Month: August 2014

By Pradip Phanjoubam

In the wake of the continuing agitation for the implementation of the Inner Line Permit, ILP, system in Manipur in the belief that this would check the problem of immigration into the State, threatening to overturn the demographic balance in favour of settlers, here is an updated version of an article I had written earlier which may provide some more insight on this contentious issue. The Inner Line Permit system, as I had said in an earlier essay, was not an Act, but a Regulation. A Regulation unlike an Act is not a law made by the legislature, but a product of executive whip.

The original regulation which brought the ILP into life was called the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation 1873, precisely because after Assam was annexed into British India in 1826 after the Treaty of Yandaboo, it was made a province of the Bengal Presidency. Only in the next year, 1874, would Assam be severed from Bengal to be made a separate province, following an interesting and increasingly bitter clash of linguistic nationalisms between the Bengalis and Assamese. As expected, the Bengalis who were far advanced and exposed to the British system, came to dominate almost completely the Assam administration as well as its cultural spheres, and at one point influenced the British to even have Bengali declared the official language of Assam claiming Assamese was only a dialect of Bengali, understandably sowing the seeds of this linguistic hostility. In fact, there are many scholars who are of the opinion modern Assamese nationalism is a reaction to Bengali hegemony during the British days. We know this linguistic hostility, though much more nuanced and complex now, still exists, and that if not for this bitter antagonism, at the time of the Partition of India in 1947, the populous district of Sylhet in Bangladesh today, could have, and probably would have been awarded to India by the Radcliff Boundary Commission.

Without digressing too far, however, let me return to a more pointed discussion on the Inner Line Permit system.

The history of the Inner Line provides some rare insights into present frictions between hills and valley, an antagonism which is, as James C. Scott notes in his influential “The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchic History of Upland Southeast Asia”, a pattern throughout the South East Asia massif, a huge land mass beginning from Northeast India and running through the entire mountain regions of South East Asia and extending up to the south and south west regions of China, what he calls Zomia, a term coined by Dutch scholar Willem van Schendel in 2002 to refer to this region.

In a nutshell, unequal development was pre-destined by geography in these little theatres of hill-valley conflict. Because of the fertile river basins and easier communication, the valleys are where agricultural surpluses become a reality, and thereby the seeds of State formations germinate. The State after all, as Frederick Engels tells us in “The Origin of Family Private Property and State” (a classic which is now available for free download on the internet), can be interpreted as a bureaucratic mechanism to manage this surplus. This surplus was rare, if at all, in the Zomian hills, where subsistent agriculture, hunting and food gathering remained primarily the mode of economy. That is, till the advent of modern times, in the case of Northeast, when under the dispensation of the modern Indian State, a service economy (in particular of government services) came to be dominant – a blessing in many ways, for it has somewhat levelled out much of the existing inequalities in society determined by geography.

Scott’s treatment of the subject is often postured very provocatively. As for instance, many of his series of lectures on the subject prior to the publication of this book in question, including the one he delivered in the London School of Economics on May 22, 2008 (audio of full lecture available on internet), were titled “Why Civilisations Can’t Climb Hills: A Political History of Statelessness in Southeast Asia”. Otherwise, his theory of Zomia has been, as we all know, generally applauded and admired in the academic world. Nonetheless, while his identification of the genesis of the hill-valley frictions in Zomia is well received, his theory has been challenged for the portrayal of the nature of this friction.

Those of us who have read the book knows that in this friction, he describes the non-State hillmen as State evaders, who are abhorrent of the organised, hierarchic, regimented discipline of the bureaucracy which is a feature of the State, and would rather continue in their independent, though anarchic existence. They therefore consciously not only flee the State but also resist emergence of State like characteristics in their own communities. This is where many scholars disagree, and curiously many of these scholars, essentially Western scholars who are now looking at the Northeast with new interest (thanks to Scott), use the region as their alibi. While all agree there were clearly differentiated State and non-State spaces before the advent of modern economy, these scholars contend that though the State did not evolve in the hills, the latter were not always abhorrent of the State, and were in fact in envy of the security and economic abundance the State afforded its citizens. In other words the non-State also always had aspired to be State. They also did not flee the State as Scott presumed, but in their own ways, extracted benefits from the State.

This brief primer of Scott’s theory and its critiques is just to create the background against which I want to discuss a peculiar system in the pre-colonial State’s interaction with the non-State in Assam, for the valuable insights it provides to all valley-hill frictions, including in Manipur.

The Ahom kingdom was surrounded by non-State spaces of the wild hills where the Abors, Daflas, Singphos, Miris, Bhutias, Nagas etc lived. Here too, as sketched by Scott, the State and non-State spaces followed widely different economic modes – settled and very productive agriculture in the valley-State and subsistent existence in the non-State hills. There were commerce between the hills and valley at all other times at different haats or foothill markets, but in the lean seasons, there would be raids from the hills to capture food grains and often slave agricultural labour and others skilled in various economic activities. The Ahom rulers then would organise punitive expeditions to the recalcitrant hill villages, but it would be discovered these villagers were not keen on a confrontation and have abandoned their villages to take shelter elsewhere in the higher reaches of the mountain. The expedition party would then burn down the villages, recover whatever is found of the loots the hill raiders carried off earlier, and then return.

After the expedition has concluded, in no time the destroyed villages would be rebuilt, and sooner than later the haats at the foothills would open and the usual commerce between the hills and valley would commence, until the next lean season when raids from the hills could be expected. The cycle would hence be perpetrated. This sordid cyclic drama of war and peace of life in Zomia is probably what is also foretold in the popular Meitei verse which children sing in play: “nom nom sagai tong, chanaba leite takhel thang” (play and make merry while there is plenty, but if there is nothing to eat, pick up your swords). This in essence was the cruel predicament pre-determined by the hill-valley geography.

Probably in recognition of the inevitability of this geographical destiny, the Ahom State and the non-State hills through the aeons of living together evolved various mechanisms for conflict resolution. Of particular interest is the posa system of the Ahoms. By an understanding between the Ahom rulers and various hill chiefs, cultivators in the foothills would pay a percentage of their agricultural produces annually to the hill chiefs in their vicinity for the promise that they would not make raids in the valley through the course of the year. In other words, the Ahoms allowed a degree of suzerainty of certain hill chiefs over some valley villages, thereby avoiding the need for the perpetual destructive wars cycle. It was a system of multiple and overlapping suzerainty in which the Ahom rulers were recognized as the suzerains of hills and plains, and on smaller local canvases, hill chiefs were allowed to be suzerains over nearby valley villages on definite agreed terms. These terms too changed periodically.

When the British took over Assam in 1826, they inherited all of what was once the Ahom’s, including the posa system. But in the British vocabulary, there was nothing to describe the posa except as “blackmail”. What had then become a custom symbolising an amicable hill-valley relationship evolved through necessity, was suddenly given a legalistic meaning. As Assamese scholar, Bodhisattva Kar points out, with an expanding tea industry, the British soon learnt the benefits of allowing this “blackmail” to continue through the back door and avoid skirmishes. They also soon gave it a reinterpretation by which to turn the table of this “blackmail” equation against the hill chiefs.

An Inner Line was drawn to segregate the State from non-State, law from no-law, hill from valley, tax-paying region from non-paying ones, capital from pre-capital regions, (Kar) and was finally made official in 1873 by the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation. There were campaigns against the Inner Line at the time, especially by tea planters and other business prospectors in the hills, who wanted the government to extend its law to all of the hills so they can benefit from the protection, but the British government saw no reason for it immediately. They were supreme revenue managers and were not eager to extend their presence in territories which did not promise them revenue, or else pose immediate security threats. Take this example to illustrate this point. In 1826 after defeating the Burmese and eliminating a Burmese threat from the east convincingly, the British even withdrew its regular Army from Assam which they had brought in during the 1826 war, on the logic that it was not cost effective, as no formidable threats to its territory remained in Assam. Instead they chose to manage Assam with a people’s militia, an ingenious innovation of the British administration, and raised the Cachar Levy in 1835. This militia, we all know, ultimately grew and became, first the Assam Military Police, and then the formidable Assam Rifles at the end of the First World War.

So the Inner Line stayed, prohibiting free interaction between valley and hills. The British administration also monetise the posa system, and the annual customary payment in kind in terms of agricultural produces was ended and instead the payments were made as fixed sums of money. This tied the hill villages to the vagaries of the market, its inflation, commodities fluctuations etc, besides formalising and bureaucratising the tradition, exposing the hill chiefs to red-tapism, corruption etc of the government’s clerical world, until finally they came to be held at ransom under the posa.

The British were ultimately to extend their law directly to the hills beyond the Inner Line, taking over the Lushai Hills and the Naga Hills, but the developments that led to this policy necessity is not within the scope of this essay to cover. Hopefully however, this article would have given IFP readers some material at least to ponder on how, unimaginative transportation of age old customs evolved through experience to ensure social harmony, into rigid legal spheres can cause dangerous disruptions of relations between traditional societies. The bitterness in the hill-divide in Manipur probably can also be seen and understood from this vantage, hopefully giving it some sobering balm for the benefit of all.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/08/the-fascinating-norms-that-governed-the-land-before-the-inner-line/

By B.G. Verghese

The deliberate fanning of politically motivated communal discord in UP and elsewhere is both disgusting and alarming but cannot condone Rahul Gandhi’s storming the well of the LokSabha and disrupting proceedings last week. It was in order for him to demand a discussion on the communal situation but not at the cost of Question Hour instead of thereafter. The Speaker was not unreasonable in firmly disallowing this demand and Rahul, who is irregular in attending Parliament and seen snoozing when present there, had no business to insist on a here-and-now discussion or none at all.

Communal harmony cannot be protected or promoted by disrupting Parliamentand to cite the BJP’s own boorish and disgraceful behaviour in blocking all debate session after session in the last LokSabha is irrelevant. If Rahul was trying to project his “leadership” to his own increasingly disgruntled and even rebellious ranks, he singularly failed once again. Nor was ArunJaitley’s snide riposte on this account justified in view of his party’s past record in wrecking parliamentary proceedings.

Nonetheless, the deliberate stoking of communal tensions, not least by the BJP-Parivar, SP, BSP and even the Congress, is playing with fire. An analysis of police records by the Indian Express indicates that 600 communal incidents have been registered in UP since the recent general elections, almost two-thirds in and around 12 constituencies scheduled to go to the polls shortly. Many appear to have been instigated by outsiderswithdisputes over land, construction or repair of religious places, the installation and use of loudspeakers for calls to prayer and worship, and alleged cases of using eve-teasing and elopement being used as triggers.

Music and processions have long been used as forms of community assertion and to mobilise religious mobs and demonstrate street power. Lumpens, fanatics andpoliticians wait to stir rented piety to mob fury. Punishments are late and light, leading to impunity and immunity. Parliament should and must take note of these divisive trends. In all of this, the prime minister has been silent and silence will increasingly be read as consent.

Great indignation has been expressed by some over a Supreme Court judge’s remark that were he a dictator he would make readings from the Gita and Mahabharata compulsory in junior schooling. The remark has got “secularists” frothing. Maybe the idea was crudely put, but the Judge is right. Children should be made familiar with them not as part of religious learning texts but as great and uplifting moral and cultural texts, philosophical treatises, wonderful poetry and enthralling literature.Children should equally be exposed to stories from the Bible, the life of the Prophet and Islamic traditions, the Buddha, Mahavir, Nanak and learn of other faiths and sages that are part of our life and culture. Not to know anything of these treasures is to be illiterate and uncultured. Unfortunately our totally skewed definition of “secularism”, increasingly hollowed out by vote-bank politics, has been reduced to “equal respect for everybody’s communalism”.

There has been another perverse debate and decision on the civil service aptitude test. The Centre has decided to exclude the 22 marks hitherto given for simple English comprehension while determining selection grades so that students from the Hindi stream have a level playing field! There havenot unexpectedlybeen protests from Tamil, Oriya and other Indian language speakers. Why debase standards? The CSAT English paper translates steel plants aslohakepedand the North Pole asUttariKhamba!Do not condone such nonsense, which is what the Centre seems to be doing under Dina NathBatra’s advice as it is precisely his formulation in a PIL that the Government appears to have adopted.

Here again, the undeclared tragedy is that successive Governments have had no language policy. Article 351 has been treated with contempt, no Hindi-made-easylearning aids have been produced, Hindi teaching and propagation have not been incentivised, inter-lingual dictionaries from Hindi into Tamil, Assamese,Kannada, Oriya or whatever are either not, or not easily, available. Translations are limited. Standard keyboards are rare if they exist at all. Simultaneous interpretation facilities are grossly inadequate. The official language committee goes globe-trotting and has a wonderful time but has done nothing of consequence whatsoever.

Parliament has meanwhile taken adverse not of Tendulkar and Rekha’s studied absence from the RajyaSabha of which they have been nominated members for two years. Tendulkar has made three appearances and Rekha seven over this period. Tendulkar says his brother had surgery? When and for how long? And did that prevent him gallivanting around the world, watching cricket, going to Wimbledon, attending commercial brand ambassador functions, opening malls and so forth – everywhere exceptParliament.

Nomination to the RajyaSabha is not a trophy or award but a highly privileged call to participate in national governance and oversight. Both Tendulkar and Rekha were wrongly selected for all the wrong reasons. In Tendulkar’s case, he had erred in fighting to get a very expensive gifted Ferrari into the country without paying customs duty and had overstayed his cricket innings, playing Tests for glory for nearly a year to get his elusive 100th test century at the cost of shutting out younger talent. And now having availed of all the benefits of RajyaSabha membership and scorned attendance in the House, the only honourable option left to him is to resign his seat. The Parliament of India cannot be reduced to a joke and government’s must learn to make less frivolous nominations.

The same must be said about the appointment of Governors. Raj Bhavans are not dharamsalas for the fallen and faithful or perches from which to dislodge or embarrass elected state governments. If a number of UPA appointed governors have been crudely dismissed by the new BJP regime, the appointments made by the latter are as disappointing. There are of course honourable exceptions but the selection of governors has by and large ignored their true constitutional role.

The dismissal of KamlaBeniwal is a particularly bad case of vindictiveness and pettiness. If she is charged with alleged corruption over several years, why was she summarily transferred from Gujarat, where she was a thorn in the side of Mr Modi, to Mizoram within weeks of her retirement? And what message did that send Mizoram and the Northeast generally?

Increasing efforts by the Modi government to control the judiciary and bureaucracy do not augur well. The latest news is that the DG of the Press Information Bureau has been removed for issuing dinner invitations to media persons in her name and not in that of the Minister, PrakashJavdekar. Simultaneously, while an already crippled PrasarBharati had had the head of Doordarshan’s news division put on “compulsory wait” since he edited Mr Modi’s interview during the recent general election in an allegedly partisan manner. This is post-facto censorship by other means.

www.bgverghese.com

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/08/unhealthy-trends/

By Chitra Ahanthem

Isn’t it interesting that even as technological, scientific and medical advances are now able to ward off various diseases and infections, some find a way of making their deadly presence felt? The latest public health scare is currently the Ebola outbreak of East Africa, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared as an international health emergency. Mention may be made that it is only for the third time that WHO has declared a public health emergency of international concern, after the H1N1 outbreak, commonly called swine flu that broke out in 2008, and the ongoing polio outbreak in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The other side of development and progress is that geographical boundaries open up and there is more interpersonal interactions that fuel the growth of the spread of infections. To cite an example, when an epidemic of plague or cholera or such broke out in a particular town or village in an earlier era, the most that the infection could travel would be to towns or villages or cities in the immediate surroundings. But the same outbreak now in this time and age of increased person to person interactions and more people being congregated at markets, airports and train stations mean that the spread of infection is increased manifold.

Another very interesting feature with viral outbreaks is that they are most deadly at its break out point and time and then go into a stupor, waking up again in either a more deadly version or a weaker strain. This happened with the H1N1 virus that took a heavy toll in terms of public health leading to a huge medical scare that eventually led to the imposition of strong medications as a generic treatment measure with no importance given on its life threatening side effects with no mention yet again on the fact that a majority of people infected by swine flu recovered without any medical treatment. I still remember the knee jerk reactions around me when lab tests confirmed that I was positive for swine flu and yes, I still have the medicines that were given to me: the ones that I refused to take because I felt that it was risk worth taking. But no, it was not easy to take that stand since the large scale fear prevailing then was that swine flu was infectious and the mortality rates were reported as being high. Of course, what made it easy for me to decide was largely the condition of the isolation ward at the hospital where I had gone to give my sample (the room had live vermin and germs that came out of the bathroom!) and then the volume of resources that I had access to (mostly online) with regard to the nature of swine flu and its implication on the human body.

What is happening now is that with more infections taking place all around us (due to more people being interconnected), there is first and foremost a tendency for a large scare that in turn creates pressure on health and state authorities to respond to the situation. It happened when the first cases of HIV/AIDS were being reported in the country: largely considered to be of foreign origin, the Ministry of Health actually sent out a directive that entry of foreign nationals would be curbed! The fall out of a public health emergency and the scare that follows it, the risks and trails undertaken by health workers along with the economic sidelight that pharma companies enjoys: all of these and more have been well portrayed in Steven Soderbergh’s acclaimed film that came out in 2011, ‘Contagion’. The film largely captured various nuances of the swine flu and earlier SARS outbreak and featured a fictional viral pandemic, the mad rush to ascertain its origin, the politics behind finding a cure and then deciding who gets the medicine first before it would get on the public domain. A viewing of this film would be largely educational as it narrates quite well the various push and pull factors that come into play when a global pandemic strikes. And call it a continuation of the debate over whether life imitates fiction or fiction imitates life for the questions that this 2011 film threw up is still relevant today with reports of yet to be approved medicines for the Ebola outbreak being a good therapy but unavailable to all outside of the well to do nations.

End-point:

When international health agencies come in with declarations of emergency etc, it means that governments tend to wake up though sometimes not in the best way as happened when HIV/AIDS was reported or even with the generalizations in the wake of the swine flu epidemic. But one aspect of viral infections is that it can be prevented or made weaker by one basic act: that of washing our hands and keeping them clean. This is easier said than done since the amount of interaction with people and things that are touched by different people (starting from doors and furniture to vehicles, utensils and buildings) is mind boggling. Then again, the entry of hand sanitizers in the consumer market today bodes well for people who want to keep away viruses, which are on the look out for a potential victim. And now, shopkeepers stocking hand sanitizers can thank me if their stocks of the same fly away from their shelves!

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/08/a-movie-and-a-viral-outbreak/