The Saint And His Taint

Who is Asaram Bapu and what keeps his cult going
Tehelka, 29 August, 2013

Once his name is mentioned, almost everybody seems to have an Asaram Bapu story. A popular Bollywood director known for his comedies with a message recalls how Asaram’s men were after him to get him to popularise the idea of celebrating Matri Pitri pujan diwas, Bapu’s brainwave to counter Valentine’s Day, even offering to fly him to “locations” in the ashram’s chartered planes.
A prominent foreign tour operator recalls how a group of clients insisted on making a payment of several lakhs through Dubai and confided, after a sundowner too many, that the hawala transaction was done through “Asaram’s ashram channel”, only to laugh away the conversation in the morning.
One of 400-odd shopkeepers of Revdi Bazaar, an Ahmedabad market originally meant for Sindhi refugees from Pakistan, whispers that “Asaram’s crores” keep circulating in loans to businessmen, at interest rates ranging from 1.5-4 percent a month, depending on the amount and the paying capacity of the borrower.
Then, of course, there are the devout and the renegade. Neelam Dubey, Asaram’s PRO in Delhi, gushes that Bapu freed her from “the habit of drinking 35 cups of tea daily”. Virendra Mehta of Rohtak memorised all 80,000 words of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary along with their page numbers to find a mention in the Limca Records after “receiving mantra-initiation” from Asaram. If these seem like minor miracles, a paralysed OP Mall, chairman of Howrah ( jute) Mills, apparently walked out of an Indore nursing home to attend Asaram’s discourse.
Shantibhai and Praful Vaghela, who admitted a son each at Asaram’s Sabarmati ashram only to recover their hollowed corpses by the river, accuse the godman, his son Narayan Sai and the ashram management of conducting black magic. Amrut Prajapati, Asaram’s personal physician of 10 years, accuses him of sexually exploiting women. Raju Chandok, Asaram’s secretary who fell apart with him, accuses Bapu of plotting the assassination attempt he survived. Mahendra Chawla, who looked after Narayan’s accounts, accuses him of forgery in land deals.
But even as charges piled up, nothing seemed to hamper Asaram’s phenomenal rise as one of India’s foremost gurus with millions of devotees and the biggest landholdings. “For us who have followed his activities from time to time, it is very difficult to escape a sense of something sinister about his operations,” says a veteran journalist in Ahmedabad. “This time, he seems to be somewhat vulnerable. But then, you never know.”
asharam_political
Indeed, few seem to know enough about Asaram, the guru, or his past. Those who do are either his own men careful not to reveal anything beyond his public persona, or people who know better than to offend the man they know so well.
THE LEGAL cell at the Motera ashram was working overtime. Minutes ago, Asaram had left for the airport to shift base to Indore. The day before — three days after a 15-year-old girl accused the “self-realised saint” of raping her — he had held a brief satsang to dub the charge a conspiracy. But his key aides in white robes were feeling the heat of an unrelenting media.
On the other side of the phone, Asaram’s chief media manager Dr Sunil Wankhade had sounded reluctant, wondering if he could trust the press not to hurt the ashram’s interests. Face to face, he asked me if I would “do sting” on the ashram. Soon, his obvious scepticism gave way to desperation and he called for help from the legal cell.
“He will do a big magazine story, cover story,” Dr Wankhade informed Vikas Khemka who had just joined us with an incessantly ringing mobile phone. “We do not give time to the sold-out media. Bapuji doesn’t care what they write or show. You will not distort our words, will you?”
My nod made Khemka draw closer to ask me if I went to Delhi University. “No? I did. BCom honours, in 1993.” Dr Wankhade intervened to underline that Khemka’s family was into “big business” and that he had given up a “monthly income of lakhs” to serve Bapuji. “We are not uneducated, ordinary people here…”
Khemka’s mobile rang yet again and this time he promptly took the call. “Kya bola channel? Bhag gaya bola? S****…!” he asked Wankhade to make someone fall in line with a “defamation threat” and “Jo bhi karo (whatever it takes)”. Then he picked up the conversation from where he had left it. “…And yet people talk about black magic and all that.”
In the next couple of hours, the two of them made an elaborate defence of Asaram. “Tell me, can anyone encroach upon a riverfront? We planted trees, checked erosion and put up pandals for a few days during Guru purnima (Asaram’s birthday) when lakhs of devotees need space. In Surat, we built a park by the river,” explained Khemka.
He dismissed “Chandok, Prajapati and Chawla” as “opportunistic, corrupt people” out to malign Bapu’s name. “How can Bapu harm anyone, even these people, when he always says ‘sabka bhala’? Yesterday, he asked devotees to take care of even this Jodhpur girl,” said Khemka.
But the highlight of his defence was the Supreme Court ruling that turned down the demand for a CBI inquiry into the death of two ashram students and modified the charge against seven ashram officials, including Khemka himself, from culpable homicide to causing death by negligence. “More than 90,000 children go missing in India; 30,000 for good.”
After the bodies of two students — Dipesh and Abhishek — were found in July 2008 by the Sabarmati river close to Asaram’s ashram, with internal organs missing, it took the state government more than two weeks to initiate a CID probe. Blaming media for the “harassment”, Khemka explained that they “might be guilty of failing to look after the boys, but were in no way responsible for what happened after the two ran away or were abducted”.
Dipesh’s father Praful Vaghela claims that only a CBI probe would have revealed how the boys went missing systematically as part of dark rituals performed at the ashram. “It took Asaram three years to appear before the (DK) Trivedi Commission and even when he appeared, he behaved as if he were delivering sermons. The case is still open and the commission report (submitted on 1 August) has not been made public yet,” he says.
But wouldn’t other parents have also complained if their sons went missing in the past? Vaghela nods. “Call it hypnotism or helplessness or whatever you will. Most of Asaram’s followers have absolute faith in him. When two boys were found dead in his Chhindwara ashram, soon after our tragedy, the parents of the first victim refused to press charges.”
Ashram
The two five-year-old Chhindwara boys in question, Ram Krishna Yadav and Vedant Manmodhe, were found dead in a bathroom in Gurukunj. Despite the mass outrage, Ram Krishna’s parents Mohanlal and Manorama blamed the loss on their destiny. “It’s our fate that we lost our son.” Within a week, the police claimed to have solved the case by arresting a “mentally unstable” Class IX student for the twin murders, dismissing his parents’ plea that their son was made a scapegoat.
Apart from these high-profile cases, detractors point out more than a dozen instances of murder that apparently led to Asaram Bapu. For example, Sandhya, a teacher at the same Chhindwara Gurukul, died under suspicious circumstances. Vashi, who worked for ashram publication Rishi Prasad, was apparently killed for protesting against his sister’s sexual exploitation. The death of a 10-year-old Gurukul student from Muzaffarnagar was blamed on suicide. No FIR was lodged when Zandu alias Narender, the head of Asaram’s Virangham ashram near Ahmedabad, was found dead. But the details in these allegations remain sketchy.
“Asaram believes in catching them young — the younger the better — for a thorough brainwashing,” says ayurveda physician Prajapati, who was picked up by Kota Police from Ahmedabad on 22 August in connection with what he claims is a false case of cheating. “He can be ruthless when it goes wrong. I asked Chandok to give up two-wheelers before he was shot at. Chawla uses only public transport. We fear for our lives.”
AT THE ashram, Khemka had returned to the legal cell. I watched a flurry of activities — media updates pouring in, sevaks shouting commands or brainstorming in a huddle — until Wankhade was back after offering a lengthy byte to a TV channel “with a good viewership in the Gulf”. He looked smug. “Their TRP goes up when we give exclusives. Now all other channels will call up asking what their fault was.” Then, he asked me to take down what he had memorised from Jivan Jhanki, a handbook on Asaram’s biography.
Asaram was born Asumal on 17 April 1941 in Sindh (now in Pakistan) to Thaumal Sirumalani and his “consort” Mehgiba. Like the three wise men who showed up at Bethlehem, a stranger apparently visited Asumal’s family the day he was born to gift ajhoola (swing) because “the day before, all of a sudden, he had a strong feeling that a great saintly child shall be born in Thaumalji’s family”.
The family moved to Gujarat after Partition. Asaram studied until Class III but was considered a brilliant student with a remarkable memory. After his father’s death, he “unknowingly” attained “all Siddhis” and fled to a Bharuch ashram. Brought back, he married Lakshmi Devi. They have a son Narayan Sai, Asaram’s heir apparent, and a daughter Bharati, whose “husband left her and the country after discovering the family’s secrets”.
Soon after his marriage, Asaram left home, with his wife’s permission, to attain god. He met a number of gurus, including a prophetic one who blessed him to be a millionaire. Asaram’s quest was rewarded when he impressed Lilashahji Maharaj in Vrindavan. Eventually, Lilashahji would advise him to stay a householder. After attaining self-realisation, he spent seven years in seclusion and started his Ahmedabad ashram in 1971.
What his official biography does not mention is that Asaram found shelter for two years in Motera’s Sadashiv Ashram before setting up a hutment of his own in the adjoining land. Even today, the sprawling Asaram ashram shares its boundary with the humble Sadashiv Ashram that Asaram’s men tried to grab after Sadashiv’s death. They did not succeed due to strong resistance from local villagers who were later implicated in false cases.
What the official biography does not mention, points out a veteran businessman who claims to know “Gujarat’s Sindhi samaj”, is that Asaram used to run a tea stall by the main bus stand at Visnagar near Mehsana and used it as a front to peddle illicit liquor. A couple of old-timers confirmed that a young Asaram was considered a “miscreant of sorts” in Maninagar, Ahmedabad. But even afterwards, the guru does not seem to have mended his ways.
In August 2002, the Income Tax Department raided 20 premises of a prominent jewellery chain in New Delhi and found a huge cache of unexplained stock. Sources claim that Asaram invested several crores in the jewellery chain, which indulged in “out of book sales” and bogus exports. They apparently imported gold under a duty-free scheme for designing jewellery meant solely for export but sold it without billing in the local market. The profits were invested in real estate.
“Probably, it was the aspiration of a landless refugee that made him value land so. Then it became big business,” says a Mumbai real estate agent of Asaram. In this quest, too, Asaram targeted the most vulnerable: the old and infirm who were duped in the name of devotion to sign deeds gifting their land to the ashram. Even temporary possession was enough to claim the land for good.
In 2002, for example, some Asaram followers approached Bhagwani Devi, a devotee in Delhi’s Rajokri, to donate some of her property to the trust. She agreed but Asaram’s men forged the power of attorney and transferred all her land to the trust. The matter eventually reached the court but the guru was not summoned.
In 2001, Asaram’s Yog Vedanta Samiti took permission to use the premises of the Mangalya temple in Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh, for just 11 days to hold a satsang. They are still in possession of the 100 acres worth over Rs 700 crore. This January, the Serious Fraud Investigation Office initiated action against the Samiti.
Panipat resident Mahendra Chawla was indoctrinated by Asaram in 1995, became his son Narayan’s personal secretary by 2001 and left the ashram in 2005. Three years later, when the murder charges came up against the ashram, Chawla alleged that Narayan had forged his signatures in 2005 to register a new trust, Bal Yogi Narayan Sai Sansthan. When he confronted Narayan, Chawla claimed, he was “locked up, beaten mercilessly and made to sign five blank papers”. Even after leaving the ashram, Chawla was apparently threatened by Narayan.
According to Chawla’s statements, Asaram’s ashram was also involved in hawala and manufacturing spurious ayurvedic medicines. Besides, whatever food, clothes and other items were donated to his ashrams were subsequently sold by the sevaks and the money was never accounted for. Several lakhs were collected in donation for each satsang — in 2011, for example, more than 200 satsangs were held — and the money transported in Asaram’s personal helicopter. However, the Virar Police, Maharashtra, found nothing actionable in the allegations.
Detractors maintain that the guru’s clout across political lines made him tide over strong public sentiment against his ashrams in Gujarat and MP, particularly in 2008-10. Agrees a political observer who has “nothing personal” against Asaram. “Though he is aligned with the Sangh for obvious reasons, his real growth happened in Gujarat and MP during the Congress rule. Modi is probably the only CM who does not care much about him. That said, the ashram activities got a boost after 2001 when Asaram indoctrinated 20,000 students in Ahmedabad alone.”
To be fair, Asaram’s biggest political assets during his rapid rise included former PM AB Vajpayee and LK Advani, a fellow Sindhi-born. Given his influence on the Sindhi-Marwari communities, the chief ministers of all the Hindi heartland states have handled him with care. The guru enjoys enough backing in the forces and the bureaucracy across the states.
Yet, with Modi issuing a whip on 28 August to restrain party leaders from defending Asaram, the political consensus against him is finally building up. With little political stake in the states that are Asaram’s stronghold, parties such as JD(U), BSP and the Left are aggressively questioning if Asaram is above the law.
In fact, he is not. While most charges of usurping private properties against Asaram and his ashrams are tangled in legal knots, the guru has quite a humble record at defending his encroachments on State land. The metro rail project is coming up on Sabarmati bank where the state revenue department authorities in January 2010 cleared the encroachment of 67,099 sq m land by his Motera ashram.
In November that year, the administration demolished ashram constructions on six acres of encroached land in Bhairavi village of Navsari district. This year, the Sabarkantha district administration served notice to Asaram’s son to vacate nearly 70 hectares of agricultural land in the villages of Pedhmala, Gambhoi and Rajpur that he had acquired by falsely claiming that he was a farmer.
In 1977, the state government acquired agricultural lands along the Tapi river for building embankments and a drinking water project. After a satsang in 1984, Asaram’s ashram occupied a stretch of this land and “regularised” the encroachment in just three weeks through its influence over the then revenue minister Atmaram Patel. The farmers raised objection in 2004 and the Gujarat High Court returned the land to the state in 2006.
Outside Gujarat, Asaram’s illegal claim over 13.5 katthas of land was rejected by a Bihar court in 2009 after a protracted battle with the Bihar State Board of Religious Trusts, which eventually got possession of the plot. In Odisha this May, the Cuttack Municipal Corporation razed an Asaram ashram built illegally in the city.
In none of these cases, Asaram tried to resist the state once he lost the legal battle. “Land cases won’t make much of a dent in his empire,” says a retired police officer in Indore. “He anyway controls too much land and losing a few acres doesn’t worry him. Also, the cases of those children’s deaths never implicated him directly. His only potential vulnerability has always been his weakness for women.”
When people line up for darshan, Asaram apparently throws a fruit or whatever is handy at a girl who catches his fancy. Women from the ashram then convince the girl and her family to send her to Asaram’s mahila ashram so that the guru can perform ananushthan with her. “If he gets his way, you can imagine what anushthan he performs,” alleges a source who directs me to Asaram’s former physician.
Prajapati says he had revived the guru from his deathbed in the mid-1990s and was given access to his bedroom every full moon to check his health. During one visit, he says he got the shock of his life. “I never questioned why a godman took insulin for thyroid. But then I got to know that his days in solitude were meant for these dirty activities. He must have violated at least a thousand women,” he alleges.
asharam2click to zoom
That is an astounding claim and it is difficult to imagine that the guru and his cult have the power to silence so many women. But a trader recalls Asaram attending “parties with arrangements for scented baths” at the kothis of the rich and powerful of Alwar, Rajasthan, since the mid-1990s, and vouches for his “give no margin” strategy.
“Once one becomes an ashram inmate, there is virtually no escape,” seconds a teacher who claims to have been associated with Asaram’s Chhindwara ashram. “There are still 200-odd women in various ashrams run by Asaram’s wife. Those from outside are made to toe the line by his goons. If thelakshman rekha is breached, Asaram becomes inaccessible. Didn’t he refuse darshanto the family of the Jodhpur victim when they came to meet him in Delhi after the incident?”
This time, though, the ploy did not silence the victim or her family. The tension is palpable in his camp and has already led to a few public faux pas. The owner of the Jodhpur land contradicted the ashram’s hasty claim that Asaram was not even there on Independence Day. The ashram’s Delhi PRO Dubey’s comparison of Asaram with Guru Nanak has drawn angry rebuttals from the Sikh community led by Shiromani Akali Dal’s Harsimrat Kaur. Her father-in-law and Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal did not have any qualms about getting photographed with Asaram earlier.
I can’t say I did not see such self-goals coming. After giving me an escorted tour of the ashram, Wankhade enquired about the circulation figure of this magazine. As we waited for the busy legal cell to produce prints of some case documents, he handed me a copy of a Gujarati magazine that recently did a cover story on Asaram.
“If you do a positive story for us — like this — Bapuji will tell devotees, on live TV, to buy your magazine. The circulation will double. Talk to your management,” he says, pausing to gauge my reaction. “Nobody can stop Bapuji from saying what he wants to on live TV.”
I concurred. But the law may yet catch up with him in real life.

Rape: The problem with our selective outrage

We hit the road only when one of our own is brutalised while remaining conveniently blind to gender terror being unleashed on the socio-economically less privileged

FirstPost, 26 August, 2013

Journalist, or specifically photo-journalist, raped in Mumbai, screamed the headlines. The next day, journalists of Mumbai hit the road, seeking justice. Their colleagues from Assam to Ahmedabad join the protest. I find it worrisome.

 Of course, every Indian should feel outraged at what happened at the Mahalaxmi mill. But did the victim pay for being a journalist? Would the lovers association of India, if there were such an organisation, hold protest rallies if it was a love-struck couple that was assaulted instead of two photo journalists? Would the medical or legal fraternity stage sit-ins unless a doctor or a lawyer is raped by a patient or a client?
We tend to hit the road only when one of our own is targeted. Now think back to the massive outrage at the brutal Delhi gang rape in December last year. That protest was mostly concerned about the safety of the urban middle class. Forget those lakhs of victims raped and assaulted all across the hinterland every day, did we ever bother to ask about the underclass in our big, bad cities? The domestic helps who consider it an occupational hazard, the street hawkers harassed for “hafta” and the homeless pavement dwellers picked up in the night by cops and ruffians alike? No, it takes a middle class victim in a middle class situation at a middle class hour to shake us, the middle class, up.
protests in Mumbai. AP
Protests in Mumbai. AP
In Mumbai, the professional identity of the young photo-journalist was incidental. She was not brutalised by the five men because they resented her job in general or her assignment in particular. She could be any woman, vulnerable at that point of time. Therefore, the protest by journalists only shows the discomfort of the privileged lot at not being beyond the grasp of criminals. Much like the insecurity of the Delhi middle class at the possibility of rape in a moving bus on a busy road at a busy hour.
Then again, the privileged — journalists, doctors, lawyers, the middle class — can hit the road and get noticed, on primetime television. What about those who can’t even register their cases? Imagine the outcome of a group of tribals trying to rally in protest against routine sexual harassment they suffer in many parts of the country. Or the homeless or the slum dwellers in a metro agitating against nightly police excesses. They do not because they know they would be taken to task by the forces and no candlelight-happy media will guard them through the nights.
I raised this point in the aftermath of the Delhi gang rape last year and I am compelled to reiterate because the so-called national debate has changed nothing in our attitude since. Can we respect women in a system that does not respect anything but money and power? Can we make them feel safer in a predominantly violent society where men are not lesser victims? Unfortunately, the might of both money and power is relative and hence the outrage of the middle class or the more privileged sections of it (such as journalists).
Only some rapists are driven only by sex. More often, rape is a power statement. Men rape women who ‘belong to’ other men. Men rape women as punishment. Men rape women because they can. That is why most rapes happen within families. Strangers also rape and the startling majority of them belong to the armed forces and the militias. It has been going on in Kashmir, the North-East and along the red corridor from Bihar to Andhra Pradesh. And not only the armed forces, police and insurgents, feudal armies too run riot across the length and breadth of rural India.
Yet, our conscience is jolted only when she is brutalised in a Delhi bus or in a Mumbai mill. Yes, that something so brazen could happen in our big cities reflects the extent of lawlessness in the less governed parts of the country. But rape cannot be fought selectively. Women will never be safe if security is extended to one social class and not the other. When we vent our anger at the VIPs, when we raise slogans that the only women safe in Delhi are Sonia and Sheila, we forget that millions of rural or poor Indian women may well feel that safety is the sole entitlement of their well-to-do city counterparts.
Sentencing the Delhi bus or Mumbai mill rapists cannot bring the victims true justice if a thousand others continue to walk free across the country. The time, place and identity of the victim are only changing parameters that should not determine how we respond to rape. Every assault that goes unpunished anywhere is an encouragement to rapists everywhere. It is really all or nothing — no woman will ever really feel safe if another does not.

State can’t promise mines to companies without asking its people

In business as usual, Congress-BJD mock fight only helps wanton loot of resources

Tehelka, 22 August, 2013

Our times make commitment an increasingly rare virtue. But few can fault the government for being untrustworthy; certainly not the mega investor. Chief Minister loves to sign grateful MoUs welcoming big money to . He also stands firm on his commitments of handing over land, water and mineral rights to investors even if statutory, judicial and democratic ‘exigencies’ demand otherwise.
Asked by the Supreme Court to take a call on bauxite mining in , all 12 gram sabhas — the last, on 19 August — have asserted their community rights over the entire hills and rejected the state’s move to allow Vedanta to harvest minerals for its 50,000 crore Lanjigarh alumina plant. This triumph of grassroots democracy would have had a sobering effect on the ruling BJD but for its commitments.
On a news channel last week, BJD strongman Pinaki Mishra dismissed the gram sabhas as politically motivated — “the direct consequence” of Rahul Gandhi’s visit in 2010 — and inconsequential to the schemes of the state and Vedanta. “It means very little actually because we will give them (Vedanta) bauxite. We are committed,” he said, adding that the government was “very anxious” about the fate of the “large investment”.
According to Mishra, one option is to tap a few unexploited mines with L&T, which has a joint venture with Vedanta. While the company will now have to depend on bauxite from faraway Gujarat to keep its Lanjigarh refinery in operation, it has already sought clearance from the state government to explore the prospects of mining laterite, a bauxite substitute, in the state. But these are really considered “Plan C, D and E” by the company and state officials.
The real focus has shifted to a 31,183-hectare bauxite reserve about 40 km west of. However, the mineral-rich Khandualmali and Krishnamali plateaus lie within 5 km of the Karlapat sanctuary, home to more than 1,500 tribals in 19 settlements and a healthy elephant population. Since no mining activities are permitted within 10 km of a sanctuary, the state’s Plan B for Vedanta depends, Mishra conceded, on “what the court’s wisdom in that matter will be”.
The  tribes, meanwhile, are waiting for their claims of rights to be sent to the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, which will have to take the final call on the issue in its submission before the Supreme Court. While expecting their gram sabha resolutions to bring immediate relief from the apex court, the villagers say they know better than to lower their guard and are prepared for a long haul.
“We do not think we can depend on the legal safeguards to stop future attempts to mine our hills. We have to remain vigilant. Already, we have held a few solidarity meetings with our tribal brothers and sisters of Khandualmali (Karlapat) where the government and the company are now planning to source bauxite from. We are together in this fight,” says Linagaraj Azad, a Samajwadi Jan Parishad leader who has nurtured the resistance movement at .
But for its unwavering commitment,  will not rush to push the boundaries of statutory limits yet again after it failed to hand over the Karlapat bauxite reserve first to Vedanta and then to BHP-Billiton nearly a decade ago. After a field visit in 2004, the Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court had concluded that the proposed Karlapat mines were too close to the sanctuary and the state in an affidavit assured that no mining activity would be allowed in Khandualmali.
If the state has decided to go back on that promise, its options include seeking denotification of parts of the sanctuary to create sufficient buffer, on paper, between the redrawn boundaries and the proposed mining areas. However, under the Forest Rights Act, the state will anyway require the consent of the gram sabhas concerned. The tribals of Karlapat will certainly weigh the risks of destabilising a water system that supports the Tel river, a major tributary of the Mahanadi, and antagonising the elephant herds against the promised benefits of mining.
Even after the  experience, the BJD, however, does not consider any of these concerns legitimate. The party feared that the Congress “will immediately start raising some environmental issue there (Karlapat) as well” because it “has always exhorted povertarianism”, said Mishra. He also underlined the Congress doublespeak with the example of the  project, which is apparently being opposed by the local Congress leaders even though the prime minister and the Union finance minister are desperate for FDI.
Mishra, of course, glossed over the fact that the Congress government at the Centre rewrote the laws last year to shield unscrupulous mining interests from the scrutiny of the Shah Commission, which has been investigating illegal mining in the state. In July 2012, the Union mining ministry amended the Mineral Concession Rules, 1960, holding mining outside the lease area as “illegal” but excess mining inside the lease area as merely “irregular”. The Indian Bureau of Mines used this new definition to condone rampant excess mining in ’s Keonjhar and Sundergarh districts.
Mishra’s grudge over the Congress’ doublespeak is also unfounded. Barring what was probably a tactical mistake by Rahul Gandhi three years ago — he has stayed clear of ever since — the party has never inconvenienced the BJD. Three months ahead of the 2009 Assembly election, the high command had replaced then  Congress chief Jaydev Jena with former Union minister KP Singh Deo, who could never impress party veterans such as JB Patnaik, and handed the BJD a virtual walkover.
It may not be a coincidence that the Congress again opted for a leadership shuffle in the run-up to the 2014 Assembly polls. While the party was experiencing a revival of sorts under Niranjan Patnaik, the high command sacked him to bring back Jena this May. The inexplicable move immediately triggered bitter infighting, which has been a welcome political reprieve for the scam-ridden BJD. Now, there is a lesson for Mishra who really should be more charitable to the Congress.
It does not look like the Congress is in any hurry to rock the BJD boat in . While neither can afford to strike a poll alliance with the other, it is possible that the Congress hopes to gain from the BJD’s tactical support in certain post-poll scenarios. But what really unites Patnaik and the prime minister is their penchant for committing too much too soon.
Time and again, at home and in Seoul, Manmohan Singh and his ministers have assured their South Korean counterparts that the  project will go through. It never mattered to the prime minister that all this while, the issues have been with the Supreme Court and other statutory bodies to decide. It never occurred to Patnaik that he needed environmental clearances and the people’s consent for opening a new bauxite mine before promising Vedanta its possession.
Thanks to the Supreme Court, the people’s courts at  have set a benchmark for the implementation of the Forest Rights Act. The apex court’s other verdict, giving landowners proprietary rights to minerals lying under their land, has redrawn the limits of state ownership. Now it is for our elected leaders to honour the people’s trust and commit and deliver within the confines of a democracy.

How Vedanta Lost The Plot
What Happened
A decade-long stand-off between  and the villagers of ’s  hills has culminated in an outright rejection of the company’s plans to mine bauxite to feed its Rs 50,000-crore alumina refinery at Lanjigarh. Asked by the  to take a call on the proposed , all 12 gram sabhas have asserted their community rights over and said no to the state government’s move to hand over nearly 700 hectare of forest land to VAL ( Aluminium Ltd) for harvesting bauxite.
In April 2009, the  had cleared the project. Amid widespread protests, the Centre constituted a committee under NC Saxena that pointed out a number of irregularities. Subsequently, acting on the fresh recommendation of the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) that had in 2007 approved the project, then Environment minister Jairam Ramesh ordered temporary withdrawal of clearance in August 2010.
In March 2011, the  government moved the  against the MoEF’s order. Once the ministry defended its stand as a safeguard against possible violation of cultural and religious rights of the local tribals, the SC on 18 April this year asked the state to seek the view of affected villagers.
What is at stake
Acting on the state government’s assurance of handing over a bauxite reserve lying within a stone’s throw,  has already invested Rs 50,000 crore in the project in building the refinery at Lanjigarh. It was considered one of Chief Minister ’s early breakthroughs when he apparently convinced Anil Agarwal to invest in the backward districts of Kalahandi and Rayagada. That dream of injecting big money to a limping economy still hangs fire.
On the other hand, the Saxena committee report noted that the forested slopes of the hills and the many streams that flow through them provide the means of living for a few thousand Dongaria Kondh, considered an endangered tribe. Schedule V of the Indian Constitution which enjoins the government to respect and uphold the land rights of Scheduled Tribes applies to the entire  hills region. In the polytheistic animist worldview of the Kondh, the hilltops and their associated forests are regarded as supreme deities. The highest hill peak, which is under the proposed  lease area, is the home of their most revered god, Niyam Raja, ‘the giver of law’
What went wrong
Almost everything. The company sought environment (2003) and forest (2004) clearances for its plant separately. The application for the environment clearance made no mention of the forest land required. The environment clearance was issued in 2004 on condition that the company would secure  clearance before “operationalising” the refinery. The approval letter stated that “the project does not involve diversion of forest land.”
Once its bluff was called, the MoEF issued a stop-work notice in 2005 till clearance was given for the diversion of 58.9 hectare of forestland. The company promptly withdrew its application for forest clearance, saying it didn’t need the forest land. Inexplicably, the MoEF did not look into the rationale of this dubious claim and allowed construction of the refinery.
Following a strong recommendation by the Central Empowered Committee against , the SC in 2006 referred the case to the FAC which asked the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and Central Mine Planning and Design Institute Limited (CMPDIL) to examine the project’s impact on wildlife, soil and water systems. While CMPDIL gave the project a clean chit in 2007, the WII report expressed a number of concerns over the impact of  on the wildlife before settling for a Rs 42-crore mitigation plan. Based on these two reports, the FAC approved diversion of forest land for .
What now
The MoEF is likely to convey to the SC the unanimous views of the gram sabhas against. The  government and  are already looking beyond  for bauxite. Last week, BJD MP Pinaki Mishra said that one option was to tap a few unexploited mines with L&T, which has a joint venture with . The other option, he said, was to harvest bauxite from Karlapat, 40 km west of , but the reserve lies within 5 km of a sanctuary.  already sought clearance from the state government to explore the prospects of  laterite, a bauxite substitute, in the state. But for now, the company will have to depend on bauxite from faraway Gujarat to keep its Lanjigarh refinery in operation.

We choose racy debates over real issues and then crib about India

We debate tirelessly over which politician to trust for a system clean-up while refusing to even discuss the excesses responsible for the mess that has become of India 

FirstPost, 19 August, 2013

Now that our prime ministerial candidates have started setting their agendas, we may also ponder what issues we will vote on in 2014. A no-brainer, most would say. We want better policies and governance. We want the economy revived, poverty reduced and lives valued. Corruption must end. Price rise checked. And Pakistan must not be allowed to get away with killing Indian soldiers.
But how are our choices — the Modis, Gandhis, Advanis and Singhs — differently placed to achieve all that? Have we ever heard them spell out their respective stands on building dams in every corner of the Himalayas or on acquiring every slice of forest or tribal land that sits atop a mineral bed? Are the thousands killed in manufactured disasters not Indians? Is handing over finite resources dirt cheap to big corporations by dispossessing thousands of poor not corruption?
Of course, we may disagree on the answers to the last two questions. But have we even heard about the recent Supreme Court judgments upholding the landowner’s right over minerals beneath his or her plot or stopping clearances for new dams in Uttarakhand? If we have, we moved on unconcerned to do what we love doing: crib about the sorry state of the country and play blame games, damning every political outfit in power, only to re-elect them as able political alternatives at another point of time.
Reuters
The real issues that plague India will not be solved by either Congress or BJP: Reuters
This is like a game of musical chairs played to an occasional tune with an exasperated and yet strangely malleable audience in attendance. The crowd seethes watching the wayward ploys of those on the seat of power and yet back the same lot when they are unseated, in the strange belief that they will somehow do better next time. The unscrupulous, horse-trading Congress of the early-1990s was brought back within a decade. So will be, grows the clamour, the vain BJP of shining India shame.
If bad economics has landed the country in such a mess, it is inexplicable as to how a mere switch between known political entities will help. There is nothing fundamentally different between the economic policies of India’s two principal parties; or, for that matter, all principal parties, such as the NCP, AIADMK or BJD. On paper, the Left claims a different position but the comrades exposed themselves on the bloody fields of Singur and Nandigram.
Yet, the national debate over the competitive merit of our political choices hinges on make-believe promises such as “dragging Dawood to India” or “apna paisa apne haath”. Indeed, we love the shrill back and forth so much that issues that cannot be readily broken down into a Congress-BJP or Modi-Rahul or UPA-NDA face-off, hardly register on the public radar.
On 8 July, the SC overruled a 1999 Kerala high court judgment that subsoil minerals belonged to the government. In a meticulously explained ruling, the apex court held that there was nothing in the law “which declares that all mineral wealth sub-soil rights vest in the state”. The state, the order said, has regulatory powers over extraction but no propriety right and “the ownership of sub-soil/mineral wealth should normally follow the ownership of the land”.
This order can potentially change the rule of the game in a country where economic growth largely depends on extraction of mineral resources. Will this empower the landowning communities to negotiate price rather than settle for shoddy rehabilitation package? Will they be able to monetise their mineral assets themselves through co-operatives? Will a rash of small-scale mining be operationally or economically feasible? Will big corporations find a way to acquire mineral-rich land and contest the government on payment of royalty?
Whichever side of the debate one would take, it should have been an engrossing and important exchange. If only there was a debate. News agencies and a number of media outlets did carry the news but it did not attract even a hundred shares or comments on all websites taken together, considering that social media engagement is the yardstick of interest and engagement these days.
Coming last week, the SC’s directive to the Centre to stop clearing any more dams in Uttarakhand and assess the impact of the hydel projects on the Alakananda and Bhagirathi attracted a little more attention. On the CNN-IBN website, the news was shared more than 500 times. On all other top news sites I scanned, the combined social media thumbprint has not exceeded 200 yet.
Given the mass outcry we witnessed two months ago when thousands perished in the hill state due to unplanned construction of hotels, roads and dams, this indifference to the first real corrective action is inexplicable. Again, one can respond to the measures differently depending on where one stands on the debate. Should the SC also stop the existing projects pending a thorough impact assessment? Or should we consider the loss of few thousand lives every few years a legitimate price for growth? Perhaps we don’t care either way.
It says a lot about us when not even a thousand of the big fat web warrior brigade, that tweets and comments 24×7 on everything that mentions a Modi or a Gandhi, apparently in the interest of a better India, could not find the two landmark judgments significant enough to merit any attention.
However, the news of farmer’s agitation against the proposed Maruti plant in Gujarat – potentially Modi’s Singur moment – attracted more than a thousand shares and comments on a single website I checked this morning. But that is possibly due to the magic of the M-word; the same reason why even this article may not go unnoticed.
Frankly, will we again decide who to vote for on flimsy, undeliverable rhetoric? No leader or party, thankfully, will ever wage a war just to teach any neighbour any lesson. But should we not demand to know who will show the rulebook to big money and safeguard the country’s resources and its people? Or we can keep carping.

Saving Durga Nagpal: Why our parties stopped at posturing

While the IAS officer maintains a curious silence, the political grandstanding over her suspension has fizzled to a whimper because every party has a past

FirstPost, 10 August, 2013

It is two weeks since IAS officer Durga Nagpal was suspended by the Uttar Pradesh government and five days since the state justified its decision in a reply to the Union Ministry of Personnel. The outrage at the Akhilesh government’s move to punish an officer, who was taking on the sand mafia, on the pretext that she fanned communal tension created hope for prompt corrective action. While a few IAs bodies are still vocal, the political furore has been reduced to a whimper since.
If anything, this is not unexpected. The political grandstanding against the Samajwadi Party was not tenable because every party has in the past harassed inconvenient bureaucrats. In a corrupt system where the political class expects babus to be pliable bedfellows, it is naive to expect our leaders to break ranks for short-term political gains. But, to make sure they sound politically correct, they made well-meaning noises.
“We must ensure that the officer is not unfairly treated… this particular instance has highlighted the need to assess whether there are adequate safeguards in place to protect executive functionaries working beyond the average call of duty to uphold the rule of law.” Thus wrote Sonia Gandhi, in her capacity as chairperson of the National Advisory Council, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
It is two weeks since IAS officer Durga Nagpal was suspended by the Uttar Pradesh government and five days since the state justified its decision in a reply to the Union Ministry of Personnel. AFP
It is two weeks since IAS officer Durga Nagpal was suspended by the Uttar Pradesh government and five days since the state justified its decision in a reply to the Union Ministry of Personnel. AFP
Fighting the sand mafia is certainly part of upholding the rule of law but how was that “beyond the average call of duty”? For that matter, what is the average call of duty of an IAS officer posted as an SDM? Do those who merely respond to their average call of duty deserve adequate safeguards? Gandhi did not elaborate on these nuances.
Alongside the righteous intervention of the Congress chief was the tug-of-war over the food security bill. Would Mulayam Singh Yadavsupport the bill in Parliament and hand the UPA its trump card for 2014? Would he hinge support on the Centre’s stand on the Nagpal issue? Or were the two issues unrelated, as Congress managers and the Samajwadi Party supremo insisted?
Two days after Gandhi wrote to the PM, Mulayam declared the suspension “final” and irreversible and indicated that he would back the food security bill, provided the UPA promised to protect farmers’ interests. For good measure, his party leaders argued that the Congress’s heart should have also bled for IAS officer Ashok Khemka, who was transferred for the 44th time after he cancelled the mutation of a Rs 58-crore deal between DLF and Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadrain Gurgaon and ordered a probe into all of Vadra’s land deals in the region.
Indeed, every member in the pro-Durga chorus — Congress, BJP, BSP, CPM — has skeletons of their own. IFS officer and whistleblower Sanjiv Chaturvedi of Haryana, eventually rescued from harassment in the state and posted at AIIMS, continues to be a thorn in the flesh of the Hooda government as he demands a CBI probe into forestry scams that concerns, among others, the chief minister’s office. Former Gujarat top cop Sanjiv Bhatt, who has questioned Narendra Modi’s handling of the 2002 riots, has been under suspension for two years now, besides facing a flurry of cases.
BSP’s suspension of UP’s seniormost IAS officer Promilla Shanker in 2011, a day after she submitted a report on the Yamuna Expressway Authority pointing to irregularities in land acquisition and planning, was quashed by the Centre last year in an unprecedented intervention. The CPM’s Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government in West Bengal had to pay senior IPS officer Nazrul Islama symbolic Re 1 cost for initiating an illegal vigilance inquiry against him. Not surprisingly, the same officer was handpicked by the Trinamool Congress before being dumped forraising inconvenient issues.
Evidently, the unrelenting media focus on Nagpal’s case brought together serial offenders to rally behind her. The facts of the case, however, remain blurry. A clutch of Muslim organizations back Nagpal, saying the case of an IAS officer taking on the sand mafia is being twisted into a religious issue. Another set of reports, however, quotes villagers saying Nagpal terrorized them into razing the structure built on contributions on gram sabha land. They argue that the demolition is being painted by the mainstream media as revenge by the sand mafia, ignoring the officer’s communal bent of mind.
Nagpal, however, has not contested the suspension order. She is yet to come forth with her version of the events, and the political tussle has already moved stage. In any case, it is unlikely that the cause of a bureaucrat, no matter how just, will spur political parties to review equations, especially ahead of elections. In the Samajwadi Party’s own perspective, it is only one regime’s Durga Nagpal against another’s Ashok Khemka or Sanjiv Chaturvedi.
A day after Sonia Gandhi wrote to him, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the media that “there are rules laid down and the rules will be followed”. Dr Singh should know the rules because he also heads the Ministry of Personnel that rewrote some of those rules last year. On 16 February 2012, V Narayanasamy, the PM’s deputy in the Ministry of Personnel and the chief central sympathizer in Nagpal’s case, issued a confidential note to the PMO saying the Centre had no jurisdiction to intervene to protect harassed officers even if they belonged to the All India Services.
Ever since, that blatantly illegal DoPT note has been the Hooda government’s sole defence against a CVC-recommended CBI probe into forestry scams flagged by whistleblower Sanjiv Chaturvedi. Since May 2012, Dr Singh’s DoPT has sat on six letters from Dr Singh’s PMO seeking clarification on that dubious note. But of course, Sonia Gandhi’s yardstick of “beyond the average call of duty” doesn’t apply where the future of a Congress chief minister is at stake.

When The Hourglass Is Empty

Considered a minor mineral, sand drives the biggest engine of growth, and life
Tehalka, 9 August, 2013

The association of sand — humanity’s most prominent symbol of ephemera — with the idea of permanence would be ironic but for the duality inherent in nature. One still can’t hold a fistful and yet modern palaces are not built as much of stone as of sand. By 2020, the construction industry is expected to swell to $12 trillion per annum or 13 percent of the global GDP.
In the past five decades, the construction industry has attracted 40 percent of the total development investment in India. The Plan panel estimated that Rs 14.5 lakh crore was the investment needed in infrastructure during the 11th Plan period. India has the world’s third largest construction industry that accounts for 9 percent of its economy and the appetite for growth continues to be big.
The world still does not have a technology to use desert sand for construction and the pressure is entirely on river banks and coasts. But sand helps permanence also in nature and is our best insurance against coastal and riverbank erosion. More importantly, sand banks act as a sponge, retaining water and making it available for us in shallow aquifers.
Without mining sand, there can be no construction. Without sand being where it belongs, there will be no water. The choice was simple but no effort was made to strike a balance because we considered sand a minor mineral found in abundance. The table was turned too soon. Singapore’s infrastructure boom, for example, came to a halt when it was refused supply by all its neighbours by 2009. In Central Asia, countries have been investing heavily in research to make use of dune sand and reduce dependence on import.
In India, the construction industry has been banking on a mafia that employs fear and favour equally to defeat every regulatory norm. On 5 August, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ordered that nobody could mine sand without clearances until 14 August when it will hear the respondents’ reply. Coming in the context of IAS officer Durga Nagpal’s suspension apparently for taking on the sand mafia, this order is a reiteration of several Supreme Court rulings since 2012 that made environmental assessment and clearance mandatory.
Unfortunately, none of these orders have been carried out adequately. Instead, the mining interests have adopted a two-pronged strategy. Within the law, states have taken the issues to court, seeking leniency in public interest. The Maharashtra chief minister even wrote to the MoEF, seeking exemption for a year before implementing the legal framework. Outside the law, the mafia is using a few permits to mine many times the allotted area, using machinery not allowed under the permit and digging far deeper than the norms allow.
The official figure for sand mined across India in 2010-11 is not even 50 lakh tonnes. To construct a standard residential tower of 50,000 sq ft, it takes about 30,000 cubic feet of sand. So, the official supply of 50 lakh tonne or 355 lakh cubic feet of sand would have built just 1,000 such towers. Given that thousands of kilometres of roads and other infrastructure also come up every year, the actual sand consumption is probably many times the volume legally mined.
Evidently, too many pockets are being lined to facilitate this loot.
In its reply to the NGT notice, the MoEF is likely to plead that the infrastructure required for examining mining plots below 5 hectare is beyond the ministry’s scope and the states must do it. This will allow the states to break down mining clusters in many sub-5 hectare plots and avoid stricter environmental assessment mandatory for larger areas. In any case, barring rare Central inspections, the states themselves are to monitor the mines for violations.
For long, our laws and court orders have failed to have any impact since the administration itself plays truant. But business as usual will make more rivers change course, seas invade deeper inland, landslides become deadlier, and water shortage and salinity, after ruining agriculture and fishery, hit human consumption. Or we may yet tilt the hourglass over.

Factor in the green deficit and all we have is negative growth

A conservative World Bank report estimates the cost of environmental damage to be 5.7% of our GDP, without even taking into account the loss of fisheries, biodiversity or non-use value of forests.


Since liberalisation, India’s average GDP growth rate has been 6.6 percent. During these two decades, both ecological footprint and bio-capacity (availability of natural resources) per capita have shrunk. The diminishing footprint means that the average Indian is not using more resources, as he/she would have had his/her economic status improved. But, paradoxically, the shrinking bio-capacity shows that resources are getting scarce.
If the average Indian is not getting richer (or less poor) and yet India’s resources are disappearing, the only plausible explanation is that some Indians must be enjoying particularly high standards of living and floating on assets made of those resources. Our 55 billionaires are worth$189 billion or two times the country’s fiscal deficit and India Inc is sitting on cash and cash equivalents of over $166 billion.
Of course, they have earned it, thanks to various incentives (no, not subsidies which are meant for the poor) offered by the state to fuel, what else, economic growth. But that 6.6 percent growth never factored in the drain on natural resources and the environment. Usually dismissed as a neo-Luddite concern, the idea of such a reality check did not escape, of all establishments, the World Bank that peddles the panacea of rapid growth across the world.
Reuters
Image used for representational purposes only. Reuters
On 17 July, the Bank released a report — Diagnostic Assessment of Select Environmental Challenges in India – that explored roadmaps to sustainable growth. The study’s admittedly conservative estimate of air and water pollution, scarcity of water, lack of sanitation, loss of soil, pastureland and forests puts the cost of damages at 5.7 percent of our GDP.
The report makes it clear that lack of data did not allow it to factor in loss of fisheries, biodiversity, non-use (ecological) value of forests etc which would have significantly added to the damage. For example, the non-use and bio-prospecting value of forests could be as much as 6-20times the use values. Clearly, the total cost of environmental damage far outweighs the 6.6 percent growth in GDP.
The Bank study says that particulate pollution (PM10) from the burning of fossil fuels has serious health consequences, amounting to 3 percent of India’s GDP. Of this, the impact of outdoor air pollution accounts for the highest share, at 1.7 percent, followed by the cost of indoor air pollution at 1.3 percent. Sustained exposure of the young and productive urban population to particulate matter pollution results in substantial cardiopulmonary and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease mortality.
A significant portion of diseases caused by inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene affects by children under 5. About 23 percent of child mortality in India could be attributed to environmental degradation, the report says. Cropland and pastureland damages arise from the decline in the value of crops due to topsoil erosion, water logging, salinity and overgrazing, while unsustainable logging practices and over-exploitation of forest resources cause forest degradation.
The report pegs the total cost of these environmental damages at $80 billion. If that sounds over the top, consider this: 14 million people were forced to quit agriculture at the peak of economic growth between 2004-05 and 2009-10; every year, urban air pollution causes 3,70,000 hospitalisations, killing 1,16,500; the health impact of poor water supply and sanitation costs nearly Rs 500 billion annually; and pastureland degradation amounts to loss of Rs 400 billion worth fodder and cattle.
If it is any consolation, China’s green deficit bill amounts to 9 percent of its GDP which nearly wipes out the country’s average GDP growth rate of 9.91 percent during 1979- 2010. But what this really shows is that nowhere in the world can the model of rapid, resource-intensive and no-holds-barred growth can work any miracle. From Iran (7.4 percent of GDP) and Egypt (4.8 percent) to Ghana (9.6 percent) and Peru (3.9 percent), the story is equally self-defeating across the developing world.
Can we fix it once we have arrived? The lead author of the Bank report does not think so. “Grow now and clean up later will not be environmentally sustainable for India in the long run,” says senior environmental economist Muthukumara S Mani, claiming that “a low-emission, resource-efficient greening of the economy is possible at a very low cost in terms of GDP growth”.
For example, the study estimates that a 10 percent reduction in particulate emission by 2030 will cause a mere 0.3 percent GDP loss compared to business as usual. If the reduction target is tripled to 30 percent, the corresponding loss to GDP rises to just 0.7 percent or about $97 billion.  Significantly, this results in a net economic gain as the study puts the savings from reduced health damages due to 30 percent reduction at $105 billion.
For some reason, the study does not offer any cost-benefit projection for particulate emission reduction beyond 30 percent and prescribes indirect fiscal measures instead of binding regulations for achieving this modest target. But coming from the Bank, that is probably as good as it gets.
The findings of this study are a pointer to the measurability of green growth which is the only means to quantify economic progress, particularly in a country that thrives on its natural ecosystems and rich biodiversity. As per the report’s conservative estimates, the value of ecosystem services from various biomes across the country amounts to about 3-5.0 percent of GDP. In actual terms, this is likely to be several times higher as we will realise when more reliable and extensive data becomes available for green accounting.
But the message is clear. “Conventional measures of growth do not adequately capture the environmental costs, which have been found to be particularly severe at the current rapid growth rates. There are also tools available now to estimate the significant contribution of natural capital in the form of ecosystem services. Therefore, it is imperative to calculate green Gross Domestic Product (green GDP) as an index of economic growth with the environmental costs and services factored in,” says Mani in a Bank release.
Otherwise, business as usual will continue to result in diminishing resources and increasing poverty, making more and more people fight over the shrinking natural reserve. The few wealthy will keep getting wealthier, till there is not much left — not even food, or water — to sell or buy.