December 2016
GREEN FEATURES
- जलवायु संकट,
पारिस्थिकी
-
प्रदूषण
-
आदिवासी विमर्श
-
कृषि और किसानी
- जल
दर्शन
- देशज ज्ञान और स्वास्थ्य
- विविध
Localism in the Age of Trump
'Trump’s ascendancy probably represents not a
victory for localism or even populism,' writes Heinber, 'but merely a
co-optation of legitimate popular frustrations by a corporatist huckster who
intends to lead his merry band of cronies and sycophants in looting what’s left
of America’s natural and cultural resources.' (Photo credit:
EtiAmmos/Shutterstock.com)
2016 will be
remembered as the year Donald Trump—a wealthy, narcissistic political novice with a strong authoritarian bent—was elected president of the United
States after campaigning against economic globalization. The events are fresh
enough in many people’s minds that feelings are still raw and the implications
are both unclear and, for many, terrifying. For those who have spent years, in
some cases decades, denouncing globalization and seeking to build a localist
alternative, this is surely a vexing and confusing moment.
When the World Trade
Organization’s ministerial conference in 1999 erupted into “the Battle of Seattle,” demonstrators voiced arguments that might
resonate with the average Trump voter. They asserted that, for the United
States, globalization was resulting in the offshoring of manufacturing that
would otherwise have occurred domestically; that while American consumers were
gaining access to cheaper consumer products, the hourly wages of workers were
stagnating or falling in real terms due to competition with foreign labor; and
that the investor class was benefitting significantly while the wage class was
losing ground. All of these points were more recently driven home, to great
effect, by The Donald.
However, the localist
critique of globalization went much further than anything Trump himself has
articulated. Anti-globalization activists decried a “race to the bottom” in
environmental protections with each new trade deal, as well as the global loss
of thousands of indigenous languages and locally-adapted forms of architecture,
art, agriculture, and music in favor of a uniform global commercial culture
dominated by corporate advertising and centralized industrial production
methods. Further, teach-ins organized by International Forum on Globalization (IFG) beginning in the 1990s; books by the
movement’s intellectual leaders (John Cavanagh’s and Jerry Mander’s Alternatives to
Economic Globalization; Kirkpatrick
Sale’s Dwellers in the Land and Human Scale;
Michael Shuman’s Small-Mart Revolution and The Local Economy Solution; Helena Norberg Hodge’s Ancient Futures); and thousands of on-the-ground locally
rooted cooperative efforts scattered worldwide promoted a vision of a green,
sustainable, equitable bioregionalism.
Throughout the last
couple of decades, some on the political left argued against localism and for
globalism. Returning to a politics and economics centered in the community, it
was said, would undermine the grand liberal vision of a borderless world with
protections for human rights and the environment. Liberal globalists argued
that climate change can only be fought with international treaties. It is by
becoming global citizens, they intoned, that we can overcome ancient prejudices
and fulfill humanity’s evolutionary destiny. Localists responded that, in
practice, economic globalization has nothing to do with moral elevation or with
worker and environmental protections, but everything to do with maximizing
short-term profit for the few at the expense of long-term sustainability for
people and planet.
That philosophical
dispute may continue, but the context has shifted dramatically: the commanding
new fact-on-the-ground is that the American electorate has for now sided with
the anti-globalist argument, and we face the imminent presidency of Donald
Trump as a result. Should localists declare victory? As we’re about to see, the
situation is complicated and holds some opportunities along with plenty of
perils.
True, voters rejected
a predatory trade system that, in Helena Norberg Hodges’s words, “put ordinary people in permanent
competition with each other.” However, Trump is not a one-man government; nor
does he stand at the head of an organization of people with a coherent critique
of globalism and a well thought-out alternative program. His administration
will reflect the ideas and ideals of hundreds of high-placed officials, and
Trump’s key appointees so far consist of business leaders, Republican insiders,
and former lobbyists. They also stand to be the wealthiest cabinet in the history of the U.S. government.
Crucially, not even Donald Trump himself has a clear idea of how to actually
implement his stated intention of bringing back jobs for American workers. His
first stab at the task, persuading the Carrier company not to move its air
conditioner manufacturing operations to Mexico (actually, fewer than half the
jeopardized jobs were saved), entailed doling out huge tax breaks—a tactic that
Bernie Sanders rightly points out will simply lead to other companies
announcing outsourcing plans so they can win similar concessions.
Let’s be clear:
Trump’s ascendancy probably represents not a victory for localism or even
populism, but merely a co-optation of legitimate popular frustrations by a
corporatist huckster who intends to lead his merry band of cronies and
sycophants in looting what’s left of America’s natural and cultural resources.
This would be the antithesis of green localism. Indeed, we may see an activist
federal government attempt to trample local efforts to protect the environment,
workers’ rights, or anything else that gets in the way of authoritarian
corporatism. Congress may train its gun sights on local ordinances to ban
fracking and GMOs, and on firearm regulations in states with the temerity to
stand up to the NRA. Trump’s message appeals as much to tribalism as to
anti-globalization sentiments—and only to members of certain tribes.
What should we
localists do, then? Bernie Sanders, who ran on a far more genuinely localist
platform than Trump’s, says he might work with the new president if conditions
are right. In a recent interview with Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, Sanders said he would cooperate with Trump
where there was common ground, but oppose him wherever the new President
impinged on the interests of workers, people of color, immigrants, women, or
the environment:
[T]his guy talked about ending our disastrous
trade policies, something I’ve been fighting for 30 years. He talked about
taking on the drug companies, taking on Wall Street, taking on the overall
political establishment—‘draining the swamp.’ We will see to what degree there
was any honesty in what he was saying.
Trump has also
promised to keep America from invading more countries. Good luck with that.
Specifically for
localists, there may be opportunities to collaborate on the revival of domestic
manufacturing. However, if that happens on Trump’s terms, the lion’s share of
benefits will likely go to business owners. Trump says he wants to spend a
trillion dollars on infrastructure for the country, and many localists would
agree the nation needs an enormous investment in electric rail, public
transportation, and renewable energy technologies if it is to mitigate climate
change and the impacts of oil depletion. Yet the infrastructure Trump favors
consists mostly of more fossil fuel-dependent highways and airport runways,
which we already have way too much of, thank you very much; and he proposes to
get that infrastructure built by giving tax breaks to corporations, whether
they actually produce anything or not. Collaboration with authoritarian leaders
always leads to moral quandaries, as Masha Gessen details in a recent thoughtful essay in New York Review of
Books. But there may be few
incentives to tempt localists to work with a Trump administration.
Another strategic
response to the new leader would be resistance: block him from doing bad
things, voice displeasure in creative and strategic ways, and pour metaphoric
sand in the gears of the new administration. There will likely be lots of awful
things to oppose, including efforts to privatize public assets, including
federal lands and even whole government agencies; efforts to weaken consumer
protections, women’s rights, immigrant rights, worker protections,
environmental regulations (including reversals of steps to deal with global
climate change and stays on oil pipeline construction); assaults on civil
rights and civil liberties, workers’ rights, prisoners’ rights, public
education, and more.
Resistance at the
local level actually holds considerable promise. As Heather Gerken wrote in a recent article in The Nation,
States can significantly slow down or reverse
federal policies simply by dragging their feet and doing the bare minimum
necessary. That’s how state and localities have thwarted federal education
reform over the last several years. Sometimes states just pull their
enforcement resources. . . . Some states even engage in a form of civil
disobedience, as many did in refusing to enforce parts of the Patriot Act.
If Trump’s
authoritarian personality were to become the main driver of public policy,
non-compliance could be the order of the day for elected or appointed state
officials, local police officers, prosecutors, juries, state and local agencies,
school boards, and teachers—and not just in blue states, nor just in big cities
or college towns. Already, according to Gerken,
. . . cities including Chicago, Los Angeles,
and San Francisco have promised to be sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants,
while Governor Andrew Cuomo has insisted that New York will be a “refuge” for
Muslims and other minority groups. These promises have made the incoming
administration so nervous that it has threatened to cut off all federal
funding—a threat that is plainly unconstitutional.
Consider a worst-case
scenario: At some point after Donald Trump is fully ensconced in the White
House, a widespread disaster occurs—perhaps an economic crisis for which the
Great Recession was only a dress rehearsal; maybe a natural catastrophe—and the
president declares a national emergency, suspending the Constitution. Congress
and the Supreme Court decline to resist this unprecedented power grab. While he
is making well-publicized efforts to deal with the immediate crisis, Trump
decides to use the opportunity to punish his enemies, issuing arrest orders for
journalists, left-leaning college professors, immigrant-rights and
environmental activists, and anyone else who has managed to offend him. Public
vocal opposition to the administration becomes foolhardy. In such
circumstances, only quiet but effective local resistance would stand much
chance of saving careers and perhaps even lives. Thankfully, as Gerken notes,
“As hard as it is to control Washington, it’s even harder for Washington to
control the rest of us.”
This Trumpocalypse
scenario probably won’t materialize, and we should all pray it doesn’t; I
describe it here only because it seems far more likely to occur under the
coming presidency than any in recent memory, for reasons I’ll return to below.
In any case, the Trump administration may be shaping up to be one of the most
centralist and anti-local in history, battling thousands of communities
determined to thwart and resist federal policies at every step.
One line of resistance
deserves special attention: the protection of vulnerable places. All geography
is local, and the salvation of that grand generality, “the environment,” often
comes down to a fight on the part of local citizens to defend a particular
river, forest, or at-risk species. This is likely to be especially true during
the tenure of a federal administration committed to rolling back national
environmental regulations.
As important as
resistance efforts will be, pouring all our energy into opposition may be poor
strategy. Just as important will be building local alternatives—cooperative
institutions and enterprises, including community land trusts, city-owned
public banks, credit unions, and publicly owned utilities investing in
renewables. Such constructive efforts have, after all, always been the main
work of committed localists.
Transition U.S. recently published a report highlighting “25 enterprises that build resilience,” including Bay Bucks, a business-to-business barter exchange program in California’s
greater San Francisco Bay Area with more than 250 participating local
businesses; CERO in Boston, MA, a worker-owned energy and
recycling cooperative; Cooperative Jackson, in Jackson MS, which is developing a network of cooperatives
engaging in a range of services and pursuits from child care to urban farming;
and Co-op Power, a network of regional renewable energy
cooperatives in the Northeastern U.S. These are merely representative examples
of what amounts to a fledgling global movement that has emerged partly in
response to the Global Financial Crisis. It goes by various names—the sharing
economy, the solidarity economy, the cooperative economy, the local economy
movement—and takes many forms, all with the aims of decentralization and
self-organization, and of meeting human needs with a minimum of environmental
impact. Sometimes municipal governments get involved, investing public
resources into worker-cooperative development. Further, localist successes are often shared
internationally—in programs such as Sister Cities
International and United Cities and
Local Governments (UCLG),
which is effectively an international league of municipalities—so as to seed
similar efforts far afield.
*
* *
The next four years
may be a time when much that is beautiful and admirable about America is
attacked, looted, liquidated, and suppressed; and when some of the more
shameful elements of the country are empowered, amplified, and celebrated. If
there is a political corollary to Newton’s third law (for every action there is
an equal and opposite reaction), then the radical policy shifts promised by
Trump will engender an enormous backlash. It is as yet unclear what forms that
backlash will take, but much of the energy unleashed will be expressed locally.
The wider historical
context within which Trump and anti-Trump forces collide will have enormous
significance. While there is often no way to predict events like natural
disasters, major terrorist attacks, or the outbreak of a major war, there are
sometimes prior warnings. Currently one warning sign is flashing bright: the
likelihood of a serious economic downturn within the next four years. Debt
levels are unprecedented, a cyclical recession is already overdue, and our
oil-based energy system is running on fumes. Hard times for the economy usually result in rejection of the
government that’s in charge when the crisis happens to hit. Which means the
anti-Trump reaction will likely eventually be intensified even further, though
it also means the Trumpocalypse scenario described earlier in this essay might
have a handy trigger.
Trump voters were not
all racists, misogynists, and xenophobes. Many were simply ordinary Americans
fed up with a government that tolerated or actively supported the dismantling
of the American middle class through global trade deals and corporate
influence, and who also sensed the decline of American civilization (which, it
must be said, is inevitable in some way or form). They voted for a man who
promised to make America great again; what they’re actually likely to see is
more economic turmoil. Trump promised not to touch Social Security, Medicare,
or Medicaid, but the team he’s heading promises to gut those programs. One way
or another, many Trump voters will likely feel betrayed. This could translate
to a deepening national political cynicism, or to action.
Can we enlist those
people and many others not just in opposing Trump, but also in building genuine
local alternatives to the globalist excesses that elected Trump in the first
place? That can only happen as the result of thousands, perhaps millions of
honest conversations among neighbors, friends, and relatives, in towns and
cities across the nation. Arguments about politics often accomplish little, but
efforts to find common ground in community projects that meet people’s needs
could eventually change everything. Localism done right—that is, in an
inclusive rather than exclusionary way—offers the best path toward maintaining
and building national cohesion. And stronger communities, local economies, and
greater self-reliance are all things that many people in Trump’s America would
support.
Localism is a long,
slow, patient path that requires trust, patience, and hard work. Such mundane
work may sound boring in a time of political crisis and turmoil. But it may
soon get a lot more interesting.
Agriculture:
Glimpses of the
Food Sangam at Muniguda, Odisha
Interview
with Pat Mooney of the ETC group, on stopping the
mega-mergers (Bayer Monsanto), digitalization of agriculture (“googlefication”) and gene drives
Food Talk: At CSE's media brief, recommendations and agreement on
India's weak regulations and policy gaps regarding food labelling, claims and advertisements http://www.cseindia.org/content/food-talk
Kutch-based
Sarhad Dairy to start processing camel milk. Amul to launch camel milk
product in March 2017.
Farmers Pension:
BARCIK, on International Farmers Day, acknowledged farmers as food
fighters as Farmers claim to introduce Pension Scheme.
Daily News Paper: Kalerkantho,
Dated: October, 2016
In a Award giving ceremony Farmers Claimed to introduce Pension
Scheme
Considering the hard reality, farmers demanded to introduce pension
scheme to them who crossed sixty years for maintaining a better life. The
demand has been raised at award giving ceremony held at liberation war museum
auditorium on Saturday in Dhaka, Bangladesh.To mark the world food day and
international Rural Women day BARCIK and Save Environment Movement (POBA), a
citizens’ movement jointly arranged the event and awarded to the farmers and
farmers leaders acknowledging their tireless effort in food productionand
keeping nations development wheel moving forward.
In the program farmers from different agro-ecological zones depicted
their challenges in food production. Apart from these, farmingexperience,
initiatives were shared and described on how they produce despite all
adversities. Mr. Nasir Ahmed from north-west drought prone Noagaon district
mentioned that they aren’t getting benefit although government putting subsidy
in agricultural inputs. He claimed middlemen, retailers and local influential persons are getting benefit from the subsidized money. He
added that production cost of 1 mound (37Kgs)rice is around BDT 700 but market
value of the same amount of rice is only about BDT 500 that incur lost of BDT
200 which discouraging farmers to grow rice. Mr. Sirajul Islam, farmer from
south- western coastal Satkhira district said, although farmers are
contributing to food security but they don’t have own land to grow, even
marginal farmers are now gradually become landless which is alarming for food
security in future. In the program Farmers from different areas claimed to
introduce pension scheme that can ensure a better life in future when grow
older.
The program was chaired by Mr. Abu Naser Khan while Mr. Sukanta Sen,
Executive Director of BARCIK delivered his welcome speech. Mr. Azharul Islam
Arzu, a senior lawyer and Vice Chairperson of Bangladesh Farmers Association (a
left orientated oldest farmers’ association) spoke as special guest and farmers
are provided scope to deliver their speech. The program was moderated by Dr.
Lenin Chowdhury.
Ensuring fundamental rights of farmers
stressed
They referred to their enormous contribution to the country's agricultural development , the speakers unanimously said the farmers deserve the rights of getting all requisite privileges. There is no alternative to protect their interests as a whole.
They were addressing the inaugural session of a daylong farmers gathering held at Public Library premises in the metropolis on Sunday. On the occasion, 21 farmers were awarded as recognition of their laudable contribution to the farming field.
Bangladesh Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge (BARCIK), a rights-based development organization, organized the programme in observance of the World Food Day-2016. More than 300 farmers from various areas in vast Barind tract attended the meeting.
Additional Commissioner of Rajshahi division Sultan Abdul Hamid addressed the discussion as chief guest saying the present government is very much positive towards protecting the legitimate rights of the farmers.
Lauding their contribution to the farm production he urged the attending farmers to avail the incentives and other opportunities being provided by the government. With farmers' organizer valiant freedom fighter Shamsuddin Mondal in the chair, Farmers Rahima Khatun and Abdul Mukid Dulal also spoke.
During his keynote presentation, Shahidul Islam, Barind Region Coordinator of BARCIK, puts forward a demand of initiating pension scheme for the old aged farmers for their food security.
He mentioned that the diversities are gradually declining now due to various natural and manmade catastrophes posing a serious threat to the farmers' community. So, there should be a campaign and state level interventions.
In the wake of abnormal declining of natural resources like native crop seeds, fish and birds species and other wildlife, conservation of natural resources has become indispensable for facing the adverse impacts of climate change.
The development activist opined that many native crops and vegetable varieties are gradually declining. Many of the native fish species, particularly the small indigenous ones are on the verge of extinction due to various reasons.
Importance should be given to capacity building to address climate change in the region with special reference to conservation of drought tolerant species.
Published at Bangladesh Sangbad
Sangstha (BSS), the country's national news agency on 17th October,
2016.,
http://www.bssnews.net/newsDetails.php?cat=4&id=613695&date=2016-10-17
पत्र
सूचना कार्यालय
भारत सरकार
जल संसाधन मंत्रालय
भारत सरकार
जल संसाधन मंत्रालय
23-दिसंबर-2016
18:31 IST
जल संसाधन, नदी विकास और गंगा संरक्षण मंत्रालय की मुख्य
उपलब्धियां
वर्षांत समीक्षा 2016
|
जल संसाधन,
नदी, विकास
एवं गंगा संरक्षण मंत्रालय
|
गंगा संरक्षण
·
केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडल ने नमामी गंगे
कार्यक्रम के तहत हाइब्रिड वार्षिक वृत्ति आधार पर सार्वजनिक निजी भागीदारी
(पीपीपी) मॉडल के प्रस्ताव को अपनी मंजूरी दे दी थी। इसका उद्देश्य भारत में
अपशिष्ट जल क्षेत्र में सुधार लाना है।
·
नमामी गंगे कार्यक्रम को लागू करने
में तेजी लाने की दिशा में एक प्रमुख पहल के रूप में गंगा टास्क फोर्स बटालियन की
पहली कंपनी को गढ़मुक्तेश्वर में तैनात किया गया था।
·
नमामी गंगे कार्यक्रम के एक हिस्से के
रूप में भारत सरकार ने प्रवासी भारतीयों, अनिवासी भारतीयों, भारतीय मूल के व्यक्तियों,
संस्थाओं और कॉरपोरेट्स को गंगा संरक्षण में योगदान देने हेतु
प्रोत्साहित करने के लिए 'स्वच्छ गंगा कोष’ की स्थापना की। 4 मार्च, 2016 तक स्वच्छ गंगा कोष
में कुल 87.69 करोड़ रुपए का योगदान प्राप्त हुआ।
·
नमामी गंगे कार्यक्रम के तहत गंगा
संरक्षण के लिए एक कार्यान्वयन समझौते पर 16 अप्रैल,
2016 को जल संसाधन मंत्रालय, नदी विकास और
गंगा संरक्षण तथा जर्मनी की जर्मन इंटरनेशनल कोरपोरेशन (जीआईजेड) के बीच नई दिल्ली
में हस्ताक्षर किए गए थे।
·
जल संसाधन, नदी विकास और गंगा संरक्षण मंत्रालय के तहत
स्वच्छ गंगा राष्ट्रीय मिशन ने इंडियन इंस्टीट्यूट कानपुर (आईआईटीके) के सहयोग से
गंगा नदी बेसिन प्रबंधन और अध्ययन केंद्र (सीजीआरबीएमएस) की
नई दिल्ली में औपचारिक शुरूआत की घोषणा की।
·
कुल 808.23 एमएलडी क्षमता वाली 34
परियोजनाओं के तहत एनजीआरबीए कार्यक्रम की शुरूआत से अब तक गंगा बेसिन राज्यों में
41 सीवेज उपचार संयंत्र विकास/ पुनर्वास स्वीकृत किए गए।
·
राष्ट्रीय गंगा नदी बेसिन प्राधिकरण
(एनजीआरबीए) की
अधिकारप्राप्त संचालन समिति (ईएससी) ने घाटों और शमशान घाटों के विकास के लिए
परियोजनाओं को मंजूरी दे दी है इन परियोजनाओं की कुल अनुमानित लागत 2446 करोड़
रुपये है।
·
जल संसाधन, नदी विकास और गंगा संरक्षण मंत्रालय ने गंगा
अधिनियम मसौदा तैयार करने के लिए एक समिति का गठन किया है। न्यायमूर्ति श्री गिरधर
मालवीय (सेवानिवृत्त) को इस समिति का अध्यक्ष नियुक्त किया गया।
·
राष्ट्रीय गंगा नदी बेसिन प्राधिकरण
(एनजीआरबीए) की अधिकारप्राप्त
संचालन समिति ने लगभग 400 करोड़ रुपये लागत की विभिन्न
परियोजनाओं अपनी मंजूरी दी है।
·
जल संसाधन, नदी विकास और गंगा संरक्षण मंत्रालय ने नमामी गंगे
कार्यक्रम के शीघ्र कार्यान्वयन के लिए कृषि और किसान कल्याण मंत्रालय के साथ
दिल्ली में एक समझौता ज्ञापन पर हस्ताक्षर किए।
·
केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडल ने गंगा नदी
(संरक्षण, सुरक्षा और प्रबंधन)
प्राधिकरण आदेश 2016 को मंजूरी दे दी है। इस आदेश में त्वरित तरीके से नीति और
कार्यान्वयन के लिए एक नए संस्थागत ढांचे का प्रावधान किया गया है और
राष्ट्रीय स्वच्छ मिशन को स्वतंत्र और जवाबदेह तरीके से अपने कार्य का
निर्वहन करने के लिए सशक्त बनाया गया है।
·
मंत्रालय ने पेय जल और स्वच्छता
मंत्रालय को चालू चालू वित्त वर्ष के दौरान स्वच्छ भारत मिशन (ग्रामीण) के तहत
गंगा कार्य योजना को लागू करने के लिए 315 करोड़ रुपये की राशि जारी की है।
·
सरकार ने जापान इंटरनेशनल कॉरपोरेशन
एजेंसी (जेआईसीए) द्वारा दिए गए विकासात्मक ऋणों के रूप में यमुना की परियोजनाओं
के लिए 496.90 करोड़ रुपये राशि की वित्तीय सहायता का लाभ उठाया।
·
30 सितंबर, 2016 के अनुसार नमामी गंगे कार्यक्रम के तहत
128 परियोजनाएं (एनजीआरबीए कार्यक्रम के तहत स्वीकृत मौजूदा परियोजनाओं सहित)
स्वीकृत की गई इन परियोजनाओं की अनुमानित लागत 9419 करोड़ रुपये है।
नदी विकास
·
उपग्रह चित्रों के आधार पर भारतीय
अंतरिक्ष अनुसंधान संगठन (इसरो) ने भारत के उत्तर-पश्चिमी भाग में पैलियो-चैनलों
पर एक अध्ययन का आयोजन किया। इस अध्ययन से पता चला है कि पैलियो-चैनल्स हिमालय के
साथ-साथ अरावली पहाड़ियों से शुरू होकर और दक्षिण की तरफ बढ़कर हरियाणा, पंजाब, राजस्थान और
गुजरात राज्यों में प्रवाहित होते हैं।
·
ब्रह्मपुत्र बराक नोर्थइस्ट रिवर डेवलपमेंट
कोरपोरेशन (बीबीएनईआरडीसी) नामक निगम के गठन के
लिए एक संशोधित विधेयक का मसौदा तैयार किया गया है।
जल
संसाधन
·
केंद्रीय जल संसाधन, नदी विकास और गंगा संरक्षण मंत्री सुश्री उमा
भारती ने घोषणा की है कि जल मंथन सम्मेलन अब प्रतिवर्ष आयोजित किया जाएगा।
·
‘सतत जल प्रबंधन के लिए एकीकृत दृष्टिकोण' विषय पर जल मंथन-2 सम्मेलन नई दिल्ली में 24 फरवरी, 2016 को आयोजित किया गया था।
·
मौजूदा बांध पुनर्वास और सुधार
परियोजना (डीआरआईपी) से सीखे गए सबक पर एक कार्यशाला का 19 फरवरी, 2016 को नई दिल्ली में आयोजन किया गया था।
·
जल संसाधन मंत्रालय के लिए संसाधनों
का कुल आवंटन 2015-16 में 7,431
करोड़ रुपये था। इसे बजटीय सहायता और बाजार उधारी के माध्यम से केंद्रीय बजट में
वर्ष 2016-17 में बढ़ाकर 12,517 करोड़ रुपये कर दिया गया। यह
आवंटन में 168 प्रतिशत से अधिक की वृद्धि दर्शाता है।
·
भारत जल सप्ताह के चौथे संस्करण का 04
से 08 अप्रैल, 2016 तक आयोजन किया
गया। इसका उद्घाटन जल संसाधन, नदी विकास और गंगा संरक्षण
मंत्री सुश्री उमा भारती ने नई दिल्ली में किया था।
·
जल फिल्म महोत्सव का नई दिल्ली में
वाटर एक्सपो 2016 के अवसर पर 8 मार्च, 2016 को आयोजन किया गया था।
·
सरकार ने विश्व बैंक द्वारा दी गई 3,679.77 करोड़ रुपये सहायता से एक बाह्य सहायता
प्राप्त परियोजना के रूप में केन्द्रीय क्षेत्र योजना के तहत राष्ट्रीय जल विज्ञान
परियोजना को मंजूरी दी थी।
·
केंद्रीय जल संसाधन, नदी विकास और गंगा संरक्षण मंत्री सुश्री उमा भारती ने साहिबगंज, झारखंड में 13 मई,
2016 को गंगा नदी के संरक्षण के लिए नमामी गंगे कार्यक्रम के तहत
ग्रामीण स्वच्छता पहलों के लिए नौ परियोजनाओं का शुभारंभ किया था।
·
प्रधानमंत्री श्री नरेन्द्र मोदी ने
अफगानिस्तान के राष्ट्रपति डॉ. अशरफ गनी के साथ 10 जून, 2016 को पश्चिमी अफगानिस्तान के हेरात प्रांत
के चिस्त-ए-शरीफ में अफगान-भारत मैत्री बांध (सलमा बांध) का
संयुक्त रूप से उद्घाटन किया था।
·
केंद्रीय जल संसाधन, नदी विकास और गंगा संरक्षण मंत्री सुश्री उमा भारती ने महानदी बेसिन में विभिन्न जल संसाधन मुद्दों/
परियोजनाओं पर विचार करने के लिए नई दिल्ली में ओडिशा और छत्तीसगढ़ की सरकारों के
प्रतिनिधियों की एक बैठक बुलाई थी। इस बैठक का आयोजन केंद्रीय जल संसाधन, नदी विकास और गंगा संरक्षण मंत्री सुश्री उमा
भारती द्वारा 26 जुलाई, 2016 को संसद में दिए दए आश्वासन के
अनुपालन में किया गया था।
·
सरकार ने नमामी गंगे कार्यक्रम के तहत
"गंगा ग्राम" नामक नई पहल की शुरूआत की है। इस कार्यक्रम के तहत स्थायी
स्वच्छता के बुनियादी ढांचे और साफ-सफाई प्रक्रियाओं के विकास से गांवों को मॉडल
गांवों के रूप में विकसित किया जाएगा। पहले चरण में सरकार ने 306 गांवों में गंगा
ग्राम पहल की शुरुआत कर दी है।
·
जल संसाधन, केंद्रीय मंत्री, नदी
विकास और गंगा संरक्षण मंत्री सुश्री उमा भारती और केंद्रीय शहरी विकास मंत्री
श्री एम. वेंकैया नायडू ने वीडियो कॉन्फ्रेंस के माध्यम से दस महत्वपूर्ण शहरों
में स्मार्ट गंगा नगर योजना का शुभारंभ किया। ये शहर हैं - हरिद्वार, ऋषिकेश, मथुरा-वृंदावन, वाराणसी,
कानपुर, इलाहाबाद, लखनऊ,
पटना, साहिबगंज और बैरकपुर।
·
जल संसाधन, केंद्रीय मंत्री, नदी
विकास और गंगा संरक्षण सुश्री उमा भारती ने कानपुर में गंगा बैराज पर नमामी गंगे
कार्यक्रम के तहत 560 करोड़ रुपये लागत की विभिन्न परियोजनाओं की शुरूआत की।
·
जल संसाधन, नदी विकास और गंगा संरक्षण मंत्रालय ने बेसिन
की जमीनी हकीकत का आकलन करने के लिए कावेरी बेसिन दौरा करने हेतु एक उच्च स्तरीय
तकनीकी टीम का गठन किया था। केन्द्रीय जल आयोग के अध्यक्ष श्री जी. एस. झा को इस
टीम का अध्यक्ष नियुक्त किया गया।
·
त्वरित सिंचाई लाभ कार्यक्रम
(एआईबीपी) के तहत 99 प्राथमिकता वाली सिंचाई परियोजनाओं के
A wait for Raj Babbar and development
Dry agricultural land, juxtaposed with the
Ramganga river flowing by, marks the tragedy of Lambagar — a village where
agricultural land awaits irrigation, houses await electricity, and the
villagers await roads.
A gram panchayat comprising 20 hamlets, Lambagar
in Uttarakhand’s hill district of Chamoli has been adopted by Raj Babbar, Rajya
Sabha member from Uttarakhand, under the Centre’s ‘Sansad Aadarsh Gram Yojna’
(SAGY).
With 270 families and a population of over 1,100,
Lambagar awaits development works as much as it awaits Mr. Babbar’s maiden
visit to the village.
At the entrance of the village from where a
bridle path carved through the hill branches out to the hamlets under the gram
panchayat, is an information board flashing the projects proposed under the
SAGY.
Among the “proposed schemes” mentioned on the
information board are a motorable road, a protection wall in the primary
school, repair of an irrigation canal, construction of check dams to stop the
sinking of land, a wall for protection against wild animals, electrification of
hamlets, and repair of drinking water pipelines.
Pointing at the information board, Madan Singh,
an 87-year-old retired Army man from the village, said, “The information board
is a façade. In the past two years, not one of the proposals has been attended
to… We’ve been fooled.”
Gopal Singh, a Class-12 student from the
Panchayat’s Lamdegadh village whose house is 8 km from the nearest motorable
road, said, “We have purchased solar lamps since there is no electricity in our
hamlet. We use the lamps for performing the daily chores.”
The village was first adopted under the SAGY by
Congress Rajya Sabha member Manorama Dobriyal Sharma. After her death in
February 2015, as Mr. Babbar replaced Sharma in the Rajya Sabha, he promised to
fulfil the tasks that Sharma had undertaken. Lambagar being developed into a
model village was one such task.
However, while Mr. Babbar, being president of the
Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee, is busy handling the party works in U.P., he
appointed one M.S. Negi as his representative in the village.
Speaking with The Hindu, Mr. Negi blamed
the Chamoli district authorities for the delay in the SAGY works. “The district
authorities are responsible for the delay in works… Even after several meetings
with the authorities, the baseline survey of the village has not been done yet,
without which no work can be initiated under the SAGY,” Mr. Negi said blaming
the Chamoli district authorities.
Just the money
However, when the negligence was brought to Mr.
Babbar’s notice he said he had taken monetary steps for the village’s welfare.
“I have already sent Rs. 3 crore for the village,” he said to The Hindu.
With the Uttarakhand and U.P. elections approaching, as the political
activities gain pace, the list of development-related announcements by the
party leaders grows longer. Falling in line with the current political activity
is Mr Babbar’s much-awaited maiden visit to Lambagar.
Mr Babbar, acknowledging the delay in the visit
had said that he would visit the village soon. The visit is tentatively
scheduled for Monday, December 26, Mr. Negi said.
With the polls approaching and
the model code of conduct to be imposed soon in Uttarakhand, the visit could
serve no more than a customary pre-poll activity bearing little difference to
the current situation at Lambagar.
The ‘witches’ of Jharkhand
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/The-%E2%80%98witches%E2%80%99-of-Jharkhand/article16933528.ece
HORRID HUNT: “Witch-hunts are so
rampant in Jharkhand that whenever a new disease sets in that afflicts either
people or cattle and villagers fail to comprehend it, they look for witches to
kill so as to propitiate the spirits.” Suspecting her to be a witch, Gomi
Tirkey, 55, has been boycotted by her village. She now lives with a relative,
at Khunti in Jharkhand. — PHOTOS: MANOB CHOWDHURY | Photo Credit: Manob Chowdhury
On
the night of August 7, five women from a village in Ranchi were hacked to
death. It wasn’t a one-off. We report on the inconceivable cruelty that awaits
women who are branded as witches.
It was a little after midnight and
Kanjia Marhatola village was in deep slumber. The tamarind tree in the middle
of the village in Jharkhand’s Ranchi district swayed gently in the night
breeze. Matiyas Khalko was woken up not by a knock but loud banging on his
door, so furious that it threatened to bring down the creaky door any moment.
Matiyas, his two teenage daughters, and wife Jesinth were sleeping inside.
Sensing trouble, he did not open the door. Minutes later, the door yielded and
the villagers barged in. They separated Jesinth from her daughters and her
husband. “Take me wherever you want but why are you beating me?” Matiyas heard
Jesinth’s voice pleading with her attackers for one last time. A few moments
later, someone in the crowd hit her with an axe and she slumped. They dragged
her by the hair till they reached the tamarind tree. She was the last of five
women who were hacked to death that night, says Matiyas. There were four bodies
already lying there. They killed Eitwariya first, then the mother-daughter duo
of Kalki and Titri. The fourth to be hacked down was Madni Khalko, whose house
was at the other end of the village. And then they turned on Jesinth.
If the tamarind tree could speak,
this is what it would narrate: on the night of August 7, 2016, and in the
morning that followed, five women were tortured to death. Branded as witches,
they were dragged out of their homes in the dead of the night, stripped and
beaten, assembled before the tree and hacked with an axe which is used to chop
wood.
“Till the morning the bodies
remained there and I watched villagers hitting and kicking them long after they
had been rendered lifeless. Villagers were even woken up from their sleep and
asked to kick the women,” says Matiyas.
Standing beside Matiyas, his
17-year-old daughter Anima shudders when she thinks of the night. She, along
with her sister, Anu, somehow managed to sneak out on a Scooty to alert the
local police station. When they returned with four constables, the villagers
attacked their vehicle forcing them to flee. The families of the women have
been socially ostracised by the rest of the village.
Tight-lipped
on the tragedy
An eerie silence prevails in the
village months after the women were hacked to death. Forty people have been
taken into custody. The police have camped permanently in the only primary
school of the village — classes for children are now held in the open.
The cries of “she is a witch” still
rings in the ears of Karamdeo Khalko, as he recounts the horror of how a mob of
50 people including children dragged his mother Madni. “I could recognise most
of them. Even before I saw them I recognised their voices,” he says. The death
of a boy on August 2, he adds, had triggered murmurs in the village that it was
the work of witches — something Karamdeo at that time had not paid much heed
to. The 28-year-old farmer is still unable to understand the reason for the
mindless violence against the women. “We did not fight with anyone in the
village. Why did they do this to us?” he says.
Unlike Karamdeo, Sibi Khalko, whose
sister and mother were killed, does not speak. All he is willing to say after
much persuasion is, “I saw it. I was awake.” Seventeen-year-old Sukumar Khalko,
a school dropout, is the only one willing to take us to the tamarind tree and
he showed where the bodies of his mother Eitwariya and other women lay.
Dayamani Barla, a social worker, does not feel it is superstition alone that
had led to violence in the village. She hints at some sinister, ulterior motive
behind the crime that has shocked the State and the nation at large.
Sariykala,Jharkhand
17th Dec 2016:: Sahnti Sardar was boycotted by the villagers on suspicions of
being a witch. Photo: Manob Chowdhury | Photo Credit: Manob Chowdhury
A
replay 150 km away
On December 9, a similar rerun took
place more than 150 km away. An elderly woman, Susari Buru, was put on fire by
her neighbour Anita Somasoe in Mander area of Khunti district. The accused
believed that Susari indulged in witchcraft and blamed her for the death of her
twin daughters. At Tapkara police station, the FIR register has a neat
complaint letter written in Hindi and a thumb impression under it of Susari’s
husband, Niranjan Buru. A case has been registered against Anita under Section
302 of the Indian Penal Code and sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Witch
Practices Act, 1999, enacted in the undivided Bihar State which also included
present-day Jharkhand.
When asked what the punishment
prescribed under relevant sections is, a police officer at the Tapkari thana
smiles and pleads ignorance. “Iske liye to granth padhna padega (For
that one has to read the law books),” he says.
Krishna Kumar Srivastava, an officer
at a police outpost about 20 km from the police station, is on a patrol with
half a dozen others. He agrees to show us the spot where the crime was
committed. “A [burnt] matchstick and a container with about half a litre of
kerosene were found along with a charred body when we reached,” he says. “At
daybreak, an old man came to us crying that his wife has been set on fire.
While he was explaining it to us, a woman carrying a month-old dead baby in her
lap appeared. Without any remorse she admitted to committing the crime,” he
adds. Niranjan, the old man Kumar refers to, weeps inconsolably when asked
about the incident. He keeps pointing at the wooden door of his thatched house
through which the woman and two others had barged in.
“The December 9 incident is the
latest of a series of incidents of atrocities committed in the name of
witch-hunt in Jharkhand, which has seen as many deaths — if not more — as that
due to Maoist violence since the State of Jharkhand was created in 2001,” says
Ajay Jaiswal, secretary, Association for Social and Human Awareness (ASHA).
This year, 51 women have been killed on the suspicion of being witches, he
claims. The Rajya Sabha was informed in June this year that 127 women branded
as witches were killed in Jharkhand between 2012 and 2014. And as per police
records, there have been 98 deaths and 1,857 incidents of witch-hunt from 2014
to June 2016 in the State.
Branded,
killed or banished
Khunti,
Jharkhand, 17 Dec 2016:: Niranjan Buru's wife, 60-year-old Sushari Buru was
burned to death as suspecting her as a witch at khunti on Saturday. Photo:
Manob Chowdhury | Photo Credit: Manob Chowdhury
In fact, just a day after the
incident at Tapkara, a 40-year-old woman was bludgeoned to death with a gas
cylinder and then hacked into pieces by her brother-in-law. Panchami Devi alias
Shefali Gorai was not killed in a rural hinterland but in the heart of
industrial town Jamshedpur. Birbal Gorai, the brother-in-law, had threatened to
kill her almost a year ago when his father had died, only to execute it
brutally on December 10.
Besides those actually killed and
their bereaved family members, there are many who have to live under constant
fear of attacks after being branded witches by the local people. According to a
survey done by ASHA last year, more than 150 women have been branded witches in
21 blocks and 78 gram panchayats of the State.
Gomi Tirkey, branded a witch by
villagers of Bala in Khunti district, cannot tell her age precisely. “Must be
between 50 and 60 years,” she says while taking a break from threshing rice.
Over the past few months she has been seeking refuge in another village about
eight km from her own. “My son sometimes comes to meet me here. The daughters
are away working in brick kilns in Nadia [West Bengal],” she says. A question
about her grandchildren brings tears to her eyes. Last year Gomi and her family
paid Rs.40,000 to the villagers who had demanded that she leave or face
consequences. When the monsoons returned bringing with them diseases and death,
the villagers turned on Gomi. “I was pushed and hit by them and I got hurt…
Finally I left the village,” she says.
In an uncanny coincidence, decades
ago Gomi’s mother-in-law too was branded a witch and driven out of the same
village. “I have not filed a police complaint because my son still lives in the
village. Even if they are arrested, on their release, they will return and my
family members have to live with them,” she says.
Forging
the fightback
Chutni Mahato, 62, from Birbhas
village in Saraikela-Kharsawan district along the West Bengal-Jharkhand border,
comes across as a gutsy woman. There is a prominent scar on her forehead, and
she vividly remembers how she got it: on September 5, 1995, she was attacked
with an axe.
Karamdeo
Khalko’s mother, Madni Khalko, 55, was killed by villagers. Photo: Manob
Chowdhury | Photo Credit: Manob Chowdhury
“I ran away from the village with my
four children and spent months under a tree,” she recounts. Asked why was she
branded a witch? Chutni flashes a smile and begins her story. “There was a
young woman in my village in love with a man from another village. When she
vomited one day, I joked that she must be pregnant. When her family members
came to know that she was indeed pregnant, they quickly branded me a witch,”
she says. Instead of being cowed down however, Chutni made it her life’s
mission to fight the practice of witch-hunting till her last breath. Since
1997, she has come to the rescue of no less than 60 women.
Fatu Devi Kumharin was one such
woman, who, on suspicion of being responsible for the death of a child, was
locked in a room with the body of the deceased five-year-old The incident dates
back to 2009 when she was visiting her relatives in the neighbouring villages
of Birbhas. Three years later, her sister suffered a similar fate: Nilmoni
Kumharin was attacked with a spade by her brother when family members took ill
one after another.
Chutni has come to Ranchi on a
chilly December morning to attend a seminar at the Ranchi University titled
“Dayan Pratha Ek Abhishap” (Witchcraft, A Curse). As a bank official — seizing
the opportunity — tries to teach digital transactions to the people gathered,
Chutni stops him in his tracks to bring the attention back to women like her
who have been branded as witches or are fighting against the villagers — Santi
Sardar, Urmila Devi, Jyostna Pramanik, Lacha Murmu, Budhu Tudu.
At the seminar, ruling Bharatiya
Janata Party legislator and the party’s chief whip in the Jharkhand Assembly
Radha Krishna Kishore says, “When the Prime Minister has undertaken this huge
exercise of demonetisation and digital India, the practice of hunting witches
shows that we still live in the dark ages.” Kishore assures the audience that
the House will take up the incidence of witch-hunts on a priority basis in the
Budget session. Sixteen years since the State was formed, no discussion on
witch-hunt has taken place in the Jharkhand Assembly, claims Kishore.
A
practice rooted in ignorance
Only last year, Kishore had to flee
for his life after his attempts to stop a ‘Bhoot Mela (ghost/witch fair) at
Saraidih village in Palamu district, failed. “People here brand a woman witch
and kill her even when the village well goes dry in summer,” he says.
“It’s a kind of social acceptability
of a wrong practice which makes it difficult to stop it. Often there is no
evidence and culprits go scot-free,” says Amit Khare, Principal Secretary of
Planning and Finance, Jharkhand, who is remembered for his innovative ways to
prevent witchcraft and witch-hunts while he was Deputy Commissioner (DC) of
West Singhbhum district in 1995. “I had introduced a postcard system whereby
anyone, without disclosing his or her identity, could inform the DC about any
instances of witchcraft being practised — it got a good response at the time,”
recalls Khare.
Sampat Meena, Inspector General of
the Criminal Investigation Department and chief of the State police’s women and
child cell, launched a women’s helpline in 2014. “We’ve done GIS mapping of all
the previous cases of witchcraft reported in the past five years. Hotspots have
been identified and a three-pronged strategy to curb witchcraft has been set in
place: strict legal action in the cases reported and their regular follow-up by
senior officers, proactive intelligence collection to take pre-emptive measures
to avoid such incidents, and awareness generation through local police stations
and local elected bodies such as panchayats,” says Meena.
The law is in place. According to
Jharkhand’s Witchcraft Prevention Act, 2001, the punishment for identifying a
woman as witch is imprisonment for up to three months and/or a fine of
Rs.1,000. Similarly, causing harm to anyone in the name of witchcraft can lead
to imprisonment for up to six months and/or a fine of Rs.2,000. Ojhas found
practising sorcery can be jailed for up to a year and/or fined Rs.2,000. “All
of these are cognisable and non-bailable offences,” says Meena. She, however,
acknowledges that the biggest challenge on the ground is illiteracy. “Villagers
are ignorant that witchcraft is a punishable crime.” Superstition, health,
illiteracy and property are the four major reasons for witchcraft incidents in
Jharkhand, she adds.
“In this practice ojhas also play an
important role… when they fail to ‘cure’ someone, they blame some women of the
village as witches who are preventing the cure,” says Ranchi-based Ajitha Susan
George, who has been working for the rights of tribals.
Social activist Xavier Dias says
witch-hunts are so rampant in Jharkhand that whenever a new disease sets in
that afflicts either people or cattle and villagers fail to comprehend it, they
look for witches to kill so as to propitiate the spirits.
As women continue to be hacked and
burned to death, involving the State’s youth is key, says Kunal Sarangi, the
35-year-old Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MLA from Baharagora constituency of East
Singhbhum district. He wants a “dedicated allocation of budget for witchcraft”
by the government to tackle superstition in the State.
What is it that sets an entire
village on edge and leads to women being singled out and hunted down? A complex
narrative emerges from Kankia Marhatola village offering some clues. Jesinth,
for instance, was known to openly voice her dislike for the sale of liquor in
the village. Titri, a single woman in her 40s, had spurned the attention of men
who had taken an interest in her — perhaps this was enough to incur their
hostility. Madni had opened a makeshift temple where she was the officiating
priest. A pattern emerges which suggests that independent, strong-willed women
may have challenged the status quo, which was enough to trigger resentment
against them.
An equal music, a beautiful society
No
aspect of life in India from the exalted heavens of the classical arts to the
most mundane pits of bodily waste can escape the totalitarian structure of
caste.
A recent event in Delhi brought
together two Indian winners of the 2016 Ramon Magsaysay Award, Bezwada Wilson
and T.M. Krishna, in a wide-ranging conversation about freedom of expression,
nationalism and inequality, issues of pressing concern. Both were outspoken
against a growing majoritarianism, and passionate about building an egalitarian
and just society through their respective fields. Wilson, 50, national convener
of the Safai Karmachari Andolan, is a campaigner against manual scavenging; and
Krishna, 40, is a prominent exponent of Carnatic music and a public
intellectual.
The two men share a commitment to
free speech and equal citizenship, to addressing entrenched forms of exclusion,
discrimination and violence based on caste, to democratic rights and the Indian
Constitution. They come from absolutely unrelated areas of engagement, and from
personal backgrounds that are far apart, but what is remarkable is how they
converge in their social activism as well as their shared ability to communicate
clearly and forcefully with large audiences. The Magsaysay Award jury was
astute indeed in recognising the laudable public spiritedness of both Wilson
and Krishna, and their common concern with the problem of caste.
The
annihilation of caste
Manual scavenging — including the
removal, carrying and disposal by hand of human excrement, and the physical
cleaning of latrines, sewers and septic tanks, a task invariably assigned to
Dalits (including men, women and children) — has been targeted for eradication
since Gandhi came back to India a hundred years ago. It was the Mahatma who
began to insist, in the face of tremendous resistance, that all his family
members and associates, regardless of caste, class and gender, clean toilets
themselves. An Act of Parliament in 1993 officially banned the employment of
manual scavengers and the construction of dry latrines. And yet it continues
today, perpetuating the most extreme forms of indignity and oppression, causing
disease and death, reducing life expectancy, and making the occupation of
thousands of Indian citizens a living hell.
Wilson has been campaigning to put
an end to this abominable practice for close to thirty years. The turning point
for him was around 1990-91, the birth centenary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956),
that brought the life and work of the great Dalit leader back into the
mainstream of national consciousness and forced the government of the day to
implement the Mandal Commission Report, expanding the scope of affirmative
action against caste-based social inequality. How can India proceed with its
ambitious economic and political agendas for growth, change and prosperity,
Wilson asks, when such an archaic form of caste discrimination, a kind of
slavery and a form of torture, continues to exist and to ruin countless Dalit
lives?
Krishna comes at caste from the
direction of the arts, particularly Carnatic music, for almost a century now
the preserve of elite urban Brahmin men — whether as composers, singers,
musicians, accompanists or listeners — in Chennai and other artistic capitals
of southern India. He has been arguing that what is now considered Carnatic
classical music and what is now called Bharatanatyam classical dance were both
originally the provenance of women, especially temple dancers and courtesans,
and of non-Brahmin “holding communities” like the Isai Vellalars. These groups
were sidelined and their art forms taken over by socially dominant Brahmin
practitioners and patrons, who cleansed the music and dance of their
vernacular, erotic, demotic and popular character, and reinvented them as
classical, religious, refined and urbane. The temple courtyard and the noisy
village square gave way to the kutcheri and the sophisticated concert hall as
performance spaces, which closed their doors to ordinary people.
In 2015 Krishna announced his
decision to stop performing in the December concert season — in the Tamil month
of Margazhi — of Chennai, even though he has been the star of this vaunted
annual cultural event from a young age. He now organises a new winter-time
music festival in the small fishing village of Urur-Olcott Kuppam in Chennai,
teaches music and performs free concerts at corporation schools, trains girls
and women in Carnatic vocal and instrumental music, and extends the ambit of his
pedagogic outreach to tribal, rural and marginalised communities. He has also
expanded the repertoire of music that he himself sings, including modern
Hindustani and Bengali forms. Most recently he has made joint appearances with
the Jogappas, a transgender community of devotional folk performers, associated
with the goddess Yellamma, from northern Karnataka and contiguous parts of the
Deccan (Andhra and Maharashtra), unimaginable in the hallowed halls of
classical music for the Carnatic orthodoxy.
Self-purification
and self-respect
Krishna
and Wilson — together, as a pair — remind one of the late D.R. Nagaraj’s
insightful formulation of “self-purification” and “self-respect” as the two
modalities of a moral resistance to caste, especially untouchability, flowing
from Gandhi and Ambedkar, respectively. According to Nagaraj, the caste Hindu
and especially the Brahmin self must purify or purge itself of its impulse to
exclude or hurt the untouchable, while the Dalit self must assert its intrinsic
worth and inalienable dignity even in the face of relentless discrimination.
Krishna,
constantly aware of and critical about his own birth, training, conditioning
and privilege, has been advocating strenuously that Carnatic music
“de-Brahminise” itself, undertake some “social re-engineering” as an act of
self-purification to render itself less unequal and more inclusive. The arts
are after all a microcosm of society, reflecting and even amplifying its
inequalities. Wilson meanwhile states unequivocally that if the Constitution
guarantees the self-respect of Dalits, then an abhorrent demeaning practice
like manual scavenging simply cannot be allowed to persist in today’s India.
But
what is more striking than this obvious dialectic of self-purification and
self-respect, which can be traced back to Gandhian and Ambedkarite stances on
caste, is how both Krishna and Wilson in their own ways struggle to actualise
what Ambedkar called “social endosmosis”. This is the natural flow and exchange
of ideas, values, practices, knowledge and energies between and across groups
that Ambedkar lamented could not occur in the rigidly stratified and segregated
Hindu social order. The traditional caste system controls social reproduction
through strict endogamy, and places nearly insurmountable taboos on
cohabitation, commensality and other forms of conviviality and commerce between
different castes.
Ambedkar and ‘social endosmosis’
Untouchability
may have been outlawed through Article 17 of the Indian Constitution, but that
is only the most extreme way to keep human beings and fellow citizens apart. In
fact, Indians of different castes even today seldom eat together, live
together, inter-marry or in other ways participate in each other’s life-worlds
across the invisible yet impenetrable barriers of caste. As Krishna has shown,
in a manner that is all the more effective for being so blunt, we can’t even
sing together, an indicator of how little we hear the speech, the pain, the
yearnings, the silences of others.
No
aspect of life in India from the exalted heavens of the classical arts to the
most mundane pits of bodily waste can escape the totalitarian structure of
caste: this was Ambedkar’s rage against varnaashramadharma, the total society.
From music to excreta, everything is segregated, violating the basic principle
of equal citizenship. Having Krishna and Wilson come together on a common
platform exemplifies what Nagaraj characterised as the necessity for modern
Indians to address, simultaneously, “the beauty and the horror” of caste. “My journey
began from the question of beauty,” Krishna said. “What is beauty?” For a
moment this seems like a strange way to begin thinking about the cultural
politics of Carnatic music, or indeed any other art form, but it turns out to
be an enormously productive line of inquiry. As Wilson points out, an equal
society is the most beautiful thing that human beings could make.
Why
can’t scientists, planners and bureaucrats come up with a way to end forever
the scourge of manual scavenging, Wilson demands, not just a moral and
political alternative but a technological and policy solution? Krishna’s path
has been more challenging to interpret as a radical move in the politics of
aesthetics. In systematically educating himself and us about the actual
historical origins and forgotten trajectories of Carnatic music; in abandoning
the highest prosceniums for unexplored spaces and unexpected audiences; in
opening himself to the sounds and rhythms of every kind of community populating
the hum and hubbub of India; in learning to listen and unlearning how he was
taught to sing, he has indisputably transformed himself as an artiste.
Articulate
to a fault, Krishna reflects, writes, lectures and teaches continuously about
what he is doing. But even if he were not to talk about it explicitly, any
sensitive listener can hear in Krishna’s voice as it continues to evolve, over
the past couple of years especially, a note of compassion, empathy and
sweetness that deepens immeasurably the musical experience for singer and
audience alike. This is not just amazing virtuosity, which he has had from the
very beginning. It is, rather, the sound of virtue itself, the profoundly
moving melody of an ethical music. Is there only suffering for the Dalit
condemned to manual scavenging, Wilson was asked. “The fight for justice is
itself the greatest happiness,” he answered.
Ananya Vajpeyi is a Fellow at the
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi.
50 biotech labs to be set up in Arunachal
A total of 50 biotechnology
laboratories will be set up in Arunachal Pradesh as part of a Rs. 75-crore push
to encourage biotechnology research and start-ups, Union Minister for Science
and Technology Harsh Vardhan said at a function in Papum Pare, Arunachal
Pradesh.
He was speaking at the inauguration of the Centre
for Bio Resources and Sustainable Development on Thursday. The labs will be
established as part of a Department of Biotechnology scheme, called Biotech
Labs in Senior Secondary Schools (BliSS) to encourage students to consider
careers in biotechnology.
The programme is part of a larger initiative to
establish labs in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura,
Nagaland, Sikkim and Manipur.
According to the scheme, Rs. 15 lakh will be
provided per school to set up basic facilities at biotech labs and
infrastructure including computers, freezers and microscopes.
Innovation hub
“We are going to ensure that there will be a
biotechnology innovation hub in Arunachal Pradesh and we will also promote
research into traditional dyes and banana fibre extraction,” he said in a
statement.
A State-level biotech hub will
be set up in the State for conducting advanced research and for training
students in related careers. There would also be an intellectual property cell
at the State Science and Technology council, for protecting indigenous
traditional knowledge, he added.
Thousands Join "Best Ecologist
Award" Ceremony to Honour Uttarakhand's Struggling Women, Join in Call for
People's Control Over Natural Resources and Development Work
After a month long competition in
which 2,386 women from 285 villages participated, thousands of people assembled
to witness the final stage of Chetna Andolan's "Best Ecologist Award
2016" competition today. Participants also joined in taking an oath to
fight for their rights under the Forest Rights Act, and for all development
work and natural resource projects to be given to people's cooperatives and
producer companies (see below).
The winner of the
competition was Bimla Devi, from Chiliyal village. She received a cheque of Rs. 1 lakh and a
silver crown weighing 16 tolas. In second place was Smt. Gyansu Devi from
Dhansani village (a Dalit), who was
given Rs. 51,000 and a crown weighing 13 tolas; and in third place was Indra Devi from Akhori
village who was given
Rs. 21,000 and a crown weighing 10 tolas. Participants were judged on their ability
to cut grass without harming other plants, and on their knowledge of the forest
and its ecosystems.
Ghasiyaris, or women
who cut grass, are the backbone of Uttarakhand's rural economy and have been at
the forefront of every struggle for justice in the state,from the Chipko
Andolan to the Uttarakhand movement to the ongoing struggles against illegal
dam and industrial projects. The Best Ecologist Award was instituted in 2015 to
honour these women.
Those assembled for
the final round joined hands in a call for a new movement in Uttarakhand to
demand that all natural resource based projects - especially hydroelectricity
projects - and government contracts should be given to producer companies of
workers. They also demanded that the Forest Rights Act of 2006 should be
implemented in full and community rights of villages, especially of women, be
recognised.
The final meeting was
addressed by local leaders, Uttarakhand's intellectuals and representatives of
Chetna Andolan, including Smt. Kamala Pant (Swaraj Abhiyan), Dr. Shekhar Pathak, Rajiv Lochan Sah (editor, Nainital Samachar), Dr. Nandwan Pandey, Kalyan Singh Rawat (Maiti Andolan), Bali Singh Cheema, Dr. Ramesh Pant (environmentalist), and so on.
China
to levy environment tax to fight pollution
Battling recurring pollution enveloping
its cities, China has passed a new law to levy environment tax on polluters,
specially on heavy industries.
The Environment Tax Law was adopted by the legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee which concluded its meeting here yesterday.
However, carbon dioxide, one of the major contributors to global warming, is not included in the levying list.
The law followed nearly week-long red alert due to heavy smog over Beijing and 23 other cities last week leading to imposition of odd-even number system to regulate vehicles and closure of schools.
The law, to enter into force on January 1, 2018, will be key to fighting pollution, Wang Jianfan, director of the Ministry of Finance tax policy department said.
China has collected a "pollutant discharge fee", since 1979.
In 2015, it collected 17.3 billion yuan (about USD 2.5 billion) from some 280,000 businesses, Wang said.
However, some local governments exploit loopholes and exemptenterprises which are otherwise big contributors to fiscal revenue.
For years, regulators have suggested replacing the fee system with a law. "The new law will reduce interference from government," Wang said.
It will also improve tax payers' environmental awareness, forcing companies to upgrade technology and shift to cleaner production, Wang said.
Under the new law, companies will pay taxes ranging from 350 yuan (USD 60) to 11,200 yuan (USD 1870) per month for noise, according to their decibel level.
It also set rates of 1.2 yuan on stipulated quantities of air pollutants, 1.4 yuan on water pollutants and a range of five to 1,000 yuan for each tonne of solid waste, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
For instance, polluters will pay 1.2 yuan for emission of 0.95 kg of sulfur dioxide and 1.4 yuan for one kg of chemical oxygen demand (COD).
Under the new law provincial-level governments can raise the rates for air and water pollution by up to ten times after approval by the people's congresses.
Lower rates may also be applicable if emission are less than national standards. The law only targets enterprises and public institutions that discharge listed pollutants directly into the environment.
Punishment for evasion or fraud are not specified, but offenders will be held liable in line with the law on administration of taxation and the environmental law.
With more than a year still to go before the law comes into effect, Wang said authorities will make preparations including drafting a regulation for implementation of the law.
China is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, due to its heavy reliance on coal to provide electricity to its population of 1.37 billion.
The Environment Tax Law was adopted by the legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee which concluded its meeting here yesterday.
However, carbon dioxide, one of the major contributors to global warming, is not included in the levying list.
The law followed nearly week-long red alert due to heavy smog over Beijing and 23 other cities last week leading to imposition of odd-even number system to regulate vehicles and closure of schools.
The law, to enter into force on January 1, 2018, will be key to fighting pollution, Wang Jianfan, director of the Ministry of Finance tax policy department said.
China has collected a "pollutant discharge fee", since 1979.
In 2015, it collected 17.3 billion yuan (about USD 2.5 billion) from some 280,000 businesses, Wang said.
However, some local governments exploit loopholes and exemptenterprises which are otherwise big contributors to fiscal revenue.
For years, regulators have suggested replacing the fee system with a law. "The new law will reduce interference from government," Wang said.
It will also improve tax payers' environmental awareness, forcing companies to upgrade technology and shift to cleaner production, Wang said.
Under the new law, companies will pay taxes ranging from 350 yuan (USD 60) to 11,200 yuan (USD 1870) per month for noise, according to their decibel level.
It also set rates of 1.2 yuan on stipulated quantities of air pollutants, 1.4 yuan on water pollutants and a range of five to 1,000 yuan for each tonne of solid waste, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
For instance, polluters will pay 1.2 yuan for emission of 0.95 kg of sulfur dioxide and 1.4 yuan for one kg of chemical oxygen demand (COD).
Under the new law provincial-level governments can raise the rates for air and water pollution by up to ten times after approval by the people's congresses.
Lower rates may also be applicable if emission are less than national standards. The law only targets enterprises and public institutions that discharge listed pollutants directly into the environment.
Punishment for evasion or fraud are not specified, but offenders will be held liable in line with the law on administration of taxation and the environmental law.
With more than a year still to go before the law comes into effect, Wang said authorities will make preparations including drafting a regulation for implementation of the law.
China is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, due to its heavy reliance on coal to provide electricity to its population of 1.37 billion.
Glimpses
of the Food Sangam at Muniguda, Odisha
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