SACW | 9-12 July 2006 | Pakistan: Marriage trade; India: Bombay Unbowed / Control over Media and information / rural violence

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | 9-12 July, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2271


[1]  India:  Bombay Blasts of 11 July - A Press 
statement (Citizens for Justice and Peace)
[2]  Pakistan: Commercial marriages of girls (Nafisa Shah)
[3]  India: Back To Emergency?  "Broadcasting 
Services Regulation Bill 2006"  (Prashant Bhushan)
[4]  India: Don't block information (Shekhar Singh)
[5]  India: Remote control (Barkha Dutt)
[6]  India: Report on the Brutal State Violence Against Farmers in Dadri, U.P

___


[1]

Citizens for Justice and Peace
Nirant, Juhu Tara Road, Juhu, Mumbai - 400 049
India


July 12, 2006

Statement of Condemnation

Acts of Terror are acts of cowardice. Terror of 
the kind unleashed by eight bomb blasts in 
Mumbai's western railway line killing over 175 
innocent victims need to be condemned 
unequivocally. Citizens for Justice and Peace 
condemns these acts and pledges itself to the 
campaign against violence of any kind.  We pledge 
whatever support we can give to the families of 
the victims and for the brave Mumbaikar who 
chipped in all night to save the soul of the city.

Mumbai has already responded and will continue to 
respond with strong condemnation and resolve to 
fight the terror and empathy and compassion for 
the victims.

Terror, especially in the name of faith, defiles 
faiths and creates deep divides among people. 
This is the greatest challenge for us. Not to 
fall for the deep design of the terrorists and 
maintain peace and harmony at all costs. Do join 
CJP's campaign for calm, harmony, solidarity and 
hope. Against Violence.

Appeal

CJP is against the politics of violence and 
terror. Action after yesterday's terror is vital 
and critical. Help to find unidentified bodies, 
empathy for the victims, salutes to the 
courageous men and women who saved, yet again, 
the soul of this great city.

Give and Share Generously.
Teesta Setalvad, Secretary 
	Vijay Tendulkar, President
IM Kadri, Vice-President 
	Arvind Krishnaswamy, Treasurer
Javed Akhtar						Shabana Azmi
Javed Anand						Cyrus Guzder
Alyque Padamsee					Anil Dharker
Titoo Ahluwalia					Ghulam Peshimam
Rahul Bose						Dolphy De Souza

____


[2] 

The News International
July 9, 2006

COMMERCIAL MARRIAGES OF GIRLS
by Nafisa Shah

The recent apex court's judicial activism on 
exchange of girls to settle disputes is rather 
dramatic. Perhaps for another few months, the 
chiefs, and the tribal elders will think before 
mediating marriage disputes. But very soon, life 
will normalise, and exchanging girls for an odd 
buffalo, or an acre of land, or even a house, or 
using girls to settle disputes over a buffalo, or 
land, or a house will go on, as if nothing ever 
happened.

A political economy of trading and trafficking 
girls through marriage has strengthened and 
increased as the rights of Pakistani citizens 
become vague with disintegration of state 
institutions, like the police and the judiciary, 
that protect and enforce these rights.

A vast and intense trafficking of girls is taking 
place across the length and breath of the country 
with complicity of the family, tribe, and 
implicitly by the state. A girl child sees her 
life pledged, negotiated, bartered, sold, long 
before she knows who she is, and sometimes years 
before she is born.

In Upper Sindh, in times of scarcity and in times 
of plenty, Balochis sell their little girls. 
Herders come from far away lands, loaded with 
sheep and buy girls and leave some sheep behind, 
and go back into the hills. Nomadic Pathans come 
down buy girls, or leave them behind, and vanish 
into the hills. Girls from rural Punjab flee 
southwards, to Sindh to escape from the vicious 
contracts through which their lives are pledged. 
Local Sindhis exchange women and girls across and 
through generations, pledging even future girls 
which will be born. Women build their houses, and 
repair their fallen roofs, after selling their 
girls. Vast trading networks of girls take place 
everyday and all the time. Girls are trafficked 
across provinces and borders, sometimes taken as 
far out as Quetta, Loralai, Kandahar, or brought 
from here to there.

The old doddering men are the best bidders of the 
girls; they offer the best rates, rich with their 
properties, their buffaloes, and their houses. 
Sometimes since they have plenty of girls to 
offer, they simply offer their granddaughters or 
grandnieces in exchange for girls who would be 
their wives.

In Upper Sindh girls are regularly sold for a 
price averaging sixty thousand rupees, for some 
market factor I cannot figure out. Sometimes a 
pregnancy, is pledged as part of the contract -- 
the first girl to be born is to be returned to 
the mother's brothers, or the middlemen in 
marriage to be given in marriage to anyone they 
choose. However, such exchanges take place 
through active participation of mothers, and 
fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers, and 
uncles and aunts of the girls.

Mothers, too, are complicit. A young woman, 
Janvri Baloch, about 30, came to me, weeping 
about her girl child who was only 16 but pregnant 
with a second child, and in a serious ante-natal 
condition. "I am poor, my husband is old and 
infirm, I gave my girl for sixty thousand rupees, 
as I did not have a house, and I built my house," 
she confesses sadly. And now the little child is 
producing her second child and is very sick.

Another woman, a Lolai Baloch, repaired the roof 
of her house from the sixty thousand she got when 
she gave away her daughter to a man from the Pal 
community in the neighbouring village. The little 
girl soon ran away from the old man who wed her 
after paying for the little bride. The woman came 
to me, to ask me to help with the divorce. I 
asked her to go to the court.

Some women do take a stand against the 
trafficking of girls. A Pitafi woman, a widow 
with four girls came to me, asking for help, when 
her second daughter, Rukhsana, only 10 had 
already been pledged in marriage by her 
brothers-in-law Maula Bux and Mehar, to Qasim for 
Rs30,000. A deposit had been given for this 
pledge by the bridegroom to be. Qasim, who is 
about fifty-years-old, already married and 
childless, killed his father's sister as kari and 
took a fine of Rs200,000 from a neighbouring Rind 
he accused of being karo with his dead father's 
sister. Rukhsana's mother's brother-in-law now 
calls him ghairatmand because of this act and 
thinks he will be an appropriate husband for the 
ten-year-old niece.

Rukhsana's mother would like to have her 
brothers-in-law arrested to deter them from 
carrying out the contract. However, there is no 
guarantee, that tomorrow Rukhsana's mother does 
not negotiate marriage of the same daughter by 
getting the money for it from her own kin. As it 
is, Rukhsana's elder sister was sold by her 
father, when he was alive, to the Burriro 
community, also for sixty thousand rupees. At 
that time, Rukhsana's mother did not resist. Most 
of the money from the first daughter's marriage 
was gambled away. About ten thousand was loaned 
to his brother Maula Bux, who, by the way, has 
still not returned this money to his brother.

The fate of these girls is tragic. Many who are 
very young, and wed to old men, often run away, 
in search of a better life. They endanger their 
own lives, and also become vulnerable to further 
trafficking. Those who mediate between these 
run-away girls or support them in running away, 
often resell them to another man, or marry them 
themselves. Sometimes these middle(men) are 
fathers and mothers themselves.

A very young girl came on a bus and a train all 
the way from Okara. She was running away from her 
old and sterile husband, that her father had wed 
her to, after taking Rs30,000 from the old man. 
She would run to her family to escape from the 
old man, but her father would tie her to a 
charpai, and take her back to her husband, every 
time she would run away from him. This happened 
regularly for three years. Now that her father 
broke his neck and died, after falling from a 
tree, this girl, who roams the land, a lost 
child, is free but yet in danger of being 
trafficked again.

Several laws indirectly deter commercial 
exploitation of girls, or their forced 
transactions in marriages, but none do so 
directly. Under the Muslim Family Law Ordinance, 
a girl must have attained the age of 16 and a boy 
must have attained the age of 18, and both need 
to consent before the marriage can take place. 
Pakistan has also ratified the UN Convention on 
the Rights of Child, which prohibits child 
marriages.

A recent law, 'The Prevention and Control of 
Human Trafficking Ordinance' (promulgated in 
October 2002), applies to all children aged less 
than 18 years and defines human trafficking to 
include recruiting, buying or selling a person, 
with or without consent, by use of coercion, 
abduction, or by giving payment or share for such 
person's transportation, for exploitative 
entertainment. The ordinance prescribes a 
punishment of 7-14 years' imprisonment and also 
includes parents if they are guilty of the crime 
involving their own children therefore they are 
liable to the same punishment.

However, this law seldom applies to parents who 
sell their girls in marriage, as marriage is a 
sacred formal legal family rite, and therefore 
masks trafficking, even when it is a commercial 
transaction.

In 2002, the chief justice of Pakistan declared 
the Pukhtoon custom of swara, giving women in 
marriage to settle disputes, as un-Islamic and 
expressed concern over the rising number of these 
cases. The Chief Justices of the high courts were 
all given instructions to ensure that trial 
courts do not allow for a woman to be given as 
compensation. The recent criminal law amendment 
2004 also disallows giving women as compensation 
for disputes or murders and therefore a complaint 
can easily be registered under the amended law to 
punish those who give girls in compensation for 
settling disputes.

However the laws are silent on the specific issue 
of selling girls in and through marriage when no 
dispute is involved. And by default, as the 
multiple laws and their interpretations stand 
today, the rights of girls are filtered through 
the family. The Pakistan Penal Code, after 
incorporating the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance, 
empowers the legal and biological heir, the wali 
with powers to compound the offence or killing, 
with powers of life over his children and minors.

The family is entrusted with law and with power 
to regulate individual rights. When the wali's 
close kin kill women, these walis are given 
sanction to forgive them. On the other hand, the 
state does not offer any effective institutions 
to uphold individual rights of men, women or 
children when these are violated by the 
proverbial walis. Hence, the family when it is 
the source of strength is also the subject of 
vulnerability.

The courts are right to show anger when tribal 
elders negotiate such marriages on the stage of 
the jirga. Hazar Khan Bijirani will probably not 
do it anymore. Or the Pir of Barchoondi Sharif 
will think twice before exchanging girls for 
settling disputes after the wrath of the courts. 
But how will the courts show anger when countless 
fathers and mothers, grandfathers and 
grandmothers, and uncles and aunts, willingly, 
and happily negotiate or pledge their little 
daughters, granddaughters and nieces, taking them 
by their hand, or in their laps on any ordinary 
day, and leaving them behind to strangers for 
some everyday expense like cash for cigarettes, 
for money owed in gambling, or for repairing 
fallen rooftops?

The writer is a former journalist and district 
nazim of Khairpur. Email: nafisa_shah at hotmail.com


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[3]


Outlook
July 06, 2006

BACK TO EMERGENCY?
Crisis for content in media? Sure. But 
"Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2006", 
prepared by the I&B ministry, gives sweeping 
draconian powers to the government to effectively 
pre-censor and cripple media organizations.

Prashant Bhushan

There is little doubt that there is a serious 
problem with the content of the print and 
broadcast media in India today. Apart from the 
fact that more and more time and space of the 
media is devoted to carrying commercial 
advertisements, much of the remaining content too 
has become trivial, inane, and debasing, 
essentially containing violence, sex and gossip 
meant to titillate and serve the baser instincts 
of the audience. Even most news channels and 
newspapers have been reduced essentially to 
purveyors of salacious gossip with meaningful 
news being carried only in snippets and sound 
bytes. Though the media says that it is merely 
catering to public taste, the fact is that this 
kind of content is debasing public taste and 
values, dulling intelligence and making people 
more amenable to propaganda. And when this 
debasement of taste and values is coupled with 
media consolidation and monopolies, as in the 
U.S. where just five media companies control more 
than 90% of all television, newspapers, 
publishing houses and even movie companies, you 
have a situation where, as Chomsky says, it is 
easy to "manufacture consent" and reduce 
democracy to a farce.

The big question however is: How do you regulate 
content of the media to prevent such debasement 
of taste and values? The I&B Ministry has 
prepared a "Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 
2006" which ostensibly seeks to do that. In 
seeking to do so, it gives sweeping draconian 
powers to the government and various executive 
officers to effectively pre-censor and cripple 
media organizations. It authorizes the government 
to "prescribe guidelines and norms to evaluate 
and certify broadcasting content and the terms 
and conditions of broadcasting different 
categories of content by service providers". It 
also empowers District Magistrates, Sub 
Divisional Magistrates and other officers to 
prevent any broadcasts and even seize equipment 
of broadcasters for violation of the content code 
or for non certification of broadcast requiring 
certification. It authorizes the government to 
take over the control of any broadcasting service 
during a war or national calamity.

These provisions, if enacted, will make the cure 
worse than the disease. It will effectively bring 
back the emergency days, when newspapers had to 
submit their entire content for pre-censorship 
and using these powers, the government was 
effectively able to muzzle the entire media. It 
has been the universal experience of nations that 
it is far too dangerous to entrust such sweeping 
powers of controlling content to the government. 
Such powers are bound to be misused by the 
government, which will eventually completely 
compromise the freedom of the media and reduce 
them to instruments of the government. These 
provisions will also violate of the fundamental 
right of free speech, which includes a free 
press, and should be struck down as being 
unconstitutional.

How then does one regulate the content of the 
media to prevent the debasement of public taste 
and values and to prevent broadcast of 
inflammatory content? The penal code has 
sufficient provisions to allow punishment of 
persons who publish or broadcast inflammatory 
content. Those provisions are however rarely 
invoked to prosecute offenders such as many 
Gujarati newspapers who fanned the genocide there 
in 2002 - because they were doing so with the 
full support and complicity of the Modi 
administration which controlled the prosecuting 
agencies. That is why we need to free the 
prosecuting agencies from the control of the 
government.

However, regulating prurient, inane and debasing 
content is a more difficult problem. Authorising 
the government to do so is certainly not the 
solution. In order to deal with this, one must 
understand what is driving such content.

One major reason, in my view, is the total 
commercialisation of the media where it has come 
to be driven only by the profit motive and 
therefore by the advertisers. It is really the 
advertisement industry which finances and 
controls the media today. This industry demands 
content which will easily and quickly grab a 
greater share of readership and viewership, which 
can be most easily accomplished by purveying 
sensational and gossipy content catering to the 
baser instincts of the viewers. The resultant 
debasement of taste and dulling of intelligence 
also suits the advertising industry well, since 
it makes the people more amenable to propaganda, 
which is what advertising essentially aims to do.

One solution worth considering would obviously be 
to empower an independent and fully autonomous 
regulator/media council, chosen in a transparent 
manner,   to lay down guidelines to regulate 
content and give it teeth to enforce the 
guidelines. A more radical solution worth 
considering would be to provide by law that media 
organizations cannot be run for profit and cannot 
carry commercial  advertisements. That will 
ensure that they run only on subscriptions by
readers and viewers. That may result in the 
closure of many media  organisations which may 
not be such a bad thing. But it may also make 
even those which survive, quite expensive for the 
viewers/readers and therefore inaccessible to 
many. Or we could end up having only a few 
channels and newspapers on the lines of the 
Public Broadcasting Service in the U.S. But such 
a scenarip has the obvious need to worry about 
the media being controlled by Trusts set up by 
large business houses or media organisations 
trying to circumvent the ban on advertising by 
using advertorials and surreptitiously selling 
news space. These are menaces that confront us 
even today which we have to deal with.

There are a few salutary provisions in the 
Broadcast bill however. The provisions to prevent 
media monopolies by restricting the control of 
channels and viewership by single organizations 
and conglomerates is welcome. Though the details 
of how this should be done can be debated, but 
there can be no doubt that media monopolies are 
even more dangerous than government control over 
the media, and this must be regulated by law. The 
provisions in the bill to ensure that private 
channels carrying national sporting events must 
be obliged to share the feed (without 
advertisements) with the public service 
broadcasters is also salutary. This will prevent 
a situation as we had recently where Doordarshan 
had to carry the advertising of the private 
channel in order to show cricket matches. The 
obligation proposed by the bill to carry 10-15% 
public interest content is more problematic, for 
who is to judge what is public interest content. 
That is bound to lead to unending disputes and 
corruption in certification of public interest 
content.

Though government control of content is not the 
answer to the serious problem of the crisis of 
content of the media, the time has come to think 
of a solution to this menace which is slowly 
devouring the heart and soul of our society.

Prashant Bhushan is a senior Supreme Court lawyer and rights activist.


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[4] 


The Times of India
July 8, 2006

DON'T BLOCK INFORMATION
by Shekhar Singh

One would think that a report on the right to 
information by the Administrative Reforms 
Commission (ARC), coming out about a year after 
the Right to Information (RTI) Act was passed, 
would make recommendations to streng-then the Act.

However, a close look at the report recently 
submitted to the government reveals that at least 
three of the recommendations threaten to 
fundamentally undermine the RTI Act.

The first of these is the recommendation that a 
public information officer (PIO) should be 
allowed to refuse a request for information if 
that is manifestly frivolous or vexatious.

The ARC states that certain instances have been 
brought to their notice of requests that are mala 
fide and intimidate, harass and even humiliate 
officials.

However, the ARC neither gives any specific 
examples, nor does it go on to explain how the 
truth can be used for mala fide purposes 
(what-ever that might mean), or for intimidating, 
harassing or humiliating an officer.

The ARC lays down no criteria for determining 
what is manifestly frivolous and/or vexatious, 
perhaps because these terms are essentially 
subjective.

For instance, an officer who deals with millions 
of rupees, might find a dispute over Rs 10 of 
wages to be frivolous, but to a poor, daily-wage 
labourer these Rs 10 could represent two 
kilograms of wheat and the difference between her 
child living or dying.

The same is true of the term 'vexatious'. Any 
request questioning the judgment, the efficiency, 
the impartiality, the commitment or the integrity 
of a bureaucrat could be considered vexa-tious.

The right to ask vexatious questions is the 
essence of the RTI Act, and flows from the 
fundamental right of the public to question the 
public servant. If accepted, this recommended 
clause would lead to most applications being 
rejected as frivolous or vexatious.

The recommended automatic appeal to the 
information commission is no solution, for it 
would just add to the growing backlog of appeals 
pending before these commissions.

In the absence of penalties, there would be 
little incentive for PIOs to act responsibly. 
Besides, even if information commissions 
decentralise, as recommended by the ARC, the poor 
and the illiterate would find it difficult to 
attend hearings or send written submissions to 
support their applications.

The ARC also recommends that information can be 
denied if the work involved in processing the 
request would substantially and unreasonably 
divert the resources of the public body.

As justification, ARC states that there may be 
cases where the efforts in compiling information 
may not be commensurate with the results 
achieved. Nowhere in the RTI Act is there any 
obligation on a public authority to compile 
information, or collect primary information.

The obligation is simply to provide information 
that is collected, or should have been collected. 
In fact, Section 7(9) of the RTI Act further 
clarifies that "An information shall ordinarily 
be provided in the form in which it is sought 
unless it would disproportionately divert the 
resources of the public authority".

ARC surprisingly recommends that armed forces 
should be excluded from the purview of the RTI 
Act, because most of their functioning is already 
exempt on security grounds.

However, this is no reason why the rest of their 
functioning should not be brought under public 
scrutiny. Security agencies have many employees; 
they make decisions which impact the lives of 
people, affect the environment, spend public 
money, award contracts and make purchases.

Why should citizens be denied access to 
information about these matters? In fact, the 
blanket exemptions for all agencies currently 
listed under Schedule II should be withdrawn.

The exemptions provided in the RTI Act are 
adequate to safeguard national interest. Perhaps 
these faulty recommendations might never have 
been made if the ARC had functioned in a 
participatory and consultative manner.

Interestingly, the recommendations of the one 
consultation that the ARC reportedly orga-nised 
at Bhopal in December 2005 have been totally 
ignored.

The Bhopal meet recommended that the RTI Act 
should not be amended, and exemptions do not need 
rationalisation. Nevertheless, the ARC went ahead 
and did the contrary.

The writer is convenor, National Campaign for People's Right to Information.

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[5]

HindustanTimes.com
July 8, 2006

Remote control

THIRD EYE | Barkha Dutt

As politicians go, Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi is an 
affable man. His ego is not enormous; he doesn't 
bristle at criticism; he's the sort of chap you 
can share a joke or two with and sometimes he 
will even laugh at himself. He's fired by 
football as much as he's driven by politics and 
his geniality is germane to his dexterity as 
Parliamentary Affairs Minister.

So what is he doing defending what could turn out 
to be the most absurd and autocratic legislation 
- if it is allowed to go through?

The Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, 2006, 
is not just preposterous; it is dangerous.

If you think that the draft Bill is technical 
mumbo-jumbo that only big media barons and 
self-important journalists need to be worried 
about, junk that thought.

This is about you and me, and our fundamental freedoms.

The Bill aims to dismantle - or at the very 
least, challenge - media monopolies by 
restricting cross-ownership. But frankly, while 
this may have got business houses very agitated, 
it's not the part that worries me. In fact, you 
could even argue that the tyranny of the 
so-called free market is just as antithetical to 
independent journalism, as overweening government 
control can be. So the jury is out on that one.

It's the attempt to annihilate editorial autonomy 
that there can be no two views on.

Here's the part of the draft Bill that would have 
been funny were it not so frightening. Next time 
there is a "war or a natural calamity of national 
magnitude",  the government may have the right to 
"take over the control and management of any of 
the broadcasting services"; even suspend 
operations if the channel is found to be harming 
"public interest".

So far, India has seen only one televised war. I 
reported from the frontline during the Kargil 
conflict of 1999. It was an age before instant 
connectivity and portable satellites, and still 
unused to television, the army was, quite 
frankly, alarmed by our presence. No one knew 
what to do with us, and so, by sheer accident, we 
were set free in the battle zone.

Every day, scores of journalists walked the thin 
line between life and death. We braved bullets, 
ducked shells and learnt to sleep under an open 
sky or behind a boulder - without food, water or 
bathrooms. But at the end of it, the ordinary 
soldier was no longer nameless or faceless; the 
war finally had a human face. The battle was not 
just about gun positions and recaptured peaks; it 
was about people; the tears and tribulations; the 
conflict and courage of young men sent out to die.

There were no rules then to 'manage the media', 
and yet, I cannot recall a single instance where 
national interest was compromised. Instead, an 
initially sceptical army conceded that we had 
been "force multipliers", and the debate suddenly 
shifted. The politically correct lobby then began 
attacking us for 'glamourising' the war.

Ironic then that the government is worried about 
controlling us during a hypothetical next war. Or 
is it the questions we raised after Kargil that 
make politicians and bureaucrats nervous - 
debates over intelligence lapses and what drove 
India to a bloody war to begin with?

The natural calamity clause is even more 
bewildering. During every recent disaster, from 
earthquakes to the tsunami, it is the immediacy 
of television that has pushed people out of their 
indifference. It is the evocative nature of 
television stories that has propelled ordinary 
citizens into donating funds, and sometimes, even 
rolling up their sleeves to volunteer for relief 
and rehabilitation. During the tsunami, 
television journalists waded through water and 
rotting flesh to reach the worst-hit interiors 
much before district officials could. Or is that 
the real problem?

The 24-hour news channel may be a monster, but 
it's also a relentless beast that lets no detail 
escape its gaze.

In my view, many lives may have been saved had 
the 1984 Delhi riots taken place in the age of 
private television;  the scrutiny would have been 
just too intense and constant. Just as it was in 
Gujarat.

But look at what the draft Bill empowers the 
government to do. "Authorised officials" can 
actually shut down transmission if it promotes 
"disharmony, enmity, hatred or ill will" between 
communities. This was exactly the excuse Narendra 
Modi used in 2002 when he briefly blocked 
television channels that had exposed the 
complicity of his administration in the riots. Of 
course, at that time, the Congress was on the 
other side of the political divide and was as 
outraged as we are now.

And just who are these 'authorised officials'? 
They include district magistrates and senior 
police officers, making it impossible for 
television to uncover the role of the bureaucracy 
and the police during a riot. Under the Bill, 
these officials even have the power to "inspect, 
search and seize equipment".

So will television journalists constantly be 
waiting for that knock on their door?

Speaking on NDTV, Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi sounded 
vaguely embarrassed about many of these 
provisions. He insisted that the Bill was not 
targeted at "established national networks" and 
the aim was only to rein in cable operators and 
the hundreds of local channels the industry has 
spawned in the last decade, often in regions of 
conflict and communal strife. Besides, he 
insisted, this was only a draft Bill - a mere 
starting point for discussion, not necessarily 
the Bill that would make it to Parliament.

But in a democracy, how in the world can we allow 
such dictatorial notions to shape the contours of 
any debate?

Does private television, still only a decade old 
in India, need some sort of regulation?

Yes.

Is it the government's job to play gatekeeper?

Absolutely not.

Admittedly, the ever-proliferating world of 
television often slides into sleaze and banality 
and, on the odd occasion, can even be 
inflammatory.

The answer is for the television industry to 
build consensus and create guidelines of its own; 
perhaps even a media council that would play 
ombudsman  and have the final word on a code of 
content. But we cannot allow politicians and 
bureaucrats to set that agenda for us.

A few months ago, when the Centre was struggling 
to defend its role in the office-of-profit 
controversy, Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi was in our 
studio passionately defending his party. 
"Bullshit," he said, on national television, 
denying that any ordinance had ever been planned.

That's exactly the word I would use for this 
outrageous and undemocratic draft Bill.

But if this Bill does go through, that's the sort 
of language that the bureaucrats in the I&B 
Ministry would find obscene. And then, the 
Minister and I would both be in trouble.

(The writer is Managing Editor, NDTV 24x7 barkha at ndtv.com)


_____


[6] 

Report on the Brutal State Violence Against Farmers in Dadri, U.P.:
The Government of U.P. Protects Interests of Reliance, Not Farmers


To,
	Justice (retd) Anand,
	The Chairman,
	National Human Rights Commission
	New Delhi.

The farmers and farm labourers of the rural 
hinterland surrounding Delhi are fighting for 
their survival, amidst the growing vulcanization 
and expanding megalopolis at their cost. Their 
struggle seems to be with their basic right to 
live with their agrarian economy and rural 
natural environs on one hand and to demand fair, 
just and humane treatment granting democratic 
rights and civil liberties even when the State 
decides to acquire their resource base and evict 
them for transferring the same to the corporate 
sector in the name of development. When thousands 
of acres of land, where populated villages and 
prime agriculture have thrived for generations, 
is being handed over to the giant companies, 
Indian multinationals, whose money, muscle and 
market power is well known, around the ever 
expanding Delhi, in the adjacent districts such 
as Ghaziabad in U.P. the struggling farmers have 
questioned the deals that the companies or the 
states on their behalf are engaged in. The State 
is forcing them to give away their livelihoods 
and lifestyles by compelling them to sell the 
land and everything attached; houses, civic 
amenities, cultural monuments, communities, and 
common property resources.

It is this struggle that has witnessed the worst 
of the attacks by the State Government of U.P. 
(most probably, as per the peoplesí narration, 
hired goons) on July 7th and 8th on which we have 
conducted an urgent enquiry and report to you 
herewith.  We request and demand that the NHRC 
undertake an in-depth investigation at the 
earliest and ensure that the guilty are punished 
and the farmers, villagers receive compensation 
for their losses and justice in the deal related 
to their lands and properties.  With the violence 
unleashed by the state and the corporates, their 
lives are under threat and hence they need full 
protection not just physical, but of their right 
to life and livelihood.  The above incidence 
being only a part of the large-scale trampling 
upon the agrarian life around the mega-cities all 
over the country, including Mumbai, Delhi, and 
Kolkata, we would expect the NHRC to take a 
position on the issue of urban development and 
its impact on the hinterlands.  We would also 
like to remind you of our petitioning on the 
issue of development-induced displacement where 
neither public interest nor just and timely 
rehabilitation with alternative livelihood is 
ensured.  Maybe expect an immediate action on 
these issues.

Sincerely,
Justice Rajendra Sachar (Retd.), Peopleís Union for Civil Liberties
Kuldeep Nayyar
Medha Patkar, National Alliance of Peopleís Movements
Thomas Kocherry, National Fishworkers Forum
Kamal Mitra Chenoy, JNU
Pradipto Roy, CSD
Vimalbhai, Matu Jan Sangathan
Rajendra Ravi, Lokayan
Denzil Fernandes, Indian Social INstitute
Madhuresh Kumar, CACIM
Bhupendra Rawat, Jan Sangharsh Vahini
Faisal Khan, NAPM, Asha Parivar
Bedoshruti Sadhukhan, Human Rights Law Network
Joyson Mazamo, NPMHR

REPORT ON THE VIOLENCE

Dehat Morcha, Jan Morcha, Rana Sangram Singh 
Sangharsh Samiti, and other organizations under 
the leadership of Shri V.P. Singh, the former 
Prime Minister of India, Shri Raj Babbar, M.P., 
and supported by various political organisations, 
have been demanding a fair deal for the farmers 
of 7 villages in Gaziabad district whose lands 
have been grabbed for the Reliance power plant in 
Dadri.  To cut short the long history of their 
2-3 year struggle, they were being compelled to 
surrender 2,500 acres acquired at a price much 
lower than the market price in the area.  This is 
also a known story for other companies who too 
have taken over large chunks of land 
(30,000-35,000 acres each) at a very low price, 
which is a small percentage of the price that 
companies are reselling land for (the instance of 
Uppal and Chadha company, one of those in the 
ìHigh-Tech Cityî in Gaziabad, selling hundreds of 
acres of land in some villages at the rate of Rs. 
14,000 per square yard, without purchasing or 
legally acquiring it through ìpre-launchingî as 
it is called, is shocking).  This is done 
obviously in connivance with the State using the 
ìlawsî but violating the constitution and 
fundamental rights.

The farmers, laborers, traders and others in the 
villages affected by Reliance power project 
received a very low cash compensation of Rs. 150 
per square yard but were compelled to accept the 
same under the age-old Land Acquisition Act 
(1894) still in practice, and using intimidation 
tactics, about 3 years ago.  Soon after a few 
were compelled to accept it, they realized the 
loot and began the agitation.  It was in February 
2004, at the time of the inauguration, that Mr. 
Mulayam Singh Yadav, CM of U.P., publicly 
announced that they would be given a better 
price, up to Rs. 310 per square yard, even when 
the market price is at least Rs. 500 per square 
yard and in the High-Tech city a few kilometers 
away, it is many times higher.  There was no 
fulfillment of the promise and the farmers had to 
resort to a number of protest actions and started 
a peaceful sit-in since November 2005.  Later, 
Shri. V.P. Singhji intervened and compelled the 
Chief Minister of UP, Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav, to 
promise them a rate of Rs. 310 per square yard by 
June 30th.

However, this did not materialize and the 
Reliance Company with a huge subsidy granted in 
various forms, kept the 2,500 acres of land 
unused during these years.  It was their attempt 
to establish the plant now that led to the 
villagers feeling compelled to intensify their 
agitation against the betrayal beyond the 
ten-month long dharna in village Bajeda. The 
peaceful nature of the movement is obvious from 
the fact that they never resorted to violence 
even during such a long agitation.  Later, they 
planned a program of symbolic ploughing of their 
own land only to assert their rights on July 8th, 
which was an open declared form of protest, under 
the leadership of Shri. V.P. Singh, the former 
Prime Minister of India, Sri. Raj Babbar, MP, and 
supported by various political organizations. 
The events related to the program, which indicate 
brutal violence and show the inhuman face of the 
state, are described below.

1.	On July 6, late night around 11pm, a few 
policemen came to the village and began asking 
the people sitting in the square to get 
dispersed.  When the villagers refused, the 
police returned back. 
2.	On July 7, the police tried to locate the 
leaders of Dehat Morcha, probably to arrest them, 
but could not.  It was just before midnight that 
a contingent of PAC arrived at the main square of 
village Bajeda in tens of vehicles along with 
senior most officials, including D.M., SSP and 
others. In the late night, the villagers could 
not identify but there were a number of cars with 
red and blue light as reported. There were only 
about a hundred villagers sleeping at the dharna 
site (i.e. main square), and 10-20 were awake. 
On seeing the vehicles from a long distance, they 
shouted and called the villagers.  When men and 
women gathered, they protested peacefully, asking 
the police not to enter the village and 
expressing determination that they would not 
move.  The police instead threatened them of 
using force and without a formal warning, started 
firing.  During 4-5 rounds of firing, three 
youths named Prempal, Vinod, and Naresh got 
wounded.  We could meet them in the jail hospital 
where the wounds were bandaged and the case 
papers recorded ìwounded with blunt objects.î
3.	After the firing, there was a sudden 
stone-pelting and the village leaders could see 
and conclude that the same was started by some 
plainclothesmen who accompanied the police in 
uniforms.  The villagers identified them as the 
goons brought along by the police.  After about 
an hour-long confrontation, the police returned 
back. 
4.	On July 8th, it was in the early morning 
at six a.m. that a large contingent of police in 
the vehicles arrived again.  Parking the vehicles 
a little away, they all marched into the village 
when there were not more than 100 villages 
sitting at the square.  A number of officials 
were accompanying them and when they started 
approaching, one of the leading villagers, Former 
Major Himanshu, requested the villagers not to 
protest or stop them, but to allow them to come 
in and be prepared for a dialogue.  The villagers 
did so, but the police entered and without even a 
warning resorted to lathi charge, brutal and 
severe.
5.	Shri. V.P. Singh, Shri. Raj Babber and 
others were stopped from entering the district 
Gaziabad with barricades and an order of 
preventing their entry for one month under 
Section 151 IPC was clamped upon them.  They and 
others squatted on the roads in protest, were 
arrested and then released.  This stern action is 
obviously unjustified considering the nature of 
the agitation planned.  It also seems to be the 
Stateís weapon to weaken and break the peopleís 
organization.  We might also remark on the 
strangeness of the state resorting to such 
tactics against a former Prime Minister of India, 
showing the lengths to which it will go to serve 
corporate interests.
6.	There was apparently a court order 
obtained by Reliance Energy against the action 
program of July 8th, which we were told happened 
after midnight.  However, instead of merely 
serving the orders or informing the villages 
about the same, the state attacked the community 
with the police force.  It was totally 
unjustifiable and inhuman, violating the human 
rights and encroaching upon the civil liberties.
7.	The police fired tear gas and then, 
wasting no time, resorted to brutal, unlimited 
lathi charge, breaking the heads and hands, 
causing fractures as well as injuries.
8.	We met Subhash Zamadar, Monu, Manoj, and 
others, who had fractures.  There were others 
like Charan Singh and Dinesh who had serious head 
injuries due to beating with sticks.  Both of 
them were in Gaziabad Jail, amongst 80 others who 
were arrested on the 8th morning, but shifted to 
jail around 11pm at night.
9.	The police also entered the houses and 
broke the wooden doors, brick walls of a few 
houses, chulhas (cooking stoves of mud), material 
such as radios and glass windows, and scattered 
grains.  A few shops, such as those of Suresh 
Sukhbir Singh, and Satish Chandra Garg (both 
arrested and in jail), in the village were fully 
destroyed along with the materials and stored 
money was taken away.
10.	We met in Bajeda village a boy of 
ten-twelve years whose whole body had the burns 
due to the tear gas shell.  Sunil Giri had his 
eye seriously wounded.  Sheilaben, a widow living 
with her daughter and child, was beaten up by the 
police who entered her house and beat her on the 
head, injuring her eye too.  She was found 
bedridden and, as others, was not capable of 
reaching the hospital on her own.  Many women, 
including Biroben, Parvati Birpal, and Seema 
Gopal showed the marks on their thighs, backs, 
and hands, which proved a serious beating.  Even 
the small infants of a few months were thrown 
away from their mothers by the police who pulled 
the women by hair and broke many things and 
furniture inside their houses. 
11.	Almost all the beaten up villagers 
confirmed that they were not in any action when 
the police attacked them.  It was early morning 
and they were engaged in their household chores. 
Some were eating, while others were with their 
children or cattle. The police loosened the 
cattle and let them go in order to get the men 
out of the house to be beaten up and then entered 
the house to take care of the women. 
12.	The worst part of the operation was the 
beating and abuse unleashed on women, who were 
pulled by their hair and pushed against the wall. 
The women also complained of molestation since 
their saris were torn and they were pushed and 
pulled by the men police.  A number of women lost 
their earrings, many of gold, since policemen 
pulled them out forcibly.  The pain and wounds 
were unlimited.  They also described how the men 
officials were laughing and passing sarcastic 
comments and policemen abusing them in filthy 
language. 
13.	Amongst the beaten up and arrested were 
villagers who had nothing to do with the 
agitation, including an old landless laborer, 
Tuki Chhidda, Shishupal Jagdish of Dhamdoj 
village (District Gurgaon), who had come to take 
his wife back from Bajeda, the three young men 
operating the microphone system at the village 
square, and young students such as Manu in the 
9th standard who were all in jail.
14.	It was against this we were shocked to 
know that out of 80 persons arrested, most (who 
were beaten up and pulled from their houses) were 
charged under Section 307.  Many other sections, 
we were told, are also applied against them. 
Seven or eight of them have three cases of Sec 
307 and two have four cases as if they tried many 
times to commit murder.  Eight children below 21 
years were amongst those in jail.  Obviously all 
the cases filed are false and are merely a 
strategy to justify the beating and firing by the 
police.
15.	On visiting the Gaziabad Jail in the 
afternoon of July 9th with Raj Babbar, Kunvar 
Sareraj Singh, MP, and others, we found that 
about 20 persons were hospitalized and almost all 
sixty men sitting outside the hospital also had 
marks of severe beating.  They had pains in the 
bodies and many could not even sit or speak 
properly.  There were aged farmers about 70 years 
in age, and some children below 16 years who were 
also beaten up above the waist, and on their 
backs, hands, and heads.
16.	We found that the single doctor in jail 
was unable to take care of so many patients with 
so many wounds and full treatment had not been 
provided until we met them, but the minimum was 
taken care of.  We saw a number of patients with 
their shirts full of blood, indicating the 
bleeding they had undergone.  They were all 
extremely worried about the women and children at 
home who were beaten up and some also left 
unconscious in front of their eyes.
17.	It should also be noted that a press 
reporter (Dainik Jagran) and media persons (of 
NDTV) were beaten and their equipment damaged, 
mainly to suppress information as repeated in the 
village.

All this and much more was narrated to us and 
observed by us during our full-day investigation 
on July 9th.  We expect the NHRC to take the 
severest action possible against this incidence 
of forcible possession and occupation of the land 
and everything attached to land, using the 
British-days act, from the farmers and others 
villagers.  Such a war against the farming 
communities that are already indebted due to the 
unequal price and wage policy, is resulting in 
nothing less than killing the living communities. 
Development-induced displacement as it may be 
called is to be seriously reviewed since affected 
people rarely get their due in rehabilitation and 
their resources are diverted to fulfill more the 
private interests than the public.  NHRC must 
therefore take a broader view of what is 
happening in the name of development that is 
pushed by the corporate and political powers 
jointly using the money, market and mafia forces. 
The state violence against the non-violent 
agitations may seem to be bringing the results to 
those who are all out to suppress the agitating 
farmers but, we would like to warn, can create a 
worse problem of land and order unless the 
constitutional authorities and the NHRC intervene 
with the right spirit to protect the peopleís 
rights.


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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
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