Strategic Culture

We Need a New Strategic Culture

India has earned the sobriquet 'Soft State' due to its handling of terrorism and hostile neighbours over the years. After the hanging of Ajmal Kasab, the terrorist responsible for Mumbai attacks in 2008, some commentators opined that India has now shed the image of a Soft State. Is it true?

There is no denying the fact that the decision of the Government to hang Kasab after his mercy plea was rejected by Hon' President Sri Pranab Mukharjee has certainly given a sense of relief to the people of the country. After all we brought one dreaded terrorist to justice, they felt. The Government, and especially Shri Pranab Mukharjee, must be complimented for their swiftness and boldness.

However it will be premature to conclude that we have shed the Soft State tag completely. Actually it is not about just a couple of decisions. Demands have arisen, correctly, that the other dreaded terrorist who was responsible for the carnage at the Parliament building in 2001,Afzal Guru, be also executed immediately. His mercy plea is pending before the President at the moment. The nation hopes that Afzal Guru too will join Kasab soon.

But these decisions are in a way inevitable ones. The judicial process was duly completed and the Government is only expected to follow the procedures in these cases.

But for us to change our image we need to do a lot more. The opposite to Soft State is not Hard or Harsh State. What we need is a Stern State, a polity that betrays zero tolerance to attacks on its sovereignty, dignity and integrity.

Countries like Israel, USA and even Russia display such attitude. It is in their culture. Israel is by culture driven by fight back instinct. It is not 'teeth for teeth' with them; 'for one tooth, the entire jaw'. That is the reason why in spite of being surrounded by the enemy 5 times larger in terms of demography and military strength and sworn to wipe out Israel from the map of the world, they not only merely survive, but lead a life of strength, courage and pragmatism.

India is driven by an instinct of compromise. We may pay lip sympathy to Gaza by asking Israel not to use disproportionate force; but one has to be on the other side of the Gaza border to understand what it means to be a target of Hamas terrorism. Everything is fair in love and war, they say. We ourselves were victims of excessive softness in 1962 when waves and waves of Chinese soldiers had invaded our territory outnumbering our soldiers by 1:6. Excessive force argument doesn't have any merit in a war; and Israel is in a perpetual war.

In USA, terrorists are tried in military courts and punished swiftly. Mind you, USA is one of the world's leading democracies. Russia cannot claim that honour, but when it comes to handling terror, Putin had demonstrated extreme commitment when he carpet-bombed Chechnya relentlessly for a month to finish off Islamic terrorism once and for all on Russian soil.

Our real problem lies in the lack of that courage and determination. We are driven by a romanticist attitude of peace, love etc when what we actually need is a strategic culture. Wen Nehru proposed Panchsheel - five principles for peaceful coexistence - to Chou En-lai, Mao retorted by saying what we needed was 'armed coexistence'.

That is what is meant the strategic cultural difference in thinking. It is not about any doctrine alone. It is more about the culture. We simply don't have it. The last known leader to have thought in terms of a comprehensive strategic cultural doctrine was Chanakya when he asked the ruler of Patna to go and befriend the rulers of the Republics in today's Afghan-Iran border thousands of miles away. There were kings like Shivaji who had used strategic wars to secure their kingdoms, but a strategic doctrine leading to a strategic culture was last developed by Chanakya in Artha Shastra, which we no longer follow.

Let me give you a simple example to buttress my point: in order to secure its borders from the Mongol invaders in the North the Qing dynasty in China had built the Great Wall of China - a thousands-of-km-long wall around its central territory after 13th Century. India was invaded by successive waves of hordes for more than 2000 years through one mountain pass called the Khyber Pass. Why has no Indian king ever thought of sealing that pass to prevent the invasions?

That is where the difference in strategic cultures stands. That is why we can't even seal our borders with Bangladesh. Even if we post our BSF men there, we give them clear orders that they cannot fire on the infiltrators even at night.

For us to really shed off this Soft State image we need to transform our cultural outlook about our security, sovereignty and national honour. We need a new strategic culture in our country.

DOES THE EUROPEAN UNION DESERVE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE?

DOES THE EUROPEAN UNION DESERVE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE?

Last week in Brussels I bumped into a junior level official at the European Commission. Brussels has one of the best public transport systems – underground and overground metro, tram and bus – and our chance meeting happened in one of the overground metros. It was in that meeting that I came to know about the anxiety of several European Union countries to make sure that the arrangement doesn't collapse due to impending pulls and pressures from within as well as without. In fact the official equated collapse of EU to relapse of jingoistic nationalism of the Nazi variety, although it sounded a bit far fetched to me.

But the strains are evident. Not all is well with the EU. There is resentment brewing in different countries in the South like Greece, Italy and Spain. Left Liberal parties are gaining in many of these Member-Countries. Recessionary trends are not showing any signs of change. Euro is struggling to remain afloat. And most importantly the cold war between the big and mighty like Germany, France and UK is continuing to haunt the progress of the Union. After several decades of its existence the European Union is certainly facing biggest challenge ever to its very raison d'être.

It is at this juncture that the Norway-based Nobel Awards Committee has decided to give this year's Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union. Mr. Srinivasan, former Foreign Secretary of India, has written an excellent article on this decision of the Nobel Committee in the Times of India dated 17 October 2012.

Not many people knew that Norway is one important country that refuses to join the European Union. In the referenda held twice the people of that country categorically voted against being a part of the EU. Norway is an important country because it is the richest economy in the entire Europe, and its joining the EU would certainly have helped the struggling EU economy due to severe recession.

Nobel prizes are given away by the committee headquartered in Oslo, the capital city of Norway. On one hand Norway refuses to join the EU and rescue it from collapse, while on the other hand it decided to award this year's Nobel Peace Prize to that very same crumbling edifice. That is why many in Europe are describing it as a crude joke, black humour etc.

Nobel awards have lost their reputation long ago. Especially the Peace Award increasingly came to be seen by the world as a politically motivated one. Of course there were honourable exceptions in recent years like HH the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela etc. But there were less than honourable cases like that of Barack Obama who was awarded a Nobel Peace prize within just a few months of ascension to the Oval Office. Of course no Indian, not even the greatest champion of peace Mahatma Gandhi, has ever been considered for the Peace Prize.

This time also there is no convincing reason for the Peace Award to go to the European Union. Within the EU member countries also this announcement was received with cynicism, sarcasm and scoffing by several groups. In the last one decade or so the EU has not covered itself in any particular glory. It has not played any meaningful role in securing world peace. Several of its member states like the UK, France etc were active partners in George Bush era wars in the Arab world. Several of the EU nations were involved in lending direct or indirect support to Orange Revolution in some countries of the Arab region that had culminated in bringing into power illiberal Islamists in many of those countries.

Within the EU also things are not so much in order for it to deserve any such Award. Cold War between Germany and France and UK continues to dominate EU politics. Uneasy truce is of course an achievement between Germany and France. Euro is in deep distress. Countries in the south are bankrupt while those in the north are in no mood to come to their rescue. As a result nationalism and anti-EU sentiment is on the rise in some of these countries like Spain, Greece etc. There were even demonstrations against the German Chancellor Merkel when she visited Greece recently.

Recovery of Euro seems to remain a distant dream. European Union is becoming increasingly irrelevant to global politics and seen by many countries in the rest of the world as only an appendage of the US. In spite of its existence for long years, countries in the rest of the world find it convenient to deal with individual countries rather than the EU as an entity.

In fact EU as an entity doesn't really inspire confidence as a democratic body. It's two wings the European Parliament and the European Commission act independent of each other with the former practically having no meaningful powers. The European Parliament is duly elected by the people of different member countries. But it has no powers to prevent the European Commission, the ruling establishment, from pursuing, making or unmaking various policies.

In such a scenario for the Nobel Committee to decide to give the coveted Peace Prize to the EU can at best be described as a morale booster only. But the fact remains that the EU is in dire need of such boosters. It is no denying a fact that several of the smaller member countries have benefitted from the EU arrangement as it has given them access to free markets and movements. Pre-Second World War Europe experience of German and Italian Nationalist movements is still a chilling memory for many in Europe.

For them, especially the countries that have been the beneficiaries of the EU arrangement, its continuance is critical. There are some other countries like Turkey, which are perpetually waiting to enter and some new ones like Serbia whose entry doesn't make much difference.

In any case can this morale booster injection of Nobel offered by Norway help rescue the European Union from going the USSR way needs to be watched. 

Detect and Disenfranchise Infiltrators

Text of the Speech Delivered at Bengaluru on 01-09-12

 

We all must be evergrateful to the All Assam Students Union and it's leaders like Prafulla Mahonta and Sarvananda Sonowal. It was they, as young men and women some 30 years ago, who fought against the illegal migration from Bangladesh into Assam and the rest of India. These youngmen in their 20s and 30s sacrificed their education, their careers and even their lives in order to secure our Motherland and it's integrity. But for the massive agitation launched by them in late 70s and early 80s the country would have been blissfully ignorant of the dangerous threat to its North East; but for their movement we would probably have lost the NE by now forever to the foreigners.

The problem of illegal migration from Bangladesh, which is at the root of many ills plaguing the North East including the recent Bodoland clashes, has today acquired humongous proportions. We all know that the North East comprising the Seven Sisters - Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura - is a land of nature's bounty. It is also strategically a very important region for us, whose borders touch four countries - Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Tibet/China.

This strategic region of the NE is linked to rest of India through a tenuous land link called the Siliguri Corridor. Various agencies like the Chinese, the ISI, the CIA are all active in the region. Various terrorist groups operate under their patronage in different states of the region.

Singularly important problem in the NE is the illegal migration/infiltration from Bangladesh. None has the actual data. But estimates - official or otherwise - put the numbers anywhere between 20 million to 30 million Bangladeshis in India, one third of whom have made the NE as their home. 

Bangladesh is the world's most densely populated country with 982 persons/sq. km. Our NE states have just 215 persons/sq. km. Additionally Bangladesh is one country that has exported tens of millions of its people to other countries. Besides those who infiltrated into India a whopping 15 million Bangladeshis live in other countries of the world. This amounts to more than half of the population of Bangladesh.

We must first of all accept and bear in mind that we are dealing with this kind of a humongous problem. Our tragedy is that a section of our political and intellectual leadership is not willing to accept the real dimensions of this problem. The issue of infiltration from Bangladesh is mired in controversies mostly on account of vote bank politics and pseudo-secular and pseudo-humanitarian pseudo-intellectualism. Result is that we are not able to have one solid opinion on any dimension of this problem.

Is infiltration by Bangladeshis into our country a political problem? We witness constant somersaults on the issue. In 90s Hiteswar Saikia, the then Chief Minister of Assam declared on the floor of the House that there were 3 million Bangladeshis in Assam. Immediately pressure was mounted on him from leaders in Delhi. Within one week he made a complete u-turn, this time claiming that there was not a single Bangladeshi in his State.

This continues even to this day. Tarun Gogoi, the Chief Minister of Assam today, is known for speaking in different tongues on this issue. One day he will say that there is no place for Bangladeshis in Assam; another day he would say that there are no Bangladeshis in Assam at all. Several other political parties too exhibit this lack of conviction and political will to openly declare that there is a never-ending influx of infiltration from Bangladesh into our country.

Usurping Assam has been on the agenda of successive leaders of Pakistan and Bangladesh for decades. Jinnah, the architect of partition of Bharat, visited Guwahati in 1946 and expressed full confidence in his speech that the city would certainly become a part of his dream country Pakistan. In fact he tried to use his proximity to the British leadership to bring Assam and East Bengal into one group so that he could take away the entire region at the time of Partition. Congress leadership was too indifferent to see through this dangerous game plan and in fact it almost acquiesced to the proposal. But for the alert intervention of Gopinath Bardoloi, senior Congress leader from Assam, who later became the first Chief Minister of Assam, the State would have fallen in the hands of Jinnah. It was Bardoloi who opposed the move to group Assam with East Bengal thus saving the state from slipping out of Bharat.

In the preceding years of Partition a systematic effort was made to alter the demography of Assam in order to make it easy to take it away. Md. Sadulla, the then premier of Assam and East Bengal, deliberately encouraged migration of Muslim farmers into Assam in the name of supplementing the British efforts to increase rice production in the region in order to ward off the repeat of drought. Lord Wavell, the British Viceroy, had commented that in the name of growing more rice Sadullah was indulging in growing more Muslims.

The Pakistan leadership had never given up on their agenda on Assam. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his book “Myth of Independence” wrote, “It would be wrong to think that Kashmir is the only dispute that divides India and Pakistan. One at least is nearly as important as the Kashmir dispute, that of Assam and some districts of India adjacent to East Pakistan. To these, Pakistan has very good claims. East Pakistan must include Assam to be financially and economically strong”.

Even Sheik Mujibur Rehman, who owed everything to India without whose support he wouldn't have succeeded in carving out Bangladesh, too nurtured the ambition of annexing at least parts of Assam if not full. In his book Eastern Pakistan – It's Population and Economics he asserted:

“East Pakistan must have land for its expansion and because Assam has abundant forests, mineral resources, coal, petroleum etc. Eastern Pakistan must include Assam to be economically and financially strong.”

The infiltration from Bangladesh must be seen in this backdrop. Bangladeshis today became a deciding factor in about 200 Assembly and 25 Parliament seats. 11 Districts in Assam have become partially or fully Bangladeshi Muslim majority. 4 districts in W. Bengal are close to halfway mark in number of Bangladeshis. Even in the national capital Delhi, right under the nose of our Government, 1.6 million Bangladeshis live all over.

There is a political party in Assam by name United National Front of Assam. It's leader is one Maulana by name Badruddin Ajmal. Ajmal's party is described by many as the party of infiltrators. He himself is a Member of Parliament from Dhubri, which is 70% Bangladeshi constituency. That means he can never be defeated by any Indian. 

Ajmal is accused of fanning communal tensions in Bodoland area that culminated in huge clashes. He is also allegedly the main financier of Raza Academy which organised the Mumbai protests leading to violence. Ajmal's party is the main opposition party in Assam Assembly today, winning 18 seats in 2009 elections leaving the BJP and the AGP far behind. Ajmal nurtures the dream of winning double the number of seats in next election and with the help of 'friendly' co-religionists in other parties capture power in the state that has just 121 Assembly seats.

That the infiltrators enjoy immunity, if not protection, from the ruling establishment became clear once again when the Assam administration chose to arrest Pradeep Brahma, a Bodo MLA, for the violence but didn't touch Ajmal in spite of demands for the same by many. In fact it is this kind of politics of power and vote banks that have been the bane of our country and blessing for the illegal citizens.

Is it demographic invasion?

Just as we refuse to see the political dimensions of the infiltration we refuse to accept that no country allows its territories to become victims of silent demographic invasion. 'Demography is destiny' is the dictum every country follows, of course except us. No other country has so much experience as we do and paid so much price as we did due to demographic imbalances. The country was partitioned primarily on demographic grounds. Partition was not peaceful - millions had lost their lives while tens of millions had become hapless refugees. One of the largest mass migrations in human history was witnessed in 1947 for the simple reason of demographic differences. 

Yet we don't understand the gravity of the emerging scenario due to unabating influx of Bangladeshi infiltrators. The community-wise growth rate given as under will give us a better picture of communal imbalance being created in Assam by the immigration of Bangladeshis :-

1951-1961.     Hindus.       33.71            Muslims.   38.35

1991-2001.    Hindus         44.08.            Muslims   89.25

In 1991 census, four districts of Assam namely Dhubri, Goalpara, Barpeta and Hailakandi became Muslim majority districts. Two more districts; Nagaon and Karimganj have attained Muslim majority in 1998.

The tribal population of Tripura, which was 93 percent in 1947 has been reduced to a minority of 23 percent of its 31.9 million population today.

As per the Home Ministry and IB estimates approx 54 lakh Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants are settled in West Bengal.

Lest we forget, the Election Commission of Bangladesh had declared around this time that a couple of million voters were 'missing' from their country.

In India as well as in Bangladesh there are many intellectuals who try to project it as a humanitarian issue. In fact some intellectuals in Bangladesh have gone to the extent of describing this migration as 'Lebensraum'. This is a German word meaning 'Living Space'. In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler detailed his belief that the growing population of the German people needed Lebensraum ("living space"), and that it should be found in Eastern Europe. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic people. 

This Fascist argument is now being forwarded by our intellectuals in the garb of humanitarianism.

No country tolerates such illegal migration. Through the "Secure Fence Act of 2006" the USA has by law started fencing its borders with Mexico. By 2010 it has completed 1200 kms of border fencing almost covering all hospitable terrains. 

Although China is a great friend of North Korea it nevertheless is building a strong barrier on its border to prevent illegal infiltrators from entering Chinese territory. Recently the Chinese administration has announced a 100-Yuan reward to the whistle-blowers on illegal infiltrators. It passed a new law pronouncing much harsher punishment for illegal migrants.

What is interesting to note is that while many million Bangladeshis infiltrate into India they hardly dare to enter China although the countries - Bangladesh and China - have been great friends.

In Myanmar nearly a million Rohingya Muslims, who are originally from Bangladesh and live on the western border of the country, have been treated for decades as non-citizens without any citizens' rights. 

Even Muslim countries don't tolerate this nonsense. The Malaysian government has recently revoked the visas of about 70,000 Bangladeshi migrants. There was a news item a few years ago that Saudi Arabia had forcibly deported some 600 Bangladeshis who were found overstaying.

What is the status of our laws with regard to infiltration? Firstly the Foreigners' Act, which was meant to deal with this problem, hardly can cope with the very magnitude of it. In the 80's, especially after the massacre of Nellie in Assam in 1983 in which some 2000 people, mostly the infiltrators, were killed, the Government of Smt. India Gandhi had brought in the infamous Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunal Act, popularly known as the IMDT Act. 

By the nomenclature it sounds as though it was meant to prevent infiltration. But in reality the Act was designed in such a way that it actually turned out to be the Illegal Migrants Protection Act. While under the Foreigners Act the government agencies are empowered to investigate and act against illegal immigrants upon receiving any information, under the IMDT Act the onus of proving that a said person is an illegal immigrant rested on the complainant. What is worse, the complainant had to pay a certain amount before complaining. This Act had thus become a boon for the infiltrators because Assam was excluded from the jurisdiction of the Foreigners' Act and placed under this Act.

In spite of this adverse nature of the Act between 1983 and 2000 a total of over 3 lac complaints came before the Tribunal out of which around 10,000 were found true; but less than 1500 deported. Governor of Assam Lt. Gen. Ajai Singh had sent  confidential report to the Union Home Ministry on infiltration in 2005 in which he claimed that about 6000 people sneak into Assam from Bangladesh everyday. When this report got leaked out into media partially he was reported to have amended his statement by saying that 6000 people cross over into India every day.

This is mind boggling. 6000 infiltrators enter every day while we send back 1 infiltrator every 4-5 days. Now, the Government figures suggest that a whopping 750 crore rupees had been spent on this great job of deporting 1400+ infiltrators.

While this being the state of affairs, the IMDT Act in the meantime became a symbol of India's much-maligned pseudo-secularism. Parties started vying with each other to safeguard this grossly anti-national Act. Even the BJP as the lead Party of the NDA could do specious little to scrap this Act because of the same political compulsions. When the Supreme Court, acting upon the petition of Sarvananda Sonowal of the AGP, asked the NDA regime to repeal the Act it submitted before the Court it's inability due to lack of numbers in the Upper House. However it did agree with the Court's view that the IMDT Act must go. Finally it fell on the Court to scrape it.

What shocked everybody was the cynical and diabolical attempt by the UPA 1 government in 2005 to circumvent and defeat the spirit of the Supreme Court judgment on IMDT by amending the Foreigners' Act so as to allow the same detrimental provisions of the IMDT Act a back door entry into it. Fortunately an alert Supreme Court intervened again and strike down the amendments as illegal. This one incident shows vividly how shameless and irresponsible our political system has become in handling such sensitive issues.

We are not realising that infiltration is a huge security issue as well. Our intelligence agencies have definite information that more than 150 ISI training camps run in Bangladesh. Under the previous regime of Begum Khalida Zia in Bangladesh all the insurgent groups of the North East like the ULFA, Kantipur National Army, NLFT etc have had safe havens in the bordering regions in that country. Fortunately the present regime in Bangladesh under Sheik Hasina has been helping India in weeding out these elements. But the fact remains that infiltration is a major security threat to our country.

This infiltration is putting a lot of pressure on our internal security machinery. The agencies come under increased pressure in all the cities where the Bangladeshis live in large numbers. Their illegal colonies become the hub of all terrorist and anti-national activities. Besides this, normal policing too faces increased pressure due to the presence of these foreigners. In cities like Delhi many crimes like dacoity, robbery, murder etc are traced in several cases to these infiltrators.

This issue of infiltration must be dealt at the diplomatic level also. We need to take up the issue with the counterparts in Bangladesh. However it is a sad commentary of diplomacy that our side never presses this matter forcefully with Bangladesh. It is not that we don't discuss important issues regarding this region bilaterally. As recently as early this year India and Bangladesh have arrived at a pathbreaking border delimitation agreement under which Indian side has conceded around 10,000 hectors of territory to Bangladesh. Even while demonstrating such magnanimity the Indian side has not demanded that Bangladesh reciprocate by taking effective measures to curb infiltration.

For sometime now the Bangladesh officials are taking a strange belligerent line of argument. There are no illegal Bangladeshis in India, they insist arguing that those who own a ration card and voter identity card of India can't be called Bangladeshi nationals. It is a clever, yet hollow argument. But it does point out the ugly political reality in our country where the infiltrators are not seen as a security risk but as vote banks.

In any case the stand of Bangladesh on the issue of illegal migrants seems to be downright negationism. Whenever the BSF tries to push back infiltrators the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) refuses to let them in saying they are not their nationals. 

Sometime back the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina rather curtly told British Secretary of International Development Affairs Andrew Mitchell in London, that 'countries including Britain, which are concerned over the Rohingya issue, should hold talks with Myanmar instead of putting pressure on Bangladesh'. 

While the apologists for infiltrators in India put forth the humanitarianism argument the leadership of the very country to which they belong doesn't betray any humanitarian concern for them. 

Is it a religious issue also? We are hammered by our pseudo-intelligentsia and media that it shouldn't be seen as a religious issue. We too agree that the issue is essentially about infiltrators. But does the other side also see it that way? The Muslim League of Bangladesh, which had a field day under Khalida Zia's regime, spews venom against Hindus and India. It aggressively campaigns for Jihad to takeover the districts of Assam. 

In our country too how can we explain the reaction of Muslims in Mumbai, Ranchi, Allahabad, Lucknow, Hyderabad etc? It is they who make it into a Hindu-Muslim issue. The insidious campaign that was unleashed in the wake of clashes in Bodoland is an affront on the entire North East. It was propagated as though the land of Shankar Dev had become a land of anti-Muslim marauders. Calls were given by clerics for street demonstrations against what they portrayed as 'anti-Muslim pogrom'. Funds were collected in each and every mosque in the name of supporting the brethren of Umma. 

Who makes it into a religious issue then? Why teach others about not communalising the issue while the Muslim leadership in the country is openly and blatantly making it into a communal one? Asaduddin Owaisi, a Member of Parliament known for his rabid communalist views, openly threatened on the floor of Lok Sabha that a third wave of radicalisation of Muslim youths will soon start. According to him the first two waves were post-Ayodhya and post-Gujarat. 

It is significant, in this context, to note that, Lafikul Islam, the 'publicity secretary' of the All Bodoland Muslim Student's Union (ABMSU), had warned the state government on July 7, 2012, that, if the 'culprits' of the violence of July 6, 2012, were not arrested within 24 hours the ABMSU would declare jehad and take up arms.

Such open and blatant communalist banalities are pushed under the carpet in our country while Hindus are routinely pontificated about treating it as a secular and humanitarian issue.

How can we explain the solidarity of Indian Muslims with the Bangladeshi infiltrators in India or in Myanmar - the Rohingyas? We must not forget the fact that under Islam the entire Muslim world is one single Umma - nation. Islam doesn't recognise any other national boundaries. Additionally there is this concept of Hijra - migration of Muslims to greener pastures. 'Whole world is a big Mosque for you', declared the Prophet and ordained his people to go anywhere and called upon the fellow-religionists that it is their religious obligation to support them.

It is another matter that the Saudis, the Malaysians and even the Bangladeshis themselves don't recognise this principle when it comes to their own lands.

What needs to be done now to remedy the situation?

Firstly, under the Assam Accord of 1986 the Government of India was to revise the National Register of Citizens adjusting it with the census data of 1971. That year has been agreed upon as the cut-off year for identifying infiltrators. Those who entered India illegally after 1971 will be treated as infiltrators and sent back. Since this Accord of 1986 succeeded the IMDT Act it should have prevailed over the Act in detecting and deporting them.

But like the IMDT Act there occurred a fiasco on the issue of National Register of Citizens too. Under the pressure of the Supreme Court, the centre in 2005 decided to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC) 'within two years', on the basis of the 1971 rolls. But the exercise never took off for reasons known only to the governments. On April 22, 2009, during the tripartite discussions between the Central and State governments, and the All Assam Students Union (AASU), the government promised to initiate NRC updates in two revenue circles, Chaygaon in Kamrup district and Barpeta revenue circle in Barpeta district. The process commenced on June 7, 2010, as a pilot project, but almost immediately ran into trouble, with 'law and order problems' surfacing in Barpeta. On July 21, 2010, protestors under the banner of the Barpeta district unit of the All Assam Muslim Students Union (AAMSU), demonstrated violently outside the Deputy Commissioner's Office, demanding a halt to the process. Police eventually opened fire, killing four and injuring 50. While no official suspension was announced, the 'pilot project' stood abandoned from that time on. 

On March 26, 2012, the government announced the 'decision' to re-launch the Registrar General of Citizens' Registration pilot project to update the NRC in three phases from July 1, 2012. Once again the AAMSU, with 24 other 'minority organizations', started issuing threats of agitation against this decision. The process has not begun till date. 

The first requirement is to complete the process of identifying legal citizens of our country by revising the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Then comes the question of detecting and deporting the infiltrators. A national consensus eludes in this matter too because of the Minority vote bank politics. The least that we should agree upon is to detect and disenfranchise the infiltrators. The Rohingyas of Myanmar are an example. Some 800,000 Rohingya Muslims, who are infiltrators from Bangladesh, live illegally on the western coast of Myanmar. The Myanmar government treats them as infiltrators only and refuses to extend citizens' rights to them. The least that we can do is to declare infiltrators as illegal citizens and deny them rights like voting, housing, ration etc.

Irrespective of whether it yield results or not we should continue to exert pressure on Bangladesh to take back these infiltrators. 

Another important measure to take is to seal our borders. India and Bangladesh share 4096 km long border. A feeble attempt has been made after a lot of pressure to build fencing along the border. Less than 1/4th of the border fencing only could be completed till date. Even that fencing is found very fragile and easy to break at a lot of places.

It costs Rs three crores per km to effectively police this border, i.e., on account of manning of border by policing force, construction and maintenance of border roads, border fencing, riverine patrols, watchtowers and so on. Over three scores of battalions of Border Security Force are presently policing the border which is woefully inadequate. For effective domination and policing requirement is well over 100 battalions. The government has been able to fence only 987 km of this border till now. Rs. 2300 crores are being spent every year in guarding this border. (WB-2217 Kms, Assam-262 Kms, Meghalaya-443 Kms, Tripura-856 Kms, Mizoram-318 Kms).

Last but not the least, we need to silence the apologists and supporters of these illegal migrants among the politicians, intellectuals and the clergymen. The tragedy is that the Government, in stead, wants to silence the patriotic voices by shutting down Twitter accounts etc. 

That brings us to the critical point - the political will. We need leaders who have the political will to tackle this menace even if it required some ruthlessness. What we need is a stern State; not a soft and measly one that we see today. Then only the people of the NE and the rest of the country can sleep peacefully.

Detect and Disenfranchise Infiltrators

Text of the Speech Delivered at Bengaluru on 01-09-12

 

We all must be evergrateful to the All Assam Students Union and it's leaders like Prafulla Mahonta and Sarvananda Sonowal. It was they, as young men and women some 30 years ago, who fought against the illegal migration from Bangladesh into Assam and the rest of India. These youngmen in their 20s and 30s sacrificed their education, their careers and even their lives in order to secure our Motherland and it's integrity. But for the massive agitation launched by them in late 70s and early 80s the country would have been blissfully ignorant of the dangerous threat to its North East; but for their movement we would probably have lost the NE by now forever to the foreigners.

The problem of illegal migration from Bangladesh, which is at the root of many ills plaguing the North East including the recent Bodoland clashes, has today acquired humongous proportions. We all know that the North East comprising the Seven Sisters - Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura - is a land of nature's bounty. It is also strategically a very important region for us, whose borders touch four countries - Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Tibet/China.

This strategic region of the NE is linked to rest of India through a tenuous land link called the Siliguri Corridor. Various agencies like the Chinese, the ISI, the CIA are all active in the region. Various terrorist groups operate under their patronage in different states of the region.

Singularly important problem in the NE is the illegal migration/infiltration from Bangladesh. None has the actual data. But estimates - official or otherwise - put the numbers anywhere between 20 million to 30 million Bangladeshis in India, one third of whom have made the NE as their home. 

Bangladesh is the world's most densely populated country with 982 persons/sq. km. Our NE states have just 215 persons/sq. km. Additionally Bangladesh is one country that has exported tens of millions of its people to other countries. Besides those who infiltrated into India a whopping 15 million Bangladeshis live in other countries of the world. This amounts to more than half of the population of Bangladesh.

We must first of all accept and bear in mind that we are dealing with this kind of a humongous problem. Our tragedy is that a section of our political and intellectual leadership is not willing to accept the real dimensions of this problem. The issue of infiltration from Bangladesh is mired in controversies mostly on account of vote bank politics and pseudo-secular and pseudo-humanitarian pseudo-intellectualism. Result is that we are not able to have one solid opinion on any dimension of this problem.

Is infiltration by Bangladeshis into our country a political problem? We witness constant somersaults on the issue. In 90s Hiteswar Saikia, the then Chief Minister of Assam declared on the floor of the House that there were 3 million Bangladeshis in Assam. Immediately pressure was mounted on him from leaders in Delhi. Within one week he made a complete u-turn, this time claiming that there was not a single Bangladeshi in his State.

This continues even to this day. Tarun Gogoi, the Chief Minister of Assam today, is known for speaking in different tongues on this issue. One day he will say that there is no place for Bangladeshis in Assam; another day he would say that there are no Bangladeshis in Assam at all. Several other political parties too exhibit this lack of conviction and political will to openly declare that there is a never-ending influx of infiltration from Bangladesh into our country.

Usurping Assam has been on the agenda of successive leaders of Pakistan and Bangladesh for decades. Jinnah, the architect of partition of Bharat, visited Guwahati in 1946 and expressed full confidence in his speech that the city would certainly become a part of his dream country Pakistan. In fact he tried to use his proximity to the British leadership to bring Assam and East Bengal into one group so that he could take away the entire region at the time of Partition. Congress leadership was too indifferent to see through this dangerous game plan and in fact it almost acquiesced to the proposal. But for the alert intervention of Gopinath Bardoloi, senior Congress leader from Assam, who later became the first Chief Minister of Assam, the State would have fallen in the hands of Jinnah. It was Bardoloi who opposed the move to group Assam with East Bengal thus saving the state from slipping out of Bharat.

In the preceding years of Partition a systematic effort was made to alter the demography of Assam in order to make it easy to take it away. Md. Sadulla, the then premier of Assam and East Bengal, deliberately encouraged migration of Muslim farmers into Assam in the name of supplementing the British efforts to increase rice production in the region in order to ward off the repeat of drought. Lord Wavell, the British Viceroy, had commented that in the name of growing more rice Sadullah was indulging in growing more Muslims.

The Pakistan leadership had never given up on their agenda on Assam. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his book “Myth of Independence” wrote, “It would be wrong to think that Kashmir is the only dispute that divides India and Pakistan. One at least is nearly as important as the Kashmir dispute, that of Assam and some districts of India adjacent to East Pakistan. To these, Pakistan has very good claims. East Pakistan must include Assam to be financially and economically strong”.

Even Sheik Mujibur Rehman, who owed everything to India without whose support he wouldn't have succeeded in carving out Bangladesh, too nurtured the ambition of annexing at least parts of Assam if not full. In his book Eastern Pakistan – It's Population and Economics he asserted:

“East Pakistan must have land for its expansion and because Assam has abundant forests, mineral resources, coal, petroleum etc. Eastern Pakistan must include Assam to be economically and financially strong.”

The infiltration from Bangladesh must be seen in this backdrop. Bangladeshis today became a deciding factor in about 200 Assembly and 25 Parliament seats. 11 Districts in Assam have become partially or fully Bangladeshi Muslim majority. 4 districts in W. Bengal are close to halfway mark in number of Bangladeshis. Even in the national capital Delhi, right under the nose of our Government, 1.6 million Bangladeshis live all over.

There is a political party in Assam by name United National Front of Assam. It's leader is one Maulana by name Badruddin Ajmal. Ajmal's party is described by many as the party of infiltrators. He himself is a Member of Parliament from Dhubri, which is 70% Bangladeshi constituency. That means he can never be defeated by any Indian. 

Ajmal is accused of fanning communal tensions in Bodoland area that culminated in huge clashes. He is also allegedly the main financier of Raza Academy which organised the Mumbai protests leading to violence. Ajmal's party is the main opposition party in Assam Assembly today, winning 18 seats in 2009 elections leaving the BJP and the AGP far behind. Ajmal nurtures the dream of winning double the number of seats in next election and with the help of 'friendly' co-religionists in other parties capture power in the state that has just 121 Assembly seats.

That the infiltrators enjoy immunity, if not protection, from the ruling establishment became clear once again when the Assam administration chose to arrest Pradeep Brahma, a Bodo MLA, for the violence but didn't touch Ajmal in spite of demands for the same by many. In fact it is this kind of politics of power and vote banks that have been the bane of our country and blessing for the illegal citizens.

Is it demographic invasion?

Just as we refuse to see the political dimensions of the infiltration we refuse to accept that no country allows its territories to become victims of silent demographic invasion. 'Demography is destiny' is the dictum every country follows, of course except us. No other country has so much experience as we do and paid so much price as we did due to demographic imbalances. The country was partitioned primarily on demographic grounds. Partition was not peaceful - millions had lost their lives while tens of millions had become hapless refugees. One of the largest mass migrations in human history was witnessed in 1947 for the simple reason of demographic differences. 

Yet we don't understand the gravity of the emerging scenario due to unabating influx of Bangladeshi infiltrators. The community-wise growth rate given as under will give us a better picture of communal imbalance being created in Assam by the immigration of Bangladeshis :-

1951-1961.     Hindus.       33.71            Muslims.   38.35

1991-2001.    Hindus         44.08.            Muslims   89.25

In 1991 census, four districts of Assam namely Dhubri, Goalpara, Barpeta and Hailakandi became Muslim majority districts. Two more districts; Nagaon and Karimganj have attained Muslim majority in 1998.

The tribal population of Tripura, which was 93 percent in 1947 has been reduced to a minority of 23 percent of its 31.9 million population today.

As per the Home Ministry and IB estimates approx 54 lakh Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants are settled in West Bengal.

Lest we forget, the Election Commission of Bangladesh had declared around this time that a couple of million voters were 'missing' from their country. 

In India as well as in Bangladesh there are many intellectuals who try to project it as a humanitarian issue. In fact some intellectuals in Bangladesh have gone to the extent of describing this migration as 'Lebensraum'. This is a German word meaning 'Living Space'. In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler detailed his belief that the growing population of the German people needed Lebensraum ("living space"), and that it should be found in Eastern Europe. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic people. 

This Fascist argument is now being forwarded by our intellectuals in the garb of humanitarianism.

No country tolerates such illegal migration. Through the "Secure Fence Act of 2006" the USA has by law started fencing its borders with Mexico. By 2010 it has completed 1200 kms of border fencing almost covering all hospitable terrains. 

Although China is a great friend of North Korea it nevertheless is building a strong barrier on its border to prevent illegal infiltrators from entering Chinese territory. Recently the Chinese administration has announced a 100-Yuan reward to the whistle-blowers on illegal infiltrators. It passed a new law pronouncing much harsher punishment for illegal migrants.

What is interesting to note is that while many million Bangladeshis infiltrate into India they hardly dare to enter China although the countries - Bangladesh and China - have been great friends.

In Myanmar nearly a million Rohingya Muslims, who are originally from Bangladesh and live on the western border of the country, have been treated for decades as non-citizens without any citizens' rights. 

Even Muslim countries don't tolerate this nonsense. The Malaysian government has recently revoked the visas of about 70,000 Bangladeshi migrants. There was a news item a few years ago that Saudi Arabia had forcibly deported some 600 Bangladeshis who were found overstaying.

What is the status of our laws with regard to infiltration? Firstly the Foreigners' Act, which was meant to deal with this problem, hardly can cope with the very magnitude of it. In the 80's, especially after the massacre of Nellie in Assam in 1983 in which some 2000 people, mostly the infiltrators, were killed, the Government of Smt. India Gandhi had brought in the infamous Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunal Act, popularly known as the IMDT Act. 

By the nomenclature it sounds as though it was meant to prevent infiltration. But in reality the Act was designed in such a way that it actually turned out to be the Illegal Migrants Protection Act. While under the Foreigners Act the government agencies are empowered to investigate and act against illegal immigrants upon receiving any information, under the IMDT Act the onus of proving that a said person is an illegal immigrant rested on the complainant. What is worse, the complainant had to pay a certain amount before complaining. This Act had thus become a boon for the infiltrators because Assam was excluded from the jurisdiction of the Foreigners' Act and placed under this Act.

In spite of this adverse nature of the Act between 1983 and 2000 a total of over 3 lac complaints came before the Tribunal out of which around 10,000 were found true; but less than 1500 deported. Governor of Assam Lt. Gen. Ajai Singh had sent  confidential report to the Union Home Ministry on infiltration in 2005 in which he claimed that about 6000 people sneak into Assam from Bangladesh everyday. When this report got leaked out into media partially he was reported to have amended his statement by saying that 6000 people cross over into India every day.

This is mind boggling. 6000 infiltrators enter every day while we send back 1 infiltrator every 4-5 days. Now, the Government figures suggest that a whopping 750 crore rupees had been spent on this great job of deporting 1400+ infiltrators.

While this being the state of affairs, the IMDT Act in the meantime became a symbol of India's much-maligned pseudo-secularism. Parties started vying with each other to safeguard this grossly anti-national Act. Even the BJP as the lead Party of the NDA could do specious little to scrap this Act because of the same political compulsions. When the Supreme Court, acting upon the petition of Sarvananda Sonowal of the AGP, asked the NDA regime to repeal the Act it submitted before the Court it's inability due to lack of numbers in the Upper House. However it did agree with the Court's view that the IMDT Act must go. Finally it fell on the Court to scrape it.

What shocked everybody was the cynical and diabolical attempt by the UPA 1 government in 2005 to circumvent and defeat the spirit of the Supreme Court judgment on IMDT by amending the Foreigners' Act so as to allow the same detrimental provisions of the IMDT Act a back door entry into it. Fortunately an alert Supreme Court intervened again and strike down the amendments as illegal. This one incident shows vividly how shameless and irresponsible our political system has become in handling such sensitive issues.

We are not realising that infiltration is a huge security issue as well. Our intelligence agencies have definite information that more than 150 ISI training camps run in Bangladesh. Under the previous regime of Begum Khalida Zia in Bangladesh all the insurgent groups of the North East like the ULFA, Kantipur National Army, NLFT etc have had safe havens in the bordering regions in that country. Fortunately the present regime in Bangladesh under Sheik Hasina has been helping India in weeding out these elements. But the fact remains that infiltration is a major security threat to our country.

This infiltration is putting a lot of pressure on our internal security machinery. The agencies come under increased pressure in all the cities where the Bangladeshis live in large numbers. Their illegal colonies become the hub of all terrorist and anti-national activities. Besides this, normal policing too faces increased pressure due to the presence of these foreigners. In cities like Delhi many crimes like dacoity, robbery, murder etc are traced in several cases to these infiltrators.

This issue of infiltration must be dealt at the diplomatic level also. We need to take up the issue with the counterparts in Bangladesh. However it is a sad commentary of diplomacy that our side never presses this matter forcefully with Bangladesh. It is not that we don't discuss important issues regarding this region bilaterally. As recently as early this year India and Bangladesh have arrived at a pathbreaking border delimitation agreement under which Indian side has conceded around 10,000 hectors of territory to Bangladesh. Even while demonstrating such magnanimity the Indian side has not demanded that Bangladesh reciprocate by taking effective measures to curb infiltration.

For sometime now the Bangladesh officials are taking a strange belligerent line of argument. There are no illegal Bangladeshis in India, they insist arguing that those who own a ration card and voter identity card of India can't be called Bangladeshi nationals. It is a clever, yet hollow argument. But it does point out the ugly political reality in our country where the infiltrators are not seen as a security risk but as vote banks.

In any case the stand of Bangladesh on the issue of illegal migrants seems to be downright negationism. Whenever the BSF tries to push back infiltrators the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) refuses to let them in saying they are not their nationals. 

Sometime back the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina rather curtly told British Secretary of International Development Affairs Andrew Mitchell in London, that 'countries including Britain, which are concerned over the Rohingya issue, should hold talks with Myanmar instead of putting pressure on Bangladesh'. 

While the apologists for infiltrators in India put forth the humanitarianism argument the leadership of the very country to which they belong doesn't betray any humanitarian concern for them. 

Is it a religious issue also? We are hammered by our pseudo-intelligentsia and media that it shouldn't be seen as a religious issue. We too agree that the issue is essentially about infiltrators. But does the other side also see it that way? The Muslim League of Bangladesh, which had a field day under Khalida Zia's regime, spews venom against Hindus and India. It aggressively campaigns for Jihad to takeover the districts of Assam. 

In our country too how can we explain the reaction of Muslims in Mumbai, Ranchi, Allahabad, Lucknow, Hyderabad etc? It is they who make it into a Hindu-Muslim issue. The insidious campaign that was unleashed in the wake of clashes in Bodoland is an affront on the entire North East. It was propagated as though the land of Shankar Dev had become a land of anti-Muslim marauders. Calls were given by clerics for street demonstrations against what they portrayed as 'anti-Muslim pogrom'. Funds were collected in each and every mosque in the name of supporting the brethren of Umma. 

Who makes it into a religious issue then? Why teach others about not communalising the issue while the Muslim leadership in the country is openly and blatantly making it into a communal one? Asaduddin Owaisi, a Member of Parliament known for his rabid communalist views, openly threatened on the floor of Lok Sabha that a third wave of radicalisation of Muslim youths will soon start. According to him the first two waves were post-Ayodhya and post-Gujarat. 

It is significant, in this context, to note that, Lafikul Islam, the 'publicity secretary' of the All Bodoland Muslim Student's Union (ABMSU), had warned the state government on July 7, 2012, that, if the 'culprits' of the violence of July 6, 2012, were not arrested within 24 hours the ABMSU would declare jehad and take up arms.

Such open and blatant communalist banalities are pushed under the carpet in our country while Hindus are routinely pontificated about treating it as a secular and humanitarian issue.

How can we explain the solidarity of Indian Muslims with the Bangladeshi infiltrators in India or in Myanmar - the Rohingyas? We must not forget the fact that under Islam the entire Muslim world is one single Umma - nation. Islam doesn't recognise any other national boundaries. Additionally there is this concept of Hijra - migration of Muslims to greener pastures. 'Whole world is a big Mosque for you', declared the Prophet and ordained his people to go anywhere and called upon the fellow-religionists that it is their religious obligation to support them.

It is another matter that the Saudis, the Malaysians and even the Bangladeshis themselves don't recognise this principle when it comes to their own lands.

What needs to be done now to remedy the situation?

Firstly, under the Assam Accord of 1986 the Government of India was to revise the National Register of Citizens adjusting it with the census data of 1971. That year has been agreed upon as the cut-off year for identifying infiltrators. Those who entered India illegally after 1971 will be treated as infiltrators and sent back. Since this Accord of 1986 succeeded the IMDT Act it should have prevailed over the Act in detecting and deporting them.

But like the IMDT Act there occurred a fiasco on the issue of National Register of Citizens too. Under the pressure of the Supreme Court, the centre in 2005 decided to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC) 'within two years', on the basis of the 1971 rolls. But the exercise never took off for reasons known only to the governments. On April 22, 2009, during the tripartite discussions between the Central and State governments, and the All Assam Students Union (AASU), the government promised to initiate NRC updates in two revenue circles, Chaygaon in Kamrup district and Barpeta revenue circle in Barpeta district. The process commenced on June 7, 2010, as a pilot project, but almost immediately ran into trouble, with 'law and order problems' surfacing in Barpeta. On July 21, 2010, protestors under the banner of the Barpeta district unit of the All Assam Muslim Students Union (AAMSU), demonstrated violently outside the Deputy Commissioner's Office, demanding a halt to the process. Police eventually opened fire, killing four and injuring 50. While no official suspension was announced, the 'pilot project' stood abandoned from that time on. 

On March 26, 2012, the government announced the 'decision' to re-launch the Registrar General of Citizens' Registration pilot project to update the NRC in three phases from July 1, 2012. Once again the AAMSU, with 24 other 'minority organizations', started issuing threats of agitation against this decision. The process has not begun till date. 

The first requirement is to complete the process of identifying legal citizens of our country by revising the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Then comes the question of detecting and deporting the infiltrators. A national consensus eludes in this matter too because of the Minority vote bank politics. The least that we should agree upon is to detect and disenfranchise the infiltrators. The Rohingyas of Myanmar are an example. Some 800,000 Rohingya Muslims, who are infiltrators from Bangladesh, live illegally on the western coast of Myanmar. The Myanmar government treats them as infiltrators only and refuses to extend citizens' rights to them. The least that we can do is to declare infiltrators as illegal citizens and deny them rights like voting, housing, ration etc.

Irrespective of whether it yield results or not we should continue to exert pressure on Bangladesh to take back these infiltrators. 

Another important measure to take is to seal our borders. India and Bangladesh share 4096 km long border. A feeble attempt has been made after a lot of pressure to build fencing along the border. Less than 1/4th of the border fencing only could be completed till date. Even that fencing is found very fragile and easy to break at a lot of places.

It costs Rs three crores per km to effectively police this border, i.e., on account of manning of border by policing force, construction and maintenance of border roads, border fencing, riverine patrols, watchtowers and so on. Over three scores of battalions of Border Security Force are presently policing the border which is woefully inadequate. For effective domination and policing requirement is well over 100 battalions. The government has been able to fence only 987 km of this border till now. Rs. 2300 crores are being spent every year in guarding this border. (WB-2217 Kms, Assam-262 Kms, Meghalaya-443 Kms, Tripura-856 Kms, Mizoram-318 Kms).

Last but not the least, we need to silence the apologists and supporters of these illegal migrants among the politicians, intellectuals and the clergymen. The tragedy is that the Government, in stead, wants to silence the patriotic voices by shutting down Twitter accounts etc. 

That brings us to the critical point - the political will. We need leaders who have the political will to tackle this menace even if it required some ruthlessness. What we need is a stern State; not a soft and measly one that we see today. Then only the people of the NE and the rest of the country can sleep peacefully.

Sushasaks (Good Administrators) needed for Sushasan (Good Governance)

 

(Text of the concluding speech delivered at the Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini workshop on ‘Quality Manpower for Good Governance’ on 26-05-12 at Delhi)

After 60 years of experience with governance in India more and more people feel that it is not working. This system of governance is not delivering.

What is after all the ultimate objective of governance? It is the Yogakshema – security and welfare of the people. Acharya Chanakya, in his seminal treatise Artha Shastra, delineated two principle functions of the government and administration: one is Vitta Shastra – the science of managing wealth; and the second is Danda Neeti – the security policy. The government and administration should strive to secure for its people ample wellbeing and security from internal and external threats.

After 60 years of Independence where do people of India stand today? We are one of the poorest nations in the world with over 612 million people – that is a staggering 50% of our population – suffering from multidimensional poverty. India stands at 161^st position in terms of per capita GDP of the countries of the world. Our per capita GDP is $ 3500. We are behind even war-torn countries like Iraq, whose per capita GDP stands at $ 3800. Qatar has the highest GDP per capita of $ 160,000. USA, in its worst financial condition last year, registered a GDP of around $ 48,000. China has more than double the GDP than ours at $ 7500.

It is not just the question of GDP alone, because the GDP can sometimes be misleading. If we look at the actual figures the picture is much more horrifying. The World Bank has set $ 1.25 – roughly INR 70 – per day as the International Poverty Line. A whopping 42.5% population of India lives below this poverty benchmark. Remember, 42.5% in India means around 500 million people.

Our own Government has set a much lower benchmark for poverty. According to Montek Singh Ahluwalia led Planning Commission of India earning INR 20 in urban areas and INR 11 in rural areas can catapult you above the poverty line. The Supreme Court of India had frowned at the utterly low benchmark and demanded from the government an explanation as to how can one subsist on such horrendously low income figures.

But the real story is something else.  Even this low benchmark for BPL (Below Poverty Line) couldn’t produce encouraging results. The Planning Commission claims that the poverty levels have come down from 37.5% to 32%. That means even after taking such low figures our poor population who can’t earn even INR 20 a day are around 400 million.

Yet we register an impressive growth rate of around 9% annually. Last year the Forbes magazine announced that India has 55 billionaires. Three of them – Lakshmi Mittal of the Ispat Group, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries and Azim Premji of Wipro - are among the top 50 of the world. It points to the growing disparity between the rich and poor in the country. Several top executives in our country earn INR 6 million in a year. That puts their daily income at around INR 15000. And 400 million Indians subsist on just INR 20 a day. The difference is 750 times.

In Mahabharata the king was advised that Dharma – Rule of Law - cannot be sustained in the face of not only the penury of the people but also over-affluence. 

‘Abhavova prabhavova yatra nastyarthakamayoh

Samaje swatmarupeshu dharmachakra pravartanam’

- The Dharma Chakra – Rule of Law – will prevail only when there is neither shortage nor excess of Artha – the prosperity and Kama – the desires in a society

Whose failure is this? Certainly the system that we have created has not produced the desired results. Two most important wings of the Government – the Executive and the Legislature – have to shoulder this responsibility. A serious rethinking is needed in order to ensure that equitable distribution of wealth is possible. Bold and path-breaking reforms need to be envisioned.

But the problem is that those who have the power to reform the system have developed a vested interest in the existing model. They will find ways to protect their vested interest even while attempting to tinker with the system here and there. That is why neither the Socialism of the first 30 years had helped us nor the liberalization of the last 30 years.

Woodrow Wilson – former President of America – was the first senior leader to talk seriously about administrative reforms. His seminal work on the theme had led to development of a complete discipline of ‘Public Administration’. He insisted upon separating politics and administration. He advocated for a dichotomy of politics and administration. But is that really an answer today?

The politicians will argue that without their control the administration will simply go berserk. Moreover a politician can be removed in five years if he doesn’t deliver whereas an administrator cannot be. But then the administrator argues that it is too much of political intervention that is preventing proper delivery by the administration. Latest case in point is the Supreme Court mandated Police Act. The new Acts drafted by several states witnessed huge tussle between the political class and the police over the control of the police administration. While the political class wants control over police administration for obvious reasons the police administration wants to get rid of not only the political control but also the control of civilian bureaucracy. It showcased how entrenched the vested interests are when it comes to reforming the system.

But one thing appears to be certain. The role of political involvement in a society should shrink. It was Chanakya who explicitly stated that the best government is one which governs the least. In our times renowned management guru Peter Drucker emphasized this aspect in his writings. “The government can’t do everything” he insisted. He called upon the governments of the world to understand what they can do and give up on what they can’t do.

What we need today is less of government. Karl Marx looked at the administration and bureaucracy as instruments of exploitation in the hands of the ruling class. That may be a bit far fetched but the fact remains that concentration of powers in the hands of a few in Delhi and in various state capitals leads to severe anomalies.  We are experiencing them day in and day out. Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia described Civil Services bureaucracy as the cancer of our polity. What Marx and Lohia said about the bureaucracy should be taken in a context. We need to decentralize the powers of authority. Let there be decentralization of powers to various rungs.

The success of the western democracies lies in their decentralized power structure. As Lohia said, the answer to non-functioning democracy is not corporatization but more democracy. Delegation of more powers to lower rungs of governance is an important reform that needs to be given a try.

In mid-80s we introduced the Panchayat Raj reforms. But it remained only a half-hearted measure, more of political expediency than real reform. Under Panchayat Raj reforms the Union Government sought to bypass State Governments - most of which in 80s and 90s had been opposition-ruled ones – to provide funds directly to Village Panchayats. What is needed is not funds alone, but delegation of powers. In western democracies a County or a City Municipality enjoys enormous freedom and authority. But in our system a village has no say even in decisions like whether the said village should have a liquor shop or not. Everything is decided at a State capital or the national capital.

 This is another way to reduce corruption and red tape too. The more the decentralization is the less the scope for corruption would be. Delivery also would improve because of the limitations of jurisdiction and local factors like acquaintance etc.

It calls for reorientation of our training mechanism also. A bottom-up training model should be developed where the functionaries of a Village Panchayat also get  training similar to the administrators of a state or central bureaucracy.

The bottomline should be a small government. In the last few years governments in India have adapted some innovative methods. There is a marked increase in PPP – Public Private Partnership projects. Several infrastructure projects have now been handed over to private operators under PPP scheme. In one state the officials claimed that while the government-owned infrastructure corporation has projects worth 2000 crores under its belt the projects under PPP scheme like highways, expressways and flyways etc are worth 28000 crores.

No doubt private participation brings in efficiency and speed. But certain pitfalls have to be kept in mind while granting such projects to private parties. The same state government is contemplating handing over PHCs – Primary Health Centers – that provide for basic health needs of the people in rural areas, to private companies under PPP scheme. In some states key public services like water supply are being handed over to private – sometimes foreign companies.

This move ought to be pondered over. Providing basic public services like health, water supply etc is the primary responsibility of the government. It collects taxes from the public in order to deliver these services. Key factor in these services is that they should be treated as services in true sense. However if a private party is handed over this crucial area it wouldn’t look at it as a non-profit service. For that matter no private company would do work as a charity. Commodification of basic human needs like water is fraught with serious consequences.

Hence a new PPP model should also be thought of. That is Public Public Participation.  The government can hand over certain functions to the people themselves. A shining example is the construction of over 140,000 check dams in Gujarat wherein the government got direct participation of the people of all the beneficiary villages. The dams could be completed with great efficiency in record time and with less input costs.

The bureaucracy needs to be encouraged towards such new methods by which neither corporatization nor privatization but public participation in the administration is promoted. Sadly here again no vested interest can be served if public replaces private. Hence rather than encouraging and rewarding officials who attempt such innovative methods we come across cases where the officials have been punished for the same.

All this boils down to one critical issue – the sensitivity in the administration. Swami Vivekananda had exhorted the reformers to have intense feeling for the subjects of their reform. “Feel from the depth of your heart”, he proclaimed, “Do you feel? Do you feel that millions are starving today and millions have been starving for ages? Do you feel…. That ignorance has come upon this holy land like a dark cloud? Does it make you restless? Does it make you sleepless? Has it entered your blood, coursing through your veins become almost consonant with your heartbeat? Have you become almost mad with that one idea of the misery of your people and forgotten about your name, fame and everything else?”

Today our administration lacks that ‘feeling’. It has become utterly insensitive to the trials and tribulations of  ordinary citizens.

Chanakya proclaimed in Artha Shastra that the happiness of the king lies in the happiness of his subjects. But what we see today is just the opposite. Our governance is happy and nonchalant while tens of millions suffer in misery and deprivation.

Sushasan – Good Governance – is possible only when we have Sushasak – Good Administrators. We must strive to create them in large numbers.

  

RTE Judgment: Minority Schools won’t teach minority poor

Every child in India should have a fundamental right to basic education. With this laudable aim the 86^th Amendment of the Constitution was introduced by adding Section A to Article 21 in our Constitution in 2002 during the NDA regime. The idea was mooted originally by Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, the NDA HRD Minister.

Although the Amendment was introduced in 2002 the NDA government went down subsequently and it took almost 5 years for the UPA government to bring a legislation in line with Art 21 A and make the right of children to free and compulsory education a reality. Thus in 2009 came the new act - “Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act – 2009” (RTE Act in brief).

It is a known fact in our country that there is a huge disparity when it comes to educational opportunities for the children of the poor, the middle class and the rich. While the rich and even the middle class have ample options to choose in the form of public schools, residential schools, convents etc the children of the poor and low-income families have little choice in the education of their child. The dysfunctional government school system or some charities are their only refuge.

Over the decades very little success has been achieved in improving our government-sponsored school system. Conditions in government schools remain pathetic despite grandiose plans and infusion of huge funds. While the world of basic education, along with that of secondary and higher education, is undergoing tremendous transformation with newer methods and tools being introduced the government schools lack even the basic amenities like good teachers, electricity, buildings etc. Teaching tools like computers are a distant dream.

No wonder the literacy rates in our country remains hovering around 73-74% even according to the 2011 census figures. 26% illiterates means there are almost 300 million illiterates in our country. That makes India the land of world’s largest illiterate population.

In that context RTE Act is a commendable initiative. It is also commendable that the Act envisaged a role for private educational institutions also in delivering this social responsibility of making every Indian child literate. Under the Act all educational institutions providing primary education – public and private, aided and unaided alike - have been obligated to reserve 25% seats for the children of the poor and underprivileged. And every child in the age group of 6 to 14 is extended a right to free primary education.

No doubt there will certain difficulties with regard to implementation of this noble scheme. I am reminded of a scheme introduced in Andhra Pradesh in the 80s by the then Chief Minister Mr. N.T. Rama Rao. Under that scheme all hotels in the state have been ordered to sell eatables at the rates prescribed by the government. The idea was to make food available for poor people at affordable prices. Price and quantity of each item was prescribed by the government – a couple of idlis with given weight should be sold for Rs. 2. Initially everybody was happy about the affordability. But soon the hoteliers came up with a novel scheme. They announced two sets of menus in the same hotel - one for the government products and the other for the normal products. In a way it led to a class division in the same hotel.

The new education scheme too is fraught with such implementation related hiccups. If the children of the poor and the rich go to same school how will they mingle? Will it end class divisions in our society at the child level or it will lead to introduction of class divisions in classrooms itself? Right from the uniform they wear to food they carry to stationary they use how would the children of the poor and the rich mingle with each other well is a question to be addressed when the time comes. In any case every effort for social transformation is fraught with some such minor hiccups and I am sure that sooner than later the situation will change and we would be able to create a more egalitarian atmosphere in the society by imparting those values at the primary education level itself.

But no one can deny that the private educational institutions too have a responsibility in educating the poor of the country. It is unfortunate that these institutions, for various reasons, decided to oppose the RTE Act. Not all wanted to shirk their social responsibility; many have other concerns like government’s unwarranted interference in their functioning through this Act etc.

It is heartening that the Supreme Court through a 3-Judge Constitutional Bench upheld the RTE Act and mandated that all the institutions – public and private, aided and unaided alike – must provide 25% seats for the children of the SC & ST and other underprivileged sections of the society. The Court also mandated that the RTE Act should come into being in this academic year itself. That means the state governments have to urgently frame the rules for the implementation of this Act.

However the SC judgment disappoints on one count. While the Central Government wanted all educational institutions to share this responsibility of educating our children the Supreme Court exempts the unaided Minority institutions from that social obligation. One of the three learned judges held that all the private institutions must be excluded from the RTE Act purview. However the majority of the Bench differed and said that only the unaided Minority institutions will be excluded and they need not provide 25% for poor children. The learned judges arrived at that conclusion on a very technical and hence contestable ground that such a provision will change the ‘basic character’ of the institution. The Supreme Court is expected to go beyond technicalities take the spirit of the Constitution into account.

Even this premise that the ‘basic character’ of the minority institutions will change if they implement the RTE Act is debatable because the character of the minority institution is derived from the management – which according to law should have majority members from minority community – and not from the children who study there. In fact a large number of minority institutions have students from non-minority communities in majority.

The learned judges of the Supreme Court have fallen back on the usual argument that Art 29 and 30 of our Constitution provide certain immunity to minority institutions. Art 29 and 30 have been incorporated in our Constitution as ‘educational and cultural rights of the minorities’. And the RTE Act also wants to uphold the right of children to education. Then how can it be pitted against those articles? At the most the Court should have said that the unaided minority institutions should provide 25% seats to the poor and underprivileged among the minorities. To exempt them from this social responsibility completely under the garb of Art 29 & 30 is an incorrect decision that needs to be challenged at an appropriate forum.

This also brings up the insensitivity and irresponsibility of the minority institutions to the fore. They vociferously opposed the RTE Act in the Supreme Court and unlike the other private institutions, succeeded in convincing the Court to exclude them. It doesn’t need great wisdom to state that the minority communities in India have a good number of poor and underprivileged people as members. In fact on many occasions the minority community leaders argue before the same Supreme Court for various rights like SC reservations etc in the name of the poor among their flock. It shows their utter disregard for the poor in their communities that when it comes to providing free education to the children of their own poor they shrug off their responsibility. It shows the minority leadership in true colours. For them only the numbers matter but not the social conditions within their community.

It is a sad commentary that the Supreme Court lets them off the hook when it comes to providing basic education to the poor and underprivileged children of their communities. It is well-known that many of the most expensive schools in our country are minority-run schools. It is also well-known that they provide education not to the pupils of their community but those of the rich families of the majority who can afford the astronomical fee.

The SC order states that they can happily continue to do so while the responsibility of the poor and underprivileged among the minority community will be borne by the schools run by the non-minority. They should do that without any prejudice because that is the ethos of the country. But let the poor and underprivileged among the minorities understand that when it comes to uplifting them the so-called minority leaders show no sympathy or sense of responsibility. At least that is one of the major meanings of the SC order on the RTE Act.