Archive for the ‘India -Domestic’ Category
India Launches Low-Cost Tablet - Aakash
India’s Minister for Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal launched Aakash, the $35 tablet, midst much fanfare last week. The launch was hailed as a grand moment for India’s innovative prowess and claims to have silenced the skeptics. Aakash is developed by DataWind, a wireless Web access products maker in Montreal in partnership with IIT Rajasthan. The tablet has a 7-inch display with 800-by-480 pixel resolution, 256MB of RAM, 2GB flash storage, a 366MHz processor from Connexant and runs on the Android 2.2 operating system. The tablet costs $50 but government of India is making it available for graduate students at the subsidized cost of $35. Making technology cheaply available is a great way to bridge the digital divide but Aakash is technologically unimpressive and socially insensitive.
India’s Da Vinci Code Justice
Courtesy: The Hindu
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 riots has been an emotive issue in India. Conviction of Modi is viewed by his critics as the only form in which justice can be accorded to the victims of Gujarat riots. Modi’s supporters cite his performance as an administrator and development of Gujarat (the Muslim population in particular) as proof of his commitment to public welfare. For the judicial system in India the challenge is compounded because each side has rigid and pre-conceived notions of justice in this case. The legal outcome of this case is expected to have profound political consequences. This context made the Supreme Court’s pronouncements on the case on Monday afternoon particularly interesting.
Facebook and Cancellation of Harud Literature festival
Online campaigns are viewed as the most democratic medium in contemporary times. There are numerous examples of social media resulting in change and enhancing accountability in countries, towns and villages. As someone who studies the positive impact of social media on civil society interactions, it’s heartening to witness these developments. Various forms on online protests, exchange of ideas on Twitter and open discussion forums available on Facebook have demonstrated the power of social media.
But a recent incident has forced me to accept the inevitable – social media is an open forum and can be misused if the users so intend. I am referring to the cancellation of the Harud Autumn Literature Festival in Kashmir, India. The festival scheduled to be held in the last week of September was a unique opportunity for the budding literary minds of Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh to engage with stalwarts from across the country. The reason for cancellation was spelled out by Namita Gokhale, the festival advisor: “What would you do if 5,000 people on Facebook are running a campaign for boycott of the festival and plan violence.”
India Against Corruption Campaign and India’s Middle Class
IAC at San Francisco, August 18,2011. Photo Courtesy: Amit Kumar
Given the recent developments it was difficult to avoid commenting on the India Against Corruption (IAC) campaign led by Anna Hazare. Let me clarify at the onset that I don’t support Anna’s version of the Jan Lokpal Bill and the intransigent campaign through which he seeks to get the proposal implemented. However, I support the shunning of the “kuch nahi ho sakta” (Nothing can be done) attitude in India. IAC campaign may be labelled as undemocratic by some and dangerous by others. Many had observed during the first round of protests in April that the Anna fever would die down once the IPL fever gains momentum. People participating in the candle light and street marches may be labelled as “posing for the camera” protesters. Only handful of the supporters can make an honest claim to have read the proposed Bill. Nevertheless, it is a protest against the Government and its unpopular policies. It is naïve to refer to these protests and India’s Arab Spring (simply unfair to the protestors in the Middle East). The protests in India may appear unintelligent and may not offer a desirable solution but it’s heartening to see mobilization for a cause that is unifying cause rather than protests for separate statehood or reservation for particular groups. Anna does not speak for all Indians (there are many outside the Government and Congress who don’t support him) but his supporters (we can argue about the numbers) identify themselves as Indians and not as Jats or Gujjars or natives of Telangana or Kashmiris!
Missing Links in India’s “Fast-Track” Approach
Much has been written and discussed about the recent ‘civil society’ protests against corruption in India. Social activist Anna Hazare’s four day fast in April compelled the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to re-consider the Lokpal Bill through a joint committee involving ministers and members of civil society. Yoga guru, christened as ‘Baba’ Ramdev, launched his hunger strike in protest against the black money stashed in foreign banks earlier this month. There has been some debate among the supporters of Anna Hazare and Ramdev regarding entrepreneurial recognition for the “fast-track” approach to combat corruption. The Government claims to have been responsive to the demands of civil society in both instances, though Ramdev’s uncompromising attitude necessitated use of force to disband his yoga-cum-protest camp.
Responses to this wave of civil society protests can be broadly classified into two categories. Supporters of the protests justify civil society’s unease on the basis of Government’s growing incompetence, excessive corruption and power induced arrogance. Critics, see the over-zealous members of civil society as a threat to the democratic law making process and institutional separation of powers. Both sides make valid arguments. Is it possible to accurately identify the villain and hero in this confrontation?
Social Entrepreneurship in India
The talk of India as an emerging power almost always gets associated with prevalence of social and economic challenges on the ground. Lack of basic sanitation, dearth of education facilities in rural areas, child labor, environmental challenges, insufficient power supply in rural areas, inadequate irrigation facilities and host of other problems tend to blur the image of shinning India. The challenges are undoubtedly numerous but so are the efforts to find solutions. Working beyond the media and public limelight there are several individuals and groups investing time, effort and talents for improving the lives of ordinary Indians. These crusaders are not social activists fighting for legal relief or changes in public policy to address the challenges; they are the doers. They work to devise solutions that can work despite the extant social, economic and cultural impediments. They constitute the new breed of social entrepreneurs in India. They don’t necessarily come up with slogans and agendas for social change but devise effective solutions for challenges faced by less-privileged segments of the population. Click to continue…
Mamata Didi’s mission - Regeneration and Rejuvenation of West Bengal
“Revenge is history, change is victory. The target is not to just overthrow CPM. It is to get Bengal back its glory.” Going by these comments of Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Mamata Banerjee, her victory in the recent West Bengal Assembly elections is just the beginning. She has been successful in unseating the CPM for the first time in 34 years. But the goal of ‘regenerating Bengal’ will get underway only when the red bricked Writer’s Building (State Government Secretariat) turns green from inside on May 20. [Red is the color of the Left Front while TMC, the grassroots party, is identified with green in the state]. Mamata Banerjee’s victory is by itself a huge change for West Bengal but the people of the state look forward to better education and employment opportunities, increased industrialization and improved infrastructure. For Didi (sister) as she is lovingly called by the people of Bengal, the job has only begun. TMC’s election manifesto outlines a “blueprint of the regeneration and rejuvenation of West Bengal.”
Right to Education - Need for Innovative Approaches
Picture Courtesy: The Hindu
Almost a year ago, I enthusiastically wrote about the recognition of Right to Education (RTE) as a Fundamental Right in India. Making elementary education an entitlement for children in the 6-14 age group, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 was expected to directly benefit close to ten million children who did not attend school. According to The Hindu, a leading English daily in India, “the enforcement of this right represents a momentous step forward in our 100-year struggle for universalising elementary education.” On April 1, 2011 Union Human Resource Development Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal released the one-year report card of RTE. Few had expected that in a year the Act would dramatically raise the number of school going children in the country. The explicit commitment was viewed as a beginning to identify and implement innovative measures to realize the goal of providing primary education to the target population. Like most other official policies the RTE turns out to be more about making the politically correct gestures without adapting to socially flexible techniques for achieving the proposed goals. Implementation of RTE is challenged on many fronts but more critically there appears to be an inveterate aversion to review and adjust policy.
P. Sainath on ‘Paid News’ in India
Palagummi Sainath a renowned journalist and rural affairs editor of The Hindu delivered the First Maharaj Kaul Memorial Lecture at University of Berkeley, California on April 11. Sainath has written extensively on farmer suicide and paid news, issues that have not been widely reported in the mainstream Indian media. At Berkeley, Sainath choose to speak on the issue of paid news prevalent in Indian media. He particularly highlighted the problem of political paid news (reported for the first time during Maharashtra State Assembly elections in 2009) described as the phenomenon where money is paid by candidates contesting elections to representatives of media companies for favorable coverage. P. Sainath’s views during the lecture and expressed elsewhere point to a grave crises confronting the state of Indian media.
[Photo Courtesy: The Hindu]
Anna Hazare’s Initiative: People’s Movement in a Constitutional Democracy?
It is important to keep Gandhi untarnished. The Gandhian can be negotiated with.
Two developments in India during the past week convinced me of the above approach in Indian politics. American journalist Joseph Lelyveld’s book The Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India created furore in the country. The book has been banned in Gujarat and Maharashtra is considering a ban. The Central government has serious objections to the book.
Anna Hazare, a Gandhian and social activist, began his fast unto death on April 5 to pressurize the Government to legislate a rigorous anti-corruption bill.
Protest or advocacy, Gandhi continues to occupy the centre stage in India.