Ottawa, you have a problem

If Canada denies a visa to individuals accused of specific human rights violations, no one would have a problem. But to treat the Indian armed forces as some sort of criminal outfit is inexcusable...







28 May 2010
The Hindu

Ottawa, you have a problem

Siddharth Varadarajan

Even if legal concepts like universal jurisdiction remain controversial, the globalisation of economic and family life means individuals who violate human rights can no longer count on being shielded forever by the walls of national sovereignty. Your government may not prosecute you for the crimes you have committed but if your offences are serious enough, the chances are that some court in some other country might. As Israeli officers and politicians are today discovering, and as the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet realised in 2000, international journeys are an indulgence to be undertaken with extreme caution if your curriculum vitae includes the commission of war crimes, genocide or crimes against humanity.

Opinions differ but I am convinced this is a good thing. Every country that values the rule of law must ensure that no individual, regardless of official affiliation, enjoys impunity. There are some crimes, like genocide or war crimes or torture, which are an affront to human civilisation regardless of where they have been committed. While foreign courts may or not entertain suits against visiting individuals responsible for such crimes, countries are under no obligation to let them enter their territory. Often, the well-publicised denial of a visa to a leader or official or soldier can have a salutary impact on the struggle for justice in their home country. Subjecting a known violator of human rights to an international boycott is the next best thing to actually prosecuting him.

In 2002, Canada passed the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to take account of its Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act introduced two years earlier. Section 35(1)(a) of the Immigration act says that persons who might have committed an act of commission or omission outside Canada that falls under the definition of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity are ineligible for entry into the country.

As a measure of the seriousness with which this provision is regarded, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration/Canadian Border Services Agency has a Modern War Crimes Section with a Resource Centre staffed by 70 to screen visa applicants. According to a 2004 paper by Joseph Rikhof, Senior Counsel in the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Section of the Canadian Department of Justice, the Resource Centre is “designed primarily to provide research support to regional field officers, immigration analysts and other enforcement partners in identifying visa applicants and individuals in Canada who may have been involved in war crimes. The Resource Centre also serves as a central repository of current information such as news reports or bulletins gathered from media sources and international human rights organisations”. By 2004, a total of 2,366 “persons complicit in war crimes or crimes against humanity had been refused visas to come to Canada”.

Though the statistics are impressive, one wonders how effective this research process actually is, at least as far as potential migrants from India with a murky past are concerned. For as several visa denial cases which have recently come to light in India demonstrate, Canadian officials appear to have adopted an ill informed, broad-brush approach by which anyone associated with the Indian army, Border Security Force, Intelligence Bureau and other security-related agencies is regarded as a criminal and, thus, ineligible for entry.

When an organisation or agency or state whose involvement in the serious and systematic violation of human rights is so well documented as to brook no second opinion – think the Nazis, the Interahamwe of Rwanda, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia — denying entry to anyone connected with the regime may well be a good policy. But is it valid to treat the institutions of the Indian state in this manner?

It is true that individual soldiers, constables and officers have committed serious human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir and virtually every part of the country. It is also true that the Indian criminal justice system often fails to take effective punitive action against these individuals. But the question that needs to be asked is whether these violations – and the failure to prosecute — are so systematic, large-scale and widespread as to cross the threshold and implicate the entire state machinery and system in a vast criminal enterprise.

The Canadian visa officials seem to be operating on the assumption that Indian state institutions are indeed beyond the pale. None of the ex-army men whose cases have come to light were denied visas because of their individual involvement in specific human rights violations. But the fact that they served in Jammu and Kashmir with the army or BSF appears to have become the sole reason for being considered guilty of crimes against humanity.

The irony is that Major Avtar Singh, formerly of the 35th Rashtriya Rifles, an ex-officer accused by a Budgam court of murdering the Kashmiri human rights lawyer Jalil Andrabi in 1996, is by some accounts, happily settled in Canada, having migrated there a few years ago. If the Canadian government were to refuse entry to such individuals or even expel them, it would not only be true to the letter and spirit of its immigration law but would also give a boost to those in India who are trying to push the system to take human rights more seriously. Instead of catching this sort of fish, however, it has cast a huge net. The current visa rejections reflect the futility of this approach.

One of the ‘rejection' letters written by the Canadian High Commission to a former BSF constable refers to ‘open source' material on human rights violations committed in Kashmir. One could easily add that there is open source material on the complicity of the Canadian armed forces in the torture of Afghan civilians.

While Canada will have to reverse its over-the-top approach or face the consequences of a diplomatic chill with India, there is also a lesson in this for the Indian government. It needs to take human rights violations more seriously. The BSF men who killed innocent civilians in Bijbehara in October 1993, for example, despite overwhelming evidence that their firing was unprovoked. The Home Ministry refused to share the proceedings of the General Security Force Court which acquitted them with the National Human Rights Commission. The NHRC said it was “deeply disturbed” by this refusal and even moved the Supreme Court before quietly withdrawing from the matter. Our national outrage at the Canadian characterisation of the BSF would have carried more weight if the Bijbehara episode had a happy ending. The 14 men involved never made it on to any visa blacklist. But they managed to blacken the name of their force.

In much the same way, Canadian peacekeepers involved in the 1993 murder of a Somali teenager, Shidane Arone, may have gotten away with relatively light punishment but they disgraced their country's army in the eyes of the world. Like the BSF, the Canadian armed forces' actions in Somalia or Afghanistan do not make it a “notoriously violent” institution, the phrase used by Ottawa's visa officials to describe the Indian security forces. But they do mean Canada is living in a glass house and cannot afford to throw stones.

Most governments tend to be reluctant to act promptly and sternly against human rights violators in uniform for fear of affecting the “morale” of the security forces. What they don't realise is that a few rotten apples will end up ruining the reputation of the barrel unless they are swiftly dealt with. Long after the current visa crisis blows over, this is a lesson India can ill afford to ignore.

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Caution pays, but leadership is also about taking a stand

Political parties cannot serve as vehicles for enlightened decision-making, for raising the level of society's consciousness, if their leaders are going to shy away from taking a stand...




25 May 2010
The Hindu

Caution pays, but leadership is also about taking a stand

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Six years as Prime Minister have not taken the conservatism of the central banker out of Manmohan Singh. His answers to most questions at Monday's press conference to mark the first anniversary of his second stint in the top job were overly cautious and controlled, one might even say ‘monitorist'. Like a prudential banker, he opted for the path of generating low interest, wary, perhaps, that an expansionary supply of words would only inflate the risk of being misunderstood.

Of course, Dr. Singh spoke passionately on issues closest to his heart or with which he was intimately familiar. These were his efforts to build peace with Pakistan, the complex relationship between himself and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the functioning of his Cabinet and, of course, his own future. His words on all these subjects carried the hallmark of sincerity and conviction. There wasn't a trace of equivocation when he said he had no intention of “retiring” from the job of Prime Minister so long as the work he had started remained unfinished. He confidently brushed aside the idea of a disconnect between party and government and surprised many by seeing virtue in debate and disagreement between his ministerial colleagues, so long as the airing of differences was first done in the Cabinet.

Little or no information

But on virtually every other issue, he yielded little or no information and barely ventured to stake out a position. There were no less than 17 questions of the 55 he was asked to which he provided generic answers. Of the boilerplate — “When the time comes, we will take appropriate decisions in all these matters” or “Every possible effort is being made and will be made to find amicable solution to these problems” or “the law should be allowed to take its course” — variety.

So it was that he told the country affirmative action for Dalits and tribals in the private sector — a promise the Congress had made in 2004 — required the “right atmosphere” while progress on delinking black money from politics needed “consensus”. The Telangana question was now being examined by a committee so it would be “difficult for me to offer any meaningful comment.” On whether a caste census might be divisive or not, all he would say is that “the process of examining [the inclusion of caste] is on.” On illegal mining in Orissa, “if anything concrete comes to the attention of the government, we will take effective action,” he said. On the failure of his government to grant sanction to prosecute soldiers accused by the CBI of murdering villagers in Kashmir, “I will look into it.”

The Home Minister's controversial demand for an “expanded mandate” to deal with the Maoist insurgency was also stonewalled. “These are issues which are strategy issues which will be discussed in the appropriate forum of the Cabinet whenever the opportunity arises,” he said.

This refusal to take a position on a range of issues that have animated public discourse over the past few weeks and months and which concern the lives of millions means that as and when the Prime Minister and his government take decisions, these will end up becoming even more divisive. Governments can carry their public along on difficult policy matters only when some effort is made to convince them about the necessity for a particular course of action. Dr. Singh has not flinched from arguing in favour of engagement with Pakistan but today neither he nor Sonia Gandhi is willing or able to play that role on pressing domestic issues. If, for example, the government really believes the execution of Afzal Guru could generate a negative political dynamic in the Kashmir valley, it should have the courage to make that argument. If, as the Prime Minister once said, minorities and other marginalised sections ought to have first claims on government resources — a Gandhian principle that is perfectly in harmony with the requirements of true democracy — he ought to lead from the front in taking the argument to the wider public. If he believes the private sector needs to do more to provide opportunities to India's Dalits and tribals, he could have used the press conference to make that point, even if a government decision is still some way away.

Political parties cannot serve as vehicles for enlightened decision-making, for raising the level of society's consciousness, if their leaders are going to shy away from taking a stand.

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A year of living indecisively

The inability of the Prime Minister and the Congress president to push official policies in the direction of meaningful social change leaves the public confused...





24 May 2010
The Hindu

A year of living indecisively

Siddharth Varadarajan

As Manmohan Singh completes the first year of his second term as Prime Minister, it has become something of a cliché to accuse him of weakness. His inability to take action against Ministers accused of corruption or sheer inefficiency is an obvious indicator of his lack of power within the government. The dissonance on various crucial policy matters is another. However, these symptoms are more a reflection of structural weaknesses in the current ruling system than of individual failing on Dr. Singh's part.

There are, in fact, two sources of weakness in the United Progressive Alliance arrangement. The first is induced by the compulsions of coalition government, the second by the nature of the ruling party itself. Though the Congress won many more seats in 2009 than it did in 2004, it is still dependent on smaller parties whose agendas are mercurial and unpredictable. But this is a derivative problem, something of mere arithmetic importance, because it begs the question of whether the current problems faced by the Prime Minister would evaporate if the Congress had a majority of its own. Would the examples of rent-seeking, influence peddling, patronage, inefficiency and insensitivity we see in the functioning of various Ministries and government departments disappear if they were run by Congress Ministers? Would the government have the ability to deliver on its promise of social and economic inclusiveness if it were staffed only by the Congress? Only the hopelessly naïve would believe that.

Of the two structural flaws that have weakened the Prime Minister and his government, then, it is the second which is the more decisive. The nature of the Congress is a serious, foundational weakness, a constitutive flaw standing in the way of policy changes that could allow it to transcend the current political constraints and deliver to the people of India the kind of governance they deserve.

Much as the Bharatiya Janata Party would like us to believe it, the existence of two power centres in the government is not unique to the UPA. It is true that as Prime Minister of the NDA government, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was also the undisputed leader of the BJP. But the dyarchy in that arrangement involved a split between the authority of the party and the sangh parivar, rather than between party and government, and Mr. Vajpayee was certainly not the head of that family. As Congress president, a Member of Parliament and head of the UPA, Sonia Gandhi has a legal and political mandate of the kind the RSS never had. But the problem is that she is not being decisive in the exercise of her mandate. Many of the problems the NDA regime ran into sprang from the sangh parivar's assertiveness. In contrast, the UPA's problems arise from Ms Gandhi's failure to lead from the front.

Within the Congress party today, there are at least three ideo-political trends competing for dominance and the divisions and differences between them are apparent on a number of issues. There is first the social democratic paternalism of the party machinery as represented by Ahmed Patel but also Pranab Mukherjee, A.K. Antony, Veerappa Moily and others. This school recognises the importance of inclusiveness not as an end in itself but as an instrument to put political space between the Congress and the BJP. It cannot move beyond the paradigm of tokenism, little alliances and reservation. Instead of boldly embracing the Sachar committee's comprehensive recommendations on ending Muslim marginalisation, for example, or pushing for a Communal Violence bill that has real teeth, or encouraging the emergence of dynamic Muslim leaders within the Congress, this group is more comfortable making a deal with a clerical section of the community. It is not a coincidence that this group is also the one making the demand for the inclusion of caste enumeration in the census as a short-sighted means of beating the OBC parties at their own game.

The second ideological trend within the Congress is that of technocratic populism, as represented primarily by Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Ministers like Kamal Nath and others. This section has a certain disdain for the ‘consensual,' accommodative politics of the old school but ends up being quite anti-political in its approach. Not surprisingly, their approach finds the widest resonance with the mass media and upper middle classes. The Telangana fiasco was the first disastrous product to emerge from the technocrats but there have been other bad ideas as well. Mr. Chidambaram rightly questioned the logistical difficulties involved in conducting a caste census but sees no problem in the state's ability to collect and keep confidential the iris scans and ten finger prints of 1.2 billion Indians. The Maoist insurgency is seen as something that can be ended through an “expanded mandate” to use military means, and healthy debate and disagreement are looked upon with suspicion. The technocratic populists are also impatient with environmental norms and public hearings if they come in the way of highways and roads and factories and mines.

There is a third trend, too, but this is currently the weakest, despite being led, in a manner of speaking, by Rahul Gandhi as he attempts to renovate the Congress from the bottom up. Though there is a strong modernising element in Mr. Gandhi's approach, his approach is inherently political and calls for greater attention to be paid to the voices and aspirations of those who have become disconnected from the socio-economic mainstream over the past two decades. This trend within the party, whose ranks include Digvijay Singh, Salman Khurshid, Mani Shankar Aiyar and also Jairam Ramesh, believes that the Congress can have a political future only if it reflects the concerns of the marginalised. It knows the limits of the paternalistic and technocratic approaches and is pitching for the emergence of the Congress as a modern political party that is democratic in its outlook and approach and its internal functioning — something which it is not today.

To be sure, the boundaries between these three groups are not neatly drawn. Depending on the specific issue, shifting coalitions get formed and Ms Gandhi often ends up mediating one way or another.

What makes this struggle within the Congress even more interesting is that it is happening against the backdrop of big money making greater and greater inroads into the corridors of power. As is clear from data on the rising net worth of MPs and MLAs, formal political structures may be getting atomised but the dominance of super-rich national and local elites is getting more and more consolidated.

The principal achievements of UPA-I came because Ms Gandhi and the Congress party provided strong political backing to initiatives like the Right to Information and the National Rural Employment Guarantee. But in UPA-II, so far at least, that political backing appears absent. The fact that there is dissonance within the Congress and the government on diverse issues is a good sign, an indication that contestation is under way. But the inability of the Prime Minister and the Congress president to mould and shape this debate and push official policies in the direction of meaningful social change leaves the public confused. Initiatives are being proposed or taken, like the Women's Reservation Bill and the Food Security Bill, but there is a danger of these ending up as incomplete measures even as attempts are made to roll back the gains already made like the Right to Information.

The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act remains unchanged despite promises. The land acquisition and rehabilitation policy of the government is in a mess, affecting the lives of millions of people. There is a danger that militarisation and securitisation will take the place of politics as a means of resolving internal conflicts. On the first anniversary of the UPA's second mandate, it is time Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh took urgent stock of their joint enterprise.

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NGO had warned of crash risk at Mangalore airport

I have no idea about the work or credibility of the Environment Support Group and Leo Saldhana in Mangalore but the fact that they had filed a PIL in 1997 and 2002 alleging that the plans for Mangalore airport's second runway were flawed suggests we take a close look at their arguments. I am appending their latest press release below. And an archive of earlier documentation on Bajpe airport, Mangalore (IXE) can be found here ..


Environment Support Group
PRESS RELEASE : 22 May 2010

Mangalore Air Crash Tragic Fallout of Criminal Negligence of Planning and Regulatory Authorities

An Air India Express Boeing 737-800 aircraft arriving from Dubai with 167 on board 2010 tragically crashed at Mangalore International Airport at 6.30 am today (22 May 2010). It is reported that the plane overshot the runway while landing and fell over a cliff resulting in this disastrous crash. Very few are known to have survived this horrific crash.

This was no accident, but the direct result of deliberate failure of officials at the highest level in the Director General of Civil Aviation, Airports Authority of India, Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Government of Karnataka for allowing this 2nd runway to be built in criminal negligence of applicable norms and standards. Such a strong charge is being made as the likelihood of this kind of a crash (the worst case scenario) was predicted. A series of Public Interest Litigations were fought by the undersigned to stop the construction of this 2nd runway in Mangalore airport on grounds that the design simply did not conform to the most basic national and international standards of airport design. The PILs also highlighted that the airport does not conform with the most minimum safeguards for emergency situations – particularly during landings and takeoffs, and could not have emergency approach roads within a kilometre on all sides of the airport as required.

It is truly sad that because of the failure of key decision makers at the highest levels so many innocent lives have been lost. It is quite possible that many lives were lost as emergency rescue teams could not access the crash site due to the difficult terrain (a valley) for over a hour after the incident, even though it was proximal to the site.1 Vimana Nildana Vistharana Virodhi Samithi (Local Communities Alliance Against Airport Expansion), Bajpe and Environment Support Group had repeatedly highlighted the high risk expansion of the Mangalore airport during the late 1990s. The expansion was proposed to enable flight movements of wide bodied aircrafts, such as Airbus A 320. Authorities were repeatedly informed that the proposal did not at all conform with the standards prescribed for runway design as laid down by the Director General of Civil Aviation, National Building Code of India and Ministry of Civil Aviation. Further, considering that the airport was proposed for international flights, a case was also made that the 2nd runway could not conform with International Civil Aviation Authority standards due to terrain limitations.

No one in authority cared to listen to our fervent pleas. This even when we demonstrated through a variety of representations that that the site chosen for expansion at Bajpe was surrounded by deep valleys on three sides of the runway and did not provide for emergency landing areas as required.

This neglect of our legitimate concerns forced us to move the High Court of Karnataka in a PIL in 1997 (Arthur Pereira and ors. vs. Union of India and ors., WP No. 37681/1997). A key concern raised was that the 2nd runway in Mangalore could not meet the standards required in dealing with an emergency, particularly during landings and takeoffs – a time when air crashes are most likely to happen.

The Airports Authority of India filed an affidavit in Court dismissing all our concerns and stated this, amongst other things:

“It is submitted that as regards the apprehensions of the petitioner that the Length and width of the runway is insufficient for a plane making an emergency landing, the same is without any basis. It is respectfully submitted that all the requirements as per the ICAO recommendation will be met and that there has been no infringement of any of the recommendation and limitation therein.” (Copy of this affidavit dated 14 October 1998 is accessible at: http://www.esgindia.org/campaigns/bajpe/docs/Statement%20of%20Objections%20of%20AAI.htm)

On the basis of this affidavit, Hon’ble Chief Justice Mr. Y. Bhaskar Rao and the Hon’ble Mr. Justice A. M. Farooq (as their Lordships then were) dismissed this PIL ordering as follows:

“It is stated that the fear of the petitioners that the runway is insufficient for any emergency landing of a plane is without any basis since before the project is to proceed, the authorities will be meeting the recommendations of the ICAO. It is also stated that there is no basis for the allegations made by the petitioners to the effect that the various safety measures have not been followed. That on the other hand they will be getting all the relevant materials described by the petitioners which will be followed in letter and spirit without which the airport would not have been conceived in the first place.

Thus it can be seen that the expansion of Bajpe airport project is at the initial stage and the second respondent has in their objections mentioned above unequivocally stated that all the safety measures etc., stated by the petitioners in their writ petition will be followed during the progress of the project and nothing can be said before the lands are handed over to the second respondent. Considering these facts, we are of the view that the petitioners have rushed to this court before commencement of the project itself and the writ petition is premature. It is not, therefore, necessary to consider the various grounds taken by the petitioners in the writ petition to allege that the respondents have been proceeding with the project in a casual manner. There is nothing to doubt about the statement made by the second respondent in their objection statement and we are sure that the respondents will be taking all necessary measures under the different enactments etc.., before proceeding with the project in question. The writ petition stands dismissed.” (Emphasis added. A copy of this order is accessible at: http://www.esgindia.org/campaigns/bajpe/docs/1998%20Karnataka%20High%20Court%20Judgement.htm)

Even though alternative sites existed, the authorities proceeded obstinately to expand the airport yielding to pressures from business, real estate and hotel lobbies who benefited immensely from an airport at Bajpe. Politicians keen to make the expansion a part of their legacy overlooked all concerns raised. Even at the existing Bajpe alternative sites existed to expand the airport, that conformed with most safety norms, but this site was not pursued as it would affect large landholders and influential people. Consequently, nothing whatsoever was done to respond to the concerns we raised about the risks involved in the 2nd runway.

The Airport Authority did not even have a proper feasibility study, and claimed that such a critical information detail would only be prepared after the land was acquired for the airport. Surely this amounted to putting the cart before the horse, for the study, even if eventually prepared, would have been tailor made to justify the decision to so expand the airport.

Distressed by such a turn of events and the absolute lack of compliance with applicable norms and standards, we appealed to the ICAO to intervene in the matter. The ICAO claimed did not respond and so we returned to the High Court with a fresh PIL in 2002. In this exhaustively researched PIL many significant concerns were raised and a case was made that the 2nd runway could not conform with ICAO norms for the following reasons:

“Minimum Area for Stop-way: At page 155 of the said (ICAO) report, para 2-1 prescribes standards for providing the minimum area for a stop way and/or a clear way in the event an aircraft undershoots or over-runs the runway. For instance, if an aircraft has initiated take off, and a technical flaw requires emergency stop, the standard prescribes the minimum area that should be kept free to enable such a stop. In the instant case, the runway distance itself is about 2400 metres, and even if the area left is most cautiously utilised, what is left is only about 300 metres on each end of the runway. By the prescribed standard, this is far below the required distance needed for an emergency stop way. Therefore, the chances of an aircraft that has achieved the decision speed forcing an emergency stop are critically minimised, and the inevitable consequence could be that the plane would come crashing down the hillsides from a height of 80-100 metres on either side of the proposed runway.” (Emphasis added. A copy of the PIL is accessible at: http://www.esgindia.org/campaigns/bajpe/docs/Bajpe%20HC%20PIL%2020905%20May%202002.htm)2

The High Court of Karnataka dismissed this PIL initiative by their order dated 27 May 2002 (WP 20905/2002) stating the following:

“No doubt, in an appropriate case, this Court can issue directions, if there is gross violation of fundamental rights or if the issue touches the conscience of this Court, but not for personal gain or political gain. The construction of 2nd Runway and Terminal Tower in Mangalore Airport will otherwise be in the interest of public. Learned Counsel has not been able to show how the construction of 2nd Runway and Terminal Tower in Mangalore Airport will be against the public interest. On consideration and in the facts of the given case no direction as prayed for can be issued in this PIL. The authorities concerned have to complete all formalities as per law before commencement of the project. Accordingly, this Writ petition is dismissed. However, it is made clear that dismissal of this petition will not preclude the concerned Authorities to take all necessary precaution and to complete the formalities as per law before proceeding with the project in question.” (Emphasis added)

In a desperate effort to stop the Mangalore airport from so expanding and needlessly exposing innocent people to unnecessary risk, we went on appeal against the High Court order to the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India. Dismissing the appeal, the Supreme Court ruled 07 February 2003 in Environment Support Group and ors. vs. Union of India and ors. [SLP(C) 1172 OF 2003] as follows:

“We see no reason to interfere with the impugned order. Accordingly, the special leave petition is dismissed. We, however, clarify that in constructing the Airport, the Government shall comply with all applicable laws and also with environmental norms.” (Emphasis added. A copy of this order can be accessed at: http://www.esgindia.org/campaigns/bajpe/docs/BAJPE%20SC%20ORDER%20070203.htm)

One hopes with the benefit of hindsight that the Director General of Civil Aviation or Airports Authority of India had complied with this order of the Supreme Court and ensured Mangalore airport was developed in full conformance with applicable laws, standards and norms. In case the current site was not feasible, they could have easily explored alternate sites, as such sites did exist – within Bajpe itself, or even in Padubidri, between Mangalore and Udupi. Instead, the authorities preferred to view the Supreme Court order as a victory, as did the Karnataka Government and Mangalore Chamber of Commerce and Industry which had systematically campaigned for the expansion.

Without any further hesitation the 2nd runway construction began in 2004 and was commissioned in May 2006. No techno-economic assessment, feasibility study, or even an comprehensive Environment Impact Assessment was ever done for the 2nd Runway. Simply put, the runway was built in comprehensive violation of applicable laws, standards and direction of the Hon'ble Supreme Court.

On 8th March 2004, we wrote to Dr. Naseem Zaidi, Chairman (Addl. Charge) & Joint Secretary, Airport Authority of India, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India, reminding him of the need to comply with the Supreme Court direction. In particular we highlighted that “such action would jeopardize passenger safety, put local communities to risk, needlessly dislocate people by acquiring land on a location that in no way could comply with the said provisions and thereby contributed to gross wastage of public money and resources.” We did not get any response.

Six years later today we are mourning the unfortunate death of so many people who should have been alive. We are clear that this is no accident, but a direct result of the series of deliberate failures of officials and key decision makers at the highest levels of all authorities connected with the decision to allow the 2nd runway to be constructed and commissioned. Of course all sorts of explanations will be on offer, but none of that can bring lost lives back or cure the tragedy that has wrongly befallen so many families.

India today is frenetically building airports all over, and for all sorts of flaky reasons. Such is the political, bureaucratic and corporate pressure to build and expand airports that anyone questing the rationale is quickly dubbed as a “busybody”, “useless interloper”, “promoted by vested interest” and raising “frivolous” concerns.

To ensure such incidents do not recur, we demand that the Union Minister of Civil Aviation orders an impartial Commission of Enquiry into the causative factors of this crash, especially investigating the absolute lack of conformance with basic runway design standards and emergency approach measures.

As a small tribute to those who lost their lives in this tragic air crash, ESG offers to assist crash affected families to initiate a damage suits against the Government. We will also initiate criminal negligence proceedings against all authorities connected with the decision to commission the 2nd runway at Mangalore in violation of the directions of the Hon'ble Supreme Court. We take these corrective actions in the hope they would serve as a deterrence against the lackadaisical approach to critical decisions by key decision makers.

Leo F. Saldanha
Coordinator
Environment Support Group
Cell: 9448377403
Email: leo@esgindia.org

Arthur Pereira
Trustee
Environment Support Group and
Spokesperson
Vimana Nildhana Vistarana Virodhi Samithi, Bajpe, Mangalore
Cell: 9449208264/9481439921
Email: arthurjpereira@gmail.com

1That such a crash has occurred at the Mangalore airport is unpardonable as a similar crash had occurred at this airport over a decade ago. Fortunately the plane did not tip over into the valley and all passengers, including Union Law Minister Mr. Veerappa Moily, were fortunate to escape..
2This safety standard of ICAO also applies to air crafts when landing. It is truly sad that today's tragic air crash could be a consequence of the lack of conformance with this standard. For further details, contact:

-- Environment, Social Justice and Governance Initiatives, Environment Support Group - Trust, 1572, 36th Cross, Banashankari II Stage Bangalore 560070 Tel: 91-80-26713559-61 Voice/Fax: 91-80-26713316 Email: leo@esgindia.org Web: http://www.esgindia.org/
ends

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This war can’t be won by mines and bullets

It is not litigants who’ve gone to court seeking the rehabilitation of civilians or ‘civil society activists’ but the Maoists and the State who must answer for the deaths of innocents in Chhattisgarh...






20 May 2010
The Hindu

This war can’t be won by mines and bullets

It is not litigants who’ve gone to court seeking the rehabilitation of civilians or ‘civil society activists’ but the Maoists and the State who must answer for the deaths of innocents in Chhattisgarh

Siddharth Varadarajan

Whether Operation Green Hunt actually exists or is, as P. Chidambaram insists, a figment of the media’s imagination, Monday’s deadly Maoist attack on a bus in Dantewada suggests it is the hunted that are doing most of the hunting.

Over the past six weeks, the Maoists in Chhattisgarh have killed more than 90 policemen or jawans from the CRPF or local constabulary. The 76 men killed in Chintalnar in April represent, perhaps, the highest casualty figure sustained by state forces in a single incident in a war anywhere in the world in years. Apart from the six villagers executed on Sunday after a kangaroo ‘peoples court’ found them guilty of being “informers”, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) killed 15 civilians in their attack on the bus, injuring scores more.

In the latest incident, the primary target was probably the group of Special Police Officers (SPOs) who were travelling on the roof of the bus. But even so, the fact that the bus was full of civilian passengers would have been obvious to the Maoist commanders whose spotters were apparently tracking the SPOs. That they chose to go ahead and detonate the land mine or IED by remote control knowing a large number of non-combatants would die should be a lesson for anyone who harbours illusions about the Maoists and their project.

When I had the opportunity to put some questions in writing to Azad, spokesman of the Maoists, in March, I was keen to push him on whether or not his party believed it had an obligation to conform to international humanitarian law. This is the body of rules which regulates armed conflict. The targeting of civilians and the killing of captives, for example, is expressly forbidden. As a format, written questions and answers do not allow the interviewer to pose counter-questions. Given this limitation, I anticipated the answer Azad would give on the question of the laws of war – that his fighters were not obliged to follow them because the government itself wasn’t doing so – and suggested this was tantamount to admitting the Maoist party subscribes to the same political culture and moral universe as the state it condemns. This suggestion of mine was met with silence but the attack on the bus is answer enough. The Maoists are not Gandhians with guns.

The authorities can console themselves by saying the latest attack shows the “growing desperation” of the Maoists, or that the targeting of civilians by them will be their undoing. But the fact is that by any metric of warfare, they are the ones who seem to have the upper hand. And they have it not because Indian democracy is robust enough to allow for a debate on the rights and wrongs of official policy or for PILs to be filed in the Supreme Court but because the CRPF, local police and SPOs on whom the Chhattisgarh government and Centre rely lack training, discipline, equipment, mobility and motivation. Instead of squarely facing this problem, Mr. Chidambaram and his colleagues in the Home Ministry are busy pointing fingers at others or bemoaning the lack of a “mandate” to fight the Maoists.

More than “social activists”, it is the government that ought to be concerned about the fact that many of the “successes” notched up by the security forces in Chhattisgarh have turned out to be bogus. For example, most of the dozen odd naxals supposedly killed in a fierce encounter last fall near Gompad were innocent villagers, some of them elderly.

There is both a moral and a military issue at stake here. Killing innocent people is wrong but it is also militarily foolish. Passing off ordinary villagers as Maoist combatants and faking entries in official log books may help the security forces present an inflated account of their success but will make actual victory on the ground even more difficult. On Tuesday, the Home Minister reiterated the importance of the so-called “two-pronged strategy” to deal with naxalism: “One prong is police action, and the other prong is development”. Unfortunately, neither prong is being followed very effectively. Indeed, the fact that there is today in Chhattisgarh an inversion of the supposed hunt is precisely because the state and central governments have made a mess of both policing and development. Thanks to a disastrous counterinsurgency strategy, several hundred innocent villagers have been killed, thousands of dwellings destroyed and tens of thousands of adivasis displaced. In Gompad last year, the SPOs cut off the fingers of a two-year old boy, Suresh. The Hindu published his photograph on October 20, 2009. Not one word of condemnation or remorse was heard from Mr. Chidambaram or his ministry.

Far from weakening the Maoists as its supporters claimed it would, the Salwa Judum vigilante movement which both New Delhi and Raipur patronised for years has strengthened the insurgents. This is precisely what the petitioners who filed a PIL in the Supreme Court in 2007 against the vigilantes had warned would happen.

In a recent RAND Corporation monograph, How Insurgencies End: Key Indicators, Tipping Points, and Strategy, Ben Connable and Martin Libicki conclude their survey of 89 past and present insurgencies by noting that ‘anocracies’ are the one form of government least likely to prevail over an insurgent force. Democracies do best and dictatorships sometimes prevail through sheer repression but the anocracies do worst. An anocracy is a phony democracy, which is good at neither proper democratic methods nor full-fledged autocracy. Its institutions are weak and poorly developed, offering little possibility for the government to isolate an insurgency from the people in whose name the fight is being waged. But the need to preserve the façade of democracy also means the full panoply of repressive measures – air strikes, mass arrests, censorship – is not available either.

India may be an imperfect democracy but I do not believe it is an anocracy. And yet, one could argue that state practice in Dantewada and other parts of India is anocratic. Based on the RAND data, then, it is safe to assume the Maoists are not going to be defeated any time soon. The choice we face is to democratise or autocratise the state’s response and the wider machinery of governance. Those who want to autocratise favour a dramatic escalation of the war, the rapid deployment of large numbers of security personnel, the use of air strikes. They are also intolerant of dissent and are quick to label any criticism of official policy as ‘support for Maoism’.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi are coming under intense pressure from this faction but they know the problem will grow exponentially if the government goes autocratic. And yet, they lack the confidence to democratise. What would democratisation as a counter-insurgency strategy look like? First, this requires strict adherence to the laws of war. No one can question the state’s right to fight those who take up arms against it. But non-combatants must never be targeted, let alone allowed to get in harm’s way. This would also mean ending the practice of billeting jawans in school buildings and other civilian infrastructure or hitching rides on civilian transport. India may not have signed the Geneva Convention additional protocol on internal armed conflict but Common Article 3 of the four conventions to which India is a party – not to speak of the Indian Constitution – prohibits violence against those not taking active part in hostilities or against combatants who are in custody. The reason the laws of war are important is that they provide a measure of protection to both sides, not to speak of civilians.

Second, the Centre should support the plan, currently before the Supreme Court, for the comprehensive rehabilitation of all those displaced by the violence in Dantewada. Third, the government should seriously consider a mutual ceasefire so as to push the Maoists towards dialogue. The cessation of hostilities, if extended, would allow the Dantewada rehabilitation plan to be implemented under the overall supervision of the apex court. Fourth, every manifestation of autocratic behaviour – the farcical public hearings on land acquisition for mining and power projects, the filing of criminal cases against poor adivasis for minor violations of the Forest Act, has to stop.

As for the Maoists, they need to realise this is not a war they can win. The Indian state’s capacity to absorb punishment is far greater than the Maoists’ ability to inflict violence. Whatever else its lacks, India certainly doesn’t need more soldiers, guns and IEDs. What it could use is a strong political movement to give voice to the aspirations of ordinary workers, peasants, tribals, women and other marginalised sections. Mao may have said power flows out of the barrel of the gun. But he also said to put politics in command. Alas, in Chhatisgarh today, there is no politics.

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India keen to engage ‘empowered' Gilani

After Thimphu, trust building key to emerging dialogue template with Pakistan ...

2 May 2010
The Hindu

India keen to engage ‘empowered' Gilani

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: The recent empowerment of Pakistani prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and his favourable disposition towards peace were important factors in India’s willingness to put the dialogue process back on track.

Providing the first detailed account of the meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan and Mr. Gilani in Thimphu on April 28, senior officials said the question of ‘who India should talk to’ had been answered by the 18th amendment to the Pakistani constitution which enhanced the authority of the prime minister.

But personal equations between the two principals also mattered. “They do manage to communicate well with one another”, an official said. “There is a certain chemistry”. Last year, when Dr. Singh was under fire following the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, Mr. Gilani batted for him by telling reporters that what the Prime Minister had said in Parliament about the controversial joint statement ‘is what we agreed’. Dr. Singh had put an Indian spin on the terror-dialogue delinking issue but the Pakistani PM chose not to score points. “We remember that”, an Indian official told The Hindu. “He seems to be favourably disposed towards peace”.

India is prepared to move ahead on the basis of Mr. Gilani’s latest assurances because the 18th amendment had legally empowered him, the sources said. “In fact, Gilani told us, ‘I’ve come with the authority. I have the support of everyone’.” The sources also appreciated the fact that his statements on India had always been relatively restrained. “Until you show him a door, he has no incentive to start doing anything [about our concerns]. And you give your enemies the chance to say, ‘Look, India is not prepared to budge even a bit’.” Why should we allow them to fuse all Pakistanis behind them, the officials asked.

The sources said India and Pakistan came to Thimphu with constraints but agreed to lower the pitch. “We have opened the door to dialogue. The purpose is to restore trust. That’s what the foreign ministers and foreign secretaries have been tasked to do … This is not a dialogue to solve all issues immediately but to restore trust”.

The officials said Dr. Singh made it clear it is terrorism from Pakistan which has been preventing dialogue. “One of the most important things to restore trust is credible action by Pakistan”. Trust was a dynamic process, the sources said, adding that the “best scenario” would be one where the 26/11 trial ends soon with convictions, Pakistan takes “credible action” against terrorist groups and the dialogue moves alongside. “We had two choices at Thimphu. First, to have ‘talks about talks’. This was the weasel option, of endless arguments about terrorism lists, Kashmir, water etc. The second was to recognise that if the problem is lack of trust, let’s make trust the issue. It opens [things] up”.

Asked if this was a new template, the officials said, “I don’t think you can give it a name. The advantage of this is that it is open. It has potential”.

The one-on-one meeting between the two prime ministers was about clearing the air, the sources said, and not a ‘negotiations meeting’. Mr. Gilani spoke about the problems Pakistan was facing in dealing with terrorism. Dr. Singh replied that the slow pace of the 26/11 trial and the threats being issued by Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed were a source of frustration for India. Mr. Gilani said he understood India’s concerns and that his government would find a legal way to address them.

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Jyotirmaya Sharma on Arundhati Roy's Bureau of Moral Certification

In 2000, the historian Ramachandra Guha wrote a withering critique of Arundhati Roy, calling her the 'Arun Shourie of the Left'. Guha attacked her essay on the Narmada project and said her 'celebrity endorsement' of the NBA did the environmental movement more harm than good. "I am told that Arundhati Roy has written a very good novel", he concluded. "Perhaps she should begin another. Her retreat from activism would be - to use a term from economics - "Pareto optimum": good for literature, and good for the Indian environmental movement".

Ten years and many political essays later, Guha has been joined by the political philosopher, Jyotirmaya Sharma. Sharma, who is a professor at Hyderabad University, critiques Roy's long piece in Outlook on the Maoists, 'Walking with the Comrades'.

Roy's essay has generated strong reactions, not so much because of its criticism of the Indian State, whose violence and villainy against the tribals and others no rational person can defend, but because of her attitude towards the Maoists. On the splendid website, kafila.org, Anirba Gupta Nigam has picked apart her romaticism:

Two tropes underpin Roy’s rhetoric throughout: the constant equation of weaponry with beauty and joy, and the repeated emphasis – if without much insight – on the militarisation of daily life. Both seem to suggest to her, the epitome of revolutionary spirit – the one we have learnt India needs right now. But this affinity of death with beauty harks back to another – perhaps more accurate – tradition that Susan Sontag spoke of in her 1975 essay ‘Fascinating Fascism.’ National Socialism, she wrote, stood for values which at the time she was writing, were deeply cherished by ‘open societies.’ Among these were “the cult of beauty, the fetishism of courage, the dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community.” Roy’s representation of the Maoists is nothing short of similar fetishisation.

Sudhanva Deshpande has critiqued her "embedded journalism", Chasing Fat Tails doesn't like her tendency to lapse into Orientalism and B.G. Verghese finds fault with her distorted Maoist idyll. Of all these critiques, only Verghese has anything reasonably positive to say about the Indian State (I personally think he's being a little too happy-happy) but he cannot be faulted for introducing a note of realism about what the Maoists actually say they want (see, for example, the full text of my interview with Azad, spokesperson of the CPI (Maoist) or selected extracts from the same). The rest of the critics cited here, and dare I say most of the anti-Arundhati pieces I have seen over the past few weeks, come from a left-liberal POV. They are worked up because, as Guha's 2000 piece said in a different context, they fear Arundhati's criticism of the government's approach to the Maoist insurgency actually plays into the hands of the security establishment.

And the 'celebrity' factor is there again. Many academics and activists signed a statement recently attacking the Chhattisgarh police for threatening to charge Arundhati under the state's draconian Public Safety Act. The police is nuts and such moves must be condemned. But the trouble with 'celebrity' oriented campaigns is that we lose sight of underlying processes. If tomorrow the CG police decides not to charge Arundhati, that will not mean a change in their authoritarian attitude towards criticism and dissent. But many will feel the 'threat' has passed and that we can all relax. Two Delhi University professors, Ujjwal Singh and Nandini Sundar (who has filed a PIL against the salwa judum) were hustled out of Dantewada by the police recently, the Hindu's Raipur correspondent was prevented from reaching Gompad village (where the security forces killed innocent villagers) from the Chhattisgarh side, Manish Kunjam and other unsung and unnamed CPI activists have been at the forefront of tribal mass struggles all these years in the face of police pressure, local reporters who tried to expose Salwa Judum were attacked. If only such signature campaigns had been mounted then. The attempts to silence criticism did not begin with Arundhati walking with the comrades!

In his piece, Jyotirmaya comes at the problem from a philosophical angle. He shares Arundhati's disgust with official policies towards the tribals and her impatience with P. Chidambaram, the Home Minister. But he dislikes her mode of argument. Like Guha, her moral certitude and length of writings remind him of Arun Shourie. Sharma also sees in her 'us versus them' approach a reflection of Carl Schmitt, and goes after her for the manner in which she uses and abuses Gandhi.

Since the Mail Today website is pretty useless in terms of providing access to articles more than a few days old, I have posted his full piece below.

24 April 2010
Mail Today

We can do without her moral certificates

Jyotirmaya Sharma

There is much in Arundhati Roy’s writings and pronouncements that I have little difficulty, at least with certain qualifications, in accepting. I agree that Indian democracy is far from perfect. I agree that successive regimes in India, at the Centre and at the level of the states, have short-changed vast sections of Indian people, mostly the poor and the marginalized. I think that the continuation of outfits like the salwa judum is an abomination and no civilized society ought to tolerate such vigilante groups.

I am with Roy when she says that the lifestyles and livelihood of the adivasis is under grave threat in the name of harebrained ideas of progress and development.

I also agree that P. Chidambaram is a disaster as home minister and has scant political sense and no vision, the proverbial man without qualities. At the same time, I dislike Roy’s illusions of certainty, her self-righteousness, her inability to go beyond self-serving monologues and her prophetic tone.

Apologist

Arundhati Roy’s essays remind me of two people. Their length and their tone of moral certitude remind me of Arun Shourie, the journalist. He landed ultimately in the BJP and now endorses every crime and misdemeanour of the BJP, including the 2002 post-Godhra riots and Narendra Modi’s role during that period. The second person that Roy’s writings remind me of is Carl Schmitt.

Those unfamiliar with Schmitt would do well to remember that he was Hitler’s apologist, wrote tracts that supported the Nazi regime. He found liberal democracy and parliamentarianism impotent and mediocre ways of organizing human societies. But even today, he is studied seriously for suggesting that in the age of technology, the only political relationship that is feasible is the one between friend and foe. The political for him lies in identifying the enemy and eliminating the enemy. There is, therefore, always an in-group and an out-group, those who belong and those who do not.

While Roy might use the word `fascist’ as a term of abuse, she is hardly aware that she, perhaps unconsciously, shares much with one of the most articulate and thoughtful apologists of the Nazi regime.

In romanticizing the naxals and justifying their violence, she is merely a victim of a philosophy that designates virtue and moral superiority to one section of the population and delineates the rest as morally and ethically compromised. It would be perfectly right to say that the naxals imitate the criminality of the state (a phrase paraphrased from Marx, no less), but to justify violence as a legitimate means of redressal of grievances is plainly silly.

Justification

But Roy justifies naxal violence by adding emotive elements on to the question of naxal violence. Hunger and the loneliness of the forests in her eyes justifies this brand of violence. Let us take the question of hunger first. The assumption implicit in Roy’s argument is that once people are well-fed, they will not resort to violence. If this was the case, the bovine placidity and conspicuous affluence of the middle class in Gujarat ought to have ensured that not a fly was hurt in that state.

The loneliness of the forest is also based on an equally tenuous assumption. The romanticization of the naxal in the forest follows from a romanticization of nature as pure, unsullied, and benign. The aranyaka delineated in ancient wisdom is really an internal condition, a state of poise and repose than a material reality. In truth, the forest was always a terrain inhabited by bandits and sages alike, a home for wild beasts who consumed weaker animals for survival. Those who have worked tirelessly in protecting the weak in the forest have done so by taming the proverbial wild beasts rather than justifying violence as a way of finding solutions to the tyranny of the state and of various rapacious regimes.

Arundhati Roy will hardly understand any of this, not because she is incapable of understanding, but because she is incapable of holding a conversation with anyone other than those that agree with her.

This instinct has two sources. The first comes from the fear that she will lose her identity if she ceased to be marginal. Her marginality is her advertisement, and excess of anything, as Lenin’s Russia taught us, is advertisement. The second is a degree of Platonism, where politics is seen as a relentless tutorial in the hands of a few chosen wise men and women.

These wise men and women, it is assumed, have seen the Light and have truth and God on their side. Everyone else lives under a veil of ignorance, incapable of perceiving their true interests and what is good for society as a whole.

The reason why Roy finds Gandhi to be pious humbug stems from the above reasons.

Gandhi, with all his faults, did not divide the world into friend and foe. He did not believe in winning wars quickly and expeditiously. If delay in getting justice be the price to pay for simple ideas of decency and civility, Gandhi was patient enough to wait, sacrifice and endure, rather than let the wild beasts of the forest rule our world. Aurobindo Ghosh asked Devdas Gandhi what the Mahatma would have done in the face of an adversary like Hitler, who was different from the imperial, but fundamentally liberal, British rule. Gandhi thought it would be right for millions to happily die in the gas chambers than compromise on ideas of civility and decency.

Gandhi

Roy finds Gandhi redundant because his politics depended on a certain degree of theatricality and the presence of an audience, something denied to the naxals and the tribals. This is right in a way, since even Roy, the city-dwelling champion of those in the forest, has to invoke Gandhi in order to be heard in order to carry off her own piece of theatre. She obviously knows that the modern Indian state has nothing to do with either Gandhian ideas or with Gandhian methods.

Had she said Manmohan Singh is pious humbug or Sonia Gandhi is pious humbug, foreign newspapers would hardly have reproduced her article in their pages. Both Mont Blanc and Arundhati Roy need Gandhi, after all, to sell their products.

Having said this, Roy is `right’ that Gandhi has little to say about the plight of the naxals and tribals, and even much less about the mining sharks and the marauding multinationals active in India.

But he also did not have much to say about the cell phone, the ipod and cybercrime.

In sharp contrast, Roy is better placed in having a view about all things known and unknown.

She suffers from no degree of doubt, has little sense of irony and no humour. Along with the BJP and certain strands of the loony Left, she has opened her own National Bureau of Moral Certification.

We now await the founding of her autonomous republic, where the heart will always be full, but the mind empty.

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