This clip has been doing round on the net - on YouTube, Facebook and numerous other distributed sites since last few days.
Some reaction to this clip, are mentioned in this article:
Glimpses of lives, torn in what someone has described as "India's very own civil war" - where some are drawn unknowingly into taking sides, and some make a conscious choice....
...but as this documentary by Shikha Trivedy says:
"...today there are ideas of many India at war with each other. And in any war, women are the worst off..."
Last evening, I had an interesting meeting with a 'friend' who is also a local entrepreneur where I live. We had met after some months, and we chatted about many things - and he shared his travails with various govt agencies to make his venture grow... Some excerpts from our conversations (not verbatim, but as I remember them... and do convey the gist):
He: "It is very difficult to grow and expand... There is so much corruption here in these states in the East. One has to pay for anything to move."
Me: "What about your expansions elsewhere? In the western and southern states? I understand things are much better there. No?"
He: "Oh yes, much better there! I have been able to move much faster... which actually is a pity! This is my state - I was born and brought-up here - and I am not able to do much here - at least not as much as I would like to do."
Me: "You mean that this part of the country is more corrupt than those states..."
He: "Oh, no!!... They are as much corrupt and need bribes - in fact, more! - sometime they ask for more than what they ask for here..."
Me: "Then...? - this puzzled me.
He: "oh, there! - there at least, if you give them the "Speed Money", your work gets done. Over here, even that does not work."
Me: "meaning?..."
He: "Arre bhai!.. Over there, if you pay bribe, there is certain amount of honesty; they deliver what they promise... At least, there is no corruption in corruption there..."
We had a nice evening together, but I came back with a couple of queries in my mind:
What kind of society we have become (or were always), where:
...it is always useful to take a stock of what-we-are-most-critical-about... Specially when the media is abuzz with Khap Panchayat - with what-the-ground-realities-are...
And so, some news-items of the past weeks (click on the headline to read the news-items):
Maharashtra seeks Facebook ban
The Maharashtra government has asked the Centre about the possibility of blocking social networking site Facebook following such a demand from Muslim and Christian organisations...
77 per cent oppose same gotra marriages: HT survey
Even as the government proposes tougher laws against honour killings sanctioned by khap panchayats, a survey carried out by Hindustan Times in Haryana shows most people are against same gotra (sub-caste) marriages... The survey shows as many as 77 per cent of the respondents do not support same gotra marriages. The survey was carried out in Chandigarh, Rohtak, Jind, Bhiwani and Kurukshetra. Surprisingly, even in Chandigarh, 65 per cent of the respondents have opposed same gotra marriages....
Now, honour killings in Andhra
Honour killings came home to Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday night when two lovers were stoned to death by the relatives of a girl who had eloped with a man from another caste in Tadwai mandal in Nizamabad district....
After khaps, Arya Samaj shocker for lovers
After khaps, it is the Arya Samaj that has shocked couples in Haryana. A section of the sect has decided to ban marriages without consent of parents and villagers....
No.. Frankly, I don’t know where are the solutions
....but do believe that we will never find them, unless we accept that there is a problem!.....
I had read about Nira Radia in a recent issue of Outlook magazine on Corporate Lobbying... Her name again cropped up in an article in The Pioneer about the phone-tapping issue
These 14 internal GOI's documents, scanned and posted in the link below show the outcome of tapped conversations:
The Radia Papers– Raja, Tata, Ambani connection
http://indiasreport.com/magazine/data/the-radia-papers-raja-tata-ambani-connection/
Given the industry big-wigs and the media houses involved, this scam may never achieve the kind of publicity in the mainstream media, which the IPL/ Lalit Modi issue got.
The other reason for believing this is also because I got to know about this link through a group mail from a journalist friend, who works with a well-known and respected mainstream newspaper - obviously, if he could have published a story on this in his own newspaper, he wouldn't have shared the documents to all!!
I had a vague idea about the origins of the "May Day"/ "Labour Day" (but not much) - besides of course that it coincided with some of the pre-Christian pagan festivals in Europe...
So, today when one of my senior colleague, who has spent more than four decades dealing with Industrial/Labour Relations, both as a practicing manager and then as an academic (besides being the author of "one of its kind" book on Industrial Jurisprudence, sent this mail, I thought that this forgotten history is worth sharing. I am reproducing his mail below:
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Today is celebrated as a "Labour Day" all over the world. Quite a few of us may not be knowing "why May 1st only"; "why not some other day"; and "why at all should there be a special day of commemoration for working class"? Here is the story in a nutshell.
Explitation by US Industry - Long Working Hours
There was no law in US in the19th century (and until even as late as 1932), which conferred a right on the working class to form a union. Secondly, any attempt of workers to organise themselves was considered "criminal conspiracy" attracting prosecution under the criminal law of US. Thirdly, the US industry was guilty of forcing the workers, including women and children to work for long hours stretching to 15 to 18 hours a day.
Anarchist Movement - Strike by 400,000 Workers in Chicago on May 1, 1886
This was the state of affairs which prompted a few workers called as "anarchists" to secretly organise workers in Chicago in 1886 demanding "8-hour workday". The first strike in this regard was in McCormick Harvester Company, on 1st May 1886, in which workers of other industrial units numbering some 4 lakhs joined, sending shivers down the spine of business captains and the government. Police entered the fray leading to violence (including the throwing of a bomb by anarchists at the police party with the latter opening fire killing and wounding a few hundred protestors.
Trial and Execution of Seven Union Leaders
Finally, police picked up eight men stood trial for being "accessories to murder". They were: Spies, Fielden, Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Michael Schwab, Louis Lingg and Oscar Neebe. The trial commenced on June 21st 1886 in the criminal court of Cooke County.
The trial was whimsical and wishy-washy in so far as no evidence was offered that any of the speakers had incited violence and indeed, in his evidence at the trial, Mayor Harrison described the speeches as "tame". No proof was offered that any violence had been contemplated. In fact, Parsons had brought his two small children to the meeting.
On August 19, 1887 the Court sentenced seven of the accused to death, and Oscar Neebe to 15 years imprisonment. After a massive international uproar, the state government relented and commuted the sentences of Michael Schwab and Fielden to life imprisonment. Lingg cheated the hangman by committing suicide in his cell the day before the executions. On November 11th 1887 Parsons, Engel, Spies and Fischer were hanged.
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It also occured to me that for many people this history would be seen as a thing of past - a mere blot in the march of history. After all, we live in a more enlightened age, with the constitutional rights in a democracy, and the "rule of law" governing the social arrangements...
...till one comes across items like these:
Maoists Worst Human Rights Offenders
...is the Headline of a news-item on the IBNLive (April 14th). It goes on to say:
New Delhi: Naxalites are India's worst human rights offenders, says a new report on Torture in India. But Maoist supporters maintain that the Naxals are fighting for survival.
A report on Torture in India has made the startling revelation. The Asian Centre for Human Rights says that the Maoists are the worst violators when it comes to torture. For the first time ever, a top human rights group in India has accepted and highlighted that fact.
So to find out the details I went to The Asian Centre for Human Rights site. The Press-Release of the report - Torture in India - quoted by IBNLive is titled
I had posted an article by the same title - Between Hope and Despair... a couple of years back... and some vague mental association brought it back today.
Read a news-item Food-shortage forcing children to eat mud today. Some excerpts:
"Under an unusually hot April sun, skinny, hungry children silently poked around on the dusty edges of a stone quarry in Ganne village, 45km east of Allahabad and a 12km walk from the nearest road.
“It tastes like powdered gram, so we eat it,” said Soni, 5, a listless girl with a protruding belly. It’s a learnt experience. Older children such as Soni wait for the excavated moist mud. The younger ones imitate them.
With most families reduced to one or two daily meals of boiled rice and salt—with a watery vegetable on a lucky day—the mud is a free but deadly option at the 20 stone quarries sustaining the poorest villagers.
Eating the mud worsens malnutrition and disease, but these families are not eligible for subsidized food and other state programmes, though each of a family of five earns about Rs400 a month; UP’s official poverty line is Rs435 per person per month."
What an irony, when another news-item informs us: Food grains rotting away in Indian godowns, streets:
"India has godowns to store 16 million tones when it needs almost three times that. What that means is wastage in these times of shortage.
Agricultural scientist Ashok Gulati said, "The total storage capacity is 28 million tonnes .. this leads to losses of 10 – 15%. Translate this into value... that is 6 million tonnes of grains damaged, unfit for human consumption ... it amounts to Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 crores annually."
...and one also comes across news-items like these:
along with one like this:
I have experienced this irony in the microcosm of life I live in - the XLRI Campus. Here we have a reasonably well-off educated community, secluded from the rest of the world, and even families of "domestic help" living in the out-houses are much better off than their counterparts elsewhere. Their kids go to schools, play in the campus with other kids, they have TVs at home - some even have air-coolers fitted in their windows....
About two years back, on an early morning, while in my balcony, I saw these two small girls diligently and furtively looking for something from the ground below. I found their innocent seriousness and concentration quite delightful - and trigger-happy as I am, clicked a photograph.
Suddenly they looked up and saw me, and became diffident and apprehensive. When I smiled and asked them what were they looking for, they became slightly relaxed. One of them mentioned a name, and then explained that it is a wild weed. What will you do with that, I asked.
I still remember her matter-of-fact reply, "Amma will cook it for our meal."
just about 100 meters away, in the students' hostel mess, everyday a huge amount of un-eaten food is thrown away, wasted...
As the 12 Myths about Hunger mentions:
"Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,200 calories a day. That doesn't even count many other commonly eaten foods: vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs- enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food."
The attack by the Maoists/Naxals on the CRPF in Dantewada, Chhatisgarh on April 6th has caused much high-decibel outrage, anger and pathos across the media, political establishment and urban discourse... "surgical strikes", "coordinated multi-pronged approach", "fitting reply", "SriLankan Solution to LTTE" etc., seem to be flavour of the day...
One of the stated objectives of the "Operation Green Hunt" is that it will "clear, hold and build", i.e., clear the ultras, hold the place till governance and development can be brought in - and thus bring the local tribals into the fold.
(Note: "Operation Green Hunt" is a term which the government says is a media-creation - and perhaps it is - though large-scale deployment of CRPF and para-military forces has been done. Those who have been deployed find this denial that the operation exist, by the government strange, and even demoralising - check: Chidambaram says no, but troops believe ‘Green Hunt' exists, The Hindu, April 10).
Noble and logical as this aim to "Clear, hold and build" may seem from a distance, its success clearly depends on the capabilities of the forces to achieve the first step, i.e., "clear" in the first place.
Before "restoring the administration" of the cleared area, there is also the issue of the 'governance'/'administration'/'capacity' of the deployed forces - a point which is mostly ignored in the jingoism about the might of Indian forces... so here are some reportage, which I could pick up - which are less visible/ less discussed - and so may complement the picture...
When I had started this blog in Sept '03 [actually, it used to be a newsletter circulated through the "alternativeperspective" yahoogroup since 2002 - and the posts here still reach about 400+ members of the group], the purpose was:
"to widen our awareness about issues related to business, environment, role and influence of media, geo-politics, culture, etc. It aims to share, on a regular basis, some of those pieces of news and information, which do not find place in the highly monopolised mainstream media."
Therefore, the name of the blog/newsletter - Alternative Perspective"
But, such remeniscences apart...
Currently, the MSM (main-stream-media>, politicians, GOI, metropolitan conversations, etc., in India, are screeching phrases like "senseless/brutal violence against innocent civilians" or something similar, etc. - and we have "Operations Green Hunt" going around the region where I live to comb-out (intersting metaphor - like you comb out the lice from the hair) the maoists/naxals/ultras... whatever...
The beheading of a police officer, derailing of trains, blasts and bombs, burning villages and killing its inhabitants, etc. are the images which occupy our mind - and reinforce the message about the "violence against innocent civilians"...
I downloaded these images from somewhere on the net... and thought them worth sharing... after all, even is we all have a point-of-view about this "Operations Green Hunt" vis-a-vis "Maoist/Naxals" - at least one needs to know what is not covered in the media matrix....
and there has to be an educated awareness when one has to consider, binary questions such as:
I had some inkling that the the Annual Budget of the Govt of India must be quite a blancing act. After all it involves the complex task of allocating resources to so many different set of competing socio-economic objectives.
However, only this year, I realised that the Annual Budget exercise also involves another delicate act of balancing - of obfuscating facts by putting them under intersting nomenclatures.
I discovered, for instance, the Annual Economic Survey 2009-10 describes Rs 5 lac crores (actually, Rs 499,340 crores - to be exact) as "Tax Revenue Foregone" - an amount consisting of exemptions of:
About a year back, I had posted some links in a post about India's fastest growing state - Gujarat's stance on "India Inc. vs Mera Bharat"...
Gujarat's model of Economic Growth is one model of Growth - even though, all growth is not necessarily good, e.g., cancer cells...
Today, I was forwarded - by a friend - Mallika Sarabhai's open letter to Gujarat's "Brand Ambassador" Amitabh Bachchan. Here are some excerpts, which details the underbelly of the Gujarat Story:
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....So, as a Gujarati, permit me to introduce my State to you.
Everyone knows of our vibrancy, of the billions and trillions pouring into our State through the two yearly jamborees called Vibrant Gujarat. But did you know that by the government's own admission no more than 23% of these have actually moved beyond the MOU stage?
That while huge subsidies are being granted to our richest business houses, over 75,000 small and medium businesses have shut down rendering one million more people jobless?
You know of Gujarat's fast paced growth and the FDI pouringin, you have no doubt seen pictures of the Czars of the business world lining up to pour money to develop us. To develop whom?
Did you know that our poor are getting poorer? That while theAll-India reduction in poverty between '93 and 2005 is 8.5%, in Gujarat it is a mere 2.8%? That we have entire farmer families committing suicide, not just the male head of the household?
You have heard of how some mealy mouthed NGO types have been blocking the progress of the Narmada project, how the government has prevailed, and water is pouring down every thirsty mouth and every bit of thirsty land. But did you know that in the 49 years since it was started, and in spite of the Rs.29,000 crores spent on it, only 29% of the work is complete?
That the construction is so poor (lots of sand added to the you-know- which cement perhaps) that over the last nine years there have been 308 breaches, ruining lakhs of farmers whose fields were flooded, ruining the poorest salt farmers whose salt was washed away?
That whereas in 1999, 4743 of Gujarat's villages were without drinking water, within two years that figure had gone up to 11,390 villages ? (I cannot even begin to project those figures for today - but do know that the figure has gone up dramatically rather than down.)
With our CM, hailed as the CEO of Gujarat, we have once again achieved number one status - in indebtedness. In 2001 the State debt was Rs.14000 crores. This was before the State became a multinational company. Today it stands at Rs.1,05,000 crores. And to service this debt we pay a whopping Rs7000 crores a year, 25% of our annual budget.
Meanwhile our spending on education is down, no new public hospitals for the poor are being built, fishermen are going a begging as the seas turn turgid with effluents, more mothers die at birth per thousandthan in the rest of India, and our general performance on the Human Development Index is nearly the first - from the bottom.
One rape a day, 17 cases of violence against women, and, over the last ten years, 8802 suicides and 18152 "accidental " deaths of women are officially reported. You can imagine the real figures.
You have said that you are our Ambassador because we have Somnath and Gandhi. Somnath was built for people. Gandhiji was a man of the people. Do the people of this State matter to you?....
Today, India's Home Minister, P Chidambaram made a statement to the media: "We are willing to suspend all memorandums of understanding [with mining companies] until we talk to the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and review them".
This is a significant statement, since as I had once mentioned in one of the earlier blogposts that there is a huge overlap among the "poverty map of India", the "maoist-infected map of India" and the "mineral map of India" - reproducing the 3 maps below:
Wall Street Journal published my article on the Self-Help Groups
An Invisible Revolution in Rural India
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, JANUARY 4, 2010
By Madhukar Shukla
Mahua Devi is a petite woman in her early twenties. She cycles through 10 to 12 villages of the Koraput district in Orissa [one of India’s most backward states] everyday.
"I help these women keep their accounts," she tells me as we walk towards a group sitting in the shade under a tree 
When she says "these women" she is referring to one of India’s millions of self-help groups, or SHGs. Each group has 15 to 20 women who pool their tiny savings of only 5 rupees to 10 rupees at a time. They use the money to give loans to members for income-generating investments like chickens, seeds or goats. The interest on the loans then adds to their savings pool.
Driving from the nearest city to the village, I don’t see any bank branches. Even if there is a branch, it’s unlikely it would be equipped to open even simple savings accounts for these women, given their meager savings, lack of assets and inability to read or write. For most of the village women the SHG is the only bank they have ever had.
Ms. Devi keeps the accounts for 20 groups, for which she gets a commission of 2% of the value of all the transactions. "On average, I earn about 5,000 rupees per month," she tells me.
That, I quickly calculate, works out to 250,000 rupees in cash transactions per month - an amazing economic engine, silently working in one of India’s poorest regions.
Self help groups are a transformational phenomenon which has swept the Indian countryside over the last decade and a half. The groups are India’s own social innovation. In a country where almost two-thirds of the population have no access to formal financial services, SHGs are a unique route to financial inclusion, increasing incomes and helping build productive assets among the poor. 
Though similar groups were promoted by many non-government organizations in the 1980s the turning point of the SHG movement was a pilot project by the National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) in the early 1990s.
Despite India’s network of around 30,000 bank branches in rural areas, a majority of the poor still remained outside the fold of the formal banking system. NABARD studies showed this was because existing bank policies, systems and products were not aligned to meet the financial needs and constraints of the poor. What the poor can earn and save varies widely each day. Meanwhile their tiny savings – as little as 50 rupees per month - make providing banking services to them too expensive for banks.
To bridge this gap, NABARD and a group of NGOs started a pilot project o 500 groups of women to be used a vehicle for financial intermediation through its SHG-Bank Linkage Program. Typically, these were informal groups of up to 20 women, who would meet regularly and pool their savings.
After saving for six months and proving the group had developed the required fiscal discipline through consistent savings, on-time loan payments and maintaining records the group becomes eligible to be "linked" to the local bank branch. The innovation here was that the group, rather than the individuals in it, could open an account with the bank and use that account to save and take loans.
The pilot was a remarkable success and within a year more than half of the first groups had become eligible for the bank-linkage. Even more impressive was the fact that 90% of the loan payments were on time and there were no defaults. The success of this pilot project sparked the SHG movement which has been an unparalleled, albeit under-reported, revolution in financial inclusion.
The number of bank-linked SHGs crossed 10,000 in five years. By 2004, there were more than one million groups with their own bank accounts. By the year ended this March, the number of groups had grown to about 4.7 million, touching 59 million rural families through their members. Meanwhile, the average loan size per group has increased from 1,137 rupees in 1992 to 74,000 rupees this year. That shows the women’s rising capacity to manage, utilize and pay back loans.
So is everything fine with the SHG movement? Not entirely. 
According to one 2006 study (EDA Rural Systems and Andhra Pradesh Mahila Abhivruddhi Society’s "Self Help Groups in India: A Study of the Light and Shades") the groups still suffer from many inadequacies. For instance, the study found that a large proportion of SHG members remained poor even after being in the groups for seven years. Another report (Access Development Services’ "Microfinance in India: The State of the Sector Report 2009") underlined the popularity of SHGs has so far been a regional phenomenon tilted towards the southern and eastern states of India.
In spite of such inadequacies, however, self help groups have emerged as a critical vehicle for creating social equity and empowerment.
I once sat with women from three SHGs in the community hall of Madanpur in Haryana. The women had assembled for a workshop on "legal literacy" organized by a Delhi NGO. There was jubilation in the air and the village women were talking animatedly.
"We got the license of the local liquor shop stopped yesterday," one of the members told me with glee. "It was a drain on us because the men-folk would squander away their earnings, spoil their health, and often physically abuse us. This time we protested and kept the liquor license from being renewed."
The self help groups have gone beyond financial inclusion and become a platform to provide a voice to a marginalized section of society. Some SHGs have become forums for women to discuss everything from health and sanitation to legal rights and human trafficking. They are also being used to promote education and skill building. The groups are so respected now that they have been called upon to implement government and donor-driven programs such as the mid-day meal program for school children and HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns.
Between 2006 and 2008, more than 600,000 new self help groups were linked to banks. Assuming an average group size of around 13 or 14 members, that means more than 400 women are joining a SHG every hour!
Now if that’s not a revolution, then what is?
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—Madhukar Shukla is a professor of organizational behavior and strategic management at the XLRI School of Business & Human Resources in Jamshedpur.
