SACW | Jan.18-19, 2007

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | January 18-19, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2350 - Year 8

[1]  Bangladesh: 
        - View from abroad (A.H. Jaffor Ullah)
        - Bangladesh Slips Into Chaos (Indrani Sen)
[2]  South Asia: Talking Peace: Not by symbols alone (J Sri Raman)
[3]  India / US: Secularism without Secularisation (Meera Nanda)
[4]  India: Tata Lobbies For Dow Chemicals - More 
injustice for Bhopal (Praful Bidwai)
[5]  India: School boards and textbook writers - 
When Will They Ever Learn (Janaki Nair)
[6]  Upcoming Events: 
    - Independent peoples' tribunal on fascism's 
rise and the attack on the secular state
(New Delhi, March 23-25, 2007)
____


[1]

The Daily Star
January 19, 2007

VIEW FROM ABROAD
by A.H. Jaffor Ullah

The vicissitudes of Bangladesh politics since 
late October 2006 surprised the most political 
pundits. No one could have predicted the way 
things have turned out in just 75 days. 
Naturally, the question that confounds any 
analyst of Bangladesh politics is: who is behind 
the sudden change in direction? Who persuaded 
President Iajuddin to relinquish his duty as the 
chief advisor of the caretaker government, which 
neither he nor his party (BNP) wanted him to 
forgo?

One may recall that right before the declaration 
of emergency by Iajuddin quite a few of the 
advisors wanted to meet the CA but Iajuddin was 
not in a mood to see them. Thus, a few of the 
dejected advisors were thinking about resigning 
from their position. Now it is becoming crystal 
clear why Iajuddin avoided meeting his advisors.

Preceding the January 11 declaration of 
emergency, the top brasses of army, air force, 
and navy met Iajuddin and offered him an 
unpublished five-point demand. The president took 
into cognizance the demand and acted accordingly. 
In a short speech addressed to the nation, he 
resigned from the position of CA of the CG, which 
was not music to the ear of the BNP.

Trust me, I have not unearthed this news sitting 
from the comfort of my house located thousands of 
miles away. The news was published by London's 
respected financial newspaper, Financial Times 
(FT) on January 17. I found the piece on Yahoo 
news site bright and early on the same day.

In the way of introduction the FT news piece 
wrote: "Five days after Bangladesh's president, 
at the insistence of the army, declared a state 
of emergency, resigned his post as head of the 
caretaker government and cancelled the elections 
that were due to be held next Monday, the full 
implications of the latest twist in Bangladesh's 
political drama are only just becoming clear. Few 
now have any doubt that the country is set for a 
lengthy period of military-backed technocratic 
rule."

According to FT it was the army who summoned Dr. 
Fakhruddin Ahmed to take the charge of chief 
advisor of the caretaker government. Dr. Ahmed is 
a technocrat who lived in America from 1971 
through 2001. He joined the World Bank in late 
1970s and worked there until 2001 when he retired 
from active duty. He was appointed by the BNP 
government in 2001 to the post of the governor of 
the State Bank. His tenure ended in 2005 and he 
joined an NGO that is involved in poverty 
alleviation in Bangladesh.

It is also not very clear who recommended the 
names of the advisors for Fakhruddin-led 
caretaker government. There are three probable 
answers: army, Iajuddin, and Fakhruddin. In the 
newspaper it was reported that Iajuddin placed 
the nomination, which no one really opposed. From 
the news briefing given by the advisors it seems 
as if Barrister Mainul Hosein, the publisher of 
New Nation, is the de facto spokesperson of the 
newly formed CG.

Indeed, Mr. Hosein was given the portfolio of 
information. Lately, Mr. Hosein has mentioned to 
the press that he doubts whether the Election 
Commission will be able to conduct a fair and 
transparent election within the stipulated 90-day 
period. He said that it might take six months or 
more. He justified his remarks by saying that the 
constitution was breached before so it is not an 
issue whether the same will be breached again.

The prime duty of the CG is to offer to the 
people a transparent election after preparing a 
correct voter list. Strangely, Mr. Mainul 
Hosein's newspaper, New Nation, was mum about the 
irregularities in the voter list and the EC 
reform. In fact, his newspaper used to peddle the 
BNP position through and through.

The FT news piece has another paragraph, which to 
me is a treasure trove of information. It reads: 
"Fakhruddin Ahmed, a former World Bank official 
and ex-central bank governor summoned by the 
generals on Friday to replace President Iajuddin 
Ahmed as de facto prime minister, is now framing 
rules to determine how authoritarian this regime 
will be. Diplomats say the army charged him with 
executing a five-point agenda that the generals 
presented to the president in a tense three-hour 
meeting the previous day."

The five-point demand of the army consists of: 1. 
A drive to clean up the country's biased 
electoral machinery; 2. A pledge to improve 
governance in the civil service; 3. An 
anti-corruption drive that would cleanse the 
nation's politics; 4. The depoliticization of the 
judiciary; and 5. Reform of the crippled power 
sector.

We already have seen some action on 
depoliticization of judiciary. The first step in 
that direction is the separation of judiciary 
from the executive branch of the government. What 
the BNP could not do in 5 years, the Fakhruddin 
Ahmed administration did it in less than a week. 
Talk about efficiency!

The army is now busily apprehending the 
godfathers of crime who have political 
connection. The news of the arrests of petty 
criminals, student cadre members, ward 
commissioner, etc is being published in all 
newspapers to keep the appetite of general mass. 
Any time a military regime comes into power, it 
does it with such finesse.

Mr. Mainul Hosein already mentioned that it might 
take more than six months to reform the EC and 
prepare a sound voter list. The new CG will be 
able to depoliticize the civil service by 
removing the partisan officers and improve the 
performance of every branch of the government. It 
is not known for sure how long will it take to 
revamp the aging and crippled power sector. In 
the past no matter which government came to 
power, they milked the power sector to make 
personal gain. Maybe, the government run by 
technocrats will be able to make a dent in the 
problem.

The foreign newspaper (FT) has already given a 
title to Fakhruddin Ahmed's government. In their 
eyes it is a technocrat government. However, I 
beg to differ with them. In my eyes it is an 
oligarchy pure and simple. When only a handful of 
people manage the government it is known as 
oligarchy. True to its definition, the CA's 
relatives are among the advisors.

Why did the military not take power? The answer 
lies in the fact that Bangladesh military had 
received lucrative contracts from the UN to serve 
as peace-keeping mission in various war-torn 
nations and they thought that had they grabbed 
the power through coup d'etat, the military would 
face trouble in this regard.

The FT article mentioned that if things do not 
move in Bangladesh the way the army wants, they 
may apply the Musharraf-tested principle of 
removing both Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina Wajed 
from the country following Pakistani military 
style which sent both Nawaz Sharif and Benazir 
Bhutto abroad. Khaleda Zia may find solace in her 
heart knowing that Saudi Arabia may take her in. 
On the other hand, Hasina may join her daughter 
and son to spend her early retirement in America.

Has the drama been acted out? Not quite so. The 
curtain was raised and it is act one now. 
Therefore, view the drama with inquisitive eyes. 
I'm not so sure when the election will be held. 
Let us hope it is sooner than Mr. Mainul Hosein 
thinks.

Dr. A.H. Jaffor Ullah, a researcher and columnist, writes from New Orleans, US.

o o o

The Nation
January 12, 2007 (web only)

BANGLADESH SLIPS INTO CHAOS

by Indrani Sen
Dhaka

In a Muslim-majority country with more people 
than Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Israel and 
the Palestinian territories combined, democracy 
is dying a slow, tortured and obscure death.

Bangladesh, an impoverished South Asian nation 
that rarely breaks out of the "world briefs" 
sections of foreign newspapers, is going through 
an election crisis that threatens to plunge its 
population of 147 million into chaos, stunt its 
desperately needed economic growth and create a 
breach for Islamic extremists to step into.

After weeks of crippling nationwide protests 
against his administration's handling of the 
upcoming election, President Iajuddin Ahmed 
declared a state of emergency late Thursday and 
stepped down from his role as head of a caretaker 
government charged with overseeing a democratic 
transition. The Bangladeshi Army moved in to 
enforce the open-ended emergency, which curtails 
many of Bangladeshis' constitutional rights and 
imposes a nighttime curfew. The election, 
originally scheduled for January 22, has been 
postponed.

Several months of pre-election turmoil came to a 
head after the opposition alliance announced 
earlier this month that it was withdrawing its 
candidates and boycotting the election to protest 
a voter list it claims the incumbent coalition 
padded with millions of fictional names. More 
than forty-five people have been killed and 
hundreds injured in pre-election clashes across 
the country over the past few months.

In a country that has seen two military 
dictatorships in its thirty-five years of 
independence, the possibility of an army takeover 
always lurks in the background of any political 
crisis. Whether the army's intervention will be 
temporary or long-term this time remains to be 
seen.

President Ahmed's resignation followed statements 
from representatives of the United States and 
Britain saying the election would not be credible 
without opposition participation. The European 
Union and the United Nations had withdrawn their 
election observers, and a spokesperson for Ban 
Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, expressed hope 
that the army "will continue to play a neutral 
role."

For months Ahmed resisted opposition demands to 
postpone the election, saying he had a 
constitutional obligation to go ahead with it as 
scheduled. Bangladesh's unusual election system 
charges a neutral caretaker administration with 
taking over government and overseeing a 
democratic transition, and the Constitution 
requires an election within ninety days of the 
handover of power. The handover was October 27, 
which made the deadline January 25. Opposition 
parties argued that serious constitutional 
violations by the caretaker government -- one 
being that Ahmed, a member of the former 
administration, put himself in charge -- had 
mooted the time requirement.

Ahmed's resignation does not by any means resolve 
the standoff between the two main political 
factions. Indeed, it's possible that the "chaos, 
bloodshed and terrorism" that Ahmed said he was 
trying to end with his resignation may actually 
escalate.

The exigencies of Bangladesh's fractured 
political landscape have made for bitter 
rivalries between the two main political parties 
and some strange bedfellows within their 
alliances. The incumbent coalition is headed by 
the Bangladesh National Party, which was founded 
in 1978 by the military leader Gen. Ziaur Rahman, 
popularly known as General Zia. Now run by his 
widow, Khaleda Zia, the BNP has its base among 
conservatives and those who favor closer ties 
with Pakistan and an Islamic vision of 
Bangladeshi national identity. The BNP-led 
coalition includes the more overtly Islamic party 
Jamaat-e-Islami, whose stated goal is to make 
Bangladesh an Islamic state governed by Islamic 
law. Jamaat's growing influence worries 
secularists.

Leading the opposition alliance is the Awami 
League, which has its roots in the independence 
movement that severed Bangladesh from Pakistan in 
the bloody Liberation War of 1971. Known then as 
the party of a secular, democratic, socialist 
Bangladesh, the Awami League was led by Sheikh 
Mujibur Rahman, an almost mythical figure known 
popularly as the Bangabandhu, or "friend of 
Bengal." His daughter, Sheikh Hasina, now leads 
the party, though her seventeen-party opposition 
alliance has turned off some of the party 
faithful because it includes the Islamist Zaker 
Party, as well as the Jatiya Party of former 
military dictator Gen. H.M. Ershad.

Without an election, it's difficult to assess 
exactly how much support each alliance has among 
Bangladeshis. As protests snarled normal life in 
Dhaka and across the country this week, however, 
a certain amount of irritation with both sides 
was evident among bystanders. "We ordinary people 
always suffer because of the political parties," 
complained Hafez Mohammed Faruque Hossain, an 
unemployed salesman who missed a job interview on 
Monday because buses were not running and he 
couldn't afford the elevated rickshaw fares 
charged during the strike. "It is not good for 
anyone." It's certainly not good for Bangladesh's 
economy, which was projected to grow 6.5 percent 
this year. Now, Chittagong's port is closed, much 
foreign trade is suspended, investment decisions 
are on hold.

For many of those who joined the protests, 
however, the election standoff is not just about 
one or another political party. Cries of "Joy 
Bangla!" or "Victory to Bengal!" recalled the 
hard-won triumph of the Liberation War, when 
Bangladeshis gained their independence from 
Pakistan and established their country as a 
secular democracy. Awami League speakers rallied 
the crowds by recalling that terrifying, hopeful 
time and stoking fears that Jamaat-e-Islami is 
seeking to create an undemocratic puppet state 
for Pakistan.

"We don't want to become a Talibanist state or an 
extreme Islamic state where there will be honor 
killing of my sisters or daughters," said 
Mohammed Faruk Khan, a former opposition member 
of Parliament, using a bullhorn to be heard over 
the crowd in the Mohakhali section of Dhaka last 
Sunday. "It is not only democracy, but it is our 
economy and it is our very independence that is 
at stake. We did not fight the Liberation War to 
become a Muslim country. We fought the Liberation 
War to become a secular country."

"Talibanist" is undoubtedly overstating the case. 
And Islamic parties have far too small a 
constituency to establish an Islamic state 
anytime soon. Still, the International Crisis 
Group warned in an October report that "a 
creeping process of Islamisation is indeed 
underway," and secularists have legitimate 
worries that threats to democracy could create 
openings for Islamic extremism in Bangladesh. 
Attacks on micro-credit and women's empowerment 
programs, persecution of minority religions and 
2005's well-orchestrated bombing campaign have 
forced Bangladeshis to acknowledge that militant 
Islam has taken root in their secular soil.

Many secularists argue that it's just a matter of 
time before the "tolerant mass" will vanquish the 
small but vocal extremist minority. They may well 
be right. But it's also true that the kind of 
political chaos the country has seen lately 
doesn't help the case for democracy. And with the 
two major parties mired in corruption, 
criminality and organized violence, Islamic 
parties like Jamaat-e-Islami benefit from 
appearing disciplined, efficient and relatively 
clean.

On Friday the sun warmed the Dhaka streets after 
weeks of unseasonably cold weather. Under the 
watchful gaze of armed police and soldiers, 
people drove carefully and wandered around 
shopping centers looking rather dazed. A group of 
men stood outside the windows of a television 
shop to watch the South Africa vs. Pakistan 
cricket game. The evening call to prayer sounded 
from mosques across the city. And, with the 
resignation that comes from an excessive 
familiarity with political uncertainty, 
Bangladeshis waited to see what will happen to 
them next.

_____


[2]

Daily Times
January 19, 2007

NOT BY SYMBOLS ALONE

by J Sri Raman

There are limits to how far campaigns based on 
cultural kinship can serve the cause of peace and 
partnership. It will be served better by appeals 
to common sense and by the argument that 
neighbours, especially nuclear-armed ones, have 
really no alternative

As a peace activist in Tamilnadu, a southern 
state of India, I know from experience how 
geography impacts history in the making. In our 
campaign for a strife-free South Asia, we have a 
special advantage as well as a strange 
disadvantage.

It helps the movement here that it addresses a 
people unburdened by memories of the partition. 
No instant hostility greets here any plea for 
South Asian peace, as it does in many places in 
the north. The campaigner is likely to lose his 
audience, however, as he tries to carry his theme 
forward. Blank stares are what any entreaty for 
India-Pakistan partnership and people-to-people 
relations, on the basis of a shared heritage and 
history, elicit for the most part.

The farther south one goes, the fewer are the 
concrete expressions of a common culture that one 
can find and cite as emotive symbols. Kababs are 
not the common man's idea of a delicacy, outside 
parts of metropolitan Chennai, in this State of 
idli and sambar. One cannot soften hearts in this 
part of the subcontinent by citing lines of Urdu 
poetry and Sufi songs, of Ghalib, Faiz and 
ghazals, of Mehdi Hassan and Nusrat Fateh Ali 
Khan.

And one cannot disarm opponents down here by 
dwelling on loved images of a left-behind Lahore, 
invoked in the north every time support is sought 
for the peace process. Former Prime Minister Atal 
Bihari Vajpayee's famous bus ride to Lahore may 
not have seemed as sentimental a journey to the 
mainstream Indian media, had he been bound for a 
city of less beautiful memories.

But as many of my upcountry friends have 
discovered time and again, an advantage of this 
kind can be cruelly deceptive. The appeal of 
symbols can be severely limited indeed. Within 
months of the bus ride - coordinated on the 
Indian side by K. R. Malkani, the Bharatiya 
Janata Party (BJP) leader of Advani-like Sindhi 
origin now borrowing the language of Lahore 
aficionados - came the bloody Kargil war.

We suddenly stopped hearing about all those 
cross-border bonds. Vajpayee and other leaders 
lost no time in switching from vows of fraternity 
to fearsome nuclear threats. The media, too, was 
quick to junk the fraternity-boosting footage and 
jump into the war of twisted words and 
traumatising images.

A fellow-activist in Mumbai points to a parallel 
with Sri Lanka. Most reports in the India media 
on the strife-torn island contain a ritual 
reference to the emotional links between India 
and the Sri Lankan minority of 'Eeelam' Tamils. 
The links are likely to be almost totally lost on 
all Indians but the inhabitants of Tamilnadu.

A campaign of solidarity with the island's Tamils 
cannot succeed in India's Hindi-speaking 
heartland, for instance, by talking of their 
immemorial cultural bonds with the people 
immediately across the Palk Strait. In the land 
of the Kumbh mela, that draws millions to the 
Ganga, mention of Murugan temples in the south of 
India and the north of Sri Lanka can make little 
impact on the listener. One can strike no chord 
here harking back to heroic poetry of the Sangam 
age while talking of the Tamil Tigers' exploits.

Symbol-based solidarity has not proved strong 
enough in this case as well, to prevail over the 
powerful forces and factors of contemporary 
politics. Talking to me decades ago, in a hideout 
in Chennai, 'Eelam' ideologue Anton Balasingham 
dismissed in derisive terms the regional politics 
of 'Dravidian' parties, on whose support the 
Tigers depended considerably at that point in 
time. And it took only the assassination of Prime 
Minister Rajiv Gandhi in a Tamilnadu town for 
these parties to hastily dissociate themselves 
from the Tigers and denounce the formerly 
glorified 'freedom-fighters'.

The history and heritage shared with another 
neighbour became a major theme during the 
Bangladesh war of 1971. The talk of close and 
tender cultural links did not touch an all-India 
chord either. It only seemed for a time to erase 
the distance between the two parts of a divided 
Bengal. East Bengal remembered poet Rabindranath 
Tagore and West Bengal sang "Amar sonar Bangla" 
(Our golden Bengal). India's far right pretended 
to share the fervour of it all.

The pretence was abandoned long ago. Treasured 
cultural bonds have not stood the test of time 
and politics in this case either. Three decades 
ago, the far right discovered a new category of 
immigrants called 'infiltrators' and declared a 
war on them. Fugitives from Bangladesh and its 
poverty continue to provide fodder for communal 
campaigns in places as far apart as Assam and 
Balasaheb Thackeray's Maharashtra.

The lesson from all this is loud and clear: there 
are limits to how far campaigns based on cultural 
kinship can serve the cause of peace and 
partnership. It will be served better by appeals 
to common sense and by the argument that 
neighbours, especially nuclear-armed ones, have 
really no alternative. Geography compels us to 
create history.

The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, 
India. A peace activist, he is also the author of 
a sheaf of poems titled 'At Gunpoint'

_____



[3]


Economic and Political Weekly
January 6, 2007

SECULARISM WITHOUT SECULARISATION
What explains the failure of secularism in the US 
and India? Why have secular constitutions proved 
to be incapable of preventing the growing 
"religionisation" of the state and the public 
sphere? This essay argues that secular laws need 
to be anchored in secular civil societies.

by Meera Nanda

FULL TEXT AT:
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2007&leaf=01&filename=10947&filetype=pdf


______



[4]

The Praful Bidwai Column 
January 15, 2007

TATA LOBBIES FOR DOW CHEMICALS
MORE INJUSTICE FOR BHOPAL

by Praful Bidwai

Judged even by a charitable yardstick, the United 
Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's record on 
environmental matters is poor, if not appalling. 
While paying lip service to the cause of 
reversing global warming, the government has 
refused targeted reductions in India's own 
greenhouse gas emissions, which are rising almost 
four times faster than the global average. 
Instead, it's recklessly promoting private 
transport and energy-intensive appliances such as 
air-conditioners and washing machines.

The government has passively watched the 
unremitting pollution of India's rivers and rapid 
melting of the Himalayan glaciers which feed 
seven of Asia's greatest rivers, including the 
Ganga, Yamuna and Brahmaputra. It has relaxed 
environmental regulations on high-polluting 
chemical factories and colluded in promoting an 
extraordinarily hazardous industry, namely, 
shipbreaking. Shipbreaking at Alang in Gujarat 
routinely wreaks a horrible toll on wretchedly 
poor workers. Last week, three young men died in 
an accident.

Just last year, the government wanted to welcome 
with open arms a decommissioned French naval 
ship, the Clemenceau, for dismantling at Alang 
although it carried thousands of tonnes of 
asbestos and a range of toxic chemicals. 
Receiving and breaking up that ship would have 
violated the Basel Ban on the trans-boundary 
movement of toxic wastes. Ultimately, it's French 
public opinion, not India's environment Ministry 
or Supreme Court, that scuttled the illegal and 
ultra-hazardous operation.

Worse, the UPA government has been complicit in 
Mr Narendra Modi's egregious and unilateral move 
to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam on 
the Narmada to 121.92 metres—in violation of the 
Supreme Court's stipulation that no further 
construction can be permitted until all those 
who'll be displaced are fully rehabilitated in 
advance.

Raising the dam height is a flagrant breach of 
the commitment made by Prime Minister Manmohan 
Singh last year, as well as the Narmada Tribunal 
award which made the project possible in the 
first place. Dr Singh didn't play with a straight 
bat. When the Narmada Bachao Andolan launched a 
hunger strike last April, he dispatched three 
Union ministers to the Valley to survey the 
situation. The Ministers reported that 
rehabilitation was incomplete. Dr Singh then set 
up a so-called Oversight Group under former 
bureaucrat VK Shunglu, overriding his own Cabinet 
colleagues.

Despite its many flaws, the Shunglu report 
conceded that some 25,000 families were still to 
be rehabilitated even at a dam height of 110 m. 
Little has been done to complete their 
rehabilitation. Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra 
say they don't have the necessary land. 
Meanwhile, the dam is irrigating only 10 percent 
of the land it's meant to serve.

But Mr Modi is now preparing to build gates on 
the dam up to 138.68 metres. This will cause even 
further displacement—of an estimated two lakh 
people. This destructive misadventure must be 
prevented. But it's not clear that the UPA will 
stand up to the pressure of entrenched interests 
hell-bent on raising the dam's height at any cost.

As if this weren't bad enough, the UPA is 
vacillating under the pressure of powerful 
industrial lobbies to further subvert justice for 
the victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster—in 
particular, by letting US corporate interests 
evade their responsibility to clean up the 
factory site of poisonous chemicals which have 
contaminated the city's water.

Under Indian law, Union Carbide, which owned the 
Bhopal plant, is criminally liable for wilful 
negligence in causing the world's worst 
industrial accident. It's also duty-bound to 
cleanse the plant site of mercury, lead and other 
toxins, including cancer-causing agents. After 
Carbide was bought by Dow Chemicals, a $46 
billion US giant, its obligation to clean up 
stands transferred to Dow. India's Department of 
Chemicals and Fertilisers has filed an initial 
claim of Rs 100 crores on Dow in the Madhya 
Pradesh High Court.

However, Dow wants to duck its responsibility. It 
has drafted the support of the US embassy in 
India. On December 8, the US Charge d'Affaires 
urged the government to withdraw the claim on 
Dow. Now, Dow has found an enthusiastic ally in 
Tata Industries chairman Ratan Tata. Mr Tata has 
offered "to lead and find funding" for the 
"remediation" (cleansing) of the site so that Dow 
can invest in India.

Dow has long eyed India's growing market. To 
acquire a toehold here, it has repeatedly tried 
to reach technical collaboration agreements with 
Indianoil and other public companies. But it was 
stopped in its tracks by the petroleum Ministry. 
Now it's worming its way back through 
collaboration with Reliance Industries and offers 
to set up plants in West Bengal and even Madhya 
Pradesh, where it has darkly hinted, it could 
employ relatives of the Bhopal gas victims!

That would only add insult to injury. The gas 
disaster killed over 3,000 people within the 
first week and inflicted unspeakable chemical 
damage upon more than 100,000. This has caused a 
further 15,000 deaths and terrible suffering for 
the survivors. Their vital capacity has been 
undermined by disorders of the lungs, other 
organs and the immune system.

After 1984, a second tragedy visited Bhopal in 
the form of a grossly unfair and collusive 
settlement imposed upon the victims by the Indian 
government, which settled their compensation 
claims for a paltry $470 million and totally 
extinguished Carbide's civil liability. Most 
victims got as little as Rs 25,000 for a lifetime 
of suffering. The bulk of this went into the 
pockets of corrupt officials and usurious 
moneylenders.

All that now remains of Carbide/Dow's liability 
is the criminal prosecution of its top directors, 
including former Carbide chairman Warren 
Anderson, in addition to the obligation to clean 
up the factory site. The Indian government has 
done its best to subvert the prosecution. It 
claims it cannot trace Anderson to serve a 
warrant on him—although his address in a posh New 
York suburb has been widely publicised!

Letting Dow off the liability book will further 
compound the injustices heaped upon the Bhopal 
victims and rub even more salt into their wounds. 
Yet, Dow insists it's not legally liable despite 
being Carbide's successor. This claim mocks at 
all legality and at the elementary "polluter 
pays" principle, which is respected even in the 
US. Dow's position is a crude form of blackmail. 
The UPA will disgrace itself if it succumbs to it.

Mr Tata is pursuing this strange and deplorable 
pro-Dow role as co-chair of the Indo-US CEO 
Forum, of which Dow president Andrew N Liveris is 
also a member. Mr Liveris has met Prime Minister 
Singh at least twice. These meetings were 
facilitated by Mr Tata. Congress party 
spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi is Dow's 
lawyer. Top UPA functionaries are lobbying for a 
committee of secretaries to examine Mr Tata's 
proposal for a corpus fund to be established 
jointly by Indian and US companies to clean up 
the Bhopal site—on condition that Dow is let off 
the hook.

The Forum and the US-India Business Council are 
rooting for resolving "legacy issues" like Bhopal 
through "dispute settlement mechanisms", which 
would "send a strong positive message to US 
investors".

There are numerous links between Dow, Tatas and 
former Indian and US officials. Keshub Mahindra, 
former chairman of Union Carbide India, and an 
accused in the Bhopal case, has  served as 
director of several Tata companies. Former State 
Department official David Good, who worked 
against Anderson's extradition to India, heads 
the Tata corporate office in the US.

Mr Ratan Tata's new role raises many questions 
about the changing nature of Indian business 
groups. Mr Tata's family has a formidable 
reputation as pioneers who set up India's first 
steel mill and ventured into electrical and 
automobile engineering, civil aviation and 
numerous other fields. They were strongly 
committed to indigenous industrialisation. And 
they were long known for not asking for favours 
from governments.

JRD Tata personified some of these values and 
kept a dignified distance from power-brokers and 
influence-peddlers. But even he had his 
weaknesses: obsessions with "discipline" and 
population control, and the conviction, which he 
expressed during the Emergency in a New York 
Times interview, namely, "the parliamentary 
system is not suited to our needs."

The present, globalising, phase of capitalism has 
produced further distortions in Indian 
businessmen's attitudes. The Tatas are furiously 
acquiring businesses abroad, including the 
European steel company Corus, which is four times 
bigger than Tata Iron and Steel. They used to 
take pride in contributing to the larger 
community through education, housing, healthcare 
and cutting-edge research. They no longer do Once 
tolerant of trade unionism, they have become 
increasingly hostile to it.

The Tatas now actively solicit generous 
government support, protection and patronage, and 
threaten to pull out of industrial projects if 
they don't receive it—like any other industrial 
entrepreneur. Singur is a prime example of this. 
The Tatas' environmental record, whether in 
Orissa, Andhra, Gujarat  or Jharkhand, is 
disappointing. They should not tarnish it further 
by cravenly lobbying for Dow and working against 
the Bhopal victims.—end--



______


[5]

The Times of India
19 Jan, 2007

WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN

Janaki Nair

Even the most committed Indian feminists should 
be wary of the sudden suggestion by minister of 
state for women and child development Renuka 
Chowdhury to introduce "gender studies" in 
classes XI and XII.

What should be welcomed as a much-needed 
corrective to the pervasive biases of the 
curriculum will, to anyone acquainted with the 
currently over- burdened school bag, be seen only 
as another perilous attempt at political 
correctness.

Away from the high-voltage attention to the 
secular content of the Indian history syllabus, 
many changes have been introduced by an 
assortment of policy decisions and Supreme Court 
judgments.

These well-intentioned moves have gone astray as 
school boards and textbook writers strive to 
achieve certain moral (rather than intellectual) 
goals.

Why should the prospect of gender studies be 
cause for disquiet? The question may be posed 
differently if one asks, what are the 
consequences of introducing every serious 
political critique of the Indian nation and its 
achievements as a new subject in schools, rather 
than as perspective?

The introduction of new subjects throws the 
already overburdened student and her teacher into 
disarray. The despairing voice of the school 
teacher, who has for long expressed anxiety over 
the growing size of high school curricula has 
been drowned by the clamour over the content of 
various school history syllabi.

A petition sent by a large number of high school 
teachers and historians to the ICSE board in 
2004, requesting a reduction (nothing more) of 
the size of the history syllabus for the standard 
X ICSE board examination, did not merit even an 
acknowledgement.

Instead, that very year, the community of 
Anglo-Indian schools was presented with an 
addition to the syllabus, a new examination 
subject entitled Environmental Studies.

At first schools groped in the dark for what 
would be an appropriate pedagogical strategy: 
Standard III students were urged, variously, to 
sprout beans, visit post offices, and learn the 
basics of personal hygiene from notes dictated in 
class.

The following year, books were hastily produced 
and taught by people who were ill-prepared for 
what is no doubt a vital way of thinking about 
every aspect of contemporary Indian life.

There is not a single topic in a sample stan-dard 
V environmental studies (EVS) textbook that is 
not covered by existing disciplines: Topics 
relating to the body, living and non-living 
things and first aid are repeated almost verbatim 
from the science textbook.

The section on Our Heritage covers themes which 
are already taught as part of the geography 
syllabus.

An odd assortment of chapters attempts to instil 
national pride in Our Nation, Our Resources. Once 
more, it is not clear what pedagogical goals are 
achieved here that have not been achieved in the 
history, geography and civics syllabus.

There is a chapter on national symbols, and 
another on national heroes: the latter includes 
Sarojini Naidu and M S Subbulakshmi, C V Raman 
and Dhyan Chand, and describes Gandhi as a 
"magical leader".

Parents such as myself are flummoxed by the 
ill-organised, information laden, and mostly 
unconnected material that our children are 
compelled to learn.

What is specific to EVS as it now stands that is 
not covered by the regular subjects is a pious 
moralism: Children must not damage monuments, 
must cross the road only at a green light, and 
must honour our national heroes.

There are a hundred things that challenge the 
child on her way to the school: A road paved with 
plastic wrappers, people whose lives are stunted 
by grotesquely unequal access to basic resources 
such as food and water, the strains of an 
economic system that compel some people to occupy 
pavements.

There are a hundred ways in which the beauties of 
everyday life, even in a city, can become a 
resource for a sensitive teacher.

Poems, stories, newspapers and the daily walk in 
the neighbourhood could encourage a mode of 
self-reflexive thinking that does not deteriorate 
into moralism.

A large amount of information followed by a pious 
statement is guaranteed to achieve nothing more 
than moral confusion, or cynicism on the part of 
the child.

When the story about groundwater pollution in the 
area around the Plachimada Coca-Cola plant in 
Palakkad broke a few years ago, I took time to 
explain the news to my six-year-old, who, after 
giving me a patient ear, declared, not that she 
would boycott Coca-Cola, but that she would never 
visit Kerala again.

Moral science masquerading as EVS is surely not 
what learned judges who mandated EVS as a school 
subject intended.

It is imperative that teachers, parents and 
students come together to reverse this pernicious 
outcome of an additional examination subject 
imme-diately, and compel rethinking on the best 
ways of sensitising a child to her environment 
without burdening the school bag.

If the fate of EVS is any indication, feminists 
too should nip any ill-conceived ideas about 
gender studies being introduced as a separate 
subject in the classroom.

The new set of NCERT books under preparation, 
ranging from mathematics to civics, has 
systematically included attention to gender 
inequalities and environmental questions without 
ascending the pulpit to sermonise.

Building on such efforts would be a far more fruitful exercise.

The writer is professor of history, Centre for 
Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.

____


[6]

INDEPENDENT PEOPLES' TRIBUNAL

ON

FASCISM'S RISE AND THE ATTACK ON THE SECULAR STATE

March 23-25, 2007

Venue: Indian Social Institute, Lodi Road Institutional Area, New Delhi

Anhad (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy) and 
Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) have taken the 
initiative to organise INDEPENDENT PEOPLES' 
TRIBUNAL ON FASCISM'S RISE AND THE ATTACK ON THE 
SECULAR STATE.

The task is stupendous. Obviously it cannot be 
undertaken by one or two organisations. We need 
to make it a collective national level effort. We 
would therefore request you/ your organization to 
participate in this effort. Participation would 
involve all or at least some of the following:

1.	Being a joint co organiser of this process
2.	Identifying issues nationally as well as 
locally which need to be taken up by the Tribunal
3.	Identifying and contacting other groups 
which can be part of this process as also names 
of panel members
4.	Helping to identify 15-20 individual/ 
groups from your state to depose at the Tribunal.
5.	Volunteering to compile the existing material on the issue.
6.	Being a co-ordinator for one of the 18 
proposed areas to be addressed during the 
tribunal.
7.	Assisting in Report preparation
8.	Fund raising for the project

A detailed note on the proposed tribunal is enclosed.

We request you to kindly respond to the following 
id for better co-ordination: iptindia at gmail.com

Sincerely

Shabnam Hashmi
tel- 23070740/ 22

March 23
Bhagat Singh's 76th Martydom Day

''Social progress depends not upon the 
ennoblement of the few but on the enrichment of 
democracy; universal brotherhood can be achieved 
only when there is an equality of opportunity - 
of opportunity in the social, political and 
individual life." - from Bhagat Singh's prison 
diary, p. 124


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Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
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