Family planning programme comes under pressure

KERALA's highly successful family programme is coming under pressure from different quarters. On one side are religious leaders who want their communities to abandon restraint and produce more children. On the other side are reformers who favour use of compulsion to enforce the small family norm.

Kerala, divided into three administrative units, had a population of only 12.5 million at the time of Independence. The region had the highest population density and the highest rate of population growth in the country. In 2001, when the last census was taken, the State's population stood at 31.8 million.
It still had the highest population density but the rate of population growth was now the lowest in the country.

This miraculous fall in population growth was a measure of the success of the family planning programme. The Indian government, anxious to hold the galloping population growth, launched the programme immediately after the country gained freedom. The programme evoked far greater response in Kerala than elsewhere in the country.

Till 1971 the state had the highest population growth rate but thereafter it started declining. By 2001, the decennial growth rate fell to 9.4 percent as against the national average of 21.5 percent. There was a dramatic decline in both the birth rate and the death rate during this period.

The fall in the death rate is attributable to such factors as improvement in public health standards and medical facilities. The fall in the birth rate is attributable primarily to practice of family planning.

The spread of education and the revolution of rising expectations brought about a salubrious change in the attitude of the people.
Parents were eager to give children greater opportunities than they themselves had, and they realised that they could make better provisions for the family if its size was small.

The government did offer incentives under the family planning programme but there was no use of compulsion, as happened in some northern States during the Emergency.
Religious leaders, who are opposed to the use of contraception, did not put up any hurdles in the way of voluntary use of contraception.

Judging by the total fertility rate (TFR), worked out on the basis of number of children per women, the response of the different religious groups to the programme has been uneven.

In 1991, the Hindus had a TFR of 1.66, Christians 1.78 and Muslims 2.97.
Against this background, the census finding that the Hindu population had come down from 57.4 percent in 1991 to 56.2 percent in 2001 and the Christian population from 19.3 percent to 19.0 percent came as no surprise. The Muslim population moved up from 23.3 percent to 24.7 percent.

Some communal outfits sought to scare the Hindu majority by raising the spectre of being swamped by the minority communities. However, they could not make a big impact, primarily because the Hindu families which restricted the number of children had done so on their own.

Though the fall in the Christian population was small, it was enough to cause "grave concern" to the powerful Catholic Church. It exhorted the faithful to abjure contraception.

On a superficial view, the Muslim TFR and population growth appear to indicate a trend contrary to that in the rest of the state's population. However, the growth rate is falling among the Muslims too. As in the Christian community, there is a powerful section among Muslims too, who believe that contraception is against the principles of the religion. But experts are of the view that Muslims remain behind other communities in the matter of population control not because of religious reasons but because of educational backwardness.

The reported move by a law reforms commission, appointed by the state government, to impose penalties to enforce the small family norm has now set the stage for a needless confrontation on the issue of population control.

Recently the media reported that the commission, headed by former Supreme Court judge VR Krishna Iyer, has decided to propose the enactment of a law providing for a fine of Rs10,000 on parents who go in for a third child.

The Catholic Church dubbed it an attempt to import the Chinese population policy.
While the Church exercises tremendous influence on the Christians, it is doubtful if it can persuade those who are restricting the size of the family voluntarily, in order to give the children better lives, to go in for larger families. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, August 18, 2008.

Chengara: Independence Day thoughts

BLOCKED: The police blocking a group of Chengara-bound human rights activists near the Chengara junction on Thursday. Photo: The Hindu

Since August 3, some persons, said to be plantation workers, have been engaged in a blockade to force several thousand landless people, most of them Dalits and Adivasis, out of the Chengara estate in Pathanamthitta district, where they have been squatting for a year demanding farm land.

While the squatters have been peaceful, the workers involved in the blockade have been violent. They have forcibly prevented social activists from meeting the squatters and damaged their vehicles. They have also abducted women squatters who came out of the estate to fetch necessities.

The police, who are present in the area, are clearly in collusion with the workers, who are under the flags of different political parties, including the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which heads the government of Kerala. They have arrested and removed activists who wanted to assert their right to enter the estate and meet the squatters.

The blockade is inhuman. It denies the squatters, who include a large number of women and children, access to food and medicine. According to media reports, the unions are taking a tough stance and the situation is getting more complex. (See report in The Hindu.)

The government of Kerala held two rounds of talks on the issue. One meeting was called by the Chief Minister and the other by the Collector of Pathanamthitta. Clearly there can be no peaceful solution of the problem so long as the blockade, organised with the tacit approval of the CPI (M) and support of the government machinery, lasts. A small incident can lead to a repetition of Muthanga (where the Kerala police broke up a similar agitation using bullets, when the United Democratic Front was in power) or Nandigram (where the West Bengal police broke up a similar agitation in a joint operation with CPI-M cadres and goons).

Let us ask the CPI (M), which, as the ruling party, has a duty to act in a responsible manner, to call off the blockade and create conditions favourable to peaceful resolution of the problem. I have sent today a message to the Chief Minister, the Collector of Pathanamthitta, the General Secretary of the CPI (M) and the State Secretary of the CPI (M) in this regard. The text of the message and the e-mail addresses of the persons concerned are given below. I appeal to all those who are in agreement with these sentiments to write to them too.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr.V.S.Achuthanandan, Chief Minister of Kerala (chiefminister@kerala.gov.in)
Mr. P.C.Sanalkumar, District Collector, Pathanamthitta (dcpta@kerala.nic.in)
Mr. Prakash Karat, General Secretary, CPI-M (prakash@cpim.org)
Mr. Pinarayi Vijayan, Secretary, CPI-M, Kerala (cpmkerala@asianetindia.com)

The blockade of Chengara estate by workers, with the tacit approval of the CPI (M) and connivance of officials, has created a serious situation.
I earnestly urge the CPI (M) and the State government to use their influence and put an immediate end to the inhuman blockade, which denies several thousand squatters access to food and medicine, and resume talks with them to find a peaceful solution to their problems.

B.R.P.Bhaskar
Silpam, NRA C-29,
Cheruvickal,
Sreekaryam,
Thiruvananthapuram 695017

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Causeless Journalists: Fourth Estate in the Age of Social Movements

Dr. T.T. Sreekumar, Assistant Professor, Communications and New Media Programme, National University of Singapore, discusses the phenomenon of Causeless Journos in an article distributed by Countercurrents.org.

Besides the exemplary examples of P. Sainath and a few others, he says, scribes in the mainstream media mostly present themselves as “causeless journo/s” (CJs) with pretensions of neutrality and a derision for those who stand up for the causes of the marginalized. The disdain probably arise from their own kinship ties or alliances with corrupt politicians or past association with Stalinist or cultural fascist media organizations.

The Kerala media comes up for special mention.

Over to Countercurrents.org for article

Online petition on the issue of Chengara blockade

The following is a message circulated by Bobby Kunhu (http://community.eldis.org/myshkin/Blog/)

Dear Friends

As most of you are aware, around 5000 families protesting in Chengara are facing violence and are completely cut off even from basic necessities like food and medicine by a bunch of goons with the connivance of the Government of Kerala.

There are several activities taking place on the ground to provide some relief to the protestors. In addition, we thought it is important to show solidarity in the form of a petition addressed to Constitutional authorities in this country, to put pressure on the Government of Kerala to act immediately and secure justice for the peaceful protestors.

Please do sign this petition and circulate it widely amongst your contacts.

The petition can be found at
http://www.petitiononline.com/chengara/petition.html

In solidarity
--
Bobby Kunhu
http://community.eldis.org/myshkin/Blog/

Party resolution seen as bid to rein in Chief Minister

A policy document adopted by the State Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has put the seal of approval on the organisational leadership's plan to take Kerala along the capitalist road, following the footsteps of China and West Bengal.

The committee approved the document, presented by State Finance Minister TM Thomas Isaac, after three days of discussion. Most of the members supported it enthusiastically and it was adopted unanimously in the absence of Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan, who is undergoing Ayurvedic treatment.

In effect, the document is a victory proclamation by the organisational wing, headed by state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, who had successfully marginalised Achuthanandan and his followers in the elections at various levels held in advance of the party's national congress at Coimbatore early this year.

The state party had witnessed intense factional strife between the two leaders before and after the Assembly elections of 2006. At one stage, the national leadership, exasperated by the way they aired their differences in public, suspended both from the Politburo, the party's highest policy-making body. The suspension was revoked before the party congress.

Later, the national leadership inducted Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan also into the politburo in an apparent bid to establish a new equilibrium in the state party with Pinarayi Vijayan in control of the organisational wing and Achuthanandan remaining the chief minister.

The new policy document pointedly rejects Achuthanandan's publicly stated positions on two issues with a bearing on agricultural and industrial development.

In the context of the growing demand for farm land from landless agricultural labourers, most of them Dalits and Adivasis who did not benefit from earlier land reform measures, Achuthanandan had endorsed the call for a second land reform.

The resolution dubs talk of a second land reform as mere rhetoric. Some time ago, a senior bureaucrat, apparently acting at the instance of his political master, had prepared a paper, making out a case for scrapping of the prevailing land reform measures on the ground that they came in the way of acquisition of land for industries.

The chief minister can seek consolation in the fact that the party has not gone that far. It has only scotched talk of further land reform.

The policy document is widely seen as a calculated attempt to rein in the chief minister and clear the way for ministers belonging to the Pinarayi faction to go ahead with their schemes without running into roadblocks.

In the early days of the present government, the Finance Minister and Local Self-government Minister Paloli Mohammedkutty, both stalwarts of the Pinarayi faction, had encountered stiff opposition from Achuthanandan in their bid to secure a loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for schemes to improve urban amenities.

As the time set by the ADB for signing the loan agreement was running out, they sent an official to New Delhi without the chief minister's knowledge and completed the formalities.

Industries Minister Elamaram Kareem, another Pinarayi acolyte, had also to contend with the chief minister's opposition when he sought to push through some schemes in which the organisational leadership seems to be interested.

The state committee's directive to adopt a liberal approach to attract investments and secure Rs250 billion for infrastructure projects in the remaining period of the government's tenure will enable him to press ahead.

A number of proposals for creating special economic zones, recommended by Kareem, have been lying in the chief minister's office for a long time.

Apparently they have not been forwarded to the Centre because Achuthanandan does not share Kareem's enthusiasm for them.

According to reliable sources, the state party leadership took up the issue with the national leadership, which then asked the chief minister to forward all pending applications to the Centre. Following this, the matter was placed before the Cabinet, where CPI ministers blocked it.

It is not as though the chief minister and the CPI ministers are totally against SEZs.
Since the present government took over, some SEZ projects have been cleared, notable among them being the Smart City project being implemented by the Dubai Internet City authorities.

They, however, favour a cautious approach in the matter. As a state with a high density of population, Kerala has to assess the needs of industry and agriculture properly and apportion the available land among all claimants, including them.

A scientific approach of this kind, which will restrict the ability to dispense favours, does not appeal to the political leadership. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, August 11, 2008.

Remembering Alexander Solzhenitsyn

‘Vayana’, readers’ collective, joined the Russian Cultural Centre in Thiruvananthapuram in a function to commemorate Nobel Prize-winning Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn on August 9.

The New Indian Express report of the event can be seen here.

Russia is expected to open a consulate in Thiruvananthapuram shortly.

Chengara: the problem and the solution

What happened at Chengara (in Pathanamthitta district) the other day is not something the regime and those who lead it can recall with pride. Thousands of landless people have been on an agitation there for a year demanding farm land. Three activists who went there to express solidarity with them on the first anniversary of the struggle were stopped by a group of men who claimed to be plantation workers. They also damaged their vehicles. All this happened in the presence and under the patronage of the police. At the request of the police, the organizers had to shift the venue of a public meeting, planned for the next day, at another location. Events of this kind are not new in Kerala. But the society needs to recognize factors which make the Chengara developments different.

The violence in Chengara was planned. Even the police does not say there was any provocation from the side of the agitators. What they have been carrying on for a year is a peaceful struggle of endurance. This is quite different from the agitations that the political parties organize. A parallel that one can point to is the agitation that the Adivasis staged at Muthanga under the leadership of CK Janu. After the attempt to discredit that agitation by alleging extremist presence failed, the government created provocation and used needless violence. AK Antony, who was Chief Minister at the time, sought to justify the use of brute force, saying the Centre had asked for eviction of Adivasis from the Muthanga sanctuary. At Chengara, too, the authorities alleged extremist presence. A plantation owner got an order from the High Court for the eviction of the agitators. But the court’s directive to avoid bloodshed came in the way of Muthanga-style solution.

Tapan Ganguly, who had come from Bengal, environmental activist CR Neelakantan and a priest and former college teacher Abraham Joseph were the victims of violence. From the eyewitness account given by Fr. Abraham Joseph at Thiruvananthapuram the next day, it appears the violence was perpetrated by a bunch of goons who were behind the plantation workers. The workers complain that the land agitation was adversely affecting them. But what happened there was not a mere protest demonstration. When workers who are under different party flags and the army of goons in the pay of the estate owners form a united front against landless Dalits and Adivasis, what emerges is a picture of the new class division taking place in Kerala. It is a phenomenon the genius of Marx could not comprehend.

It cannot be a coincidence that police arrangements there were at a low level and provided the assailants an opportunity to run riot. The only point on which there is room for doubt is the level at which the decision to keep the police presence at a low level was taken. According to the practice in democratic societies, it is the duty of the police to check those perpetrating violence and protect those engaged in peaceful activities. The very opposite happened at Chengara. There the police checked those who maintained peace and protected the perpetrators of violence. This indicates the direction in which police reform, of which we hear a lot these days, is moving.

The responsibility for the Chengara events cannot be laid on the shoulders of the small police force present there. The circumstances suggest that they were acting in accordance with the wishes of those who decided that limited police presence will do. Even if it was an official who took that decision, the responsibility has to be shared by Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan. He is not known to have expressed displeasure over the police conduct. As such, it must be presumed that it has his approval. In the Communist Party of India (Marxist) dispensation, the party is above the individual. No minister, not even the Chief Minister, has the right to take a decision that does not have the party’s approval. In the circumstances, it will not be right to limit the responsibility to the minister. It extends to the party.
Most of those engaged in the agitation for land are Dalits and Adivasis. Some others are also at Chengara. What unites them all is landlessness. The government has a duty to solve this problem. A Left government has greater responsibility in this matter than any other regime since it was the Left that raised the slogan ‘Land for the Tiller’. It was the failure to make good this promise that led the Dalits and the Adivasis to the path of struggle.

The Dalits and Adivasis have traditionally stood with the Left. The party congress, held at Coimbatore, acknowledged that these sections were moving away from the CPI-M and decided on steps to bring them closer to the party. Following this, General Secretary Prakash Karat planned to lead a protest demonstration in a Tamil Nadu village, where a wall had been erected to segregate the Dalits. The government pulled down the wall even before he arrived. The party’s intervention thus yielded result. But the governments in Kerala and West Bengal have not taken any steps in the light of the party congress decision. The party leadership presumably believes that it can attract Dalit support nationally by projecting Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati as the Third Front’s prime ministerial candidate. But Mayawati’s elevation as Prime Minister will not solve Dalits’ problems just as Indira Gandhi’s elevation did not solve women’s problems. The party has to demonstrate its sincerity by solving the problems of Dalits and other weaker sections in Chengara and Nandigram.

Problems of this kind cannot be solved except through negotiations. The government had made some efforts to settle the Chengara agitation. At one point the Chief Minister had called the leaders of the agitation as well as elected representatives for talks but there was no progress. Later the District Collector had talks with the agitation leaders. As long as the CPI-M leadership maintains a negative approach towards the problems of the landless, talks by the government at whatever level are bound to fail. Winds of change must blow in the party.

Based on column ‘Nerkkazhcha’ appearing in Kerala Kaumudi dated August 8, 2008