India

[blindpig]

She Was Brutally Killed Before She Could Write Her Story for the World: The Thirty-Fifth Newsletter (2024)

Following the the murder of a young female doctor in Kolkata, health workers, medical unions, and women’s movements have mobilised across the country to decry rampant gender-based violence and dangerous working conditions.

29 August 2024


Arpita Singh (India), My Lollypop City: Gemini Rising, 2005.

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On 8 August 2024, a 31-year-old doctor at the RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata (West Bengal, India) finished her 36-hour shift at the hospital, ate dinner with her colleagues, and went to the college’s seminar hall to rest before her next shift. The next day, shortly after being reported missing, she was found in a seminar room, her lifeless body displaying all the signs of terrible violence. Since Indian law forbids revealing the names of victims of sexual crimes, her name will not appear in this newsletter.

This young doctor’s story is by no means an isolated incident: every fifteen minutes, a woman in India reports a rape. In 2022, at least 31,000 rapes were reported, a 12% increase from 2020. These statistics vastly underrepresent the extent of sexual crimes, many of which go unreported for fear of social sanction and patriarchal disbelief. In 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published an extensive study of violence against women using data from 161 countries between 2000 and 2018, which showed that nearly one in three, or 30%, of women ‘have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or non-partner or both’. What this young doctor faced was an extreme version of an outrageously commonplace occurrence.


Nalini Malini (India), Listening to the Shades, 2007.

Not long after her body was discovered, RG Kar College Principal Dr Sandip Ghosh revealed the victim’s name and blamed her for what had happened. The hospital authorities informed the young doctor’s parents that she had committed suicide. They waited hours for the authorities to allow a post-mortem, which was done in haste. ‘She was my only daughter’, her mother said. ‘I worked hard for her to become a doctor. And now she is gone’. The police surrounded the family home and would not allow anyone to meet them, and the government pressured the family to cremate her body quickly and organised the entire cremation process. They wanted the truth to vanish. It was only because activists of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) blocked the ambulance that the family was able to see the body.

On 10 August, the day after the young doctor’s body was discovered, the DYFI, Students Federation of India (SFI), Communist Party of India (Marxist), and other organisations held protests across West Bengal to ensure justice. These protests grew rapidly, with medical personnel across the state, and then across India, standing outside their workplaces with placards expressing their political anger. The women’s movement, which saw massive protests in 2012 after a young woman in Delhi was gang raped and murdered, again took to the streets. The number of young women who attended these protests reflects the scale of sexual violence in Indian society, and their speeches and posters were saturated with sadness and anger. ‘Reclaim the night’, tens of thousands of women shouted in protests across West Bengal on 14 August, India’s independence day.


Rani Chanda (India), The Solace, 1932.

The most remarkable aspect of this protest movement was the mobilisation of medical unions and doctors. On 12 August, the Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA), with whom the murdered doctor was affiliated, called upon all doctors to suspend non-emergency medical services. The next day, doctors in government hospitals across India put on their white coats and complied. The head of the Indian Medical Association, Dr RV Asokan, met with Union Health Minister JP Nadda to present five demands:

hospitals must be safe zones;
the central government must pass a law protecting health workers;
the family must be given adequate compensation;
the government must conduct a time-bound investigation; and
resident doctors must have decent working conditions (and not have to work a 36-hour shift).
The WHO reports that up to 38% of health workers suffer physical violence during their careers, but in India the numbers are astronomically higher. For instance, nearly 75% of Indian doctors report experiencing some form of violence while more than 80% say that they are over-stressed and 56% do not get enough sleep. Most of these doctors are attacked by patients’ families who believe their relatives have not received adequate healthcare. Testimonies of female doctors during the protests indicate that women health workers routinely experience sexual harassment and violence not only from patients, but from other hospital employees. The dangerous culture in these institutions, many of them say, is unbearable, as is evidenced by the high suicide rates among nurses that are committed in response to sexual and other forms of harassment – a serious problem that received little attention. An online search using the keywords ‘nurses’, ‘India’, ‘sexual harassment’, and ‘suicide’ brings up a stunning number of reports from just the past year. This explains why doctors and nurses have reacted with such vehemence to the death of the young doctor at RG Kar.


Dipali Bhattacharya (India), Untitled, 2007.

On 13 August, the Calcutta High Court ordered the police to hand over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation. On the night of 14 August, vandals destroyed a great deal of campus property, attacked doctors who were holding a midnight vigil, threw stones at nearby police, and destroyed evidence that remained on the scene, including the seminar room where the doctor was found, suggesting an attempt to disrupt any investigation. In response to the attack, FORDA resumed its strike.

Rather than arrest anyone on the scene, the authorities accused leaders of the peaceful protests of being the culprits, including the DYFI and SFI leaders who had initiated the first protests. DYFI Secretary for West Bengal Minakshi Mukherjee was one of those summoned by the police. ‘The people who are connected to the vandalism of a hospital’, she said, ‘cannot be from civil society. Who, then, is protecting these people?’

The police also summoned two doctors, Dr Subarna Goswami and Dr Kunal Sarkar, to the police station on the charge of spreading misinformation about the post-mortem report. In fact, the two are vocal critics of the state government, and the community of doctors saw the summons as an act of intimidation and marched with them to the police station.

There is widespread discontent about the West Bengal state government led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of the All India Trinamool Congress, a centre-right party formed in 1998 that has been in power since 2011. A particularly salient example of the source of this lack of confidence in the state government is its decision to hastily rehire Dr Ghosh after his resignation from RG Kar to be the principal of the National Medical College in Kolkata. The Calcutta High Court rebuked the government for this decision and demanded that Dr Ghosh be placed on extended leave while the investigation continued.

Dr Ghosh not only grossly mishandled the murder case of this young doctor: he is also accused of fraud. Accusations that the murdered doctor was going to release more evidence of Dr Ghosh’s corruption at the college are now spreading across the country alongside allegations that sexual violence and murder were being wielded to silence someone who had evidence of another crime. Whether the government will investigate these accusations is unlikely given the wide latitude afforded to powerful people.


Sunayani Devi (India), Lady with Parrot, 1920s.

The West Bengal government is defined by its fear of the people. On 18 August, the state’s two iconic football teams, East Bengal and Mohun Bagan, were set to play for the Durand Cup. When it became clear that fans intended to protest from the stands, the government cancelled the match. This did not stop the teams’ fans from joining with fans of the third-most important West Bengal football team, Mohammedan Sporting, to mobilise outside the Yuva Bharati Stadium to protest the match cancellation and the young doctor’s murder. ‘We want justice for RG Kar’, they said. In response, they were attacked by the police.


Shipra Bhattacharya (India), Desire, 2006.

Many years ago, the poet Subho Dasgupta wrote the beloved and powerful poem Ami sei meye (I Am That Girl), which could very well be the soundtrack of these struggles:

I am that girl.
The one you see every day on the bus, train, street
whose sari, tip of forehead, earrings, and ankles
you see everyday
and
dream of seeing more.
You see me in your dreams, as you wished.
I am that girl.

…

I am that girl – from the shanty Kamin Basti in Chai Bagan, Assam
who you want to abduct to the Sahibi Bungalow at midnight,
want to see her naked body with your eyes intoxicated with the burning light of the fireplace.
I am that girl.

…

In hard times, the family relies on me.
Mother’s medicine is bought with my tuition earnings.
My extra income bought my brother’s books.
My whole body was drenched in heavy rain
with the black sky on his head.
I am an umbrella.
The family lives happily under my protection.

…

Like a destructive wildfire
I will continue to move forward! And on either side of my way forward
numerous headless bodies
will continue to suffer from
terrible pain:
the body of civilisation
body of progress
body of improvement.
The body of society.

Maybe I’m the girl! Maybe! Maybe…

The paintings in this newsletter are all done by women who were born in Bengal.

Warmly,

Vijay

https://thetricontinental.org/newslette ... ers-india/

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Left-led anti-femicide demonstrations enter third week in India’s West Bengal
Protests against the rape and killing of a woman doctor have faced massive repression and attempts by the right-rwing to infiltrate it in orde to push regressive agenda

August 28, 2024 by Peoples Dispatch


Left groups march against femicide after RG Kar crime (Photo via CPI (M) West Bengal/X)

Protests against femicide carried out by the medical professionals and left-wing activists in India’s West Bengal province have now entered their third week. Apart from demanding justice for the victim and better security for women at the workplace, protestors have also raised the need for larger societal changes.

On August 26, the West Bengal Junior Doctors Front (WBJDF) organized a mass convention in Kolkata to discuss the failure of the state government to provide better security at work places and accountability for crimes. The conference was attended by several members of civil society as well as the doctors.

Doctors belonging to the WBJDF have been on strike since the beginning of the demonstrations over the rape and murder of a junior female doctor in Kolkatta’s RG Kar public hospital on August 9. There were large-scale nationwide protests following the reports of the crime, with doctors across the country going on strike to demand better security measures at their workplaces.

The WBJDF also decided to hold a demonstration in support of their demands in the city on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, left groups continue to mobilize thousands of people across the state. Apart from raising the demand for justice for the victims of RG Kar hospital, the left has been consistently raising the need for the creation of a safer public environment for women. Left groups such as Student Federation of India (SFI), All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) among others have organized night vigils in different parts of the state.

On August 24, hundreds of cab drivers held a rally in solidarity with the protesters in Kolkata. The rally was organized by the Center for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), a left-affiliated trade union movement.

On Tuesday, LGBTQ, sex and mental health workers in Kolkata gave a call for a march in the city to demand justice for the victim and also for safer public places for all. On Monday evening transgender activists in the city carried out a small demonstration on the same issue.

Right-wing attempts to push for regressive agenda
Apart from the fact that left groups have faced numerous attempts by the state government and the ruling TrinaMool Congress (TMC) to disrupt the protests, issuing threats of police action or mob violence, the protests have also seen attempts by the right-wing to infiltrate to push a regressive, electoral agenda.

The state government has accused left leaders of vandalism during the night vigil protest first organized on August 14 at the RG Kar hospital. The government has also issued warnings against the school administrations in the state to not allow students to participate in any protest.

Hindu supremacist groups such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its parent organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and other groups such as the newly formed Chatra Samaj have asked for capital punishment of the culprits apart from demanding resignation of the state government. They have indulged in violence during some of their marches. On Tuesday, these groups called for a march to the state secretariat which ended in clashes with the police.

The left has clearly distanced itself from right-wing demands and mobilizations. Communist Party of India (Marxist) polit bureau member and secretary of its West Bengal state unit Mohammed Salim claimed that Tuesday’s call to go to the secretariat by the right-wing forces “was nothing but a ploy to divert attention from the spontaneous campaigns demanding justice in the RG Kar incident.”

Meenakshi Mukharjee, one of the leaders of the movement and state president of DYFI warned in a video message posted on social media just before protests on Tuesday for people to be vigilant about the right’s move towards violence and promoting a regressive agenda through infiltration of the movement.

Meanwhile, the state government responded to the demands of better security for women at the workplace by curbing their working hours and restricting night duties for women. This led to strong reactions from the progressive sections which called the moves “regressive.”

Shrabani from Janwadi Mahila Samiti, a part of AIDWA, told Peoples Dispatch that such a move goes against the entire spirit of the women’s movement in the country “which has fought long” against “sex-based discrimination” and for women’s “freedom of movement.”

If the West Bengal government goes ahead with what it announced last week, “it will narrow down the scope of women’s participation in public spaces” Sharbani said, noting that rather “the government must encourage greater participation of women in public places.”

Left parties have called for a mass rally on September 3 in Kolkata to push for their demands of accountability in the cases related to violence against women and to denounce both the right-wing forces and the state government’s attempts to curtail the rights of women.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/08/28/ ... st-bengal/

[blindpig]

Arundhati Roy. (Photo: Flickr)

“People must realize that reality is not what is shown on tv”
By Arundhati Roy (Posted Sep 17, 2024)

Originally published: NewsClicks.in on September 16, 2024 (more by NewsClicks.in) |

In an engrossing interaction, eminent author, public intellectual and activist Arundhati Roy discussed a range of issues—from her Malayali roots and patriarchy to Kerala politics, Hindutva, caste, corporate greed to Youtubers and the young generation’s inner world—with KS Ranjith, Chief Editor of Chintha Publishers. The interview appeared in the Onam special issue of Deshabhimani Weekly. Below are translated excerpts:

1. Let us start with a question in connection with your Kerala background. It seems ‘God of Small Things’ reflects your quiet personal experiences … As a person born and brought up outside Kerala, does your inner self still identify yourself strongly with Kerala?

The God of Small Things is as public and political as it is quiet and personal. I was born in Shillong, yes. But my parents—my father was Bengali— were divorced when I was less than three. I spent my childhood in Kerala. In Ayemenem and Kottayam. I was in boarding school for a few years but always home for the holidays. I grew up on the Meenachil. I used to speak, read and write fluent Malayalam. Only, in those days, we would actually be punished and made to speak in English. I’ve been away so long my Malayalam is rusty. My inner and outer self–both identify completely with Kerala. I love the landscape. The food. Most of all I am so proud of how it has withstood what has happened in the rest of the country–this wave of Hindu Supremacism that has swept over us. We are such a proud people. We cannot fall prey to the utter stupidity of fascism.

2. Normally, the upper-class Christian families in central Travancore are upholding very orthodox social and political values. But we all know about your mother’s fight against the patriarchal family system and how it revolutionised the Christian women’s status. Does this ignite the political and activist in you?

Almost everything about me, personally as well as politically, everything about me as a writer—has been formed by growing up in the Syrian Christian community while being reminded by them all the time that we, my brother and I, were not ‘pure’ Syrian Christian, and were ‘outsiders’. It was rough stuff. Very early on it was made clear to me that I had no future there. I have been forged in fire by my mother in ways that nobody can possibly imagine. In good ways and bad. I left home at the age of seventeen. I was in second year in Architecture School in Delhi and stopped going home altogether. I made my own way through college and onward. I returned after about seven years. The Syrian Christians are remarkable community. But many among them are insular, chauvinist, casteist and elitist. And of course, patriarchal. They need to take a hard look at themselves.

3. The institution of family is normalising and legalising almost all the traditional values in the society. It’s a mechanism or medium of extending the status quo. But we rarely see sharp criticisms against this institution. Why?

I am so glad you asked this question. It is something I think about all the time—the valorization of the family that comes at us from every direction. In movies, in literature, in the media, on TV, in the social media and in real life of course. It disturbs me greatly. As you can tell from my books so far (and as you will see from what is still to come)–in The God of Small Things but most especially in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness — the idea of the family is questioned deeply, radically. It is the most conservative prism through which to view things, it deepens stereotypes, it justifies all kinds of selfishness in the name of parental unselfishness. Most of all it perpetuates the iron brand of caste, the most disgusting, stagnant and malignant thing about Indian society. The only time the idea of ‘family’ is questioned is when it comes to dynastic politics. And there too some dynasties are acceptable, and some aren’t. It’s ok, by all means question that. But all those dynasts have to win elections at least, they don’t inherit their parents’ seats in Parliament. What about our great corporations that virtually own our country? All of them are family-owned and run. Almost all those big family-owned corporations belong to one particular trading caste. That obscene amount of capital accumulating generation upon generation… and there are no questions asked.

4. Seeking jobs and opportunities, Keralites will reach any place on this planet. This is specifically true about the people from central Travancore. As a person coming from this place, you might have noticed this. But we normally forget the social history behind this capacity building. Social reform movements, land reforms, development of public education systems and primary health centres…all these factors played a role in developing human resources with the skill matrix of competing anywhere in this world. Do you align with this thought?

I absolutely do. And even though I have in the past been accused of being a critic of the Marxist party, I am actually for the most part an admirer. All those reforms have made Kerala not just a unique place in India, but in the whole world. There are many, many things we need to worry about still, but we must give credit where it is due. What I feel is that the education–to which Christians too have contributed a great deal–and land reforms and political awareness have made all Malayalis, regardless of what party they belong to, a little Marxist. Nobody can mess around with them. That is why I also feel that it’s so important that the Marxist Party and the Congress party take turns in running the state. They must respect each other and still fight each other. It’s not easy. But it has to be so. That way we avoid what happened in West Bengal to the Marxist party. Those forty years of continuous power is what finished off the CPM in Bengal and allowed the BJP in. A healthy opposition is so important. We need it in order to prevent the fascists from sliding through the cracks. If either the Marxist or the Congress Party starts to dissipate because they have spent too many years in power or too many years out of it, fascists will creep in. And once they are in, they will move fast.

5. Historically, Kerala civic society is very much political. We can see serious political discussion in tea shops and barber shops and each and every nook and corner in our countryside. Presence of active student politics in the campuses is another thing. But with the penetration of capital, the sociology of Kerala is changing. And it reflects in the political landscape also. Younger generation is not much concerned about political or social issues. How do you see this? Is it practically possible for human beings to keep away from politics forever?

I am surprised to hear you say that the younger generation is not politically aware in Kerala. I had the opposite impression. But you know better than me for sure. If what you say is true, then we are in trouble. Big trouble. The religious and social composition of the population in Kerala and their relationship with each other is, when compared to the rest of India, unique. If that gets corroded by greed and idiocy, we are looking at disaster. The BJP and its corporate friends will seize every opportunity to pit communities, castes, religions against each other. It will blackmail people with threats of ED. This includes religious leaders. To get a toe-hold into Kerala it needs the Christians. So, while the goons of this regime are burning churches and smashing Jesus statues in the rest of India–look at Manipur, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat–they are wooing or arm-twisting Christians in Kerala. Over the past few years there have been hundreds of attacks on churches. People must understand. It will be the greatest irony and the greatest betrayal of Christianity itself if the Syrian Christians of Kerala become the ones to invite Hindu Supremacists into Kerala. When I hear certain priests and bishops praising or doing deals with the BJP my jaw drops at their short-sightedness.

6. There is a stark difference in human living indices in north Indian states and south Indian states. And currently, a discussion is going on linking the BJP’s poor performance in south Indian states with this factor. As a person living in North India and having roots in South, what is your opinion?

My opinion is that the strong sense of peoples’ political awareness of their own rights has kept them out of the South so far. Also, in places like Tamil Nadu a long history of anti-caste struggles have made people aware of what Hindu Nationalism actually is. It’s nothing but a Trojan Horse to smuggle in and continue to uphold caste supremacy. I feel that the collusion of the mainstream media with this regime has drawn a screen over the real situation our country is in. When it is all finally unmasked we are going to see the level of devastation… the economy is in shambles. Health care, education are in crisis. Every tiny move towards social justice has been reversed. Poor Dalit and OBC students are being pushed out of the education system. Health care is completely unaffordable. Going to most private hospitals is its own special form of hell where doctors are there to loot and rob you, not cure you. Our Constitution has for all practical purposes already been set aside unofficially. The new criminal laws are a declared permanent Emergency. We live in a police state. Every institution has been hollowed out … to see the state of universities is particularly heart-breaking. Those universities, Delhi University, JNU, they were legendary places… now it’s all being turned to dust by a regime that hates intellectuals, hates science, hates all forms of intelligence–the intelligence of farmers, weavers, musicians, writers–every form of intelligence is seen as a threat. But today the fake news industry is making it all seem otherwise. However, now that the complete, totalitarian control is gone, the scandals are coming out, each worse than the next. So, as a Malayali who lives in Delhi when I come to Kerala—I want to stop each person on the street and describe the horrors of the North and say, “You must do everything possible to prevent that happening here.”

7. Quite unexpectedly rural people from UP rejected the BJP in this election. At the same time, for the first time BJP opened its account here in Kerala. A similar phenomenon happened in the parliament elections after the Emergency. When the whole country stands for democracy people of Kerala took a different stand. The high percentage of middle class presence in Kerala and their secured approach to life may be the reasons behind this. How do you see this?

It took a long time for people in UP to realize that their own reality is what counts and not what they see on TV. Their own hunger, their own joblessness, their own malnutrition. Not the ‘reality’ that corporate owned TV channels sell them. But the main thing is that people realized that the idea of a ‘Hindu’ majority is a scam—it’s a way for privileged-caste people to hold on to wealth and power while making the very people they oppress vote for their own oppression. Big swathes of the population of Dalits and OBCs saw through this finally. That is what lead to the seismic shift. We have to hope that it holds. Middle-class people in Kerala ought to travel to BJP ruled states to see what life is like there even for middle class people. I mean every bridge, road, tunnel and airport and even temple they build seems to have a life span of two years… its insane what is going on. The NEET scam… all centred in Gujarat. All the chief honchos of the scams seem to be pals of the BJP. Also, it is extremely disturbing that so many men accused of sexual assault and rape are connected to the current regime loosely or directly. Once that ideology of religious chauvinism moves into Kerala, Kerala could turn into the Lebanon of the seventies. Lebanon has a similarly complex population. And we see from history how when one community begins to radicalize, as a reaction all communities begin to radicalize. But I am sure Malayalis are not going to be manipulated into self-destruction. Every religious community has a responsibility and must see that that doesn’t happen. Yes, the fact that the BJP won one seat is worrying. But from what I hear it was a vote for Suresh Gopi and his work and not BJP. But still, it’s the thin edge of the wedge. We have been put on notice.

8. In the last decade, India is passing through an entirely different political situation compared to its long democratic history. The very ideological foundation on which this nation stands is in jeopardy. Even the propaganda of rewriting the Constitution was spelt out publicly in the election campaigns. But the results, at least for the time being, put a halt on this. Do you think so?

The fact that the BJP does not have a majority of its own is a great relief. But it still has its hands on the levers of power. It still controls institutions. For the first time since he became the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002, Modi faces a real opposition. He is being challenged to his face. He has been stripped of the image he has spent 20 years building. It’s gone. But I am very very worried. Because his only reaction to any kind of political defeat is to turn up the knobs of hatred. You remember that the 2002 Gujarat pogrom came on the back of local elections defeats. Already now lynchings of Muslims have increased. The new criminal laws make it easier for them to go after Muslims and also, the opposition. They will try to return to power by polarizing and with more bloodshed… I hope that Indian people have seen through all this.

9. Religious politics of Hindutva is just a mask to conceal corporate interests and the neoliberal project. Do you endorse this proposition?

Not at all. I disagree completely. It’s dangerous to minimize the danger of pure, unadulterated, casteist, fascist Hindu nationalism. That is a thing in itself. It is the main thing. Corporations are colluding with it because they are happy at the muscular state’s ability to beat down resistance and cut through red tape to reward those industrialists who are most loyal. To further their interests Corporations will collude with anyone who is in power. A secular state like the one Dr Manmohan Singh headed was no less friendly to corporations. No less friendly to the privatization of education and health and infrastructure… all so disastrous. The rhetoric of Rahul Gandhi and the new Congress is different of course. That is a relief.

10. There are very few people writing political essays with the intensity and creativity you are showing. Your writings stand out from the general stuff of political writing. What’s the X factor behind this organic writing?

I’d say it is a commitment and respect to the craft and art of writing. I want to be able to write about power and powerlessness, dams, irrigation, mining, war with the same attention I pay to writing about childhood, love and heartbreak. Before I am anything else, I am a writer. To my very core. For me, writing is prayer.

11. For a person writing fiction and creative nonfiction, what is the demarcating line between these two modes of writing?

The more I think about this—the less I understand the difference. Both require different kinds of discipline. But both are forms of prayer.

12. Language of Marx is highly intense and creative. Even in writing the dry subject of political economy his language stands on a different plane. It seems language becomes organic and creative when it dives deeper into reality.

Language is something a writer has to go out and find. Nobody gifts it to us. And it is cleaved to ourselves. It’s not a coat or outfit you wear when you go out. As I have said before, language is the skin of my thought.

13. The political essayist of Arundhati is a strong critic of Imperialist interventions and financial capitalism. Your writings stand with the marginalised sections and the victims of developmentalism. How do you enter this stream of thought? Do its roots lie in your intellectual exposure to humanitarian ideas, or does it emanate from your empirical observations?

It comes from having a sense of justice. Justice in all its elaborate and complicated glory. It’s that simple. And when I say justice, I do not mean simply ‘human rights’. The neo-liberals would like us to conflate the two. But we musn’t. Human rights are important, but a far narrower concept than the idea of justice. But speaking up for justice must never make you feel you have the right to speak on ‘behalf’ of anybody. One of the tropes I most hate is this idea of ‘the voice of the voiceless’. Perhaps the most often repeated quote of mine—one which I believe in deeply is ‘There is no such thing as the voiceless. There is only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.’

14. You are vehemently upholding thoughts of Ambedkar. And you tried to evaluate Ambedkar’s thoughts and actions with that of Gandhi. Do you like to revisit this argument in the current Indian context?

Yes, I have written a book about it. Not just the Ambedkar-Gandhi debate but also about how caste and capitalism have combined to form a peculiarly Indian alloy. In the last paragraphs of that book–The Doctor and the Saint — I say that unless those who call themselves revolutionary develop a radical critique of Brahminism (which is the anti-caste movements traditional term for Hinduism) and unless those who understand Brahminism sharpen their critique and understanding of capitalism—our country isn’t going anywhere.

15. Similarly, thinkers like Anil Teltumbe are upholding Ambedkar’s thoughts and Marx’s ideas parallelly. How do you see the class and caste orientations in politics?

This has been something I have been pre-occupied with since I wrote The God of Small Things. The Left in India has not managed to make serious inroads because it has failed to address caste and has comforted itself by saying ‘caste is class.’ There are overlaps sure, but caste is not class. Read Ambedkar and you will never say that again. Anand Teltumde I have always maintained is one of the most important intellectuals in our country. He should be honored, listened to. Instead, he has been jailed and humiliated.

16. Many recent popular films and novels in Malayalam are focusing on the sentimental and inner world of youth. Craftwise most of them are below par. But they are communicating with the youth quite successfully. How do you see this?

Quite honestly, an inner world that does not place itself in the context of an outer world is of little or no interest to me. It mostly bores me. I am not suggesting that everything has to be a manifesto. I am merely pleading for some basic intelligence. And some decency, given the state of our outer world. To cut it out altogether is a kind of politics too. Equally, literature or cinema that is just a disguised manifesto doesn’t interest me either.

17. We are now living in a neoliberal paradigm. Getting out of its categories of thought is becoming more and more difficult. A situation similar to the person trapped in Plato’s cave. How do we overcome this dominant discourse?

We need a prison break! The first thing is to stop watching mainstream TV. Including the entertainment channels. In that beautiful silence, our brains will return to us. Our IQs will be enhanced.

18. Nationalism has always been a very serious political project in modern human history. In the era of anti-colonial movements, nationalism was very much a revolutionary and progressive idea. But even in the same era, it has been used to legalise and implement fascist and authoritarian rule and suppress people racially. We ourselves are now seeing similar attempts of sectarian nationalism. It’s a double-edged sword. How do you see this phenomenon?

Nationalism is for fools. Or, at best, for Sports. Some good fun. For the rest— we try and live in a society that has wonderful and terrible things about it. We celebrate the wonderful, we fight against the terrible. We keep the conversation going. For me, all the fighting comes from great love. I laughed so much when a Malayali security guard at the Delhi airport while checking my ID said “In our Kerala we also have one Arundhati Roy. Always in trouble.” He didn’t realise that I was the same one. As a writer, human beings aren’t necessarily the only thing I care about. My books are full of animals, insects, rivers, skies and mountains too. Imagine a nationalistic insect or a flag-waving tiger. We have to love and tend to our land, our rivers our mountains… but we are destroying them in the name of nationalism. Flags are bits of cloth they use to shrink-wrap our brains and as shrouds to bury us when we are dead.

19. Mainstream media is fully focusing on the lives of the upper crust. Life of the majority, the stories from rural India are never visible in the mainstream media. It is a world dominated by the narrative created in the corporate media houses. Any practical suggestions to overcome this?

There has been enough criticism of the mainstream media for it not to be necessary to repeat it. In India our mainstream channels, many of them the equivalent of Radio Rwanda before the genocide that took place in that country—have not merely facilitated fascism’s arrival in India—they are a fundamental part of the fascist project. Nobody needed to censor them, they were enthusiastic participants in all of the dog-whistling. Some of the anchors are like captains literally directing Muslim-murdering lynch-mobs. It is largely because of them and their lies that people like Umer Khalid, Khalid Saifi, Gulfisha have been in jail for so many years. We know all this. But what to do about it? As I said there is a structural problem, a conflict of interest in economic model of these channels and newspapers. Some of them are owned directly by the companies like Adani and Reliance, others get all their money from government and corporate advertisement. This goes into hundreds of thousands of crores. So why expect anything from them? The problem is in how they are structured and financed. We need to come up with a model for a few TV channels and newspapers where they are financed through a public trust and are editorially completely independent. Not vulnerable to political parties or corporations.

20. Finally, a Dhruv Rathee is needed to speak publicly that the king is naked and the impact he created is huge. Is it an indication of the potential of new media? Do you see a ray of hope in new generation social media activists?

Dhruv Rathee is just fabulous. There are other Hindi language Youtubers who are awe-inspiring. They are articulate, professional, and totally fearless— Ravish Kumar of course. But also, Punya Prasun Bajpai, Deepak Sharma, Naveen Kumar, Sanjay Sharma, 4pm news, Satya Hindi news with its many anchors, so many of them. Within minutes of uploading their shows they have hundreds of thousands, and in a few hours millions of viewers. Each of them has a unique take on things. They are actually a phenomenon. New in the world. I follow them closely. We owe them a lot. I’m really proud of them.

This interview was first published in Malayali language in Deshabhimani Weekly. Reproduced with kind permission.

https://mronline.org/2024/09/17/people- ... own-on-tv/

******

September 19, 2024 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
India’s military support to Israel is a hideous mistake

My column in the Deccan Herald newspaper on India’s fractured West Asian policies:

Deccan Herald, September 18, 2024

India’s military support to Israel is a hideous mistake

Doesn’t the government realise that this is adding to the growing perception internationally that the current government is ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘anti-Muslim’?

M K Bhadrakumar

It came as a disappointment that the Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud dismissed a joint petition filed by a distinguished group of intellectuals that the supply of arms from India to the Israeli military during the Gaza war is in violation India’s obligations under international law coupled with Articles 14 and 21 read with 51(c) of the Constitution.

The petitioners pleaded that the court had on previous occasions held that India is under obligation to interpret domestic law in the light of the obligations under the conventions and treaties that it has both signed and ratified. However, the apex court took note that this is an issue of foreign policy. The government is off the hook…

Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/in ... ke-3195471

https://www.indianpunchline.com/21145-2/

[blindpig]

eG.N. Saibaba (1967-2024). (Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty)

“Why do you fear my way so much?”
By Bernard D'Mello (Posted Oct 25, 2024)


Why Do You Fear My Way So Much?

Professor G. N. Saibaba (1967—2024)

(This is the text of what I said and what I could not say (due to the time limit and other reasons) at a Professor G. N. Saibaba Memorial Meeting at the Mumbai Press Club on October 17, 2024.)

Professor Gokarakonda Naga Saibaba, communist political activist, radical left intellectual, scholar of Indian writing in English, poet, writer, and dedicated teacher, died on October 12, 2024, seven months after acquittal following eight and a half years of brutal imprisonment, in the course of which a number of his body organs had begun to fail.

Professor Saibaba’s life, or rather, Sai’s life, for that is what his friends called him, cannot be adequately understood without situating him in an authentic history and “present as history” of the Indian society of which he was a part. There are definite links between what Sai experienced and what he did and the historical and contemporary processes and changes, and the class and other contradictions which affected him. Those other contradictions emanate from the caste system, racial discrimination, and semi-feudal and capitalist patriarchy, whose main victims, have been Dalits and the so-called ritually “impure” Shudra jatis (sub-castes), Adivasis, and women, respectively. These three contradictions have also effectively divided the exploited and the oppressed. So, Sai not only has to be located in the times of which he was a part, but also in the social processes and contradictions which influenced and affected him. The ethos and quintessence of those times must be taken into account.

The year of Sai’s birth, 1967, happened to be the year of the Naxalbari uprising. Indeed, that “Spring Thunder Over India” had roared out a grave warning to the political establishment and the ruling classes. Revolution has been in the air and on the ground ever since, albeit, developing slowly and unevenly, and remaining almost entirely unfinished, thwarted by its inevitable accompaniment, counterrevolution. In the counterrevolution, led by the Indian state, the end has necessarily justified the means—bent on wiping out the unfinished revolution by all available means, violating with impunity Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Protocol II of 1977 relating to non-international armed conflict, of which India chose to remain a non-signatory.

The revolutionists, especially at times when survival in the face of the barbarity unleashed against them, have been forced to resort to no restraints in the fight to defend their unfinished revolution. For me, author of India after Naxalbari: Unfinished Revolution)—and I do not presume to speak on behalf of anyone or any organization but myself—one important learning from the history of revolutions, applicable here too, is that the violence of the oppressed has always been preceded and provoked by the violence of the oppressors.

What was/is the “crime” of Sai, and the Bhima-Koregaon (BK) accused? (The latter, variously but taken together—communists, poets, artists, writers, journalists, scholars, literary critics, professors, human rights lawyers, grassroots democracy activists, civil liberties and democratic rights activists, bards and lyricists, and even a practitioner of liberation theology, the Jesuit priest and Adivasi rights activist, Father Stan Swamy.) It was/is the “crime” of all those who refuse to remain unmoved and inactive in an India where hundreds of millions of people have been and are the victims of capitalism’s irrationality, brutality, and inhumanity. Despite the skill, the ingenuity, and the diligence of the Indian people, most of India’s population is still inadequately fed, miserably clothed, wretchedly housed, poorly educated, and without access to decent medical care. Worse still—monstrous income and wealth inequality, the unleashing of the super-exploitation—expropriation dynamic with a vengeance that is a major determinant of that monstrosity, the rise and consolidation of Hindutva nationalism, semi-fascism and sub-imperialism. Sai’s and the BK accused’s “crime” is the crime of all those who refuse to remain unmoved and inactive in an India whose deeply oppressive and exploitative social order is crying out for revolutionary change.

Sai and Father Stan Swamy, both of whom died because of the utter callousness of the repressive apparatus of the Indian state and the failure of the Indian judiciary, had thrown their lot with the wretched of the earth, put themselves on their side and came to their defense. And for what they thereby did, they were persecuted. And yet they persisted, for they deeply understood that what this wretched of the earth, this proletariat and semi-proletariat in India, especially Dalits and Adivasis, needed most was dignity, solidarity and empathy among themselves in the face of exploitation and oppression, this even more than they needed roti (bread). And, the means that Sai, Father Stan and the other BK accused, partisans in common, employed, are best expressed in these lines:

Where are the weapons?

I have only those of my reason

…

— PIER PAOLO PASOLINI

POET, FILMMAKER, NOVELIST, AND POLITICAL JOURNALIST—IN AN AUDACIOUS AND INSPIRING POEM, WRITTEN IN 1964, ENTITLED “VICTORY,” TRANSLATED BY NORMAN MACAFEE AND LUCIANO MATINENGO

So, what were/are those “weapons” of reason? Jurisprudence and the law, civil liberties and democratic rights for those denied them, and poetry, literature, art, songs and lyrics, political analysis, political journalism, authentic history, New Democracy and socialism, dedicated teaching with the pedagogy of the oppressed, and grassroots democratic organizing, all permeated with ideas like theirs, for which they knew they would not have been left alone.

Sai was born in 1967 in Amalapuram, a small town in the then East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. He came from a coastal Andhra, Kapu caste, middle-peasant family. Struck by polio at the tender age of five, his mother nurtured him with ever more attention than she gave of herself to his two siblings, carrying him to school and back in her arms. Upon completion of a B.A. (Andhra University), Sai joined the University of Hyderabad in 1987 for an M.A. in English Literature, which he completed in 1989.

During much of the M.A. period, Sai struggled with the debilities of polio, but those ideas of his, for which much later he realized he could not ever expect to be left alone by the state’s repressive apparatus, began to take root upon coming under the influence of two intellectuals who might better be left unnamed. Sai’s other influences were the writings of the prominent Telugu poet and lyricist, Sri Sri, founding president of Virasam, and later, the Kenyan novelist and academic, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, whose A Grain of Wheat (1967) and Petals of Blood (1977) are particularly notable. Sai got to know the communist-revolutionary poet and singer, Gaddar, and the communist activist, poet, writer, and teacher, Varavara Rao (now one of the BK accused) in 1990, and became a member of Virasam, the Revolutionary Writers Association. His writings appeared in Srijana, a magazine that used to be edited by Varavara Rao and has been considered an off-the-record organ of Virasam. In the pages of Srijana, Sai highlighted forms of knowledge that exclude Dalits and Adivasis from participation in Indian literature.

In May 1992, the CPI(ML) (People’s War), a precursor of the CPI (Maoist), and what the state deemed to be the CPI(ML)(PW)’s “front organizations” were banned, following which the All-India People’s Resistance Forum (AIPRF) was floated. Sai joined the AIPRF and became its state secretary in !993—94. He really came into his own in 1995 when prisoners’ struggles erupted in the jails of Andhra Pradesh. A sizable solidarity movement blossomed outside, and Sai was one of the secretaries of the prisoners’ solidarity committee. He went on to become the national secretary of AIPRF, which successfully organized an international seminar in 1996 on the national question. Then came the Telangana state movement and the historic Warangal Declaration of 1997 which was its pivot, only to be opportunistically appropriated by the Telangana Rashtra Samithi without acknowledgement.

Sai moved to Delhi in 2003 where he registered for a PhD at the University of Delhi and taught English literature at one of its affiliated colleges, the Ram Lal Anand College. By then the Indian state—big business combine had initiated another round of the dynamic of “accumulation by dispossession” or what might be called expropriation (appropriation without equivalent, or just plain robbery) of jal, jangal, zameen (water, forest, land) as part of the process of capitalist development—underdevelopment in the Bastar division of the state of Chhattisgarh. But the Maoist movement there was the biggest impediment to this profit-upon-expropriation process. The classic counterinsurgency strategy centered upon a state-backed, state-financed, state-armed private vigilante force called Salwa Judum to cut off the villagers from the Maoists, with the formation of “strategic hamlets,” was put in place.

As I have written previously:

In Dantewada and Bijapur districts, backed by the security forces, between June 2005 and 2009 Salwa Judum razed 644 villages, hounded the inhabitants into roadside police camps (“strategic hamlets”), and forced many more to escape in order to save life and limb. Around 350,000 Adivasis were displaced—47,000 were forcibly herded into roadside camps, 40,000 fled across the state border into Andhra Pradesh, and 263,000 sought shelters in the forests. Perhaps this was the largest and most brutal displacement so far in independent India in the state’s bid to grab lands for and on behalf of private corporations.

Sai could not remain unmoved and inactive in the face of such brutality unleashed in the process of expropriation and dispossession of the Adivasis from their habitats, unleashed to put cheap natural-resource hoards on the asset side of big-business balance sheets, and thereby create huge capital gains opportunities. On an academic invitation to the U.S. and as part of the International League for People’s Struggles, he spoke about such happenings in India, which in 2008—09 ruffled and angered the then Union Home Minister, P. Chidambaram. In 2011, the Supreme Court declared the practice of the state of arming local Adivasi youth as Special Police Officers, and of funding the recruitment of vigilante groups like Salwa Judum to fight the Maoists, unconstitutional.

On an academic visit to Europe, Sai, once again spoke about the Indian State—big business combine’s diabolical Operation Dispossession, intensified since then with the launch of Operation Green Hunt in September 2009. Following this European visit, the Swedish author, Jan Myrdal, son of Sweden’s most influential twentieth century intellectuals, Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, both Nobel Prize winners, came to India in 2010 and travelled to and met the leadership of the CPI (Maoist) in the guerrilla bases in southern Chhattisgarh. (Following which Jan Myrdal authored a book, Red Star Over India: As the Wretched of the Earth Are Rising (2012).) Union Home Minister Chidambaram was more than merely ruffled. Sai’s residence in Delhi University was raided by the police and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on September 12, 2013, on the plea of a theft far away in Aheri in Gadchiroli district. The Sai family’s cell phones, his hard drives, pen drives, and some books were taken away, without sealing. They came again in January 2014 and interrogated Sai. And, then on the basis of the “evidence,” it was claimed that he was working for the Maoist party.

Then on May 9, 2014 (before Narendra Modi assumed prime ministerial office on May 26, 2014) they picked up and arrested Sai as he was returning from college and forcibly took him to far-away Nagpur, and then, accompanied by anti-landmine vehicles with heavily armed commandos, to Gadchiroli. They didn’t seem to bother about the fact that they were handling a differently abled person, because of which—even before Sai faced the harsh conditions of life in jail, including being caged in an Anda cell in solitary confinement, and denial of proper medical care—they had almost semiparalysed his left hand.

On March 7, 2017, in an embedded judgment of the Sessions Court in Gadchiroli, Sai was awarded life imprisonment, framed under sections 10 (penalty for being a member of an unlawful association), 13 (punishment for unlawful activities), 18 (punishment for conspiracy, etc.), 38 (punishment related to membership of a terrorist organization), and 39 (offence related to support given to a terrorist organization) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) and Section 120 B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). This on the basis of manipulated and fabricated electronic documents—aided by the complicity of a forensic lab—supposedly recovered from his Delhi University residence on September 12, 2013. Moreover, the sanction to prosecute under UAPA was “faulty”; indeed, the sanctioning officers, apart from “non-application of mind,” were said to have even resorted to falsehood under oath. And, the trial was unfair in many respects.

On October 14, 2022, Sai was acquitted by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court, but the Supreme Court, in undue haste, suspended the order, sending the case back to the high court for “re-evaluation.” Sai a “grave threat to national security” must have been uppermost in the mind of the learned two-judge bench, headed by Justice Bela Trivedi, who had been the State of Gujarat’s law secretary during Narendra Modi’s tenure as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. But on March 5, 2024, Sai was once again released by the high court, citing, among other things, particularly the verdict of the Gadchiroli Sessions Court as a “failure of justice.”

My brief account of Sai’s life would be incomplete if I were not to mention the two women who loved him and had a profound influence on him, Sai mother, Suryavathi, and his spouse, A. S. Vasantha Kumari. Upon his acquittal and release from jail, in an address to the press in March 2024, Sai also talked about his mother, who died of cancer on August 1, 2020, recalling how lovingly (in Sai’s own words) “she took me in her arms to school” after he was struck by polio at the age of five. Her dream for him was that he serves the people as a teacher; how she “craved to see me before she died.” And yet, the Bombay High Court denied Sai parole to meet his mother when she was about to pass away; and again, denied him parole when she died and he wanted to be at her funeral and for remembrance meetings. And, Vasantha, Sai’s spouse, reminiscing on her response on being asked why she chose Sai to be her life partner, writes: “My answer has always been the same. In this patriarchal society where women are constantly oppressed and treated as second-class citizens, … [Sai has] always tried to go against that thinking. [Sai has always taken it upon himself] … to defend women’s rights, their freedom of expression and treat them with great respect and dignity.” I can picture/imagine Vasantha reading and re-reading the Marxist writer and critic, Telugu novelist and short story writer, Ranganayakamma’s Janaki Vimukti (The Emancipation of Janaki) to Sai as both of them together explore a path to overcoming semi-feudal and capitalist patriarchy in India.

Sai always cared about his fellow prisoners, especially his co-accused, Mahesh Kariman Tirki, Pandu Pora Narote, Hem Keshavdatta Mishra, Prashant Rahi, and Vijay Nan Tirki. Pandu Narote, who lived in a village in Gadchrioli, died in jail of a fever on March 7, 2017. Running a high fever, Narote was not taken to hospital until after Sai and the other prisoners raised an alarm. As related by Sai, Pandu Narote was diagnosed of Swine Flu only after he died.

Sai came to the Nagpur jail with the polio he a had contracted at the age of five, albeit, there must have also been the inevitable slow development of muscular weakness since then. Eight and a half years of imprisonment in “a nineteenth century prison environment” (in his own words) led to the onset of “sixteen serious ailments including that of a life-threatening heart condition, acute pancreatitis, Anterior Horn Cell Syndrome, post-polio syndromes, Brachial plexopathy, etc.” Frankly, the repress apparatus of the state and the failure of the judicial system had a lot to do with his death. Indeed, in October 2020, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led union government with Modi as India’s Prime Minister chose to ignore an urgent call from the United Nation’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for the immediate release of Sai due to his deteriorating health.

Why did they fear his way so much? The short answer I have given is that he refused to remain unmoved and inactive in the India that that I have described, an India whose deeply exploitative and oppressive social order is crying out for revolutionary change.

References:
Bernard D’Mello, India after Naxalbari: Unfinished History (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017/Delhi: Aakar Books, 2017).
Bernard D’Mello, “‘Jal, Jangal, Zameen (Water, Forest, Land)!’: Adivasi Resistance in Historical Perspective,” in Bernard D’Mello and Subhas Aikat (eds.), The Present as History: Late Imperialism (Kharagpur: Cornerstone Publications, 2023), pp. 158—225.
N. Saibaba, Why Do They Fear My Way So Much? Poems and Letters from Prison (New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2022).
Alpa Shah, The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon and the Search for Democracy in India (Gurugram: Harper Collins, 2024).

https://mronline.org/2024/10/25/why-do- ... y-so-much/

[blindpig]

Indian farmers and workers are uniting once again for a national mobilization on November 26

Millions are expected to join the nationwide mobilization launched by a combination of central trade unions and an united front of farmers called the Samyukta Kisan Morcha

November 23, 2024 by Abdul Rahman


Farmers rally in Maharashtra in 2020-2021 farmers struggle. Photo: Newsclick

India’s major farmers and workers unions are coming together to launch a nationwide mobilization on Tuesday, November 26, to demand the government address the distress faced by the majority of the country’s population of farmers and workers.

A call for nationwide protests was given by the united farmers front, Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) and a joint platform of the Central Trade Unions earlier this month. Left-affiliated farmer’s organizations All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), All India Agricultural Workers Union (ALAWU), and Center for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), one of India’s largest trade union federations, are part of the call to mobilize.

The agitation is based on a comprehensive charter of demands, which includes withdrawal of all anti-worker legislation enacted by the current ultra right-wing government led by prime minister Narendra Modi, and the enactment of legally guaranteed procurement at a minimum price for all farm products.

Other major demands include a guaranteed job of minimum 200 days for all, a minimum wage of 26,000 rupees (around USD 307), comprehensive loan waiver for farmers, agricultural and other workers.

The SKM, formed by farmers organizations during the 2020-21 struggle against three farm bills introduced by the Modi-led government, continues to raise the issue of the government’s failure to fulfill its promises of enacting a law for minimum support prices (MSP) for all farm produce. The Modi government had promised in a written agreement with the SKM on December 9, 2021 to enact such a law as a condition to end the farmer’s agitation, SKM claims.

According to a press release on November 15, SKM has already launched a door to door campaign in districts across the country starting November 7. The campaign will continue until November 25 with a target to cover 100 villages in each district with a total target of at least 50,000 villages across the country. It aims to mobilize large gatherings at all district headquarters across the country on November 26.

Growing distress among farmers and the working population in India
SKM issued a leaflet highlighting the plight of farmers and agricultural workers across India for the campaign. It claims at a time when the “cost of cultivation and inflation is rising at a higher than 12-15% every year, the government is increasing MSP by only 2 to 7%,” leaving working people and farmers in the country in distress.

It raises the issue of the government’s reluctance to fix MSP for farm produce according to the agreed formula of C2+50%. The leaflet also points out that the government’s failure to procure enough crops is forcing a large number of farmers to sell their products at lower prices, incurring losses and many leaving farming altogether.

SKM claims there is a direct link between the distress in farming, rising unemployment, and the greater exploitation of the working classes across the industrial and urban areas. The government is introducing corporatization in farming by forcing farmers to digitize their land and crops through methods such as the Digital Agricultural Mission, which was announced during the last union budget, formation of a union cooperative ministry in violation of India’s federal character, and the imposition of centralized taxations such as GST at a time when it is letting them exploit the workers by abolishing the hard won rights of unionization and collective bargaining.

The SKM claims that new labor codes imposed by the Modi government “annuls any guarantee on statutory minimum wages, job security, social security, eight hour working day and right to unionize and collective bargaining.”

Though passed in 2020, the four new laws dealing with labor in India have not been implemented yet due to strong protests by all major trade unions. The Modi government reiterates its intention to implement them soon.

The SKM accuses the government of reducing crucial social security for the working class, and also reducing subsidies on food, education, health and education. The inability of the working class to buy food at the market prices, for example, is pushing more and more people towards food insecurity. It quotes data from UN agencies, which claim that nearly 36% of children aged below 5 years in India are underweight, and 38% are facing stunted growth. It notes that nearly 57% women and 67% children in India are anemic due to lack of adequate nutritious food.

Privatization of education and health care has further deprived the majority of people in India any possibility of an improved living conditions apart from facilitating corporate exploitation of popular desperation.

The Modi government is siphoning off public money collected through regressive taxes “to corporations in the form of incentives under various heads, Capex, production linked employment and so on,” while promoting contractualization and pushing “job-seeking youth to virtual slavery,” SKM claims.

“The Modi government has waived” millions of dollars of debt for corporate houses, “but refused to free farmers and agricultural workers from indebtedness through a comprehensive loan waiver and credit policy,” according to the SKM.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/11/23/ ... vember-26/

[blindpig]

Why does India need AI?
December 5, 13:19



Why does India need AI?

In 2024, India held its next parliamentary elections, in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the majority of votes. The BJP election platform, published just a few days before the start of the vote, places special emphasis on technological development. The new administration promises to develop the space program, quantum computing technologies, and improve the scientific and technological infrastructure by creating the Anusandhan Fund (translated from Hindi as research) with a budget of $ 12 billion.

A significant share of the budget will be directed to support developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The increase in funding is a consequence of the growing ambitions of the country's leadership. In the 2019 program, the BJP for the first time set the goal of launching a national AI development program. Five years later, in the 2024 election platform, the party leadership explicitly stated its intentions to turn the country into a “global industry leader” by “developing domestic development potential to ensure technological sovereignty.”

The question arises, how relevant is this goal for a country where 45.7% of the population works in the primary sector, and 129 million people live in extreme poverty?

Following the publication of strategic documents defining AI development goals in the United States, China and several other countries in 2016-2017, India attempted to develop its own response to the changing technological landscape. In 2018, the National AI Strategy was published by the government’s main think tank NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India). The document, which is de facto an analytical report, provides fairly broad estimates of the prospects for the implementation of AI: the use of technology can bring up to $ 1 trillion to the Indian economy, and the focus of public policy should be on the areas of healthcare, education, agriculture, smart cities and transport. The institute's analysts believe that innovative solutions will help alleviate the problem of staff and hospital shortages in healthcare, and improve the efficiency of forecasting and resource use in agriculture. The government invited foreign companies to test technologies in India for subsequent scaling to other regions. In 2021, NITI Aayog experts published two other documents (Responsible AI: Part 1, Part 2), which outlined the need to take into account ethical issues and security risks when developing regulatory instruments in the field.

However, the publication of the strategy did not become a guide to action. The government began to take practical steps to develop the sector relatively recently. In March 2024, the Cabinet of Ministers approved the launch of the national IndiaAI Mission program and announced the allocation of $ 1.2 billion for its development over a period of five years. However, in the final version of the budget for FY 2024-2025, incomparably little funds were allocated for its implementation - only $ 66 million (3% of subsidies for national programs in the field of electronics and IT; 13% of subsidies for the Digital India program [1]). Apparently, the funding will include the purchase of several hundred graphics processing units (GPUs) and the establishment of the IndiaAI Innovation and Research Center (IAIC).

According to the government's plans, in the medium term, the IndiaAI Mission program should eliminate the shortage of computing infrastructure necessary for the expansion of AI in the economy. This and other problems are planned to be solved by deploying clusters of 10 thousand GPUs, increasing funding for startups and building an IAIC center, as well as small laboratories.

Related programs are being developed in this direction, for example, initiatives in the field of designing computing clusters. In 2023, the AIRAWAT supercomputer for training AI was developed in India. It is the most powerful supercomputer in the country, but it does not yet stand up to international competition - in performance ratings, the computer dropped from 75 (May 2023) to 110 (June 2024).

The use of artificial intelligence technologies is indirectly regulated by industry laws defining the rules for activities in the IT sector (Information Technology Act, 2000; Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023), but a separate regulatory framework in this area has not yet been created. The government is trying to address the problem of national legislation lagging behind the pace of technology adoption by developing a sectoral law that, according to some reports, would require labeling of AI-generated content.

Proposals for new legislation are voiced by individual agencies. For example, in 2023, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recommended that the government “urgently develop a regulatory framework applicable to all sectors” and create an independent body whose functions would include developing ethical principles, laws, and risk classification, as well as providing recommendations for the development of AI technologies in India.

However, information about the AI ​​law being developed comes mainly from the media, so it is premature to talk about any of its features.

Socio-political factors

Today, the ruling party’s key domestic political narrative is that AI will have beneficial social implications for India. Experts and politicians discuss the potential impact of the technology in agriculture, medicine, business, and public administration, but in the short- to medium-term, the main beneficiaries will be the young urban middle class, who represent an important part of the BJP’s electoral base. The government’s promise to achieve India’s “golden age” (Amrit kaal) by 2047 using technology resources is aimed precisely at this audience. For example, an important goal of the IndiaAI program is to support youth employment and turn the southern Indian state of Kerala into a regional hub for AI development. The Indian government has also approved the creation of three AI centers of excellence and allocated $120 million for this purpose by 2028 (and $30.2 million for 2024–25).

The ruling party’s reliance on the growing middle class also appears to be the reason for articulating the need for “status” in development. This has become possible thanks to technological breakthroughs, including in the rapidly developing IT sector. Techno-optimism of political elites is becoming a commonplace in matters of economic and political planning. In India, it is believed that “leapfrogging” will help not only to raise the country’s status on the international stage, but also to resolve complex social problems. “Aggressive deployment (of technologies) can be difficult, but it can yield enormous benefits,” concludes Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar in his book [2].

The result of such a policy is widespread awareness among Indians about the possibilities of using AI and their positive attitude towards the process of implementing the technology. According to a survey by BCG and Nasscom, more than 80% of Indian companies are ready to implement AI in their work and improve the skills of their employees to work with it. However, the high level of technology implementation is largely due to the area of ​​work of the companies.

The rise of AI in India has been a consequence of the changing global technological landscape. The development of powerful graphics processors in the early 2010s, the development of deep learning algorithms, and the emergence of advanced generative models in the early 2020s have all had an impact comparable to the socio-political consequences of the launch of the first satellite.

In 2020, the Department of New, Emerging and Strategic Technologies (NEST) was established in the Ministry of External Affairs of India. In the same year, India became a co-founder of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI). AI-related issues occupy a special place in cooperation with the United States within the framework of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) and the Quad investment support program. In this area, India is developing bilateral formats with the UK, EU, Germany, Japan, and the UAE.

Imbalances in Technological Development

In theory, reliance on external resources and the competent use of one's own potential should bring significant dividends. In practice, uncontrolled technological development entails imbalances in economic and social development.
The AI ​​market in India is expected to reach $ 17 billion by 2027. However, at the moment, foreign companies, such as Microsoft, Intel, and Google, remain the main suppliers of technological solutions. Over the past 10 years, the share of patents filed by Indian firms has been less than 1% of the global total.

According to Stanford University, India will rank 5th in the world in terms of investment in AI startups ($3.2 billion) in 2022, and startups in this field received a total of $7.7 billion in the 10 years from 2013 to 2022 (6th place in the world). At the same time, government support, public and private funding will mainly benefit high-tech startups, mainly located in clusters such as Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and to some extent Pune and New Delhi. Fostering innovation exclusively in tech clusters exacerbates geographic imbalances, while government efforts to create new innovation hubs (for example, in Uttar Pradesh) look unpromising.

The Indian government is betting on the development of new technologies, discussing the prospects for creating “sovereign AI”, which implies a high level of data localization and the development of data processing and storage capabilities. By implementing AI, the government intends to reform the public administration system, eliminate infrastructure problems in the fields of education and medicine, and increase the efficiency of production in agriculture. The country's main competitive advantage is its personnel: more than 420 thousand people work in the field of AI (second place in the world), and India is among the top five countries with a multiple increase in the number of professionals in this field. From 2016 to 2023, the number of specialists increased by 263%. Three of the largest Indian IT companies (Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro) said that they have already trained more than 775 thousand of their employees in the skills to use generative AI.

The problems associated with the development of AI technologies in India can be divided into two blocks:

Scaling national programs. Today, the main drivers of technological development are American corporations. The role of local players is relatively small. Despite India's competitive advantage in terms of human resources, many highly qualified specialists go to work abroad, since the problem of "brain drain" is especially relevant for the IT sector. In addition, India lags far behind in patenting and publication activity. Finally, the level of development of scientific and technological infrastructure in India does not yet match the ambitions of the political elites. The desire of the BJP leaders to turn India into a leader in the industry should be supported by the ability to provide access to a large volume of high-quality data and the presence of a developed computing infrastructure.

The need for comprehensive development of the sector puts on the agenda the issue of increasing funding, as well as the need for prompt development of regulatory standards.
Consequences of the spread of AI technologies in India and the "isolation" of technological development from the needs of the economy. The technological breakthrough that the government is counting on entails a change in production relations. It is quite possible that mass automation will lead to increased unemployment and social stratification.

Particularly vulnerable will be low- and medium-skilled urban residents (the BJP electoral base), as well as workers in the agricultural sector (more than 40% of the working population). Potentially major transformations await the Indian IT sector - an "army" of junior developers may be left without work due to the process of automating code writing. In the context of the burden on the education system, creating a large-scale retraining system will be extremely problematic.

Another important problem for India is that today this country has the greatest potential in the field of developing applications using AI, but in other areas it is still forced to rely on foreign solutions. As a result, the pace of implementation of AI technologies in India will be determined by factors of the international situation.

(c) I.Shchedrov

https://russiancouncil.ru/analytics-and ... -indii-ii/ - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9535583.html

Google Translator

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December 11, 2024 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
Who’s afraid of George Soros?


From left to right: Donald Trump, US Treasury-designate Scott Bessent and billionaire-financier& philanthropist George Soros

The raging controversy over the Bharatiya Janata Party’s allegation that the Congress Party leadership is hand in glove with the famous US financier George Soros with an infamous track record of funding the colour revolutions and regime change projects is snowballing.

Congress Party may use the floor of the parliament to fuel its public tirades against the government, borne out of the proverbial folklore of Kerala, “Whether the leaf falls on a thorn or a thorn on a leaf, the leaf is always harmed.”

Congress calculates that the Modi government and the BJP would be the losers if this controversy remains in focus. These are early days and how all this pans out is hard to tell, as there are many variables in play. Look at the reticence of the SP and TMC, for instance, to wade into the Adani file. Besides, BJP is a peerless champion for diversionary tactics in Indian politics.

From foreign policy angle, the outcome of the slugfest between India’s two mainstream parties, is going to depend on an “X” factor, namely, George Soros’ clout with the incoming US administration and the attitude of President Donald Trump toward the Deep State’s advancement of a regime change agenda in Delhi as happened in Bangladesh.

The BJP has quietly backtracked from its spokesman’s accusation at the press conference in New Delhi on December 6 that “It has always been the US State Department behind this agenda”.

The BJP National Spokesperson and MP Dr. Sambit Patra directly accused the US State Department of trying to “destabilise India” and claimed that the US “deep state” is working to “target Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

“The Deep State had a clear objective to destabilise India by targeting Prime Minister Modi,” the BJP spokesman reportedly said. In fact, he anchored on the Deep State and the US State Department the BJP’s entire case of Rahul Gandhi being a “traitor of the highest order” and of Congress “conspiring with foreign forces” to derail the government because of their “hatred” for Modi.

The BJP demanded on the floor of the parliament that Rahul Gandhi ought to be thoroughly investigated for meeting with the controversial business tycoon George Soros and some other American officials during his periodic visits to the US who have “a history of peddling anti-India agenda”.

Of course, this is an explosive charge that could only have been made with clearance (or instructions) from the highest echelons of the BJP and possibly the government.

Surprisingly, however, the BJP subsequently censored the above remarks from its lengthy press release on Dr. Patra’s remarks. The bulk of the corporate media also followed suit with self-censorship, a few exceptions apart.

Such backtracking doesn’t behoove India’s ruling party or our media honchos. It smacks of faint-heartedness and lack of resolve. This is happening despite the well-known fact that Soros indeed has a long history of acting as the frontman of the US State Department in its regime change projects abroad.

Organisations such as Soros’ Open Society Foundations (founded in 1984) or National Endowment for Democracy (founded in 1983) are to be seen as the US government’s “white gloves” for

instigating colour revolutions to subvert state power in other countries;
cultivating pro-US forces in target countries;
misrepresenting the human rights situation in other countries;
manipulating and interfering in other countries’ elections;
inciting division and confrontation to undermine the stability of other countries; and,
fabricating false information to mislead public opinion, using “academic activities” as a cloak for interference and infiltration.

This is a complex story on which Professor Sreeram Chaulia, at the O.P. Jindal Global University, had written a well-researched essay titled Democratisation, NGOs and “colour revolutions” way back in 2006.

By the way, Soros is also a globalist by conviction who genuinely subscribes the neocon ideology. He has given to the Foundations over $32 billion of a personal fortune made in the financial markets. The Foundations are estimated to have $25 billion in assets last year, and amongst worldwide activities, they prioritise “the current challenges … of the rise of new forms of authoritarianism” in foreign countries.

Will Trump put Soros out of business? This seems to be the assumption in Delhi, which is predicated on the antipathy between Trump and Soros who had close links with the Democratic Party — and, conversely, on Trump’s jovial attitude toward Modi.

Soros is a formidable adversary who has reportedly earmarked one billion dollars for a regime change in India. He views regime changes not simply as a neocon pastime but also as a business proposition. In Ukraine, where he funded the Maidan protests and regime change in 2014, he is investing to generate lucrative business (here and here)

No doubt, what remains to be seen is how Trump sees Soros going forward. It is a complicated story, as Soros has his line open to Trump’s inner circle. There are some straws in the wind. Basically, Trump is a dealmaker who has no permanent friends or allies — or enemies, for that matter.

The salience of Trump’s one hour twenty-six minutes long interview with NBC News on Sunday, his first after the election victory, is that while he may harshly deal with those officials who misused their authority under President Biden’s watch to harass him, humiliate him and hunt him down, he hopes to work with the Democratic Party lawmakers in the Congress to carry forward his agenda.

Trump acknowledged the criticality of bipartisan support to make the required constitutional amendments in regard of immigration laws. He even paid tribute to the left wing constituency who voted for him.

Significantly, Alex Soros, son of George Soros, had generously contributed to Kamala Harris’ chest, but has since paid a fulsome compliment to Trump. He wrote on X: “Too many Democrats are fighting each other over campaign tactics, because it is easier than accepting that Trump was underestimated as a candidate. He was a “super candidate” with increasing appeal to a broader electorate — likely beyond the reach of both Democrats and Republicans.”

Interestingly, Elon Musk also responded by calling himself the “George Soros of the middle. I don’t want the pendulum to swing too far right, but right now it’s just too far left.”

The bottom line is that Trump has made a thoughtful decision to tap Scott Bessent for the crucial cabinet position of Treasury Secretary. Bessent’s credentials include his stint on a small team at Soros’ investment firm through the 1980s that in 1992 helped “break” the Bank of England with crushing trades against the British pound, having amassed a $10 billion bet that the pound was overvalued.

The New York Times reported, “Though the British government tried to support the currency, it wasn’t able to withstand the pressure, and the pound plunged in value. Mr. Soros’s fund earned more than $1 billion, along with credit (and infamy) for orchestrating one of Wall Street’s most audacious trades.”

Now, there’s nothing Trump loves more than Wall Street’s seductive success stories. Times wrote, “it was Mr. Bessent’s experience at Mr. Soros’s fund — including another high-profile bet, against the Japanese yen — that helped define his career, and that his former colleagues and other associates see as a crucial credential” for the cabinet job as Treasury Secretary.

And now comes the news that Trump has picked a California lawyer Harmeet Kaur Dhillon to head the US justice Department’s civil rights division and nominated her as assistant attorney-general, who, apparently, empathises with pro-Khalistan activists in the US and Canada.

Do not underestimate the ingenuity of the Deep State in America to have its way. Keeping the guard down will be a catastrophic mistake on the part of Delhi establishment. We could get hit when least expected. That’s what happened in Syria and Bangladesh.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, as they say. Make no mistake, at the end of the day, Trump is a great patriot and nationalist who stands by “America First” as his chosen dictum. An equal relationship based on mutual respect is impossible to forge with the US.

https://www.indianpunchline.com/whos-af ... rge-soros/

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Farmers in India intensify mobilization despite government crackdown

Farmers are demanding fair compensation for land acquired for urban projects near New Delhi and a legally guaranteed minimum support price for their crops

December 11, 2024 by Abdul Rahman


Source: AIKS/X

Scores of women held candlelight vigils in support of over a hundred farmer leaders arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police in India on Tuesday, December 10. The protesting women warned authorities against intimidating the families of the farmers and demanded the immediate release of all those detained.

The vigils took place in villages near New Delhi, where farmers have been agitating for months. Their demands include proper compensation for land acquired for the development of large townships, the return of 10% of developed lands to those affected, and adequate rehabilitation for families who have lost their only source of income under the Land Acquisition Act of 2013.

Additionally, the farmers are calling for a guaranteed minimum support price (MSP) at total cost of production plus a 50% profit for all farm produce, as promised by the Modi government during the 2020-2021 farmers’ agitation against three pro-corporate farm laws. Thousands of farmers had surrounded Delhi for over a year during that protest, ultimately forcing the government to repeal the laws and pledge the legally guaranteed MSP.

On Monday, a delegation comprising representatives from the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), Center for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), and All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), led by Amra Ram, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) Member of Parliament, met with authorities. The delegation reiterated their demands for the immediate release of all arrested farmers and an end to the intimidation of farmers and their families.

Additionally, thousands of farmers, under the leadership of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) and AIKS, took to the streets and called for a march to the national capital, New Delhi, on December 2. Their aim was to press the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national government and the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh provincial government to fulfill their long-standing promises of adequate compensation for lands acquired during the development of the satellite city Noida near New Delhi.

BJP’s failure to fulfill promises
The ultra-right-wing BJP, currently leading both the central and provincial governments, has consistently opposed farmers’ demands and is allegedly aligned with the interests of large corporations. Farmers have criticized the Modi government for failing to deliver on its 2021 promise of a legally guaranteed MSP for all farm produce, even after more than three years have passed since the commitment was made.

Regional authorities deployed massive force on December 3 to prevent farmers from entering Delhi, arresting several farm leaders in the process. Despite promising to negotiate with the farmers after they agreed to convert their march into an indefinite sit-in near the Delhi-Noida border last week, the government has failed to initiate any talks.

Instead, the Uttar Pradesh government escalated its crackdown on the protesters, arresting over a hundred of them from the protest site. According to an AIKS press release, police raided farmers’ homes late at night, placing some leaders under house arrest, intimidating their families, and even detaining leaders who were not present at the protest site. Local AIKS leader Roopesh Varma was rearrested just hours after being released from jail when he rejoined the ongoing agitation and sit-in.

AIKS claims that “hundreds of farmers were directly taken to jail without any legal process. Even the family members of farmers are being falsely implicated in cases.” The organization accused the authorities of deliberately violating legal procedures in an effort to suppress the movement.

In response, the farmers have launched a mass “courting arrest” movement, voluntarily surrendering in large numbers to oppose the Uttar Pradesh government’s attempts to suppress their agitation.

Farmers who were arrested have also undertaken hunger strikes while in prison. AIKS, CITU, and AIDWA have called for a larger demonstration in front of the district authorities on Thursday, December 12, demanding the immediate release of all detained farmers.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/12/11/ ... crackdown/

[blindpig]

MODI TAKES HIS BEST SHOT – HOW INDIAN STRATEGY PUTS TRUMP IN FRONT OF PUTIN



by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, is the first of President Vladimir Putin’s strategic allies to leave him to make whatever exit from the Ukraine war he can negotiate with President Donald Trump.

Modi did this by saying as little as he could about Russia last week in Washington while preparing his own military, energy supply, sea lane and land route agreements with the US; altogether, according to Indian sources in Moscow, they enlarge India’s role in the escalating US war against China across the globe, and diminish Russia’s role significantly.

“I have been in constant contact with both Russia and Ukraine. I have also visited both countries,” Modi said beside Trump at the White House on February 13. “And many people are mistaken and they feel that India is neutral. I would like to clarify: India is not neutral. We have taken a side, and we have taken the side of peace…Ultimately, you have to come to the negotiating table, and India has constantly made efforts that there are talks that take place where both parties are present. It is only then that we will find a solution. The efforts being made by President Trump — I support them, I welcome them, and I would like that President Trump is successful as soon as possible so that the world is on the path to peace once again.”

This isn’t a statement of India’s support for Russia, according to Russian sources. It is not even India’s acknowledgement of the wars which the US and its allies are waging against Russia simultaneously on its western and eastern, northern and southern fronts. It’s India’s declaration that it aims to be on the US side in the multi-front war India is waging against China from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. It is also a proclamation by Modi against the Arab, Iranian and Muslim resistance to the US and Israel on the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf.

“The prime minister and I,” said Trump, “reaffirmed that strong cooperation among the United States, India, Australia, and Japan [the Quad], and it’s crucial really to maintaining peace and prosperity, tranquillity even, in the Indo-Pacific.”

“We will work together to enhance peace, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific,” Modi replied, “The Quad will play a special role in this. During the Quad summit scheduled to be held in India this year, we will expand cooperation in new areas with our partner countries.”

A veteran Indian source in Moscow explains: “Indians are very pleased with the anti-China stand of the US. The last two years of relations with Russians have been bruising for Indians and a lot of top oil and gas managers are exasperated with the Russians. They would do anything to stop doing business with the Russians – this is not because of the sanctions, it is the Russians themselves! [From Modi’s visit to Washington] there is the general take that we cannot be throwing our lot with Russians because they are so unreliable now and are junior to the Chinese. Putin might have brokered the Ladakh moment, but all in all Indians prefer to deal with the US now. For now we know that the Americans call the shots.”

Russia has been relegated. In Delhi now, Quad is major league; the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS are minor league.

“One thing that I deeply appreciate, and I learn from President Trump, is that he keeps the national interest supreme,” Modi said in his Oval Office remarks. “Like him, I also keep the national interest of India at the top of everything else.”

The Indian media have interpreted this as more than compensating for the American put-downs Modi registered. “The President did not turn up to greet [Modi] when he arrived at the White House; Trump snubbed him by doubling down on reciprocal tariffs…Elon Musk insulted him by bringing his children to a business meeting… In the age of trivialisation through social media tattle and trolling, all of this is of little consequence… The broad consensus among more seasoned analysts and experts is that PM Modi disarmed a rampant US President…and advanced bilateral ties…The visit was actually a tour de force measured in terms of impact and outcomes.”

Click on the White House transcript to read what was said in the February 13 press conference. https://www.whitehouse.gov/remarks/2025 ... onference/


In the White House press room on Thursday, President Trump stumbled over pronunciation of Prime Minister Modi’s name as he read haltingly from the speech prepared for him. He also evaded an Indian reporter’s question on anti-Hindu and anti-Modi operations in the US. “I can’t understand…a word he’s saying. It’s not the — it’s the accent. It’s a little bit tough for me.” The Indian press hit back at Trump’s deception.

In the 33-point joint statement which officials from both sides had negotiated word by word in advance of Modi’s arrival in Washington, Indian sources caution that points 1 through 6 cut across existing defence and military supply agreements with the Kremlin, while point 13 undercuts the current Russian oil and gas supply trade with India.


Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/

Trump amplified this for Putin’s ear. “The prime minister and I also reached an important agreement on energy that will restore the United States as a leading supplier of oil and gas to India. It will be, hopefully, their number one supplier.”

Before the Special Military Operation began in February 2022, India imported 4.2 million barrels of crude oil per day: 24% came from Iraq, 16% from Saudi Arabia, 10% from the US; only 2% from Russia. By 2023, India was importing 4.6 mmbd of crude. During this period, the share of imports from Russia climbed to almost 40%, while Iraq’s share slipped to 20%, Saudi Arabia’s fell to 15%, and the United States’ dropped to 4%.


Source: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/

The Russian supplies of crude at a discount price dictated by US sanctions have also stimulated the Indian petroleum refining industry into re-exporting their products and enriching one of Modi’s leading political financiers, Mukesh Ambani.

An Indian investment banker qualifies. The Modi-Trump points don’t so much cut out the Russians, he says, as supplant them. “They will cover where Russians have defaulted. Indians have understood that Russians will be unreliable and the Russian market will not be beyond $10-15 billion of Indian goods. The US is the primary market now for India and will be if manufacturing shifts away from China slowly. On the other hand, Indians will never curtail Russians from competing and doing real business in India if they have the will and means to.”

Points 23, 24, 27 and 28 are also interpreted by Indian sources as strikes intended by Modi and agreed by Trump against both Putin’s and China’s President Xi Jinping’s Caspian Sea and Belt and Road trade movement plans, as well as against China’s military resistance to escalation of US pressure on China’s shipping lanes in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and around Taiwan.



Since 1967 ASEAN has been an anti-Russian, anti-Chinese alliance.
Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/

Trump was explicit, adding Israel whose war against Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iran is supported by Modi’s anti-Muslim domestic voters. “We agreed to work together,” said Trump, “to help build one of the greatest trade routes in all of history. It will run from India to Israel to Italy and onward to the United States, connecting our partners by ports, railways and undersea cables – many, many undersea cables.” In explicit payoff, it was announced that US Government funding for opposition parties and votes against Modi’s ruling BJP party has been cancelled.

Modi obtained this concession from Elon Musk who came to his meeting at the official Blair House residence for the Prime Minister with his girlfriend, his children, and a private business agenda that triggered corruption reports in the US media.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAut2426aX4

Modi’s direct and friendly interaction with the Musk children contrasts with the behavior of Trump who met with Musk and his son in the Oval Office later in the day. Indian and US sources have noted the contrast also. “To be sure,” commented one source off the record, “the Indians were taken by surprise at Musk's costume and entourage when they showed up at Blair House, but they were too politic to show it. Modi then acted towards the four-year old as you would expect from a human being, let alone a politician on camera. That Trump could not, was frozen when he had his meeting with the child, indicates to me that Trump is borderline psychotic.”

Ahead of Musk and Trump, Modi had met Tulsi Gabbard, the new US Director of National Intelligence (DNI). There has been extensive reporting of their meeting in the Indian press, but no official statement from the DNI. Indian sources and the Indian press noted that Gabbard is the first Hindu to hold a senior US intelligence post, and that in front of Trump she had taken her oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita.

The DNI ignored the Modi meeting. It then published the speech Gabbard gave the next day at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. “The challenges presented by Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea,” Gabbard identified the US intelligence community’s targets, “similarly demand a united front to advance the cause of peace, freedom, and prosperity. To deter aggression and maintain stability, we look forward to working closely with those who share those interests.”


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5WhGJeoAow

In this hour-long podcast, one of India’s highest-ranking artillerymen, Lieutenant-General (retired) P.R. (Ravi) Shankar, analyzes the convergence of Indian strategy with the Trump Administration’s China warfighting objectives. He is dismissive of what Trump says, recommending instead to concentrate on what the US is already doing and now planning. “We should not rely on [Trump],” Shankar adds. “We should rely on him not at all.”

In his Indian strategy, Shankar ignores Russia. Click to view.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/live/6xAwwcJGqn0

Commenting on Shankar and on Modi’s Washington meetings last week, an Indian political source says “the fine details of what Trump says and does , tariffs or no tariffs, are not all that much of a problem for us. What he is delivering is already a lot. The Indians in his administration are loyal to India. The Trump family – Ivanka in particular – is also very good with India. We know we can get a lot out of Trump; and at a minimum, stop the Canadian, USAID, Ford Foundation, and Soros interference in Indian domestic politics. Indian officials know also that the US will have to act in tandem with them on Pakistan and Bangladesh. Perhaps in Afghanistan, too. So the finer points of Trump’s unreliability and all Americans being made out of the same cloth does not really concern Indians. After all, what other world order is there for them to choose from? What alternative can Russia offer?”

A US source agrees with Shankar’s identification of the anti-Chinese objectives common to US and Indian strategy in talks at the moment. He faults Shankar for over-estimating Trump’s capacities and the resistance he is generating at home. “My read is that no one, including Shankar, appreciates how bad the situation is in the US nor how much better, ultimately, the Chinese will be to deal with. The Americans are not reliable.”

As for Trump, the source comments: “Look at what the dyed hair, the caked-on make-up, his wild eyes are signaling: since the Inauguration Trump’s decline has become more evident across the board. His repetition of the same points, over and over again, with one wild assertion after another, is also a clear sign that he is losing his mind. His condition is going to get worse, much, much worse, and soon. As that happens, the things happening in the name of ‘President Trump’s wishes’ will accelerate and grow worse.”

https://johnhelmer.net/modi-takes-his-b ... more-91104

Italics added. Yep