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Part-4: Who are the vested interests

Opinions

vinod2a

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11 January 2021

Private sector players like Amul, Suguna, Nestle, Hatsun, and ITC work directly with farmers and set up storage and collection facilities to procure directly. This simplifies the supply chain and makes the overall costs cheaper. But this clearly is not a good deal for the middlemen, moneylenders and loan sharks. They have every interest in ensuring a reliable and efficient source of produce. They have a vested stake in farmer welfare and would harm their own supply chain by exploiting farmers.

The middlemen (arhatiyas) are the most hurt through the farmer law changes. They used to get away charging 2% commission to the farmers and charging between 8.5%-14.5% from the traders without adding any value. In Punjab alone, 400 arhatiyas make around 1600 crores a year which translate to each arhatiya making 40 lacs a year. This pay is way more than what a IIT-IIM graduate with 10-15 of work experience makes in an Indian MNC. A sweet gig indeed for the middlemen. The much pilloried GST act actually brought down the taxes paid by traders to the middlemen from 14.5% to 8.5%. Hence the consumer was the net beneficiary through the GST act.

I don’t blame the middlemen who hate losing their sinecure privileges. It would be interesting to look at data about how many of these rich arhatiyas actually end up immigrating to the west with all the excess income they have. 60% of Canada’s immigrants come from just one Indian state – Punjab. When I looked at statewide data of SUV car sales per capita and % of foodgrains procured under MSP, the correlation across states is 0.7. If anyone understands even a bit of statistics, it would be obvious that there is a strong correlation between the procurement price paid by the government and the price paid by farmers to buy fancy cars.

The money lenders charge 60% rates of interest because the farmers are unable to reach the traders directly. Because national banks won’t lend to farmers and because farmers default regularly, moneylenders have increased their rates of interest from 24-36% to 48-60% rates of interest per year. Hence it is clear where a chunk of the farm loan waivers goes, straight to the hands of moneylenders and repayment of their usurious rates of interest. They will stand to lose a lot if the farmers and traders work directly with each other. When the CNN writes that “eight out of ten farmers are in debt, and the average amount a farmer owes is more than four times the average annual income”, the question nobody asks is why isn’t there any clampdown on the moneylenders.

Part-3: Long term consequences of no reforms

Opinions

vinod2a

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11 January 2021

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Part-3: Long term consequences of no reforms

India is stuck in the past. Figure 2 shows that it is almost 200 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to moving out of agriculture, and transitioning to other sectors of the economy like manufacturing and services. When the British ruled India, they had an incentive in keeping India out of manufacturing. The only role for Indians was to be consumers of their manufacturing output.

Farmers are also saying that they are more comfortable doing farming (an occupation at least 12000 years old) rather than move to modern sectors more suited for the technological age. Indian agriculture while it employs around 50% of the population only contributes 18% to India’s GDP. Most of the farmers are doing work which creates little or no economic value.

Unwisely the Congress made disastrous choices in terms of making negligible structural reforms during the last 60 years. Indian agricultural reforms are stuck since 1955, not a good sign for any economy. The BJP in 2003 had taken some fledgling steps to reform the APMC through the model APMC act. Consultations on state wide reform had begun then and has been going on for 17 years. There has been some adoption though. Bihar ditched the APMC act in 2006. States like Andhra, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh who adopted the model APMC act saw an average agricultural growth rate between 5-7% after adoption and diversified their cops. Punjab which refused to make any reform, saw an average growth rate of 1.8% during this same period. Punjab has only itself to blame for its current state of problems.

Figure 1: Percent employment in Agriculture

China which faces problems like India, managed to move 60% of farmers out of agriculture in the last two decades, unlike India which has managed to move only around 30% of its people in the same time (Figure 1). Indian manufacturing is also miles behind Chinese manufacturing. Agriculture compared to services and manufacturing pays 10 to 30 times lesser, hence it is a question for farmers if they want to make 10 to 30 times more money or cling to low paying agricultural jobs at any cost. Agricultural survey indicate that farmer are not blind to their predicament – about 40-50% of children of farmers want to get out of farming and want nothing to do with it.

Shrinking farm sizes: Farm sizes are shrinking and farming for marginal farmers is a sure path to perennial poverty. The average farm size in India has shrunk 100% from 2 hectares in 1976 to around 1 hectare currently. It continues to shrink as people have more kids and land gets more fragmented. Other countries have broken this vicious trap of poverty by allowing cooperatives, contract farming and forward contracts, by roping in the private sector. But the archaic and Nehruvian era APMC act insidiously prevents any involvement of the private sector. The act ensures that while farmers are free to reach out to a third party to sell, the third party cannot procure from farmers without the approval from mandis. Mandis are also to be paid taxes of 8-14% for services they have not rendered. By becoming a supercop policing private players, Mandis have ended up becoming a mafia cartel, beggaring the already impoverished farmers and becoming fat cats in the process.
Water scarcity: In regions outside Punjab and Haryana, there is a severe shortage of canals and irrigated water. Hence the farmer is always at the mercy of the monsoons. They indiscriminately use groundwater for cultivating water intensive crops like wheat and rice. This kind of use has caused an astounding 61% reduction in groundwater levels in India between 2007 and 2017. India is the biggest user of groundwater in the world even though it has 17% of the world’s population living on 4% of the world’s water reserves. It extracts more groundwater than China and the US (the next two biggest users of groundwater) combined. A Niti Aayog report released last year predicts Day Zero for 21 Indian cities by next year because of falling groundwater. Day Zero refers to the day when a place is likely to have no drinking water of its own. Big cities like Delhi are the most susceptible. India is living like there is no tomorrow.

Wheat and Rice are poor choices for India and totally unsuited. MS Swaminathan who worked with Norman Borlaug during the Green Revolution has pointed out that the harmful practices of farmers in Punjab and Haryana is creating a new set of “demographic, ecological and economic problems.”

Fertilizer subsidies: Farmers use large amounts of fertilizers which are given as generous subsidies from the central government. The fertilizers ruin the natural soil fertility balance and the land requires increasing doses every year. The chemicals further leach into the water table and cause all sorts of health issues.
Unsuitable crops: One kg of Rice or Wheat each gobble 4000-5000 litres of water per kg. Back of the envelope calculations show that currently India uses as much groundwater for rice and wheat as the entire groundwater needed for its population of 1.4 billion. Farmers have noticed that they keep digging deeper and deeper borewells searching for water which doesn’t seem to exist. They seem to still think that their present mode of farming will continue forever. In Punjab, 30 lakh pumpsets are being used compared to 17 lakh, 12 years back. This continues to increase. 80% of land is exploited in Punjab versus 50% in Haryana. The CNN reports that Punjab has turned into the cancer belt with high rates of cancer.
Electricity subsidies: Free electricity in states like Punjab have ensured reckless usage of groundwater. The government is moving to a system of giving cash subsidies and making farmers pay for units they consume. In the current model, unscrupulous farmers can get away by pumping an infinite amount of groundwater. These subsidies comprise 10% of the budget of some states. When a voluntary scheme was launched to meter the connections, just 600 out of 12.5 lakh farmers participated, showing how resistant they are to change.
Disconnect with the market: Because farmer produce foodgrains with no link to the market expectations, their products are not saleable in the external market and are also priced too high for any private player to get involved in. Most Indian farmers just want to produce three water hungry crops covered by MSP – wheat, rice and sugarcane, ensuring that every other crop takes a backseat. 26 crops are covered by MSP in India compared to an average of 3-4 crops in every other country. It is a luxury which a poor country like India cannot afford.
Diversification of crops Why is it that nobody wants to talk about production of fruits, vegetables and milk which consume less water, are more suited for the Indian environment, more exportable and appeals to a growing middleclass. Inspite of not being covered by MSP, these options have been very profitable for farmers. Basmati rice is not covered by government procurement, but is more remunerative and requires lesser water.
Farmers and NPA’s: Because of supply chain inefficiencies, farmers outside Punjab and Haryana get the short end of the stick. They typically find farming unsustainable as middlemen grab all the supply chain profits. In the past, they used to borrow from National Banks to pay for fertilizers, produce and also the usurious moneylenders. Trying to save farmers, governments started granting farm loan waivers. This ensured a perfect disaster. Most farmers stopped paying loans because they began expecting the state governments to waive it. Because farmers stopped paying, national banks stopped lending. Unwise decisions of lending to farmers under government pressure, Loan waivers and favoring handpicked corporates has meant that Non-Performing assets (NPA’s) at many National banks are between 12-15% compared to 1-3% at private banks.

Because the big banks don’t lend, farmers began to borrow from cooperative banks which are loosely regulated. These banks have historically had close links with state politicians and sugar mills. Research shows that 56% of cooperative banks had chairmen who contested assembly and parliamentary elections between 1993 and 2005. Because of endless loan waivers, farmers don’t pay back their loans too. This means that cooperative banks are stuck with NPA’s of 18-29%. Next time you hear about your money in Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank or Lakshmi Vilas Bank being held up forever, you know that your money is compensating for the fact that rich farmers and big corporates either can’t or don’t want to pay back their loans.

Studies in the past have shown that two-thirds of all government farmer subsidies go to relatively well-off, mainly rich farmers. This is also the same group who don’t like to diversify their crops from wheat and rice, unlike small farmers who are way more diversified, and hence less impacted by MSP changes. Punjab farmers also don’t want their waters to be diverted to lower riparian states and think that not diverting water will improve yields, which will enable them to make more rice and wheat.

It is because of all these reasons that I propose that the central government pays the farmers in Punjab for stock they do not produce. Otherwise, the government has to pay inflated electricity subsidies, the inflated procurement prices jacked by middlemen, foodgrain transportation and storage costs, and finally end up seeing foodgrains rotting in granaries because nobody wants them.

Part-2: What is the current condition of Indian agricultural supply chains

Opinions

vinod2a

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11 January 2021

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Part-2: What is the current condition of Indian agricultural supply chains

Currently there are 10,000 suicides a year among farmers in India. 70% of them are tenant farmers who do not even own their land. In the present system, 70-80% of the value is captured by middlemen. For example, a farmer in Nashik gets Rs 35 per kg of onion when the consumer pays more than Rs 100 per kg. While both consumers and farmers complain, the middlemen laugh their way to the bank. There have been times when farmers sell onions for Rs 5/kg and the consumer buys for Rs 100/kg. Economist Ashok Gulati notes that there is an additional 40% markup after passing through Mandis because of the intermediary administrative, procurement, distribution and stocking expenses.

Mandis and traders have been known to form cartels. 35% of India’s onions passes through Asia’s largest market in Nashik. 20% of onions procurement is controlled by just 1 firm. IT raids which broke this cartel in 2017 revealed that “a few traders purchased the onions at lower rates and then sold them at four to five times that rate” which ensured price fixing profits of 42 crores a day.

Current Supply Chain model of Indian Agriculture

Increased inefficiency: Currently if a farmer wants to sell his produce in an adjoining Mandi a couple of miles away, he is prevented by the Mandi system. He will have to sell wherever his regional Mandi is, even if it is hundreds of kilometers away. The entire cost of transportation and inefficiency will fall on the farmers. Hence, he needs to involve the aggregator (Bania) to pool in produce and transport to Mandis, adding to the farmer costs. Mandis in turn jack up the price of produce by 10-15% without adding any value. They charge hefty commissions from the farmers and exorbitant taxes from the traders. Even an unskilled Punjabi laborer in Mandis who does loading and unloading in a Mandi is currently paid an exorbitant salary of more than 1 lakh a month which more than what many IIM graduates make. Somebody is paying for all this inefficiency, either the farmer or the consumer.
Overproduction: The government procures foodgrains from Mandis and stores them in FCI godowns. Because states like Punjab and Haryana keep overproducing wheat and rice every year and exclude every other crop, the Central government is stuck with foodgrain stock which it doesn’t even have facilities to store. Compared to an annual uptake of 30-40 million tons, godowns are overflowing with produce. The overall current stock is already around 97 million tons, around 2.5 times the annual uptake and well above international norms.
Wastage: As per current trends, 25% of produce in godowns is being wasted or spoilt. This wastage is only bound to increase in the future as there is no additional storage facility left. This 25% wastage and rotting foodgrains translate to around 48000 crores. Tens of thousands of crores will be spent in buying grains nobody wants and will anyway go to waste. The government has made tall promises of more procurement next year without talking about enhancing storage or logistical facilities. This is what farmers need to be questioning.
Stagnancy and inability to change: Because the government is spending around 1.5 lakh crores buying foodgrains every year, farmers too see no reason to change food crops as they have an assured buyer promising rates above market. Since the government can’t sell the produce in the open market, without crashing the price of rice and wheat, the overall prices are also kept artificially high. The only option available to the government with their stock is to keep giving the foodgrains free in the public distribution system. But as the wealth of India improves, the poor will want to replace foodgrains with milk, poultry, fruits and vegetables. It is only a matter of time before the poor start demanding cash payments in lieu of foodgrains, so that they can buy the food they want. Once that happens, the government can pretty much dump all its excess unsold foodgrains straight to the ocean, so that atleast the government can save on storage and inventory costs. Because farmers are short sighted, they fail to understand their best welfare is to notice economic trends in the market. They need to move towards less water intensive and more remunerative options like poultry, milk, fruits and vegetables like other agricultural economies. This would even fetch them higher profits compared to the small profits they make currently.

Part-1: Introduction to Indian agriculture reforms

Opinions

vinod2a

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11 January 2021

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Part-1: Introduction to Indian agriculture reforms

In this article I propose to make a outlandish case that if the Indian Government has the genuine interests of Punjabi farmers in mind, it makes perfect logic for the Government to pay each farmer, full cost of the foodgrains they may produce in the future and get a promise in return that farmers would not cultivate an additional bushel of rice or wheat. In short, pay farmers to do nothing.

You would be surprised at this comment that the Government should compensate farmers for grains they do not produce, but there is a list of reasons why this preposterous move would be the most beneficial. This essay will also highlight the socialistic and short-sighted nature of Indian agriculture. Doleouts, subsidies and lack of foresight has meant that Indian agriculture has deteriorated into a logjam of vested interests trying to push forward their interests at any cost, with little regard to the welfare of the poor farmers on the ground or their own future.

Farmer protests are nothing new in India. Farmer protests and Jat agitations have been historically led by the same group of leaders. In 1987, Mahendra Singh Tikait brought the Rajiv Gandhi Government to its knees by organizing a blockade of Delhi with 5 lakh people. This number is atleast 10 times higher than the number of farmers protesting today against farm laws. Mahendra Singh Tikait was a populist Jat leader, and certainly not a visionary. The concessions he got in terms of waiving electricity bills for farmers, waiving water charges, higher prices for sugarcane, and farmer loans writeoffs, may have pleased his followers in the short term but set in place a disastrous set of events, which further weakened the tottering Indian agricultural sector. The current condition of farmers is partly attributable to the lack of reform and logical thinking among the spineless leaders of the past.

It would be insightful to locate the origin of Indian agricultural woes. The history of Mandis and MSP goes back to the 1950’s when India faced an enormous food shortage and India was begging every country in the west to send us foodgrains. The US did send ships laden with wheat, inspite of the fact that India was pro-USSR and opposed the US in the name of the defunct Non-Aligned Movement. To help find a long-term solution, the Indian Government worked with the Rockefeller Foundation and researcher Norman Borlaug to create high yielding rice and wheat varieties, colloquially called the Green Revolution in India.

The Green revolution happened in the 1970’s and was predominantly focused in regions like Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. These places were already well irrigated and close to the centre of power in Delhi. The Government invested heavily in procurement and storage in these regions. These farmer focused initiatives made Punjab the richest state in India by the 1970’s. Even today, an average Punjabi farmer now possesses around a hectare of land worth 2.5 crores and get subsidies totaling 1.2 lakhs a year. But these actions also ended up ignoring agricultural realities in every other state outside this Delhi belt. The consequences of this neglect linger to this day.

The idea of Minimum Support Price (MSP) and Mandis came about in 1955 through the Essential Commodities Act, 1955. Monopoly was given to Mandis in 1965, to become the solely procurer of foodgrains in their defined regions, which typically span hundreds of square kilometers. This was probably an example of Nehruvian overreach to choke the private sector. This was also the same decade when the Monopoly and Restrictive Trade Practices Act came into the picture to choke private initiative with quotas and punish Indian industry if they dared to become efficient. The MRTP act is infamous for pushing India into near bankruptcy in the late 1980’s, until Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh rescued India from the clutches of Nehruvian socialism. To argue that the present amendments in farmers laws should be repealed and that one should go back to the disastrous laws of 1955 and 1965 betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the Indian economy.

Even during COVID, while every sector of the Indian economy has been hit by unemployment, the agriculture sector has been hurt the least. Contrary to expectations, they have done much better than every other sector and the new laws may have helped. After the farmer laws were amended, foodgrain arrival at mandis had fallen by around 20% in just 3 months. This means that while farmers have reduced selling at Mandis, they are already finding better options. Something is clearly working for farmers if they are not selling at Mandis which even promise MSP. Maybe they are getting better prices in the private sector. This possibility that Mandis are losing ground to the private sector offering better remuneration, may have been the real spur behind the current protests. Considering how dire the situation of Indian farmers is, opposition to every type of reform is making India the laughing stock in front of the world.

What is there is the building

Opinions

Ravi S Gupta

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11 January 2021

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We have entered the 21st year of the 21st century. The nation is on a transformative journey to fulfil the aspirations of its citizens. A century ago, several historical milestones helped Indians to achieve their goal of Swaraj. The ongoing decade will now go a long way towards fulfilling the aspirations of a proud democratic country. The newly-inaugurated Parliament building is a case in point — it will showcase the broad trajectory of growth in the years to come.

The Montague-Chelmsford reforms resulted in the participation of Indians in the governance and administration of the country through the Government of India Act 1919. Public representatives were elected for the first time in 1921. These reforms resulted in the creation of a bicameral legislature. To accommodate the legislators, Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker designed the present Parliament building, which has stood the test of time. The first Lok Sabha had 489 seats and each Memmber of Parliament (MP) represented, on an average, seven lakh people. As the country’s population has increased from 36.1 crores in 1951 to over 135 crore today, so has the number of people represented by an individual MP.

The idea of a new structure for Parliament is not a recent one — two former Speakers highlighted this need as the number of parliamentary staff, security personnel, media visitors, and parliamentary activities have seen a steep rise. During a Joint Session, the Central Hall is jam-packed and runs out of chairs for MPs.

Since Parliament is a heritage building, there are severe limitations to the structural repair, alteration and modifications that can be made. According to Union government’s affidavit filed before Supreme Court, ‘the existing building lacks several safety features such as earthquake-proofing, a standard fireproofing system and also has inadequate office space’. This necessitated the demand for a modern building and several members voiced this need. In 2012, Meera Kumar, the then Lok Sabha Speaker, accorded approval for the new Parliament building. In 2016, former speaker Sumitra Mahajan suggested that the urban development ministry initiate the new Parliament building’s construction.

Article 81 of the Indian Constitution provides for the delimitation of parliamentary constituencies. Since the last delimitation exercise was based on the 1971 census, the ongoing freeze on increasing the state-wise distribution of seats will end in 2026. Subsequently, the number of MPs will undoubtedly increase, which poses an urgent demand for appropriate arrangements.

It is the farsighted vision of current government — dedicating the new Parliament building to the country by the 75th year of Independence in 2022 —which will nurture the atmanirbhar nation’s aspiration. Under the Central Vista redevelopment project, the new Parliament building’s indigenous architecture will represent the cultural diversity and strengthen the “Ek Bharat-Shrestha Bharat” spirit. The red Dholpur stone of Rajasthan will provide a great look to this temple of democracy. This more spacious, energy-efficient, accessible and tech-friendly building will have a seating capacity of 1,224 MPs.

India has imbibed democratic values and these are a part of our cultural ethos —be it the 12th-century Anubhava Mantapa of Bhagwan Basava or Buddhism from the sixth century BCE onwards, which taught liberty, equality and fraternity to the world. B R Ambedkar, chairman of the Constitution’s draft committee, lucidly elaborated these facts during the Constituent Assembly debates. The US’s present parliamentary building was constructed within 25 years of its independence; it took 70 years to build its parliament. In 1988, Australia proudly dedicated its new parliament building in Canberra. Thus, it is imperative to undertake this historical exercise to develop our post-colonial people’s Parliament. This glorious project will depict India’s democratic tradition and represent India as the mother of democracy in a real sense.

The Supreme Court verdict has provided a green signal to the government to go ahead with the Central Vista project. The government has clarified that it will continue to adhere to the highest standards and be sensitive to environmental concerns during construction. In the modern, technologically-connected world, all stakeholders’ roles demand a continuous recalibration over their rights and duties. Convergence is required among individualistic, collective and nationalistic goals. The new Parliament building will be a fitting tribute to Indian democracy on its 75th year of independence.

Doomsday and damaged democracy

Opinions

agarwalvj

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11 January 2021

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The largest democracy, India, witnessed doomsday on June 25, 1975, when the democracy was crushed by the then India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by declaring a state of emergency. Nearly 45 years later, on January 6, 2021, the doomsday emerged for the oldest, but now badly bruised and damaged, democracy- the United States of America. An unprecedented history was made for all the wrong reasons because of the most egregious act of “insurrection” incited by the sitting President Trump. Let me admit that I had not known what insurrection meant until the events unfolded on January 6.

We must ask why? Put it simply, in both cases, the greed and hunger for power blinded the leaders of the free world and they cared less about the damage they were causing to the democracy and decency of their people. I never knew that the political power can corrupt one’s moral and ethical thinking as much as it did.

I was shocked and terrified in 1975 on my way from Japan to France during about a month-long stay in my own country. I felt “silenced” with no sense of freedom like tens of millions around me.

In the United States since 1978, I had never expected the unexpected. The horrible spectacle by “domestic terrorists” storming and taking over the Capitol in Washington was unprecedented. They desecrated the Capitol, the sacred symbol of democracy, and interrupted the proceedings to formally vote on the legitimate win of President-elect Biden.

The biggest difference then and now is that we are in an extraordinary age of Internet communication and social media like Facebook and Twitter. India’s democracy was severely damaged in 1975, but the world cared less because India was among the “third world” countries then. The U.S., supposedly the most powerful nation, was no different than a third world country on January 6. It happened because of the last four years of anarchy and lack of consistent leadership by Trump. Today, the world is laughing at the United States. The Americans themselves are discussing and debating on what is yet to come in the remaining 10 days or so before Biden takes the oath of Presidency on January 20.

There are discussions privately, publicly, and in the world media about President Trump’s state of mind. People are asking for his voluntary resignation, removing him forcibly, and/or impeaching him for the second time. What a disgrace for a country with a sustained history of freedom and democracy since 1776. I could never imagine that the Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) will publicly assert that Trump is deranged and dangerous, and incapable of serving as President. She is asking Vice President to revoke article 25 which would enable him to assume Presidency, which perhaps is unlikely to happen. By all accounts, the impeachment process is likely to begin in earnest in the House with the Democrats in the majority. Such action may further divide the already heavily divided America and Americans.

Everyone’s well-founded fear is how much more damage Trump may cause in his remaining days of Presidency. I cannot speak of the whole nation but even his own party men and women are beginning to distance themselves from Trump following an open call to his supporters inciting violence, riots, and arguably sedition on January 6. The world knew for almost a year about Trump’s imaginary conspiracy theories and his preconceived ideas of rigged elections. He refused to accept numerous court verdicts about the elections being fair with no evidence of voting fraud. Yet, Trump was blinded by his greed for power that he never conceded.

Now there are theories that the violent riots on January 6 were organized not only by Trump supporters but many individuals belonging to the groups from the Left, Right, and/or the Center causing death and destruction. They must and I am sure will be held accountable and punished as appropriate. What matters most is how the leader of the free world, at least until recently, the sitting President of the United States be held accountable and “punished” for inciting the riots and seizing the Capitol.

Where does divided America go from here? I had hopes that Trump will concede and ask his supporters to accept and respect Biden as the next President to rebuild America, heal the differences, and bring Americans together. I am afraid that the events of January 6, equated to coup d’état and blatant acts of arson, looting, damage, destruction, and death, will make it to be a distant dream. But, as Americans, we must never lose hope with Trump gone into oblivion in a matter of days.

America’s last four years under Trump were full of many embarrassments on the world stage including his failed leadership in managing the worst ever public health crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic. Despite the highest number of deaths due to COVID-19, America was beginning to be hopeful with two vaccines on hand to guard against the pandemic. Who would have imagined that another crisis was brewing on January 6, the darkest and dangerous day for the American democracy?

While I don’t believe in using “never”, it may surely be decades before America will regain its moral, ethical, and economic authority of being the world leader. India took decades to emerge from being a third world impoverished country to be included among the G-20 group of nations and being one of the few “firsts” with her own vaccine against COVID-19. Likewise, the U.S. under the right kind of leadership in the future will surely restore the pre-Trump eminence and greatness with a thriving democracy and decency of her people.

Are we helpless against the fascist Silicon Valley big tech?

Reports

Madhavan

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11 January 2021

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Are we helpless against the fascist Silicon Valley big tech?

In the morning of 09 January 2021, every social media platform was buzzing with activity, the usual mix of celebration, outrage and a bit of shock. Twitter had just permanently suspended the account of sitting US President and supposedly the most powerful person on the planet, Donald J Trump. This was followed by similar actions by Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Many Trump supporting SM handles also faced the wrath of the Silicon Valley Big Tech Companies. Google and Apple went so far as to ban an entire social media platform called Parler from their respective Play and App stores.

In US, those on the left celebrated this as a much delayed but very welcome development and those on the Right outraged against this as fascism and second coming of Goebbels. In India, the leftist joined their American comrades in applauding the actions of the bourgeois corporations and the confused lot, i.e. those who call themselves the Right Wing, were worried contemplating what this could mean for the ability of the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, to communicate with them directly. Like on many other similar occasions in the past, several patriotic Twitter users bemoaned the absence of a home grown, nationalistic social media alternative where they could have migrated en-masse and taught the fascists from California a befitting lesson. Watching this tragicomedy unfold on my timeline this morning, I was reminded of a similar bout of collective wailing that the Indian RW went through a couple of months back.

There was an account on Twitter called TrueIndology that is quite popular among the NLW folks (non-Left Wing). This anonymous handle was known to counter the propaganda, especially the anti-Hindu messaging, of the Leftists on the platform using information from published literature. Naturally, the establishment and their media proxies used to constantly report this handle and the Silicon Valley radicals happily obliged their Indian comrades to suspend the handle. The handle was restored after some time, or TrueIndology opened a new account, and the cycle used to start over again. A side show usually accompanied this suspension-restoration cycle; that of TrueIndology’s fans lamenting Twitter’s leftist bias and wishing for an alternative platform where their superstar could go about his activities in peace.

What the Indian RW-ers, including the senior leaders, MPs and social media czar of the ruling party, seem to have not figured out in all these years of complaining about the political agenda of Silicon Valley big tech, however, is an alternative, unbiased platform of their liking. It is not as if there were no options that could have been nurtured to rival the establishment social media platforms. But the preferred option seems to be to sit around complaining about Twitter’s bias, on Twitter.

For a very long time now, it has been established beyond any doubt that the Big Tech has a political agenda and they use the platforms to shape the public opinion in a particular direction, promoting certain view-points while censoring the others. None of the tech companies, whether Twitter or Facebook or Google (and YouTube) or Apple are exempt from this trend. If by any chance a company deviates from this trend, their woke employees ensure that necessary “corrections” are made. And to be fair, as private business entities these companies are free to set their terms of use as they choose, as long as that doesn’t violate any law. What’s relevant is to ask if there is anything that the consumers who are distressed by this sort of bias can do. Do they have no option other than sitting around complaining and whining or is there anything they can do to solve the problem? I think there is.

In a free market, the only way to force a business to pay attention to its customers is by disrupting it’s monopoly and creating competition. If you don’t like the service a business provides, move to an alternative one. I have often observed a certain type of attitude among Indians, with frustration. Let’s say there is a private establishment that provides quality service to address a need among consumers by creating its own niche and through its own processes. It acquires popularity and reaches a certain level of penetration in the public. Then the same people who enjoyed and appreciated the services start complaining and demand the government to implement price caps and other sundry regulations that will not only stop the business from growing but even put it’s existence in doubt.

If there was something lacking in the service provided by the business or if someone thinks the same quality of service could be provided at a lower cost or more effectively, instead of creating an alternative competitor, our basic, and only, instinct is to demand that the established business model be bent to suit our demands. This is how we have scared away anyone and everyone who wants to invest their money or effort or ideas in our country. And then we sit around moping about how countries like Israel or China or South Korea, that became independent around the same time as India, have marched far ahead of us.

This is exactly what’s been happening in social media space too. Instead of figuring out alternatives to the politically biased big tech, people want them to change or that government intervene to regulate or even ban them. There are several other platforms, some of them even developed by Indian developers, that can be supported. Some platforms like IndiToot or Gutrgoo were shutdown for lack of adoption by the consumers. These were not in any way inferior to platforms like Twitter or Facebook but were defeated by our herd-like attitude of loving everything imported and treating anything home-grown like shit. And here we are crying that Twitter is not fair. There are still some options left and before they too are dead, I plead you dear reader, at least try them out and explore if they are worth your time and bandwidth.

There is the Koo app which was one of the winners in the digital India Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge conducted by Government of India. It is almost like Twitter but in Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. The Elyments app was launched with the inspiration from spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar by his disciples and aspires to be an alternative to Facebook. Opined is a platform for sharing opinions in the form of short messages, long form articles, polls, etc. Wylo app is focused on sharing information through short texts, pictures, articles, polls etc on different areas of interest like sports, fitness, politics, food, etc. These are only a few Indian platforms that I had tried out. There might be others offering similar or different or better features. If you know any such, leave a comment below.

The bottom line is this. Sitting around and complaining that things are not going our way is what incompetent or inept- loser do. That cannot be the attitude of those who claim to agitate in the defence of a 7000 year old civilization. The least we can contribute is a bit of time and bandwidth.

चीन की मक्कारी व अहंकार को चूर करता अमेरिका का “तिब्बतियन निति व् समर्थन अधिनियम २०२० (Tibetan Policy and Support Act)”

Nagendra Pratap Singh

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11 January 2021

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चीन की मक्कारी व अहंकार को चूर करता अमेरिका का “तिब्बतियन निति व् समर्थन अधिनियम २०२० (Tibetan Policy and Support Act)”

दोस्तों जैसा की हम सभी जानते हैं की तिब्बत व् भारत का रिश्ता अत्यंत ही प्राचीन है। तिब्बत प्राचीन भारतीय संस्कृति, धर्म और सभ्यता का एक प्रमुख केंद्र रहा है।कैलाश पर्वत और मानसरोवर तिब्बत में ही स्थित है। तिब्बत स्थित पवित्र मानसरोवर झील से निकलने वाली सांग्पो नदी पश्चिमी कैलाश पर्वत के ढाल से नीचे उतरती है तो ब्रह्मपुत्र कहलाती है। कालिदास ने कैलाश और मानसरोवर के निकट बसी हुई कुबेर की नगरी ‘अलकापुरी’ का ‘मेघदूत’ में वर्णन किया है।प्राचीनकाल में तिब्बत को त्रिविष्टप कहते थे। तिब्बत ही प्राचीन आर्यों की भूमि है। पौराणिक ग्रंथों अनुसार वैवस्वत मनु ने जल प्रलय के बाद इसी को अपना निवास स्थान बनाया था और फिर यहीं से उनके कुल के लोग संपूर्ण भारत में फैल गए थे। वेद-पुराणों में भी तिब्बत को त्रिविष्टप ही कहा गया है।

महाभारत के महाप्रस्थानिक पर्व में स्वर्गारोहण प्रकरण में स्पष्ट किया गया है कि तिब्बत हिमालय के उस राज्य को पुकारा जाता था जिसमें नंदनकानन नामक देवराज इंद्र का देश था। इससे सिद्ध होता है कि इंद्र स्वर्ग में नहीं धरती पर ही हिमालय के छेत्र में रहते थे। वहीं शिव और अन्य देवता भी रहते थे। कई माह तक वैवस्वत मनु (इन्हें श्रद्धादेव भी कहा जाता है) द्वारा नाव में ही गुजारने के बाद उनकी नाव गोरी-शंकर के शिखर से होते हुए नीचे उतरी, इसी गोरी-शंकर को एवरेस्ट कहा जाता है। दुनिया में इससे ऊंचा, बर्फ से ढंका हुआ और ठोस पहाड़ दूसरा नहीं है।

डा.सतीश चन्द्र मित्तल द्वारा लिखित लेख “तिब्बत पर चीन के खूनी अत्याचारों के पचास वर्ष” के अनुसार ” जवाहर लाल नेहरू ने १९३५ में कहा कि तिब्बत एक स्वतंत्र देश है परन्तु चीन में साम्यवादी शासन स्थापित हो जाने पर, माओत्से तुंग की सरकार की भांति उन्होंने भी तिब्बत को चीन का आंतरिक मामला बतलाया, जो इतिहास की भयंकर भूल है। गृहमंत्री सरदार पटेल ने नवम्बर, १९५० में पंडित नेहरू को लिखे एक पत्र में परिस्थितियों का सही मूल्यांकन करते हुए लिखा- “मुझे खेद के साथ कहना पड़ रहा है कि चीन सरकार हमें शांतिपूर्ण उद्देश्यों के आडम्बर में उलझा रही है। मेरा विचार है कि उन्होंने हमारे राजदूत को भी “तिब्बत समस्या शांतिपूर्ण ढंग से सुलझाने” के भ्रम में डाल दिया है। मेरे विचार से चीन का रवैया कपटपूर्ण और विश्वासघाती जैसा ही है।” सरदार पटेल ने अपने पत्र में चीन को अपना दुश्मन, उसके व्यवहार को अभद्रतापूर्ण और चीन के पत्रों की भाषा को “किसी दोस्त की नहीं, भावी शत्रु की भाषा” कहा है। भविष्य में इसी प्रकार के उद्गार देश के अनेक नेताओं ने व्यक्त किए। डा. राजेन्द्र प्रसाद ने चीनियों को तिब्बत का लुटेरा, राजर्षि टण्डन ने चीन सरकार को “गुण्डा सरकार” कहा। इसी प्रकार के विचार डा. भीमराव अम्बेडकर, डा. राम मनोहर लोहिया, सी. राजगोपालाचारी तथा ह्मदयनाथ कुंजरू जैसे विद्वानों ने भी व्यक्त किए हैं।”

इतिहास गवाह है की राजनीतिक दृष्टि से तिब्बत कभी चीन का अंग नहीं रहा। ७ वीं शताब्दी तक मध्य एशिया के एक भू-भाग पर तिब्बत का आधिपत्य रहा। चीन का तिब्बत के साथ सम्बंध ७ वीं शताब्दी में हुआ, वह भी चीन की पराजय के रूप में। ८२१ में चीन की तिब्बत के साथ युद्ध में भारी पराजय हुई तथा ऐसी के साथ दोनों देशों की सीमाएं भी तय हो गइ। १२४९-१३६८ तक मंगोलों का आधिपत्य अवश्य रहा। १६४९-१९१० तक मंचू शासक रहे। परन्तु १९१० से १९४९ तक तिब्बत एक स्वतंत्र देश रहा। उल्लेखनीय है कि वर्ष १९४७ में नई दिल्ली में हुए एफ्रो-एशियाई सम्मेलन में तिब्बत एक स्वतंत्र देश के रूप में आया। तब तक इस देश में भारतीय मुद्रा चलती थी तथा भारत की ओर से डाक व्यवस्था थी।

माओत्से तुंग के पास भी डलहौजी के जैसी परन्तु थोड़ी अलग “राज्य हड़पने की निति” थी, अत: बड़ी ही मक्कारी से उसने तिब्बत को चीन का हिस्सा बताना शुरू कर दिया और १ जनवरी, १९५० को चीन की कम्युनिस्टों की सरकार ने घोषणा की कि तिब्बत की “मुक्ति”, चीन सेना का एक मुख्य उद्देश्य है। अत: ७ अक्तूबर, १९५० को चीन ने तिब्बत पर विशाल सेनाओं के साथ आक्रमण कर दिया, परिणामस्वरूप 40,000 की संख्या में चीनी सेना तिब्बत के 410 किलोमीटर भीतर तक घुस गई। भारत को इसकी जानकारी २५ अक्तूबर को मिली। अप्रैल, १९५१ में चीन ने तिब्बत को हड़प लिया। १९५४ में भारत के साथ एक समझौता हुआ, जिसमें जवाहर लाल नेहरू नें दब्बू व् झुक जाने वाली नीति का परिचय देते हुए तिब्बत को चीन का क्षेत्र स्वीकार कर लिया।

स्वतंत्रता के लिए संघर्ष :-
स्वाभाविक रूप से चीन के भारी अमानवीय दबाव से तिब्बतीयों में बेचैनी तथा विद्रोह की भावना भड़की। १९५६-१९५८ के दौरान तिब्बत में स्वतंत्रता के लिए कई संघर्ष हुए। १९५९ तिब्बत के स्वतंत्रता इतिहास में बड़ा संघर्ष का वर्ष रहा। चीन ने स्वतंत्रता आन्दोलन को दबाने के लिए सभी हथकण्डे अपनाए। हजारों तिब्बतियों को पकड़कर चीन ले जाया गया तथा उन्हें कम्युनिस्ट बनाया गया। लगभग 60,000 तिब्बतियों का बलिदान हुआ। 11 हजार से अधिक को चीन की जेलों में रखा गया। तिब्बत के अन्न भण्डार चीन ले जाए गए। 50 लाख चीनियों को तिब्बत में बसाने की योजना बनी। सोना, चांदी तथा यूरोनियम आदि बहुमूल्य पदार्थ चीन ले जाए गए। तिब्बत के धर्म गुरुओं तथा बौद्ध भिक्षुओं का अपमान किया गया। उन्हें “मुण्डित मस्तक”,”चीवरधारी आवारा”,”लाल रंग का चोर” आदि कहकर अपमानित किया गया। करीब 27 प्रतिशत आबादी का सफाया कर दिया गया।

१९५९ -२०२० तक अर्थात पिछले ६१ वर्षों से चीनियों का तिब्बत में यह खूनी दमन चक्र निरन्तर चल रहा है, परन्तु तिब्बतियों ने कभी हार नहीं मानी और अपने संघर्ष को जारी रखा। चीन के द्वारा पुरे विश्व में कोरोना विषाणु (कोविद-१९) फ़ैलाने तथा उससे हुए लाखों निर्दोषो की मौत व् उसके राज्य हड़पने की निति ने सम्पूर्ण विश्व को चीन के विरुद्ध कर दिया है| विश्व के अधिकांश देश चीन के विरुद्ध एकजुट होकर कई प्रकार के प्रतिबन्ध लगा चुके हैं और दिन प्रतिदिन लगा रहे हैं। इसी क्रम को आगे बढ़ाते हुए अमेरिका की संसद ने वर्ष २००२ से विचाराधीन अवस्था में पड़े “तिब्बतियन निति व् समर्थन विधेयक” को अंतत: वर्ष २०२० में पारित कर दिया और अमेरिका के महान राष्ट्रपति डोनाल्ड ट्रम्प द्वारा हस्ताछर कर देने के बाद अब यह “तिब्बतियन निति एव समर्थन अधिनियम २०२०” का रूप लेकर कानून बन चूका है।

आइये देखते हैं इसके मुख्य प्रावधान क्या हैं।

१:-यह अधिनियम तिब्बती लोगों के हर पहलू को संबोधित करता है।इसमें उनके मौलिक अधिकार, पर्यावरण अधिकार, मानवाधिकार, धार्मिक स्वतंत्रता इत्यादि शामिल हैं।
२:- यह अधिनियम तिब्बत के अंदर और बाहर तिब्बतियों के लिए फंडिंग को मजबूत करता है।
३:-इस अधिनियम में दलाई लामा द्वारा एक लोकतांत्रिक शासन को लागू करने की सराहना की गई है।इसके अलावा, इस अधिनियम में तिब्बती निर्वासन समुदाय को स्वशासन की प्रणाली को सफलतापूर्वक अपनाने के लिए सराहता की गयी है। दलाई लामा का मतलब होता है ज्ञान का महासागर, तिब्बत के लोग उन्हें अपना शिक्षक मानते हैं. जो उन्हें सही रास्ते पर चलने की प्रेरणा देते हैं. माना जाता है दलाई लामा ऐसे धर्म गुरु हैं जिन्होंने मानवता की रक्षा के लिए पुनर्जन्म का फैसला किया। तिब्बत में दलाई लामा का इतिहास करीब 600 वर्ष पुराना है. तिब्बत में दलाई लामा के बाद दूसरे सबसे महत्वपूर्ण व्यक्ति पंचेन लामा होते हैं। उनका पद भी दलाई लामा की तरह पुनर्जन्म पर आधारित है. वर्ष 1995 में तिब्बत में 6 वर्ष के एक बच्चे को पंचेन लामा का अगला अवतार माना गया था. हालांकि पंचेन लामा और उसके पूरे परिवार को उसके बाद से आज तक देखा नहीं गया। तिब्बत के लोगों का दावा है कि उनके गायब होने के पीछे चीन का हाथ है। यह अधिनियम केंद्रीय तिब्बती प्रशासन को एक वैध संस्थान के रूप में मान्यता देता है।यह संस्थान दुनिया भर में तिब्बती प्रवासी लोगों की आकांक्षाओं को दर्शाता है।

४:- इस अधिनियम में तिब्बती पठार के पर्यावरण और जल संसाधनों की सुरक्षा के लिए प्रावधान हैं।यह इस क्षेत्र में जलवायु परिवर्तन के नकारात्मक प्रभावों को कम करने में पारंपरिक तिब्बती घास के मैदान के महत्व पर प्रकाश डाला गया है।
यह अधिनियम तिब्बत में व्यापारिक गतिविधियों में कार्यरत्त अमेरिकी नागरिकों और कंपनियों को व्यापार और मानवाधिकारों पर संयुक्त राष्ट्र के मार्गदर्शक सिद्धांतों में कॉर्पोरेट सामाजिक जिम्मेदारी का अभ्यास करने के लिए प्रोत्साहित करता है।

५:- यह अधिनियम तिब्बत की राजधानी ल्हासा में अमेरिका के वाणिज्य दूतावास की स्थापना पर बल देता है। अमेरिका (America) तिब्बत की राजधानी ल्हासा में एक वाणिज्य दूतावास (Consulate) खोलना चाहता है. इस दूतावास की मदद से अमेरिका, तिब्बत में खुद को कूटनीतिक रूप से मजबूत करना चाहता है. इस कानून के मुताबिक, जब तक अमेरिका को ये दूतावास शुरू करने की इजाजत नहीं मिलेगी, तब तक वो चीन को भी, अमेरिका में नए दूतावास खोलने की अनुमति नहीं देगा.

6:-अमेरिकी संसद में तिब्बतियन नीति एवं समर्थन अधिनियम 2020 के पास होने के बाद मैक्लोडगंज स्थित निर्वासित तिब्बत सरकार ने खुशी जताते हुए इस पल को तिब्बती समुदाय के लोगों के लिए ऐतिहासिक बताया है।बिल पास होने के बाद अमेरिका ने सीनेट में तिब्बतियन नीति एवं समर्थन अधिनियम 2020 को पास करके यह संदेश साफ दिया है कि तिब्बत मुद्दा उसके लिए महत्वपूर्ण है। साथ ही यह भी संदेश दिया है कि अमेरिका का धर्मगुरु दलाईलामा और केंद्रीय तिब्बती प्रशासन को पूरा समर्थन है।

और इस प्रकार हम देखते हैं कि इस अधिनियम के द्वारा अमेरिका ने चीन को उसकी गुंडागिरी व् असामाजिकता का पर्याप्त उत्तर देते हुए भारत को संकेत कर दिया है की उसे भी तिब्बत की स्वतंत्रता के लिए अब उचित और समुचित कदम अवश्य उठाने चाहिए। तिब्बत की पवन भूमि पर नापाक चीनी कम्युनिस्टों की उपस्थिति एक श्राप की तरह है और इसे मिटाना भारत का कर्तव्य है।

नागेंद्र प्रताप सिंह (अधिवक्ता)

Peaceful or aggressive pressure: What were the reasons behind India’s independence?

ishaan

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11 January 2021

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Peaceful or aggressive pressure: What were the reasons behind India’s independence?

Introduction

India is celebrated as the country of Gandhi, but few understand that he was only a part of the Indian freedom struggle and not its entirety. To summarize his position, a famous line by Gandhi is often quoted, “if someone slaps you on one side of your face, turn the other one to him”. While Gandhi might have followed this path, other leaders had different visions. The role of revolutionaries in this struggle has been neglected on popular platforms, and their sacrifices lived on as folk tales describing ancient and unseen times. The narrative of a perfect non-violent struggle that won freedom cannot account for the freedom struggle of an extremely diverse country. Moreover, while most agree that the independence of a nation is not a one-person deal, history books tend to disagree.

There have been many discussions about the success of the freedom struggle. While most claim that it was the nonviolent movement propagated by Mahatma Gandhi that led to this success, I want to advocate for the importance of the pressure created by more aggressive actions taken by leaders like Subash Chandra Bose.

History: The Early Revolutionaries and Their Influence

The British came to India as traders under the name of East India Company and earned themselves a place among the Indian elite. Slowly, they began gaining power and started conquering kingdoms. One of the most important of these was the acquisition of Bengal after the Battle Of Plassey in 1757 (Roukis 943). Bengal was a major economic hub and would have been a great victory for the company. India was governed by the Company until Queen Victoria took charge in 1858. This change was because of the revolt of 1857, which was caused by the mistreatment of Indian soldiers in the army, unequal punishments which were used to demonstrate “the strength of British power and authority rather than to prevent crime or punish lawbreakers” (Peers 229). These inequalities led to the violent army revolt of 1857, during which many British officials were killed. Once Queen Victoria took charge of India, a period of relative peace was established, but the sparks of revolt lived on in secrecy.

The revolutionary movement for India had leaders living across the world. One of the leaders of the revolutionary movement, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (Or Veer Savarkar) was inspired by this idea of an armed revolt within the army and wrote the book “The Indian War of Independence 1857” analyzing the history of that revolt. Almost concurrently, the Ghadar Movement in North America was being established. It was a movement started by the Sikhs in America. Ghadar, literally meaning revolt or mutiny, led an anti-colonial movement for India. It included a vast variety of people, from laborers to students and intellectuals. They even started their own newspaper that was printed in San Francisco and sent off to the rest of the world (Upadhyay 1).

Another revolutionary, Rash Behari Bose was a prominent figure from Bengal. Bengal was among the first provinces to be captured by the British, and it also became the birthplace of early revolutionary organizations (Mcquade 645).In December of 1912, he attacked Lord Hardinge who was the Viceroy and Governor-General of India. Hardinge was severely injured after this event. Three years later, seeing the weakness of the British, Rash Behari Bose sketched out a plan against them during the first world war. He planned mutinies across northern India and Singapore in 1915 but his plan was foiled due to the presence of an informant within the conspiring team. Following this failed attempt, he became a highly wanted person for the British. Due to this tension, he left India and traveled to Japan while continuing his revolutionary activities for India till his death in 1945.

These revolutionaries had created a strong movement, which would be handed over to the next generation of evolved revolutionary minds. They believed that aggression was the only way to force the British to leave India. Many of their efforts failed, but their influence lived on in the form of inspiration. A few years after the initiation of the non-violent movement, such leaders would emerge out of the non-violent form and take actions much like their revolutionary predecessors.

Counterargument: Importance of The Gandhian Movement

Mahatma Gandhi was the pioneer of non-violent movements for independence in South Africa and India. He had been active in South Africa since the 1900s and had held many non-violent rallies and returned to India only in 1916 (Iodice 7). On his return, he joined the Congress Party and soon became an important leader. He led major events between 1919 and 1945 (Ali 39). His movements would inspire unprecedented mass support. Gandhi was also the one who revolutionized the Indian National Congress. He turned the Congress from a talking committee to a political entity, and the party’s successful image was largely his creation (Bose et al. 267). Furthermore, many have claimed that Indian independence was brought about only by the efforts of Gandhi.

Mahatma Gandhi started participating during a time when the freedom struggle was in a confused state. At that time, the revolutionary movement felt too extreme for the people and previous constitutional attempts had borne no fruit. With the novel idea of non-violence, he re-ignited the spark of passion within his countrymen. This was accompanied by the massacre in the city of Amritsar in 1919 (Iodice 9). This event caused mass agitation among Indians. Following this tragic event, Mahatma Gandhi started the Non-Cooperation Movement and asked Indians to boycott British schools and colleges, foreign cloth, and give up government jobs and titles. New institutions were set-up to teach the students who left the government institutions. These institutions were very much national and included a compulsory class for teaching the pupils how to spin and weave their own cloth. The cloth to be made is called Khadi, and wearing khadi became a sign of defiance towards the British.

Mahatma achieved many things within a very short span of time, and this came at the cost of many mistakes. While he achieved the love and support of the country through his “single-hearted devotion, his relentless will, and his indefatigable labor” (Bose et al. 267), he missed out on diplomatic and political opportunities. For example, in 1921, a large civil disobedience movement took place. After the arrest of protestors, as a compromise, they offered to release all prisoners and arrange a round table conference to discuss the future constitution of India. Although other leaders were affirmative, Gandhi delayed the decision. This led to an exceptional loss for the movement as the government changed its mind due to the delay. One other such incident also occurred in 1922, while the civil disobedience movement was near its peak popularity. Owing to an isolated violent event, Mahatma suspended the movement throughout the country. This event furthered the frustration within the movement.

Overall, while Gandhi was exceptionally successful at winning over people’s hearts, he wasn’t the best political leader. His efforts led to mass gatherings, but they couldn’t reach the government. The attitude of the government towards Gandhi in 1921 shows the lack of a major influence on the administrators. Many leaders like Subhash Chandra Bose were not satisfied with his clarity of goals and how to achieve them (Bose et al. 48). Gandhi’s actions were reactive and not proactive. Future leaders wanted to be proactive and shape the situation in India’s favor.

Argument: History, Efforts, and Influence of the Indian National Army

Influential leaders left the Gandhian movement citing many organizational and ideological problems. One of the criticisms that came for the movement was that it had become a “one-man show” (Bose et al. 55) and didn’t offer much room for discussion. Subhash Chandra Bose left Congress in 1939 due to disagreements with the Gandhian wing of the party. He created a “radical and progressive party” (Bose et al. 308) inside the Congress, called Forward Bloc, which grew to a national level. When the second world war started, Mahatma asked Indians to cooperate with the British. The Forward Bloc started large scale propaganda against this decision by the Mahatma. This decision, even today, feels wrong as it diverges vastly from the non-violent philosophy of the party.

Moving ahead, while Bose was in house arrest in 1940, he slyly escaped from the eyes of the secret agents and traveled to Germany. There, he created the Indische Legion (Indian Legion) consisting of Indian prisoners of war held by Germany (Bakshi 24). Bose was able to inspire the soldiers to fight for the freedom of their motherland. Around the same time, the Japanese had conquered the South-East Asian territories. They also had created their own Indian legion but were unable to manage it. The Japanese asked the Germans for Bose to lead this legion. Once back in Asia, Bose proceeded to establish the Provincial Government of Azad Hind (Free India) consisting of about 1,500 officers and 60,000 men. The army has been called by different names including Azad Hind Fauj and Indian National Army or INA. Furthermore, this government was recognized by 11 countries.

The first move of the government was to declare war on Britain owing to their occupation of India. This government cleared the misconception that Indians believing in different faiths could not work, and fight, together (Ali 50). In 1944, the government launched an operation codenamed Operation U. This led to a battle on the eastern borders of India near the city of Imphal. Though they did have some victories, the “blunders” (Ali 53) of the Japanese practically destroyed the move and they had to retreat. During this entire sequence of events, 26,000 Indian soldiers laid down their lives.

After victory in the world war, the British in India must be feeling very confident and decided to hold publicized trials of officials of the Indian National Army. Because of the publicized trials, Indians came to know about the contributions of the INA, which enraged the public Further, it led to a large-scale mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy in which 20,000 Indian sailors took control of 78 ships (53). They also marched through the streets of Mumbai and Karachi, two major port cities, raising slogans of the “Jai Hind” used by the INA. This revolt also passed on to the Royal Indian Air Force, whose airmen went on strike and also raised slogans supporting the INA.

The INA was born through a culmination of thoughts and ideologies of the prior leaders. Early revolutionary leaders always believed that a revolt within the armed forces would have the greatest impact on the rulers. The INA led a major movement, and its reverberations started a mass uprising in other armed forces within India. Unfortunately, the importance of the INA and the revolutionary movement has been neglected. Even today, 73 years after independence, it is rare to come across people who understand the sacrifices made by these fighters.

These events should suffice to prove that the efforts of aggressive leaders were anything but small and negligible. When the armed forces and the general public revolted, the colonial rulers were left without a defense because the entire colonial rule was dependent upon the loyalty of Indians. Furthermore, Gandhi seemed to have been confused during the war. He left his non-violent ideologies to support the recruitment of Indians for the army. Moreover, near the virtual end of his political career, Gandhi raised an evolved motto of “Karo ya Maro” (Bakshi 51), meaning do or die. Hence, Gandhi himself had turned in support of more aggressive ideologies for independence. These aggressive actions were the most probable cause of the withdrawal of the British in 1947, months after the extensive revolts within the armed forces.

Conclusion

Throughout this article, I’ve attempted to prove that the independence of India was not achieved by a linear set of movements, or by one ideology. It was also not achieved entirely through nonviolent protests, as can be seen from the case of the INA and earlier revolutionaries. The movement led by Mahatma Gandhi had a large impact on the population in the early years. In later times, near the world war, aggression was rising within India. This is evident even from Gandhi’s do or die motto. The revolts following INA trials shook the confidence of the rulers, leaving them defenseless.

This alternative history of the freedom struggle should be brought to the masses. Moreover, clarifying history is important because it helps shape the future identity of the population. The revolutionaries had an immense influence on people and were the most probable cause of independence, that was granted only a few months after the series of mutinies in previous years.

Works Cited

Ali, Tahseen. “The Untold and Alternate Story of the Indian Subcontinent’s War of Independence.” African and Asian Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2003, pp. 37–61., doi:10.1163/156920903763835661.
“Aims.” Netaji Research Bureau, netaji.org/aims.html.
Bakshi, G. D. Bose or Gandhi: Who Got India Her Freedom? KW Publishers Pvt Ltd, 2019.
Bose, Subhas Chandra., et al. The Indian Struggle, 1920-1942. Netaji Research Bureau, 2014.
Iodice, Emilio. “The Courage to Lead of Gandhi.” The Journal of Values-Based Leadership, vol. 10, no. 2, 2017, doi:10.22543/0733.102.1192.
Mcquade, Joseph. “The New Asia of Rash Behari Bose: India, Japan, and the Limits of the International, 1912–1945.” Journal of World History, vol. 27, no. 4, 2016, pp. 641–667., doi:10.1353/jwh.2016.0130.
Peers, Douglas M. “Sepoys, Soldiers and the Lash: Race, Caste and Army Discipline in India, 1820–50.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 23, no. 2, 1995, pp. 211–247., doi:10.1080/03086539508582951.
Roukis, George S. “The British East India Company 1600‐1858.” Journal of Management Development, vol. 23, no. 10, 2004, pp. 938–948., doi:10.1108/02621710410566847.
Upadhyay, Nishant. “Ghadar Movement: A Living Legacy.” Sikh Formations, vol. 10, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1–3., doi:10.1080/17448727.2014.895546.

Some curbs are need of the hour to save democracy

chandra298

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11 January 2021

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Some curbs are need of the hour to save democracy

What has been witnessed in Capitol USA, which saw its highest legislative body under siege from aggrieved section of the society, many would prefer to describe it as transgression of democracy perpetrated by those who have lost the people’s mandate. However a deeper insight would reveal that it was the inevitable consequence of the failure of democracy to cater to the aspirations of the most significant section of the populace who feel aggrieved and frustrated at the plight Democracy to protect itself from being usurped by those who are not native Americans.

The main objective of the advent of Democracy which enabled the mantle of governance from the monarchs to pass on to the hands of the people through their chosen representatives has been vitiated over the centuries. The struggle against the rule of the monarchs envisaged replacement of the same by the people’s rule. It is pertinent to note that the people in this case referred to those homogeneous group belonging to a specific geographical area with a common ethnicity and culture.

Over the years this reference interrelating the land and the people of the land got obscured with migration of people from different geographical regions for various historical reasons. Although such migration initially did not alter the intrinsic character of the relation between the land and the original inhabitants, subsequently in many instances and in many places the demography of places significantly got altered much to the discomfit of the original inhabitants.

Affinity of a particular group to its ethnicity and its preferential claim to the privileges of a specific geographical area is as old as the human civilization. Clashes between various human civilizations have taken place whenever the ethnicity of group of people has been endangered. The various clashes and unrest that has been witnessed from 19th century in various countries and various separatist moments have all had to do with peoples not being able to compromise on the loss of their ethnic identity. The Ireland, Palestine, Sri Lanka, fragmentation of- African colonies, East European countries, USSR and many similar happenings around the world had to do with people considering their ethnic identity as of paramount importance. Even the reunification of bifurcated Nations like Germany and Vietnam was possible only because of commonality of ethnicity scoring over division by ideologies.

The Democracy which took birth during the despotic regime of many monarchies to restore liberties to the people and provide them the ownership of the rule over the geographical area they belonged to, was found wanting in protecting that very promise. The Democracies themselves became vulnerable to being made impotent and unavailing by those with vested interest.

Often it so happened that Governments which wanted to make democracy relevant and thriving found themselves handicapped by the very edicts of the democracy and democracy too in turn many a times suffered at the hands of governments who were too meek to do the needful to make the Democracy relevant.

In countries like India, the anomalies of Democratic set up allowed less than twenty percent of the population to decide as to who shall rule the land, making a mockery of the principle of governance of the people, for the people and by the people. In many instances the coalition govts especially the post election coalition arrangement rubbished the popular representation principle.

The democracy, is being gnawed away at the roots and the trunk by communist forces and religious fundamentalist forces, fully endowed with the conviction that, those looking after the tree would hesitate to use insecticide to dispel the termites lest it is chided by the others for spoiling the fruits borne by the tree.

World over the simmering frustration of the people in seeing the impotency of the democracy to fulfill their aspirations is beginning to burst out in a violent manner that would make it appear very undemocratic but such unrests have at the root of their mind a vehement intention to correct the skewness of the democracy.

Many would like to call the unruly incidents in capitol as Trump incited to conveniently pin the blame on him, because Trump continues to be the target of attack by the Liberals due to his attempt to correct certain anomalies of democratic set up in his country to make it more relevant. This obviously was disliked by the gang which preferred to have the ailing democracy to continue for that made very congenial setting to their nefarious designs. The indiscriminate nature of immigration policy in the name of democratic principles and human values played havoc with the ethnic pride and identity of the ethnic Americans and also compromised their security against terror groups.

For many of them after many decades, their hopes and aspirations were kindled with “America for the Americans“ and “America come first” slogans coined by leaders, who were ready to risk at not being politically correct. For these group to lose out to usurpers of their dream and that too in an unfair manner as is being suspected is sure provocation for them to vent out their frustrations.

In India too democracy is being misused by the inimical elements to unsettle the elected govts from carrying out what is deemed beneficial for the country and prevent it from breaking free of its shackles to march in the path of progress. Elected govts became paralyzed by these forces whose frequent judicial litigation invited unnecessary judicial interventions in legislative and executive functions of elected bodies. The govt was also intimidated by these reprehensible groups through frequent disruption in public life and damage to public property in the name of exercising their democratic rights.

The Democracy is hijacked and held to ransom by few inimical forces with resources to spare. People like George Soros through their NGO were becoming a real menace to many countries, including his country of birth disallowed and banned his organization. There is an all out effort to make the electoral democracy irrelevant by few who care two hoots for democracy by paralyzing public life in the name of democracy and make the duly elected govt to stoop down on its knees.

There are counties like Singapore, where there is dignity for human life and at the same time suitable environment to enjoy individual freedom, without endangering the democratic set up of the country. The freedom to protest and dissent are governed by some guide lines. Democracy does not necessarily have to envisage freedom to protest and create unrest as a prerequisite to qualify as a true Democracy. Any Democracy that cannot provide for congenial environment to majority of the people to realize their aspirations ceases to be the true democracy no matter whatever Liberal label it may acquire.

It is high time the democracy is refurbished and nourished with proper safe guards to prevent it from getting hijacked. In countries like India where due to its diversity destructive forces are taking advantage to weaken the democracy to drive their selfish motives, the Institution of Democracy needs to be reengineered and restructured with suitable safety provisions and riders elucidating the need for certain restrictions that are incorporated in it to retain its vibrancy and utility otherwise in future the frustrations of the silent majority may erupt violently.

It may come off as an oxymoronic expression, but sooner or later every democratic country would be compelled to place certain restrictions and curbs in place for a healthy democracy to thrive.