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Monday, April 26, 2010

[ALOCHONA] Stop BCL's criminal activities



15 RU teachers urge govt

Fifteen teachers of Rajshahi University expressed deep concern over the "criminal activities" of Bangladesh Chhatra League at the educational institutions and urged the government to take immediate steps in this regard.

Referring to the recent call of five other noted educationists who have urged Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to cut all relations with BCL, the RU teachers said the call has been made in time.

In a joint statement issued yesterday the teachers said, expressing words like "concern, apprehension and despair" is not enough to describe the reality of the educational institutions. The anarchic situation, which prevails at the institutions, is also being infiltrated into the state activities like an incurable disease, it added.

They termed this situation destructive to the state and society.

The signatories are Hasan Azizul Haque, Sanat Kumar Saha, Zulfikar Matin, Mokhlesur Rahman, Shah Newaj Ali, Moloy Bhowmik, Abdul Mazid, Mahbubur Rahman, Jalal Uddin, Chhitta Ranjan Misra, SM Abu Bakar, Ananda Kumar Saha, Sujit Sarker, Shamsuddin Illias and Hasibul Alam Prodhan.

Pointing out the PM's remark that all achievements of the nation would not go in vein for BCL, it said the government must take stern actions against the criminal activities of other organisations.

They demanded elections of students' unions immediately to create atmosphere of student politics at the educational institutions.

Talking to The Daily Star in the afternoon, eminent littérateur Hasan Azizul Haque said, "We [signatories] are not against student politics."

Achievements of student politics in the past will never be ignored in the history but the wrongdoings in the name of student politics cannot be accepted, he said.

Referring to the role of student politics in building the nation, he demanded restoration of healthy culture in student politics.
 


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[ALOCHONA] Anti-graft body to be kept under control



Cabinet okays proposals for restricting ACC's freedom

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) would be obliged to take permission from the government prior to initiating a case against any government officials.


This was approved by the cabinet yesterday amid debates triggered by a set of amendment proposals submitted in March last year by a government-formed committee.

The anti-graft watchdog would now also be accountable to the president and would not remain self-governed anymore.

The cabinet approved the amendments ignoring the anti-graft body's cautions in the last few months that those would mainly diminish its independence and impartial functioning.

The ACC commissioners including its Chairman Ghulam Rahman even met the law minister to request him not to bring the amendments saying those would hamper independent functioning of the commission.

"We have given our statement regarding the proposed amendments and their implications. Now it's the responsibility of parliament to make those a law. The Anti-Corruption Commission will function the way parliament wants it to and the framework they set for its functioning," ACC chairman Ghulam Rahman told The Daily Star.

The cabinet also approved a five-year jail term and fine for filing a false complaint or case against any individual, and appointment of the ACC secretary by the government.

People playing a key role in fighting corruption observe these amendments would make the ACC laws discriminatory and allow the government executive branch to control the anti-graft body.

After the cabinet meeting, Prime Minister's Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad said the premier emphasised having an effective and accountable commission as her government is strongly committed to curbing corruption.

"We have to ensure an atmosphere in which the Anti-Corruption Commission can work independently," Azad said quoting the premier as saying during the cabinet meeting.

"We have decided in principle that ACC must be accountable to the president since no organisation within the state is above accountability," a senior minister told The Daily Star wishing anonymity.

Speaking on the issue, Transparency International Bangladesh executive director Dr Iftekharuzzaman said: "The amendment of taking prior permission indirectly allows government officials to remain out of ACC reach as it would be complex and time-consuming."

"This also implies that we are treating someone in a different way when no permission is required in filing a case against a politician or any other person," he added.

"It's a clear violation of our Constitution that ensures equal rights of the people."

On ACC being accountable to the president, he said it increases the possibility of partisan political influence on the commission.

Regarding punishment for a false case or allegation, he observed, "Apparently it may seem good. But it would result in creating deterrence against prosecution of any case of corruption."

Dr Iftekhar believes appointing the ACC secretary by the government has no logic at all and it only establishes administrative control over the anti-graft body.

The cabinet also approved enabling the commission to engage any agency, department and their officials in its investigation, if it wished.

"Following the amendments, ACC can take help of any expert or experienced government officials to probe any allegation," said the premier's press secretary.

Earlier, ACC in its opinion submitted to the government-formed committee stated that taking prior permission would make its laws discriminatory and encourage high officials in the said offices to get involved in rampant corruption.

Currently, the Anti-Corruption Act allows ACC to initiate probe and file cases if the offences are included in its schedule.

Regarding accountability to the president, the commission in its opinion said this amendment would bring the anti-graft body under control of the government's executive branch as the president cannot take any decision without having advice from the prime minister, except for appointing the chief justice and the prime minister.

Cabinet Division Additional Secretary Tariqul Islam was the chief of the government-formed committee that prepared the amendment proposals.

The Cabinet Division now will send the approved amendments to the law ministry for vetting before those are placed in parliament for passage.
 
http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=136103
 
 


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[ALOCHONA] BSF kills yet another Bangladeshi



BSF kills yet another Bangladeshi

 


Indian Border Security Force (BSF) killed one more Bangladeshi along Daudpur border in Birampur upazila in Dinajpur early Monday as the killing spree on Bangladesh border continues unabated despite India's repeated pledges to stop such killings.

With this BSF killed 23 Bangladeshi nationals in over three months and 103 in last 13 months. The number of Bangladeshis killed by BSF during the nine years period from January 1, 2000 to April 26, 2010 stands at 828. BSF also injured 859 and abducted 899 Bangladeshis in the same period.

According to UNB News Agency, a cattle trader was shot dead by BSF along Daudpur border in Birampur upazila in Dinajpur early Monday. The victim was identified as Shahidul Islam, 18, son of Abdul Sattar, of Daudpur village of the upazila.

BDR sources said when Shahidul went near border pillar no 290/32 BSF troop of Bhimpur camp opened fire on him, leaving him dead on the spot. The BSF men also took away the body of the youth. BDR sent a letter to BSF seeking return of the body.

The killings of unarmed Bangladeshis by the BSF on the border are continuing in clear violation of the spirit of good neighborliness as well as international law and despite repeated pledges by the Indian authorities to stop it. In every meeting between BSF and BDR and also between the higher level officials of the two countries, the Indian side assures that killing of Bangladeshis by its forces on the border would come to an end immediately. But this pledge is seldom implemented.

 http://newsfrombangladesh.net/view.php?hidRecord=315118



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[ALOCHONA] New York Times - IT work outsourced to India & Bangladesh



Not the kind we would like! but what the heck.....

 

April 25, 2010

Spammers Pay Others to Answer Security Tests

By VIKAS BAJAJ

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/technology/26captcha.html?pagewanted=print

 

 

MUMBAI, India — Faced with stricter Internet security measures, some spammers have begun borrowing a page from corporate America's playbook: they are outsourcing.

 

Sophisticated spammers are paying people in India, Bangladesh, China and other developing countries to tackle the simple tests known as captchas, which ask Web users to type in a string of semiobscured characters to prove they are human beings and not spam-generating robots.

 

The going rate for the work ranges from 80 cents to $1.20 for each 1,000 deciphered boxes, according to online exchanges like Freelancer.com, where dozens of such projects are bid on every week.

 

Luis von Ahn, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who was a pioneer in devising captchas, estimates that thousands of people in developing countries, primarily in Asia, are solving these puzzles for pay. Some operations appear fairly sophisticated and involve brokers and middlemen, he added.

 

"There are a few sites that are coordinated," he said. "They create the awareness. Their friends tell their friends, who tell their friends."

 

Sitting in front of a computer screen for hours on end deciphering convoluted characters and typing them into a box is monotonous work. And the pay is not great when compared to more traditional data-entry jobs.

 

Still, it appears to be attractive enough to lure young people in developing countries where even 50 cents an hour is considered a decent wage. Unskilled male farm workers earn about $2 a day in many parts of India.

 

Ariful Islam Shaon, a 20-year-old college student in Bangladesh, said he has a team of 30 other students who work for him filling in captchas. (The term is a loose acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart.")

 

He said the students typically work two and a half to three hours a day from their homes and make at least $6 every 15 days; they earn more the faster and the more accurate they are. It is not a lot of money, he acknowledged, but it requires little effort and can help supplement their pocket money.

 

Mr. Shaon, who agreed to speak to a reporter only over an Internet chat, said he gets the work on Web sites and is paid through Internet money transfer services.

 

He does not know the identities of the people paying him, nor does he have any interest in finding out. If he asks them, he said, "they maybe do not give me my payments."

 

Another operator in Bangladesh who goes by the screen name Workcaptcha on Freelancer.com boasts on his profile page that his firm has 30 computers, up from just five a year ago. Three shifts of workers allow the operation to hum 24 hours a day, seven days a week. On the site, Workcaptcha has 197 reviews from other users, the vast majority of them positive.

 

It was not possible to verify the claims made by Workcaptcha and Mr. Shaon, but Mr. von Ahn said it was clear that Bangladesh had become a hub for paid captcha solving, as have China and India. The completed captchas help spammers open new online accounts to send junk e-mail and carry out other mischief.

 

Executives at Internet companies like Google say they do not worry a lot about people being paid to decode captchas because they are one of several tools that Web sites use to secure themselves. Some sites, for instance, might also send confirmation codes as text messages to cellphones, which then have to be entered into a separate verification page before new e-mail accounts are activated.

 

"It can't be helped that paid human solvers will be able to solve captchas," said Macduff Hughes, an engineering director at Google. "Our goal is to make mass account creation less attractive to spammers, and the fact that spammers have to pay people to solve captchas proves that the tool is working."

 

Mr. von Ahn said that the cost of hiring people, even as cheap as it may appear, should limit the extent of such operations to only spammers who have figured out ways to make money. "It's only the people who really actually are already profitable that can do this," he said.

 

That view was confirmed by an executive at one south Indian outsourcing company that advertises its captcha-solving prowess on a Web site. The executive, Dileep Paveri, said his firm had stopped offering the service because it was not very profitable.

 

His company, SBL, which is based in Cochin, got about $200 a month in revenue for each of the 10 employees it had hired to decipher the puzzles on behalf of a Sri Lankan client.

 

"We found that it's not worth doing," said Mr. Paveri, a manager in SBL's business process outsourcing and graphics unit. Moreover, he added, "after some time, the productivity of people comes down because it's a monotonous job. They lose their interest."



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[ALOCHONA] FW: Martial Law and an ordinary law suit [1 Attachment]

[Attachment(s) from Farida Majid included below]


 



 http://www.samakal.com.bd/details.php?news=23&view=archiev&y=2010&m=04&d=26&action=main&menu_type=&option=single&news_id=61535&pub_no=318&type=




    Please find my bangla article on the curse of the Fifth Amendment in the op-ed of Samokal of Monday, 26th April, 2010. 
 
     You have probably read about various bad aspects of this amendment and the important elements of our 1972 Cosntitution that it scrapped and destroyed. In my article you will find why and how the bloody mess --the whole package ('bismillah' and all) --is thoroughly ILLEGAL.
 
                  You will also learn about the Moon Cinema Hall case, a rare example of masterful judicial activism in Bangladesh history. I have done good research and the facts here are accurate, and have been checked with the sources. One of the sources was Ruhul Quddus Babu. Sticking a label of AL on Babu is totally a politically motivated falsehood.  Babu has done many legal works that are pro-people and hence anti-Jamaat/razakar minded lawyers. It is no wonder that they are after him.
 
                  Comments are welcome. 
 
                  Shubho nabo borsho!
 
                   Farida Majid
 
                 





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Attachment(s) from Farida Majid

1 of 1 File(s)


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[ALOCHONA] FW: Ather Farouqui: Ghettoization of Indian Muslims




 



       This is the curse of Partition that was feared by the then Ulema of Hind. I have had some recent thoughts on this that I am putting down in a  short article.
 
           Farida
======================================

Living toghether separately:

ghettoization of INDIAN Muslims
 
By Ather Farouqui [ farouqui@yahoo.com]

                                                                                   

With the spectre of communalism raising its ugly head all across the country, Muslim ghettoization is emerging as a grave and complex problem that requires urgently to be addressed. It has a decisive bearing on communalism. Unfortunately, it has not drawn the attention it deserves.

 

It is common knowledge that during the last two decades, Muslim families have faced enormous difficulties in renting houses and flats in developed residential areas, which are obviously Hindu-dominated areas, as Hindu landlords tend to shun Muslim tenants even if they belong to the same social class and enjoy equal or better footing in society. In Bombay, for instance, a large majority of housing societies openly refuse membership to Muslims. In other cities, too, it is difficult for a Muslim to get an apartment in a housing society. Landlords and housing societies may not openly say no to Muslims but adopt various subterfuges. If a well-known Muslim cine artist in Bombay finds it difficult to rent a house from a Hindu landlord, the plight of the common Muslim as well as the gravity of the situation can be estimated.[1]

 

Muslim ghettoization began after partition but gathered pace with slow but steady migration of Muslims from rural to urban areas. Amongst other factors, the abolition of zamindari was a major factor for Muslim migration to urban areas as Muslims were the community most affected by the zamindari abolition. The second most important factor was the emerging insecurity as with the partition mass migration changed the sociology of demography. In the seventies and eighties it became a worrying phenomenon. Rural India is almost entirely bereft of Muslims except in Assam, Kerala and West Bengal. West Bengal is the only state where 65 per cent of Muslims live in rural areas and because of this factor they are not part of a pan Islamic brotherhood. In India Urdu as a language works as a symbol of pan Islamic identity while rural Bengali Muslims speak only Bengali. However, this is an altogether different debate. The villages of north India particularly, where Muslim presence was once 5-10 per cent, are now inhabited only by Hindus. The Muslim population has gradually been forced to migrate to Muslim localities in nearby towns. In all of north India, barring Jammu & Kashmir—which is itself a ghettoised Muslim society—it is difficult to find even a single Muslim family in Hindu-dominated areas even in towns and cities.

 

In general, Muslims are forced to settle in Muslim-majority areas with poor infrastructure and civic facilities, for which the government alone is to blame.

 

Until the early nineties, one could find Muslim government servants occupying government housing in areas where the majority of the population was not Muslim. But even here, a change has been visible since 1992. To take just one example: a large number of Muslim teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, reputedly an enlightened institution with liberal outlook and social sensitivity, prefer to live in Muslim-dominated colonies or ghettos rather than on university campus after 1992.

 

The result of this phenomenon is that all over the country Muslim families are to be seen only in areas that can be termed as 'Muslim clusters'. Muslim staff members as well as the old generation of teachers at JNU, have mostly returned to Muslim-dominated areas after retirement. An employee of the World Bank or a foreign mission, owing to fear psychosis, is often forced to live in places like the Jama Masjid area of Old Delhi, though his social profile certainly does not match that of the average inhabitant of the walled city. It has become common for families that moved from the walled city to New Delhi some fifty years ago to move back to their old family homes simply because they do not feel secure in Hindu-dominated areas.

 

Jamia Nagar, near New Friends Colony in south Delhi, boasts a huge Muslim elite which shifted there after 1992. Land costs here have gone through the roof owing to limited space and tremendous demand as each new day brings more families, even NRIs, needless to say Muslim NRIs, seeking a safe foothold in Delhi, further straining the already poor infrastructure. Such is the state of infrastructure here that Jamia Nagar, which adjoins the campus of the Jamia Millia Islamia, a central university, does not even have a government dispensary or a branch of a public sector bank (though there is one on university campus). Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit admitted the lack of these bare minimum facilities in the area in a TV interview after the Batla House shootout. The disturbing thing was that she had been unaware of the situation despite having been ten years at the helm of affairs in Delhi.

 

Jamia Nagar conjoins many Muslim colonies such as Batla House, Zakir Nagar, Abul Fazal Enclave, Ghaffar Manzil, Johri Farm, Noor Nagar, and Okhla Vihar. This whole area, with a population of about 10 lakh, is a victim of official apathy. The situation is not unique to Delhi but prevails in all state capitals and district towns.

 

No multinational bank provides the inhabitants of Muslim colonies with credit cards and MNC pizza and burger outlets based in nearby posh areas refuse to deliver in these areas. The capital city of India, New Delhi, is no exception. Even housing loans are not extended by most nationalized banks in Muslim areas in Delhi and New Delhi, Jamia Nagar being just one example.

 

Who is responsible for this increasing ghettoisation of Muslims? Civil society is squarely to blame. Let me quote two instances that were widely reported at the time and still haunt collective memory. The house of the famous Urdu poet Bashir Badr, who insisted on living in the Hindu-dominated colony of Shastri Nagar in Meerut because of his immense faith in secularism and popularity as poet amongst Hindus, was lost to a communal blaze in late 1987. Fortunately, the lives of his family members were saved as everyone was out at the time of the incident. Much worse was the assassination of Zaki Anwar, a college lecturer and Urdu writer, during the infamous Jamshedpur riots in 1978. Zaki had unshakeable faith in his Hindu neighbours, Hindu-Muslim unity, and Gandhian philosophy. He sat on a Gandhian-type long-drawn-out hunger strike in a Hindu-majority area to protest against communal tension. But all that his faith and his striving for togetherness and amity led to was his brutal killing. In both cases, it can be inferred that the Hindu neighbourhoods did not live up to the faith of the victims, whatever the reasons. Bashir Badr now lives in Bhopal and Zaki Anwar's family in Jamshedpur, both in Muslim-dominated areas. One needs to study the case of Bashir Badr in perspective as he supported the BJP during NDA rule and is now a Muslim poster boy of the BJP in Madhya Pradesh. He made an all-India tour during the general elections of 2004 to solicit Muslim support for the BJP and Atal Bihari Vajpayee as Prime Minster.   

 

The poignant story of former Member of Parliament Ehsan Jafri, brutally murdered in a Hindu-dominated area in Ahmedabad in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, is etched in the nation's memory. No civil society can withstand repeated incidents of this kind.

 

The Bhagalpur riots of 1989 led to large-scale migration of rural Muslims in Bihar and the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992, and the resultant backlash drove the last nail in the coffin of Hindu-Muslim neighbourhoods all over the country. As per press reports on the Bhagalpur riots, in all the neighbouring villages of Bhagalpur, where Muslims constituted less than 10 per cent of the population, the majority were killed and only a few managed to flee. In Hashimpura locality of Meerut, 40 Muslim youths were taken away by the police in May 1987 and massacred in cold blood and their bodies thrown in the canal.

 

In sharp contrast, not a single incident has been reported of a non-Muslim, in particular a Hindu, family living in a Muslim-dominated area having faced a similar situation during communal tension or violence in post-independence India.

 

All the same, post-1992 one can find hardly any Hindu family in a Muslim-majority locality, which was not the case earlier. Overall, the extremely surcharged atmosphere has forced non-Muslim families to shift out, turning their original abodes into Muslim ghettos by default. The phenomenon of a few Muslim families still living in Hindu-dominated areas and vice versa needs serious sociological study.

 

The question is: does communal ghettoisation represent the death of our hitherto composite culture and liberal and tolerant outlook or can we still do something to save it? Do we have the option of remaining silent? The answer is decidedly no. The question then is: what can be done to set the clock back and foster communal harmony? It will take a lot of courage and determination to figure out the answers but that is the only way forward if secular democracy is to survive. And we have to do it before it is too late. A new and reformed politics shunning populism is a necessary step forward.

 

But we have to understand that communal categorisation and communal identity perception can be resolved only through progressive mass movements dealing with issues pertaining to different facets of our shared life. Not for a moment does the term progressive refer to movement prescribed by different left wing political parties. The ideological confusion and resultant contradictions of these parties are more dangerous than communalism itself. Movements for literacy, education, sports facilities, employment, health care, shelter, and community interaction can help develop a wider political and social consciousness, thereby lessening the communal identity perception of the common people.

 

This is also the only way forward if Indian democracy is to survive.  And we have to do it before it is too late.

 

1.      The shameful incident of Emran Hashmi, a noted film actor of Bombay, in July 2009 and a number of other incidents of the same nature in which high-profile Muslims were refused houses highlight the problem. As per reports, Emran [Imran] Hashmi was 'told by [the] Pali Hill's Nibbana Cooperative Housing Society, [Bombay] to go and look elsewhere'. The actor, who is married to a Hindu girl, and interestingly whose mother is a Christian, 'believes the housing society is discriminating against him because he is a Muslim'. He has further informed the media, 'The seller, Survana, has now informed us that the society will not give us an NOC and it has blocked the sale. We have information that this has been done as they will not allow any Muslim in the society'.

 

It would be appropriate to remember that in the past Bollywood actress Shabana Azmi, one-time Member of Parliament and her writer-activist husband Javed Akhtar, now a Member of Parliament himself, have faced problems getting a house in Juhu (Bombay). As per press reports appearing at the time of the Emran Hashmi incident, once actor Aamir Khan also filed a PIL after being refused a house in Lokhandwala, Maharashtra.

 

For a detailed report of the Emran Hashmi issue, see The Times of India, New Delhi, 31 July 2009 which published a news items entitled ' Emran Hashmi can't get a house in Pali Hill' on the front page with additional information entitled 'Being a celeb does not mean you get everything' on page 11.




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[ALOCHONA] BCL Today after Bogra Govt AH College, Tomorrow Potentially after YOU



BCL cadres (sonar chhelera) today are out with ramda on patrol at Bogra Govt. Azizul Haque College. No wonder if tomorrow they follows you at your college or home or work place or wherever you are. Watch and enjoy the pictures:

 

http://www.prothom-alo.com/media-detail/type/photo/album/547/media/2369

http://www.prothom-alo.com/media-detail/type/photo/album/547/media/2368

http://www.prothom-alo.com/media-detail/type/photo/album/547/media/2367

http://www.prothom-alo.com/media-detail/type/photo/album/547/media/2366.



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[ALOCHONA] India: Soaring food prices place tens of millions at risk



India: Soaring food prices place tens of millions at risk

By Ajay Prakash

Rapidly rising food prices are pushing tens of millions of Indians deeper into poverty and outright hunger.The soaring price of vegetables pushed the annual rate of inflation for food articles to over 19 percent for the week ending November 28, a marked increase from the 17.5 percent recorded the previous week and the 15.5 percent the week before that.

The most recent data shows that the price of cereals has gone up by 12.7 percent over the past year, the price of rice by 11.8 percent, wheat by 12.6 percent, fruits by 13 percent, and milk by 11.4 percent. Potatoes cost more than double what they did a year ago and the price of onions has risen by more than 23 percent. Pulses, a major source of protein for the poor, now cost 42 percent more than they did a year ago.

In response to the latest inflation figures, Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi said that “the price rise of essential commodities continues to be a matter of highest concern to us” and pledged that India’s Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance coalition government will take “every possible step” to address the issue.

UPA Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the government will strengthen the Public Distribution System, which offers select food items at fixed prices to those with low incomes, but failed to provide any details.

Mukherjee blamed the food price rises on a shortage of pulses on the international market, saying, “There is a shortage of pulses to the tune of 3-4 million tonnes and this deficit cannot be met through imports as there are not enough pulses in the international market. It is this scarcity that is pushing up the prices.”

This is a cynical attempt to shirk the responsibility of India’s elite for the current crisis and the acute economic insecurity in which the vast majority of Indians live.

Since last spring, India’s agricultural sector, upon which more than 60 percent of the population depends for its livelihood, has been battered by drought. Floods also devastated crops and uprooted millions in some parts of the country during the late summer and fall. As a result, 278 of India’s 626 administrative districts have been declared drought or flood afflicted.

While the monsoons came late and rainfall was the scantest in four decades, the drought is not merely or even principally a natural calamity. After six decades of Indian independence, the bourgeoisie has failed to develop a proper irrigation-water management system. Consequently, the overwhelming majority of India’s peasant farmers are wholly dependent on the monsoons to water their crops, meaning the threat of crop failures and food shortages and price rises is ever-present.

As a result of this year’s poor monsoons, India’s production of rice is expected to fall by 18 percent in 2009, from 84.6 tons to 69.5 million tons, and India, the world’s second largest producer and biggest consumer of sugar, will be forced to import sugar for the first time in many years. In 2007-2008, India exported 5 million tons of sugar, but next year it is anticipated it will import an equivalent amount.

Another reason for the pulse-shortage is the decreasing acreage given over to pulse production. Seeking to maximize their meagre earnings, Indian farmers have increasingly turned to cultivating crops that are either in high demand from the sections of the middle class that have benefited from India’s increased integration into the world capitalist economy or are suitable for export.

For fear of the social dislocation and unrest that would result, New Delhi has thus far resisted Washington’s demands that India remove all its barriers to agricultural imports. Nevertheless in India, as around the world, food prices are being impacted by a recent surge in speculation in agricultural commodities.

While Sonia Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee made hollow statements of concern about the impact of rising food prices on India’s toilers, C. Rangarajan, a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and current chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, shed light on the real concerns of India’s financial elite.

He warned that the food price rises could cut across Indian big business’s drive to make the country a world manufacturing hub. “Food prices,” said Rangarajan, “must be controlled, otherwise they have a tendency to lead to manufacturing inflation … this will require monetary action by RBI, especially (money) supply management.”

Successive Indian governments have expended enormous energy catering to the profit interests of domestic and international capital, while simultaneously promoting brutal market relations in agriculture. Since 1991, when the Indian bourgeoisie abandoned state-led development and national economic regulation in favour of India’s full integration into the world capitalist economy, state support for agriculture, including irrigation, has been slashed. Price supports have been reduced if not eliminated and the Public Distribution System has been drastically curtailed. Since 2003, the amount of cultivated land has declined still further as India’s central and state governments seize agricultural land for use by domestic and international corporations in the form of special economic zones

The poor, rural and urban, are the first victims of food inflation. Most have no savings and insofar as they do, their savings are for meeting medical and other emergencies. As a last resort poor peasants can mortgage their land at exorbitant rates of interest, a process that frequently results in their incurring ever greater amounts of debt and ultimately losing or being forced to sell their land.

The intolerable conditions facing small farmers has led to a wave of suicides―over 200,000 since 1997. This year, over 1,500 farmers in the state of Chhattisgarh committed suicide after crop failures led to their amassing debts that they could not repay. Bharatendu Prakash from the Organic Farming Association of India told the Press Association, “Farmers’ suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money, but when the crops fail they are left with no option other than death.”

A poll conducted by the government-run National Sample Survey Organisation found that 40 percent of Indian farmers would quit farming if they had a choice―an alarming revelation for a country where two-thirds of the billion-plus people live in villages.

Farmers in Uttar Pradesh, India’s biggest sugar cane producing region, held protests in New Delhi on November 19 forcing parliament to shut down for several hours. Some 50,000 demonstrators took to the streets demanding changes to the fixed price paid to cane producers. Producer prices have remained fixed even as the price of sugar in the retail sector has soared.

A similar demonstration took place a week later when thousands of farmers, workers and activists protested in New Delhi demanding immediate implementation of a “Food Entitlements Act” and help for drought affected areas. According to the Hindu newspapers, “The rally underscored the urgency of addressing pervasive hunger and starvation, especially in a year of widespread drought and spiralling food prices.”

The government-run Indian Planning Commission claims that the proportion of the population living below the government’s subsistence level poverty-line fell from around 35 percent in 1993-1994 to just over 25 percent in 2004-2005.

However, there are a growing number of reports and surveys that refutes these claims. Their findings include that the caloric intake of rural Indians has actually declined over the past two decades.

According to a recent report by an expert group headed by Suresh Tendulkar, a former chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, 37.5 percent of India’s population lives in poverty. For its part, an expert committee appointed by the Ministry of Rural Development and headed by Dr. N.C. Sexena concluded in a report submitted this past summer that half of India’s population is living in poverty.

These estimates, however, pale beside the findings of the UPA government-appointed National Commission for Enterprises in Unorganised Sector (NCEUS). It concluded that more 800 million Indians live on less than 20 rupees (about 50 cents US) a day.

In September the Kolkata Telegraph reported that the UPA government “appears likely to go by the [Planning Commission] panel’s [poverty estimate] rather than the N.C. Saxena committee’s higher count which, if adopted, will enormously hike expenditure on anti-poverty schemes by adding crores [tens of millions] to the list of beneficiaries. The irony is that the government itself had appointed the Saxena committee to work out new criteria to decide which households lived below the poverty line.”

While the Indian bourgeoisie celebrates India’s recent high rate of economic growth and increasing importance in world geopolitics, the reality is that the vast of majority of Indians, even before the recent food price shocks, were stalked by poverty, with hundred of millions regularly gnawed by hunger.

One in three of the world’s malnourished children lives in India, reports UNICEF. Around 46 percent of all Indian children below the age of three are too small for their age, 47 percent are underweight and at least 16 percent are wasted. This social calamity will have consequences for decades to come, since, as UNICEF notes, malnutrition in early childhood “has serious, long-term consequences.” It “impedes motor, sensory, cognitive, social and emotional development.” Malnourished children “are less likely to perform well in school and more likely to grow into malnourished adults, at greater risk of disease and early death.”

The Congress Party promised in its manifesto for the April-May national election to “enact a Right to Food Law that guarantees access to sufficient food for all people, particularly the most vulnerable sectors of society.” It further pledged that “every family below the poverty line either in rural or urban areas will be entitled by law to 25 kg of rice or wheat per month at Rs. 3 per kg.”

But after two sessions of parliament and under conditions of mounting economic crisis, the Congress Party-led government has taken no steps to adopt such legislation, not even introducing a draft bill.
 


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