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Sunday, September 14, 2008
Valson Thampu - Mother Teresa shows the way: Faith in scepticism
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Re-conversions in Orissa -- Tehelka Report by Vijay Simha
The terror works. In the jungles off Sankarakhol village, one of the first targeted by the militant Hindus, a group of RSS whole-timers are reconverting 18 Christians to Hinduism. It’s a daytime ceremony. The RSS Mandal Mukhiya (head of the Mandal unit) Sudhir Pradhan, a slim bearded man, is in charge. There are 30 Hindus to make sure that the 18 Christians don’t change their mind.
Each of the Christians has brought a Bible, in Oriya, along. They have also brought a coconut each, and some incense sticks, red thread to tie around the wrist, and vermillion for their foreheads. The Christians first burn their Bibles in a small bonfire. They sit in a circle. In the middle are the coconuts, each one signifying a Christian, and the other paraphernalia. The God of the Hills is appeased first in a prayer.
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Ashes to ashes This woman’s son is still hiding in the jungles |
Then, a Christian rises. He has a coconut in his hand. “I swear that I have become a Hindu today. After today, if I ever become a Christian again, may my dynasty perish,” he says. He breaks the coconut on a stone. The other Christians follow, each one making the same promise. Some murmur, some are loud. A Hindu priest begins to apply vermillion on the foreheads of the Christians-turned-Hindus. One of them protests, but it is too late. There’s a red streak on his forehead as well.
Sudhir Pradhan then takes over. Eyes closed, spine firm, and voice ominous. There is a deep and rhythmic chanting of Om followed by the Gayatri Mantra, a sacred chant of the Hindus. The slogans follow: “Bharat mata ki jai.” “Ganga mata ki jai.” “Gau mata ki jai.” “Sri Ramjanambhoomi ki jai.” They pause for a few moments and the Christians-becoming-Hindus kneel, placing their foreheads on the ground. There’s a final “Jai Shri Ram.” The first stage of reconversion from Christianity to Hinduism is over. The motivation for these Christians to reconvert is life. They want to live in Kandhamal, keep their houses and, maybe, get some regular work.
Months afterward, these Christian-turned- Hindus will be asked to attend a yagya — a Hindu ritual of sacrifice that involves the worship of deities, unity and charity. In the yagya, they will wear saffron clothes and a sacred thread, and get their heads shaved. They will offer a few goats and some rice as fee. They will be given Gau Mutra (cow urine) and Tulsi water to drink. They will take Hindu vows. Then, they will share the mutton and rice (cooked from their offerings) in a small feast. This completes their reconversion. From then on, they will have a Tulsi plant in their homes, have pictures of Hindu gods on their walls, and celebrate Hindu festivals. They will pray only to Hindu gods.
Pradhan is happy. He’s done his job for the day. He explains the difference between a Hindu and a Christian. “They (Christians) eat cows. We (Hindus) worship cows.” Therefore, “people who eat cows should be given the same treatment that they give the cows.” Pradhan says Togadia has laid down the policy. “He has already announced that there is no place for Christians. If Christians don’t become Hindus, they have to go. We don’t care where they go. They must leave Orissa,” he says.
BUTWHAT’S the point in killing and driving a people out, merely to nudge the percentage of Hindus from near 95 percent to 100 percent? Dr Krishan Kumar, the young District Magistrate of Kandhamal, thinks it’s actually about jobs, land, and only then religion. Kumar has studied medicine (hence the Dr prefix), and was given overnight charge of Kandhamal when the Hindu militants began attacking the Christians. Read
Monday, September 8, 2008
The Azadi We Need: Response to Arundhati Roy by UMAIR AHMED MUHAJIR
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Sunday, September 7, 2008
RAJINDER PURI On Indians Wealthy and Miserable
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| Eighty per cent of China’s industry is owned by foreigners. Almost a hundred per cent technology that built China is foreign, a great deal from America. Olympics 2008 was a mega creation. Like the pyramids by the Pharaohs, the coliseum by the Romans, or the autobahns by the Nazis. | |||
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Thursday, September 4, 2008
What happened to the India of our dreams?
Cry, my Beloved Country!
Aijaz Zaka Syed (VIEW FROM DUBAI)
4 September 2008
4 September 2008
Until recently, many of my Pakistani friends would envy the pluralism and the culture of genuine tolerance in the world’s largest democracy, attributing it to its democratic ethos. This general worldview of India did not change even after the demolition of Babri mosque (1992) and Gujarat (2002).
The extremist Hindu organisations like RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal have been concerned by the massive proselytizing by Christian missionaries in the tribal areas of Orissa. The missionaries have been doing some excellent social work, running schools, clinics and orphanages in interior Orissa where even government officials avoid going. As a result, low caste Hindus and tribal groups, exploited for thousands of years, have been joining Christ’s flock in thousands every year.
The current wave of violence was sparked by the killing of a leader from the VHP, the militant Hindu organisation that was in the forefront of the Ayodhya mosque demolition and subsequent anti-Muslim riots.
Religious violence is hardly new to Orissa. In 1999, an Australian missionary Graham Steins who had been working in the state for three decades treating lepers in remote tribal areas, was burnt alive with his two sons as they slept in their jeep. The children had been visiting their father from Australia. And the self same demons have come back to haunt Orissa today unleashing a reign of terror across the region where Emperor Ashoka gave up violence to promote Buddha’s message of peace.
And all that the state government and the federal government in Delhi have done so far is pass the buck to each other. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has rightly called the attacks a “national shame,” just as PM Vajpayee had done in the case of Gujarat in 2002 where his own party was in power and his protégé presided over the carnage.
But is that enough? Is it not the responsibility of governments to protect their people, especially the vulnerable among them? The Orissa government finds itself helpless in dealing with the murderers and arsonists because they are led by the men who are part of the coalition in the state. The government in Delhi is busy settling political scores with the Orissa government. Instead of taking action to stop the carnage, the federal government has suggested a probe by the CBI -– India’s answer to FBI -– into attacks.
Remarkably, the authorities that look the other way while the mobs ransack Orissa, hunting and killing helpless men and women like some cornered animals, have been extraordinarily efficient in dealing with the ‘Muslim terrorists.’
From the plains of the North India to the Malabar coast down south, hundreds of young Muslims have been swallowed up by India’s jails as the terrorists and ISI agents. Although there has always been the ominous cloud of ISI and Pakistan hanging over Indian Muslims -- especially if they looked like Muslims – the extent of persecution of Muslims under the secular and liberal UPA government is truly shocking.
Even though one has been reading and hearing about the harassment of Muslims in Indian press from time to time, the big picture revealed by the Tehelka magazine (www.tehelka.com) and the recent open, people’s courts held by human rights groups in Hyderabad is incredibly horrifying. I can’t believe this is happening in my own country. From fake encounters to torture to old fashioned terror tactics, the world’s biggest religious minority today faces the kind of terror that it did not experience even under the long British rule. Today, the Muslims have become enemies of the state in their own land.
The then BJP-NDA government started the witch-hunt of the Muslims by banning the SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India) in September 2001 -- days after the 9/11 events in the US. Not only the offices of the obscure outfit hopelessly dreaming of Muslim glory were shut and sealed but hundreds of innocents from across the country were also thrown behind bars in the name of fighting terror.
Is this Gandhi’s India? Whatever happened to the India of our dreams, the champion of non-violence and tolerance? And where’s this country headed? I do not know. But I fear and cry for my country.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Dr Binayak Sen, My Brother, Our Hero By Dipankar Sen
The courtroom was hushed as the prisoner stood awaiting sentence. The judge donned his black skullcap as he deliberately passed the death sentence. That is the sweat drenched nightmare that I sometimes wake up to. The prisoner is no ordinary man: he is my brother, Dr Binayak Sen. Recently, I went to visit him again in prison in Raipur in Chhattisgarh, just before his last court hearing. I saw him again in court. The courtroom itself was far from the courtrooms that we see in the movies. No pictures of a toothless smiling Gandhi or Subhas Chandra Bose hung from the wall behind the judge, a Sikh, Mr Balinder Singh Saluja. There were just two benches, one for the lawyers and the second for visitors. The dock, a 1.5m x 1.5menclosure, was just enough space for the three standing prisoners while the lawyers argued their case. Binayak stood leaning against the railing of the dock. The expression on his face and his body language did not betray any anxiety or distress of this unnecessary prison experience imposed on him through an intricate web of lies. There, standing within touching distance was my Dada, handsome, dignified, ever driven by the force of conviction, all of which showed up in the gentleness of his composure and the calmness in his eyes. I asked him how he was. "Without a purpose," was his reply. And that, I suspect, must have been one of his weaker moments, because he actually said something about himself. His reply would normally be, "I'm ok, don't worry about me. I am just fine. How is Ma? Tell her not to worry. And how are you?"As the proceedings started, there was a witness in the dock on the other side of the room, closer to the judge. He was identifying the seizure list. The list was long, and the monotonous but hypnotic tapping sound of the typewriter caused my mind to float away. I looked at Dada and my mind drifted to the tune of "Where are the green fields," which he would whistle when we were kids in Pune in 1965. He had just passed his Senior Cambridge exams from Calcutta Boy's School with brilliant results and had every reason to be chirpy. He had a lot of friends and we would go out hiking, which meant a lot of walking through the wild grasslands then surrounding the camp area in Pune. I was just a fat 11-year-old then and often had problems keeping up. Dada often had to carry me piggy back so that the tall grass would not cut me with the sharp blades. By the time he became a doctor, his care for the little brother had been replaced by constant concern for the health of poor Indians, the tribals, workers, the dispossessed or others that are in the process of joining their ranks. Around May 9, 2007, I had called my mother in Kalyani, when I was told by my niece that they had learnt through journalists that their father was supposed to be arrested but was reported to be absconding. Binayak and his entire family were at Kalyani then, spending some of their holidays with my aged mother. My mind did not even register the urgency or the gravity of the situation. I just thought it was some stupid mistake that the police had made. After all, who could have anything against Dada...the poor man's doctor and helping hand? I had even nicknamed him Father Teresa, except that he liked Kingfisher beer. I suddenly realized that I knew very little about The BINAYAK SEN. It had been a long time that we had gone our ways. But the prospect of arrest and prison for Dada were a long way off from anything that we as a family could have imagined. The next day, and everyday after that, I called Kalyani, and realized that Dada's situation was much more serious than I had thought. That is when I started begging him to come to me, in Belgium. Run... do anything but don’t go back to Chhattisgarh. He just said that he could not betray the trust of his patients, who would be waiting for him from the May 14, 2007. He insisted on leaving as scheduled, on May 13.While sitting in an Italian restaurant in Paris on May 14, I heard of his arrest. His older daughter Pranhita first called to say that he was called to the police station in Bilaspur to give a statement, but that the police would not arrest him. About 15 minutes later she called again to say that he had indeed been arrested. It was around 12.45 in Paris that my life turned its page on political innocence. I suddenly grew up. During the course of Dada's year in prison, I read about him in the pres, both national and international. I found him on Wikipedia. I found his name on numerous internet sites. There were the admiring letters that he received in prison, and that must have helped to keep his sanity. Then came the recognition from the Indian Academy of Social Sciences, the Keithan Gold Medal, the Jonathan Mann award, the 21 Nobel Laureates writing to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the demonstrations in India and around the world. But I began feeling guilty and embarrassed. Because of my long absence in Europe since the 1970s, I learnt about Dada's greatness, above all about his work, through the press and through the mail of his admirers from distant lands. I did not know about the hospital he helped build in Dalli Rajhara, his work in Ganyari near Bilaspur, the Mitanin project, the Right to Food campaign. Nor had I heard of his work with the People's Union for Civil Liberties(PUCL), or of the dedicated band of people that worked with him. They included doctors, lawyers, journalists, filmmakers and the man on the street. His circle of supporters included doctors from all over the world, the most active among them being his own former teachers and class mates, as well as some who were not his contemporaries at Christian Medical College(CMC), Vellore, but had attended the same college. I learnt details about his career from his former teachers and colleagues at the Christian Medical College, which bestowed on him the Paul Harrison Award to recognize his work that exemplified their best ideals of a doctor. There were two images of my brother - the more familiar one of a fun-loving man who liked good food, good music, and enjoyed horsing around with his family and his many good friends; and the other of a serious doctor with concerns - expressed even while he was a student -- about the health of poorer communities, and its roots in their social and economic deprivation. This is what his former teacher, Dr P Zachariah, wrote in a tribute to his student:" Binayak is a very rare doctor - a man with a deep understanding of the social and political dimensions of health. The governments of the world, the World Bank and other organizations are now worrying about food security and alternative food policies; Binayak was decades ahead of them all."None of this apparently moves the State, which refuses to budge from its position. If you ask someone in the government why Dada is in prison, the reply is standard: "He is a Maoist leader and sympathizer, and we have enough evidence against him."So I asked the DGP of Chhattisgarh, so why is he not returning the computer seized from Dr Binayak Sen over a year ago, especially since forensic examination of the hard disc had failed to turn up any incriminating evidence. He said that the Forensic Institute in Hyderabad could not break into a code. When I reminded him that teenagers are hacking into banks and the Pentagon everyday, his reply was patently evasive. I also reminded him that I had heard that not one of the police witnesses gave any credible witness/evidence against Binayak. He countered with the possibility of a supplementary charge sheet that was in preparation based on some 53 pages of telephone conversations with someone who is a known Maoist. Like an astrologer, he predicted that the lower court would probably convict him but the higher court would release him. Now, how long the process would take is anybody's guess. Common sense tells me that it could be years. Back in the courtroom, my mind suddenly woke up to the noise of some strong protests from defense lawyer Mahindra Dubey. He had just found that a letterhead been planted by the police and had clearly stirred some excitement in court. The insistent tapping of the typewriter had stopped. The judge looked worried. A letter to a senior Maoist party member which the police were claiming had been found among the documents seized from his apartment was printed on a plain sheet of computer paper, and did not even have his signature. Moreover, it did not appear in the list of seized documents that Dada and the police had co-signed at the time they were seized. It was indeed a plant. The old public prosecutor did not bother to look embarrassed, he simply denied any knowledge of it or how it got there. I left the court dejected and heartbroken as he was driven away in the police van. An entire State was conspiring to subject upon my brother a life without a life... without a purpose, without any privacy, without any space of his own, denying him the very means of contributing to society in a way that even the State itself had acknowledged when it had implemented his ideas to start the Mitanin programme. They are imposing a punishment upon an innocent man in the full knowledge that they are doing wrong. Now that we are convinced that his imprisonment is based on false and trumped up charges, we will want to know who would want to inflict such a fate on this man and above all why? Then we could have a possible basis and a clue to engage in a sensible dialogue with them to secure his release. My Dada was one who, at a very early age, wondered why we could not invite the servants in our home to eat with us. At the age of five, he had the sensitivity to write: I saw a bird in the morning sun Flying high up in the sky, A man shot it down with his gun And I began to cry. He does not deserve this fate. But for someone who has withstood more than year-and-four months of prison, solitary confinement, harassment, humiliation but not shame, we have a simple message: Tum akele nahin ho Dada... My brother!
The writer is an options trader in the commodities market based in Antwerp, Belgium. The print version of this article will appear in the September edition of Hard news magazine. The magazine will hit the stands on September 1, 2008
Thanks to Dr. Jesudas Athyal for sending the news link
The writer is an options trader in the commodities market based in Antwerp, Belgium. The print version of this article will appear in the September edition of Hard news magazine. The magazine will hit the stands on September 1, 2008
Thanks to Dr. Jesudas Athyal for sending the news link
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Virus Infects Space Station Laptops (Again)
Not the First Time Viruses or 'Worms' Have Made It Onboard the Space Station
(AP)
More Photos
More Photos
"This is not the first time we have had a worm or a virus," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said. "It's not a frequent occurrence, but this isn't the first time."
Read More
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Paralysed man walks again thanks to Robocop-style exoskeleton
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 2:09 PM on 26th August 2008A man who has been paralysed for the past 20 years is able to walk again thanks to a revolutionary electronic exoskeleton.
Radi Kaiof, 41, now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum as the system moves his legs and propels him forwards.
More
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Indaba
Indaba is a Zulu word for a gathering for purposeful discussion and is both a process and method of engagement, and offers a way of listening to one another concerning challenges that face the Anglican Communion.
Each Indaba group will nominate one of their group whom they believe to be most capable of carrying their views and the fruit of their discussion into the reflections process. Their ‘Listener’ joins a Listening Group under the chairmanship of Archbishop Roger Herft of Perth, in Western Australia.
Canon Kearon states, “Working with the summaries of the fruit of Indaba arising from each group, it will be their duty to generate a common text which reflects authentically the Indaba.” The text must reflect the mind of the bishops attending the 2008 Conference.
The intention is that the Listening Group will meet in four open sessions. Here all bishops can comment on the developing text. It is envisaged that in this way every bishop attending the conference will be given the opportunity to “shape the Reflections” from what emerges.
The letter concludes, “The hope of the Lambeth Design Group is that this process will permit the development of a Reflections Document which will meet the objectives set out for it, and be available on the last day of the conference to be received as an authentic account of the engagement of the bishops together in the service of Christ.”
Read it all
Each Indaba group will nominate one of their group whom they believe to be most capable of carrying their views and the fruit of their discussion into the reflections process. Their ‘Listener’ joins a Listening Group under the chairmanship of Archbishop Roger Herft of Perth, in Western Australia.
Canon Kearon states, “Working with the summaries of the fruit of Indaba arising from each group, it will be their duty to generate a common text which reflects authentically the Indaba.” The text must reflect the mind of the bishops attending the 2008 Conference.
The intention is that the Listening Group will meet in four open sessions. Here all bishops can comment on the developing text. It is envisaged that in this way every bishop attending the conference will be given the opportunity to “shape the Reflections” from what emerges.
The letter concludes, “The hope of the Lambeth Design Group is that this process will permit the development of a Reflections Document which will meet the objectives set out for it, and be available on the last day of the conference to be received as an authentic account of the engagement of the bishops together in the service of Christ.”
Read it all
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Theophilus Appavoo
Reverend James Theophilus Appavoo (1940-2005) was a presbyter of CSI Madras Diocese and a member of the faculty of the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary, Arasaradi, Madurai. He was involved in making village folk music the medium of musical expression among Dalit Christians. Zoë Sherinian, who became the Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Oklahoma did her PhD on his work in folk music as a “liberative transformation system." Appavoo has been awarded a honorary Doctorate Degree by the Academy of Ecumenical Indian Theology and Church Administration, of which Dr. Rajaratnam is the Chancellor.
Appavoo´s musical ideas are considered as a strong vehicle for social change and spiritual development. According to Zoë Sherinian he has created a "musical theology of Liberation" which is musically disseminates it through songs and liturgies -- a significant strategy within the field of Dalit theology." Appavoo has develped a theoretical critique of the hegemonic cultural values transmitted and reinforced through indigenized Christian Carnatic music used primarily among Protestant community. The folk music composed by Appavoo stands out not only for its beauty, rhythmic vitality, and theologically powerful lyrics, but also for the way it has generated excitement and inspiration among Christians. His theo-musicalogical position that folk music is the form of Tamil Christian music with the greatest potential to empower and liberate Dalits from caste and economic oppression is significant. Appavvoo has never advocated conversion to the institution of Christianity, but tinsisted on conversion of all to the "kingdom values." He worked toward socially empowering the oppressed regardless of religion and changing the values of those who oppress, especially those Christians who continue to practice casteism. See "Dalit Theology in Tamil Christian Folk Music: A Transformed Liturgy by James Theophilus Appavoo" This chapter is contributed by Zoe C. Sherinian to the Popular Christianity in India: Riting Between the Lines, edited by Selva J. Raj, and Corinne G. Dempsey, and
Appavoo´s musical ideas are considered as a strong vehicle for social change and spiritual development. According to Zoë Sherinian he has created a "musical theology of Liberation" which is musically disseminates it through songs and liturgies -- a significant strategy within the field of Dalit theology." Appavoo has develped a theoretical critique of the hegemonic cultural values transmitted and reinforced through indigenized Christian Carnatic music used primarily among Protestant community. The folk music composed by Appavoo stands out not only for its beauty, rhythmic vitality, and theologically powerful lyrics, but also for the way it has generated excitement and inspiration among Christians. His theo-musicalogical position that folk music is the form of Tamil Christian music with the greatest potential to empower and liberate Dalits from caste and economic oppression is significant. Appavvoo has never advocated conversion to the institution of Christianity, but tinsisted on conversion of all to the "kingdom values." He worked toward socially empowering the oppressed regardless of religion and changing the values of those who oppress, especially those Christians who continue to practice casteism. See "Dalit Theology in Tamil Christian Folk Music: A Transformed Liturgy by James Theophilus Appavoo" This chapter is contributed by Zoe C. Sherinian to the Popular Christianity in India: Riting Between the Lines, edited by Selva J. Raj, and Corinne G. Dempsey, and
published by SUNY Press, in 2002.
Read a synopsis of her dissertation
Also Refer
Appavoo's famous words of Lords Prayer which was commented by Sherinian in her article in Popular Christianity :
Read a synopsis of her dissertation
The Indigenization of Tamil Christian Music: Folk Music as a Liberative Transmission SystemZoe Carey SherinianDoctoral dissertation. Wesleyan University, Connecticut. 1998.In this dissertation I seek to understand the complexity of theindigenization of Christian music through examining the power dynamics ofculture contact, local hierarchies of musical style value, and indigenousagency in the South Indian Tamil Protestant Christian context. I draw onthe Rev. James Theophilus Appavoo's concept of "Christian indigenization" ofmusic to consider the ideological debate over musical style in relation toTamil Christian social identities, particularly as a determinant of music'svalue as a transmission system that can facilitate social and spiritualliberation for poor and Dalit (former "untouchable" or oppressed) Indians. The ethnographic focus of this dissertation is the TamilChristian production (composition, compilation, recording etc.) andtransmission of indigenized music from 1600 C.E. to 1994 and within thecontemporary Protestant Church of South India (CSI). Part one attempts toprove that one of the primary modes of transmission of Christianity to Tamilpeople in India has historically occurred through the medium of music, inmany cases indigenized music. I show how the three indigenous styles(karnatak, folk and light) as well as Western hymns have been used as ameans to transmit Christianity. I then describe contemporary patterns ofstyle use from the perspectives of caste, class, theological, anddenominational identity. Part two is an ethnographic description of the useof music styles among the three largest castes among Tamil Protestants, asrepresented by individuals, and of the production and transmission of musicat the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary, where I conducted nine months ofinteractive, participatory fieldwork. Part three is a case study of J. T.Appavoo, a Dalit Christian composer and theologian whose life and workexemplifies the contemporary complexity of style use ideology. I describeAppavoo's family and personal music history, changes in his commitment fromclassical karnatak music to folk music, and the development of his Dalitconsciousness. I then describe the three tenets of Appavoo's liberationtheology and his analysis of social and musical values that informs them.Finally, I musically, linguistically and theologically analyze a performanceof Appavoo's folk music liturgy to demonstrate his ideology of liberativetransmission through this style that he believes allows for re-creation andre-contextualization with every transmission, thus defining Christianindigenized music. (Author)
Also Refer
Reception and Advocacy of Tamil Folk Music: Performing Multiple Ethnographic Roles Among Dalit Christian Villagers.
Zoe Sherinian, University of Oklahoma
The Dalit Christian theologian Theophilus Appavoo (1940-2005) radically reformed Protestant music in Tamilnadu, India. He intended to create a liberation theology through Tamil folk music that would easily transmit to villagers, and engage them in a discourse of caste, gender, and class consciousness. In 2002, I conducted a reception study among Dalit Christian villagers and found that the most positive effects made through Appavoo’s songs occurred in places where his former seminary students taught the songs by engaging villagers in a dialogue about issues of oppression, and used the songs in social activism where they had direct referential meaning. However, where the villagers were not clear about the significance of the music, I often attempted to explain Appavoo’s ideas such as unity, shared eating, and folk music as a worthy and powerful medium for Christian liturgy. I argue it is essential to reflexively distinguish between the responses of my informants based on my multiple roles as observer/interviewer and advocate. However, I maintain that multiple and shifting roles may be necessary for the researcher in a highly politicized ethnographic context where a significant expectation of the work is to contribute to positive change through a dialogical process. I believe my use of this method is rooted in my experiences as an undergraduate at Oberlin College in which classroom learning was fused with my development as an activist, and in my initial experience in India as an Oberlin Shansi Fellow, which involved developing close relationships with and a commitment to minority communitiesAppavoo's famous words of Lords Prayer which was commented by Sherinian in her article in Popular Christianity :
Lord’s Prayer
(Composed by Reverend James Theophilus Appavoo)
Vanathila Vazhugira Pethavere samy
Um per velangavenum samy Viduthala vara venum
Needhiyatra atchi venam Pethavere samy
Um nemayulla atchivenum Uthamare samy
Vanathila unathusitham kodi Parappadhu pola
Indha olagathilum nadakka Venum Pethavere samy
Othumaya oru oulyil Sendhu thinnum soru
Nittam nittham kedaikkanuame Pethavere samy
Kutthangala nee mannicha Pethavare samy
Appdy mattavanga ktthangala Mannichittom samy
Sethukula madinjazhiyum Natthu pola nanga
Pei sothanayil veezhhndhidama Katthiduvai samy
Atchudan adhikaramum Pethavare samy
Keerthiyellam ungalukke Thandhidurom samy
Aam amen aam amen Pethavare samy
Anadhiyaga amen amen uthamare samy
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Arul Kadal Jesuit Seminary
Aikiya Alayam, Arul Kadal Jesuit Seminary, Arul Kadal, (Jesuit Theologate), IDCR, 98 Santhome High Road, Chennai - 600004Mylapore
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Wilson’s world view: Beginning of Anticolonial Nationalism
The Hindu - Indian Newspapers in English Language from eight editions.
Frontline
Volume 25 - Issue 16 :: Aug. 02-15, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents
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BOOKS
Wilson’s world view
A.G. NOORANI
A study of the expectations for a more inclusive international order that Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric raised among colonial nationalists.
"In June 1919, Nguyen Tat Thanh, a twenty-eight-year-old kitchen assistant from French Indochina, set out to present a petition to the world leaders then assembled in Paris for the peace conference. The document, entitled ‘The Claims of the People of Annam’, echoed the rhetoric of the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, who had recently emerged in the international arena as a champion of the right of all peoples on self-determination. In the tumultuous months following the end of the First World War, Wilson was hailed around the world as the prophet of a new era in world affairs, one in which justice, rather than power, would be the central principle of international relations.
“The young men from Indochina, who signed the petition as Nguyen Ai Quoc, or ‘Nguyen the Patriot’, sought a personal audience with the American President to plead his people’s case before Wilson. According to some accounts, he even rented a formal morning suit in preparation for the occasion. The meeting, however, did not materialise. Wilson probably never even saw Nguyen’s petition, and he currently did not respond to it. Within less than a year the man, who would later become known to the world as Ho Chi Minh, adopted Bolshevism as his new creed, and Lenin replaced Wilson as his inspiration on the road to self-determination for his people.”
Oppressed peoples pin their hopes on any leader who promises change with stirring eloquence. FDR [Franklin D. Roosevelt] and the Atlantic Charter never aroused the hopes which President Woodrow Wilson did in 1918 with his Fourteen Points. Prof. Erez Manela, Dunwalke Associate Professor of American History at Harvard, has filled a gap in studies of Wilson with an original work, which describes with a meticulous scholarship Wilson’s world view, the origins of the Points, his enormous popularity when he arrived in Europe for the peace conference at Versailles, the subsequent disillusion and the seeds of revolt it sowed. He concentrates on Egypt, India, China and Korea as case studies.
Scholars have hitherto concentrated on how Britain and France foiled his plans for a new order after the collapse of the Hapsburg and the Ottoman empires. This work concerns the Third World, which was charged with the slogan of self-determination. Its representatives flocked to Paris with petitions and memoranda. Ho Chi Minh’s experience was typical.
THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
October 29, 1954: Ho Chi Minh, President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru at his official residence in Hanoi.
“Hundreds of such documents, many addressed to President Wilson himself, made their way to the Paris headquarters of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at the Hotel Crillon, but most got no further than the President’s private secretary, Gilbert Close. The President read only a small fraction of them, and he acted on fewer still. The complex and contentious issues of the European settlement were foremost on his mind during his months in Paris, and relations with the major imperial powers – Britain, France, Japan – loomed larger in the scheme of U.S. interests as Wilson saw them than did the aspirations of colonised groups or weak states.
“Though the dispensation of territories that belonged to the defunct empires – German colonies in Africa and the Pacific, Ottoman possessions in the Arab Middle East [West Asia] – was an important topic in the peace negotiations, the leading peacemakers had no intention of entertaining the claims for self-determination of dependent peoples elsewhere, least of all those that ran against their own interests. To himself and to others, Wilson explained this lapse by asserting that the peace conference already had enough on its plate and that the League of Nations would take up such claims in due time.” The Wilsonian Moment failed them. The author does not overlook the rival appeals of Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution.
The ideas of both Wilson and Lenin crossed borders. Of all the four countries, Wilson’s appeal was the weakest in India. It was confined to a few. Lajpat Rai was the most prominent among them. He said: “Ideas – universal ideas – have a knack of rubbing off all geographical limitations. It is impossible that the noble truths uttered by President Wilson in his War Message could be limited in their application. Henceforth, his words are going to be the war cry of all small and subject and oppressed nationalities in the world. He has conferred a new charter of democracy and liberty on the latter and the people of Asia are going to make as much use of this charter, if not even more, as are those of America and Europe.”
American participation in the war had thrown “the imperial powers of Europe into the shade” and they would have no choice but to go along with Wilson’s plan for the post-war international order. The author remarks: “Not all Indian activists shared Lajpat Rai’s optimism about Wilson’s importance for the Indian struggle.”
Woodrow Wilson. "Not all Indian activists shared Lajpat Rai’s optimism about Wilson’s importance for the Indian struggle."
Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote to Wilson in January 1919 that “the world’s hope for peace and justice is centred in you as the author of the great principle of self-determination”. He urged the President and the peace conference to apply the President’s “principle of right and justice” to India. Tilak enclosed a copy of his letter to Lloyd George, hoping that Wilson put additional pressure on the Premier to do right by India. Tilak’s letter to the President also included a handsomely illustrated pamphlet entitled “Self-Determination for India”, which was published by the India Home Rule League’s London office. Korea’s Synghman Rhee was Wilson’s associate at Princeton. It would be fair to say that they were all encouraged but not inspired by Wilson.
The author has no illusions about Wilson. He records his racism and his admiration of British colonialism and espousal of American expansion. The Fourteen Points propounded in his address to Congress on January 8, 1918, did not include self-determination. On the contrary, Point 5 said that the “interests” of the people concerned “must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined”. On February 11, 1918, in another address, came his Four Points in which he stressed “self-determination”. A wag exclaimed that even the Almighty was content with ten.
The impact of Wilson’s ideas lasted long. “Wilson himself, it is true, had at best only a vague idea of how the principle of self-determination would be practically implemented even in Europe, and he devoted little attention to its implications elsewhere. Nevertheless, the President’s talk about the right to self-determination and his advocacy of the League of Nations implied a new and more equitable model of international relations, and they took on a life of their own, independent of Wilson and his intentions. In retrospect, it is easy to see that the expectations for a more inclusive international order that Wilson’s rhetoric and global stature raised among colonial nationalists were far beyond the President’s intentions and even further beyond what he would achieve.”
Frontline
Volume 25 - Issue 16 :: Aug. 02-15, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents
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BOOKS
Wilson’s world view
A.G. NOORANI
A study of the expectations for a more inclusive international order that Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric raised among colonial nationalists.
"In June 1919, Nguyen Tat Thanh, a twenty-eight-year-old kitchen assistant from French Indochina, set out to present a petition to the world leaders then assembled in Paris for the peace conference. The document, entitled ‘The Claims of the People of Annam’, echoed the rhetoric of the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, who had recently emerged in the international arena as a champion of the right of all peoples on self-determination. In the tumultuous months following the end of the First World War, Wilson was hailed around the world as the prophet of a new era in world affairs, one in which justice, rather than power, would be the central principle of international relations.
“The young men from Indochina, who signed the petition as Nguyen Ai Quoc, or ‘Nguyen the Patriot’, sought a personal audience with the American President to plead his people’s case before Wilson. According to some accounts, he even rented a formal morning suit in preparation for the occasion. The meeting, however, did not materialise. Wilson probably never even saw Nguyen’s petition, and he currently did not respond to it. Within less than a year the man, who would later become known to the world as Ho Chi Minh, adopted Bolshevism as his new creed, and Lenin replaced Wilson as his inspiration on the road to self-determination for his people.”
Oppressed peoples pin their hopes on any leader who promises change with stirring eloquence. FDR [Franklin D. Roosevelt] and the Atlantic Charter never aroused the hopes which President Woodrow Wilson did in 1918 with his Fourteen Points. Prof. Erez Manela, Dunwalke Associate Professor of American History at Harvard, has filled a gap in studies of Wilson with an original work, which describes with a meticulous scholarship Wilson’s world view, the origins of the Points, his enormous popularity when he arrived in Europe for the peace conference at Versailles, the subsequent disillusion and the seeds of revolt it sowed. He concentrates on Egypt, India, China and Korea as case studies.
Scholars have hitherto concentrated on how Britain and France foiled his plans for a new order after the collapse of the Hapsburg and the Ottoman empires. This work concerns the Third World, which was charged with the slogan of self-determination. Its representatives flocked to Paris with petitions and memoranda. Ho Chi Minh’s experience was typical.
THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
October 29, 1954: Ho Chi Minh, President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru at his official residence in Hanoi.
“Hundreds of such documents, many addressed to President Wilson himself, made their way to the Paris headquarters of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at the Hotel Crillon, but most got no further than the President’s private secretary, Gilbert Close. The President read only a small fraction of them, and he acted on fewer still. The complex and contentious issues of the European settlement were foremost on his mind during his months in Paris, and relations with the major imperial powers – Britain, France, Japan – loomed larger in the scheme of U.S. interests as Wilson saw them than did the aspirations of colonised groups or weak states.
“Though the dispensation of territories that belonged to the defunct empires – German colonies in Africa and the Pacific, Ottoman possessions in the Arab Middle East [West Asia] – was an important topic in the peace negotiations, the leading peacemakers had no intention of entertaining the claims for self-determination of dependent peoples elsewhere, least of all those that ran against their own interests. To himself and to others, Wilson explained this lapse by asserting that the peace conference already had enough on its plate and that the League of Nations would take up such claims in due time.” The Wilsonian Moment failed them. The author does not overlook the rival appeals of Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution.
The ideas of both Wilson and Lenin crossed borders. Of all the four countries, Wilson’s appeal was the weakest in India. It was confined to a few. Lajpat Rai was the most prominent among them. He said: “Ideas – universal ideas – have a knack of rubbing off all geographical limitations. It is impossible that the noble truths uttered by President Wilson in his War Message could be limited in their application. Henceforth, his words are going to be the war cry of all small and subject and oppressed nationalities in the world. He has conferred a new charter of democracy and liberty on the latter and the people of Asia are going to make as much use of this charter, if not even more, as are those of America and Europe.”
American participation in the war had thrown “the imperial powers of Europe into the shade” and they would have no choice but to go along with Wilson’s plan for the post-war international order. The author remarks: “Not all Indian activists shared Lajpat Rai’s optimism about Wilson’s importance for the Indian struggle.”
Woodrow Wilson. "Not all Indian activists shared Lajpat Rai’s optimism about Wilson’s importance for the Indian struggle."
Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote to Wilson in January 1919 that “the world’s hope for peace and justice is centred in you as the author of the great principle of self-determination”. He urged the President and the peace conference to apply the President’s “principle of right and justice” to India. Tilak enclosed a copy of his letter to Lloyd George, hoping that Wilson put additional pressure on the Premier to do right by India. Tilak’s letter to the President also included a handsomely illustrated pamphlet entitled “Self-Determination for India”, which was published by the India Home Rule League’s London office. Korea’s Synghman Rhee was Wilson’s associate at Princeton. It would be fair to say that they were all encouraged but not inspired by Wilson.
The author has no illusions about Wilson. He records his racism and his admiration of British colonialism and espousal of American expansion. The Fourteen Points propounded in his address to Congress on January 8, 1918, did not include self-determination. On the contrary, Point 5 said that the “interests” of the people concerned “must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined”. On February 11, 1918, in another address, came his Four Points in which he stressed “self-determination”. A wag exclaimed that even the Almighty was content with ten.
The impact of Wilson’s ideas lasted long. “Wilson himself, it is true, had at best only a vague idea of how the principle of self-determination would be practically implemented even in Europe, and he devoted little attention to its implications elsewhere. Nevertheless, the President’s talk about the right to self-determination and his advocacy of the League of Nations implied a new and more equitable model of international relations, and they took on a life of their own, independent of Wilson and his intentions. In retrospect, it is easy to see that the expectations for a more inclusive international order that Wilson’s rhetoric and global stature raised among colonial nationalists were far beyond the President’s intentions and even further beyond what he would achieve.”
Bank on them - A book on Muhammad Yunus
The Hindu - Indian Newspapers in English Language from eight editions.
Bank on them
JOHN M. ALEXANDER
Building local capacities of the poor and marginalised must be recognised as an essential part of social entrepreneurship.
Ideas have the power to change history. When new ideas emerge, they challenge established ways of thinking and acting, and suggest alternative approaches to resolve problems confronting the world. Yet ideas can turn out to be birds without wings. Without visionary and committed individuals who can actualise them, new ideas will hardly make any difference to the lives of people. They will remain as wishful thinking and disappear without trace.
Many social entrepreneurs across the world today have been able to make a mark not merely because of their innovative solutions to specific problems of poverty, illiteracy, health care, inequality, insecurity and environmental degradation but because they have also worked with determination towards a systematic realisation of those ideas for social transformation.
David Bornstein’s How to Change the World narrates the stories of 10 such visionary entrepreneurs. It includes people such as Fabio Rosa of Brazil who spearheaded rural electrification for poor farmers; Bill Drayton of the United States who instituted the Ashoka foundation to nurture and provide financial support to budding entrepreneurial leaders; Jeroo Billimoria who founded Childline in India, a 24-hour emergency response system to help children in distress; Erzsebet Szekeres of Hungary who championed the idea of assisted living for the disabled; and Veronica Khosa of South Africa who started home-based care for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) patients.
Bornstein intersperses the stories of these remarkable individuals with attempts to identify common patterns and traits among them. Who becomes a social entrepreneur? How does one become a social entrepreneur? What criteria can we use to identify someone as a social entrepreneur? The motivation behind such an introspective exercise is that despite their varied backgrounds and areas of intervention, if one can recognise some common qualities, we can find these pioneers, nurture and support them; their ideas and experience can be spread to others working in the same or similar fields.
Bornstein identifies six traits to be the hallmark of a good social entrepreneur. The first one is the willingness to self-correct. While governments, big development agencies and bureaucratic institutions hold fast to their predetermined ideas and programmes even when they are found to be not working, social entrepreneurs are honest enough to admit their mistakes and flexible enough to try out other things that will work.
Second, charismatic social entrepreneurs are team players, willing to share credit with others instead of attributing success to themselves. Third, entrepreneurial projects which address social problems are successful to the extent the initiators are willing to take risk and think out of the box, venturing out to remedy something in society that will invariably bring confrontation with established structures and institutions.
Four, good social entrepreneurs realise that for effective achievement of their goals and objectives it is important to network and build bridges with other actors involved. Governments, universities, businesses and non-profit organisations should be viewed more as allies than as competitors or antagonists in doing good. Five, most social entrepreneurs have preferred to work quietly focussing on their goals rather than seeking the limelight. When public recognition comes their way, most often after many years of quiet work, they accept it gracefully and use the opportunity to scale up their outreach.
Finally, what differentiates social entrepreneurs from business entrepreneurs and drives them to engage in what they do is the ethical motivation to improve the quality of life of the poor and marginalised.
Building local capacity
Bornstein’s list of identified qualities, however, misses out another essential trait that comes out so very strongly in most social entrepreneurs: building local capacities for sustainable social change. This feature calls for working with the poor and marginalised to identify their individual and collective capacities and helping them to develop those capacities. In some cases it may mean helping individuals or small groups to participate more effectively in the economy and gain easier access to the market. In other instances, it may require organising grassroots groups with a view to influence governments and policymakers.
For example, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) started by Ela Bhatt in 1972 has until now helped approximately 9.6 lakh self-employed women, including hawkers and vendors, home-based workers, manual labourers and service providers. In addition to protecting them from exploitation from the local elites, the police and public officials, SEWA offers many services to build their capacities, including banking and financial services, access to health care, skill development, leadership training and development. SEWA has also been quite influential in the formulation of national and international legislation and policies to protect the rights of self-employed women.
Whatever direction the local capacity-building effort may take, entrepreneurial leaders with a social agenda have been very careful to mobilise existing resources of the poor to improve their lives rather than simply import resources and services. This is because mobilising the resources of the poor and grounding development projects in local commitment and capacities increases the likelihood of sustainable social change.
With the intimate knowledge that comes from their fieldwork, social entrepreneurs have come to realise that without the willing participation and cooperation of local partners, development initiatives are bound to fail. Moreover, contribution and involvement create a sense of dignity and ownership among the beneficiaries that they too can take part in a reciprocal relationship. Inclusion of this trait of identifying and cultivating local capacities will make the profile of a social entrepreneur more complete.
Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner and the founder of the Grameen Bank, is a social entrepreneur par excellence. Not only does he embody many of the identified qualities of a social entrepreneur, but his idea of microcredit as a strategy to overcome poverty has spread to every continent and benefited millions of families across the world. He reversed the orthodox banking theory by showing how to extend collateral-free loans systematically on a cost-effective basis to poor villagers, particularly women. He dared to ask: How do you know that the poor are not credit-worthy if you have not tried it out? It is perhaps banks that are not people-worthy.
In his first book Banker to the Poor (Penguin Books India, 2007), Yunus chronicled the idea and development of microcredit and the Grameen Bank. It was also meant to be his autobiography intertwined with his work and vision for the poor. Now, in the sequel Creating a World Without Poverty, he goes a step further than microcredit to propound and promote the idea of social business. It is, according to Yunus, “a business that is totally dedicated to solving social and environmental problems”. It is neither charity nor a not-for-profit endeavour. It operates on business principles and aims to cover its own costs rather than rely on some external source of funding. The product or service offered by a social business is not free. It charges a fee so that it can be self-sustaining and can grow in potential.
The difference between a social business and other businesses lies on its principle of social benefit. While dominant business enterprises are driven by profit-maximisation and are intended to achieve some limited personal gain, social business operates with the aim of addressing a social cause. For this purpose, investors who want to do something noble with their money can invest in a business that works towards achieving a specific social objective or in a business that is owned by poor people who want to escape from poverty.
The investors, however, are entitled to recover only the amount invested and not dividends. The surplus made here gets reinvested in the business itself either for expansion or for starting up another, related social business, thus passing on the gain back to the target group of beneficiaries. As Yunus aptly puts it, a social business is a “non-loss, non-dividend business”.
Yunus clarifies that social business is not the same as social entrepreneurship. He understands it as a species and as a special variety of social entrepreneurship for the reason that social entrepreneurship as it has been understood so far is a broad idea that includes any initiative to help the poor. It can be monetary or non-monetary, for profit or not for profit. As Yunus illustrates, “distributing free medicine to the sick can be an example of social entrepreneurship. So can setting up a for-profit health care centre in a village where no health facility exists”. But in the case of a social business the objective is specific and well focussed. The aim of a social business is to address a social concern through business principles and operation.
As one of its first models of social business, the Grameen Foundation, in a joint venture with the French food company Danone, runs a factory to produce fortified yogurt at affordable prices to bring nutrition to malnourished children in Bangladesh. Interestingly, not only the milk used comes from local people, but also the cows that provide the milk are bought with loans from the Grameen Bank. The company’s aim is to expand the business until all malnourished children in the country are reached with this yogurt. Yunus believes that the current social-entrepreneurship movement should pay more attention to and move in the direction of social business because sustainable social change can be more effectively brought through social businesses than through direct charity or non-profit organisations.
In Creating a World Without Poverty, Yunus has two aims: the first is to inspire and initiate a social business movement closely modelled on the Grameen Bank experiment. The second is to articulate the foundational principles that inform and sustain social business.
Yunus criticises the model of one-dimensional human beings espoused by mainstream economics and business thinking. He says: “In the conventional theory of business, we’ve created a one-dimensional human being to play the role of business leader, the so-called entrepreneur. We’ve insulated him from the rest of life, the religious, emotional, political, and the social. He is dedicated to one mission only – maximise profit. He is supported by other one-dimensional human beings who give him their investment money to achieve that mission.”
Such a lopsided view of human behaviour, according to Yunus, is a “conceptualisation failure”. A balanced and realistic view would be to think of human beings as multidimensional beings motivated not just by profit, but by many factors including sympathy, trust, compassion, fairness and justice. A multidimensional view of the human being is a seedbed for different types of entrepreneurs concerned about doing good to people, society and the environment.
Further, social business is premised on the idea that poor and marginalised people are social assets from which everyone can benefit. Given the right environment and opportunities, the poor, just like anyone else, would be able to participate, contribute and succeed in the economic process. There is no reason to be pessimistic or fatalistic about their talent and future. Contrary to this, governments, non-governmental organisations and development agencies have far too long viewed the poor as a social liability and have failed to recognise their capacities to contribute.
Policies and programmes for the poor have often considered them as mere beneficiaries rather than agents who can take their destiny into their own hands. Among some development audiences such ideas are now slowly being replaced by a more positive attitude. Yet a social business that involves the poor and marginalised and which is specifically targeted to alleviate some of their sufferings and misery will be a more effective venture.
And finally, social business is a realistic way of correcting and refining capitalism to help the poor. As Yunus puts it, capitalism in its present form is “a half-developed structure”. It needs to be completed with many of its missing elements. Entrepreneurs engaged in social business and investors who want to support them with their capital should keep a critical watch over the way globalisation and the free market operate. While believing that globalisation and the free market have the potential to help the poor, it should be realised that this does not happen automatically.
Yunus warns: “Unfettered markets in their current form are not meant to solve social problems and instead may actually exacerbate poverty, disease, pollution, corruption, crime, and inequality.” Comparing globalisation and the global trade to a hundred-lane highway that criss-crosses the world, he points out that without stoplights and speed limits, rules and regulations, small and marginal users will be crushed or edged out by big giants. Hence, global as well as local markets need to be regulated to protect the interests of the poor. Without such regulations the rich and the already well-off can alter the conditions of the market to make it work for their own benefit.
Not every social entrepreneur has been able to build a theory out of his/her work and achievement as Yunus. Some among them do not even have the time or interest to make predictions about their work.
Nevertheless, what has been quite common to all noteworthy social entrepreneurs is the commitment and dedication to build local capacities of the poor, and pursue their ideas with passion to the very end for a qualitative change in people’s lives. It is this unique and proven capacity to endure until the very end and be busy with the details of how to make things happen that makes social entrepreneurs a rare breed of leaders whom the young generation can aspire to follow.
Unfortunately, social change theories have too often glorified ideas and their place in history quite disproportionately. They have been busy concentrating too much on how ideas influence hearts and minds. The emerging class of social entrepreneurs is a living proof as to why this oversight needs to be corrected.
Ideas no doubt move people, but we also require generous, public-spirited, hard-working, resilient and dedicated people to move ideas from the realm of theory to practice. Without such people, the world would have been much poorer than what it is now. With more of them, we can certainly hope for a better world tomorrow.
Bank on them
JOHN M. ALEXANDER
Building local capacities of the poor and marginalised must be recognised as an essential part of social entrepreneurship.
Ideas have the power to change history. When new ideas emerge, they challenge established ways of thinking and acting, and suggest alternative approaches to resolve problems confronting the world. Yet ideas can turn out to be birds without wings. Without visionary and committed individuals who can actualise them, new ideas will hardly make any difference to the lives of people. They will remain as wishful thinking and disappear without trace.
Many social entrepreneurs across the world today have been able to make a mark not merely because of their innovative solutions to specific problems of poverty, illiteracy, health care, inequality, insecurity and environmental degradation but because they have also worked with determination towards a systematic realisation of those ideas for social transformation.
David Bornstein’s How to Change the World narrates the stories of 10 such visionary entrepreneurs. It includes people such as Fabio Rosa of Brazil who spearheaded rural electrification for poor farmers; Bill Drayton of the United States who instituted the Ashoka foundation to nurture and provide financial support to budding entrepreneurial leaders; Jeroo Billimoria who founded Childline in India, a 24-hour emergency response system to help children in distress; Erzsebet Szekeres of Hungary who championed the idea of assisted living for the disabled; and Veronica Khosa of South Africa who started home-based care for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) patients.
Bornstein intersperses the stories of these remarkable individuals with attempts to identify common patterns and traits among them. Who becomes a social entrepreneur? How does one become a social entrepreneur? What criteria can we use to identify someone as a social entrepreneur? The motivation behind such an introspective exercise is that despite their varied backgrounds and areas of intervention, if one can recognise some common qualities, we can find these pioneers, nurture and support them; their ideas and experience can be spread to others working in the same or similar fields.
Bornstein identifies six traits to be the hallmark of a good social entrepreneur. The first one is the willingness to self-correct. While governments, big development agencies and bureaucratic institutions hold fast to their predetermined ideas and programmes even when they are found to be not working, social entrepreneurs are honest enough to admit their mistakes and flexible enough to try out other things that will work.
Second, charismatic social entrepreneurs are team players, willing to share credit with others instead of attributing success to themselves. Third, entrepreneurial projects which address social problems are successful to the extent the initiators are willing to take risk and think out of the box, venturing out to remedy something in society that will invariably bring confrontation with established structures and institutions.
Four, good social entrepreneurs realise that for effective achievement of their goals and objectives it is important to network and build bridges with other actors involved. Governments, universities, businesses and non-profit organisations should be viewed more as allies than as competitors or antagonists in doing good. Five, most social entrepreneurs have preferred to work quietly focussing on their goals rather than seeking the limelight. When public recognition comes their way, most often after many years of quiet work, they accept it gracefully and use the opportunity to scale up their outreach.
Finally, what differentiates social entrepreneurs from business entrepreneurs and drives them to engage in what they do is the ethical motivation to improve the quality of life of the poor and marginalised.
Building local capacity
Bornstein’s list of identified qualities, however, misses out another essential trait that comes out so very strongly in most social entrepreneurs: building local capacities for sustainable social change. This feature calls for working with the poor and marginalised to identify their individual and collective capacities and helping them to develop those capacities. In some cases it may mean helping individuals or small groups to participate more effectively in the economy and gain easier access to the market. In other instances, it may require organising grassroots groups with a view to influence governments and policymakers.
For example, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) started by Ela Bhatt in 1972 has until now helped approximately 9.6 lakh self-employed women, including hawkers and vendors, home-based workers, manual labourers and service providers. In addition to protecting them from exploitation from the local elites, the police and public officials, SEWA offers many services to build their capacities, including banking and financial services, access to health care, skill development, leadership training and development. SEWA has also been quite influential in the formulation of national and international legislation and policies to protect the rights of self-employed women.
Whatever direction the local capacity-building effort may take, entrepreneurial leaders with a social agenda have been very careful to mobilise existing resources of the poor to improve their lives rather than simply import resources and services. This is because mobilising the resources of the poor and grounding development projects in local commitment and capacities increases the likelihood of sustainable social change.
With the intimate knowledge that comes from their fieldwork, social entrepreneurs have come to realise that without the willing participation and cooperation of local partners, development initiatives are bound to fail. Moreover, contribution and involvement create a sense of dignity and ownership among the beneficiaries that they too can take part in a reciprocal relationship. Inclusion of this trait of identifying and cultivating local capacities will make the profile of a social entrepreneur more complete.
Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner and the founder of the Grameen Bank, is a social entrepreneur par excellence. Not only does he embody many of the identified qualities of a social entrepreneur, but his idea of microcredit as a strategy to overcome poverty has spread to every continent and benefited millions of families across the world. He reversed the orthodox banking theory by showing how to extend collateral-free loans systematically on a cost-effective basis to poor villagers, particularly women. He dared to ask: How do you know that the poor are not credit-worthy if you have not tried it out? It is perhaps banks that are not people-worthy.
In his first book Banker to the Poor (Penguin Books India, 2007), Yunus chronicled the idea and development of microcredit and the Grameen Bank. It was also meant to be his autobiography intertwined with his work and vision for the poor. Now, in the sequel Creating a World Without Poverty, he goes a step further than microcredit to propound and promote the idea of social business. It is, according to Yunus, “a business that is totally dedicated to solving social and environmental problems”. It is neither charity nor a not-for-profit endeavour. It operates on business principles and aims to cover its own costs rather than rely on some external source of funding. The product or service offered by a social business is not free. It charges a fee so that it can be self-sustaining and can grow in potential.
The difference between a social business and other businesses lies on its principle of social benefit. While dominant business enterprises are driven by profit-maximisation and are intended to achieve some limited personal gain, social business operates with the aim of addressing a social cause. For this purpose, investors who want to do something noble with their money can invest in a business that works towards achieving a specific social objective or in a business that is owned by poor people who want to escape from poverty.
The investors, however, are entitled to recover only the amount invested and not dividends. The surplus made here gets reinvested in the business itself either for expansion or for starting up another, related social business, thus passing on the gain back to the target group of beneficiaries. As Yunus aptly puts it, a social business is a “non-loss, non-dividend business”.
Yunus clarifies that social business is not the same as social entrepreneurship. He understands it as a species and as a special variety of social entrepreneurship for the reason that social entrepreneurship as it has been understood so far is a broad idea that includes any initiative to help the poor. It can be monetary or non-monetary, for profit or not for profit. As Yunus illustrates, “distributing free medicine to the sick can be an example of social entrepreneurship. So can setting up a for-profit health care centre in a village where no health facility exists”. But in the case of a social business the objective is specific and well focussed. The aim of a social business is to address a social concern through business principles and operation.
As one of its first models of social business, the Grameen Foundation, in a joint venture with the French food company Danone, runs a factory to produce fortified yogurt at affordable prices to bring nutrition to malnourished children in Bangladesh. Interestingly, not only the milk used comes from local people, but also the cows that provide the milk are bought with loans from the Grameen Bank. The company’s aim is to expand the business until all malnourished children in the country are reached with this yogurt. Yunus believes that the current social-entrepreneurship movement should pay more attention to and move in the direction of social business because sustainable social change can be more effectively brought through social businesses than through direct charity or non-profit organisations.
In Creating a World Without Poverty, Yunus has two aims: the first is to inspire and initiate a social business movement closely modelled on the Grameen Bank experiment. The second is to articulate the foundational principles that inform and sustain social business.
Yunus criticises the model of one-dimensional human beings espoused by mainstream economics and business thinking. He says: “In the conventional theory of business, we’ve created a one-dimensional human being to play the role of business leader, the so-called entrepreneur. We’ve insulated him from the rest of life, the religious, emotional, political, and the social. He is dedicated to one mission only – maximise profit. He is supported by other one-dimensional human beings who give him their investment money to achieve that mission.”
Such a lopsided view of human behaviour, according to Yunus, is a “conceptualisation failure”. A balanced and realistic view would be to think of human beings as multidimensional beings motivated not just by profit, but by many factors including sympathy, trust, compassion, fairness and justice. A multidimensional view of the human being is a seedbed for different types of entrepreneurs concerned about doing good to people, society and the environment.
Further, social business is premised on the idea that poor and marginalised people are social assets from which everyone can benefit. Given the right environment and opportunities, the poor, just like anyone else, would be able to participate, contribute and succeed in the economic process. There is no reason to be pessimistic or fatalistic about their talent and future. Contrary to this, governments, non-governmental organisations and development agencies have far too long viewed the poor as a social liability and have failed to recognise their capacities to contribute.
Policies and programmes for the poor have often considered them as mere beneficiaries rather than agents who can take their destiny into their own hands. Among some development audiences such ideas are now slowly being replaced by a more positive attitude. Yet a social business that involves the poor and marginalised and which is specifically targeted to alleviate some of their sufferings and misery will be a more effective venture.
And finally, social business is a realistic way of correcting and refining capitalism to help the poor. As Yunus puts it, capitalism in its present form is “a half-developed structure”. It needs to be completed with many of its missing elements. Entrepreneurs engaged in social business and investors who want to support them with their capital should keep a critical watch over the way globalisation and the free market operate. While believing that globalisation and the free market have the potential to help the poor, it should be realised that this does not happen automatically.
Yunus warns: “Unfettered markets in their current form are not meant to solve social problems and instead may actually exacerbate poverty, disease, pollution, corruption, crime, and inequality.” Comparing globalisation and the global trade to a hundred-lane highway that criss-crosses the world, he points out that without stoplights and speed limits, rules and regulations, small and marginal users will be crushed or edged out by big giants. Hence, global as well as local markets need to be regulated to protect the interests of the poor. Without such regulations the rich and the already well-off can alter the conditions of the market to make it work for their own benefit.
Not every social entrepreneur has been able to build a theory out of his/her work and achievement as Yunus. Some among them do not even have the time or interest to make predictions about their work.
Nevertheless, what has been quite common to all noteworthy social entrepreneurs is the commitment and dedication to build local capacities of the poor, and pursue their ideas with passion to the very end for a qualitative change in people’s lives. It is this unique and proven capacity to endure until the very end and be busy with the details of how to make things happen that makes social entrepreneurs a rare breed of leaders whom the young generation can aspire to follow.
Unfortunately, social change theories have too often glorified ideas and their place in history quite disproportionately. They have been busy concentrating too much on how ideas influence hearts and minds. The emerging class of social entrepreneurs is a living proof as to why this oversight needs to be corrected.
Ideas no doubt move people, but we also require generous, public-spirited, hard-working, resilient and dedicated people to move ideas from the realm of theory to practice. Without such people, the world would have been much poorer than what it is now. With more of them, we can certainly hope for a better world tomorrow.
BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY: Limited victory for people
The Hindu - Indian Newspapers in English Language from eight editions.
Frontline
Volume 25 - Issue 16 :: Aug. 02-15, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents
Printer Friendly Page Send this Article to a Friend
BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY
Limited victory
AJOY ASHIRWAD MAHAPRASHASTA AND V. VENKATESAN
The survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy secure from the government promises to implement part of their demands.
RAJEEV BHATT
Akash Kushwaha, a seven-year-old boy who suffers from malformed eyes owing to contaminated groundwater, at a press conference held to highlight the plight of the gas victims, in New Delhi on April 29.
AT a small park in New Delhi on June 21, a few children, aged between five and 15, from Bhopal made paper hearts and wrote messages on them. It was their way of telling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to have a heart and do justice to the survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
These children, along with the survivors and activists, began a dharna at Jantar Mantar on March 28, agitated outside the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on June 9, and courted imprisonment following their unique “die-in” protest by lying on the ground with shrouds covering their bodies. Nine activists began an indefinite hunger strike on June 10. They ended their fast after 22 days but nine others took over from them. The agitation, led by the Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA), demonstrates what Gandhian methods of peaceful protest and self-inflicted suffering can achieve. The agitators undertook a gruelling 500-mile (800 km) walk, which lasted 38 days, from Bhopal to New Delhi on February 20 in order to strengthen their resolve to fight for their rights and also build public opinion.
Their peaceful agitation did not go in vain. A set of documents procured by the activists from the PMO under the Right to Information Act reveals the government’s thinking on some of the major demands put forward by the agitators.
These include a Commission on Bhopal, specially empowered by the Prime Minister, to plan and carry out medical, economic, social and environmental rehabilitation of the gas victims and civil action for environmental and health damage caused by soil and water contamination by taking appropriate legal action against Union Carbide and Dow Chemical Company (DCC), which owns it now.
The meeting of the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster, which was held on April 17, decided to take further action on setting up the commission in consultation with the Ministry of Law and Justice. It also decided to request the Health Ministry to consider continuing the research carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on the effects of the gas leak on the survivors and their families.
A contentious issue was the approval given by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion for the foreign technical collaboration (FTC) between the Dow Global Technologies and Reliance Petroleum Limited, which would facilitate the import of UNIPOL-PP, a technological process patented by Union Carbide to manufacture polypropylene, a thermoplastic used chiefly for electrical insulation and packaging.
The Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals, (DC&PC), the nodal department dealing with the aftermath of the gas tragedy, sought a reconsideration of the approval. It submitted that any future investment of Dow Chemical should be allowed only after the company met the Central government’s submission in the ongoing case in the Madhya Pradesh High Court. In this case, the DC&PC has, as an interim measure, sought Rs.100 crore from the DCC towards environmental remediation of the gas leak disaster site.
The Law Ministry has, however, disagreed with the DC&PC’s view. It held that the two issues of site remediation and approval of the FTC were unrelated. The Ministry also opined that it was almost impossible to foresee what view a court of law might take in the absence of any precedent.
The Law Ministry, nevertheless, shared the DC&PC’s stand on the question of Dow Chemical’s liability. It opined that it was doubtful whether by virtue of any clause in a merger agreement, companies could wipe out any liability incurred under any law or judicial decisions. “Any such liability unless extinguished by discharge of the liability or by any law, cannot evaporate in thin air. Any clause in an agreement between parties will be against the public policy and will be void and unenforceable in Indian courts,” it said in its opinion given to the Department of Chemicals.
On May 29, Prithviraj Chavan, Minister of State in the PMO, revealed on behalf of the Prime Minister that the government had sanctioned a project under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission to provide safe drinking water through pipelines from the Kolar Reservoir to the 14 localities situated in the vicinity of the abandoned site of Union Carbide of India Limited (UCIL). The Bhopal Municipal Corporation would be responsible for executing the project, which is slated to be ready by the end of the year. This was one of the long-pending demands of the gas victims.
On June 3, Manmohan Singh convened a meeting to discuss the issues relating to Bhopal gas survivors. The minutes of this meeting, as revealed under the RTI Act, show that the government took several decisions. Those present at the meeting included, Prithviraj Chavan; K.M. Chandrasekhar, Cabinet Secretary; V.S. Sampath, Secretary, DC&PC; and senior officials from the PMO. The decisions taken at the meeting partly satisfy the demands of the agitators.
The meeting decided to ask the DC&PC to submit to the GoM a detailed proposal to set up the Commission on Bhopal. The Department was also asked to obtain from the State government a detailed plan of action for the rehabilitation schemes as decided by the GoM and take appropriate action.
It was decided that the DC&PC would expedite the site remediation, particularly the task of transporting the toxic waste for incineration and to the designated landfill. More important, the Department would request the Law Ministry to appoint a senior lawyer to pursue the application filed by it before the High Court seeking an advance of Rs.100 crore from Dow Chemical and two other companies for remediation of the site of the gas leak.
The meeting directed the Ministry of Agriculture to pursue the investigations into the allegation that its officials had taken bribes for the registration of four pesticides by DCC, with the Central Bureau of Investigation for an early and appropriate resolution of the matter. The Ministry has registered three pesticides patented by Dow to be sold in India. They are Dursban, Pride and Nurelle. The Committee of Secretaries convened by the Cabinet Secretary on May 30 recorded that the Registration Committee in the Ministry did not find any compromise on the efficacy of the pesticides.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission filed a settled civil action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on February 13, 2007, alleging that DCC violated the books and records and internal controls provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with an estimated $200,000 in improper payments made by a fifth-tier foreign subsidiary of Dow Chemical to Indian government officials from 1996 through 2001. Without admitting or denying the allegations in the commission’s complaint, DCC consented to pay a $325,000 civil penalty. ’
V. SUDERSHAN
The police remove children who staged a demonstration outside the Prime Minister’s residence in New Delhi.
The gas leak survivors and the activists working among them are satisfied that their five-month-long agitation has yielded at least partial results. The BGIA wants the proposed Commission on Bhopal to be set up through an Act of Parliament, with a tenure of 30 years and a budget of Rs.2,000 crore, to deal with the rehabilitation of the survivors of the disaster and their progeny and provide them with proper living conditions. According to Satinath Sarangi of the BGIA, the 30-year term is necessary as there will be many more people, yet to be born, who will still be affected by the harmful effects of the disaster.
It appears that there will be considerable debate over the proposed terms of reference of the Commission. According to Sarangi, the commission should have the power to summon the officials of DCC so as to make the company liable to the survivors of the disaster. It remains to be seen whether the government will agree to this suggestion from the activists, who are likely to be involved in drafting the terms of reference of the commission.
The activists are also satisfied with the government’s decision to pursue the case of legal liability for the disaster against DCC despite pressures to dilute this charge to facilitate investments in India by DCC.
However, the activists are unhappy that there has been no substantive commitment on reversing the approval given to Reliance Industries to purchase the UNIPOL technology.
At the GoM held on July 11, Union Ministers Arjun Singh and Ram Vilas Paswan agreed that the permission given to Reliance Industries should be revoked, but a decision could not be taken as another Minister, Kamal Nath, reportedly disagreed with the suggestion.
But the meeting, according to informed sources, decided that there would not be any more transfer of UCC-patented technology to India.
The activists are also disappointed that the government has not been sincere in seeking extradition from the U.S. of Warren Anderson, the UCC chief at the time of the disaster. He continues to be a fugitive before the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Bhopal, where the criminal case regarding the disaster is being heard.
The activists and the survivors of the disaster will end their current agitation in the national capital once the PMO issues a directive to the DC&PC to prepare a blueprint for the proposed commission.
So far, they have secured only a limited victory, and this was made possible by sheer perseverance, good organisation and novel forms of protests.
Frontline
Volume 25 - Issue 16 :: Aug. 02-15, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents
Printer Friendly Page Send this Article to a Friend
BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY
Limited victory
AJOY ASHIRWAD MAHAPRASHASTA AND V. VENKATESAN
The survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy secure from the government promises to implement part of their demands.
RAJEEV BHATT
Akash Kushwaha, a seven-year-old boy who suffers from malformed eyes owing to contaminated groundwater, at a press conference held to highlight the plight of the gas victims, in New Delhi on April 29.
AT a small park in New Delhi on June 21, a few children, aged between five and 15, from Bhopal made paper hearts and wrote messages on them. It was their way of telling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to have a heart and do justice to the survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
These children, along with the survivors and activists, began a dharna at Jantar Mantar on March 28, agitated outside the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on June 9, and courted imprisonment following their unique “die-in” protest by lying on the ground with shrouds covering their bodies. Nine activists began an indefinite hunger strike on June 10. They ended their fast after 22 days but nine others took over from them. The agitation, led by the Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA), demonstrates what Gandhian methods of peaceful protest and self-inflicted suffering can achieve. The agitators undertook a gruelling 500-mile (800 km) walk, which lasted 38 days, from Bhopal to New Delhi on February 20 in order to strengthen their resolve to fight for their rights and also build public opinion.
Their peaceful agitation did not go in vain. A set of documents procured by the activists from the PMO under the Right to Information Act reveals the government’s thinking on some of the major demands put forward by the agitators.
These include a Commission on Bhopal, specially empowered by the Prime Minister, to plan and carry out medical, economic, social and environmental rehabilitation of the gas victims and civil action for environmental and health damage caused by soil and water contamination by taking appropriate legal action against Union Carbide and Dow Chemical Company (DCC), which owns it now.
The meeting of the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster, which was held on April 17, decided to take further action on setting up the commission in consultation with the Ministry of Law and Justice. It also decided to request the Health Ministry to consider continuing the research carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on the effects of the gas leak on the survivors and their families.
A contentious issue was the approval given by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion for the foreign technical collaboration (FTC) between the Dow Global Technologies and Reliance Petroleum Limited, which would facilitate the import of UNIPOL-PP, a technological process patented by Union Carbide to manufacture polypropylene, a thermoplastic used chiefly for electrical insulation and packaging.
The Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals, (DC&PC), the nodal department dealing with the aftermath of the gas tragedy, sought a reconsideration of the approval. It submitted that any future investment of Dow Chemical should be allowed only after the company met the Central government’s submission in the ongoing case in the Madhya Pradesh High Court. In this case, the DC&PC has, as an interim measure, sought Rs.100 crore from the DCC towards environmental remediation of the gas leak disaster site.
The Law Ministry has, however, disagreed with the DC&PC’s view. It held that the two issues of site remediation and approval of the FTC were unrelated. The Ministry also opined that it was almost impossible to foresee what view a court of law might take in the absence of any precedent.
The Law Ministry, nevertheless, shared the DC&PC’s stand on the question of Dow Chemical’s liability. It opined that it was doubtful whether by virtue of any clause in a merger agreement, companies could wipe out any liability incurred under any law or judicial decisions. “Any such liability unless extinguished by discharge of the liability or by any law, cannot evaporate in thin air. Any clause in an agreement between parties will be against the public policy and will be void and unenforceable in Indian courts,” it said in its opinion given to the Department of Chemicals.
On May 29, Prithviraj Chavan, Minister of State in the PMO, revealed on behalf of the Prime Minister that the government had sanctioned a project under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission to provide safe drinking water through pipelines from the Kolar Reservoir to the 14 localities situated in the vicinity of the abandoned site of Union Carbide of India Limited (UCIL). The Bhopal Municipal Corporation would be responsible for executing the project, which is slated to be ready by the end of the year. This was one of the long-pending demands of the gas victims.
On June 3, Manmohan Singh convened a meeting to discuss the issues relating to Bhopal gas survivors. The minutes of this meeting, as revealed under the RTI Act, show that the government took several decisions. Those present at the meeting included, Prithviraj Chavan; K.M. Chandrasekhar, Cabinet Secretary; V.S. Sampath, Secretary, DC&PC; and senior officials from the PMO. The decisions taken at the meeting partly satisfy the demands of the agitators.
The meeting decided to ask the DC&PC to submit to the GoM a detailed proposal to set up the Commission on Bhopal. The Department was also asked to obtain from the State government a detailed plan of action for the rehabilitation schemes as decided by the GoM and take appropriate action.
It was decided that the DC&PC would expedite the site remediation, particularly the task of transporting the toxic waste for incineration and to the designated landfill. More important, the Department would request the Law Ministry to appoint a senior lawyer to pursue the application filed by it before the High Court seeking an advance of Rs.100 crore from Dow Chemical and two other companies for remediation of the site of the gas leak.
The meeting directed the Ministry of Agriculture to pursue the investigations into the allegation that its officials had taken bribes for the registration of four pesticides by DCC, with the Central Bureau of Investigation for an early and appropriate resolution of the matter. The Ministry has registered three pesticides patented by Dow to be sold in India. They are Dursban, Pride and Nurelle. The Committee of Secretaries convened by the Cabinet Secretary on May 30 recorded that the Registration Committee in the Ministry did not find any compromise on the efficacy of the pesticides.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission filed a settled civil action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on February 13, 2007, alleging that DCC violated the books and records and internal controls provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with an estimated $200,000 in improper payments made by a fifth-tier foreign subsidiary of Dow Chemical to Indian government officials from 1996 through 2001. Without admitting or denying the allegations in the commission’s complaint, DCC consented to pay a $325,000 civil penalty. ’
V. SUDERSHAN
The police remove children who staged a demonstration outside the Prime Minister’s residence in New Delhi.
The gas leak survivors and the activists working among them are satisfied that their five-month-long agitation has yielded at least partial results. The BGIA wants the proposed Commission on Bhopal to be set up through an Act of Parliament, with a tenure of 30 years and a budget of Rs.2,000 crore, to deal with the rehabilitation of the survivors of the disaster and their progeny and provide them with proper living conditions. According to Satinath Sarangi of the BGIA, the 30-year term is necessary as there will be many more people, yet to be born, who will still be affected by the harmful effects of the disaster.
It appears that there will be considerable debate over the proposed terms of reference of the Commission. According to Sarangi, the commission should have the power to summon the officials of DCC so as to make the company liable to the survivors of the disaster. It remains to be seen whether the government will agree to this suggestion from the activists, who are likely to be involved in drafting the terms of reference of the commission.
The activists are also satisfied with the government’s decision to pursue the case of legal liability for the disaster against DCC despite pressures to dilute this charge to facilitate investments in India by DCC.
However, the activists are unhappy that there has been no substantive commitment on reversing the approval given to Reliance Industries to purchase the UNIPOL technology.
At the GoM held on July 11, Union Ministers Arjun Singh and Ram Vilas Paswan agreed that the permission given to Reliance Industries should be revoked, but a decision could not be taken as another Minister, Kamal Nath, reportedly disagreed with the suggestion.
But the meeting, according to informed sources, decided that there would not be any more transfer of UCC-patented technology to India.
The activists are also disappointed that the government has not been sincere in seeking extradition from the U.S. of Warren Anderson, the UCC chief at the time of the disaster. He continues to be a fugitive before the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Bhopal, where the criminal case regarding the disaster is being heard.
The activists and the survivors of the disaster will end their current agitation in the national capital once the PMO issues a directive to the DC&PC to prepare a blueprint for the proposed commission.
So far, they have secured only a limited victory, and this was made possible by sheer perseverance, good organisation and novel forms of protests.
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