Individually, men may be endearing in their wisdom of welcoming diversity. But collectively, there’s a beehive thinking that’s seared deep enough and always doubts otherness

In many ways, the Supreme Court probe panel’s summary dismissal of the sexual harassment charges against the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi is but a natural corollary of the presumptuous sexist attitude towards working women in this country. A mindset that sees them as encroachers in a so far restricted space and, by virtue of laying claim to that space, considers them liberated and bold enough to bend all kinds of rules and worse, use feminine guile as a negotiation tool. Individually, the men may be endearing in their wisdom of welcoming diversity, even making a point in doing so. But collectively, there’s a beehive thinking that’s seared deep enough and always doubts this otherness. Worse sees it as a threat. And that’s sad.

A dipstick survey among men at any workplace shows a majority assigning some portion of the blame of sexual harassment to the woman herself, often concluding that such charges are nothing but the age-old honey trap ploy or cry wolf syndrome to get what she wants. Some even assume that these are extra-territorial relations gone wrong. Rarely would they agree that the predatory attack comes from powerful men, who by virtue of their longer reign in authority, or age, try to use the manipulative and primal hunter-tame strategy. It is almost as if men in power are pre-ordained to be morally invincible and not capable of human frailty or monstrosity. Unless tempted or trapped. Nobody looks at it as either opportunistic or situational from their end. And if they have a profitable career graph, that worth far outweighs a lone woman’s dignity.

It may sound incredulous but no matter how many capable women have proven their mettle, how many have broken the glass barrier or how many have brought their unique skill sets and multi-tasking abilities to dynamic management, myths about a woman’s role and place in society are embedded far deeper in our cultural DNA. And a woman in a leadership role is either perceived as circumscribed by able male advisors (remember former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s coterie) or almost a man herself (remember UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher). Working women are subjected to unending innuendos and suppositions and cannot get clemency from this mental stranglehold. So much so that some women play by the rules of the game and even overturn them to suit their trajectory. That’s there, too, as a collateral damage of this uncodified warfare at the workplace.

That is why the day the allegations against CJI Gogoi surfaced, there was a ready acceptance of his argument that it was a conspiracy to “deactivate” his post on the eve of crucial verdicts and an attack on the institution of the judiciary. In a case saddled with inequities — a rank junior court employee who cannot take on the topmost office-bearer as no legal framework applies to him except impeachment — the complainant has already been pre-judged regardless of her courage to challenge a systemic shrine rather than an individual. And a litany of her past legal cases was bandied about for every claim that she made about being punished and intimidated for daring to stand up. Then the questions kept floating around: Why did she take so much time to report this alleged misbehaviour? Why did she release statements? What’s the price of vilifying a CJI? Will she be decimated in an out-of-court settlement? Why had not other women staffers seen this coming? Why should an educated woman like her feel frightened and vulnerable if she is so empowered? Our line of questioning has no empathy but only discredits the victim’s account and shows how we are hardwired to dismiss the allegations rather than probe them. As a society we are yet to buy into the idea — in this case as in the others — that a woman might be traumatised, threatened, ashamed and even outwitted by hostile circumstance. What is often disregarded is her first coming to terms with the violation, getting over self-loathing and then taking the fight to the errant. That reconciliation doesn’t often happen overnight. Especially when the offender almost always happens to be familiar and legalities demand specifics as to when and how the line was crossed in intimate encounters. Then there is the larger threat of her economic sustenance, the loss of job as a hitback strategy by the male superior on something as whimsical as non-performance or wrongdoing.

Undoubtedly, there is legal redress in the form of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, but even the prosecution process needs to be free from biases that are shaped by the common worldview. Any inquiry process that does not make the victim feel safe and sure is inherently flawed and not neutral. We may not realise but a formulaic who-where-what-why format and an accusatory tone seem to discredit the victim’s account and automatically prepare the ground for the rejection of allegations. Particularly in a set-up where both the accused and complainant have been close and are not strangers. What needs to be looked into is if the charges are verifiable, whether there is corroborative evidence and the complainant’s willingness to subject herself to a thorough probe. The complainant in the CJI case just wanted to do that, knowing full well that he couldn’t be subjected to existing legal structures. All she wanted was a level-playing field in the inquiry process with the presence of her lawyer, a neutral, apolitical observer and a right to a shared, not one-sided, proceedings. It would be silly to assume that a woman would stake her entire reputation and career path to pursue a case legally, at the cost of her limited resources, only to wangle an out-of-court deal that could have been done informally anyway. It is because there are stereotypes that any inquiry process needs to be above board, honouring the intended spirit of the law. Even around the world as here, any sexual harassment case automatically implies that the complainant is assigned an advocate trained in sexual assault cases, who may in turn lead her to more support services. An audio visual recording is also desirable even if not mandated. The most significant oddity about sexual harassment cases is that unlike other investigations, the focus is not on the offender but the accuser, as if she is the one whom motives can be ascribed to. The victim’s inconsistency or vulnerability always makes news, not the offender’s transgressions. If we want true justice, be it nailing the accused or exposing the fakery of the complainant, any judgement has to be based on thorough investigations and procedural propriety rather than latent bias. The last is easy to give in to. But then that is not law. That is what young women lawyers are saying in their silent campaign of sending snail mail letters to Supreme Court judges from across the country with printouts of the Sexual Harassment Act.

And in their appeal on social media, they have pointed to this very mindset of assumption: “Independence of the judiciary was never envisaged to mean a complete lack of accountability and existence above the law. For an institution, which is meant to be the saviour of the rights of all citizens and the final interpreter of the Constitution, the judges of the Supreme Court of India have for far too long gotten away with impunity from charges of sexual harassment levelled against them.”

(The writer is Associate Editor, The Pioneer)

Writer: Rinku Ghosh

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Mumbai’s wholly inadequate airport is an example of bad planning and how insufficient space can strangle a city

When an Indian Air Force Antonov careened off the runway at Mumbai airport, it did not make the headlines because of any fatalities as it thankfully sank into the mud at the end of the stretch. Such excursions are quite common and tens of such incidents occur in India every year (another one was reported from Surat just last week). But the problem in Mumbai, India’s second busiest airport, was that this runway excursion meant that it effectively shut down its primary runway. With the second one shorter and only limited operations possible from it, flights went for a toss. Mumbai is a prime example of a wholly inadequate airport, constrained by insufficient infrastructure and a lesson on how poor planning and politics have led to lopsided development of the city. While the Mumbai airport developer has done a great job in removing some of the slums around the expanse, it is still, as a former civil aviation secretary said, “slumlocked” with local politicians preventing the removal of many clusters that they treat as captive vote banks. As a result, when the airport suffers a problem such as a runway excursion, it effectively shuts down and sends flight schedules haywire.

But it need not have been that way. Mumbai is possibly the best example of an urban metropolis making do with infrastructure that is wholly inadequate and a failure of Indian policy-making, which almost always patches up requirements instead of planning ahead. India’s commercial capital needed a new airport over a decade ago and while work continues on the Navi Mumbai Airport, it will take another five years at the minimum to build. This has had a cumulative negative impact on the economic growth of the entire Greater Mumbai region. Aviation may be the preserve of a select few in India, although that number is growing rapidly, but it has a major economic cascade. Delhi’s massive airport has played a critical role in supercharging the Delhi-NCR economy. A second NCR airport in western Uttar Pradesh will have a dramatic impact on that region as well. This should be a lesson on how planned infrastructure can impact a city and how inadequate infrastructure can actually harm it. India needs to continue building and developing aviation infrastructure, because it has a multiplier impact on the economy of the nation. With the challenge of creating jobs and employment opportunities, we should keep ensuring that we are building enough for the future and not just enough to patch our needs for now.

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

As we near the 15th anniversary of the 2004 tsunami, the impressive achievements by Tamil women underline their resilience and ability to turn disasters into development opportunities

Fifteen years ago, in 2004, giant waves turned 55-year-old Sundari’s world upside down. Gushing water crashed into her hut in Nochi Nagar located near the Marina beach in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and had she not grabbed her five-year-old grandson by his hair, he would have been swept away. The next few days were spent in fear, in nearby makeshift shelters along with hundreds of others whose homes along the Marina beach were destroyed by the tsunami. As the days stretched into months and months into years, there were many moments when Sundari and other tsunami-affected families despaired they might never be able to shift out of the temporary shelters. It took 10 years of unwavering struggle before Sundari and around 628 Dalit families from the fishing and non-fishing communities could finally, in 2014, move into two-room flats constructed by the State Government under the Emergency Tsunami Recovery Project.

But communities in coastal States of Odisha and West Bengal, who were hit by Cyclone Fani on May 3, will not have to wait so long. The Odisha Government was well prepared. It evacuated millions of people well before the natural disaster could strike. This helped save lives. Yes, restoring normalcy will take time. People of the State will need basic necessities, houses and livelihoods, with many standing crops destroyed. But considering the swiftness of the Odisha Government’s response, the rehabilitation process is expected to be smooth. Comparisons between Cyclone Fani and the tsunami cannot be made. Unlike Fani, the tsunami came unannounced and caught everyone unawares. But even though the Tamil Nadu Government was understandably unprepared, its slow and apathetic post-tsunami rehabilitation process added to the misery and woes, forcing those affected to run from pillar-to-post to claim their rights.

This is why the long and hard struggle by Sundari and others affected is important and offers lessons on how disasters can be turned into opportunities for community development and women’s empowerment. It illustrates the vital role played by women in reclaiming their land and rights. Whether it was resorting to cooking food in the middle of the road to protest against the delay in delivering housing promises or forming a human chain to block wrongful land acquisition by the Government, women showed heart and courage to stand up for their rights. Their determination forced the State Government to make several critical changes.

The biggest gain was ensuring the allotted flat was jointly owned by the husband and wife — a big change from the earlier policy of giving it in the name of the male member. The first impact of this move was a fall in domestic violence. Women began to understand that they no longer needed to fear being thrown out of their houses and this awareness boosted their confidence. “Earlier, women were afraid of complaining against their husbands. But now, they approach the police for help,” said Sundari. The police, too, have been cooperative.

Another critical change the community movement brought was ensuring each flat, albeit small, had an attached toilet. This is a big boon for women and girls. State tenements built at the Government’s relocation site, where several families were shifted soon after the tsunami, are one-room flats and have a common toilet for two families. The ability of the Nochi Nagar community, particularly its women, to bring about a design change in their housing, inspired residents of the adjacent fishing community living in Nochikuppam. They allowed the State Government to make new houses to replace their existing dilapidated tenements only after ensuring they, too, would get attached toilets. The triumph of the coastal community of Nochi Nagar boosted their confidence.

For the fisherwomen of the Irula community, a nomadic tribe living near the sea, this was the first time they got a proper roof over their heads. But more than that, getting ownership of a flat in their name gave them an identity of their own. “Acquiring an identity was something so emotional that it was hard to explain what it meant,” said Usha, a 45-year-old Irula fisherwoman. Now, no one can evict them, not even their husbands.

Both the Irula fisherwomen and other women from the non-fishing community like Nochi Nagar resident Sundari were helped by the Forum for Securing Lives and Livelihoods Rights of Coastal Communities (FLLRC), a collaborative platform of four community-based organisations supported by ActionAid India, a civil society organisation. They provided the guidance, training and hand-holding the women and communities needed to rebuild their lives.

Their 10-year struggle also showed that given the opportunity, women use it to further community development through collective action. Once the women learnt about land and gender rights and were trained to use tools like the Right to Information (RTI) Act, there was no stopping them. Sundari used this training to file several RTIs to monitor the progress of the houses promised to them by the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB) during the time the Nochi Nagar residents lived in temporary shelters from 2009-2014. This way she kept the community in the information loop and ensured design changes like attached bathrooms for each flat were implemented.

She also used it to access information on the TNSCB’s housing project for the coastal communities, like hers, living along the Marina stretch. It was through an RTI that she got to know that TNSCB planned to relocate the non-fishing community, to which Sundari and 500 other such families belonged, to areas quite far from the sea. Further, the RTI also revealed that only the fishing community would be provided housing near the coast.

This was unacceptable for Sundari as their predominant livelihood activities were related to fishing and they needed to stay close to the coast to survive. A meeting to discuss the issue was attended by over 500 other Dalit women living along the Marina stretch. As protests grew louder, other Dalit community leaders joined hands, leading to the formation of the Chennai Dalit People’s Federation (CDPF), to give voice to the marginalised community. Sundari, who was elected president of the CDPF, led the women’s campaign to expose the Government’s bid to divide the fishing and non-fishing communities. They received a big boost with the participation of national Dalit leaders from several organisations, including the National Dalit Women Movement, who addressed rallies against the Government’s discriminatory policy. When the TNSCB realised that the storm of protest was unlikely to end, it was forced to declare that it would no longer differentiate the coastal communities on the basis of their occupation.

Women didn’t stop here. They used the opportunity to demand that they be treated on par with the fishermen. They argued that the role of the fishermen ended once they returned from the sea. The fish was cleaned and sold by the women. Nearly 75 per cent of the total catch is marketed by women fish workers but they are not covered under any welfare scheme or given equal rights in Government entitlements for the fishing community. These women wanted their labour in the fish trade to be recognised. According to an estimate, women engaged in fishing-related activities constitute 55 per cent of the workforce in Tamil Nadu and 65 per cent at the national level.

So, women leveraged their collective strength by organising a rally that was attended by over 500 women from 16 federations from across the State. They sat outside the office of the Chennai Collectorate, demanding they be given the same compensation as given to men during the off-season for fishing. They continued their protests until compensation was increased from the existing Rs 4,000 to Rs 6,700. Although the women could not convince the Government to pay separate compensation, they managed to get the payment in the joint name of the husband and wife. This, too, was a big achievement.

As we approach the 15th anniversary of the deadly tsunami some months from now, a lookback at the impressive panorama of achievements by coastal women in Tamil Nadu underline their resilience and ability to turn disasters into opportunities for community development.

(The writer is a senior journalist)

Writer: Swapna Majumdar

Courtesy: The Pioneer

While remembering the events of 1919 and seeking to better integrate the spirit of May 4 into the party’s narrative, the student revolt of 1989 has been completely blacked out

China is suffering from a strange disease, a sort of selective amnesia — certain things from the past are clearly remembered, while other events seem to have been completely erased from the nation’s collective memory (or at least from the party’s annals). Take the May Fourth Movement, which was recently celebrated with much fanfare in every corner of the Middle Kingdom. In this case, the memory of the event, which occurred a hundred years ago, is absolutely clear.

Following the 1911 Revolution in China, the Manchu (Qing) dynasty disintegrated, triggering the fall of imperial rule. Eight years later, the May Fourth Movement took place in the Chinese capital where students started protesting against the nationalist Government’s weak response to the Treaty of Versailles, allowing Japan to control the territories surrendered by Germany in Shandong.

On the morning of May 4, 1919, student representatives from 13 different local universities met in Beijing and drafted five resolutions, in particular, to oppose the granting of Shandong to the Japanese and the creation of a Beijing student union. Later in the afternoon, some 3,000 students of Beijing University marched to Tiananmen Square, shouting slogans such as “struggle for the sovereignty externally, get rid of the national traitors at home” and “don’t sign the Versailles Treaty.”

Nobody can deny that it was a true revolution. Hundred years later, Chinese President Xi Jinping affirmed that patriotism was the core spirit of the 1919 event. He added that the May Fourth Movement inspired the ambition and confidence of the Chinese people and the nation to realise national rejuvenation. “It was also a great enlightenment and new cultural movement of disseminating new thought, new culture and new knowledge,” Xi said.

The President urged Chinese youth “in the new era” to love the country, the party and adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC)…by the way, where was the party in 1919? Seventy years later, another student revolution took place on Tiananmen Square in Beijing and the Communist Party has no remembrance of it.

The aspiration of the students may have been very similar: A craving for a fairer world, more freedom for the youth to express themselves, a more democratic system (termed the ‘Fifth Modernisation’) and greater transparency and participation in the state’s affairs. A power struggle at the top of the party ended with the decision to send tanks on to the Square on June 4, 1989, which resulted in the death of some 3,000 youths.

The Tiananmen papers, prefaced by a Chinese scholar, Andrew Nathan, gave a clear picture of the decision process inside the Politburo, which led to the massacre. Nathan wrote: “For the first time ever, reports and minutes have surfaced that provide a revealing and potentially explosive view of decision-making at the highest levels of the Government and party in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)…the protests were ultimately ended by force, including the bloody clearing of Beijing streets by troops using live ammunition. The tragic event was one of the most important in the history of communist China and its consequences are still being felt.”

This has completely been blacked out by Beijing. In May 1968, students in France and elsewhere in Europe also dreamt of a better world, but the two-month revolution, often violent, did not result in any casualty, neither from the students nor the police side.

Wang Xiangwei, a former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post, wrote an editorial piece for the Hong-Kong newspaper. After mentioning the similarities between the student movement in 1919 and 1989, he commented: “But the Government will disregard the 30th anniversary of another student demonstration in 1989 that preceded its bloody crackdown on June 4. The latter protest may be less seminal in China’s modern history, but its core spirit should not be obscured.”

Wang also noted that before the beginning of the May 4 celebrations, Xi chaired a meeting of the Politburo “to discuss ways to enhance study into the movement’s history and significance. The President seeks to better integrate the spirit of May 4 into the party’s narrative that only it can lead the country’s youth to his goal of national rejuvenation.”

The sad fact is that today, China is probably worse off than in 1989. Sycophancy and repression have reached new heights. Recently, the regime re-established an alliance of nine colleges, called the “Yanhe University Talent Training Alliance,” in order to perpetuate what is called the Yan’an Red DNA. Yan’an was the place where the Long March ended; it later became the centre of the Chinese communist revolution. In the early years, nine university institutions were set up to train the next generation of communist cadres. It was called the ‘Red DNA college’, responsible for spreading the “fire of the Chinese revolution” to the whole country.

Another instance, during the cultural revolution, party committees in universities made the students report on the anti-party faculty members.

After the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, the regime systematically established student informants in key Chinese universities. In 2005, the arrangement was expanded to almost every university and even some high schools explained the well-informed site Chinascope: “Although on the surface, the purpose is to collect information on academic activities, the student informants are the ears and eyes of the communist party authorities in the universities.” One could multiply the examples. One can just guess that China’s freedom-loving students will again revolt one day.

Incidentally, in 1989, the Indian Government ordered the state television to pare down the Tiananmen coverage to the barest minimum. Analyst C Raja Mohan explained: “The Government’s monopoly over television helped Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signal Beijing that India would not revel in China’s domestic troubles and offer some political empathy instead.”

Rajiv Gandhi had travelled to China barely six months earlier. Sometimes, it is easier to be Alzeimerish.

(The writer is an expert on India-China relations)

Writer: Claude Arpi

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Despite the return of KCR in post-poll negotiations, the anti-BJP coalition has a lot of hurdles

The problem with the concept of mahagathbandhan — an alliance of regional parties that are as against the BJP as the Congress — is that its constituents never coalesce together with confidence despite their command over the grassroots. Somewhere they are scared of seizing the national agenda collectively and are reconciled to their limited territorial might, clutching on to prominent national parties as props for a pan-Indian sustenance. Worst, for the best of ambitions, they are more prone to bargaining the best deal for their respective fiefs and fritter away their tally and common ground all too easily. This uncertainty between intention and execution has prevented the federal front from acquiring critical mass. Besides, the policy paralysis of coalition front governments at the Centre has definitely bred voter fatigue over time. Nobody trusts a pyrrhic leadership race anymore. The same half-hearted co-existence of disparate interests sounded the knell of an anti-BJP front this election, the SP and the BSP being the only exception in Uttar Pradesh. That, too, by the way, is rooted in their need to hold on to their turf and not be swamped by national parties. Now when some pollsters have predicted that both the BJP and Congress may not get the magic numbers on their own and that regional players may put up a determined show, talk of a federal front has gathered momentum in a post-poll scenario. Except this time, all are on the same page about shedding equidistance and choosing the Congress as the much-needed adhesive.

The federal front’s one-time architect and Telangana Chief Minister, K Chandrashekar Rao, has spurred into action again, holding meetings with Kerala’s Leftist Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and hoping to get Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy and DMK’s Stalin on board. He is keen to form a southern bloc in post-poll negotiations and restore the trust among other parties, who were upset about his intransigence on including the Congress and had seen him as a B team of the BJP. Clearly, he doesn’t want to be left out of possibilities and is trying to assuage the anxieties of both archrival and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu and Bengal counterpart and his original ally, Mamata Banerjee. The larger question is whether Didi, who is now helming the federal front, will be comfortable with him or not. She was none too happy when despite going the mile with KCR, the wily leader had left the door ajar for possible negotiations with the BJP and a rewarding largesse for his newly-formed state. Hence the renewed diplomacy now to dispel fears of him being a sellout. KCR himself knows that if there’s anybody who can ultimately strike a balance between allies and the Congress in the larger picture, it will be Mamata Banerjee. So has he subsumed his ego or is he playing saboteur once again? Meanwhile Naidu has spoken to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi about an all-Opposition parties meeting on May 21 to discuss the possibilities of a conglomerate government in case of a fractured mandate. The Congress may be ready to take the Karnataka model ahead but would it stay out of the leadership race if it manages to improve its numbers? Rahul Gandhi has after all led the party to victory in three different States and would be amped up with additional gains if any. He could emerge consensus among the colliding heads of aspirant front PMs — NCP chief Sharad Pawar, Naidu, Mamata and BSP’s Mayawati. Most importantly, would any of the federal front leaders agree to cede ground to a first among equals? Besides, if everybody is so keen, why didn’t they show the same urgency for a pre-poll arrangement knowing full well that a post-poll arithmetic usually doesn’t hold ground with the President as a first option? The prospects are still hazy.

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Financial inclusion in a diverse country like India needs a spectrum of services in order to encapsulate the different dimensions of the diverse populations they reach

Finance is one field where we have witnessed significant innovations in recent decades. Earlier, we could only visualise social change in rural India because villages were so deeply mired in caste conflicts. These issues had engendered local tyrannies and subverted the social order, resulting in bondage and servitude for a significant portion of the population for generations. In the 1970s, the locus of change shifted to other areas, which worked towards levelling caste divisions and neutralising feudal overlords. Finance was the pivot of this process of change.

When I began life as a rural banker in the 1970s, outsiders rarely visited the villages. Those who did, other than the occasional anthropologist, Government extension officers, family planning staff of the Government or census worker, were missionaries of various religions. Over the years, I noticed that the balance shifted to agents toting financial schemes. Of course, those who lived in the villages already had both. As an ancient Indian proverb has it — a village can be formed wherever the three come together: A river, a priest and a moneylender. This gradual change in the profile of visitors and reformers was my first introduction to the then embryonic revolution in development finance, which later grew into the niche of social banking.

Bankers, who began showing up in villages on their bicycles, motorcycles or jeeps in the 1970s and 1980s, were usually employees of local branches of State-owned banks. Their mission, as assigned by their Governments and assorted international donors, was to find trustworthy villagers to whom they could provide credit. This, it was thought, would help villagers start small businesses, thereby increasing rural economic growth while at the same time empowering people to climb out of poverty.

The bankers and missionaries, who shared much of the same client pool, were curiously alike in some ways. Usually outsiders to the local community, members of both groups tended to discover their own preconceptions in the villages, rather than the local realities and dynamics. However, many of them genuinely cared about helping poor people increase their incomes and better their lives. Some were even quite successful. They came with powerful ideas, found other similarly powerful plans already present and often became catalysts for the cross-fertilisation of their own ideas of social and economic reforms and wisdom of the locals.

A unique characteristic of bankers visiting villages was the refreshing change in their academic credentials and their willingness to adapt to the harsh realities of rural life. Most of them were from technical backgrounds, endowed with a vision that focussed more on the technical and practical, rather than the financial aspects of the problems of the poor. This was particularly seen in the innovative practices they fostered in agriculture, dairy and small enterprises and artisanry. Their overarching goal was energisation of the rural economy and promotion of entrepreneurial approaches. Development finance was just one of the many sources into which they dipped.

They brought a range of weaponry to combat poverty and agricultural regress: High-yielding varieties of seeds, new techniques for pest management, a modern range of equipment and chemical fertilisers. Veterinary doctors brought exotic breeds of cattle, a range of new drugs and nutritional supplements to combat mortality and improve cattle health. Artificial insemination techniques built superior breeds of cattle.

Financial inclusion or access is a component of financial development, along with depth, stability efficiency and financial development, which is important for economic growth. Financial inclusion in particular has a bearing on equity as well. Access to a transaction account is a first step towards broader financial inclusion as it serves as a gateway to other financial services like credit or insurance; lowers transaction costs for daily economic activities; and enables the creation of a buffer for emergencies. Other potential benefits of financial inclusion include: Improving efficiency and targetting of Government welfare programmes; reducing corruption through better monitoring and regulation of financial transactions through digital technology. Transfers made directly to the citizen’s bank accounts can eliminate corrupt and inefficient intermediaries. Digitisation of finance and economy holds the key to myriad problems.

Building inclusive digital economies requires the collective action of Governments, industry, financiers and the civil society. Before speeding ahead, we need to build the infrastructure, align our policies and create the tools that will enable the poor to board the digital train. India has a highly vibrant and innovative high-tech ecosystem in the world. However, along with it, there exist hundreds of millions of people, who live in villages, who are happy with a technology that is hardly more sophisticated than a bullock cart and a plough. Since systems are meant to work for the user, the onus is on the designer to make sure the users can access the system comfortably. There is a need to integrate various modules — savings, credit and insurance among others — into a technology framework for the development of holistic strategies for comprehensive financial inclusion. Low-income groups, women in particular, have the lowest access to formal financial instruments, forcing them to rely on age-old informal mechanisms: Money under the mattress, money guards, relatives, friends and money-lenders. These informal mechanisms are insufficient and unreliable as well as highly expensive. Thus, financial exclusion imposes large opportunity costs on those who suffer from it the most.

While policy and financial regulatory initiatives enabled substantial progress in terms of financial inclusion indicators — branch penetration, account density or deposit and credit figures — there is a need to strengthen enabling institutions, which actively promote financial deepening in our country. Alternate service channels such as agents or business correspondents have tremendously expanded their outreach. They are better positioned to serve remote pockets as they operate in a limited geographical area, enjoy greater acceptability among the rural poor, have greater understanding of the issues specific to the underprivileged and have flexibility in operations, providing a level of comfort to their clientele. Formal financial services such as savings, loans and money transfers can enable the poor improve resistance to shocks, boost productivity of business, facilitate empowerment of marginalised groups, such as women and rural residents, and help reduce poverty. Life is one long risk for them as they are just a tragic event away from a financial catastrophe.

One way to ensure that the past wrongs are not repeated is to have mandates and subventions in the financial inclusion space so that banks and other financial institutions vigorously expand their outreach to cover even remote populations. The cost involved in the implementation of these mandates is quite stiff and need serious consideration. Instead of banks recovering these costs by overcharging ordinary customers, or by demanding recapitalisation by the Government, one alternative can be that the Government pays for these mandates. These costs can be determined by an independent agency. Not only will the cost of the mandate become transparent, it will make services accessible. The Government will also have to make a reasoned decision about how long to impose the mandate. Moreover, only efficient service providers will come forward to bid for these mandates.

On the demand side, financial literacy is an important tool for financial inclusion. Consumers have to understand the nature of the products and services they are buying as well as the implications of these purchases. There is also the need for substantial research on how vulnerable groups manage their complex financial lives. This can aid product design and solutions of financial instruments that can be tailored to their needs. Financial inclusion in a diverse country like India needs a spectrum of services in order to encapsulate the different dimensions of the diverse populations they reach.

Financial services need to be tailored to the needs of the disadvantaged groups, especially the women, poor people and first-time users, who may have low literacy and numeracy skills. Fintech is now providing platforms that allow financial institutions to carry on personalised, electronic conversations with customers through text messages using powerful data analytics that tailor messages to customer behaviour. All stakeholders must now realise that financial inclusion can succeed only through the (convenient) marriage of all four paradigms: Digital, finance, literacy and numeracy.

(The writer is Member, NITI Aayog’s National Committee on Financial Literacy and Inclusion for Women)

Writer: Moin Qazi

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The Easter Sunday self-inflicted tragedy was in military parlance a total command failure, which is likely to take Sri Lanka a decade back

Neither Sherlock Holmes nor Alfred Hitchcock would have been mystified by intelligence oversights that led to one of the world’s most dastardly terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka last month. Simply because it was a case of just connecting the dots — so detailed and specific were the tip-offs. According to a top secret intelligence memo of April 9 (there were two others before the fateful day dawned on Easter Sunday), the country’s intelligence chief had warned the Inspector General of Police that “Zahran Hashim of the National Tawheed Jamaat and his associates were planning to carry out suicide terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka shortly.” How this classified warning was not shared with President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is a riddle. Rarely has there been an intelligence goof-up of this magnitude in recent memory.

That such a catastrophic intelligence foul-up took place in Sri Lanka, which only a decade ago had destroyed the invincible Velupillai Prabhakaran-led Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), ending root and branch a 30-year-long deadly insurgency and becoming the first country to achieve such a feat in the 21st century, is intriguing. The Army, Navy and Air Force have held annual international seminars in Colombo to showcase their military successes, including the Army’s prowess in deep penetration intelligence acquisition skills. According to the then Defence Secretary and brother of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, now a presidential hopeful for the elections this year, the present Government dismantled the elaborate intelligence and surveillance network of 5,000 personnel he had set up in 2011 across the country, including the Muslim majority areas of the east.

Nine suicide bombers, including one woman, struck in coordinated attacks followed by two or three hara-kiri acts by family members and associates of the mastermind Hashim. It is now known that the suicide squad consisted of 15 members and the support group was 150 of whom 100 cadres have been arrested. Thirty-six Sri Lankans are reported to have gone to fight with the Islamic State in Syria and many had returned. The preparation for serial human bombing of this scale and sophistication would have taken months if not years. Sirisena has revealed that planning for the attacks started in Syria in 2017. How this massive diabolical plot escaped detection is a mystery. The Sri Lankan Army Commander, Lt Gen Mahesh Senanayake, in an interview to BBC, has said that the suicide bombers “got some sort of training” in Kashmir and Kerala. This should worry India. Given the severe communal polarisation exacerbated by the elections, major terrorist attacks are not unlikely in India in the near future.

In 2017, I retraced my times with the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) 30 years ago in the east, travelling through Muslim majority Ampara and Kalmunai areas near Batticaloa and saw an increased density of population, mosques and madrassas as also prosperity and development. The Muslims were targeted by the LTTE notably in their massacre in Sri Lanka’s biggest mosque in Kattankudy near Batticaloa in the 1990s. (Kattankudy is the hometown of Hashim, the mastermind of the attacks and its training ground). Later, the Sinhala Buddhist extremists Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), ostensibly supported by the Government, targetted Muslims periodically from 2013, culminating in the big anti-Muslin riots in Kandy last year, which led to the Government declaring an Emergency. The trigger for Muslim alienation and radicalisation is the BBS attacks and objections to hijab and halal. How the Government did not pick up these straws in the wind is an enigma.

Initially, the Government ascribed the horrific attacks to the Islamic State (IS)-inspired Sri Lankan Muslim National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) as retaliation for Christchurch till IS supremo Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi claimed responsibility as revenge for loss of Baghouz, the caliphate’s last bastion in Syria. Sri Lanka’s own counter-terrorism czar, the Singapore-based Rohan Gunaratna, confirmed that IS has created support groups around the world and NTJ has joined the IS.

The rift and infighting between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe is a folklore. The politics of the carnage is beguiling. Sirisena has squarely blamed the Prime Minister, the Defence Secretary and the Inspector General Police and said he was kept in the dark and that he would reconstitute security structures. On his part, Wickremesinghe said, “I did not know…still we have to take responsibility for that part of Government machinery that did not work.” Sirisena is not only the Defence Minister but has also kept the Law and Order Ministry with him, some say, unconstitutionally. This has kept Wickremesinghe quarantined from defence and security, including national security council meetings. That the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing is the black hole in the security system.

Former Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka was the key architect of victory of the LTTE but he fell out with the old regime’s top leaders, the Rajapaksas. The Sirisena Government appointed Fonseka a Field Marshal and a Minister. Speaking in the Emergency debate in Parliament after the bombings, Fonseka lambasted his own Government, including Srisena, Wickremesinghe and other defence and intelligence officials. Demands for making Fonseka Minister for law and order are increasing.

Sri Lanka is under Emergency rule with the Prevention of Terrorism Act in place but is likely to be replaced with the new counter-terrorism Bill. It is the first country to ban the face veil in South Asia. Both the curfew and ban on social media were lifted after a week. The preliminary report on the bombings has been completed, which Sirisena is keeping close to his chest. A new military command territorially, including parts of west and northwest provinces, including Colombo and Puttalam and strangely called Overall Operational Command, has been established and coastal security beefed up. India’s offer of sending its elite National Security Guards has been politely rejected. The joke in Colombo is about how NSG messed up in Mumbai in 2008 taking four days to complete the operation. Tongue-in-cheek Sri Lankan military veterans say what the IPKF started and did not complete, we finished.

Over-indulgent in its conquest of LTTE, Sri Lanka let its guard down. A dysfunctional cohabitation Government has been rent apart by catastrophic terrorist attacks, which are likely to take Sri Lanka a decade back. The Easter Sunday self-inflicted tragedy was in military parlance a total command failure. That neither the Prime Minister nor President has resigned is to borrow a famous war time Churchillian one liner: A riddle wrapped in a mystery surrounded by an enigma.

(The writer is a retired Major General of the Indian Army and founder member of the Defence Planning Staff, currently the revamped Integrated Defence Staff)

Writer: Ashok K Mehta

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The apex court has closed the debate around VVPATs but they have to be factored in next time

Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, many political parties have been crying wolf about the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) malfunctioning across the country and have been protesting to all and sundry, even though it appears that the public at large has not really been interested in the debate. Their latest approach to the Supreme Court demanding that the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system be used more intensively during the current general elections was a lost cause any which way, with the poll process largely complete. The court dismissed the petition with just two phases remaining and it being impossible for the Election Commission (EC) to change machines now. Criticism has been a constant since these machines made their debut, the loudest cries before 2014 being ironically made by the BJP in the aftermath of the 2009 elections.

But can VVPAT machines be brought into more widespread use going forward so as to allay fears that the machines can be tampered with to benefit one party or another? Yes, it must be done. However, one has to remember that in India with 900 million potential voters and 600 million plus votes cast, the scale of VVPAT issues can be mind-numbing and the extent of recounts has to be managed. Otherwise the political turmoil that will invariably follow contested elections could go on for weeks if not months, and India cannot afford that. So while more machines should have VVPAT printers and storage, if any political party or candidate demands a recount or an audit, they should be made to pay, just like those students who want their examination papers re-evaluated. The sum of money should be significant enough to pay for the hundreds of staff required to conduct such an exercise. Meanwhile, the EC must use more authentication units before the polls to weed out counterfeit/tampered EVMs, progress on which has been slow. It can fix a uniform sample size for hand-counting VVPAT slips for all constituencies. And it should fix a margin of error before ordering an automatic recount. The process may be time-taking but would ensure credibility of devices among voters. India must not return to the days of paper ballots, and as we have been noticing in these elections, the problem is more to do with booth security rather than the EVMs.

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The local militant Islamist group involved in the attacks neither had the sophistication nor the ability to carry out such attacks. It was clearly steered more by the ISI than IS

Despite all the confusion, carnage and horror of the Sri Lankan suicide bomb attacks, that killed at least 359 people and left hundreds more injured, one thing that is abundantly clear is the utter futility of such attempts by religious bigots to change the world to their likeness. Of course, there is also a stark reality that Governments around the world are forced to confront and for which politicians pay a heavy price: That despite the strictest of controls imposed, little can actually be done to control the turn of such events. In the case of Sri Lanka, the security and intelligence establishment appeared to have become complacent if not comatose after it defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.

Politicians try and make a living by trying to convince the citizens that they have the necessary expertise and required abilities if given a free hand to make their lives safe, secure and comfortable. Nothing can be further from the truth as at the end of the day, howsoever sophisticated and technology-dependent the data collection, analysis and dissemination process may be, they are all finally subject to the frailties and follies of human beings.

It has emerged that in the case of Sri Lanka, actionable intelligence provided by Indian agencies was not acted upon because of the on-going factional fight between President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. This apart, there’s also the perception that these agencies were keen on creating a rift between Sri Lanka and Pakistan over the issue. Also, there may well have been a sense of complacency, not least given the common perception that Indian agencies rarely get it right — the Pulwama tragedy being the latest one in a long line of such disasters.

Fortunately, the Sri Lankan Government did move rapidly after the attacks. Once it had overcome the initial shock, it was able to identify the perpetrators and put in place a series of measures that have till now prevented a repeat of such attacks from being executed. Also, except for a couple of minor incidents, they have been able to prevent reprisals against the Muslim community, the overwhelming majority of whose members are upright and loyal citizens, who were equally shocked and incensed by the senseless atrocities perpetrated in the name of their religion. This ensured that much of the subsequent intelligence that enabled the police and security forces to stop further attacks was provided from within the community.

Finally, one could not help but appreciate Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s prompt action to publicly apologise for the inability of his Government to forestall the tragedy. He further ensured accountability by sacking the defence secretary and police chief for inaction on their part and for deliberately withholding intelligence about possible terrorist attacks. Our political leadership will do well to learn from this. They must keep their egos under control and focus on accountability every time they come short instead of clinging on to their chairs as they all do.

Interestingly, while the Islamic State (IS) lost no time in claiming responsibility for the attacks, its ability to actually coordinate and execute such a sophisticated and complex attack, involving seven suicide bombers, seems quite doubtful. The fact that it is on the run obviously makes organising such an attack extremely challenging, though it may well have been able to radicalise the perpetrators online.

On the other hand, dismissing their involvement as out of hand would also be quite foolish, given that its ideology has attracted a large number of followers in recent years. We have already seen some pointers towards this in our neighbourhood as well as in Jammu & Kashmir. Moreover, we must also remember that a vast number of our population emigrates to the Middle East in search of jobs and it is not inconceivable that some among these workers may well have fallen prey to this radical ideology and returned to South Asia to carry forward the Islamic State’s war against non-believers. It will indeed be interesting to learn what interrogations of suspects — captured before they were able to act — brings out.

Then there is, of course, the alternative narrative that suggests the involvement of Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) along with Chinese intelligence to create an environment within the country that can enable former President Mahendra Rajapaksa to once again win the presidential hustings due in the near future. That he was rabidly anti-Indian in his past two tenures as President is not under doubt as also his wholehearted support for Pakistan and China.

This perception is supported by the belief that Indian agencies were able to provide such detailed actionable intelligence only because they had caught and interrogated some members of a module, connected to the perpetrators at Coimbatore.

It has been a long-standing belief within our security and intelligence community that after the withdrawal of the Indian Peace Keeping Force from Sri Lanka and the subsequent refusal of the Indian Government to supply the Sri Lankan armed forces with weapons, the Sri Lankan Government turned to Pakistan for assistance. It is at this time that Pakistan’s ISI established a foothold

in that island nation, which was used to radicalise, train, arm and employ Islamists for operations in South India.

Let us not forget that Sri Lankan Muslims have sided with Pakistan since the Partition. And have been united by the “big” presence of India in the neighbourhood to coalesce their mutual interests. Let us also not forget that during the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh, when India withdrew landing and overflight rights to Pakistan, Sri Lanka extended landing and refuelling facilities to Pakistan International Airlines. As the Pakistan Army launched operations against the Mukti Bahini, Pakistani military aircraft landed and took off from the Katunayake international airport. While Sri Lanka insisted these aircraft were civilian, there were reports that they actually carried armed troops. And as the Tamil separatists also kept the island Muslims at bay, Pakistan’s ISI got actively involved in the local government’s counter-offensive strategies.

In this particular case, while there is the possibility that these elements may well have acted independently, it could just as well have been a “false flag” operation to push the blame on cadres of the Islamic State, who in their present condition, would have been more than happy to accept responsibility for obvious reasons.

One way or the other, the National Thowheeth Jama’ath, the local militant Islamist group involved in the attacks, neither had the sophistication nor the ability to carry out such attacks and clearly unknown foreign organisations provided them with the necessary technical and logistic support.

Finally, in our context, there have been credible reports that Islamists have been successful in establishing a fairly strong presence in States such as West Bengal and Kerala, where they now seem to be becoming increasingly assertive. They have got away with this primarily because local Governments have been reluctant to act against them in the foolish hope that by doing so, they would gain the support of the Muslim community to consolidate power. This bodes ill for the country in the long run and requires the Union Government to undertake necessary measures, some of which may well make them unpopular, if we are to avoid a turbulent and extremely violent future.

(The writer, a military veteran, a consultant with the Observer Research Foundation and a Senior Visiting Fellow with The Peninsula Foundation, Chennai)

Writer: Deepak Sinha

Courtesy: The Pioneer

While the Congress leader’s assertion that the Nehru-Gandhis are the ‘first family’ goes against our democratic ethos, their transgressions are now precedents followed by others

Although the Congress was in the vanguard of the freedom movement, many of its members are still not comfortable with the core values in our Constitution and the democratic way of life. A case in point is the recent statement of a dyed-in-the-wool Congressman PC Chacko that the Nehru-Gandhi family is “the first family in the country.”

In the mid-1970s, the then Congress president, Dev Kant Barooah, had proclaimed that “Indira is India and India is Indira.” What followed was terrible consequences for the country’s citizens. Taken in by such sycophancy, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi displayed fascist tendencies and turned our democracy into a dictatorship. While the assertion of the Congress leader, Mr Chacko, that the Nehru-Gandhi family is the “first family of the country” goes against the very grain of our democracy and Constitutional dharma, we must admit that the family has many firsts to its credit.

Here are some of them:

In 1946, when the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) asked its State units to propose the name of the person who, in their view, should become party president and the first Prime Minister of India, not one Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) voted for Jawaharlal Nehru. A dozen of them wanted Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to become the party president and Prime Minister. Three other State units proposed no candidate. Yet, though he did not secure a single vote, Jawaharlal Nehru, backed by Mahatma Gandhi, became the first Prime Minister of India. The Congress and historians close to this family have written tomes, describing Nehru as a “great democrat” but have hidden this dreadful truth from the Indian public. Nehru, therefore, has the unique distinction of getting the top job without a single vote in his favour!

Nehru was also the only Prime Minister under whom India suffered a humiliating defeat in a war with China, thanks to his woolly-headed approach to international relations and gross misreading of China’s real intentions. He was also the Prime Minister who preferred to beseech the United Nations on January 1, 1948, and internationalise the Kashmir issue, rather than allow the Indian Army to throw out the infiltrators.

Yet another first for Nehru was the manner in which he initiated dynastic politics in the country. He manipulated the party bosses and ensured the appointment of his daughter Indira Gandhi as the Congress president in 1959.

Indira Gandhi, too, has many firsts to her credit. She was the only Prime Minister to supersede four judges of the Supreme Court (three of them in April 1973, and one in January 1977) and propound the theory of a “committed judiciary”— that is, committed to the Congress. She was the only Indian leader to crush democracy and replace it with dictatorship during the dreaded Emergency, which she imposed in 1975. She was the first national leader to abolish the need for quorum in Parliament so that a few Congress MPs could make laws for the entire country. She was also the first and only Prime Minister to empower the President to amend the Constitution through an executive order. She was also the first leader of the Congress to give party tickets to two people, who had hijacked an aircraft in 1978. Soon after she returned to power, she ensured the withdrawal of cases against the hijackers, gave them party tickets in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in 1981 and ensured their victories.

Thus, she made sure that the hijackers became honourable members of the Uttar Pradesh legislature. Thereafter, her successors in the family — Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi — have repeatedly honoured one of the hijackers with a party ticket to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh. Such is the respect that the Nehru-Gandhis accord to this individual that they have given him the party ticket five times and made desperate attempts to ensure the presence of this man in the House of the People.

Rajiv Gandhi is another member of the family to achieve many firsts. He was the only Prime Minister to be directly accused of taking kickbacks in an international arms deal. He was also the second Prime Minister after Indira Gandhi to bring a law to crush press freedom. A united media forced him to eventually back off.

Two members of this family — Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi — have the unique distinction of conferring the Bharat Ratna upon themselves. Later, Rajiv Gandhi, too, was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously. All the three members of this family, who became Prime Ministers, have a special attribute — completely ignoring national leaders like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Dr BR Ambedkar. It was left to other party Governments to confer the Bharat Ratna on these great national leaders.

Yet another first, which is now etched in stone, is that this is the only political family in the country to name all major Government schemes, national projects and institutions and most of the sports trophies after its own members to the complete exclusion of everybody else.

Sonia Gandhi is probably the only foreigner to get herself included illegally in the voters’ list in our country. This happened in 1980, when she was still a citizen of Italy. Someone lodged a complaint with the Chief Election Officer, Delhi, and he removed her name from the voters’ list because she was not a citizen of India.

Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are two members of the Nehru-Gandhi family who are members of the Lok Sabha and who consider it infra dig to ask questions in the House. Obviously, they take the Chacko principle seriously. A look at the parliamentary record of the two Gandhis shows that they have never asked a single question in their parliamentary careers. According to a study conducted by PRS India, on an average, MPs asked 300 questions in the 15th Lok Sabha and 293 questions in the 16th Lok Sabha. Compare their record with the highest number of questions asked by an MP in the 16th Lok Sabha — 1,181 — and you get an idea of what an active MP can do during question time. This is the record of the “First family.” Mr Chacko, please stop using expressions that militate against our democratic ethos. India is the biggest democracy in the world, not a monarchy.

(The writer is an author specialising in democracy studies. Views expressed are personal)

Writer: A Surya Prakash

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The small and dispersed community has lacked political representation since the Partition. A Constitutional amendment could give them a non-territorially linked seat in the Lok Sabha

It seems to be the end of the road for veteran politician Lal Krishna Advani as his party denied him ticket for the Lok Sabha elections. It is speculative whether the party will oblige him through the Rajya Sabha route. Opinion is divided on whether he should have been offered a party ticket or not. On the one hand, there is little dispute about his towering stature in Indian politics, on the other, his advancing age and scanty participation in the proceedings of the 16th Lok Sabha clouded his prospects.

This polarised debate, however, conceals an impersonal tragedy. Will LK Advani, therefore, turn out to be the last leader from Sindh in Indian politics? Once there was Acharya JB Kripalani (1888-1982), the former Congress president. Then there was also KR Malkani (1921-2003), the journalist and historian-turned BJP politician. At present, there are just two nonagenarians left in Parliament viz, LK Advani and Ram Jethmalani. With the former’s retirement, only one will be left. Jethmalani, a legal luminary, is not a career politician. His main interest in being a Rajya Sabha member, the joke goes, is retaining his official bungalow at 2, Akbar Road, New Delhi. His son, Mahesh Jethmalani, a senior advocate, also entered politics but without success.

At any rate, Sindhi politicians do not represent their community. That, however, has little to do with their intention. The franchise structure of the two Houses of Parliament, under Articles 80 and 81, is territorial rather than ethno-lingual. A Lok Sabha MP, who is chosen directly, represents a constituency (geographically located in a State); whereas a Rajya Sabha MP, elected by the Legislative Assembly, represents the State itself. But Sindhis, having lost their ancient province completely during Partition, do not fit into either category. They are a scattered lot across Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

The community mostly has two institutions viz, a temple of Jhulay Lal, also called Lal Sai temple, and Sindhi Akademis. Sindhis are an enterprising community and overall, commercially successful. But over the last 75 years since the Partition, they have tried to protect their culture, religion and language. Even in the sphere of language, they had to adopt the local language of the State they had chosen to reside in and play down their identity. Thus, a political representation remained a pipe dream. So in a highly caste/community-conscious Indian politics, they might just lose out for all time to come.

The demographic profile of the Sindh province on the eve of Partition made its incorporation into Pakistan inevitable. But had the Indian leadership been little more sincere and tactful, the district of Tharparkar could have been salvaged for India. This Hindu-majority district could have then become the “little Sindh” in India. Had it been converted into a State, it could have sent at least one member each to the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, besides having its own Legislative Assembly. It could have Sindhi as the official language of the State in a script of their choice.

On Tharparkar, the Congress leadership found itself outwitted and outmaneuvered by the Muslim League. As KR Malkani describes in his book, The Sindh Story (1984): “The Tharparkar district had a Hindu majority and the Congress should have claimed it. Indeed, it had traditionally been more a part of Marwar than of Sindh. On the eve of Partition, the Sindh Government promptly merged Sanghar district with Tharparkar district — to cancel out its Hindu majority. But even then, the case of Tharparkar district was on par with that of Sylhet in Assam (now in Bangladesh), where the Muslim League had demanded — and subsequently got — part of the district, through a plebiscite (Pg 98).”

India could also have claimed, Malkani argues, the Khairpur state, as big as the Tharparkar district itself. The ruler of Khairpur, viz Mir Faiz Muhammed Khan-II, was ready to accede to India but Jawaharlal Nehru declined the offer. Sindh, Malkani informs, had 71 per cent Muslim population but the Muslim League secured only 46 per cent votes in the 1946 interim elections. Nationalist Muslims like GM Syed and Maula Bux won three votes per four votes scored by the Muslim League.

The upshot is that Pakistan got the entire Sind though Hindus were more than a quarter of the population. Sindh (or Sindhu) remained only in India’s national anthem. A majority of the Hindus became refugees, fleeing to Bombay via the sea route. Some Sindhis might already have been living in Maharashtra and Gujarat as the colonial Sind province was part of Bombay State between 1850 and 1937.

According to the 2011 census, there were 27,72,264 native speakers of Sindhi in India. The number was understandably meagre as they constituted only 0.23 per cent of India’s population. But consider those territorially-grounded communities, who enjoy political representation despite having lesser population. The Konkani speakers were only 22,56,502 in 2011 but have Goa. The Manipuri speakers were 17,61,079 in 2011 but have Manipur. The Bodos were fewer still at 14,82,929 but have the Bodoland Territorial Council in Assam. While these people are a “political community,” the Sindhis are not.

Can a non-territorial ethno-linguistic community have no representation in Parliament? Not really. There is the example of the Anglo-Indian community, who can have such a representation in the Lok Sabha. The President of India, under Article 331 of the Constitution, can nominate not more than two members of the Anglo-Indian community if it is found that they are not adequately represented. In the outgoing Lok Sabha, the Anglo-Indian seats were occupied by George Baker and Prof Richard Hay. These are seats in the Lok Sabha not corresponding to any actual territorial constituency.

Curiously, the head count of Anglo-Indians is not known. They are not enumerated as a separate category but counted as part of the Christian population, since the census of 1941.

The Sindhis, therefore, deserve a non-territorial seat in the Lok Sabha, if not another in the Rajya Sabha. This can be done through a suitable Constitutional amendment. Questions might immediately be raised whether Zoroastrians and Jews also deserve a seat each in Parliament. Whether they do or not, in one’s opinion, they should not impede the prospects of the Sindhis.

Jew, Zoroastrians and Syrian Christians took shelter in India. Though Zoroastrians (Parsis) had thrown up stalwarts like Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah M Mehta and Madam Bhikaji Cama, they never had a representation as Parsis. But Sindhis had a place in the scheme of political representation in India prior to the Partition. This article merely asks for their restoration, or semblance of it. The Indian leadership failed to wrest the Tharparkar district. A seat in Parliament for the Sindhis will be a token compensation if not also an atonement.

(The writer is an independent researcher based in New Delhi. The views expressed herein are his personal)

Writer: Priyadarshi Dutta

Courtesy: The Pioneer