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In the big league
Migrants’ plight |
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Holding MLA to ransom
Facts vs bluff on Siachen
A village called Anta
Unbridled and politically inclined
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Migrants’ plight
Had
it been Punjabis trapped, the approach of the state government would have been different. This is what a relative of one of the victims of the Jalandhar factory collapse was reported as saying while others with him made an appeal to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to come and help them. This is a sad commentary on Punjab — the community as well as the government. Nearly the entire industry in the state, and to a great extent agriculture, is dependent on migrant workers. Ludhiana alone is said to have 19 lakh immigrants. Yet, the state does nothing to bring this huge mass of people on record so they may become eligible for social benefits and protection. The only face of the government they comes across is the police — that too not to listen to their grievances, but because they are seen as natural suspects anytime there is a petty crime. Because the migrants are not organised under any meaningful unions — or dare not unite — it is easy for their employers to exploit them in terms of wages, work hours and conditions. Not a single labour contractor is registered in Punjab, as required under the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979. Without identity, workers’ families have no access to government education or health services. Their living quarters are mostly illegal, i.e., slums. Some of them are lucky enough to be offered ghetto-like multi-storeyed tenements on rent. Were the government to regulate their movement and employment, it would benefit both them and the local residents. One would get social benefits and protection against exploitation, and the other a more secure society. The violent clashes in Ludhiana in December 2009, apparently between a spiritual sect and Sikh activists, had actually turned into a battle between local residents and migrants. It had nothing to do with religion, but everything to do with voices suppressed. Let the Jalandhar tragedy also be a wake-up call for the larger picture of migrant workers. And who better to understand the plight of a migrant than Punjab, with every other family in the state sending a member abroad.
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Holding MLA to ransom
The
Naveen Patnaik government in Odisha has come out poorly in the whole drama following the abduction of a tribal legislator Jhina Hikaka and two Italian tourists on separate occasions. While the Italians have been freed following the government’s capitulation to Maoist demands, Mr Hikaka is being tried by a “people’s court” set up by the Maoist abductors despite the government having agreed to withdraw cases against 13 prisoners including five Maoists at their behest. It is small wonder that there is widespread demoralization in the Odisha police because it was on the orders of the administration that the police had launched combing operations for the Maoists and had arrested many of them. The whole credibility of the police and the administration in general is in question as the Patnaik government now sues for peace with law-breakers. The government’s credibility is dented even more because the Naveen Patnaik government was vociferous in Parliament in opposing the setting up of the National Counter Insurgency Centre which was conceived as a nodal agency to co-ordinate action between the Centre and the states against insurgents across the country. While some specific provisions of the draft on NCTC were debatable and needed wider discussion, the need for an agency with a clear mandate to co-ordinate action against insurgents is indisputable. By releasing outlaws who had been nabbed with much difficulty the government has sent out a signal of weakness which is potentially dangerous. It must be examined why the Italians and the MLA were allowed to go to Maoist-infested areas without adequate police protection. While Maoist outlaws must be pursued with vigour after this unpleasant chapter is over, lessons need to be learnt and intelligence-gathering sharpened so that the administration is not caught napping. There must be swift and deterrent punishment meted out to Maoists who are captured. Above all, the government must shed its spinelessness so that it is not taken for granted by the Maoists.
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Give thy thoughts no tongue. — William Shakespeare
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Facts vs bluff on Siachen There
has been a flurry of interest after Gen Ashfaque Kayani declared that India and Pakistan must live in peaceful coexistence as defence without development is neither viable nor acceptable. Hurrah! He saw all issues as capable of resolution and Siachen as an urgent starting point. This impassioned appeal followed the tragic death on April 7 of 138 Pakistani troops in an avalanche “while on Siachen”. He said, “Everyone knows why the army is here … because in 1984, the Indian Army occupied the area and in response to that the Pakistan army was sent in”. The facts are otherwise. General Kayani has also got the genesis of the problem wrong though he rightly asserts that both sides are paying a high price in blood, treasure and environmental costs. Pakistan’s solution calls for an Indian withdrawal from the glacier. India in turn is willing to accept a mutual pullback and redeployment of troops to agreed positions provided Pakistan acknowledges the present “Actual Ground Position Line” (AGPL) that it holds. These are the proffered “solutions”. The Indian Army, however, fears that Pakistan could renege on the agreement and send troops dressed as “mujahideen” to occupy Siachen as it brazenly attempted to annex Kashmir in 1947 and again in 1965 and the Kargil Heights in 1998. The Siachen “solutions” overlook the problem. The critical date is not 1984 but July 29, 1949, when the Cease-Fire Line Agreement was signed in Karachi by ranking military representatives of India and Pakistan and the UN Military Observer Group. It delineated the entire CFL, demarcating over 740 km on the ground. With the CFL increasingly running through high mountains and glaciated areas as it traversed north, it often followed a directional path in the absence of clear landmarks. Thus, finally, “Chalunka (on the Shyok River), Khor, thence North to the glaciers”, passing through grid reference NJ 9842.The segment beyond NJ 9842 was not demarcated, being an elevated glaciated, unexplored and unpopulated region that had seen no fighting. A plebiscite was soon to follow and the matter, it was assumed, would soon be settled. The delineation of this segment of the CFL was, however, unambiguous: NJ 9842, “thence north to the glaciers”. If everyone of 30 or more earlier directional commands were meticulously followed in tracing the CFL, there was no reason whatsoever for any departure from this norm in the case of the very last command. “Thence North” could only mean due north to wherever the boundary of J&K State lay. The very next section crucially directed that the line be drawn “so as to eliminate any no man’s land”. Therefore, the Line could in no way be left hanging in the air. Certain sectors along the CFL were also to be demilitarised but if deployed, troops would remain “500 yards from the ceasefire line.…” The CFL was ratified by both sides and deposited with the UNCIP. It was revalidated as the LoC after Simla, and incorporated the military gains made by either side in J&K in the 1971 war. In the Kargil-Siachen sector, all gains thereby went entirely to India which acquired the Turtok salient just south-west of NJ 9842. Earlier in 1956-58, during the UN-designated International Geophysical Year, an Indian scientific team led by the Geological Survey explored the upper Nubra and Shyok Valleys, mapped and measured the Siachen and other glaciers and publicly recorded its findings. No protest followed. Why? Locate NJ 9842 on a detailed physical map of northern J&K and draw a line “thence North” and much of Siachen will be found to lie on the Indian side of the CFL. Pakistani military maps (ref. Musharraf’s Memoir, “In the Line of Fire”. Free Press, London. 2006), depicting Pakistan’s military positions during the Kargil operations, situate the entire Siachen glacier on the Indian side of the delineated line, NJ 9842, “thence north to the glaciers”. All Pakistan, UN and global atlases depicted the CFL correctly till around 1967-72. By then Beijing had commenced its creeping cartographic aggression in Aksai Chin and in 1963 signed a boundary agreement with Pakistan which unilaterally ceded the 5000 sq km Shaksgam Valley to China. Thereafter, Pakistan started extending its lines of communication eastwards and began licensing western mountaineering expeditions to venture east of K2. It was emboldened to extend this “eastward creep” when, between 1967 and 1972, the US Defence Mapping Agency, an international reference point for cartography, began extending the CFL from NJ 9842 to a point just west of the Karakoram Pass, unilaterally hardening what was possibly no more than an extant World War II air defence information zone (ADIZ) line into a politico-military divide. World atlases followed suit. So did Pakistan, which followed cartographic aggression with moves to occupy Siachen. Getting wind of this stratagem, India, pre-emptively occupied the glacier in March 1984. In a US Institute for Peace conference on J&K in Washington in 1991, delegates were delivered a map at their hotel without the mandatory credit line regarding its origins. It was headed “The Kashmir Region: Depicting the CFL/LoC, Siachen and Shaksgam”. This showed a hatched triangle NJ 9842-Karakoram Pass-K2, and Shaksgam in the north, with a legend reading, “Indian occupied since 1983”. The conference organisers disowned what it surmised was “possibly” a CIA map that might be treated as “withdrawn”! The map not only confirmed Pakistan’s claims but labelled India an aggressor. As on present, I “protested” to friends in the US State Department and informed the Indian Embassy and the MEA at home to no avail. Years later, US Ambassador David Blackwill said the US Defence Mapping Agency had got its lines wrong and that the impugned maps would be amended. Nothing ensued. Any unqualified redeployment from the Siachen glacier without asserting the correct delineation of the CFL/LoC from NJ 9842 “thence north to the glaciers”, will mean accepting the Pakistan claim and throwing the August 1948 UN Resolution and derivative 1949 Karachi Agreement into the dustbin. Dr Manmohan Singh’s 2005 peace formula would sanctify the LoCas an evolving international boundary, rendered porous as “mere lines on a map” across which movement and commerce increasingly flowed to bind the peoples of J&K and India and Pakistan together in friendship and cooperation. This is the only viable win-win solution for all in and over J&K. But unless the LoC is firmly anchored to a northern terminus, it will dangle loose and surely unravel, leaving everything for grabs. Siachen has no intrinsic strategic value. Both sides should withdraw or redeploy from there once there is clear acceptance of the 1949 CFL-cum-LoC. Thereafter the triangle NJ 9842, K2 and the Karakoram Pass can be designated an International Glacier and World Weather Park, hopefully with Shaksgam as a partner, to study and measure climate change. India should, therefore, welcome General Kayani’s second thoughts and pursue it without getting snow-blinded regarding the facts, larger perspectives and the national
interest.
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A village called Anta A weird name Anta, my own
village, was once known as Arun Teerth, six kos east of
the mythological town of Safidon, referred to as Sarp-Daman in
the scriptures. Coins found from Arun Teerth as per the
Gazetteer of Jind, confirm its linkage to the Mahabharata times. My
grandfather told us that during the First War of Independence,
reinforcements were rushed from Karnal to contain the ‘Mutiny’ at
Hansi via a route that wove through my village, at that time called
Adda, which later on became Anta. Anta has had a strong spiritual
side to it. Its inhabitants have been organising Sada-Vrat which
was an ever-prevalent practice of charity, offered to starving and
famine-affected men and women besides cattle-head. They came to Anta
in those days from as far as Rajasthan. Chaudhary Udmi Ram was a known
saint in and around Anta. Accounts of his charitable nature and
saintly disposition abound in the local narrative and folklore. He
ensured that all hungry stomachs were fed before he took his own
meals. Sada-Vrat continues here till date, though on a
rotational basis between all sub-families of the clan. At the time
of Partition Anta had a mixed population of Hindus and Muslims. All
around were big villages like Urlana, Nimnabad, etc, which too had a
sizable population of Muslims. During the ‘Maar-kaat’-bloodbath-it
was largely due the efforts of two brothers, Jai Ram Singh, a police
officer, and Maha Singh, a 12-village-cluster chieftain, that
appreciable damage control was ensured with the Antawala’s
investment in communal harmony. Muslim villages were ‘kettled’
from all sides to be lynched. Stories abound confirming the fact that
the Muslims stayed put till they believed they enjoyed the confidence
and support of these two brothers. Even a railway contractor, Fazal
Hussain, who was our family friend, had left his entire family before
migrating to Pakistan, in the care of my grandfather. Chaudhary Sher
Singh (Udmi Ram’s son) was a tehsildar in the Jind Royal
Administration. His disposition and demeanour of charity and fair play
made the King send him to Dadri, where the peasantry was in bad
financial health, owing particularly to a tax on camels and cattle
head . Sher Singh got it abolished. A saying, ‘Sher Singh ko aano
hogyo aur Jajiya ko jano hogyo’, is still fresh in the minds, at
least of the older generation. Then emerged another spiritual star on
the divinely fertile horizon of Anta in Hazoor Maharaj Tara Chand, a
Radha Swami saint, whose preachings of ‘Nirgun-Bhakti’
combined with the tenets of ‘Sant-Mat’ had the entire
village and many others around it turn to Radha Swami faith. My father
was his first follower. A sizable number of drunkards in the area gave
up the bottle, thanks to the Saint’s exhortations. Antawalas have
been traditionally easy-go-lucky types, fun loving and educated
people. Some of them now live abroad. Anta had such a cohesive and
assimilating nature that it welcomed in its socio-cultural fold any
stranger from any other part of the world. Even during the British
era, officers toured to Anta, particularly for hunting, etc. A case in
point is an English man who visited here and shook hands with my
mother - a thing that was taken with aplomb by the so-called uncouth
villagers. A native composition to end it: Anta gaanv bada nagina/Aao
das din, thehro mahina/ khelo, nacho, gaao, kudo/ khao chowl, awai
paseena (Anta, they say, is a jewel/One comes here for ten
days/Enjoys, for a month stays/Play, dance, sing and revel/Eat rice,
have stomach swell.)
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Unbridled and politically inclined
Unlike other quotas that divide people and increase communal hatred, income frustrations, lingual barriers or regional difference, there should be a youth quota. Not only would that increase youth representation but it would be a truly unifying bind in a country so diverse that we need to find common ground
In a country infamous for handing out quotas like hot cakes, pulling one section of the underprivileged but creating a greater divide in the process. Instead of having quotas based on religious, regional, ethnic criterion, we need to have quotas that are progressive like that for women. Unlike other quotas that divide and increase communal hatred, income frustrations, lingual barriers or regional difference there should be a youth quota. Not only would that increase youth representation but it would be a truly unifying bind in a country so diverse that we need to find common ground. Post-Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru searched for such a unifying bind in secularism. Today, we can unify all sections of our expansively diverse nation with the idealism of youth.
Agents of change Not to paint a rosy picture and harbour delusions of grandeur about the youth’s idealism, but proposing youth’s involvement would annihilate corruption is an inadmissible argument, anyone who has witnessed a university election and the money that is exchanged could attest to that. What does make them more accountable is that they have to live with the decisions they make, unlike 70-year-olds deciding the trajectory the nation will take in the century to follow and not be alive to see those changes as progressive or redundant. There is a need for the youth to elect leaders younger, not leaders who legislate policies that will have their effects, positive or negative, after they depart. That would add a sense of accountability, credibility. Plus there is an obvious disconnect with the youths needs.
Inheriting seats of power But there is a huge obstacle in making this true. In a shocking study conducted by an American historian, Patrick French, who, stumped by lack of credible statistics, set out to consolidate a very telling tale of Indian politics. He found that every MP below the age of 30 had inherited a seat, and that two-thirds of the 66 MPs under the age of 40 were hereditary. And of the 38 youngest MPs, 33 are hereditary. What does this tell about our vibrant democracy and future political trajectory? Gone are the times where grassroots-level leaders could rise in ranks due to their sheer integrity, will and grit. This is a very dismal reality for talented youth who willing to join politics stand a dismal chance. A challenge that comes naturally to all democracies is that of paralysis. Paralysis in legislation, a prolonged indecision because of opposition and diversity in views, and abundance in diversity is no greater visible than in India. In such a system destined for molasses like change, youth can act as a catalyst to a common consensus. The present generation has needs shared and craved globally. The needs of the youth such as strong infrastructure, progressive education models, transcend ethnicity, religion or region. And if the promise of a brighter future is not enough to pursue more youth involvement, it is not a far-fetched notion to suggest that involving youth in politics might be the only way to avert conflict. US Intelligence Agency pointed out that “Several troublesome global trends, especially the growing demographic youth bulge in developing nations whose economic systems and political ideologies are under enormous stress, will fuel the rise of more disaffected groups willing to use violence to address their perceived grievances.” This was issued as a warning to US counterterrorist operations that might not eliminate the threat of future attacks because they fail to address the underlying causes that drive terrorists. A cry for lack of political action , which can be surely remedied by addressing needs of the youth, but not without representing them in politics.
Countering conflict In 2003, researchers with Population Action International (PAI) reviewed the data on population and past conflicts and found that countries in which young adults made up more than 40 per cent of all adults were about two-and-a-half times as likely to experience an outbreak of civil conflict during the 1990s as other countries. The study identified 25 countries where a large youth bulge, coupled with high rates of urban growth and shortages of either cropland or fresh water, creates a “very high risk” of conflict. Conditions rampant in India. And while our nation does not lie on the extreme of the spectrum, it lies well within its purview. Central to remedy is addressal of youth needs before they divert to radical methods to have their voices heard. It is time we pay heed.
More mobility So how does one go about bringing about these changes? For starters, there must be a system to increase mobility between the less privileged to enter the elite political platform. One way this can be enforced in an organised fashion where merit gets credit is by providing internships in government offices to students excelling in their fields. So a ministry would have actual interns who have studied and excelled in the subject matter of the department, instead of having inherited the seat from their forefathers. Such prestigious internships would help people from non-traditional political backgrounds not only get a glimpse of the inner political sanctum behind closed doors. It would also help to forge contacts and gather experience to help sustain a political career and build on such positions long after their apprenticeship is over. But most importantly, the rhetoric and culture must be revamped. Schools, parents and the community must invest and encourage community service, arrange for public forums and recreate the general attitude towards political involvement. The political paradigm must shift from politics as a family business or a wealthy man’s career to something anyone who wants to make a difference can participate in and subsequently succeed in doing so. The writer makes documentary films for international news channels
We, the youth, matter
— Sahil Sandhu, Student of aeronautical engineering, Embry Riddle, Florida
Beyond varsity politics
— Navratan Singh, doing his LLM from University of Toronto. President, Graduate Law Students’ Association
Let the young speak out
This is the only way effective legislation can be made to deal with serious issues such as drug abuse and other matters that affect the youth directly, which the government has so far failed to do.
— Mehtab Khaira, president Youth Congress, Bholath
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Youth needs to play a positive role towards socio-political causes. It may sound cliched but we already have a huge participation but that participation is restricted to political rallies or road shows. Everyone generally goes home after that and we sit down thinking ‘yes we have the youth on board ‘ but that’s mere groupism, not participation. The youth needs to come out and involve themselves in a way that would have a direct impact on the society, participate in issues such as prevalent drug addiction, female foeticide and agricultural development. Usually, youth who are politically involved are oblivious to these serious social problems.
I consider student politics a worthy passage into building stronger networking skills and helping the student community at large. But after spending a year at Panjab University as a law student, I realised that the adventures of the student politics in Panjab University were only limited to university life. The realities of life were by far different and far removed from university politics. Further, there are no charismatic mentors or leaders that you can find at the university level. Rather, the entire scene becomes one of clashing egos and groupism. As soon as you realise that your education and professional networking is what really matter in life, you start seeing student politics as a mere game played during the free hours of the evening.
In the future, the state should see more representation of youth in the Vidhan Sabha. The younger legislators should be given a chance to voice their opinion.