Naxalite Maoist India

Rene Girard quote on Man

2011-12-25T14:14:00.001+05:30

Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.

- Rene Girard , Violent Origins

René Girard's Mimetic Theory: Random Link

2011-12-25T14:09:00.002+05:30

After radically transforming social relations in the last decade, techno-geeks now want to re-invent political theory. One such person is Peter Thiel who is keen promote his Guru's theories...

Mimetic Theory:A Very Brief Introduction

Rene Girard

René Girard is recognized worldwide for his theory of human behavior and human culture. In 2005 he was inducted into the Académie française, and in 2008 he received the Modern Language Association's award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement. He is Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.

But back more than 50 years ago, René Girard started teaching French literature because he needed a job. He hadn't even read many of the books he was assigned to teach. Then, as he studied the classic novels of Stendhal and Proust with a fresh mind, staying one step ahead of his students, he was struck by a series of similarities from novel to novel. Unbound by any narrow research agenda, Girard discovered a simple but powerful pattern that had eluded sophisticated critics before him: imitation is the fundamental mechanism of human behavior.

Stories thrive on conflict between characters. By reading the great writers against the grain of conventional wisdom, Girard realized that people don't fight over their differences. They fight because they are the same, and they want the same things. Not because they need the same things (food, sex, scarce material goods), but because they want what will earn others' envy. Humans, with a planning intelligence that sets them apart from all other animals, are free to choose. With freedom comes risk and uncertainty: humans don't know in advance what to choose, so they look to others for cues. People can desire anything, as long as other people seem to desire it, too: that is the meaning of Girard's concept of "mimetic desire." Since people tend toward the same objects of desire, jealousy and rivalry are inevitable sources of social tension -- and perfect themes for the great novelists.

After his successful writings on modern literature, curious to find out how well his "mimetic theory" of imitative behavior might explain the human past, Girard studied anthropology and myths from around the world. He was struck by another series of similarities: myth after myth told a story of collective violence. Only one man can be king, the most enviable individual, but everyone can share in the persecution of a victim. Societies unify themselves by focusing their imitative desires on the destruction of a scapegoat. Girard hypothesized that the violent persecution of scapegoats is at the origin of the ubiquitous human institution of ritual sacrifice, the foundation of archaic religions.

Girard then turned to the relationship between rituals of sacrifice and the many acts of violence recorded in the founding documents of the religions of the modern West (including the secular religion known as the Enlightenment): the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Gospels. Girard interpreted the Bible as a gradual revelation of the injustice of human violence. The culmination, Jesus's crucifixion, is unprecedented not because it pays a debt humans owe to God, but because it reveals the truth of all sacrifice: the victim of a mob is always innocent, and collective violence is unjust.

An outsider in every field, René Girard has changed scholars' thinking in literature, anthropology, and religion. But you don't have to be a scholar or an insider of mimetic theory to understand it. Imitation is constant, scapegoating is an ever-present temptation, and violence is wrong. These simple insights have unlocked the meaning of modern novels, ancient myths, religious traditions, and the behavior of each and every one of us in our daily lives.

Today a global community of scholars is building on Girard's work to better understand our world. Imitatio is a non-profit foundation devoted to aiding progress in this ongoing development and critique of René Girard's mimetic theory. Here at the Imitatio web site, you can read Girard's writings, peruse scholars' work, learn about upcoming events and watch video from past events. Sign up for our email newsletter to stay current with news, events, publications, and discussions in mimetic theory from São Paulo to Paris, Tokyo to San Francisco.

Chalo Assembly : Andhra Pradesh Documentary 2000

2011-12-25T13:57:00.000+05:30

Black Monday - Chalo Assembly on 28th August 2000 : Firing on people agitating against power prices

Documentary about the mass struggle led by 9 Left Parties in Andhra Pradesh

Language : English

Interview with Sonu Gujjar, Maruti Suzuki Employees Union

2011-12-06T11:04:00.001+05:30

After spearheading a five-month agitation that severely hit production at Maruti Suzuki, Sonu Gujjar, former president of the unrecognised Maruti Suzuki Employees Union, created a stir with his exit from the company last month. Detractors alleged he had received a substantial “full and final settlement” from the company in lieu of his resignation even before an agreement brought the labour unrest at Manesar to an end. In an interview with Akshat Kaushal and Sharmistha Mukherjee, the 25-year-old from Jhajjar explains what drove him to desert his 2,000-odd comrades. Edited excerpts.

After being the face of the Maruti strike for three months, you are now being labelled as a betrayer. There are allegations that you took money to leave. How do answer these accusations?

I read in the papers that I was accused of accepting a bribe of Rs 40 lakh. Is there any proof of that? No one contacted me to verify whether I got this money. I and my other comrades successfully led the strike at Maruti. Our demand was that Maruti should take back all the casual workers at the Manesar plant. That they have now done. The company has also reinstated 64 suspended workers, that too without a chargesheet. The strike was a success; how is this a betrayal?

If you won, why did you leave the company?
I was sure there was no way we could be reinstated. I am just a tenth pass. Do you think I would have stood a chance against the lawyers Maruti would have fielded when the inquiry against us began? All 30 of us had a choice of either accepting the company’s offer or facing inquiry, which we were sure of losing. We were hoping the trade unions would support us in our demand for reinstatement, but that did not happen. So, we took the money the company gave us, and exited.

If not Rs 40 lakh, what was the value of the settlement?
All 30 workers have received Rs 16 lakh each. This comprises our dearness allowance, provident fund and basic salary that we would have received if we had gone on to work at Maruti till turning 52. This is legitimate money that the company owed us.

Was there any pressure to reach an agreement?
There was no pressure from the company. But, people from nearby villages were pressuring us to end the strike. They were worried that their livelihood would be affected if Maruti moved out of Haryana. Pressure was also there from workers’ families.

What happens to the fate of the union, which was the cause of the unrest?
During the settlement, the company committed to approving a union at the factory. The management had then said the workers would be allowed to follow the usual process for registration and the company would not obstruct their way. I am not part of the company, but I still feel strongly for the union. I am also in touch with some workers.

Where do you go from here?
I will soon start looking for a job. I know it will be difficult. But then, what’s easy? My father is mentally-challenged. For now, I want to be with him for some time.

Source ET : http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/qa-sonu-gujjar-maruti-suzuki-employees-union/454839/

Face of New Labour Unions in India : India Today Article

2011-12-06T10:43:00.001+05:30

New breed of activists demand labour rights across industrial units
| November 19, 2011 | 08:47
A.R. SINDHU, 38 DelhiSecretary, All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers & Helpers
Education: Physics graduate
Claim to fameSindhu is one of few trade unionists who have tried to reach out to workers employed in Government social sector schemes. After anganwadi workers held a huge public protest in the capital in 2010, the Government was forced to double their salary from Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000.
Big labour is back. The Maruti employees' stir hogged the headlines for months but it's not the only recent instance of labour unrest. Trade union disputes are spreading across the country. Maruti Udyog, Dunlop, Dhanlaxmi Bank, Coal India, Bosch, textile workers in Ludhiana-the list of dispute-hit entities is long. The number of man-days lost has shot up from 9 lakh in 2002 to 16 lakh in 2010. In the first half of this year, nearly 1 million man-days have been lost. Taking ownership of these protests are new independent trade unions and a set of young activists cutting across unions and party lines. Some of them ultimately succumbed to money and pressure but the rest are assiduously building unions at organisations where it was hitherto inconceivable.
IFB Automotive, at Binola in Haryana, is a leading technology provider for safety- and comfort-related products in the automotive sector. Its client list includes the biggies such as Honda, Ford, Toyota and Hyundai. "Every time you push back your front seat in the car, remember that our hard work has gone into making it possible. We worked to make life comfortable for others, often working overtime without extra wages. Now, over 250 workers have been expelled without an adequate explanation," says Manoj Kumar, 25. He is not your textbook trade union leader. A political science graduate, he heads IFB Mill Workers' Union which is spearheading the protest against the company's decision to terminate the workers. "A day after 250 workers were packed off by the management on June 11, we decided to form a union. I had never been affiliated with any political party. I thought I should put my education to good use to lead these workers," he says. Kumar has already prepared an overtime bill of Rs 62 lakh for the workers and submitted it to the district labour commissioner for inquiry.
RAKHI SEHGAL, 41 DELHIOrganiser, National Trade Union Initiative
Education: Post-graduate
Claim to fame Sehgal plays a pivotal role in NTUI, one of the fastest growing independent trade unions whose membership has grown from 500 in 2006 to nearly 11 lakh now. She heads the ongoing protest in Hero's Dharuhera plant in Haryana.
In Ludhiana, two young men, Rajwinder, 29, and Lakhwinder, 28, have led 1,500 power loom workers on an indefinite strike since September 22 for better wages, reasonable work hours and safer factory floors. A poor brick-kiln worker's son who now heads the powerful Textile Mazdoor Union (TMU) that has stalled all work in 95 medium textile units in Ludhiana's industrial district, Rajwinder says even as a child, while helping mix the clay with which his father made bricks, he knew something was "horribly wrong". His family, like scores of other households of brick-kiln workers, was forced to live on the brink of starvation while the kiln owners grew rich.
"A whole new world opened to me in college," says Rajwinder, recalling the time when he first read freedom fighter Bhagat Singh's jail diary. The young man devoured the extensive literature on labour movements, from the Howrah railwaymen's agitation for shorter work hours in 1862 to more contemporary movements in the 1980s led by Datta Samant. In 2005, Rajwinder and Lakhwinder, a diploma-holder in casting and moulding plastics from Chandigarh's Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, headed for Ludhiana. They launched the independent Karkhana Mazdoor Union (KMU) in June 2008, whose membership grew rapidly as workers got increasingly disillusioned with older party-affiliated labour unions. The subsequent success of a textile workers' strike in September 2010 established the KMU's dominance across Ludhiana. It paved the way for a separate TMU with plans to unionise Ludhiana's cycle industry, automobile ancillary units and hosiery workers.
Punjab continues to have one of the lowest rates of minimum wages in the country, which, TMU claims, has not been comprehensively reviewed since 1970. Private factory owners are reluctant to pay even this low wage. "Textile workers are terribly exploited. A single worker runs twice the number of machines he did a decade ago, yet takes home less money than he did then if one adjusts for inflation. Working conditions are extremely unhygienic," says Rajwinder, recounting an instance in 2008 when a local tyre-manufacturing unit's management simply disowned a worker who was killed in a shop floor accident. "These are very poor people who live in unimaginable squalor. Workers have no choice but to fight. Things can't get any worse for them," he says.

Rajwinder and Lakhwinder believe the stage for the current labour unrest in many parts of India was set with the liberalisation of the economy that was initiated in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The new unrest, the duo says, comes after a long "agitational gap" since the 1990s wherein traditional labour unions, essentially geared to dealing with public sector managements, were unsure of how to tackle private owners, new sectors and mammoth social sector schemes of the Central Government. "The new independent unions have a younger leadership and are more in sync with the aspirations of an equally young workforce," says Lakhwinder.
Rakhi Sehgal, 41, with short hair and a carefree grin on her face, lifts her fist as she says, "I love a good fight." Her union, the National Trade Union Initiative (NTUI), has grown from a membership of just 500 workers when it was founded in 2006 to nearly 11 lakh now. While traditional trade unions were still formulating their strategy, NTUI forayed into unorganised labour, private factories and organising women workers.
Sehgal, a post-graduate in international relations from American University in Washington, first came to Gurgaon in 2003 to conduct field study for her doctoral dissertation. "I was taken aback by the problems workers faced and decided to stay back and organise them," she says.
"Unlike traditional unions, we listened to workers and made the organisation democratic. The central leadership isn't allowed to turn down decisions taken at the grassroots," she adds. NTUI engages with employers and the state on issues of collective bargaining and regulation of employment in workplaces. Its interventions span from DHL emplo-yees across the country to health workers in Punjab.
DEBASIS SHYAMAL, 32
Haripur, West Bengal
Executive member, National Fishworkers'Forum
Education: Graduate from Prabhat Kumar College, East Midnapur
Claim to fame
Shyamal played a prominent role as convener of the protest movement against the proposed nuclear plant in Haripur. It resulted in the West Bengal government scrapping the project altogether in August this year.
Traditional trade unions have failed to innovate and restricted their activities to public sector units. The once powerful Left trade union, All India Trade Union Congress, has little clout among workers in new industries. A.R. Sindhu, 38, secretary of the All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers affiliated to the CPI(M)'s trade union Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), is one of few trade unionists who have tried to reach out to workers employed in Government social sector schemes. "They are the driving force behind all Government programmes but they live in abysmal conditions. The Government has on its rolls the services of 41.39 lakh women who receive an average of Rs 50 per day for working in social sector schemes," says the physics graduate from Kerala who had moved to Delhi in 2000 when her husband Krishna Prasad became national president of the Students Federation of India, the CPI(M)'s student wing. Prasad returned to Kerala and became a legislator. Sindhu opted to stay on in Delhi to organise anganwadi workers in north India. "After anganwadi workers held a huge public protest in the capital in 2010, the Union Government was forced to double their salary from Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000," she says.
Leaders are emerging from the factory floor. Sharavana Kumar, 24, has all workers at mobile handset manufacturer Nokia's Tamil Nadu plant in Chennai on speed dial. He, along with P. Suresh, also 24, set up the Nokia India Tozhilazhi Sangham in 2010. Finnwatch, the watchdog for Finnish companies operating in developing nations, reports in September 2010 that Nokia's employees in Chennai are being paid low salaries "even in the Indian context". "Initially, workers were scared to unionise. Then we talked to them about their rights and asked them to come under the banner of an independent union," says Kumar. Nokia's Chennai workers went on strike in July 2010 and secured a pay revision.
In the small fishermen's hamlet of Baguram Jalpai next to Haripur in West Bengal lives Debasis Shyamal, 32, a leader of the National Fishworkers' Forum (NFF) that represents around 7 million fishermen. In 2004, he was inducted into the NFF executive committee at 24. Shyamal is a graduate but his seven uncles are all fishermen. "My life changed after I met Harekrishna Debnath, the late NFF chairperson, and Father Thomas Kocherry, the founder of Kerala Swatantra Matsyathozhilali Federation," says Shyamal. He got involved in the fishermen's movement himself.
Shyamal played an instrumental role in the Machimar Adhikar Rashtriya Abhiyan, a campaign of fishing folk that started in Jhakhau, Kutch, on May 1, 2008 and finished in Kolkata on June 27, 2008, after covering major fishing villages along the entire seaboard. The campaign demands included scrapping of the proposed Coastal Management Zone (CMZ) notification of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests and recognition of the rights of fishermen. The Government modified the CMZ Act after the movement.
Shravana Kumar
SHARAVANA KUMAR, 24Chennai
Founder, Nokia India Tozhilazhi Sangham
Education: Pursuing BCom by correspondence
Claim to fame Kumar, along with P. Suresh, set up the Nokia India Tozhilazhi Sangham in 2010.Workers at the Chennai plant of the handset manufacturer went on strike in July 2010. Kumar had the last laugh as Nokia agreed to a long-term pay revision.
Independent trade unions are often accused of a myopic factory-level approach at the cost of the larger trade union movement. Sonu Kumar aka Sonu Gujjar, 25, the union leader who brought Maruti Suzuki to its knees, is accused of such an approach. 'Pradhanji', as he is called, led the young tribe of workers through three strikes since June, protesting against the management's "unfair practices" and demanding that their union, the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union, be recognised. Maruti Suzuki India witnessed a production loss of at least 50,000 units and over Rs 1,800 crore in revenue since June. Sonu took a settlement package worth over Rs 40 lakh and quit in early November, leaving colleagues to their fate. An Industrial Training Institute Rohtak graduate, he had joined Maruti in 2006 when its Manesar unit was being set up and decided to stand for the Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union (MUKU) president's post in April. MUKU being Gurgaon workers-dominated body, Manesar workers decided to launch their own union. He was elected president. "He raised such important issues and with such conviction that he managed to inspire us," says Parvinder, a worker.
SONU GUJJAR, 25 GurgaonPresident, Maruti Suzuki Employees Union
Education: Diploma from Industrial Training Institute, Rohtak
Claim to fameSonu was the face of the labour unrest in Suzuki's Manesar plant. The company witnessed a loss of 50,000 units and over Rs 1,800 crore due to a labour dispute since June. He has since accepted an exit package and left the union.
Sonu now faces both criticism and fulsome praise for the final agreement reached on October 21 between the management and the workers. "We thought he had the capability and the conviction to lead us," says Rishi, a former aide. His supporters say it was difficult to secure the workers' initial demands as the government largely spoke in management's favour. Suber Singh Yadav, leader of the Suzuki Powertrain India Employees Union, says part of the problem is Sonu's age. "There was a lot of pressure from all sides. A leader shouldn't be scared; he is too young," he says. Sonu is refusing to talk to the media now.
New unions run the risk of not putting democratic processes in place and getting hijacked by a leader who treats it like a fief. "The task is to imbue the spirit of democracy among the workers. In north India, workers often follow a leader without giving serious thought about the organisation and its mission," says Sindhu.
Many workers in the bpo sector approach unions only if they face a crisis. "We often end up playing agony aunts. The first salary of many workers is often more than the last drawn by their parents. It is very difficult to build a credible and committed leadership because we face the same crisis the industry faces: heavy attrition," says Kartik Shekhar of unites, a bpo industry union.
- With Asit Jolly, Lakshmi Subramanian, Partha Dasgupta and Shravya Jain

Source : http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/special-report/1/160578.html

The State of Surveillance Technology

2011-12-06T10:35:00.001+05:30

It's only a matter of time before we lose the privacy of our thoughts.

iPhone, BlackBerry, Gmail users are ‘all screwed’: Julian Assange

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has told smartphone users that they are vulnerable to a ‘mass surveillance’ industry that has been steadily growing since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

“Who here has an iPhone? Who here has a Blackberry? Who here uses Gmail? Well, you’re all screwed,” said Assange in this video taken during a speaking engagement at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism at the City University of London.

The warning came as Assange launched his website’s new Spyfiles project on Thursday.

The Spyfiles reveal the activities of about 160 companies in 25 countries which develop technologies to allow the tracking and monitoring of individuals by their mobile phones, email and Internet browsing histories.

More on

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/02/iphone-blackberry-gmail-users-are-all-screwed-julian-assange/

Palantir Technologies - A Profile

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/palantir-the-vanguard-of-cyberterror-security-11222011.html

Kishenji tortured and killed in fake encounter

2011-11-25T20:36:00.001+05:30

The killing of top Maoist leader Kishenji raised a controversy on Friday with his supporters and some political parties alleging he was eliminated in a fake encounter, a charge denied by CRPF which said it was a "clean" operation. The Maoists demanded an independent probe into the circumstances leading to the killing of Kishenji in Burisole forest in West Midnapore district on Thursday. A call for a two-day bandh in West Bengal from November 26 was also given by Maoists in protest against the alleged fake encounter.

"Kishenji was killed in a fake encounter. To protest this we are calling a two-day statewide bandh from November 26 and a week-long protest," Maoist state committee member and spokesperson Akash told PTI on phone from an undisclosed location.

Rejecting the allegation, CRPF Director-General Vijay Kumar said Kishenji was killed in a 'very clean and successful' operation by the joint forces in West Midnapore district.

"It was a very clean and successful operation and our boys did not waste a minute," Kumar told reporters in Burisole forest in Jhargram area where Kishenji was killed.

"No, no, no" he said when asked about the allegation that Kishenji was eliminated in a fake encounter.

Telugu poet and Maoist sympathiser Varvara Rao also alleged that Kishenji had been killed in a fake encounter.

"Kishenji was arrested two days ago and kept in police custody. He was killed in a fake encounter. It is a murder case which should be probed,'' Varvarao Rao told reporters at Kolkata airport.

Rao had also said that the "story" of an encounter was a fabrication.

Maoist spokesperson Akash when asked to substantiate his allegation said, "He was arrested when our people were present nearby and then murdered in cold blood. We demand an independent investigation into the killing of our leader".

CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta in a letter to Home Minister P Chidambaram said, "The story of the encounter appears to be fake, needs to be inquired into and the government must clarify".

Questioning the manner in which Kishenji was killed, Dasgupta asked government to clarify whether he was done to death in "cold blood" after being arrested.

Dasgupta, who spoke to Chidambaram on phone, quoted a "source" to say that Kishanji was arrested at noon yesterday and "subsequently killed in a cold-blooded murder".

"If my information is right, then it is an act of dastardly crime in violation of all national as well as international laws," he said in the letter.

Human rights activist and the head of government-appointed interlocutors, Sujato Bhadra also demanded an inquiry into Kishenji's killing.

Samajwadi Party also levelled the allegation of a fake encounter and said Naxalism cannot end through "massacre" of Naxal leaders.

"The way reports of Kishenji's killings have come out, it does not look like Kishenji was killed in an encounter... It is a fake encounter," Samajwadi Party leader Mohan Singh told reporters in New Delhi.

In Bihar, the CPI(M-L) Liberation urged West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to order a judicial inquiry into the killing of Kishenji, just as she had demanded one for the death of rebel leader Azad in Andhra Pradesh last year.

"There is a similarity in the encounter deaths of Azad and Kishenji. Mamata Banerjee should order a judicial inquiry into the killing of Kishenji," CPI (M-L) leaders Raj Kumar Singh and Krishna Adhikari told reporters in Patna.

Source HT - http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/WestBengal/CRPF-under-fire-for-Kishenji-s-killing-defends-itself/Article1-773963.aspx

Kishenji traced through Sabyasachi Panda’s Laptop

2011-11-25T10:31:00.001+05:30

Panda’s laptop helped securitymen lay trap for Kishenji
Nov 25, 2011

A laptop confiscated recently from a top Maoist leader Sabyasachi Panda’s hideout in Odisha is believed to have helped the security forces carry anti-Maoist operation against Mallojula Koteshwar Rao alias Kishenji. According to sources, the laptop was analysed by top analysts in Delhi to locate the whereabouts of the no 3 leader in the Maoist hierarchy.

Kishenji

According to sources, security forces including the CRPF had surrounded Kishenji and a few other top leaders in the forests of West Bengal on Wednesday itself. However, Kishenji managed to give police the slip only to land in the middle of yet another ambush. An encounter for half an hour resulted in his killing.

Panda’s laptop is believed to have provided several important clues about the whereabouts of other leaders including another politburo member Akkiraju Ramakrishna alias RK. According to soruces, RK was earlier spotted in the Andhra-Orissa border. However, a miscommunication among the security forces in cornering him allowed him to escape the police net recently. Though unconfirmed, sources said the next target would be RK since his location has almost been confirmed.

However, the rights groups are crying foul at Kishenji’s encounter. They believe like in the case of ‘encountered’ top leader Azad, Kishenji too was captured somewhere else and brought to Junglemahal only to be shot from close range. According to sources among the sympathizers, Kishenji has a security cover of about 40 people armed with advanced weaponry and there is no way he alone getting killed. The other version that is pointing at the cause of action is the infight within the Maoist party.

Though the staunch supporters of Maoists rule out any infighting, sources said that the local leaders particularly the natives of the eastern region in the party have always been opposing the way Kishenji operated and did not like a Telugu climbing up the ladder in the hierarchy. “Undoubtedly there is an information leak from within the party,” a source said.

Source : DNA http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_pandas-laptop-helped-securitymen-lay-trap-for-kishenji_1616995

Related Post List of Social Workers and Political Activists arrested, killed online.

Top Maoist's laptop in police custody
Nov 20, 2011

In what could be termed as the most precious haul so far made during anti-Maoist operations, the police have seized a laptop computer used by top Maoist Sabyasachi Panda alias Sunil.

Panda's laptop was recovered during a joint operation by the Odisha Police and the CRPF at Kerubadi jungle of Kandhamal district about a month ago. Though all the inmates, about 150 including Panda, of a Maoist camp could manage to escape from the place, the police could seize a number of items used by the Maoists in the dense forests.One of the seized items was the laptop; a senior official said, adding that after proper verification by experts, it was revealed that the laptop was being used by Panda, who continues to regulate all the Maoist activities in the State.

Panda's laptop was sent to New Delhi, where it was decoded and read.

“We have found a lot of information like people in link with the Maoists, their future plans, their communication with their central committee members and the amount of funds generated by the Maoists in Odisha,” sources said.The laptop has many secret documents, which are in possession of the CRPF headquarters in New Delhi.

The information received from it is likely to be passed over to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs. Panda is one of the three top Maoists against whom the State Government is planning to announce a cash reward of `20 lakh. Panda, a young, sworn Maoist, has given slip to the police several times. The great escape from the Kerubadi jungle is dubbed as the latest bid to fool the security personnel.

“Information received from Panda’s laptop will certainly help as the police can keep vigil on the people whose names figure in the computer. The persons whose names are there do not also know whether their names exist in the laptop,” official sources added.

Source : Pioneer : http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/bhubaneswar/21737-top-maoists-laptop-in-police-custody.html

Naxalite student demonstration video 1968 - Calcutta

2011-10-17T14:24:00.000+05:30

This is a fragment from the Louis Malle documentary Calcutta (1969). It shows Naxalite student organisations demonstrating and the Calcutta police firing on them. It also has some clips of the United Front student demonstration.

Related Post

The Life and Struggle in Regional Engineering College, Durgapur 1966 to 1970

Jairam Ramesh on Naxalite-Maoist Movement of India

2011-10-17T14:20:00.001+05:30

SARDAR PATEL MEMORIAL LECTURE

From Tirupati To Pashupati

Some reflections on the Maoist issue: the title of the lecture comes from the popular image in the media that a “liberated” Red corridor is sought to be created extending from Andhra Pradesh to Nepal and cutting across the very heart of India...

JAIRAM RAMESH

Text of the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture (organised by Prasar Bharati) by the minister for rural development
I am not just privileged but also truly humbled to be part of this prestigious lecture series launched a half century and six years ago by none other than C. Rajagopalachari. Many distinguished personalities have preceded me and this makes me feel all the more honoured to be here this evening.

To say anything about such an indomitable colossus as Sardar Patel, one of our Founding Fathers, would be gratuitous. Often referred to as the “Iron Man” and as the “Bismarck of India”, he was part of the triumvirate which dominated the Indian National Congress and indeed the Indian political landscape for almost three decades. Using this imagery of the trinity, one of his well-known biographers B. Krishna wrote :"Gandhi represented Brahma-the creator and inspirer. Nehru reflected Vishnu’s soft, gentle looks, a nobility of character and humanism that transcended barriers of caste and creed. And Patel proved, like Siva, the destroyer and unifier-the builder and consolidator of Modern India ". And in keeping with the modern-day Brahma’s predilections, the destruction was peaceful. During his visit to India in 1955, Nikita Khrushchev is reported to have expressed his amazement at the Sardar’s accomplishments by remarking “You Indians are an amazing people. How on earth did you manage to liquidate princely rule without liquidating the princes?”

On his death on December 15th, 1950, Nehru made an emotional statement in Parliament and described his departed comrade-in-arms as “the builder and consolidator of the new India, a great captain of our forces in the struggle for freedom...one who gave us sound advice in times of troubles as well as in moments of victory, a friend and colleague on whom one could invariably rely,, a tower of strength which revived wavering hearts when we were in trouble”. The Cabinet Resolution of December 16th, 1950, drafted by Nehru himself, spoke of his “magnificent talents and abounding energy, his matchless courage, inflexible sense of discipline and genius for organisation”.
Sardar Patel's contributions go beyond being the cartographer of immediate post-Independence India . He had a profound impact on our Constitution as well as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities and Tribal and Excluded Areas in the Constituent Assembly. Granville Austin in his classic history of the making of the Indian Constitution writes: "Nehru and Patel were the focus of power in the (Constituent) Assembly....The blend in the Constitution of idealistic provisions and articles of a practical, administrative and technical nature is perhaps the best evidence of the joint influence of these two men". None other than Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar himself acknowledged this influence in his famous speech in the Constituent Assembly on November 25^th, 1949 when he said: It is because of the discipline of the Congress Party that the Drafting Committee was able to pilot the Constitution in the Assembly with the sure knowledge as to the fate of each article and each amendment. The Congress Party is, therefore, entitled to all the credit for the smooth sailing of the Draft Constitution in the Assembly”.

Today, India is the largest milk producer in the world and has seen a White Revolution captured memorably in Shyam Benegal’s Manthan. Not many know that it was on entirely on Sardar Patel’s bidding that the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union was set up in 1946 under the chairmanship of his lieutenant Tribhuvandas Patel. This was then to spawn the Amul cooperative movement under Dr. V. Kurien's leadership in Anand.
II
The topic of my lecture is “From Tirupati to Pashupati: Some Reflections on the Maoist¹ Issue”. The title comes from the popular image in the media that a “liberated” Red corridor is sought to be created extending from Andhra Pradesh to Nepal and cutting across the very heart of India . This has been described by the Prime Minister to be India ’s most serious internal security challenge and by the Home Minister to be even graver than the problem of terrorism. Armed communist insurgency is something that the nascent Indian nation-state of which Sardar Patel was the home minister confronted in Telangana even as the Constituent Assembly was debating the architecture of our republican democracy founded on adult suffrage and positive discrimination in favour of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The modern-day Maoists see themselves as legatees of this uprising², which Sardar Patel dealt with firmly but sensitively.

The phenomenon of Naxal violence has been studied by official committees from time to time. I recall that in the early 1980s, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sent a team headed by the-then Member-Secretary of the Planning Commission to conduct field-level studies of Naxal-affected areas in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh and recommend solutions both for the Centre and the States to adopt. The author of this report is, incidentally, now our Prime Minister. The recommendations were many but the main point made was that urgent and long-festering socio-economic concerns of the weaker sections of society must be addressed meaningfully if the influence of Naxal groups is to be countered effectively.

More recently, three years ago the Planning Commission published the report of its 17-member expert group on development challenges in extremist-affected areas. And what a group this was. It had all the people you would want for such an exercise, people who have spent a life time thinking, speaking, writing and working on this subject—people like Debu Bandopadhyay, S.R. Sankaran K. Balagopal, B.D. Sharma, K.B. Saxena, Ram Dayal Munda, Dileep Singh Bhuria and Sukhadeo Thorat to name just eight of them. As was only to be expected, the report of this group was extraordinarily detailed. It gave the historical, political, social and economic context to the issue, reviewed government efforts to deal with the problem and recommended a number of key policy and programme measures and changes to vastly and visibly reduce, if not totally eradicate, the effects of Left-wing extremism in different states. Running into 95 pages, this report may lack the lyrical beauty and sheer poetry, misleading though it may be, of Arundhati Roy’s now famous 33-page essay in Outlook magazine³ but for sheer comprehensiveness and depth of analysis and for showing a practical way ahead it has no peers.

Please permit me to inject a personal note here. As a student of India ’s political dynamics I have always had an intellectual interest in this subject, but over the last seven years, my involvement has grown and has become increasingly more direct. First, since 2004 when I became a Member of Parliament from Andhra Pradesh, I have used my MPLADS funds mostly in Adilabad, Warangal and Khammam—three Naxal-affected districts--to strengthen women’s self-help group organisations and reduce the trust deficit between tribal communities and the civil administration. Second, between June 2009 and July 2011 as minister in charge of environment and forests it fell on me to bring about changes in forest policy and administration since this has been identified as a key factor in dealing with the issue of Naxal violence. Third, since July 2011 as minister in charge of rural development covering key programmes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), watershed management, drinking water supply, housing, social assistance and modernisation of land records, an opportunity has been afforded to me to address the development deficit in the Naxal-affected areas that the 17-member Planning Commission expert group so tellingly identified.
III
Before I go any further on the development route, I wish to pause and reflect on something that the Union Home Minister has so forcefully said on more than one occasion, quite in contrast to his predecessor who described the Naxals as “our wayward and misguided younger brothers” (and I should add increasingly sisters) who have to be gently persuaded and cajoled to give up the cult of violence and wanton killings. Both in Parliament and outside, the present Home Minister has said that on the basis of material gathered from captured left-wing extremist groups, it is unequivocally clear that their objective is the violent overthrow of the Indian state and that their basic ideology is a complete rejection of parliamentary democracy as enshrined in our Constitution. Knowing the Home Minister as I do, I can attest to the fact that he believes very much in the “developmentalist” approach, the strategy and approach advocated, for instance, by the expert committee of the Planning Commission to which I referred earlier. But he does raise a fundamental point that should not be brushed aside summarily. Of course, the Indian state has confronted many groups in the past that reject its very basis and rationale. And in many cases, these very groups that have fought the might of the Indian state for years have finally come around and become a peaceful part of our polity. I might recall here that in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, Kameshwar Baitha, a top Naxal leader, contested and won on a Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) ticket from Palamau in Jharkhand.

Some weeks back in Kolkata the Union Home Minister reiterated that the Centre is ready for unconditional talks with Maoists and all that it is demanding that they stop violence without necessarily giving up their ideology, surrendering their arms or even disbanding their militias and armies. I cannot think of a fairer offer than this.
It is my good fortune to have two outstanding IAS officers working with me now, both have had the misfortune of being abducted by the Naxals. One was kidnapped in 1987 in Rampachodavaram in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh along with S.R. Sankaran and kept captive for four days. The other was held hostage for nine days in Malkangiri district of Orissa. Both the officers are very strong advocates of the S.R. Sankaran approach of development and sensitive governance in tribal areas. But in my continuing conversations with them, two things have emerged. One, the Naxals are exploiting the tribals and two, the tribals themselves want peace, not war. The Naxals are using the tribal areas and issues for their tactical purposes. The terrain and the forests suit them for guerrilla warfare. They have spread their terror and ensured that the developmental activities are obstructed. The tribal cause, which the Naxals espouse, is only a mask to further their own agenda. The Malkangiri incident is a clear message from the tribals of the region that they want development and not Naxal terror.

What is clear is that we need a two-track approach--one that deals with the leadership of the Naxals, who wish to overthrow the Indian state and the other, which focuses on the concerns of the people they pretend/claim to serve. There is clearly a need to recognise tribal populations as victims--first of state apathy and discrimination and then of the Naxal agenda. My firm belief is that a complete revamp of administration and governance in tribal areas, especially in central and eastern India , is the pressing need of the hour. Andhra Pradesh has attempted to do this through its ITDA (Integrated Tribal Development Agency) model but much more needs to be done. We must also come to grips with the sad reality that affirmative action programmes like reservations have had a very marginal impact on the welfare of the central and eastern Indian tribal communities.
IV
The Union Government has identified 60 districts in seven states that are affected by left-wing extremism. Of these, 15 are in Orissa, 14 in Jharkhand, 10 in Chattisgarh, 8 in Madhya Pradesh, 7 in Bihar, 2 each in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh and 1 each in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. 18 more districts are being considered for inclusion. States have said that the “block” and not the district should be the basic unit for identification and I quite agree with this demand. There are a few districts, for instance, Guntur in Andhra Pradesh and Raipur in Chattisgarh, which are not part of this 60 but where certain blocks are badly affected. I am hopeful that when we get into the XIIth Five Year Plan from April 2012, we would have made this change from the district to the block.

When you look at these 60 districts on a map of India , five characteristics stand out. I should, however, mention straightaway that the 7 districts of Bihar are an exception to these generalisations. Bihar has its own dynamics embedded in caste and land-related structures.

First, an overwhelming majority of these districts have substantial population of tribal communities.
Second, an overwhelming majority of these districts have significant area under good quality forest cover.
Third, a large number of these districts are rich in minerals like coal, bauxite and iron ore.
Fourth, in a number of states, these districts are remote from the seat of power and have large administrative units.
Fifth, a large number of districts are located in tri-junction areas of different states.

Let me make a couple of observations based on personal experience on each of these characteristics.
On the size of administrative units, recently on a visit to Chattisgarh I discovered that the size of some blocks (like Conta in Dantewada district and Orchha in Narayanpur district and Orgi in Surguja district) was equivalent to the size of some districts in some other states and indeed equivalent to the size of some other states themselves. Given poor connectivity and infrastructure to begin with, this is a huge handicap to contend with by administrators. Rationalisation of administrative units is entirely within the domain and powers of state governments. The Chattisgarh government has very recently decided to create five more districts in the Naxal-affected regions of the state and this is a good step.

On the tri-junction nature of these districts, Debu Bandopadhyay, one of the key administrators responsible for land reforms in West Bengal in the seventies and early eighties, has an interesting story to tell. When I mentioned this dimension to him recently in Kolkata he recalled that this was very much part of Hare Krishna Konar’s considerations while working out the strategy in the early 1960s before the CPM came to power in West Bengal. I was told that Konarbabu focussed on three specific areas as epicentres for class struggles—Naxalbari, Jangalmahal and Hasnabad--all three of which are in tri-junction areas. Today the key tri-junction areas are Chattisgarh-Maharashtra-Andhra Pradesh, Orissa-Chattisgarh-Andhra Pradesh, Orissa-Jharkhand-Chattisgarh, Orissa-West Bengal-Jharkhand. The challenge is to quickly improve infrastructure—roads and bridges more specifically—that enables basic developmental activities to be carried out. My own view is that there is no alternative to the Central government stepping in for financing and executing these tri-junction infrastructure works. It is not happening at the speed at which it is required.

Realising the need for smaller units accompanied by a broader pan-state approach to dealing with the administrative aspect is an important first step to deal with the problem. But the real challenge is how do you transform administration in tribal areas so as not only to give people a sense of participation and involvement but, more fundamentally, to preserve and protect their dignity”? How do you prevent or address their continued victimisation, first by the state and now by the Naxals? Empowering the tribals, who are essentially victims, by giving access to basics, by giving them what is theirs by right and by securing their livelihoods is, to my mind, an absolute undiluted must⁴. Here, issues related to land ownership and land alienation must receive over-riding priority.

On the minerals issue, the Union Cabinet has very recently approved the repeal of the Mines and Minerals (Regulation and Development) Act, 1957 and its replacement by a new law. This new law will establish a District Mineral Foundation in each of the mineral-rich districts into which will flow every year an amount equal the royalty paid (for minerals other than coal) and equal to 26% of net profits as far as coal is concerned. This works out to something like Rs 10,000 crore annually at present rates to be distributed across the mineral-rich districts which could each get close to Rs 180-200 crore per year. These additional resources are to be used for local infrastructure development and for the welfare of the communities impacted by mining activities. The new law also provides for the approval of local communities before mining concessions are granted and when mine closure plans are implemented.

On the forests dimension of the Naxal-affected districts, I took five major initiatives when I was at the MoE&F. First, state government-executed physical and social infrastructure works requiring less than 5 hectares each of forest land were exempted from the approval processes of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 as also the need for compensatory afforestation. Second, amendments were approved to Section 68 of the Indian Forest Act, 1927 that not only raise the monetary limits to which offences could be compounded but also ensure that local forest officials can lodge cases only after the written consent of the gram sabha. Third, a beginning was made in Menda-Lekha village of Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra to transfer control of the transit pass book for bamboo—the most important NTFP (non-timber forest produce)—from the forest department to the gram sabha⁵. Fourth, an expert review of the implementation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 was initiated along with the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and specific reform measures identified including a sharper focus on the recognition and granting of community, as opposed to just individual rights. Fifth, the idea of a Central minimum support price (MSP) for 12 major items of NTFP, coupled with the removal of all purchase monopolies, was taken up with the Planning Commission and the Finance Ministry. These initiatives must be taken forward. More than anything else, I firmly believe that a completely transformed forest administration lies at the very core of an effective anti-Naxal strategy.

Regarding the tribal nature of the Naxal-affected districts, much has been said about the pivotal role that the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (known popularly as PESA, 1996) can play in fulfilling the aspirations of people in a manner by which they are fully involved and empowered. However, even after fifteen years, the Act has yet to be translated into reality primarily because of the reluctance of the states and also because of the reluctance of the Centre to invoke its provisions to take on a more direct and active (and activist) role in Schedule V areas. There continues to be considerable divergence of opinion on whether “consultations” with the gram sabha as envisaged in the legislation is adequate or whether there should, in fact, be “prior informed consent” before the start of development projects. Furthermore, I am convinced that implementing PESA in an environment where the local administration is dominated by disinterested and always-ready-to-leave non-tribal personnel will just not have any positive impacts. The technical and organisational capacity of panchayati raj institutions has to be built up urgently.

One important administrative innovation introduced by the Central government in these 60 districts is to give untied funds to a troika comprising the Collector/District Magistrate, the Superintendent of Police and the District Forest Officer. In 2010/11, Rs 25 crore was released to each district and in 2011/12 another Rs 30 crore will be released. The idea is that the triumvirate representing the face of the Indian state as it were would be in a position to identify critical developmental works that could taken up and completed quickly so that the people begin to see the government in a completely new light. These works cover ashram schools, anganwadi centres, drinking water schemes and roads. This has spurred unprecedented development activity in these districts and it is interesting to note that none of the works taken up so far have been the target of Naxal attacks. This initiative should continue on an expanded scale but the challenge will be to give a role to elected representatives and local elected institutions in the selection and execution of works without, of course, losing its essence—which is flexibility and speed of execution.
V
In my current ministerial assignment, I consider the PMGSY to be the single-most important rural development intervention that can significantly transform the ground-level situation in the LWE-affected districts. This is not to minimise the importance of other programmes but the PMGSY stands apart. The first target of Naxals is roads, that is why PMGSY works are severely lagging in the LWE-affected districts. Some innovations have been made to maximise the involvement of local contractors, for instance. But there have been frequent instances of these contractors being killed. Some degree of security cover by para-military agencies like the CRPF will be essential to expedite PMGSY works. But we have a long way to go.

There are 25 districts out of the 60 LWE-affected districts where the expenditure levels are lower than the overall national average. And within these 25, there is a core of 10 districts where expenditure levels are lower than the average for the LWE-districts themselves. These to me appear to be the districts where Naxal activity is most intense. These ten districts are Bijaipur, Narayanpur and Dantewada in Chattisgarh, Gadchiroli in Maharashtra , Khammam in Andhra Pradesh, Lohardaga, Gumla, Latehar and Simdega in Jharkhand and Malkangiri in Orissa. It is here that we need the synergy between the security forces and implementing agencies on the ground in order to speed up connectivity without which nothing else worthwhile is really possible.

We have estimated that in order to complete all PMGSY works covering habitations with a population of 250 to 500 in these 60 LWE-affected districts about Rs 15,000 crore will be needed. Another Rs 19,000 crore will be needed to complete road connectivity to habitations with population less than 250. In addition, we will need additional funds to complete small and minor bridges (unlinked with PMGSY roads per se) which have an importance of their own in these LWE-affected districts. I am optimistic that these resources will be forthcoming—the challenge really will be to ensure project completion in the next three-four years at most. We need a renewed sense of urgency and a “get it done” attitude. And we are battling huge odds. One small bridge—the 1 km Gurupriya bridge—that is crucial to fighting Naxalism in Malkangiri district in Orissa has been talked about for almost three decades and it still remains to be constructed.

Along with PMGSY, I consider interventions to ensure the speedy settlement of land-related disputes to be high priority in the LWE-affected districts. In many places, the ability of the Naxal cadres to mete out “instant justice” has given them a foothold and acceptance amongst the people at large. Here I recall my personal experience some years back. When I first went to Adilabad in 2004, I met a feisty Gond lady called Mankubai whose land had been usurped by outsiders and she had been fighting her case with the government and with the judiciary for over two decades. I immediately mobilised some young lawyers who, working under the aegis of the state government’s Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), were able to get Mankubai’s land restored to her. That experience is still fresh in my memory and that is why I am now proposing to support the establishment of paralegal assistance centres in all the LWE-affected districts. These centres would document all cases of land alienation and work for the restoration of lands to their rightful owners, mostly tribals.
VI
The might of the Indian state is in the Naxal-affected areas. 71 battalions of central para-military forces, amounting to some 71,000 personnel, have been deployed. They have a vital role to play in backing the state police and in developmental activities. The Collector of LWE-affected Balaghat in Madhya Pradesh told me recently how the presence and approach of the CRPF in the area had a considerable psychological impact enabling villagers to come out in large numbers to seek employment under MGNREGA. But let us be clear, para-military and police action cannot and should not be the driving force. The driving force has necessarily to be development and addressing the daily concerns of the people, of people who have every reason to feel alienated. Massive reform of the police and the forest administration at the cutting edge is the need of the hour. A more humane policy of land acquisition with focus on effective rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) is the need of the hour. I think it was Walter Fernandes the noted sociologist who estimated that over 50 million people in central and eastern India have been displaced over the past five decades due to developmental projects. R&R for very large numbers of people has yet to be completed. Worse, there are large numbers of tribals who have been subjected to repeated displacements. It is not the Naxals who have created the ground conditions ripe for the acceptance of their ideology—it is the singular failure of successive governments both in states and governments to protect the dignity and the Constitutional rights of the poor and the disadvantaged that has created a fertile breeding ground for violence and given the Naxals space to speak the language of social welfare but in reality use that as a cloak to construct their guerrilla bases and recruit most tragically women and children in large numbers.
VII
So where do we go from here? Let us not underestimate the seriousness of the threat we are faced with. I, for one, do not believe that a "developmentalist" strategy alone, so eloquently advocated by the Planning Commission’s Expert Group, will do. I also do not believe that a strategy based on the primacy of para-military and police action will yield long-term results. The two must go hand-in-hand deriving strength from each other. We are combating not just a destructive ideology but are also confronted with the wages of our own insensitivity and neglect, especially in so far as the central Indian tribal population is concerned. Simply put, we need to rise above partisan political considerations and set aside old centre versus state arguments and work concertedly to restore people’s faith in the administration to be fair and just, to be prompt and caring, to be prepared to redress the injustices of the past, and to be both responsible and responsive in future. Only then will the tide of Naxalism be stemmed.
IX
I started by paying tribute to Sardar Patel's enduring achievements. Let me end by recalling two other dimensions of his personality, which somehow have not received the attention they deserve. First, was his sense of fairness. He was tough and uncompromising but, at the same time, large-hearted. Nothing captures this better than his exchange with the Nawab of Bhopal who wrote to him in August 1947: "I do not disguise the fact that while the struggle was on, I used every means in my power to preserve the independence of my state. Now that I have conceded defeat, I hope you will find that I can be as staunch a friend as I have been an inveterate opponent". Patel's reply was quick: "I do not look upon the accession of your state as either a victory or defeat for you. It is only right and propriety that have triumphed at the end, and in that triumph you and I have played our respective roles. Second, was his devastating sense of humour. He comes across as a stern, serious, and single-minded individual, which he undoubtedly was. But he had a deadly wit as well, perhaps surpassed only by Sarojini Naidu in that remarkable generation of men and women. The distinguished diplomat K.P.S. Menon records in his autobiography a discussion that took place in 1950 on Goa in which Sardar Patel wanted quick action saying that it was just two hours work to liberate it from Portuguese rule but Nehru resisted the suggestion saying that it would create international complications. Menon reports that Sardar Patel remarked to a friend that Nehru was proving himself to be not merely the political heir of Mahatma Gandhi but a lineal descendant of Gautama Buddha! And those of you who think that only Nehru was his target, consider this gem from Krishna's biography. Making fun of Gandhi's preference for using baking soda in almost every drink, Sardar Patel would offer a solution to a difficult problem with the humorous remark-- soda dalo na.

Source : Outlook

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?278610

Swedish solidarity website for Indian struggles launched

2011-10-11T10:36:00.002+05:30

A Swedish website with translations of english articles about people's movements in India has been launched.

The website can be accessed at http://www.indiensolidaritet.org

Another interesting website - http://redstaroverindia.se/

Readers can send useful information, documents to the email id given on the website.

Free online Artificial Intelligence Course

2011-10-11T09:21:00.002+05:30

A bold experiment in distributed education, "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" will be offered free and online to students worldwide from October 10th to December 18th 2011.

The course will include feedback on progress and a statement of accomplishment from Stanford.

Enrol today at http://www.ai-class.com/

Life in an Indian Maoist jungle camp - BBC Video Report

2011-09-09T08:38:00.000+05:30

The BBC's Suvojit Bagchi, who was granted unprecedented access to a Maoist camp in the depths of the Chhattisgarh jungle, describes the rebels' precarious life.

After eight hours of walking in dense forest, in the early evening we entered a narrow, barren stretch of land hemmed in by hillocks.

At the far end stood a few blue and yellow tents.

Somji, one of the men who collected me between a small town in south Chhattisgarh and the thick central Indian forest, picked up speed as we approached.

A tall man standing guard with a rifle flung over his shoulder whistled and people started rushing towards us.

In under a minute, the camp members stood in formation and began singing a welcome song.

Each member in the queue raised their fist to whisper "lal salaam" - "red salute".

Mostly aged between 15 and 30 years old, the men and women in the camp wore rubber sandals, olive green battle fatigues and carried guns of various makes.

India's Maoist rebels say they are fighting for the rights of indigenous tribespeople and the rural poor.

CPI Maoist organises medical camps in villages of Bihar, India

2011-09-09T08:32:00.000+05:30

The Communist Party of India (Maoist) recently organised a six daylong medical camp for villagers in Parsawa village of Bihar. With the onset of monsoon, diseases like malaria and diarrhea grips the village, taking lives of almost 10-20 people every year.

Though, the Maoist insurgency has gripped nearly a third of the country, and is spreading into the interiors of 20 of India's 28 states, locals of this village are grateful to them for providing medical aid. Considered as one of the backward region, villagers complain of lack of proper medical facilities and doctors.

What Maoism and fascism have in common

2011-09-03T13:51:00.002+05:30

The views expressed in the below article are those of the Author. Naxalrevolution does not endorse or adhere to the views or opinions expressed in the media articles posted on this website. This is purely an information site, to inform interested groups.

What Maoism and fascism have in common

By Jairus Banaji ( Know more about Jairus Banaji )

Jairus Banaji explores cultures of resistance that are hostile to democracy.

I’ll start with three meanings of democracy as I see it.

1.Democracy in the sense of the formal framework of a constitutional democracy with the rights to freedom and equality, the right to life and personal liberty, to freedom of religion etc that it guarantees. In the Indian Constitution these are the fundamental rights incorporated in Part 3 of the Constitution, under Articles 14–30.

2. Democracy as a culture of resistance grounded in the constitutional rights given under my first meaning, including the Fifth Schedule protecting adivasi communities in the Scheduled Areas. India today is full of mass struggles and when labour movements are strong we can see what a culture of resistance means.

And

3, democracy as an aspiration for control. One can see the Communist Manifesto as a generalisation of democracy in this third sense (of the mass of workers aspiring to control their own lives, economically, politically and culturally) and as a culmination of democracy in both the previous senses. Thus for communists (in Marx’s sense) the mass element in democracy is crucial, it is what defines democracy in its most complete sense and historical form.

Now contrast this with cultures of resistance and/or struggles for control that are notgrounded in democracy in sense 1/. They involve an authoritarian vision of democracy, both in the sense that they set out to overthrow the existing democracy which is seen simply as a mask for the rule of capital or in the sense that they disregard the rights guaranteed by the Constitution on the grounds that no armed struggle can be waged while respecting those rights. In contrast to all of the above, fascism targets democracy in all senses, seeking to overthrow democracy as such without pretensions of replacing it with any more complete form of democracy, as the Maoists claim to do with their notion of a ‘New Democracy’. What fascism and Maoism share in common is the goal of overthrowing an existing parliamentary democracy, though they seek to do so in very different ways (the right being driven by what Arthur Rosenberg called their ‘hatred of democratic government’). ¹ I’ll deal with both a bit later but first let me make another set of distinctions which you may find helpful.

In India we face the paradox of a constitutional democracy that is based on a repressive state apparatus. I call this a paradox because the exercise of repression violates numerous rights guaranteed under the Constitution, so that it generates a contradiction at the heart of the system. By repressive state apparatus I mean (to take the obvious examples) large-scale militarisation of the Indian state; the culture of encounter killings (that is, extra-judicial killings) that is specially rife in certain states like Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh; the shocking impunity that exists for politicians who instigate violence against minorities; and so on. All of these have become endemic features of our democracy. But how do we understand this paradox? On the left the traditional answer has been that this is what ‘bourgeois democracy’ is, there is no contradiction or paradox here, it’s the nature of ‘bourgeois’ democracy to promise more than it can offer.

This is an essentialist argument in the sense that it constructs a model of a system and seeks to explain reality by the essential nature of that model. Frankly, I think it’s time to break with this orthodoxy because, to my mind, the expression ‘bourgeois democracy’ is really quite meaningless. I suggest it would be helpful (as we did with the different meanings of democracy) to draw a line between three things that are, especially on the left, often conflated, namely, capitalism, democracy and the state apparatus. As a historian I know at least this much -- that capitalism and democracy are not functionally related, not even historically, but systems in conflict. Capitalism seeks to limit democracy through its use of the state apparatus. For the democratic left the crucial element of democracy lies in the ability of the masses to shape their lives through the political system, and that in turns requires mass organisations like unions, workers’ councils, and popular committees of the kind we saw in the recent upsurge in Egypt especially. It is this ‘mass’ element in democracy that capital seeks to contain or subvert through its use of the state apparatus. Mass democracy presupposes a strong and well-organised labour movement, as well as a passion for freedom, that is, a culture where people are willing to fight for their rights, and it withers in conditions where capital is able, through the state, to decimate both of these.

With these distinctions, there is nothing particularly paradoxical about a constitutional democracy that survives by requiring some level of repression against its own people. It is not democracy that is at fault but the state apparatus (as an entity distinct from democracy) and the ability of powerful groups to use it to contain both cultures of resistance and aspirations for control, if not actually subvert the Constitution itself. In the case of India, the recent book by Anu and Kamal Chenoy shows brilliantly how the militarisation of the Indian state has been grounded in a drive to hold the union together by force rather than the power of democracy.²

This is one sense in which we can speak of the subversion of constitutional democracy, which is often secured behind the mask of laws that legitimate repression. The frayed margins of Indian democracy where insurgencies are based on sub-nationalisms or class assertions have seen the worst forms of human rights abuse, that is, departures from the Constitution the state claims to be defending, and of course the marginality of these regions (Kashmir, the Northeast, Jharkhand and other tribal regions) is not just geographical in relation to some imagined centre, it is also profoundly cultural in the sense that the backbone of ‘mainstream’ India, as we all know, is caste Hindu while the insurgent regions are multi-ethnic, tribal and religiously more diversified. India has been imagined in all sorts of ways, there is no master narrative of the Indian ‘nation’, but I suggest that one major rift in these different ways of constructing Indian nationalism lies in the issue of how central democracy is to the process and what we mean by democracy. To build a country through the power of democracy is a very different sort of agenda from seeking to hold it together by force or foisting some imaginary unity or commonality on its people when their cultures and sense of community are so diverse.

Now Maoism and fascism share a common hostility to the existing forms of democracy; fascism because it seeks to destroy democracy as such, being unreconciled to the liberal traditions of the 19th century, the Maoists because they claim to want to replace existing forms of democracy by something called New Democracy. Both seek to overthrow constitutional democracies of the kind that emerged in Germany in the 1920s (the Weimar Republic) or that exists in India today, but in very different ways. Fascism is essentially a mass movement, this was the great insight of Arthur Rosenberg’s essay of 1934 in contrast to the orthodoxy that saw it either as a counter-revolution and mainly that, or as a conspiracy hatched by capitalists acting from behind the scenes.³ The power élites of Germany gave their backing to fascism, they did not create it. It is crucial to understand this point as it has extraordinary relevance to our situation in India.

Fascism only succeeds as a mass movement and its strategy of subverting democracy from within depends on mass mobilisations based on pathological forms of nationalism that identify racial or religious victims (Jews, Muslims) and political enemies (Marxists, ‘Bolsheviks’). When Hitler attacked Marxism in relentless campaigns of propaganda that filled the beerhalls of Munich, it was Social Democracy and the Weimar Republic that he was targeting. In an earlier talk I gave, I suggested that when discussing fascism it’s helpful to make a distinction between the ‘enabling conditions’ and the ‘historical pattern’ itself. For example, a spineless judiciary that refused to contain violence from the right; or a climate shaped by widespread racial antisemitism, a yearning for national redemption and ‘mystical notions of a uniquely German social order’; or the backing of powerful figures within the ruling establishment; or the profound economic crisis of the late-1920s were all enabling conditions in the success of the Nazis who till then had remained completely marginal.

However, to take just one example from this list, there’s no reason to see ‘crisis’ as such as part of the narrower historical pattern of fascism, which is much better defined by the following features: a single-minded concentration on propaganda (for Hitler politics was propaganda, as Kershaw shows in his biography); ‘nationalisation of the masses’ as the decisive fascist strategy, that is, their incorporation into extreme forms of nationalism; the combination of paramilitary training with political activism (the use of Stormtroopers); and finally the systematic construction of a Leader cult.⁴ All of these features are related to the mobilising of a mass base as some inert object that the organised group works on in a conscious and systematic way. In India three of these features of the ‘historical pattern’ as I call it are fully present. The racial antisemitism and radical nationalism of the Nazis both have their Indian counterparts in the targeting of Muslims especially, by the Sangh Parivar. What the BJP or Sangh Parivar lacks at the moment is a leader around whom a fanatical cult can be built which will speed up mass mobilisations and incorporation of the masses into assertive forms of pan-Indian or ‘Hindu’ nationalism that either seek to build up justifications for a war with Pakistan or target minorities as an imagined ‘fifth column’, or do both.

Note that there is a political culture here that implicates a specific form of mobilisation. I’ll return to this at the end when comparing it with other possible forms of mobilisation.

Now in the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels made a special point of stating, “The communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties…They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement”. This is a profoundly interesting passage of the Manifesto as it outlines a conception of the role of communists that would be progressively undermined and discarded in the decades that followed. Far from following the precept that communists interact with parties formed by the workers themselves (what Marx called ‘working-class parties’), the revolutionary left of subsequent generations came to believe precisely the opposite. That it is the role of communists to form a separate exclusive party that will ‘lead’ workers, even if workers have had little to do with its formation or lack any substantial control over its leadership and policies. This is what some of us on the left call vanguardism.

It is a political model that generated an endless cycle of fragmentation on the left, since each vanguard, originating as a sect, often completely divorced from the mass of workers, proudly asserted its claim to be the vanguard, the exclusive and true representative of proletarian interests in contrast to all other political organisations making the same claim. Theory was then drawn into this dialectic as an elaborate apology for demarcating the numerous vanguards, was progressively doctrinalised and reduced to the repetition of formulas, and lost its strictly scientific function of illuminating reality. In the reified form of doctrine, theory became the ostensible touchstone for discriminating between contending claims to leadership, even when the real causes of fragmentation lay deeper, in external international events, as with the split between the CPI and the CPI(M) or the subsequent Maoist split or series of expulsions from the CPI(M), both of which were essentially motivated by major divisions within the Stalinist bloc between Russia and China, and permanently weakened the left in India.

Today vanguardism has reached extreme and ludicrous proportions with the different left groups ready to use force against each other, dispensing even with the formality of a political debate, since what passes for debate on the Indian left is a series of fierce denunciations and the constant reassertion of fixed positions, of formulas that have been around often for decades together and have lost all meaning in relation to the actual nature of capitalism. Even something so obvious as the fact that ‘comprador bureaucratic bourgeoisie’ is not the best description one can have for powerful corporate groups like the Ambanis and the massive influence they exercise over parliament and the executive doesn’t seem to make the least difference to some of the Maoist parties that use this characterisation.

The Maoist movement in India is a perfect example of the miasma of sectarian politics that flows from the logic of vanguardism. Since much of this vanguardism is now armed, or has been so since the 1980s, the Naxal groups have been slaughtering each others’ cadre and, more recently, assassinating the cadre of the left parties and being killed by them. How could they possibly justify any of this? The merger between the MCC and People’s War in 2004 was partly an attempt to stop this bloodletting, especially since each of these parties was converging on Orissa, one from Andhra Pradesh, the other from Jharkhand.

Had the merger not gone through, their squads would surely have clashed somewhere in the central districts of that state. I have little sense of the ground reality of the districts where the armed struggle has been raging except through the reports of journalists who have covered it with some consistency but my impression is that with the largely tribal base that it has acquired and that helps it to survive, Maoism in India has mutated into a particularistic movement that has lost both the more general perspectives that defined it when it emerged in the late-1960s and certainly lost any appeal to industrial workers, even those in the mining areas of Chhattisgarh that were so brilliantly organised by Shankar Guha Niyogi. The loss of this double orientation is partly a lack of continuity between different generations of the movement, except at some purely rhetorical level, and partly their complete absorption by the armed struggle that is consuming all their energies and the lives of their cadre, not to mention the tribals themselves or state personnel.

The contradiction in the Maoist model stems from its extreme vanguardism, the notion that an armed and well-organised élite can ‘lead’ the masses to victory and usher in democracy on this basis, through ‘armed struggle’. There is no conception here of a culture of mass democracy where the masses are not some element to be worked on (like Sartre’s ‘worked matter’) but subjects shaping their own lives and in control of their own movement. One reflection of this is the astonishing tenacity of caste discrimination within the ranks of the ‘comrades’. Note KG Satyamurthy’s revealing statement in a recent interview: “When KS was in jail, people started coming to me and telling me about the caste discrimination they faced”.

This of course is a major issue and one not confined to the Maoists either. Again, the obsession with violence as the sole means of conducting the struggle assumes that democracy can emerge from a culture of violence such as any prolonged insurgency must inevitably breed. But in New Democracy, regardless of its formal proclamations, the masses will fail to hold their own against the armed vanguards, the ‘mass’ element in democracy will be completely subject to the control of an armed leadership that will be the core of the new state. Already in the conflict zones the armed squads often behave like Stormtroopers vis-à-vis the civilian population on the classic pattern of what the Chenoys have called a ‘degenerated insurgency’. The CPI(M) embodies a different version of the same sectarian vanguardism (the notion that the masses cannot create their own political movements and cultures), except that it conflates democracy with the state apparatus, seeks to control the latter by contesting elections, and ends up finding itself subject to the will both of capital and of the state apparatus, controlled by them more than it controls them. Note the record of the Left Front in failing to prosecute senior police officers who were known for atrocities committed at various times in the early-’70s or the more recent use of the CRPF to suppress both popular movements and the Maoists. Neither armed struggle nor parliamentary absorption offers a way forward.

So what the left in India desperately needs is a new political culture, one that goes back to the roots of Marxism and reconstructs a vision of the world from classical premises. The relationship between communists and class has to be rethought in a fundamental way that returns to the vision of the Manifesto. Here the communists are defined not by party formation but by a role they play in relation to working-class parties where these do exist. In Marx’s day the prime example of a party in this sense was the Chartist movement in England. Indeed, Marx was so impressed by the self-activity of workers that by the 1860s in Vol 3 of Capital he describes the “cooperative factories run by workers themselves” as “the first examples of the emergence of a new form” within capitalism itself.

“The opposition between capital and labour is abolished here”, he wrote, implying that these self-managed factories were the embryos of a communist society.⁵ Now within the revolutionary left this early vision of workers’ self-emancipation from capital was largely obliterated by the experience of the Russian Revolution and the doctrine that What is to be done?offered a template of the ‘revolutionary party’ as a small, cohesive group of professional revolutionaries that worked in both clandestine and other ways to raise the mass of workers to the level of politics. When the Maoists in India qualify their Marxism by adding ‘Leninism’, it is this tradition that is being foregrounded. In their historical memory Lenin subsumes Marx so completely that they don’t need to look at Marx any more or take any of his ideas seriously. Lenin speaks for Marx.

But the left internationally also has a rich array of political cultures opposed to these authoritarian and élite-driven forms of politics. Syndicalism in its strict meaning predates even the Communist Manifesto. It reflected the innate belief of workers that their association and solidarity were sources of a massive potential power which, combined with the new forces of large-scale industry, could form the basis for an abolition of the wages system and for collective management of the economy. Syndicalist ideas were popular in Britain in the years leading up to the First War.⁶ In the 1920s and 1930s similar ideas resurfaced in the ‘Council Communist’ currents that built on the experience with soviets, factory councils and workers’ committees that emerged in Germany, Russia and Italy after the First War.⁷

Without the soviets the Russian Revolution would have been inconceivable. And without the Soldiers and Workers Councils the November Revolution in Germany would have made the German left even less radical than it proved to be in the 1920s. In Russia itself the ‘Theses of the Workers Opposition’ (defended by Alexander Shlyapnikov and Alexandra Kollontai, the left-wing faction in the Bolshevik party) argued this model of mass democracy as the only basis on which the Bolsheviks could secure the revolution from imminent collapse.⁸ They were forcibly disbanded, by Lenin no less, massive numbers of them expelled from the party, and that vision rapidly withered, at least within the ranks of Bolshevism which was now incorporated into a new kind of ideological formation where the party was becoming a state and this new party-state rediscovering ‘national’ interests that were surreptitiously trumping those of revolutionary movements elsewhere in the world. The instrument of this covert Russian domination of the international movement was of course the Comintern and the role it played in the 1920s and ’30s was a watershed in the final defeat and extinction of revolutionary traditions inherited from the 19th century. In this sense at least the Communist Party of India, only fully formed in 1936, was stillborn as a revolutionary force, one that completely lacked any concrete links with the great revolutionary upsurge of 1917–19.

Today capitalism itself has changed in dramatic ways, it is no longer dominated either economically or politically by the representatives of productive capital whose rates of profit have suffered permanent depression, but is much better described, with Altvater, as essentially a ‘finance-driven capitalism’ where a range of financial institutions, from investment banks and hedge funds to insurance companies and pension funds (all embodying fictitious capital in Marx’s sense) have made the debt markets central to the accumulation of capital,⁹ so that debt servicing becomes the mainstay of accumulation and the ability of governments to service that debt through austerity measures creates a new, second wave of rationalisation leading to further job losses, wage cuts, cuts in public expenditure and the huge sense of insecurity that this spreads throughout society. But part of this process of capital transformation is also a new division of labour where countries with vast reserves of cheap labour become key manufacturing sites, so that there is still space for the aggressive expansion of manufacturing and mining capital, of a ‘real’ economy if you like, but now in more brutal predatory forms that are asset-stripping nature at a phenomenal rate, revamping whole countrysides,¹⁰ that lack even a minimal commitment to notions of welfare and mount continued strong resistance to unions and unionisation.

It is in fact the unions and above all the independent and radical unions that offer a way forward. They are mass organisations of the working class and without them workers form an inchoate mass with no sense of their own identity as a class. True, the unions embody that identity in a rudimentary form, but that is where we have to start. The astonishing Arab Spring, the spectacular mass mobilisations that have occurred throughout the Arab world from Morocco to Syria, have suddenly confronted us with a vision of how resilient the striving for mass democracy still remains and the different forms it can assume, from mass demonstrations and popular committees to the occupation of central spaces. But the drive to form independent unions has also been a major way in which workers have been drawn into this great struggle for democracy. Mostafa Omar’s brilliant report ‘The Spring of the Egyptian Revolution’ makes it absolutely clear that independent unions have emerged as the organisational form of the workers’ movement in the recent upsurge.

It is these independent unions that are the closest modern equivalents of the factory councils in Germany and elsewhere, the 'mass' element behind the will to power reflected in the fact, reported by Omar, that “hundreds of militant trade unionists have come together to initiate the Workers Democratic Party”.¹¹ So here the road to Athens lies via Cairo. Battered by capitalism, large sectors of society, now living in a world of rapidly depleting natural resources and widespread unemployment, know that their fate is bound up with democracy in all of the three senses I outlined at the start. Those meanings of democracy (as a constitution that guarantees fundamental rights; as a culture of resistance or mass struggle; and as an aspiration for control – control over all aspects of our lives), those meanings run concurrently, they are not ‘stages’ in some historical drama scripted by a metaphysical playwright. For example, even when democracy in sense 3 (as communism if you like) eventually triumphs, if it does, democracy in senses 1 and 2 will have to be part of that society. There will have to a constitution that protects the fundamental rights, now expanded and redefined. And there will have also to be a culture of resistance, vibrant oppositions, many of them, instead of a single monolithic party-state that decides the fate of humanity as if it speaks in its name.

(Jairus Banaji is a scholar and activist who writes on issues related to Marxist theory and contemporary capitalism)

Arthur Rosenberg, A History of the German Republic (1936).

Anuradha M. Chenoy, Kamal A. Mitra Chenoy, Maoist and Other Armed Conflicts(2010).

Arthur Rosenberg, Der Faschismus als Massenbewegung (1934); abridged version in Wolfgang Abendroth et al., Faschismus und Kapitalismus (1967). The journalHistorical Materialism will be publishing a translation of this classic essay.

All of these are covered well in Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (1998).

Marx, Capital Volume Three, p. 571.

Bob Holton, British Syndicalism, 1900–1914: Myths and Realities (1976).

E.g., Gwyn A. Williams, Proletarian Order: Antonio Gramsci, Factory Councils and the Origins of Communism in Italy 1911–1921 (1975); Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control 1917–1921 (1970).

Theses of the Workers Opposition (1921), http://www.marxists.org/archive/shliapnikov/1921/workers-opposition.htm

Elmar Altvater, Der groβe Krach oder die Jahrhundertkrise von Wirtschaft und Finanzen, von Politik und Natur (2010).

See Jia Zhangke’s remarkable film Still Life, which is set against the background of the obliteration of whole villages caused by the building of the Three Gorges Dam.

Mostafa Omar, ‘The Spring of the Egyptian Revolution’,http://wwww.socialistworker.org/2011/03/30/spring-of-the-revolution

Source :

Infochange News & Features, August 2011

http://infochangeindia.org/governance/analysis/what-maoism-and-fascism-have-in-common.html

Hormones Impact Career Choices

2011-09-03T13:44:00.001+05:30

Teacher, pilot, nurse or engineer? Sex hormones strongly influence people's interests, which affect the kinds of occupations they choose, according to psychologists.

Berenbaum and her team looked at people's interest in occupations that exhibit sex differences in the general population and are relevant to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers. The researchers studied teenagers and young adults with congenital adrenal hyperplasia -- a genetic condition -- and their siblings who do not have CAH.

"Our results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with things versus people," said Adriene M. Beltz, graduate student in psychology, working with Sheri A. Berenbaum, professor of psychology and pediatrics, Penn State.

A professional revolutionary in the Jungles of Dandakaranya.

People with CAH are exposed to more androgen -- a type of male sex hormone -- than is normal while in the uterus. Females with CAH are genetically female and are treated as females, but their interests tend to be more similar to stereotypically male ones.

The researchers report in the current issue of Hormones and Behavior that females with CAH were significantly more interested than females without CAH in careers related to things compared to careers related to people. The researchers also found that career interests directly corresponded to the amount of androgen exposure the females with CAH experienced -- those exposed to the most androgen in the uterus showed the most interest in things versus people.

"We took advantage of a natural experiment," said Berenbaum. "We're suggesting that these interests are pretty early developing."

Females without CAH had less interest than males in occupations related to things, such as engineer or surgeon, and more interest in careers focused on interacting with people, such as social worker or teacher. There was no significant difference reported between males with CAH and males without the condition.

"We found there is a biological influence on that interest toward things, so maybe women aren't going into STEM careers because what they're interested in -- people -- isn't consistent with an interest in STEM careers," said Beltz. "Maybe we could show females ways in which an interest in people is compatible with STEM careers."

The researchers asked the participants to rate each item in a list of 64 occupations, according to whether they would like, dislike or were indifferent to doing that job. The occupations were grouped into six categories of careers -- realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. This list and the categories are based on a well-established and validated system often used by vocational counselors.

The realistic and investigative categories reflect thing-oriented careers like farmer and scientist, social and artistic categories reflect people-oriented jobs such as teacher and artist, and the enterprising category was in the middle with occupations like realtor and hotel manager.

Also working on this research was Jane L. Swanson, professor of counseling psychology, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

The National Institutes of Health supported this research.

Science Daily

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110901101435.htm

Sonia Gandhi - Secret Health illness causes revealed ! - Exclusive

2011-08-28T23:12:00.001+05:30

Soniaji stop eating Brasht-Aachaar which is causing all your tummy problems and get well soon !!

Climate cycles drive civil war in Tropical Countries like India - New Study

2011-08-28T23:04:00.004+05:30

Countries where the majority of the population lives in areas that become much warmer in El Niño years (red) are more likely to experience wars than those where temperatures are less affacted (blue).

Climate cycles drive civil war

Tropical conflicts double during El Niño years.

Natural climate cycles seem to have a striking influence on war and peace around the equator. Tropical countries face double the risk of armed conflict and civil war breaking out during warm, dry El Niño years than during the cooler La Niña phase of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), according to an analysis published today in Nature1.

The study throws light on the hotly contested issue of whether climate change has any notable effect on violence and societal stability, particularly in poor countries. The authors of several popular books have previously proposed a link, but there are disagreements within the scientific literature over whether a robust climate signal can be detected in conflict statistics.

Previous studies have focused on the question of how anthropogenic climate change might increase conflict risk. A 2009 study by economist Marshall Burke at the University of California, Berkeley, and his co-workers found that the probability of armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa was about 50% higher than normal in some unusually warm years since 1981. But critics point to statistical problems — for instance when linking possibly random local temperature and rainfall variations with outbreaks of civil war — that may have resulted in a false appearance of causality.

To overcome this problem, Solomon Hsiang, an economist currently at Princeton University in New Jersey, and his colleagues opted to look at how historical changes in the global, rather than local, climate affect conflict risk1.

Clear signal

The team designed a 'quasi-experiment' for which they divided the world into regions strongly affected by the ENSO — the tropical parts of South America, Africa and the Asia–Pacific region, including parts of Australia — and regions only weakly affected by it. They then searched for a link between climate and armed conflicts that arose in the first group between 1950 and 2004.

A very clear signal appeared in the data. The team found that the risk of annual civil conflict doubles, from 3% to 6%, in countries of the ENSO-affected, or 'teleconnected', group during El Niño years relative to La Niña years. In many cases, conflicts that might have broken out anyway may have occurred earlier owing to the effects of El Niño, Hsiang suggests.

Civil conflicts have been by far the most common form of organized political violence in recent decades, Hsiang says. Globally, one-fifth of the 240 or so civil conflicts since 1950 could be linked to the 4–7-year climate cycle originating in the southern Pacific, the study concludes. The results were unaffected by any modification to the statistical set-up of the analysis — such as excluding particularly crisis-prone African countries — which the team performed to confirm the robustness of their findings.

"A doubling of risk is a very strong effect," says Halvard Buhaug, a conflict researcher with the Peace Research Institute Oslo, who was not involved in the study.

Buhaug, who has previously criticized claims such as Burke's, says he feels "surprised and a bit puzzled" by the results. He grants that the study is "very competently executed" but adds that the issue is nonetheless far from being settled. "I don't dismiss that a correlation exists, but it is a correlation we so far don't understand," he says. "I remain sceptical about any potential causal connection."

A more detailed analysis of the 'narratives' of historical conflicts that have occurred during El Niño years is needed to establish whether any factors that may have caused these conflicts — such as harvest failures that led to food shortages — can be traced to El Niño events, he says.

Greenhouse effects

The authors of the study are aware of its limitation and of the difficulties involved in establishing a causal link between climate and conflict. But, says Hsiang, case studies are ongoing at Columbia University in New York and elsewhere on how El Niño events might link to local outbreaks of violence.

"Different hypotheses have been proposed as to how one phenomenon causes the other, and we aren't sure yet what the correct narrative is," he says. "It could be that agricultural income in El Niño years drops to levels that can trigger violence. Furthermore, psychologists think that aggressive behaviour gets generally more widespread during exceptionally warm conditions."

El Niño events, he adds, are by no means the sole factor leading to conflict. But although these natural climate cycles do seem to play a part in the peacefulness of nations, the authors warn against rushing to the conclusion that anthropogenic greenhouse warming will lead to more armed conflict and political instability.

Climate models give ambiguous projections as to how ENSO will change in a warming world. "El Niño is different in structure than anthropogenic climate change," says Hsiang. "It would therefore be hard to map our results onto future changes."

But Burke, who was not involved in the study, says that the work could be useful for at-risk countries. "The fact that ENSO is itself somewhat predictable makes their findings policy-relevant," he says. "If we think an El Niño is coming, then governments in teleconnected regions could put in place measures and safety nets to try to reduce the risk of conflict in that year."

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110824/full/news.2011.501.html

El Niño appearances tied to civil conflicts in tropical countries

Political conflicts are extremely complex, and we almost never understand all the factors that are involved in their timing, the course they take, and their eventual outcome. In this week’s Nature, a paper suggests a new variable to consider: the climate. According to researchers from Columbia and Princeton, there is good evidence that global climate variations can play a role in the onset of civil conflicts.

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle, known as ENSO, is a climatic pattern that repeats about every 5 years. Variations in water temperatures and air pressure in the Pacific Ocean cause El Niño years to be warm and dry, while La Niña years are cooler and wetter. These oscillations are felt most strongly in tropical countries, while mid-latitude areas are much less affected.

The authors of the study hypothesized that these cycles might play a role in the onset of civil conflicts. Although some research has been done on the correlation between climate and conflict, methodological difficulties and inconclusive results have caused lots of confusion. Climate studies are difficult because there is no Earth we can control to experiment with; we are stuck examining global patterns with few controls. However, in this study, ENSO provides a convenient experimental setup: volatile El Niño years provide a “treatment” group, while calmer La Niña years serve as a control.

175 countries were included in the dataset, including 93 tropical countries that are highly prone to the effects of El Niño and 82 other countries that are weakly affected by ENSO. Countries were classified as experiencing "conflict onset" in a given year if more than 25 people had died as a direct result of a new political dispute between two groups. Conflicts from 1950 to 2004 were included. Then the researchers calculated the annual conflict risk (or ACR) for both the tropical countries and the weakly affected countries. The ACR is the probability that a randomly selected country from the group experienced conflict onset in a particular year.

For the countries that aren’t highly affected by ENSO, such as Greece, Afghanistan, and Sweden, the ACR was about 2 percent in both El Niño and La Niña years, indicating that these climate cycles are unlikely to affect civil conflict in these countries. However, the ACR for tropical countries such as Australia, Sudan, and Trinidad doubled during El Niño years, increasing from 3 percent to 6 percent. From their analyses, the researchers concluded that the ENSO cycle may have affected 21 percent of civil conflicts since 1950.

The results are remarkably robust; the researchers repeated the analysis with various types of statistical models and with different ENSO indices, and their conclusions remained the same. Furthermore, the results held up even when high-conflict countries were excluded from the dataset, and when other variables, such as a country's age structure, income growth, and agricultural reliance, were included in the analyses.

Two additional findings were particularly intriguing. Many of the conflicts affected by ENSO are particularly deadly recurring conflicts. By changing the requirement for the length of "peaceful periods" between conflicts, the researchers found that the relationship between ENSO and large conflicts decreased. Additionally, low-income countries were the hardest hit by El Niño years, indicating that poorer countries are particularly sensitive to ENSO patterns.

Although the relationship between ENSO and civil conflicts is quite clear, the reasons behind this correlation are still not understood. Warm, dry El Niño years might decrease agricultural output, stressing a country’s resources and increasing food prices. ENSO patterns affect the frequencies of natural disasters, such as hurricanes and cyclones, which put countries at risk for upheaval. Extreme conditions can also cause psychological stress and alter human behavior. Finally, ENSO is a widespread phenomenon, and may cause suboptimal conditions on a large scale.

In order to use the results of this study to predict or alleviate conflicts, we need to better understand the mechanisms driving the relationship between climate patterns and political conflict.

Nature, 2011. DOI: 10.1038/nature10311 (About DOIs).

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/08/el-nino-appearances-tied-to-civil-conflicts-in-tropical-countries.ars

First proof that climate is a trigger for conflict: study

Climate shift has at times been fingered as a culprit in triggering conflict, fuelling for instance the 1789 French Revolution by wrecking harvests and driving hungry peasants to the city.

Evidence to back the theory has often been contested as sketchy or anecdotal - but the case has been boosted by the first scientific study to declare an unmistakeable link between climate fluctuations and violence.

It says tropical countries affected by the notorious El Nino weather event are twice as likely to be hit by internal unrest compared to the phenomenon’s cooler, wetter counterpart, La Nina.

The civil war and famine gripping the Horn of Africa is a typical example of what happens when a climate swing causes drought and overstresses an already fragile society, say its authors.

The inquiry, appearing in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature, focusses on a naturally occurring pattern of climate change.

But its authors say there is a disturbing lesson about violence driven by man-made warming, which is expected to bite deep in coming decades.

"What it does show and show beyond any doubt is that even in this modern world, climate variations have an impact on the propensity of people to fight," said Mark Cane, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York.

"It’s difficult to see why that won’t carry over to a world that’s disrupted by global warming."

Formally known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the cycle occurs every two to seven years and last from nine months to two years, often inflicting massive losses on agriculture, forestry and fishing.

It starts when warm water builds on the western side of the tropical Pacific and shifts across the ocean.

This part of the cycle, El Nino, can cause dramatic changes in rainfall patterns and temperatures, unleashing scorching heat or drying winds in much of Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Australia.

When the cycle goes into reverse, a phase called La Nina, the water in the eastern Pacific cools, often bringing heavy rain to those regions.

The study looked at ENSOs from 1950 to 2004 and overlaid this data with civil conflicts - violence that had taken place within national borders, as opposed to cross-border wars - that had killed more than 25 people in a given year.

The data included 175 countries and 234 conflicts, more than half of which caused more than 1,000 battle-related deaths.

In countries whose weather cycles are determined by ENSO, the risk of civil conflict occurring during La Nina was about three percent; during El Nino, this doubled to six percent, the paper says.

Countries not affected by ENSO remained at two percent regardless.

Overall, according to the study, El Nino may have played a role in 21 percent of civil wars worldwide, and nearly 30 percent in those countries that are specifically affected by El Nino.

Lead author Solomon Hsiang of Columbia’s Earth Institute said El Nino was an invisible factor - but not the only one - in driving intra-border conflict.

By causing crop losses, hurricane damage or helping to spread epidemics of water-borne disease, it amplified hunger, loss, unemployment and inequality, which in turn fuelled resentment and division.

Other factors that could affect risk and the outcome are the country’s population growth and prosperity and whether its government is able to manage El Nino events properly.

"Even though we control for all of these factors simultaneously, we still find that there’s a large and pervasive El Nino effect on civil conflicts," Hsiang said in a teleconference.

Although the current crisis in the Horn of Africa occurred beyond the parameters of the study, it was a "perfect example" of the hidden destruction of an El Nino.

"Forecasters two years ago predicted that there would be a famine in Somalia this year, but donors in the international aid community did not take that forecast seriously," said Hsiang.

"We hope our study can provide the international community and governments and aid organisations with additional information that might in the future help avert humanitarian crises that are associated with conflict."

http://www.canada.com/news/First+proof+that+climate+trigger+conflict+study/5306130/story.html

Government of India want's real time data from Facebook, Twitter

2011-08-28T22:49:00.000+05:30

Having tasted blood , the government now want's more.This article appeared in the first week of August.

Govt wants to monitor Facebook, Twitter

The Union home ministry has written to the department of telecom asking it to "ensure effective monitoring of Twitter and Facebook".

Milind Deora, minister of state for communications and information technology, said in written reply to a question on Friday in the Rajya Sabha that DoT has received a letter from MHA to ensure monitoring of social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter in order to "strengthen cyber security paraphernalia".

Deora told the Parliament "the telecom service providers (already) provide facilities for lawful interception and monitoring of communication flowing through their network including communications from social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter."

He said that in cases where the data is encrypted, the department works with all concerned parties to obtain lawful access to it.

Citing security a reason, India in the recent months has sought more surveillance and monitoring from internet service providers as well as companies like Research In Motion, which sells BlackBerry phones capable of encrypted emails and messaging.

In April the government notified a new set of IT rules, virtually making intermediaries like internet service providers and web hosts and websites like Facebook and Twitter responsible for any wrongdoings on their networks. The rules were widely criticized by privacy activists.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Centre for Internet and Society said these "blanket surveillance practices" are counterproductive.

"People advocating greater surveillance don't understand how the web works. In some cases, if there is evidence, targeted monitoring can be done but if governments wants to go through each tweet and every status update, it's just waste of money and resources. Agencies involved in monitoring can do better work by focusing on core issues. This will also save ordinary law-abiding citizens from unnecessary harassment," said Abraham.

According to their policies, Twitter and Facebook don't share any private information available on their servers without valid court order or subpoena. Twitter had said in the past that even if there was a court order, it would first inform the users in question before sharing information related to them.

Times of India

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-08/social-media/29863856_1_facebook-and-twitter-social-networking-websites-monitoring

Naxalite Maoist India

2011-06-21T23:36:00.000+05:30

Operation Green Hunt

Naxalite - by Asian Dub Foundation(2003)

Special Report on Indian Maoists broadcast in Dateline show on SBS TV - Australia

2011-06-21T23:35:00.002+05:30

The Video Report below gives a glimpse into the life of a Maoist Guerrilla in the Dandakaranya region of India.

India's Red Tide

Special Report on Indian Maoists broadcast on Dateline show on SBS TV in Australia
Maoist guerrillas have been at war with the Indian government for over 40 years… challenging the capitalism which they fear will take over their land and its mineral resources, and instead proposing a communist way of life.

It’s been a bloody conflict, with thousands of people killed and the Naxalites, as they’re also known, pushed into a nomadic existence deep in the jungle.

Dateline gets a rare glimpse into the lives of a group of people seen as terrorists on one side and human rights activists on the other.

WATCH - Victoria Strobl narrates this insight into the divide between India’s rich and poor.

FACTFILE - Read more about the Maoists and the history of their violent fight for land rights in India.

REPLAY - Watch a previous Dateline story from 2008 on the Maoist rebels in India.

For more visit - http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/601216/n/India-s-Red-Tide

US crime figures: Why the drop?

2011-06-21T23:19:00.001+05:30

For 20 years, crime in the US has been falling and new figures from the FBI show a sharp drop in the last two years, despite the recession. Why?

Through Democrat and Republican administrations and through booms and busts, crime has been falling since 1991.

Murder and robbery rates nearly halved from 1991-98, a phenomenon that has saved thousands of lives and spared many more potential victims of crime.

The pace of the reduction slowed in the late 90s but new FBI figures show the sharp drop in crime that began around 2008 continued last year, despite high unemployment.

No-one agrees on the reasons for this.

Here are 10 possible theories.

1. The Obama effect could explain the increased pace of the reduction of the last few years, says one of the country's top criminologists, Alfred Blumstein. "The prior expectation was that the recession would have the opposite effect. The question then is what distinctive event occurred in '09?" The election of a black president could have inspired some young black men, who are disproportionately involved in arrests for robbery and homicide, says the professor. It's very speculative, he adds, and probably only one factor of many, as one of the cities with a huge drop in crime is Phoenix, in Arizona, which does not have a large black population. "In the field of criminology, you don't get consistent indicators as you would in physics. There are so many factors that could have contributed." A separate study on school test scores supports the view that some black teenagers were motivated to try harder by the new presidency.

2. The fall in violent crime that began in the early 90s can be partly explained by the fall in demand for crack, says Prof Blumstein, co-author of The Crime Drop in America. Word got round about the dangers of crack use and - aided by aggressive policing - the gun violence associated with its supply decreased. The converse had happened in 1985, when the incarceration of dealers led to a spiral of violence, as younger and more reckless suppliers took their place.

3. Smarter policing helped the border city of Laredo in Texas to reduce car theft by 40% last year. Police spokesman Joe Baeza says they introduced a scheme whereby motorists could register their car number plates into a police database and this empowered patrol cars to stop these cars if they were spotted late at night, to verify the owners. Mr Baeza adds that they also targeted car theft networks, educated the community about prevention and promoted anti-theft devices.

4. Number crunching has also helped in Laredo, where overall crime fell 16% last year, says Mr Baeza. "CompStat is a crime mapping project that pinpoints crime peaks in different parts of the city. The police chief then sends a team of officers to reinforce hotspots for burglaries or thefts or robberies, and they hold steady the flow of criminality." The CompStat methods began in New York City and featured heavily in gritty television drama The Wire, set in Baltimore.

5. There is a controversial theory put forward by economist Steven Levitt that the increased availability of legal abortion after the Supreme Court ruling in 1973 on Roe v Wade meant that fewer children were born to young, poor, single mothers. This, says the theory, stopped unwanted babies in the 1970s and 80s from becoming adolescent criminals in the decades that followed. But some of his peers have questioned whether the evidence really supports the theory.

6. A sociologist at Tufts University, John Conklin, says a significant factor behind the fall in crime in the 1990s was the fact that more criminals were behind bars and therefore unable to offend. In his book Why Crime Rates Fell, he says sentencing was lenient in the 60s and 70s, when crime rose, and then more prisons were built and more offenders were imprisoned. But others question why crime has continued to fall recently when budget constraints have kept the prison population relatively flat.

7. An economist at Amherst College in Massachusetts links the fall in violent crime to a decline in children's exposure to lead in petrol. Jessica Wolpaw Reyes says: "Even low to moderate levels of exposure can lead to behavioural problems, reduced IQ, hyperactivity and juvenile delinquency. You can link the decline in lead between 1975 and 1985 to a decline in violent crime 20 years later." About 90% of American children in the 1970s had blood levels that would today cause concern, she says. Her research also found a link at state level between the timing of laws banning lead and subsequent crime statistics.

8. The baby boomers grew up. With birth rates peaking between 1957 and 1961, the proportion of men in the US in their late teens and early 20s was highest the late 70s and early 80s. As time went on, the proportion of people at "criminal age" decreased.

9. A study released last month suggested video games were keeping young people off the streets and therefore away from crime. Researchers in Texas working with the Centre for European Economic Research said this "incapacitation effect" more than offset any direct impact the content of the games may have had in encouraging violent behaviour.

10. Some people have suggested to Professor Blumstein there is another technological deterrent and that is the proliferation of camera phones, which makes some criminals think twice before risking possible incrimination on film. The impact of other kinds of cameras is unclear. In the UK, the influence of CCTV on crime is disputed.

Source : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13799616?print=true

The Crime of Lead Exposure

2011-06-21T23:16:00.000+05:30

The steep drop in crime in America is one of the most noteworthy sociological trends of the last twenty years. What astonishing is that, although the murder rate has fallen by more than 50 percent in many cities, we still don’t know why. Part of the mystery, of course, is that the causes are plural: there are many reasons why our cities are getting so much safer. In a recent essay, the political scientist James Q. Wilson outlines several possible explanations for the falling crime rates, from better policing to a shrinking market for crack cocaine. He also references one of the hypotheses that I’m most interested in, which is that reductions in exposure to lead gas and paint have reduced levels of aggression and improved impulse control in young men:

For decades, doctors have known that children with lots of lead in their blood are much more likely to be aggressive, violent and delinquent. In 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency required oil companies to stop putting lead in gasoline. At the same time, lead in paint was banned for any new home (though old buildings still have lead paint, which children can absorb).
Tests have shown that the amount of lead in Americans’ blood fell by four-fifths between 1975 and 1991. A 2007 study by the economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes contended that the reduction in gasoline lead produced more than half of the decline in violent crime during the 1990s in the U.S. and might bring about greater declines in the future. Another economist, Rick Nevin, has made the same argument for other nations.

In recent years, neuroscientists have made important progress in identifying the precise mechanisms by which lead exposure reduces impulse control. Here, for instance, is a recent PLOS study from the Cincinnati Lead Study, in which the blood lead level of babies born in poor areas of Cincinnati were repeatedly measured between 1979 and 1984. Twenty years later, the researchers tracked down these subjects and put them in MRI machines, allowing them to measure the brain volume of participants. The researchers found that exposure to lead as a child was linked with a significant loss of brain volume in adulthood, particularly in men. Furthermore, there was a “dose-response” effect, in which the greatest brain volume loss was seen in participants with the greatest lead exposure. What’s especially tragic is that the loss of volume was concentrated in the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain closely associated with executive function and impulse control. Here are the scientists:

Childhood lead exposure is associated with region-specific reductions in adult gray matter volume. Affected regions include the portions of the prefrontal cortex and ACC responsible for executive functions, mood regulation, and decision-making. These neuroanatomical findings were more pronounced for males, suggesting that lead-related atrophic changes have a disparate impact across sexes. This analysis suggests that adverse cognitive and behavioral outcomes may be related to lead’s effect on brain development producing persistent alterations in structure.

The degradation of the prefrontal cortex by lead exposure also helps explain the relationship between blood lead levels and IQ scores. According to one 2003 estimate, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, blood lead levels below the supposedly “safe” limit of 10 micrograms per deciliter still produced a reduction in IQ of around 7 points. (Approximately 1 in 50 American children has lead levels above that threshold.) That’s a big cognitive loss for millions of kids.

The reason the prefrontal cortex is such an essential component of intelligence returns us to its most important function, which is controlling the spotlight of attention and regulating the short list of thoughts in working memory. (These are the thoughts we’re actually thinking about.) Although we typically assume that attention and working memory are intellectual skills – they’re essential for academic success and school smarts – it has become increasingly clear that they also help us regulate our emotions. Look, for instance, at Walter Mischel’s classic marshmallow task, which I wrote about in The New Yorker a few years ago. The experiment involved offering four year old children a choice between eating one marshmallow right away or, if they could wait fifteen minutes, the chance to eat two marshmallows. While every kid wanted that second sweet treat, the vast majority failed to resist the temptation right in front of them. However, about 20 percent of preschoolers were able to successfully delay gratification, restraining their impulses and exerting self-control. (A follow-up study demonstrated that these kids had fewer temper problems, more friends and much higher SAT scores as high-school seniors.) So what allowed these four year olds to resist the allure of the marshmallow? The secret was attention. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Mischel’s conclusion, based on hundreds of hours of observation, was that the crucial skill was the “strategic allocation of attention.” Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow—the “hot stimulus”—the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from “Sesame Street.” Their desire wasn’t defeated—it was merely forgotten. “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it,” Mischel says. “The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.”

Furthermore, the scientists are now doing brain scans on the original marshmallow subjects – the four year olds are now in their forties – as they try to better understand the substrate of self-control. In essence, they want to decipher the cortical persistent differences between high-delayers and low-delayers. Most of the relevant regions they’ve identified so far are in the frontal cortex, and include areas such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the anterior prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate, and the right and left inferior frontal gyri. (Needless to say, these are also many of the brain regions undermined by lead exposure.) In general, high-delayers show higher levels of activation in these areas when performing tasks requiring the allocation of attention, which is why they also perform at a higher level.

What Mischel’s data demonstrates is that attention isn’t just about information. Instead, it’s also what allows us to blunt the urges of our errant emotions, allowing us to look past the desire to stuff that yummy marshmallow into our mouth. While we can’t always control what we feel – many of our urges are ancient drives, embedded deep in the brain – we can control the amount of attention we pay to our feelings. When faced with a tempting treat, we can look away.

This returns us to aggression. Let’s say you’re being teased by a bully at school. You can feel your anger rising; the hot emotion is vibrating in your veins. It would feel so good to punch that bully in the face, to vent your frustration with a fight. However, you also know that such violence will get you suspended from school, which is why throwing a punch is not a good idea. If you can’t strategically allocate your attention – and this is a skill that requires a solid prefrontal cortex – then you’re not going to be able to resist your anger. You’re going to get in a fight and get suspended. However, if you can properly look past this negative emotion – perhaps by counting to ten, or just walking away, or finding something else to think about – then your anger will subside. The hot feeling has been cooled off.

The tragedy of lead exposure is that it undermines one of the most essential mental skills we can give our kids, which is the ability to control what they’re thinking about. While the unconscious will always be full of impulses we can’t prevent, and the world will always be full of dangerous temptations, we don’t have to give in. We can choose to direct the spotlight of attention elsewhere, so that instead of thinking about the marshmallow we’re thinking about Sesame Street, or instead of thinking about our anger we’re counting to ten. And so there is no fight. We walk away.

Source : http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/the-crime-of-lead-exposure/

Stuxnet - Anatomy of a Computer Virus

2011-06-14T08:39:00.002+05:30

An infographic dissecting the nature and ramifications of Stuxnet, the first weapon made entirely out of code. This was produced for Australian TV program HungryBeast on Australia's ABC1.

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

Link to Video : http://vimeo.com/25118844

Direction and Motion Graphics: Patrick Clair patrickclair.com
Written by: Scott Mitchell
Production Company: Zapruder's Other Films.

Jangalnama - Travels in a Maoist Guerrilla Zone - A review

2011-06-14T08:39:00.001+05:30

Jangalnama- Travels in a Maoist Guerrilla Zone by Satnam, translated by Vishav Bharti- a review.

‘In the light of a candle, drinking maté (a local drink) and eating a piece of bread and cheese, the man’s shrunken features stuck a mysterious, tragic note. In simple but expressive language, he told us about his three months in prison, his starving wife, and his children left in the care of a kindly neighbor, his fruitless pilgrimage in search of work and his comrades, who had mysteriously disappeared and were said to somewhere at the bottom of the sea’. These copper mines – ‘ spiced with the lives of poor unsung heroes of this battle, who die miserable deaths, when all they want is to earn is their daily bread’

- Che Guevara, describing the life of a working class couple in the copper mines of Chuquicamata. (The Motorcycle Diaries)

At the age of 23, Che undertook a journey on a motorcycle across South America and wrote a journal based on it. The journal was published in a book form titled The Motorcycle Diaries a decade or so back. Satnam’s Jangalnama could well be a sequel to that book, written in the context of the Red India, as the Maoist controlled belt has come to be known.

There are differences, of course. Che was young, fresh out of medical college. He rode a motorcycle and was essentially on an adventure tour during the course of which he got to see the underbelly of South America and about which he wrote so eloquently. This journey was part of his education in becoming a revolutionary soon after.

Satnam, on the other hand, is an unknown writer- there is very little about him in the book except a few self descriptions. We know that at the time of his travel in 2001 he is a forty something, bespectacled Punjabi journalist who took a 2 month tour of the ‘red’ tribal belt in Eastern India in the company of the guerrillas. Che was at an age when young men and women of a certain generation tended to turn communists, Satnam, on the other hand, was at an age when the same young men and women become cynical. Satnam’s undying idealism,however, makes his account outstanding. The very fact that a person would travel all the way from Punjab to the tribal districts of Eastern India, that too, in a Maoist controlled territory is quite remarkable.

Satnam describes how the guerrilla live and operate. He travels with different squads across the Bastar, visiting tribal villages and observing how the guerrillas and the tribals live.

Some of his observations are so straightforward that they would be trite, were they not accompanied by the flights of imagination that makes the same observation so special. Take for example, on the tribals’ use of river water.

One of the things that stuck me as I travelled through the jungle was that the tribals neither abuse their rivers, nor do they worship them. They don’t pollute their rivers because they get their drinking water from them.They use natural toilet paper, that is leaves, or water. They don’t know what sin is, so they don’t need to wash it away in a ritualistic ordeal. They are free of thievery and fraudulence that afflict civilized societies.

A commonplace observation thus takes on a different meaning when put in a broader context and becomes a critique of much that we otherwise take for granted. Similarly, he writes on the use of plastic.

Plastic is a rarity in the jungle, there are no heaps of garbage in the jungle. the guerrillas use it for carrying water for their morning ablutions, or to protect their books and stuff from rain. ‘Garbage’ is the sign of civilized society. An abundance and luxury, followed by muck and filth.

What reminded me of Che’s book, was this description of how how Satnam discovers a heap of ‘something re- coloured’ over which the water flowed clearly.

I didn’t know whether it was magnet or iron ore but iron ore is found throughout Bastar. It is this very iron ore of Bastar on which the Japanese factories and its famous automobile industry thrive. One is infuriated by the role that these iron mines have played in the lives of the tribals. Every day, two goods trains full of iron extracted from the mines of Bailadilla head for the port of Vizag where it is loaded on to ships for Japan. The tribals, legitimate owners of this invaluable resource, have no idea about the many uses of iron and how it has been the base for modern civilization… the hellholes of exploitation and abuse are Japan’s contributions to the industrial development of the country.

There are observations too on how the guerrillas work with the tribals- how they have made medical care their highest priority, after the resistance against plunder and governmental repression. Pisiculture and even simple things that one takes for granted- like the use of vegetables and fruits that are rich in nutritional or medicinal properties, are unknown to the tribal people and educating them on their uses is a challenge for the Maoists.

The campaign for education- literacy as well as political education, too are described as a lived experience and not drab statistics. One of the most hilarious parts of the book is the one where the guerrillas organize a meeting to protest against the US invasion of Afghanistan and speaker after speaker fails in delivering a speech. Most of the speakers- all young women and men encouraged to speak in public- end up either giggling away or saying ‘Lal salaam’ and quickly exiting the stage. One of the speakers manages to speak longer:

“Adna got up from his place and jauntily walked up to the stage. looking around, he scratched his head and wondered whether anything remained to be said. He put his hands on his waist, looked into Raju’s eyes, and the words came to his lips. Looking into everyone’s heads, he stared into the darkness:
‘America is the world’s number one enemy. Tomorrow all of you will come here with bows and arrows, axes and sickles.We will fight America.’ He uttered these three sentences in a single breath, spat on the ground and swung back as he had come.’

There are snippets, too, of the writer’s conversations with some of the guerrillas- young Gond men and women whose personal stories point to the fact that behind the tribal upsurge there are also as many stories of personal rebellions as there are guerrillas.

The book, a translation from Punjabi to English, makes for an effortless reading. It is written in a simple style, like a journal, and keeps the reader engaged with insightful observations that the writer makes about the life of the Maoist guerrillas and the tribals among whom they work. The descriptions are not exotic or scintillating as they might have been in the pen of a more youthful or excitable writer- indeed as they in Arundhati Roy’s somewhat flamboyant short travelogue, but have the quiet dignity of aging silver. In terms of time, Satnam’s 2001 rendezvous with the Maoists is older than that of Roy’s as well as Sudeep Chakravarti’s Red Sun, Travels in Naxalite Country (2008).

This is not to say that the book is without its flaws- it is marked by repetition, particularly that of a political rhetoric that might reassure the converted but is a bit of a nuisance for others. It is clear that the writer is sympathetic to the Maoist guerrillas as he makes it a point to reiterate it every few pages. Other than that, it is an insightful book on what the Indian Prime Minister considers to be “India’s gravest internal threat”. Reading the book, one realizes that it might be the other way round- and that it is Indian government which is the gravest threat for the tribals of eastern India.

Source :

http://readerswords.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/jangalnama-travels-in-a-maoist-guerrilla-zone-a-review/

Anonymous denies hacking Indian Government Websites

2011-06-14T08:38:00.000+05:30

Hackers claiming to be from the infamous hackers group Anonymous recently hacked Indian government website to express solidarity with the anti-graft movement in the country. It's hard to understand how hacking the government websites will help the cause.

Now, after having seen a spate of attacks on Indian websites, and promises for more, India seems to be a big target on the hit-list of hackers of global noteriety. Though none of the hacks have so far proved to be too damaging, concerns on level of Internet security in the country have grown sharply.

The 'Anonymous' hackers group also hacked the Indian Army website but quickly retracted after a lot of outraged Indians flooded the Facebook and Twitter pages of Operation India with angry questions on the motive of the step. Soon after the event, the Facebook and Twitter pages for Anonymous India were removed – a move that took everyone by surprise. It is also not clear whether the move was taken by the hackers group or the social networking sites were too involved into it.

Things became more confusing after a message posted on PasteBin said that it was not Anonymous that hacked the government sites but someone else misusing its name.

Here's excerpt of the message:

“It has come to our notice that some of the Indian hackers and there groups are taking the undue advantage of the situation and the name and platform of Anonymous”

“You targeted organizations and other Indian Government properties to settle your own issues and you used the name Anonymous for personal benefits. By doing all this activities, you have not only hampered the image of Anonymous but you all are responsible for the damage caused to #OpIndia.”

http://www.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Anonymous-clears-its-name-in-Indian-Army_6966.html

CPI Maoist Politburo member Jagdish Yadav alias Jagdish Master arrested

2011-06-14T08:32:00.000+05:30

The Bihar Police have arrested CPI (Maoist) politburo member Jagdish Yadav alias Jagdish Master, one of top five Naxal leaders and in-charge of entire armed operation and mass mobilisation in Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa, Assam and Chhattisgarh.

According to the police, he was the one who had facilitated the merger of Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and People’s War Group (PWG) into the present outfit. Yadav, 71, is resident of Kasma, Aurangabad and at least Rs 14 lakh reward had been announced on his head in different states, said officers. Yadav, never arrested ever since he joined Naxal movement in 1968, published and edited ultra’s firebrand magazine, Chingari.

This is the second big catch of top Naxal leaders in less than two months in Bihar. In April-end, three central committee members were arrested from Barsoi, Katihar.

Yadav, who also used many aliases like Akhileshji, Prabhatji and Rupeshji, was arrested at Guraru, Gaya. He was arrested when he visited a Ayurveda practitioner friend Lalji Yadav. Though the police made the arrest two days ago, it confirmed the arrest only after verifying Yadav’s photographs with Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand police. Yadav’s friend was also arrested.

Bihar Director General of Police Neelmani told The Indian Express: “This is by far the biggest Naxal catch as Jagdish Master was one of top eight politburo members of the outlawed group. Yadav, a politburo member since 2004, has been behind several major Naxal attacks across the country.” After arrest of Kobad Ghandy, Yadav played big role in strategy formulation of the CPI (Maoists), said the DGP.

Neelmani said Yadav, who had been central committee member from 1996 to 2004, had cases in Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

Magadh Range Deputy Inspector General of Police Umesh Kumar added though the accused claimed he had been living at the house of his Ayurveda practitioner friend for the past one week, the police had information of his stay at Gurau for one and a half month. “We cracked down only after being sure of Yadav’s identity,” said the DIG.

Indian Express : http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Wanted-in-6-states--top-Maoist-nabbed/803400/

List of Social Workers and Political Activists arrested killed online

2011-06-10T23:02:00.014+05:30

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. - Charles Darwin

The above quote made by Charles Darwin in the context of the evolution of biological species can be applied to the political animal too. The maoists/naxalites which are one among the many political species that originate in the sub-continent have over the past few years made some efforts to adapt to changes that are taking place in India.

One major change that has taken place in India over the last decade, is the growth in telecom infrastructure which in turn has increased the spread and decreased the cost of acquiring Internet connectivity. Internet penetration in India is estimated to be at 8.5% of the population as of 2010, this translates into approximately 100 million people who currently have access to the Internet. Only a small percentage of this 100 million are regular users , which is still significant.

Publishing and disseminating information through the Internet can be considered as one of the important initiatives that they have taken in recent times.One can also speculate that they are using the internet for their internal communication and research also.

The benefits of using the Internet for communication however has come at a heavy price.The murders and arrests of social workers and political activists who have been tracked electronically either through the Internet / Mobile or by the use of other surveillance technology.

In fact more than two years ago, the CPI (Maoist) had constituted a two member ‘ Investigation Commission ' with two central committee members - Kobad Ghandy and Patel Sudhakar Reddy, to zero in on the reasons for the arrests and killings of top Maoist leaders. But before they could complete the investigation - Kobad Ghandy was arrested in May 2009 and Patel Sudhakar Reddy was killed in a fake encounter in Sep 2009.

As this article which appeared in the Hindu last month reveals :

Maoist party ordered top leaders not to attend February meeting

In a curious development, the Maoist party is said to have ordered six of its central committee members to stay away from a top-level meeting that was convened on the borders of Orissa and Jharkhand in February.

The central committee meeting, called to take stock of the revolutionary movement in the country, was attended by the other 18 members. Among the six leaders ordered not to attend were Akkiraju Haragopal alias Ramakrishna, Varanasi Subrahmanyam, Pulendu Sekhar Mukherji, Misir Besra, Malla Raji Reddy and another unidentified person, intelligence agencies say.

The Maoist leadership suspected that these six were under intense surveillance from intelligence agencies, and that their attending the meeting could jeopardise the security of the other central committee members.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2038216.ece

The arrest of CC member Varanasi Subramanium on April 29th, 2011 is another shocker because it proves that senior Maoist leaders are unable to shake off their pursuers. Before he was arrested on April 29th 2011 , he had two close scares in Delhi during his interactions with Swami Agnivesh (Peace talks mediator) in the months of July 2010 and August 2010. This means it took the IB only 10 months to get back on his trail and arrest him ?

This has led to speculation that either there is mole in the higher ranks of the CPI(Maoist) who is passing on this information or it could be the result of increased surveillance which the CPI(Maoist) is unable to detect or bypass.

Over the last few years, many such cases have been reported in the media.

Given below is a brief list I have compiled of such cases which have been reported in the Media. PUCL and other civil liberties organisations should investigate if these individuals were tracked online and initiate suitable actions to protect the democratic rights of Indian Citizens.

The list below is indicative and not comprehensive as there are some other reports that I couldn't find.

List of Social Workers and Political Activists arrested killed through the Internet

Arrested : April 2011
Three CPI(Maoist) CC member Varanasi Subramanium, Vijay Kumar and Jhantu Mukherjee

As mentioned before Varanasi Subrmanium got two chances in July 2010 and August 2010 but was still tracked down and arrested in April 2011.

One can speculate that it was Varanasi who was the weak link and led the IB to the other two CC members. As per media reports Varanasi Subramanium is believed to have been managing International Relations after the arrest of Kobad Gandhy.

Arrested : October 2010
Cecelia Guriya, Alleged Courier and girlfriend of Maoist leader Kundan Pahan.

As per the news report which appeared in the Telegraph

Pahan girlfriend held

Cecelia, who is also known as Rupa and Monica Dang, was arrested with a letter from CPI(Maoist) politburo member Amitabh Bagchi.

She trained at Saranda and then worked with Maoist sub-zonal commander Prasadji in Rania. When Pahan met and fell in love with her, she was sent to work in Bundu-Tamar in January. He then sent her for computer training at an institute in Khunti to make her a member of the Maoists’ technical cell,”

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1101028/jsp/frontpage/story_13109801.jsp

Arrested : August 2010
CPI (Maoist) leader Rajesh Kumar Sinha alias Udaiji

This article which appeared in the Times of India shortly after his arrest reveals that : -

Captured Maoist sings, says he has girlfriend in UK

Udaiji's interrogators are now quizzing him on whether or not he secured funds from the UK for the Maoist movement. "We are also scanning his email accounts, blogs and chat history as well as bank accounts to cross-check his confessions," another police officer said.

He gave police the slip several times even though he extensively moved in the three states, said a cop who was tracking him for the last two years.( Tracking him online or offline? )

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-08-07/ranchi/28282815_1_jharkhand-cops-maoist-movement-rebel-leader

Killed : July 2010
CPI(Maoist) Politburo member Azad and Journalist Hemachandra Pandey killed in fake encounter

Azad's interactions with the media had increased manifold over the past few years.Until some years ago there would be an interview probably once every 2-3 years and about 5-10 press releases annually. But with the intensification of People's war over the last few years, the amount of press material attributed to Azad saw a huge leap. This would have meant greater interactions with the media and taking much greater risks.

As per this news article published in India Today weeks after both of them were killed in fake encounters:

AP Cops raid dead Journalists house

A five-member team of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Andhra Pradesh police raided Pandey's rented house in A-96 Shastri Nagar,Delhi where Hemachandra Pandey and his wife Babita had been staying since February 7.

The police have seized about 1,000 books, a computer, a laptop, a scanner, a fax machine and four letters addressed to top leaders of the Maoists.

http://naxalrevolution.blogspot.com/2010/11/ap-cops-raid-dead-journalists-flat.html

One can speculate that the police got to Azad through Hemachandra Pandey who could have been the compromised link. It is also unlikely that Azad himself accessed the Internet directly and mostly relied on some courier for his information needs who could have also have been the weak link.

Moreover they were interacting with a highly exposed Swami Agnivesh who also must have ultimately unknowingly played a role in their deaths.

Arrested June : 2010
Nanda Kumar , CPI Maoist Karnataka State Secretary was arrested first and then a week later Chandrasekhar Gorebale, another member of the CPI Maoist Karnataka State Committee was arrested.

It was only a week ago that the Karnataka police arrested the Karnataka secretary of the Maoist party, Nanda Kumar in a raid in Shimoga district. This is the second successive blow to the Maoist movement in Karnataka in the recent times.

http://www.hindu.com/2010/06/02/stories/2010060259930100.htm
http://www.hindu.com/2010/06/14/stories/2010061459190100.htm

One of them used to issue press releases on behalf of the CPI(Maoist) Karnataka State Committee.. I am not sure who but as per media reports I think it was Chandrasekhar Gorebale who used to use the alias of Gangadhar. He had been issuing press releases and managing media relations for the Karnataka SC since many years.

You can find an archive of press releases issued by him at http://ajadhindkannada.wordpress.com.

Arrested : September 2009

CPI(Maoist) Politburo member Kobad Gandhy

Kobad Gandhy was arrested in Delhi in September 2009. He is alive in jail today because he did not fulfill the criteria that the AP SIB/SIT have for bumping off Maoists in fake encounters. As per news reports that were published after his arrest. Two contradicting claims were made.

An article which appeared in the Hindustan Times claimed :

E-trail led to Kobad capture

One of the factors that led to Maoist Politburo member Kobad Ghandy’s arrest was his carelessness in concealing his tracks while using the Internet, police sources reveal. Police sources said it was the seizure of a laptop the Maoist left behind during a police raid in Jharkhand that set them on Ghandy’s trail.

Ghandy had authored a document soon after the Lok Sabha elections called ‘Post-election situation: Our tasks’ that was found on this laptop.Thereafter, cyber crime detectives tracked various IP addresses through which the document was circulated, which in turn led to people whose questioning led them to Ghandy.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/E-trail-led-to-Kobad-capture/Article1-457733.aspx

The CPI(Maoist) confirmed this soon and blamed a courier of having betrayed Kobad. It was however not revealed how the police got to the courier. The article appeared in Zee News

'Weak element' betrayed Kobad Gandhy, claim Maoists

"The arrest of Gandhy is being touted as a big success of intelligence officials while it was actually a result of the betrayal by a weak element in the party who was acting as his courier," CPI (Maoist) spokesperson Azad said.

The "courier" led the Andhra Pradesh Police and intelligence wing in Delhi to the rendezvous spot of Gandhy in Bhikaji Cama Place, he claimed in a statement. However, the party did not identify the "betrayer".

The Maoists are of the view that the arrest of Gandhy, who played a "crucial role" in bringing out party publications in English, was a "great loss" to the party

http://zeenews.india.com/news567132.html

However another contradictory article which appeared in Zee News at the same time claimed

Pen drive new tool for Maoists to hoodwink police?

The laptop of Ghandy, which was seized from him by Delhi Police's Special Cell after his arrest on September 21, did not have a hard drive and investigators were left high and dry as it did not reveal much about the plans of the outlawed CPI (Maoist).

"Ghandy's laptop did not have a hard drive. Maoists are using laptops without hard drives. Hard drives are loaded in pen drives. Once the laptop is used, they take out the pen drive," a senior police official said.

http://zeenews.india.com/news569147.html

If Kobad Gandhy's actual laptop did not have a hard drive then whose laptop was it that was seized in Jharkhand and how did it lead to the arrest of Kobad Gandhy ?

Killed : May 2009
Tech Savy Patel Sudhakar Reddy, MI and CC member killed in fake encounter

An article that appeared after his death the Hindu

Huge setback to Maoist movement

Reddy, known as Vikas, was taken into the CC as a representative of Maharashtra in 2007. Known to be tech-savvy, Sudhakar Reddy set up the MI unit and was also instrumental in getting international exposure to the Maoist movement using internet extensively.

The naxalite leader was arrested in April 1992 in Bangalore where he had set up an extensive gun running network. Police who seized nearly 250 double barrel guns from his den were surprised to find that he was using a fax machine, a new tool in those days.When the erstwhile People’s War (PW) announced a unilateral ceasefire through a group of newsmen in 2002, it was Patel Sudhakar Reddy who showed documentaries to visiting newsmen on spread of naxalite movement on his brand new laptop, deep inside the Nallamala forests.Reddy, officials admit, was an extremely intelligent man.

After his prolonged interrogation spells with intelligence officers, he wrote to his party from jail underlining the need to set up an intelligence unit in the party on the lines of police.The MI unit members, under his guidance, not only used open source intelligence to build a database of their targets, but also helped Maoist party to devise strategies in response to the counter strategies of police.

http://www.hindu.com/2009/05/25/stories/2009052554140400.htm

If Patel Sudhar Reddy is intercepted and killed in a fake encounter, it should ring alarm bells in any activist's mind, he was the most tech savy among them all.

Killed : April 2008
Maoist leaders Gajerala Saraiah and Aruna killed in fake encounter

An article which appeared in the Hindu claims :

Slain naxal couple lived in village near Belgaum

Maoist and most-wanted naxalite Gajerala Saraiah (44) alias Azad alias Bhaskar and his wife and member of the Maoist party, B. Aruna alias Rama, who were reportedly killed in an encounter near Rampur forest area in Eturunagaram mandal limits in Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh on April 2, had spent nine to 10 months in a sleepy village near Belgaum, Karnataka.

When contacted, the owner of the house, Ashok Hadimani, said he was not aware about the true identities of his tenants and was surprised to know that they were naxalites. He said “Vinay” had presented himself as a computer worker and engaged in desktop publishing and hailed from Chintyal village in Andhra Pradesh.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/04/11/stories/2008041153650700.htm target="_blank"

Arrested : June 2007
Alleged CPI Maoist operative Arun Ferreira

Studying Networks- Naxalites eyeing Dabbawallahs
The pen drive seized from alleged Naxalite Arun Ferreira contained information about the operational details of the city’s dabbawalas, top officials of the anti-Naxalite unit of Maharashtra Police told DNA

http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_ultra-left-eyeing-the-dabbawalas_1101786

Killed : June 2007
CPI Maoist Karnataka State Secretary Sende Rajmouli killed in fake encounter

As per a news article that had appeared in the now defunct newindpress.com website

Rajamouli’s body handed over to kin

Monday June 25 2007 12:23 IST
ANANTAPUR: Dharmavaram police handed over the body of Sande Rajamouli, one of the topmost Naxalite leader, to his relatives.

DSP Sivaiah spoke to them and handed over the body to them. Mouli’s relatives alleged that he was killed in a fake encounter and demanded an inquiry.

It is learnt that the CDs seized from near the body of the slain Naxalite contained important information. The information included the letter written by Mouli’s wife Rajita to Maoist politburo member Lakshman and e-mail IDs and websites of Maoist leaders in the world.

They also had information about various militant outfits in Nepal, their addresses, e-mail IDs.

http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEA20070625020200&Page=A&Title=Southern+News+-+Andhra+Pradesh&Topic=0

One can speculate that a courier who provided this CD was the one who led the police to Rajmouli. The courier probably practiced insecure internet browsing and was most likely traced during one of his online sessions.

What is common among all those listed above ?

1. Most of the social workers and political activists who have been killed / arrested above seem to possess laptops, usb's and other electronic devices, which indicates that they could have been active on the Internet.

2. Most of them are directly or indirectly involved in publication, managing media communication or international relations.

3. Only in the case of Kobad Gandhy, both the CPI(Maoist) and IB have confirmed that he was traced through through his tracks left behind by his courier on the Interent. There is little or no information available about the others as to how they were all intercepted, arrested and killed .

Recommendations

1. If you don't understand the Internets , stay away from the Internets.

2. Outsource Publication/ Media relations to an external body present in a neutral country. Existing international linkages like the ILPS could be used. Being officially present in another country has numerous advantages, gives very high visibility, plenty of sympathetic PIO's NRI's, is more secure and far easier to communicate and co-ordinate with media. Ideally Azad or Kobad should have been present in an external country in a role similar to that taken up by Prof Jose Maria Sison who is based in the Netherlands.

3.International communists have various advantages in these areas which social workers in India lack. Who knows what could be done ?

4. If the search engine data is any indication it is high time they set up their own platform online rather than depend on third parties whose intentions are not always clear.

5. All information given in this post has been collated from media reports available online.

Last but not the least please read our Disclaimer.

Blog Hibernation and other updates

2011-06-10T22:44:00.006+05:30

Today I made some more updates to Saketh Rajan Internet Memorial

I added a Kannada article and posted Gauri Lankesh's article on Saketh Rajan. Also added photos of the protest after the funeral of Saketh Rajan.

New Mp3's were added to audio section - A total of 29 songs are now available for download - Revolutionary Songs and Mp3's from India .

The Humour Category on Naxalite Maoist India was updated with images found on the Internet - Cartoons Naxalite Maoist

The sidebar of the blog was re-organised and a link to revleft forum was added.

Personal Updates :

I had restarted this blog after a gap of more than a year on June 9th, 2010. Yesterday was it's 5th Anniversary and updates will be discontinued for some time now because of various reasons.. Should the need or occasion arise, regular posting will be restarted.

Not that many of you would be interested in knowing what I am currently doing, but for those who know me, have met me and been in touch with me, I finally completed my Masters's Course the same one which I was studying with a CRPF IB official. I am now enrolled in a part time M.Phil course and there is also a full time job to balance.

It should take me the next 2-3 years to complete it. In light of new knowledge that is being acquired, I hope to make suitable course corrections and take decisions reflecting new understandings.

Support JNU Forum against War on People - Sign Petition

2011-05-31T14:17:00.000+05:30

Dear friends,

Please Sign this Online Petition against the authoritarian actions on the JNU Forum against War on People by the university administration, and circulate it widely: http://www.petitiononline.com/jnufawp0/petition.html

With regards,
JNU Forum against War on People
--------------------------------------------------
A note on the petition

As you know, the JNU Forum against War on People have been consistently active in the last two years in opposing Operation Green Hunt, the Indian state's war on people. The activities and campaigns of the Forum has to a great extent mobilised a strong opinion against this repressive war by the state, which has made it a target of the JNU administration as well as the right-wing students' organisations. Now by using the pretext of an 'objectionable' image, the administration is conducting a farcical Proctorial Enquiry against the students associated with the Forum, and launched a witch-hunt for them. Moreover, it has effectively put a ban on all activities of the Forum including public meetings etc. by 'restraining' the Forum from all activities pending the enquiry. This highly objectionable and authoritartian act has been strongly opposed by the Forum, the student community of JNU as well as the teachers, since it is not an attack on one particular organisation, but on the democratic space and political culture of the university itself.

We, on behalf of the JNU Forum against War on People, appeal to you to support the struggle of the students in all possible manner. We request you to endorse and sign a petition to the Vice Chancellor opposing the actions of the administration, and demanding their immediate withdrawal. We look forward to your much-needed support to strengthen our collective struggle against Operation Green Hunt and state repression on the people.

With regards,

JNU Forum against War on People

Saketh Rajan Internet Memorial Updated

2011-05-31T10:49:00.004+05:30

Over the weekend I was able to update and revise https://sites.google.com/site/sakethrajan/ .

The Updates and new additions include

A pdf copy of Making History Vol-2 is now available for download.
A section for PDF E-books has been created.
A section for Mp3's and other audio material has been added.
Profiles of Com Naveeen,Com Bikash and other images and information on other Martyrs has been added.
Articles from MIB have been included.
Some new images have been added.

You can visit the updated website at https://sites.google.com/site/sakethrajan/

Oppose Arrest & Torture of Com Harbhinder Jalal

2011-05-31T10:40:00.001+05:30

COM. HARBHINDER JALAL, BEING PRODUCED BY POLICE IN KHARAR COURT

Harbhinder Singh Jalal, who has been editing a revolutionary Punjabi magazine “CHAMKDA LAL TARA” (Shining Red Star), was arrested by Kharar Police while he was traveling in a bus near Gharuan village. The police alleged him to be the head of Punjab unit of CPI Maoist. A 32 bore pistol and some live cartridges were shown to have been recovered from him.

In police custody Harbhinder was severely tortured and subjected to third degree methods of interrogation. A case under S.10,13,18 & 20 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act; S. 25, 54, 59 of the Arms Act and Section 121, 419, 420, 471 of the IPC has been slapped against him. He was denied the legal assistance of his chosen lawyers. Lok Morcha Punjab, along with his family approached S/Sh. R.S. Bains and Harinder Pal Singh Ishar, Chandigarh based Human Rights lawyers, who moved an application for permission to meet Com Harbhinder in police custody and for his medical examination. The State vigorously opposed this application on the fictitious ground of threat to national security. However the court allowed the advocates to meet him daily in the Police Station between 7 PM to 8 PM and also to get him medically examined every 48 hours from the Civil Hospital.

On 9.5.2011, when Com Harbhinder was produced in court for further remand, dozens of his friends and well-wishers from all over Punjab, came to see him, but the police did not allow them to meet him. His further police remand was sought on the plea that he was to be taken to Ranchi to affect certain recoveries. Subsequently this pretext proved to be false as he was not taken to Ranchi. Perhaps the court’s order permitting his lawyers to meet him everyday in the extended period of remand, acted as a dampener for the police. On 14.5.2011, he was remanded to judicial custody and is now lodged in Ropar Jail.

On 6.5.2011, a heavy contingent of Ropar and Bathinda Police raided his house at Rampura. Finding it locked, the police tried to find its keys from the neighbors, abusing, threatening and misbehaving with them. The people however refused to be cowed down and did not allow the police to search his house in the absence of any of his family members. To terrorize the people, the police raided the houses of two trade unionists living in the locality. Next day, the police party again came early in the morning along with some Municipal Councilors of Rampura City and forcibly entered in and searched Harbhinder’s house in the absence of his family members and any person from the locality. The police took away a computer, a large number of books and some domestic articles. This move was strongly opposed by the democratic mass organizations of the area. Next day a strongly worded statement denouncing the terror tactics of the police was issued jointly by the Bharti Kisan Union ( Dakonda), Technical Services Union, Democratic Teachers Front, and B.K.U. (Ugrahan).

Lok Morcha Punjab, Democratic Front Against Operation Green Hunt Punjab, and a revolutionary paper SURAKH REKHA condemned the arrest and false implication of Harbhinder Jalal in a criminal case. To keep the people informed about this, we utilized the medium of Facebook by posting news items and press statements on it. Now the DFAOGH Punjab has decided to hold Conventions at Chandigarh and Rampura on this issue along with the repressive measures taken at village Selbrah and Kotra Kaurian Wala, against the people opposing opening of liquor vends.

The planting of 32 bore revolver and live cartridges on Harbhinder Jalal, seems to be a part of the Punjab Police’s crude attempt to discredit revolutionary democratic movement in Punjab. Recently the police unearthed a gang of serving police employees and Arms Dealers, supplying country made illicit arms as genuine, by putting fake stamps and markings of reputed arms companies on them. As many as 8 police employees serving in various districts of Punjab have been arrested. The DGP Punjab, with the aid of certain pliable press persons, has been trying to link it with the Maoists, although up till now, no such proof is forthcoming.

Lok Morcha Punjab views the arrest of Com Harbhinder; falsely charging him with unlawful activities, waging war against the Govt, forgery and cheating; subjecting him to third degree torture, and illegal raids at his house and the houses of other trade unionists at Rampura, as atrocious, totally illegal and undemocratic steps, deserving strongest condemnation. These steps are aimed at stifling the political dissent, and ruthlessly crushing of every attempt to organize the people against the policies of liberalization, globalization and privatization, being pursued by the anti-people and anti-national rulers to ensure super profits for the MNCs and their Indian agents, through unhindered exploitation of our rich natural resources. We call upon all democratic people to join us in demanding withdrawal of the criminal case registered against Com Harbhinder Jalal and his unconditional release; putting an end to all repressive measures initiated against revolutionary political and mass activists and the people; and complete halt to neo-liberal economic policies.

By: N.K.JEET, Advisor, LOK MORCHA PUNJAB, (E-Mail: nkjeetbti@gmail.com)

Source: http://lokmorcha.blogspot.com/

Noam Chomsky on Osama bin Laden’s Death

2011-05-09T19:15:00.006+05:30

Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

By Noam Chomsky

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany.

What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

There is also much media discussion of Washington’s anger that Pakistan didn’t turn over bin Laden, though surely elements of the military and security forces were aware of his presence in Abbottabad. Less is said about Pakistani anger that the U.S. invaded their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American fervor is already very high in Pakistan, and these events are likely to exacerbate it. The decision to dump the body at sea is already, predictably, provoking both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.

It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bush was calling for invasion and destruction of the U.S. and murder of its criminal president.

Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts should provide us with a good deal to think about.

Source

http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/2652/noam_chomsky_my_reaction_to_os/

American Kids React to Osama Bin Laden's Death

This is a special episode of KIDS REACT - It is important to take pause when historical events occur and to reflect on how the next generation views the actions of our ever changing world. Though this is a more serious subject than our usual episodes, it is valuable to learn from the insights of more innocent eyes than our own.

Link to Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pkKNPEU8oc

If they only knew, why so called Terrorists hate them ?

To hell with the World Cup and IPL

2011-04-24T10:43:00.001+05:30

Our farmers are dying, to hell with the World Cup

Yes, you read it right; to hell with the World Cup; to hell with the celebrations; to hell with all the free land and money being showered by different governments on the players. How can I jump, scream, have gallons of beer and cheer for the nation when a few kilometres away the farmers and feeders of my country are taking their own lives in hordes?

Do you know that, on average, 47 farmers have been committing suicide every single day in the past 16 years in our shining India — the next economic power, progressive with nine per cent growth?

Last month, on March 5, Friday evening, when Bangalore's watering holes were getting filled up, when all the DJs were blaring out deafening music, when we were busy discussing India's chances at the World Cup, sitting in CCDs and Baristas — just 100 km away from Bangalore, Swamy Gowda and Vasanthamma, a young farmer couple, hanged themselves, leaving their three very young children to fend for themselves or, most likely, die of malnutrition.

Why did they do it? Were they fighting? No. Were they drunkards? No. Did they have incurable diseases? No! Then WHY? Because they were unable to repay a loan of Rs 80,000 (a working IT couple's one month salary? 2-3 months EMI?) for years, which had gradually increased to Rs. 1.2 lakh. Because they knew that now they would never be able to pay it back. Because they were hurt. Hurt by our government which announced a huge reduction in import duty for silk in this year's budget (from 30 per cent to 5 per cent).They were struggling silk farmers and instead of help from the government, they get this! Decrease in import duty means the markets will now be flooded with cheap Chinese silk (as everything else!) and our own farmers will be left in the lurch.

On average, 17,000 farmers have been committing suicide every year, for the past 15 years on the trot. Can you believe it? Most of us wouldn't know this fact. Why? Because, our great Indian media, the world's biggest media, are not interested in reporting this! Why? Because they are more interested in covering fashion week extravaganzas. They are more interested in ‘why team India was not practising when Pakistanis were sweating it out in stadium on the eve of the match?' They are more interested in Poonam Pandey.

The media are supposed to be the third eye of democracy and also called the fourth estate, but now they have become real estate. Pure business.

So any attention from the media is out of the question. Who is left then? The government? But we all know how it works. The other day, I was passing by Vidhan Soudha in Bangalore and happened to read the slogan written at the entrance, “Government work is god's work”. Now I know why our government has left all its work to god!

Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa announced plots for all the players. But land? In Bangalore? You must be kidding, Mr. C.M.. So he retracts and now wants to give money. But where will it come from? Taxes, yours and mine. Don't the poor farmers need the land or money more than those players who are already earning in crores?

A government-owned bank will give you loan at six per cent interest rate if you are buying a Mercedes but if a poor farmer wants to buy a tractor, do you know how much it is charging him? Fifteen per cent! Look at the depths of inequality. Water is Rs. 15 a litre and a SIM card is for free! For how long can we bite the hand that is feeding us? The recent onion price fiasco was just a trailer. Picture abhi baaki hai doston!

In 2008, Lakme India fashion show venue was in a Mumbai five-star hotel and was covered by 500 journalists and the theme was ‘Cotton'. A few hours drive from there, cotton farmers were committing suicide, 4 or 5, everyday! How many TV journalists covered this? Zero!

Sixty-seventy per cent of India's population is living on less than Rs. 20 a day. A bottle of Diet coke for us? The electricity used in a day-night match could help a farmer irrigate his fields for more than a few weeks! Do you know that loadshedding is also class dependent? Two hours in metros, 4 in towns and 8 in villages. Now, who needs electricity more? A farmer to look after his crop day and night, irrigate, pump water and use machines or a few bored, young professionals with disposable incomes, to log on to Facebook and watch IPL?

How can we splurge thousands on our birthday parties and zoom past in our AC vehicles and sit in cushy chairs in our AC offices and plan a weekend trip to Coorg when on the way, in those small villages, just a few minutes' walk from the roads, someone might be consuming pesticide or hanging himself from a tree for just Rs.10, 000? How can we?

There was much panic when there was swine flu. Every single death in the country was reported second by second, minute by minute. Why? Because it directly affected our salaried, ambitious, tech-savvy, middle-class. So there were masks, special relief centres, enquiry centres set up by government to please this section. On the other hand, 47 people are dying, every single day for the past 15 years. Anybody cared to do anything?

It has been observed that within months of a farmer taking his life, his wife follows, either by poisoning the kids first or leaving them on their own. In Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, a distressed woman farmer went to the government seed shop, bought a bottle of pesticide, on credit, went home and drank it. She was under debt for most of her life and now — even her death was on credit!

Centuries ago, there was a Roman emperor, called Nero. He was a strong ruler and also very fond of parties, art, poetry, drinking and a life full of pleasures. Once he decided to organise a grand party and invited all poets, writers, dancers, painters, artists, intellectuals and thinkers of society. Everybody was having a great time eating, drinking, laughing, and socialising. The party was at its peak when it started getting dark. Nero wanted the party to go on. So he ordered and got all the arrested criminals, who were in his jails, around the garden and put them on fire! Burnt them alive, so that there was enough light for the guests to keep on enjoying! The guests had a gala time though they knew the cost of their enjoyment. Now, what kind of conscience those guests had?

NERO'S GUESTS

What is happening in our country is not different from Nero's party. We, the middle-class-young-well-earning-mall-hopping-IPL-watching and celebrating-junta are Nero's guests enjoying at the cost of our farmers. Every budget favours the already rich. More exemptions are being given to them at the cost of grabbing the land of our farmers in the name of SEZs, decrease in import duties in the name of neo-liberal policies, increase in the loan interest rates if the product is not worth lakhs and crores. Yes, that's what we are, Nero's guests!

I'm not against celebrations. I'm not against cricket. I'm not against World Cup. I would be the first person to scream, celebrate and feel proud of any of India's achievements but, only if all fellow countrymen, farmers, villagers also stand with me and cheer; only if they do not take their own lives ruthlessly, only if there is no difference between interest rates for a Mercedes and a tractor. That would be the day I also zoom past on a bike, post-Indian win, with an Indian Flag in hand and screaming Bharat Mata Ki Jai. But no, not today. Not at the cost of my feeders. Until then, this is what I say. To hell with your malls. To hell with your IPL. To hell with your World Cup. And to hell with your celebrations.

(The writer's email is: naren.singh.shekhawat@ gmail.com)

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article1761700.ece

Binayak Sen gets another Tareek

2011-04-11T09:33:00.005+05:30

Tareekh Pe Tareekh

Link To Video

SC adjourns Binayak Sen's bail plea till Friday

The Supreme Court on Monday adjourned civil liberties activist Binayak Sen's bail plea till Friday on the Chhattisgarh government's request.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/SC-adjourns-Binayak-Sens-bail-plea-till-Friday/articleshow/7942572.cms

Rising poverty fuels Maoist movement?

2011-03-26T12:56:00.000+05:30

20 crore families live below the poverty line in India. That's just one of the shocking figures in a new report that has left the government red in the face. This comes at a time when India faces its biggest internal threat from the growing Maoist movement... And it begs the question - is the government's denial of growing impoverishment and food scarcity actually feeding the Maoist movement.

Link to Video

Gudsa Usendi on Maoist modes of Communication

2011-03-20T08:24:00.003+05:30

The many lives of Gudsa Usendi

Phantom spokesman is emblematic of Chhattisgarh's secretive yet media-savvy Maoists
‘Today I am Gudsa Usendi, tomorrow it could be someone else'

Maoists keenly aware of connection between surveillance and communication

Raipur: In the autumn of 2007, a suave, middle-aged man with a military bearing walked into Naresh Bazaar cloth store near the Bilaspur bus stand and bought a thousand metres of olive green tericot fabric for Rs. 101 a metre. According to a shop assistant, the man looked like an ex-serviceman, spoke in English, introduced himself as Sunil Choudhury, a private security contractor with contracts to secure factories across Chhattisgarh, and said he needed uniforms for his guards.

Later that year, Choudhury appeared at Dayaram Sahu's workshop in Raipur's Purani Basti and asked the struggling tailor to stitch him trousers of waist sizes 28, 30 and 36 inches with corresponding shirts. “He said he employed more than 50 security guards and each watchman needed three sets of uniform,” said Sahu. “He asked for 35 uniforms, and promised another 100 sets if he liked my work.”

It appears that Choudhury liked Sahu's work; when the Raipur police raided the workshop in early 2008, they claim to have found 634 metres of military green cloth, 200 trousers and 107 full-sleeved shirts.

Sunil Choudhury, the police said, was not a security contactor but was Katta Ramchandra Reddy alias Vijay alias Gudsa Usendi, a high ranking member and spokesperson of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal (DKZ) Committee of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). The uniforms were meant for Maoist guerrillas rather than private security guards.

According to police charge sheets and court documents, Gudsa Usendi is the shadowy figure who sent compact discs of Maoist propaganda to Raipur politicians in 2006 and was the source of a consignment of 91 country-made shotguns recovered from a busy intersection in Raipur in 2008. The police claim he was in frequent contact with jailed human rights activist and award-winning paediatrician Binayak Sen and independent filmmaker Ajay T.G., an association denied by both Dr. Sen and Ajay. Gudsa's supposed wife, K.S. Malti, is currently in Raipur Central Jail; another alleged associate of his was arrested in Durg as recently as September last year. But who is Gudsa Usendi? “Gudsa Usendi is just a name,” said a smooth voice over the telephone in August last year, “Today I am Gudsa Usendi, tomorrow it could be someone else. Gudsa Usendi is the title taken over by the spokesperson for the DKZ.”

Maoist spokespersons have long had a fascination for aliases. Before he was slain in a police encounter last year, Maoist central committee spokesperson Cherukuri Rajkumar was known to the outside world as Azad (translated as Free), but within the party he went by several names including Madhu, Gangadhar, Uday and Dinesh. His successor goes by the name of Abhay (translated as Fearless); the spokesperson who handled the abduction of Malkangiri District Collector R.V. Krishna in February went by the name of ‘Prasad,' but Dandakaranya's Gudsa Usendi is different, because Gudsa Usendi was once a ‘real' person.

“It was at about three in the morning in Potenar village in Abujmarh. It was June 25 2000, it was raining heavily. There were six comrades in a hut when they were surrounded by the police,” said a young Maoist fighter who called herself Rehmati. “Five comrades were killed, one of them was Gudsa Usendi. He was 17.”

When he joined the Maoists, Gudsa Usendi dropped his given name and took on the moniker of ‘Ramesh.' He was of the Maria tribe from Chhattisgarh's Abujmarh region, according to the Maoists. A year after his death, the Maoist spokesperson of Dandakaranya (broadly corresponding with South Chhattisgarh) took on his name to keep his memory alive and the practice has continued ever since.

The Maoists are wary of sharing organisational details with reporters, but anecdotal evidence suggests that Gudsa Usendi functions at the centre of a cloud of cell phones, laptops and individuals. A message from Gudsa Usendi could appear as a note under your door, a letter postmarked by a small town on the Chhattisgarh-Andhra Pradesh border, an email from an IP address that traces back to a neighbouring State, or a micro-SD card stuck to a sheet of paper.

In a recent meeting, a member of their communications team explained that every Maoist division (equivalent to a zilla in the panchayati sytem) has access to a laptop, memory cards, a portable inkjet printer and a cell phone. The netbook examined by this correspondent ran an open source Linux-based operating system with open source text, image and video editing software. Gudsa Usendi usually prepares a press note and hands it over to one of his assistants. Major press releases (like the announcement for Martyrs Week) are designed using crack versions of software like Adobe Pagemaker and converted into PDF format, before being sent to printing presses installed in secret locations.

“We prefer PDF format, because it removes the problem of fonts when issuing press releases in English and Hindi,” explained an assistant, referring to a document format created by Adobe. The files are emailed from the top of a tall tree on a mountaintop where a GPRS enabled phone can log onto a stray network

All the devices are charged by truck batteries connected to solar panels. “Batteries provide direct current (DC); laptops and phones need alternating current (AC),” explained the assistant patiently, “So we add a DCAC inverter to the circuit and use solar power to charge our devices.”

The Maoists are keenly aware of the connection between surveillance and communication. In the forests, only certain senior cadres are allowed to carry cell phones and use their devices sparingly. “We have to secure an area and post sentries before making a phone call,” said a Maoist commander who carries a Nokia phone. However, the poor density of cellular towers in Maoist territories makes it hard to pinpoint the location of a particular phone.

On a windy day in Konta in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district for instance, it is possible to pick up reception from a tower in Andhra Pradesh's Khammam district; by moving 50 km northwards from the same spot in Konta, a user can start ranging towers in Orissa's Malkangiri district, moving further towards Chintrakonda in Malkangiri, the Andhra network comes back into range. Somewhere in that broad stretch of land, a man climbs up a tree, pulls out a cell phone from the folds of his clothes and makes a phone call. “Hello? I have a statement from Gudsa Usendi,” he says.

Source:

http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/13/stories/2011031355331200.htm

Government to amend Indian IT Act to muzzle Bloggers

2011-03-20T08:23:00.000+05:30

The draft proposal to amend the Indian IT Act so as to impose restrictions on intermediaries has provoked a huge outcry in the country, especially among its vocal bloggers.

While the proposed rules seek to control the ‘intermediaries' such as telecom networks, web-hosting sites and Internet service providers, search engines, online payment, cyber cafes and auction sites, it is the focus on blogs that has provoked an outburst.

‘Vague' reasons

The overemphasis on blogs, indicating the government's anxiety to control them; the ‘vagueness' of the reasons for which the government can block websites; and the utterly regressive move of introducing ‘intermediary due-diligence,' a favourite tool of repressive regimes against bloggers, is upsetting, says Shivam Vij, journalist, Kafila.

“It is interesting that while ‘Blogs' and ‘Blogger' are defined, the words aren't used in the rules per se. In other words, they had blogs in mind while making the rules,” he adds. Certain websites and blogs were blocked in 2006, while selective blocking was prevalent at times of wars and emergencies, say sources.

Besides curtailing the freedom of expression of individual bloggers, the draft holds them responsible for readers' comments and online discussions.

Experts also fear the restrictions now targeted at individual blogs will soon be applied to micro-blogging sites that facilitate online discussions, and the due diligence clause will result in higher power of censorship to the larger player.

For someone like K. Nageshwar, who maintains a blog and a website, indiacurrentaffairs.org that registers over 1 lakh visitors a month, moderating all comments is difficult. “Blogs often carry inflammatory content — some categorical, some critical and some full of hate. We understand as bloggers that we have the responsibility to ensure information is not used to spread the wrong message. Such regulations have to be exercised by bloggers themselves. Draconian measures would deepen discontent among the community.”

The blogging community sees these rules as an outcome of the larger censorship of areas of scrutiny that do not really fit into the Indian cyber space. The issue of Internet freedom is really about the tension between national security and personal liberty, and national security will always prevail under the pretext of economic growth, social stability or military threats, say the bloggers.

“In my mind, it's inevitable that we will soon end up with 200 different slices of the Internet, each one circumscribed by the whims of the censors in the country,” says Gaurva Mishra, a blogger and social media analyst.

“Instead of focusing on ‘bad repressive regimes,' the debate on Internet freedom should focus on “bad practices in open democracies,” including over-aggressive cyber crime, copyright, defamation laws to protect entrenched corporate interests, surveillance of Internet users in the name of national security, censorship of Internet content in the name of safeguarding intellectual property, isolating hate speech or preventing child pornography,” he adds.

Mr. Mishra says that in the aftermath of the Wikileaks controversy, governments are likely to pass regressive cyber-security laws to limit online freedom of expression in both ‘open democracies' and ‘authoritarian regimes.'

Krish Ashok, a Chennai-based blogger, says such censorship shows a certain lack of understanding because it takes quite a bit of technical skill to actually censor the Internet. As one will realise from the recent revolutions in West Asia, it mostly does not work.

“The Internet community will always end up being smarter. India does not control the rest of the web, and people can write blog posts by sending just an email. The lesser fortunate ones will end up facing the ham-handed fist of these new guidelines,” he says.

Scope for misuse

What is needed is more transparency in the system, and this clandestine, surreptitious way of blocking sites won't work, says Mr. Ashok, citing how websites blocked often show error pages. “Anybody can take a print out of a comment posted and complain against a blog to the authorities for it to be blocked. This draft leaves a lot of scope for it to be so misused,” Mr. Vij says.

Source:
http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/13/stories/2011031354750800.htm

Nero's Guests screening - 3rd March 2011 in Bangalore

2011-02-28T09:41:00.005+05:30

Nero's Guest - Film Screening at IISC, Bangalore, 3rd March, 5:30 pm

Nero's Guests Official Trailer

ABOUT THE FILM:

Nearly two lakh farmers have committed suicide in India over the last 10 years. But the mainstream media hardly reflects this.Nero´s Guests is a story about India’s agrarian crisis and the growing inequality seen through the work of the Rural Affairs Editor of Hindu newspaper, *P Sainath*. Through sustained coverage of the farm crisis, Sainath and his colleagues created the national agenda, compelling a government in denial to take notice and act. Through his writings and lectures, Sainath makes us confront the India we don’t want to see, and provokes us to think about who ‘Nero’s Guests’ are in today’s world.

ABOUT P SAINATH:

P Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu, is the 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s most prestigious prize (and often referred to as the ‘Asian Nobel’), for Journalism Literature and Creative Communications Arts. Winner of over 35 global and national awards, his current work the agrarian crisis has produced the largest journalistic body of work ever on the Indian countryside in terms of the problems faced by farming communities. It is also a body of work that goes far beyond the realm of journalism, capturing issues and complexities that academia and policy makers have failed to.

ABOUT DEEPA BHATIA

Deepa Bhatia is a Film Editor, based in Mumbai. She has worked with acclaimed directors like Govind Nihalani (Dev, Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa, Deham) & Jahnu Barua (Maine Gandhi Ko Nahi Mara, Har Pal). She recently edited ‘My Name is Khan’ directed by Karan Johar. Her other popular work as editor includes Rock On & Taare Zameen Par. Deepa has also been involved in research on several documentaries & films. *Nero’s Guests is her first independent documentary.*

The Die is Caste screening in Bangalore - 18th Feb 2011

2011-02-12T21:02:00.003+05:30

Bangalore International Centre presents

"The Die is Caste"

Directed by Mr. Ranjan Kamath

Duration of film: 83 minutes

Language: Hindi with English Subtitles

Mr. Ranjan Kamath, Director will be present to interact with the audience after the screening.

Date: Friday, 18th February, 2011 at 6.00 p.m.

Tea will be served at 5:30 pm

About the film:

‘The Die is Caste' is an appraisal of three decades of the Naxalite (extreme left) movement in the state of Bihar, in eastern India. It examines the role of Naxalites (e.g. Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninst) Liberation, People's War Group and Maoist Communist Centre) as agents of socio-political change, employing violence.

Against the backdrop of Parliamentary and Legislative Assembly elections in Bihar, between 1999-2001, the film portrays the change - over 30 years - in social and political status of the Scheduled Castes (i.e. the lower castes including the Dalits or "Untouchables"); the benefits accruing to the middle castes engineered by the Mandal Commission and the emergence of Laloo Yadav and the consequent violent backlash from the upper-caste landlord militias like the Ranvir Sena.

‘The Die is Caste' is thus an exploration of caste dynamics in Bihar and raises the question as to whether any benefit has accrued to the Schedule Castes or are they mere pawns on the political chessboard.

Excerpt from the documentary " The Die Is Caste"

Link to Video

Ranjan Kamath

Ranjan Kamath graduated with an ssociate degree from Trinity School of Music in London. He began working in Calcutta's theatre and music world soon after, both as an actor and stage/lighting designer. He then went on to work as an assistant director in Bombay on documentaries and short films.

He has completed his post-graduation from the London International Film School, with a distinction in Cinematography, and has been working as a producer and director/ cinematographer on Indian features, international co-productions and short features for the BBC, Channel Four, National Geography and others.

Search Engine Data for Naxal Revolution

2011-02-02T12:56:00.004+05:30

Search Engine Data For Naxal Revolution Blog

We have decided to make public search engine data for this website, as readers of this blog you have a right to know who visits this blog and how they visit it..

As such we do not use any tracking service to monitor visitors on this website but because it is hosted on blogger.com, Google automatically collects some visitor statistics.This data can be accessed by site admins when they visit www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ and verify their blog ownership.

Also in August 2010 - Blogger introduced Blogger Stats which now automatically monitors all visitors and cannot be disabled.

Visitors

Visitors from more than 150 countries visited this blog in 2010. The top 20 countries are given below : -

India
United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
United Arab Emirates
Germany
Brazil
France
Singapore
Italy
Saudi Arabia
Pakistan
Bangladesh
Spain
Nepal
Sweden
Philippines
Turkey
Finland

Note - While it is not possible to determine the ethnicity of users, a significant percentage of users from abroad are PIO's and NRI's.

Browser Usage

IE - 38.88%
Firefox - 33.50%
Chrome - 20.01%
Safari - 3.64%
Opera - 2.59%

Network Analysis

An analysis of the network properties and ISP details of vistors, indicate significant amounts of traffic from military bases, police networks, various criminal corporations and international imperialist organisations.

Search Terms used to reach Naxal Revolution Through Search Engines

Search terms are the words entered by the searcher into a search engine such as Google, which is part of the query along with other instructions. The search engine will look for these words in the index and return the matching results, usually sorted by relevance.

Search terms Between April 1st - April 31st 2010 when there were many new visitors because of the Dantewada Massacare.

what is naxalism in india
official website of naxalites
origin of maoists in india
pro naxal websites
129-page maoist document
bela bhatia is naxalite
blogs on history of naxalites and maoists
maoist mind control
maoist sympathisers wiki
maoists+new delhi
powerpoint presentation of naxalite movement
appalled maoist compared to bhagat singh
are maoist and naxal same
are maoists liberators or mafias?
are naxalite-maoist good
are naxals same as maoists
areested naxal leader after 2007 with his name
aurobindo maoist
avakian naxalites
banned websites for naxalism
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book on history of indian maoist to download
books about naxalite ideology
books on maoism in central india
can naxal be sorted out by power sharing
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chomsky on maoists in india
compiled vital details about the naxalite leadership in india
debra naxal leaders. 1970
difference between terrorists and naxalites
documantry naxalite
documentary naxals
documentary on greyhounds andhra pradesh
documentary on naxal
documentry on maoists india
does china help naxalites
does naxalism and moist the same
downlode salwa judum song mp3
dipanjan rai chaudhuri - naxalite
evolution of maosits and naxalites in india
founder of naxal revolution in india
fuck naxalites
fuck the bloody maoists
fuck the maoist
fuck the naxal
full information about naxalite with picture
gaddar email id
gautam sen ex naxalite
govindan kutty naxal engineer
hacking maoist sites india
hindi films on the naxal movement
historical photos of naxalites
history and purpose of maoists in india
history janashakthi magazine in india-wikipedia
how many naxalite in india
how maoist created in india
how much height enough to the ap si of police
how naxalites came into existance india
how one becomes a naxalites
how to become naxalite
how to become naxlalism
how to curb naxal revolution
how to handle maoists india
images of maoist march
images related to maoist
importance of cultural activities, shibdas ghosh
indian revolutional parties
indian revolutionary songs
indian website against maoist
is an armed revolution in india possible
is naxalite problem related to power sharing io india
jalagam vengal rao naxal
jpg free photos of naxal with gun
karnataka naxalite press conference
know about history of maoist in india
know more about naxalites
lal salaam quotes
laltara punjabi communist magazine
latest information on naxalites in india
latest on atack on crpf at dantewara
latest strategies maoists india
leader of naxalite
manifesto of maoist in india
maoist india army gujarat
maoists who r they & why they r formed
mavoist shamsunder histary
mother fucker maoists of india
motive of naxalite in india
naxal poems
naxal religion
naxalism and role of army national institute of defence studies
naxalite ,1980 ,mathai in kenichira
naxalite achievements
naxalite ethnic membership
naxalite mahabharata
naxals are not bad
number of naxal party in india
objectivesof naxals and maoists ?
official web site of naxal
official website of maoist india
revolution poem in tamil
revolutionary poems and songs in hindi
revolutionary songs from indian
revolutionary songs in hindi
revolutionary songs of the world
revolutionary songs+faiz+download
revolutionery hindi songs
rsearch on maoist in india
site:naxalrevolution.blogspot.com ninth congress
tamil poralie tamil book april 2010
unknown poems against naxalites
vision of naxalite
what causes naxalism
who is naxalite in india
secret behind naxal maoist
solution to the maoist problem in india
some names of naxalites in india
spatial inequality and naxalism
techniques used in media
tel me something about the origin of naxalites
telangana armed movement (1946 -51).
tell me name of naxalites leader
university of geneva naxalite
urban mission of maoists
vandana shiva maoist
websiteofnaxlites
what about moist in india
what are the naxal agends in ap??
what do u mean by maoist in india
what happened in naxalbari in 1967
what happened to govindan kutty
what happened to the constable who killed varghese the naxalite
what is maoist issue in india
what is maoists india
what is naxal revolution
what is the cause of naxalism in india
what is the difference between terrorist and naxalites
the reason for increasing maoism in india?
what is the supremecourt verdict on blogging of ajith
what will happen to maoist movement in india
what-is-naxalite-maoist
when did the split of cpi m-l begin
when does revolutionary violence become terrorist
when is red alert the war within releasing
when naxal revolution started
when naxalism started in india with photo
where are naxal leaders
which corporations are behind salwa judum
who's behind india's maoists
why is naxalism in india
why kondapalli seetharamaiah is ousted
why maoist india
why naxal revolution
why naxalism is growing in india
why not injured any crpf at dantewara
tamil poralie tamil book april 2010
unknown poems against naxalites
vision of naxalite
the naxalites + torrent

Five Ws of Search Terms

In journalism, the Five W's (also known as the Five W's (and one H), or Six W's) is a concept in news style, research, and in police investigations that are regarded as basics in information-gathering. It is a formula for getting the "full" story on something. The maxim of the Five W's (and one H) is that for a report to be considered complete it must answer a checklist of six questions, each of which comprises an interrogative word:

Who is it about?
What happened (what's the story)?
When did it take place?
Where did it take place?
Why did it happen?
How did it happen?

Given below are search terms and questions people are asking about the maoist movement in India and the CPI (Maoist). While it is not possible to list all the search terms , we have filtered the data for a given random period for the above 5 W's. The search terms given below are indicative and not exhaustive. Repetative and common search terms related to leaders and other aspects have been filtered.

Who - Search Terms

who are amoist of india

who are maoist ?

who are maoists blogspot

who are maoists/ naxalites?

who are moaist

who are naxal and maoist

who are naxals in india

who are nixcel in india

who are the maoist in india?

who are the maoists and naxalites in india?

who are the maoists in india?

who become naxalites

who fund the naxalite movement in india

who gave information about naxal varghese death

who gives the order to kill naxal varghese

who is a naxal

who is a naxal?

who is a naxalite

who is civic chandran

who is comrade ganapathy?

who is head of naxal in india? tell me his name..

who is helping maoist in india

who is maoists in india

who is mavoist in india

who is naxal?

who is naxalites writing?

who is now supporting naxalites in india

who is the founder of cpi maoist

who is the naxal general secretary

who kill the principal of jadavpur university in naxal period

who killed azad

who killed india by khwaja abbas

who killed naxalite varghese

who many maoist in india

who provide money for naxals

who stands behind maoists in india

who the fuck are maoists

who was azad naxalite

who was azad, maoist

who was murdered in andhra pardes

who was the chief minister when naxal varghese killed

who wrote neel darpan which is violet revolt

who's fighting in the naxalite-maoist insurgency

who's said "" tum humein kune do hum tum azaad desh bagat singh

whos ajitha pic

why tribals of orissa who are dying of hunger are influnced by maoists and naxalites

who funds maoists in india

a naxalite is someone who hates his country

candidate who qualified for oral test in gadchiroli police bharti 2010 gadhchiroli district

children whose parents killed by naxlites

india chaina who is the best friend of srilanka?

india today - who is a naxalite

information and pictures of sonia gandhi who struggled to learn and brought a revolutionary change in the lives of women

interview with ramachandran nair who killed naxal varghese

maoist india who are they

naxalites are people who have lost faith in administration

pics who are naxalites

pictures and information about people who fought equality for india

ramachandran nair the man who shot varghese

songs or poems on peasent women of india who toil dy n night

the foolish old man who removed the mountains (june 11, 1945)

What ? - Search Terms

what is maoist

what is maoism in india

what is naxalism in india

what is naxalism

what is naksal

what is naxalite

what is maoism

what is maoist in india

what is maoists

what is naxal

what are maoist

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Arindam Chaudhuri on Binayak Sen

2011-02-02T10:33:00.006+05:30

Arindam Chaudhari talks about Binayak Sen.

Link to Video

Also read:

Red Blood Trail
How Marxists are creating killing fields in Bengal of the type never seen before in india... And why the centre must immediately call for elections.
http://www.thesundayindian.com/article.php?article_id=11425

Indian Army Base in Abujhmad,Bastar to become operational soon.

2010-12-14T22:52:00.001+05:30

The Indian army is moving into the conflict theatre of Bastar, arriving at the doorsteps of what is arguably the strongest military base of the CPI Maoist - not for combat, as yet, but ostensibly for training. "Manoeuvre ranges have been finalised in Narayanpur district where training will be given to our troops," confirmed a highly placed official in the army.

Significantly, the hundred square kilometres identified for training lie in the foothills of Abujhmad, a thickly forested plateau, straddling both Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, one of the only regions of India unsurveyed by the government, considered out of bound for the administration, entirely controlled by insurgents, and often described as a Maoist liberated zone.

While the army sought to emphasise that its plans are limited to training, and there will be no active troop deployment against the Maoist insurgency, sources in the security establishment said any training facility would necessitate logistical support. "This means the army would first secure the Kondagaon-Narayanpur axis, placing a large number of troops in a series of camps, before it moves inwards for the purpose of training, somewhere near Orcha in the foothills of Abujhmad" explained a senior official.

Since the Maoists ambushed and killed more than hundred CRPF men in Bastar this summer - incidentally one of the ambushes took place close to the proposed army training range - an intense debate has raged over whether at all the army should be drawn into anti-Maoist operations. For the record, the government has maintained that the army's role would be limited to training. The army itself has shown great reluctance for the job. But sources indicate the army has begun mapping the contours of the conflict, preparing itself for the eventuality of deployment, in case the government decides to declare Maoist affected territories as disturbed areas, like parts of the North East, or Jammu and Kashmir.

While one view is that the training range in Bastar will bring the army tantalisingly close to the Maoists, and hence could be part of future strategic positioning, another view is that the move is purely routine, linked to the army's needs. "Since the army's counter-insurgency training centre in Vairengte in Mizoram is under great pressure, the army has been scouting for training grounds in tropical forests, either in Orissa, Maharashtra, Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh," said a security expert. Recently, the army also announced the setting up of a peace time station, called a sub area command, near Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh, one of the few states where the army has no presence.

Whether strategic or routine, the army's move into Bastar would be significant, pointed out a retired army officer: "Look at this in the light of psychological warfare. It is like telling the Maoists, beware, the tiger is outside your den".

Read more: Finally, Army moves into Maoist territory - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Finally-Army-moves-into-Maoist-territory/articleshow/7096294.cms#ixzz186kYitkW

Leningrad of Bihar falls

2010-11-26T13:49:00.000+05:30

The Left bastion of Teghra, earlier the Barauni Assembly seat in Begusrai district that was held by the CPI since Independence, was swamped by the Nitish Kumar wave today with the BJP planting its lotus flag on this small township that had been equated with the Russian city that was the hub of the October Revolution.

The CPI, once a major Opposition force in Bihar, has been left with only one seat —Bachhwara.

The CPI, in fact, will be the only Left party in the new Bihar Assembly to have a legislator with the other communist parties all drawing a blank.

In the just-dissolved Assembly, the combined Left strength was nine.

Ram Dev Verma, a veteran CPM legislator from Bibhutipur in Samastipur district, found himself pushed to the third place.

In a bid to revive its fortunes, the CPM had fielded Amit Sarkar, the Australia-returned son of Ajit Sarkar, the murdered communist leader, from its CPM’s traditional stronghold of Purnea. The ploy failed as the BJP won the seat, Amit trailing in third place.

The biggest blow has been dealt to the CPI(ML) Liberation , considered the most vibrant Left party in the state which stood its ground even in the Lalu Prasad era by ensuring at least half-a-dozen seats. This time it has won nothing. Its bastion in Siwan has crumbled with the NDA surging through.

“The results are unexpected and we will be analysing the reasons behind the debacle. Our candidates have come second in five Assembly seats and got a sizeable number of votes in a few others,” said CPI(ML) office secretary Santosh Sahar. However, the votes of the party have actually gone down since the last Assembly elections.

The party put up a brave front though. “Our political agenda will remain the same. We will struggle outside the Assembly,” insisted Sahar.

Analysts say the Left has itself to blame for its shrinking base. “Students and the youth are no longer attracted towards the Left. Issues such as land reforms no longer lure the youth. It’s perhaps because of the cultural changes taking place,” conceded a senior communist leader.

However, it is perhaps the EBCs (Extremely Backward Castes) and the Mahadalit card played by Nitish Kumar which has hurt the Left the most. This segment which backed the Left parties the most.

In the run-up to the Assembly polls the JD (U) organised an impressive rally of Mahadalits at Gandhi Maidan in Patna. The CPI(ML) countered it with an equally large gathering. However, Nitish’s promise to give this section of Dalits special treatment —- land, radio, education, healthcare and other benefits — appears to have worked.

The Mandalisation of politics saw the Left marginalised. Today, with Nitish winning over more sections to his side, the Left parties have been reduced to have-beens in Bihar.

Source :
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1101125/jsp/nation/story_13219262.jsp

Govt taps about 5,000 people's phones on average

2010-11-23T06:54:00.001+05:30

NEW DELHI: Telephone calls of about 5,000 people are being recorded by central security agencies daily as part of security and preventive measures.

Government sources said on an average telephones of about 5,000 people are being kept under surveillance by intelligence agencies suspecting their linkages with terror activities, hawala operators and members of banned organisations.

Telephones of a number of people involved in various economic offences are also being monitored.

Sources said that conversations of terrorists and insurgent outfits in Jammu and Kashmir, Northeast and the banned CPI (Maoist) are mostly under the scanner of intelligence agencies.

"A lot of times the phone tapping is done for only sixty days. But when it involves persons who are facing any criminal case or are under the scanner of investigating agencies, their phones are kept under surveillance for a longer period," a senior Home Ministry official said.

As per official procedures, the phone tapping by intelligence agencies is done with the consent of the Union Home Secretary . The government can authorise tapping for 60 days which can be extended again as per needs.

The sources said that emails are also being monitored by government agencies after getting the consent of the service providers.

Sources said that tapping of telephone conversations of leading corporate lobbyist Niira Radia, whose name has cropped up in the 2G Spectrum row , with several influential persons were authorised by the government

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/Govt-taps-about-5000-peoples-phones-on-average/articleshow/6971846.cms

How and why Narayan Murthy gave up on Communism

2010-11-21T11:20:00.000+05:30

NR Narayana Murthy who was a staunch Communist in his early days reveals how he moved away from communism in this lecture given in 2007 at New York University's Leonard N Stern School of business.

Narayana Murthy on the lessons life has taught him

After some thought, I have decided to share with you some of my life lessons.

I learned these lessons in the context of my early career struggles, a life lived under the influence of sometimes unplanned events which were the crucibles that tempered my character and reshaped my future.

I would like first to share some of these key life events with you, in the hope that these may help you understand my struggles and how chance events and unplanned encounters with influential persons shaped my life and career.

Later, I will share the deeper life lessons that I have learned.

My sincere hope is that this sharing will help you see your own trials and tribulations for the hidden blessings they can be.

The first event occurred when I was a graduate student in Control Theory at IIT, Kanpur in India.

At breakfast on a bright Sunday morning in 1968, I had a chance encounter with a famous computer scientist on sabbatical from a well-known US university.

He was discussing exciting new developments in the field of computer science with a large group of students and how such developments would alter our future. He was articulate, passionate and quite convincing.

I was hooked.

I went straight from breakfast to the library, read four or five papers he had suggested, and left the library determined to study computer science.

Friends, when I look back today at that pivotal meeting, I marvel at how one role model can alter, for the better, the future of a young student. This experience taught me that valuable advice can sometimes come from an unexpected source, and chance events can sometimes open new doors.

Break with communism

The next event that left an indelible mark on me occurred in 1974.

The location: Nis, a border town between former Yugoslavia, now Serbia, and Bulgaria.

I was hitchhiking from Paris back to Mysore, my home town.

By the time a kind driver dropped me at Nis railway station at 9pm on a Saturday night, the restaurant was closed. So was the bank the next morning, and I could not eat because I had no local money.

I slept on the railway platform until 8.30 pm in the night when the Sofia Express pulled in. The only passengers in my compartment were a girl and a boy.

I struck a conversation in French with the young girl. She talked about the travails of living in an iron curtain country, until we were roughly interrupted by some policemen who, I later gathered, were summoned by the young man who thought we were criticising the communist government of Bulgaria.

The girl was led away; my backpack and sleeping bag were confiscated. I was dragged along the platform into a small eight-by-eight-foot room with a cold stone floor and a hole in one corner by way of toilet facilities. I was held in that bitterly cold room without food or water for more than 72 hours.

I had lost all hope of ever seeing the outside world again, when the door opened. I was again dragged out unceremoniously, locked up in the guard's compartment on a departing freight train and told that I would be released 20 hours later upon reaching Istanbul.

The guard's final words still ring in my ears 'You are from a friendly country called India and that is why we are letting you go!'

The journey to Istanbul was lonely, and I was starving. This long, lonely, cold journey forced me to deeply rethink my convictions about Communism. Early on a dark Thursday morning, after being hungry for 108 hours, I was purged of any last vestiges of affinity for the Left.

I concluded that entrepreneurship, resulting in large scale job creation, was the only viable mechanism for eradicating poverty in societies.

Deep in my heart, I always thank the Bulgarian guards for transforming me from a confused leftist into a determined, compassionate capitalist!

Inevitably, this sequence of events led to the eventual founding of Infosys in 1981.

For the rest of the article visit
http://sify.com/finance/Narayana-Murthy-on-the-lessons-life-has-taught-him-imagegallery-others-klmrm1cgdgi.html