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Feb 18, 2007

Bus and auto fares not to slip down

If you were hoping for a drop in bus and auto fares with a simultaneous slide in oil prices, here's some bad news.

Not only is the Jharkhand Bus Owners' Association refusing to follow suit, its president Krishna Mohan Singh hinted on the contrary and suggested there might be a rise instead.

If Singh is to be believed, the association has already pressed the state government to hike the passenger fares by at least Rs 10 to 15.

Demand for the lowering of prices, even with a meagre drop of Rs 2 and Re 1 for petrol and diesel, respectively, was "ridiculous", Singh said.

The auto drivers could not provide any ray of hope either.

Though they did not speak of an immediate hike in the fares, they brushed aside suggestions of bringing them down.

Not only were they troubled with passengers who fleeced them everyday, the drivers alleged that they have to suck up to the local dadas, who exhorted a hefty sum during any festival.

"Bus operators owning just about one or two busses are incurring losses. Those owning a fleet are somehow making ends meet. Given the rising operating costs, including the high costs of replacements, the fares being charged were already lower than what was needed for our sustenance," the association president said.

Singh pointed out that according to the rules, passenger fares were to be determined by the state government through a committee comprising representatives of the government and the association.

The last time the fares were fixed was in 2000 during the days of undivided Bihar.

Though the association has been demanding a new block of fares over the past six years, no action has been taken in this regard, Singh alleged.

"In August 2006, following a hike in petrol- eum prices, we had arbit- rarily increased our bus fares on all routes after the government turned a deaf ear to our demands. There were strong protests from many quarters. Where the protests were on a higher scale, we were compelled to bring down the fares," Singh further said.

He, however, conceded that though they were demanding a hike by at least 13 paisa per kilometer, they would be willing to settle for an increase of 10 paisa.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070217/asp/jamshedpur/story_7404349.asp

Waiting for deliverance

MORE than 600 non-resident Biharis from over 60 countries, representing all walks of life, gathered in Patna on January 19-21 for the Global Meet for a Resurgent Bihar. The delegates - policymakers, industrialists, academics, representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), development specialists and trade, industrial and agricultural policy specialists - discussed the plight of the State, one of the most backward in the Indian Union.

The Bihar government was highly visible at the meet. Either Chief Minister Nitish Kumar or Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Mody was always there, accompanied by a bevy of senior bureaucrats representing all departments of the government. Although Nitish Kumar took pains to say repeatedly that it was neither a government-sponsored meet nor a meeting of investors, it was obvious that the government was showcasing its agenda for development.

The Nitish Kumar government, just into its second year in office, enjoys a heart-warming level of goodwill. Expectations are high. In fact, Nitish Kumar told Frontline that he was wary of the "enormous burden" of these expectations. Although it is currently trendy, especially among the elites in Patna, to blame the previous Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) government - especially its leader and Railway Minister Lalu Prasad - for all that is wrong in Bihar, there is a general consensus that the State's slide has been relentless in the last two decades.

Speaking to Frontline, Alakh Sharma, director of the Delhi-based Institute of Human Development and the coordinator of the meet, provided a context to the new-found hope. He said: "Institutions had more or less collapsed in Bihar. The rule of law, the basic requirement for governance, had been completely eclipsed. Under the new government, there is hope. For the first time in decades there is no open patronage of criminals, to the point that they have been kept out of the State Cabinet. Most critically, development now figures as a key issue in the political discourse."

The Nitish Kumar government has constituted the Bihar Foundation, of which the Chief Minister is the chief patron. Although the main objective of the foundation is to facilitate the participation of the Bihari diaspora in the State's development, it is also to provide help to the large Bihari migrant population settled and working across the country, often in adverse conditions.

In his inaugural address, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam set out a 10-point "mission objective" for the transformation of the State. In particular, he emphasised the importance of the agricultural sector along with infrastructure development and tourism, and of using Bihar's "global human resource capital", represented by its diaspora. He said: "A developed Bihar is necessary for a developed India."

BIHAR'S BURDEN

Bihar is perhaps India's least developed State. The third biggest in terms of population, it fares poorly on almost every scale of human development when ranged against other States. Its plight has worsened since Jharkhand was carved out of it in 2000. It is the least urbanised State in India, with just 10 per cent of the population residing in urban areas. Literacy rates are abysmal. Just over half the population is literate. More significantly, only one in three females in the State is literate. The situation among the marginalised communities such as Dalits and tribal people is far worse.

More than 40 per cent of the people of Bihar live below the poverty line.

Bihar's is a predominantly agrarian society. The creation of Jharkhand robbed the State of access to minerals while transferring the dominant portion of its industrial base to the newly created State. Although the State has the best alluvial soils in the country, the blight of feudal relations in agriculture have hampered prospects of any meaningful transformation in the countryside. Indeed, the social basis of agriculture, specifically agrarian relations, is believed to lie at the root of Bihar's malaise. The pressure on the agrarian economy has become acute, indicated by the fact that the density of population in rural Bihar (880 persons per square kilometre) is about three times that of rural India as a whole. Clearly, agriculture holds the key to any kind of socio-economic transformation.

Since the process of economic liberalisation hastened in the 1990s, Bihar's relative position has worsened considerably. In the 1990s, when the Indian economy grew at the rate of about 6 per cent, Bihar's economy grew at only half this rate. While the rate of growth of the population between 1991 and 2001 slowed down in the rest of the country, in Bihar it increased. This meant a worsening of per capita incomes in the State. This has meant that income levels of an average Bihari have worsened when compared with the average Indian's. In 1961, the notional average Bihari's income was about two-thirds of an average Indian; by 2004, this had fallen to less than one-third.

These averages, like all averages, hide more than they reveal. Income inequalities are obviously high, given the unequal access to the most basic of all assets, land. About 87 per cent of all landholdings are marginal holdings. Indeed, the acute land hunger in rural Bihar lies at the heart of the violence that is latent in the State.

A senior bureaucrat told Frontline that the dominance of criminal gangs in social life can be "traced to their ties with the landed gentry". The vested interests in land, which have thwarted any meaningful land reforms, also dominate the political structures and through them the avenues of governance. "The overpowering role of caste only reflects this feudal situation. Often, people mistake the symptom for the malaise," he remarked.

Bihar has about 425 lakh people below the thoroughly discredited measure of poverty, the poverty line. This means that more than 40 per cent of the population earn less than what it takes to access the barest essentials of life. Denied any hope for decades, the poor have done the only thing they possibly could in the face of such tremendous tribulations - migrated. The ubiquitous Bihari migrant, visible as agricultural workers in Punjab or as construction workers all over India, has literally paid with his blood to escape the tyranny of feudal ties at home.

The recent killing of Bihari migrant workers in Assam is only the latest example of the desperate Bihari's plight. However, Alakh Sharma points out that it is not only the poor Bihari who has migrated. The poor opportunities for higher education in the State have forced even sections of wealthier youth to migrate to study elsewhere. Moreover, the lack of industrialisation has forced the elite to move outside the State.

A recurring theme at the meet related to the need for improving the social sectors. Speakers emphasised the need to improve the human capital, which would lead to improved living conditions and also enable Bihar's transformation. Improvements in education and health, it was pointed out, would not only improve the quality of life but also reflect in increased productivity and skill formation. This, it was noted, would lay the basis for industrialisation.

The abysmal levels of literacy are an obvious hindrance. In 2001, the gross enrolment ratio of children in the 6-14 age group, who have the fundamental right to free education, was only 56 per cent, compared with the national average of 85 per cent. In the 1990s, under the sway of several popular movements, there was a general expansion of educational facilities in the country. While the number of elementary schools increased by 40 per cent between 1990-91 and 2003-04, the intake of teachers increased by 37 per cent in India. However, in Bihar, the number of schools fell by 10 per cent and the number of teachers by almost 30 per cent during this period.

The gravity of this decline is best illustrated by the fact that there has hardly been any accretion to the number of government-run schools (54,000) since such schools were "nationalised" in the late 1970s. According to the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, nearly one in five schools in Bihar is in "urgent need of repair". Moreover, only one in five schools has a separate toilet for girl students, hardly an incentive in a situation of abysmal rates of female literacy.

A similar situation prevails in the health sector. According to national norms, Bihar should have at least 533 primary health centres (PHCs); but there are only 398 PHCs in the State. Similarly, the State has fewer than 9,000 functional health sub-centres, compared with at least 16,500 as per national norms. There are only 70 referral hospitals, though the norms stipulate at least 619 such hospitals in the State. This is reflected in the number of government medical officers - the State has only 3,380 medical officers, whereas the norms stipulate 8,500.

Girls do not go to school in Basuhar village near Patna, home to mostly Musahirs, an extremely backward Dalit community of manual workers.

In Basuhar village, about 15 km from Patna, inhabited by Musahirs, an extremely backward community of Dalits, most girls do not go to school. Most of the 42 families of the village work as labourers and live in two-room mud structures.

Ram Lakhan, an agricultural worker, said that the prevailing wage rate was about 3 kg of rice for a day's work for both men and women. However, since the last harvest (about a month ago), he has found no work. Referring to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), he said: "I have a job card but no work." He said that a few others in the village did get work but were not able to earn a reasonable wage. He pointed out that people from his community found the stipulation of lifting 110 cubic feet of earth for a wage of Rs.68 difficult. Although most boys in the village go to school, girls do not go because "they help with chores inside and outside home". There are no latrines in the village, and there are only two hand pumps for drinking water. Ram Lakhan said that about 30 men in the village migrated to Rajasthan to work in brick kilns and at construction sites. They stayed there for about three months but were only given food, no wages.

The nearest PHC is more than 3 km away, and most people in the village prefer going to a "private doctor". Ram Lakhan complained that "the government clinics work like government offices; their timings do not suit our working hours, and in any case, they are not open for emergencies, which are invariably in the night". Not a single person in the obviously poor hamlet has "passed the matric exams [high school]".

Nitish Kumar told Frontline that the government had initiated "a massive enrolment of teachers". The government is recruiting doctors but as a "short-term measure" is also hiring doctors on contract to serve in government hospitals. On January 26, the government launched a "coupon system" to deliver essential rations to the poor through the public distribution system (PDS).

Munna Paswan, a resident of Madhuban, a village about 20 km from Patna, complained that there were only 42 ration cards for the 77 families in the village. A member of the gram samiti, Munna Paswan also runs a PDS outlet. He explained that he "adjusts the limited supplies of foodgrains to ensure that every family gets at least some grain". Nitish Kumar said the coupon system would ensure that people knew what they were entitled to. However, Munna Paswan said that unless the coupon system was backed by actual delivery of grains to PDS dealers, "it would not mean much to poor households".

NEOLIBERALISM?

Although the State government repeatedly emphasised that this was not an "investor meet", the abiding impression one got was that it was an event to woo private investment. The Nitish Kumar government showcased its "incentives" for investors, while advocating policy initiatives that are recognisable features of the neoliberal mantra in the rest of the country.

The role of private-public partnerships, for instance, has been advocated in fields as varied as health care and road building. The government has already initiated such partnerships in government-run hospitals where X-ray services, for instance, have been "outsourced" to private parties. One delegate told Frontline that such outsourcing was "unsustainable" because these partnerships were likely to be eventually more expensive for the public exchequer. "The government would be better off running such services on its own because private operators of such services will definitely price the service much higher." More ominously, there is a danger that such services will drive the poor away from health care, whether private or public.

It is obvious that a sustained effort at poverty reduction requires a significant increase in public investment. This is required not only for the expansion of the social sectors such as health and education but also for programmes such as the NREGS and the delivery of essentials to the poor through the PDS. Since agriculture represents Bihar's "core competence", any effort at industrialisation would also require a significant scaling up of investment in agriculture. Such a strategy would recognise that Bihar's fundamental problem is conditioned by a demand constraint. It would recognise public investment as a means of expanding incomes, which can lay the basis for sustained industrialisation.

In contrast, most participants highlighted the supply side issues. Typically, these address the problems of development as a matter of getting the technique right. For instance, land reforms is only regarded as a problem of fragmented landholdings, not as a means of solving the acute problem of land hunger, which would increase demand. This attitude was best typified by the notion that Bihar's problem is just a matter of building better roads, "improving connectivity", improving the availability of electricity and increasing agricultural productivity.

The Bihar Government's Approach Paper to the Eleventh Five Year Plan, prepared by the State Planning and Development Department, provides some clues about what to expect in the years ahead. The Eleventh Plan targets a growth rate of 8.5 per cent per annum, from less than 4 per cent in 2003-04. The targeted investment, corresponding to the targeted rate of growth of 8.5 per cent of Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), is about 24 per cent of the State's income, up from about 18.5 per cent in 2003-04.

The most striking feature of the Plan is the sharp shift to emphasis on private investment as the prime mover of the economy. In 2003-04, private investment accounted for about 54 per cent of overall investment; this is projected to increase to 65 per cent during the Eleventh Plan period. In effect, the strategy adopted by the Bihar government appears to be to "withdraw" the State to facilitate private investment. Whether private investment will respond is, of course, another matter.

This has important consequences for Bihar's economy and society - indeed, for the direction that the Nitish Kumar government will take in the years ahead. For one, the relative squeeze on pubic investment may well jeopardise the welfare schemes that the government has embarked upon. Moreover, the government's enthusiastic acceptance of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budgetary Management (FRBM) ceilings is likely to impose a severe constraint on the revenue deficits that the State can run, generally, the first to face the burden of expenditure cuts. If the situation worsens, the first targets of such expenditure cuts may well be the commitments made for the expanded coverage of the PDS and the NREGS and allocations for health, education and welfare. The Nitish Kumar government thus appears to be taking a risk-laden strategy. If the strategy of wooing private investment fails, the goodwill that it now enjoys could quickly evaporate.

Vol:24 Iss:03 URL: http://www.flonnet.com/fl2403/stories/20070223002811300.htm

India: 'Hidden Apartheid' of Discrimination Against Dalits

? India has systematically failed to uphold its international legal obligations to ensure the fundamental human rights of Dalits, or so-called untouchables, despite laws and policies against caste discrimination, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. More than 165 million Dalits in India are condemned to a lifetime of abuse simply because of their caste. The 113-page report, "Hidden Apartheid: Caste Discrimination against India's 'Untouchables'," was produced as a "shadow report" in response to India's submission to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). The committee will review India's compliance with the convention during hearings in Geneva on February 23 and 26.

On December 27, 2006 Manmohan Singh became the first sitting Indian prime minister to openly acknowledge the parallel between the practice of "untouchability" and the crime of apartheid. Singh described "untouchability" as a "blot on humanity" adding that "even after 60 years of constitutional and legal protection and state support, there is still social discrimination against Dalits in many parts of our country."

"Prime Minister Singh has rightly compared 'untouchability' to apartheid, and he should now turn his words into action to protect the rights of Dalits," said Professor Smita Narula, faculty director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University School of Law, and co-author of the report. "The Indian government can no longer deny its collusion in maintaining a system of entrenched social and economic segregation."

Dalits endure segregation in housing, schools, and access to public services. They are denied access to land, forced to work in degrading conditions, and routinely abused at the hands of the police and upper-caste community members who enjoy the state's protection. Entrenched discrimination violates Dalits' rights to education, health, housing, property, freedom of religion, free choice of employment, and equal treatment before the law. Dalits also suffer routine violations of their right to life and security of person through state-sponsored or -sanctioned acts of violence, including torture.

Caste-motivated killings, rapes, and other abuses are a daily occurrence in India. Between 2001 and 2002 close to 58,000 cases were registered under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act ? legislation that criminalizes particularly egregious abuses against Dalits and tribal community members. A 2005 government report states that a crime is committed against a Dalit every 20 minutes. Though staggering, these figures represent only a fraction of actual incidents since many Dalits do not register cases for fear of retaliation by the police and upper-caste individuals.

Both state and private actors commit these crimes with impunity. Even on the relatively rare occasions on which a case reaches court, the most likely outcome is acquittal. Indian government reports reveal that between 1999 and 2001 as many as 89 percent of trials involving offenses against Dalits resulted in acquittals.

A resolution passed by the European Parliament on February 1, 2007 found India's efforts to enforce laws protecting Dalits to be "grossly inadequate," adding that "atrocities, untouchability, illiteracy, [and] inequality of opportunity, continue to blight the lives of India's Dalits." The resolution called on the Indian government to engage with CERD in its efforts to end caste-based discrimination. Dalit leaders welcomed the resolution, but Indian officials dismissed it as lacking in "balance and perspective."

"International scrutiny is growing and with it the condemnation of abuses resulting from the caste system and the government's failure to protect Dalits," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "India needs to mobilize the entire government and make good on its paper commitments to end caste abuses. Otherwise, it risks pariah status for its homegrown brand of apartheid."

Attempts by Dalits to defy the caste order, to demand their rights, or to lay claim to land that is legally theirs are consistently met with economic boycotts or retaliatory violence. For example, in Punjab on January 5, 2006 Dalit laborer and activist Bant Singh, seeking the prosecution of the people who gang-raped his daughter, was beaten so severely that both arms and one leg had to be amputated. On September 26, 2006 in Kherlanji village, Maharashtra, a Dalit family was killed by an upper-caste mob, after the mother and daughter were stripped, beaten and paraded through the village and the two brothers were brutally beaten. They were attacked because they refused to let upper-caste farmers take their land. After widespread protests at the police's failure to arrest the perpetrators, some of those accused in the killing were finally arrested and police and medical officers who had failed to do their jobs were suspended from duty.

Exploitation of labor is at the very heart of the caste system. Dalits are forced to perform tasks deemed too "polluting" or degrading for non-Dalits to carry out. According to unofficial estimates, more than 1.3 million Dalits ? mostly women ? are employed as manual scavengers to clear human waste from dry pit latrines. In several cities, Dalits are lowered into manholes without protection to clear sewage blockages, resulting in more than 100 deaths each year from inhalation of toxic gases or from drowning in excrement. Dalits comprise the majority of agricultural, bonded, and child laborers in the country. Many survive on less than US$1 per day.

In January 2007 the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women concluded that Dalit women in India suffer from "deeply rooted structural discrimination." "Hidden Apartheid" records the plight of Dalit women and the multiple forms of discrimination they face. Abuses documented in the report include sexual abuse by the police and upper-caste men, forced prostitution, and discrimination in employment and the payment of wages.

Dalit children face consistent hurdles in access to education. They are made to sit in the back of classrooms and endure verbal and physical harassment from teachers and students. The effect of such abuses is borne out by the low literacy and high drop-out rates for Dalits.

The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and Human Rights Watch call on CERD to scrutinize the gap between India's human rights commitments and the daily reality faced by Dalits. In particular, CERD should request that the Indian government:
Identify measures taken to ensure appropriate reforms to eliminate police abuses against Dalits and other marginalized communities;

Provide concrete plans to implement laws and government policies to protect Dalits, and Dalit women in particular, from physical and sexual violence;

Identify steps taken to eradicate caste-based segregation in residential areas and schools, and in access to public services; and,

Outline plans to ensure the effective eradication of exploitative labor arrangements and effective implementation of rehabilitation schemes for Dalit bonded and child laborers, manual scavengers, and for Dalit women forced into prostitution.
"International outrage over the treatment of Dalits is matched by growing national discontent," Smita Narula said. "India can't ignore the voices of 165 million citizens."

"Hidden Apartheid" is based on in-depth investigations by CHRGJ, Human Rights Watch, Indian non-governmental organizations, and media sources. The pervasiveness of abuses against Dalits is corroborated by the reports of Indian governmental agencies, including the National Human Rights Commission, and the National Commission on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. These and other sources were compiled, investigated, and analyzed under international law by NYU School of Law's International Human Rights Clinic.

Background

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) is a body of independent experts responsible for monitoring states' compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), ratified by India in 1968. It guarantees rights of non-discrimination on the basis of "race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin." In 1996 CERD concluded that the plight of Dalits falls squarely under the prohibition of descent-based discrimination. As a state party to ICERD, India is obligated to submit periodic reports detailing its implementation of rights guaranteed under the convention. During the review session CERD examines these reports and engages in constructive dialogue with the state party, addressing its concerns and offering recommendations. CERD uses supplementary information contained in non-governmental organization "shadow reports" to evaluate states' reports. India's report to CERD, eight years overdue, covers compliance with the convention from 1996 to 2006 yet does not contain a single mention of abuses against Dalits ? abuses that India's own governmental agencies have documented and verified.on from 1996 to 2006 yet does not contain a single mention of abuses against Dalits ?

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/183173da5128ed97d1d4c03d56
688262.htm

PFC invites RFQ for Jharkhand UMPP

After the successful completion of bidding for Sasan and Mundra ultra mega power projects (UMPPs), the state-run Power Finance Corporation (PFC) has invited request for qualification (RFQ) for 4,000 mw UMPP in Jharkhand. It has formed a wholly-owned subsidiary, Jharkhand Integrated Power Ltd., for carrying out entire bidding process for the upcoming project.

Bidders are expected to submit RFQs by March 20 while their shortlisting based on responses to RFQ and issuance of request for proposal (RFP) would take place on April 2. The cut-off date to submit technical and price bids is July 2. PFC plans to shortlist successful bidder and issue letter of intent by July 16 and subsequently sign agreement by September 17. The power from the upcoming plant would be procured on a competitive bidding route by Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar and Jharkhand.

Power Finance Corporation sources told FE the project includes establishment, operation and maintenance of a 4,000 mw coal-fired pit head power project including mine development and transportation of coal from the proposed allocated captive coal mines at North Karanpura. The project site is located near Tilaiya village.

According to request for qualification, the bidders' internal resource generation should be equal to at least Rs 1,140 crore or equivalent to five times the maximum internal resources generated during any of the last five years of business operations.

Bidders should have networth of Rs 1,000 crore and the annual turnover of Rs 2,400 crore. The bidders must meet technical requirement of having experience of developing projects in the last 10 years whose aggregate capital costs must not be less than Rs 3,000 crore.

Out of these projects, the capital cost of at least one project should be equivalent or more than Rs 500 crore.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=155031

Neoliberalism And Primitive Accumulation In India

Recent events in Singur - a town which is less than 40 kms away from Kolkata (Calcutta), where the West Bengal government is struggling to acquire and sell 1000 acres of agricultural land to Tata Motors - indicate the extent to which capitalist-parliamentarianism can regiment a counter-hegemonic force once it agrees to play by the rules. At the least, it clearly shows that the Communist government, which boasts of being the longest-running democratically elected Marxist government in the world, is hopelessly caught in the neoliberal project. And Singur is not an isolated event. In the state of West Bengal alone, the process of state-led land grab and the resultant opposition is already gaining momentum in at least three different locations: (a) in Kharagpur, West Medinipur district, where vast tracts of multi-crop farmland is being taken over for yet another Tata vehicle factory; (b) in Nandigram, East Medinipur district, where a chemical industries hub is proposed to be set up by the Salim group on a 10,000-acre area; and (c) in North Bengal where a Videocon Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is proposed to come up in the near future.

Nor is this story limited to West Bengal. Throughout India, resources are being acquired for Special Economic Zones and numerous other industrial schemes meant to facilitate corporate capital expansion. Since laws permitting this acquisitions were passed an year ago, state governments have notified 267 SEZs, which will require more than a half million hectares of land. Of this, the state has already acquired 137,000 hectares for 67 SEZs while another 80 have `in principle' been approved.(1) The Government has converted the erstwhile Export Processing Zones located at Kandla and Surat (Gujarat), Cochin (Kerala), Santa Cruz (Mumbai-Maharashtra), Falta (West Bengal), Madras (Tamil Nadu), Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and Noida (Uttar Pradesh) into SEZs. In addition, 3 new Special Economic Zones that had been approved for establishment at Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Manikanchan (Salt Lake, Kolkata) and Jaipur have since commenced operations.

In this backdrop, the West Bengal government's adamant attitude towards land acquisition, despite the popular unrest, shows that the Indian State and its agencies, irrespective of their ideological masks, are working relentlessly to provide the private sector with "an internationally competitive and hassle free environment". In this note, we wish to conceptualise this political economic process, identifying its different facets and understanding their interlinkages. It is our contention that using the recently re-interpreted Marxist concept of "primitive accumulation" can provide crucial insights in this regard. We wish to demonstrate that current developments in India can be fruitfully understood by employing the notion of primitive accumulation, understood as a constitutive primitive of capitalism, the process which continuously creates and consolidates the capital-relation. Adopting this new perspective might also help in redefining the agenda of struggles and counter-hegemonic politics in the neoliberal context.

Primitive Accumulation: Two Interpretations

As is well known, Marx had brought up the concept of primitive accumulation to try to understand the historical origins of capitalism. It is generally accepted by economic historians that in pre-capitalist modes of production the primary producers (majority of whom were peasants) had ownership of the means of production, most crucial among them being land. If we agree that capitalism is distinguished from these other modes of production by the relationship of a class of propertyless labourers (who have nothing to sell but their labour power) and a class of propertied capitalists (the owners of the means of production) mediated through the market (2), then the following question naturally arises: how did we arrive at the class of propertyless labourers from a class of producers who had the ownership (or at least the right of usage) of the means of production? It is this historical question that Marx sought to answer with the concept of "primitive accumulation".

In a sense, the answer is already contained in the question. Primitive accumulation is the process by which the producer is divorced from her/his means of production. Since, moreover, land is the primary means of production in pre-capitalist societies, the main focus of primitive accumulation was to separate peasants from the land. While the gradual penetration of market relations had a role to play in this, outright use of force was far more important, and in a sense the key. Only by evicting peasants from their lands and disrupting their livelihood could the development of markets in free labour and land be ensured; and only this could provide the firm basis for the emergence and consolidation of the capital-relation:

"The capital-relation presupposes a complete separation between the workers and the ownership of the conditions for the realization of their labor. As soon as capitalist production stands on its own feet, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a constantly extending scale. The process, therefore, which creates the capital-relation, can be nothing other than the process which divorces the worker from the ownership of the conditions of his own labor; it is a process which operates two transformations, whereby the social means of subsistence and production are turned into capital, and the immediate producers are turned into wage-laborers. So-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as 'primitive' because it forms the pre-history of capital, and of the mode of production corresponding to capital."(3)

It is worth recalling that Marx studied the "enclosure movement" in Britain within this overall perspective. One crucial aspect of primitive accumulation should be noted immediately: it effects a redistribution and transfer of claims to already existing assets and resources, rather than creating any new assets. In this sense, it is an accumulation of intangible rights and not the accumulation of tangible assets or goods. This aspect of primitive accumulation is important for our purposes because the current frenzy of state-assisted acquisition of land and other resources in India is precisely a process whereby rights of access and usage of already existing resources are being redistributed and transferred.

The last decade has witnessed a resurgence of debate around attempts to re-interpret the concept of primitive accumulation.(4) This debate has indicated that there are two distinct but related interpretations of primitive accumulation, one which stresses the temporal aspect and the other which stresses the constitutive or originary aspect. For the first, more traditional, interpretation the primitiveness of primitive accumulation is understood in a purely temporal sense. Primitive accumulation is seen as the historical phase which created the preconditions for the development of capitalism by forcing the separation of workers and means of production. The second interpretation notes that there is both a temporal and a continuity argument in Marx's account of primitive accumulation. For this interpretation, therefore, the primitiveness of "primitive accumulation" does not arise simply from its location in historical time, relevant only as the initial stage of capitalism; rather, it is the constitutive primitive of the capitalist system, a process that is essential for perpetuating its fundamental class structure - the separation between producers and means of production.

If primitive accumulation is constitutive, then it must arise as a continuous process within capitalism viewed as a global system. Expanded reproduction of the system requires reproduction of the capital-relation at every moment; separation of workers and means of production must be maintained continuously. In its day-to-day functioning, a mature capitalist economy enforces this separation through the market, i.e., by economic means; but at the boundaries (both internal and external), where capitalism encounters other modes of production, property and social relations attuned to those modes and also to the earlier stages of capitalism, other ways of subsistence, primitive accumulation comes into play. More often than not, direct use of force is necessary to effect the separation at the boundaries. And since capitalism, as a global system, continuously encounters other modes of production along with the simultaneity of diverse stages of capitalism in various localities, the constitutive role of primitive accumulation is always in demand. One can probably go so far as to assert that capital accumulation is the extension of primitive accumulation, enforced through the market. In fact, in Volume 3 of Capital, Marx himself calls the concentration and centralisation of capital, which occur during the course of market-induced capital accumulation, as "simply the divorce of the conditions of labour from the producers [which occurs through primitive accumulation] raised to a higher power"(5).

But this does not mean that the two are identical. In fact two differences are especially important to grasp for the development of our overall argument:

(a) "[W]hile accumulation relies primarily on "the silent compulsion of economic relations [which] sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker," in the case of primitive accumulation the separation is imposed primarily through "[d]irect extra-economic force" (Marx 1867: 899-900), such as the state (Marx 1867: 900), particular sections of social classes (Marx 1867: 879), etc. We can say therefore that primitive accumulation for Marx is a social process instigated by some social actor (the state, particular social classes, etc.) aimed at the people who have some form of direct access to the means of production. This social process often takes the form of a strategy that aims to separate them from the means of production."(6)

(b) "As opposed to accumulation proper, what may be called primitive accumulation... is the historical basis, instead of the historical result, of specifically capitalist production' (Marx 1867: 775). While sharing the same principle - separation - the two concepts point at two different conditions of existence. The latter implies the ex novo production of the separation, while the former implies the reproduction - on a greater scale - of the same separation."(7)

Keeping these differences are important because one comes to the rescue of the other when market processes falter. Since capital accumulation operates through the market, the services of primitive accumulation are required almost by definition when the market is in crisis. During crucial phases of capitalist crisis, primitive accumulation emerges to help transcend barriers to accumulation in two ways: (a) by facilitating the transition from the critically fated regime to a new regime of accumulation, and (b) by continuously negotiating the spatial expansion (both internal and external) of capitalism. During periods of transition and expansion, "new enclosures" are required for putting the normal course of capitalist reproduction back on track. Securing these enclosures through force and other "direct extra-economic means" is the function of primitive accumulation. This re-definition allows us to grasp the function of the State and its continuous politico-legal activism in every stage of capitalism.

The present neoliberal phase can probably be understood fruitfully from this perspective. Despite the talk of separating the political from the economic, which is a staple rhetoric of the current phase, it is the state as the instrument of politico-legal repression that facilitates neoliberal expansion. Firstly, the state intervenes with all its might to secure control over resources - both natural and human ("new enclosures") - and secondly, to ensure the non-transgression of the political into the economic, which essentially signifies discounting the politics of labour and the dispossessed from affecting the political economy. David Harvey notes that, "The main substantive achievement of neoliberalization... has been to redistribute, rather than to generate, wealth and income"; the main mechanisms for achieving this is referred to by Harvey as "accumulation by dispossession", by which he means,

"... the continuation and proliferation of accumulation practices which Marx had treated of as 'primitive' or 'original' during the rise of capitalism. These include the commodification and privatisation of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations...; conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights...; suppression of rights to the commons; commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial, neo-colonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources); monetization of exchange and taxation, particularly of land; the slave trade (which continues particularly in the sex industry); and usury, the national debt and, most devastating of all, the use of the credit system as a radical means of accumulation by dispossession. The state, with its monopoly of violence and definitions of legality, plays a crucial role in both backing and promoting these processes."(8)

Harvey identifies four main features of "accumulation by dispossession": privatisation, commodification, financialization and the management-manipulation of assets, each feeding on the other, supported by the other and gaining strength from the other. The neoliberal resurgence since the mid-1970s can be understood as capital's counter-revolutionary response to the crisis that enwrapped "embedded liberalism" internationally in the late-1960s, with "signs of a serious crisis of capital accumulation...everywhere apparent. Unemployment and inflation were both surging everywhere, ushering in a global phase of 'stagflation' that lasted throughout much of the 1970s."(9)

The Politics of Primitive Accumulation in India

What is going on in India today can be understood by employing the concept of primitive accumulation (as understood in the second interpretation) in almost all of the above senses: separating primary producers from land; privatisation of the "public", conversion of common property resources into marketable commodities, destroying non-market ways of living, etc. To our mind, each of the instances of ``displacement" or state-led "land grab" are willy-nilly feeding into the overall process of primitive accumulation in India by divorcing primary producers from the land or restricting direct access to other common property resources like forest, lakes, river, etc. A question crops up immediately. Being a labour-surplus economy, does India need to generate additional labourers, which is an obvious result of primitive accumulation, before absorbing what is already available? Certainly not, if we think from the perspective of labour. But the answer changes if we see the whole process from the perspective of capital. Fresh entrants into the already burgeoning ranks of the proletariat will increase the relative surplus population - floating, latent and stagnant - depressing real wages and thereby increasing the rates of profits on each unit of invested capital. Moreover, one of the major features of the neoliberal regime of accumulation has been the incessant `informalisation' of the labour process, and further growth of the relative surplus population makes late-capitalist countries like India finely attuned to this. As Jan Breman notes:

"Mobilization of casual labour, hired and fired according to the needs of the moment, and transported for the duration of the job to destinations far distant from the home village, is characteristic of the capitalist regime presently dominating in South Asia."(10)

Separation of producers from their means of production and subsistence, especially land and other natural resources, also creates markets for these resources; and thus comes into being the various agencies that thrive through hucksterage in these markets. These intermediaries play the crucial role of facilitating and normalising the process of primitive accumulation. Examples abound: Trinamool Congress goons, grassroots-level CPI(M) leadership, local middle classes like school teachers, lawyers, and other similar forces in the Singur case; state-traders, local elites-supported Salwa Judum in Chhatisgarh.

The major target of land acquisition in India today is in areas where either peasant movements have achieved some partial success in dealing with capitalist exploitation and expropriation or areas largely inhabited by the indigenous population whose expropriation could not be increasingly intensified because of the welfarist tenor of the pre-liberalisation regime. West Bengal is the prime example of the former, where Left Front rule congealed due to its constituents' involvement in the popular movements. Now, the movements' institutionalisation and incorporation of the leadership into the state apparatus is facilitating the present-day resurgence of primitive accumulation. Examples of the second kind of area could be parts of Chhatisgrah, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh, which the corporate sector is eyeing for mining activities and for setting up steel plants.

As an instructive example, if nothing else, let us see how displacement in Singur will affect the various class forces on the ground. While the state apparatuses are trying to secure resources for corporate capital, sections of the local elite, including the well-off farmers led by the mainstream non-left political parties - like the Congress and Trinamool (TMC) - have joined the movement against land acquisition essentially to obtain various kinds of concessions, a higher price for giving up the land to the State and perhaps also for increasing the land price for their future real estate speculation around the upcoming industrial belt. For example, "a TMC leader and ex-pradhan of one of the gram panchayats was initially with the movement, but finally gave away his land. Many of the landed gentry, some of them absentee, who own bigger portions of land, depend on 'kishans' (i e, hired labours, bargadars, etc) for cultivation of their lands. They principally depend on business or service and have come forward to part with their land in lieu of cash."(11) In case the government talks to the protesters and gives larger concessions, it is these sections that will benefit the most.

The people who are really the backbone of the movement in Singur are the landless working class and poor peasantry. According to a recent report, "many agricultural workers and marginal peasants will lose their land and livelihoods. Though the State Government has decided to compensate the landowners, no policy has been taken for the landless agricultural workers, unrecorded bargadars and other rural households who are indirectly dependent for their livelihood on land and agricultural activities."(12) The region is also inhabited by the poor who "frequent the nearby town, being employed in factories, shops and small businesses. Some of the youth have migrated to cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, working there principally as goldsmiths or construction workers. There were several cases of reverse migration when people came back to their village after the closing down of the industries where they were working or finding it more profitable to work on the land than to work in petty industries or businesses, drawing a paltry sum in lieu of hard labour."(13) For this population as also for the landless workers and marginal peasants, the Singur struggles are existential ones.

As an example of the second kind of land acquisition, we can turn our attention to Chhatisgarh. A report on recent developments in Chhatisgarh notes that, in India,

"[t]ribal lands are the most sought after resources now. Whether it is in Orissa or Chhattisgarh or Andhra Pradesh, if there is a patch of tribal land there is an attempt to acquire it. It is no geographical coincidence that tribal lands are forested, rich with mineral resources (80 per cent of India's minerals and 70 per cent of forests are within tribal areas) and also the site of a sizeable slice of industrial growth. The tribal districts of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Maharashtra are the destination of us $85 billion of promised investments, mostly in steel and iron plants, and mining projects. Ironically, these lucrative resources are of no benefit to the local people: an estimate of 10 Naxal-affected states shows that they contribute 51.6 per cent of India's GDP and have 58 per cent of the population. As with Chhatisgarh, all these states have a strong Naxal presence and are witness to movements against land acquisition. The state governments say these protests are Naxal-inspired. Local people say, however, that all they are trying to do is protect their land, forests and livelihood."(14)

Here the State's mode of facilitating primitive accumulation is by raising mercenaries, the Salwa Judum. This extra-legal use of force is supported by the traditional exploiters of the indigenous population - traders, usurers, civil servants and tribal neo-elites, who have functioned as intermediaries in the regime of commerce-based surplus extraction. On the one hand, absence of any recognised land rights of tribal communities, has allowed the State to use principles of terra nullius and eminent domain to expropriate them. On the other, these communities have continued to exist in defiance of all these legalities. However, with the recent intensification of efforts to secure resources for corporate profiteering, along with the continued presence of primitive extractive modes of exploitation, these communities have been left with no real choices but to arm themselves for securing their unrecognised rights. Hence,

"Most tribal people living in forests are officially 'encroachers'. They live under the constant threat of being alienated from their land and livelihood. While the government completely failed to reach out to them, the Naxals succeeded in connecting to sections of the people. They spread to the state's 11 districts (200 districts in the country). Unable to contain them, government supported the creation of a civilian militia - Salwa Judum".(15)

Besides these widely discussed cases of recent land acquisition and displacement, there have been numerous conflicts around the rights over water resources over the years. In almost all such cases, the state has come forth as being hell bent upon the construction of big dams and other hydroelectric projects despite all evidence of the net negative marginal costs of these projects. During the past two decades, Narmada Bachao Andolan has been a prominent force constantly exposing the anti-people, anti-environment character of these projects. Even in the Himalayan region of Uttaranchal (site of the legendary Chipko Andolan), riverbeds and surrounding lands have been 'enclosed' for private capital to be used for power generation and lucrative tourism projects. In fact, recent politics in this region cannot be fully understood without understanding the conflicts around these enclosures. Closer to urban India has been the neoliberal systematisation of commercial and financial centres, the `clearing' of slums, in cities like Delhi and Mumbai, which have naturally been the hotbed of the politics of and against "new enclosures".

Understanding all these diverse processes in the framework of primitive accumulation has several strategic implications. Perhaps, most urgently, this can provide a unified framework to locate the numerous struggles going on in the country right from the `new' social movements, like landless workers movements, Narmada Bachao Andolan and other local mobilisations of 'development-victims', to anti-privatisation movements of public sector workers, all the way to the revolutionary movements led by the Maoists. This unified framework can then possibly facilitate dialogue among these movements, something that is more than essential at this juncture if the movement of labour against capital is to be strengthened.

A Future Beyond Capital

Using this framework will also mean re-evaluating many of the theoretical positions that are currently in use. For example, it will be necessary to rethink the classical communist position that characterises the Indian state as semi-feudal and semi-colonial, and thereby sees the struggle of the peasantry as being directed primarily against feudal oppression. It is possible that the inherent limitations of this ideological framework disallow revolutionaries and other radicals to formulate effective strategies against the whole system, a system that preserves various vestigial forms to facilitate accumulation but is not defined by them. Thus, movements struggling against different forms of these vestiges are easily localised, regionalised, marginalized, dispersed, and even utilised in the intra-ruling class competition and conflicts. The state of the official Indian left is illustrative in this regard. It, too, stresses on the presence of "vestiges" and the insufficiency of development, but then turns around and justifies its accommodation in the neoliberal capitalist project as a fight against these vestiges!

Despite the apparent popularity of the new movements of Latin America among the official Left in India, their attachment to a schematic notion of national capitalist development retains all its strength. The devastating consequence, of course, is the deferral of the revolutionary moment till that development is attained; in reality, this amounts to postponing the revolutionary moment beyond the horizon of all concrete possibilities. Surely, this is not simply an ideological problem coming from a faulty understanding of the dynamics of capitalism or socialism. It is a consequence of the official left leadership's accommodation in the capitalist-parliamentary framework, an accommodation moreover that forces them to participate in the competitive race for representation. In the pursuit of presenting itself as the legitimate representative of the "plurality of opinions", which parliamentary politics poses against the notion of class struggle, the left reproduces this plurality within itself, along with its built-in hierarchy. With partial successes in this exercise, representatives of the opinions that count, i.e., the hegemonic class interests, solidify themselves within the party structures. And it is this congealment within the Left Front in West Bengal that leads the "communists" to vocalise neoliberal myths of neutral industrial development, dubbing every protest against its policies as anti-developmental, backward and manipulative. Parallels with the neoliberal demonisation of the transgression of the political into the economic can hardly be missed. Echoing well-heeled mandarins in Delhi, the Left Front government regularly uses the classic threat of capital flight to regiment all protesting voices.

Without comprehending the function of vestiges of earlier modes of production within capitalism or the role of earlier stages of the capitalist mode of production in sustaining capital accumulation, any fundamental challenge to the hegemonic forces in a late capitalist society like India cannot be formulated. It can hardly be denied that, "we suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also the incompleteness of that development. Alongside the modern evils, we are oppressed by a whole series of inherited evils, arising from the passive survival of archaic and outmoded modes of production, with their accompanying train of anachronistic social and political relations. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif [The dead man clutches onto the living]!"(16)

We will have to recognise the fact that during the stage of imperialism, and more so in the present postcolonial situation, "a high level of capitalist development no longer require[s] the elimination of the traditional class of 'small producers'" and other pre-capitalist 'remnants'.(17) Even in a country like Japan, "in which capitalist society developed only at the so-called finance-capitalist stage of world capitalism, a high level of capitalist development has not been incompatible... with the survival of the traditional class of 'small producers'."(18)

Indian capitalism, like Japanese, came into being in the stage of imperialism, when finance capital and inter-imperialist rivalries were already subjugating the whole world. Moreover, development under direct colonialism foisted some unique features on to the general characteristics of "late capitalism". During the colonial period, "self"-expansion of Indian capital beyond the physical horizons of India was implausible because this would have required an Indian State committed to these interests. Colonialism ruled this out almost axiomatically. However, there were other channels available. The simultaneous existence of various socio-economic formations at diverse levels of Indian society allowed some possibility of 'internal' colonialism and "enclosures", thus, providing the basis for capitalist expansion. Even after Independence, Indian capital relies heavily on the 'diversity' (or unevenness) of Indian economy and society for primitive accumulation and expansion. Additionally, 'semi-feudal' conditions at various locations within the country provide a vast reserve army of labour. The important characteristic of this insecure and docile population is that they can be pulled out of their original locations and thrown into the growing labour market without disturbing the essential fabric of society. In other words, pre-capitalist forms of exploitation provide vast and near permanent pools of cheap labour, which competes with the urban proletariat, thereby bringing the latter under political and economic control. Moreover, this seems (19) to resolve the "agrarian problem" of Indian capitalism, by 'externalising' rural and underdeveloped India from the "core" industrial islands. Concentrating capitalist agricultural development in particular locations of India (for example in West and North-west India), Indian capitalism could afford to under-develop other locations so that they could serve as "external markets" and as reserves of "footloose labour".

Because unevenness is the essential feature of capitalist development, any mode of regulation, including neoliberal globalisation, has to negotiate with diverse stages of societal development. Hence local reactions against this new wave of capitalist consolidation and accumulation are bound to be diverse. The revolutionary vision consists in coordinating these diverse forces for building a formidable challenge to capitalism. Even the struggles against vestigial forms, if they have to be decisive, need to be recognised as contesting capitalist relations that sustain them and are articulated through them. In the Indian context, they are all struggles against a stuttering capitalism, against the inherent brutalities of primitive accumulation. We will have to realize that the movements are not about "saving" tribals/indigenous populations or their way of lives; the movement is a movement of labour against capital. Tribals, poor peasants, marginal peasants, landless labourers, informal sector workers, all these sub-classes are fighting against the tyranny of capital, against being fed - with their labour and resources - into the capitalist machinery. Obviously, in this fight against capital, we cannot cling on to any nostalgia for a pristine past, rather our vision must be directed towards the future, a future built on the transcendence of capital, a socialist future rooted in a participatory economy and polity. Only then can the vast majority suffering in the margins of capitalism and toiling under vestigial relations, can make a concerted, decisive effort to end the tyranny of capital.

Notes & References

(1) Prem Shankar Jha, "Compensation not enough", Daily News & Analysis (October 2, 2006), http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1056324&CatID=19

(2) Marx refers to this as the capital-relation.

(3) Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, Penguin Books (1976 [1867]), pp. 874-75

(4) See the contributions in The Commoner No 2. (September, 2001), http://www.commoner.org.uk/

(5) Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 3, Penguin Books (1981 [1894]), pp. 354

(6) Massimo De Angelis, "Marx and primitive accumulation: The continuous character of capital's "enclosures", The Commoner No 2 (September, 2001)

(7) Ibid. (Note: ex novo is used in the sense of `original' or `from the scratch').

(8) David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford (2005), pp. 159

(9) Ibid, pp. 12

(10) Jan Breman, Footloose Labour: Working in India's Informal Economy, Cambridge University Press (1996), pp. 23

(11) Parthasarthi Banerjee, "Land Acquisition and Peasant Resistance at Singur", Economic & Political Weekly (November 18, 2006)

(12) Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity, "Terror Cannot Suppress Them: People's Resistance to Forced Land Acquisition In Singur", (December 6, 2006)

(13) Parthasarthi Banerjee, op cit

(14) "Anti-Naxal operations a cover for exploiting tribal people", Down to Earth Vol 15 No 11 (October 18, 2006)

(15) Ibid.

(16) Karl Marx, "Preface to the First Edition", Capital Vol 1, Penguin (1976 [1867]), pp.91

(17) Kozo Uno, Principles of Political Economy, Harvester Press (1980 [1964]), p.xxvii.

(18) Ibid, pp. 125

(19) Japanese Marxist Kozo Uno stressed that capitalism is incapable of solving the agrarian question. "We can say that it became clear on a world scale that the ability to solve the agrarian question would entail the ability to construct a new society to replace capitalism, and we may regard the League of Nations as having been one such attempt. The solution to this problem, of course, means no more than the external expression of the internal contradictions of capitalism, and cannot occur unless the issue of class relations is solved. In this sense, the failure of the League of Nations was only to be expected." (Quoted in Andrew E Barshay, The Social Sciences in Modern Japan: The Marxian and Modernist Traditions, University of California Press (2004), pp.128)

http://www.countercurrents.org/chandra090207.htm

Cheating: Bihar bane - Daddies' 'support-system' for good result

A principal at Maharajganj in Siwan used to dig up 12-ft deep and 10-ft wide trench around the school's campus and fill it with water before examination every year just to stop cheating at the centre.

Although the legend has lived on more than 15 years, Bihar continues to be in search of a "foolproof" solution to stop unfair means during examination. The task becomes all the more difficult when parents are hell-bent on passing chits to their wards for high percentage.

With daddies' "support-system", cheating has got several variants in one of the underdeveloped states in the country.

Students hide chits in undergarments and write vital points on arms or inner sleeves of shirts

Going for toilet is a common practice to "look for answers" as books, notes can be hidden there

A sleek bamboo is used by an outsider to pass on chits, tied at the top, to students through windows

For more tech-savvy GenNext, cellphones, in silent mode, facilitate getting answers even from the US

But with a strict vigil in place this year, these tricks have not proved successful for students and parents at 371 exam centres across 38 districts. Over 5 lakh students from arts, science and commerce have been taking the 18-day exam that began on February 12.

Last week's incidents at Saharsa and Madhepura clearly suggest that only gun power alone can frustrate the parents' recalcitrance. On February 13, Saharsa police fired 16 rounds in air at Sarva Narayan Singh College to disperse over 500 people, who pelted stones at the examination centre and also tried to break through iron gates to vandalise the proceedings. Fifteen students were expelled for copying at the Saharsa centre.

The very next day, B.N. Mandal Stadium examination centre witnessed a bigger show of impatience during zoology test when parents torched two government vehicles to protest "unprecedented vigil" during examination. The Madhepura police fired over 90 rounds in air in face of heavy brick-batting, which left 12 injured.

Parents, however, have offered a different perspective to the entire episode. They either want full attendance of teachers at college or an unwritten permission for use of unfair means during examination. They insist on cheating because they want their wards to score high percentage so that they stand a fair chance of admission in good institutes outside Bihar.

Education minister Brishen Patel and human resource development department secretary Madan Mohan Jha, however, are not ready to buy the "weird" logic. They want a fair examination system in the state at any cost.

The Saharsa and Madhepura "syndrome" has forced even chief minister Nitish Kumar react sharply. He said the government would continue to play a hard role on unfair means, a punishable offence under the Bihar Conduct of Examinations Act, 1981.

With the chief minister appealing for "cheating-free" exams, the Bihar Intermediate Education Council chairman, Girish Shankar, has started visiting several centres in districts, too.

However, an official of the council said the steps had little result in curbing cheating in exams.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070218/asp/frontpage/story_7406055.asp

Displacement and Its Impact on Women in Orissa

Displacement is becoming a contentious issue as States take the road to fast economic growth. Though development induced displacement poses as one of the most critical challenges to women, in most reporting on displacement, their standpoint has been excluded.
Displacement in Orissa is due to large projects which cover not only industry but also mining, dams, industry, wildlife sanctuaries, Special Economic Zones and defence establishments. In this road to more and faster we tend to forget the people who suffer from this race and are excluded from the process. Today's displacement is the result of policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. Globalisation is not a new phenomenon but its history can be linked to imperialism and western nation's search for more markets and primary goods.

We, therefore, need to remember how imperial countries became richer and the gaps they created between the rich and poor. We need to decide if we should make the same mistakes? While it is easy to say that the process of Globalisation is unstoppable and makes the people rich we again need to ask whom does the process make richer? In a poor country and especially a State where nearly half the population lives below the poverty line and the same percentage being women fall in the same category what happens to them?

Displacement, it is observed, is almost always forced and not voluntary. The United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement based upon existing international humanitarian law and human rights instruments, which serve as an international standard to guide governments in providing assistance and protection to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), is rarely followed.

When a `developmental' project commences, all public eyes are on the `development', not on the cost. More significantly, since this is just a `cost', statecraft and governmental procedures reduce cost to compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement, thus turning the entire thing into a game with the government and the plant/mine owners etc., trying to minimise `cost' as much against a weakened and displaced claim making group of people. In this group, the women are always invisible.

The banality of bargaining which is unsuitable to catch the public eye and become visible only when someone dies (the larger the number dying the more the visibility), or there is breakdown of law and order, or a sit-in strike, and a counter violence, which we may choose to call mimetic violence as in the Kalinga Nagar case. Though in the bargaining processes women are missing in protests they lead the way.

To take up invisibility, one can look at the voices of the displaced women in the wake of the construction of the Hirakud Dam in Orissa way back in the 1950s. For fifty years voices of women displaced by the dam and asking for justice has gone unheard. They live in camps, the socio-economic process produced by displacement undermining their rights and entitlements.

The displacement camps are the bio-political paradigm of modern governmental power; lives of families, victims, direct victims, their children and their men and women, all these are lumped together in this bio-political existence, which acquires its specific character of existence through the governmental function of protection. Protected but not improved, maintained but fed and clothed at a bare level, herded together in a shelter but the armour of gender, age, or physical and mental inability taken away

The Adhapara Camp of Hirakud for instance is one of the many such camps lost in wilderness. In this particular camp displaced villagers including the women have been forced to change their occupation due to land alienation. The irony is that the village has the Hirakud Dam reservoir on one side and the power plant (ITPS) on the other but the village has no electricity, no safe drinking water source and no irrigation facility for whatever marginal cultivation is done at the periphery of the village. The women of this village have been subjected to police atrocities and also jailed when they protested against the ITPS establishment in 1990 and their displacement a second time.

In displacement, in Orissa as elsewhere, it has been observed that women become the worst sufferers as they lose livelihood, face problems regarding water, sanitation, medical and the education facility, their dependency increases on their husband and their sons and the cultural change and present environment is found to be uncongenial. As Orissa moves to industrialisation and setting up of SEZs, women will continue to suffer unless radical measures are taken.
In this context, we need to learn from the collapse of the East Asian economies where subsequently defeminisation of export based economy took place where older and young women were forced into insecure employment. Many migrated or were trafficked. Initial exhilaration of new work cannot replace the life in camps and future defeminisation.

We must not ignore the basic fact of general poverty and dispossession of people of resources and that once a section of population is pushed to the margin, it is difficult for them to come back to the mainstream of life - not only because they start living in camps (the mark of invisibility) but because these camps and other such settlements of terra incognita, devoid of even elemental educational and medical care facilities, symbolise the target of governmental strategy, that sections of population groups are to be included, yet they will be kept in a state of exclusion.

Thus in a state of displacement, which is an abnormal condition, violence will occur at each micro level and moment, it will be a life without care - thus no health facility, no educational support, no extra food, no aesthetic delight etc. In majority of the cases it is the women who are targets of violence and who miss out on literacy and health acre.

What can we do? In an initial stage human rights protection would mean that a legal recognition of the IDPs as a category is absolutely necessary. Without this recognition at the national level, it would be difficult to ensure their basic rights.

Consultative mechanisms have to be devised so that in the formulation of policies for the relief and rehabilitation of the IDPs by the government institutions and national and international NGOs, the experiences, opinions and preferences of the displaced themselves are given utmost priority.

The national human rights institutions have to be sensitised more about the perils of the IDPs and especially women. Special attention must be paid to women and especially female-headed households.

* The writer is President of `Sansristi', a Bhubaneswar-based research orgnisation working on gender issues.
* The above is part of a larger study on South Asia done by the Calcutta Research Group in collaboration with the well-known Brookings Institute. The study reproduced voices of displaced from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and India. In India, North East, Gujarat, Orissa and Jammu and Kashmir were covered. `Sansristi' a research based think tank working on gender issues carried out the Orissa study.

http://www.kalingatimes.com/views/news_20070217_Displacement_and_its_impact_on
_women_in_Orissa.htm

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