Wasted Years, Wasted Lives

The West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee has been lamenting lately of late regarding the “wasted years” of the state – primarily in the sixties and early seventies when Left sponsored militancy was at its highest and the resulting anarchy and chaos led to a massive flight of capital from the state. This flight of capital toppled West Bengal from its position as the premier industrial state of India, a position that it has never since regained.

Today as it teeters, on the edge it would seem of another round of the “wasted years”, this time led by Mamata Bannerjee and her band, it would be worth lamenting the many, many wasted years, in several parts of the country that have damaged and shattered so many lives in this country. Think J & K, think the North East, think Orissa, think Bihar, think the many states affected by Maoism, Naxalism, call it what you will, and calculate the total. It is staggering and to any body who lives in this country or loves it, the details are pretty heart breaking.

In Jammu and Kashmir, according to the trade body, ASSOCHAM, the current agitation involving the land for the Amarnath Yatra (one has to qualify in the J & K context because they have had so many agitations) has led to an economic loss of close to Rs 1500 crores and growing. And this of course is only a business perspective. It does not count the innumerable human lives snuffed out because of the chronic insurgency going back to 1989. Although in human tragedies, numbers will never tell the full story but still to tell it… More than a dozen Islamic militant groups have been fighting since 1989 for Kashmir's independence or its merger with Pakistan and in the process more than 68,000 people have been killed in the fighting.

Similarly Kashmiri Pandits have suffered crimes amounting to ethnic cleansing from the Valley and roughly 12000 were killed since insurgency began in Kashmir, and 300,000 have been displaced, though some sources claim that more than four to five thousand Kashmiri Pandits were killed. Some sources claim that nearly 500,000 internally displaced families of Kashmiri Hindu live in the National capital region,

Similarly, although we don’t often notice the North East on our radar,” Terrorist attacks are claiming more civilian lives in India's northeast than in Jammu and Kashmir. The region is also witnessing more insurgency-linked violence. According to latest central home ministry figures, there were 1,489 incidents of violent incidents in the northeast in 2007 compared to about 1,000 in Jammu and Kashmir. Civilian casualties in the northeast during the same period stood at 498 as against 158 civilian in Jammu and Kashmir”

The North Eastern states have as many as 30 armed insurgent organizations with demands ranging from secession to autonomy and right to self determination. Besides, the region is an ethnic minefield, as it comprises of around 160 Scheduled Tribes6, besides an estimated 400 other tribal or sub-tribal communities and groups and it is impossible for any one to meet their often conflicting demands related to their ethnic or tribal identities.

I suppose that the balance will never tilt one way or the other- is economic prosperity more important or preserving your language or culture or tribal identity is. Chambers of commerce and upwardly mobile professionals make take out their calculators and compute business and economic losses but for others, ethnic, tribal or religious pride takes precedence over every thing else, even if looks foolish. Meanwhile, while governments struggle over the issue of whether to preserve national boundaries or respect ethnic or linguistic or caste ones, thousands of lives and years will waste away into oblivion.

Crime and Punishment

The Leftist magazine Mainstream in a recent issue carried a very interesting article by Shree Shankar Sharan, representing a Gandhian organization Lok Paksh. The article offered a constructive and rather innovative solution to deal with the Naxalites of Andhra Pradesh, a festering sore that refuses to go away. Drawing on their experiences in dealing with Maoists in Bihar, they suggested that the Naxalites be dealt with using Gandhian tactics (no not Gandhigiri!). Considering the relevance that we give Gandhiji and his methods today, and especially the questions that were often raised as to whether his methods and ideas would work with anarchist groups, it could have been thought to have been a utopian idea unworthy of any serious consideration.

As I think about it, I wonder why I or any one else should think of the idea as so far fetched and why we have always looked upon the Naxalites and other forms of extremist violence as something to be countered by force and not by any other means. There was a time when another group of people who were as lawless were actually won over to the path of peace through peaceful methods. In fact , one of Jayaprakash Narayan’s lasting contributions which has lasted(the Janata Party experiment of course did not last!) was to bring about a mass surrender of the Chambal dacoits in 1972. It was an event that TIME magazine, no friend of India then, deigned to cover it in fair detail.

Nor was JP’s effort the first of its nature. Our story goes back to the 1960's when Tehsildar Singh, son of legendary dacoit Man Singh wrote a letter to Vinoba Bhave from his cell in Naini Jail. He was serving a death sentence and wanted to see Vinoba once to discuss the problem of dacoity in Chambal and how to rid it of the curse. Although Vinoba was on a padyatra in Kashmir at that time, Tehsildar Singh's letter drew him to the Chambal. In May 1960, he went round the valley, spreading his message of truth, love and compassion Twenty dacoits surrendered their arms before him: it was a triumph of non-violence and human good sense. The dacoits were prepared to face the law courts and jail sentences courageously. The specially constituted Chambal Valley Peace Committee helped them in their efforts. After their release, they were given Bhoodan lands to lead a simple and peaceful life---they had no ambition of becoming film stars or politicians or gaining cheap publicity”

The story was again repeated when Arjun Singh was the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh when the then bandit chieftain Malkhan Singh surrendered and then possibly for the last time in 2005 when a gang led by Arvind Gujar surrendered to the Madhya Pradesh police. The surrender was slightly different in the sense that the police admitted that the surrender took place as a result of as a result of pressure mounted by the police. Surrender enforced at gunpoint is not exactly the Gandhian method but perhaps still a better method than encounter killings, deaths and counter killings in retaliation. In fact after this incident, the whole route of peace and reconciliation seems to have been abandoned and all that one hears of are deaths, killings, ambushes and an ever increasing number of orphans and widows. Perhaps the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister should pay heed to the letter from the Gandhian leader and open the door for repentance and reconciliation and talks rather than go down the path of ruthless revenge that every one else seems to be taking.

Pushing Along, Pulling Along

The other day a bizarre event happened on a railway track in Bihar. An electric train was passing through the station of Buxar , when as is characteristic of the place some of the passengers who wanted to get down pulled the chain. So the passenger train slammed its brakes after plodding along for a while, it came to a stop. Now the point where it came to a stop was a point on the track where there was no live overhead electricity wires to which the train’s electric engine could connect for power. Now while such short stretches of non energized tracks are common on the network, usually the train’s inherent momentum allows it to coast over these short stretches till it comes to the next energized section. In those odd cases , where the train does stop mid way , short haul diesel engines are summoned to haul the train back to the energized segment of the track.

But remember this is no other place, this is Bihar. So when the train suddenly stops in its tracks and people realize it wont start because it cannot connect to an electricity source, hundreds of passengers get off the train and push it along the tracks for a few meters till the engine’s antennae are again able to draw on electricity from the overhead wires, at which point the passengers get back to their seats and resume their journey.

Two people were traveling for a plum job interview from Mumbai to Delhi. One took the overnight Rajdhani Express while the other guy took a morning flight. The beauty of the story was that the job went to the man who traveled to Delhi by train. The man taking the flight took off late from Mumbai because of congestion at the airport, and then as it moved to land in Delhi, there was congestion there too and after hovering over the skies for a while, finding its fuel getting exhausted, the plane went and landed in Jaipur. By the time, the airline put its hapless passengers back in Delhi; it was all over for the job seeker as the interviews were over.

These two stories tell very well, the journey of India’s tryst with technology and its lopping sided development. And so we have railway jazzy coaches and electric tracks but no assured power supply and with most of the states chronically short of power, the railways are thinking of captive power plants. We have heaps of airlines which have certainly mad flying more affordable and added more flights and destinations, but flying is no longer a pleasurable exercise that it once was

Similar is the story of highways – world class cars and great models when once we had only the Ambassador, but no corresponding roads, we now have glitzy shopping malls with world class products inside but huge traffic snarls outside as there is little in terms of parking space to speak of. Then now there is a great push towards manufacturing, e governance, telephone penetration and greater internet connectivity, but a staggering shortage of electricity that does not look will go away any time soon.

It is great to see India develop and consumers and people have options and choices that were not available or if available, then were unaffordable, perhaps even a decade ago. But just as China resolved to put its infra structural back bone in place first and then open units economy to explosive growth, perhaps India should do the same if we have to avoid these bizarre stories from above. Clearly without adequate bijli, pani and sadak, the story of muscle power hauling railway trains down the track as happened in Buxar will recur … albeit in different locations and with different themes.

Mulayam Singh's love for Higher Education

In a session that will go down in posterity, the Uttar Pradesh assembly met Wednesday just four days before its term expires to grant minority status to a university in minister Azam Khan's hometown Rampur. The last time such a thing happened was in 1957 when the house met to seek a vote of account on an interim budget of the state. Going by the grim persistence of the government in pursuing the matter of the university, it would appear that education must be a very high priority in Uttar Pradesh. The bill for setting up the university was passed by the state on May 18, 2005 following which it was sent to Governor T.V. Rajeshwar for his constitutional assent. However, the governor raised certain queries and the bill was returned to the government at least twice. Azam Khan eventually initiated fresh moves to set up the university in the private sector, for which he finally got the governor's green signal. Envisaged as a 297 acre campus on the outskirts of Rampur city, the university will have separate colleges for engineering, medicine, dentistry, law, home sciences and vocational training as well as routine degree courses.

As I said earlier, one could be pardoned for thinking that higher education must be a high priority for the Mulayam Singh government , except of course for the fact that the facts speak otherwise. One of the more news worthy items emanating about universities in the state is about the Lucknow University in the state capital, but the news from there does not have anything at all to do with the blossoming of learning. Rather it has a lot to do with a pro active Vice Chancellor , Ram Prakash Singh trying to cleanse the university which had become a den of criminals mostly owing allegiance to the ruling Samajwadi Party. The government of Mulayam Singh Yadav, instead of supporting this move to indeed make the University a den of learning rather than of crime confronted the VC for his stance which was affecting the young muscle men masquerading as student leaders, who found cheap food and lodgings in the university hostels. The beleaguered VC, badgered by the government, had to seek the protection of the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court to carry out his duties.

On the other hand, the ranking of literacy and other social indicators in Uttar Pradesh is dismal. The newly launched economic daily titled “The Mint” has brought out an article titled “Is Uttar Pradesh turning into the new Bihar?”, India’s most populous state has been faring poorly on political, social and economic indicators, even falling behind Bihar in many of them. Although for for years. Bihar has been the by word for poor and apathetic governance , the Nitish Kumar administration has even according to his opponents has worked hard to briong about a turn around.

It is often said that the road to power in Delhi passes through Lucknow and Mulayam Singh Yadav has never concelaed his prime ministerial ambitions. If such are the credentials of a future Prime Minister , predicting the country’s future needs no crystal grazing. In the knowledge economy of the twenty first century, where information , education and knowledge is power and not muscle power and military power, a Prime Minister like Mulayam Singh schooled in the wrestling pits of U.P. villages wil lead India right back to the stone age…. And that is a shuddering thought…..