The New Life

Had not written anything for a few months now. Not because I was not provoked. I was. But then, I had ceased to be a freelancer. Having agreed to take up a job with a media organisation, operating in all the four areas of mass media – TV, Radio, Print and Internet – I had to vent my feelings only in one of those belonging to the group. I think I did that on a few occasions on the TV channel.

I am no longer there and hence decided to return to blogosphere. And all the more because I am also far away from what is otherwise known as the mainland. I have now moved to the hills in Sikkim and have also taken up a job that I love most. I am a teacher again. The Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Sikkim University is where I teach and the first few days has been fun as much as learning. From Chennai, where it is hot, hotter and hottest, Santha and me are now in a place where it is cold, colder and coldest. It has been cold as it is in the past five days we have been here and we expect the colder and coldest weeks some months from now.

We did look forward to this shift. I was beginning to feel the discomfort of life in a city. Driving was a pain most often. In any case, it was a feeling of loneliness in the middle of so many people. Barring just a couple of them in Chennai, my friends were in far-away places in any case. Santha too felt the same way and the idea of moving out to Sikkim and teach in a university sounded great. So we have moved. And this is why I decided to write again.

The hills fascinated me first when we went to McLeodganj in May 2009. That was our destination after Delhi (where we took Chinku around to see the Teen Murti Bhawan, The Red Fort and Tees January Marg) and Amritsar (to be there at the Golden Temple and the Jallianwalah Bagh) which we enjoyed. Yes we also ended up spending some time at the Wagah Border and understood that Jingoism and Teflon Patriotism similar expressions. If that was jarring, McLeodganj was heaven. I saw the snow clad peaks from the lawns of the lodge where we spend the last four days of our holiday and that was when I had fallen in love with the mountains. Well, I had visited Gangtok and Darjeeling earlier in 1990; but I was not grown up enough to make sense of the mountains then!!!

We went to the hills again in May 2010. That was an experience about which I have written about here. And I was planning a trip to Uttarakhand this May and had even mobilised some others; the plan was to walk up from Uttarkashi to Gaumukh, in five or six days. That is not happening this year. We are now in another part of the mighty Himalayas. Like the Ocean, which has fascinated me, the mountains too make me feel humble. The mighty seas and the tall mountains make me feel small and humble. I am sure living in the hills will ensure this feeling in me for all the times to come.

We should soon go to NathuLa. We will also explore the various other tracks in Sikkim and then go to Bhutan and also to Darjeeling. We will be going to Rumtek soon; just waiting for our Bolero to reach here. And hope to write more about the places, the people and their lives as we see it and also our own life here in this beautiful place. I may write less and less of politics from now...

I must confess... I borrowed the title to this entry from Orhan Pamuk. Yes. I think he is remarkable.

Vachati

The sessions judge at Dharmapuri on September 29, 2011, convicted as many as 215 public servants for a set of crimes that included rape. Among them were high ranking police and forest officers and also those from the revenue administration. The conviction, coming as it did at the end of a legal process that began in 1995, is indeed historic. It is one of the few instances where all those accused of having participated in a brutal attack on innocent people were convicted. Of the 269 personnel accused in the case, 54 had died and thus escaped punishment. In other words, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that began probing into the acts of atrocities committed through the night on June 20, 1992, did its job to establish the charge. Sessions Judge S. Kumaraguru could not have glossed over the material evidence.

Seventeen public servants (including five forest officers, two police inspectors, six sub-inspectors and two tehshildars) were found guilty of rape among other acts of illegal violence against the hapless malayali tribes in Vachati. In the scheme of things, as ordained in our penal code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, the sessions judge could have inflicted a more severe punishment than the 10 years Rigourous Imprisonment that has been handed over to 17 of the accused. Some of them are in fact, vested with the duty to investigate such crimes and ensure that the guilty are punished. This, after all, is the role of the police. And it is hence possible and even desirable that the higher judiciary, where the convicts are most likely to appeal, enhances the punishment. Section 376(2) of the Indian Penal Code, after all, specifically deals with rape by a police officer and provides for imprisonment for life. The code lays down imprisonment for not less than 10 years; and for life as punishment.

A brief recall of the sequence of events on June 20, 1992 will be in order to see the judgment in perspective. It all began with a routine `raid’ by a band of 45 forest department officials in Vachati, a village with only 160 families in the foothills of the Sitheri range located in Tamil Nadu and not too far from Karnataka. The raid was routine because Vachati, like many such villages, happened to be a hub for stacking sandalwood smuggled out of the forests. The fact is that the hapless tribals of Vachati too were engaged, by big time operators, in the sandalwood trade and apart from cutting the wood and carrying the logs from the forest, they were also engaged in stacking them in their lands before the precious wood was transported to the towns and elsewhere. It is also a fact that like in all those instances of a tribal-smuggler nexus, the malayali tribes in Vachati too earned only a pittance.

All those 160 families depended on the public distribution system for their food requirements and lived in small tenements with tiled roof and thatches. None of them had the money to send their children to the private residential schools like some others in the illegal business of sandalwood business do. In other words, they were also forced into the illegal trade by the bent and the beautiful but denied of the wealth. The point is that the adivasis are not known for trading in sandalwood; if that were so, the forests in the region would not have had so many of them even in 1992. The raiding party, according to reports, had found 55 tonnes of sandalwood, buried under the sands in Vachati, on June 20, 1992. This was in addition to larger stocks being seized by the officers while they were smuggled out in the few months prior to the raid in Vachati. The plain and simple fact is that kingpin in the sandalwood smuggling business in this region involved someone there in the political domain who was neither a tribal nor poor. K.A.Sengottian, the then minister for forests was indeed in the know of things. He was the AIADMK’s strongman in the Salem district then. Incidentally, he remains the party’s strongman in the region even now and Minister for Agriculture.

On June 20, 1992, the raiding party met with resistance from the village and one of them suffered head injuries and was hospitalized. A large posse of police, senior forest officials and officers from the revenue department soon reached Vachati. The sun had set by then and there were as many as 80 women constables in the large posse of police that went to Vachati. The lawlessness began then and as many as 15 girls, all unmarried, bore the brunt of it all. The women constables were there but the officers seemed to have taken them to the village only to show the world that they followed the law as laid down. These girls and many others (300 in all according to police records) were arrested during the night and lodged in the Salem Central Jail subsequently. The tenements were ransacked, the wells contaminated with diesel oil and carcasses of the live-stock. The men in uniforms had done such things elsewhere and across the country both before and after Vachati on June 20, 1992.

And it is a fact that Sengotian, the then Minister for Forests, went on record to defend the police action and describing reports of the atrocities as baseless. It may be noted that the first ever news-report in the June 20, 1992 atrocities appeared as late as in August 1992. Vachati, after all, was not as remote from the mainland; a mere 70 kilometres from Salem town and connected by motor able roads. But then, like it is the case with the adivasis in many other parts, the 160 odd malayali tribals in Vachati too were outside the `mainstream’. The story came out after the CPI(M) leaders in the State took it up. And the first report, written by a student activist, on the Vachati appeared in The Frontline magazine. The State Government did not care to investigate and nothing happened until the Madras High Court ordered the CBI to investigate the case. That was as late as in 1995.

It may be added here that the sandalwood trail had taken another dimension by this time. The State Governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka had set up a Joint Special Task Force (JSTF) to nab one man called Veerapan. And since April 1993, when the JSTF was born, inhabitants in the villages across the forests in Dharmapuri, Sathyamangalam and MM Hills would experience all that the hapless malayalis of Vachati did. As many as 121 persons from the villages all over the region were detained under TADA for more than seven years and until the Supreme Court found all but four of the 121 guilty of the charges. They all languished in the Mysore Central jail after having suffered torture in the hands of the JSTF personnel for days on end. An enquiry by the Justice Sadashiva Panel set up by the National Human Rights Commission concluded that the police personnel were guilty and that a number of the villagers were killed in encounters that were fake.

The Justice Sadashiva panel had submitted its report to the NHRC on December 3, 2003, after holding 10 sittings in the course of which it recorded evidence from 192 victims and 28 officers of the JSTF. Officers of the rank of Inspector General of Police from both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka were present throughout the sittings of the panel and the officers had cross-examined all victims who deposed before the panel. Despite this, all that has happened in the name of justice is that some of the victims have been paid compensation. The police officers in the JSTF were rewarded with out-of-turn promotions and housing plots in Chennai city by the Tamil Nadu Government. That was after Veerappan was killed on October 18, 2004. A number of them, in fact, were indicted by the Justice Sadashiva panel for crimes similar to those in the Vachati case.

The Vachati outrage too would have gone unheard of but for the Madras High Court ordering that the investigation be done by the CBI. That was in 1995 and over three years after the incident. Until that time, the police had not only shielded the guilty in this case and instead trumped up charges against the victims. All the 15 girls who were subjected to rape by the police and forest officers were, in fact, held in the Salem jail for several days after June 20, 1992. It may be stressed, in this context, that K.A.Senkottian, now the Agriculture Minister, was the Minister for Forests at that time. The CBI chargesheet, in which 269 public servants were listed as accused, was filed around the same time when there was a change of Government in Tamil Nadu, in May 1996. And the verdict on September 29, 2011, holding all the 269 officers guilty of a number of crimes and convicting all the 215 who are alive (of the 269 found guilty), was based on the case made out by the CBI.

The Prince Charming has spoken... what a disaster?

If anyone there had a faint hope that the Government of the day was going to listen to the people of India, the Prince Charming has conveyed that such hopes are misplaced. Rahul Gandhi, after several days when the nation had come on the streets and on a day when a resolution committing the Government to three things: A people’s charter in the Lokpal, inclusion of the lower bureaucracy under the Lokpal and Lokayuktas in the States, the most important leader of the ruling party, only because he happened to be born in the Nehru family, has rendered a solution to the deadlock a difficult proposition.

For all the talk, in all these days, that Parliamentary supremacy shall not be denuded, the sight on TV screens, was one where Parliament was sought to be reduced to a stage where the Prince Charming had his say and nothing else. It is strange that one man, whose only credential seems that he happened to be Sonia Gandhi’s son, was given the chance to simply rubbish a Government’s Bill, now before the Standing Committee. This he did when he said that a mere statutory authority called the Lokpal will not do and that we need a Constitutional body. Well. It may be true that we need the Lokpal as a Constitutional body. But Rahul must have conveyed this to such great luminaries as Pranab Mukherjee, P.Chidambaram, Veerappa Moily, Kapil Sibal and Salman Khrusheed whose draft was accepted by the Union Cabinet and moved as the Government’s Bill to set up a Lokpal. He failed to do so then and wisdom dawned late, only at a time when a simpler solution was in sight.

That he chose the Zero Hour to prescribe what the Government should do is stupid. For, Zero Hour is when members raise issues and do not expect an immediate response. And since it happened to come from the Prince Charming, it is futile to expect those in Government to revert back to what they had committed before; to move a resolution, incorporating measures suggested by Team Anna and pass that over to the Standing Committee. Well. It is possible that the Prince Charming’s idea of a Constitutional body in the Lokpal, which will call for a simple Constitutional amendment, is also incorporated in the resolution. It seems remote at this stage for we also saw the most important leader of the Congress party driving away after he preached from the pulpit. And the Congressmen who shouted down anyone and everyone who rose against Rahul Gandhi will now be rest assured that let the people do whatever they wanted as long as Rahul Gandhi did not speak a word on how to bring the crisis to a resolution.

The message is very clear. The Congressmen will shout that Parliament is supreme. But that will not apply to the Prince Charming. And will wait for another day when the Prince Charming speaks out and takes another line. Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, who had promised only 24 hours before Rahul Gandhi screamed, will slide back and take another position. This, certainly, is NOT democracy.

Remember that infamous statement: If they do not have bread, let them eat cake. That is what Rahul Gandhi seems to be telling us now.

In response to some criticism against the Hazare campaign

The week that passed by was indeed tumultuous. The political discourse in India has changed. Anna Hazare and his comrades have baffled, even those who empathized with the campaign with their perseverance. The fact is that it is clear now that Anna and his team are distinct, in all aspects, from Baba Ramdev. The surge of protests against the arrests is clearly a pointer to this. Baba Ramdev could not move an inch further after the police ``acted’’ against his followers. Anna Hazare’s arrest, on the contrary turned the whole of Delhi and the country into a venue for protest.

All this notwithstanding, there is criticism against the movement and in most instances the critics seem to be repeating chants that were heard in the early Seventies when JP had captured the imagination of a generation of the youth and rallied them against corruption. It may be placed on record, at the outset, that JP drew his inspiration from the Navnirman andolan that rocked Gujarat and where the students, who began protesting against hike in the mess charges in an Engineering college in Ahmedabad, ended up demanding Chimanbhai Patel’s resignation and fresh elections to the State assembly. Patel was considered corrupt by the people of Gujarat and it was not merely a perception. The movement achieved its demand and the victory of the Janata Morcha in the elections held in June 1975.

JP’s movement in Bihar too challenged the state in Bihar and as it grew in strength, the then establishment headed by Indira Gandhi pulled all the stops to crush the campaign. The rest – the Emergency, the 1977 elections and the Janata regime -- is history. The Anna Hazare campaign now has striking similarities with the JP movement. For instance, JP too was apprehensive of involving the parties that were then opposing the ruling Congress. He persisted with that until he was challenged by Indira Gandhi to ``prove’’ his own strength by contesting elections. JP bit the bait and witnessed his apprehensions come true. The Janata Party’s birth and its decimation in his own lifetime led a section of his followers away from the mainstream of Parliamentary democracy and spend their time and energy in building civil society institutions. Some adopted the path of receiving funds from abroad while a few persisted with organizing and orchestrating protests.

The point is that the soul of the JP movement had not died and the IT explosion in the past two decades lent a means to mobilizing protests that was not available to JP and his comrades then. In other words, censorship of the state controlled TV and Radio and the willingness of the print media to confirm had left JP without any other option than enlist support from the parties that were then in the opposition to mobilize in times of protest. This is not the case now. Some hard work during the past months with a dedicated set of IT professionals gave Anna Hazare and his team the cadre that could carry out protests, simultaneously, across the country. In other words, unlike in the past, technology has helped raise a political campaign without having to depend on parties, whether from the Left or the Right.

Only the naïve would have waited for one of the many parties to launch a campaign of this nature. Political parties across the spectrum are guilty of corruption and if the BJP and the CPI(M) have joined the campaign in their own way, it is guided by their survival instinct rather than any commitment to an effective institution to catch the corrupt. The nation’s middle classes as well as the poor and the oppressed are no longer innocent. They know the truth about the parties. And they waited for an alternative. There is, hence, now a possibility of an option emerging from this movement. It may or may not be a part of Hazare’s agenda and may or may not turn into another party in the long run.

The point now is whether the nation needs a law that creates an institution to catch the thief from among the political class, investigate their crime and prosecute them; and also do what is needed in accordance with law to take back such ill-gotten wealth? And if this is the question, whether the institution that the Government’s Bill seeks to set up will achieve the objects. The answer is that it will not do. The institution that will come into place will have to be empowered to receive complaints; must have the machinery to investigate under its superintendence; must be empowered to prosecute. And leave the judgment to the courts. This, after all, is what the CBI is meant to do: To receive complaints against the high and mighty, investigate and prosecute. The political establishment that is resisting a meaningful Lokpal is happy to allow a CBI with such powers! Only because they know that the CBI is their handmaiden.

Just think of this: Jaganmohan Reddy is now in the CBI’s grip. It is happening because he began irritating the Congress party. Not a day before he set out on his own. This is not to say that he is a victim. He is not. But he may manage to wriggle out if he negotiates and assures the Congress that he will behave in future. The CBI officers, drawn from among the IPS personnel, are indeed vulnerable because the agency comes under the Department of Personnel and Training and hence under the Prime Minister. An independent Lokpal, like the CAG or the Election Commission, can change the situation. It may not. But it can. And that is making the political class adamant that it cannot accept the proposals put forward by Anna Hazare and his team.

The Government side is now arguing that they may alter their Bill in a substantive sense but not within the time-frame set by Anna Hazare and his team. They say that Parliamentary Procedure will take longer and that August 31, 2011 is too short a time and that changing the law in such a pace will be an affront to the Constitution. The Congress leaders will only have to be reminded of the Constitution (Thirty Ninth Amendment) Act, 1975. The supreme law of the land was amended, in the middle of the Emergency. The amendment added Article 329-A to the Constitution by which election disputes involving the Prime Minister and the Speaker were kept outside the scope of the courts to decide. It was intended to save Indira Gandhi, whose election from Rae Bareili was held null and void by the Allahabad High Court.

The Constitution (Thirty Ninth Amendment) Act, 1975 was moved on August 6, 1975, the Bill was considered and voted in the Lok Sabha on August 7, 1975, in the Rajya Sabha on August 8, 1975 and endorsed by State Assemblies in special sessions convened on August 9, 1975 (though it happened to be a Saturday) and brought into effect on August 10, 1975 after obtaining assent the same day. A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court was to take up the appeal by Indira Gandhi against the Allahabad High Court verdict on August 11, 1975! It is another matter that the Constitution Bench struck down the amendment.

The point is that it is possible that the Bill can be amended and made into a law in just a few days. It is, after all, an ordinary legislation.