p r a t h a m a: October 2004

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Law and Order Issues

Some important Indian Law & Order (Security) issues:

We have more than 20 million pending cases across the country (Not all of them are criminal cases) and over 1 million persons in Jails who are awaiting trail. Our conviction rate is around 1% which means for every 100 criminals (or alleged criminals) caught (most of them won't get caught) only one guy gets convicted the other 99 are free to commit crimes (again). Almost all our jails are holding people more than 200% of their capacity and nearly 35% of them are under trials while 5% are awaiting trial. According to a UN survey, India ranks number one in the list of countries that has maximum number of acquittals in the world. Which shows the poor state of our justice system.

Crime against Women
The Centre for Development of Women's Studies (CDWS) gives some disturbing statistics. It says 42 women are raped every day in India, one every 35 minutes!. A field study conducted in 2000 by the Chandigarh-based think tank, Institute of Development and Communication (IDC), on atrocities against women found that for every reported rape case, as many as 68 rapes went unreported, while for every FIR filed on molestation 374 remained unreported. "The assertion of female identity is still viewed through a Stone Age prism and misconstrued as an expression of sexuality," says IDC Director Pramod Kumar.

According to a survey the most dangerous city for women is Delhi, 266 rape cases in 2002. Also unsafe: Chennai, maximum crimes against women. Becoming insecure: Mumbai, 127 rapes in 2002. Other unsafe cities (for women): Bhopal and Hyderabad.

As many as 56,000 rape cases are pending in courts across the country as of Oct 03. In Major cities 75% of the rape victims are minor and 25 % of these are below 12 years. While only 20% of the criminals are convicted in rape cases.

Corruption
As of 2004 (after the elections) almost 25% of the over 540 people elected to Parliament face criminal charges ranging from murder to extortion and even rape. Almost 50% of Lallu's RJD MPs are facing criminal charges.

Election laws allow politicians facing criminal charges to run for public office, debarring them only in case of convictions, which are rare in an overloaded and imperfect judicial system. In a country where 250 million people are below poverty line, more than 50% of the MPs have assets of over 50 Lakhs ($109,400) not counting the black money. Deputies of Congress party, accounted for more than 50% of the assets of all MPs. MPs, who helped themselves to a salary hike three years ago (2001), earn a basic salary of 12,000 rupees, besides allowances. They are also given heavily subsidized housing, free air and rail tickets, electricity and water. However, nearly half of all MPs were yet to repay loans to public financial institutions, while nearly 14 per cent owed money to government departments.

One of the major crimes which affect the ordinary citizen on a daily basis is corruption.... corruption has a direct effect on the law and order and justice system of the country. In 1997 India ranked as the 7th most corrupt nation among 52 countries surveyed. The rank in 2000 was 21 out of 90 countries surveyed. This year (2004) it is the 56th most corrupt out of 146 countries. during all these years the CPI (corruption perception Index) score constantly remained at 2.8 out of 10. which means the perceptible corruption never changed in India. What changed was the amount of money involved in corruption which kept increasing.
http://www.transparency.org/pressreleases_archive/2004/2004.10.20.cpi.en.html

Public perception is that only politicians are involved in major scams. Not many people notice the bureaucratic corruption. According to a 2004 survey, Corruption in the bureaucracy costs the Indian taxpayer Rs 31,500 crore a year (equivalent to 1.25 per cent of India’s GDP). Which is more than the total budget allocated for Rural Development, Public Health, Family welfare, Primary education and several other departments each year. And this 31,500 crores is only a part of the total amount involved. The point is if people responsible for law making and law enforcing themselves are breaking law from every possible angle we have to be more than naive to assume we are going to have a proper law and order situation in the country.

As I have written earlier, the BJP govt admitted earlier this year that every month the police in Delhi collect Rs.50 crores from street vendors, Rickshaw pullers and auto drivers. Police in other cities may not be making that much money from lowest income group but I'm sure the situation may not be much different.

In a very recent article Prakash Singh writes:
Today an IAS officer aspiring to be Chief Secretary engages a tycoon, who pays a few crores to the Chief Minister to get him posted as such. The Chief Secretary, of course, later obliges the tycoon. A couple of lady IAS officers in one of the biggest states of the country (I'm sure he's talking about UP) have no qualms in liaising with their political bosses. Persons belonging to the Chief Minister’s inner circle collect crores from government departments.

Quite a few senior IPS officers have links with organized crime syndicates, who apart from paying them money are also providing them with an evening’s entertainment. The number of officers whose assets would be worth more than Rs 10 crore is fairly large and some of them even have accounts in foreign banks.
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=57864

Chanakya wrote in ArthaShastra that a country can prosper socially , educationally and economically only when there is peace from within and without....which seems very obvious.... We had tremendous progress in terms of education, arts and economy during the peaceful periods of Mauryan empire, Gupta Empire etc. Security becomes the primary issue for any kind of progress to happen.

For creating internal peace and security we need Laws and Justice system in place and proper enforcement of the laws. Lets discuss our system and enforcement issues after we discuss the major problems.

It is said that each decade since independence can be identified with a major security issue. mid 50s to mid 60s was the decade of turmoil in the North East when the Naga hills went up in the flames which engulfed several states.

Nagaland:
The Naga problem is a little like the Kashmir problem. The British created a Naga National council in 1945 after the WWII, by which time they knew for sure they were going to leave India. Mainly because Pakistan wanted Assam to be a part of it after Independence but the Assamese were hell bent on joining India (There was no Nagaland at the time, it was part of Assam). Using their "divide and rule" philosophy they started helping Angami Zapu Phizo, (the Naga leader who sought Japanese help to overthrow British from India). Phizo bought into the British play and started demanding an Independent Naga nation. Mountbatten, Nehru and others didn't pay much attention to Phizo when he declared independence on Aug 14th 1947 (along with Pak). Later on when they arrested Phizo and bungled up the whole operation, Phizo naturally became a leader of a legitimate cause for majority of the nagas. He went ahead and declared his independence (again) based on a plebiscite he organized in some villages of (present day) Nagaland and formed his government and Army in 1954. Phizo later fled to Pakistan and from there to Britain and started fighting his war from Britain with British advise.

http://members.tripod.com/israindia/isr/july3/naga.html
http://members.tripod.com/israindia/isr/july10/naga.html
http://members.tripod.com/israindia/isr/july17/naga.html
http://members.tripod.com/israindia/isr/July25/naga.html

Though Nehru came up with a (somewhat idealistic) framework for dealing with tribal areas, nothing concrete was done until 1963 when the Govt. carved out Naga-land (They couldn't find a more original name :-) out of Assam. Nagaland has as much or more freedom as Kashmir.A little known fact is that the British Padres (Missionaries) were part of the official delegation for talks.

The Constitutional amendment (13th - that created Nagaland ) says this:
" No act of Parliament in respect of :
a) Religious and social practices of Nagas
b) Naga customary law and procedure
c) administration of civil and criminal justice involving decisions according to Naga customary law
d) ownership and transfer of land and its resources
shall apply to the state of Nagaland unless the legislative assembly of Nagaland by a resolution so decides. "

Pakistan was not happy that we resolved this issue with the Nagas so it started supporting the extremists (through East Pak) who were not happy even with all the liberal provisions and wanted complete independence. Added to this, after the war in 1962 China took India to be a soft state and started meddling with the NE affairs and started supplying arms and ammunition to the extremists.

After the 1971 war, extremist Nagas almost stopped getting support from Pak (Now it was Bangladesh) So, in 1975 Nagas came back to the table and the "Shillong Accord was signed.

Now china took up the cause and started training and supplying ammunition to the nagas under the new leaders Muivah & Isaac. They started undermining Phizo (living in Britain) meanwhile the Army and negotiators were successful in persuading some of the surrendered extremists to take part in elections and one of them was elected CM of Nagaland but Mrs.G's politics and the corrupt contractors meddled with the situation and the govts kept changing because of horse trading of MLAs, after 3 different CMs with in a short span, frustrated, the governor declared President's rule. This kept continuing even after the elections in 1982, congress used all means (mostly foul) sponsoring a series of defections and formed the govt. This game of snakes and ladders continued well into the 1990s. This has convinced the Nagas about the futility of either joining, or accepting the democratic process. Nagas were traditionally hunters & warriors (The Kiratas of the Mahabharata & Ramayana - King Kamarup is said to have fought along side Kauravas) so they were not going to be pacifists and fatalist like the rest of the country and they increasingly took to violence. In addition, the youth, disillusioned with the corruption of the politicians and the political system started moving towards terrorism. Obviously with all time and resources spent on knee-jerk reactions and political corruption, there is very little development in Nagaland today, the once serene land with innocent tribals (I agree they were headhunters and intra tribal rivalries were strong - but they had there own traditions and culture) is now a land of drugs, Christian Majority (nothing wrong with that - but I want to point out the gradual conversions) and terrorism, supported strongly by ISI of Pak and Chinese govt. Result is that this movement spilled over into Manipur and combined hands with insurgents in Assam. The political corruption reached to a level unprecedented where the governor had to report that the CM is in cohorts with one of the separatist groups involved in terrorism and keeps it alive to seek funds from the center in the name of fighting them. From 1947 till 2004 this problem remains unsolved. The only reason we don't hear much about this is because of the remoteness of the area and general media and public apathy. Until china or some other country stakes claim to Nagaland, we probably won't wake up.

Naxalite movement
The 60s were the Naxal years with the movement spreading from Nakshalvadi (Naxalbari) in WB to Bihar, UP, Orissa and reaching A.P.

A year after independence, the people of Telangana revolted against the zamindar's tyranny (remember the film "Maa Bhoomi"). This was the first time an armed uprising happened in independent India. In June 1948, a leftist ideological document 'Andhra Letter' laid down a revolutionary strategy based on Mao Tsetung's New Democracy.

Karl Marx was the original promoter of revolution within the leftist ideals of Hegel. Lenin was the one who brought the theories of Karl Marx into the effect and he wanted the revolution of really depressed. The main principle of revolution by Lenin was that the society will not develop unless the power is snatched away by force from the established rich.

When the way of communism came from Russia to China it attained slightly different form. Accepting Marxist Philosophy, Mao brought forward the communism which is suitable by Chinese conditions. Chinese are very proud of their long standing and ancient culture. Therefore, they wish to form the new society based on ancient Chinese culture. They do not like to go much away from old values and traditions. China was mainly an agricultural country and the majority of the farmers were landless laborers. There was exploitation and very large scale of poverty was running supreme. Mao wanted to liberate poor landless laborers from the land lords in this agricultural country. He said: "Power flows from the barrel of a gun".

Prakash Singh (retd. DGP BSF and other orgs) writes, "In India two decades after independence large segments of the population (Peasants, workers and tribals) were still suffering from the worst forms of exploitation. The peaceful political process it was felt would not be able to bring about the necessary changes because vested interests controlled the levers of power, regulated the wheels of industry and had a feudal stranglehold over the predominantly agrarian economy". The first civil liberties organization was formed in Andhra with Telugu poet Sri Sri as president following mass arrests of communists during Indo-China war. The young Communist leader Charu Mazumdar started forming the philosophy for Indian communism. He wrote various articles based on Marx-Lenin-Mao thought during 1965-66. which later came to be known as 'Historic Eight Documents' and formed the basis of naxalite movement.
http://cpiml.s4u.org/documents/

On 2nd March, 1967 An adivasi youth named Wimal Kesan, having obtained a judicial order, went to plough his land...he was attacked by the goons of local landlords. Tribals retaliated and started forcefully capturing back their lands. The CPI (M)-led United Front government cracked down on the uprising and in 72 days of the "rebellion" a police sub-inspector and nine tribals were killed. The Congress govt at the Centre supported the crackdown. By this time Charu Mazumdar's group split form the CPI(M) to form CPI(ML) which was supportive of an armed revolution. On May 25th 1967 The rebel cadres led by Charu Mazumdar launched a peasants' uprising at Naxalbari The incident echoed throughout India and naxalism was born.
The ideology of naxalism soon assumed larger dimension and entire state units of CPI (M) in Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir and some sections in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh joined the struggle. Many intellectuals highly educated youth including those from Delhi University, IITs, RECs, and many other universities joined the struggle.

Today, after nearly 4 decades of naxalbari incident the movement remains quite strong in most of backward districts in AP, Bihar, WB and UP. In AP 18 out of 23 districts are affected by naxalite activities in varying degrees. With the naxalites killing an average of 500 people every year, This still remains an issue not just because of the killings but also because majority of the land reforms remain uninitiated in several states in the country including AP.

Prakash Singh was asked to head the enquiry commission to look into the attempt on Chandra Babu Naidu's life near Tirupati (in 2003), He came back with a report saying that the political solution is as important as the police solution and he suggested that the govt. should complete the land reforms in the backward districts of AP. Y.S.Rajasekhar Reddy apparently didn't like the report talking about "political solutions" but nevertheless he accepted the recommendations. we have to wait and see what the govt. is going to do in AP after the recent talks with Naxalites. The Naxalites themselves doesn't seem to be impressed with the talks, I say this mainly because they still think of going along with Maoist ideology to achieve their goals (They joined forces with Bihar's MCC and renamed themselves as CPI(Maoist).

Land reforms may be a topic of economics but naxalites made sure it is also an issue of law & order. movements like naxalism thrive because of corruption in general and political corruption in particular. As a step towards socialism, Indian Govt. (Mrs.G - during emergency) removed the right to property from fundamental rights of the constitution so, now it is only a legal right. (Never understood what she achieved with this) But the actual reforms and solutions to the violent naxalite movement came from people such as Vinobha Bhave whose bhoodan movement tried to solve the issue. April 18th 1951 was the day of the genesis of bhoodan movement. On this day in Pochampalli village of Nalgonda dist. in AP, Vinobha went to visit a Harijan colony. By early afternoon villagers began to gather around Vinobha at Vinobha's cottage. The Harijans asked for eighty acres of land, forty wet, forty dry for forty families that would be enough. Then Vinobha asked,” If it is not possible to get land from the government, is there not something villagers themselves could do ?” To everyone’s surprise, Ram Chandra Reddy, the local landlord, got up & said in a rather excited voice: “I will give you 100 acres for these people.” At his evening prayer meeting, Ram Chandra Reddy got up & repeated his promise to offer 100 acres of land to the Harijans. This incident neither planned nor imagined was the very genesis of the Bhoodan movement & it made Vinobha think that therein lay the potential of solving the land problem of India. This movement later on developed into a village gift or Gramdan movement. This movement was a part of a comprehensive movement for the establishment of a Sarvodaya Society (The Rise of All socio-economic-political order), both in India & outside India. Bhoodan movement remained popular till the end of 50s after that it gradually waned off. Today, Sainath writes, that the very landlords who donated land under bhoodan utilized it to acquire more illegal holdings (benami). Apparently even Vinobha's ashrams in several places are now grabbed.
http://www.mkgandhi.org/vinoba/bhoodan.htm

The total naxalite strength in all the states together is estimated at 50,000 but the most important factor in the case of naxalites is that the movement does not depend on any support from outside, unlike terrorists. This movement is sustained and supported by grievances of the people. Successive governments forget the fact that development in urban areas further exposed the downtrodden and tribals to the economic and social disparity and injustice. This draws them toward the naxalites who take up arms on their behalf to protect them against exploitation.

Despite 15Years of economic reforms, 67 per cent of India earns only 22 per cent of the country's GDP. The reforms and globalization unfortunately sharpened the divide between haves and have-nots. What's disturbing is that the pace of poverty reduction has slowed down during the 1990s particularly in rural India. A Delhi School of economics paper concludes that rural poverty did not decline during the 1990s. Prakash Singh writes, "Those in Authority are only pruning leaves and trimming the branches without going to the root of the problem. And so, the wretched of the earth continue to struggle against the system.

Alright, let me follow this up with some other law and order problems and the basics of our Police and Justice system.

-keshav

Monday, October 18, 2004

RE: NAM...

There’s a reason he’s called nutwar.

The real name of the game is to do whatever you want, just don’t name it..

Pradeep Elamanchili

Architecture Research & Technology/CHG

x552-0079

From: Keshav Pitani [mailto:pkeshav@hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 9:10 AM
To: A Srinivas; Elamanchili, Pradeep; Pradeep Ravipati; pravipati@gmail.com
Cc: Blogger
Subject: NAM...

Can somebody please tell this man... he's outdated :-)....

Non Aligned with who?

=======================

Monday, October 18, 2004 (Hanoi):

The Non Aligned Movement has to be reinvented to address the problems of the first decade of the 21st century, External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh said today.

"The international agenda has changed. Earlier there were issues like apartheid, decolonisation. But today the issues are terrorism, drugs, environment," said the minister.

"The NAM has to be reinvented to face these issues, to address the problems of the first decade of the 21st century," he added.

http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?slug=NAM+to+be+reinvented%3A+Natwar+Singh&id=62201

========================

-keshav

NAM...

Can somebody please tell this man... he's outdated :-)....

Non Aligned with who?

=======================

Monday, October 18, 2004 (Hanoi):

http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?slug=NAM+to+be+reinvented%3A+Natwar+Singh&id=62201

========================

-keshav

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

RE: Arjun... Still MBT?

Exactly. Its all about money and old doctrines. They keep changing the goal posts on Arjun every friggin time. The DRDO does acknowledge, that

Arjun has certain issues. But these need to be ironed out slowly. The current Isreali Merkava is one mean machine, but its night and day from the first Mk1

version. Did they throw out the first one, no they build it from the ground up to be where it is right now.

Right now, after reading up on it, with all its li’l issues, it(Arjun) can still find (first) and kill all of its potential enemies in our south asian battlefield. If the Pakis do get

some M1 with its new MNNA status, then you can imagine whats going to happen to the T72s and T90s against them. The only one which can punch it out against

the M1s would be the Arjun. Some say that’s an unlikely scenario. We’ll wait and see. Countries get strong and into dictating terms by preparing, not hoping.

Deepu.

Pradeep Elamanchili

Architecture Research & Technology/CHG

x552-0079

From: Keshav Pitani [mailto:pkeshav@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 10:28 AM
To: Elamanchili, Pradeep; Pradeep Ravipati; pravipati@gmail.com
Cc: pkeshav.ilavarta@blogger.com
Subject: Re: Arjun... Still MBT?

Did you see K Subrahmanyam's remark... I trust his and Jasjit Singh's opinions..

IExp didn't expand on it... I guess Arjun does what its meant to do... If they change the specs now its not Arjun's problem...

I guess somebody is going to loose money if they stop buying stuff from outside...

What bothers me most is that all this activity based on remarks by a stupid enemy general who doesn't know how to fight a war.....

Talk about the morale of the troops.. I never imagined Pranab Mukherjee to be a good defense minister... May be he'll suggest we buy the Italian Tanks (If they have any)

Whats worse is the media playing this stupid liberal role when it comes to Defense.

-keshav

----- Original Message -----

From: Elamanchili, Pradeep

To: Keshav Pitani ; Pradeep Ravipati ; pravipati@gmail.com

Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 10:09 AM

Subject: RE: Arjun... Still MBT?

Very opportune that you bring it up. This debate has been raging for the last few days on the internet forums.

Now what, we take the Mushrat’s claim about the Arjun. Arjun is one kick ass system. The pakis will soil their undies

if the Arjun is let loose among them. The army wanted a monster and a killing beast and they got one. No main battle tank

worth its name is smaller than 60 tons, the Abhrams M1A2, or the Isralei Merkhava, or the French LeClerc or the German Leo.

These are mean killing machines. The Alkhalid wouldn’t last 10 seconds against an Arjun.

The stink starts from the Russian Arms lobby. We have too many of them hanging in Delhi. The T90S was accepted with all its flaws and they

are being worked on. It has significantly less armour than the Arjun, the Arjun is more protected, and has order’s or magnitude better survivability

than the T90S( Lets not even talk about the T72, it’s a match box waiting to be lit, not withstanding the poor tactics of the people operating it in Saddams

army, we have seen hundreds of them taken out by the M1s in Iraq with not a single kill to its credit). And lets not pussyfoot around, the T90 is a

souped up T72, Even the Russians have acknowledged it and have proposed moves to the black eagle. But of course they want to sell us the T90.

Which is root of all this. Guys, money changes hands and tons and tons of it, with “phoren” maal. But not much with Indian systems.

Why don’t we just buy the Alkhalids, since we seem to take Gola’s word. They must be laughing their pants off in Pindi.

==

Pradeep Elamanchili

Architecture Research & Technology/CHG

x552-0079

From: Keshav Pitani [mailto:pkeshav@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 9:17 AM
To: Pradeep Ravipati; pravipati@gmail.com; Elamanchili, Pradeep
Subject: Arjun... Still MBT?

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=56882