Monday, January 7, 2008

Vidarbha agrarian crisis far from solution


INDIA GROWING ..........................................

On going Vidarbha agrarian crisis has hit hard third year in row when 1211 distressed farmers committed suicides as per "Farmer suicide dairy” of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS)" which has released graphic of month wise and district wise farm suicides listed by the VJAS, activist group keeping track of farmers suicides since 1999.

In spite of a major new initiative from the Union Government by launching the National Food Security Mission (NFSM) which aims at increasing the production of rice by 10 million tonnes (MT), of wheat by 8 MT, and of pulses by 2 MT during the 11th Five Year Plan with an envisaged outlay of Rs. 4, 882.48 crore.

And another major intervention in the agriculture sector is the introduction of the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) envisaging an outlay of Rs. 25,000 crore over the 11th Five Year Plan. This scheme for Additional Central Assistance to the States is designed to boost public investment in a whole range of activities relating to agriculture and allied sectors based on agro-climatic District Agriculture Plans.

Nothing has become operational in suicide prone six district of Vidarbha more over Government totally failed to provide any protection to million of dying farmers on credit and food security front resulting more farm suicides than year 2006, said VJAS president Kishor Tiwari.

The toll claims of Indian Government that Agricultural Extension has been strengthened and Agricultural Technology Management Agencies (ATMAs) have been set up in 544 districts is not even seen on the paper in Vidarbha region, Tiwari added.

As most of the political parties are doing crocodiles cry over the insult of cotton farmer but they are not talking about the solution to redress the hardship of Vidarbha farmers as presently most of the farmers who are committing suicides are the victim of poverty and hunger resulted after the long accumulation of economic collapse in region due to on going agrarian crisis.

Tiwari said they are demanding urgent steps to provide food security and health care facilities to these dying farmers before making arguments over farm suicides being agrarian or non agrarian. “Now time has come to give complete loan waiver and price protection on all agriculture produce from free trade in WTO era to Vidarbha''s dying farmers”, he added.

Reacting to the reports of change guards in Maharashtra, VJAS termed it as too late to address the crisis as it's time now to change policies not the leadership. According to Kishore restoration civil and social administration is need of the hour to stop this Vidarbha farmers mass genocide.

According to VJAS "Farmer suicide dairy “ largest number of 332 farmers committed suicide in Yavatmal district during last year, while it was followed by 210 in Amaravati and 162 in Washim districts. While 112 farmer suicides were recorded during December in Vidarbha, highest number of 113 suicides was recorded during March and September months, respectively.


Prisoners riot in northern India

Indian Prisons are same as Guantanamo Bays Abu Garib Prison by its Nature...
MMI

Rioting prisoners in Jalandhar
A prisoner adds fuel to the flames
Hundreds of prisoners have rioted for several hours in the main jail in India's northern city of Jalandhar, in Punjab state.

Officials said the prisoners were protesting against the alleged high-handedness of the staff.

Around 1,500 prisoners went on the rampage, smashing windows, doors and furniture. They also set fire to the hospital and kitchen.

Police said the protesters also threw stones at prison officials.

'Situation brewing'

One prisoner was injured and the police had to use tear gas and baton-charges to bring the situation under control.

The rioting broke out on Monday morning soon after the prisoners began a hunger strike demanding immediate action against the jail authorities, accusing some of them of mistreating prisoners.

"The situation was brewing up for a few days. The prisoners had a number of complaints including lack of proper food and medicine," a senior policeman, Arpit Shukla told the BBC.

Mr Shukla said the superintendent of the jail had been suspended.

One Sikh prisoner, he said, had accused a jail officer of pulling out some of his hair.

Police said the situation had been brought under control and the prisoners had gone back to their cells.

Mr Shukla said there were reports that some prisoners had attempted to take advantage of the melee to try to get away.

"Jallandhar prison is one of the most secure prisons so nobody was able to escape," Mr Shukla said.

A detailed investigation into the incident has already been ordered.

It comes after nearly 300 communist rebels and their supporters escaped from a prison in the central state of Chhattisgarh in an armed jailbreak less than a month ago.

India's jails are overcrowded. The excruciatingly slow pace of justice is often blamed for this, as thousands of people are kept behind bars awaiting trials.

Dozens injured in anti-Jindal violence in Chhattisgarh

Raipur : Heavy police deployment has been made Sunday in tension-hit rural areas of Chhattisgarh's Raigarh district following Saturday's clash between the police and people during a public hearing for Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL).

At least 50 people, including 15 policemen, were injured Saturday when a crowd of over 1,000 people, mainly poor farmers, turned violent during the public hearing for JSPL at Khamaria village, 275 km northeast of capital Raipur.

The people were enraged when the JSPL officials in the presence of the police and district administration officials asked the people to hand over their lands to the company for coal mining in order to feed its power plant. JSPL has 1,000 mw coal-fired power plant at Tamnar in the same district.

"The crowd turned violent after hearing the JSPL proposal and began pelting stones at the police," R.P. Sai, Additional Superintendent of police, told reporters Sunday here.

"Dozens of farmers and 15 policemen have been injured in the clash. Police presence has been boosted after the clash in Tamnar areas and also in the nearby villages from where the farmers came in to attend the public hearing," Sai said.

Local police officials said at least 50 farmers were injured in police baton charge and admitted to a hospital at Tamnar. Eight of them were said to be in critical condition.

A.K. Mukherjee, JSPL's executive director, Sunday said, "The company is committed to welfare, development, employment generation and civil infrastructure build up of not only the coal-rich villages but also the entire Raigarh district."

As a retaliation to Saturday's police baton charge, farmers of a large rural stretch of Raigarh district have blocked road traffic at several places in the district since Sunday morning.

Phani is Virasam secretary


Monday January 7 2008 08:45 IST

GUNTUR: Phani was elected State secretary of Viplava Rachayitala Sangham (Virasam) at the 21st State conference of Virasam here on Sunday.

Those elected to the new executive body are: Chenchaiah, CSR Prasad, M Venugopal, Nagaraju, G Kalyanarao, Ravikumar, Ratnamala, Sharif, P Kotaiah, Varalakshmi, Khasim, Syamrao, Chnnaiah and Ujjwal.

Chalasani Prasad and Vara Vara Rao were nominated as permanent invitees.

The conference sought lifting of ban on People’s March magazine of Kerala and immediate release of its editor Govindan Kutty, extended support to Goans who are agitating against economic zones, expressed solidarity with Taslima Nasreen, demanded due share to local people in the natural gas found in the Krishna-Godavari basin and condemned attacks on churches and Christians in Orissa.

Woman Maoist leader arrested in Jharkhand

Y It is a Women,It is a Maoist.....Peoples Star.Party know how to take rescue her from the false system

MMI

Ranchi, Jan 7 - A top woman Maoist leader has been arrested from the Garwah district of Jharkhand, police said Monday.

Acting on a tip off Sunday night, police arrested Vineeta alias Simppi, a zonal commander of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist), from Bardari village of Garwah district, about 140 km from Ranchi.

Police said she had masterminded more than a dozen Maoist attacks in Jharkhand. She is accused of attacking a Home Guard training centre in Giridih district in 2006 and looting around 200 police rifles.

'Vineeta had joined the CPI-Maoist group 15 years ago. She was active in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh,' said a police official.

She was lately involved in spreading Maoist propaganda. She used to show villagers CDs with images of police torturing innocent people in the name of anti-Maoist operations.

According to a police official, Vineeta is an expert in handling sophisticated weapons and making landmines.

Maoist rebels are active in 18 of the 24 districts of the state. Nearly 1,000 people have been killed in Maoist related violence in the state in the last seven years.A

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Indian court orders 'arrest without bail' of Dutch activists

From Indymedia
See the Face of Indian State....

AP
A court in Bangalore has issued an order for the 'arrest without the possibility of bail' of seven campaigners over their websites postings about labour conditions of an Indian supplier of fashion label G-Star. The activists are from the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) and the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN); the director of their Netherlands based ISP, Antenna, is included.

The case could have implications for activists posting anything on the web, with the court using the Convention on Cyber Crime to call for extradition. It all happens with the backdrop of the continuing campaign about labour conditions and particularly the huge number of child workers in India coming up against the religion of 'free trade'.

The case has been running for some time now. As the legal threats get worse the campaign are asking for solidarity. As G-Star is the only remaining buyer from the jeans manufacturer at which the CCC and ICN have highlighted the labour rights violations they are asking people to make demands of them listing things you can do [cleanclothes.org]. In the UK No Sweat! have called a picket of G-star [nosweat.org] focusing on their Covent Garden store. There are lots of outlets around on their store locator [g-star.com].

Background

In 2006 the CCC and ICN launched a campaign to draw attention to severe labour rights violations at Indian jeans manufacturer Fibres and Fabrics International and its subsidiary Jeans Knit Pvt Ltd (FFI/JKPL). The campaign highlighted the workers own words. At the time FFI/JKPL were producing jeans for companies including G-Star, Armani, RaRe, Guess, Gap and Mexx and had a gagging order of local labour rights organizations that were informed about labour rights violations at the factory by workers in 2005. To date FFI/JKPL has refused to engage with the local labour groups to resolve the outstanding labour issues. For doing so while there was a gagging order the activists were accused of 'cyber crime', 'acts of racist and xenophobic nature' and 'criminal defamation' by the Indian jeans manufacturer Fibres and Fabrics International and its subsidiary Jeans Knit Pvt Ltd (FFI/JKPL). News 07 Sep 07 [cleanclothes.org]

As they did not travel to India in person for the first hearing of the case (no doubt to be kept in the country while the trial proceeded, something that could take years) the court ruled on Saturday that international warrants will be issued for their arrest.News 03 Dec 07 [cleanclothes.org]

Free Speech a Cyber Crime?

The potential restriction on free speech could have immense implications for all activists. Extradition is requested using the Convention on Cyber Crime, and its Additional Protocol.

The Original court order of June 14th 2007 [cleanclothes.org][pdf] referred to:

'The continuous publication and hosting of the false defamatory material on the website amounts to cyber crime and a cyberspace libel...' 'the representation of their alleged theories and ideas advocates and promotes hatred, discrimination and violence against the complainant and the country based on national origin thus being xenophobic in nature...' 'publish material to insult the country and the complainant publicly through a computer system on grounds of national origin...' 'All the accused... commission of the cyber crime of publication of xenophobic material'.

This according to the Indian court makes potentially 'criminal defamation' of telling Indian workers own stories from interviews [schonekleren.nl][pdf] and publicising the results of a fact finding mission extraditable under the Additional Protocol.

In 2001 when the Council of Europe drew up the Convention they explicitly left out integration with the European Convention on Human Rights. At the time activists were highlighting it could be used to restrict freedom of speech, now it seems they may have been right. Two years later as the Council drafted the Additional Protocol to target racism and xenophobia on the internet again they seemed to ignore differences of freedom of expression that exist around the world.

There is a handbook on the Convention on Cyber Crime for activists [cyber-rights.org][pdf]

Campaigners pawns in global free trade power game

The escalation of this case times itself with the growing push by Indian Commerce Minister, Kamal Nath, to increase foreign trade and stop international campaigns particularly about child labour in India. Nath has been removing restrictions on trade, and claims that governments supporting NGOs that are campaigning about working conditions in his country are 'disguised protectionism' [depers.nl][dutch]

Who knows maybe the tactics are working? On Friday 30th November, the EU and India released their Joint Statement of the 8th India-EU Summit [ue2007.pt]. It spends much time praising growth in 'multilateral trade', and while mentioning efforts on climate change they are also 'recognising the importance of strengthening transportation links ... the growing importance of India-EU civil aviation'. There is no explicit mention of working conditions and child labour, just that they have a 'strengthening of the EU-India dialogue and cooperation on employment and social policy on the basis of the Memorandum of Understanding' with its visits and seminars.

India's government, its manufacturers, and the companies they supply are however under immense pressure from non-governmental and grassroots groups about the use of child labour. The country has some of the highest number of children under 15 working, sometimes in terrible conditions. The most recent case to highlight this was the Observer's exposure of a factory producing for GAP kids [guardian.co.uk], 'child workers as young as 10 found working in conditions close to slavery... the children described long hours of unwaged work, as well as threats and beatings.' GAP has been a long target of campaigns about sweatshops and labour, so this time GAP moved quickly at this exposure.

This is not the first time Kamal Nath has played the free trade card to try and remove some external pressure on standards within the country. In 1994 as Minister for the Environment he pushed for the de-linking of environmental standards from trade [65.108.190.76][rtf]. Also while he was Environment minister a commercial venture of his damaged the environment [wikipedia.org] so much so he was later fined Rs 1.000.000 by the High Court

Zapatistas smell war in the air of Chiapas


North AmericaNativity scenes are plentiful in San Cristóbal de las Casas, a colonial city in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. But the one that greets visitors at the entrance to the TierrAdentro cultural centre has a local twist: figurines on donkeys wear miniature ski masks and carry wooden guns. It is high season for "Zapatourism", the industry of international travellers that has sprung up around the indigenous uprising here, and TierrAdentro is ground zero.

Commentary By Naomi Klein


SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS–Nativity scenes are plentiful in San Cristóbal de las Casas, a colonial city in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. But the one that greets visitors at the entrance to the TierrAdentro cultural centre has a local twist: figurines on donkeys wear miniature ski masks and carry wooden guns.

It is high season for "Zapatourism", the industry of international travellers that has sprung up around the indigenous uprising here, and TierrAdentro is ground zero. Zapatista-made weavings, posters, and jewellery are selling briskly. In the courtyard restaurant, where the mood at 10 p.m. is festive verging on fuzzy, college students drink Sol beer. A young man holds up a photograph of Subcomandante Marcos, as always in mask with pipe, and kisses it. His friends snap yet another picture of this most documented of movements.

I am taken through the revellers to a room in the back of the centre, closed to the public. The sombre mood here seems a world away. Ernesto Ledesma Arronte, a 40-year-old ponytailed researcher, is hunched over military maps and human-rights incident reports. "Did you understand what Marcos said?" he asks me. "It was very strong. He hasn't said anything like that in many years."

Arronte is referring to a speech Marcos made the night before at a conference outside San Cristóbal. The speech was titled "Feeling Red: The Calendar and the Geography of War". Because it was Marcos, it was poetic and slightly elliptical. But to Arronte's ears, it was a code-red alert. "Those of us who have made war know how to recognize the paths by which it is prepared and brought near," Marcos said. "The signs of war on the horizon are clear. War, like fear, also has a smell. And now we are starting to breathe its fetid odour in our lands."

Marcos's assessment supports what Arronte and his fellow researchers at the Centre of Political Analysis and Social and Economic Investigations have been tracking with their maps and charts. On the 56 permanent military bases that the Mexican state runs on indigenous land in Chiapas, there has been a marked increase in activity. Weapons and equipment are being dramatically upgraded, new battalions are moving in, including special forces–all signs of escalation.

As the Zapatistas became a global symbol for a new model of resistance, it was possible to forget that the war in Chiapas never actually ended. For his part, Marcos–despite his clandestine identity–has been playing a defiantly open role in Mexican politics, most notably during the fiercely contested 2006 presidential elections. Rather than endorsing the centre-left candidate, Andrés Manuel LÓpez Obrador, he spearheaded a parallel "Other Campaign", holding rallies that called attention to issues ignored by the major candidates.

In this period, Marcos's role as military leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) seemed to fade into the background. He was Delegate Zero–the anticandidate. Last night, Marcos announced that the conference would be his last such appearance for some time. "Look, the EZLN is an army," he reminded his audience, and he is its "military chief".

That army faces a grave new threat–one that cuts to the heart of the Zapatistas' struggle. During the 1994 uprising, the EZLN claimed large stretches of land and collectivized them–its most tangible victory. In the San Andrés Accords, the right to territory was recognized, but the Mexican government has refused to fully ratify the accords. After failing to enshrine these rights, the Zapatistas decided to turn them into facts on the ground. They formed their own government structures–called good-government councils–and stepped up the building of autonomous schools and clinics. As the Zapatistas expand their role as the de facto government in large areas of Chiapas, the federal and state governments' determination to undermine them is intensifying.

"Now," Arronte says, "they have their method." The method is to use the deep desire for land among all peasants in Chiapas against the Zapatistas. Arronte's organization has documented that, in just one region, the government has spent approximately $16 million expropriating land and giving it to many families linked to the notoriously corrupt Institutional Revolutionary Party. Often, the land is already occupied by Zapatista families. Most ominously, many of the new "owners" are linked to thuggish paramilitary groups, which are trying to force the Zapatistas from the newly titled land.

Since September, there has been a marked escalation of violence: shots fired into the air, brutal beatings, Zapatista families reporting being threatened with death, rape, and dismemberment. Soon, the soldiers in their barracks may well have the excuse they need to descend: restoring "peace" among feuding indigenous groups. For months the Zapatistas have been resisting violence and trying to expose these provocations. But by choosing not to line up behind Obrador in the 2006 election, the movement made powerful enemies. And now, says Marcos, their calls for help are being met with a deafening silence.

Exactly 10 years ago, on December 22, 1997, the Acteal massacre took place. As part of the anti-Zapatista campaign, a paramilitary gang opened fire in a small church in the village of Acteal, killing 45 indigenous people, 16 of them children and adolescents. Some bodies were hacked with machetes. The state police heard the gunfire and did nothing. For weeks now, Mexico's newspapers have been filled with articles marking the tragic 10-year anniversary of the massacre.

In Chiapas, however, many people point out that conditions today feel eerily familiar: the paramilitaries, the rising tensions, the mysterious activities of the soldiers, the renewed isolation from the rest of the country. And they have a plea to those who supported them in the past: don't just look back. Look forward, and prevent another Acteal massacre before it happens.

Armed might won't defeat the Naxals

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's clarion call on December 20 at the high level conference to discuss internal security to crush the Naxalites, now up in arms in several states, brought to mind a line from Zafar Gorakhpuri's popular qawwali featured in the 1972 movie Putli Bai. It runs: "Inke kalai dekho tho chudiyan uthane ke kabhil nahi, phir bhi talwar uthane ki dhamki�" (See their waist and they look incapable of lifting a bangle, but still the threat is to pick up a sword).

I am not alluding to the weight of the PM's kada but to the worn out sinews of the state that are hardly capable of quelling any armed assault upon it let alone assuaging the causes that force normally compliant people to resort to violence. Having traveled several times through the 'affected' areas in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra I have little hesitation in testifying that the insurgency has much popular support. The police, forest and excise departments are truly hated and this is just about all the government the common people encounter.

The prime minister has a typical bureaucratic response to this major crisis now gripping the adivasi homelands in six states. The government will now raise 25 more battalions of armed police, mostly for the Central Reserve Police Force. It is unfortunate that the prime minister sees this as a law and order problem. One would have thought Manmohan Singh was more intelligent than that because more coercion by the state will only beget more against it by the people. It seems that, let alone intelligence, even common sense and good sense are kept out of that corner of South Block which houses the Prime Minister's Office?

It seems that the prime minister threat of more forces found favorable response with all the participants of the conference which included the Congress, the Communist Party of India-Marxist and Bharatiya Janata Party chief ministers. In his closing remarks, Dr Singh said conferences of this nature send a strong message that the "political leadership of the country can rise above our political and party affiliations when it comes to facing national challenges, particularly those concerning internal security." It seemed that the entire national political spectrum was not just speaking but thinking as one. Groupthink is a serious psychological disorder and means that when all are thinking alike nobody is really thinking. Signs of it among the nation's top leaders are an ominous portent of things to come.

The spread of Naxalism is an indication of the sense of desperation and alienation that is sweeping over of large sections of our nation who have been not only systematically marginalised but cruelly exploited and dispossessed in their last homelands. The late Professor Nihar Ranjan Ray, one of our most distinguished historians, described the central Indian adivasis as "the original autochthonous people of India" meaning that their presence in India pre-dated the Dravidians, the Aryans and whoever else settled in this country. The anthropologist Dr Verrier Elwin states this more emphatically when he wrote: "These are the real swadeshi products of India, in whose presence all others are foreign. These are ancient people with moral rights and claims thousands of years old. They were here first and should come first in our regard."

Unfortunately like indigenous people all over the world, the India's adivasis too have been savaged and ravaged by later people claiming to be more 'civilised'.

In the decades after Independence the exploitation has only become more rampant. The adivasi homelands are rich in natural resources and the new modernising and industrialising India needs these resources. Today all the mineral resources except oil that India boasts off are to be found only in these areas and the state has not been lax in exploiting them. The only problem is that the people whose homelands were ravaged to extract nature's bounty got little or nothing of it. Even the meager royalties the states receive are mostly expended by the authorities on themselves as salaries have now become the biggest single expenditure of the Indian states. At last count the total wage bill of India's government is a monstrous Rs193,000 crore or about 5.6 percent of the Gross National Product.

We all now know very well that big government in the absence of a responsive nervous system actually means little government, and whatever little interaction the people at the bottom have with the state is usually a none too happy one. In the vast central Indian highlands the occasional visit of an official invariably means extraction by coercion of what little the poor people have. It doesn't just end with a chicken or a goat or a bottle of mahua (the local brew), it often includes all these and the modesties of the womenfolk. Most tribal villages and settlements have no access to schools and medical care. Very few are connected with all weather roads. Perish the thought of electricity though all the coal and most of the hydel projects to generate electricity are in the tribal regions. The forests have been pillaged and the virgin forests thick with giant teak and sal trees are things of the past.

In Orissa over 72 percent of all adivasi's live well below the poverty line. At the national level 45.86 percent of all adivasis live below the poverty line. Incidentally the official Indian poverty line is a nothing more than a starvation line, which means that almost half of India's original inhabitants go to bed every night starving. Several anthropometric studies have revealed that successive generations of adivasi's are actually becoming smaller unlike all other people in India who benefit from better and increasingly nutritious diets.

What little the Indian state apportions to the welfare and development of indigenous people gets absorbed in the porous layers of our government. A typical instance of this is in the tribal majority KBK (Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput) districts of Orissa where over Rs 2,000 crore cumulatively spent ostensibly on social welfare and rural development schemes during the past three years has just vanished leaving little or no evidence of having done any of the intended recipients any good. The people are not having any more of it and have taken to coercing the state, dishing out to it what its minions have been doing for ages.

The armed police first went into Bastar, now in Chhattisgarh in 1966. The Gond people in Bastar revolted against the corrupt and exploitative ways of the Madhya Pradesh Congress government of D P Mishra. Pandit D P Mishra, a Sanskrit scholar of some repute, had few qualms in unleashing the police on the adivasis who congregated in Jagdalpur to pay the customary Dussera homage to their Raja, Pravinchandra Bhanjdeo. Not only did the MP police kill scores of adivasis, but they also shot down the Raja in cold blood.

Soon after this incident central forces were deployed in Bastar and one got a first hand look at the havoc they wrought. The military only repeated what they had done in the Naga Hills. In those days the armed forces used Lee Enfield .303 rifles and the adivasis used bows and arrows and the occasional muzzle loading gun. With the advent of the AK-47 capable of delivering over 650 rounds per minute combined with an intimate knowledge of the terrain, the Naxalites, now mostly adivasi volunteers, are not as disadvantaged as before. In the recent months the police have been at the receiving end and the prime minister is a worried man.

During my last visit to Bastar, I drove down from Narayangarh to Chota Dongar, deep in the jungles. The only sign of the state here were the pockmarked buildings that once housed government offices. At the village haat (bazaar) at Chota Dongar, as we stood watching cockfights a Naxal patrol quietly came along and took talashi (search) of our vehicle. They had a few good laughs over the cartons of mineral water we were carrying but refused to pose for pictures.

Two days prior to this the vehicle was stopped and searched in Andhra Pradesh's Warangal district by an armed police patrol. The sub-inspector leading the team was drunk, as were most of his men. The first question was whether we were carrying firearms? Then they wanted to know how much cash we were carrying? Then things got a bit hairy. They wanted to know as to how we had entered the forest area without 'permission'. One got the distinct feeling that only our facility with English and the Delhi license plates prevented an encounter. And now Dr Singh is proposing 25 more battalions of such fine fighting men to defend our democratic way of life and to uphold the Constitution?

Quite clearly the solutions lie elsewhere. There are several paradoxes that must be dealt with. The most important of these is that to provide good government in the worst of law and order environments. A better civil administration structure must come up in place of the one sent packing by the violence and by popular sanction. Instead of the state capital controlled government the instruments of government dealing with education, health, irrigation, roads and land records must be handed over to local government structures.

The police must also be made answerable to local elected officials and not be a law unto themselves. The local community must get all the royalties for the minerals extracted from their areas. We cannot have any more episodes like that in Kalinganagar where the Tata's got adivasi lands at a fraction of their market value. Tata's and others want to exploit Bastar's iron ore. They must pay the full value of this to the local community.

When Dr Singh first became prime minister, he promised that the reform of government was his number one priority. He promised us a government by the people and for the people. Instead of devoting himself to this he seems to have frittered his time schmoozing with the fat cats of the Confederation of Indian Industries and the World Economic Forum and running a government for them alone

First anniversary of Nandigram unrest

i THINK NDTV Given a wrong Heading Actually it should be First Anniversary of Fascism
AP

It is exactly a year since the Nandigram SEZ crisis began and winds of change are cautiously blowing over the fields in Nandigram.

For eleven long months villagers here suffered a siege within as supporters of the CPI (M) and the Trinamool Congress backed Bhumi Uched Pratirodh Committee clashed over the controversial issue of land acquisition for a petro chemical hub. The standoff worsened with the issue turning into turf war for supremacy between the two political parties.

A year later the figure of people killed is still not known but at least 50 people have died and several are still missing. Hundreds have been injured and thousands made homeless for months with a feeling of fear and helplessness.

That is how the people of Nandigram will remember the year gone by. And this is where the first voices of protest against acquiring land for a Special Economic Zone were heard, exactly a year ago.

At a meeting of Kalichandrapur Panchayat, there were rumours that the Haldia Development Authority would announce a land acquisition drive.

Villagers feared their land would be taken away by force. One of the victims in the violence that followed was Rehman's 19-year-old son, a member of the Trinamool Congress-backed Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee.

''My son is no longer with us and I don't want an industry. I don't require one,'' said Sheikh Fojla Rahman.

In February, the Chief Minister announced no land would be forcibly acquired but by then the damage had been done. And in March police tried to enter Nandigram using force. 14 people were killed in firing after which Nandigram remained on the boil. The administration did nothing to restore calm.

For both the CPM and the Trinamool Congress, the issue turned into a turf war for supremacy. Voices of protest echoed on the streets of Kolkata also in Parliament. A spate of bandhs followed, Nandigram became a national issue.

The Calcutta High court condemned the firing and ordered a CBI probe. And in November when the CPM tried to recapture its lost base four people died in clashes.

But the Chief Minister visited Nandigram only last week, almost a year after trouble first broke out to attend a district level conference of the CPM, where he handed out compensation to the 29 party workers, who were killed last year.

Paramilitary forces are present in the area but the general worry is, what happens after they are gone.

Both the CPM and the Trinamool who have lined up meetings to mark the first anniversary of the violence claim many of their supporters are still missing.


Life is desperately trying to return to normal here in Nandigram as an uneasy calm shadows the shattered peace.

The controversial land acquisition issue was hijacked by an intense political battle for turf between the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress, crippling life for an entire year.

It is not difficult to guess what the people here will be longing for in the New Year, peace that will last.

“No withdrawal of CRPF from Nandigram”


Kolkata: The West Bengal government on Wednesday ruled out the immediate withdrawal of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) from Nandigram and said it was up to the Centre to decide how long it would remain there.

“The State government does not want immediate pulling out of the CRPF from Nandigram,” said Home Secretary P.R. Roy. The Centre would decide how long the force would stay at Nandigram, he told reporters.

On Tuesday, veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu favoured continuance of the CRPF in Nandigram despite the CPI(M)’s allegations of excesses against the Central forces. — PTI

CPM leaders gunned down, finger at Maoists



Krishnagar/Purulia, Jan. 2: Maoists shot dead two CPM leaders, in Nadia’s Chapra and Purulia’s Balarampur, within 12 hours since last night.

Ramprasad Mondal, 50, a local committee member of the CPM and a primary teacher, was cycling to school around 10.45 this morning when he ran into a gang of six, between 20 and 25 years old.

Dressed in shirts, trousers and sleeveless sweaters, the youths surrounded Mondal on a field in Madhabpur village in Chapra, about 130km from Calcutta.

Witnesses told police that two of them whipped out revolvers and shot Mondal from point-blank range in the chest and head. He died on the spot.

Mondal is the sixth CPM leader to be killed by Maoists in Nadia since June 2005.

“The murder is the handiwork of Maoists. Police movement is difficult in the area because of poor road links. The Maoists are taking advantage of that to strengthen their base in Chapra,” Nadia superintendent of police H.K. Kusumakar said.

Around 50 printed leaflets were found at the spot that warned villagers against testifying in cases pending against Maoists. “Anyone standing witness against us will meet a similar fate,” one of them read.

However, Mondal was not a witness in any such case.

Some posters also warned the villagers against hobnobbing with the police.

Local CPM legislator Samsul Alam said the rebels had earlier threatened to kill Mondal, who had been campaigning against Maoist activities

Mondal’s daughter Mohua, 20, said the family knew about the threat. “My father had not been staying out late. That is why the Maoists killed him in broad daylight,” she said.

Another band of Maoists chose the cover of darkness to kill Narayan Majhi.

The 42-year-old CPM branch committee member had gone to bed around 11 last night when 20 men in olive green fatigues barged into his house in a Balarampur village in Maoist-infested Purulia.

They tied the widower’s hands and dragged him out. The gang then shot him in the chest and ear.

“When my son shouted for help, I pleaded with them to let him go... They dragged him out and killed him,” wept Majhi’s 72-year-old mother Dhundi.

The killers left behind posters threatening to intensify Maoist movement against corruption in gram panchayats and the CPM.

“Narayan Majhi was killed by Maoists,” said Pranab Kumar Das, the additional superintendent of police.

Hours before Majhi was shot, 20 Maoists raided a house 4km away. They took away a double-barrel gun, a motorbike and a cellphone from the house of Abinash Kumar, a ration dealer at Jugidihi village.

The gang then raided two more houses before setting fire to the home of a CPM local committee member in an adjoining village.

Top

Maoists attack police station


Statesman News Service
Patna, Jan. 2: Stung by the daylight Maoist attack on a police team in Munger on New Year’s day yesterday, killing four retired Army jawans absorbed in police jobs on contracts, and looting their weapons, the police have launched a massive combing operation in east Bihar districts.
The absconding Naxalites turned merrymaking into mourning for the state government. Last year, Bihar witnessed about 200 incidents of Naxalite violence, indicating how the state police machinery was proving to be pigmy before the Maoists guerrillas. Sources said a huge police force has been engaged in the combing operation and recover weapons looted from the police. Reports said senior police officers are monitoring the combing operations in Munger and its neighbouring areas where, the police believe, the Naxalites may have taken shelter after committing the crime.
Witnesses said the Maoists, with the local revellers were celebrating the arrival of the New Year at Rishikund, a popular picnic spot in Munger surrounded by hills, when a police team in a jeep reached the spot to monitor law and order. On seeing the police jeep, the extremists, said to be more than 200 in number, resorted to indiscriminate firing, killing four retired jawans on the spot. The local station house officer saved his life reportedly by hiding in a bush nearby.
The Nitish Kumar-led government here has appointed more than 5,000 retired Army jawans on contract to tighten law and order. The government’s efforts have so far failed to bear any results, going by the number of Naxalite incidents reported in the last year. An official report said 39 people were killed in 175 Maoist-related incidents reported from 29 of the 38 districts of Bihar last year. Of the 39 killed, 22 were policemen, indicating how they have become soft targets.

Release Govindan Kutty, the Editor of People's March Unconditionally


Revolutionary Democratic Front

All India Committee

Date: 31 December 2007

Release Govindan Kutty, the Editor of People's March Unconditionally

Withdraw False Case Fabricated on the Editor

On December 19th the Kerala Police, under the orders of Ernakulum Police Commissioner, raided the room of Govindan Kutty, 65, the editor and publisher of Peoples March which is not a banned publication and confiscated all his literature and computer hard disk. Govindan Kutty was arrested under the charges of spreading sedition and indulging in unlawful activities and was remanded in judicial custody by a lower court at Aluva in Kerala. He was implicated in a fabricated case under a number of clauses like section 134 A and 163B of Indian Penal Code and 13 of (1) b of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and sent to Aluva prison.

The Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in the State under the close instructions of UPA Government at the Centre resorted to this crackdown on the popular revolutionary magazine. Govindan Kutty, according to his lawyers, was harassed and psychologically tortured for a day in the name of interrogation before being sent to judicial custody. Ever since he was arrested he was on hunger strike protesting against the trampling down of his right to freedom of speech and Freedom of Press.

He continues his protest within the four walls of the prison demanding his unconditional release. His lawyer who met him two days ago said that his health condition was serious given his age and chronic ailments with which has been suffering. His life is in a serious threat.

The arrest of Govindan Kutty and the police crackdown on the office of the publication was an attack on the freedom of press.

As hundreds of thousands of people from all corners of the world know, the People's March supports all revolutionary movements including the Maoist movements in India , Nepal and elsewhere. It is a fully legal publication registered with Indian registrar of Newspapers of the Government of India with the RNI number KER ENG/2000/2051 and the postal registration number: KL/EKM/614/2007-09. The magazine has been coming out for over 7 years (since 1998) meeting all the legal requirements. The magazine has been freely available not only in bookstalls all over India, but also in prominent libraries in New Delhi and other major cities in India and abroad.

The People's March publishes news reports and interviews of Maoists, both from India and abroad like all other hundreds of magazines and newspapers in India. It is People's March today which is under attack, tomorrow all other media will face the same threat if we don't raise our voice against this attack on freedom of press.

A year ago the website of People's March was blocked by the Indian Government without assigning any reasons. When its editors started publishing the online magazine through a blog on googlepages, it was also blocked by Google in December 2007, under the pressure of Indian Government.

The arrest of the editor and the foisting of fake charges against him are nothing but an attempt of the Government of India to further stifle freedom of speech in the country. The so-called largest democracy in the world with a gigantic army, Paramilitary and police force feels threatened by a mere monthly magazine with a limited circulation of a few thousands in print. This action displays the fascist character of the Indian state and the cowardly action of the Kerala police.

The Revolutionary Democratic Front appeals to all democratic and revolutionary organizations and individuals to raise their voice against the arrest of the editor of People's March, a popular independent revolutionary newspaper from India.

We demand the immediate and unconditional release of Govindan Kutty and allow the continued publication of People's March. We hold the government entirely responsible in the face of any damage to his health or threat to his life due to hunger strike within jail.

Rajkishore

General Secretary

Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF)

Maoists have cops in a web


Hyderabad, Dec. 30: The cyber duel between the police and the Maoists has turned into a cat and mouse game. Every time the police gets a website or a blog closed, Maoist sympathisers set up another one and continue as before. The cyber catch-me-if-you-can hotted up last week after the police got Peoples March, the most popular pro-Maoist site, blocked through Central agencies. Its editor Govindan Kutty was arrested in Kerala.

The website used to carry interviews with top Maoist leaders including Ganapati and spokesperson Azad. It was blocked an year ago but emerged again and was blocked last week. The Special Intelligence Branch says Peoples March and other websites act as communication link between the underground cadres and sympathisers.

The service provider has left a message stating that the action was taken for violation of programme policies. Following this, however, Maoist sympathisers set up maoistmovementinindia.com. The new site carried a warning to the police to release Kutty or he would go on a hunger strike. A senior police official said, "Maoists are using the internet to propagate their ideology. The network is big." The Maoists are under pressure in the AP with the police evicting them from most of their bases. The internet offers a safe way to get the Maoist message across.

"Several Maoist sympathisers from AP are writing columns using pennames," the official said. State police suspects that Maoist leaders who are in hiding in Andhra Pradesh are frequently visiting Kerala, where most of the pro-Maoist bloggers are based. Sources pointed out that Maoist leader Raji Reddy was picked up in Kerala earlier this month. Following this, the Revolutionary People's Front complained to the Kerala government which resulted in the police announcing Raji Reddy's arrest.

Pointing out to the close links, police noted that the AP Revolutionary Writers Association had condemned the arrest of Kutty of Peoples March. Sources in the police said that the bloggers have close links with Maoist sympathisers and this has been detected by sniffer software. Resistance India.blogsot.com, a Mao-ist blog, was hacked in August, and the role of the law enforcing agencies is suspected. Following this, the Maoist sympathisers created maoistresitance.blogspot.com. Police has also blocked Naxal revolution.blogspot but expect another blog to replace it. From the police side, www.naxalwatch.blogspot.com, an anti-Maoist website supported by AP-based police, is a popular anti-Naxal blogspot