Open Letter on Military Offensive in Central India

by Dollars and Sense

We encourage readers of D&S and the D&S blog to consider signing the following open letter. Hat-tip to our friend Taki. —cs

Sanhati (www.sanhati.com), a collective of activists/academics who have been working in solidarity with peoples’ movements in India by providing information and analysis, took the initiative to bring together voices from around the world against the Government of India’s planned military offensive in Central India. A statement (Hindi, Bengali, and Telugu versions are available on our website) and a background note were drafted in consultation with Indian activists, and duly circulated for endorsement. Readers are encouraged to endorse the statement by e-mailing sanhatiindia [at] sanhati [dot] com with their full name and affiliation.

To:
Dr. Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister,
Government of India,
South Block, Raisina Hill,
New Delhi,
India-110 011

We are deeply concerned by the Indian government’s plans for launching an unprecedented military offensive by army and paramilitary forces in the adivasi (indigeneous people)-populated regions of Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa and West Bengal states. The stated objective of the offensive is to “liberate” these areas from the influence of Maoist rebels. Such a military campaign will endanger the lives and livelihoods of millions of the poorest people living in those areas, resulting in massive displacement, destitution and human rights violation of ordinary citizens. To hunt down the poorest of Indian citizens in the name of trying to curb the shadow of an insurgency is both counter-productive and vicious. The ongoing campaigns by paramilitary forces, buttressed by anti-rebel militias, organised and funded by government agencies, have already created a civil war like situation in some parts of Chattisgarh and West Bengal, with hundreds killed and thousands displaced. The proposed armed offensive will not only aggravate the poverty, hunger, humiliation and insecurity of the adivasi people, but also spread it over a larger region.

Grinding poverty and abysmal living conditions that has been the lot of India’s adivasi population has been complemented by increasing state violence since the neoliberal turn in the policy framework of the Indian state in the early 1990s. Whatever little access the poor had to forests, land, rivers, common pastures, village tanks and other common property resources has come under increasing attack by the Indian state in the guise of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and other “development” projects related to mining, industrial development, Information Technology parks, etc. The geographical terrain, where the government’s military offensive is planned to be carried out, is very rich in natural resources like minerals, forest wealth and water, and has been the target of large scale appropriation by several corporations. The desperate resistance of the local indigenous people against their displacement and dispossession has in many cases prevented the government-backed corporations from making inroads into these areas. We fear that the government’s offensive is also an attempt to crush such popular resistances in order to facilitate the entry and operation of these corporations and to pave the way for unbridled exploitation of the natural resources and the people of these regions. It is the widening levels of disparity and the continuing problems of social deprivation and structural violence, and the state repression on the non-violent resistance of the poor and marginalized against their dispossession, which gives rise to social anger and unrest and takes the form of political violence by the poor. Instead of addressing the source of the problem, the Indian state has decided to launch a military offensive to deal with this problem: kill the poor and not the poverty, seems to be the implicit slogan of the Indian government.

We feel that it would deliver a crippling blow to Indian democracy if the government tries to subjugate its own people militarily without addressing their grievances. Even as the short-term military success of such a venture is very doubtful, enormous misery for the common people is not in doubt, as has been witnessed in the case of numerous insurgent movements in the world. We urge the Indian government to immediately withdraw the armed forces and stop all plans for carrying out such military operations that has the potential for triggering a civil war which will inflict widespread misery on the poorest and most vulnerable section of the Indian population and clear the way for the plundering of their resources by corporations. We call upon all democratic-minded people to join us in this appeal.

*************

The unabridged list of signatories is available at sanhati.com.

National Signatories:

Arundhati Roy, Author and Activist, India
Amit Bhaduri, Professor Emeritus, Center for Economic Studies and Planning, JNU, India
Sandeep Pandey, Social Activist, N.A.P.M., India
Manoranjan Mohanty, Durgabai Deshmukh Professor of Social Development, Council for Social Development, India
Prashant Bhushan, Supreme Court Advocate, India
Nandini Sundar, Professor of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India
Colin Gonzalves, Supreme Court Advocate, India
Arvind Kejriwal, Social Activist, India
Arundhati Dhuru, Activist, N.A.P.M., India
Swapna Banerjee-Guha, Department of Geography, University of Mumbai, India
Anand Patwardhan, Film Maker, India
Dipankar Bhattachararya, General Secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, India
Bernard D’Mello, Associate Editor, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), India
Sumit Sarkar, Retired Professor of History, Delhi University, India
Tanika Sarkar, Professor of History, J.N.U., India
Gautam Navlakha, Consulting Editor, Economic and Political Weekly, India
Madhu Bhaduri, Ex-ambassador
Sumanta Banerjee, Writer, India
Dr. Vandana Shiva, Philosopher, Writer, Environmental Activist, India
M.V. Ramana, Visiting Research Scholar, Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy; Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University, USA
Dipanjan Rai Chaudhari, Retired Professor, Presidency College, India
G. N. Saibaba, Assistant Professor, University of Delhi
Amit Bhattacharyya, Professor, Department of History. Jadavpur University, Kolkata
D.N. Jha, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Delhi, India
Paromita Vohra, Devi Pictures
Sunil Shanbag, Theater Director
Saroj Giri, Lecturer in Political Science, Delhi University, India
Sudeshna Banerjee, Department of History, Jadavpur University, India
Achin Chakraborty, Professor of Economics, Institute of Development Studies, Calcutta University Alipore, India
Anand Chakravarty, Retired Professor, Delhi University, India
Anjan Chakrabarti, Professor of Economics, Calcutta University, India
Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta, Professor, Jadavpur University, India
Uma Chakravarty, Retired Professor, Delhi University, India
Kunal Chattopadhyay, Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, India
Amiya Dev, Emiritus Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, India
Subhash Gatade, Writer and Social Activisit, India
Abhijit Guha, Vidyasagar University, India
Kavita Krishnan, AIPWA, India
Gauri Lankesh, Editor, Lankesh Patrike, India
Pulin B. Nayak, Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University, India
Imrana Qadeer, Retired Professor, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, J.N.U., India
Neshant Quaiser, Associate Professor, Jamia Millia Islamia, Central University, Department of Sociology, India
Ramdas Rao, President, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Bangalore Unit, India
Shereen Ratnagar, Retired Professor, Center for Historical Studies, JNU, India
Rahul Varman, Professor, Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, IIT Kanpur, India
Padma Velaskar, Professor, Center for Studies in the Sociology of Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India

*************

International Signatories:

Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, M.I.T., USA
David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, The C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center, USA
Michael Lebowitz, Director, Program in Transformative Practice and Human Development, Centro Internacional Mirana, Venezuela
John Bellamy Foster, Editor of Monthly Review and Professor of Sociology,University of Oregon Eugene,USA
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor and Director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University, USA
James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science, Yale University, USA
Michael Watts, Professor of Geography and Development Studies, University of California Berkeley, USA
Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government, Departments of Anthropoogy and Political Science, Columbia University, USA
Mira Nair, Filmmaker, Mirabai Films, USA
Howard Zinn, Historian, Playwright, and Social Activisit, USA
Abha Sur, Women’s Studies, M.I.T., USA
Richard Peet, Professor of Geography, Clark University, USA
Richard Levins, John Rock Professor of Population Sciences, Harvard University, USA
Gilbert Achcar, Professor of Development Studies and International Relations, School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London, U.K
Massimo De Angelis, Professor of Political Economy, University of East London, UK
Gyanendra Pandey, Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History, Emory University, USA
Brian Stross, Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas Austin, USA
J. Mohan Rao, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA
Vinay Lal, Professor of History & Asian American Studies, University of California Los Angeles, USA
James Crotty, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Haluk Gerger, Political Scientist, Activist, Political Prisoner, Turkey
Justin Podur, Journalist, Canada
Hari Kunzru, Novelist, U.K.
Louis Proyect, Columbia University
Biju Mathew, Associate Professor, Rider University, USA
Balmurli Natrajan, Campaign to Stop Funding Hate and South Asia Solidarity Initiative, USA
Harsh Kapoor, South Asia Citizens Web
Kim Berry, Professor of Women’s Studies, Humboldt State University, USA
Shefali Chandra, Professor of South Asian History, Washington University at St Louis, USA
Angana Chatterji, Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, USA
Stan Cox, Senior Scientist, The Land Institute, USA
Martin Doornbos, Professor Emeritus, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, Netherlands
Robert A Hueckstedt, Professor, University of Virginia, USA
Louis Kampf, Professor of Literature Emeritus, MIT, USA
Emily Kawano, Director, Center for Popular Economics, USA
Arthur MacEwan, Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA
Bill Martin, Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University, USA
Ali Mir, Professor, William Paterson University, USA
Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, Longman Professor of English, Oberlin College, USA
Kavita Philip, Associate Professor, University of California, Irvine, USA
Nicholas De Genova, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Latino Studies, Columbia University, USA
Peter Custers, Academic researcher on militarisation, Netherlands
Radha D’Souza, School of Law, University of Westminster , UK
Chris Sturr, co-editor, Dollars & Sense magazine, Boston, USA

Labels: India, Manmohan Singh, Sanhati, West Bengal

 

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10/20/2009 04:05:00 PM 0 comments

 

HR Manager Beaten to Death by Angry Workers

by Dollars and Sense

From CNN/Asia. Yikes!

By Harmeet Shah Singh | Wednesday, September 23 2009

NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- Angry workers beat to death a human resources vice president after he laid off 42 employees at an auto-parts manufacturing company in southern India, police said Wednesday.

Roy George was vice-president for human resources at Pricol, the auto-parts company.

Some four to five workers, belonging to a union not recognized by the company, barged into his office and beat him up with iron rods, said N. Kannan, a police superintendent of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu state.

George, 47, died from his head injuries Tuesday, Kannan told CNN.

Police have arrested nine people and are expected to round up more.

Last year the Indian head of an Italian company died after allegedly being beaten by a mob of sacked employees.

More than 60 people were charged with the murder of the chief executive of Graziano Transmissioni near New Delhi.

Earlier this month, India's Jet Airways had to cancel hundreds of flights after pilots struck work over the sacking of two of their colleagues in August.

Companies in the South Asian nation, despite its rapid economic growth in recent years, have often been faced with tough labor issues because of archaic laws and company policies on hiring and retrenchment.

Business consultants in India blame such labor standoffs on what they call lack of transparency in retrenchment or layoff policies.

Hiring and firing conditions are often not explained to workers by their companies, said Rajeev Karwal, founding-director of Milagrow Business and Knowledge Solutions.

Issues could spiral out of control if the businesses and bureaucrats are seen in a "corrupt nexus" by the employees seeking reprieve from labor authorities, he said.

Labels: human resources, India, layoffs

 

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9/24/2009 01:37:00 PM 0 comments

 

Oligarchs' Threat To Indian Democracy

by Dollars and Sense

Nice FT piece from yesterday:

Brotherly shoveBy Joe Leahy
Financial Times
Published: August 11 2009 20:40 | Last updated: August 11 2009 20:40

Murli Deora, India's oil minister, normally relaxes by playing bridge at the weekend with his wife and friends. But in recent weeks, a rather less genteel contest than that has been intruding on his free time.

Mr Deora was a close confidant of Dhirubhai Ambani, the rags-to-riches entrepreneur who built his Reliance polyester group into a corporate titan but died in 2002 without leaving a will. This sparked a succession war between his sons Anil and Mukesh, now Asia's richest siblings.

Dropping into Mr Deora's Mumbai home one weekend in June after his customary jog on the seafront, Anil Ambani complained to "uncle" about how he believed Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries was trying to corner the spoils of the KG Basin, a giant gas field discovered by the group off India’s east coast in 2000, says a person familiar with the matter.

Late last month, frustrated by suspicions that the minister was siding with his brother in the dispute, Anil Ambani went public. He used the podium of the annual meeting of one of his companies, Reliance Natural Resources, to lambast Mukesh’s Reliance Industries and the oil ministry.

The nationally televised onslaught--and the release of an earlier letter to Manmohan Singh, prime minister, that contained the same allegations--sent reverberations through the halls of power in New Delhi and has elevated the long-running Ambani succession war into an issue of national importance.

"Motivated by corporate greed, RIL [Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries] is dishonourably trying every trick in the book to get out of its binding commercial obligations," Anil alleged later in e-mailed answers to questions from the Financial Times. (Mukesh Ambani and Reliance Industries declined to comment for this article.) Not only is the row, which is being heard in the Supreme Court in New Delhi, threatening to disrupt sales from the KG Basin, India’s most important natural resource discovery in decades, but it has also raised questions about how business is done in the world's fastest-growing large economy after China.

Read the rest of the article

Labels: Ambani family, development economics, energy, India, infrastructure, Manmohan Singh, natural resources, project finance

 

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8/13/2009 01:49:00 PM 0 comments

 

Analysis of Indian Election Results

by Dollars and Sense

From D&S collective member Smriti Rao; I am posting this belatedly:

India-watchers across the world celebrated the unexpectedly strong victory of the Congress-party–led coalition in Indian elections, interpreting it as a victory for centrism over extremism of both the religious and (left) economic kind. Journalists for the mainstream press in the west seemed as relieved about the poor performance of the left parties in India as they were about the defeat of the right-wing nationalist party, the BJP. Every report on the Indian elections seems to end by predicting that the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, can now push forward with reforms—the codeword for economic liberalization—now that his hands are no longer 'tied' by a strong Left party presence in the government.

And yet, as these same journalists attempt to explain why the Congress won, they usually point to India’s relative insulation from the current economic crash—a result of its moderation in the pursuit of economic liberalization (staying away from further financial sector liberalization, for example)—and its institution of some social safety net programs—particularly a national employment guarantee scheme in rural India. As left commentator Vijay Prashad points out, both 'achievements' were at least partly the result of pressure from the very same Left parties these journalists seem to criticize as holding India back and neither would suggest that this government should interpret its victory as a mandate for further liberalization. (See this Counterpunch article.)

The recent appointment of Congress Party veteran Pranab Mukherjee as Finance minister suggests that while the Prime Minister is planning to push the liberalization process forward, he may be willing to proceed cautiously. While Mukherjee cut his political teeth in the Congress' socialist days, he is best known for being a political survivor, able to reinvent himself as the environment around him changes. He was instrumental in pushing forward the recent nuclear deal with the US—a far cry from the days when political upheavals in India were routinely attributed by the Congress Party to the foreign hand' of the US. And he is clearly on board with the broad idea of economic reforms—the government yesterday announced it was considering removing its decades-long program of subsidizing gas prices (see this Reuters report). However, unlike one of the other possible candidates for the Finance Ministry post, he is not considered a free-market ideologue. Let us hope he, and the Prime Minister, vindicate the faith the Indian voter has placed in them.

Labels: BJP, Congress Party, elections, India, Manmohan Singh, neoliberalism

 

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6/08/2009 07:24:00 PM 0 comments

 

Mass Suicide By Broke Indian Farmers

by Dollars and Sense

From the wires:

Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.

The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.

"The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago," Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine

"Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well."

Mr Sahu lives in a district that recorded 206 farmer suicides last year. Police records for the district add that many deaths occur due to debt and economic distress.

In another village nearby, Beturam Sahu, who owned two acres of land was among those who committed suicide. His crop is yet to be harvested, but his son Lakhnu left to take up a job as a manual labourer.

His family must repay a debt of £400 and the crop this year is poor.

"The crop is so bad this year that we will not even be able to save any seeds," said Lakhnu's friend Santosh. "There were no rains at all."

"That's why Lakhnu left even before harvesting the crop. There is nothing left to harvest in his land this time. He is worried how he will repay these loans."

Bharatendu Prakash, from the Organic Farming Association of India, told the Press Association: "Farmers' suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no option other than death."

Mr Prakash added that the government ought to take up the cause of the poor farmers just as they fight for a strong economy.

"Development should be for all. The government blames us for being against development. Forest area is depleting and dams are constructed without proper planning.

All this contributes to dipping water levels. Farmers should be taken into consideration when planning policies," he said.

Labels: Farming, India, poverty, suicide

 

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4/17/2009 03:44:00 PM 0 comments

 

Just What We Need: Another Mega-Scandal

by Dollars and Sense

This time in India's Vaunted IT Outsourcing Industry, which has contracted with much of the Fortune 500, as well as the World Bank, and in which an even greater premium is put on trust than is the case with most other industries. From the Financial Times:

Satyam lifts the lid on Indian corporate fraud

By John Elliott
Financial Times
Published: January 8 2009 10:43 | Last updated: January 8 2009 10:43

I have often mentioned to businessmen visiting India how remarkable it is that many of the appalling business practices of the country's traditional old family-controlled companies do not seem to have spread to the booming software sector--and then add that I wonder whether there are some skeletons in unopened IT cupboards.

If I am talking very privately, I have mentioned Satyam, rated till today as India's fourth biggest software and outsourcing company, as one whose governance has been frequently questioned.

This week's resignation and confession of fraud--vastly inflating company results for "several years"--by Ramalinga Raju, Satyam's founder and chairman, means the company can now be openly named for dubious business practices that have concerned (some) investors in the past. (It also means that Satyam is presumably not India's fourth largest IT company and should not have been rated along with the other market leaders Infosys, Wipro and TCS.)

Raju has admitted inflating the figures--for example by well over $1bn in September --and has admitted that his attempt to merge the family's Maytas construction companies into Satyam last month "was the last attempt to fill the fictitious assets with real ones". (The Maytas attempted merger, aborted after about ten hours triggered a series of events that culminated in today's news).

Read the rest of the article

Labels: financial crisis, India, Information Technology, Ramalinga Raju, Satyam

 

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1/08/2009 08:54:00 PM 0 comments

 

Outsourcing Corporate Crime To India

by Dollars and Sense

The CEO of one of India's largest outsourcing companies, Satyam (Irony alert: the word means "truth" in Sanskrit), has resigned in what may be the country's largest case of corporate fraud. Analysts are likening it to the Enron scandal. The New York Stock Exchange halted trading on the stock after the news broke.

Ramalinga Raju, company founder and now ex-CEO, announced in a statement that about $1 billion (or 94%) in cash on the company's book was fictitious.

The company's auditors, US-based PricewaterhouseCoopers, said they are "looking into the matter."

The World Bank, one of the firm's major clients, recently cut off business relations citing "improper benefits" given to Bank officials.

The company was recently recognized with a "Golden Peacock" award for corporate governance by an Indian business association.

Early reports indicate that the accounting scandal could spread quickly to other firms and imperil India's huge outsourcing industry.

A full report from Reuters is here.

Labels: Corporate Fraud, Corporate Swindles, India, outsourcing

 

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1/07/2009 05:11:00 PM 3 comments