[ALOCHONA] Dear Bangladeshi, Not only keep your idle eye on Bangabhaban, but also ........................................

Dear Bangladeshi,

Don't only keep your idle eye on banglabhaban,but also play your part to resist the disaster in Bangladesh.

 

 

রাজনীতিতে নাটকীয়তা অপেক্ষা করছেআপাতত চিন্তা মাইনাস বিএনপি, মাইনাস হাসিনা উইথ আওয়ামী লীগ। বঙ্গভবনের দিকে নজর রাখুন...

১২ ই মার্চ, ২০০৮ সকাল ১১:৫৪

                       

বঙ্গভবনের দিকে নজর রাখুন...

রাজনীতিতে নাটকীয়তা অপেক্ষা করছেআপাতত চিন্তা মাইনাস বিএনপি, মাইনাস হাসিনা উইথ আওয়ামী লীগ। বঙ্গভবনের দিকে নজর রাখুন...

শেখ হাসিনা বিদেশে চিকিৎসার জন্য যেতে রাজি হয়েছেন। নাটকীয় সিদ্ধান্ত নয়। অনেক দিন ধরেই এ নিয়ে জল্পনা কল্পনা চলছিল। চিকিৎসকরা, আইনজীবীরা প্রতিদিনই বলে আসছিলেন নেত্রী ভীষণ অসুস্থ। বিশেষ করে তার কানের সমস্যা প্রকট। এই অবস্থায় তাকে বিদেশে না পাঠানো হলে বিপদ হতে পারে। হাসিনা ইতস্তত করছিলেন। সোমবার তিনি নিজেই জানিয়ে দিয়েছেন। বলেছেন, চিকিৎসা জরুরি। তাই আমাকে বিদেশে যেতেই হবে। এই যখন অবস্থা তখন দলের সাধারণ সম্পাদক আবদুল জলিলকেও বিদেশে পাঠানোর সিদ্ধান্ত হয় এবং সোমবার রাতে তিনি সিঙ্গাপুর গেছেন। এক মাসের প্যারোলে হলেও শর্ত জুড়ে দেয়া হয়েছে পাঁচটি। জলিল মুক্ত হয়েও কথা বলতে পারেন নি। রাজনৈতিক সহকর্মী ও একটি পত্রিকার সাংবাদিকদের কাছে প্রতিক্রিয়া ব্যক্ত করেছেন। বলেছেন, তার বিরুদ্ধে দায়ের করা মামলার কোন ভিত্তি নেই। ডাহা মিথ্যা বলেও মন্তব্য করেছেন। যাই হোক, হাসিনা তাহলে কবে কখন যাবেন? সরকারি মহলে এ নিয়ে তিন দফা আলোচনা হয়েছে। তারা নীতিগতভাবে সিদ্ধান্ত নিয়েছেন হাসিনাকে বিদেশে পাঠাতে। আওয়ামী লীগের নেতারা বিশেষ করে 'র্যাটস' জোরালো দাবি তুলেছেন। তারা বলছেন হাসিনার চিকিৎসা নিয়ে টালবাহানা করা হচ্ছে। হাসিনার কিছু হলে এর জন্য সরকার দায়ী থাকবে এ রকম হুমকিও দিয়ে রেখেছেন। আসলে তারা কৌশলগত কারণে শেখ হাসিনাকে বিদেশে পাঠাতে চাচ্ছেন। এতে তাদের লাভ দুটো। সংস্কারের নামে নেতৃত্ব কব্জা করা। নির্বাচনে অংশগ্রহণের মধ্য দিয়ে হাসিনাকে জানানো তার অবর্তমানেও দল চলে। সোমবার একজন প্রেসিডিয়াম সদস্য বললেন, এ ছাড়া উপায়ই বা কি? ভারত, বৃটেন ও আমেরিকা হাসিনাকে মাইনাস চাচ্ছে। যেভাবে দেশ এগিয়ে যাচ্ছে তাতে তো হাসিনাকে বাদ দিয়েই রাজনীতি করতে হবে। জলিলকে [/sb

বিদেশে পাঠানোর পর সংস্কারবাদীরা এখন তৎপর হয়ে উঠেছেন। নতুন এক ফর্মুলায় দেশ এগিয়ে যাচ্ছে।

আগামী নির্বাচনের আগে দুটি শক্তিকে মাইনাস করা হবে।

এক. বিএনপিকে রাজনীতির দৃশ্যপট থেকে বিদায়। হাসিনাকেও গুডবাই। আওয়ামী লীগের সঙ্গে বোঝাপড়ার মধ্য দিয়ে নির্বাচনে অংশগ্রহণ।

এই ফর্মুলায় জিল্লুর রহমানের উপর এক ধরনের মানসিক চাপ সৃষ্টি হয়েছে। তাকে বলা হচ্ছে, হাসিনার অবর্তমানে নির্বাচন হলে তিনিই হবেন সম্ভাব্য প্রধানমন্ত্রী। এতে তিনি বেশ উৎফুল্ল। আবার দুশ্চিন্তাও আছে। শেখ হাসিনা এত বিশ্বাস করে তাকে দায়িত্ব দিয়ে গেছেন। এর সঙ্গে যদি তিনি বিশ্বাসঘাতকতা করেন তাহলে দলের অগণিত নেতাকর্মী হয়তো ভালভাবে নেবে না। বিশ্বাসঘাতক হিসেবে চিহ্নিত করবে। তাকে অবশ্য একাধিক বিদেশী শক্তি পরামর্শ দিয়েছে হাসিনাকে বিদেশ চলে যেতে বলার জন্য। যথারীতি তিনি এই বার্তাও পাঠিয়েছেন। ওদিকে বেগম খালেদা জিয়া বিদেশ যেতে চাচ্ছেন না। এখানেই সুচিকিৎসা করাতে চান তিনি। তার দলের ভেতরে এ নিয়ে নানা সঙ্কট তৈরি হয়েছে। এক সময় চাপ ছিল দল যাতে ঐক্যবদ্ধ না হয়। এখন চাপ দলকে ঐক্যবদ্ধ করতে। এর পেছনে নাকি অন্য উদ্দেশ্য। মান্নান ভূঁইয়ার ওপর থেকে বহিষ্কারাদেশ প্রত্যাহার করে নতুন কৌশল। সাইফুর রহমানের নেতৃত্বে দল ভাঙার ফলাফল যখন শূন্য তখনই এই কৌশল। বেগম জিয়ার নেতৃত্ব কবুল করে ভিন্ন কৌশলে দলের নেতৃত্ব দখল করা। কাউন্সিল হতে পারে একটি কৌশল। এই অবস্থা টের পেয়ে দলের মহাসচিব খোন্দকার দেলোয়ার হোসেন সিঙ্গাপুর চলে গেছেন। সম্ভবত চাপ এড়াতেই তিনি দেশ ছেড়েছেন। মান্নান ভূঁইয়াকে রিট মামলায় পক্ষ করার মধ্য দিয়ে বিষয়টি স্পষ্ট হয়েছে। দুর্নীতি মামলায় মান্নান ভূঁইয়া আসামি হলেও তার সঙ্গে যোগাযোগ রয়েছে একটি শক্তিশালী মহলের। যদিও অন্য একটি মহল মান্নান ভূঁইয়াকে শেষ করে দিতে চাইছে। মান্নান ভূঁইয়া তার সহকর্মীদের বলছেন ওরা চাইলে কি হবে? আমাকে সরাতে পারবে না। আমাকে যারা কথা দিয়েছিল তারা আখেরে জয়লাভ করবেই। তাছাড়া তিনি ইঙ্গিত করেন একটি বিদেশী শক্তির কথা। এই শক্তি এখন সবেচেয় বেশি সক্রিয়। তারাই হাসিনাকে বিদেশ চলে যেতে বার্তা পাঠিয়েছে।

হাসিনা চলে গেলে খালেদাকেও যেতে হবে। কারণ, একজনকে দেশে রেখে তারা নিজেদেরকে নিরাপদ ভাবতে পারছেন না। খালেদা যেতে চাইলে তার ছোট ছেলে কোকোকে যেতে দেয়া হবে।


তারেককে কোন অবস্থাতেই নয়। তারেকের বিরুদ্ধে আরও অন্তত এক ডজন মামলা হতে পারে। তারেক নাকি বলছেন প্রয়োজনে তিনি একযুগ জেলে থাকবেন।


বাংলাদেশের রাজনীতি হঠাৎ করেই নতুন মোড় নিয়েছে। পাকিস্তানের পথ ধরে কৌশল ঠিক করা হচ্ছে। বেনজির এবং নওয়াজ শরীফের মতো ভাগ্য বরণ করতে হবে দুইনেত্রী হাসিনা ও খালেদাকে।

তাদের জনপ্রিয়তা আরও বেড়েছে। তাতে কি? তাদেরকে রাজনীতির ময়দান থেকে বিদায় নিতে হবে।

তারা বিদায় না নিলে অন্য কোন ফর্মুলা কার্যকর হওয়ার নয়। তাই স্বল্পকালের মধ্যেই দেখা যাবে হাসিনা বিদেশে পাড়ি জমিয়েছেন। অন্তত দশটি শর্ত জুড়ে দেয়া হবে- যেমনটা জলিলকে দেয়া হয়েছে। খালেদা রাজি না হলে কি ব্যবস্থা তা এখনো স্পষ্ট নয়।

তবে এ কথা ঠিক, বিএনপিতে হঠাৎ করেই বড় ধরনের সঙ্কট সৃষ্টি হবে। আগের কৌশল ভণ্ডুল হয়ে গিয়েছিল বলে এবার সফল হবে না তা ভাববার কারণ নেই।

কারণ, একটি পাকা শক্তি এবার মাঠে নেমেছে। আগে দূর থেকে কলকাঠি নাড়তো এখন কাছ থেকে অনেকটা প্রকাশ্যেই পরামর্শ দিয়ে চলেছে।



এই শক্তির সঙ্গে অতি স¤প্রতি সমঝোতা হয়েছে। সমঝোতা কি খালি খালি হলো। তারা কি খালি হাতে সমর্থন ও শক্তি যুগিয়ে যাবে। শিগগিরই খোলাসা হয়ে যাবে বিষয়টি।



রাজনীতিতে যে নাটকীয়তা অপেক্ষা করছে এতে কোন সন্দেহ নেই। বঙ্গভবনের দিকে নজর রাখুন। দেখুন হঠাৎ কিছু পরিবর্তন দেখতে পারেন।

বিচারপতিদের ওপর খড়গ নেমে এসেছে। এটা একটি পরিকল্পনার অংশ। শুরুতে ছিল নেহায়েত দুর্নীতির কারণে সেখানে সংস্কার। এখন রাজনৈতিক উদ্দেশ্য কাজ করছে। বিচারপতি শাহ আবু নাইম মোমিনুর রহমানের ঐতিহাসিক রায়ের পর সব হিসাব নিকাশ পাল্টে যাওয়ায় 'গুডবাই' নীতি গ্রহণ করা হয়েছে।

ড. ইয়াজউদ্দিন সব জেনেও এই সিদ্ধান্ত বাস্তবায়নে কোন দ্বিধা করছেন না। তিনি জানেন না এটা ঠিক নয়। তার ভাগ্য লেখা হয়ে গেছে। এক সকালে তাকে অসুস্থ হয়ে বলতে হবে প্রিয় দেশবাসী আমি অপারগ। স্বাস্থ্য আমাকে দায়িত্ব পালনে অক্ষম করে দিয়েছে। তিনি হয়তো মনে মনে এই শক্তি পাবেন, অনেক তো হলো পাঁচ বছর তো কাটিয়ে দিলাম। বাকি সময়টা বোনাস। আবদুর রহমান বিশ্বাসের কাছ থেকেও শিক্ষা নিলেন না ইয়াজউদ্দিন। জেনারেল নাসিমের কামান-বন্দুকের সামনে দাঁড়িয়ে তিনি বলেছিলেন সংবিধান রক্ষার শপথ নিয়েছি, জান দিয়ে হলেও রক্ষা করব। তাই তিনি করেছিলেন। এটা তো নিকট অতীতের ঘটনা।

ইয়াজউদ্দিনের সামনে আরও অনেক ঘটনা ঘটবে। যার সরব সাক্ষী হবেন তিনি।
যাকগে, পরিস্থিতির সামগ্রিক বিবেচনায় খারাপের দিকে যাচ্ছে এতে কোন সন্দেহ নেই। একটি ব্যর্থ রাষ্ট্রের ছবি নয়, বাস্তবেই কি তা দেখা যাবে?

রাজনীতিকরা ( সংস্কারবাদীরা) সামান্য কিছু পাওয়ার আশায় কিংবা দুর্নীতির অভিযোগ থেকে বাঁচার জন্য যে পথ ধরেছেন তার জন্য একদিন তাদেরকে জাতির কাছে কৈফিয়ত দিতে হবে।

এই ভূখণ্ডের জনগণ অন্য সব অঞ্চলের জনগণ থেকে আলাদা। তারা সময়মতো জ্বলে ওঠে।

রাবাত আলী মুন্সী

৪ মার্চ ২০০৮

http://www.manabzamin.net/Janathar%20chok/Janathar-02.htm

Is this CTG better than Ershad  in case of political party reform and anti corruption drive and dealings with teachers and Students ?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sobhan Allah-  Only Allah flawless 
           Alhamdulillah - All praise to be of Allah 
                   Allah hu Akbar - Allah, the Greatest

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Would Be Mahathir of BD

 

---

Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. __._,_.___

[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com

Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[mukto-mona] Re: Reply to SC

WRT: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/47049

How do you, or Mr Savage view conservatives like Mr. Bush Junior and
his foreign policy?

J.A.

*****************************************
Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm

*****************************************
Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf

*****************************************

MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm

*****************************************
Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/

*****************************************
MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari

http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm

*****************************************
German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/

Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm

*****************************************

Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm

****************************************************

VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

****************************************************

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
-Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/join

(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:mukto-mona-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:mukto-mona-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
mukto-mona-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

[mukto-mona] Re: Fwd: 'Pakistanis were misled into thinking that Bangladeshis were Hindus’

WRT: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/47050

"Pakistani-rulers also brain-washed Bangalees, in the East-Pakistan,
to be anti-Indian and anti-Hindu also, which we are still suffering
from even after 36 years of independence."

-Not untrue. Just a minor correction: your statement might lead to
the wrong notion that the "Bangalees" of the East Pakistan didn't
include any Hindus. Indeed, those "anti-Hindu" are/were
not "Bangalee" in the context of true meaning of the word. They are
just communal Muslims like communal Hindus/Xtians etc.

-J.A.

*****************************************
Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm

*****************************************
Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf

*****************************************

MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm

*****************************************
Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/

*****************************************
MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari

http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm

*****************************************
German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/

Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm

*****************************************

Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm

****************************************************

VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

****************************************************

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
-Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/join

(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:mukto-mona-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:mukto-mona-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
mukto-mona-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

[mukto-mona] Deoband's Anti-Terrorism Convention: Some Reflections

Deoband's Anti-Terrorism Convention: Some Reflections
Submitted by Tarique on Tue, 03/11/2008 - 18:37.

* Indian Muslim
* Articles

By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net

The mammoth 'Anti-Terrorism Convention' organised at
Deoband late last month, which brought together ulema
from all over the country, has received wide media
coverage. While smaller conventions of this sort have
been organized by other ulema bodies in recent years,
this one, unlike others, caught the attention of the
media particularly because it was organized by the Dar
ul-Ulum Deoband, probably the largest traditional
madrasa in the world, which large sections of the
media have been unfairly berating as the 'hub' of
'terrorism'.

The speeches delivered at the convention have been
considerably commented on in the press. By and large,
the non-Muslim press has focused almost wholly on the
resolutions that were passed that labeled 'terrorism'
as 'anti-Islamic', leaving out other crucial issues
that were raised by numerous ulema who spoke on the
occasion, particularly about Western Imperialism and
Zionism as major factors behind global 'terrorism',
and the hounding of Muslim youth and mounting
Islamophobic offensives across the world, including
India, in the name of countering 'terror'. Muslim
papers have dealt with these issues fairly
extensively, but, following most of the speakers at
the convention, they have placed the blame for
'terrorism' almost entirely on what they identify as
'enemies of Islam', thus presenting a very one-sided
picture. In short, media reporting about the
convention, by both the Muslim and non-Muslim media,
has been inadequate and somewhat imbalanced. The same
can be said of several of the speeches made at the
convention.

The presidential address to the convention, which was
also circulated as a printed document, was delivered
by the conference's organizer and rector of the
Deoband madrasa, Maulana Marghubur Rahman. 'We condemn
all forms of terrorism', he insisted, 'and in this we
make no distinction. Terrorism is completely wrong, no
matter who engages in it, and no matter what religion
he follows or community he belongs to'. 'Islam', he
announced, 'is a religion of mercy and peace'. Hence,
terrorism or the killing of innocent people 'is
totally opposed to Islam'. He evoked the Quran to
argue that Islam exhorts Muslims to behave well with
people of other faiths if they do not oppress them, to
abide by their treaties and agreements with
non-Muslims and not to let the injustice of any
community cause them to deviate from the path of
justice.

Maulana Marghub ur-Rahman argued that far from being
'anti-national', numerous ulema and madrasas were in
the forefront of India's freedom struggle. Dismissing
charges that madrasas were used for fomenting
'terrorism', he insisted that they 'promote love,
peace, tolerance and patriotism'. He appealed to the
madrasas to provide 'proper guidance to their students
so that they are not misused as agents to engage in
any illegal activity in the name of Islam', an obvious
reference to certain radical Islamist outfits that
have sought, largely unsuccessfully, to make recruits
among Indian Muslim youth. He suggested that in order
to counter the misapprehensions that many non-Muslims
have about madrasas, the managers of the madrasas must
establish good relations with government officials and
people of other faiths living in their vicinity. 'We
must not unnecessarily make or consider others as our
enemies', he stressed. 'Instead', he advised, 'we must
spread our message of love'. He also suggested that
madrasas should improve their system of functioning,
maintain proper accounts and focus on the
character-building of their students.

Indians, Muslims as well as others, the Maulana
declared, are 'brothers', and they have 'jointly
sacrificed for and contributed to the country'. He
appealed to all Indians to join hands to work for
India's 'peace and development'. If the government of
India is really serious about combating terrorism, he
stressed, it should be neutral in its approach to
various communities, not suspect or target anyone
simply because of his religion, and cease hounding
innocent people, an obvious reference to the growing
number of cases of police arresting and even killing
Muslims in the name of countering 'terrorism'. He
lambasted what he termed as 'Zionist forces' for
spreading terrorism throughout the world as a means
for promoting Western and Israeli expansionism and
imperialism, and even suggested that these forces
might well be behind many terrorist attacks in India,
which, he insinuated, had been deliberately, but
wrongly, attributed to Muslims. He refused to
acknowledge that Indian Muslims might engage in
terrorist activities, claiming that because this would
hurt Muslims more than others 'it is unrealistic and
even impossible for them to be terrorists'.

Several other speakers at the convention repeated many
of the points that Maulana Marghub ur-Rahman had made.
Like him, all of them argued that Islam did not
sanction terrorism or the killing of innocents. Some
used this argument to make the specious claim that, by
definition, Muslims could not be terrorists, thus
placing the entire burden of global terrorism on what
they called 'anti-Islamic forces', particularly
'Western Crusader' and 'Zionist' groups. These forces,
they alleged, were engaged in a global conspiracy to
defame Islam and wrongly brand it as a violent
religion, while at the same time engaging in
state-sponsored terrorism on a large-scale, as in the
case of the American devastation of Iraq and
Afghanistan, or masterminding blasts and violent
attacks which they had, so they alleged, wrongly
blamed on Muslims simply to give them and Islam a bad
name.

This, for instance, was the burden of the argument
made by Maulana Noor Alam Khalil Amini, editor of the
Deoband madrasa's Arabic magazine 'Ad-Dai', in a
booklet commissioned by Maulana Marghubur Rahman
specially for the convention, which was distributed to
those present on the occasion. In a similar vein,
Maulana Khalid Rashid Firanghi Mahali, a noted Islamic
scholar from Lucknow, declared that 'America is sowing
the seeds of terrorism all over the world'.
'Anti-Islamic forces', he claimed, 'are scared of the
increasing influence of Islam. That is why they claim
that Islam and terrorism go with each other'.
Likewise, Maulana Mahmood Madani, senior leader of the
Jamiat ul-Ulema-e Hind, denounced George Bush as 'the
world's biggest terrorist'. He castigated America and
other Western powers for 'spreading hatred against
Muslims and Islam'.

The final declaration of the convention ran on similar
lines. It denounced the killings of innocents as
completely 'anti-Islamic', no matter who the
perpetrators were, Muslims or non-Muslims. It insisted
that Islam 'teaches peace, equality, justice and
service to others'. It failed, however, to recognise
the very existence of terrorism in the name of Islam
engaged by some self-styled Islamist groups. Instead,
it appeared to put the burden of terrorism entirely on
the shoulders of those whom it saw as inimical to
Islam. 'Governments of most countries', it announced,
'are toeing the line of Western and imperialist
powers, and in order to please them are behaving in a
despicable manner with their citizens, particularly
Muslims'. It rued the fact that India's internal and
external policies were being increasingly shaped by
these anti-Islamic powers, who 'have unleashed untold
terror' in countries as far as Afghanistan, Iraq and
South America. It condemned the hounding of innocent
Indian Muslims and their religious institutions in the
name of countering 'terrorism', while lamenting that
the Indian state took no action against the real
perpetrators of crimes against humanity. It appealed
to the Muslims of India to 'follow their established
tradition of love and respect for the country and be
alert so that no anti-Islamic and anti-national forces
could use them as agents'. Finally, it called for all
Indians to unite 'for upholding justice, the rule of
law and secularism'.

The significance of the Deoband convention can be
gauged from the fact that various Muslim organizations
(including several non-Deobandi groups), as well as
Hindu and secular bodies have welcomed it, although
some have rightly expressed the wish that it should
have been organized much earlier. The announcement by
the organizers of the convention that similar meetings
will be held across the country is indeed a very
heartening development. One wishes this step would be
reciprocated by Hindu religious organizations, who,
too, need to take a clear stand against the terrorism
being actively stoked by hardliner Hindu groups. One
also hopes that the appeals for cooperation with
secular non-Muslims that have been made at the
convention are accepted by the state and civil society
groups and movements, who can explore creative ways of
engaging with the ulema for working for Muslim
empowerment, inter-communal harmony, improving India's
relations with Muslim countries (particularly
Pakistan), promoting dialogue with Kashmiri groups and
countering radical Islamist forces from across the
borders.

That said, some burning questions still remain.
Writing in the Urdu "Hindustan Express", Shakeel
Rashid asks, 'Why is it that the ulema were silent for
the last two decades when Muslim youth were being
hounded in the name of combating terrorism and when
communal violence, which is also a form of terrorism,
was being unleashed on a massive scale?'. For an
explanation, which he obviously does not agree with,
he refers to Syed Arshad Madani, till recently the
President of the Deobandi Jamiat ul-Ulema-e Hind, as
having declared at the convention that despite
widespread anti-Muslim violence in India for the last
60 years, the Deoband madrasa 'had not brought the
community together', but that now it was forced to, in
the form of the convention, because madrasas are being
increasingly targeted. What Shakeel Rashid was
probably suggesting was that the ulema were coming
into the open to protest mainly because now, unlike
before, their own institutions are under attack and
that they themselves are being branded as
'terrorists'.

Another critical issue raised by the commentator Yusuf
Ansari, also in the "Hindustan Express", is that none
of the ulema who condemned terrorism at the Deoband
convention 'named a single terrorist organization and
condemned it'. Ansari sees it as unfortunate that the
ulema failed to explicitly mention, leave alone
condemn, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and similar groups in
Pakistan and Kashmir, some of which have also now
reportedly extended their activities into India, who
are 'misusing the name of Islam to spread terror'.
'The question arises', Ansari writes, 'as to why those
ulema who condemn terrorism as anti-Islamic did not
say a thing about these groups'. 'Is it', he asks,
'that in their eyes their actions do not constitute
terrorism?' 'Every speaker at the convention', he
notes, 'condemned America for its terrorism', but why,
he asks, 'did they not themselves also introspect and
look within?'. Further, he rightly adds, while the
ulema denounced the massive killings of Muslims in
Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine by America and
American-backed regimes, they remained curiously
silent on the massacre of Muslims by fellow Muslims,
be it by the late Saddam Hussain in Iraq, or in
Darfur, Sudan, where several hundred thousand Muslims
have been killed and rendered homeless in a
devastating intra-Muslim civil war.

In conclusion, Ansari aptly comments, 'It cannot be
logically sustained that, on the one hand, terrorism
is condemned as anti-Islamic, and, on the other hand,
silence is maintained about those [Muslims] engaged in
such anti-Islamic activities'. 'It is not enough', he
insists, 'to denounce terrorism as anti-Islamic.
Terrorist organizations must also be specifically
named and explicitly and sternly condemned'. Their
failure to do so, he suggests, had kept madrasas in
'suspicion'.

Yet, despite these apt comments by critics, the
Deoband 'anti-terrorism' convention is indeed a very
welcome development. One hopes it is not just a
one-time event, but that, as the organizers have
promised, it is but the first of a series of such
meetings to be held across the country in order to
galvanise a truly popular movement involving people
from different communities jointly struggling against
all forms of terrorism, whether by the state, groups
or individuals, and irrespective of the religious or
communal affiliation of its perpetrators. As one of
the speakers at the convention, Maulana Abdul Alim
Faruqi, very appropriately put it, the struggle
against terrorism demands that 'Hindus and Muslims
should unitedly work to take the country forward in a
spirit of love, brotherhood and unity'.

____________________________________________________________________________

Yoginder Sikand is the author of 'Bastions of the
Believers: Madrasas and Islamic Education in India'
(Penguin, New Delhi, 2005). He writes mainly on Indian
Muslim issues, and maintains a blog on Indian
madrasas, which can be accessed on
www.madrasareforms.blogspot.com

Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye


The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping

*****************************************
Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm

*****************************************
Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf

*****************************************

MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm

*****************************************
Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/

*****************************************
MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari

http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm

*****************************************
German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/

Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm

*****************************************

Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm

****************************************************

VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

****************************************************

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
-Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/join

(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:mukto-mona-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:mukto-mona-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
mukto-mona-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

[ALOCHONA] NSC: Why & how

NSC: Why & how

 

http://www.ittefaq.com/content/2008/03/12/news0665.htm

 

http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=27361

---

Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. __._,_.___

[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com

Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

Re: [ALOCHONA] An Open Letter from Sheikh Hasina to the people of Bangladesh.

The best thing for Bangladesh is to ensure the law of
the land. Let Hazing refute her charges at the court.
Not by show of force or agitation, she should solve
this problem.
We need to get away from the culture of getting even.

Love Bangladesh first, leader comes later.

--- "Md.Hasibul Hassan" <think_tank_habib@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>
> I have attached here a Hand written letter that
> sheikh hasina wrote before getting arrest.
>
> Sheikh Hasina the ex-prime Minster of Bangladesh
> is being detained under the Emergency Powers Rule,
> 2007, not under the criminal code of Bangladesh.
> There is no due process under the emergency powers.
> Right to bail and right to appeal are denied and the
> detention can be extended indefinitely even without
> a trial. Trials are conducted by special tribunals
> in camera (only the judge is present, there is no
> jury and the proceedings are closed to outside
> scrutiny) and summarily (normal procedures such as
> conducting discovery are not allowed.)This is a
> violation of international human rights laws, in
> particular Article 9 of the International Covenant
> on Civil and Political Rights.Gov didn't accept case
> against war criminals but they are making politics
> tuff for politicians.Raise ur voice for justice & to
> get Free of sheikh Hasina and to held a fair
> election.
>
>
> Here I ,mentioned some links where you can have
> the picture of human rights violation in Bangladesh
> by the present government. We want to free sheikh
> hasina & a fair election.
> 1) Torture By Fakruddin Government(Army
> Backed & anti-democratical Gov) in Bangladesh
>
>
http://www.e-bangladesh.org/2008/02/14/how-the-bangladesh-military-abuses-its-power-under-the-state-of-emergency/
>
> 2.."Bangladesh: Protecting Rights as Vital as
> Ending Corruption Press Release, August 1,
> 2007 ::
>
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/08/01/bangla16556.htm
> 3.Bangladesh: Release Journalist and Rights
> Activist Press Release, May 11, 2007
>
::http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/05/11/bangla15906.htm
> 4.Bangladesh: Elite Force Tortures, Kills
> Detainees Press Release, December 14, 2006 ::
>
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/12/13/bangla14844.htm
>
> 5.Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Torture and
> Extrajudicial Killings by Bangladesh's Elite
> Security Force Report, December 14, 2006
>
http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=asia&c=banglahttp://sotacit.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/everything-you-need-to-know-about-general-moeen-u-ahmed/
> Raise your voice to get free Ex-Prime Minister of
> Bangladesh sheikh Haina
>
>
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/bangladeshjustice/?e
>
> Thanking you
>
> Habib
> think_tank_habib@yahoo.com
>
> ---------------------------------
> Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with
> Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.

[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alochona/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alochona/join

(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:alochona-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:alochona-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
alochona-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

[mukto-mona] Land question: important speech

 
Does Land still Matter? By D Bandyopadhyay 8 Mar 08 37 (http://epw.org.in/epw//uploads/articles/12027.pdf)

The national economy is growing at near double-digit rates but neither industry nor non-agricultural activities in rural
India have been able to provide livelihoods for millions of rural workers. It is this failure that underlies the spurt in rural violence that has highlighted once again the issue of the poor's access to land, water and forests. It is gradually being recognised that further deterioration of economic, social and political conditions of the rural poor can neither be
arrested nor reversed without a significant policy shift towards a comprehensive land reform programme. Land reform means the disempowerment of a small but very powerful number of people. In a democratic society land reform can be undertaken sans bloodshed but not without tears.

Agriculture in India is currently passing through a crisis. The annual growth of agricultural output decelerated from 3.08 per cent pa during the period 1980-81 to 1991-92 to 2.38 per cent pa during 1992-93 to 2003-04 and the growth rate of crop output decelerated from 3.19 per cent pa during the 1980s to 1.18 per cent pa during the latter period.
Similarly, the annual growth of foodgrains output decreased to an all time low of 1.16 per cent pa. This annual growth is lower than the rate of growth of population of 1.95 per cent pa. Thus, in the post-reform period there had been a sharp decline in the per capita availability of foodgrains [Bhalla 2007: 67]. The signs are ominous.

The disparities between the primary sector and the other two, viz, secondary and tertiary sectors, are growing alarmingly. That apart, at the margin of the primary sector a large number of households are either currently facing food insecurity or would be facing the problem in the near future, leading to enhanced morbidity and mortality.
In a vast country, macro figures tend to iron out many ugly regional features. Except Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir and
Himachal Pradesh all the other states showed deceleration of growth in agriculture after 1995-96. Agriculturally developed states like Punjab and West Bengal were able to maintain a growth higher than the national average between 1995-96 and 2004-05. Andhra Pradesh witnessed a fall in growth rate from 3.18 per cent pa between 1984-85 and 1995-96 to 2.69 per cent pa between 1995-96 and 2004-05 [Ramesh Chand et al 2007: 2530-31]. A fall of about 15 per cent in the growth rate is quite significant, which did have deleterious social and political consequences.

There is a lot of literature on the present problems in agriculture including the several-volume report of the Swaminathan Commission. All the literature deal with techno-economic factors like the lack of public investment in the primary sector, unfavourable terms of trade for agriculture, intensity of use or lack of use of chemical fertilisers, lack of institutional credit facilities and the like. Each factor is understandably important. But there has not been any serious discussion on the mode and relations of production in agriculture. If agrarian relations are not conducive to proper utilisation of the techno-economic factors, their mere availability might not solve the crisis.

West Bengal is now recognised as an agriculturally advanced state. But from 1891 to 1981 the growth rate of agriculture varied between 0 and 1 per cent pa. The century old stagnation was able to burst asunder from 1982-83 due to the conglomeration of a number of conducive forces in production relations. This point is often ignored by the pundits of agriculture.
Land reform in West Bengal did play  an important role. Freedom struggle and peasants There is a folklore that the whole concept of land reforms was brought to the fore in India by Wolf Ladejinsky (the World Bank consultant in India) who carried out drastic and radical land reforms in Formosa (now Taiwan), Japan and Korea under Douglas MacArthur during the period of the American occupation after the second world war. His famous report on the
abuse of 'bataidari' system in north Bihar did shake the conscience of those in power at that time. But the concept of
land reforms was a part and parcel of our freedom struggle. In Jawaharlal Nehru's autobio graphy one gets a vivid account of the participation of peasants and agricultural workers in both the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1921 and
Non-cooperation Movement of 1931. They took part in these movements in large numbers and suffered repression and
police atrocities in the hope that political freedom would be accompanied by their emancipation from oppression and
bondage of the taluqdars and zamindars who were the "lords of the land" and whom Nehru described as "the spoilt
children of the British government". Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, the first  president of the All India Kisan Congress
(then a front organisation of the Indian National Congress), asserted in 1936 that "no compromise was possible between the peasants and the landlords except dispossession of zamindars of their land" [Bandyopadhyay 2007: 102].
Radical land reform was accepted, as a post-independence programme of action by a large section of the Congress particularly those who described themselves as the "Congress Socialists Group". Soon after independence, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) set up the Congress Agrarian Reform Committee, commonly known as the Kumarappa Committee.
Among other measures the Kumarappa Committee proposed a fairly radical ceiling on land. The First Five-Year Plan generally endorsed the recommendations of the Kumarappa Committee and left it to the states to implement the ceiling provisions depending on the realities of each state. Since then land reform has been an item for action in all the five-year plans. In the Seventh Five-Year Plan there was a clear statement linking land reforms with other major programmes of the plan. It stated clearly: Land reforms have been recognised to constitute a vital element both in terms of the anti-poverty strategy and for modernization and increased productivity in agriculture. Redistribution of land could provide a permanent asset base for a large number of rural landless poor for taking up land-based and other supplementary activities. Similarly, consolidation of holding, tenancy regulation and updating of land records would
widen the access of small and marginal landholders to improved technology and inputs and thereby directly leading to increase in agricultural production.  The short point was that this document, though late in the day, acknowledged the
centrality of land reform in the whole process of rural development and poverty alleviation. After this late recognition
came the tsunami of liberalisation which drowned all the issues of fairness and justice in socio-economic field.

Favouring the Marginalised
Gone are the days of the 1950s and 1960s when equity, egalitarianism, socialism and social control of productive resources for common good were part of the thought processes of leaders of almost all democratic nations. Die hard capitalist countries, barring a few, opted for welfarism. Others adopted various forms of socialism from the mixed economy of the Nehruvian variety to the puritan socialism of Mao Zedong. The commonality among all was
the recognition of the interventionist role of the state to tilt the scale in favour of the poor, disadvantaged and marginalized segments of the society. The first flush of land reform in India particularly the abolition of zamindari was a product of that ambience, which was a carry over of the tradition of the freedom struggle. Then the Indian state felt and thought it had a direct responsibility towards the majority of citizens, particularly the rural impoverished masses, who had very low bargaining power in a market of unequal exchange.
Enthusiasm for land reform abated from the early 1960s when India faced a major food crisis, particularly in the eastern
region. Naturally, the focus shifted from land reform to enhancement of foodgrain production and productivity. Land reform receded from the frontal visibility. But rural unrest in the late 1960s and early 1970s brought to the fore the issue of land reform. In 1972 prime minister Indira Gandhi convened a meeting of chief ministers to tackle the problem of rising rural unrest commonly known as "Naxalism". In that meeting the then home minister Y B Chavan made that oft quoted famous statement "We would not allow the green revolution to turn into red revolution". In that meeting
a consensus was arrived at to reduce land ceiling and to introduce family-based ceiling on land, tenancy reform and other similar measures.
All the measures indicated in the national consensus were quite progressive not only in the context of the then
prevailing situation, but the principles and philosophy behind them remain valid even today. The point to note is that at
the height of the green revolution when the entire effort of the Indian state was to attain self-sufficiency in foodgrain
production to shake off the humiliating shackles of the US Public Law 480, the government of India could think of drastically reducing the land ceiling for redistributive land reform. It did, for some time, have some effect on reducing the intensity of rural violence.

Seeds of rural Unrest
However, things did not happen in the way one would have expected. Reviewing the situation almost a decade later, the
Sixth Five-Year Plan (1980-85) observed: If progress of land reforms has been less than satisfactory, it has not been due to a flaw in policy but to indifferent implementation. Often the necessary determination has been lacking to effectively undertake action, particularly, in the matter of implementation of ceiling laws, consolidation of holdings and
in not vigorously pursuing concealed tenancies and having them vested with tenancy/ occupancy rights as enjoined under the law (p 115).
One marvels at the naivety of the statement. Is not the bureaucracy an integral part of the system of governance which formulated the policy? If the bureaucracy failed, the policymakers were no less responsible. In this failure lies the seeds of further rural unrest which we are witnessing today. In 1991, when the neoliberal economic policy hit India with a thunderous gale force, land reform went off the radar screen of the Indian polity. It became a forgotten agenda of state policy. Marketeers dominated all the segments of governance. It was repugnant to them to talk about land reform or to mention it in their polite society just in case the investors and other big operators in the market got frightened by any
government intervention in the land/lease market. They were finding the existing land reform laws that were enacted on the basis of the central guidelines in the early 1970s not only unwanted road blocks but also obnoxious to the free play of capital in the land/lease market. Hence a strong lobby developed to scrap the ceiling laws, allow unfettered rights to lease markets, open up the agrarian sector to the cor porate bodies for capitalist farming and/or large-scale contract farming, to move away from traditional crop husbandry to export-oriented crop production and the like. In short to do away with the peasantry and the peasant way of life. To many, land reform had become totally irrelevant, an undesirable anachronism in the days of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation.

'Fish in Water'
This is one side of the story. On the other side, according to our prime minister, Naxalism posed the most serious threat to the internal security of our country. The ministry of home affairs assessment in 2006 was that 120 to 150 districts in 12 states were "Naxal infested". Obviously, the normal writ of the state did not run in these areas. Thus a huge chunk of the mainland of India was being practically "governed" by extra legal and in some places illegal authorities. It also showed that militants, whoever they were, had established some rapport with the local population due to which they could move freely evading and avoiding the pincers and crab claws of law enforcing authorities.
They were proving to the hilt the doctrine of Mao Zedong of the "Fish in Water" where fish were militants and water was the mass of disgruntled and disaffected peasantry and landless agricultural workers. If the disaffection of the latter could be substantially reduced, water would evaporate and the militants would disappear. This thesis of Mao Zedong was demonstrated and practised in West Bengal by Hare Krishna Konar the revenue minister of West Bengal in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A massive operation was launched by the West Bengal government for vesting of concealed ceiling surplus land in 1967. Sharecroppers, agricultural workers and marginal farmers took part in tendering oral
evidence facing sharp cross-examination to disprove well crafted false 'benami' documents. Around one million acres of good land was vested in the state. This led to their dis-engagement from the militants and brought them back to the mainstream. Naxalism disappeared from its state of origin. It is now flourishing elsewhere. The present spurt in rural violence has brought to the fore again the whole issue of the poor's access to land, water and forests.
Will there be a knee-jerk response from the state to administer some temporary palliatives or would there be a consistent long-term policy frame for land reform in all its different facets? That is the issue that confronts the intelligentsia today. Rural violence that we are witnessing in India is not an isolated event totally indigenous in character. There are similar movements of violent nature in several countries of Latin and central America and
in parts of South Africa, the Philippines and Indonesia. What these countries are witnessing in the form of a violent land movement is basically the "third wave" of left politics. When the agrarian crisis becomes more acute, the political vacuum in the countryside deepens. The traditional parties of the left which had a rather nebulous relationship with the dispossessed in the countryside have, by and large, succumbed to the logic of capital either to obtain power or after obtaining power, they have wanted to continue in power eschewing Marxian left policies, though many of them still carry the name of Marx. Some of these traditional left parties are openly and unashamedly promoting neoliberalism in its crude form discarding even the fig leaf of egalitarianism, not to speak of socialism. The third wave "virulent left politics" is the direct result of the traditional left's subservience to the needs of capital exhibited through their adherence to the neoliberal economic reform policies. So we have the violent Maoist movement in India, Zapatistas in
Mexico, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Colombia, Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil and the Hook in the Philippines. Market-Based reforms In order not to rattle the landowners in
the rural areas and to diffuse the growing rural uneasiness, which sometimes led to open unrest, a move was made to implement a market-based land reform programme. This was brought about through the financial and technical support from key international agencies and bankers with the aim of offering credit to poor cultivators for purchase of land. Although this approach might have helped a few poor peasants to access some land, in the overall context it was not much of a success. In the first place sufficient land was not available in the market on a voluntary "willing seller willing buyer" basis to satisfy the land hunger of the land hungry poor peasants. Secondly, wherever the operation took place, land prices shot up favouring the landowner to the disadvantage of poor land purchasers. The procedure
of land purchase and registration process were onerous for the poor and small peasants. Some independent scholars
were quite critical of market-based land reforms arguing that it provided an easy escape route for the unwilling states to
undertake redistributive land reform through state intervention. Market-based land reform did not succeed wherever it
was tried and it has hardly any chance of success in India. The early planners had high hopes that with rapid industrialisation of the country, the surplus labour force in agriculture would be drawn away and absorbed in the
secondary and tertiary sectors. But this was not realised. At the end of the Tenth Five-Year Plan, almost 60 per cent of the labour force in India is still engaged in the primary sector contributing around 21 per cent to the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Industry employs 17 per cent of the labour force producing 27 per cent of GDP. What is happening in India is not anything unique. China which is today the third largest country of the world for
manufactured commodities still has 49 per cent of its labour force engaged in agriculture producing 15.2 per cent of GDP. Industry engages only 22 per cent of the labour force contributing 52.9 per cent of GDP [The Economist 2007: 60, 66]. It shows that macroeconomic growth in both these contexts, has failed to create improved prospects for the rural poor to acquire productive assets, gainful employment or a significant increase in their income and quality of life.
The Indian economy has been having nearly double digit growth rate for the last several years. In spite of this high growth rate, the secondary sector instead of drawing surplus labour force from the primary sector, is itself experiencing a downward trend in labour absorption. So the rosy dream of an El Dorado (the gilded one) put out by the neo-liberal economists and their noisy camp followers were not only not realised but were not realisable. Employment figures for the organized private and public sectors present a dismal picture. In 1991 total employment in this segment was 267.33 lakh. It went up to 282.85 lakh in 1997. Since then it has been continuously declining. In 2004 the figure was 264.43 lakh which was 3 lakh less than in 1991 when liberalisation started. Thus we are witnessing a gradual squeezing out
of regular employment, increasing the pool of the urban unemployed proletariat. What is also happening is that regular
jobs are being casualised in the organized sector. Casual employment is also getting "feminised", putting greater burden on women for earning a livelihood and looking after the household. The International Labour Organisation has described the situation as "feminisation of poverty". pressure on rural sector Under compulsion then a majority of the
additional labour force in rural areas would have to be absorbed both in the farm and the non-farm segments of the
rural economy. It may also have to deal with the back flow of the urban labour of rural origin rendered unemployed through the process of jobless growth. Under these circumstances, it would not only have to provide some sort of livelihood to labour already attached to agriculture and allied pursuits, it might also have to take care of a segment of the surplus urban unemployed coming back to the rural areas for shelter and livelihood. Hence it is being increasingly recognised that further deterioration of economic, social and political conditions of the rural poor can neither be arrested nor reversed without a significant policy shift towards a comprehensive land reform programme. This
programme should include (i) getting more land under ceiling laws for redistribution, (ii) security of tenure of tenantsat- will, (iii) poor's access to the common property resources, and (iv) proper social and economic rehabilitation of the compulsorily displaced persons from the coercively acquired land. The World Conference on Agrarian
Reform and Rural Development in 1979 at Rome declared in its Peasants Charter that: The rural poor must be given access to land and water resources, agricultural inputs, and services, extension and health facilities; they must be permitted to participate in the design, implementation and evaluation of rural development programmes; the
structure and patterns of international trade and external investment must be adjusted to facilitate the implementation of poverty oriented rural development strategies.
Growth is necessary but not sufficient; it must be buttressed by equity and above all by people's participation.
The two subsequent world summits in the 1990s, the World Conference on Hunger and Poverty in 1995 and the World Food Summit in 1996, established a direct link between resource rights, particularly access to land for overcoming hunger and poverty. The summits of the 1990s examined the pending crises – the environmental development, energy and food. But deeper analysis would show that these were not separate crises. They were all one and the same.
The single most important cause and effect is poverty resulting from unequal access and use of resources. The call would be for action on the in equitable distribution of wealth, the lack of access by the poor to productive resources, insufficient participation by the poor in the decisions which affect their daily lives and the need for reform in the macroeconomic policies that adversely affect the rights of the poor.

Revival of Agrarian reforms
The interaction between poverty, food security and resource rights is starting to bring about a refocusing of national and international agendas on the revival of agrarian reforms and resource tenures for the agricultural communities as well as for the fisherfolk and coastal communities, forest dwellers, pastoralists and other traditional resource users. Agrarian reform is primarily about changing relationships. First, it aims to change access and tenure relationships. Second, it aims to change the current culture of exclusion so that the poor gain access to credit, technology,
market and other productive services. Third, it aims for the poor to be active participants in the development of policies
and programmes affecting their communities and their livelihood. While we are talking about redistributive
land reforms, coercive eviction from land and livelihood because of compulsory acquisition of land for "development
purposes" is greatly aggravating poverty distress and landlessness of the project affected persons (PAPs). Walter Fernandes, estimated that between 1951 and 2005 roughly 55 million persons were forcefully evicted through land acquisition processes. Among the PAPs tribals constitute 40 per cent. The absolute figure would be around
22 million out of a total tribal population of little over 80 million. It appears that the main brunt of the adverse effects of development have had to be borne by the tribals who have the least sustaining power. It is estimated that only 18 to 20 per cent of the displaced tribals were properly resettled and rehabilitated. Thus a vast majority of displaced, homeless, landless and jobless tribals are roaming about as flotsam and jetsam of the cruel development process. They are depressed and dejected, annoyed and angry.
The situation is getting further aggravated by the almost mindless "land grab" in the name of special economic zones. It
is grabbing of poor man's land by the rich for the rich. It is difficult to keep track with figures as they change every day. But this new land grab gave rise to sharp popular resistance as witnessed in Nandigram in West Bengal and Jagatsinghpur in Orissa. Half way across the world in the Chiapas region of southern Mexico, indigenous people declared in 1980: We demand absolute respect for our communitarian self-determination over our land, over our natural resources and over the forms of organisation that we wish to give ourselves... We are opposed to have our
natural resources plundered in the name of a supposed national development. Our scheduled tribe (ST) leadership had
been demanding almost the same. And partly in response to that the central government enacted provision of Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA) in 1996 giving substantial power to the gram sabha and other tiers of panchayats in the Fifth Schedule Areas. Unfortunately, state governments are observing the law more in breach than in adherence ag gravating the anger of the tribals against the establishment.

Common property resources
The common property resources (CPR) where every member of the community had easy access and usage facility used to be an integral part of the social and economic life of the village poor, particularly, for the landless and land poor households. Among the landless, a vast majority belonged to dalit groups. For sheer survival they had to depend heavily on the CPR. A study in seven states in semi-arid areas indicated that CPR accounted for 9 to 26 per cent of household income of landless and marginal farmers, 91-100 per cent of their fuel wood requirements and 69-89 per
cent of their grazing needs. However, CPR is getting increasingly scarce through takeover by the state or
privatisation including corporatisation. In different states, corporations are being given huge tracts of the so-called waste land, degraded forest land and semi-arable land which constituted CPR for the dalits and the village poor. This has severely affected the economic positions of these people. Neoliberalism has put the dalits and the agricultural workers under the triple jeopardy of social, economic and political exclusion. Exasperated and desperate the dalit groups constitute the tinder dry flammable substance waiting for a spark to ignite.
Expropriation of CPR for handing over land to the corporate sector for agri-business or industry has caused depeasantisation among farming communities and accentuated immiserisation of the already poor landless and marginal farmers most of whom belong to dalit groups. Depeasantisation directly increases landlessness and
acute poverty coupled with assetlessness and debt bondage. The third wave of left politics often violent
in nature is looked upon by the establishment as a challenge and/or a threat to the stability of the state. There is no denying that there is widespread discontent in rural India. But no flaming bush fire is taking place because the poor are fragmented along caste, ethnic, religious, linguistic and other divisive lines. Moreover, the land struggle tends to differ for different interest groups. Landless strive for land ownership. Tribal groups aim at protection and preservation of their traditional rights on forest and other livelihood resources. Marginal farmers try not only to retain their minuscule holding but also to make it more productive and acquire more land and strive for more social recognition and
political influence. Thus with disaffection all around, with no coalescing of interests and objectives, no combined and determined movement could be developed to seriously threaten the establishment.

Introspection
One could look at the "third wave left politics" also as an opportunity. It provides for an occasion of deep introspection
regarding what we had been doing, why we had been failing, could there be a course correction to avoid the past mistakes and to do things properly for the landless, the assetless, the evicted, the dispossessed and the marginal farmers
who are eking out a life of misery at the margin of society. The third wave left politics has given us an opportunity to frame a third wave of agrarian reform policies as the second wave of left politics gave Indira Gandhi the chance to formulate the second wave of agrarian reform policies in 1972. The operation of ceiling laws in the country during the last five decades has resulted in vesting of 7.43 million acres of land of which 5.70 million acres were taken over and 4.34 million acres were distributed among roughly 5 million beneficiaries. The total area vested is less than 1 per cent
of the total area of 812.63 million acres of the country and barely over 2 per cent of the arable land area. Not only that,
National Sample Survey Organisation's (NSSO) survey of land ownership pattern in 2003 shows very skewed landholding position. At the all India level marginal and small owners constituted 90.40 per cent of the total number of owners. But they owned only 43.43 per cent of land whereas the medium and large farmers who constituted only 9.60 per cent of landowners owned as much as 56.21 per cent of land. In Andhra Pradesh the corresponding figures were that marginal and small farmers who constituted 91.80 per cent of landowning community owned 41.82 per cent of land whereas 8.40 per cent of medium and large owners had 58.12 per cent of land. Thus the argument that there would be no land available for the third wave of operation for acquisition of ceiling surplus land is not correct. The achievement so far is hardly anything to write home about. There are wide variations in the ceiling provisions in different states. Many state laws deliberately provide loopholes to enable big land owners to evade the law. It is common knowledge that in many states through benami and clandestine transactions large areas have been stashed away beyond the ceiling limit. There is enough evidence world over to prove that self-cultivation of small farms yields a significantly higher level of productivity than large farms cultivated by tenants or hired labour. Thus, equity and
efficiency demand that the ceiling limit should be drastically reduced to the level of five to 10 acres per family. Since various classifications of land give enormous opportunity to landowners to evade ceiling, laws should provide for one simple definition of land as given in the standard English dictionary. In one stroke many of the escape routes would be blocked. Moreover, law should provide for cancellation of all benami and 'farzi' documents retrospectively, since these are proven cases of large scale fraud on this count.

Empowering the powerless
On the tenancy front the picture is quite dark. The NSS figure of 6 to 7 per cent is generally admitted to be an underestimate.  Tenancy being illegal in many states respondents often do not disclose the truth. Many micro-studies indicate that incidence of tenancy could vary between 15 per cent and 35 per cent. These are all concealed tenancies with very exploitative terms of oral contract. Moreover, the emergence of the phenomenon of reverse tenancy is also a matter of serious concern. Hence while discouraging the earlier system of rent seeking sub-infeudation, leasing-in and leasing-out of land for the purpose of cultivation should be permitted within ceiling limits. All such non-owner
crop sharing tillers of land should be recorded, prescribing a fair sharing of crop at 75 per cent (for the tiller) and 25 per
cent (for the owner) and they should have heritable rights of cultivation without title to the land. The moment such recorded sharecroppers get certificate of sharecropping, they would become bankable. It would infuse institutional credit to augment both production and productivity. At last, after a long delay the forest dwellers' law was notified with effect from January 1, 2008. In the PESA area it should be implemented by the gram sabha and the appropriate tier of panchayat. In the non-PESA area it should be done through committees consisting of the beneficiaries, NGOs, panchayat representatives and the like. In no case this should be left with the former poachers now turned conservationists who are more interested in protecting species of the animal world than fellow homo sapiens.
Other points to be considered could be:
(i)A massive operation should be undertaken for restoration of alienated tribal lands to the rightful tribal owners;
(ii) appropriate amendments be made to the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 and Coal Bearing Areas (Acquisition and Development) Act of 1957 in tune with PESA;
(iii) issue of "user patta" in the names of women and men for use of CPR "including tree patta for forest dwellers and water pattas for the fisherfolk for CPR water bodies inland or coastal; and
(iv) setting up of dispute settlement machinery at the gram panchayat (GP) level with GP members and representatives
of beneficiary groups with the representative of the bureaucracy as the member-convenor to keep the records and
to explain the legal position.
Land reform in reality means disempowerment of a small highly empowered caucus and empowerment of many powerless  persons by the transfer of land resource from the former to the latter through state intervention. In a democratic society it can be done without bloodshed but it cannot be without tears. There is bound to be strong resistance from vested interests, particularly from the landowning classes. The key to success lies in building up strong
organisations of prospective beneficiaries vociferously demanding change in their favour and backed up by equally forceful political will of the state to intervene in favour of the rural poor and the dispossessed. The birth of a better social order will have its birth pangs. It is unavoidable. Acharya Vinoba Bhave, a staunch Gandhian and a social activist who launched the Bhoodan Movement in India used to end all his prayer meetings saying: "Land belongs to Gopal and all his children have equal right to its produce". This is the universal ethical basis of land reforms anywhere and everywhere.

References
Balagopal, K (2007): 'Land Unrest in Andhra Pradesh Ceiling Surpluses and Public Land', Economic & Political Weekly, September 22-28.
Bandyopadhyay, D (2006): 'Is Land Reform Still Relevant?', Yojana, August. – (2007): 'Land, Labour and Governance', World View, Kolkata.
–     (2007): 'Rural Unrest', Yojana, February.
Bhalla, G S (2006): Condition of Indian Peasantry, National Book Trust, New Delhi.
– (2007): Indian Agriculture Since Independence, National Book Trust, New Delhi.
Government of India (2006): Report of the Working Group on Land Relations for the Formulation of Eleventh Five-Year Plan, Planning Commission, July 31.
IFAD-UNRISD (2001) : 'Whose Land?' in Krishna B Ghimire (ed), IFAD, Rome.
Sam, Moyo and Paris Yeros (2005): Reclaiming the Land: The Resurgence of Rural Movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Zeel Books, New York.
Ramesh Chand,S S Raju, L M Pandey (2007): 'Growth Crisis in Agriculture: Severity and Options at National and State Lands', Economic & Political Weekly, June 30-July 6.
The Economist (2007): Pocket World in Figures, A Concise Edition, London.

This article is based on N P Sen Memorial Lecture delivered at the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad on January 12, 2008. D Bandyopadhyay (csdnl@del2.vsnl.net.in)  is with the Council for Social Development, New Delhi.

__._,_.___

Groups related to mukto-mona

bdresearchers (234 common members)
Countries/Bangladesh: This online community is for all Bangladeshi resea...

alochona (174 common members)
Countries/Bangladesh: Alochona Home   |   Muktangon Forum   |   Aloc...

dahuk (87 common members)
Countries/Bangladesh: Motto: Promoting Islamic moral values among the Ba...

KoBiTaOgAaN (57 common members)
By Language/Bangla: This is the email group of Paltalk Bangladeshi roo...

indiathinkersnet (56 common members)
Countries/India: Anti-fascist , pro-development , anti-communalist ...

*****************************************
Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm

*****************************************
Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf

*****************************************

MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm

*****************************************
Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona 
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/


*****************************************
MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm

*****************************************
German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/


Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm

*****************************************

Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm

****************************************************

VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

****************************************************

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190

Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___