Around ten thousand workers and their family members marched through the streets of Ahmedabad on 22nd April, 2010 defying the threat of the Government to invoke ESMA against the striking transport workers of the Ahmadabad Municipal Corporation. The strikers were demanding the implementation of the sixth pay commission’s recommendations which were adopted by the Government and the Corporation for its own employees.

The Gujarat Mazdoor Sabha which was representing the workmen had repeatedly requested the authorities to regularize the services of the temporary drivers and conductors but instead of doing so, the Corporation had adopted an even more exploitative tactics of employing contract conductors for short term periods. Such workmen were paid just Rs. 199/- per day without any guarantee of 26 days of work per month. The uncertainty of another day’s employment led to the spontaneous strike by the contract conductors.

After six days of stoppage of work from 21st April to 26th April, the Management of the Corporation settled the issue after failing to scare the workers with the threat of arrest under ESMA. The daily wage of the temporary drivers and conductors was increased to Rs. 275/- per day instead of Rs. 199/- whereas the wage of the contract conductors was raised to Rs. 225/- per day. All workmen who had been removed or stopped from joining their duties because of their leading role in conducting the strike were taken back on job. A militant action of the workmen finally led to a decent rise of salary with the court cases still being heard for the relief of permanency.

Russian revolutionary and feminist, Alexandra Kollontai, had helped to organise the event in Germany, wrote that it had exceeded all expectations…Germany and Austria were seething and trembling in the sea of women. Meetings were organized everywhere…..in the small towns and even in the villages, halls were packed so full that they had to ask (male) workers to give up their places for the women.
A hundred years after that glorious march of the women, what is the image of the Indian Woman that is being beamed into our living rooms every day? What stories do Santu, Jyoti, Amoli, Anandi, Sia and scores of other women tell us every evening? To be a true Indian woman, you have to accept the traditional rule of the patriarchal hierarchy and completely sacrifice her own wants and desires! Nay, not just wants and desires but her own identity and existence!

Law today emphatically prohibits female infanticide, child marriage and sexual abuse of any woman. But what does Amma do in LAADO? Openly murders the female child and reduces the rebel Sia into a servile maid servant. Anandi, the helpless child bride of BALIKABADHU, is abused harassed and kicked around by Dadidsa who can get away with every type of ill treatment of her Bahus (daughter-in-law). JYOTI allows Shushi to be used as a prostitute to satisfy the material needs of her husband and she herself is kicked out on false charges of adultery with her “loving’ husband turning a “blind eye”. In BANDINI, Santu enjoys her captive role and tolerates the abuse as a “low caste woman” as a good virtue in order to become a role model for all mothers. The worst ofcourse is “Bairi Piya” that for nights together shows the sexual exploits of the “Thakur”(landlord) on Amoli whose own husband is portrayed as the spineless servant who gifts his married wife to his master for his sexual pleasures! One wonders why the different woman’s organization are so silent; does it not concern the National Woman’s Commission when the national channels beam such vulgarity about women?

The two channels that promote such disgusting and loathsome serials are ofcourse making loads of money. NDTV Imagine {Bandini, Jyoti etc} and COLORs {Laado, Balikabadhu, Bairi Piya etc} have increased their TRP substantially and millions watch these serials with bated breath. Both these channels belong to very reputed groups; the former being a part of NDTV and the latter being a part of Viacom 18 that partners with Network 18, the CNN-IBN group. Wonder whether people like Barkha Dutt, Pranob Roy, Rajdeep Sardesai etc ever watch their own group’s productions and deal with such issues in their “We the People” and “Big Fights”!

Be that as it may, on this day of International Woman’s Day, it is a tragedy what we have reduced this day to a ritual, unconcerned about the real state of the woman in this country. The media which can influence a large section of the populations portrays her as a “BANDINI”. Are we going to accept this image?

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Chief Justice S J Mukhopadhaya made the oral query to the AG while hearing a petition challenging the order of the Justice G T Nanavati-Justice Akshay Mehta Commission which rejected a plea to summon Modi and six others in September last year.

Appearing on behalf of the State before the Division Bench headed by the Chief Justice, the AG told the court that the Commission passed the order not to summon the seven because it was “premature” at that time.

The Chief Justice then asked when would be a “mature” time to summon them, as the term of the Commission is ending in June this year.

The Jan Sangharsh Manch (JSM) had moved the application before the commission to summon Modi and the others for their alleged role in the riots. Apart from Modi, the list included the then home minister Gordhan Zadafia, then health minister (present Speaker) Ashok Bhatt, then DCP of Ahmedabad City R J Savani and three staff members of the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) — Omprakash Singh, Tanmay Mehta and Sanjay Bhavsar.

Appearing on behalf of JSM, Mukul Sinha pointed out that since the Terms of Reference of the commisison has provision to summon the Chief Minister and others, it cannot turn down the application to summon them.

The next hearing of the petition has been scheduled for February 15.

Geetha Johri offers to quit SIT

RAJKOT: A week after the Supreme Court pulled up the Gujarat police for improper investigation into the Sohrabuddin encounter case, senior IPS officer Geetha Johri, who is one of the three Gujarat police officers in the SC-appointed Special Investigation Team investigating the cases related to the Godhra riots, offered to quit the SIT on Wednesday. Johri, who currently holds the post of Rajkot Police Commissioner, said: “I am a professional and can do my work. But I cannot handle politics.”

‘Saw Kodnani firing from pistol’

AHMEDABAD: Eyewitness in the Naroda Patiya massacre case, Amina Belif on Wednesday told the special trial court in Ahmedabad that on February 28, 2002, she saw BJP MLA Maya Kodnani at Naroda Patiya. She said Kodnani pointed towards the mosque and the Muslim locality and told the mob to attack it. The mob then threw stones and burning rags at the Muslim houses, Belif said, adding that she also saw Kodnani firing from a pistol.

Belif called up Naroda Police Station where a person introduced himself as (then Senior Police Inspector K K) Mysorewala. She claimed he told her police were on leave and “you all have to die”.

Source: Indian Express

While the poorest in order to survive have to sell the symbol of our republic, the rich are selling the republic itself. The choice of who would be the Chief Guest of the Republic day celebration is also decided not on the stature of our guest but on financial consideration. This year, the President of South Korea  Mr. Lee Myung Bak was invited to preside over the Republic day parade, guess for what reasons? Because the South Koreans are investing the highest amount to establish the gigantic POSCO!

POSCO, is the world’s fourth largest steel producer and one of the most competitive steel companies in the world. POSCO-India’s proposed investment is the highest ever Foreign Direct Investment in India. The company has ambitious expansion plans in India, hoping to invest some $19 billion in the country. For instance, five years ago Posco unveiled plans to build India’s largest steel mill in the city of Orissa on the Bay of Bengal.

Because of local opposition, though, the project has suffered extensive delays and Posco hasn’t even secured a 4,000-acre property promised for the steel plant. For more than four years the Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samity (PPSS) has been bravely resisting attempts to displace over 30,000 people in Jagatsinghpur District of Orissa by POSCO, which wants to set up a steel company and a port on their lands. The Korean steelmaker is hoping the visit to New Delhi by South Korean President Lee Myung Bak will clear the way for its $19 billion in proposed investments in India.

The republic which was meant to be of the people by the people and for the people to empower the common man has now become the podium for auction to the highest bidder. May be in the next republic day we find the displaced children of Jagatsighpur of Orissa selling their tricolor flags in your city with  the small prints behind the flags “made in South Korea”!

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Sohrabuddin Sheikh was shot and killed in the encounter of 26^th November, 2005 and his wife Kauserbi was injected with Pentothal and apparently burnt in the ilol, the village of Vanzara. Her body was never found. A letter from Rubabuddin, the brother of Sohrabuddin to the Chief Justice of India led to a preliminary enquiry by the CID and later to the filing of the writ petition before the Apex Court. After notice was issued by Supreme Court, the investigation was handed over to DIG Rajnish Rai who did the unbelievable; he arrested D.G.Vanzara in April 2007 alongwith two other IPS officeres, namely Shri Dinesh M.N. from Rajasthan and Rajkumar Pandyan from Gujarat cadre. The arrests of the top Police officer close to the powers shook the foundations at Gandhinagar and Rajnish Rai was removed and the investigation was transferred to IGP Gita Johri.

Few more policemen were arrested, notable amongst them was Dy.SP Shri Narendra Amin, who was accused of murdering Kauserbi. The investigations carried out by Johri revealed that Sohrabuddin, Kauserbi and another person were kidnapped from a bus by the Gujarat Police when these persons were traveling from Hyderabad to Sangli. The third person, who was later identified as Tulsi Prajapati was also killed in another encounter by the same team in December, 2006 near Ambaji. The investigation thereafter started faltering and on behalf of Rubabuddin, the demand for handing over the investigation to CBI was renewed. Ultimately, on 12^th of January, 2010, the Apex Court passed its final Judgment and Order directing the investigation to be handed over to CBI.

The handing over of the investigation of the fake encounter case to CBI can now bring out the required evidence to indict not just some more police higher-ups but also their political masters. It would have been practically impossible for any Police Officer of the Gujarat cadre to dare to look for any evidence that may implicate any of their political bosses but that hurdle is now removed. The manner in which seven “encounters” have been carried in Ahmedabad without the Government not even bothering to institute a single serious inquiry into the genuineness of any of them, raises serious question about the bonafides of the Government. It is difficult to believe that the Government would remain totally aloof despite knowing that in every FIR, the police was alleging that the dead persons had plans to kill the Chief Minister!

The investigation by CBI would help in the investigation from yet another angle. In most of the “encounters” Policemen from more than one State are involved. In the Sohrabuddin case, the Rajasthan Police, Gujarat Police, Maharashtra Police and the Andhra Police are involved. Having a Central agency investigating into the crime would facilitate search for the evidence in the different States and bring out the nexus between the Police of the different States in creating the bogey of “terrorism” to satisfy the political needs of parties.

In the Sohrabuddin case itself, the last encounter in December, 2006, that killed Tulsi Parajapati near Ambaji close to the Rajasthan borders was a clear joint operation on the part of the Rajasthan and Gujarat Police. Tulsi,  who was an accused in another criminal case registered in Gujarat was reportedly brought to Ahmedabad under the guise of producing him before the Ahmedabad Court and while taking him back to Rajasthan where he was lodged in the Udaipur jail, he was apparently shot and killed as he was allegedly escaping from the police custody in the train. An investigation has revealed that at that time Dinesh M.N. IPS was the SP of Udaipur (now under arrest for killing Sohrabuddin) and the two Policemen who accompanied Tulsi to Ahmedabad were working under him and specially assigned to travel with Tulsi!  The Gujarat police ofcourse found him near the Rajasthan border and killed him in self defense! In such inter State conspiracy, CBI alone can be efficacious.

Now that the majesty of law has once again been established by the Apex Court, the country will have high expectation of the capability and impartiality of CBI. Since last seven years, numerous allegations have been flying around the Narendra Modi Government but no one has pinned a single allegation to make it stick. Either they are wholly innocent or they are too smart to catch. We have to now wait and see what the CBI can do.

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That perhaps is the story of all products in the world today. Call it whatever you may; turn it around and you will always see the small print, ‘Made in China.’ Nay, it is not just limited to material products alone. In almost every field of human activity, the Chinese dominate including the field of sports as they have recently demonstrated in the Beijing Olympics. Yet China has to play second fiddle to America.

If we for the time being restrict our attention to the rise of three nations, we will notice they have a common period of sprouting. America, China and India changed qualitatively in the post second world war as compared to its health prior to the Second World War. America jumped into the seat of the most powerful and wealthy nation whereas China and India attained its political independence, albeit in different ways.

Led by Mao, the Chinese peasantry smashed the semi-feudal, semi colonial social structure that made China pregnant with not a socialist revolution but an aggressive capitalist mode of production. Deng Ziao Peng rightly diagnosed the nature of the embryo in 1976 and in the next one decade had delivered the fastest growing capitalist child that started running before it crawled.
India on the other hand, led by Jawaharlal Nehru, opted for the capitalist path using the public sector as the foundation and an apologetically slow land reform. Despite socialist slogans, the real intention was never to empower the people and thus after six decades of Independence , 40% of the population still languishes below the poverty line. The Globalization of nineties and thereafter has ofcourse benefited the monopoly capitalists of India who hope to gain by their close collaboration with America.
The relation between America, China and India is becoming more akin to the monkey and the two cats which were fighting over a loaf of bread. The monkey, pretending to deliver equal justice, eats away bits of the bread of both the cats but the antagonism between the cats blinds them to the treachery of the monkey. That is where Deng Ziao was wrong when he had said that, “ it does not matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it can catch the mice” . Deng was commenting against the Mao’s line that the worker must learn socialist politics as much as he learns productive skills. For Deng, politics did not matter, as long as the workers gave production- the standard capitalist mantra. But Deng was wrong. The color of the cat matters. The capitalist cats can only fight and allow to be fooled by the monkey; exactly what China and India is doing in the present time. As nations, China and India should unite and cook their own Chopsuey.

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Marxists seek to foster and educate the left-wing to develop a more sober and scientific view of the political terrain, to learn to understand the motivation of other social layers and how to win battles, rather than just fighting valiantly. A Marxist leadership does not look for the most left-wing position on any given problem, but rather tries to find the policy which strengthens and builds the self-confidence, unity and self-consciousness of the working class as a whole. The Maoist seems to have forgotten this basic lesson of Marx and Lenin after they dropped the suffix (ML)!

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1. Is science circumscribed by class interest? Does the dissemination of science suffer from the same ailment?? Many of our leading scientists and intellectuals would be aghast even for posing such obnoxious questions. Surely, science and knowledge cannot have any boundaries and least of all, class boundaries!Ofcourse, to those of us who are born in this country, these two questions ought not to really cause any shock. Not very long ago, a few hundred years back also, our society had very definite rules for acquiring knowledge for different sections of the society. The Manusmriti, which was a codified law of the past, prescribed stiff punishment to shudras if they dared acquire the knowledge of Vedas. The clause XII.4.  of the code stipulated the following:

XII. 4. If the shudra intentionally listens for committing to memory the veda, then his ears should be filled with (molten) lead and lac; if he utters the veda, then his tongue should be cut off; if he has mastered the veda his body should be cut to pieces.

The shudras, in the name of lord was ordered to serve others and not to learn. The clause I-91 of the code prescribed the duties:

I – 91. One occupation only the lord prescribed to the shudra is to serve meekly the other three castes.

2. The frontiers of science move only as we resolve our contradiction with nature. This constant struggle between us and the nature pushes the knowledge content of the society; but this struggle takes place at different epoch at different levels of the development of the productive forces. But as we know, the development of the productive forces itself depends on the production relations at any stage of history. This production relations sometime become the engine for driving the productive forces to higher degrees whereas at times the same become fetters to its further development. This contradiction between the productive forces and the production relation relates directly to the classes participating in the process of production and thus gets related to the class- struggle. Thus, science and knowledge itself get related to the class contradictions. This obvious truth does not however become evident if we look at scientific knowledge in its abstraction. But the moment we scrutinize the manner of research, dissemination and application, the class nature of science become very obvious.

3. As students however we are made to believe the otherwise. Science is raised to a high pedestal and the scientists assuming the role of selfless saints. How true are these images and profiles that are created??

4. India under Jawaharlal Nehru, did adopt a very secular and scientific attitude towards the education and cultural development of post independent India. Though the lower levels of educations were not paid sufficient attention, Higher Institutions of Science and Technology did come up under the earlier plan periods. Major Universities developed across the country. Cost of education was also relatively low and elitism was yet to creep in a big way. But all that changed with the wind of Globalization blowing away the fig leaf of socialist pretensions.

5. But much before the virus of privatization could attack the vitals of the education system, the bureaucratization of the public Institutions run by the Government had already become a major fetter for the advancement of science and education in India. The authors own experience in this regard can help understand the malaise.

6. After completing MSc in physics from IIT Kanpur in 1972, the author had joined the Physical Research Laboratory for his PhD in Plasma Physics. After the completion of PhD in 1977, the author had joined as a Visiting scientist in PRL itself. In 1979, a protest against a supervisor for kicking a class-IV employee led to a lock-out in August 1979. Since the author refused to give in to the unacceptable demand of the PRL Management to sign an undertaking declaring allegiance to the Management, he was promptly dubbed as the trade union leader and his services came to be ended by December, 1979.

7. This authoritarianism born out of the bureaucratization of the public Institutions all over the country led to several trade union movements all across the country and instead of co-operation which should be hall mark for the quest in science, the staff and the Management work at cross purpose.

8. The enormous amount of money invested by the Government in the public Institutions and the Government’s deep and pervasive control obviously led to politicization of the scientific Managers and the recent disclosure of the Pokhran-II dud reveals the extent to which scientists could lie to appease their political bosses. The sudden termination of the Chandrayan project would also raise similar questions since as reported, it appears that the DOS scientist forgot to take into account the heat effect from the moon’s surface on the Chandrayan leading to the failure of its controls. Was it because the political bosses hurried up the entire launching resulting in this blunder?

9. The next major hurdle for the Indian education system from the class point of view is the massive privatization and commercialization of the entire system. Privatization of every type and level of Institutions and introduction of capitation fee and high levels of term fees have now made good education out of reach of the poor and the middle class. In the name of merit, Manusmriti is back in a new form. Dalits are virtually deprived of any higher education. Self- reliance has given away to buying technology of the shelf. Research or whatever we did, has given away to training our multitude to make them fit for the employment market.

10. With the integration of India with the capitalist network in this era of Globalization, the class nature of science as well as the education system is now becoming abundantly clear. Profit being the primary motive force driving the production, all funding also get channelized only towards such research that can lead to a development of profitable products. The entire defense-military establishment of the western world funded the nuclear and space research precisely because that yielded to hugely profitable weapons for mass destructions.

11. If we examine the division of labor across the globe it can easily seen that the Asian and Chinese part of the sub-continent have become the manufacturing backyard for the advanced countries. The high end of the science and technology will ofcourse be the prerogative of the advanced western block and the cheap labor of the Chinese-Indian sub-continent with imported technology will be the manufacturing centers for the supply of the consumables and that too at an unfair rate of exchange!

12. The primary goal of peoples’ science should be therefore to unshackle science and research from the narrow bounds of class interest and direct the research into the needs of the people rather than the profit of any business. Both from fundamental science as well as material point of view, we need to keep the people’s need at the centre of our concern and allow a wide participation of the people themselves in this process. The existing status-quo in the progress of science and technology can be altered only if we can free science from the shackles of profit motive.

While Jaswant Singh was rediscovering the virtues of Jinnah, the RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat was busy rediscovering the “Hindu”. During his mid-September visit to Ahmedabad, he put forward an inclusive definition of the “Hindu”. Though not very original, he said that the word “Hindu” would include all those who lived in India including members of all other communities like Muslims, Christians etc!

Perhaps Bhagwatji has forgotten his guru’s teachings in the confusion of vote politics. This is what Guru Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar had said in his book “We or Our Nationhood Defined”:

“German Race pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by purging the country of the Semitic Races-the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by”.

“….. There are only two courses open to the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race. That is the only sound view on the minorities’ problem. That is the only logical and correct solution. That alone keeps the national life healthy and undisturbed. That alone keeps the nation safe from the danger of a cancer developing into its body politic of the creation of a state within a state. From this stand point, sanctioned by the experience of shrewd old nations, the foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even citizen’s rights. There is, at least should be, no other course for them to adopt…”

The failure of the BJP led NDA to come anywhere near the half way of the total parliamentary seats has perhaps led the RSS Chief to redefine the word Hindu to reach out to the minorities but alas, Our Nationhood Defined by Guru Golwalkar has only one status for the minorities, their subordination to the majority. Has Bhagwatji worked out any formula by which so much of minorities votes can be equated with so much of majority votes so as to conform to the Golwalkar’s thesis??

THE INHUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

Whenever the Gujarat Government or its policemen gets exposed either in a law court or in the media regarding the atrocities on the minorities, their spokesmen invariably curse the persons who exposes them as anti-Gujarat human rights activists! Reacting to the “Tamang report” holding that the Isharat Jahan encounter case was a fake one, Shri Jaynarauan Vyas, the minister-spokeman of the Gujarat Government went so far as to accuse the lawyers of Isharat to be allegedly inhuman as they did not sympathize with those who were the victims of the bomb blasts! He also asserted that Gujarat State has had lesser number of “encounters” than other states yet the events in Gujarat alone get focused. We kill less than you do- that seems to be the logic!

In the last seven years, many of the stories floated by the Gujarat Government to profile Narendra Modi as the “Hindu Hero” hunting down the “wicked Islamic terrorists” have come off the hinge. After the intervention of the Supreme Court, the investigation into the Sohrabuddin encounter case has not only revealed that the encounter was totally fake but now the same Government of Gujarat has now offered Rs. 10 lakhs to compensate for the custodial death of Sourabuddin! The SIT appointed by the Supreme Court in the nine important 2002 riot cases has also exposed and arrested important VHP and BJP leaders like Jaideep Patel and Mayaben Kodnani (who was a minister in Modi Government) proving that till now the investigators were protecting them.

The common masses of Gujarat must therefore take lessons from these exposures and refuse to succumb to the emotional communal propaganda since by doing so, they legitimize the most illegal and heinous acts of their leaders!

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