultures and communities in all ages had equally valid claims to knowledge and method. In India a simple way has been found to support such theories – all one has to do is to claim that everything that modern science has accomplished, and will ever accomplish, is already there in the Vedas.\nIn any case, West did not accomplish the miracle of Great Divergence only through capitalism and industrial revolution. Enlightenment and Modernity played an equally important role. I have already referred to the complex interaction between Science and Culture. In 18th century Western Europe this imparted an added acceleration to history. And it took nearly two centuries after the advent of modern science for scientific temper to seep into western culture. Enlightenment was the name given to this process of seeping in.\nEnlightenment and Modernity cannot just be imported or imitated. This is because of the fact that science is one but cultures are many. All cultures must find their own ways to imbibe science and animate modernity. Among those who were left behind, there have been a few successful examples of catching up with the West. Soviet Union used to be one such example but it collapsed. Russia, in any case, was too close to the European civilisation to count as a distinctive example. In the East, Japan earlier and China now have been such examples. What has stopped the subcontinent from being another such example?\nThis too is an enormous subject and an extraordinarily complex one. It is said that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. But let me rush in nevertheless. Among many millennial historical processes that have gone into the making a distinct civilisation on the subcontinent, one is special and unique. Elements of it may be found in other lands but on the subcontinent it has played role like no other place on the planet. This, in my opinion, has been the single largest obstacle to scientific temper seeping into our culture. Let me conclude by pointing a finger at it.\nI am alluding to the fact that nearly all religions on the subcontinent took, in varying degrees, a mystical-devotional form, comprising of numerous sects led by gurus, pirs, mahatmas and other god-men – all engaged in the task of paving a plebeian road for a direct access to God without the mediation of priests or books or other intermediaries. On the Hindu side it emerged in the South as the Bhakti Movement and spread to the North in the second millennium. On the Muslim side it made its way through Afghanistan to the north-west of India and spread through sufis, dervishesand pirs. The phenomenon also gave rise to a new religion – Sikhism. It is this phenomenon of Bhakti, Sufism, Sikhism and assorted mystical-devotional movements that is at the heart of a distinct civilisation on the subcontinent.\nThis phenomenon has been judged favourably by nearly everyone. It has won praises from the religious and the non-religious, from traditionalists and modernists, from the right-wing as well as the left-wing. Nearly everyone prefers heterodoxy to orthodoxy. There is no denying that in many ways it has contributed positively to the culture and civilization on the subcontinent. And yet, there is a very large negative fall-out that has been largely ignored.\nThis phenomenon triggers processes that obstruct the advance of scientific temper and modernity. It encourages blind faith at the cost of a genuine sense of wonder; prevents religiosity from turning genuinely spiritual and becoming philosophical; prevents the philosophical from becoming reasoned; prevents Reason from seeping into Culture. It has been the principal vehicle of unreason, blind faith and superstition in our part of the world. George Orwell once said, “Saints should always be judged guilty until proven innocent”. An ironical meaning has been added to Orwell by today’s India where god-men do not lose followers even after being convicted as rapists and murderers.\nEven Nehru fails to grapple with the civilizational consequences of Bhakti Movement. He harbours contradictions. He admires Vivekanand, Rabindranath Tagore, Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and Einstein – all at the same time. He was a great man – a visionary, a leader, a thinker, a statesman. Like Whitman he could perhaps say, “I am large, I contain multitudes”. He failed because the weight of the past was too heavy. He could not speak bare truths because he had to carry his people along. That is why, sometimes, you need to listen to small men too. They can speak the bare truth as they are spared the onerous task of carrying Nehru’s burden.\nThis is where I will stop.\n[Republished from Countercurrents.org. Transcript of remarks by Dr. Ravi Sinha, who was part of an online panel discussion organised by The Indian Diaspora Washington DC Metro, USA on November 19, 2022]\n","date":"November 25, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/the-absence-of-scientific-temper-in-the-land-of-bose-raman-and-salam/","section":"Blog","summary":"1707×2560 335 KB Dr Ravi Sinha [I must begin with a “thank you” to the Indian Diaspora of Washington DC* and to Razi Saheb for letting me say a few words here. It is an honour for me to share the dais, even if virtually, with Gauhar Raza and Pervez Hoodbhoy. I was stressed…","title":"The Absence of Scientific Temper in the Land of Bose, Raman, and Salam","type":"blog"},{"content":"","date":"November 25, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/uncategorised/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Uncategorised","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"September 23, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/art/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Art","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"September 23, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/ashoka/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Ashoka","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"September 23, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/culture/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Culture","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"September 23, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/history/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"History","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"September 23, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/music/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Music","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"September 23, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/the-edict-project/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"The-Edict-Project","type":"tags"},{"content":" Renowned Carnatic vocalist, writer and speaker, TM Krishna recently launched the second edition of The Edict Project, in collaboration with Ashoka University. The Edict Project has been conceived in four parts. This edition is based on the theme ‘Ashoka and Memory’.\nNayanjot Lahiri, Professor of History at Ashoka University and an expert on Ashokan and ancient Indian history worked with Krishna to cohere a format that would help Krishna render musically the relevance and wisdom of Ashoka’s public writings and decrees. Krishna’s musical project, complete with easy English translations, makes the edicts originally in accessible to the lay person.\nThe complete version of both editions are available on Youtube. The link to the first edition is here.\n","date":"September 23, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/tm-krishna-returns-with-the-second-edition-of-the-edict-project/","section":"Blog","summary":"300×168 11.3 KB Renowned Carnatic vocalist, writer and speaker, TM Krishna recently launched the second edition of The Edict Project , in collaboration with Ashoka University. The Edict Project has been conceived in four parts. This edition is based on the theme ‘Ashoka and…","title":"TM Krishna returns with the second edition of The Edict Project","type":"blog"},{"content":"","date":"September 23, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/tm-krishna/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tm-Krishna","type":"tags"},{"content":" in collaboration with Ashoka University\nThe Edict Project reimagines Ashoka’s remarkable conversation with people across the subcontinent, expressed in the form of engraved monoliths and rock-faces. Many have been rediscovered in the last 2 centuries, and form a refreshing approach to governance, surprising for those bygone days.\nThe Edict project recreates Ashoka’s edicts today in musical form, in order to create vibrant academic, socio-political and aesthetic conversations.\nAshoka’s Edicts: The inscriptions, in the central and eastern parts of the subcontinent, are written in Prakrit using the Brahmi script, and in the north-west, In Kharoshthi, Greek and Aramaic. The edicts are addressed to his subjects, to whom he felt as close as his own children, as he wrote in the Kalingan edict. While couched in a simple, brief, and personal style, the content is profound, abiding and universal. Ashoka, Emperor of the Mauryan empire, reigned from 268 BCE to 232 BCE, beginning his rule in the traditional warrior-conqueror mode. But, following the horrific bloodshed of the battle of Kalinga, he redefined his role, expressing a personal belief in ‘dharma’ as the pivot of his royal policy. The edicts are widely translated and published, and are often quoted.\nIn the First Edition of this 4 part series, shared on October 14th, 2021, commemorating the day Babasaheb Ambedkar embraced Buddhism, 4 edicts taken from different locations have been set to music.\nCredits:\nVoice – TM Krishna Research – Shravasti Dhammika Research and Translation – Dr. Naresh Keerthi Introductory Text – Gopalkrishna Gandhi Sound and Visual – Rithvik Raja Concept, Composition, Production: TM Krishna Composition: Raga-Tala Malika\n","date":"September 23, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/tm-krishna-brings-ashokan-wisdom-alive-with-the-edict-project/","section":"Blog","summary":"972×538 510 KB in collaboration with Ashoka University The Edict Project reimagines Ashoka’s remarkable conversation with people across the subcontinent, expressed in the form of engraved monoliths and rock-faces. Many have been rediscovered in the last 2 centuries, and form a…","title":"TM Krishna brings Ashokan wisdom alive with The Edict Project","type":"blog"},{"content":"","date":"September 14, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/medha-patkar/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Medha-Patkar","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"September 14, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/narmada/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Narmada","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"September 14, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/narmada-bachao-andol/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Narmada-Bachao-Andol","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"September 14, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/nba/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Nba","type":"tags"},{"content":" The Narmada Bachao Andolan started its work 30 years ago. Today, it is a moral force, and its most important contribution to India and the world is its continuance as a bastion of Gandhian truth and non-violence in an increasingly violent world.\nS. G. Vombatkere THE Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) has completed 30 years of people’s resistance to the dam projects in the Narmada valley. In the early 1980s, the people of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat in the Narmada valley were shocked when the construction of 3,000 small, 135 medium and 30 major dams and canals was begun on the 1,312-kilometre-long Narmada river, which flows through an area that has had 5,000 years of continuous civilisation. The projects, which included two mega dams, Narmada Sagar and Sardar Sarovar, were supposed to irrigate two million hectares, feed 20 million people, provide drinking water for 30 million people, employ one million people and generate electric ity for agriculture and industry. The state was silent on the fact that the projects would inundate 37,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land, affecting the lives and livelihoods of lakhs of forest-dwelling and farming Adivasis and other rural families, and submerge ancient temples and towns with cultural and environmental significance for not only the people of the Narmada valley but also the rest of India. The social costs of human displacement and the loss of wildlife and forests were not a part of the crude (and perhaps manipulated) cost-benefit calculations. Perhaps the social ill effects were neglected because the project-affected families (PAFs) were predominantly Adivasi and rural, and they really did not matter even decades after Independence.\nThe State and Central governments were keen to obtain loans from the World Bank and push through large projects, regardless of even basic considerations of feasibility. For example, the economic feasibility of dam projects is primarily based on a correct estimation of the total annual flow. The Narmada’s total annual flow as estimated by the Bradford Morse Committee was 17 per cent lower than the project design flow, which meant that the designed benefits could not be achieved and the cost-benefit calculations were wrong or had been falsified. These projects promised unsubstantiated benefits to one section of people at the cost of the land and livelihood of another section of people, while the immediate financial benefits went to the construction industry, the administrator-engineer-politician nexus and, of course, the lending financial institutions.\nAs the PAFs began to realise the impact of the 3,000-plus projects, they began to question their bases. Assisted by social workers and activists, the PAFs questioned the social, financial and technical bases of the projects and the viability of the whole scheme and of individual projects. The separate organisations coalesced into the NBA in 1985 under the leadership of Medha Patkar, supported notably by Baba Amte and B.D. Sharma and, later, by Ramaswamy R. Iyer, S.C. Behar, L.C. Jain, Kuldip Nayyar and Swami Agnivesh, among others.\nIn 1985, the World Bank provided $450 million of the $6 billion needed for the project (1970 estimate). But because of the NBA’s cogent critique of the socio-economic-technical-environmental assumptions and effects of the projects and the non-violent demonstration by the PAFs and their march to Ferkuwa on the Madhya Pradesh-Gujarat border in December 1990, the World Bank reviewed its involvement in the projects. It formed an independent review committee in 1991 under Bradford Morse, a respected former administrator at the United Nations Development Programme. The State and Central governments gave the committee their full cooperation, possibly expecting it to help them counter the growing resistance from the NBA. But the Morse Report (1992) was critical of the government and of the projects in general.\nThe report had this to say about rehabilitation, environmental impacts and the general economical viability of the Narmada projects: “We think the Sardar Sarovar Projects [SSPs] as they stand are flawed, that resettlement and rehabilitation of all those displaced by the Projects is not possible under prevailing circumstances, and that environmental impacts of the Projects have not been properly considered or adequately addressed…. [W]e caution that it may be more wasteful to proceed without full knowledge of the human and environmental costs…. [Hence,] step back from the Projects and consider them afresh. …” The World Bank withdrew its financial involvement in 1993, damaging the credibility of the state’s plans.\nThe State and Central governments refused to reassess the projects as recommended by the Morse Report. Gujarat, the principal beneficiary of the projects, raised funds by issuing Sardar Sarovar Bonds in 1993 to fill the $450-million financial gap. But, coupled with people’s movements in Brazil (the Amazon Highway), Thailand (mining, dams and forestry) and Indonesia (forced displacement of two million people), the NBA’s well-argued resistance drew the attention of the international community.\nEmbarrassed by the worldwide outcry against World Bank-funded “development” projects, the United States summoned the bank’s officials before its Congress to explain their lending policy. Following this, in an implicit admission of destruction and injustice, the World Bank noted that sustained economic growth was not possible without preservation of the environment and just treatment of people and even made borrower-nations’ preparation of national environmental action plans conditional to providing development loans.\nWorld Commission on Dams Apart from the NBA’s organised resistance against large dams primarily for social justice and its critique of them and their adverse economic-environmental effects, there were escalating controversies on large dams elsewhere. This prompted the creation of a World Commission on Dams (WCD) in May 1998, with Medha Patkar as a member, a landmark victory for the NBA. The WCD was financed by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank; the governments of Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the U.S.; the corporates ABB, Voith Siemens, Manitoba Hydro, Atlas Copco, Tractabel, Enron and Harza Engineering; and civil society organisations such as the World Wildlife Fund (now also called World Wide Fund for Nature). This new model of funding through 54 public, private and civil society organisations relied on extensive public consultation through a forum of 68 members from 36 countries representing a cross section of interests, views and institutions.\nThe WCD was to review the development effectiveness of large dams to develop internationally acceptable criteria, guidelines and standards for the planning, design, appraisal, construction, operation, monitoring and decommissioning of large dams. Thus, the WCD report was the product of an independent, international, multi-stakeholder body that included two corporate CEOs as members, genuinely reflecting the interests of diverse groups. The WCD’s final report (titled “Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-making”) was released in November 2000 by Nelson Mandela. It incorporated five core values for decision-making concerning large dams: Equity, Efficiency, Participatory decision-making, Sustainability and Accountability.\nThe Government of India did not accept the WCD’s recommendations, and the construction of large dams continued not only in the Narmada valley but all over India, with people in their thousands joining the ranks of PAFs. Continuing its resistance to large dams, the NBA also worked to reconstruct the lives of the PAFs to ensure their resettlement and rehabilitation (R\u0026amp;R) and moved courts of law against the State and Central governments’ mal-governance and their ignoring, circumventing or violating of orders of High Courts and the Supreme Court of India. The NBA questioned the state’s model of development and right of eminent domain. The NBA’s policy remains peaceful resistance to injustice and oppression (sangharsh) along with social reconstruction (navnirman). People’s movements from all over India have taken heart from the NBA’s successes and increasingly question the state’s power of eminent domain over land. However, corporate-owned print and electronic mainstream media give little coverage to such movements and struggles but are quick to dub resistance to infrastructure projects (including dams) as “anti-development”.\nThe PAFs can approach the following agencies with regard to their rights, demands and grievances: the Narmada Control Authority; the Narmada Valley Development Authority; local courts and High Courts and the Supreme Court; Grievance Redressal Authorities; the State governments of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat; and the Central government. These have mostly failed to deliver justice owing to collusion between them. The NBA has shown that governments acquiring land in Adivasi areas without the prior informed consent of gram sabhas is a violation of the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act. But it has had little effect because of the corrupt politician-bureaucrat nexus. When the Supreme Court ordered equivalent land-for-land rehabilitation of the PAFs, the State and Central governments stated in the court that there was no land available for the purpose, even while they create “land banks” for industrial use and give agricultural land for special economic zones (SEZs). In Madhya Pradesh, the police and the administration forced evacuation of Adivasi villages in the submergence zone by sealing their handpumps, demolishing buildings with bulldozers and clear-felling the land. All this illustrates the state’s attitude towards people’s problems. Notwithstanding such gross injustices, police violence on peaceful demonstrators and the failure by all three pillars of the Constitution to address development-induced “involuntary” displacement, the NBA has maintained non-violence as a strategic imperative.\nThe Maoist violence in some States is being understood as the extreme reaction of people to the economic and physical violence they face from forest, revenue and police officials. State (police) violence is the response. The violence by both sides is indiscriminate and adversely affects large, uninvolved (mostly Adivasi) populations caught in the crossfire. The escalation of violence has resulted in the state raising specialist forces and launching Operation Green Hunt. However, thanks to the NBA’s persistence over 30 years, and perhaps understanding its principled stand, the state does not use gun violence against it as they do against the Maoists. However, because of the machinations of the politician-bureaucrat-corporate nexus, governments persist in mal-governance with callousness, neglect and ignorance. Corruption is the major reason for the violence inflicted upon the PAFs.\nExposing corruption With commendable perseverance, the NBA succeeded in presenting facts of endemic mismanagement and corruption in the R\u0026amp;R process before the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which in 2008 appointed a commission under retired Justice S.S. Jha to investigate and report its findings. In January this year, the Jha Commission brought out its report, which has exposed many cases of fake registries that provide compensation to people not entitled to it while omitting the PAFs, indicating monumental, systemic corruption amounting to around Rs.1,500 crore. The PAFs demanded that the Jha Commission Report be placed in the public domain to expose the corruption and criminality that have derailed the R\u0026amp;R process and denied them the rightful compensation granted by the Supreme Court and violated their constitutional right to life. However, to protect the corrupt officials, the Madhya Pradesh government prevented the Jha Commission Report from being placed in the public domain.\nPeople’s voices Apart from the Narmada valley, countrywide there are many ongoing or upcoming hot spots of resistance against human-cum-environmental disasters. Demanding development without displacement and destruction, the protests are inspired by the NBA’s success. The NBA has led the world in redefining development-for-people, giving the lie to mainstream media reports that these people are against development, as shown by one of the many slogans of these people: “Vikaas chahiye, vinaash nahin” (We want development, not destruction). While resistance remains nonviolent by design, there is anger and dismay expressed vocally, never physically, though their slogan “Rajniti dhoka hai; dhakka maro, mauka hai” (Politicians are false; the time to strike is now) shows impatience with the politician-bureaucrat nexus. People affected by displacement-causing development are today aware of their rights, thanks to the NBA — witness the unambiguous slogan “Hum apna adhikaar maangte! .. Nahin kissi se bhik maangte!” (We demand our rights, we are not begging). People are disputing the state’s power of eminent domain that is built into the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, and staking their claim to and right over land, water and forests, whatever the law may say. The state’s injustices are responded to in the call for resistance: “Har jor zulum ki takkar mein .. Sangharsh hamara nara hai!” (We strongly resist and oppose injustice in every manner). And as columns of protesters move from one place to another, their lilting marching song is “Narmada ki ghati mein ab sangharsh jaari hai; chalo utho, chalo utho, rokna vinaash hai” (Resistance is ongoing in the Narmada valley; arise! arise!).\nThe environment-ecology aspect of destructive development that threatens to destroy humanity is recognised in “Narmada bachao! Manav bachao!” (Save Narmada! Save humanity!), and two frequently repeated calls to join hands are “Aao hum sangharsh karein .. Ek doosre ka saath dein” (come, let us help one another in our struggle) and “Hum sab .. Ek hain” (We are united!). Apart from bringing the dam displacement issue to national and international attention, the NBA has brought women to stand shoulder to shoulder with men at the forefront of resistance. This is acknowledged in calls of “Mahila shakti aayi hai .. Nai roshni layi hai” (Women’s power has brought new light to our movement) whenever a woman comes up to speak, as increasing numbers do.\nThe NBA has also succeeded in uniting people across the language divide of the three affected States, coining the catchy slogan “Hindi, Marathi ya Gujarati .. Ladne wale ek hi jaati” (whether we speak Hindi, Marathi or Gujarati, we are one). The NBA’s meetings, often held in temples, have united people across castes to resist the submergence of temples. The NBA’s success in redefining social and economic development in the national discourse has attracted diverse movements across the length and breadth of India. These have coalesced into the National Alliance of People’s Movements, of which the NBA is a member movement. The NBA has attracted many individuals, including formally educated young women and men from urban backgrounds, to live and work in the Narmada valley alongside the PAFs. The dignified non-violent stance of simple Adivasi and rural people facing oppression and suffering because of government policies and officials’ corruption and callousness is a humbling lesson, especially in present times. Today, the NBA is a moral force, and its most important contribution to India and the world is its continuing as a bastion of Gandhian truth and non-violence (satya and ahimsa) in an increasingly violent world, without soft-pedalling the vehemence of its arguments and agitations.\nThe Supreme Court had ordered that raising the height of the SSP dam was to be executed in stages only after the R\u0026amp;R mandated for the previous stage was completed. The government was to certify stage-wise R\u0026amp;R completion with an Action Taken Report (ATR) filed before the Supreme Court. But misled by false ATRs certifying R\u0026amp;R completion, the Supreme Court gave permission to raise the SSP dam height at each stage without the PAFs actually being rehabilitated. Thus, on the basis of repeated falsehoods regarding R\u0026amp;R completion, successive State and Central governments have, over the years, succeeded in constructing the SSP dam to its finished height of 138.68 metres and even installed the sluice gates. The present situation is critical because if the sluice gates are closed the submergence area will increase enormously and over 40,000 PAFs in Madhya Pradesh alone will be affected. This year, the nation faces an almost countrywide drought situation, and prays for a bountiful monsoon. But the 40,000 PAFs in Madhya Pradesh live in dread of that very monsoon because it will drown them. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi strives to place India in a position of prominence in the comity of nations, it can become prominent for the wrong reasons with its altar of development claiming the lives of many thousands of the PAFs.\nMajor General S.G. Vombatkere retired as the Additional Director General, Discipline \u0026amp; Vigilance in Army HQ, New Delhi. He holds a PhD in Structural Dynamics from IIT, Madras and is an adjunct associate professor of the University of Iowa, U.S.\n(This article orginally appeared in the digital edition of Frontline on August 3, 2016, and is being republished here with the permission of the author, in the light of some recent reprehensible critiques by a columinist on Medha Patkar and the Narmada Bachao Movement.)\n","date":"September 14, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/relentless-crusade/","section":"Blog","summary":"906×619 242 KB The Narmada Bachao Andolan started its work 30 years ago. Today, it is a moral force, and its most important contribution to India and the world is its continuance as a bastion of Gandhian truth and non-violence in an increasingly violent world. S. G. Vombatkere…","title":"Relentless crusade","type":"blog"},{"content":"","date":"September 14, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/open-letter/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Open-Letter","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"September 14, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/sardar-sarovar-proje/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Sardar-Sarovar-Proje","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"September 14, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/ssp/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Ssp","type":"tags"},{"content":" Maj Gen Sudhir Vombatkere Hon’ble Prime Minister,\nMy respectful Greetings to the Office of India’s highest executive authority! I have travelled in the valley of the Narmada River and observed at first hand, how the people, mostly Adivasis and Dalits, have been displaced from their homes and lands and livelihoods by an uncaring and corrupt bureaucracy. Whatever little relief that a small percentage of the Project Affected Families (PAFs) have received has been only at the hands of the judiciary. The Hon’ble Supreme Court has decreed that rehabilitation will be done by governments by providing land-for-land as compensation – though the rights of landless people and fisherfolk are not covered – but that too has been effectively negated over the years, by officials of successive governments. Officials of the Government of Madhya Pradesh (GoMP), Government of Maharashtra (GoM) and Government of Gujarat (GoG), have provided false Action Taken Reports (ATRs) of resettlement \u0026amp; rehabilitation (R\u0026amp;R) to the Hon’ble Courts.\nThe Hon’ble Supreme Court had ordered that raising the height of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) dam was to be executed in lifts (stages) only after the R\u0026amp;R mandated for the previous stage is completed. However, false ATRs showing completion of R\u0026amp;R have resulted in the Hon’ble Supreme Court permitting raising of the SSP dam height in stages, when in fact the PAFs are not actually rehabilitated. Thus the PAFs’ constitutional right to life has been and continues to be violated by the very governments which are sworn to protect them. This continuing, unremedied, rampant economic violence, social injustice and inequity inflicted on the poorest and most helpless sections of our society, is the cause for my bringing this matter to the notice of the august Office of the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India. This is particularly after being enthused on visiting webpage .\nIn addition to the apathy, indifference and callousness of government officials in the R\u0026amp;R processes, there has been massive corruption in the R\u0026amp;R of PAFs. Taking cognizance of reports of corruption, the Hon’ble High Court of Madhya Pradesh constituted a commission of inquiry under Hon’ble Justice S.S. Jha (hereinafter, the Jha Commission) in August 2008. The Jha Commission submitted its report in January 2016, after years of detailed investigation into corruption in the R\u0026amp;R process involving government servants. It revealed massive fraud amounting to about Rs.1,000 crores. I hope and pray that your election campaign declaration “na khaunga na khanedunga” will be put into effect at least with regard to the Jha Commission Report findings.\nHowever, the Jha Commission Report is withheld due to GoMP raising technico-legal objections presumably because the facts therein may incriminate several GoMP officials. Thus, the justice and relief which the Jha Commission Report would have provided to the PAFs is denied. The PAFs cannot be faulted if they speak of GoMP covering up corruption by government servants. They demand that the Jha Commission Report be placed in the public domain. This is not merely to expose the humongous corruption, but more to show that it is criminal corruption which has derailed the R\u0026amp;R process and denied them the compensation which the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India has decreed, and violated their right to life as guaranteed by Article 21 of our Constitution.\nBut today, and very urgently even as I write, for all the foregoing reasons, with the monsoon about to break, the people of the Narmada River valley are in imminent danger of being flooded out of their homes and lands or drowned, due to the rising waters in the reservoirs behind the hundreds of small, medium and large dams, which have been constructed on Narmada river and its tributaries over the years. In particular, the SSP dam at its finished height of 138.68-metres with the sluice gates installed, threatens the lives of around 40,000 PAFs in Madhya Pradesh. Clearly, there is a disaster-in-the-making; if India does nothing now, its reputation in the international arena will suffer.\nThere are several other very serious ill-effects of the dams in the Narmada valley, like sea water ingress 40-km upstream from Bharuch, Narmada water not reaching drought-prone Kutch but being consumed by industries along the canal, etc. But these can be addressed in detail later, because as of now, the imminent human tragedy and disaster-in-the-making connected with the existential threat to the upstream PAFs due to the SSP dam height being raised to its present height of 138.68-metres and installation of the sluice gates, needs to be addressed with extreme urgency.\nI have myself met people at grassroots levels, and find them to be greatly disillusioned that their pleas, pleadings, prayers, and peaceful demonstrations and agitations over the past three decades to various levels of governance at State and Centre, has fallen on deaf ears. The voice of poor Adivasi and Dalit people who live in Narmada’s remote valleys is not heard in the distant corridors of power of the States and Centre. Nor does the public know much about them, because the print and electronic media gives their problems and pitiable condition little or no coverage, because of government influence and the geographical remoteness of the PAFs. Unless the 30-years-long problems of these people are addressed, the mantra of “sab ka saath, sab ka vikas“ as the focus of government’s conduct will remain a hollow promise. If “government’s only ritual is the well being of 125 crore Indians”, I request you to consider these children of Narmada mayya as being no less deserving than any other Indian. In the context of the current nation-wide drought situation, the whole of India prays for and eagerly awaits the monsoon. But there are about 40,000 PAFs in Madhya Pradesh alone, who live in dread of that very monsoon for which we pray, because it will drown them.\nHon’ble Prime Minister, you hold the Office of the highest executive authority in our country, and there is nobody higher than your onerous Office, to provide justice to the suffering children of Narmada mayya. Your taking cognizance of this disaster-in-the-making in the Narmada valley and taking urgent steps to halt it, will not only bring you the blessings of the poorest of India’s people, but can raise the respect of Office of the Prime Minister to hitherto unattained heights. In every manner, this will do good to our democratic, secular, socialist Republic.\nTherefore, in the immediate interest of saving the lives and livelihoods of all the PAFs of Narmada valley and in particular the 40,000 PAFs of Madhya Pradesh affected by raising of the SSP dam to its present level, my fervent and very urgent prayers to you, Hon’ble Prime Minister, are:\nIssue a “Most Immediate” order to Government of India and State government officials to not close the SSP dam gates until all rehabilitation of PAFs in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat is honestly and meticulously completed with full transparency. Issue urgent orders to governments’ lawyers to permit placing the Report of the Justice S.S.Jha Commission of Inquiry in the public domain before a specified early date, so that the huge corruption in the R\u0026amp;R process is brought to public glare, and R\u0026amp;R of PAFs can be completed in full accordance with the orders of the Hon’ble Supreme Court. Jai Hind! Respectfully yours, Sudhir Vombatkere (Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere (Retd)\nThis open letter to the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was originally written in June 2016, and is being republished with permission from the author.\n","date":"September 14, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/the-narmada-river-valley-imminent-disaster-in-the-making/","section":"Blog","summary":"1280×853 239 KB Maj Gen Sudhir Vombatkere Hon’ble Prime Minister, My respectful Greetings to the Office of India’s highest executive authority! I have travelled in the valley of the Narmada River and observed at first hand, how the people, mostly Adivasis and Dalits, have been…","title":"The Narmada River Valley – Imminent Disaster-In-the-Making","type":"blog"},{"content":" T M Krishna As much as Narendra Modi’s every word is savoured and actions admired by his followers, the emotions he triggers in his critics are diametrically opposite. Watching him speak or even take a stride evokes intense negativity. Other than the obvious ideological opposition and historical reasons, there are many other perceived qualities that generate dislike. In him we see a dictatorial, unsympathetic, overpowering individual. Someone who does not seem to listen or care, who does whatever he wants to achieve his goal, irrespective of its consequences. For the moment, let us keep the ideological standpoint aside and look at other things about him that bother us.\nFrom time immemorial, tales, myths and social conversations have all pointed to certain characteristics of a leader. Even management books and leadership guides espouse similar qualities. Some of the often-used words and phrases in association with leadership include: firm, strong, decision-maker, unsentimental, courageous, must command respect, must inspire confidence, a striking presence and body language. It is possible to understand these expressions in many different ways, but all of us but all of us instinctively comprehend their undeclared inferences.\nIn fact, I am certain that, as you read those words, you saw a certain kind of person in your mind’s eye. Unfortunately, it would have most likely been a man! Within the Indian context, many of these characteristics are closely tied to gender, caste, cultural and class privilege. An imitation of these qualities is considered leadership. This is established and emerges from India’s deep-rooted feudal construct.construct. We are told that being sensitive and caring are important, but those qualities need to be kept in check because hard choices have to be made and we need to “progress”. Often, the idea of a ‘greater good’ is flaunted. Each of these excuses are levers of power.\nI am raising this question because I wonder if we liberals will be fine with, or turn a blind eye to, a non-right-wing Narendra Modi? Life is cyclical and Prime Ministers come and go, but unless we investigate ingrained ‘leadership’ absolutisms, we will only replace one supremo with another. Look at how we treated Manmohan Singh when he was Prime Minister. His walk, talk and appearance did not match our cliched perceptions of a leader. Even if his actions worked, credit was always attributed elsewhere. Now, in retrospect, we express gratitude. Singh himself said in 2014, “History will be kinder to me…”\nIn contrast, today’s Prime Minister is complimented for anything and everything. This happens because he speaks, walks, talks like what we believe a leader should be! Actually, he generates fear, and we want a leader to be feared. In our dictionary, fear and respect are synonyms. Liberals are unable to call out Indira Gandhi as a deeply problematic leader because she, too, fits the bill. If ‘if’ and ‘but’ explanations are brought forward for her, then similar ones are given by the other side for someone like Modi. They are both stereotypical leaders; which one we celebrate depends on our respective socio-political leanings.\nAt a private gathering, many supporters of another political party complained that the very qualities that I find problematic are strikingly evident in their party leader as well. But they had not heard me speak of it. They were right. Of course, all us are negotiating these political spaces, but the fact that dictatorship does not bother us as long as it is on our side of the green needs addressing.\nBut we cannot begin at the top. Our homes and schools are built on these tropes. The social order is clearly demarcated, and everyone plays by those rules. The strong father is the head of the house, the mother is the feminine caregiver. She does everything to ensure that the leader is successful. There is, of course, the unacceptable saying “Behind every man’s success, there is a woman.” Women and people from marginalised communities have to imitate this normalised, unilateral style of leadership if they want any kind of respect from the dominant.\nParents tutor children, especially boys, to be ‘cutthroat’ and ‘driven’. Schools worsen the situation. Principals and teachers segregate children on the basis of these qualities, and this also means casteism is at play. Some students are called ‘achievers’ and paraded on the stage as examples to emulate. The others who are not ‘that type’ watch with awe and fear, hoping that someday, they too can look, speak and behave like the on-stage stars. The entire examination process and workplace environments feed into this ‘success’ psychosis. These qualities are the very same that people admire in Modi.\nChildren who want to rest and not push themselves so hard are considered mediocre under-achievers and told they can never be leaders. How many times have we heard people speak of how Modi works “24 hours of the day”! Whether it is true or not is irrelevant. But I am certain many in the younger generation are told, “You want to be like Modi-ji, you have to work 24 hours.” The impact of such inanity is not just on our social and political choices; it hurts our society’s psychological health. Depression, emotional distress, and suicides are seen across our societal landscape.\nReaders may wonder how a piece that seemed utterly political in the beginning transformed into a commentary on our behavioural patterns. But aren’t the two ntimately connected? The leader image did not come from a vacuum. It was constructed by tapping into common thinking and strategically exaggerating certain aspects that mesmerize us. Our political choices will shift only when our homes, schools and workplaces metamorphosize.\n(T M Krishna: the mind questions, the music moves, the mountains beckon)\nThis article was originally published on the Deccan Herald website on August 28, 2022. Republished with permission from the author. https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/if-not-modi-who-do-we-liberals-want-ah-one-like-him-from-our-side-of-the-patch-1139970.html\n","date":"August 28, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/if-not-modi-who-do-we-liberals-want-ah-one-like-him-from-our-side-of-the-patch/","section":"Blog","summary":"460×500 57.5 KB T M Krishna As much as Narendra Modi’s every word is savoured and actions admired by his followers, the emotions he triggers in his critics are diametrically opposite. Watching him speak or even take a stride evokes intense negativity. Other than the obvious…","title":"If not Modi, who do we liberals want? Ah, one like him from our side of the patch!","type":"blog"},{"content":"","date":"August 28, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/leadership/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Leadership","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"August 28, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/politics/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Politics","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"August 28, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/reformation/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Reformation","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"August 21, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/governance/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Governance","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"August 21, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/independence/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Independence","type":"tags"},{"content":" Admiral Ramdas, former CNS So a few thoughts on what “AZAADI” or Freedom, meant to me, a young boy of 14 when we made our Tryst with Destiny on that midnight hour of August 14th/15th. We listened to the inspiring speech by Nehru gathered round our tiny little radio!\nNext morning, Aug 15th 1947, I can clearly remember even today – 75 years later – running from my home in Bengali Market to Princess Park near India Gate. I was one among millions of exuberant citizens who watched the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, unfurl the Indian National Flag – the Tiranga – at the same time as Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy and First Governor General of India, hauled down the British Union Jack.\nI cannot ever forget the feelings that swept over us as we were all caught up in the sheer delirium of our Azaadi! It was also on that occasion that this wide-eyed fourteen year old, planning to join the Fauj, was so fascinated by the immaculate white uniform and shining medals worn by Lord Mountbatten, that he was inspired to join the Navy!!\nIt was shortly after Independence that it was decided to create a National Defence Academy at Kharakvasla, Pune and inaugurated in December 1954. Meanwhile I joined the Inter Services Wing of the then existing Armed Forces Academy and we were accommodated in the erstwhile POW camp in Clement Town, Dehra Dun, in January 1949. This served as our home, our school and our training ground for two years till we passed out in December 1950.\nWe were an idealistic bunch – full of josh and the endless possibilities of what lay ahead for us young men in a free and Azaad India. Our first headmaster, Jack Gibson, made sure that he introduced his first batch of future service officers to the fundamentals of the newly minted Constitution with all its exhilarating and solemn promises of Justice, Equality, Liberty and Fraternity, adopted in Jan 1950 when India became a Republic. My belief in, and loyalty to, that ‘Holy Book’ – the Constitution of India, has continued, to be the guiding light for all my actions and future decisions. We all take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution when we are commissioned.\nThe Present\nComing to the present – namely Aug14/15 2022 – being widely celebrated as Azaadi ka Amrit Mahotsav. I am about to enter my ninetieth year on Sept 5 2022 – which we celebrate as Teachers Day to honour that great Teacher and former president of India – Dr S. Radhakrishnan. Yes India has come a long way from where we were – but at the same time my first set of thoughts today is how, after 75 years, we have failed our children by accepting a totally skewed, unjust and discriminatory education system in the new India where we had made promises of Justice, Equality and Liberty for all.\nPoverty, unemployment and Illiteracy are rampant – and we have failed to achievethe promised goals in most of the basic areas and universal developmental benchmarks. Large numbers of children remain outside reach and access to education. A majority are consigned to an indifferent and poorly resourced govt school system and are virtually ‘pushed out’ of schooling though we refer to ‘drop outs’. This has resulted in third rate education system for the bulk of our children and ‘quality’ education for a small elite.\nWe need to ask ourselves what Azaadi means to these children and their families? Certainly it is very different from the mass production of synthetic tirangas and exhortations to fly them from every home in the country, almost by executive fiat!\nIf we were truly a democratic Republic and Azaad as we had hoped – we would not be seeing the demise of many of our time honoured constitutional institutions, and the plethora of draconian laws that have been introduced over time to control and often to intimidate our own citizens. So there are many points to ponder as we look at Azaadi……\nThe next question we are addressing today is about AMRIT KAAL – loosely translated as the “Era of Elixirs” To be very honest – I had completely forgotten what this was about and had to take the help of Professor Google to remind me –and depending on the ideology or mind set of who was speaking –there were many different versions – and we can look at a few. For a start here is one explanation of the origins of this phrase. “The term comes from Vedic astrology. Amrit Kaal is the critical time when the gates of greater pleasure open. Amrit Kaal is considered the best and most auspicious time to start new work.”\nFrom Millenium Post – a view from a supporter “Prime Minister has given the mantra of ‘Amrit Kaal’, a quarter century period in which India must strive to assume the status of a global power, recognised for her ability to do things differently. Amrit Kaal stretches from the 75th year of India’s independence to the centenary of her freedom in to the centenary of her freedom in 2047. For decades a Nehruvian India was compelled to base herself on shallow philosophies and vacuous visions of a great-power status. “\nMost papers refer to the Finance Minister Ms Sitharaman repeatedly using the term ‘Amrit Kaal’ while presenting the Union Budget – “We are marking Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav and have entered into Amrit Kaal, the 25-year-long leadup to India@100. The Budget lays a parallel track of a blueprint for the Amrit Kaal, which is futuristic and inclusive, directly benefiting youth, women, farmers, the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.”\nAnother paper describes Amrit Kaal as aimed to deriving the best in every field , aiming to better the lives of citizens, lessen the divide between villages and cities… and reduce government interference in public life.” Some are more critical and nuanced : “The Union Budget 2022-23 was anything but what a budget should be. It gave a grand idea of the future, but not much of this intent was translated into monetary provisions. Finance Minister repeatedly used a phrase, trended on social media: Amrit Kaal, which loosely translates to ‘the era of elixir’. It points out that there were no references to the promises made for India @ 75.\nFrom becoming a $4 trillion economy to generating employment for women, doubling farmers’ income and eradicating poverty, there are some 41 targets under this strategy, of which at least 17 have a deadline in 2022. It appears that all the targets have been given a pass, with the government directly taking us into the Amrit Kaal and supposedly extending all “New India” targets to 2047, the centenary year of India’s Independence. The all important promise of doubling of farmers’ income, the biggest and most critical target to be met this year, was not even mentioned”. The size of the economy was also not talked about, although the finance minister said to various media outlets later that India was headed to being a $5 trillion economy.”\nI have no doubt that other colleagues will surely comment on the above – but purely as a former military person, here are my concerns about any notion of “Amrit Kaal”. Sadly, this appears to be one more attempt to divert attention of the public from some of the key concerns and travails of our people.\nIn addition, politicisation of the Armed Forces has been steadily on the increase under this regime – and there is a disappointment that the President, who is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and the Chief Election Commissioner, have chosen to remain silent despite appeals made by veterans over this period. The traditional distancing of the Armed Forces from politics has been severely compromised. And not even the promised One Rank One Pension to veterans has been given. All of this does not bode well for National Security, nor indeed for Human Security. Finally to ACCHE DIN – the other popular slogan of the day.\nWe need to look at ourselves and introspect on whether we have reached the goals of – Justice, Equality and Liberty – as envisioned in the Constitution? Have we as teachers, elders and citizens, paid serious attention to the content and real purpose of education and learning? Did our schools and teachers create minds that could think independently, question, reason and express their opinions? Have we pushed to build scientific temper in our youth or are we still governed by superstition and blind belief? Indeed, have we failed to address the problems of those at the bottom of the heap as they struggled with issues of sheer survival as they endured the hastily announced measures following Demonetisation; followed by Lockdown, not to mention GST and now Agnipath and Agni Veer schemes? Let us not forget the CAA and NRC which have in turn created protests and insecurities. To my mind there is little doubt that all of these together have created the greatest hardships for our poor, migrant workers, farmers and Dalits and Tribal populations, as also our minorities.\nIn closing I want to draw our attention to the key word used in the Preamble to our Constitution – namely Fraternity. Many might not know that this was especially added by Babasaheb Ambedkar a year after the former three points were made for adoption by the Constituent Assembly.\nAs a former serviceperson – it was a matter of greatest pride that those of us in uniform did not distinguish or discriminate on the basis of caste or faith or community. As we said in the Navy – you swim or sink together. The legacy of the bitter communal violence in 1947 – some of which I experience personally as a young lad growing up in pre partition Delhi – has unfortunately been carried forward and exacerbated especially because all political parties have found it convenient to use these divisions for electoral politics. When this is combined with the hugely discriminatory policies of the present regime – based largely on the ideology and philosophy of the RSS – it makes for a highly precarious situation that we are seeing today with Democracy itself fragile and uncertain.\nAn India where Dharm Sansads openly call for genocide of minorities – Muslims in particular – even calling for the Armed Forces to take up arms against them, is violative of the fundamental principle and promise of Fraternity. So too the openly announced intention to create a new Constitution based on the Manusmriti and Varna theory – also announced by a Dharm Sansad.\nSo this 75th Anniversary of our Independence is a moment for serious introspection and reflection – and in closing I would like to share a message originally in Marathi – which I received this morning. “Saheb You are telling us to first bang on our thalis Then light our diyas and Hoist the National Flag, the Tiranga on our homes That is fine But have you stopped to find out if there is rice in our thalis? Is there oil to fill the Diyas? Or even if there is a house on which to fly the flag? Jai Hind” I fear the basis of our Azaadi is threatened; Amrit Kaal – is an avoidable diversion – And we have a long long way to go to achieve Acche Din… But I still have faith in the power of our people and the Constitution – and we will together need to work to achieve that vision that will make We the People – truly Azaad, Equal, with Freedom to practice their faith , to free speech and above all the spirit of Fraternity and Insaaniyat.\nRamu Ramdas\n","date":"August 21, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/reflections-on-azaadi-amrit-kaal-achhe-din-looking-back-looking-forward/","section":"Blog","summary":"1024×678 40.7 KB Admiral Ramdas, former CNS So a few thoughts on what “AZAADI” or Freedom, meant to me, a young boy of 14 when we made our Tryst with Destiny on that midnight hour of August 14th/15th. We listened to the inspiring speech by Nehru gathered round our tiny little…","title":"Reflections on AZAADI, AMRIT KAAL, ACHHE DIN: Looking back, looking forward","type":"blog"},{"content":" The project outcomes must be shared under a free culture license, such as General Public License, Affero General Public License. Creative Commons etc. with least or no restrictions on the use by other agencies. The project will be executed in India and payments to be received in Indian currency. NNF cannot accept contributions from outside India. ","date":"June 21, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/terms-of-fiscal-hosting/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"The project outcomes must be shared under a free culture license, such as General Public License, Affero General Public License. Creative Commons etc. with least or no restrictions on the use by other agencies. The project will be executed in India and payments to be received…","title":"Terms of Fiscal Hosting","type":"page"},{"content":"","date":"April 26, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/afspa/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Afspa","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"April 26, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/military/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Military","type":"tags"},{"content":" Pic Credit: thefederal.com Army deployed in Nagaland\nMaj Gen S.G.Vombatkere ADG DV (1994-1996)\nPublic opinion, especially of the literate and opinion-influencing public, is heavily influenced by print and electronic media. The army is pleased to think that public opinion, again particularly of the literate and opinion-influencing public, regarding the army is largely favourable, because of the numerous and frequent instances when it is called upon to render national service, which the civil administration is unwilling, unable or incompetent to perform with the police resources at its command. Instances of the army (and to a lesser extent the navy and air force) rendering national service “in aid of the civil power” (defined in the Constitution of India, Article 246) is relief and rescue in natural and man-made calamities and accidents (including rescuing children from borewells), all carried out with characteristic elan and discipline. But there is one aspect of the army’s activities which has drawn flak from the public, and that is the instances of HR violations committed by army personnel on IS duties.\nWe in the serving and Veteran fraternity know that instances of CI ops-related HR violations are investigated and disciplinary action is taken against the accused, and that often administrative action is also taken against the command structure. But there are inevitably slippages and even cover-ups in the system. These attract extremely negative media attention and cause adverse public opinion about the army that effectively negates the public appreciation won elsewhere at great cost. But most importantly, the media coverage of the army’s slip-ups and cover-ups is focused on showing that the AFSPA provides impunity and even enables and encourages army personnel to carry out rape, molestation etc., and that AFSPA exists because the army wants it.\nThere are some sources of confusion that the scheming, anti-army bureaucracy/police (especially in MoD and MoH) deliberately omits to bring out, and which the media obediently or conveniently omits to question: One, the public confusion over distinguishing between the army and central police forces, and the term “armed forces” incorrectly (actually unconstitutionally – see Article 33(A)) being used to include armed para-military forces. Thus, crimes committed by BSF, CRPF etc., are attributed to the army because civilians are ignorant of army ranks and uniform, and also because the police use olive-green and disruptive pattern uniforms that are similar to or identical with army uniforms. Two, the army cannot open fire on civilians without the express written permission of civil authority (magistrate), and AFSPA is applicable ONLY in areas defined by civil government as “disturbed” and ONLY when civil government calls in the army to maintain law and order, after civil administration (including the state and central police) has failed in its primary duty of maintaining law and order. Three, it is continued failure of governance (the primary responsibility of the elected politician and appointed bureaucrat) due to incompetence, corruption, ignorance, etc., that has created continuous or continual law and order including insurgency situations of “disturbed areas”, necessitating calling upon the army “in aid of the civil power” continuously for decades.\nThe fact is, as we all know, government (and not the army) invokes AFSPA so that army units and formations deployed on IS duties will have legal cover. Without AFSPA, every round fired by the army would be illegal and potentially an attempt to murder. Yet, taking only one most recent cue from an editorial in “The Hindu” of 23 August 2014, on the re-arrest of Irom Sharmila (who has been on fast for over 11 years in protest against AFSPA), it rather casually states, “The ‘Iron Lady of Manipur’ has come to symbolise the conscience of a country that probably recognises that AFSPA gives unconscionable protection to excesses committed by the Army in parts of India hit by political conflict, but is unable to abrogate, amend or dilute it. The state has been unable or unwilling to prevail over the Army, which stubbornly favours the retention of the indefensible law.”\nWe in the serving and Veteran fraternity understand that the army has no institutional stake in carrying out or continuing in its secondary role of aid of the civil power for IS duties or rescue/relief duties. But this is not known to the media or the public, and the quote above demonstrates this. This writer learns that ADG PI has made public statements to that effect. But the media persists in declaring that the army “stubbornly favours the retention of the indefensible law”, and public opinion about the army is influenced by the devious machinations of the bureaucracy.\nIt is therefore the considered view of this writer that COAS needs to address a press conference specifically on AFSPA at least once during his tenure. Further, that PSOs need to address periodic press briefings/conferences (this suggestion for bi-annual conferences was placed on file to COAS and VCOAS by this writer when he was ADG DV in 1994-1996) covering their areas of command and control. In these briefings/conferences, the AG would cover the issues of discipline including those concerning HR violations by army personnel during IS duties, the MGO might cover the issues of weapons and equipment acquisitions, the QMG might cover matters of defense land and accommodation authorization, and so on with other PSOs. Naturally, the PSOs would prepare for answering probing, awkward and contentious questions. This writer strongly feels that such exposure to public gaze should be a part and parcel of PSOs charter of duties, if the army is to get a fair deal. (When this writer was ADG DV, with the concurrence of COAS – then Gen Shankar Roychowdhury – he addressed two press conferences on HR violations by army personnel, and the journalists present asked why this was not being done more frequently).\nThe army’s image needs to be built up in the public view, and public opinion will have its effect upon the political class whose opinion is presently influenced principally by the bureaucracy. COAS and PSOs addressing the media and taking on questions (as suggested above), can get the army and its role into the minds of the political class, past the hurdles cunningly placed by bureaucrats and police officials to keep the army insulated from the political leadership and under civil service control instead of under civil cabinet control.\nThis writer has published a number of articles and given interviews over the last few years, bringing out the facts and inconsistencies concerning AFSPA (ATTACHED herewith for information). But the Veteran fraternity has not taken it up for discussion, perhaps because of being narrowly focussed on OROP. Also, copies endorsed to Army HQ have also drawn no response, while senior officers who appear on TV have never stated the position clearly. Hopefully this Note will draw at least an acknowledgement and spark an in-house debate concerning how the army should project its image, beyond TV advertisements, to motivate youth to join the officer cadre.\n","date":"April 26, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/why-the-army-needs-to-make-its-stand-clear-on-afspa/","section":"Blog","summary":"474×346 47.8 KB Pic Credit: thefederal.com Army deployed in Nagaland Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere ADG DV (1994-1996) Public opinion, especially of the literate and opinion-influencing public, is heavily influenced by print and electronic media. The army is pleased to think that…","title":"Why the army needs to make its stand clear on AFSPA","type":"blog"},{"content":" Sharad Shah\nDuring the first two decades after independence, general elections to the Parliament and the State Assemblies were held simultaneously. But that happened as there was no meaningful opposition in those days, and to that extent, it was an imperfect democracy.\nAs the opposition developed, and due to the dissolution of certain State Assemblies in 1968 and 1969, followed by the dissolution of Parliament in 1970, and the subsequent general elections in 1971, the cycle of simultaneous elections was disrupted, and mid-term elections became the rule rather than exception. The frequent elections lead to massive expenditure by Government and contestants. Some other issues that have come to the fore since then are money and muscle power, cost and credibility of EVMs, and as a result, there is a visible erosion of faith in elections and electoral democracy.\nThe need for electoral reforms and synchronised elections to the Parliament and Assemblies, and even local bodies, have been debated all along. But when, in his Valedictory Address on the Law Day Celebrations 2017, the Prime Minister gave a call to start a constructive discussion on the issue, fresh momentum, and the matter, came into focus at various fora of the Government.\nHowever, the supposed guidance, spelled out in [Niti Aayog’s Note] (http://www.niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/document_publication/Note%20on%20Simultaneous%20Elections.pdf) (PDF), reads rather like a command performance, with a gathering of orchestrated support. The ensuing discussion, instead of investigating issues, degenerated into a political slugfest, and ended in a whimper.\nPrudence demands that this debate is resumed immediately, the issues discussed, differences narrowed down and necessary legislative action started as soon as possible. But this does not seem to be happening, and very important and urgent reforms are back in cold storage. If there is any sincere intent to implement these much needed reforms, the time to do it is now before the public loses faith in elections and democracy completely. And so, here is a small attempt to bring the question of electoral reforms back to centre stage.\nThe work of drafting a constitution at any time is a humongous task. But we had the benefit of learning from other constitutions already working over the previous couple of centuries. Two important ones were the written U.S. constitution, and the unwritten British Constitution. The latter had an early start here when, slowly but surely, the British started transferring power to the Indian people. It was only natural that they followed the same basic rules that they had back at home.\nThis had two defects, that came to the fore within the first couple of decades. The first is the idea of a fixed term of five years of the Parliament, coupled with the right of the Prime Minister to dissolve the Parliament anytime, which leads to mid-term elections (Britain itself rectified this very recently and has curtailed this power of the Prime Minister). The other is that the fixed five year period implies that people express their will once every five years, and then shut up for the rest of the term – a rather long period of silence. Apart from this, it makes the elections unwieldy and expensive. These defects were magnified for us, because we not only have a Parliament, but 26 State Assemblies and 3 union territories, each representing, millions, even hundreds of millions of people.\nBe warned – what is suggested hereafter is unprecedented, and way out of the box. It must be examined with scepticism, but tempered with an open mind, because it may be the disruptive game changer we so badly need.\nThe Parliament and the State Assemblies will be perpetual, with a five year term and 2% of the senior most members retiring every month. Thus, every month there will be about ten simultaneous elections for seats vacated by retiring members in the ten Parliamentary Constituencies, all Assembly Constituencies and all local bodies in that Parliamentary constituency.\nThe first advantage of this will be that, though each citizen will still have only one opportunity in five years to speak up, collectively the electorate will speak every month. These results, of monthly elections, will provide the rulers, whoever they are, as a bellwether.\nThe second advantage will be that there will be no mid-term elections, and only a few bye-elections on the death of a sitting member. Even this can be avoided, by having a pair of elected candidates for every constituency, and on the death of a sitting member her term will be completed by the second.\nThe problem of the Election Commission (EC) is that it is in a seasonal business, like the Kumbh Mela. The 60 lakh or more EVMs required for simultaneous elections cost roughly Rs. 15,000 crores. During the working life of 15 years, they are used 3 times, or once every five years, costing Rs.5,000 crores per election.\nOn the other hand, if the elections are phased out over 5 years, as suggested above, the same EVM is used 60 times, and the total number needed drops to only 3 lakh EVMs, at a cost of Rs. 250 crores, even if the full cost is written off in 5 years, to take into account more intensive use, resulting in a saving of Rs.4,750 crores per election. (See Table 1). There are other savings, and the assumed costs are very conservative, so the actual saving may come close to Rs.10,000 crores.\nTable I Cost of EVMs (Rs)\nTotal No of Booths Rs 15 lakhs EVMs per Booth 4 Lifetime Cost of EVM Rs 25,000 No of Elections in 15 yrs 3 One Phase Sixty Phases Life of EVMs in yrs 15 5 No of Phases 1 60 No of EVMs 60 3 Per Election Cost of EVMs 5,000 250 Crores Saving Per Election 4,750 Crores Rational Costing of EVMs\nNote\nEVM Life is taken as 15 years for Simultaneous Elections, but 5 years for Staggered Elections, due to intense use. Also, it should be understood that newer developing technologies are inevitably going to result in a demand for continual upgradation of the design EVMs per Booth is taken as 4, but is more likely to be 5 or 6 State Financing of Elections\nWith a saving of this size in the cost of running the elections, the Commission can certainly consider the long standing proposal for the state financing of elections. If, for each Parliamentary Constituency, Rs 3 crore is provided for each Parliamentary candidate, and Rs 4 crores for Assembly candidates, the gross cost would be about Rs. 4,000 crores, comfortably covered by the above saving.\nThe EC should encourage candidates to use the Crowd Funding route to finance their elections, and it should devise and provide a mechanism to this end. The public, for instance, can buy Election Bonds (not the similarly named ones, currently structured to fund political parties in an opaque and dubious manner, for which an outraged public litigation is stagnating in the Supreme Court), and the money received may be disbursed to the candidate named in the bond.\nAfter the elections the State Election Fund will be distributed among the first three candidates in proportion of votes polled in their favour, discounting the votes polled by the rest of the candidates. If this amount is more than the amount received by way of Bonds, the Bond holders will be refunded their dues, with the balance accruing to the winning candidate. If the amount is less, it will be distributed among the bond holders in proportion of each one’s contribution, and the candidate will not get anything.\nSuch a measure will go a long way in diminishing the influence of money power at election. Table 2 illustrates how the state fund of Rs.3 Crores would be distributed among participating candidates in a typical case.\nTable II State Funding (Rs) {State Funds Rs 300 Cr per Parliamentary Constituency)\nCandidate Crowd Fund (Cr) % Vote Share % State Fund State Fund (Cr) Surplus (Cr) A 1.00 40 44 1.33 0.33 B 0.80 38 39 1.17 0.37 C 0.75 15 17 0.50 0.25 D 0.25 8 x x x E 0.30 2 x x x Total 3.10 90 100 3.00 0.45 State funding of public elections in India\nWith Staggered Elections, there will be no dissolution of the Parliament, and no mid-term elections (almost – the rare exception is described below), and the Parliament will be a continuing entity, with members who retire after their five year terms being substituted by newly elected members.\nIf there is a vacancy due to resignation or death of both alternate members, a mid-term election can be held, if the remaining term is more than two and a half years, otherwise the seat can remain vacant for the remaining term. There is also another option. At the time of election itself, as part of the process of filing electoral declarations, every candidate must name a Nominee, who will take her place for the remaining term in case of his death or resignation. The alternate elected member steps in when the Nominee is also not available, and this person, naturally, is going to be representing a different political ideology, party or viewpoint.\nIf the party in power loses the confidence of the House, and no other party can form a government, the Parliament can elect a committee of ten members, by a single transferable vote, and the President will rule, with advice and consent from this Committee. To provide checks and balances, the full Parliament will still have the power to overrule any decision of the President, by a two third majority. This will continue until some party comes to the President with the requisite majority support. This amounts to temporarily adopting the US model (‘Washminster’) – Westminster in normal times, and Washminster as a fallback.\nRationalising the EC Operations\nA weakness of the EC is that it is almost entirely dependent on the staff on loan from the administration for conduct of election. And with the seasonal nature of its work, it cannot be otherwise. But once the work is perennial, this need not be so. The EC can have a larger staff of its own with full allegiance to it with limited borrowed staff at lower levels for the duration of election in that section. This can be done by creating an Indian Election Service, which will be answerable only to the President, through the Chairman of the Election Commission.\nThere are also many other pending issues that need to be resolved as soon as possible.\nTherefore it is very important that one or more competent committees are appointed immediately, to look at constitutional, financial, legal and all other aspects of election reforms, in a time-bound manner, followed by legislative action, to ensure that the elections of 2029, if not 2024, are conducted under such revised laws.\n","date":"April 26, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/election-reform/","section":"Blog","summary":"718×450 313 KB Sharad Shah During the first two decades after independence, general elections to the Parliament and the State Assemblies were held simultaneously. But that happened as there was no meaningful opposition in those days, and to that extent, it was an imperfect…","title":"Election Reform","type":"blog"},{"content":"","date":"April 26, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/elections/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Elections","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"April 26, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/evms/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Evms","type":"tags"},{"content":" Pic Credit: al Jazeera\nVC\nThe Reporter’s Collective (TRC) has conducted an investigation, in coordination with Ad Watch, an independent researcher, into some distasteful and certainly surprising revelations into the way that commercial social media platform Facebook (which recently renamed itself Meta), that also owns popular SM platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, has been acting with regard to the Indian electoral scenario.\nThe last is particularly significant in this context, because it acts as a surrogate and exponential multiplier of scandalous content, and that has been linked in the past to a number of horrendous quasi-genocidal actions across the world.\nAnd it is precisely this, well-crafted fakes bombarded on Facebook users in the form of ‘promoted’ (actually, advertised) posts, that have been the hallmark of one particular political party. A large number of these posts were not actually placed by the principal, but by thinly disguised ‘surrogates’.\nOminously, many were routed through one particular company, that turns out to be a subsidiary of India’s largest private sector business enterprise, one that is very closely linked with the ruling party. The current scion/promoter is not just India’s wealthiest person, among the world’s top ten richest, but his personal wealth reportedly grew far faster in the last year than any of the world’s most well-known billionaires. And this, when the country’s economy is in disarray, with galloping inflation and unemployment, and no sign of a turnaround. As it happens, this company, that now lays claim to being India’s largest and fastest growing digital advertisers, is not the only surrogate supporter working for the ruling party. A surprising number of the others, though, cannot be tracked outside their presence at the BJP office in Delhi, as their home page weblinks don’t work.\nTwo of India’s independent institutions are named: the Supreme Court, that severely noted Facebook’s association with divisive media messaging and interference with India’s internal affairs, but then left the topic without pronouncing an order to solve, or even address the core issues; and the Election Commission, that has adroitly avoided taking note of the multiplier effect of both direct advertising and surrogate political advertising that take place on digital platforms (it has strict rules regarding the use of print, television and radio), even after the Supreme Court’s sounding a note of caution.\nAll of this is noted in the 3 part series of articles published by al Jazeera, the well-known international publication, together with TRC and Ad Watch. The coverage got near-instant reflection across a large number of countries, including the USA, which was the first country to have had its national elections (presidential elections) tampered with using Facebook’s distorted media reach and influence and selective promotion plans for commercial advertisers.\nThe second was the UK, which called a referendum on continuing its lengthy association with the European Union, which in turn resulted in it leaving the union of nations. Both of these elections turned out to have been deliberately manipulated by a handful of extremely wealthy and influential businesspersons, together with the help of a data analytics business called Cambridge Analytica. That company was forced to shut down after the scandal broke, but the technology it developed was acquired by one of the US-based billionaires, Peter Thiel, and continues in business as Palantir.\nThe pattern of that action, which has been described in detail by the lead scientist on the project, and later whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, is echoed in the Indian scandal.\nThe major difference is that no local mainstream media: print, radio or television, has so far taken up the issues raised in the TRC story. In contrast, the Cambridge Analytica story was widely reported in both countries, apart from “almost” everywhere else in the world.\nHowever, it is noteworthy that the British exit from the EU (Brexit), which has caused a considerable series of economic and political problems both within the UK and across Europe, some of which have worsened thanks to the pandemic, shows no sign of being reconsidered, thanks to the continuing political strength of the ruling Conservative Party.\nThis is much like the continuing political strength of India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party: both are consistently strengthened by waves of both positive influencing of the party position, which is majoritarian, and corrosive and divisive influencing against political opponents (in India, this includes the minority communities themselves, apart from their favoured political representatives).\nIn the USA, apparently, the overt support given to successful presidential candidate Donald J Trump in 2016, by the Facebook company/platform, either continues directly or indirectly, and divisive politics and white supremacism are exceedingly visible in many parts of the country. If the direct influencing through selectively attractive advertising deals are no longer a part of the formula (this has not been addressed in the series of articles published by al Jazeera that are referenced here, but many of the senior management staff and the founder, Mark Zuckerberg, were interrogated in the US legislature precisely on this: the relationship between commercial deals and selective display of posts to members of the public), then the conclusion must be that divisiveness, as a social strategy, takes on a life of its own, having tapped deep into the psyche of large numbers of people, both voters and other supporters.\nSo far, despite the disquiet expressed (but not in the palpable form of a judicial order) by the SC of India, the continuing silence from the ECI means that the deals with FB/Meta can continue unchanged. This comprises some visible and some concealed support, with direct advertising made available at very favourable rates, and a lot of surrogate advertising that is selectively chosen to favour the BJP, while attempts by supporters of other parties to take advantage of the ECI’s failure to take note of the outrageous surrogacy are surgically excised by FB/Meta, citing its short-lived commitment to creating a level playing field.\nThe favourable direct advertising support cites a secretive FB-designed ‘popularity’ index that claims to reward advertisers who tap into popular themes. The popular themes are, almost always, based on stirring up emotions, by some tampering with reportage of actual news and events, and some blatant fake media creations, that continue to circulate for days and weeks before fact-checking makes it impossible for FB to continue allowing it to spread directly in its platform. By that time, of course, the paid advertising campaigns have multiplied the false stories manifold.\nThe successful use of hate as a rallying cry to populism is not new, of course. As a politically successful strategy, the National Socialist Party of Germany stayed in power for a decade and a half, during which it engaged in an ultimately nation-destroying war across Europe and Asia, and created and deployed one of the most chilling uses of advanced technology ever, to execute millions of civilians, citizens of Germany and numerous conquered territories.\nIn India, while active full-scale warfare has not yet been adopted, internal divisiveness, accompanied by both violence and economic disadvantage against opponents of the ruling party has been a very successful political tactic across many parts of the country.\nIt remains to be seen, though hopefully, it will not happen, whether it will devolve into the kind of continuing violence that is synonymous with civil war.\n","date":"April 25, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/facebook-its-implicit-support-for-divisive-politics/","section":"Blog","summary":"770×513 43.9 KB Pic Credit: al Jazeera VC The Reporter’s Collective (TRC) has conducted an investigation, in coordination with Ad Watch , an independent researcher, into some distasteful and certainly surprising revelations into the way that commercial social media platform…","title":"Facebook: its implicit support for divisive politics","type":"blog"},{"content":"","date":"April 25, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/social-media/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Social-Media","type":"tags"},{"content":" A network of people got together to collaborate today for a better tomorrow! The Pledge we take everyday Networking Creating networks to increase outreach across regions and building alliances with organizations working with similar humanistic and universal values\nThe activities shall be carried out independently or in collaboration with other individuals, groups, or other bodies, either public or private\nProvide a transparent platform to create networks, linking producer, consumer, and service providers. This will directly encourage distributed, decentralized, and federated economic models.\nDesign, develop and make use of distributed and decentralized free information infrastructure. This will primarily assist resource-constrained agencies – especially village schools, panchayats, geographically remote and difficult terrains, and marginalized communities.\nRespect multicultural and multilingual cohabitations, in any such forms, representations, depictions as may evolve from time to time.\nFacilitate and support the participation of people with different abilities, languages, locations, communities, and cultures.\nArt Gather creative expressions (voices) from across the country from the marginalized, criminalized, vulnerable, ignored, and minority communities.\nWork towards a confluence of creative expressions and celebrate diversity by providing them with a vibrant forum.\nGathering and curating people’s art in the form of an archive, but also amplifying them through social media.\nEmpower the people working at the grassroots providing training to use modern media to record and disseminate their voices to the rest of the world\nResearch Provide a platform for research, documentation, publishing, and training on art, social, scientific, legislative, and executive aspects of civil life\nSuggest policy recommendations and identify amendments to existing policies to promote decentralized state-of-affairs\nLiteracy for a Democracy Undertaking activities that will promote the public good; build better citizenship participation; and strengthen democratic imperatives\nMentoring Providing mentoring, expertise, and resources to groups and individuals in the areas of Social Welfare, Health, Education, Agriculture, Human Development and the Environment\nSupport and recognize organizations or people who take leadership in promoting the growth of functioning self-governance\nHealth Encouraging and supporting relevant organizations to take up programs involving nutrition and the well-being of women and children\nSupport all efforts towards universalizing public healthcare and the infrastructure to make it accessible\nMedia Interacting with and creating content for the print and electronic media across languages to create awareness of issues affecting specific groups or the general populace\nLegal Aid Providing legal aid, where necessary, and supporting civil society groups, minorities, and individuals, in their efforts to ensure the upholding of constitutional values and provisions\nFunding Arrange or provide funding that enables participants in the company’s user spaces to independently and sustainably provide appropriate hardware and services in their communities and local regions\nProvide scholarships/fellowships and internships to people to experiment, explore, and research efforts\nTechnology Conduct, organise, promote, conceptualise, curate, design, develop, make available and use new and existing analog and digital media.\nProvide platforms for collaboration, communication, and collective action, as also through which to explore and open up pathways of diverse, vibrant cultures.\nPromoting STEM habits Provide spaces for participatory shaping of technologies involving local communities through the transfer of knowledge to self-help groups to support self-reliance.\nCreation of local clubs that carry out creative innovations and investigations to develop and enhance artistic and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) habits among people.\nEnvironment Curate, design, develop and make use of technologies that will promote universal scientific literacy to sustain life in all its forms\nSupport the design and development of modular technologies to ensure reuse of devices and components and to promote a circular economic system\nBecome a Member Coming Soon\nJoin the Club\n","date":"January 6, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/","section":"Welcome!","summary":"A network of people got together to collaborate today for a better tomorrow! The Pledge we take everyday Networking Creating networks to increase outreach across regions and building alliances with organizations working with similar humanistic and universal values 1200×1200…","title":"Welcome!","type":"page"},{"content":"","date":"January 5, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/kashmir/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Kashmir","type":"tags"},{"content":" by Anuradha Bhasin\n“The truth is rarely pure and never simple,” wrote Oscar Wilde. Truth buried for years beneath layers of tumult, violence, fear, pain and suffering, produces a tendency to obsessively cling on to a linear understanding of one’s own trauma while overlooking that of the other, and thus allows memories to be coloured by partial forgetfulness.\nKashmir which has breathed with multiple narratives of grief and horror is a case in point. The tendency to view its turbulent past in fragments disallows truth to emerge with all its complexities and shades. It rather creates contested narratives and binaries of us and them, reducing or magnifying human tragedies, depending on who is viewing them. Not only does this have the potential of tarnishing inter-community relations, it provides space to vested interests to usurp peoples’ tragedies and memories and place it in a distorted context to the further detriment of communal harmony and overall peace.\n1989 and 1990 were turbulent years in Kashmir that changed its landscape. Insurgency had emerged due to deep-rooted years of resentment and after moments of its infancy it took the Valley by a storm. Everyone was caught unaware as guns and grenades began to consume lives – Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs. As the entire state was rattled by the sudden turn of events that were in those days difficult to absorb and process in their exact portents and comprehension, Pandits were forced to flee and the Muslims, sandwiched between the guns of the militants and the security forces, were left to bear the brunt of a repressive and highly militarised landscape.\nThe true story of what happened and why it happened cannot be grasped by pulling out some pages from the diary and de-contextualising them, much worse by pitting up one community against another. The complete story is a jigsaw puzzle, pieces of which are memories of those who suffered. These are multiple and varied.\nThe only way to reconcile these different, even contested, memories and narratives is through interaction and talking so that different perspectives can be shared, absorbed, and understood. My experience at the various community-level dialogue initiatives since 2001, in which both Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits were included, taught me the effectiveness of such experiments aimed at sharing the truth with an aim to heal long ignored wounds. The difference such initiatives made was subtle and slow, yet powerful.\nIn a recent article in Outlook, I shared some of my experiences at the people-to-people level dialogues to demonstrate this point. The link to my article:\nhttps://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/national/kashmir-needs-healing-not-politicisation-of-pain-magazine-189303\nPic: JK Now\n","date":"January 5, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/blog/kashmir-if-truth-be-told/","section":"Blog","summary":"474×248 33.4 KB by Anuradha Bhasin “The truth is rarely pure and never simple,” wrote Oscar Wilde. Truth buried for years beneath layers of tumult, violence, fear, pain and suffering, produces a tendency to obsessively cling on to a linear understanding of one’s own trauma…","title":"Kashmir: If truth be told","type":"blog"}]