Call it the seven year itch but the cruel Covid summer 2021 has brought Prime Minister Modi to the crossroads. From the euphoria of 2014 on the wings of hope and trust a chai-wallah made his debut on national stage, down riding the crest of popularity wave in 2019 of saab ka saath, saab ka vikas, saab ka vishwas which would lead India on a path of growth, displaying his muscular 56-inches chhathi to metamorphosing as a Himalayan hermitage sage in 2021.

May 30 marked seven years of the Modi Sarkar wherein he dazzled the country with brilliance, his oratory skills, decisiveness and battled with bull. A colossal Pied Piper to whose tune millions banged thaalis, clapped and light diyas.‘s If his first tenure was about ‘Swachch Bharat’ to ‘Make in India’, now it’s Aatma Nirbhar, and ‘Go vocal on local,’ NaMo’s progress is a study in chutzpah and grandeur.

Yet, there are visible signs that the war against Covid 19 seems to have dimmed Modi’s sheen in the face of death and devastation and gut-wrenching grief. Amidst the public aakrosh of dead corpses floating in the Ganga, stink of unclaimed bodies, burning pyres, smoked-out crematoriums, grieving families is a reminder of a putrefying political system where citizens totals statistical numbers.

The goodwill of ushering in aachche din has slowly dissipated. Modi seems to be floundering as the messiah of progress and modernity. Today, he seems unsure, uneasy whereby his emotional appeal and tears don’t seem to move even his ardent admirers with an increasingly angry and restive janata demanding answers.

Questionably, has his luck and leadership run out? Can the Prime Minister brush under the carpet that he and the BJP are to blame for the mess they are in today. Will the seven-year itch affect Modi as it did his predecessors Indira Gandhi in 1973-74 and Manmohan Singh in 2011? Will his dream run at the hustings continue? Is NaMo vincible?

Undoubtedly, the second wave has dented Modi’s image and the Government’s credibility in hard political currency. The glossy Teflon-coated protective veil around the Modi persona has been lifted and a governance deficit of callousness and mismanagement exposed. A floundering vaccine policy, lack of hospital beds, medicines, oxygen et al.

So what went wrong? Everything. Sadly, the Government has none but itself to blame for the incredible mess it finds itself in even as it fobs it off on an “pervasive, unaccountable “system”. The BJP tries distractive old tricks by creating a Congress ‘toolkit’ controversy and the Hindutva fountainhead RSS launches a campaign “Hum Jeetenge” and “Positivity Unlimited” to counter ‘negativity’ and apply balm but it comes across as insensitive and jarring.

Worse, it forgot that power is 99% perception and rightly or wrongly, Modi, his ministerial brood and the Party is perceived as arrogant and brash dictatorial running a one-man rock band albeit concentrating power in the PMO. A one-way street full of staccato monologue, no dialogue and questions are a strict no-no.

Certainly, Brand Modi has taken a hit. Asserted a senior BJP leader, “The pandemic has exposed the widening gaps between the Government and Party, denting their reputations. The winding up of additional capacity in Delhi in February as cases were rising in Maharashtra and Kerala, demonstrated our lack of anticipation compounded by the absence of Ministers, MPs, MLAs and workers from the scene to provide relief and aid.”

The coming months pose a stiff challenge. The Government’s future hinges on how quickly and effectively it addresses the issue of mass vaccination of people specially belonging to marginalized and poorer sections of society. Given the pandemic could upset the BJP’s ideological and electoral applecart.

Politically, next year will be decisive as seven States go to polls: UP, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Himachal, Punjab, Goa and Manipur against the backdrop of a relentless Covid shadow. The stakes in UP and five others barring Punjab are high as it promises to become a referendum and a litmus test on the BJP more so post the West Bengal defeat which has dented the Modi-Shah image of invincibility. Consequently retaining these States is vital.

His second challenge is a course correction of the economy. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy rural unemployment rate touched 13.5%, urban joblessness rose to 17.4% totaling a national new high of 14.7% last week. The annual GDP performance in 2020 crashed to -8.0%, the worst amongst all developing nations (Bangladesh grew at 3.8% in 2020). Add to this, rising oil prices, consumers buying less and a slowing economy. Clearly, bread-and-butter issues are back on the economic delivery table. Modi in 2014 had asked for 10 years to put India on track, let’s see.
Paradoxically, even as Covid 19 gives the moribund Opposition a unique opportunity to put Modi on the mat, hold him accountable and resurrect itself, it is too timorous to claim it. Primarily, because of the disarray within the Congress, the largest Opposition Party which has largely been in suspended animation wherein Sonia-Rahul look more like a bunch of stricken virus patients than like determined champions of the democratic mandate to hold the Government to account.

Their failure to seize the opportunity or the collective Opposition’s unwilling to confront and corner the Government on substantive issues of mishandling the second wave, economic mismanagement to demand accountability along-with the TINA (there is no alternative) factor has ensured that Modi retains his macho numero uno and still enjoys goodwill.

Of course, he is no magician as he has to live up to huge expectations generated by his 3D media campaign on social and digital networking sites, twitter, U tube etc. His task is not enviable and the burden enormous given our fickle and unforgiving voters. Much is expected of him.

Startlingly, Modi has still to address key developmental issues that continue to exercise people: law and order, preventing crime against women and children, inflation, illiteracy and ill-health which are the touchstone of the much-hyped and illusionary deal of roti, kapada aur makan. Look at the irony. Cellphones go abegging, yet people continue to beg for food.

Ultimately, much will depend upon Modi’s political will and priorities in the weeks and months ahead. He knows only too well staying ahead is the name of the game. The leader who survives is the one that rises to meet the moment, who has the wisdom to recognize the threat and the will to turn it back, and does so before it is too late.

Undeniably Modi is still the BJP’s best bet despite his trust quotient and credibility taking a beating vis-à-vis handling of the pandemic. It remains to be seen if the Pradhan Sevak will rise to the occasion as by the term his term ends in 2024, a quarter of the 21st century will already have gone by. The electorate has presented him a historic opportunity. Yet he needs to remember a Hindi idiom: “Bhooka Pait Bhajan Nahin Hoth Gopala” (Lord I cannot sing to you on an empty stomach.) Today, the nation needs a healing touch. Will he apply the much needed balm? Time will tell. — Courtesy The Dispatch

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Picked up from his house in the Kupwara district of Kashmir, Mr Mir was then in prison for more than 18 months without charge when he lost his mother. He had moved a bail application in March to carry out the last rites. It was denied.

“His mother kept waiting for nearly two years to get a single glance of her only son,” his brother-in-law, Sajjad Dar, told The Independent. “She was not granted that in life. And was denied that dignity even in death.

“She was buried by the villagers when it should have been her son doing the last rites. Pouring the final soil.”

Riyaz Ahmed Dar, 33, has been in prison since December 2013. At first, he was arrested during an investigation into the murder of a police officer in Kashmir’s Chadoora. But even after his acquittal in 2017, he remains in custody.

“We have not spoken with him since the Eid of May 2020,” says his father Ghulam Rasool Dar, 57. Raising concerns about the spread of coronavirus in jails, he says he has no idea what the conditions are like where his son is being kept. “Every time we call the jail authorities, they tell us he is doing alright but never really bring him on the phone.”

Riyaz had spent the first two years of his detention in Kot Balwal jail of Jammu before being moved to Karnal jail in the neighbouring state of Haryana. His transfer to a jail outside of the state overlapped with the government’s decision to revoke the special status of Kashmir.

Since then, he has met neither his family nor his lawyer, alleges his father. “We were not even told when he was being moved,” says Ghulam. “It was when someone went to the Jammu jail to visit an inmate, booked under the same charge as him, that they told us Riyaz had been transferred.”

Mir and Dar are both held under the infamous Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA). They are among 7,357 Kashmiris who were arrested before and immediately after the Modi government moved to revoke the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir previously guaranteed under Article 370 of the Indian constitution. Of these, about 396 were detained under the PSA.

The contentious law allows the detention of a person without a warrant, trial or court hearing for a maximum period of two years. With reports of the coronavirus pandemic spreading through the inmates, their families have now joined those demanding their release on parole, at least until the pandemic is under control.

“Every day we hear of people getting infected with coronavirus inside the jail. It is so difficult to get healthcare [even] outside… god knows the condition in which they are keeping him there,” says Riyaz’s father. “If nothing else, can they at least transfer him to jail within Jammu and Kashmir? It has been so long since we last saw him.”

Riyaz’s lawyer, Kaiser Ali, said that his plea to quash the PSA charge has been pending before the court since August. “Every time our date of hearing gets pushed to the next date. It has been at the last stage for quite some time, but due to Covid the courts are not able to take up the matter regularly. And the delay has only increased.”

Termed political prisoners by rights groups, demands for the release and transfer of those booked under the PSA have been mounting in the valley especially since the death of the separatist leader Ashraf Sehrai earlier in May. The 78-year-old was the president of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, a pro-independence group in Kashmir, and had been at the forefront of calls for Delhi to relinquish its rule over the disputed territory.

Detained under the PSA, Mr Sehrai had been lodged in Udhampur jail since 12 July 2020, before recently being shifted to a hospital in Jammu after he complained of breathlessness. He tested positive for coronavirus posthumously.

His 17-year-old grandson Ishaq Khalid Khan calls it a case of “custodial killing”, adding that his grandfather had multiple ailments and was dependent on regular medical attention but was deliberately denied the care he needed.

“Inside the jail [the jail authorities] did not provide him with medicines on their own. We had to provide them from here. And they did not provide him with a medical check-up, either. That is why he died,” he told The Independent. “During his final days, he had been telling us that he is not getting the medical care including the medicines that we used to provide after permission from the court. Had he received the care that he needed, he would have definitely been saved.”

“In today’s India, one pays [the] price with his life for dissent,” wrote former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, grieving Mr Sehrai’s death. “Like him, countless political prisoners and other detainees from J&K continue to be jailed purely for their ideologies and thought process,” she wrote on Twitter as she urged the prime minister to release the “detainees on parole so that they return home to their families”.

The demands were echoed by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association, which urged the government to transfer these prisoners “to the nearest jails in Kashmir valley”.

Prisoners’ rights groups are hopeful for progress after the Supreme Court this month ordered the decongestion of prisons across the country amid the unprecedented second wave of Covid cases, but the concerns in Kashmir about the alleged misuse of the contentious PSA remain.

“As recently as August 2018, a person booked under PSA could not have been detained in a jail outside the territory of Jammu and Kashmir,” explains criminal lawyer Mir Urfi.

“But the amendment allowed their detention outside of the state, anywhere in India. A lot of them have now been shifted to jails in Agra, Varanasi, Haryana,” she says. “PSA is being misused because we never really meet the client. If the detainee is in a prison in Varanasi, how will they meet their lawyer in Kashmir? And especially during lockdowns like these, when the movement is so restricted.

“To keep him away from his home is also a punishment. They have no idea about their family and vice versa. They are allowed to speak with them only once a month,” she says. “And due to covid, physical meetings have been stopped. So, I would have known the health status of my client only if his family or I had an access to my client. But [now] they are lodged in a jail in another state.”

Back at his house in Chadoora, Riyaz Dar’s father says he doesn’t hold out much hope of the administration listening to their pleas. “If the law had taken its course, then my son would not have been in jail this long. So, I don’t know about the government or the law. I know only that Allah will listen to us.”

Source: The Independent

The post Feature: Calls for India to release Kashmiri political prisoners during devastating second Covid wave appeared first on Kashmir Media Service.

On 29 May 2009, two young women, Asiya (17) and her sister-in-law Neelofar (22), married to Shakeel Ahmad Ahanger, went missing in the evening while returning home from their family orchard in Nagbal area of South Kashmir’s Shopian. On the following morning, they were found dead near the Rambiara Nala by a team of cops along with Shakeel; leaving behind his barely 2-year-old son, Suzain.

After the initial investigation, on the direction of Omar Abdullah led government, Justice Jan Commission was formed to deliver the justice. The report by the commission concluded that the two women have been raped and murdered by ‘men in uniform’. Later on, a number of Indian investigative agencies came into the scene only to spoil the broth.

“It’s been 12 years, and every wound is still burning. We are still suffering the same what we were suffering then,” says Ahanger, sitting in an under-lit room, displaying the timeline of his life through magazine covers since May 2009. As the tired Ahanger narrated, the long struggle for justice has always been a walk on spikes for his family.

Ahanger didn’t fumble for a second while narrating his experience with the tragedy, seemed like he had been telling the same story for the last nine years. “I cooperated with everyone who ever walked through my gate; hoping that he might help me to get the justice,” says Ahanger.

He believes that due to harassment, by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and all other institutions involved at various stages of the investigation, his family has suffered as no one else did in the world. Collecting his breath, he says, “Whenever they [investigating agencies] feel that someone is helping my family, they form a case and book them under sections.”

While talking to Ahanger, who is in his 30s, he recalled an incident after 4-5 months of the case when he was going to his furniture shop in the Shopian town, along with his two-year-old son, Suzain, and a police convoy came and asked him to step out of his car. As he resisted, the police officials started abusing him, badly. “Why would anyone listen to abuses? But they went on to drag me on the road, in front of my toddler,” says Ahanger.

The home with two-storeys on the right, a smaller one floor on the left with an empty compound in-between, the rusted gate stood still in hope to welcome justice. “The home hasn’t even changed a bit since then. It is the same. Old and wrecking; so is our life,” with a younger brother, Aqib Ahmad, and sister, Rumi Jan, Ahanger’s are only left with one reason to smile, little Suzain. In a family of 4, Shakeel is the only breadwinner.

Like every other issue in the valley, all the political fronts have led down the people of Kashmir in their own way. “When Mehbooba Mufti was in opposition, she used to say, ‘these are like my sisters.’ Apparently, she was protesting more fiercely than we did.” But Mufti has harshly turned her back on the victims of Shopian rape and murder case since she took the office in her hands three years ago.

The National Conference has not helped in any manner either. The then serving Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, as claimed by Ahanger, offered him a huge amount of money and a government job. “But can this money buy my wife and sister’s honor? No, it can’t,” said Ahanger. The memories of various fake promises accelerated and Ahanger went on to say, “They think that they can rape Kashmiris and throw money on their faces to shut them up.”

Ahanger believes that they have walked a long way in their struggle seeking justice, and became the face of resistance against sexual violence by government forces in the valley. “They think that one day, we will get tired. We will stop asking for justice. But, Insha-Allah, whether I live or die, my child will take this struggle forward.”

Standing in his courtyard, Ahanger looked up to the sky, stared and said, “If we would have stayed silent, they would have done the same; if not in Shopian then somewhere else in Kashmir.”

Around 4 in the evening, Suzain, now 14-years-old, returned from the school to his father at home – happy and cheering. Ahanger hid his teary eyes and asked his son about his day. As Suzain went in to change his uniform, Ahanger said, “His upbringing was the toughest part and even now it has not changed much. He was breastfeeding, when they murdered his mother. Tell me, how to tell him about what happened to Neelofar?”

A couple of years back, a media person had come for the family’s interview and she told Suzain about the incident for the first time, his father hadn’t. “Every night, he would sleep with his head pressed to my chest, but that night he turned away and slept with his back facing me. I couldn’t sleep that night. I was worried about how he will ever live through it?”

To negate the loss of the young mother and a teenage aunt, Ahanger has made Suzain live on the materialistic things. “Whenever he tries to find his mother and aunt, we buy him something to escape the pain of facing him,” said Ahanger. As he told us, Suzain focuses a lot on Kashmir’s conflict now. “When forces killed the innocent children of Shopian, he was angry- very angry. He told me, ‘I want to do something.’”

“No parent in the world would want their son to go on the way Suzain is going,” sighed Ahanger.

While speaking to The Kashmir Walla, Mohammad Shafi Khan, vice-president of the former Majlis Mashawarat committee said, “What kind of hope is left with the case? It has already been buried- deep and down.”

The consultative committee was formed by the people of Shopian to lead the protests and campaign for the case. But now unlike earlier when international media and human rights commissions were standing by the family, now they are on their own wailing for justice.

As Suzain came, he took us to his room; full of paintings and board games. “All the children play here on Friday, Sunday, and on Hartals,” said Suzain. The wall had a canvas full of small handprints of children. “This one is of Suzain, isn’t it perfect?” Ahanger pointed out. The printed hand didn’t have the palm lines.

Ahanger believes that Suzain is the worst affected by the tragedy. “I want to become a heart surgeon. There are not many in the world, right?” asked Suzain.

Though Suzain has asked his father a lot of times to not worry about him, he does miss his mother. One such incident was during Iftaar in days of Ramzan when Suzain bought two tiffins saying, “This is for me and the other one is for Mamma.” The cold graves of two women who never returned home are barely 100 meters from their house.

“Suzain never goes to his mother’s graveyard. He knows exactly where it is, but he never goes there,” said Ahanger.

“The family is in Srinagar to protest the 12th death anniversary of their loss and to ask the valley, “Do you remember Asiya and Neelofar?”

This story is the second part of a series “Remnants of Kashmir’s Dead”

Kashmirwalla.com

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India is using rape and molestation of women as a weapon of war to suppress the Kashmiris’ struggle for securing their inalienable right to self-determination. Women are the worst victims of Indian state terrorism in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir as Indian troops have molested over 11,240 women since January 1989 till date.

Rape and murder of two women in Shopian, the mass rape of Kunanposhpora, and rape and murder of a minor girl, Aasifa Bano, in Kathua area of Jammu region are glaring examples of this brutality committed by Indian forces’ personnel in the occupied territory.

Indian men in uniform had abducted 17-year-old Aasiya and her 22-year-old sister-in-law Neelofar after they had gone to their orchard on May 29 in 2009, gang-raped and subsequently murdered them in custody. Their bodies were recovered from an ankle-deep stream in the area on the next morning.

The troops had raped around one hundred women in Kunanposhpora area of Kupwara district on the night of 23 February 1991. An 8-year-old Muslim girl, Aasifa Bano, was raped and killed by seven Hindus including four policemen and a temple priest in January 2018 in Kathua area of Jammu.

IIOJK is that region of the world where Indian troops are committing the worst human rights violations and subjecting the women to sexual violence on daily basis. Human Rights Watch in its report in November 2019 maintained that India is using rape of Kashmiri women as a weapon of war in IIOJK.

At the 52nd United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Professor William Baker, a human-rights activist, argued that rape in IIOJK was not merely a case of isolated incidents involving undisciplined soldiers, rather Indian forces were actively deploying rape on Kashmiri populace as a method of humiliation and invoking fear.

The rape and molestation of women by Indian forces’ personnel in IIOJK has become a routine and even former Indian Army officers affiliated with the ruling extremist BJP are supporting the use of this crime as a weapon to punish the Kashmiris. During a talk show in November 2019, BJP leader, Major General (retd), S P Sinha, advocated the use of this tactic. His remarks reflected the communal and Hindutva ideology of Narendra Modi that is targeting the Kashmiri women.

Kashmiri women are facing unending ordeal of trauma due to sexual violence at the hands of Indian troops and the rape cases in IIOJK expose the dark face of the so-called democratic India.

Justice continues to elude the family of Aasiya and Neelofar despite the passage of twelve years. It is unfortunate that not a single Indian soldier or policeman involved in Shopian tragedy, Kunanposhpora gory incident, Kathua brutality and other such heinous crimes has been punished till date. The Indian forces’ personnel enjoy complete impunity for their brutal actions due to the black laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act and Disturbed Areas Act.

India’s brutal actions in IIOJK pose a challenge to the global community. The organizations working for the women rights should not remain silent on the victimization of the Kashmiri women and take measures to bring the Indian policemen and troops involved in such crimes to book. The world must wake up to contain the sexual violence being used as a war tactic by India in IIOJK.

(The author is Senior Editor at Kashmir Media Service)

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Since the outbreak of COVID-19, India has exploited the circumstances to accelerate the pace of its colonization project in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IIOJK) thus increasing the miseries of the people of the occupied territory manifold. On the pretext of COVID lockdown imposed in the territory, India continues to carry out its repressive police in the occupied territory killing, maiming innocent civilians, and above all denying proper medical care to the people of the occupied territory at the time of pandemic.

The occupation authorities on April 29 imposed a curfew in 11 districts in the name of controlling the surge in COVID-19 cases. The curfew was later extended to all districts till May 31.

Be it geographical, demographical, identical, religious, traditional, educational, economical or administrative areas one and all aspects of Kashmir’s distinct identity are being eroded in an imperialistic and systematic manner using different coercive measures like threat, bribe, intimidation arrests, dismissals and so on.  Shunning the norms of humanity, India not only stopped supply of COVID-19 vaccine to the occupied territory but it also diverted the allocated medical stocks to other Indian cities. The criminal attitude of the Indian government in blocking vaccine supplies came at a time when the Valley witnessed the highest spike in COVID deaths and positive cases ever since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. The “evolving” virus strengthened by the day, and Modi-led Baharatya Janata Party government’s ignorance of its nature gave the virus ample space to grow and spread in the occupied territory where vaccination is scarce and medicines unavailable.

As reported by the Indian Express, Indian Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also admitted the fact the “permanent” solution to fight the virus was vaccination, and the reason behind India’s poor COVID performance was because New Delhi had “no vaccination strategy”. Although Mr Gandhi was able to portray the reality in main cities and rural areas of India the thing he forgot to mention was the occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir which is facing step-motherly treatment from the Hindutva regime during the pandemic.

On one hand crippling the occupied territory through strict restrictions and denial of medical assistance, there seems to be no end to violent cordon and search operations (CASOs) when IIOJK was facing a humanitarian crisis because of COVID wave. The Indian atrocities had left 281 Kashmiris dead from March 2020 when the first COVID case was detected in the territory till May 2021. Vowing to continue with its repressive measures, Jammu and Kashmir’s Director General of Police (DGP) Dilbag Singh in a media interaction in Kulgam district on May 28, forewarned of more cordon and search operations (CASOs) in the territory that he claimed have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Apart from facing persistent health hazards, Kashmiris have been facing a double whammy of unemployment and rising food prices that have crippled them economically. Since August 2019, the incomes of people associated with the informal sector, consisting of low wage workers have dwindled sharply due to a major job loss wave. Nothing was done to support them in time of need which is also the worst form of repression and pain inflicted upon the COVID-hit populace of the occupied territory. At a time when the occupied territory is grappling with pandemic, the unrestricted inflow of non-Kashmiri labourers on one hand is a major reason for the spread of coronavirus and on the other a cause of concern for the locals who are unable to find work.

The devastation caused by the lockdown on the Kashmir economy, and on human lives, is stupendous and massive. Considering the fact that accurate data is usually unavailable in occupied Kashmir, we can safely believe that conditions are much worse than as reported.

One shudders to think what hell most common Kashmiris are going through. Many are on the verge of starvation with their families. We are mostly in the dark about all this, as the media in India is busier in reporting politics, lives of film stars and cricketers, it does not ordinarily condescend to report such sordid facts and details and that too about the occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

It is a terrible time in occupied Kashmir!

The author could be reached at humsandeela@gmail.com

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Over the last few weeks, public anger has been simmering in the Lakshadweep islands over a number of controversial proposals floated by the Union Territory Administrator, Praful K Patel. Also the Administrator of the UT of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Patel was given additional charge of Lakshadweep following the death of Dineshwar Sharma last December.

While the UT Administration has said Patel’s proposals are aimed at ensuring safety and well-being of residents along with promoting the islands as a tourist destination on par with the Maldives, residents view them as ripping the social and cultural fabric of the islands.
Some of the proposals include:
Cow slaughter & beef
PROPOSAL: An order from the Administration seeks to ban the slaughter of cow, calf, bull and buffalo without a certificate from a competent authority. It prohibits the sale, transport and storage of beef and beef products. Penalties include a jail term up to one year and a fine of Rs 10,000. The Administration has not provided an explanation on why the rule was brought in.
PROTEST: Residents view the rule as a direct infringement on their culture and eating habits. They allege the rule was decided without consultation with local bodies.

Two-child policy
PROPOSAL: Under the Draft Panchayat Regulation 2021, the Administration aims to bar people with more than two children from becoming a member of the gram panchayat. For those who already have more than two children, the regulation does not disqualify them provided they do not have further children after the date on which the rule comes into effect.

PROTEST: Locals have questioned the motive. The NCP and the Congress too have opposed the move.

Serving liquor to tourists

PROPOSAL: The Administration has decided to allow liquor to be served at resorts on inhabited islands. Currently, prohibition is in place on all inhabited islands, with liquor served only at resorts on the uninhabited Bangaram island. Collector S Asker Ali clarified that liquor permits would be given only to resorts for tourists, not for locals.

PROTEST: Residents have allegedthat the move will lead to a proliferation of liquor sales on the island, which had been observing near-prohibition until now.
Editorial |Centre must advise Lakshadweep administrator against imposing questionable agenda in name of islands’ development
Land acquisition powers

PROPOSAL: The Administration brought in a draft Lakshadweep Development Authority Regulation (LDAR) to oversee development of towns on the islands, with sweeping changes in the way land can be acquired and utilised. It talks of declaration of ‘planning areas’ and constitution of ‘planning and development authorities’ for preparing a land use map and register, ostensibly for large projects.

PROTEST: Residents have protested against the way it was prepared and pushed through without consultation. They fear large infrastructure and tourism projects can destabilise the ecology, and that the notification gives powers to the Administration to remove small landholdings of ST residents.

Anti-Goonda regulation

PROPOSAL: The draft Lakshadweep Prevention of Anti-Social Activities Regulation provides for powers to detain a person for up to one year to prevent him from “acting in any manner prejudicial to the maintenance of public order”. It allows for detention for anti-social activities from six months to a year without legal representation. The Collector said while the island remains peaceful, there have been reports of drugs being found along with weapons and live ammunition. He said the regulation is required to keep the “youth from getting misguided by illegal businesses”.

PROTEST: Residents are sceptical of the need for such a stringent law in a UT with one of the lowest crime rates in the country. They allege it has been brought in to arrest those opposed to the Administration.

Covid-19 SOPs

PROPOSAL: For a year, Lakshadweep did not record any case of Covid-19 , thanks to stringent quarantine protocols and testing of inbound travellers. Last December, Covid-19 SOPs were diluted by doing away with mandatory quarantine for travellers at Kochi and Kavaratti. Instead, anyone with a negative RT-PCR certificate issued in the previous 48 hours could travel to Lakshadweep. The Administration said the SOPs were changed in accordance with Home Ministry rules and to allow for reopening of the economy.

PROTEST: The change led to the island losing its ‘green zone’ tag and a spurt in infections in subsequent months. As of May 28, the Union Territory has reported over 7,300 cases and 28 deaths. Islanders blame the Administration for mismanagement in handling of the pandemic.

Lakshadweep Islands, the people and the politics

GEOGRAPHY: 36 islands across 12 atolls, closest to Kerala, on which it depends for essential supplies. Only 10 of the islands are inhabited. Once a part of Malabar district of the Madras Presidency, Lakshadweep was given Union Territory status following Kerala state’s formation in 1956.

DEMOGRAPHY: With a population of 65,000 (2011 Census), Lakshadweep is India’s smallest Union Territory. It has the highest population share of Muslims (96%) and Scheduled Tribes (94.8%) among the UTs. Residents speak Malayalam and Dhivehi.

POLITICS: The UT is served by a Lok Sabha MP, currently Mohd Faizal P P (NCP) since 2014. The NCP and the Congress are the dominant parties; the BJP and Communist parties too have units. P M Sayeed won 10 consecutive terms during 1967-2004, eight of these on a Congress ticket. His son Muhammed Hamdulla Sayeed was MP between 2009 and 2014.

Apart from the UT Administration, there are dweep panchayat councils. In 2017, the Congress won a majority of wards in the district panchayat and dweep panchayats. — Courtesy The Indian Express

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The Holocaust is an expression which is usually associated to extermination of European Jews by the Nazis. But in India a Holocaust has taken place which though not amounting to large scale extermination of human beings has resulted in horrible misery to a large section of the 1350 million people of India.

I am referring to the massive calamity in India pursuant to the lockdown imposed by the Indian Government in April 2020, and thereafter by several state governments, consequential to the COVID pandemic. Much is reported in the Indian and foreign media of the daily COVID cases ( about 300,000 ) and the COVID deaths. Scenes are shown on TV screens of bodies being cremated, and accounts given of shortage of vaccines, oxygen cylinders, beds in hospitals for COVID patients in India.

But scant information is given of the monumental havoc caused in the lives of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of Indians due to the lockdown.

Soon after the Indian Prime Minister imposed the nationwide lockdown in April 2020, huge numbers of workers in the informal sector of the Indian economy, who comprise about 85% of the total Indian workforce–migrants, contract, casual and temporary employees–fled the Indian cities and moved, often trekking hundreds of miles with their families on foot, to their villages, many dying on the way.

When it was thought the worst was over, a second wave of COVID, probably caused by a mutant virus, hit India, and lockdowns has been continued.

It is submitted that the illnesses and deaths due to COVID, which has been highlighted by the media, pale in significance before the horrendous tragedy which has occurred in the lives of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of the Indian people resulting from the lockdown.

Here are some facts :

(1) Since one year many lawyers, particularly junior lawyers, have no work and no income, as courts are not functioning regularly, and online courts are hardly any substitute. Many junior lawyers who were practicing in Delhi have migrated to their hometowns in UP, Bihar, MP, south India, etc as they have no money to pay the rents or survive in Delhi. Some have been reduced to selling vegetables, driving e-rickshaws, and what not. The same is the situation in most courts in the country.

Since lawyers have little or no work, their clerks, peons, etc have also been laid off. What effect this would have had on their families can only be imagined.

The same is the plight of many other professionals, e.g. accountants.

(2) Regarding shopkeepers, I received this email from one of them recently :

” I own a clothing store in Delhi. The earning are 0 from 18 April as the shop is closed since then. By God’s grace, we have enough savings to survive the lockdown but not everyone is that fortunate. Shopkeepers who are on rent had to close/empty their shops as they don’t have money to pay rent of their already closed shops. Many of them are now selling vegetables on Riksha. Some, small shop owners open their shops in the evening. The local police constable takes bribes daily from such shop owners and vegetable sellers “.

(3) This is another email I received :

“My name is Asif Javed. I am a law student who hails from india’s most backward district which is called Mewat (Haryana). Sir our district is totally dependent on agriculture. Main source of income is agricultural produce. 30 to 50 percent village youngsters are truck drivers who get minimal salary for their work. Sir agriculture is no more a profitable occupation because of the higher inflation in all essential fundamental edibles and others. People of villages of Mewat are coming out from their houses and selling cheapest items by roaming from village to village. Some people are selling edibles like vegetables, fruits, birayani etc on village roads. And these activities are giving them only some coins to meet two time food not more than this. Shops have been allowed to be open but customers are very few because of the income issue.”

(4) An employee of Honda company in Delhi met me recently and informed me there is no work and he is getting only half his salary. The same is the position of employees in many companies. As per the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE) data, it is estimated that due to the lockdown about 150 million people in India have lost their jobs

(5) Many private school teachers are working on reduced salary, or not being paid.

(6) Hotels, restaurants, parlours, etc have been badly hit. So has the transport industry, including drivers.

(7) As regards the plight of students in the country, this is an email I received from a student:

To

Mr. Markandey Katju

Sub: College students facing immense loss.

Hello Sir,

I have been following your Facebook posts for a long time .

Relating to that, I would like to discuss a major issue that the students are facing. The colleges (and hostels) in India have been closed since last year due to Covid19 . So, now it has been almost a year and most of college students are sitting inside their homes.

In my opinion, college life plays a very important part in our lives. And Hostel life even more. College life is much more than Academics. Here, students are supposed to grow socially and mentally in addition to Academics. Hostel life prepares a student to face the complications of the real world. To be denied a healthy college and hostel life, I feel, is an immense loss students are suffering.

At a time when students are supposed to be enjoying Fests , attending Seminars , participating in competitions , dancing , singing , playing volleyball , Planting trees in campus , Enjoying with friends , going for a trip , applying for an internship , doing parade during Republic day etc  we are here sitting inside our homes and glued to a screen in the name of online class or scrolling Youtube/Instagram.

Not everything suits Online mode. A Civil Engineer graduating from online learning. How does it sound? Would you like to live in that house which he has constructed?

The Education system is only concerned on how to qualify the students. No one is concerned about how much we learn or how much practical knowledge we have.

Please address this issue through your F/B . Please give your opinions too.

Thank You

Regards

AJK

Currently pursuing Engineering from NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY , Silchar , Assam.

The devastation caused by the lockdown on the Indian economy, and on human lives, is stupendous and massive.

Considering the fact that accurate data is usually unavailable in India, particularly from rural areas where 60-65% of Indians live, we can safely believe that conditions are much worse than as reported.

One shudders to think what hell most common Indians are going through. Many would be on the verge of starvation with their families, many may have committed suicide. We are mostly in the dark about all this, as our media, more busy in reporting politics, lives of film stars and cricketers, does not ordinarily condescend to report such sordid facts and details.

Terrible times have come in India

Markandey Katju is a former judge of the Supreme Court of India. He was also the Chairman of the Press Council of India.

— Courtesy Naya Daur

The post Article: How Covid lockdown is causing devastation in India appeared first on Kashmir Media Service.

Barkha Dutt

This week, I took a three-hour boat ride down the Ganga, traversing a little over 30 kilometres from the Mehndi Ghat in Kannauj to the Nanamau Ghat in Kanpur Dehat, in pursuit of understanding why dead bodies are piling up on our river banks in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar and why corpses are floating in the river.

Most recently, over a 12-day trip through rural UP, I personally counted more than 1,000 bodies at six different points, spread over a few thousand kilometres from the east to the west of the state.

The presence of many graves, and the fact that those who have died during the Covid-19 surge are being abandoned and dumped either because of lack of money for cremations or the continued fear and stigma around the pandemic, is horrifying. But what is even more horrifying is the Indian State’s callous refusal to acknowledge this truth.

On the issue of these graves by the river banks in UP, we have seen one of three responses from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its supporters. One, there is absolute denial and a tendency to look the other way, while patting UP on the back for what is patently questionable death data. Second, there is attack on the handful among us who are on the field, in extremely trying physical circumstances, with abuse and threats. And finally, it is claimed that this is an old practice among some communities to bury the dead instead of cremating them and so to link it to Covid-19 is false.

It is this last claim that I will counter by drawing attention to scores of local testimonies recorded on camera.

Subhash, a boatman, helped us navigate our way through the water, past stray animals that hovered about corpses and past pyres that were being lit by the banks even in the smallest villages. He told us that the carnage, at its peak, was so bad that he shut down his boats and ran away for a few days. “I have been working for 30 years and I have never seen so many bodies in my life. Mujhe ghabrahat ho gayi (I panicked).”

Mayank, a young boy who helps with entries at the Mehndi Ghat cremation ground, said he had counted 1,500 bodies in all at the one single ghat he looks after in recent weeks. “I have worked here for eight years and I have never seen anything like this,” he told me.

In Kanpur, where the bodies lie stacked up in ravines so sandy and rocky that our car would not go down and we could only access the spot by motorcycle, local residents said people would come in the cover of the night, when no one was looking, and abandon the bodies and hastily make their way home.

At Prayagraj, as the police watched, the Ramnaami chadars were ordered off the makeshift graves — the ultimate indignity. A local pandit walked me through the banks and asked the fundamental question: “Will our Covid dead ever be counted, will we ever know how many people have died from Covid?”

Theoretically, without exhumation and testing, we cannot unequivocally prove that all of the deaths are from Covid. But the fact that these bodies have piled up at multiple points within the last four to six weeks, the exact period of the second wave, is telling. Especially when you couple it with what’s happening in our villages, where there is hardly any Covid testing and most people are dying in their homes without reaching hospital.

At cremation sites, in cases where families had accompanied the bodies for the last rites, villagers testified to a surge of deaths in their hamlets. There was a common refrain. “Every day, four or five bodies leave for the funeral grounds.” This account of a sudden surge in deaths in rural India was true for villages all the way from the east in Varanasi to the west in Basi Gaon, two hours from Delhi.

Yes, locals have explained to us that children and young brides have always been buried and never cremated. But none of these customs explain the volume of the bodies all along the Ganga. Even in the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency of Varanasi, in Sujabad, seven bodies had to be buried by locals as they washed ashore. And at the farthest point in Unnao, by the river’s open fields, where there is hardly anyone to be seen, a young cowherd told me that over the past two weeks, 20 bodies had washed ashore or been left in the sand.

Angry denials, obfuscation, calling those covering the issue vultures, none of this addresses what’s staring us in the face — the under-reporting of Covid-19 deaths and the stubborn refusal to even count the bodies. India’s citizens deserve better, in life and yes, in death.

Barkha Dutt is an award-winning journalist and author

— Courtesy Hindustan Times

The post Article: From the holy river, a story of human tragedy and state callousness appeared first on Kashmir Media Service.

The last time Neha Kaul Mehra was in her hometown of New Delhi was in October 2019 for Diwali.

She and her family decorated the house, cooked a feast and gave out gifts. A few months later, she and her parents, who are scientists, watched news coming out of Wuhan, China, anticipating the novel virus would impact whether they could see one another ahead of expected lockdowns.

Since then, a pandemic emerged, travel became impossible and she has not seen family members abroad for more than a year.

Adding to that heartbreak has been watching from afar as India faces a deadly COVID-19 wave. The country’s count of COVID-19 cases doubled in three months, even as officials believe the true number of cases and deaths to be higher than counted. The White House has pledged help to the country.

“It’s stressful trying to keep up with what’s going on, trying to be helpful,” Mehra said.

For the Andersonville neighborhood resident, as for many in Chicago worried about family abroad, the situation has been wrenching.

Seema Mehdi was hoping to introduce her baby to grandparents by now. Medhi lives in suburban Elk Grove Village with her husband and children; both her and her husband’s parents are in India. Beyond worrying about them, the separation has been hard as they were hoping the grandparents would be able to visit Illinois this month and finally meet their grandbaby.

Meanwhile, they worry about any symptom they hear of in a family member.

“The moment anybody’s coughing at home it’s like, ‘Oh, what’s going to happen?’” she said.

To help those in India, many Illinois residents have been gathering donations to help buy things like oxygen. For Mehra, trying to help has been cathartic. She gathered friends who are savvy with policy and data analytics to coordinate help online. When it became apparent that the country was going to be wrestling with a bad wave of infections, she joined others trying to collect assistance for resources. Many are frustrated with the government as people are facing issues finding bottled oxygen, hospital beds or COVID-19 tests.

Even helping with that eventually has taken a toll. Mehra has had to take breaks from looking at Instagram, Twitter, the news.

“It just felt like these endless howls into the void,” she said. “Seeking help, seeking guidance, seeking resources, it just felt overwhelming because it’s just so many people and you can’t help all of them.”

Family members on both her mother’s and her father’s sides have had COVID-19, from those in their 80s to a baby. It took about an entire month for them to get over the illnesses, she said.

She monitors the news, and she worries.

“I don’t even know what to call it. It almost feels like resignation at this point of just how bad this wave is, and it’s just going to keep crashing over,” she said.

Farah Manjiyani, who has immediate family in the U.S. and extended family in India, said it has been surreal to see restrictions and cases ease in the States while the pandemic gets worse elsewhere.

“The situation there is so much more intense,” the Lakeview resident said.

Making it harder is that information and resources are limited, as is the ability to offer support should someone like her grandmother become ill.

“There’s very little we can do about it if something happens,” she said. “We can’t go over there and help, we can’t ask people to go over and help because we don’t know what kind of situations they live in. It’s been intense.”

She feels this experience is “just a reminder that we’re connected.”

“Things are OK here in the U.S. and they’re getting better, but at the same time your entire family is spread out, and that’s not the case everywhere,” she said. — Courtesy Chicago Tribune

The post Feature: ‘Endless howls into the void’: Those with family in India watch and worry appeared first on Kashmir Media Service.

Islamabad, May 28 (KMS): It is a marvelous scenic place on Earth. Its four seasons are testimony to the timeless beauty which has been portrayed in the lyrics of poetry. One may delightedly spot, as depicted by Shakoor Rather in his new book Life in the Clock Tower Valley, “life-size scarecrows during summers to frighten the unrelenting birds hovering over the paddy fields, and the ceremonial snowmen that delight the neighborhood children celebrating the much-awaited snowfall”.

It is Kashmir.

If British India was the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, then Kashmir has been the biggest crack in it when the crown finally fell over on that land. Since the Partition of India in 1947, three devastating wars and unending violence have submerged the Valley in blood and tears, leaving its people in grievous past and uncertain future. The humiliation and hatred incited by colonists still haunt the two peoples on that land generation after generation.

For many, in Kashmir Muslims and Hindus contently living side by side has painted too rosy a picture. Yet once upon a time they managed to maintain amity and peace. Indian politician Markandey Katju wrote in his book The Nation, that “Up to 1857, there were no communal problems in India. Hindus and Muslims used to help each other. The Muslim rulers […] were totally secular; they organized Ramlilas, participated in Holi, Diwali.”

Tragedy was planted when the British Empire attempted to consolidate their rule and prevent the emergence of the Indian independence movement by applying the same notorious plot that has claimed millions of lives not only in India but also on the vast lands of Africa, Middle East and Asia. The plot is named “divide and rule”. In 1857, the ‘Great Mutiny’ broke out in which the Hindus and Muslims jointly fought against the British. The colonists were so shocked that after suppressing the Mutiny, they artificially engineered communal riots. Markandey Katju wrote that “the British collector would secretly call the Hindu Pandit, pay him money, and tell him to speak against Muslims, and similarly he would secretly call the Maulvi, pay him money, and tell him to speak against Hindus.” The British Empire fell, but the poison of hatred has been injected into the body politic of two peoples for decades to come.

The Sword of Damocles dropped in the dusk of British Empire, where hatred accumulated to such extent that the British, gaily adopting their old tactic, decided to divide Muslims and Hindus into two countries in a document called The Mountbatten Plan. Ironically, it might be easy to vote in a foreign parliament to decide for the lives of tens of millions of people, but there is never an equally light-hearted consequence for drawing a random line between two countries.

In June 1947, Britain appointed Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a man “who had never been east of Paris”, to chair two boundary commissions, one for Bengal and one for Punjab. All lawyers by profession, Radcliffe and the other commissioners had none of the specialized knowledge needed for drawing a boundary. In this respect, Dr. Lucy Chester commented in her study that “the absence of outside participants – for example, from the United Nations – also satisfied the British Government’s urgent desire to save face by avoiding the appearance that it required outside help to govern – or stop governing – its own empire.”

Whether the face was saved or not, clearly Britain cared about its barely-existing dignity far more than the lives of Indians and Pakistanis. In the first few years since the Partition, around 14.5 million people fled across the new boundary to what they hoped was the relative safety of religious majority. In this course, massacre, rape and torture claimed 200,000 to 2 million lives and turned the subcontinent into a hell on earth.

According to The Mountbatten Plan, all princely states could decide for themselves to join India or Pakistan, but Kashmir was treated differently. A war quickly broke out upon the ambiguity of its belonging. The following decades have witnessed three major wars and countless conflicts between India and Pakistan, from regional tension to all-out confrontation.

“Après moi, le déluge” [ “After me, the flood”]. The land once as pristine as its famous Kashmir Sapphires was carved by innumerable scars, cracked by the greed of imperialists and soaked by the tears of people in fear.

David Cameron, the former UK prime minister, said when answering questions from students in Pakistan in 2011: “As with so many of the problems of the world, we are responsible for their creation in the first place.” But Cameron’s “politics of apology” was trashed by both the Right and the Left within the UK.

The imperial past is far from being dead. We should not be surprised when British foreign policy interests and interventions today are perceived by many as “neo-colonial” in their nature. As long as the bloodshed in Kashmir continues, Britain can never clean itself from its bloody colonial past.

___ Courtesy: Xinhuanet

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