Kerala Letter

People’s tribunal must go into Jayalalithaa’s allegation of land grab

2011-12-10T14:18:00.003+05:30

The full-page advertisement under Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa’s signature, appearing in the national dailies today, makes a reference to the interests of land grabbers in Kerala in the Mullaperiyar dam controversy.

Following the concerns voiced by Kerala over the safety of the dam, the reservoir level has been kept at 136 feet for the last few years although the optimum level envisaged was 156 feet. After the Tamil Nadu government carried out certain repairs, which were recommended by the Central Water Commission, the Supreme Court had allowed it in 2006 to raise the level to 142 feet. The court said the level could be raised further after further works were carried out.

The Kerala government immediately got the Assembly to amend the Irrigation and Water Conservation Act to fix the maximum water level at 136 feet. The Tamil Nadu government questioned the validity of the law before the Supreme Court. Its petition is still pending before the court.

In the advertisement, Jayalalithaa states, “It is …reported that when the water level at Mullaperiyar Dam is 136 feet, the water spread area is 4678 acres and that if the water is stored to 155 feet, the water spread area will be 8591 acres. Since water has not been stored above 136 feet for a long time, the water spread area has been encroached upon by land grabbers in Kerala who have built resorts and other buildings on the lands leased to Tamil Nadu. If the water level is increased from 136 feet, these resorts will get submerged in water. This is also cited by some as the possible reason for the plea to decommission the Mullaperiyar Dam.”

We who know well about the activities of land grabbers and their political links cannot dismiss her statement as mere grist to Tamil Nadu’s propaganda mill.

Revenue Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan told the Kerala Assembly on Friday that rough estimates of the likely damage in the event of a dam break showed that 21,540 people would be directly in the danger zone where the time would be too short for rescue operations and 1,28,460 people more would be affected in the evacuation zone.

Quite obviously the figure of loss of three million to four million lives bandied about by he and his colleagues during the past few days was a gross exaggeration. Those who made such irresponsible statements must not only be kicked out of the government but also prosecuted for spreading rumours.

The ministers who have been most actively building up a scare by painting a doomsday scenario belong to a party which has always vehemently championed the cause of forest encroachers. As the aborted Munnar eviction campaign of the last few years has shown, land grabbers and their patrons are there in all the major parties.

In these circumstances, Jayalalithaa’s allegation needs to be examined. Considering the influence of land grabbers across the political spectrum there is no point in asking the government of Kerala to conduct an investigation and place the facts before the public. Civil society must set up an independent people’s tribunal to ascertain the facts.

One question that legitimately arises is why did Tamil Nadu allow the leased land in its possession to be grabbed by resort builders. The short answers is that those who bribe politicians and officials of Kerala can bribe those of Tamil Nadu as well.

Mullaperiyar: wasted opportunities

2011-12-09T16:12:00.004+05:30

Kerala’s current agony stems from the fact that there is on its territory a dam which is under the control of the government of another state.

In 40 years the government of Kerala has not been able to convince the government of Tamil Nadu that the 116-year-old Mullaperiyar dam has outlived its life and that if it collapses the lives and livelihood of millions of people will be in jeopardy.

The Indian government has been in the picture all through. Tamil Nadu’s intransigence has frustrated its efforts to help resolve the issue through talks so far. Maybe it has also found Tamil Nadu’s argument that there is no threat to the dam more convincing than Kerala’s stand that it poses a threat.

For several years now, the Supreme Court too has been in the picture. Tamil Nadu has met with a measure of success in that forum. The apex court allowed TN to raise the water level of the reservoir, which had been lowered to 136 feet at Kerala’s request to reduce the risk of dam burst, after it had carried out some maintenance works proposed by the Central Water Commission. It also said TN could raise it further to the optimum level of 156 feet after taking further steps to strengthen the structure.

A series of earth tremors which rocked the Idukki district, where the dam is located, in the past few months has aggravated Kerala’s concerns about the safety of the dam. Responsible leaders and the media have played up the issue and spread fear. This has resulted in an emotional upsurge, which is very uncharacteristic of Kerala.

Whether the fear of dam burst is real, as the Kerala government insists, or it is artificially created, as the Tamil Nadu government maintains, there are some questions that need to be addressed squarely. Must the people of Kerala remain perpetually at the mercy of the government of another state? Must the government of Kerala, which has a constitutional obligation to protect the lives of its people, wait upon the goodwill of another state government to discharge its duty?

The Mullaperiyar dam stands on land leased by the Maharaja of the erstwhile Travancore state to the British government under an agreement signed in 1886. The Dewan of Travancore signed the agreement for the Maharaja and an official of the Madras Presidency for the Secretary of State for India, who was the British minister in charge of Indian affairs.

The agreement uses the term ‘lease indenture’. That term conclusively establishes its colonial character. Indenture makes it clear that the agreement was not between equals. The Maharaja of Travancore was a vassal of Britain, which had taken over the administration of India from the English East India Company in 1858.

The agreement set the period of the lease indenture at 999 years. The British presumably imagined India would be at their heels for all time. The Maharaja of Travancore certainly was reconciled to remaining a vassal for 1,000 years.

Under the lease agreement, Travancore made available 100 acres of land for the dam and 8,000 acres for the reservoir. The dam was built by British military engineers and it remained under the control of the Madras government.

The legal position is that the indenture ended when India became independent in 1947. Thereafter the government of Travancore and those of Travancore-Cochin and Kerala, made several unsuccessful attempts to sign a new agreement. The government of Madras and that of Tamil Nadu were determined to keep the advantage the colonial-era agreement gave them. Since the Travancore government and its successors scrupulously adhered to all terms of the lapsed agreement the authorities in Madras were in no hurry to go in for a new one.

The situation changed somewhat in 1970. Tamil Nadu wanted a new agreement as it wanted to use the waters of the Periyar for power generation also. The original agreement only provided for their use for irrigation.

The government of Kerala failed to use the opportunity to end the anomalous situation of another government controlling the dam located in its territory. The responsibility for the lapse lies at the door of the political parties which wielded power in the state at the relevant time. They fell in line with the wishes of their national leadership, which backed Tamil Nadu's demand. Ironically, the leaders of these very parties are now vying with one another to be recognized as the most vocal champions of the state’s interests.

People's Convention to demand moratorium on death peanlty

2011-11-07T17:34:00.002+05:30

K. Girish Kumar, Convener, Organizing Committee, People’s convention Against Death Penalty, writes:

A people’s convention demanding moratorium on death penalty will be held on 28 November 2011 at VJT hall, Thiruvananthapuram. Various civil society groups, intellectuals and political activists will attend the convention.
Local level meetings and campaigns are also planned in different districts.

Following the Tamil Nadu legislative Assembly's adoption of a resolution demanding commutation of the death sentence awarded to the convicts in the Rajeev Gandhi assassination case, a resolution also came before the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly with a similar demand regarding the death sentence awarded to Afsal Guru in the Parliament attack case. This is quite an unprecedented development in the country.

The land of Kerala has the legacy of abolishing death penalty in 1940s. In continuity with this step, members from here had also voiced, in the Constituent Assembly the demand for enactment of a progressive law for the nationwide abolition of death penalty.

In 2005, the Vadhasiksha Virudha Samithi (Council Against Capital Punishment) submitted a mass representation, ‘human rights memorial’ before the central and state governments , urging them to abolish the death penalty and take legal and policy measures to protect the human rights of prisoners, including the right to life.

Though the demand that the Kerala Legislative Assembly adopt a resolution against death penalty is yet to materialize, campaigns and protests have succeeded in ensuring many rights of prisoners, like restoration of the precedence of releasing prisoners after serving a certain period of life imprisonment.

As mentioned above, a new scenario is evolving in the country. Political parties, legislative assemblies, states and people are joining the protest bloc created by human rights activists and civil rights activists against death penalty in connection with particular cases.

We request all political parties, social organizations, groups and individuals to take part in the convention

Mr Girish Kumar can be contacted at 09947787523

2011-08-16T19:25:00.008+05:30

B.R.P.Bhaskar

MOVE OVER, your lordships.

The stargazers have taken over. Speaking through them, Sree Padmanabhaswamy, the presiding deity of Thiruvananthapuram ( in picture), has made it known that he is not amused by the opening of the temple’s underground cellars which has revealed him as the nation’s richest god.

The decision to requisition the services of five astrologers to conduct Devaprasanam ( divine consultation), the traditional method of ascertaining the wishes of Hindu deities, was taken by Uthradam Thirunal Marthanda Varma ( who controls the temple administration) in consultation with the Thanthri, the head priest who is the final authority on matters concerning temple rituals.

The sequence of events leaves room to suspect that the astrological findings are a command performance aimed at nullifying the SC’s directive to set up a trust to administer the temple, and thus perpetuate the erstwhile Travancore royal family’s control over it.

Marthanda Varma, who is the younger brother of Travancore’s last king, Sree Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma and would have succeeded him if the state and kingship had survived, had taken over the temple administration after his brother’s death — assuming the title of Sree Padmanabha dasa ( servant of Padmanabha). The governments were apparently unaware that he was not entitled to do so.

He would have been able to keep the temple under his control without challenge but for certain remarks he made to a Malayalam daily, claiming the temple treasures were the property of the former royal family and revealed that arrangements had been made to photograph them.

Infuriated by the claim, some devotees moved civil courts seeking injunction against those in control of the temple.

One court, after hearing the plaintiffs, who included the Temple Employees Union, granted an injunction against opening of the treasure rooms.

Marthanda Varma and the temple’s executive officer approached the high court seeking legal sanction for his defacto control over the temple. In a judgment delivered in January this year, justices C. N. Ramachandran Nair and K. Surendra Mohan refused the plea.

The judges concluded that Marthanda Varma did not have the right to administer the temple since he was not the ruler of Travancore. They said Balarama Varma ( Marthanda’s brother) had never claimed that the temple was his property or that of his family. The temple did not figure in his will.

The SC upheld the high court’s findings and constituted a committee to open the cellars and catalogue the treasures.
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As the committee was proceeding with its task, Moolam Thirunal Rama Varma,http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif> a relative of Marthanda Varma, filed a petition objecting to the cataloguing of the treasures and seeking a Devaprasanam to ascertain the deity’s wishes.

The court didn’t say anything on this but deferred the opening of the last cellar.

The attempt to prevent the opening of the sixth cellar raises questions and curiosity about what valuable assets or secrets it may contain. The treasures revealed so far have been informally valued at ` 100,000 crore. -- Mail Today, New Delhi, August 16, 2011

Does Thazhamon family have a better story than Cheerappanchira and Malayarayans?

2011-05-28T14:43:00.005+05:30

Once upon a time there was a king ….

Long, long ago, there lived a ….

These are sound openings for fables.

“The Heredity (sic) rights of Sabarimala temple was (sic) and is (sic) with Tazhamon Family from time immemorial for millenniums”. This statement can also be placed in the category if fables.

Ask the Thazhamon spokesman when and how the family acquired its hereditary rights in Sabarimala, and the answer is that there is a “lack of record”. Then comes the explanation that this is the case with all the temples, families etc. You also get a counter-question: can you tell the name of your great-grandfather of 30 generations ago?

Many royal families of old, in India as well as other countries like Japan, used to claim descent from the Sun or the Moon. This was done to establish not only antiquity but also Divine sanction for their hereditary title. Out of feudal loyalty, the people tacitly accepted the claim.

The solar and lunar dynasties of India have all disappeared. Japan’s imperial family, with a claimed history of 2,500 years, is still there but now it does not talk of descent from the Sun. This is because it does not need the fib of divine origin any more, the country having graduated from empire to constitutional monarchy.

The only ones who still hold on to fictional accounts that originated in the tribal or feudal past are those connected with various religions. Many people who accept current scientific theories about the origin of Earth and Man and reject the myths about them still believe in God and religion. This shows that a religion does not really need fables for survival. But there are people who live by the religion and feel the need to perpetuate the fables for their own survival.

The Sankara Mutts have in their possession records which list all those who headed the institutions, from Adi Sankara down to the present incumbents. The lists go back to about 500 BCE, although it is now widely accepted that Sankaracharya, who founded the institutions, lived from 788 to 820 AD. The lists cover 2,500 years because they were created when the Vedic establishment was trying to push back Sankara’s period to the Buddha’s. Some people still want to do that. (Please see my blog post at http://brpbhaskar.blogspot.com/2009/09/times-group-steps-in-to-help-revive.html).

Other religions, too, contain such fabrications. The Bible, for instance, lists the names of Adam’s successors down to Noah and on to Solomon and beyond. However, few consider it a historical record.

True, no one will be able to name his/her forebear of 30 generations ago. But, then, it is not necessary either – so long as he/she does not enjoy or demand any special right or privilege on the basis of descent from that person.

When a controversy arose over the purification ceremony conducted at the Guruvayur temple following alleged desecration by members of Vayalar Ravi’s family, the late K. P. C. Anujan Bhattathiripad, a widely acclaimed authority on rituals and author of "Kshethraachaarangalum Vrathaanushtthaanangalum", said in a magazine article that the Chennas family has been associated with that temple as Thanthris for 6,000 years! In a letter to the editor of the periodical which published the article, I pointed out that the Chennas family’s own claim was that it obtained its rights at this temple from the Zamorin (Samoothiri) of Calicut and that 6,000 years ago neither the temple nor the Samoothiri existed. Anujan Bhattathiripad made no attempt to defend his statement. Evidently he was ready to respect facts.

MAHARAJAS’ CONTROL OVER TEMPLES

At the time of Independence, the Maharajas of Cochin and Travancore controlled the major temples in their states. It was Munro, a British Resident who also served as Dewan of Travancore, who brought the state’s temples under the government. Though the creation of a white officer, the department scrupulously followed the caste rules, and reserved all jobs for members of the so-called upper castes. Even though these rules are no longer in force, these castes, which constitute a minority of the Hindu population, still hold a lion’s share of the jobs.

The Maharajas of Travancore and Cochin as also the Zamorin of Calicut (the British allowed him to retain the title even after his kingdom was taken over) came to have a say in the affairs of temples in their respective areas by virtue of the political control they had over the regions. The case of Jammu and Kashmir illustrates how political power leads to control over temples.

Jammu and Kashmir did not exist as a state until after the Anglo-Sikh War. The British, who defeated the Sikh ruler of Punjab, were not keen to take over the territory. They demanded Rs 15 million as war reparations. Punjab could not come up with the money. Gulab Singh, who was commander in charge of the Jammu and Kashmir area, which was part of the Sikh empire, offered to pay the money. The British took the money and made him Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir.

On becoming the Maharaja in 1846, Gulab Singh created the Dharmarth Trust with himself as sole trustee. Subsequently his successors became the sole trustees. Karan Singh, who was Yuvaraj at the time of Independence, did not become Maharaja on the death of his father Hari Singh but he became the sole trustee of the Dharmarth Trust. In that capacity, he receives one-third of the revenue of the major temples including the Vaishnodevi temple in Jammu and the Amarnath cave temple nestling in the Himalayas. The Thakur families, which controlled the Vaishnodevi temple before the Maharaja’s entry, get another one-third and the Brahmin priests the remaining one-third. In the case of the Amarnath temple, too, the trustee and the priests each get one-third, the remaining one-third going to a Muslim Bakharwal (shepherd) family, whose ancestor had helped trace the cave after it had remained inaccessible for a few centuries.

The J and K Assembly was informed recently that 171 temples in the state were destroyed or damaged during the past decades of militancy. The state BJP has demanded enactment of a law to protect the temples. This once again illustrates the connection between political power and temple administration.

CHEERAPPANCHIRA AND SABARIMALA

Until a few decades ago the Cheerappanchira family of Cherthala enjoyed the right to conduct ‘vedi vazhipadu’ at Sabarimala. The Devaswom Board abolished it and started auctioning the right in order to raise the revenue. The family challenged the decision in court, where it produced a copper plate on which was inscribed a royal decree granting it the right. The court ruled that the board had the power to make alternative arrangements.

The judiciary cannot be faulted for refusing to honour the decree of a ruler who no longer exists. Its decision was in conformity with the new political realities. But the fact that this family had in its possession a document to support its claim of hereditary rights deserves to be noted.

How did the Ezhava family of Cheerappanchira acquire hereditary rights at Sabarimala through a royal decree?

According to the family’s tradition, its chief had imparted training in martial arts to Ayyappa, adopted son of the Pandalam king, who was preparing to challenge the tribesmen from Tamil Nadu who had seized the Sabarimala shrine. The chief’s daughter, Poonkodi, fell in love with Ayyappa. The chief and Vavar, a Muslim, along with their men, actively participated in Ayyappa’s successful campaign against the tribesmen. Since Ayyappa did not return from the mountains, Poonkodi, accompanied by relatives, went to Sabarimala looking for him. Ayyappa, who had turned an ascetic, advised her also to lead an ascetic life.

Ayyappa’s association with the Cheerappanchira family is mentioned in Kottarathil Sankunni’s Aithihyamala, which is a collection of legends which, for the most part, reinforces casteist theories. CPI State Secretary C.K. Chandrappan and the late CPI-M leader Suseela Gopalan are among the Cheerappanchira family members of our time.

The Pandalam family claims descent from the Pandyans who had ruled from Madurai. To escape harassment by tribesmen they moved into Kerala. They were initially based at Ranni. They did not reach Pandalam until around 1000 AD. P.R. Rama Varma of the Pandalam family, in his “Ayyappan Charithram”, avers that Ayyappa was born in 1006.

This story makes it clear that the shrine was in existence before the time of Ayyappa, the adopted son of the Pandalam family. Going by the tales propagated by the Vedic and royal establishments, there was already a temple at Sabarimala before the king of Pandalam picked up Hariharaputra whom Siva and Vishnu had abandoned in the forest. Whose shrine was it?

THE MALAYARAYANS AND SABARIMALA

In an affidavit filed in response to a Kerala High Court directive, the Travancore Devaswom Board recently confirmed something that was already known to and accepted by all but the incorrigibly superstitious. It said the Makara Vilakku, which flashes thrice on Ponnambalamedu on the last day of the Sabarimala festival, is lit by humans, and not of divine origin. It stated that the practice was started by tribesmen living in the area as an offering.

The court decided not to open the can of worms. It steered clear of questions like how, why and when the Police, Electricity and Forest departments of the secular government of Kerala took over the ritual from the tribal population. It allowed the Devaswom Board to take over the job from the government departments.

A few months earlier, former Devaswom Commissioner P.V. Nalinakshan Nair had said, in a letter to Justice (retired) R. Bhaskaran, the Court-appointed Ombudsman for the Travancore and Cochin Devaswom Boards, that in 2008 he, along with a few Devaswom officials, had visited Ponnambalamedu where the Makarajyothi was being lit.

He revealed that Makarajyothi had a history of only 45 years. He wrote, “The lighting of the Makarajyothi had originally been done by a few families of the Malayaraya tribe. Officers attached to the Kerala State Electricity Board continued the practice when the forest-dwellers were evicted in connection with the Sabarigiri hydro-electric project. The TDB and the Police Department took over the duty when the KSEB officials too left the place at a later time.''

After the court verdict of the subject, the Malayarayan community, whose members live in the area, came forward to re-claim their right to conduct the Makara Vilakku ritual on the hill.

Unlike the Devaswom Board and the Thazhamon family, the Malayarayans are not endowed with the kind of resources needed to secure justice through the Indian legal system. Even if they approach the courts, they are unlikely to succeed. When the Cheerappanchira family’s copper plate was of no avail, what chance is there for a tribal community which cannot produce written evidence of any kind?

SOME PERTINENT QUESTIONS TO ASK

The Thazhamon family has evaded a pointed question about how and when it acquired its hereditary rights. The only authority its spokesman has cited so far in support of its claim of antiquity is the work of two British army officers engaged in survey work in Travancore in late 19th century.

We can disentangle ourselves from the fables and arrive at reasonable, plausible conclusions about Sabarimala’s past by raising some pertinent questions.

Who are the Malayarayans?

Several websites including a governmental one provide the following information about this community: “Among the scheduled tribes, Malayarayans outclass all the other factions in socio-economical and educational aspects. Renegades and traditional Hindus following the hereditary regulations and customs are included in this group. When an evaluation in the educational and employment prospect is taken, it will be found that almost all the Government Servants and other employees are coming from this faction of scheduled tribes. Their dwelling places and surroundings are showing the bright prospect of development and they have always been showing the tendency to dissolve with the then prevailing socio-developmental programs.”

The use of the tern ‘renegades’ to refer to those who are not ‘traditional Hindus’ is significant. It recognizes the presence of persons outside the Hindu fold in the community. It is not clear whether the term is used to refer to those who converted to some other religion in recent times or to those who still adhere to pre-Hindu beliefs. It may be noted that followers of the Vedic tradition have used terms like ‘renegade’ and ‘apostate’ to refer to the Buddha and his followers. In Aurobindo’s writings, the Buddha is referred to as apostate.

Why should a tribal community living in a nearby hill make an offering to the Sabarimala deity?

A plausible answer is that the shrine originally belonged to the tribe, that after intruders ousted them and took over the temple, they started making offerings from the adjoining hill where they took refuge. The Electricity Department took over the hill and drove them out from there too. Its employees continued the Makara Vilakku ritual either to placate the tribe or to satisfy their own religious sentiments.

It is doubtful if the Thazhamon family has a better, more credible Sabarimala story than those of the Cheerappanchira family and the Malayarayans. If it has, it must come out with it.

Meanwhile let us ponder over the observations of two learned men on the Dharma Sastha of Sabarimala.

Former Kerala University Dr. A. Ayyappan, who was a well known social anthropologist, said the Sastha image was that of Samantabhadra Bodhisatva, the Buddha who protects the faithful, especially those preaching the Dharma.

Kesari A. Balakrishna Pillai said people of Kerala had given the name Sastha to Avalokiteswara Bodhisatva.

Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, who visited India in the seventh century, wrote that he had worshipped the statue of Avalokiteswara at a vihara in the Western Ghats. Pilgrims visited the hill shrine after fasting for a week or two, he added.

(Facebook Note dated May 18, 2011)

Information Department curries new CM’s favour at taxpayers’ expense

2011-05-18T10:51:00.003+05:30

A half-page advertisement of the Government of Kerala appearing in the English and Malayalam newspapers today proclaims:

Development on Fast track

Days of Caring ahead …

UDF Government under the leadership of Shri. Oommen Chandy swearing-in today at Raj Bhavan, 2 p.m.

The advertisement is not a simple announcement of assumption of office by a new government after the Assembly elections. It bears a political imprint. The slogans “Development on Fast track” and “Days of Caring ahead…” contain an implied suggestion that the outgoing government was slack in the areas of Development and Caring.

The Information and Public Relations Department placed these advertisements before the new government was installed.

In other words, the advertisement was placed when the LDF government was continuing as a caretaker administration. I doubt if it was issued with the knowledge and approval of Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan, who was his own Information Minister.

Since the UDF government had not taken charge when the advertisement was placed, it cannot be accused of doing political propaganda using taxpayers’ money.

The responsibility for the advertisement, including the politically loaded copy, rests solely with the official machinery, specifically the Director of Information and Public Relations. Someone needs to tell him that he acted improperly. I don’t expect the newspapers to do this as they have derived material benefit from his act.

The Information and Public Relations Department customarily issues advertisements with political import when a ministry marks its anniversary. This year, ahead of the Assembly elections, it issued a series of advertisements about the achievements of the LDF government. Those advertisements were political propaganda carried out at the taxpayers’ expense before the poll schedule was announced and the model code of conduct came into force.

Did the Director of Information and Public Relations issue the latest advertisement to make amends for his role in that instance of misuse of public money? Since an elected government was in place when the earlier advertisements were placed, the responsibility for them rests on the political bosses of the time. In the absence of an elected government, responsibility for the new advertisement and the misuse of public money involved in it rests on the Director. He is guilty of currying the new CM's favour at the taxpayers’ expense.

Sabarimala and Kerala’s Buddhist Tradition

2011-05-01T22:32:00.003+05:30

B.R.P.Bhaskar

The 1931 Census Report of Travancore states: “The famous Sastha temples now existing in Sabarimala, Thakkala and other places in Travancore were originally none other than temples dedicated to (the) Buddha. Besides these temples, several remains of Buddhist viharas and chaityas are still seen in different parts of this country. These are indications of Buddhism having been once the common religion in Travancore”. (Thakkala is now in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu).

The Census Report of Travancore was not written by a British official or Marxist historian. The Census, though part of the operations conducted by the British rulers throughout the continent, was conducted by the government of Travancore. The state was ruled by a family which had accepted Vedic servitude unreservedly. Most of the Dewans who presided over the administration were followers of the Vedic tradition. The senior members of the bureaucracy also belonged to that tradition. The Dewan at the time of the 1931 census was V. S. Subramanya Iyer, whose name itself certifies his Vedic connection.

A report dated June 5, 1881, submitted by the Peishkar (head of the district administration) of Trivandrum, V. Nagam Aiya, to Maharaja Visakham Thirunal, pointed out that the temple at Chitaral in Vilavancode taluk (this place too is now in TN) was a Buddhist place of worship. The Maharaja recorded this comment on it: “Your description is correct. The Brahmins have appropriated and adapted this Buddhist temple as they have done with many others. What you call muni is nothing but the figure of Buddha Gautama”. (Nagam Aiya, well-known as the author of the Travancore Gazetteer, belonged to a Telugu Brahmin family living in the Thirunelveli area of TN)

The Sabarimala deity was given a Hindu identity by the Vedic community by fabricating the fib about the Raja of Pandalam finding the abandoned son of Vishnu and Siva in the forest. The Raja’s family, a remnant of the Pandyans of Madurai, did not reach Pandalam until the 11th century. Sabarimala’s history goes back farther than that.

The Vedic community could not even fabricate a credible lie for the origin of the temple it took over. It didn’t need a good story because there was a slavish population ready to swallow any lie it dished out.
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The quotations above are taken from the book “A Social History of India” by Dr. S. N. Sadasivan, a distinguish academic who taught at the Indian Institute of Public Administration , New Delhi, and the National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie.

The book appeared in 2006. Dr. Sadasivan (1926-2006) was with us for six years after its publication. The book is priced Rs 2,000. For our present purposes, it is only necessary to look into the chapter titled “Buddhism in Kerala”, which can be accessed on the Net at http://bit.ly/dXX2VD.

It appears the intellectual honesty that Visakham Thirunal, Nagam Aiya and V. S. Subramanya Iyer displayed is lacking in the followers and apologists of the Vedic tradition today. Instead of repeating fabricated stories and shouting slogans, let them come out with facts and counter Dr. Sadasivan’s account.

Uthradam Thirunal Marthanda Varma, in an interview to Kalakaumudi a few weeks ago said the Sree Padmanabhaswami Temple had a collection of about 300,000 documents. A reader, in a letter the weekly published subsequently, suggested that the public should be given access to these documents. Another reader stated that the documents had been transferred to the State Archives. A history of the Sree Padmanabhaswami Temple, written by a member of the former royal family, who had access to temple documents, contains references to past connections of some of the non-Vedic communities to the temple. Let other scholars, belonging to other traditions, also study the documents and come out with significant facts they can find in them.

The Thazhaman family and the former Pandalam raja’s family may have in their possession documents which can throw light on the history of the Sabarimala temple. If so, let them throw them open to scholars to study.

A newspaper feature of the period when poet Vishnunarayanan Namboothiri performed priestly functions at the Thiruvalla temple said that temple also had a collection of ancient documents. Let all documents kept under lock and key in temples by the Vedic community be accessed and studied by scholars with different backgrounds so that a truthful account of the past can be reconstructed.

(Facebook note dated 22 April 2011)

Remembering K. M. Bahauddin

2011-03-21T09:46:00.005+05:30

K. M. Bahauddin, former Aligarh Muslim University Pro-Vice-Chancellor, has passed away. Heartfelt condolences to the family.

Bahauddin and I were classmates at the Kottapuram High School at Paravur more than 70 years ago.

He was Principal of the Regional Engineering College, Kozhikode, during the Emergency and had testified before the court in the Rajan case.

Kerala remiss in implementing Forest Rights Act: a letter to Brinda Karat

2011-02-16T17:29:00.003+05:30

Mr T.Madhava Menon, former IAS officer who headed the Tribal Mission of Kerala and is an ardent supporter of the Adivasis’ struggles for justice, has asked Communist Party of India (Marxist) Politburo member Brinda Karat to examine “independently and sympathetically” how her party’s government is implementing the Tribal Rights Act in Kerala.

Madhava Menon, who is a Senior Fellow of the International School of Dravidian Linguistics, Thiruvananthapuram, made the suggestion in a letter he wrote to Ms Karat on Tuesday in response to a statement by her.

The following is the text of the letter:

Madam,

I have been concerned with the condition of Scheduled Tribes people, especially those living in the Forests of Kerala. I was therefore heartened to read the report in The Hindu, Thiruvananthapuram Edition, 15 Feb 2011, in which you had condemned the Central Government circular proclaiming the Forest Department’s unrestrained powers to declare any forest as a “critical wild life habitat” without first observing the spirit of the “Forest Rights Act”.

You complimented the State Govt. of Tripura, as the only one that had implemented the Act in true spirit. On the other hand, you found Congress- and BJP-ruled States as being especially at fault. I am afraid you will have to add the State Govt. of Kerala, ruled under a Communist Party of India (Marxist) leadership, as equally, if not more remiss.

Recently, a renowned NGO conducted a case study of some Kanikkar settlements deep in the Thiruvananthapuram Forest division as a sample. The study was conducted among the forest dwelling Kanikkar in the Fourth and the Fifth wards of the Kuttichal Panchayat, and found the members of the Panchayat, the members of the Forest Rights Committee that has been constituted there, the ST Promoters, and the field level officers of the Forest Department not very knowledgeable about the provisions of the Act. No serious efforts had been taken to educate the concerned persons about these provisions.

Within the jurisdiction of the Forest Rights Committee (FRC) at Kottoor, there are 192 families living in 16 settlements. The members are 5 ladies and 5 men, with the ST Promoter as the secretary; he has received training from KIRTADS about the Act. He has conducted some meetings of the Ooru koottam-s where he has tried to transmit some awareness, by no means adequate. The FRC recieived 68 claim petitions. Significantly, 110 members from 8 settlements declared that they do not require any land allotment under this Act. The FRC recommended grant of lands in 43 petitions received by it, and has forwarded them to the regional (ITDP) and from it, to the District level.

The Survey team constituted by Government commenced to measure the land under actual possession of the applicant families, according to the records of a survey conducted in 1980 (for the purposes of implementation of the Forest Conservation Act). This was (rightly) opposed by the tribal people, because it obviously restricted their holdings under the compulsions of the Forest Department. They further (rightly) argued that they are entitled to the lands they traditionally used to enjoy before the Department encroached on their holdings. This fact, that the survey would limit the areas they would ultimately get to the areas allowed by the Forest Department, and not what they were entitled to under the Act, was one of the reasons why so few were interested in filing applications. According to the perceptions of the study team, the Kanikkar had always suffered from deprivation of even the basic requirements of good living, and health facilities, and had lost all faith in Government and its officials. They found that the benefits conveyed through the agencies of government are not according to their entitlements, nor aimed at their sustainable development.

In Mannarkat Forest Division, the DFO “vetoed” the recommendations of the Forest Rights Committee, on the ground that the tribal people were entitled only to such extents of land as had been “allotted” to them by the Forest Department according to a unilateral survey that had been conducted a few years back (before the enactment of the Forest Rights Act). This seems to be the accepted view of the Department and the Government. As you know, this is violently in conflict with the provisions of the Act, under which a tribal person has to establish his rights under a variety of evidences, including documents, descriptions, and testimony of earlier reports by anthropologists. His rights are certainly not limited to what the Department, during the course of “Historical Injustice”, compounded by the barbarism of the Forest Conservation Act 1980, deigns to “allot” to them.

The net result has been that the tribal persons are being offered only the lands within the “jundas” (boundary marks) erected by the Department after a survey, intended mainly for the strict implementation of the Forest Conservation Act. The result is that the State of Kerala, under the governance of your Party, leads all the rest in oppressing and denying the ST people their legitimate rights.
It is with considerable pain that I write this letter of condemnation of your Party’s government in Kerala. I had always felt that your Party was sincere in its posture of equity and social justice. Your Party, and especially yourself, were instrumental in the enactment of this Act, which is indeed a magna carta for the tribal forest dwellers. But your Party’s government in Kerala has made a travesty of it.

I hope that your Party will consider the issue sufficiently important to examine, independently and sympathetically, how your Party’s Government is implementing the Act in Kerala.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,

T. Madhava Menon.

Mr Madhava Menon can be contacted at tmadhavamenon@gmail.com

The return of a sex scandal

2011-02-06T16:46:00.002+05:30

B.R.P.Bhaskar
Tehelka

With the Left Democratic Front’s term drawing to a close, Kerala is in election mode. The first sign of the poll season was a foundation laying spree. Then came a surer sign: a sex scandal. Many of the projects for which foundation stones are laid are not new. The sex scandal, too, is not new.

For three decades, the LDF, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the United Democratic Front, led by the Congress, have been voted to office in the state in alternate elections. As such, it is now the UDF’s turn. Having done well in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and, rather unexpectedly, in last year’s panchayat poll too, the UDF was brimming with confidence. Having been drubbed in two successive elections and having lost two allies, the Janata Dal (S) and the Kerala Congress (Joseph), the CPI (M) was seeking to refurbish its image damaged by the differing signals sent out by Chief Minister and state party secretary throughout the life of this government.

Suddenly, a sex scandal that refuses to die darkened the political landscape, casting gloom over the entire UDF camp. The ice cream parlour case, as it is known, was one of half a dozen sex scandals that broke in the 1990s, in which the names of several VIPs cropped up. Its central character is P. K. Kunhalikutty, general secretary of the Indian Union Muslim League, the second largest constituent of the UDF. He was not among the accused in the case but he had to bow out of the last UDF government as one of the victims named him in a television interview.

Getting wind of another television bomb being readied by his detractors, Kunhalikutty announced at a news conference that K.A. Rauf, husband of his wife’s younger sister, was preparing a video to blackmail him and posing a threat to his life. When he was Industry Minister, Rauf had figured in media reports as a fixer. He admitted having shown him favours and vowed not to yield to blackmail again. Rauf appeared before television cameras immediately and confessed to his role in bribing girls to keep Kunhalikutty’s name out of their testimony. Malayalam news channel Indiavision aired a report which, it said, it had been working on for four months, based on information provided by Rauf. It included secretly filmed sequences in which a former government prosecutor refers to bribing of two judges who had handled issues relating the parlour case in the high court. The ex-prosecutor disowned the statement and the ex-judges denied the allegation.

The LDF quickly moved in to cash in on the fallout. The police registered cases on the basis of the media reports, the government explored the possibility of reopening of the parlour case in the light of the new revelations, and party leaders made it the main talking point.

The UDF was in disarray. It was Indiavision, which had first telecast the interview which cost Kunhalikutty his ministership in 2004. Its chairman, M. K. Muneer, who too is an IUML leader and former minister, distanced himself from the reports damaging to his senior colleague saying he does not interfere in the freedom of the editorial department and was unaware of what it was doing. Some elements in the UDF may not be unhappy over the developments as they can be used to rein in the IUML. Muslims in the northern parts having been slow in taking to family planning, the community’s population had registered considerable growth, leading to an increase in the number of Assembly seats from the region. As the dominant party of the region, IUML has a strong claim to the additional seats.

Sex scandals have been talked about at every election in the past 15 years. However, they have not impeded the swing of pendulum so far. Also, which front is in power and which front the VIP suspects belong to have made little difference to the handling of the cases.

Candlelight Vigil in solidarity with K. K. Shahina

2011-01-13T18:29:00.000+05:30

The KK Shahina Solidarity Forum has planned a candlelight vigil at Thiruvananthapuram on Friday, January 15, 2011.

The Forum says in a communication:

KK Shahina, Kerala correspondent of Tehelka was framed by the Karnataka police under Section 506 (2) of the Indian Penal Code allegedly for trying to influence witnesses in the Bangluru bom case in which Abdul Naser Mahdani is an accused. Later She was later charged also under section 22 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, a draconian law designed to silence voices of dissent and bury political freedom. The lower courts in Karnataka have denied her anticipatory bail.

Shahina is being punished for carrying out independent investigation into the charges slapped on Madani and for writing about a fragile and unfair legal system working against minorities. She is a journalist of considerable experience. We see her framing as part of arrests, illegal detentions, incarcerations and disappearances of human rights activists and political activists in the country in the recent past. None of the political parties in power in various states – the BJP, the Congress or the CPI(M) -- have been an exception in carrying out such violent acts. The case of Dr. Binayak Sen confirms our worst fears -- that nobody who exercises the right of free speech to expose the violent state will be spared.

On 14th January we will walk wearing black gags and holding lighted candles in support of Shahina demanding immediate withdrawal of charges against her. The procession will start at 5.30 from Statue Junction and end at Swadesabhimani Square near the Martyr’s Column. Prominent artists, journalists and social activists will speak

Please join.

For more information, please contact Kuryachan TD 9447713466

Obscenity vision betrays a state of mind

2010-12-15T23:00:00.008+05:30

The picture above is of a bronze statue that stands in front of the administrative building of the century-old, state-owned University of the Philippines at Diliman, Quezon City. It is named Oblation, which means offering. It depicts a nude male, standing with outstretched hands, as if to say "I have nothing to hide".

This nude figure has greeted students, faculty members and visitors at the entrance of the campus for more than 60 years. No one, male or female, has so far complained that it turns them on. Or that it arouses obscene thoughts in them. Even the conservative Catholic Church, which commands the loyalty of the bulk of the population of the Philippines, has not seen obscenity in it.

What prompts me to post the picture and write about it is the controversy in Kerala over the obscenity which some people have seen in the plant sculpture Sagara Kanya (Mermaid) in the Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) campus at Kochi, the cutting off of its breasts by the fast breeding tribe of self-appointed moral police and the reported finding of the pro-vice chancellor, Godfrey Louis, that Sagar Kanya is not an artistic work suited for an educational institution.

Apparently the last word on the subject has not been said yet. The university syndicate has reportedly set up a three-member committee to conduct a further enquiry.

Sagar Kanya was created by a gardener, Varghese, of Elamkunnapuzha, who, inspired by Kanayi Kunhiraman’s sculpture at Thiruvananthapuram, made out a female figure by growing and cropping plants. With the university gardeners tending it with care, it stood there for two decades without provoking any obscene thoughts in the students who passed through the portals of the institution during that period. Then, somehow, it started disturbing some employees and they complained to the registrar, N. Chandramohanakumar.

Cusat Express, a campus blog, quoted the registrar as saying "I received two complaints objecting to the nude figure of the mermaid at the Cusat garden. The complaints were forwarded by Women's Welfare Association of the Cusat and some Cusat employees."

A few days later Sagar Kanya’s breasts were cut off (See picture on left).

According to Cusat Express, Chandramohanakumar said he was against disfigurement of the work of art, “but as an administrator I was forced to act on it.” He claimed there was a Supreme Court order which discouraged educational institutions exhibiting such paintings and art works.

Cusat Express said university employees, including women, turned up wearing black badges in protest against disfigurement of Sagar Kanya.

Kanayi Kunhiraman recalled that some people had tried to assault him when he did his famous sculpture Yakshi at the Malampuzha dam site and said such people appeared to be still around. “Education at a campus that does not inculcate appreciation of art is purposeless,” he added.

Jose Joseph, New Delhi-based animator, painter and cartoonist, expressed his feelings in a cartoon published in his blog. It is reproduced below.

When the University of the Philippines celebrated its centenary in 2008, it had a distinguished woman, Dr Emerlinda R. Román, as its president. Another woman, Isabelita O. Ryes, was the editor of the centennial souvenir. And on the cover of the souvenir was a picture of Oblation.

Incidentally, as in Kerala, girl students outnumber boys in most departments in almost all universities of the Philippines.

Those who find the Cusat Sagar Kanya objectionable must be made to realize that the obscenity they see lies not in the clipped plants but in their own minds. Psychiatrists may be able to help there.

Congress in Kerala may be exulting too soon

2010-11-22T23:23:00.004+05:30

B.R.P.Bhaskar
IANS

A landslide victory in last month's local elections has heightened the United Democratic Front's (UDF) hopes of returning to power in Kerala in next year's assembly elections but the Congress, which heads the alliance, may be exulting too soon. Its position is not as rosy as it imagines.

The credit for the UDF victory belongs not so much to the Congress as to its allies who helped consolidate minority support behind the UDF after the Communist Party of India- Marxist (CPI-M), which heads the rival Left Democratic Front (LDF), antagonised Muslims and Christians.

Kerala had created history in 1957 by voting the undivided Communist Party to office. It created history again in 1959 by staging a 'liberation struggle', which provided the centre with the excuse to dismiss the Communist government while it enjoyed majority support in the assembly.

The local election vote was 'liberation' by other means. All the forces which had joined hands in 1959 to oust the Communists from power came together again to end their reign over local bodies. The only exception was the Nair Service Society, the forward Hindu community's organization, which now officially follows a policy of equidistance from the two fronts.

In the local elections of 2004, the LDF had secured control of all five city corporations, 12 of the 14 district panchayats, a large majority of the municipalities and block panchayats and two-thirds of the village panchayats. This year, for the first time, the UDF seized control of a majority of local bodies at all levels with the exception of city corporations, where the LDF was able to retain a slender 3-2 lead.

The LDF victory in the 2006 assembly poll came as a hat-trick after successive wins in the Lok Sabha and local elections. In the past three decades, people have voted the LDF and the UDF to power in the state alternately. After successive drubbings in Lok Sabha and local elections, the LDF now faces the possibility of a reverse hat-trick.

The local elections victory has boosted the image of the state Congress leadership, now firmly in the hands of Leader of Opposition Oommen Chandy and Pradesh Congress Committee president Ramesh Chennithala.

For decades, the party had witnessed continuous infighting between an 'I' faction, named for Indira Gandhi, and an 'A' faction, named for A.K. Antony. Oommen Chandy inherited the 'A' faction when Antony moved to the centre. Ramesh Chennithala, a former protege of K. Karunakaran, gathered around him the remnants of the 'I' faction when the veteran walked out of the party, peeved with his neglect by the high command. With Sonia Gandhi backing them to the hilt, the Chandy-Chennithala 'jodi' established a condominium.

Karunakaran, 92, is back in the party but too old and weak to challenge the duo, whose clout is evident from the way they have delayed the return of his son and former state Congress president K. Muraleedharan. He had left the party with Karunakaran but did not return with him. When he finally expressed readiness to return Chandy and Chennithala reacted coolly and the high command did not want to go against their wishes.

While the Chandy-Chennithala combine is in an unassailable position within the Congress, the party's position in the UDF has weakened. The party's electoral performance under them pales into insignificance beside the strides made by its partners, the Indian Union Muslim League and the Kerala Congress (Mani).

The League is in a position to wield power on its own in many local bodies in its stronghold, the Muslim-majority Malappuram district, which happens to be the most populous one in the state. Unable to agree on the division of seats, the Congress and the League had opposed each other in some parts of the district. The League trounced the Congress in those areas. That puts the League in a commanding position.

In areas with a concentration of Christians, the Kerala Congress similarly outperformed the Congress. Its leader, K.M. Mani, had once described the party as one that "splits as it grows, and grows as it splits". He recently strengthened it by wooing back the breakaway factions led by P.J. Joseph and P.C. George, which were in the LDF during the last assembly elections and had helped it attract Christian votes.

Across the state, the UDF polled 15.65 lakh votes more than the LDF. Malappuram alone contributed a lead of more than four lakhs. Kottayam and Ernakulam districts, which have significant Christian populations, provided a lead of more than three lakhs.

The Church, which runs many schools and colleges, was annoyed with the LDF government's education policy. It reportedly played a role in the merger of the Kerala Congress factions. The CPI-M distanced itself from its former Muslim supporters since the Lok Sabha results showed that the association with some of them had cost it many votes. The bid to make up the loss of minority votes by appealing to majority sentiments did not succeed.

The change of government in the state every five years has been made possible by a swing of the pendulum in the southern districts of Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam and Alappuzha. As the minority parties command little influence in the region, elections there are a direct trial of strength between the CPI-M and the Congress. The LDF's lead of about 80,000 votes over the UDF in these districts is something the Congress has to worry about.

കവി അയ്യപ്പന്റെ യാത്ര അവസാനിക്കുന്നു

2010-10-22T13:53:00.004+05:30

കവി എ. അയ്യപ്പന്റെ യാത്ര അവസാനിച്ചിരിക്കുന്നു.

അയ്യപ്പൻ എപ്പോഴും യാത്രയിലായിരുന്നു. യാത്രയ്ക്കിടയിൽ ചില അവസരങ്ങളിൽ അദ്ദേഹത്തെ കണ്ടുമുട്ടിയിരുന്നു.

ചെന്നൈയിലെ ആശാൻ മെമ്മോറിയൽ അസോസിയേഷൻ അയ്യപ്പനെ ഇക്കൊല്ലത്തെ ആശാൻ സ്മാരക കവിതാ പുരസ്കാരത്തിന് തെരഞ്ഞെടുത്തതായും സമ്മാനദാനച്ചടങ്ങ് ഒൿടോബർ 23ന് നടത്താൻ തീരുമാനിച്ചതായും വായിച്ചപ്പോൾ ആ ദിവസം അവിടെയുണ്ടാകുമെന്നതുകൊണ്ട് വീണ്ടും കാണാൻ അവസരമുണ്ടാകുമെന്ന് കരുതി.

പക്ഷെ അദ്ദേഹം പുരസ്കാരം വാങ്ങാതെ യാത്ര മതിയാക്കി.

അയ്യപ്പന് ആദരാഞ്ജലികൾ

Fishermen’s body flays state sponsorship of M. S. Swaminathan

2010-10-22T12:14:00.002+05:30

The Kerala Swatantra Matsya Thozhilali Federation (KSMTF), a leading organization of the fishing community, has criticized the State Government’s decision to recommend the name of Dr M.S. Swaminathan for Bharat Ratna.

Dr Swaminathan, well-known agricultural scientist, hails from a former landowning family of Kerala. The State government decided to recommend his name in recognition of the role he had played in the success of the Green Revolution.

C. Subramaniam, who, as Union Agriculture Minister, had promoted the Green Revolution, had been honoured with the award of Bharat Ratna earlier.

Alleging that Dr. Swaminathan’s work had harmed the traditional rights of the fishing community, KSMTF president T. Peter called for a proper and critical appraisal of his contribution to the agricultural and fisheries sectors.

As an agricultural scientist, Swaminathan might be the father of Green Revolution in India, but it must be remembered that “this very revolution has done great harm not only to agriculture in the country but also to fisheries,” he said. Its role in creating the situation that led to thousands of farmers committing suicide could not be denied. Agro-chemicals promoted by the Green Revolution had poisoned not only farmlands but also water resources. The grains and vegetables consumed by citizens of this country had been affected by toxic chemicals.

Peter added that Kuttanad, the main area of rice production in the state, had used maximum pesticides causing irreversible problems for fisheries. Large-scale destruction of fish had taken place in the region. Scientists had identified chemical pesticides as a causative factor in this.

A real picture from a liquor shop in Kerala

2010-10-18T08:58:00.001+05:30

Here is a picture I received from en e-mail group.

Gulf Today column

2010-10-18T08:41:00.002+05:30

Beginning today, my weekly column in the Sharjah daily Gulf Today will not be confined to Kerala affairs.

In view of the change in the character of the column it will now be posted in the BHASKAR blog instead of here.

All talk and no action is key to happiness

2010-10-11T07:07:00.004+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

At his coronation ceremony two years ago, King Jigme Khesar Wangchuk of Bhutan said, “While I am but king of a small Himalayan kingdom, I may in my time be able to do much to promote the greater wellbeing and happiness of all people in this world.”

Bhutan has been trying to spread cheer in Kerala from the time of his predecessor by holding forth before the people the opportunity to get rich quick through its lottery scheme. In the process, it has ruined many, but one man has reason to be happy: Tamil Nadu-based lottery king Santiago Martin.

Martin’s name has been familiar to Keralites since he donated Rs20 million to Deshabhimani, the official organ of the Communist Party of India-Marxist. Embarrassed by reports of the donation, the party removed EP Jayarajan, a central committee member and confidante of state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, from the post of general manager of the newspaper. He was quietly reinstated within a year.

Martin, who began life as a lottery retailer, started acquiring distributorship of state lotteries after winning a prize of Rs150,000 on an unsold ticket. By adopting a strategy of holding on to unsold tickets, instead of returning them, so as to collect any prizes they may win, he made more money.

Martin’s association with Bhutan lottery began when Sanjay Jayantilal, its promoter, made him sole distributor for Kerala. Three years ago he became its promoter by outbidding others. He is also the promoter of the Sikkim state lottery and sole distributor of several other state lotteries, including West Bengal’s.

Together the Bhutan and Sikkim lotteries siphon off an estimated Rs150 billion each year from Kerala, their biggest market. In 2006, Vigilance chief Siby Mathews, in a report to the state government, said the promoters of these lotteries were acting in gross violation of the provisions of the central lottery law.

Over the past few years Congress leaders have repeatedly pressed for action. Their main concern appears to be Martin’s proximity to the CPI-M leadership rather than his exploitation of the poor by promoting the gambling instinct.

Kerala pioneered state lotteries by launching the country’s first such lottery in 1967. Under private operators, the Bhutan and Sikkim lotteries started holding several draws in a day, providing an easy outlet for gamblers.

The Kerala High Court, while passing orders in a lottery case, recently directed that draws be limited to once a week. There are reports that the order is being flouted and that the official machinery is unable or unwilling to ensure compliance with it.

Martin runs his empire through a chain of companies. The contract with the Bhutan government is in the name of Monica Distributors. The operations in Kerala are under Megha Distributors, owned by his brother, John Kennedy. In West Bengal, he operates under the banners of Bayani Traders and Future Distributors. Almost all his outfits have attracted charges of irregular or illegal activity.

The Kerala sales tax department recently found that Megha Distributors printed Bhutan tickets at a Tamil Nadu facility, which is not a security press, in violation of the law. Other alleged irregularities included sale of fake or expired tickets and operation of single digit lotteries which are banned.

At one time 70 to 80 per cent of all Bhutan and Sikkim tickets were being sold in Tamil Nadu. To save the poor, the former All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government banned all lotteries. The state police have registered several cases for alleged sale of tickets after the ban.

On raiding the Kolkata premises of Future Distributors, which had not been filing returns, Income-tax officials found evidence of large-scale evasion. They slapped a bill of Rs190 million, said to be the largest recovery from any tax evader.

It is natural that Martin has influential friends. A few days ago he embarrassed the state Congress by bringing Abhishek Manu Singhvi, the party’s national spokesman, to argue for him in the High Court. He is said to have financed a film scripted by Tamil Nadu’s DMK Chief Minister, M Karunanidhi. Last week a Bhutan newspaper quoted a Kolkata businessman as saying a lot of ‘big shots’ in West Bengal were behind him.

The public debate in Kerala centres on who must act against the lottery mafia. Congress leaders want the state government to take action. Finance Minister TM Thomas Isaac insists it is for the Centre to act. The debate is all about scoring points. All talk and no action keeps everybody happy.

The political ball game has started

2010-10-04T08:45:00.003+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Elections are here again. In the polling scheduled for October 23 and 25, Kerala’s voters will decide who should manage the affairs of the state’s local self-government institutions (LSGI) for the next five years.

LSGIs constitute the lowest levels of the administration. They have only limited powers. They cannot legislate. There is hardly any scope to raise revenues through taxation. But they have at their disposal grants allotted by the central and state governments.

The large number of posts at stake makes the LSGI elections the biggest undertaking of its kind. In the Lok Sabha elections, the state’s voters choose only 20 MPs. In the State Assembly elections they choose 140 MLAs. In this month’s LSGI elections they will choose more than 21,600 persons to run five city corporations, 59 municipalities, 14 district panchayats, 152 block panchayats and 978 gram panchayats.

A law enacted early this year raised the seats reserved for women in LSGIs from 33 per cent to 50 per cent. If the total number of seats in a body is an odd one, women will have one seat more than men. As a result, more than 11,200 seats will go to women. Since women can contest for general seats also, the number of women elected to LSGIs may exceed this number.

Half of all the LSGIs will have women at the helm. Where men are at the helm, there will be women in the No.2 slot. The top positions will be filled by drawing from the ranks of the elected members.

The entry of women in large numbers makes these elections quite unlike anything the state has witnessed so far. In recent years, fewer women have been elected to Parliament and the State Assembly than in the early years of Independence.

When 33 per cent reservation came into force, political parties experienced difficulty in finding candidates for the reserved seats since women have not been very active in the political sphere. They overcame the problem by drawing candidates from among family members of party leaders or members of affiliated women’s organisations.

This time the parties once again experienced difficulty as they had to find more women candidates than last time.

Unlike the Lok Sabha and the State Assembly, which are legislative bodies patterned after western parliamentary institutions, LSGIs are based on the Indian tradition of village panchayats (five-member councils). The system did not envisage separation of the elected representatives into treasury benches and opposition benches.

Respecting the essential difference between the western and indigenous models, for a long time the political parties stayed out of LSGI elections. Their members did contest LSGI elections but they did so without party labels.

During the past two decades, as the confrontation between the Left Democratic Front led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist and the United Democratic Front led by the Congress, the main contenders for power in the state, became intense, both sides started putting up candidates on party basis in LSGI elections also.

The three-tier panchayat system now in vogue all over the country is the result of an initiative taken by the late Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister. He decided to strengthen the lower levels of administration after he found that middlemen gobbled up most of the funds earmarked for schemes meant for the weaker sections of the society.

In Kerala, the last LDF government took the concept of grassroots level democracy a step further by initiating steps for decentralisation of power and people’s participation in the planning and execution of development projects.

Since then people’s participation has fallen into bad days. Schemes are now drawn up by officials and executed by contractors. Corruption in the administration and favouritism in the distribution of benefits under welfare schemes are widespread.

A number of new players have entered the electoral arena this time and some of them pose a challenge to the ways of the established political forces. They include activist groups which have been pursuing various causes including protection of the environment.

Also among the new entrants are organisations like the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Dalit Human Rights Forum, and CPI-M dissidents, some of whom are erstwhile supporters of Chief Minister VS Achuthananadan.

Both the LDF and the UDF are treating the LSGI elections as a dress rehearsal for the Assembly elections which are due next year. The CPI-M has said the election will be a referendum on the performance of the present LDF government. These are postures aimed at keeping the contests in the familiar matrix of alliance politics.
If the new entrants are able to upset the traditional equations in the LSGI elections, the political scenario may well undergo a change before the Assembly elections.

A celebration of poetry

2010-09-27T06:25:00.003+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Literate Kerala took a short break from its daily preoccupation with political theatre during the weekend to celebrate Malayalam poet ONV Kurup winning the prestigious Jnanpith award.

There were good reasons to celebrate. ONV, as he is known, has been a doyen of Malayalam poetry for long. That explains why some writers and politicians described this award as something which was overdue.

Then, again, no Malayalam poet has won this honour since the late G Sankara Kurup was picked for the very first Jnanpith award 45 years ago. Three Malayalam writers won the award during this period. They were novelists and short story writers.

Further, the award comes as a kind of consolation to prize as votaries of Malayalam bemoan the Central government’s failure to grant it the status of classical language. The other major languages of the Dravidian group, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu, have won such recognition.

Instituted in 1965 by the Bharatiya Jnanpith, a trust set up by Ms Rama Jain, of the Dalmia-Jain family, owners of the Times of India group of publications, the award is regarded as the country’s most important literary prize, surpassing even the awards given annually by Sahitya Akademi, the state-sponsored literary body.

While the Akademi gives separate prizes for each major language of the country, there is only one Jnanpith award in a year. The cash component of the prize, which was always significantly higher than that of the Akademi awards, now stands at Rs700,000.

Since even scholars have only limited knowledge of literary activity in languages other than their own, the task of the jury constituted to choose the winner, is extremely difficult, howsoever eminent its members maybe.

In the beginning, the award was given to a writer for a specific literary work. In 1982, the trust amended the scheme. Now the award is given to a writer in recognition of the writer’s entire contribution to literature.

In the early years, the award was announced regularly each year. For reasons that are not clear, it has fallen behind schedule since 2005. The awards for 2005 and 2006 were announced together in 2008.

On Friday, again, the trust announced the awards for two years together. ONV Kurup was chosen for the 2007 award and Urdu poet Akhlaq Khan Shahryar for the 2008 award.

At one time, Malayalam and Kannada were leading the Jnanpith tally with three awards each. Now Malayalam, with five awards, shares the third place in the roll of honour with Bangla. Kannada with seven awards and Hindi with six occupy the top spots.

The Jnanpith award comes as a fitting tribute to ONV’s seven decades of service to the Muse. While still a student he had caught the attention of not only scholars but all lovers of poetry. His early poems and the folksy songs he wrote for plays and movies earned popularity for him and helped the Communist movement by spreading the message of change.

While some of his contemporaries experimented with new forms of poetry, ONV made an unostentatious transition from revolutionary romanticism to classicism. In the process he raised himself above most of them.

ONV belongs to the small band of poets who played a major part in arousing environmental consciousness in the state at a time when powerful vested interests embarked upon a destructive course in the name of development.

Emerging as the foremost poet of his generation, he won all major literary prizes, an honorary doctorate and the Padma Shri award given by the president. Also, he endeared himself to generations of college students as a popular teacher and thrilled even more people with his oratory.

All that made ONV a natural choice for Jnanpith in the eyes of the Malayalees and when it came they celebrated it viewing it as an honour as much to themselves as to him and his work.

ONV was in Dubai with his wife to attend Onam celebrations organised by a Kerala group there when Education Minister MA Baby informed him on the telephone about the award. Baby was at the airport with Law Minister M Vijayakumar to receive the poet and escort him home on his return to Thiruvananthapuram.

Baby said the state government would request the Jnanpith authorities to hold the award presentation ceremony in Kerala.

Political and parochial considerations underlying such moves must not cloud the fact that ONV’s award reinforces the place of Malayalam in Indian literature and gives a boost to poetry at a time when misgivings about its future are widespread.

A poll that can spell a change in course

2010-09-20T06:17:00.002+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The elections to the local self-government institutions, scheduled for late October, are seen by the ruling Left Democratic Party and the opposition United Democratic Front as a dress rehearsal for the State Assembly poll due next year.

The LDF, led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, had approached the 2005 elections with great confidence, having bagged 18 of Kerala’s 20 Lok Sabha seats the previous year. The CPI-M’s own tally was a record 12 seats. The Congress, which usually fared better than the CPI-M in the national elections, did not get a single seat.

The CPI-M buttressed the LDF position by entering into a tactical alliance with others including the Democratic Indira Congress of former Chief Minister K Karunakaran and his son and former state Congress chief K Muraleedharan. In the event, the LDF won all the five city corporations, 34 of the 52 municipal councils and a large majority of the district, block and village panchayats.

The LDF also won the Assembly elections comfortably. With three wins in a row, the party was entitled to a grin. That grin was visible on Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan’s face in the advertisements the LDF government placed in newspapers to publicise its achievements before the announcement of the local elections schedule.

Public perception of the government’s performance appears to be at variance with the claims made by the government and the party. Last year’s Lok Sabha elections revealed erosion in the CPI-M’s base. The departure of two constituents, Janata Dal (S) and Kerala Congress (J), and an informal ally, the Indian National League, has weakened the LDF. Their rumps left in the LDF are of doubtful value.

The UDF thinks it is now its turn to grin. But it may be grinning too soon.

With no one to challenge its hegemony, the CPI-M could complete seat allocation in the LDF in most places without a hitch by last week. The Congress was yet to pacify the restive Kerala Congress leader KM Mani, Communist Marxist Party leader MV Raghavan and Janadhipathya Samrakshana Samithi leader KR Gowri Amma.

A close look at voting trends suggests that the popular belief the LDF’s loss is the UDF’s gain may be too simplistic.

In the parliamentary elections of 2004 the LDF’s vote share was eight percentage points above the UDF’s. Since the CPI-M and some other parties made tactical alliances cutting across the dividing line, it is not easy to determine the vote share of the two fronts in the local elections of 2005. In the 2006 Assembly elections, which the LDF won, its lead over the UDF was less than six percentage points.

In last year’s Lok Sabha poll, the UDF’s vote share was only three percentage points above the LDF’s. The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, which undertook a detailed study of the voting behaviour of different social and economic groups, reported a significant drop in LDF support among the Christians (15 percentage points), forward Nairs (14 percentage points) and Dalits (five percentage points).

The UDF’s gains among Christians (13 percentage points) and Nairs (four percentage points) fell short of the LDF’s losses. Both fronts lost Muslim votes: the LDF loss was three percentage points and the UDF loss two percentage points.

Neither front has understood the significance of this phenomenon. It points to the emergence of new players on the political arena besides the two state-level fronts and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

It also indicates that the conventional wisdom that one front’s loss is the other’s gain is no longer valid. Just as there are voters who switch sides from election to election, there are also voters who reject the theory propagated by the two fronts that there is no alternative before them except to rally behind one of them.

The collapse of the TINA (there is no alternative) theory has opened up the possibility of a change in the direction of electoral politics in the state. Small groups which attract voters who are disillusioned with the big parties and the fronts they lead may not be able to make a difference to the outcome of the elections at the national and state levels, but they may be able to do so in the local elections.

Yet another factor to be taken into account is the reservation of half the seats at all levels of local self-government for women. If the new forces are able to challenge the LDF and the UDF effectively in these seats the pace of change will quicken.

A heady cocktail of politics and graft

2010-09-13T08:50:00.006+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Having lived through eight liquor disasters in 19 years, Kerala has developed the capacity to overcome the impact of such tragedies quickly and make them a part of the games that politicians play. It is, therefore, not surprising that the hooch deaths that cast a shadow over Malappuram during the Eid celebrations has become another topic to be talked out on television channels.

In terms of death toll, Malappuram ranks lower than Vypin where 78 persons died in 1982, Punalur where 34 died in 1981 and Kalluvathukkal where 33 died in 2000. But there are certain factors which set it apart from the earlier tragedies.

It shows that liquor disaster, until now a southern phenomenon, has moved northward. The killer potion was distributed not in just one place but in a few places in the Malappuram and Thrissur districts.

Liquor tragedies usually occur at festival time when the demand for intoxicants goes up. According to Excise Minister PK Gurudasan, taking into account the southern districts’ history, the authorities had taken adequate precautions there in advance of Eid and Onam.

The liquor trade is the main source of revenue of the state government and subject to strict regulations and tight control. The government cannot, therefore, escape blame for liquor tragedies.

Arrack, which is locally distilled, having been banned by the United Democratic Front government in 1995, the law permits the sale of only two types of liquor: rum, whiskey and such other items labelled as ‘Indian-made foreign liquor’ (IMFL), and toddy, a sap drawn from coconut or other palms.

The Kerala State Beverages Corporation, a public sector undertaking, has monopoly over IMFL trade. Toddy shops operate under licences issued by the Excise department. To get a licence the applicant has to show he has access to at least 50 coconut palms and the services of at least five persons who are registered members of the Toddy Workers Welfare Board.

Official data indicates that there are more than 5,900 toddy shops in the state and more than 36,000 registered workers, including more than 16,000 toddy tappers.

The government earned Rs36.50 billion by way of taxes on liquor sales last year. The Beverages Corporation, whose sales have been growing steadily, has fixed a target of Rs53 billion for this year and the government expects excise revenue of Rs40 billion.

Inevitably, media debates on the Malappuram tragedy became spats between spokesmen of the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist and the Congress party. The Opposition demanded a judicial probe, and the government readily agreed.

There were judicial inquiries into almost all the liquor tragedies of the last two decades. The judges, after gathering evidence, explained how killer drinks came to be distributed and outlined measures to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies. The CPI-M and the Congress which take turns at the helm did not care to implement these measures.

Last week CPI-M state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan called for stern action against those involved in illicit liquor trade. Left Democratic Front convener Vaikom Viswan voiced suspicions about sabotage and demanded a probe into that aspect.

Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan insinuated that the liquor mafia had been trying to implicate senior police officers, who had been after it, in the custodial death of an accused in a murder case in Palakkad, which is now being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

It is easy to see that the ruling party leaders are drawing red herrings across the trail. The victims of the tragedy had bought the drink from licensed toddy shops, not bootleggers.

The state police had investigated the custodial death for months before the High Court transferred the case to the CBI. There was no suggestion of the liquor mafia’s involvement. at that time.

Like earlier instances of this kind, the Malappuram tragedy is the result of a brew of which politics and graft are the main ingredients. The state does not produce enough toddy to meet the needs of the shops it has sanctioned. The shopkeepers supplement the supplies with toddy produced artificially using industrial spirits, some of which can be lethal.

Shops in several districts, including Malappuram, show Chittur in Palakkad as the source of toddy since there are not enough palms and tappers in their areas. Official records indicate that they get 225,000 litres from there but the actual production is only 75,000 litres. The gap between demand and supply is made up at the shop end. The shopkeepers buy the silent approval of officials to this activity with regular payments.

Playing with students’ fortune

2010-09-06T09:00:00.003+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

A week after the Supreme Court upheld the High Court order asking self-financing medical colleges to fill the management quota from the rank list prepared on the basis of the common entrance examination conducted by the state government the students are in the dark about the fees they have to pay.

It was eight years ago that Kerala allowed the setting up of private professional colleges on self-financing basis. Since then the government and the managements have been playing with the students’ fortune.

The term ‘self-financing’ is a misnomer. The finance comes from the students in the form of exorbitant fees.

Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have had such colleges since the 1980s and they were attracting students from Kerala in large numbers. AK Antony, who, as chief minister, sanctioned the earliest elf-financing colleges, envisaged admission to half the seats from the government’s rank list, leaving the managements free to admit students of their choice for the remaining seats.

Initially, students admitted under government and management quotas paid the same fees as were paid by students in the government colleges: Rs11,500 for the medical degree course and Rs6,600 for the engineering degree course.

However, students seeking seats under the management quota had to pay huge sums under the counter. The courts ruled such payments illegal. The managements then demanded higher fee structures. As the government failed to bind the managements down through legislation or agreement they could freely fleece the students.

Self-financing colleges now dominate the professional education sector. Seventy of the 84 engineering colleges and 12 of the 17 medical colleges in the state come under this category. The sanctioned intake of the engineering colleges is above 26,000 and that of the medical colleges is 1,100.

Belated attempts to control the managements through legislation have led to litigation. Over a period, problems in the field of engineering education have died down but those in the field of medical education, where scope for profiteering is vast, have persisted.

Every academic year now opens with the students or managements approaching the courts with petitions. The plethora of judgments that have emerged has not yielded a formula that can end the agony of students and guardians.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist, which heads the Left Democratic Front, had vigorously opposed the UDF government’s stand on self-financing colleges. Its student affiliate’s campaign against the private colleges led to violence on several occasions.

After the change of government in 2006, it fell to the LDF, particularly the CPI-M, to manage the problem. Its record has been as dismal as that of the UDF.

Every year Education Minister MA Baby holds talks with the private managements only to surrender to them. This year, after signing an agreement on fee structure with the government, the managements filled the 450 seats in their quota on the basis of an entrance examination which they themselves conducted.

Early last month the High Court set aside these admissions and ordered fresh admissions from the government’s rank list. Since most of the students admitted on the basis of the test held by the managements had not taken the entrance examination conducted by the government, they have to go out.

While the Supreme Court upheld the High Court order with regard to admissions, it has still not disposed of the petitions. In offering seats to students in the government’s rank list, the managements have stated that the fees payable by them will depend upon the apex court’s final order expected on September 13.

Under the agreement the managements signed with the government this year, they are entitled to collect from each student admitted under the management quota an annual fee Rs550,000 and a caution deposit of Rs500,000. Now they are also demanding a bank guarantee to cover the fees payable for four years. This, they say, is necessary to prevent their being left in the lurch if a student drops out.

The managements’ demands are beyond the means of most of the students who took the government examination. They have very little time to raise the money as the Medical Council of India has fixed September 30 for the completion of admissions. To make things worse, the managements have threatened to raise the fees if they are not able to get enough students from the government list to fill the management quota.

UDF prepares for seat sharing talks

2010-08-30T09:55:00.002+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

As the Left Democratic Front, traditionally the front-runner in local elections in Kerala, enters the arena weakened by the departure of several allies, hope runs high in the rival United Democratic Front.

Most LDF deserters have found refuge in the UDF. Now it has to cope with the problem of finding seats for the newcomers.

The UDF was in a bad shape at the time of the last elections in 2005. The Congress had been weakened by the exit of former Chief Minister K Karunakaran and his son and former State Congress President K Muraleedharan. The LDF’s prospects improved as the Communist Party of India-Marxist having struck a deal with Karunakaran’s Democratic Indira Congress.

Factionalism in the Congress is under check. Karunakaran is back in the party. Muraleedharan has not been readmitted but he has publicly pledged support to the UDF.

MP Veerendrakumar’s Janata Dal, which has been rechristened Socialist Janata, is now a constituent of the UDF. The Congress has appealed to all allies to part with some seats for it. The appeal has not invoked any response.

With the merger of the Kerala Congress faction led by PJ Joseph, which was with the LDF for two decades, the Kerala Congress (Mani) has become the second largest UDF constituent, pushing the Indian Union Muslim League to third place. It has made known that it expects a larger share than in the last elections by virtue of its growth. The Congress party has asked it to accommodate the Joseph group in its quota.

The Janadhipathya Samrakshana Samithi of KR Gowri Amma and the Communist Marxist Party of MV Raghavan are also seeking more seats than last time. Gowri Amma recently hinted that she would explore alternatives if her party’s claims are ignored.

While the JSS remains in the UDF, Gowri Amma has been staying away from its meetings in protest against the Congress party’s failure to act against its members who had worked against her and her party colleagues in the last Assembly elections.

Gowri Amma and Raghavan floated their parties after being expelled from the CPI-M. Some CPI-M leaders, including Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan, have resumed personal contacts with Gowri Amma in the recent past. The CPI has said its doors are open to her.

There is little chance of Gowri Amma returning to the CPI-M or the CPI, or the JSS becoming a constituent of the LDF. However, the possibility of a tactical alliance between the CPI-M and the JSS cannot be ruled out. The CPI-M has entered into such alliances with UDF partners in the past.

The Indian National League, a breakaway group of the Indian Union Muslim League, which worked closely with the LDF for many years, has moved over to the UDF camp. The Congress has already decided on an electoral understanding with it.

The delimitation of constituencies has resulted in an increase in the number of wards in various local bodies. However, this is not enough to satisfy the demands of all allies.

The UDF has said it will begin talks on seat allocation for the elections to the local self-government institutions on September 1.

Last week Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy and State Congress President Ramesh Chennithala did some tough talk apparently to set the tone for the negotiations which will be held at lower levels. The party also fielded two other leaders, former Speaker Vakkom Purushothaman and PT Thomas, MP, to counter the demands of the JSS and the Kerala Congress (M) respectively.

In theory, the two fronts divide the seats in proportion to the strength of the constituent parties. But who knows for certain the strength of the parties?

The LDF had won its big majority in the State Assembly in 2006 with only 48.63 per cent of the votes polled. The UDF did not get even half as many seats as the LDF but it had secured 42.98 per cent of the votes. A swing of the pendulum enabled the UDF to bag 16 of the state’s 20 Lok Sabha seats last year.

The CPI-M’s share of the votes polled in the Assembly elections was 30.45 per cent and the Congress party’s 24.09 per cent. These figures indicate that the parties which lead the two fronts together command only about 55 per cent of the votes. Both stand in desperate need of allies to win elections.

Light fare in heavy Onam packs

2010-08-23T09:37:00.002+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Today is Onam, the most important day in the Keralite’s calendar. Bloated newspapers heralded the arrival of festive season days in advance with two-in-one editions. Television channels whipped up interest with announcements of celebrity chats and other special programmes.

The two-in-one newspaper idea was conceived by Malayala Manorama, which is the most widely circulated Malayalam daily and pulls in the most advertisements, a decade ago. Mathrubhumi followed suit.

The day’s edition has to be printed in two sections because of the limited capacity of the press. The masthead appears in the same size in both the sections, making it difficult to decide which one is the main section.

The front pages of both sections of Manorama carry a note saying: “Two Manoramas today.” Mathrubhumi plays no such trick. It simply says, “In two sections today.”

Traditionally the newspapers also bring out special Onam editions in magazine format with literary content. Since the special edition attracts lots advertisements, the two large newspapers have been bringing it out in two volumes for some years. This year Manorama had to go in for three volumes.

Onam, the traditional harvest festival, has been the main shopping season for as long as one can remember. To begin with, it was the time when people bought new clothes. Today it is the time when people acquire all manner of goods.

According to market watchers, 50 to 60 per cent of all consumer durables sales in Kerala take place during this season. Sales of expensive items like jewellery and automobiles also go up at this time. This year the makers of a well-known brand announced prizes worth more than Rs9.3 million in a bid to boost sales of their mobile handsets.

Manufacturers of consumer goods, automobiles and mobile handsets and jewellers resort to heavy advertising at this time. Although television probably has more clout than newspapers, the print media still gets the biggest share of the advertising pie.

A website devoted to media matters quoted spokesmen of Malayala Manorama and the Communist Party of India-Marxist daily Deshabhimani as saying they earn one-fifth of their annual advertisement revenue during the Onam season.

Manorama has been working hard for years to boost Onam advertisements. It began Onam brand building a decade ago. The success registered in the early years encouraged it to plan new activities to impress advertisers and advertising agencies.

This year, beginning July, in an innovative campaign, it staged Pulikali, the tiger dance which is associated with Onam celebrations, at the offices of big and small advertising agencies in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai. As the dancer performed to the accompaniment of drums, the newspaper’s marketing staff handed out to media planners pamphlets which said “The best way to reach Malayalees is through Manorama.”

The two Manoramas the subscribers received each day for a fortnight for the usual price and the three volumes of the special they got for Rs50 testify to the success of the paper’s efforts.

The media website’s reporter who spoke to marketing officials of Mathrubhumi and Deshabhimani said both were hoping to haul in twice as much as they did last year.

At the market place everybody is happy — producers and distributors because they have sold more, the media because they have earned more, and consumers because they have acquired new products.

However, not many consumers of the media — newspaper readers and television viewers — can share their same sense of exhilaration. For, the Onam fare which has come in heavy packages is rather light.

The newspaper can accommodate more advertisements by increasing the number of pages. But it cannot find enough new poets and writers to produce additional reading material to fill the extra pages.

Many editors fill the extra pages with material that can be generated with comparative ease like celebrity interviews and discussions. The superstars hogged much of the space in one Onam special. Another devoted 55 pages (inclusive of advertisements, of course) to a minor actor-politician and 23 more to a comedian.
Cartoonist EP Bunny, who lives outside the state, provided a rare insight into the local scene in an interview published by Madhyamam in its Onam special. “Although power has been decentarlised to the panchayat level, in daily life the Keralite has to go through a more hierarchical setup than before,” he said. “The people maintain their dignity playing snake and ladder everyday.”

Discord mars goodwill season

2010-08-16T07:31:00.004+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

On the eve of the Onam festival, when people rejoice in memories of a just society characterised by equality and fraternity, Kerala is under a cloud of distrust generated and sustained by acts motivated by political and religious considerations.

A popular myth links Onam with annual homecoming by a benevolent ancient king, Mahabali, whom jealous gods had deposed. Ballads hail his reign as a time when all were equal and there was no falsehood or deceit.

Although the myth connects Onam tenuously with the Hindu religion, scholars are agreed that it is the traditional harvest festival of the region, and followers of all faiths join the celebrations enthusiastically, making it the most important goodwill season in the Keralite’s calendar. In recent years, the state government has developed it as the tourist season.

Onam, which falls next week, acquires added sanctity this year as it coincides with the holy month of Ramadan. Muslims, who form about 25 per cent of the population, constitute the state’s largest minority.

The people of the state have always prided themselves in the region’s long tradition of communal harmony. India’s oldest synagogue, church and mosque are all located in the state. They bear eloquent testimony to this hoary tradition.

Kerala, still under Buddhist-Jain influence, extended a warm welcome to Jews when they landed here centuries ago to escape persecution in Israel. The local Christian community believes St Thomas, one of Jesus’s 12 disciples, came here and preached the gospel. An Arab, Malik bin Deenar, reputedly built the Cheraman mosque at Kodungallur in the lifetime of the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

In the early 1920s, violence erupted in Malabar in the course of the Khilafat movement launched by the Congress at the instance of Mahatma Gandhi. Although the event had communal overtones, scholars are of the opinion that it was primarily anti-British and anti-landlord in character. Thanks to the spirit of inclusiveness promoted by the social reform movements that had swept the region earlier, the trouble did not spread far.

The emergence of vote banks built around religious and caste identities promoted a degree of divisiveness after Independence. Sectarian groups gained political legitimacy as the Congress and Communist parties pampered them to win elections.

Communal sentiments grew in the 1990s in the wake of the Ayodhya temple controversy fanned by the Sangh Parivar. That was when Abdul Naser Mahdani appeared on the horizon. That was also when National Development Front, predecessor of the Popular Front of India, which is now under the scanner following a hand-chopping incident, took birth.

Both the Congress and the CPI-M vied for Mahdani’s favours but he eventually ended up as a pawn on the political chessboard. He spent more than nine years in a Tamil Nadu jail without bail or parole before being acquitted in a bomb blast case. As these lines are written, a police team from Karnataka is waiting to arrest him to face trial in a blast case in that state.

The murder of PK Mohammed Abdul Hassan Maulavi of Chekannur, whose reformist ideas infuriated orthodox elements, in 1993 and the communal riot that rocked the fishing hamlet of Marad in 2002 were rude reminders that fanaticism was on the rise. The warning signals evoked only a weak response.

The hand-chopping case shows how those who ought to act soberly are exacerbating the situation with short-sighted action.

In March, TJ Joseph, a college teacher in Thodupuzha, set a question paper in which students were asked to provide punctuation marks in a text, which was an imaginary dialogue between the Creator and a character named Muhammed. There was nothing in the text to suggest that the character was the Prophet (PBUH) but word spread that the teacher had denigrated the Prophet (PBUH). The college, the university, the government and the media implicitly endorsed the charge of denigration.

Religious leaders in Thodupuzha came together and brought communal sentiments under control quickly. However, elsewhere, some people were plotting revenge. On July 4 Joseph was waylaid near his home in Muvattupuzha while returning from church and his right hand chopped off. Six weeks later, he is back at home, the severed hand sewn up, but the social fabric remains torn.

The political parties have their eyes on the local self-government elections which are at hand and the Assembly elections which are not far away. The CPI-M, eager to live down the impact of its disastrous association with Mahdani in last year’s parliamentary elections, is taking a position close to that of the Bharatiya Janata Party on communally sensitive issues.

Organisations like the pro-CPI-M Democratic Youth Federation of India, the Indian Union Muslim League, the BJP and Jamaat-e-Islami have drawn up separate programmes to repair the damage to the social fabric. The partisan approach reflected in these efforts offers little room for hope.

The grand lottery loot

2010-08-09T09:14:00.002+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Kerala now has the highest per capita income as well as expenditure in India. High-rise buildings and bustling shopping centres strewn all over the state are visible symbols of its prosperity

Official figures never reflected the state’s financial health fully and correctly. Academics were able to inject a measure of realism in statistics relating to income. However, there is no proper understanding of where the money goes.

After a long period of hand-to-mouth existence, the state’s fortunes turned as jobseekers started migrating in droves to the Gulf States in the wake of the oil boom of the 1970s. The savings they sent home boosted the state’s economy.

Since money flowing into banks from abroad did not figure in the government’s books, the state remained below the national average in income tables. Scholars at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, helped correct the picture by working Gulf remittances into the tables.

In the net state domestic product (NSDP) table Kerala is still at the ninth place among 22 states. In the per capita table, it ranks higher — at the sixth place. The NSDP includes income of non-profit institutions too. The Consumer Pyramid constructed by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), which presents a realistic picture of family income, placed the state first with a per capita household income of Rs63,000 in 2009, way ahead of Delhi (Rs55,000) and Punjab (Rs42,000), the other big earners.

Gulf remittances, which were around Rs3 billion a year in the late 1970s, have now grown to about Rs300 billion a year. Banking statistics indicate that domestic savings add up to almost as high a figure as non-resident deposits.

How much of the money that flows in from outside and is generated locally goes into construction and conspicuous consumption? There is no ready answer to this question.

The Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, which conducted a survey a few years ago to find out how Kerala lives, estimated that each year the people of the state spent about Rs68 billion on marriages and Rs28 billion on medical treatment. The figures it rolled out leave a wide gap between income and expenditure.

There is no reliable estimate of consumer spending in the state. Each year the government conducts a Grand Kerala Shopping Festival with the active cooperation of commercial interests. It claims the festival is a great success but does not divulge any sales figures.

Jewellers are among the government’s major partners in the shopping festival. India, with a sales turnover of 900 tonnes, is the biggest consumer of gold in the world. Kerala, which accounts for less than four per cent of the country’s population, accounts for 25 per cent of the gold sales.

The huge turnover of the jewellers, unofficially estimated at hundreds of billions of rupees, is not reflected in the sales tax figures. Last year the government managed to push up sales tax revenue from Rs1.5 billion to Rs1.8 billion.

Kerala tops in per capita liquor consumption. The Kerala State Beverages Corporation, which has a monopoly over sale of Indian-made foreign liquor, reported a record turnover of Rs55.39 billion in 2009-10. This was 20% more than the previous year’s figure.

The biggest beneficiary of the spurt in liquor sales was the state government. The KSBC contributed Rs42.60 billion to the exchequer by way of sales tax, excise duties, licence fees and other levies last year.

Kerala also tops in the consumption of tobacco. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation, per capita monthly expenditure on tobacco products in the state was Rs.14.50 in the villages and Rs18.50 in the urban areas. The national average for both urban and rural areas was only Rs9.90.

The expenditure story will not be complete until we look at the loot by the lotteries.

Kerala pioneered the system of state lotteries. In 1967, the first year of operation, the state Lotteries department sold tickets worth Rs2 million and made a profit of Rs1.4 million. Over the past four decades, sales have risen to Rs4.84 billion and profit to Rs1.04 billion.

The state Lottery department has now been put in the shade by lotteries operated by private agencies under licences issued by the Sikkim state and the neighbouring country of Bhutan. They take away much more money than the state government.

Based on data relating to tickets printed and sold in the state by private lottery agencies, Mathrubhumi, a leading newspaper, reported last week that they are siphoning off about Rs157 billion from the state each year.

Apparently a large number of poor people in the state today pin their hopes for a better future not on the state government but on the governments of Sikkim and Bhutan whose agents have lured them with schemes that provide for several draws each day.

Controversy over judges’ remarks

2010-08-02T07:34:00.002+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Talkative judges, testy politicians and sensational media can make a deadly combination. As the cacophony that reverberated through Kerala last weekend showed.

It all started with Justice S Siri Jagan castigating the government for failing to comply with a high court directive to act against illegal quarrying in the Malayattoor and Neeleswaram areas.

He had before him two writ petitions, including one filed by a citizens’ group named Grama Samrakshana Samithi, seeking action against those carrying on quarrying in land allotted by the government for agricultural purposes.

When the matter came up earlier the court had ordered cancellation of the patta (title) of land where quarrying was on. It also asked the government to recover from the land owners the cost of the granite that had been quarried and to ascertain whether the Mining and Geology department had quarrying licences unlawfully.

The government informed the court that the pattas had been cancelled but sought time to submit a report on the loss to the state and the role of Mining and Geology officials.

Giving expression to the court’s displeasure at the government’s tardy response to the court’s directive, the judge wondered whether it was working for the benefit of politicians and mafia gangs. In a pointed reference to the inaction of the police, he pointed out that the court could issue a directive to call in the army if the government was unable to maintain law and order.

Those were harsh words but, then, it is not unusual for judges to express displeasure in strong terms. The government was, however, upset as it had been subjected to such criticism often in recent times.

In a measured response to Justice Siri Jagan’s remarks, Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said judges should introspect on the propriety of such comments. His party colleague MV Jayarajan, who is already under the scanner for attacks on the courts, let loose another harangue.

In an unprecedented action, Advocate General Sudhakar Prasad called on Chief Justice J Chelameswar to convey to him the government’s displeasure over repeated adverse comments by judges.

The Supreme Court had recently expunged similar remarks made by two other judges of the Kerala high court.

While hearing bail applications of the accused in a case of attempted murder last year, Justice V Ramkumar had observed that law and order in the state was in a shambles and that many criminals came from the Home Minister’s constituency. On an appeal by the state government, the Supreme Court ruled last month that the comments were unnecessary, ill-timed and uncalled for.

Last week the Supreme Court removed from an order of Justice K Padmanabhan Nair an observation that the sandalwood mafia’s influence appeared to extend to the office of the Forest Minister.

The decision came on a petition by KP Viswanathan, Forest Minister in the then United Democratic Front government, who had resigned in the wake of the court’s stricture. The apex upheld his contention that the high court should not have made such an observation without hearing him.

While in the former case expunction came in just one year, in the other the process took more than five years. As Viswanathan has pointed out, had the decision come sooner he could have returned to the Cabinet.

Political parties generally take a narrow view of judges’ remarks which are incidental and not binding. The opposition sees them as a stick with which to beat the government.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist, which is crying hoarse over Justice Siri Jagan’s comments, had hailed Justice Padmanabhan Nair’s remarks against Viswanathan.

Such remarks by judges, referred to as obiter dicta, receive undue public attention in Kerala as the media, aware of their sensational worth, play them up. Many mainstream newspapers displayed Justice Siri Jagan’s comments under eight-column headlines at the top of the front page.

There is a case for introspection, as suggested by Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, but not by judges alone. The judges must certainly ask themselves whether the impact of obiter dicta was not diminishing as a result of overuse. The politicians must ask themselves whether they are not overreacting to them. Above all, the media must ask themselves whether they are serving the best interests of the society by dwelling too much on casual comments which have only ephemeral value. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, August 2, 2010.

Gearing up for a decisive poll

2010-07-26T07:21:00.000+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Besides the long-established political parties, a host of smaller entities, many of them with no political affiliation, are preparing to contest the local self-government institutions (LSGIs) in Kerala, which is likely to be held towards the end of September.

LSGIs constitute the lowest levels of administration. They are bodies elected to exercise authority at the district, block and town and village levels.

As in the elections to Parliament and the State Assembly, the main contenders for power in LSGIs are the Left Democratic Front and the United Democratic Front. Traditionally, the LDF has had an edge over the UDF, thanks to the well-oiled election machinery of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, which heads the alliance.

In the last elections, held in 2005, the CPI-M got control of all five city corporations, all but one of 14 district panchayats, a majority of the municipal councils and block panchayats and nearly 700 out of about 1,000 village panchayats.

A series of reverses suffered by the CPI-M in by-elections to local bodies held during the past year point to erosion of its mass base. With a disastrous Lok Sabha poll behind it and new Assembly elections less than a year away, it has much at stake in the LSGI elections.

This is one reason why the CPI-M, which limited the role of small LDF constituents four years ago, is now willing to placate even the smallest splinter group. It recently decided to retain the breakaway P C Thomas faction of the Kerala Congress (Joseph) in the alliance and welcomed back the National Congress Party which had been shown the door earlier.

Originally, the panchayat system did not envisage division along party lines. However, lately local bodies too have become an arena of partisan warfare.

The last LDF government had initiated a programme of democratic decentralisation and people’s participation in the planning process. It generated a lot of enthusiasm, which evaporated fast. People’s interest in local bodies waned as parties which controlled them resorted to favouritism.

The coming elections are the first since women’s reservation in LSGIs was raised from 33 per cent to 50 per cent. When women’s reservation was introduced, the political parties drafted wives and daughters of their leaders as candidates. The CPI-M picked candidates from the ranks of its student and women’s affiliates too.

When elected, these candidates generally acted as proxies for male party functionaries. Those who refused to do so were reined in. As a result, women’s empowerment, the proclaimed objective of reservation, remains unrealised.

The Bharatiya Janata Party and the People’s Democratic Party of Abdul Naser Mahdani, which fought LSGI elections in the past and are holding the balance between the LDF and the UDF in some local bodies, are hoping to improve their position this time.

Several new players are also preparing to enter the arena. They include the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Social Democratic Party of India, the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Dalit Human Rights Movement.

The BSP, a recognised national party which is in power in Uttar Pradesh, has only a small presence in Kerala. The SDPI is the political wing of the Popular Front of India, which is under a cloud following the arrest of several of its members in connection with the chopping of the hand of a college teacher at Muvattupuzha, allegedly as punishment for denigration of the Prophet (PBUH).

The Jamaat and the SDPI have done considerable groundwork in areas where they have influence. Both the groups are planning to field Muslim women in constituencies where the community has substantial presence.

A large number of civic groups involved in agitations over environmental and developmental issues are also likely to contest the elections. They want to challenge the stranglehold of the LDF and the UDF on state politics. CPI-M dissidents may also enter the fray.

All this invests the LSGI elections with unusual significance. The outcome of the election may well decide whether the present two-front system can survive for survive.
With many forces vying with one another, multi-cornered contests are inevitable. The resulting splintering of votes will work to the advantage of the two fronts. Realising this, the small entities are exploring the possibility of coming together on a common platform. All of them agree on the need to eliminate corruption and favouritism which are rampant in LSGIs today.

Of the party, by the party, for the party

2010-07-19T08:19:00.002+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Forget Abraham Lincoln’s definition of democracy. Kerala has rewritten it to read ‘government of the front, by the front, for the front.’ Since Left Democratic Front constituents other than the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) are midgets, under LDF rule democracy gets reduced to ‘government of the party, by the party, for the party.’

Last week, George Mercier, a member of the opposition United Democratic Front, asked in the State Assembly how many cases of attacks on women had been registered and how many women had been killed since the present government took office.

Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan replied that police had registered 33,148 cases of attacks on women and 243 women had been killed during the past four years.

There is nothing to suggest that attacks on women have increased under LDF rule. Since the question was about cases reported after the LDF came to power, there was no occasion for the minister to provide comparable figures of the UDF period.

In limiting the inquiry to the period of LDF rule Mercier was following a pattern set by others before him. Members often use the question hour to ferret out material which may show the other side in a bad light.

How much has been spent by ministers of this government on entertainment, on telephone calls, on air travel? Such questions come up regularly in the Assembly.

The information the government provides may not be enough to decide whether the spending was justified but it will be enough to plant a suspicion in people’s minds that ministers are spendthrifts.

The change of government in 2006 may not have led to a growth in the crime rate or rise in ministerial extravagance, but there is reason to believe the tendency to misuse authority is increasing. Since many officials are aligned with the CPI-M through service organisations, it is easy for the party to help those whom it favours.

One of the earliest scandals of the present government relates to irregularities in the appointment of assistants in Kerala University. The Upa-Lokayuta, who inquired into the matter, concluded that there had been political interference. The beneficiaries were members of the CPI-M’s youth and student affiliates. The issue is now before the high court.

During the Upa-Lokayukta’s inquiry it came to light that the answer papers of 40,000-odd candidates who took the examination held for filling the post had disappeared. The external agency which evaluated the papers said it had returned them to the university but the university denied having received them. The university bodies are packed with nominees of political parties who are ready to do their bidding.

While revising the voters list of the Kannur constituency before the by-election to the Assembly last year, 9,357 new names were added. Many new voters were shown as staying in buildings under the CPI-M’s control. The Congress alleged that the party had fudged the list with the help of officials.

The Election Commission directed the district authorities to register a case and investigate. While they complied with the directive, the chances of effective prosecution of the guilty officials are thin.

Punishing deserters is as much a part of the scheme as rewarding the faithful. After the Janata Dal quit the LDF and joined the UDF, its president, MP Veerendrakumar, and his son, MV Shreyamskumar, MLA, have come under attack as land grabbers.

The CPI-M Wayanad district secretary CK Saseendran led a group of tribal people under the banner of the Adivasi Kshema Samithi and occupied an estate belonging to Shreyamskumar. The court ordered that they be removed. In a stage-managed show, the police evicted the squatters only to return after the cops left.

High court judges who watched a video of the eviction drama noted that legislators had tried to obstruct the police and asked the Advocate General to advise those concerned to respect the law.

The CPI-M justifies the encroachment on Shreyamskumar’s property saying he is in illegal possession of land that belongs to the Adivasis. The land was in his possession all through the two decades during which the Janata Dal was an LDF constituent. The party or its governments did nothing to reclaim it for the Adivasis during that period.

The most worrying aspect of political infiltration of the service is the reported formation of CPI-M fractions in the police. It was in the 1990s that the presence of party members in the police first came to light. Recently the media reported that policemen had been called to party offices in some places for meetings. – Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 19, 2010.

Degeneration of decentralised planning

2010-07-12T11:19:00.002+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Kerala has a proud record as a pioneer of decentralised planning in India, having launched a programme for preparing development plans with people’s participation soon after the Indian constitution was amended to facilitate devolution of power to local self-government (LSG) institutions at the district, block and village levels.

While the state’s performance in this regard has won acclaim nationally, those who have been associated with the programme at one stage or another during the past 15 years are agreed that it is plagued by problems that defeat its very purpose.

The people’s plan programme was launched with fanfare by the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government headed by EK Nayanar. The formation of a committee headed by EMS Nambooripad, the tallest leader of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), to propagate the programme testified to the importance attached to it by the party which heads the LDF.

The Nayanar government, while transferring control over institutions under several departments to LSGs, announced that one-third of the state’s annual budget outlay will be earmarked for them.

The Congress-led United Democratic Front government, which came to power in 2001, retained the decentralised set-up but rechristened the programme as Kerala development plan, presumably because the original name was associated in the popular mind with the LDF government. When the LDF returned to power four years ago, many people expected it to re-launch the people’s plan but it did not.

An expert team, headed by MA Oommen, a noted economist, appointed by the present government, said in a report presented last year that the programme had failed to achieve its primary objective of boosting agricultural production. Farm output which was growing at 3.42 per cent a year declined at 0.29 per cent a year after the introduction of decentralised planning.

It found that there had been a decline in people’s participation in the planning effort. Development seminars, which were conceived as a means of preparing people to participate in the planning process, had been reduced to a ritual. Plans were being prepared by officials. It cited the case of a junior clerk who prepared 120 projects for LSGs in just one month.

Dr S Mohanakumar, KM Shajahan and N Niyathi, who were involved in the programme in the early period, presented their assessment of its working at a seminar organised by the Kerala Vikasana Samithi in Thiruvananthapuram recently.

Mohanakumar, who is attached to the Institute of Development Sudies, Jaipur, is a CPI-M member. Shajahan, who was on the personal staff of VS Achuthanandan when he was Leader of the Opposition, was expelled from the party for alleged anti-party activities. Niyathi has no political affiliation. All three agreed that the expectations raised by people’s planning remain unfulfilled.

Mohanakumar laid the blame for the failure of the programme at the doors of the Kerala Sastra Sahithya Parishad, a non-governmental organisation, whose activists were involved in the preparatory efforts. He also said a section of the CPI-M was opposed to the programme.

He pointed out both LDF and UDF started distributing benefits under various schemes administered through LSGs to their members and supporters disregarding all parameters. As people’s participation declined, everything came under the control of the bureaucracy.

He alleged that only 35 to 70 per cent of the fund allotted for a scheme was spent. The rest of the money was shared by officials, contractors and politicians under an agreed formula.

Shajahan observed that decentralised planning had turned into decentralised corruption. The Comptroller and Auditor General had pointed out that several LSGs had failed to submit their accounts to the Local Fund Audit department for scrutiny.

Of the more than 18,000 LSG members about 12,000 belonged to the CPI-M members and many of them also held party posts, he said. They were handling the money allotted to LSGs. There were discrepancies in the statistics provided by the government about LSG spending. The mechanism created to scrutinise the accounts was failing. All this pointed to large-scale corruption under cover of decentralisation.

Niyathi pointed out that the commitment to transfer one-third of the state budget to LSGs was not being honoured. While the Nayanar government gave 29.6 per cent and the UDF government 28.8 per cent, the present LDF government had given them only 21.6 per cent. In the absence of effective coordination among various official agencies, projects often suffered. He cited the examples of hospital buildings remaining unused as there was no water or power or staff. – Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 12, 2010.

Vehicle Rally by Hartal Opponents in Kochi

2010-07-06T19:54:00.003+05:30

Say No to Hartal campaigners on the road in Kochi on Monday

On Monday, about 25 citizens opposed to the hartal called by the Left parties and the Bharatiya Janata Party took out a Vahana Jatha (Vehicle Rally) in Kochi under the auspices of the Say No to Hartal campaign

The following is a message from Facebook friend Raju P. Nair who took the initiative in organizing the campaign:

Thank you for the support extended.

As informed, Say NO to Hartal held a Vahana Jatha to protest against the hartals. I am happy that almost 25 cars and some eminent personalities took part in the Jatha held today. Hon’ble Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer inaugurated the Jatha by handing over the flag to the Jatha Captain.

Rotary International, Chamber of Commerce and Travel Operators Association of Kerala extended their support.

Ms. Deepthi Mary Varghese, Fr. Roby Kannancheril, Director, Chavara Cultural Center and Mr. Mansour of the Chamber of Commerce led the Jatha.

Say No to Hartal campaigners offering transportation to stranded passengers at Ernakulam Jn railway station

The vehicles which took part in the Jatha proceeded to the Ernakulam Jn railway station and offered free transfers to stranded passengers.

The media extended great support to this movement.

Request your support to this campaign in the future. Please kick off a debate in the media about the bill presented by Hon'ble Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer against the bandhs and harthals.

Ruling party’s tirade against judges

2010-07-05T15:24:00.002+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Communist Party of India-Marxist, which heads Kerala’s ruling coalition, has launched an orchestrated campaign against high court judges, prompting Chief Justice J Chelameswar to observe that “attacking judges personally does not augur well for democracy.”

What drew the party’s ire was the court’s June 23 judgement directing the state government not to grant permission to hold meetings on public roads and road margins. It also asked that if any meeting was held the police must remove all installations and people and prevent it.

A division bench comprising Justice CN Ramachandran Nair and Justice PS Gopinathan had passed the orders on a petition by a resident of Aluva challenging the authorities’ action in permitting a public meeting on the road in front of the local railway station. The Executive Engineer, Public Works Department, Roads, and the Superintendent of Police, Ernakulam Rural district, were cited as respondents.

The judges who perused a set of photographs presented by the petitioner were convinced that the meeting had blocked traffic on the busy road and that such meetings resulted in suffering for the travelling public.

Even though the petitioner drew the court’s attention only to the instance of a road in Aluva, the judges decided to extend the benefit of the decision to road users all over the state. They did not visualise any objection to such extension from any corner, including government agencies, “because the act sought to be prevented is illegal.”

It soon became evident that the assumption that there would be no objection was not correct. All national parties, including the Congress, the CPI-M and the Bharatiya Janata Party criticised the ban on roadside meetings, which have been a feature of public life since the days of the freedom struggle. They dubbed it as a denial of the constitutionally guaranteed rights of association and assembly.

The charge of denial of rights is far-fetched as the court has not imposed a blanket ban on meetings. It only wants to prevent meetings hindering traffic. “In our view,” the judges said, “all meetings should be permitted only in stadiums, public grounds outside road margins and grounds of educational institutions on holidays.”

Three days after the court order, addressing a roadside meeting held on a thoroughfare to protest against the Centre’s decision to hike fuel prices, CPI-M state committee member MV Jayarajan, a close lieutenant of party state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, reviled the judges who had delivered the judgement.

After seeing television and newspaper reports of the speech, a lawyer approached the high court with a plea to initiate contempt proceedings against Jayarajan. A bench headed by Chief Justice decided to hear the Advocate General on the issue.

Meanwhile party central committee member EP Jayarajan carried the campaign against the judges further with an equally vituperative speech in which he declared no one could take action against MV Jayarajan.

Pinarayi Vijayan and Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan also joined the campaign but they spoke with a certain degree of restraint. Vijayan said they were only criticising a wrong judgement, not attacking judges. Achuthanandan pointed out that the court had a duty to hear the state’s views before pronouncing a judgement of this kind.

But the vile campaign continued at another level. The Democratic Youth Federation of India and the Students Federation of India organised protest marches to courts at different places in the state and their leaders made virulent attacks on judges. “If necessary we will hold meetings outside judges’ houses,” said a young hothead.

MV Jayarajan’s speech could have been dismissed as the work of a rabble-rouser but for the calibrated performances that followed. The DYFI and SFI are CPI-M affiliates. In the party’s politburo and state committee there are members charged with the task of overseeing the activities of these organisations.

This is not the first time that the CPI-M has come out against court judgements adverse to its interests or those of the government that it heads. However, the current campaign marks a new low in its public conduct. There was no vicious campaign of this kind even when the late EMS Namboodiripad, the tallest party leader of the time, was found guilty of contempt of court in the 1960s for a speech in which he alluded to the class character of judges. – Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 5, 2010

Declining appeal of mother tongue

2010-06-28T14:25:00.002+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Who is the father of Malayalam language, music composer Sarat asked noted playback singer KS Chithra recently during a television musical reality show in which both are judges.

“I don’t know the father but I know the mother of Malayalam,” Chithra quipped. “Who’s that?” asked Sarat. “Ranjini,” she replied, pointing to the ebullient presenter of the popular programme.

The judges and the studio audience broke into laughter. The viewers, too, enjoyed Chithra’s banter. It is possible to espy a prophetic element in it. For, Ranjini is one of the young television presenters who use an admixture of Malayalam and English, which may well be the language the next generation of Malayalis speaks.

In the last century, spoken Malayalam had undergone change, helped by the spread of education and appearance of mass communication media like newspapers and films. The print media influenced the spoken language most. Television having emerged as the most popular medium, it now has greater ability than the press to shape the spoken language.

It is natural for a living language to undergo changes. It will be unrealistic to try to freeze it in a particular form in the name of maintaining its purity. However, those who love the language have a duty to watch on the trends and do what they can to ensure that the language evolves in a manner suited to the needs of the society and does not move away from the traditions of the native speakers. That does not seem to be happening.

Leading writers regularly express concern at current trends and voice anxiety over the future of Malayalam. However, they have not put forward, singly or collectively, any proposals to arrest the undesirable trends.

The proposals being canvassed by the literary and political establishments are directed more at establishing the glory of Malayalam than at promoting its healthy evolution. The demands for grant of classical status to the language and setting up of a Malayalam university are examples.

The Central government having recognised Tamil, Telugu and Kannada as classical languages, Kerala is the only southern state whose official language does not enjoy that status. Also, Malayalam is the only major Dravidian language without a university to foster its growth.

One reason why Malayalam’s claim for classical status has received short shrift is that it is of comparatively recent origin. Until a few years ago, it was projected as a modern language by playing down its ancient association with Tamil and playing up its more recent link with Sanskrit.

Thunchath Ramanujan Ezhuthachan, the putative father of Malayalam language, composed his masterpiece “Adhyathma Ramayanam” as recently as the 16th century. The late Dr K Ayyappa Paniker, while hailing “Ramacharitham,” believed to have been written by Sree Veera Rama Varma, who ruled Travancore in the closing years of the 12th century, as the oldest extant classic in Malayalam, had conceded that it was in an early form of the language “which appears to be almost indistinguishable from Tamil, except perhaps for a linguist”.

Neither classical status nor a university bearing its name can save Malayalam if it is not able to meet the needs of the people. Television channels’ increasing resort to English even for names of programmes is but one manifestation of the widespread feeling about its inadequacy.

The state government is committed to the use of Malayalam for all official purposes, but it still transacts much of its business in English. Malayalam has a low rating as a medium for acquisition of knowledge. Since English is seen as the key to upward mobility, more and more parents are putting their children in schools where that language is the teaching medium, sometimes paying fees that are beyond their means.

This year enrolment in schools under the state system was 115,000 less than last year. The fall is attributable in part to the drop in the number of children in the school-going age group as a result of the decline in the growth of population. But it is also due in part to children shifting to other systems.

From 2003-04 to 2009-10, enrolment fell from 1.6 million to 1.3 million in government schools and from 3.0 million to 2.8 million in aided schools. During the same period, enrolment in expensive unaided schools imparting education in the English medium rose from 270,000 to 365,000. It is for the government and scholars to devise measures to enhance the appeal of the mother tongue. –Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 28, 2010

'Act now to prevent Kerala becoming a police state'

2010-06-21T21:47:00.003+05:30

On 11 May 2010, a Select Committee of the Kerala Legislative Assembly published a questionnaire seeking opinions and advice from the general public, jurists and human rights organizations concerning the Kerala Police Bill, 2010. The purpose of the exercise is to receive comments and recommendations concerning the Bill so that the aspirations of the people of Kerala are reflected in the law governing the state police, when the Kerala Legislative Assembly finally enacts the law.

Nervazhi and the Asian Legal Resource Centre jointly released on Monday a study on the Bill titled "Kerala, a police state in the making - Act Now!".

Nervazhi is a registered human rights organization, based in Thrissur district, Kerala. The ALRC is a registered regional human rights organization based in Hong Kong. The ALRC enjoys a General Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and have extensive network of partners in India and other Asian countries.

Nervazhi has considerable experience concerning human rights issues, in particular those related to the functioning of law enforcement agencies in Kerala. Justice institutions, in particular the police, prosecution and the judiciary have been ALRC's area of focus since its inception in 1986 and thus its field of expertise. The ALRC has extensive knowledge about the functioning of police in various Asian jurisdictions, in particular India. The ALRC has assisted the drafting of similar laws in South Asian countries, the latest, a law criminalizing torture and custodial death which is currently under the consideration of the Bangladesh parliament.

For preparing the comments and suggesting recommendations to the Bill, Nervazhi and ALRC have consulted experts in the field, including senior police officers serving and retired in India, jurists, academics, journalists and above all the people of Kerala. For this very reason, the comments and recommendations will reflect a combination of expertise emerging from this knowledge base.

We have no claims whatsoever that the following pages contain a comprehensive analysis of the Bill, but we are certain that the Bill, as it stands now has the potential to turn Kerala into a police state. The comments and recommendation are thus made with an intention to prevent this. We have analyzed the Bill bearing in mind various human rights cases that we have come across from Kerala in particular and India in general. We have studied the jurisprudence developed internationally concerning law enforcement agencies and their operational standards and the case law developed by the courts in India, the Supreme Court of India in particular, concerning the rights of the citizens while in custody and the duty of the state as well as that of the law enforcement agencies in dealing with the citizens while engaged in law enforcement duties.

We have held consultations with the general public about the Bill. The use of simple language in the document, understandable to the common person, is thus not an intentional use of any editorial style, but is the result of the effort taken to write down the opinions the ordinary Indian living in Kerala provided us concerning the Bill. It reflects the collective wisdom of the ordinary people, rooted in their experience of dealing with the police as a state institution.

The recommendations also reflect this collective voice of the people of Kerala and their hope that their police can be corrected, provided the law governing the police is also right. Almost everyone whom we have consulted has informed us in various forms that the state of affairs of the Kerala police is deplorable at the moment. They want the new law to be a tool to bring change to this unacceptable status quo.

The ALRC, along with the comments and recommendations is also submitting a model law for the consideration of the Legislature to criminalize torture and extrajudicial executions.

We hope that the recommendations and comments will be duly considered and appropriate changes incorporated in the Bill. We are certain that by incorporating the recommendations in the Bill, the Kerala State Police will be provided with a statutory framework to discharge their duties, thereby contributing to develop India, a country of great people into a mature democracy.

A copy of the comments and recommendations with the copy of the original Bill is sent either by email, fax or post to Honourable Governor of Kerala, Honourable Speaker and all other members of the Kerala Legislative Assembly, Judges of the Supreme Court and the Kerala High Court, the National and State Human Rights Commissions, the Director General of Police - Kerala and all print and electronic media in Kerala.

The comments and recommendations with the Draft Bill can be downloaded from here.

New group equation in Congress

2010-06-21T16:17:00.002+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Factionalism has reappeared in Kerala’s Congress party which had presented a semblance of unity in the recent past with Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy and Pradesh Congress president Ramesh Chennithala operating like Siamese twins.

Oommen Chandy inherited the leadership of the Congress (A) faction along with the chief minister’s post when AK Antony moved to Delhi to join the Central Cabinet in 2004. Ramesh Chennithala was a protégé of Congress (I) leader K Karunakaran but had broken away from him and emerged as a group leader in his own right.

After Karunakaran’s exit from the party with his son and former Pradesh Congress president K Muraleedharan and Vayalar Ravi’s entry in the Central Cabinet, there was no one to challenge to the Chandy-Chennithala duo, which enjoyed the patronage of party president Sonia Gandhi. As a result factionalism subsided.

Karunakaran returned to the Congress after a brief sojourn in Sharad Pawar’s National Congress Party, but Muraleedharan is still waiting to be readmitted. Chandy and Chennithala are in no hurry to let him in. They don’t want his readmission to be considered until his six-year suspension is over.

There was a time when the Congress in Kerala elected its office-bearers through a transparent process. As factionalism became intense, rival groups enrolled bogus members, leading to bitter disputes over the rolls and elections became impossible. The central leadership then nominated office-bearers, as in other states.

Although Sonia Gandhi is said to be keen to restore the democratic process, the exercise now under way falls short of full-scale elections. The party is now experimenting with a form of guided democracy.

For the youth and student bodies of the party, Rajiv Gandhi, who is general secretary of the All India Congress Committee, devised a system of elections in which there are no losers. There is an open contest between two candidates. Te one who gets the largest number of votes becomes the president and the runner-up is accommodated as vice-president.

Office-bearers of the Congress party at different levels are being decided through consensus building. There is a tacit understanding not to disturb existing arrangements.

As the process got under way in the state, word spread that Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala had struck a deal to maintain the status quo. This means Chandy will be the chief minister if the Congress-led UDF emerges victorious in the next Assembly elections, as is expected, and Chennithala will remain PCC president. This led to heartburn in some erstwhile faction leaders.

Later there was speculation that Chennithala may make a bid for the chief minister’s post with the backing of the Nair Service Society, which speaks in the name of the forward Nair community. This raised hackles in the Chandy camp. The party is keen to placate the NSS leadership which has expressed dissatisfaction at the absence of a Nair acceptable to it in the Central Cabinet.

According to reports in the local media, under the emerging consensus Oommen Chandy’s Congress (A) faction will head the party unit in seven of the 14 districts. The reconstructed Congress (I) faction under Chennithala will get six districts. One district will go to Karunakaran’s nominee.

The ‘A’ faction, it is said, will get at least half of the 280 seats in the Pradesh Congress Committee, the ‘I’ faction about 115 and the Karunakaran rump about 15. That leaves just about 10 places for leaders who have stayed away from factional games.

The new group equation places the Congress at a disadvantage in the context of the realignment of caste and religious forces now under way.

There has been a consolidation of Christian sectarianism with the merger of the PJ Joseph faction of the Kerala Congress, which was until recently an LDF constituent, in the KM Mani faction, a UDF constituent, and The Indian Union Muslim League, another UDF constituent, is working for a consolidation of Muslim groups, taking advantage of the alienation of Muslim bodies which were aligned with the LDF.

That leaves the Congress in keen competition with the Communist Party of India-Marxist for the Hindu vote. The CPI-M has already made a pitch for it by talking of the growth of Muslim and Christian communalism and glossing over the growth of Hindu communalism. Karunakaran has warned that the new equation may not help the party in the panchayat elections due this year and the Assembly elections to follow next year. –Gulf Today, June 21, 2010

Real estate sector booms again

2010-06-14T13:43:00.001+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Kerala’s real estate sector is booming. Overcoming the gloom imposed by the global meltdown, builders of apartments and villas are going ahead with mega projects once again.

The state began witnessing intense construction activity three decades ago, fuelled by massive inflow of funds from migrant citizens working abroad, mostly in the Gulf countries. Builders soon stepped in with offers of modern bungalows, villas and flats.

As foreign remittances grew, the demand for luxurious abodes rose. Some big players then entered the scene to cater to the high-end market. Real estate operators started grabbing property, pushing up land prices.

When the financial markets crashed, expecting a fall in the demand for costly homes, many builders switched to construction of budget flats. The appearance of advertisements offering “world-class villas and apartments” indicates that the real estate business is again on the upswing.

According to industry sources, the quick turnaround was made possible by the improved liquidity resulting from steps taken by the central government and the Reserve Bank of India to tide over the economic crisis.

They claim that speculators, who were very active before the economic downturn, have withdrawn from the field. The middlemen have also disappeared. As a result, they now deal only with genuine buyers.

Banks have helped in the recovery process by holding interest on housing loans at low levels, especially for small, short-term borrowings. The State Bank of India group, for instance, has been charging an interest of only eight per cent in the first year. In the second and third years a higher rate of 9 per cent will apply on loans of up to Rs3 million and of 9.5 per cent on loans exceeding Rs3 million. The borrower has the option to stay on 8 per cent interest for two more years, and then move to floating rates.

In Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi, apartment builders, with their eyes on high-earning professionals, have gone in for projects close to information technology parks and hospitals.

The big builders, who were only operating in the cities and their immediate vicinity earlier, have now started moving into smaller towns which are flush with money like Kottayam, Thiruvalla, Kannur and Thalasseri.

The industry has begun aggressive promotional activity abroad. Last month the state’s builders organised a Property Expo in Abu Dhabi, where they sought to put across to non-resident Keralites the message that high living does not cost the earth and that the right time to buy property is now.

Much of the construction activity in the recent past has been along the waterfront. Apart from apartment buildings, many tourist resorts have also come up close to the water bodies which give Kerala its distinct identity as a must-see destination. Environmentalists have voiced concern over the impact of large-scale construction on the region’s fragile ecology.

The Indian Green Building Council, which has been promoting environmental awareness in the industry, has set up a centre in Kochi. Some builders are already claiming that their projects are in tune with the “green” philosophy.

While there is no reliable data on the size of the real estate sector, claims by builders indicate it is huge. A three-year-old firm, which has won this year’s national Emerging Developer of the Year Award, says it has completed 15 mega projects so far and has 11 on hand.

At the lower end, builders are offering “affordable homes” for Rs1 million to Rs2.5 million. At the higher end there are “super-premium condos” of 2,500 to 5,000 square feet in the price range of Rs100 million to Rs250 million.

Several builders are said to be planning to mobilise additional capital from the open market to be able to expand their operations while the boom lasts.

The housing scene testifies to the alarming growth of disparity in Kerala society. Real estate agents are grabbing farmlands and islands with the tacit support of the political establishment to build apartment complexes even as thousands of landless families, mostly Adivasis and Dalits, are clamouring for land to cultivate.

According to official statistics, more than 705,000 families in the state are homeless. Of them, about 333,000 are both landless and homeless. More than 372,000 have land but not homes.

In 2008 the state government launched the EMS housing scheme with the proclaimed objective of providing houses to all by 2011. Families below the poverty line were to get houses with a plinth area of 25 to 40 square feet. Financial constraints have impeded the progress of the scheme. – Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 14, 2010

How many lanes will Kerala need in 2050?

2010-06-10T19:57:00.002+05:30

The following is an excerpt from an article by G. Ram Mohan Nair, retired General Manager of Kerala SIDCO, now working as Chief Consultant at Industrial Consultancy Services, Kochi, which has appeared in the May 31-June 15 issue of Passline, a business publication from Kochi.

There is no dispute about the following:

The population is increasing day by day. Vehicle density in Kerala is 1:6 against the national average of 1:25.

Irrespective of anything the Government does, development takes place at a steady pace automatically. If the infrastructural facilities are also not developed in tune with it, chaos will result., and our life will become unbearable.

Vehicular traffic increases at an average rate of 10% in the State. At this rate traffic will become 2.6 times after 10 years, 4.2 times after 15 years and 6.7 times after 20 years.

This shows that if it is comfortable today with a four-lane traffic, after five years we will have to make it six lanes, after 10 years 10 lanes, after 15 years 17 lanes and after 20 years 29 lanes to maintain the same comfort level.

So in 2030 Kerala will need 29 lanes. How many lanes will we need in 2050? Any guesses?

Battle over road width

2010-06-07T09:19:00.002+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The consensus on national highways, hurriedly worked out by the ruling Left Democratic Front and the opposition United Democratic Front barely two months ago, has collapsed.

Strident voices for repudiation of the agreement to restrict road width to 30 metres and abandonment of the BOT (build, operate, transfer) formula are now being raised by leaders on both sides of the political divide.

The consensus was reached at an all-party meeting called by Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan in the wake of protests all along the major highways against acquiring land to increase road width to 45 metres.

Nine national highways run through the state. Together they account for 1,542km. The longest of them is NH17, which runs from Panvel in Maharashtra to Edappalli, near Kochi. About 420km of it lie in the state. About 417km of NH47, which links the Tamil Nadu towns of Salem and Kanyakumari, also lie in the state.

While national highways in other states were widened during the past two decades in keeping with the revised standards set by the Central government, Kerala could not do so for two reasons. One was the state administration’s reservations over some aspects of the Central policy. The other was the difficulty in acquiring land in view of strong opposition from the public.

The revised Central specifications fixed the width of the four-lane national highway at 60 metres. The state government urged the Centre to reduce the width to 30 metres in Kerala considering the heavy density of population. The Centre agreed to reduce the width to 45 metres.

Two months after the present LDF government took office in 2006 the government of India agreed to develop 868 kilometres of national highways in the state at a cost of Rs50 billion. However, the project could not be taken up because of the LDF’s reservations about the BOT formula. By the time LDF changed its mind, opposition to land acquisition became almost insurmountable.

On the basis of the decision taken at the all-party meeting, the chief minister led a delegation, which also included the Leader of the Opposition, to the Prime Minister in April and made a fresh plea to fix the road width at 30 metres.

When reports from New Delhi suggested that the Centre was not inclined to accept the request, Public Works Minister Jose Thettayil, who belongs to the breakaway Kerala Congress faction, broke ranks and came out against the consensus on 30-metre width.

Communist Party of India-Marxist state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan followed up with a suggestion that another all-party meeting be held to look at the matter afresh.

Since then a number of trade and civic organisations have come out opposing the move to reduce the width. Most of them want the government to stick to the figure of 45 metres, which was previously decided upon. Some want the state to fall in line with the national standard and go in for 60-metre wide highways.

Those favouring wider highways argue that there will be a bottleneck if road width in the state is fixed at 30 metres. They cite the state’s high vehicle population and the increasing incidence of road accidents to reinforce their demand.

In the eight years from 2001 to 2009, the number of vehicles in the state rose from 2.45 million to 4.88 million. However, multiplicity of vehicles rather than their number appears to be the major problem. Of the vehicles on the road, 2.92 million are scooters and motorcycles.

State Crime Records Bureau statistics show that poor driving standard is the main cause of road accidents. It attributed as many as 25,899 of 26,371 road accidents reported in 2009 to “fault of driver of motor vehicle”.

The need to facilitate fast vehicular traffic on the highways is not in doubt. Some groups agitating against land acquisition have offered a formula to end the impasse. This envisages construction of four lanes in 30 metres in the land already available with the government and construction of four more lanes on an elevated highway to be built by erecting pillars.

An elevated highway will, of course, involve higher construction costs. However, since there is no need to uproot people there will be saving in rehabilitation expenses. Any gap still left can be covered by collecting toll from users of the elevated highway. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 7, 2010

A quiet consensus on caste census

2010-05-31T14:42:00.002+05:30

By BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

A noisy debate is going on in India on whether or not to gather caste data during the census operations now in progress. The issue does not, however, figure in the public discourse in Kerala.

As soon as the census operations began national political parties like the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, which draw support from the backward classes of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar respectively, demanded that caste data be collected. The Bharatiya Janata Party supported the demand but the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh opposed it.

In Kerala, the Nair Service Society, which represents the forward Nair community, joined backward class organisations like the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam in endorsing the demand for caste census. As a result, a quiet consensus has emerged on this issue even though the state’s major political parties, the Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist, have not publicly taken a position.

The SNDP Yogam, which represents the Ezhava community, was the first to join the demand raised in Parliament by the SP and RJD. On caste-related issues, the Yogam and the NSS are generally in disagreement as the interests of Ezhavas and the Nairs, who together account for the bulk of the state’s Hindu population, differ.

Since 1872, when the subcontinent was under British rule, the government in New Delhi has been gathering population data every 10 years without fail.

In Britain, the census exercise usually steers clear of religion. On the few occasions when religious data was collected, the information was published separately, and not included in the census report.

Departing from the practice, the colonial administration gathered information on religious affiliation and made it part of the census report from the very beginning. The official explanation was that the government wanted detailed information about the governed.

The first census classified the people in four groups: I. Indo-Aryan; II. Iranian; III. Semitic; and IV. Primitive.

Among Indo-Aryans, three subgroups were recognised: A. Hindu, which was further divided into (a) Hindu Brahmanic, (b) Hindu Arya-Vedic theists and (c) Hindu Brahmo-Eclectic theists; B. Sikh; C. Jain; and Buddhist.

Parsis, who profess the Zorashtrian religion, were the only community in the Iranian category. The Semitic category covered three religious groups: A. Musalman; B. Christians; and C. Jews. The Primitive category was divided into two: A. Animistic; and B. Miscellaneous.

Scholars are of the view that the census reports promoted consolidation of the Hindus on a national scale. Over the years the government refined the classification but it continued to be fuzzy with the result that the reliability of the data relating to castes was in doubt. The administration did not have an equal interest in religion and caste.

The officer in charge of the 1931 Census wrote: “India is the most religious country in the world and (that) must be regarded as the justification for the importance attached to religion in the Census of India as compared, for example, with the US of Americas where culture is relatively independent of religion.”

In the early 1930s, Madras presidency in British India and princely states like Travancore and Mysore introduced reservation in government services for backward castes.

After the 1931 census report was published, the Hindu upper castes, who, though numerically small, dominated government and politics, mounted pressure to stop gathering caste data. Following this, caste enumeration was dropped. However, in 1941 the government gathered information about Maithili Brahmins of Bihar at the instance of their association for a small payment of Rs24,000.

The Travancore and Cochin regions of Kerala, which were under princely rule, were among the earliest “native states” to follow the British example and conduct census operations. Population data from these states formed part of the census reports published by the Indian government.

At election time, all parties of Kerala, including the Congress and the CPI-M, take into account the caste and religious composition of constituencies, as assessed by their leaders, while selecting candidates. Their silence on the issue of caste census is attributable to the lack of clarity at the national level.

With the Congress divided on the issue, the Union Cabinet recently constituted a committee of ministers to take a final view in the matter. The CPI-M’s position, as outlined by its leader in the Lok Sabha, is that the party considers caste a divisive factor but is not against collecting data in the context of the reservation available to backward classes.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 31, 2010.

Fronts in disarray as polls approach

2010-05-24T10:48:00.001+05:30

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The rival political fronts which have provided Kerala stable administrations during the past three decades are in disarray as the state moves into election mode again.

Two elections are due in the next 12 months. Elections to local bodies at village, town, block and district levels are to be held in September. State Assembly elections must take place by May next year. After that the state can look forward to two election-free years as the next Lok Sabha poll is due only in 2014.

The electoral performance of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist and the United Democratic Front (UDF) led by the Congress over their years presents a set pattern. While they alternate in power at state level, the LDF has an edge over the UDF in the local bodies elections and the UDF has an edge over the LDF in the parliamentary elections.

The UDF’s rout in the Lok Sabha elections marked a departure from the familiar pattern. Its impressive win in last year’s poll restored the pattern.

As the two fronts prepare for the local bodies elections, changes in their composition and re-emergence of factionalism in the CPI-M and the Congress have created an air of uncertainty.

Soon after the last Assembly elections, the LDF had expelled the National Congress Party to keep out former chief minister K Karunakaran and his son K Muraleedharan who had joined that party. The Janata Dal broke away from the alliance in the wake of differences which surfaced during the Lok Sabha elections. A few days ago the Kerala Congress (Joseph) walked out of the LDF to merge with the Kerala Congress (Mani), which is a constituent of the UDF.

The Indian National League, which has been an informal ally of the LDF since it broke away from the Indian Union Muslim League, is in negotiations for return to the parent body.

Following the national leadership’s assessment that the camaraderie with Abdul Naser Mahdani’s People’s Democratic Party harmed the party in the Lok Sabha elections, the CPI-M has been distancing itself from it. After this month’s police action at Kinaloor the Jamaat-e-Islami, which has generally backed the LDF in elections during the past several years, has moved away from it and the CPI-M has branded it as an extremist group.

The CPI-M itself suffered a setback when three former MPs, AP Abdullakutty, KS Manoj and S Sivaraman quit the party to enter the Congress. Abdullakutty is now a Congress member of the Assembly.

While these former MPs are not political heavyweights the fact that they belong to the Muslim, Christian and Dalit communities has electoral significance.

Recent public statements of Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan and State Secretary Pinarayi Vijayan show that they are still locked in combat. Several days have passed since Vijayan got the State Committee to reiterate the choice of CP Narayanan as the chief minister’s political secretary, overriding Achuthanandan’s objections. The chief minister is yet to sign Narayanan’s appointment order.

If the LDF has suffered as a result of desertions, the UDF is suffering as a result of accretions. Having admitted the Janata Dal as a constituent, the UDF has to accommodate it in the coming elections. The Congress has voiced reservations over merger of the Mani and Joseph factions as the unified Kerala Congress will demand more seats.

Personal ambitions appear to have strained the relationship between Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy and Pradesh Congress President Ramesh Chennithala who had worked closely together during the past few years, opening up the possibility of new alignments within party. K Karunakaran, who is back in the Congress, is nursing two grievances. Muraleedharan has still not been readmitted, and those who returned with him have not been accommodated honourably.

As they grapple with these problems, the fronts, particularly the parties, which lead them, have to take into account the impact of the increase in women’s representation in the local bodies from 33 per cent to 50 per cent and the possibility of several new players entering the poll arena.

The CPI-M, which is retaining in the LDF some remnants of the parties, which walked out in recent years, is looking for new allies to cover the losses and improve its prospects in the local bodies elections. The minorities having turned away, it is trying to woo the Hindus. India Today’s perspicacious correspondent MG Radhakrishnan says, “The CPI-M’s best hope lies in the religious hunger for consolidation of the majority community.” – Gulf Today, May 24, 2010

Lawyers must learn to respect human rights

2010-05-24T10:01:00.001+05:30

The Bar Association of Thiruvananthapuram has decided that its members should not represent a police officer who threatened a local advocate, according to a newspaper report.

The officer is Sureshkumar, Circle Inspector of the Cantonment police. K. Shaji, an advocate who had moved an application in the district court seeking anticipatory bail for a person named Suresh, had complained that Sureshkumar threatened him on the telephone for two days. The court the police to register a case and investigate.

Whether or not Sureshkumar is guilty of the charge levelled against him is a matter for the court to decide on the basis of the evidence produced before it. The police is known to go to great lengths to protect the evil elements in its ranks. The lawyers cannot, therefore, be blamed if they do not expect it to conduct a fair investigation. That, however, is no justification for them to deny him the right to a proper defence.

It is possible to argue that the association has only barred local lawyers from appearing for the inspector and that it is open for him to engage a lawyer from some other place. What is the guarantee that the association will not put obstacles in the way of a lawyer from elsewhere who is ready to appear for him?

The bar association’s stand shows scant regard for a basic principle of legal and human rights -- an accused person’s right to be defended by a person of his choice. It also reveals that the professional training the lawyers received is deficient inasmuch as they are not able to overcome petty personal and group prejudices.

The association must reconsider its position, recognizing lawyers’ duty to respect human rights.

LDF regime enters the last lap

2010-05-17T10:31:00.003+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Kerala's Left Democratic Front government, which took office in 2006 amid infighting in the Communist Party of India-Marxist, enters the last year of its five-term term tomorrow (Tuesday), still hamstrung by lingering sectarianism.

Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan, who was subdued after his demotion from the Politburo as a disciplinary measure, has lately shown readiness to lock horns again with state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan who demonstrated his total control over the party machinery at the state conference in 2008.

Last week, the party leadership asserted its authority and reiterated its choice of state committee member CP Narayanan as the chief minister's political secretary, brushing aside Achuthanandan's objections. It also disapproved of his intervention to foil Industry Minister Elamaram Kareem's plan to speed up work on a four-lane road to an industrial estate at Kinaloor, which has met with popular opposition.

The government had its finest hour on the eve of its first anniversary when it concluded a deal with Tecom of Dubai to set up the Smart City project at Kochi. The chief minister's personal standing was also high at that time, thanks to the campaign he had initiated to reclaim lands grabbed by encroachers enjoying political patronage in and around the hill station of Munnar.

On the eve of the fourth anniversary, the government's image is dull. Not a brick has been laid at the Smart City site. With Tecom and the state government locked in a dispute over land title, the project is on hold. The Munnar operation was scuttled by local leaders of the CPI-M and the CPI.

The uneasy relationship between the chief minister and the party secretary limits the government's ability to refurbish its image in the last lap.

Last year's Lok Sabha poll revealed erosion of the ground support which had enabled the CPI-M and the LDF to register spectacular victories in the previous parliamentary, local bodies and Assembly elections. It is now preparing for the local bodies elections, due later this year, which will provide the next big test.

Outwardly the party has been projecting a picture of satisfaction at the government's performance. It attributed the electoral reverse to failure to convey to the people the state government's achievements, which included expansion of welfare measures and turning of loss-making public sector units into profitable undertakings.

According to the Restructuring and Internal Audit Board, the PSUs, which had incurred an aggregate loss of Rs696 million in 2005-06, yielded a profit of Rs2.32 billion in 2009-10. The turnaround was achieved by pumping in more than Rs2 billion and tying up some units with Central PSUs.

In view of the high level of unemployment in the state, one yardstick with which to measure its performance is its record on the job front. There was only a modest increase of 30,000 in the strength of the state's work force in the organised sector in the first two years -- from 1.10 million in 2006 to 1.13 million in 2008, the last year for which figures are available. The number of registered jobseekers went up from 4.0 million in 2006 to 4.5 million in June last year.

Finance Minister TM Thomas Isaac claims collection of commercial taxes has increased and the state's finances are in robust condition. He has secured financial stability by pushing up the debt burden from Rs459 billion in 2005-06 to an estimated 672 billion last year.

There are reports that Pinarayi Vijayan has voiced dissatisfaction at the performance of the government and some CPI-M ministers in a document prepared for discussion in party forums.

The government's lacklustre record must be viewed against the background of the dismal performance if all governments of the last three decades, during which the LDF and the rival United Democratic Front have alternated in power.

Essentially the Achuthanandan government's problem is one of poor image rather than poor performance. Its bid to give the police a people-friendly image has collapsed with a dozen police personnel facing murder charge in connection with a custodial death. There are allegations that it is shielding senior officers involved in this and other cases. Last week, policemen, ostensibly provoked by demonstrators, had gone on a rampage in Kinaloor.

On the education front, the government has bought peace by surrendering to the powerful private sector, dominated by the Christian Church, and on the administration of Hindu religious institutions it is seeking peace by giving in to the demands of the powerful Nair Service Society. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 17, 2010.

Selective pursuit of the past

2010-05-10T10:35:00.002+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Along with Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan and Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy, a writers' delegation met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi last week to press the demand to declare Malayalam as a classical language.

The delegation included poets ONV Kurup, K Satchidanandan and Sugathakumari.

They said later Dr Manmohan Singh had offered to refer the matter to experts. He had observed that Malayalam appeared to have a strong case but this was a matter for experts to decide.

The government of India began the practice of granting recognition as classical language in 2004. Tamil was given classical status that year, Sanskrit in 2005 and Kannada and Telugu in 2008. Since then Kerala has been nursing the grievance that it is the only southern state whose language does not enjoy classical status.

No language of the eastern or western region has received classical status so far. There is no clamour for such recognition there either.

The Centre originally laid down three criteria for granting classical status to a language:

1). It must have high antiquity with texts and recorded history going back more than 1,000 years.

2). It must have a body of ancient literature which has been considered a valuable heritage by generations.

3). It must have a literary tradition that is original and not borrowed from another language.

Later it added a proviso. "The classical language and literature being distinct from modern, there may be discontinuity between the classical language and its later forms or offshoots."

Until recently the Malayalam literary establishment did not claim great antiquity for the language. Thunchath Ezhuthachan, who is considered the Father of the Malayalam language, is believed to have lived in the 16th century.

This, of course, does not mean the language was born in the 16th century. A language evolves gradually over a long period. Ezhuthachan's Adhyatma Ramayanam and Mahabharatam are acclaimed as Malayalam classics. A classic may emerge only after a language had produced considerable volume of literature of a lesser order.

Earlier the literary establishment was eager to highlight Sanskrit's impact on Malayalam and distance it from its Dravidian past. The Kerala Sahitya Akademi's 1993 publication "Malayalam Literary Survey," for instance, points out that, though Dravidian in origin, around 80 per cent of the Malayalam words are taken from Sanskrit.

Scholars are of the view that the modern languages spoken in the southern states have a common proto-Dravidian ancestor but evolved differently over the centuries. The varying degree of impact of Sanskrit was one factor that influenced their development along different paths. Sanskrit made the least impact on Tamil and the most impact on Malayalam.

Some scholars believe that Ilango Adigal, author of Silappadikaram, and Chathanar, author of Manimekalai, which were written in the early part of the Christian era, were natives of Kerala. Both the works are in an old form of Tamil, which was apparently in use in the region in their time. They also contain references which indicate that the region was under Jain and Buddhist influence when they were written.

The difference between the language of these ancient works and modern Malayalam is reflective of the socio-political changes that have occurred since then. The discontinuity between the two may be attributed to the emergence of a new literary establishment with a pro-Sanskrit bias and its attempt to make a break with the Jain-Buddhist past.

Thanks to the proviso to the Centre's criteria for grant of classical status to a language, this discontinuity need not come in the way of Malayalam's claim to be declared as a classical language.

The government and the literary establishment have a selective approach to the past. While seeking to establish the antiquity of the regional language they have shown little interest in reclaiming the rest of the region's culture and history, especially the period before the establishment of the caste system.

The excavations at Pattanam, near Kodungallur, have yielded archaeological evidence to believe it may be the lost port town of Muchiri (Muziris). An expert has identified an Indus Valley motif in the engravings in the Edakkal cave in Wayanad. These are indicative of a rich pre-Sanskrit past.

The state is keen to secure classical status for Malayalam as that will lead to generous Central grants for development of the language. The declaration of Tamil as a classical language was followed by the establishment of the Centre for Excellence in Classical Tamil, which is now working on 10 major literary projects with Central assistance.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 10, 2010.

Bid to protect migrant workers

2010-05-03T10:38:00.002+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Kerala added one more item to its long list of 'firsts' last week. It became the first Indian state to institute a welfare programme for migrant workers.

"Behind every rise of Kerala there is the effort of workers from other states," the state government said in an advertisement announcing the programme, which provides for medical assistances to migrant labourers and educational assistance to their children.

Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan inaugurated the scheme on May Day eve. Labour Minister PK Gurudasan presided over the inaugural function at which three other ministers distributed membership cards to selected migrant workers.

The local media, which was following up developments relating to the exit of the Kerala Congress (Joseph) from the ruling Left Democratic Front to merge with the Kerala Congress (Mani), a constituent of the opposition United Democratic Front, paid little attention to the event.

Preoccupation with politics apart, the media's indifference was indicative of the apathy of the middle class to the plight of workers from other states. Reports of exploitation of migrant labour rarely evoke sympathy in the state.

Millions of Keralites are working in other parts of India and abroad. There are an estimated 2.2 million of them in the Gulf States, which have been the main destination of jobseekers from the state since the 1970s.

Inward labour migration, which was going on at a slow pace for many years, gathered momentum in the recent past as remittances from Keralites working abroad fuelled construction activity and unskilled workers arrived to do jobs which local workers did not find attractive.

Observers have noted that unskilled workers of other states are coming to Kerala, "viewing the state as their Gulf." Labour contractors get them to work for longer hours at lower wages than are paid to local workers.

Dr N Ajith Kumar, Director of the Centre for Socio-Economic and Environmental Studies, who studied the condition of migrant labour in Kochi in 2007, had said the rising inward migration raised questions of governance, public health, sanitation, water supply, housing, urban environment, education, infrastructural needs and law and order, which warranted the attention of the authorities.

The State Planning Board, in its report for 2009, observed that migrant labour, like child labour, was a social hazard. It said workers had been coming from distant states like West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand besides the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Their number was increasing.

The board said migrant labourers were working under shabby conditions and did not even get subsistence wages. However, it claimed that much had been done in the last five years to "improve the life situation, education, health etc of migrant workers."

No one knows for certain the size of the migrant population in the state. Unofficial estimates vary from one to three million.

After the Andhra Pradesh police arrested Malla Raja Reddy, a Maoist leader of that state, from a hideout in Angamali, near Kochi, in December 2007 the Kerala government ordered a survey of migrant labour. The results of the survey have not been made public.

Meanwhile some alarmist theories are circulating among the middle class. A blogger wrote in 2008 that in three years' time 30% of the state's active population would be immigrant labour. Another claimed that migrant workers already formed two to three per cent of the population in most constituencies and they were in a position to tilt the election results.

The chief minister, while launching the welfare programme, said it would benefit about 500,000 people. This indicates that a large number of migrant workers will remain outside the protective umbrella.

In 1979 the Centre had enacted a law to regulate employment and service conditions of migrant labour. It covers every establishment or contractor employing more than five migrant workers. Few states have given effect to the provisions of the law.

Construction, road making and cable laying are among the activities in which large numbers of migrant workers are involved. Kerala was the first state to set up a welfare board for construction workers in response to the Centre's suggestion. It is this board which has been charged with the task of implementing the new welfare programme.

A migrant worker who registers under the programme will be required to pay an annual contribution of Rs30. The board will credit twice that amount in his account. The government will provide the rest of the money needed for the welfare measures. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 3, 2010.

Malayalam cinema in self-destruct mode

2010-04-26T23:04:00.003+05:30

B.R.P.BHASKAR
Gulf Today

April may go down in the history of Malayalam cinema as the cruellest month. It saw the film industry, which has been in the doldrums for several years, moving into self-destruct mode.

The month began with thespian Thilakan, facing threat of banishment from films due to the hostility of a powerful section of the industry, declaring that the actor in him was committing suicide. He said he would return to the theatre, where he had begun his acting career.

Last week, Sreenath, a movie and television serial actor of about 30 years’ standing, was found dead at a film location. Police said he appeared to have committed suicide. His family alleged he was facing threat of denial of work.

These personal tragedies are pointers to the misfortunes dogging the multi-billion film industry. Sections of the industry are at war with one another. It looks as though they are in the grip of a death wish.

Thilakan, who had been summoned by the Association of Malayalam Movie Actors (AMMA) to answer charges of indiscipline, appeared before its executive committee, and was promptly expelled, saying his explanation was not satisfactory. The committee paid no heed to his complaint that producers were denying him work in films under pressure from certain quarters.

Soon AMMA was at the receiving end. The Kerala Film Chamber of Commerce asked the stars to reduce their remuneration to help bring down the high production cost which was rendering film making commercially unviable.

The Chamber also demanded that film artistes, including singers, and lead technicians stay away from reality shows and other television programmes which were luring viewers away from the theatre. It said those who continued to appear on TV shows after May 1 will invite severe action, including ban on release of their films.

Chamber spokesmen said this was not a new decision. As far back as 2002 AMMA had agreed in writing that its members would not participate in television shows other than those connected with the state government’s film awards ceremony.

Representatives of various organizations affiliated to the Chamber like the Kerala Film Producers Association (KFPA), the Film Exhibitors Association of Kerala (FEAK) and the Film Distributors Association of Kerala (FDAK) attended the meeting which took the crucial decisions.

The Chamber claimed such measures were necessary to save the Malayalam film industry. Other contemplated steps in this regard include placing restrictions on the exhibition of films in other languages.

FDAK president Siyad Kokker said Tamil and Hindi films should be shown in the state only two weeks after they were released elsewhere.

In an attempt to force all concerned to help cut production costs, KFPA announced suspension of film production from April 16. Producers can complete ongoing projects but cannot start work on any new film.

FDAK announced suspension of new releases to pressure the exhibitors into accepting its terms and conditions regarding screening of films.

While FEAK and FDAK are fully with the Chamber in the confrontation with AMMA, they are fighting their own separate battles too.

The distributors and the exhibitors share theatre collections under an agreed formula. This formula covers only the proceeds of the three regular shows. The distributors want the exhibitors to share the proceeds of the noon show too.

According to KFPA president G. Sureshkumar, about 70 films are produced each year and only three or four of them yield profits.

AMMA disputes the claim that the high remuneration of artistes and technicians is the reason why films fail commercially. It says lack of good stories and lack of planning are to blame for the industry’s ills.

While superstars Mammootty and Mohanlal have maintained discreet silence on the developments lesser luminaries have taken up position for and against the Chamber’s move to keep film personnel away from TV channels. The most vociferous critics are composers and singers who now earn more from reality shows than from films.

Industry insiders have identified some other factors such as domination of the industry by ageing superstars and by directors with limited range also for the decline of Malayalam films which had attracted national and international attention until a decade ago.

Actor-turned director Revathi wonders why Mammootty and Mohanlal are seeking young female leads when Sobhana will be a perfect match for them. Director Sibi Malayil says new directors, technicians and actors are needed. In Malayalam there are very few good artistes to choose from, he adds. In Tamil, Telugu or Hindi there are 10 to 20 to choose from. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, April 26, 2010

National Highway can be widened without dislocating large masses of people

2010-04-20T17:18:00.000+05:30

A few hours before the all-party meeting called by the Kerala government to consider people’s opposition to the proposal to widen two national highways in the State on BOT (build, operate, transfer) basis, representatives of people engaged in movements against the proposal began a day-long dharna outside the State Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram.

According to media reports, Chief Minister V. S. Achuthanandan decided to call today's all-party meeting after three ministers, G. Sudhakaran, C. Divakaran and N. K. Premachandran, drew his attention at a Cabinet meeting to the agitations at different places along the highways against the proposal.

These ministers represent constituencies through which the coastal highway runs. People started agitating against the proposal in these constituencies five years ago. As officials took up acquisition of land up to 45 meters in width in pursuance of the BOT proposal there was tension at many places. But it is only now that the ministers have taken note of the situation.

Representatives of the agitating groups called on the leaders of all parties before the all-party meeting and reiterated their total opposition to the BOT proposal. They pointed out that acquisition of 45 meters was not necessary as four or even six lanes according to the specifications laid down by the government can be built in 30 meters. Except in a few places the government has already in its possession up to 30 meters of land.

The NH 17 Kerala State Action Council placed before them an alternative proposal which will make it possible to widen the highway without dislocating large masses of people. The following are the salient points made by them in a written memorandum:

1. Build four-lane path immediately in the 30 meter wide land already acquired.

2. Up to six lanes can be built in 30 meters. The move to acquire 45 meters is meant to satisfy the BOT partner, whose entry will mean privatization of the highway.

3. Now the cost of bus travel is Rs. 5 for every 10 kilometers. It will double if there is a BOT road.

4. Population density in the areas through which the highways pass in the State is between 2,000 and 3,000 per square kilometer. The highway expansion project report says widening of a one-kilometer stretch will affect 310 families, 1,076 people and 51 buildings. This means along the 840 kilometers of NH 47 and NH as many as 17 257,300 families, 903,840 people and 42,840 buildings will be affected. Actually twice as many families, people and buildings will be affected.

5. By an order dated 18.10.2007 the government has frozen building activity up to a width of 90 meters along the highways. The people cannot build houses or shops in this area. This will destroy the small businesses.

6. The government is to give 40 per cent of the construction cost to the BOT partner as grant. The contractor will be able to cook up figures and do the entire work with the money provided by the government with no investment from his side.

A sketch prepared by the action council shows how a six-lane path can be built in 30 meters. With 3.5 meters specified for a lane, the land required for six lanes is 21 meters. The median will take up 1.5 meters. That still leaves enough for a paved shoulder 1.5 meter wide and a footpath-cum-utility of 2.25 meters on either side.

A tale of two scandals

2010-04-19T14:27:00.002+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Mark Twain prefaced one of his popular tales with these words: "It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened." These words may be echoing in the minds of Keralites as the media bombards them with particulars of two scandals.

One of the scandals has embarrassed the Congress, which heads the government in New Delhi, and the other has caused discomfiture to the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), which heads the Left Democratic Front that rules the state.

At the centre of the first scandal is Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor. The central character of the second one is Tomin J Thachankary, an inspector general of police who is reputedly close to the state CPI-M leadership.

Tharoor got into trouble following the disclosure that Dubai-based Sunanda Pushkar, whom he reportedly plans to marry, obtained sweat equity in Rendezvous consortium, which won the Indian Premier League's Kochi cricket team for US$333 million in an auction last month.

Tharoor admitted to mentoring the consortium. However, he said his sole interest was to get an IPL team for his state. He asserted he had no financial stake in the consortium.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition in Parliament, and the CPI-M charged Tharoor with misusing his office. The BJP stalled the proceedings of Parliament last week and vowed to keep up pressure until the Prime Minister made a statement.

Thachankary's troubles began when it came to light that after seeking leave to go to Sikkim on holiday he visited some Gulf States. Janata Dal (S) leader M P Veerendrakumar linked his travel with that of CPI-M State Secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, who is currently on a fund-raising tour of the Gulf region.

A former United Nations bureaucrat who failed in his bid for the post of Secretary General, Shashi Tharoor was nominated by the Congress to contest for the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram. A section of the party, viewing him as an outsider, took a hostile position, but the city's middle class voters, viewing him as a change from the conventional politician, plumped for him. Early in his ministerial career he encountered some tweeting troubles but the party leadership stood by him.

Thachankary, an Indian Police Service officer and a lyricist, is known to have helped the CPI-M in setting up the television channel it controls. He is facing some serious charges like illegal detention and torture and possession of wealth in excess of his known sources of income.

Did Tharoor misuse his position? Did Thachankary travel in aid of the party? The material on record is not enough to go beyond Mark Twain's words.

When Tharoor came under attack in Parliament, no colleague rose to defend him. However, the controversy has not affected his standing among the middle class. A survey by the New Indian Express showed that 57 per cent of the respondents considered Sunanda Pushkar his proxy but 58 per cent still regarded him as an honest man.

The Thachankary affair revived the sectarianism in the CPI-M which had subsided after VS Achuthanandan's demotion from the Politburo to the Central Committee in July last year. Asserting his authority as Chief Minister, he ordered the officer's suspension even as Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan was seeking to close the matter with his transfer from the post of Inspector General, Kannur range.

Four years ago the anti-piracy cell of the state police had raided a recording studio owned by Thachankary's wife in connection with piracy allegations. The officer conducting the raid was recalled before he could complete the mission. Achuthanandan intervened on his behalf but the party thwarted him.

Lately the state party leadership had been ensuring Achuthanandan's compliance with its wishes on controversial issues by issuing directives to him ahead of Cabinet meetings. By acting against Thachankary while Pinarayi Vijayan and Kodiyeri Balakrishnan were away from the capital, he has presented them with a fait accompli.

While Achuthanandan has primacy in the government, as Politburo members, Vijayan and Balakrishnan now rank above him in the party.

The final episodes of the Tharoor and Thachankary serials are still awaited as these lines are being written. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who heard Tharoor's explanation and discussed the matter with Congress President Sonia Gandhi and senior party colleagues, will take a decision on whether or not to retain him in the council of ministers. The state CPI-M is expected to look into the Thachankary affair after Pinarayi Vijayan returns next week.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, April 19, 2010.

Clouds over Kerala's education scene

2010-04-12T14:24:00.002+05:30

B R P BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Kerala's lead in social developments has put it at a disadvantage as the government of India pushes through a scheme to provide free and compulsory education to all children up to 14 years.

The Centre launched the scheme on April 1 in pursuance of the constitutional amendment of 2002, which made elementary education a fundamental right, and the Right to Education (RTE) Act of 2009, which provides for free and compulsory education to children in the 6-14 years age group.

The Constitution, promulgated in 1950, envisaged free and compulsory education up to the age of 14 but until now there was no scheme to give effect to it all over the country.

In Kerala, the first step in that direction was taken when the Maharaja's regime made primary education free and compulsory in the erstwhile Travancore state in 1946. After Independence, the governments of Travancore-Cochin and Kerala carried the reform forward, making education free till the school leaving stage.

The Centre will bear the bulk of the cost of the new scheme, which calls for an estimated investment of Rs1,710 billion over the next five years. Last week Education Minister MA Baby said Kerala had forged ahead early by making huge investments in education.

The new law became necessary because the other states neglected this area. He wanted the Centre to compensate the state considering that it had put into education money which could have gone into industry and agriculture.

Baby, who had earlier characterised the new law as an encroachment on the states' authority, modified his position slightly. He said the law was a welcome measure but it must be implemented keeping in view the federal spirit of the Constitution.

Baby did not take into account the state's educational situation in its entirety. While ahead of the rest of the country in the spread of education at the lower levels, it lags in higher education. The quality of education at all levels is low. The state is now paying the price for neglect in this area.

Improvement of quality of education is an important element of the new Central initiative. Kerala thus have the opportunity to benefit from the planned Central investment. However, there is room to doubt its ability to make proper use of the opportunity.

Years ago, at the Centre's instance, the University Grants Commission had drawn up a scheme to revise wage scales, tying them up with improvement of academic standards.

The teachers' unions wanted the new scales but not the academic part of the package. The state government succumbed to their pressure.

The new law provides for setting up of committees with representatives of the local community to introduce a measure of social control over school managements. It also requires the expensive elite schools, which do not receive grants from the state, to set apart 25 per cent of the seats for poor students.

These provisions have invited opposition from managements, especially those belonging to religious minorities, who argue that they infringe upon their constitutional right to establish and administer their own institutions.

Private managements dominate Kerala's education sector at all levels. Of the state's 12,649 primary and secondary schools 8,148 are under private managements. While 7,284 of them receive aid from the state government for their upkeep, 864 are unaided.

There are 1,703 higher secondary schools. Of these 968 are privately managed: 529 are aided and 439 unaided. The state has 189 arts and science colleges, of which 150 are under private managements. There are 84 engineering colleges, of which three are aided and 70 unaided.

Christian missions did pioneering work in the education sector. They account for the bulk of the private institutions. The fierce opposition of the private school managements, especially the Christian missions, to an education reform measure, which was by no means very radical was one of the underlying causes of the so-called 'liberation struggle' which resulted in the Centre's dismissal of the state's first communist government in 1959.

There is a distinct possibility of the aggrieved managements challenging some aspects of the Centre's proposals in the court.

The views articulated by the state governments and spokesmen of private managements suggest that the communists and the private managements could well be on the same side in the event of a new confrontation over education reform. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, April 12, 2010.

Cherthala-Imphal march postponed

2010-04-06T13:12:00.002+05:30

The Cherthala-Imphal March in Support of Irom Sharmila, which was scheduled to begin on April 14, has been postponed to May. The new date for its start will be announced later.

The March, from Defence Minister A. K. Antony’s home town of Cherthala to the Imphal jail where Sharmila is incarcerated, is being organized by social activists of Kerala.

Sara Joseph and Dr P. Geetha, activists and writers, are to lead the March.

Civic Chandran, Coordinator of the March, said it was being postponed as travel arrangements were yet to be completed.

Looking for jobs that are not there

2010-04-05T11:56:00.003+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

The Congress-led United Democratic Front, which came to power in 2001, had promised employment to 1.5 million youths but could not provide jobs for even 50 persons, Leader of Opposition VS Achuthanandan had said as he campaigned in the 2006 elections, which was to put him in the Chief Minister's seat.

As his Left Democratic Front government enters the last leg of its five-year term, unemployed youths are still looking for jobs that are not there.

The Smart City project, which the state government was to set up with the help of TECOM Investments of Dubai, was expected to create at least 100,000 jobs, mostly in the information technology sector.

It remains stalled by a dispute between the Dubai firm and the government over the status of a small part of the land earmarked for it.

On Saturday Achuthanandan held aloft another carrot before jobseekers. 110,000 IT-related jobs will be created with the help of a global consultancy firm, he said.

Official statistics indicate that there has been only a small increase in employment in the entire organised sector since the LDF came to power. In March 2006, the public and private sectors together provided employment to 1.10 million people in the state.

The corresponding figure for December 2008 was 1.13 million -- a modest gain of 30,000 jobs. In the public sector, the state's biggest employer, there was actually loss of jobs, with employment falling from 616,000 in 2006 to 607,000 in 2008. Employment in the private sector, however, went up from 485,000 to 524,000.

The state government accounted for 43.85 per cent of the public sector employment, the central government for 10.41 per cent, quasi-government institutions for 41.38 per cent and local bodies for 4.36 per cent.

Job loss in the public sector is a continuing phenomenon. In 2001, more than 645,000 people were employed in this sector. More than 4.5 million people are seeking jobs through the employment exchanges.

In 2000, the exchanges provided government jobs to more than 23,000 persons. In the following years the number declined, touching an all-time low of 8,711 in 2004. More than 10,000 were given jobs in 2005 but the number dropped to four digits again in 2006.

On March 31, more than 20,000 state government employees retired, raising a flicker of hope in the minds of jobseekers. Most of the vacancies that have arisen are to be filled by promotion. Once that process is completed, the government will notify the vacancies at direct entry level, which may number just a few thousands.

The en masse retirement was the result of the government's decision to shift the retirement date of all employees who reached the age of superannuation during the financial year to the last day of the year.

Life expectancy at birth in Kerala is 75 years, the highest in the country. Retirement age of state government employees is 55 years, the lowest in the country. Decades ago the retirement age was raised to 58 years but it was lowered again to increase employment opportunities.

Successive governments have turned a blind eye to the colossal waste of human resources involved in early retirement of employees for fear of offending the vast army of unemployed youths. The Communist Party of India-Marxist, which heads the LDF, is more wary than other parties as the Democratic Youth Federation of India, which it controls, has more than 4.6 million members in the state, many of them jobless.

By pushing the retirement age to the last day of the financial year the cash-strapped government could delay pension payments and earn a brief respite. It is estimated the measure helped it to save Rs15 billion during the year. The chicken will come home to roost in the financial year which has just begun.

60 per cent of the jobseekers on the register of the employment exchanges have only passed the school leaving certificate examination. The government has dashed their hopes by raising the educational qualification for recruitment to some posts, including that of police constable, to pre-degree.

The jobseekers' best hope lies in migration, and the Gulf region remains the most favoured destination. The number of Keralites employed in the Gulf States rose from 1.36 million in 1998 to 2.19 million in 2008, the last year for which figures are available. That makes for 29 migrants for every 100 households.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, April 5, 2010.

Feminisation of poverty in Kerala

2010-03-29T19:36:00.002+05:30

B R P BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Education has sharpened the Kerala woman's intellect, widened her outlook and tuned her social and civic senses, the state government proclaims at its website. But statistics belie the claim.

They show that the women in the state lag in many areas despite educational advance. On a superficial view, the women are in a happy situation. Kerala is the only Indian state with a favourable sex ratio. At the time of the 2001 Census there were1,058 females for every 1,000 males, and female literacy was 87.86 per cent.

The University Grants Commission's report for 2000-01 said enrolment of girls in higher education in the state was 3.3 per 1,000 people, while the all-India average was only 2.9. In the rest of India boys led in the matter of higher education. In Kerala, the situation was reversed. Boys' enrolment was only 1.9 per 1,000 people as against the national average of 4.8.

Ironically, educational achievements have not helped women to improve their position in the state's job market. The Economic Review presented in the State Assembly in advance of this year's budget says, "Women's education has not translated into employment."

It adds, "Low levels of female employment and persistence of gendered work structures limited women's claim to independent sources of income."

Male work participation in the state compares favourably with that in the country as a whole. A national survey conducted in 2004-05 showed that male employment rate was 55.9 per cent in the rural areas and 54.7 per cent in the urban areas.

The corresponding all-India figures were 54.6 per cent and 54.9 per cent respectively. Female work participation was much lower -- 25.6 per cent in the rural areas and 20.0 per cent in the urban areas.

The corresponding all-India figures were 32.7 per cent and 16.6 per cent respectively. This shows that while rural women are worse off than their counterparts elsewhere urban women are doing better.

Officials attribute the comparatively favourable situation of urban women in the state to education. This, however, is a matter which calls for detailed examination.

According to published official data, male employment in the primary sector in the rural areas, which was 54.3 per cent in 1993-94, dropped to 43.4 per cent by 1999-2000. During the same period, female employment came down from 51.4 per cent to 46.3 per cent. Women now outnumber men in this sector.

Male employment in the secondary sector rose from 17.8 per cent to 22.9 per cent in the rural areas and from 27.3 per cent to 33.3 per cent in the urban areas. The increase in female employment was more modest: from 27.5 per cent to 28.9 per cent in the rural areas and from 33.5 per cent to 36.0 per cent in the urban areas.

These figures show that women, who constituted a large segment of the labour force in the traditional industries, are retaining their dominant position even though male presence in this sector is growing.

Unlike in the primary and secondary sectors, men were ahead of women in the tertiary sector. While male employment in this sector was 33.6 per cent in the rural areas and 59.3 per cent in the urban areas, female employment was only 24.9 per cent and 56.1 per cent respectively.

Although urban women are not faring too badly in this fast growing sector, the rising proportion of women in agriculture and manufacturing industries point to increasing feminisation of poverty.

When the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the highly acclaimed poverty alleviation programme, was introduced in the state more women than men came forward seeking work.

Women account for less than half of all work under NREGS in the country. However, in Tamil Nadu (79.1 per cent), Rajasthan (69.6 per cent) and Kerala (66.0 per cent women are its main beneficiaries.

Apart from women, Dalits and Adivasis also form part of the poverty brigade. The Dalits, who constitute 9.8 per cent of the state's population, account for 16.0 per cent of all NREGS work. Adivasis, who form only 1.1 per cent of the population, get 8.6 per cent.

The Kudumbasree Mission, built around the Central government sponsored women's self-help scheme, has more than 180,000 neighbourhood groups in the state with a total membership of more than 3.3 million women.

Lowly jobs like garbage clearance, for which there are no takers in the state, are being entrusted to such groups.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 29, 2010.

DHRM’s English and Malayalam blogs

2010-03-24T19:54:00.002+05:30

Dalit Human Rights Movement, which the Kerala police has branded as a terrorist organization, has set up blogs in English and Malayalam to convey information about its activities.

Here are the URLs:

ENGLISH: http://blackvoice24.com/

MALAYALAM: http://dhrmsc.blogspot.com/

Absurd play is dragging on

2010-03-22T13:31:00.003+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Two months after the Kerala high court ordered steps to remove all encroachments at Munnar in Idukki district the state government has taken no meaningful action in pursuance of the court order.

Munnar used to be a quiet place until three decades ago when real estate interests invaded the area, grabbed land with the help of politicians and started building holiday resorts. Apparently corrupt officials helped them to create titles for the property.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), which heads the ruling Left Democratic Front, and the CPI, the second largest constituent of the alliance, are also said to have interest in resorts.

Eviction of encroachers was one of the first steps initiated by VS Achuthanandan, who had become the Chief Minister outmanoeuvring CPI-M state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan in 2006. He sent a team of three officials who enjoyed his confidence to perform the task.

The team, which started demolishing unauthorised structures with bulldozers under the eyes of television cameras, encountered opposition from two sides. Some affected resort owners rushed to the court and obtained stay orders. The CPI-M's Idukki unit, led by a follower of Achuthanandan, switched its loyalty to Pinarayi Vijayan, and raised stiff opposition to the move locally. The CPI unit also joined the campaign.

The chief minister, who was isolated in the party and the Cabinet, had to pull out his men from Munnar. The government formally reiterated its commitment to oust the encroachers and deputed another team to continue the mission. But, for all practical purposes, the mission was dead.

Munnar came to the fore again as One Earth One Life, a non-government organisation, sought the high court's intervention, stating encroachments and land transactions were continuing there unabated.

It pointed out that Nivedita P Haran, Principal Secretary, Revenue department, had proposed a moratorium on land transactions and constructions in the Pallivasal, Devikulam and Udumbanchola taluks until all doubts about bogus titles were cleared. The government had not acted on her recommendation.

At the hearing stage itself, Chief Justice SR Bannurmath and Justice Thottathil B Radhakrishnan made it clear that they believed stern action was needed to remove the encroachments. They said they would look into the steps taken by the government since 2007.

Justice Bannurmath, who has since retired, stated later that during a visit to Munnar to attend a seminar he had the opportunity to acquaint himself personally with the situation there.

In a 470-page action taken report, filed in response to the court's directive, District Collector Ashok Kumar Singh said the Kannan Devan company belonging to the Tata group was the biggest encraoacher and it held thousands of acres of government land. Action initiated to repossess the land had been halted by stay orders issued by the courts.

He claimed action had been taken against 119 resorts and 14,000 acres recovered from encroachers between 2007 and 2010. The nature of the action taken against illegally constructed resorts was not clear.

The Collector's report mentioned encroachments made by some politicians or their relatives too. His attempt to project the Tatas as the biggest villain is in tune with the tactical line adopted by the ruling parties.

The court's response to the Collector's action taken report will be known when it takes up the case again in the next few days.

When Forest Minister Binoy Viswam announced the government's decision to declare 17,000 acres of land taken back from the Tata firm under a law enacted in the 1970s, the Collector had shot off a letter raising doubts about the status of the land.

In reply, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests TM Manoharan wrote to him saying his letter was based on lack of appreciation of the history of the Kannan Devan hills. He devoted much of his letter to narrate how the land had changed hands since the 19th century.

Meanwhile T Damu, director of a Tata firm, has come out with a book titled Munnar Rekhakal, which essentially presents the company's side of the story.

While the absurd drama involving the government departments and the ruling parties goes on with no end in sight, there are indications that other actors will soon enter the picture.

A technical committee deputed by Union Forest and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh is due to visit Munnar shortly. The empowered committee appointed by the Supreme Court to look into environmental issues is also expected to take up the case of Munnar soon.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 22, 2010.

Kerala's ancient glory revealed, but creators untraced

2010-03-19T17:06:00.003+05:30

B.R.P. BHASKAR
IANS

Thiruvananthapuram, March 18 (IANS) A multi-disciplinary project launched three years ago has yielded archaeological evidence of Kerala's ancient glory. The official establishment plans to exploit the find to boost tourism but has little interest in identifying its creators.

Kerala has boasted of a long history on the basis of references in ancient Tamil texts and the accounts of foreign travellers. However, barring a stray find of Roman coins, no tangible proof of its antiquity was available until now.

Tamil literature of 2,000 years ago contains references to a prosperous port city of Muchiri, where ships from distant lands came with gold to fetch pepper. Romans called it Muziris and said there was a temple of Augustus Caesar north of the city.

Apparently, it was through Muziris that Christianity and Islam entered the subcontinent. Jews fleeing from Jerusalem found refuge there. The younger generation having migrated to Israel, the Jewish community is now almost extinct.

Muziris, which according to foreign accounts could be reached from Egypt in 40 days under favourable wind conditions, disappeared 10 or 12 centuries ago in circumstances that are unclear. Until recently scholars believed Kodungallur, 35 km north of Kochi, was the legendary port city but no evidence of maritime mercantile activity could be found there.

According to Roman and Tamil literature, Muziris was located at the mouth of the Periyar. A few years ago, K.P. Shajan, a geoarchaeologist, pointed out that the river had changed course over the centuries and suggested the ancient port might have been at Pattanam, where broken pottery and ancient fired bricks had been found during digging.

In 2007, the Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR), of which eminent historian K.N. Panikkar is chairman, began excavations at Pattanam with the permission of the Archaeological Survey of India. KCHR director P.J. Cherian led the field team, which included Shajan and V. Selvakumar as co-directors.

The team made a rich haul of broken Roman and Indian pottery. Other finds included early coins of the Chera kingdom, human bones, storage jars, a gold ornament, glass beads, stone beads and utilitarian objects made of stone, copper and iron.

The team also found an ancient brick wall, a brick platform, a ring well and a wharf with bollards. The structures indicated that there was a big urban settlement. A six-metre-long wooden canoe lay parallel to the wharf, about 2.5 metres below surface level. Carbon dating done by the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, showed that Pattanam's story goes back to the first millennium BC. The place was probably under continuous occupation from 2nd century BC to 10th century AD and Roman contacts were at the peak from 1st century BC to second century AD.

The state government, recognising the tourism potential of the Pattanam finds, sanctioned a Muziris heritage project, the first phase of which will cost Rs.1,400 million. It also decided to approach Unesco to declare Muziris a world heritage.

The project envisages preservation of identified monuments and restoration of old bazaars, roads, canals and bridges, spread over two municipal towns and six panchayats. They will form part of a cultural tourism circuit, dotted by a coir museum, an aquatic museum, a fishing tools museum and a spices museum, producing a new product for Kerala Tourism.

Many of the elements that form part of the project actually relate to a comparatively recent period. But, says Benny Kuriakose, a Chennai-based architect who is the chief project consultant, the Pattanam finds, which prove the area's long history and ancient maritime links, will be the key component.

When did Muchiri disappear and how? Who were the makers of the glory that was Muchiri, and what happened to them? With the official establishment turning the history project into one of tourism, there is no serious attempt to find answers to these questions.

The official Kerala Tourism website attributes the port's disappearance to natural causes and European colonisation. It says, "The Muziris port underwent a tragic incident some time around the middle of the 14th century in a massive flood and resultant silting triggered by the river Periyar. Since the 15th century, the region began to come under the influence of foreign powers, starting with the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch and the British."

Available historical material does not warrant the conclusion that the port flourished much beyond the 10th century. Whatever the explanation for the disappearance of the structures, it is reasonable to assume that the port's decline began with the establishment of a feudal order dominated by the Vedic community, which looked down upon seafaring, between the 8th and 10th century. Historians have noted that in the north, too, several prosperous Buddhist towns declined as feudalism struck roots and the caste system relegated their builders to an inferior status.

Kerala's cultural ancestry goes back much farther than Muchiri. According to noted historian, M.R. Raghava Varier, the engravings in the Edakkal Caves in the Wayanad district include a man with jar cup, which was a symbol unique to the Indus Valley Civilization.

"We do not claim that the Indus people reached Wayanad," Raghava Varier said. "Nor do we argue that Edakkal was a continuity of the Indus civilisation." However, he added, the presence of a rare and interesting Indus motif in Edakkal was striking.

Edakkal and Pattanam testify to the vibrant cultural and economic traditions of societies that were overrun by migrants in the last millennium.

A march from Antony’s Cherthala to Sharmila’s Imphal

2010-03-17T22:10:00.002+05:30

A march from Cherthala in Kerala to Imphal, capital of Manipur, will begin on April 16. It is being organized by social activists of Kerala in solidarity with Irom Sharmila, whose fast demanding repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act is in the tenth year.

Sharmila has been in police custody during this period, except for short breaks. She has been charged with attempted suicide and is being fed forcibly through the nose.

The Sunday Theatre of Kozhikode has been staging a solo play titled “Women with Torches”, based on Irom Sharmila’s life and struggle, in different parts of Kerala for some time. Beginning yesterday, a march is being held in the State as part of the preparations for the long march to Manipur.

Writer and feminist activist Sara Joseph will lead the march. It will pass through Bengalooru, Chennai, Nellore, Vijayawada, Bhopal, Delhi, Kolkata and Guwahati. Jnanpith award winning writer Mahasweta Devi will join the march towards the end.

The sponsors of the march have raised a series of questions: In a democratic society, must there not be space for democratic struggles? Must not the government seek to settle such struggles? Must not civil society give its support for the success of such struggles? Why is it that popular agitations from Narmada to Chengara do not get such consideration? Why is it that no responsible person has talked to this woman who is engaged in a non-violent struggle, which has attracted national and international attention, against a black law that does not even allow complaints to be lodged against army excesses? What justification is there for President Pratibha Patil or Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or First Lady of Indian power structure Sonia Gandhi or Defence Minister A. K. Antony not talking to her even once?

Explaining the choice of Cherthala as the starting point of the march, they say: “The first reason for taking out the peace march from Cherthala is that our Defence Minister is a Malayali and Cherthala is his home town and (former) constituency. We are trying to address the conscience of a democratic leader who has considered his mother as his main inspiration while she was alive and even after her death and claims to be the personification of political correctness.” The march will terminate at the Imphal hail where Sharmila is lodged.

T. R. N. Prabhu and Civic Chandran are the coordinators of the march.

Global warming casts its shadow

2010-03-15T13:33:00.002+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

The worst global warming scenario envisages the Arabian Sea rising and gobbling up part of Kerala's 550-kilometre-long coastal belt where a large chunk of the population lives. That may be only a distant possibility but climate change appears to have cast a shadow on the state already.

Over the last few days, nearly 20 persons have reportedly suffered burns in different parts of the state. While sunburn cases have been reported from half of the 14 districts, the worst affected is Palakkad, where the maximum temperature was above 42 degrees Celsius last week.

On Saturday the media reported a sunstroke death from Thrissur. Television channels and newspapers said the victim was a man who was found dead in a field with burns on the body. Officials, however, said the man had died of a hear attack.

About 1,000 people reportedly die of sunstroke in India each year. Kerala has been free from the menace, thanks to the moderate climate. The average maximum summer temperature is 32 degrees Celsius in the state's coastal areas and 37 degrees Celsius in the interior. The sunburn cases, therefore, caused a minor alarm.

Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan asked the Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS) at Thiruvananthapuram to send a team of scientists to Palakkad to study the phenomenon. Revenue Minister KP Rajendran dispatched a disaster management team to the area.

The CESS team, comprising Dr EJ Zachariah, Dr PVSSK Vinayak and Dr S Muralidas, who have specialised in microwaves, meteorology and oceanography and atmospheric sciences respectively, visited Palakkad and met the affected people on Friday. Its preliminary finding is that the burns were the result of direct exposure of the body to the sun.

The team is expected to submit to the state government a detailed report which will take into account data relating to solar activity. Lack of adequate information on ozone conditions may diminish the worth of the report.

More than 25,000 people are engaged in physical labour district under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Palakkad. The Collector has ordered that the work be regulated in such a way that there is no exposure to the sun between 11am and 3pm.

The Health department has issued guidelines outlining measures to combat the unusual heat. It has asked schools to dispense with assemblies and drills to avoid exposing the children to the sun. They have also been instructed to keep drinking water in every classroom.

The school leaving examinations, which about 500,000 students take, begin today (Monday). In view of the harsh weather conditions, the students are being allowed to carry water bottles into the examination hall. Education Minister MA Baby has said that in the light of the current year's experience the government will consider changing the examination time from next year.

The disaster management team, comprising Revenue and Health officials, which reached Palakkad on Saturday, said there was no need for panic. However, people are bound to worry since they know that the worst summer months of April and May are still ahead.

Already there are reports of rivers and water bodies drying up. Summer rain offers the only hope of respite. Weather officials are holding out the promise of some showers in the coming days.

The situation is not entirely unexpected. Five years ago, Dr CK Rajan, head of the department of atmospheric sciences at the Cochin University of Science and Technology, had pointed out that the evolving weather scenario, marked by sudden drenchers and long dry spells, was "indicative of the shadow of global warming creeping into our backyard."

Long before climate scientists warned of rising global temperatures environmentalists had drawn attention to the fast depletion of groundwater, which was directly attributable to denudation of forests.

With the slogan "tree is the answer to global warming" the state government has taken up a scheme under which hundreds of thousands of saplings are planted each year. The current developments suggest that response may be too little and too late.

Ecological sensitivity is low in Kerala, especially in the corridors of power. The Left Democratic Front government's attempt to push through the Athirappilli power project, which the Centre has blocked on environmental grounds, and the opposition United Democratic Front's support to the move bear this out.

In all likelihood the first summer showers will wash away the fears engendered by the sunburn cases and the state lapse back into the normal state of environmental unconcern.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 15,2010.

Dalits greet DHRM leaders released on bail

2010-03-08T23:11:00.002+05:30

Dalits gave a rousing reception outside the State Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram today to Dalit Human Rights Movement organizing secretary Das K. Varkala, and others who were released on bail after being in custody for nearly five months as accused in the Varkala Sivaprasad murder case.

Several hundred Dalit men and women had come from different districts to greet the DHRM activists.

The police has described DHRM as a terrorist organization and alleged that its activists had murdered Sivaprasad, who was on a morning stroll, to proclaim the strength of the organization.

Das, who addressed the gathering, said DHRM was a human rights organization and the police had falsely implicated it in the murder case. While the police alleged it was a terrorist organbization and they could not produce a shred of evidence in support of that allegation.

The police charge-sheet said that he was arrested from Aluva, near Kochi, but he asserted that police had called him out while he was inaugurating a seminar at Varkala and placed him under arrest.

He gave a detailed account of the torture to which he was subjected in various police stations in Thiruvananthapuram district and in the Central Jail. The torture took place at police stations where boards mentioning the protection to which Dalits were entitled under the law were displayed.

He said DHRM worked strictly within the bounds of law. The political parties had turned against it because they realized that its activities were weaning Dalits away from them.

Earlier, inaugurating the function, I pointed out that the treatment meted out to Dalits in Kerala was indicative of the regression taking place in the society, which had made big strides towards equality and equal opportunities in the last century. The political parties were trying to keep the poor in perpetual slavery. The government was taking no steps to help them to stand on their own legs.

Budget spells double trouble

2010-03-08T12:12:00.001+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

For the people of Kerala, the central budget presented on Feb.26 spelt double trouble. The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), whose members walked out of the Lok Sabha when Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced a hike in petrol and diesel prices in the budget speech, followed it up with a hartal last Tuesday.

More trouble is on the way with the party planning to organise blockade of central government offices even in some small towns to focus attention on the price rise.

There was no work stoppage in the other CPI-M strongholds of West Bengal and Tripura. Nor will there be blockades in those states. This is because the agitations are organised by the party's state committee, and are not part of any national campaign.

Evidently the CPI-M wants to keep the pot boiling in the state with an eye to the panchayats elections due later this year and the Assembly elections due next year.

Meanwhile, the CPI-M-led state government is making its own contribution to the rise in living costs. Ahead of the state budget, it raised bus charges and taxi rates. The rate revision was unrelated to the latest petrol price hike. In fact, transport operators had been demanding rate revision for some time.

After presenting his budget in the Assembly on Friday, State Finance Minister TM Thomas Isaac said he had adopted a different approach from the central minister. Patting himself on the back, he claimed he had placed before the country a model which other states could follow.

There are no doubt differences in the approaches of the two ministers. But, then, there are also similarities in their approaches.

Reactions of the political parties to the two budgets were along predictable lines. The Congress and its allies hailed the central budget and criticised the state budget. The CPI-M and its allies denounced the central budget and praised the state budget.

While the Bharatiya Janata Party criticised the two budgets, most non-partisan analysts characterised both as populist.

One of the areas where differences are discernible in the approaches of the central and state governments relates to the public distribution system, which, in theory, covers the entire population of Kerala.

Pranab Mukherjee said in his speech that the centre would like to switch from the rationing system to a coupon system, which will allow poor people to buy their requirements of food grains at subsidised rates from any outlet.

The state government is keen to retain the public distribution system, although very few persons other than those holding below-poverty-line cards actually buy grains from ration shops now. It is well known that the ration shops divert the unsold supplies to rice mills.

The centre and the state are involved in a dispute over the number of people who are below the poverty line. While the centre puts the number at less than 1 million, the state reckons it is more than 2.5 million. The finding of a BPL survey conducted by the state government is awaited.

Thomas Isaac announced plans to supply rice at the subsidised rate of Rs2 a kilogramme to all labourers. The proposal is expected to benefit 3.5 million people.

Another area where the centre and the state differ relates to the public sector. The centre has been divesting the shares of public sector companies year after year to raise money. The state government, which claims to have turned round most of the losing public sector units, has decided to float a few new ones in the coming year.

Selective distribution of largesse is an area where the approaches of the two governments are similar. While the centre earned the gratitude of the middle class by lowering income tax rates the state sought to please the working class by offering a small rise in the paltry pensions besides extending the subsidised rice to all labourers.

The rich have reasons to be pleased with both the central and state governments. Both have showered concessions on the real estate sector. If industrialists are the major beneficiaries of central budget, traders are the major beneficiaries of the state budget.

Thomas Isaac has demanded only a nominal increase in the compounded tax paid by jewellers for the last few years. Those who evaded registration charges have been given more time to get themselves off the hook by making a small one-time payment.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 8, 2010.

Right in conflict with privilege

2010-03-01T12:31:00.001+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Five years after parliament enacted a law to give Indian citizens access to information under the control of public authorities, all limbs of the state are still fighting shy of its mandate.

Several government departments and the Supreme Court of India have come into conflict with Central or State Information Commissions on whether or not certain information sought by citizens can be provided.

In Kerala, a dispute between the Legislative Assembly and the Information Commission is threatening to develop into a confrontation between the two, which may, willy-nilly, draw in the other limbs of the state too.

The preamble of the Right to Information (RTI) Act states that democracy requires an informed citizenry and transparency of information is vital to its functioning and to contain corruption and hold the government and its instrumentalities accountable to the governed.

In April 2008, DB Binu, an advocate and secretary of the Human Right Defence Forum, sought from the Kerala Legislature secretariat copies of the video recording and printed version of the speech delivered by Kerala Congress (Jacob) leader TM Jacob in the Assembly during the debate on a no-confidence motion in 2005.

V Jayalekshmi Amma, Additional Secretary in the Legislature Secretariat, who is the designated State Public Information Officer (SPIO) under the RTI Act, gave him a copy of the printed version of the speech. She, however, refused the request for a copy of the video recording.

Binu then approached R Prasanna Kumari, Special Secretary, who is the designated appellate authority. She rejected his appeal, saying the matter involved encroachment on the privileges of the legislature.

The decisions of the SPIO and the appellant authority had the sanction of the Speaker, K Radhakrishnan, who is the 'competent authority' in respect of the Assembly under the RTI Act. The Speaker, incidentally, is also the custodian of the privileges of the house.

Section 8 of the Act, which gives citizens the right to access information, makes it clear that it does not cast an obligation to provide "information the disclosure of which would cause a breach of privilege of Parliament and State Legislature." Apparently, the Speaker is relying upon this proviso.

Dissatisfied with the appellant authority's decision, Binu exercised his right to prefer a further appeal to the State Information Commission.

Chief Information Commissioner Palat Mohandas and Information Commissioner PN Vijayakumar, who heard the appeal, held that there was no justification for denying the video record when the SPIO had given the applicant the printed version of the member's speech. They ordered her to supply the video record within 15 days.

Failure to comply with the Commission's directive renders an SPIO liable to pay a heavy fine for every day of default.

On January 14 Jayalekshmi Amma wrote to Binu saying the commission's order was prima facie an encroachment on the privileges of the house and the Speaker had referred the matter to the Privileges and Ethics Committee.

While talking to the media ahead of the Assembly session, which began last week, the Speaker said video recording of speeches did not come under the purview of the RTI Act as they were not part of the proceedings of the house.

"Only the documents printed and published by the Assembly form part of the Assembly proceedings," he said. "The video recordings are only a temporary arrangement."

The Assembly's decision to treat the print and electronic versions differently is based on a fine distinction it draws between the two. It puts the video recording on a different footing from the printed version of a speech, which is an approved text, scrutinised and edited by the Speaker who has the authority to expunge, delete or remove any word or sentence.

This aspect was examined by the Information Commission while considering Binu's appeal. It pointed out that supplying an edited copy of the videotape would do harm as the proceedings of the house were telecast live with the approval of the Speaker.

The privileges of Parliament and the legislatures constitute a grey area since they have not been codified into law, as envisaged by the Constitution. Technically, these bodies have the same privileges as were enjoyed by Britain's House of Commons at the time India became free.

The concept of right to information was unknown at that time. The question to be decided now is which must prevail when there is a conflict between the citizen's right to know and the Assembly's privileges. The people will probably respect their elected representatives more if they respect their right to know.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 1, 2010.

K.G.Sankara Pillai in "Human Rights and Culture"

2010-02-26T20:28:00.003+05:30

An English translation of a poem by Malayalam poet K. G. Sankara Pillai appears in the 39th issue of Human Rights & Culture, brought out by the Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong.

While welcoming KGS back to the pages of HR&C, the editors say: “Prof. Sankara Pillai was one of our very first contributors”.

Here is the poem:

A Preface to an Autobiography

Prof. K.G. Sankara Pillai

Where do I start?

Did history start in me, or
Did I start in history?

Who took form in whom?

Did I see the world, or
Did the world see me?

Who became the truth in whom?

How do I see?

With my memory, or
With forgetfulness

Do I make the trodden paths
Into my arteries?
Do I make the spread out land
Into my flesh?
Do I make the binding tornado
Into my breath?

With affection, or
With curses?

Do I make the hated fears
Into love?
Do I make the sown sins
Into virtue?
Do I make the proud victories
Into sacrifices?

In secret, or
In public?

Do I make the flowering trees
Into ghosts?
Do I make cracking love
Into philosophy
Do I make the whirlpools seen
Into falsehood?

In a leap, or
In a crawl,

Do I make the world behind
A forerunner?

With a bow, or
With a boot, or
With a reception,

Do I make the fallen horse
Into a victor?

With praise, or
With a curse?

Do I raise the past
Into something ugly?

K.G. Sankarapillai, is a contemporary Indian poet writing in Malayalam. He has won the National Award for Poetry in India on two occasions. More about this author may be found at http://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=8636

Mollywood rivalries spill over

2010-02-22T13:46:00.002+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Off-screen rivalries of the Malayalam film industry are out in the open. Associations of actors and technicians, instead of trying to solve the problem amicably, are threatening to excommunicate gifted actor Thilakan, who has challenged the institution of superstardom.

Two factors have contributed to the emergence of superstars since the time of Sathyan and Prem Nazir, who ruled the hearts of movie-goers for long as mere stars. One is imitation of the ways of Tamil cinema. The other is use of fans associations by actors to boost their image.

Mammootty and Mohanlal, talented actors who have won many awards, are the two widely acknowledged superstars. There are other lead actors like Suresh Gopi, Jayaram and Dileep at the top, but they are not in the same league.

Mollywood is a male bastion where actresses have to be content with a subordinate role. There is, therefore, no female superstar.

Mammootty, who is in his mid-50s, and Mohanlal, who will be 50 this year, have invited criticism for their apparent reluctance to move from romantic leads to roles that are appropriate for their age and for demanding high remunerations that upset the producer's budget.

They are said to be in a position to dictate terms to directors by virtue of their awesome power as superstars. Thilakan has brought this aspect into focus.

Fans associations are now a big factor at the box office. Industry sources attribute the phenomenal success of Mammootty's 2005 comedy Rajamanikyam to a vociferous campaign by his fans and a periodical named Mammootty Times. Fans of some older stars have been reportedly booing in theatres when films of 27-year-old Prithviraj, the most promising actor of the new generation, are released.

Thilakan, who turned 74 last month, has said he was dropped from the cast of a movie under production at the instance of a superstar. The industry, he alleges, is in the clutches of a mafia backed by the superstars and a few persons from the Film Employees Federation of Kerala (FEFKA), comprising several trade unions, and the Association of Malayalam Movie Actors (AMMA).

This is not the first time that Thilakan has railed against superstars. In an interview two years ago he had accused the superstars of trying to keep him away from films, using every trick in the book including verbal assaults, character assassination and mental torture.

Attributing their hostility to a sense of insecurity, he said, "They will not -- and they can't -- take the slightest competition. I have outperformed them in many films, which obviously has not gone down well with them."

Tracing the hostility back to 1986, he said he had kept quiet for a long time but his patience had run out. He alleged a caste lobby had a big role in it.

Although he clubbed the superstars together in earlier statements and named another prominent actor Nedumudi Venu while talking of caste discrimination, Mammootty appears to be his sole target now. Mohanlal, who is general secretary of AMMA, has said they would not allow Mammootty to be singled out for attack.

There is nothing to indicate that caste, religion or region influences movie-goers' appreciation of the performance of actors. However, some movie makers seem to think otherwise. When the 1998 film Harikrishnans starring both the superstars was released, two different versions were made. In the version released in the north Mammootty won the girl. In the version released in the south Mohanlal won her.

Mutual jealousies are a part of artistic life the world over. However, the Thilakan-Mammootty standoff cannot be dismissed as a mere manifestation of professional rivalry.

The issue of superstardom which Thilakan has raised is one that has a direct bearing on the health of the film industry and needs to be addressed squarely.

FEFKA has already decided not to cooperate with Thilakan. AMMA has asked him to appear before its disciplinary committee on March 1 failing which action will follow. Both the organisations believe in barring non-members from work.

Vinayan, who directed several successful movies without superstars, had earned their ire earlier. Thilakan's current troubles began after he worked on a film of his. He said on Saturday he and Vinayan would produce movies with public support.

There has been a spontaneous outburst of sympathy for Thilakan, whose sterling performance in a host of movies has endeared him to film-goers. Several groups have come forward to defend his right to practise his profession. Sukumar Azhikode, who often gives voice to the sentiments of the silent majority, has also spoken up for him.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, February 22, 2010

Dalit's fight against bias

2010-02-15T12:35:00.004+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Payyanur in Kannur district boasts of a rich and glorious heritage. The town's website says, "Payyanur is one of the ancient civilised places in Kerala." It has a place of pride in the history of the freedom struggle and the Communist movement. Lately, however, it is making news for the wrong reasons.

Last month, Paul Zacharia, noted writer and social critic, was roughed up by activists of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) affiliated Democratic Youth Federation of India, as he was leaving the town after making a speech which met with their disapproval.

Also last month, Chithralekha, a young Dalit woman making a living as an auto driver, came under renewed attack from a trade union which has been harassing her ever since she ventured into the male-dominated profession.

She was trained as an auto driver under the officially sponsored people's planning programme in 2004. She then obtained a loan under the Prime Minister's Rozgar Yojana (employment scheme) and bought an auto-rickshaw. The pro-CPI-M auto drivers union was not ready to admit her into the fold.

As Chithralekha persevered, the union had to give in. However, male colleagues at the auto stand made things difficult for her. They abused her with caste appellations and cast aspersions on her character. But she refused to be cowed down.

One of her colleagues then broke the windscreen of her auto-rickshaw and tore its hood. When she remonstrated, she was beaten up. Since the union did not act on her complaint against the man who damaged her vehicle she lodged a complaint with the police.

This infuriated the union leaders, who filed a counter complaint accusing her of drinking and using drugs and insinuating that she was a sex worker. The man who had damaged her vehicle later attempted to run over her with his auto-rickshaw. She filed yet another complaint against him, and the police arrested him.

The union then launched a vicious poster campaign against her in the town. A few days later, her auto was set on fire. But the union could not destroy her never-say-die spirit. Forced to leave Payyanur, she and her husband, Shreeshkanth, who is also a trained auto driver, worked as wage labourers.

Carmel Christy and Jenny Rowena, two researchers who studied l'affaire Chithralekha at that stage concluded that it was not merely a case of conflict between a woman and a trade union. The union, they pointed out, was dominated by the backward Thiyya community and its hostility towards Chithralekha was based on untouchability and gender.

They viewed the union's campaign against Chithralekha as part of an attempt to maintain caste hegemony. The union, which did not approve of the marriage between Chithralekha, Dalit, and Shreeshkanth, a Thiyya, had become an instrument for maintaining caste and gender boundaries in the Malabar region, they said.

In June 2008 a Kannur-based action committee presented Chithralekha with a new auto-rickshaw bought with public contributions. Following this, she resumed life as an auto driver in Payyanur and the union resumed harassment.

On January 20, she lodged a complaint with the police alleging she was assaulted at the auto stand. Union activists lodged a counter complaint alleging she was drunk. The police wanted to take her for an alcohol test but she refused. She said later that the police had assaulted her too.

A fact-finding team consisting of Professor Gail Omvedt of the Indira Gandhi National Open University, Professor Nivedita Menon of Delhi University and two local activists, V Geetha and KK Preetha, visited Payyanur and gathered evidence from her, the auto union, the police and some other witnesses. It found inconsistencies in the versions of the union and the police.

The team, in its preliminary report, said, "The January 20 incident is not an isolated one. Other Dalit women auto drivers in this region have faced intense intimidation, sexual harassment, caste-related abuse, accusations of promiscuity and immorality and damage to their autos."

It noted that the union's statement regarding Chithralekha's behaviour used metaphors that insultingly linked her caste status, gender and sexual immorality. It also sought to cast doubts on her marital status.

It observed that the union leaders' unease with Chithralekha and characterisation of her as a woman 'living outside the track' revealed their inability to tolerate this Dalit woman's assertiveness, stubborn courage and confidence despite her caste and gender. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, February 15, 2010

Reversal in direction of political traffic

2010-02-09T07:32:00.002+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

For two decades political traffic in Kerala flowed in one direction --- towards the Communist Party of India-Marxist-led Left Democratic Front. With fair-weather comrades leaving the fold, there is now traffic in the other direction.

TK Hamza was one of the earliest to switch to the LDF from the United Democratic Front. He was president of the Malappuram district Congress committee when he earned the hostility of K Karunakaran, who had total sway over the party at the time.

It was a time of flux in state politics. A Congress faction which was in alliance with the CPI-M had just walked out. The CPI-M persuaded Hamza to contest the 1982 elections as an LDF-backed independent. He defeated Aryadan Mohammed.

When the LDF came to power in 1987 Hamza became a minister. Later he grabbed for the LDF the Lok Sabha seat from Manjeri, over which the Muslim League had a monopoly.

Joining the CPI-M, he rose to the level of state committee member. His website is silent on his Congress days. Obviously he wants to hide his Congress past.

Another UDF member who travelled in the same direction was Lonappan Nambadan. Elected to the Assembly on the Kerala Congress ticket in 1977 and 1980, he turned a rebel and was elected four more times -- as an LDF-supported independent. Like Hamza, he too served a term as minister.

In 2004, the CPI-M put him up for the Lok Sabha from Mukundapuram. He contested this time on the party ticket and won.

In 1997, when there was a by-election to the Lok Sabha from Ernakulam, a Congress stronghold, the CPI-M cast its net wide, reckoning an independent with the right religious affiliation might fare better than a party nominee. The strategy paid off. Sebastian Paul, a journalist turned lawyer, whom it fielded as an LDF independent, won the seat.

He could not retain the seat in the next general election but was able to enter the Assembly through a by-election. In 2004, he successfully contested for the Lok Sabha once again. However, in 2009 the party dumped him.

AP Abdullakutty, who hailed from a family with Congress connections but strayed into Left politics as a student, was serving as a member of the Kannur district panchayat when the CPI-M asked him to contest for the Lok Sabha. He defeated Congress leader Mullapally Ramachandran and was hailed as a ‘wonder boy’. He repeated the performance in 2004.

In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections the CPI-M fielded a young government doctor, KS Manoj, who had been active in a Latin Catholic community organisation, as LDF-backed independent in Alappuzha. He defeated Congress stalwart VM Sudheeran by a small margin.

When KT Jaleel, a leader of the Muslim League’s youth wing, fell out with the party leadership the CPI-M received him with open arms. He defeated League strongman PK Kunhalikutty in the 2006 Assembly election as an LDF independent.

The reverse traffic began with Abdullakutty, who was not given the party ticket to contest last year’s Lok Sabha elections, quitting the CPI-M and joining the Congress. Within days the Congress asked him to contest the Assembly by-election in Kannur and he trounced his former CPI-M mentor MV Jayarajan.

Dr Manoj, who had sought and been given CPI-M membership, contested the Lok Sabha elections again last year. However, he lost to Congress candidate KC Venugopal. Last month he resigned from the party.

The CPI-M had reiterated recently that elected representatives should not observe religious rites. Both Abdullakutty and Manoj cited this as the reason for their defection.

Last week S. Sivaraman, who had been elected to the Lok Sabha once from the Ottapalam reserved constituency, announced his decision to leave the CPI-M. He said party leaders did not practise what they preached.

Apparently all three ex-MPs quit the CPI-M after making sure that the Congress will keep its doors open for them. There are reports that the Congress is looking out for other possible defectors.

Significantly, all three ex-MPs who quit the CPI-M are young men. Within the party hierarchy, none of them could go beyond the area committee stage. Their departure is indicative of growing alienation between the party and the minority communities, whom it had wooed assiduously in recent years, and the Dalits, who have been its ardent supporters since long. --Gulf Today, February 8, 2009

Fact-finding team's report on Varkala events

2010-02-07T07:47:00.003+05:30

Janakeeya Manushyavakasa Prasthanam, one of the human rights groups which joined the fact-finding team to Varkala in the wake of the police crackdown on the Dalit Human Rights Movement, has posted the team's report at its blog.

It can be accessed at http://janakeeyamanushyavakashaprasthanam.blogspot.com/2010/02/friends-we-are-posting-fact-finding.html

Opposition to 'rural doctor' plan

2010-02-01T13:50:00.000+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Kerala has reacted coolly to a Central government scheme to conduct a short-term course to train doctors exclusively for service in the rural areas where regular medical graduates are reluctant to work.

About 3,000 doctors and medical students demonstrated outside the Raj Bhavan in Thiruvananthapuram last week to register their protest against the scheme.

The demonstration was called by the Indian Medical Association which claimed the proposed three-and-a-half-year Bachelor of Rural Medicine and Surgery (BRMS) course would create quacks.

The Centre drew up the BRMS scheme in consultation with the Medical Council of India as doctors are not coming forward to work in villages despite the National Rural Health Mission's offer of many incentives.

The scheme envisages setting up medical institutes in all states to run the BRMS course. They will be located in rural areas and have an annual intake of 50 students each. Admission will be restricted to those who have passed the Plus Two (Medical) examination from rural schools.

Several states, including Left-ruled West Bengal, have evinced interest in the scheme.

Kerala's Health Minister PK Sreemathi has said the state will take a decision in the matter after consultations with doctors. Her observation that the state has enough doctors to take care of its rural health care needs, however, betrays a lack of interest in the scheme.

The doctor-patient ratio (including practitioners of western medicine, homeopathy and the indigenous systems) in India is 1:870. If practitioners of non-western medicine are excluded, there is only one doctor for 1,634 people. Comparable figures for some other countries are: the USA 390, the UK 440, Qatar 450, and China 950.

Kerala, a leader in the matter of health care, had achieved the health and demographic goals set for the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) several years before it was launched. The Mission, therefore, set separate targets for the state.

A NRHM review team pointed out two years ago that the state is facing some new problems. Its morbidity profile is fast changing with childhood diseases dropping and old-age health problems rising. Some infectious diseases have resurfaced and lifestyle-related non-infectious diseases are on the rise.

The team observed that the situation calls for location and community specific planning guided by an epidemiological approach. The state has not taken any concrete steps in this direction so far.

The minister's claim that the state has enough doctors to take care of the needs of the rural population deserves close scrutiny.

The number of medical officers under the state Directorate of Health Services in 2008 was only 3,862. This works out to one doctor for 8,244 people. The distribution of doctors across the state is highly skewed, varying from one doctor for 5,807 people in Thiruvananthapuram district to one doctor for 11,343 people in Malappuram.

Surprisingly the backward Wayanad district has one doctor for 6,448 people although Ernakulam has only one doctor for 9,194 people.

To get a correct picture regarding availability of doctors, we have to factor in the large number of medical practitioners in the private sector too. According to information gathered by the NRHM review team, there were 24,401 doctors in the private sector.

A complaint often heard in the past was that many primary health centres in the rural areas were not functioning for want of doctors. According to the Health Minister, there is now no PHC without a doctor.

This does not mean that the PHCs have their full complement of medical and paramedical personnel. Most of them are functioning with less than the sanctioned staff strength.

The Indian Medical Association's stir against BRMS is a repeat of its campaign in the 1950s which led to the closure of medical schools which were running licentiate courses. Products of those institutions were rendering yeomen service in the small towns, mostly as family doctors.

Today Kerala presents a queer picture with total absence of family physicians on the one hand and proliferation of specialists and super-specialists on the other. Mercifully, the services of highly qualified personnel are available at rates that are lower than what prevails in the metros.

With the big private sector institutions setting their sights on lucrative medical tourism, it remains to be seen whether the local population will continue to get the same service at the same cost for long. This is a factor the government must take into account while assessing the long-term requirements of the state, especially the needs of the poor people. -Gulf Today, Sharjah, February 1, 2010.

Kerala is rich and beautiful but few jobs for locals

2010-01-29T19:47:00.001+05:30

BRIJ BHARDWAJ
National Press Agency

There are few places more blessed with beauty, fertility and capacity to grow exotic spices, tea, coffee and coconuts. It is not without reason that the Kerala was described as God’s own country and flourished as a tourist destination as there are very few places which can match the beauty, color, fascination of backwaters and breath taking view of terraced gardens, exotic waterfalls and serene lakes, but life for its inhabitants remain hard forcing them to migrate in millions in search of jobs to other states in India and abroad.

One seriously wonders why a state so blessed with natural resources and people who work hard and are well qualified in terms of education and other skills have to leave their homes in search of jobs. What use is the full literacy and their ability for hard work as there are no avenues for employment within the State. The answer to these questions was provided by a veteran journalist now settled in Trivendrum after retirement. He said that some States progress because of bureaucrats with a missionary zeal or Politicians with a vision, but Kerala has been ill served by both. There is no IT hub or industry worth the name.

The result is that there is all-round corruption. The portfolios are divided on the basis of their ability to yield funds for running political parties. The situation has not changed even though the electorate throws out the coalition in power to be replaced by the other every five years, but it makes no difference to the ground situation. The State continues to thrive through migration, largest group over two millions in Gulf only who have built colorful houses in their old villages.

The bright hues, no colour being a taboo, provide the best advertisement for paint companies speaking about colorful homes and houses which continuing to shine despite rain and dust for years. The State can also boast of one industry which has been growing at a spectacular pace that is consumption of liquor. Alcohol sale is the largest money spinner for the State. Tourism is also a flourishing industry, but has suffered setbacks recently because of the world-wide recession. A number of charter flights has stopped, though Indian tourists who have discovered the beauty of this coastal State continue to visit in ever growing numbers.

This has also led to large scale illegal construction and encroachments in beauty spots like Munar which have not been demolished despite best efforts by State Chief Minister who is facing opposition from his own party men .No illegal structure comes up without the backing of a politician who are ready to do everything to protect them when threatened by the authorities. Why people accept this state of affairs is easy to explain as no viable alternative has emerged so far. Coalition politics makes for inefficient and corrupt administration and Kerala is no exception.

It, however, remains an ideal place for a holiday as state as a whole has high standard of hygiene. The roads are smooth and people are friendly. Its beautiful churches and historic temples are a delight. People gather in thousands and remain disciplined. There is no pushing or jostling. Eve teasing is unheard off. The sunset and sun rise have a beauty and charm which can not be compared with any sight in the world.

The State agencies, however leave much to be desired The most beautiful and unique wood palace in the country can charm anyone but visit to it is made difficult for one and all. Long distance has to be covered bare footed where sharp stones can easily injure the old and foreigners not used to walking without shoes. The lovely paintings are difficult to view or appreciate in the absence of lighting. The narrow staircase, lack of proper management make every visit a serious hazard. The State, however, has used the opportunity by posting large number of persons all-round who have little knowledge about history or the uniqueness of exhibits.

The boat trips in the lake in tiger sanctuary have been resumed after a break because of tragedy when a boat sank killing many because it was overloaded. There are, however, few animals to be seen few wild pigs and stags can be spotted during hour’s long journey. There is no denying that the state has unique attractions as a tourist destination an industry which can generate large number of jobs. This, however, will come when State gets around to improving its infrastructure and not rely only on ability of Ayurveda to revive and revitalize the tired bodies.

There is need to regulate markets selling spices and handlooms and stop the mushroom growth of Spas selling immediate cures and rejuvenation packages. Kerala hopes that setbacks in UAE and other destinations which provide hope to millions in Kerala will revive soon and continue to brighten its country-side with foreign remittances.

The author can be contacted at brj.bhardwaj@gmail.com

Sectarian forces flexing muscles

2010-01-25T17:07:00.001+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

With elections to the panchayats and the State Assembly fast approaching, organisations of the Nair and Ezhava communities, which account for the bulk of Kerala's Hindu population, have started making noises.

On Friday, Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, the century-old organisation of the backward Ezhava community, held a massive rally at Kochi and proclaimed a charter of demands, which seeks for the community proportional representation in the political, social, industrial and economic spheres.

Three weeks earlier, the Nair Service Society, which is still a few years short of its centenary, had adopted a resolution demanding reservation for the community in admissions to educational institutions and appointments to government service.

The present reservation policy, which was discriminatory and unscientific, had denied the Nair community equality of opportunity and relegated it to backwardness, the resolution said. To overcome the situation, it proposed that reservation in government employment and education, now restricted to the backward communities, be extended to Nairs too.

Both the Yogam and the NSS invoked the principle of social justice in support of their demands. The Constitution of India, as it now stands, allows special provisions like reservation only for "socially and educationally backward classes" of citizens. Among the beneficiaries of reservation are Ezhavas, Muslims and backward sections of Christians.

The Yogam, established in the time of Sree Narayana Guru, was the first of several social organisations whose combined efforts helped modernise Kerala's caste-ridden society. It was followed by the Sadhujana Paripalana Sangham, of Ayyankali, the earliest fighter for Dalit rights.

The Nair community had enjoyed high social status in the feudal period although it was never recognised as part of the three so-called upper castes, comprising Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaisyas. As feudalism was crumbling, a band of young Nairs, led by Mannath Padmanabhan, realised that the community was on the decline. They founded the NSS to better its lot.

This was followed by the formation of the Yogakshema Sabha, which spearheaded the reform movement of the Namboodiri Brahmins.

As organisations working for social reform, they found areas where they could cooperate. Thus, when a satyagraha was on at Vaikom, under the auspices of the Congress, to assert the right of the so-called lower castes to use roads around a temple, Mannath Padmanabhan mobilised Nair support for the agitation.

However, there was a difference in the motivations of the different community organisations. While the victims of the old social order were fighting to secure equal rights, its beneficiaries were essentially seeking ways to retain their supremacy in the emerging new order.

CP Nair, a former chief secretary to the government, in a newspaper article upheld the NSS argument that the community had been relegated to backwardness. He said the land reform measure of the 1970s had dispossessed Nair landowners. With the decline of agriculture, the economic foundations of the community collapsed. Also, it did not benefit to any significant extent from the migration to the Gulf States and to Western countries.

While this assessment is substantially correct, it is not sufficient to warrant the conclusion that the Nairs have become socially and educationally backward. The community's problem is one of economic backwardness. The NSS resolution is part of a campaign to secure an amendment of the Constitution to extend reservation to cover economic backwardness as well.

The NSS's sabre-rattling brought immediate results. Leader of Opposition Oommen Chandy and Pradesh Congress President Ramesh Chennithala rushed to the NSS headquarters at Perunna, near Changanassery, suing for peace.

The NSS leadership was not mollified. It has been annoyed with the Congress since the induction of Shashi Tharoor, whom it has dubbed a 'Delhi Nair,' in the central ministry instead of a Nair MP acceptable to it. It became even more furious when the Congress nominated a Muslim to contest an Assembly seat which was earlier held by a Nair who was in its good books.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) extended support to the NSS resolution. The party has been backing reservation on the basis of economic criteria since the time of the late EMS Namboodiripad.

The NSS publicly expressed appreciation of the CPI-M's response.

The immediate objective of the NSS and the SNDP Yogam is limited. They are flexing muscles to pressure the Congress-led United Democratic Front and the CPI-M-led Left Democratic Front into picking candidates acceptable to them from the two communities in the forthcoming elections, especially the Assembly poll due next year.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 25, 2010.

Nothing exceeds like media excess

2010-01-21T10:19:00.002+05:30

B.R.P.BHASKAR
Gulf Today

The Kerala media’s penchant for excessive, celebratory coverage of annual events was in evidence once again last week.

Going by standards established by the media, especially since the advent of private satellite television two decades ago, there was plenty to celebrate. The three-month-long Sabarimala pilgrimage season, which is said to attract 50 million people, a majority of them from outside the state, came to a climatic end on Thursday. The week-long annual School Kalolsavam (art festival), in which about 10,000 high school and higher secondary students vied for honours in a variety of events, ended on Friday.

The Sabarimala season, spread over two sessions, begins in November and ends in January. No one knows for sure how long the temple, nestling in the western mountains, has been attracting devotees. The Hindu religious establishment ties up its history with that of the erstwhile royal families of Travancore and Pandalam both of which rose and fell in the modern period.

A clue to its antiquity lies in the principle of absolute equality that is part of the Sabarimala tradition. The temple is open to all, irrespective of caste and religion. The devotees wear the same simple clothes and address one another as “Swami” or “Ayyappa”, both terms used to refer to the deity himself. A visit to the shrine of Vavar, a Muslim saint, located on the way to the temple, is an indispensable part of the pilgrimage.

It is unimaginable that such egalitarian practices could have originated after the Vedic establishment gained control of Kerala society and enforced the caste system, probably around 8th century AD.

The government’s Devaswom department has under its control more than 1,000 temples, big and small, in the Travancore region. Sabarimala is the biggest money-spinner. Preliminary estimates put the earnings of the just concluded season at a whopping Rs1.2 billion.

The hereditary Thantri of the temple, the authority on rituals, is said to receive each year a few million rupees by way of gifts and offerings. The senior and junior priests, who are selected each year by draw of lots, also take home substantial sums.

The government collects payments from the Devaswom authorities for various services rendered by its agencies for the pilgrims. Haindava Keralam, a Hindutva website, describes the levies as loot.

Most Malayalam channels made elaborate arrangements for coverage of the main activities at Sabarimala during the season. These included several live transmissions, accompanied by drab descriptions by hapless commentators who have to keep talking even when they have nothing new to say.

The School Kalolsavam was a one-day affair when it began in 1956. The participants numbered about 200. There were no television cameras around.

The Kalolsavam grew in size year after year. With the addition of new events the prizes to be won grew too. It became a major event in the school children’s calendar when a festival title became a veritable passport for a film career.

That induced parents to make heavy investments to provide special coaching for the children in various items. Losers often appealed against the festival judges’ decisions. There have been occasions when the courts decided the winners, overthrowing the judges’ findings.

Somewhere along the way TV cameras arrived and started carrying the festival proceedings into homes. This year several channels established temporary studios at the festival venues. From there they kept up a continuous flow of sound and pictures.

Some channel stories dwelt on the vulgarisation of the festival due to the excessive parental interest in the proceedings. The reports glossed over the fact that excessive media coverage is also contributing to the process of vulgarisation.

On the last day, rival TV crews were involved in a melee. As they fought for the privilege of being the first to put the winning Kozhikode team and its trophy on the screen, the duplicate trophy which was in its possession broke.

The coverage of the assault on writer and social critic Zacharia by activists of the Democratic Youth Federation of India, youth wing of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, at Payyanur, was quite modest. According to informed sources, party managers worked overtime behind the scenes to contain the fallout of the incident, which even many devoted party followers were obliged to deplore.

Commercial sponsors are the driving force behind all excessive media coverage. No improvement in the situation can be expected so long as there are advertisers to back up such vulgarisation.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 18, 2010

Environment still has low priority in Kerala

2010-01-13T21:43:00.003+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

A slight rise in global temperature levels can force coastal residents to seek shelter in the interior as climate refugees, a scientist said at the Indian Science Congress, held in the state capital last week.

Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan was among the state dignitaries who attended the Congress. In a prepared speech, the chief minister even made a sensible point when he deplored the tendency among the youth to neglect basic sciences and give weightage to information technology related subjects.

But the sound warning about the need to protect the state’s environment has not made any impact on the official establishment, which has been promoting ecologically disastrous schemes in the name of development.

The state comprises three distinct geographical regions, all of which are in an extremely fragile condition. The long coastline is subject to erosion by the sea at many places. Much of the tropical evergreen forests has been depleted over the past half century as a result of encroachments by settlers who enjoyed political patronage. The plains in the middle have suffered heavy soil erosion.

Depletion of underground water sources have been reported from all regions. The hills, the lakes and the backwaters are the mainstay of the tourism industry, which has lately emerged as a major element in the fast growing service sector. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that further damage the environment may well spell death.

Environmentalists saw the writing on the wall 25 years ago and raised a hue and cry against the Silent Valley hydro-electrical project which posed a serious threat to the surviving rainforests. The political parties, bureaucrats, engineers and the media forged a united front against them. The small band of environmentalists could prevail over this formidable combination because Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s recognised the justness of their cause.

Since then political parties have paid lip service to environmental protection but while in power attempted to take up projects without regard for ecological consequences. One project successive governments have relentlessly pursued is the Athirappalli project, which has been projected as a substitute for the Silent Valley project.

Environmentalists and tribal residents of the forest areas that will be submerged campaigned vigorously against the project. At one point the central government gave environmental clearance to the project, overlooking all objections.

But the people continued the campaign. Last week the centre issued a notice to the state government to show cause why the environmental clearance cannot be cancelled.

Electricity minister AK Balan rushed to New Delhi to plead against the contemplated action. He claimed that clearance was given after studying the likely environmental impact.

Union minister Jairam Ramesh told Balan he had personally looked into the matter and was convinced the project would adversely affect the forest and the lives of the tribal communities living there.

Balan returned to the state fuming there was a conspiracy against the state. Apparently the political leadership has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. The state of the environment and the fate of the poor continue to be matters of low priority to the state administration.

Public resentment over the government’s indifferent attitude towards people’s protests against environmental pollution erupted into violence in the Mampad area of Nilambur last week.

Last Tuesday villagers protesting outside a polluting latex factory were fired upon by a security guard. Media reports indicate that the factory management had engaged the man, who hails from a northern state, as guard because he possessed a licensed gun. One villager received bullet injury and another suffered knife injury.

Angry villagers retaliated by setting the factory on fire. The next day a few other polluting factories were also set on fire.

The official establishment has reacted coolly to the bizarre events. No minister has considered it worthwhile to even visit the place. To the government it appears to be simply a matter for the police to handle. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 11, 2010

A Call To Struggle….for Water….for Life

2010-01-05T14:30:00.001+05:30

The following is a communication from the Adivasi Samrakshana Sangham and the Plachimada Struggle Solidarity Committee:

Plachimada reels under water shortage. Chittur taluk, where Plachimada is located, was declared a ‘notified area’ on 19 November 2005 under the Kerala Ground Water Act. The area was classified “over exploited.” This followed the poisoning and depletion of ground water by Coca Cola. In 2004, the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Waste ordered Coca Cola to provide piped water to the affected families in Plachimada. Coca Cola never carried out this order. Instead of taking action against Coca Cola, the government declared the Rs.4 crores Plachimada Water Project a year back much to the relief of the people of Plachimada. Coca Cola too must have rejoiced.

A year went by after the government announced the Plachimada Water Project. But the project is not even conceived. If there were no funds available for the project, why was the project announced? To cheat the people? To appease Coca Cola? Once again the government betrays the people.

Till date the government has not taken any step to prosecute Coca Cola for any of their numerous violations of numerous laws. Coca Cola has been allowed to pillage and pollute ground water making huge profits. It destroyed lives, livelihood and ecology. The government allowed the criminal Cola to romp free. Its victims continue to be victimized. Our struggle for water, a source of life, continues….

We, the Plachimada Struggle Solidarity Committee demand:

 Plachimada Water Project must be completed in a time-bound manner to urgently remedy the water-shortage;
 Take immediate measures to prosecute Coca-Cola for environment contamination and pollution, and water-pilferage;
 Recover the compensation due from Coca-Cola company for destruction of water, lives, livelihood and destruction of ecology.

Mayilamma, the legendary pillar of Plachimada Struggle, left us to carry the mantle of the struggle on 6 January. We carry forward her legacy… for the right to water and right to live with dignity.

On this day, 6 January 2010, we march and hold a dharna before the Palakkad District Collectorate at 11 A.M, remembering her.

We request the participation of all in this peoples struggle to survive with dignity.

When governance is reduced to charity

2010-01-04T13:24:00.002+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Over the past four decades, successive governments in Kerala established more than 40 welfare schemes as a safety net for vulnerable sections. They now cover about 3.7 million people or about 11 per cent of the population.

The benefits available under these schemes include pension, ex-gratia death benefit, retirement benefits, maternity benefits, marriage assistance, educational assistance and funeral expenses.

The oldest of the schemes, the Kerala Toddy Workers Welfare Fund Scheme, was launched in December 1969. Although about 42,000 persons are eligible for membership, only about 37,000 have joined it. There is also a separate welfare fund for about 2,000 abkari workers.

There was a proliferation of welfare schemes in the next three decades. Those brought under the safety net during this period included widows, the physically and mentally challenged, leprosy and cancer patients, sportsmen, journalists, agricultural workers, tree climbers, fishermen, motor workers, tailors, artisans and ration dealers.

No government has explained how it identified the groups that needed protection. Often the political establishment was guided by electoral considerations.

After the turn of the century, more welfare schemes were instituted. One, established in 2001, provided for a monthly pension of Rs110 to an unmarried woman above 50 years. The amount was raised to Rs120 in 2007 and to Rs200 in 2008.

Other sections covered by welfare funds in recent years include bamboo and pandas leaf workers and dairy farmers.

When the first welfare fund was created, Kerala was one of the poor states of the country, its per capita income being below the national average. Today it is one of the richest, thanks to the steady inflow of remittances from Keralites working abroad since the 1970s and the significant growth of the service sector.

Since the state's social development indices compare favourably with those of the advanced countries of the world, it is time for the government to think of a comprehensive social security system covering the entire population. What stands in the way is the feudal mindset that prevails in the ruling circles, which has turned governance into an exercise in charity.

Another possible reason for the authorities' preference for piecemeal welfare measures is that it provides them the opportunity to exercise patronage. Politicians play a key role in identifying the beneficiaries of the schemes.

The setting up of separate welfare funds to cater to the needs of different categories of people offers scope for creating sinecures for politicians and bureaucrats in the form of chairmen and chief executives.

Official documents indicate that an annual administrative expenditure of Rs335 million is involved in the disbursal of welfare payments of Rs2.10 billion. In some cases, the administrative expenses are inordinately high. For instance, the annual administrative expenditure of the Tailoring Workers Welfare Scheme, which disburses benefits to the tune of Rs35 million, is a whopping Rs10 million.

The Planning Board states in latest Economic Review that the administrative expenditure of some bodies like the lottery workers' welfare fund board and the motor transport workers' welfare board is not available.

The latest and most ambitious of the welfare schemes is the Pravasi Welfare Fund floated last year to take care of the needs of non-resident Keralites. Over two million Keralites working abroad and one million working in different parts of India are entitled to join the scheme.

Although 11 months have passed since the scheme came into force, there is no official word on the number of NRKs who have joined it.

Last week, a committee appointed by the government suggested a reduction in the number of welfare fund boards through a process of mergers. Hopefully, this will lead to a saving in administrative costs.

A national old age pension scheme, instituted by the government of India, has been in force since 1995. Under the scheme, a person aged above 65 years is entitled to a monthly pension of Rs250, with the Centre contributing Rs200 and the state putting in Rs50.

According to the 2001 Census 6.6 per cent of the state's population of more than 31 million was above 65 years. Yet only 156,871 came forward to claim benefits under this scheme in 2008. Apparently the people are looking for genuine social security, not charity.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 4, 2010

Terror probe is an indictment of ruling Left Front

2010-01-01T20:24:00.001+05:30

B.R.P.BHASKAR
IANS

Thiruvanathapuram, Dec 29 : Kerala's Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan is angry. Why is the National Investigating Agency (NIA), which has not taken over cases registered in connection with the bombings in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Surat, showing special interest in Kerala cases, he asked after the NIA announced plans to take over further investigation of the Kalamassery bus burning case and the Kashmir terror recruitment case.

Two cases registered in connection with bomb blasts in Kozhikode had been taken over by the agency earlier.

Balakrishnan's discomfiture is understandable. The NIA decision is a virtual indictment of the state police's handling of terror cases under Left Democratic Front (LDF) rule. Balakrishnan is the only Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) politburo member in the state cabinet. As such, in the party hierarchy, he now ranks higher than even Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan, who was dropped from that high-ranking body as a disciplinary measure.

When the LDF came to power in 2006, state party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan had picked Balakrishnan for the home minister's post. As a result, Achuthanandan became the first chief minister in a long time who did not hold the home portfolio. He tried to keep with him the Department of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption, which usually goes with the home ministry, defying the state party leadership's wishes.

According to reports published at the time, Industries Minister Elamaram Kareem had told the state committee they would all go to jail if Achuthanandan retained the vigilance department. The central leadership asked Achuthanandan to hand vigilance to Balakrishnan as well.

Balakrishnan was nominated to the party politburo at the height of the sectarian war between Achuthanandan and Vijayan. Observers saw it as a move by the national leadership to keep him in line as a likely successor in case it became necessary to replace either the chief minister or the state secretary.

Under Balakrishnan's stewardship, Kerala police has had a dubious record in the investigation of major crimes. Four Keralites were among those killed in encounters in the Kupwara area of Kashmir Valley in 2008. Initially the state police sought to dismiss it as a case of false identity. After the Kashmir police established the Kerala origin of the youths, the state police took up investigation but the trail vanished somewhere along the way. This is one of the two cases the NIA has now decided to take over.

The other case relates to the burning of a Tamil Nadu-registered bus at Kalamassery, near Kochi, on Sep 9, 2005 to press the demand for release of People's Democratic Party chairman Abdul Naser Mahdani, who was then in a Coimbatore jail as an accused in the Coimbatore blast case. The police made some arrests immediately but the investigation went on for years, first under the Congress-led United Democratic Front government and then under the present LDF government.

Mahdani, who emerged from jail in 2007 after being acquitted in the bomb blast case, campaigned vigorously for the CPI-M in the Lok Sabha elections. The party central committee, after reviewing the poll debacle, concluded that the association with Mahdani was a mistake.

At election time the local media carried a plethora of reports, based on leaked testimony of men held in connection with the bus burning case, alleging Mahdani's wife, Soofiya, was involved in the conspiracy. Balakrishnan dismissed the reports, saying they contained nothing new. After the elections, the police questioned Soofiya. There was, however, no further action.

Mahdani and his wife suddenly came within the ambit of terror investigations with the arrest of two Keralites -- Thadiyantavide Naseer, said to be the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba's commander in south India, and his associate Shafas, on the Bangladesh border early in November. Both are said to have been associated with Mahdani's outfit.

The Karnataka police, which had been looking for Naseer in connection with the serial blasts in Bangalore, obtained his custody from a Meghalaya court. Kerala rushed an officer to Bangalore to join in the investigation and seek Naseer's custody in connection with the cases against him in the state. The opposition alleged that the officer had been sent to protect the party's interests.

Police officials from Karnataka took Naseer to several places in Kerala as part of the investigation into the Bangalore case. There is no indication when it will be through with Naseer and Kerala can get him for its own investigations.

As the Karnataka police investigations were proceeding, the Kerala police found it necessary to make wholesale changes in the list of accused in the Kalamassery bus burning case. It dropped the first three of the nine accused, saying they were not involved in the crime. Thadiyantavide Naseer became the new first accused. Soofiya Mahdani was named the tenth accused and arrested.

The opposition has demanded that Balakrishnan give up the home portfolio. Fifty years ago, E.M.S. Namboodiripad had faced a similar demand while heading the state's first Communist government. Responding to the demand, he handed over home to V.R. Krishna Iyer, one of the three non-party members of his cabinet. Today no one expects a similar response.

Life beneath an aged dam

2009-12-28T12:33:00.002+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Long-running agitations are part of Kerala's everyday experience. Some agitations succeed, some fail and some linger on with no end in sight.

Among the success stories are the closure of the Birlas' rayon factory at Mavoor, near Kozhikode, and Coca Cola's plant at Plachimada, near Palakkad, which had by polluted air and water and sown death and destruction. These stories remain sources of inspiration for small and vulnerable groups fighting polluting businesses.

On Friday, villagers living under the shadow of the aged Mullaperiyar dam in the Idukki district marked the third anniversary of their agitation demanding decommissioning of the dam. It was on Christmas Day 2006 that the Mullaperiyar Samara Samithi, led by Fr Joy Nirappel and CP Roy, launched the agitation.

The Mullaperiyar dam, commissioned in 1895, was built in pursuance of an agreement of 1886 between the British-ruled Madras Presidency and the princely state of Travancore, for diversion of an agreed quantity of water from the Periyar to irrigate arid regions in Madurai and adjoining districts.

The dam was constructed by Madras on land given on long lease by Travancore. As successor governments, Tamil Nadu now controls the dam and Kerala has ownership of the land.

The estimated life-span of the lime-and-mortar dam was only 50 years. Since 1970 Kerala has maintained that in view of the age of the dam it is unsafe to store water in the reservoir up to a height of 46.3 metres, as originally envisaged, and that the level should not exceed 41.45 metres. It is pointed out that a dam burst could endanger up to four million lives in Kerala.

In 1979, the Central Water Commission (CWC), after inspecting the dam, directed Tamil Nadu to lower the water level to 41.45 metres as a cautionary measure and take steps to strengthen the structure. Tamil Nadu accepted the directive.

In the 1990s, there was a spate of petitions in the Tamil Nadu and Kerala high courts on the Mullaperiyar issue. While Tamil Nadu petitioners asked for a higher water level, Kerala petitioners opposed it. In 1998 all the petitions were transferred to the Supreme Court.

At the court's instance, the Centre initiated talks with the Tamil Nadu and Kerala governments but no solution emerged.

In 2001, a committee headed by the CWC chairman proposed that after taking steps to strengthen the dam the reservoir level might be raised first to 43.28 metres and then to the originally envisaged 46.6 metres.

The Kerala government opposed the proposal. It pointed out that the suggestion was based on a stress analysis study which covered only the baby dam, and not the main dam.

However, in February 2006, the Supreme Court directed Tamil Nadu to carry out the strengthening measures suggested by the CWC and asked Kerala not to obstruct the work.

These developments caused considerable anxiety in Kerala, especially in the context of a 2003 study by the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, which warned that an earthquake could cause tensile cracks in the main dam.

People also entered the battleground. In Kerala, those living under the shadow of a possible catastrophe demanded that their safety to ensured. In Tamil Nadu, workers of the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam stopped trucks carrying goods to Kerala, which depends on outside sources for most of its requirements.

The Kerala government responded by enlarging the scope of a law it had enacted in 2003 to create an authority charged with the task of ensuring the safety of all dams in the state. It vested in the authority the power to advise the government to suspend the function of a dam or even decommission it.

The amending measure statutorily determined 41.45 metres as the safe height of the Mullaperiyar dam.

The state also commissioned a survey as the first step towards the construction of a new dam.

The Tamil Nadu government approached the Supreme Court once again. The court constituted a constitution bench to decide the matter. Hearing is set to begin early in 2010.

To the court, the issue is one of dispensing justice. To the state governments, it is a power game.

But to large sections of people in the two states -- to Keralites living under the shadow of the aged dam and to Tamils who depend upon Mullaperiyar waters for agriculture -- the issue is one of life and death, which needs to be resolved in a spirit of goodwill. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 28, 2009.

History repeats itself -- with a small change

2009-12-21T13:06:00.001+05:30

B R P BHASKAR
Gulf Today

History repeated itself last week -- with a small but significant change.

Eighteen years ago the Kerala police arrested People's Democratic Party chairman Abdul Naser Madani in connection with some allegedly incendiary speeches he had made years ago. He remained in a Coimbatore jail for nearly 10 years thereafter as an undertrial prisoner.

The Tamil Nadu police alleged that he was a party to the conspiracy that resulted in a series of blasts in Coimbatore shortly before the Bharatiya Janata Party leader and then Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani arrived there. Since the charge was one of terrorism he was denied bail and parole.

The wanton denial of Madani's human rights generated a certain measure of sympathy for him in all those who did not put narrow political interests above basic human values. At one point the State Assembly unanimously passed a resolution voicing sympathy for him.

The main political formations sent their emissaries to jail to seek his support in the elections. It was the Left Democratic Front government headed by EK Nayanar which arrested Madani and handed him over to Tamil Nadu to stand trial in the bomb blast.

Initially, therefore, he asked his supporters to back the United Democratic Front in the elections. Later he felt that the UDF was not doing enough for him and he switched his support to the LDF.

On his return from jail the LDF gave him a hero's welcome. To ensure his support in the last Lok Sabha elections, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) accepted his suggestion to give the Ponnani seat to an independent candidate. He appeared on the dais with CPI-M state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan.

After the elections, the CPI-M central leadership concluded that the camaraderie with the PDP had not done the party any good. However, the state party leadership continued to maintain good relationship with Madani and his party.

Last week the LDF government arrested Madani's wife Soofia in connection with the burning of a Tamil Nadu bus near Kochi when Madani was still in jail. The bus was burnt ostensibly to press the demand for his release.

The case had been under investigation for many years. At the time of the Lok Sabha elections, the media carried many reports implicating Soofia Madani in the case based on statements given to the police by some persons arrested in the case.

After the elections were over, the police questioned Soofia Madani. However, there was no further action. The state government became active following the arrest of Thadiyantavida Naseer of Kannur, whom the intelligence agencies describe as Pakistan-based Laksar-e-Taiba's commander in south India, in Bangladesh.

As Karnataka police obtained his custody for questioning in connection with a terror case in Bangalore, the state police deputed Inspector General of Police (Northern Range) Tomin J Thachankari to Bangalore to join in the interrogation.

Thachankari is said to be close to the CPI-M leadership. UDF leaders alleged that he had been sent to Bangalore to protect the interests of the party. As Karnataka police arrived in the state with Naseer to gather evidence, there was an abrupt change in the official attitude.

Apprehending arrest, Soofia Madani approached the high court for anticipatory bail, which was refused. She was taken into custody immediately.

After Madani's arrest, the Nayanar government had listed it as one of its achievements. After Soofia's arrest Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan claimed it had improved the image of the government.

Will Soofia Madani get a fair trial? Some citizens' groups have voiced concern over the matter. The concern is based on two factors. One is the politicisation of the case. The other is the malicious media coverage based on selective leak by the police. Newspapers have been full of reports about telephone calls Soofia made or received before and after the burning of the bus. Undeterred by the fact that the contents of the conversations are unknown they have been conveying the impression that they are clinching evidence of her complicity in the bus burning conspiracy.

To begin with, Madani had said the PDP would face the matter legally. Now he is said to be planning a fast unto death with his children demanding justice for his wife. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 21, 2009.

Dalit Solidarity team on tour of Thiruvananthapuram district

2009-12-18T23:43:00.001+05:30

A team of the Dali Solidarity Group is now touring Thiruvananthapuram district to apprise the people of the situation in Varkala and educate them about the conspiracy behind the branding of Dalit Human Rights Movement as a terrorist organization by the local police.

On September 23 police had said DHRM was responsible for the murder of Sivaprasad, an innocent stroller, on that day. Nearly three months later police have still not filed a charge-sheet in court although ot is holding many DHRM in custody

The campaign, which began from Vengannur, birthplace of 20th century Dalit revolutionary Ayyankali, on Thursday, will end at Varkala on Sunday afternoon.

Former Gujarat Director General of Police R.B.Sreekumar IPS (Retd), who played a key role in exposing the role of Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the anti-Muslim pogrom in the state, has accepted the group’s invitation to attend the concluding function.

Various human rights organizations and movements are represented in the Solidarity Group, of which I am the chairman.

The final report of the fact-finding team which visited Varkala under the auspices of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties is now in the press. It will be released shortly. The team, during its visit to Varkala, had unearthed a lot of information which the media had willfully suppressed.

Commission proposes, government disposes

2009-12-14T15:59:00.002+05:30

B R P BHASKAR
Gulf Today

The fate of a set of proposals sent to the Kerala government by the State Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Commission illustrates how the political establishment scuttles efforts to address the problems of the weaker sections.

The commission, headed by PK Sivanandan, a former IAS officer, received on Oct.6 a complaint from VV Selvaraj, chairman of Dalit Human Rights Movement, alleging police atrocities against the organisation's supporters in Varkala. It also received a petition signed by 536 Dalit women containing the same allegation.

The commission forwarded the complaints to the Chief Secretary, the Director General of Police and the Secretaries to the Home and Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Welfare departments. It received no response from any of them.

Varkala was the scene of a dastardly murder on Sept.23. The victim was a person named Sivaprasad with no known affiliation. Within hours of the murder, the police said DHRM members had killed him to proclaim the organisation's strength.

Police swooped on Dalit colonies and arrested many DHRM workers. However, it has still not filed a charge-sheet in the murder case.

On Oct.21, the commission visited Varkala and gathered evidence directly from all concerned. It went to the Dalit colonies and spoke to both supporters and opponents of DHRM. It found the police version of events suspect and the testimony of DHRM supporters credible.

In the report, approved on Oct.29, the commission specially drew attention to the evidence of two women. One of them was a pregnant woman, who said police had taken her in a jeep and abandoned her on the roadside. The other was the mother of Das, DHRM organising secretary. She said the deputy superintended of police (DySP), Attingal, had taken her son to the police station and tortured him after a magistrate had remanded him to judicial custody.

The commission referred to the high-handed action of the circle inspector in locking the house of an arrested person and walking away with the key, denying his mother and sister access to their dwelling.

The key was returned to the family a day before the commission's visit after the chairman took up the case with the superintendent of police.

During the visit to the Thoduve colony, noting the prevailing tension, the commission's chairman directed the police superintendent to set up a picket there to prevent anti-social elements from taking advantage of the situation.

The report pointed out that if the police had taken adequate security measures, the clash on Oct.27 in which several women were injured could have been averted.

To put an end to the continuing strife, the commission suggested a visit to the colony by a high-powered government team, preferably under the leadership of the Chief Minister. It also proposed the formation of a committee comprising officials and elected representatives at the local level to maintain constant vigil.

The commission asked the government to order an impartial inquiry into the charges against the police, keeping the DySP and the Circle Inspector and Sub-Inspector of Varkala away.

The commission noted that many residents of Thoduve were living in tenements put up on government land. It proposed that they be given preferential treatment under the EMS housing scheme and rehabilitated.

Seven weeks have passed since the report was sent to AK Balan, Minister for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Welfare, with copies to the Chief Minister, the Home Minister and a host of officials. So far there has been no action on the basis of its recommendations.

Inquiries have revealed that Balan, who is himself a Dalit, turned down the proposal for a visit to Thoduve by a team headed by the chief minister, saying it was impractical. He termed the proposal for rehabilitation of the colony residents also as impractical. He effectively killed the proposal for an impartial inquiry into the police conduct by referred it to the DGP.

The government's inaction reflects the ruling establishment's callous attitude towards the problems of the Dalits, who have been victims of discrimination for centuries. Since DHRM has been propagating the view that all established parties have betrayed the Dalits, it has invited the enmity of the entire political spectrum.

A campaign waged by DHRM has weaned away a large number of Dalits away from liquor and drugs. It has endeared the organisation to Dalit women but earned it the wrath of the drug mafia and those in its pay.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 14, 2009

Politicking amid price rise

2009-12-07T11:32:00.001+05:30

BRP BHASKAR
Gulf Today

Prices of food grains and other essential items have risen sharply in Kerala in recent weeks, imposing a heavy burden on the people. Vegetable prices have gone up by about 30 per cent in six months.

Kerala depends on other states for most of its requirements. Tamil Nadu is the main source of supply of vegetables. Trade sources attribute the spurt in vegetable prices to the damage to crops by rain in that state.

To help the people tide over the situation, the government decided last week to distribute vegetables through the state-owned Kerala State Civil Supplies Corporation (Supplyco) in the urban centres.

In the five cities, Supplyco will make available kits with two and a half kilograms of vegetables for Rs25. This will involve a state subsidy of Rs7.50 per kit as the cost of procuring the vegetables is estimated at Rs32.50.

In the municipal towns, vegetables will be distributed through fair price shops at 15 to 30 per cent below the market rates. Mobile shops will also be commissioned to sell vegetables.

Will the plan work? Doubts prevail in view of the failure of the scheme the state government launched three months ago to set up a chain of far price hotels.

The scheme envisaged setting up of 140 hotels, 10 each in the 14 districts. They were to supply tea and snacks for Rs3 and meals for Rs12.

Only about 50 persons came forward to run hotels under the scheme. And only18 of them actually opened hotels. Five of the hotels have already closed down.

The scheme failed because the authorities did not do the necessary homework before taking it up. Supplyco could not provide grains to the hotels at low rates, as promised.

The ruling Left Democratic Front and the opposition United Democratic Front are trying to derive political mileage out of the price rise by laying the blame at the doors of different governments.

The UDF has announced plans to stage protests outside state government offices. The Kerala Congress (Mani), a constituent of the UDF, has already held some demonstrations on its own.

Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan said that if the opposition is sincere it should stage protests outside the offices of the central government, which was responsible for the price rise.

He also claimed that Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar had commended the state government's efforts to hold the price line and held it out as a model for others. UDF spokesmen questioned the claim.

Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy put the ball back in the chief minister's court. He asked the state government to make good the LDF promise to commit Rs400 million to hold the price line with the help of 40,000 cooperatives.

Finance Minister TM Thomas Isaac used the opportunity to press the LDF government's long-standing demand for restoration of universal coverage under the public distribution system. The UDF countered the demand by pointing out that the state had failed to lift 20,000 tonnes of rice allotted by the centre.

As a state with chronic food shortage, Kerala developed decades ago a public distribution system capable of serving the entire population. After the centre decided to limit subsidy to persons below the poverty line, those above the poverty line stopped using the PDS outlets as they can get good quality rice in the open market at comparable prices.

Many ration shops started diverting unsold grain stocks to rice mills. The state government turned a blind eye to this clandestine trade.

The centre, taking note of the decline in the requirements of the public distribution system, slashed the state's grains quota. The LDF routinely cites this as proof of discrimination against the state.

As the people reel under the impact of the price rise, the state government is promoting crass consumerism under the banner of the Grand Kerala Shopping Festival.

About 5,000 shops spread all over the state are participating in the 45-day shopping festival, which was formally inaugurated on December 1.

According to the government, the festival aims at linking trade and tourism. It claims that the festival will help find markets for the state's traditional products like spices, handlooms, cashew, coir, handmade mirror and bamboo items.

However, the government's partners in the venture are commercial houses with no interest in traditional products. They include a jewellery, a private sector bank, a super bazaar, a home appliance manufacturer, an automobile firm and a soap manufacturer. The bank and the jewellery are the only institutions from the state. -- Gulf Today, December 7, 2009.

A felicitation volume

2009-12-01T22:30:00.000+05:30

The Law Department of the University of Kerala has brought out a souvenir to felicitate its former head, Dr. N. K. Jayakumar, who is now Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Kochi.

I released this publication at a function held at the Press Club of Thiruvananthapuram this evening by handing over the first copy to Dr. G. Rajasekharan Nair, Principal, Government Law College.

The Souvenir contains three research articles -- one by Dr. T. R. Subramanya, Dean and Chairman, Department of Post-graduate Studies in Law, College of Law, Bangalore University, another by Dr. A. David Ambrose, Professor, Department of Legal Studies, University of Madras, and the third by C. Sobha Jacob, Lecturer, State Council for Educational Research and Training, Government of Kerala and Dr. K. C. Sunny, Head of the Department of Law, University of Kerala.

It also contains a number of articles on each of the following subjects:
Object and curriculum changes for legal education reforms.
Reforms in teaching methods and examinations.
Objects and methods of PG studies and research in law.
Restructuring management and control of legal education.

The poor find Kerala's educational system wanting

2009-11-25T20:56:00.003+05:30

While Kerala’s educational system appears to meet the needs of the mainstream, there is grave deficiency, in both quantitative and qualitative terms, in the facilities available to the poor.

This was the conclusion of the three-member panel which heard the testimony of five persons – four children and one parent – belonging to the marginalized sections, including Adivasis, Dalits and the fishing community.

The panel was appalled to note that Dalit students were being subjected to discrimination.

The panel endorsed three demands of CRY:

1. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, should be amended to cover children aged below six years and in the age group 15-18 years.
2. There must be a school with adequate facilities and qualified teachers within s kilometer of any habitation.
3. The Government of India must allot 10 per cent of the GDP to education.

The panel consisted of Mr. Justice P.K.Shamsuddin, Ms. Rekha Raj and myself.

The public hearing was held at the initiative of CRY (Child Rights and You), a non-profit organization, which is marking its 30th anniversary with a nationwide campaign to spread the message “Do What Is Right—Equal Rights for Every Child.”

One element of the programme is collection of signatures on a charter of demands on Right to Education. The charter will be submitted to decision-makers at the Centre and in the States.

The hearing, held at Jawahar Bal Bhavan, Thiruvananthapuram, was intended to create and spread public awareness about the right of every child for equal education.

The testimony

Suresh, 12-year-old Kurumba boy of Thazhethudikki village in Attapadi block of Palakkad district, was studying at the model Residential School in Munnar. He said he had dropped out because the family could not afford the travel expenses. Adivasi children have to hire a jeep, which charges Rs. 3,000 for the trip to Munnar.

Chandran, 32, of Agali, who belongs to the Muduka tribe, said two of his children, studying in Standard 4 and Standard 1 are attending a school five km from the hamlet. They are in the hostel. The nearest anganvadi where he can put his youngest child, Kannan, aged 4, is more than a kilometer away. He wants an anganvadi in the hamlet. Of the 32 families there, at least 10 have children of anganvadi age, he said.

Teresa, who belongs to the fishing community, is studying in Standard 7 in a Government school at Valiyathura. She complained of lack of drinking water, poor sanitation, inadequacy of teachers and corporal punishment.

Haritha, studying in Standard 8 at a school in tsunami-hit Alappad area of Alappuzha district, said while Rs 50 lakhs was needed to rebuild the school the authorities had spent only Rs 5 lakhs. On the second anniversary of the tsunami the Chief Minister said the local UP school would be upgraded to high school but the necessary infrastructure or teachers were not there.

Albin, 13, a Dalit belonging to Sooranad in Kollam district, who is attending an aided school, said Dalit students were asked to clean the school toilets.

CRY website: www.cry.org
CRY on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=38445633833