Bodo hopes and minority rights - The Hindu

12th May 2014 - Link

The Bodoland Territorial Area District (BTAD) has emerged as one of the most volatile flashpoints of violence in the country with deadly clashes breaking out repeatedly over a mobilisation of identity, territory and resources being linked to claims on political power.

Who are the Bodos?

• The Bodos, who constitute the largest tribal community out of a total of 34 tribal communities in Assam.
• The BTAD, an area of 27,100 square kilometres (or 35 per cent of Assam), the Bodos constitute less than 30 per cent with no other ethnic group (Assamese speakers, Bengali Muslims, Bengali Hindus, Koch-Rajbongshis) having an absolute majority.



Timeline of violence

They have been fighting for greater political autonomy since the early decades following independence

1960s - This gathered momentum with the organisation of the Plain Tribals Council of Assam (PTCA)  

1987- The demand for a separate State by the All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU). 

February 2003 - The Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) was formed as a special territorial privilege under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution as in the Memorandum of Settlement of  between the Government of India, the Government of Assam and the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT). 

Why this violence?

• In the interest of early colonialism, new reservation policies were introduced to restrain “native” access to valuable forests and to stimulate the clearance of fertile “wastelands” for the setting up of tea estates resulting in an increasingly restrictive regime of “boundaries” that curtailed livelihood options
• This colonial enterprise for revenue maximising, also accompanied by schemes like “grow more food,” radically altered western Assam’s demography as a large influx of poor peasants and labourers from Chota Nagpur, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Nepal and Maimansing was engineered in the interest of the colonial economy
• The tribal population in northwest Assam surrounded by a wealthy forest zone of 3,539.95 sq.km — in formal-judicial terms, more than 80 per cent was inaccessible to them. This entrapment is not only of the community from the resources but is also an entrapment of one community from the other.

Result of this:

The fear of all political minorities in Bodoland is a replication of the way the Bodo community was once entrapped.

And now:

Feelings of relative deprivation through an entrenched minority entrapment could spark off new insurgencies in the BTC/BTAD territory.

Why did the BTC accord fail?

1.The BTC accord justifies that every community with perceived historical roots in a particular place has a right       to delineate that “imagined place” and to protect it from perceived “outsiders.”

    as a result

    Riots in the Bodoland area have highlighted increasing valorisation of the “son of the soil” doctrine, a                 doctrine that is the result of powerfully territorialised (ethnic) identities and the enduring but highly selective       reaffirmation of “natural” geo-cultural links between ethnic groups and territory.

2.the choice to negotiate with the BLT in 2003 bilaterally and a significant tolerance of BLT ceasefire violations all seem to have been intended to allow the BLT to consolidate local power.

3.Even the interim body created to oversee the first elections to the BTC was headed by former militants.

4.Observations about the exercise of special political autonomy often show that it has perpetuated local oligarchies and created new elites, often weakening the links between people and political power.

Need for radical measures

1.First step would be to sweep the region clean by seizing the significant amount of illegal weapons.

2.A modification of the BTC agreement: The arrangements now not only give the elites from one ethnic group disproportionate power over the others, but also provide further incentive and a rationale to/for this domination.

The BTC accord needs be reworked to expand the democratic ambit of its mandate by making it more accommodative with a greater share and proportionate representation to different communities residing in BTAD.

Otherwise, a redrawing of BTAD boundaries by removing areas with a substantial non-Bodo majority seems to be a sensitive but an unavoidable option.

The case against privatisation of education - The Hindu

10th May 2014 - Link

This article debates whether higher education in India should be privatized or not.

Note: I have organised this article in form of arguments and counter arguments on the topic.

Arguments: Are arguments n points of those who demand privatisation of education

Counter- Arguments: Are counter arguments to those points(arguments) by the author.

Argument:

The supply of publicly provided professional education has not expanded commensurately with the growth in demand, thus signalling a failure.

Another associated argument - The government should cease regulating institutions that it does not fund.

Counter- Argument:

Educator's - performance actually determines the life chances of a very large number of individuals in society.

So they must be regulated like driving licenses and medical practices are regulated.

Argument:

Doctors and engineers, trained using the tax payer’s money, have now begun to enter politics.

Counter-Argument:

The answer to this malaise is surely not the privatization of professional education, but to expect that these youth in question serve in India, if not in the public sector itself, for a brief period after graduation, in lieu of which they repay the cost of their education.

Argument:

India’s regulatory agencies can be ham-handed in their interventions and are perceived to be corrupt.

That politicians influence the regulator to further the interests of private institutions owned by them or their clients.

Counter-Argument:

This deficit only provides an argument for drastically reforming how our regulatory bodies are populated and run rather than a case for dismantling them.

The most important reason for the state to remain in higher education is that the private sector is yet to demonstrate its capacity to create knowledge on a sufficient scale. Where is the research that creates knowledge? Even in these ‘professional’ courses there is more research in public institutions than in the private ones.

Reasons for greater knowledge creation in public institutions are

• They often have large government facilities attached to them.This enables the apprentice to learn by doing, arguably the best way to learn
• Underlying objective is not the pursuit of profit.

The private sector is not a presence much felt among the arts and sciences as these subjects do not always command high exchange value

Right to Education: neither free nor compulsory - The Hindu

9th May 2014 - Link

Background:

2002:

Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act 2002 added Article 21A to the Constitution, which requires the state to provide free and compulsory education to all children aged six to 14.

2009:

Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (“2009 Act”) was enacted, which provides that children aged six to 14 have a right to free and compulsory education, and provides for a quota of 25% of school seats to be reserved for children from weaker and disadvantaged sections.

Several private schools challenged the constitutional validity of the 2009 Act on the basis that the law, which imposed infrastructural and regulatory requirements on schools and violated:

• Article 19(1)(g): constitutional right to practise any profession or occupation.
• Article 30(1):  the constitutional rights of minority groups to establish and administer schools. 

2012:

SC  gave Judgement in - Society of private schools of Rajasthan Vs Union of India (Rajasthan Schools case)

Judgement:

The majority of the Court held that the 2009 Act is constitutionally valid and shall apply to government-controlled schools, government-aided schools (including minority schools), and private unaided non-minority schools.

However, the 2009 Act infringes the fundamental freedom guaranteed to unaided minority schools under the Constitution, therefore the Act shall not apply to such schools.

Court reasoning:

The main question is whether the 2009 Act violates Article19(1)(g) of the Constitution (which gives every citizen the right to practise any profession or occupation.)

Why should it apply to rest of the institiutions?

Article 19(6) of the Constitution of the Constitution - The State can regulate by law the activities of private schools, including admission, by imposing reasonable restrictions in the public interest under .

The quota obligation imposed on private unaided non-minority schools is in the public interest and is a reasonable restriction for the purposes of Article 19(6). Therefore, the 2009 Act shall apply to private unaided non-minority schools.

Why it shouldn't apply to unaided minority schools?

Article 29(1) of the Constitution protects the right of minorities to conserve their language, script or culture, and

Article 30(1) protects their right to establish and administer schools of their choice.

So according to the court - Imposing a quota on such schools would result in changing their character and would therefore violate these minority rights. Therefore, the 2009 Act shall not apply to unaided minority schools.

Regarding government-aided minority schools, Article 29(2) of the Constitution protects every citizen’s right of admission into a State-aided school. Accordingly, the 2009 Act shall apply to aided minority schools.

2013:

In Pramati Educational and Cultural Trust Vs Union of India : The Court has gone further than Rajasthan Schools and completely removed all minority schools, whether aided or unaided, from the purview of the RTE Act.

Three problems are evident with the reasoning adopted in Pramati 

First:

It has placed Article 30 on a pedestal, possibly elevating it to a status above the fundamental freedoms, even Article 21. All fundamental rights are limited by reasonable restrictions imposed by law on certain bases, but Article 30 alone, on the Court’s interpretation in Pramati, is above any restriction in any manner.

Second: 

The Court bases its reasoning upon judgments in T.M.A. Pai v State of Karnataka (2002) and P.A. Inamdar v State of Maharashtra (2005) which were decided in the context of tertiary education and not primary education. The Constitution does not recognize a fundamental right to tertiary education, but primary education is a fundamental right.

Third:

It was held, for instance, in TMA Pai that admitting a few members of a non-minority group into a minority institution does not take away the minority character of such an institution and that Articles 29 and 30 clearly contemplate such an inclusion.

The Court’s judgment in Pramati, by closing the door to non-minority students of economically weaker sections, actually goes contrary to the principles laid down in the earlier Bench decisions in TMA Pai and Inamdar, despite the Court extracting passages from these judgments in Pramati.

Where everyone is a minority - The Hindu

7th May 2014 - Link

The Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC), that narrow wedge of land in western Assam where everyone is a minority.

Current violence

While the State government has directly blamed the shadowy Songbijit faction of the National Democratic Front of Boroland for the massacres, there is, as always, a complex play of factors here:

• Militants were under tremendous pressure from security forces since they killed an Additional Superintendent of Police in Sonitpur district. The police went after them with a vengeance, taking down several cadres.forced the faction to hit vulnerable targets, to take the heat off, get time to regroup while also stoking communal fears and exposing the shortcomings of the State government.

• A statement by a prominent Bodo leader, Pramila Rani Brahma of the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF):  "Since Muslims had voted against the party’s Lok Sabha candidate, he was unlikely to do well". This has complicated matters and led to calls for her arrest.

Timeline:

1993 - An armed group, the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT), attacked Santhals as well as Muslims. For their own safety, they were placed in relief camps, which again came under attack. Accounts say that not less than 50 were killed in those incidents.

2002 - there were a series of attacks; in one, non-Bodo passengers were pulled out of a bus and shot. Soon after this, the BLT decided to come to the negotiating table.

2003 - The Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which enables small tribes in four States of the north-east to run their own affairs in the manner of an expanded Panchayati Raj system, instead of being completely dependent on the whims of the State government.

The Sixth Schedule aims to protect tribal rights from encroachment by larger non-tribe groups and is in place in parts of Assam, all of Meghalaya, Mizoram and a part of Tripura.

The Schedule was extended to the western Assam plains to create the BTC as part of an agreement between the Centre, the State government and the BLT.

Drawback:
BPF is the party in power in the BTC, which rules the “Bodo” districts. But there’s a major flaw in the system — the BPF doesn’t have control over law and order: the State government has jurisdiction of the police.

2008 - A major outbreak occurred in which both Bodos and non-Bodos including Muslims were rendered homeless and placed in camps. In 2008 again, bomb blasts across the State killed over 100 persons including 80 in Guwahati.

These were attributed to the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, led by Ranjan Daimary, which sought independence from India.

2012 - when over 100 died and about 4.5 lakh were displaced in rioting and killings, was described as the most extensive internal displacement since Partition.

Reasons for failure of peace accords

The core of the problems in the north-east, be it in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam or elsewhere, lies in the mobilization of identity over land.

There are two issues here:

First:

• If key problems are to be tackled, then all sides need to sit down together to work out the ways that land and resources can be shared without creating further ill-will.
• The State government and the BTC have failed to do so. They have failed because they have looked for quick-fix solutions without going deep enough and far enough to meet people’s grievances. The fallout that we see today is that of manufactured consent.

Second:

• There is a second critical point: if such processes are to gain momentum, then there must be a relentless campaign against terrorist groups.
• The way governments proclaim that they will tackle ethnic and communal violence with a “firm hand”; yet, once the bloodshed is over, the displaced go home and the issues vanish from the headlines, it’s back to business as usual with the criminals, extortionists and their partners in politics and the bureaucracy.

In this situation, tossing out the mantra of “Bangladeshi” immigrants as being at the heart of the problem would be extremely ill-advised. Nothing could be further from the truth, so insidiously easy to push, so dangerous to stoke.

Choosing the Chief Justice - The Hindu

5th May 2014 - Link

The issue of having a fixed tenure for the Chief Justice of India arises owing to the short tenures that Chief Justices have on average.

• In the last 20 years, there have been 16 Chief Justices of India.
• Only four have had tenures of more than two years.
• Eight have served for less than a year with one having served for less than a month.

Reason: for the limited length of such tenures

At the time a vacancy in the Chief Justice’s post arises, the senior-most judge in the Supreme Court is appointed irrespective of the length of tenure remaining before his retirement.

Consequence:

Excessively frequent transitions lead to systemic inefficiencies, increase incoherence in strategies to deal with ongoing problems and hinder the stability of leadership that a large and widely respected institution requires.

Why does such a convention exist?

Two Reasons —

• The legitimate expectations of future Chief Justices to hold such offices would be taken away in the absence of its strict application.
• Any other method would be subjective with considerable potential for the independence of the judiciary being adversely affected.

These two points are discussed in detail below

No legitimate expectation

No judge of the Supreme Court can have a “legitimate expectation” to be Chief Justice of India.

The protection of legitimate expectation does not require the fulfillment of the expectation where an overriding public interest requires otherwise. In other words, personal benefit must give way to public interest and the doctrine of legitimate expectation would not be invoked which could block public interest for private benefit” — ( Monnet Ispat and Energy Ltd. v. Union of India And Ors. , (2012)11SCC1)- A recent judgement by justice RM Lodha.

Overriding public interest in this case lies in the need for stable leadership of the Indian judiciary and its attendant public benefits.

Future judges becoming Chief Justice is on the other hand a matter of great personal honor and no more.

Conclusion:

The “legitimate expectations” of Chief Justice-ship that individual judges may harbor cannot provide a principled ground against fixed tenure and modified application of the seniority convention.

Objectivity by Seniority

Age functions as a de facto criterion for appointment of judges to the Supreme Court( no judge since 1979 having been appointed before the age of 55, a high rate of turnover of Chief Justices is inevitable.)

Reason:

To stick to seniority despite this can only be explained by the objectivity that seniority is perceived to lend, thereby obviating threats to judicial independence.

Such objectivity is overstated for two reasons: 

First:

• Seniority is determined not simply by age, but rather by the date of appointment to the Supreme Court.
• The process of appointment by a collegium led by the Chief Justice of India is opaque, functioning without any transparency or accountability for decisions taken.
• Certain appointments have raised wide speculation in legal circles for their timing with cases of unexplained expedition or delay, regarding which neither can information be sought nor review requested.
• It is thus within the realm of possibility that the objectivity that the seniority convention engenders is often founded on a ruse.

Second:

• Rampant corruption in public life ==> accountability discourse , as a result a premium has been placed on objective criteria in decision-making.
• Independent commissions are regularly demanded since they are expected to decide more objectively than ministries.
• Objectivity today has become a byword for fairness and more worryingly, any decision not on objective criteria often automatically leads to claims of corruption or hanky-panky.
• This disincentives good decision-making and creates perverse results, worse than the malaise it set out to cure.

Competence, not Seniority

The appointment of the Chief Justice of India provides an ideal opportunity to reverse this trend.

Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC): 

A carefully constituted commission is a body which should be empowered to select the person, who in its opinion is the most competent to deal with the administrative, judicial and leadership tasks expected of a Chief Justice of India.

It is a shame numerous Chief Justices that India has had for extremely short duration's, could not serve for longer; or several others seen widely as deserving of the office never served at all

JAC provides an opportunity to prevent such unfortunate incidents from recurring by dispensing with the seniority convention

It would demonstrate that as a mature polity, India is prepared to trust decisions taken by accountable public authorities following well-established and transparent processes. 

‘Jobless growth’ no more - The Hindu

17th April 2014 - Link

Between 2009-10 and 2011-12, non-agricultural employment grew rapidly:

Non-agricultural employment increased between 1999-2000 and 2004-05 (which coincides with the time the National Democratic Alliance was in power) by 37.5 million over the five-year period

Fall in unemployment rate:
Since 2004-05 fewer people joined the labor force. This meant that fewer people were looking for work, but the number of non-agricultural jobs created was as many as before so the open unemployment rate fell.

Growth of non agricultural jobs

A.Development:

• Development implies that workers leave agriculture for more productive work in industry and services, and total factor productivity increases in the entire economy. Every developing country is supposed to undergo this structural transformation.Since 2004-05, this transformation has been happening for the first time in the history of India.
• During the 11th Plan, agricultural output grew at 3.2 per cent per annum (2007-12) on average, despite crippling drought in 2009-10.
• The share of agriculture in the workforce has been in decline for decades (falling to 49 per cent in 2001-12) --> fewer workers were producing more output in agriculture, farm mechanization increased, and productivity grew.

B.Where did the agricultural-workers go?

1.Construction Employment:

• Unskilled workers who left agriculture flocked to construction employment.
• It was infrastructure (roads, bridges, airports, ports, energy projects) investment which drove most of the employment growth.

2.Rural non-farm construction related employment:

• Rural areas also saw significant growth in non-farm construction-related employment
• Government investment in rural housing for the poor (Indira Awas Yojana) grew, as did rural roads and other rural construction investment (Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act).

C.Rising Wages:

The wages rose between 2004-2005 mainly because of two reasons:

1. MGNREGA and rising minimum support prices for government procured cereals, a floor wage was created in the rural areas. This along with an increasing demand for labor in construction led to a tightening of the labor market, both rural and urban.

2. Demand for labor in construction — which is treated as non-manufacturing industry.

Growth in service jobs

Services jobs grew by 11 million, and manufacturing employment increased by a remarkable nine million in two years alone (2009-10 and 2011-12).

Why?

• After 2004-05, demand for a number of consumer goods has grown sharply, which is reflected in the rise in consumption expenditure to 2011-12. This rise of consumption expenditure shows that the numbers of poor fell(For the first time in the history of India, there was a decline in the absolute numbers of the poor after 2004-05)
• This has driven demand for goods to the bottom of the pyramid, as poor people have emerged out of poverty.
• The new non-poor demand simple manufactured consumer goods: processed food (biscuits, milk), leather goods (shoes, sandals), furniture (plastic chairs/tables, wooden furniture), textiles, garments and mobiles. All these product areas and services saw a dramatic increase in employment.
• Because these simple, low-end products (at least those consumed by the new non-poor) are produced in the unorganized sector, using labor-intensive methods.

Conclusion:

A new inclusive dynamic is in place in the Indian economy, which is difficult to reverse. There is a feedback loop between increasing demand, and production to meet that demand, that generates employment among those who will consume the products that are produced.

The echoing silence of caste - The Hindu

15th April 2014 - Link

Caste in India

Progressive-minded Indians think that caste politics is the bane of India. If it were not for the politicians who are stoking the fire of caste, India would be tearing ahead to be a part of the developed world, à la China

Congress Party manifesto has reservation for the oppressed castes in the private sector. From the fearful prognosis, it seemed that a tsunami of soul-numbing “quotas” was going to be unleashed which would gobble up an otherwise meritorious India, and which would leave nothing but an economic Stone Age in its wake!

The greatest tragedy of India is the shocking silence about caste. Caste in India is like air, it is what you breathe but yet you cannot “see” it

The irony of spewing venom on caste politics is that it is mainly politics that has delivered some limited empowerment and mobility to the oppressed castes, through reservations in Parliament, Assemblies, and in government jobs and public education.

There is a mammoth and unbridgeable gap between caste in the political sphere, and caste in the cultural sphere and the private economic sector

American Parallel

Condition in India:

• Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) survey of 315 important decision-makers in 37 Delhi-based publications and television channels, not one was found to be a Dalit or Adivasi
• Dalit population numbering 20 crore (as large as the population of Brazil!) has hardly “produced” any national cultural icons in the non-political sphere.

Condition in America:

African-Americans have similar histories of slavery and oppression as the Dalits, and even if their general condition is vastly inferior to the white population, American society has provided the conditions for the emergence of black icons who are celebrated across race barriers.

Reason: The colossal scale of our participation in denying them the opportunities, and the complicity in silencing their icons.

Cultural sphere and private sector

Foreign Example:

What could be a better demonstration of the fostering of diversity, by representing the oppressed sections, than the quota system (even with its flaws) in South African cricket?

What needs to be done?

The recognition of the vibrant struggles for empowerment of the oppressed castes has to expand beyond political confines to the cultural sphere and the private sector.

Whats the problem in doing that?

The annihilation of caste is hardly on the agenda as savarna India, especially the youth, rush to embrace neo-liberal capitalist development (now in a heady mix with Hindutva lite) in which concepts like caste-based reservation are anathema.

Solution:

All the moral outrage that is directed against reservations should be targeted at dismantling the caste system.

Then, we would not be holding on to a vacuous notion of merit which means keeping nearly 80 per cent of the population’s talents from flourishing.(Due to reservation)

Conclusion:

• Discrimination does not always mean a deliberate picking of an “upper caste” over a “lower caste,” but a systematic exclusion which results from unequal starting points leading to a grossly unequal competition.
• Destroying caste is not “uplifting” the oppressed castes; it is about liberating ourselves from the labyrinth of caste