January 2005, Hyderabad.

Today India celebrates the 60th anniversary of her independence from British rule. It is a time to celebrate, reminisce, take stock and of course look forward. As The Guardian put it succintly, “India is the best place in the world to be born right now”. Indeed.

It looks as if some banks in India consider themselves above the law. In spite of a Supreme Court order to the contrary, banks such as the ICICI Bank continue to employ private agencies for debt recovery, which in turn employ goons and other anti-social elements to intimidate the defaulters and make them cough up the money. Recently, in Hyderabad, this has resulted in the tragic death of a government employee after he was allegedly held in confinement by debt recovery agents who worked for a loan recovery agency which had a tie up with ICICI Bank. The bank and the agency of course deny any wrong doing on their part.

Failure by the police to control these agencies has resulted in the banks blatantly ignoring the Supreme Court oder, which expressly forbids hiring goons and using force to recover defaulted loans. While the defaulter is at fault for not paying up on time the bank should not resort to illegal means to recover the money. Given India’s glacial judicial system where it takes years for a case to be resolved it is no wonder then that private banks are resorting to force and coercion to get back their money. However, this should be condemned and prevented as no bank can and should consider themselves above the law. If not anything this will lead to the strengthening of goons who might resort to other illegal activities given their patronage and protection by the banks.

The police should make sure that the guilty parties are brought to justice in the above case and make sure that the said bank/agency and others do not resort to using the same tactics again. Bank customers should also put pressure on their bank when they hear about such cases to desist from using such unlawful means. After all, the one thing these banks fear is bad publicity and that is a power bank customers can use to influence their banks to mend their ways.

January 2005, Bangalore.

Sterling 125

January 2005, Hyderabad.

Sterling 125 

January 2005, Hyderabad.

Something from HCU or more properly, University of Hyderabad, my old alma mater.

The travesty of a Member of Parliament, Babubhai Katara, being arrested for people-trafficking is a sore reminder of the depravation that has permeated our lawmakers. That Babubhai was naive enough to believe that he could lead a lady in ghunghat masquerading as his wife through immigration in India and Canada, shows the level of (or lack of) intelligence that has become a hallmark of his peers.

What is worse is the decision of the Parliament’s Ethics committee to not take action against him as “charges against him were unrelated to his work in Parliament”.

It is appalling that 135 members of parliament have criminal cases pending against them.

In India, we have a tradition of declaration of assets etc. by candidates when they file their nomination for election. What is missing is a similar declaration once they have been elected. What we need is an annual declaration by all elected members of parliament, of their assets as well as the police record against them. Let the public then judge them.

The problem is such a practice can only be made mandatory by a law. But will the lawmaker be ready to make such a law?

One alternative could be that of an independent agency/NGO taking up this work and of publishing it at the year-end in the newspapers. The Right to Information Act can be very useful for this activity.

The people of India cannot afford to dismiss such crime with cynicism. It is our duty to act.

So Manu Sharma has got life imprisonment. In passing the judgment the Delhi High Court noted that the trial court’s verdict, which had earlier acquitted Manu Sharma, was ‘perverse that made no sense and was illogical’. Following that verdict there was a national outcry. The media, sensing public outrage got into the act and newspapers swung into campaign mode. Talking heads appeared on TV and railed about miscarriage of justice and perversion of law. Ordinary middle class men and women held candle light vigils and screamed themselves hoarse that Manu Sharma had escaped because he was rich and influential. The national middle class outrage forced the powers that be to order a retrial which has led to the present conviction.

Why was the middle class up in arms over the Jessica lal case? After all, middle class militants in this country are a rarity. Thousands of women are molested, ill treated and raped throughout India every day. How come no one in the cities takes up cudgels on their behalf? Just 2 months ago two dalit women were paraded naked and raped in Khairlanji. What happened to middle class metropolitan rage then? Every year thousands of baby girls are killed? Why do the pretty faces not parade in front of the television then?

Was it because Jessica lal could have been any woman in any city in India. She was young, good looking, independent, modern, English speaking. Hell, she could have been my sister or girlfriend or neighbour. The way she lived and died could be the story of any woman living in big city India. A drunken lout, politically well connected though, shoots her point blank in a trendy bar because he is refused a drink. That could form part of the middle class nightmare. Its not very difficult to imagine because all of us like to go to trendy bars and be served by good looking women. So the middle class erupted in righteous rage because it was one of their own who was killed.

What happened to Jessica was heinous and Manu deserves the penalty he got. Its just that this case has held up a mirror to urban Indian society where we can see a reflection of ourselves, our values and what we hold dear.

Courage comes in many sizes. Sharmila Irom Chanu is a diminutive woman from Manipur, frail and meek looking. Looking at her one wouldn’t imagine that this woman has embarked upon a courageous mission to save her land and people. But what she has done over the last six years is nothing short of a display of courage of the rarest kind, a courage born out of empathy for the rape of her land.

Sharmila has been on a total hunger strike for the last six years for the cause of withdrawing the Armed Forces Special Provision Act (AFSPA) that has been clamped in Manipur and much of the north-east of India. This draconian act gives the Indian army power to detain and shoot people upon a mere suspicion. Further, army personnel cannot be prosecuted without prior permission from the ministry of home affairs.

The turning point for Sharmila was in November 2000 when a convoy of Assam Rifles was ambushed in a village outside Imphal. The enraged troops shot dead 10 people at a bus stop. That was when Sharmila decided to embark on her extraordinary measure. After all you have to fight fire with fire. In this case she decided to use a Gandhian form of non-violent protest and refused to eat or drink anything till AFSPA was repealed from Manipur.

What rights do a people, who have been dispossessed of their land for half a century and live in another country, have? This must be the question Tibetans must be asking themselves in the wake of Chinese premier Hu Jintao’s visit to India.

Ever since China’s brutal invasion and occupation of Tibet in 1959 India has hosted the largest community of Tibetan exiles including their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. They have lived here for three generations and the younger members have no living memory of Tibet, except for their parents tales of it, and a nostalgic yearning for a lost homeland. Every time a Chinese official visits India the Tibetans have organized protests demanding freedom for Tibet. This time too the Tibetans geared up to greet Hu with protests and sit ins. But the Indian government took no chances and muzzled their protests. Tibetans were placed under preventive custody and those who actually protested were arrested and whisked away.

The Tibetans have a right to protest and express their grievances in public spaces. Especially since China is still continuing with its brutal occupation of Tibet and has reduced the Tibetans to a minority in their own land by encouraging Han Chinese to migrate there. Tibetan culture has been brutally suppressed in the name of development and China has arrested thousands of Tibetans.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) recently held a meeting of major Indian scientists in Bangalore to discuss the feasibility and economics of sending an Indian astronaut into space and then later landing him/her on the moon. This has given rise to the usual arguments both in favor of and against such a venture. There are those who argue that India, with her many social and economic problems, should not waste money on something that has already been done before and will yield nothing new. That instead, the money should be used to help the poor and the downtrodden. Simply put, India should not dare to dream that big and be constantly aware of her limits.

I firmly disagree. I think India should seriously plan on putting a man into space and then later on the moon. Yes, it will be expensive. However, what no one realizes is how much of a kick start it will give to the science and technology fields in India and ultimately benefit society. The space race between the erstwhile U.S.S.R. and the U.S. in the 1950s and 60s led to the development of many new technologies that later found widespread applications in many different areas, ranging from health to housing.