SACW - 5 Sept 2015 | Nepal: Conflict Alert / Burma: Anti-Muslim Buddhist Group / Bangladesh: Sweatshop labour / Pakistan-India: Ceasefire Violations, Who started it game / Sri Lanka: Communal Danger / India: Statements on killing of Prof MM Kalburgi; Kamasutra for Women / Party Discipline and the Values of the Soviet Regime

Sat Sep 5 04:33:09 EDT 2015

South Asia Citizens Wire - 5 Sept 2015 - No. 2869 
[since 1996]

Contents:
1. Is it really about who started it? Ceasefire violations on LoC and the IB, by India and Pakistan must stop immediately (Joint Statement by PIPFPD 3 Sept 2015)
2. India And Pakistan's Dialogue Of The Deaf | Mohammed Hanif
3. India: Statement by Concerned Intellectuals Regarding Proposed Changes in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library
4. Is Pakistan Male?  | Afiya Shehrbano
5. Video: India's World - Violence over state boundaries in Nepal
6. India: P.A.D.S. Statement on the killing of Prof MM Kalburgi - a sane voice against communalism and superstition
7. India: SAHMAT Statement on Kalburgi's killing - Silencing a critical voice
8. India: Time to go after the Killers of Rationalists - Select Editorials
9. Letter by South Asia Scholars at US universities on Prime Minister Modi’s planned visit to Silicon Valley
10. Book Review: Siegelbaum on Cohn, 'High Title of a Communist: Postwar Party Discipline and the Values of the Soviet Regime'
11. Religion and Morality | N. D. Pancholi
12. Recent On Communalism Watch:
 - India Supreme Court judge recuses from hearing plea in 2008 Malegaon blasts case
 - India: What makes the axis between the government and the RSS so problematic (Siddharth Varadarajan)
 - Godhra Riots: Gujarat govt gets HC nod to launch probe against former DGP Sreekumar (Satish Jha / Indian Express)
 - Book Review: Within the Saffron Family (Andrew Whitehead) London Review of Books, 10 September 2015
 - In Scholar MM Kalburgi's Murder, Sri Ram Sene Man Arrested for Sharing Threatening Tweet
 - India: Was Aurangzeb the most evil ruler India has ever had? - Probably not. And here are five reasons why (Shoaib Daniyal)
 - Linking the past and the present: Interview with the historian Romila Thapar (by Ranabir Chakravarti)
 - Ziauddin Choudhury: The lure of extremism
 - India: The Renaming of Aurangzeb Road - Erasing of History (Editorial, The Hindu, 2 Sept 2015)
 - India: Modi Govt Ministers join meetings with BJP, Sangh and its affiliate organisations - RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat is presides
 - India: Manipur on the brink (Nehginpao Kipgen)
 - India: Thirty years after its creation, the Bajrang Dal continues to challenge an already precarious rule of law (Christophe Jaffrelot)

::: RESOURCEs & FULL TEXT :::
13. In Bangladesh, the sham of Shams factory | Adam Matthews and David Bergman
14. Anti-Muslim Buddhist Group Moves Toward Burma’s Mainstream | Timothy Mclaughlin & Hnin Yadana Zaw 
15. Nepal: Conflict Alert - International Crisis Group
16. Nepal: Open and shut case | Kunda Dixit
17. Sex and ancient Indian women: Excerpts from Wendy Doniger's book
18. Peter Custers - Dutch Scholar and Friend of Bangladesh is No More

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1. IS IT REALLY ABOUT WHO STARTED IT? CEASEFIRE VIOLATIONS ON LOC AND THE IB, BY INDIA AND PAKISTAN MUST STOP IMMEDIATELY (Joint Statement by PIPFPD 3 Sept 2015)
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The Indian government claims that there have been 45 violations of the 2003 ceasefire accord in August 2015 and over 240 ceasefire violations along the Indo-Pak border in 2015. The situation on both sides of the border is worsening. In the last few days especially, the situation has become extremely tense.
http://www.sacw.net/article11588.html

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2. INDIA AND PAKISTAN'S DIALOGUE OF THE DEAF | Mohammed Hanif
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We are at it again. India and Pakistan are talking a lot these days, mostly about why they don't want to talk to each other. Our national security advisers were supposed to meet last week. And they were supposed to talk about terrorism. Instead, they did what they do best: They hurled accusations at each other about how the other side doesn't really know how to talk, and the meeting was canceled.
http://www.sacw.net/article11585.html

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3. INDIA: STATEMENT BY CONCERNED INTELLECTUALS REGARDING PROPOSED CHANGES IN THE NEHRU MEMORIAL MUSEUM AND LIBRARY
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we note with concern that there are reportedly plans afoot to transform the Nehru Museum into a “Museum of Governance”, and to repurpose it to broadcast the activities of the current government. While the government has every resource at its disposal should it want to build a Museum of Governance and use such an institution to display its own achievements, the Nehru Museum was never meant to be anything other than a museum dedicated to India's first Prime Minister, his life and his times.
http://www.sacw.net/article11598.html

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4. IS PAKISTAN MALE?  | Afiya Shehrbano
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As common idioms go, the Pakistani nation is perceived and personified as male. Its female citizens are ‘his' avatars who are validated through kinship – either by virtue of birth or marriage. This explains how the title of Mother/Daughter/Sister-in-law of the Pakistani nation has usually been the exclusive privilege of those women who have been either proxies or progeny of male leaders.
http://www.sacw.net/article11586.html

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5. VIDEO: INDIA'S WORLD - VIOLENCE OVER STATE BOUNDARIES IN NEPAL
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A discussion on India's state run Rajya Sabha TV Violence over state boundaries in Nepal with Guests: Jayant Prasad, India's Former Ambassador to Nepal ; Prof. S D Muni, Subject Expert on Nepal ; Tapan Bose, Subject Expert on Nepal. Anchor: Bharat Bhushan
http://www.sacw.net/article11584.html

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6. INDIA: P.A.D.S. STATEMENT ON THE KILLING OF PROF MM KALBURGI - A SANE VOICE AGAINST COMMUNALISM AND SUPERSTITION
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The respected and loved Kannada scholar and writer MM Kalburgi was murdered by two unidentified men on August 30 at his home in Dharwad. The seventy seven year scholar was actively researching Vachanas literature of early Kannada and literature produced during the Adil Shahi period in Northern Karnataka. He was a source of wisdom for many students and scholars, and his killers gained access posing as students. He was also a vocal critic of religious superstitions and had been targeted by fundamentalists within his own Lingayat community and by Hindutva organisations.
http://www.sacw.net/article11578.html

See also the statement in Hindi: http://www.sacw.net/article11589.html

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7. INDIA: SAHMAT STATEMENT ON KALBURGI'S KILLING - SILENCING A CRITICAL VOICE
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Kalburgi's killing comes even as police report a complete lack of progress, or even of credible clues, in the Dabholkar and Pansare murders. It comes as individuals accused of terrorist crimes and murderous rioting are being shown undue leniency by both prosecutors and the judiciary, because the colour of their violence accords with the political ideology that today rules the country. We condemn the heinous killing of Kalburgi and call on all forces that stand for a sane and just social order to mobilise in the quest for justice.
http://www.sacw.net/article11566.html

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8. INDIA: TIME TO GO AFTER THE KILLERS OF RATIONALISTS - SELECT EDITORIALS
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The gunning down of rationalist Kannada scholar M.M. Kalburgi is a blot on our society. The behaviour of these fringe religious zealot groups, who have assassinated three such eminent thinkers and elderly scholars in the last two years in Maharashtra and Karnataka, is no less than that of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
http://www.sacw.net/article11571.html

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9. LETTER BY SOUTH ASIA SCHOLARS AT US UNIVERSITIES ON PRIME MINISTER MODI’S PLANNED VISIT TO SILICON VALLEY
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Digital India initiative ignores key questions about the collection of personal information and the near-certainty that such systems will be used to enhance surveillance, says statement.
http://www.sacw.net/article11567.html

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10. BOOK REVIEW: SIEGELBAUM ON COHN, 'HIGH TITLE OF A COMMUNIST: POSTWAR PARTY DISCIPLINE AND THE VALUES OF THE SOVIET REGIME'
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Disciplining Communists
One of the more interesting developments in the field of Soviet history has been the reinterpretation of what loosely 
http://www.sacw.net/article11590.html

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11. RELIGION AND MORALITY
by N. D. Pancholi
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It is generally supposed that the morality of a people is grounded in their religion. The falsity of this view is, however, borne out by the frequent riots in which a large number of innocent people are mercilessly killed in the name of religion. 
http://www.sacw.net/article11602.html

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12. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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 - India: Modi govt’s ‘appraisal’ - Answerable to people or Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS boss? | Editorial, The Tribue)
 - India Supreme Court judge recuses from hearing plea in 2008 Malegaon blasts case
 - India: What makes the axis between the government and the RSS so problematic (Siddharth Varadarajan)
 - Godhra Riots: Gujarat govt gets HC nod to launch probe against former DGP Sreekumar (Satish Jha / Indian Express)
 - Book Review: Within the Saffron Family (Andrew Whitehead) London Review of Books, 10 September 2015
 - In Scholar MM Kalburgi's Murder, Sri Ram Sene Man Arrested for Sharing Threatening Tweet
 - India: Was Aurangzeb the most evil ruler India has ever had? - Probably not. And here are five reasons why (Shoaib Daniyal)
 - India: Hindutva Mothership RSS evaluating Narendra Modi Govt's Performance Cartoon and related newsreport
 - Linking the past and the present: Interview with the historian Romila Thapar (by Ranabir Chakravarti)
 - Ziauddin Choudhury: The lure of extremism
 - India: The Renaming of Aurangzeb Road - Erasing of History (Editorial, The Hindu, 2 Sept 2015)
 - India: Modi Govt Ministers join meetings with BJP, Sangh and its affiliate organisations - RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat is presides
 - India: Manipur on the brink (Nehginpao Kipgen)
 - India: Thirty years after its creation, the Bajrang Dal continues to challenge an already precarious rule of law (Christophe Jaffrelot)
 - Announcement: Join Us in Defense of Rationality on 05 Sep 15 - 03 to 07 PM at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi
 - India: Assault on Reason - The Re-writing of History (Press Conference, Press Club of India, September 5, 2015)
 - India: The way of the gun - Nilanjana S Roy
 - India: BJP mulls giving 'contemporary' look to Nehru Memorial Museum & Library; Congress labels idea crazy
 - India: "You can attack us but our works will live on" says Prof KS Bhagwan who is under threat from the Hindu Right 
 - available at: http://communalism.blogspot.com/

::: RESOURCES & FULL TEXT :::
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13. IN BANGLADESH, THE SHAM OF SHAMS FACTORY
by Adam Matthews and David Bergman
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[Two part article on AL Jazeera by Adam Matthews in New York, David Bergman in Dhaka, Bangladesh ]

PART I

MEGA-CHAIN THE CHILDREN’S PLACE CONTINUES TO SOURCE CLOTHES IN UNSAFE SWEATSHOPS

Published on Monday, Aug. 31, 2015

On March 2, 135 large cardboard boxes arrived at the Port of Savannah, in the U.S. state of Georgia. They were packed with hundreds of pairs of shorts in two patterns and delivered to the warehouses of the largest kids’-clothing-only retailer in the United States, the Children’s Place. The first pattern featured blue pineapples on red cotton twill and the second, red palm trees on a dark blue background. Both styles were a bargain, just $19.95 at retail and, after discount, well under half that on TCP’s website at the time of writing. Belying their carefree design, the mini surfer dude shorts came from a cheerless factory in a landlocked city in a country half a world away — Shams Styling Wears, located on the outskirts of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.

Shams occupies a drab nine-story concrete tower in Savar, a polluted industrial suburb. The structure is less than five miles from Rana Plaza, the eight-story garment factory building that collapsed on April 24, 2013, killing more than 1,100 workers and injuring at least twice as many. The disaster was supposed to mark a turning point in the manufacturing of ready-made garments, the largest industry in Bangladesh. In the aftermath, multinational brands launched two major initiatives to improve the structural, fire and electrical safety of their Bangladeshi factories. In May of that year, a European-led consortium that included the brands Primark and H&M launched the legally binding Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. The agreement created a system of inspections that would warn, punish and eventually disqualify factories that didn’t meet basic safety benchmarks.

The Children’s Place, however, joined other American brands like Walmart in forming the far less strict Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, which relies on third-party inspectors to identify key deficiencies but imposes no real deadlines in implementing changes. Similarly, the accord mandates that foreign brands must finance improvements to bring their Bangladeshi factories in line with international standards, but the alliance doesn't.
Bangladeshi volunteers and rescue workers search for survivors of the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex, April 25, 2013. (Photo by Munir uz Zaman / AFP / Getty Images) (Click to enlarge images)

“The two competing initiatives [show] the tension between civil society wanting reform and the brands that want control over the initiatives they join,” says Heather White, a supply-chain expert who founded the labor monitoring nonprofit Verité. “The U.S.-led initiative operates by excluding trade unions, which leads to reduced, shoddy standards, limited improvements, a huge waste of NGOs’ time and an erosion of credibility.” The alliance doesn’t actually engage with organized labor leaders, a serious concern in Bangladesh, where the outspoken organizer Aminul Islam was tortured and murdered in 2012, allegedly at the hands of the country’s Industrial Police force.

White is more optimistic about the European consortium — as long as unions remain involved.

Javed Ali, a 21-year-old worker on the factory floor at Shams, asked that his real name not be used for fear of losing his job. He says that although the workers have a union, “it is a puppet trade union. The management put their own people on it, just to show the buyer that they have a trade union.”

More than two years after Rana Plaza, the Shams factory, like many other garment factories in Bangladesh, has no contingency plan should a fire break out. A June 2014 fire inspection by the Texas-based engineering firm CCRD, which was hired by the alliance, found aisles that were blocked by merchandise, and an alarm that wasn’t monitored by the local fire department. CCRD’s report suggested that these were serious issues and should be corrected within six months. But as of April 16, when Shams was reinspected, it had fixed fewer than half of the critical deficiencies, according to GMMB, the Washington, D.C.-based consultancy that handles public relations for the alliance. Eight of the nine highest-priority fire hazards have not been fixed. A representative from Shams told Al Jazeera America in June that it has completed “over 50 percent” of the necessary repairs, and the outstanding items will be completed “within a few months.”
Men and women enter the Shams building through separate entrances. (Click to enlarge images)

This cavalier attitude shocks safety expert Keith Wrightson of the U.S. consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. “The plan of action should say, ‘Close all operations until the sprinklers are installed,’” he says. “They know what’s going to happen.” A similarly unsafe building on the outskirts of Dhaka, Dignity Textile Mills, burned down on May 31. No one was killed or injured. But the seven-story structure, which was empty, lacked a sprinkler system that could douse or slow down a fire — just as in Shams. The factory remains without sprinklers despite two inspections, in June 2014 and April 2015, which identified this as a safety hazard.

These conditions appear to violate the Children’s Place’s own supplier code, which requires factories to “provide workers with a safe and healthy workplace … ensuring at a minimum, a safe building with proper fire safety equipment; sanitary facilities with adequate lighting and ventilation.”

But Shams workers have more immediate concerns than structural or fire safety violations, which can seem abstract. “Sometimes we don’t get a single day off in a month,” says Ali. He is sitting in a bare, concrete room, just 13 feet by 13 feet, which he shares with three other workers from the factory. “And the most we get is two days off in a month.” They are also forced to do overtime, he adds, at least two hours a day. That means they end up working 10 or 11 hours per day and, most of the time, seven days per week.
Javed Ali in the room where he lives, top. The Shams building, left, and a meal Ali shared with his co-worker, who lives with him. (Click to enlarge images)

Shams Styling Wears is one of more than 20 garment factories owned by the Standard Group. The conglomerate was founded as an engineering and construction company in 1969, before Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan. In the mid-1980s, Standard opened one of the first clothing factories in Dhaka. The group now dabbles in real estate, manufacturing and insurance. In an interview with Al Jazeera America, Standard Group cofounder Mosharraf Hussain, who portrays himself as a grandfatherly figure benevolently providing employment to more than 40,000 people, denies that his firm forces any employees to work overtime or put in seven-day workweeks. “No, never,” says Hussain, 71, at his well-appointed Dhaka headquarters. “It is not possible. … [We] have to go by norms now.” He adds that if some of the workers wish to pick up more money, they can do a few extra hours. “Maybe you are making some confusion,” he says. “This kind of thing may be in some other factories.”

More than five months after executives from the Children’s Place refused to meet with a Rana Plaza survivor and other activists at a rally at its headquarters on March 12, the U.S. company remains unwilling to fully address its record in Bangladesh. Emails and phone calls over a period of months requesting comment about what workers in Bangladesh describe as violations of TCP’s code of conduct went unanswered.
Following the path of a pair of shorts
Methodology: We ordered a pair of boys’ pineapple chino shorts, size 7 — the middle of all sizes offered — to the Al Jazeera America newsroom in New York City. It weighs 6.8 ounces, which allowed us to estimate how many pairs of such shorts were in the March 2015 shipment from Shams Styling Wears to the Children’s Place. The shipment weighed 2,883.6 pounds, and we divided the shipment weight by estimated average weight of the shorts.

In the first six months of 2015, Shams has already sent more than 10 shipments to TCP in the United States and Canada — that’s 390,383.5 pounds of clothing. And Shams Styling Wears illustrates why Bangladesh remains such an attractive market for these foreign brands. Hussain explains that he and other Bangladeshi suppliers operate on thin margins. “Very low, maybe 3, 4, 5 percent,” he says. “It is a competitive market. … Who is putting [in] the lower price will get the order.” According to this reporter’s calculations, Shams was paid about $9 a pound for a container of shorts it recently shipped to the Children’s Place.

The garment company is able to survive on these narrow profit margins on the backs of its workers: Ali, the highest-paid of three Shams workers who agreed to speak to Al Jazeera America on condition of anonymity, makes only $52 per month in base pay and $122 with overtime. “We are not paid on time,” Ali says. “We should be paid between the third and fifth of each month. Usually, we get our basic salary on 10th, but have to wait for till the 15th or 20th for our overtime pay.” The overtime pay, he adds, is often short.

This means that while American moms can buy TCP’s red and blue twill shorts for the price of a couple of Happy Meals, Ali has to work for two days, with overtime, to afford a single pair.

A 13,000-mile journey

We traced the route a pair of boys’ pineapple chino shorts took from the Shams Styling Wears factory on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, to the Al Jazeera newsroom in New York City.

After the shorts were manufactured, they were transported by truck or train to the port city of Chittagong.

These low margins likely contribute to other kinds of apparent violations by Shams — and perhaps other suppliers — of TCP’s vendor code of conduct. And the alliance’s 2014 financial statement shows why the group may not be much help. Of the roughly $5.5 million the group spent, just $272,583 went to inspections. It spent slightly more than that on communications and public relations. There are line items for both worker support (roughly $472,000) and training (roughly $63,000). Of the total expenditure, 20 percent, or $1.1 million, was spent on expenses for the board. Another million went to legal fees.

The accusations from Shams workers aren’t the first time a Standard Group garment factory has faced scrutiny. In November 2013, a blaze consumed the 10-story Standard Garments building in nearby Gazipur. The circumstances remain unclear. The Standard narrative is that local workers unconnected to the factory, amped up by a false rumor that police had killed one of their colleagues, torched the building and 22 vans loaded with clothes. Another version suggests that workers from the Standard factory, protesting low salaries, were also involved in the arson.
Smoke and flames billow from the Standard Garments building, Nov. 29, 2013, left. A firefighter inspects the damage after the flames were put out. (Photos by Munir uz Zaman / AFP / Getty Images, left; Andrew Biraj / Reuters / Landov, right) (Click to enlarge images)

A few days after the fire, on Dec. 3, 2013, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came to the remains of the factory to show her support for Standard CEO Mosharraf Hussain and his colleagues at the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. After Hasina toured the factory, she gave a press conference there with Hussain, a pink box of tissues strategically placed at arm’s reach. After the CEO broke down in tears, Hasina promised to follow up with the banks to help reopen the factory. According to a press release from Hasina’s ruling Awami League Party, the culprits of the fire were “evil elements…[belonging] to the anti-liberation force.” She told the crowd to remain vigilant. “We have information that they’re now hatching [a] conspiracy to sink ferry and steamer,” she said. It’s unclear what ferry and steamer she was referring to. Within a week, the government-owned Bangladesh Bank gave Standard Group $25 million in low-interest loans.

Standard Group also filed an insurance claim with Standard Insurance. (That company was later investigated on another matter and had its license suspended by Bangladesh’s Insurance Development & Regulatory Authority.) Though the insurance concern is an independent public company, three of Hussain’s children, his wife and two business partners from clothing ventures sit on its board.

Despite Bangladesh’s ongoing safety and compliance challenges, the country holds one powerful competitive advantage: It is still the cheapest place to source clothing. “The industry is there for all the obvious reasons,” says Pamela Ellsworth, who heads the Global Fashion Management program at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology. In its 2014 annual report, the Children’s Place agreed, saying it plans to manufacture even more clothes in countries such as Bangladesh. “In order to maintain and/or reduce the cost of our merchandise, we have reduced and will continue to reduce production in China and … move production into other developing countries.” The report estimates that 20 percent of these imports came from Bangladesh. Al Jazeera America’s analysis of TCP’s 2014 shipping records indicates that Bangladesh likely accounts for around 50 percent of the company’s imports.

But the Children’s Place also acknowledges the risk of making clothes in a country such as Bangladesh. “The failure of our third-party manufacturers to adhere to local law in the areas of worker safety (e.g. fire safety and building codes), worker rights of association, and social compliance and health and welfare requirements could result in accidents and practices,” its annual report states, “that cause disruptions or delays in production and/or substantial harm to our reputation.”

That’s not the only outcome of TCP’s suppliers violating local labor laws. Those colorful chino shorts that are available for a song in U.S. stores have proved costly for workers like Ali — and could prove deadly as well.

o o o

PART II

SACK, CLOTH AND ASHES

Children's Place CEO's 'reign of terror' has seen staff fired, activists arrested
The Children’s Place CEO Jane Elfers in the model store at the company’s corporate headquarters in Secaucus, N.J., 2010. (Photo by North Jersey / Landov)

By Adam Matthews in Secaucus, N.J.

Published on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015

It was the arrest that clinched it for the Children’s Place. Mahinur Begum, a survivor of the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory complex in Bangladesh, was at the New Jersey headquarters of the U.S. children’s clothing company in March along with 26 other activists. She wanted to ask the company’s CEO, Jane Elfers, to increase compensation to the victims of the collapse. But after the protesters went into the office, someone called the cops. All the activists were handcuffed and charged with trespassing.

“For Mahinur, it was a double tragedy,” says Kalpona Akter, a Bangladeshi labor rights activist who was also there. “She was trapped in Rana Plaza for 24 hours and now they’re arresting her?”

The arrests were a public relations nightmare for TCP. As Rana Plaza’s anniversary approached, anti-sweatshop activists seized on the incident and launched the website OrphansPlace.com and a matching Twitter account, making plans to picket 25 Children’s Place stores around the country. After resisting demands for a larger payout for more than a year, the company finally caved. On April 23, TCP wired more than $2 million into the Rana Plaza victims’ fund.
Mahinur Begum, 18, second from left, a former garment worker who was nearly killed in the Rana Plaza building collapse, protests with others for victims’ compensation. The protesters were subsequently arrested. Bangladeshi garment workers and family members of missing workers protest two months after the accident in Dhaka. (Photos by USAS; Munir uz Zaman / AFP / Getty Images) (Click to enlarge images)

But bad press continues to dog the clothing retailer and especially its CEO. In March, two activist hedge funds penned a scathing letter to TCP’s board chair, citing Elfers’ “egregious” salary and her lack of “managerial expertise,” resulting in “constant executive turnover.” On anonymous job review website Glassdoor, only 30 percent of posters approve of her. One memorable 2014 review likens working at the company’s New Jersey head office to “drowning and someone hands you a bowling ball.” The reviewer goes on to describe headquarters under Elfers as a “hostile work environment cultivated from the highest level down … [where] employees are disposable.” The reviewer also offers a specific critique that may shed light on a more troubling corporate culture: “This company attempted to force me to ignore compliance regulations.”

Under Elfers, the company has reduced its orders from China and significantly increased them from Bangladesh. Despite the lessons of Rana Plaza — and TCP’s own promises to improve safety — many say it falls dangerously short of responsible business practices.
Relatives cry out after identifying the body of a loved one killed in the building collapse, May 3, 2013. (Click to enlarge images)

When the eight-story Rana Plaza, just outside Bangladesh’s capital city of Dhaka, collapsed on April 24, 2013, 1,129 people were killed and thousands more injured. President Barack Obama swiftly dumped Bangladesh from the list of developing countries eligible for reduced import tariffs.

The Children’s Place initially denied it had anything to do with the disaster. “While one of the garment factories located in the building complex has produced apparel for the Children’s Place, none of our product was in production at the time of this accident,” spokeswoman Jane Singer told the Associated Press. But a few days later, The New York Times dug up customs records proving that a factory from the New Wave retail group in Rana Plaza had sent TCP a massive shipment just weeks before the collapse. In fact, in a 2013 interview with Canada’s CBC, New Wave owner Bazlus Samad said his company was producing garments for the Children’s Place when the building collapsed.

For close to a year, the company refused to pay any compensation. Finally, in March 2014 TCP paid $450,000 to a fund established to help survivors and the families of the victims — about 1/17 of the requested $8 million and an even more minuscule sum compared with Elfers’ $17 million compensation package the year before the collapse. (In contrast, the British chain Primark, which also sourced clothes from a New Wave factory, pledged to donate $6.3 million, or $10,500 for each of the 600 victims in that factory.) At the time of the Rana Plaza disaster, Bangladesh’s minimum wage was just $38 a month. Though TCP’s final $2 million donation was less than was hoped for, it helped the fund reach its $30 million goal in June.

The aid is necessary and welcome, activists say, but little has changed on the ground. More than two years after Rana Plaza, the Children’s Place continues to purchase garments from Bangladeshi factories that are in danger of collapsing and have no fire safety plan. And TCP’s pledges ignore the real cause of the industrial accidents that plague the country’s garment industry: its razor-thin margins. These economic strictures make it almost impossible for suppliers to meet the prices demanded by TCP and other international brands and still adhere to their suppliers’ code of conduct, which bans child labor, forced labor and unsafe working conditions.
The Shams Styling Wears building, where the Children’s Place currently sources clothing, Dhaka, Bangladesh, April 2015. (Click to enlarge images)

For years Bangladeshi workers have raised concerns about unsafe working conditions and low pay. But no one is listening — least of all Elfers, who former employees say has allowed the bottom line to trump ethical considerations at the Children’s Place. When she was hired as CEO in 2009, Wall Street cheered her arrival as a change agent who could clean up shop. Her predecessor, Ezra Dabah, who ran TCP from 1991 to 2007, was forced out by the board after being accused of financial impropriety and leading a disastrous attempt to open Disney-branded clothing stores. Crain’s, the New York business weekly, cooed, “Children’s Place gets a grown-up.”

Following industry trends, Elfers cut production costs by terminating many Chinese suppliers contracted under Dabah in favor of vendors in Vietnam and Bangladesh who were willing to produce similar clothing for less money. Even after the Rana Plaza disaster, TCP continued to increase its orders from Bangladeshi factories, many of which have poor labor conditions and unsafe structures.

After 2012, a noticeable shift to sourcing in Bangladesh

weight in pounds (M = millions)BangladeshChinaAll

Source: Datamyne shipping records
Note: From 2004-2015, 24.5 percent of all clothing came from Bangladesh; 20.8 percent from China. “All others” includes more than 40 countries that ship to the Children's Place, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Lesotho, Indonesia and India.
Very little data is available for some years, particularly 2006-07 and 2009-10. During these flat spots, the Children's Place used a Customs and Border Protection program that allows U.S. companies to redact their shipping documents to hide the names and locations of their suppliers abroad.

Things seemed to get worse in 2011 when Elfers allegedly forced out Mark Rose, the company’s well-regarded supply chain head. The following year, according to a source who would not speak on the record, she eliminated the entire 10-person quality assurance department, a team crucial to ensuring that supplier factories operate within the company’s code of conduct and make clothes of consistent quality and size. If it seems difficult to believe that Elfers would eliminate a department that handled such a critical function, former employees describe a corporate culture that didn’t value competency.

Almost a dozen former staffers describe an environment at TCP where supplicants rose through the ranks while anybody who disagreed with Elfers was trampled. During her tenure, the company has lost at least 12 senior staffers. But the board didn’t do enough to check Elfers’ power, says one former midlevel employee who spoke on condition of anonymity: “I don’t understand how there is a board of directors that allows this stuff to happen. I just know so many people who left there broken. And very talented people.”

A former high-level employee who was pushed out by Elfers concurs with this description. “I would call it Jane’s reign of terror,” he says. And the board approved the staff turnover because “she has [Brad Cost] her personal attorney as her chief legal counsel, who controls all the information that goes to the board. And she’s got Larry [McClure], the head of HR, who has basically been awarded gigantic grants of stock to do all her dirty work.”

Cost and McClure did not respond to requests for comment.

Zeeshan Haider, a retail analyst who covers clothing for IBISWorld, an investment research firm, agrees. “If the company is badly reviewed by its employees and there is a lot of employee turnover, especially executives at high levels, that could be one of the reasons for the structural inefficiencies.” When top management changes every few years, he says, “there is no consistency in terms of your planning, and that definitely does trickle down to your bottom line and negatively influences it.”
A Children's Place store in Union Square, New York, April 2015. (Photo by Mark Rykoff) (Click to enlarge images)

To the rank and file, Elfers seems remote. “I mean, when the previous CEO was there, if we had to work late he was there with us, see. He was encouraging, he was very much a part of the company,” says the first former employee. “As far as I could tell, [Elfers] was upstairs on her throne and she really distanced herself from the process, so I really had very little dealings with her, because she didn’t get her hands dirty. She wasn’t involved with people like me who were creating the product.”

This dissatisfaction is seconded by financial news website 24/7 Wall St., which ranked TCP among “America’s worst companies to work for.” Despite the outpouring of negativity about the company, more than a dozen former TCP employees, including Rose, declined or ignored requests to talk about their employment, with many citing nondisclosure agreements. “She really ruled with an iron fist and fear tactics,” says the first former employee. “It wasn’t pleasant. I just don’t want any backlash, and I’ve moved on from there.”

Under Elfers, TCP’s stock, very low during the recession, rose more than 80 percent; in comparison, the stock of TCP competitor Carter’s rose by 242.9 percent during the same period. At the Children’s Place, this stock price surge was accompanied by a sharp increase in the salary of the company’s new supply chain heads. Mark Rose, a Dabah-era holdover, made more than $500,000 in 2010. His first replacement, Peter Warner, lasted just a year. In 2014, Greg Poole, who replaced Warner, made more than $3.7 million in total compensation.

Requests for an interview with Elfers and Poole went unanswered.

From 2012 to 2013, Elfers’ compensation went from $17 million to $6.84 million, though it increased to $7.5 million in 2014. (In 2007, his last year as CEO, Dabah took home $1 million in salary, modest by industry standards; his total compensation that year was nearly $5 million.) But it’s common for executive pay to fluctuate from year to year, says Haider, so it’s important to look at compensation over a four-year period. “[TCP’s] CEO made around $43 million between 2011 and 2014,” he says. “The problem is that the CEO is being paid too much in relation to the company’s performance.” In his February 2015 report on the U.S. children’s retail clothing market, Haider notes that under Elfers, TCP’s share of the burgeoning children’s clothing market has declined from 15.4 percent in 2010 to 13.7 percent in 2015. Haider chalks up the decline to inefficiency. “The way the company is being run is not reflective of the on-the-ground realities,” he says.

CEO salaries at The Children's Place

Ezra Dabah, the longtime CEO of the Children's Place who was forced out in 2007, made nearly $5 million in total compensation that year. Charles Crovitz, the interim CEO, never touched $4 million. However, current CEO Jane Elfers made $17 million in total compensation in 2012.

Source: Securities and Exchange Commission, Schedule 14A forms, 2006, 2008, 2009-2015.

Some of the company’s investors agree. On March 11, the activist hedge funds Barington Capital Group and Macellum Advisors, which collectively own 2 percent of TCP’s stock, sent a heavily critical letter to the chairman of the board, citing Elfers’ inability to identify and retain talent, her poor merchandising decisions and her “excessive” pay, which earned an F rating from the pension fund watchdog Glass Lewis. “We find it remarkable that Ms. Elfers’s total compensation over the last three years was $35.1 million, which, for comparison, was $11.7 million, or 50%, greater than that of the CEO of Carter’s,” the activists write in the missive. “Carter’s … stock outperformed The Children’s Place by 130% over this three year period.”

In late May, the group settled with TCP’s board, which agreed to add retail veteran Robert Mettler as a member. But larger changes are brewing. TCP recently retained Goldman Sachs to explore a merger or acquisition with another clothing company or firm. Both Macellum and Barington declined to comment.
The bodies of unclaimed victims are readied for burial after a fire at Tazreen Limited Fashions, Dhaka, Bangladesh, Nov. 24, 2012. At least 117 people were killed and hundreds injured in the fire. (Click to enlarge images)

The shift of TCP’s production to Bangladesh has had a massive human cost. The disaster at Rana Plaza made safety concerns impossible to ignore. Yet, in the two years since the collapse, Elfers seems to have ignored them. Pre-Rana Plaza, too, there was cause for alarm. There were four major factory fires in Bangladesh from 2010 to 2013, which, according to Heather White, a supply chain expert and fellow at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, were the outcome of the country’s weak enforcement of building codes and the desperation of factories that will do anything not to lose an order from an American brand. “There’s a lot of corruption, there’s a lot of conflicts of interests, and auditors shake down the factory,” White explains. “Brands are saying to factories they don’t want to pay for audits and are telling their customers we have independent, third-party auditors.” The conversation is fundamentally dishonest, she adds. But rather than actually enact real change, TCP has focused on creating the impression it is committed to change rather than enforcing its corporate code of conduct.

With both current and former TCP supply chain heads declining to comment, it’s impossible to know for sure what happened. But TCP seemingly ignored warning signs in Bangladesh. In December 2010, a fire at That’s It Sportswear, a supplier for Gap and other brands, killed 29 workers. In spite of this, the supplier’s sister factory, That’s It Fashions, continued to supply garments to the Children’s Place until May 2013. That’s It Fashions and That’s It Sportswear are both run by the mammoth industrial concern Ha-Meem Group; TCP continued sourcing from other Ha-Meem factories until 2014, when the U.S.-brand-funded industry group Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety called for the immediate evacuation of the top six floors of That’s It Fashions, based on the alliance’s report on the building.
The aftermath of three recent fires in Bangladesh garment factories, from left, Tazreen Fashions Limited, Nov. 24, 2012, 117 deaths; Smart Garment Export, Jan. 27, 2013, 7 deaths; That’s it Sportswear, Dec. 14, 2010, 29 deaths. (Photos by AFP / Getty Images; Munir uz Zaman / AFP / Getty Images (2)) (Click to enlarge images)

Today, TCP seems to primarily rely on its suppliers’ individual corporate social responsibility departments and once- or twice-yearly inspections by private firms such as the London-based compliance group Intertek. But all the while, TCP presides over a system with loopholes big enough to fit a container full of onesies through. Just three months before Rana Plaza collapsed, Marcus Chung, the company’s head of social responsibility and vendor compliance, authored a blog post for the U.S. probusiness nonprofit Net Impact titled “Hope for Bangladesh.” In an apparent response to calls for safety in clothing manufacturing in the country, Chung wrote, “The apparel industry cannot ignore a fundamental commercial reality: Bangladesh has a ready supply of very capable garment factories that are filled with inexpensive labor and it’s not realistic for companies to simply stop sourcing from Bangladesh.”

But while Chung wrote of “responsible sourcing strategies and principled decision-making” and described meetings with factory owners, managers and corporate social responsibility professionals, there was little mention of speaking directly and independently to the workers whose very lives may depend on the decisions of people like him.

Kalpona Akter, the Bangladeshi activist, believes that brands have to actually talk to garment workers to understand the underlying problem. For conditions in Bangladesh to improve, she says, the companies have to pay their suppliers more and their suppliers, in turn, have to pay workers living wages.

If Akter ever gets face time with Elfers, she knows exactly what she will tell the CEO. “A person like her who has this power, she can really make a difference,” Akter says. “And we are not asking for charity. These workers [who died] made her clothes.”

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14. ANTI-MUSLIM BUDDHIST GROUP MOVES TOWARD BURMA’S MAINSTREAM
by Timothy Mclaughlin & Hnin Yadana Zaw 
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(The Irrawaddy -  01 Sep 2015)

Buddhist nationalist group Ma Ba Tha is ratcheting up its public image and eyeing popular support ahead of a general election in November.
by TIMOTHY MCLAUGHLIN & HNIN YADANA ZAW / REUTERS | 01 Sep 2015

Swathed in crimson robes, 77-year-old Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa shuffles through a crowded conference room with the help of an aide, his supporters standing in respect as he takes a seat at the head of a table under a portrait of his own image.

It is from here, at an unremarkable roadside monastery just outside the city of Yangon, that the abbot is propelling the radical Buddhist group he co-founded into the mainstream of Burma’s politics.

Four bills drafted by his Committee for the Protection of Race and Religion, better known as Ma Ba Tha, have been passed by parliament and signed into law. Critics say the new laws effectively legalize discrimination against women and the country’s minority Muslims.

Along with political clout, Ma Ba Tha is also ratcheting up its public image ahead of elections in November that will be the first free vote in Burma in the last 25 years. The radical Buddhist group has regular programming on one of the country’s most popular satellite TV channels and has launched a magazine.

“There should be lawmakers in parliament who are reliable for the country,” Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa said in an interview. “There might be some people, especially Muslims, who are working on weakening Buddhism, so we need strong people for our religion.”

Ma Ba Tha has shown no signs of contesting elections itself but says it will “remind” the public of candidates who opposed its four laws. These include Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), which is going head to head with conservatives and military figures in the polls.

Established two years ago, Ma Ba Tha sprang from the “969” movement, a loose collection of monks linked to a wave of violence against the country’s Muslim minority in 2012 and 2013.

Senior Ma Ba Tha officials said the 969 movement had raised awareness about threats to Buddhism from a burgeoning Muslim population, but was disorganized and lacked leadership.

“It was (concerned with) only the symbols of Buddhism,” said Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa.

Now, a growing number of professionals are offering their expertise on everything from media relations to legislation, helping to shape Ma Ba Tha into a slick organization with popular support and real political clout.

One such expert is Aye Paing, who spent two decades toiling as a lawyer in Burma’s musty courtrooms before finding a dramatic new use for his legal skills.

Aye Paing and a team of Ma Ba Tha-linked lawyers drafted the protection of race and religion bills, the last of which was signed by President Thein Sein on Monday.

Lawyers, economists, IT experts and other professionals had made Ma Ba Tha “very efficient, systematic and legal” said Aye Paing, 52, who wears a black “taik pone,” a short collarless jacket worn over a shirt that is common among Burma’s legal professionals.

“We discuss, give advice and share our visions,” he said.

International Visitors

In another sign of its growing influence, foreign diplomats regularly visit the group’s monastery headquarters.

One was US ambassador Derek Mitchell, who went there twice in May to discuss “the need for increased interfaith dialogue” and “the importance of keeping religion out of politics,” according to a statement from the US embassy in Rangoon.

Burma’s revered and influential monks led many pro-democracy protests during nearly half a century of military rule in the Buddhist-majority nation. But after a quasi-civilian, reformist government took power in 2011, some outspoken monks claimed Islam was eclipsing Buddhism and weakening the country.

Now, Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa says Ma Ba Tha has 250 offices nationwide. He couldn’t estimate how many supporters it has, but in June more than 1,500 people attended the group’s annual conference in Rangoon.

Ma Ba Tha recently struck a deal with Burma’s popular satellite television provider, SkyNet, to broadcast its sermons.

The broadcasts would help the public “know the truth” about Ma Ba Tha, said Khine Khine Tun, 25, an articulate former teacher and interpreter who heads the group’s international relations department.

Through media training courses, she said, she has learnt to speak to visitors with a smile, confounding expectations of the abrasive and sometimes confrontational style for which the group is known.

The television deal bolsters an information campaign that already includes a bi-monthly magazine with a circulation of 50,000 that contains sermons delivered by Ma Ba Tha monks nationwide.

Race and Religion

In contrast to long-delayed legislation on banking, mining and property, the Ma Ba Tha-backed “race and religion” bills moved swiftly through parliament.

One bill requires some women to wait at least three years between pregnancies. Another requires Buddhist women to seek official permission before marrying a non-Buddhist man.

This will stop Muslim men “torturing and forcing (Buddhist women) to change religion,” Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa said.

Suu Kyi and her NLD opposed the laws. But government officials and politicians rarely criticize Ma Ba Tha, because they either sympathize with the group’s views or fear upsetting its many supporters during an election year.

“They are afraid of Ma Ba Tha,” said May Sabi Phyu, the director of the Gender Equality Network, a women’s empowerment group that opposed the bills.

Any plans to sway voters would be “violating the law,” said NLD spokesman Nyan Win, adding: “It’s the government’s responsibility to control and stop them.”

Top Photo - (Steve Tickner / The Irrawaddy) Ma Ba Tha members gather for a conference in Rangoon, June 2015.

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15. NEPAL: CONFLICT ALERT - INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP
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Kathmandu/Brussels  |   2 Sep 2015

Spiralling protests against a draft constitution have left 23 dead and hundreds injured in Nepal in two weeks. An over-militarised security reaction and inadequate political response from the centre threaten to fuel deep-seated ethnic, caste and regional rivalries less than a decade after the civil war’s end. The major parties should recognise the depth of discontent and the fundamental challenge this poses to the legitimacy of the proposed constitution. A hastily-passed document, weeks after mobilisation of security forces to counter citizens’ protests against it, is unlikely to be the social contract Nepal needs.

The constitution, nine years in the making, was envisioned as an instrument to address longstanding grievances of large parts of society, who argue that the old system marginalised them from state institutions and political authority, deprived them of a fair share of the benefits of development and discriminated against them. These groups include plains-based Madhesi, Tharu and smaller groups, Dalit caste groups in the hills and plains, hill ethnic Janajati (“indigenous nationality”) groups and women. Many have concluded that the 8 August draft does not adequately deliver on commitments to a federal system and inclusion.

The government and its opposition partners in the constitution deal say they are under pressure to end years of uncertainty by passing the draft quickly. They downplay the significance of the protests, arguing that not everyone in a democracy can be satisfied and that the constitution can be amended. The state response to the protests has been security-heavy and in some areas, the army has been mobilised to deal with civic unrest for the first time since the civil war.

Kathmandu circles underestimate the scale and intensity of disagreement and the complexity of the often-competing grievances and claims. There are high-voltage public debates over disadvantage and structural discrimination that feed social resentments and grievances. These deeply-felt issues will continue to find expression in agitation and opposition if the present moment is handled badly. A botched solution risks entrenching communal polarisation in society and radicalising groups that feel their concerns were not seriously considered.

Reconciling the expectations of all Nepalis was always going to be a challenge for the Constituent Assembly. The 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the then Maoist rebels and representatives of political parties, as well as the 2007 Interim Constitution, promised political reform and redress for past inequities. Numerous social groups based on caste, gender, ethnicity, and regional interests lobbied for their agendas. Often, movements turned violent to force the government to take them seriously. Since 2007, governments have signed over 40 agreements, often contradictory, with different groups.

The recent violence was mainly sparked by delineation of the six-, now seven-state federal structure proposed to replace 75 administrative districts. Tarai-based groups wanted to keep stretches of the southern Tarai plains together, including by changing the traditional north-south administrative divisions, which mixed plains, hills and mountains in administrative zones. In the hills, some Janajati groups want to keep areas traditionally considered homelands intact, though this is not a focus of protests. Other issues are also highly contentious though not explicitly part of the current demands: a proposed citizenship measure which makes it difficult for children with a single Nepali parent to gain citizenship with the same rights as those who receive citizenship by descent; and the proposed electoral system and standards for demarcating constituencies, which may not deliver better representation of the agitating population groups.

Madhesi communities, one of the country’s biggest population blocs and the largest group across the Tarai, and Tharu communities, many concentrated in the far-western Tarai, say the current system puts them at a demographic disadvantage politically. They anticipate gains under the new system but object to some parts of the plains being included in hill states. Traditionally hill-based communities, and the framers of the draft constitution, counter that migration continues from hills and mountains to the Tarai, forming mixed communities, and that hill community members have land or commercial ties to the disputed areas. Madhesi and Tharu groups believe the major parties want to renege on the letter and spirit of earlier commitments to political empowerment and reform.

Within the Constituent Assembly, which functions as the parliament, there is discontent. The governing coalition consists of the Nepali Congress (NC), the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) and the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum-Democratic (MJF-D); its opposition partners in the constitutional deal are the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M). The MJF-D last week said it could no longer support the deal if Tharu concerns were not addressed. The NC and UML have forbidden their members from trying to amend the draft; 33 smaller parties have refused to be part of the process, and the oldest Madhesi party, Sadbhavana, resigned from the Constituent Assembly last month.

There are protests and agitation in much of the Tarai. Kailali district in the far west, parts of which Tharu groups and the hill-based Undivided Far West Movement want for their respective new states, had the worst violence last week. The major parties revised the federal model to add a seventh state in response to the latter’s demands. That added to the discontent of Tharu groups, considered among the most historically marginalised in Nepal, who said their grievances were ignored as they lacked close ties to Kathmandu power centres.

Since the protests began three weeks ago, at least fifteen people have been killed by police in various parts of the country. On 24 September, seven police and a child were killed in an apparent attack by protesters in Kailali’s Tikapur town. Kailali remains under a 24-hour curfew. Given restrictions on movement, it is difficult to verify reports of significant displacement of Tharu families fearing or following retaliatory violence. Birgunj city and areas in the central Tarai are tipping into serious violence, with nine people killed by police this week. The National Human Rights Commission has not officially investigated any of the deaths. The army has reportedly been mobilised at different times in Kailali, Dang, Parsa, Rautahat and Sarlahi districts. There are concerns about communally driven violence and about the state’s response. An indefinite banda (strike) across the Tarai is in its third week.

It is unlikely the discontent can be resolved by a deal between power-brokers in Kathmandu that does not address core issues. While some district-level political leaders and parties that represent Tharu and Madhesi groups in the Constituent Assembly have been involved in the protests or support them, the mobilisation and leadership comes largely from within local communities. Many of the protests do not involve huge numbers, but rely instead on better organisation and target the shutdown of specific infrastructure, such as government offices and stretches of the national East-West highway.

The government must act urgently to address tensions, reduce the risk of more violence and to restore confidence in the constitution-writing process. The enormous trust deficit between agitating groups and Kathmandu’s political leadership will worsen if the government and major parties persist with a heavily securitised response to fundamentally political protests, and if they and the media portray the protests as marginal or criminal. The government should also urgently form an independent commission to investigate the recent killings.

All protesting groups must denounce and guard against violence from within their ranks, and avoid threatening or extreme rhetoric. They must also offer realistic alternatives, not just reject Constituent Assembly proposals.

The major parties say they are open to amendments and willing to talk to any group that feels it has been excluded. The government in early August conducted a four-day exercise to obtain feedback on the draft, though there is a public perception it will ignore suggestions that do not fit the current draft’s form.

The timing, sequencing and design of talks will be challenging. It is essential the government does not insist on artificial deadlines or preconditions and is ready to discuss the status of past commitments. The agitating groups are wary of being forced into an accelerated timetable within the Constituent Assembly. The government anticipates speaking to each agitating front separately, but Tharu and Madhesi groups may seek a joint negotiation. Small adjustments to the proposed boundaries of states in the far west and east would significantly lower tensions but are strongly resisted by some leaders.

Tenor will matter as much as issues. If there are more deaths and if groups feel negotiations are not respectful or in good faith, this could jeopardise confidence in other contentious compromises on citizenship, the electoral process, the number and distribution of constituencies, the threshold for political parties, representation and inclusion.

The anger in the Tarai and among various social groups is real. If it is ignored or mishandled, the violence will grow. If the new constitution is truly to be one for all Nepalis rather than a starting gun for new forms of conflict, its framers must recognise that getting it done right is more important than getting it done fast.

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16. NEPAL: OPEN AND SHUT CASE | KUNDA DIXIT
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(Nepali Times, September 2nd, 2015)

editorial

It is difficult to find a resolution to violent unrest if you don’t know what the demands of the protesters are. How do you address an agitation without a clear agenda? This appears to be what is happening with the violent protests that have rent the Central Tarai this week.

The Tharus had genuine reasons to be angry at being left out by the power brokers in Kathmandu when the federalism model was changed from 6 to 7, and left their demands for autonomy unaddressed. Tharu leaders of various Maoist persuasions just cashed in on the prevailing resentment and piggybacked a peaceful protest to butcher policemen.

It is a different story in the eight districts of the central Tarai that make up Province 2. Madhesi leaders, many of them who had lost the 2013 elections not just to fellow-Madhesi candidates from the NC and UML, but even to candidates of hill origin, have been trying to reassert themselves to build up their support base. Having been thoroughly discredited for their lack of concern for the everyday needs of their constituents when they served in high government positions in Kathmandu, they have taken recourse in whipping up communal sentiments against ‘colonial’ rule in the Tarai.

After failing to ignite the Central Tarai last month, prominent Madhesi leaders from various parties forged an alliance with the Tharu Struggle Committee and addressed a gathering in Tikapur of Kailali district in the west urging locals to take up weapons and chase hill-dwellers out to where they came from. We believe it isn’t a coincidence that what was supposed to be a peaceful protest in 24 August ended up in the lynching and shooting of eight policemen and a baby.

Now, the violence has spread to the Central Tarai where disparate Madhesi parties including former Maoists like Matrika Yadav and Upendra Mahato are in the fray, competing to be more violent than each other in order to build up support in their constituencies. This is why some of the Tarai towns don’t seem to be in control of the more mainstream and relatively moderate Madhesi leaders anymore. More and more, it looks like the agitation is driven by those who want to stop the constitution going through at any cost: an unlikely cabal of the extreme left to the extreme right and everything in between.

What doesn’t help at all is that there is a government in Kathmandu that appears to be in denial, exposing a real disconnect between the capital and what is happening outside. Leaders seem incapable of grasping just how dangerous the situation is turning out to be. When they do look at the Tarai it is only to gerrymander boundaries for added electoral advantage. When these leaders negotiate, they aren’t listening to the people and their leaders from the Tarai but with each other. Engaging in such cynical power games when there is an urgent need to douse the flames in the plains is a sign of serious political failure and lack of statesmanship at the level of the Prime Minister.

As our map of the past month of unrest shows more than half the country has been shut down now for nearly three weeks. The cost to the national economy, the disruption to the lives of ordinary people and the impact on earthquake reconstruction is immeasurable.

Despite the deepening deadlock and violence, the disagreements on the constitution aren’t intractable. As we understand after talking to Tharu leaders, they will be satisfied with taking three Kailali constituencies which they dominate, away from Province 7 to be a part of Province 5. This may anger some Undivided Far-west politicians, but they are all members of the three-party alliance and could be brought into line. Bijay Gachhadar of the MJF-L, part of the four-party alliance that signed the 8 May agreement, has a critical role to play here.

The Central Tarai is more complicated because we really don’t know who wants what aside from agitating for the sake of agitation. Upendra Yadav’s main grievance is that his constituency is in Morang, which is not a part of the Madhes Province and other Madhesi parties want Sunsari to be included in Province 2. The actual demand of some national Madhesi leaders seems to be for more proportionate representation in future elections so they don’t have to face the kind of humiliating defeat they did in 2013. Then there is the geopolitics of water, and the Indian interest in ensuring that future projects on the Karnali and Kosi don’t become tangled up with Nepal’s federalism adventures.

None of these issues should be impossible to resolve. All it needs are cool heads, statesmanship that can forge compromises, and the ability to look beyond partisan pastimes at the larger national interest.

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17. SEX AND ANCIENT INDIAN WOMEN: EXCERPTS FROM WENDY DONIGER'S BOOK
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(Hindustan Times, July 19, 2015)

The Mare's Trap: Nature and Culture in the Kamasutra
Wendy Doniger
Speaking Tiger
184pp; Rs 399

The Kamasutra for women

The assumption that the intended reader of the Kamasutra is male persists in popular culture today…  But… The Kamasutra is for women-it was intended to be used by women, and has much to offer to women even today.

Vatsyayana argues at some length that some women, at least, should read this text, and that others should learn its contents in other ways:

A woman should study the Kamasutra and its subsidiary arts before she reaches the prime of her youth, and she should continue when she has been given away, if her husband wishes it...
This is an important text, for it argues for the method by which the Kamasutra (and indeed, other Sanskrit texts) would have been known not only by women, but by the wider population in general; such knowledge was by no means limited to men, or women, who knew Sanskrit.

The eighty century CE playwright Bhavabhuti, in his Malatimadhava, depicts women actually citing the Kamasutra (2.2.6-7). At the start of act seven, when a woman complains that her friend was raped by her husband on the wedding night, she changes from the dialect in which she is speaking (as most women in Sanskrit plays do) and 'resorts to Sanskrit' (as the stage directions indicate) to say, 'The authors of the Kamasutra warn, "Women are like flowers, and need to be enticed very tenderly. If they are taken by force by men who have not yet won their trust they become women who hate sex."' This is important evidence not only of the common knowledge of the Kamasutra in literary circles, but of the use of it by women who knew Sanskrit as well as the dialects in which they conventionally spoke. It is also evidence that the Kamasutra was regarded as a counterforce to the prevalent culture of sexual violence.

In addition to this general expectation that all women should know all of the Kamasutra, particular parts of the book were evidently designed to be used by women. Book Three devotes one episode to advice to virgins trying to get husbands, and Book Four consists of instructions for wives.
Book Six is said to have been commissioned by the courtesans of Pataliputra, presumably for their own use.

Women's rights

The Kamasutra reveals relatively liberal attitudes to women's education and sexual freedom. To appreciate this, it is useful briefly to recall the attitudes to women in two important texts that precede it, the Laws of Manu and the Arthashastra. Kautilya, the author of the Arthashastra, is far more liberal than Manu. He takes for granted the woman with several husbands, who is unimaginable for Manu and poses a problem even for the permissive Kamasutra.

Kautilya is also more lenient than Manu when it comes to divorce and widow remarriage; where Manu does not allow either of these options for a woman whose husband has died, Kautilya gives a woman some control over her property, which consists of jewellery without limit and a small maintenance; she continues to own these after her husband's death-unless she remarries, in which case she forfeits them, with interest, or settles it all on her sons. In these ways and others, Kautilya allows women more independence than Manu does. But both of them greatly limit women's sexual and economic freedom.

The Kamasutra, predictably, is far more open-minded than Manu about women's access to household funds, and about divorce and widow remarriage. The absolute power that the wife in the Kamasutra has in running the household's finances stands in sharp contrast with Manu's statement that a wife 'should not have too free a hand in spending' and his cynical remark that, 'No man is able to guard women entirely by force, but they can be safely guarded if kept busy amassing and spending money, engaging in purification, attending to their duties, cooking food and looking after the furniture.'

And when it comes to female promiscuity, Vatsyayana is light years ahead of Manu. Vatsyayana cites an earlier authority on the best places to pick up married women, of which the first is 'on the occasion of visiting the gods' and others include a sacrifice, a wedding, or a religious festival. Secular opportunities involve playing in a park, bathing or swimming, or theatrical spectacles. More extreme occasions are offered by the spectacle of a house on fire, the commotion after a robbery, or the invasion of the countryside by an army. Somehow I don't think Manu would approve of the man in question meeting married women at all, let alone using devotion to the gods as an occasion for it, or equating such an occasion with spectator sports like hanging around watching houses burn down.

Sexual freedom

The Kamasutra assumes a kind of sexual freedom for women that would have appalled Manu but simply does not interest Kautilya. Vatsyayana is a strong advocate for women's sexual pleasure. He tells us that a woman who does not experience the pleasures of love may hate her man and leave him for another. If, as the context suggests, this woman is married, the casual manner in which Vatsyayana suggests that she leave her husband is in sharp contrast to the position assumed by the Laws of Manu: 'A virtuous wife should constantly serve her husband like a god, even if he behaves badly, freely indulges his lust and is devoid of any good qualities.'

The Kamasutra also acknowledges that women could use magic to control their husbands, though Vatsyayana regards this as a last resort. He casually mentions, among the women that one might not only sleep with but marry, not only 'second-hand' women (whom Manu despises as 'previously had by another man') but widows: 'a widow who is tormented by the weakness of the senses…finds, again, a man who enjoys life and is well-endowed with good qualities'.

Vatsyayana dismisses with one or two short verses the possibility that the purpose of the sexual act is to produce children; one of the things that make sex for human beings different from sex for animals, he points out, is the fact that human women, unlike animals, have sex even when they are not in their fertile period. Given the enormous emphasis that Manu and all the other dharma texts place on having sex only to produce children, the Kamasutra's attitude here is extraordinary.

Vatsyayana's discussion of the reasons why women become unfaithful rejects the traditional patriarchal party line that one finds in most Sanskrit texts, a line that punishes very cruelly indeed any woman who sleeps with a man other than her husband (cutting off her nose, for instance). Manu assumes that every woman desires every man she sees: 'Good looks do not matter to them, nor do they care about youth; "A man!" they say, and enjoy sex with him, whether he is good-looking or ugly'.

The Kamasutra takes off from this same assumption, but then limits it to good-looking men and modifies it with an egalitarian, if cynical, formulation: 'A woman desires any attractive man she sees, and, in the same way, a man desires a woman. But, after some consideration, the matter goes no further.' The text does go on to state that women have less concern for morality than men have; it does assume that women don't think about anything but men; and it is written in the service of the hero, the would-be adulterer, who reasons, if all women are keen to give it away, why shouldn't one of them give it to him?

Women's voices

Passages such as the woman's thoughts about beginning an affair, or a courtesan's thoughts about ending one, may express a woman's voice, or at least a woman's point of view. The Kamasutra often quotes women in direct speech, expressing views that men are advised to take seriously, and it is clearly sympathetic to women, particularly to what they suffer from inadequate husbands. But if parts of the text are directed toward women, is it also the case that they reflect women's voices? Certainly not always. For, while the Kamasutra quotes women in direct speech, we also encounter the paradox of women's voices telling us, through the text, that women had no voices.

Male texts may merely engage in a ventriloquism that attributes to women viewpoints that in fact serve male goals. The Kamasutra not only assumes an official male voice (the voice of Vatsyayana) but denies that women's words truly represent their feelings.

We must admit that we find women's voices in the Kamasutra carrying meanings that have value for us only by transcending, if not totally disregarding, the original context. Were we to remain within the strict bounds of the historical situation, we could not notice the women's voices speaking against their moment in history, perhaps even against their author. Only by asking our own questions, which the author may not have considered at all, can we see that his text does contain many answers to them, fortuitously embedded in other questions and answers that were more meaningful to him.

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18. PETER CUSTERS - DUTCH SCHOLAR AND FRIEND OF BANGLADESH IS NO MORE
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New Age Online - September 5, 2015

Peter Custers passes away

Journalist and researcher Peter Custers, who was awarded with Friend of Bangladesh Honour, died of cardiac arrest in Leiden of Netherlands on Thursday night. He was 66.
Friends of Peter quoting Peter’s son Sukanto Custers confirmed the news.
He is survived by wife Sumita and son Sukanto.
A news portal of expatriates quoting Sumita said Peter felt chest pain Thursday evening and he was pronounced dead on reaching hospital.
The funeral of the prolific researcher will be held on Sunday.
Condolence messages are pouring on his Facebook profile.
Born in 1949, Peter holds an MA in international law from Leiden University, the Netherlands (1970). He subsequently followed a three-year course in international relations at the Johns Hopkins University, in Washington DC. He obtained his PhD in sociology from the Catholic University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
In the first part of the 1970s, after Bangladesh gained its political independence, he gathered first-hand experience in grassroots’ peasant organising, while stationed in Bangladesh as leading Dutch journalist, writing for both Dutch and international newspapers and magazines. During the 1980s, he actively participated in the Dutch peace movement against the threat of nuclear war.
Over the last twenty years, Peter has led or helped initiate a variety of international campaigns on Southern causes, while lobbying actively towards the European Parliament and other Brussels-based European institutions. Such as: the international campaign questioning the World Bank-coordinated ‘Flood Action Plan’ (FAP), Bangladesh (1991-1997), and the campaign on trade liberalization and Africa (i.e. on ‘EPAs’)(2004-2007).
In 2007/2008, Peter was an affiliated fellow, researching on religious tolerance and the history of Bangladesh, at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, the Netherlands.
In 2010, he was granted an award as Human Rights’ Defender and Friend of Bangladesh, by the country’s current government.
He also served as Special European Correspondent of the Bengali language daily Prothom Alo, and as International Columnist of the English language newspaper The Daily Star, Bangladesh.
Custers’ original theoretical study Questioning Globalized Militarism covers both the production and exportation of arms and nuclear production in its broadest sense (i.e. civilian plus military).

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South Asia Citizens Wire
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www.sacw.net/

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