Play the Death Game: fill in the Gujarat blanks

You Fill in the Rest: Dilip D’Souza on the Godhra verdict, MARCH 1, 2011 [Link]


Here’s a crime: February 27 2002, 59 people killed when a train is set on fire in Godhra. 90+ people are arrested and accused of the slaughter. Bail is denied to them all. The trial takes nine years, the trial verdict acquits 63 of them, finds the other 31 guilty. The judge sentences 11 of those 31 to death, the other 20 to life in prison.

Here’s another crime: February 28 2002 (the next day), 69 people killed when a building called Gulberg Society is set on fire and its residents attacked in Ahmedabad. You fill in the rest. How many arrested and accused of this slaughter? How many denied bail? How long does the trail take? How many are acquitted? How many are found guilty? How many are sentenced to anything at all?

I’m not saying I agree with the verdict or the death sentence. That’s an argument for another time. What I am saying is, take a look at these two crimes, then fill in the rest. When you’re done, or when you give up, ask this question: if we can find, arrest, try and punish the men who attacked a train and killed its passengers, how is that we will not find, arrest, try and punish the men who attacked a building and killed its residents? And then try some more.

Here’s a third crime: November 1984, 3000 people killed in Delhi. You fill in the rest. How many arrested and accused of this slaughter? How many denied bail? How long does the trail take? How many are acquitted? How many are found guilty? How many are sentenced to anything at all? Here’s a fourth crime: December 1992 and January 1993, 1000 people killed in Bombay. You fill in the rest. How many arrested and accused of this slaughter? How many denied bail? How long does the trail take? How many are acquitted? How many are found guilty? How many are sentenced to anything at all?

Now tell me, how do you explain this in your own mind? How do you rationalize this? How do you persuade yourself that justice has been done?

Thoughts on Communalism

Young boys are initiated —through tales of past glory of one religion or the other - into visualising themselves as great heroes, born to avenge the wrongs - real or imaginary - done to their community by the “enemy.” We have to look within to see if we have not encouraged this kind of inculcation in young minds. The whole approach of glorifying the past in terms of our respective communities is outdated and cannot help us resolve our problems in today’s complex reality - Bhisham Sahni talking of Tamas 
                                                                       -
Ram banwaas se jab laut ke ghar mein aaye, Yaad jangal bahut aaya jo nagar mein aaye, Raqse deewangee aangan mein jo dekha hoga, 6 december ko Shri Ram ne socha hoga, Itne deewane kahan se mere ghar mein aaye?

Jagmagate thhe jahan Ram key qadmon ke nishaan, Piyaar kee kahkashan leti thi angdayee jahan, Mod nafrat ke usee rahguzar mein aaye, Dharam kya unka haye, kya zaat haye, yeh janta kaun? Ghar na jalta toh unhe raat mein pehchanta kaun, Ghar jalane ko mera, log jo ghar mein aaye, Shakahari haye mere dost tumahara khanjar. Tumne Babar kee taraf pheke thhe saare patthar, Haye mere sar ki khata zakhm jo sar mein aaye.

Paun Sarjoo mein aabhi Ram ne dhoye bhee na thhe, Ke nazar aaye wahan khoon ke gehre dhabbe, Paun dhoye bina Sarjoo ke kinare se uthe, Ram yeh kehte hue aapne dwaare se uthe, Rajdhani kee fiza aayee nahin raas mujhe, 6 December ko mila doosra banwaas mujhe - Doosra Banwas by Kaifi Azmi
                                                                    -
Deen mein dadee hai, dadee mein deen nahi - Maulana Wali, in Khuda ke Liye
                                                                     -

Mandir masjid dadee chotee, kaat rahen hain botee botee

baant rahen hain hum bachon ko, cheen rahen hain sabki roti -SAHMAT
                                                                     -
Mandir toh ban jayega, par Ram kahan se laoge. Us mandir ki deewaron ko, kya pak kabhi kar paoge. Jis chaukhat par log jale, Ram wahan na jayenge. Jin galiyon mein khoon gira, maulana kya reh payenge? - Anon. October 2010, after the Ayodhya-Babri verdict

And some positive notes
God created the seven notes to unite all the people in the world through music, to make them feel they are members of a single family - Ustad Amjad Ali Khan Saheb 
                                                                      -
Tum aao gulshan ai Lahore se chaman bardosh, hum ayen subah Banaras ki roshni lekar. Aur uske baad yeh poochen ki kaun dushman hai - Ali Sardar Jafri

Delhi going going gone

Sometimes it seems as if no other great city of the world is less loved or less cared for. Occasionally there is an outcry as the tomb of the Mughal poet Zauq is discovered to have disappeared under a municipal urinal or the haveli courtyard house of his great rival Ghalib is revealed to have been turned into a coal store; but by and large the losses go unrecorded. I find it heartbreaking: every time I revisit a favourite monument, it has either been overrun by some slum, unsympathetically restored by the ASI or, more often, simply demolished. Ninety nine per cent of the havelis of Old Delhi have been destroyed, and like the city walls, disappeared into memory. According to historian Pavan Verma, the majority of the buildings he recorded in Mansions at Dusk only ten years ago no longer exist. Moreover, the losses are accelerating. In 1991, the MCD tore down much of the outer wall of Qila Rai Pithora, one of the last pre-Islamic structures surviving in the capital. Shah Jehan’s great Shalimar Garden, where Aurangzeb was crowned, now has a municipal housing colony on its land. Two years ago, there was an attempt to concrete over the historic sultanate-period Hauz Shamsi in Mehrauli.

Already, one of the most beautiful legacies of India’s colonial past – the bungalows of New Delhi designed by the great Edwin Lutyens – has nearly gone: those in private hands have been destroyed in the welter of demolitions between 1980 and 2000. It is unclear if the same fate awaits the Lutyens buildings owned by the government and that no fewer than 1,114 houses built across 1,000 acres will be demolished: an unprecedented act of mass vandalism. The wholesale destruction of arguably the greatest colonial townscape in the world would be an act of cultural destruction comparable to the bulldozing of Bath or the wiping out of Washington. Yet in Delhi, there has been little outcry.

Only Rome and Cairo can even begin to rival Delhi for the sheer volume and density of historic remains; yet in Delhi familiarity has bred not pride but contempt. Every year, more ruins disappear, victims to unscrupulous developers or often, unthinking bureaucrats.

Read: Slips show as Delhi sleeps, by William Dalrymple

Pay a rupee and buy a river for 22 years

Carved out of Madhya Pradesh on 1 November 2000, Chhattisgarh was never a water-scarce state. According to unofficial estimates, the state has 32,000 ponds. With major river basins — Mahanadi, Godavari, Narmada and Brahmani Kachar — and several major rivers — Kurkut, Mahanadi, Kharun, Sheonath, Indravati, Jonk, Kelo, Sabri, Hasdev, Peri, and Maand — water shortage was never an issue. But the priorities have changed.

THE SALE of Chhattisgarh’s rivers began in 1998 when the then MP government handed a 23.6 km stretch of Sheonath river in Durg to RWL, pleading shortage of funds for supplying water to industries. In a shocking story of “corruption and favouritism”, as an Assembly nominated committee discovered later, the Rs. 9 crore project was signed on 5 October 1998 between MPAKVN and RWL on a build, own, operate and transfer (BOOT) basis. The plan was to build a barrage on the Sheonath to supply up to 30 million litres per day (mld) to the Borai Industrial Centre. Construction was completed in two years and operations began in January 2001. “We got to know about the sale of the river only when RWL began harassing us,” alleges Khemlal Sahu, a farmer in Mahmara. “Almost 25 percent of the villagers are fishermen. They were stopped from fishing. Soon, fencing around the 23.6 km stretch began. Iron gates were erected on both sides of the barrage to prevent locals from approaching the river.”

Chhattisgarh has seen hundreds of companies investing in the state and many vying for the river waters. In a recent deal, the Water Resource Department (WRD) gave its nod to 141 private and government projects for which it will be supplying nearly 2,600 million cubic metres (mcm) of water from rivers every year. Interestingly the state supplies only 2,000 mcm of water for irrigation every year. Earlier, dams were built to store water for irrigation. Now, they are being constructed for supplying water to industry. In fact, the Chhattisgarh government openly declares that it is committed to giving water to industries throughout the year but not to farmers for rabi crop.

Rivers belong to the people. But, in Chhattisgarh they belong to corporations.

Read: The Water Wars

India's open invitation to radioactive poisoning

The West has learnt its lesson with nuclear energy and is funding renewable energy solutions even as India is busy setting up a 25 billion dollar radioactive power plant in Ratnagiri. India has no independent regulator of nuclear safety. Why then is India getting into a 25 billion dollar investment in unsafe energy?

Nicholas Sarkozy left India with much fanfare having signed deals worth over 25 billion dollars. Among the pacts he inked with Manmohan Singh, was a deal between French nuclear giant, Areva and the NPCIL (India's state owned nuclear corporation), allowing India to buy Areva's new European Pressurized Reactors (EPR). The plant has been proposed at Jaitapur in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, otherwise well known for Alphonso mangoes. At a planned final capacity of 9900 MW, the plant will be the largest nuclear park in the world. Just over a week before Sarkozy's visit, a report by Stephen Thomas, professor of Energy Studies from the University of Greenwich showed that the EPR is doomed to fail. These sentiments were also echoed by A. Gopalakrishnan, former head of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) in a press conference organized by the Konkan Bachao Samiti. India has no independent regulator of nuclear safety. The DAE and AERB are unable to control even non high-level nuclear waste in the country, considering their inept handling of the Mayapuri scrapyard incident. And of course, there is no known way to safely dispose of nuclear waste. The initial cost estimates are 25 billion dollars for the entire plant. However going by the cost overruns of the construction of the same reactors in Finland and France, it is more likely to cost close to 9 billion dollars for each of the six 1650 MW reactors, despite cheaper labour and material costs in India. These costs do not take into account the on going fuel nuclear costs, maintenance costs, or the costs for safely storing the 300 odd tonnes of waste that the plant will generate every year. Nor do they consider the costs of forest destruction from mining for fuel, the health costs of the miners or the workers at the plant, nor the health costs of the people and environment of the region. Data from other nuclear plants around India have shown serious health impacts for people living near the plants due to the radioactivity in the environment. To build this plant will require over 2000 acres of land, not to mention an exclusion zone of a 5km radius where no other development will be allowed. For this the Maharashtra government has used police brutality, arrest and stifling of non-violent protest and media presence in Ratnagiri. Villagers have refused to part with their land as the compensation offered is paltry compared to their loss of livelihood. Over 1500 people were arrested in the last protest that took place during Sarkozy's visit to India. Hundreds more have been arrested before. If these didn't seem like enough reasons to avoid building this plant the shocker is the location – Jaitapur is part of the same seismic area as Latur, and is rated at higher risk for earthquake damage.

So why is the Indian government in such a hurry to sign this deal? Is it the promise of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council? Is it the promise of more French imports of Indian goods? Or is it just plain stupidity? Meanwhile, just a few months ago the US approved the world's largest solar project. The plant that will be located in California will produce 1000MW of power and using an integrated thermal process will provide electricity even post sunset. And this at a cost of 6 billion dollars. Despite the lack of advanced technology, renewables in India already outperform nuclear, contributing nearly 8% to our energy mix while nuclear contributes less than 3%. All this in a much quicker time frame to setup and at a much lower cost.

Nuclear waste dumping in France has been causing radioactive poisoning of water and vineyards. High levels of radiation has been found in French wines. The choice seems clear – keep these dangerous reactors out of India, and invest in clean energy. Keep the delicious mangoes of Ratnagiri radiation free!

Read more

"We’re going to free the Arab world.”

Words like ‘uprising’ and ‘revolution’ only hint at the scale of events in Egypt, which have already reverberated across Yemen, Jordan, Syria and even Saudi Arabia, offering a new template for change in a region that long reeled from its own sense of stagnation. “Every Egyptian understands now,” said Magdi al-Sayyid, one of the protesters.

The protesters have spoken for themselves to a government that, like many across West Asia, treated them as a nuisance. For years, pundits have predicted that Islamists would be the force that toppled governments across the Arab world. But so far, they have been submerged in an outpouring of popular dissent that speaks to a unity of message, however fleeting — itself a sea change in the region’s political landscape. In the vast panorama of Tahrir Square on Wednesday, Egyptians were stationed at makeshift barricades, belying pat dismissals of the power of the Arab street. “The street is not afraid of governments anymore,” said Shawki al-Qadi, an opposition lawmaker in Yemen, itself roiled by change. “It is the opposite. Governments and their security forces are afraid of the people now. The new generation, the generation of the internet, is fearless. They want their full rights, and they want life, a dignified life.”


Dignity’ was a word often used on Wednesday, and its emphasis underlined the breadth of a movement that is, so far, leaderless. Neither the Brotherhood nor a handful of opposition leaders — men like Mohammed ElBaradei or Ayman Nour — have managed to articulate hopelessness, the humiliations at the hands of the police and the outrage at having too little money to marry, echoed in the streets of Palestinian camps in Jordan and in the urban misery of Baghdad’s Sadr City. The lack of an alternative may have led to the uprising, making the street the last option for not only the young and dispossessed but also virtually every element of Egypt’s population — turbaned clerics, businessmen from wealthy suburbs, film directors and well-to-do engineers. Months ago, despair at the prospect of change in the Arab world was commonplace. Protesters on Wednesday acted as though they were making a last stand at what they had won, in an uprising that is distinctly nationalist.

The word ‘traitor’ rang out on Wednesday. The insult was directed at Mubarak, and it echoed the sentiment heard in so many parts of the Arab world these days — governments of an American-backed order in most of the region have lost their legitimacy, built on the idea that people would surrender their rights for the prospect of security and stability. In the square, protesters offered an alternative, their empowerment standing as possibly the most remarkable legacy of a people who often lamented their apathy.

From minute-by-minute coverage on Arabic channels to conversations from Iraq to Morocco, West Asia watched breathlessly at a moment as compelling as any in the Arab world in a lifetime. For the first time in a generation, Arabs seem to be looking again to Egypt for leadership, and that sense of destiny was voiced throughout the day.

“I tell the Arab world to stand with us until we win our freedom,” said Khaled Yusuf, a cleric from Al Azhar, a once esteemed institution of religious scholarship now beholden to the government. “Once we do, we’re going to free the Arab world.”

For decades, the Arab world has waited for a saviour — be it Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the charismatic Egyptian president, or even, for a time, Saddam Hussein. No one is waiting for a saviour now. Before nearly three decades of accumulated authority — the power of a state that can mobilise thousands to heed its whims — people had themselves.

“I’m fighting for my freedom,” Noha al-Ustaz said as she broke bricks on the curb. “For my right to express myself. For an end to oppression. For an end to injustice.” “Go forward,” the cries rang out, and she did, disappearing into a sea of men.

Read: Arab world watches breathlessly

Also watch: This vlog was recorded on January 18th by Asmaa Mahfouz, the girl who helped start it all. She had shared it on her Facebook, and it had gone viral. It was so powerful and so popular, that it drove Egyptians by the thousands into Tahrir Square.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBg7O48vhLY&feature=player_embedded

Nokia worker dies trapped in faulty machine

S Ambika, a 22 year old woman factory-worker, was a permanent employee of Nokia Telecom Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Sriperumbadur in Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu, India. Her agonising death was due to a fatal accident at a panel loading machine in the factory.

Only a power shutdown could have stopped the system, a decision no one was willing to take. Agitated workers asked the technicians to break the machine so that Ambika could be taken out, but the line managers dismissed the demand by saying that the “machine was too costly”. Fifteen minutes after Ambika was taken to the hospital, all the faulty sensors were rectified, Ambika’s bloodied machine was cleaned and workers were ordered to resume work. Agitated workers were told that the company will incur losses if they stop the work. Ambika died later in the night.

Ambika, like rest of her fellow workers, risked accidents daily on these machines when the magazine rack on which the metal panels are loaded gets stuck many times a day. Ambika was working on the loader machine, which loads metal panels into a magazine rack which then moves through a conveyor belt into a blade (metal box). It is a closed loop system that works through sensors. For each such cycle, 100 mobiles are produced. At around 6.45 pm on 31st Oct, Ambika’s machine jammed. The conveyor belt got stuck and the sensor stopped functioning. “Out of 25 such assembly line machines, which are all new models, 8 machines have been regularly getting stuck atleast 20 times a shift due to malfunctioning of the sensors”, informed some of the assembled Nokia workers outside Apollo. “We have repeatedly complained to the technicians and the line managers about this for past several months. But they have not paid any attention. They are aware that we were risking our lives everyday.”

When Ambika put her head inside under the metal box to pull the magazine rack, the conveyor belt came unstuck. Immediately the sensor started functioning and the blade (metal box) came down to load the panels. The process was so quick that before Ambika could pull her head out, the metal box fell on her head and neck. The machine got jammed again, this time with Ambika’s head inside it. Ambika could not reach the emergency button behind the small door on the machine. Even if she could have, the button would not have helped as the blade would have come down to its ‘ideal’ position before stopping.  Alarmed co-workers called the technicians who for 25 minutes could not figure out how to get Ambika’s head out of the machine. Nor were tools available which could pry open the blade. In those 25 minutes Ambika fainted bleeding from her nose and mouth. Her neck had got crushed under the metal box. 

“We keep working like machines in these assembly lines. We have to meet our production targets at all costs. Injuries are very common. In the stamping room, hand injury is very common where fingers get crushed inside the stamping machines” said one of the workers. “It depends on the demand for a particular model. For model no. 1616 we need to assemble 40,000 handsets per day, for some models it can be 12,000 sets per day”.

Nokia’s Sriperumbadur plant produces the largest number of mobile handsets in the world. The unit, capable of producing 7.5 lakhs units per day, has produced about 350 million units since the production started in 2006 as reported by Economics Times in June 2010. Grief stricken and in a state of shock, Ambika’s parents, farm labourers from Puttithangal village in Vellore district, stood outside the hospital waiting to take their dead daughter’s body home. Nokia management had not even informed the parents about their daughter’s accident till late in the night. Under pressure from the trade unions, Nokia finally conceded to give compensation of Rs 10 lakhs and a job to a family member.

Ironically Nokia’s website claims that the Sriperumbadur plant has ‘world class’ safety systems and has been designed keeping in mind ‘worker’s safety’. Joint investigation launched by the State Labour Commissioner and Factories Inspectorate is yet to come out with its findings of the accident. No action has been taken against the management and maybe it never will. Similar investigations of accidents in Sriperumbadur area, the SEZ heartland of Tamil Nadu, haven’t even yielded a single report let alone action against any company. In July this year, 200 workers in the assembling unit of Taiwanese MNC Foxconn India Private Limited, which supplies mobile components to Nokia suddenly fell unconscious while working inside the factory in two different shifts. A few vomited blood and complained of giddiness, some suffered breathlessness, coughing, pain in the chest. They complained of ’poisonous gas leak’ inside the factory. Some of the workers had to be hospitalised for 15 days. A team of ‘experts’ led by Chief Inspector of Factories (CIF) investigating the incidence could not ascertain what caused the workers to faint. A shoddy government investigation attributed the ‘probable’ cause to a pesticide leak during a pest control operation. The CIF team gave a clean chit to the factory which reopened within a few days after being shut temporarily.

It left one wondering if it were indeed a pesticide leak then how did the management allow pest control operations while hundreds of workers were inside the factory? Foxconn management went unaccounted for exposing their workers to unsafe work conditions. Till date the real reason behind the incidence is not known.“There are accidents everyday in these SEZ units in Sriperumbadur and Oragadam. These hi-tech multinational companies flout safety conditions and labour regulations on a daily basis. In most cases accidents are not recorded or registered. These companies are getting away with murder. How can you say that an accident has taken place if it does not even get registered?” asked Soundararajan, state general secretary of Centre for Indian Trade Union (CITU).

Complaints of striking women workforce of Chinese company Build Your Own Dreams (BYD) Electronics India (P) Ltd, another supplier to Nokia in the neighbouring Oragadam industrial area, are a testimony to the sweatshop-like working conditions in some of these factories. BYD workers have 12-hour work shifts, with very little breaks in between, and no holidays for weeks. Workers are made to work even on festivals and national holidays. Worse still, they suffer all manner of injuries such as heat blisters in their hands due to handling of hot mobile covers while taking them out of the moulding machines manually. Loss of fingers and hand injuries are common accidents amongst workers, for which no compensation is given, only medical treatment in some private hospital is provided by the company.

Workers from Caparo, a fully owned subsidiary of Caparo UK, also allege that when they are injured at work, the company immediately gives them a notice of negligence at work without any investigation.

“We are told we have ESI (Employees State Insurance), but we do not have cards or ESI numbers, we don’t even know where the ESI hospital is,” lamented a woman worker who has been on strike in front of the factory  since October  28. “We face hostile attitude from the line supervisors. They use abusive language when we spend a few extra minutes in the bathrooms during our menstruation. In the assembly section, we cannot even leave our spot even to go to the bathrooms till someone else replaces us”, complained another worker.

BYD has over 50% women workforce, but all the supervisors and managers are men. “Women workers from Salcomp, a Nokia component supplier inside Nokia Telecom SEZ have privately complained to us about sexual harassment and poor working conditions inside the factory. Workers from American company Sanmina-SCI have told us of similar situation. But they all are too scared to come out openly and lodge complaints. The work situation is hostile in these SEZs,” said Soundararajan.

Incidences of accidents and poor working conditions abound in Sriperumbadur area. Hyundai Motor India’s car manufacturing facility in Irungattukottai had seen seven workers severely injured in a fire in the paint shop in 2008. The accident happened nine months after four workers died in the factory while cleaning the tank which stored waste paints. For a region with more than 200 industries, the lack of adequate health facilities in the area is quite startling, not to say alarming. The local private hospitals are hardly equipped to treat any major accidents as it happened in Ambika’s case or the Foxconn gas leak.It is interesting to note that Apollo hospital is now planning to set up a 60 bedded hospital inside Nokia Telecom SEZ. It has sought exemption from the central Board of Approval in Ministry of Commerce for a waiver to treat patients from outside SEZs.

Ambika’s tragic death and the stories of working conditions in this rapidly industrialising town have thrown up a lot of issues regarding the worth of a worker’s life.  The morning after Ambika’s death, listening to workers narrating their work woes outside Apollo hospital reminded one of scenes from Charlie Chaplin’s famous movie Modern Times, which showcased the desperate economic situation during the Great Depression,  a direct consequence, as many have argued, of the ‘efficiencies of modern industrialisation’. Similar scenes seem to be playing out again 70 years later in these hi-tech modern industrial zones of Tamil Nadu. Efficiency and production target is given primacy over safety and dignity of the workers. The only difference being that here women are main protaganists–over 70% of the workforce in this area are women.

Source: Ambika’s Death: Madhumita Dutta & Venkatachandrika Radhakrishnan