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Monday, October 31, 2011

[ZESTCaste] Away from the glamour of Formula One, poverty stalks India's villages

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/30/india-formula-one-poverty-villages?newsfeed=true

Away from the glamour of Formula One, poverty stalks India's villages

The world's eyes are on the new Buddh circuit, but elsewhere the race
to propel India into the 21st century is causing conflict

Jason Burke

The Observer, Sunday 30 October 2011

A single pitted track leads to the village of Bhatta-Parsaul. A line
of women carry firewood on their heads, bending under its weight. In a
nearby rice field, a labourer stands ankle-deep in mud, talking on a
mobile phone. A man whose wife and three children are perched on his
motorbike weaves between potholes as an expensive-looking SUV
accelerates, forcing boys on bicycles off the road.

Five miles away is another strip of tarmac, in better condition, which
is the focus of considerable attention this weekend. India's first
Formula One grand prix is being held on a new £130m track. Last week,
the chairman of the construction group behind the project said that it
was now possible to "safely say that India has arrived in the 21st
century as a force to reckon with".

The disparity between headline-grabbing projects such as the Buddh
circuit and the poverty that surrounds them has been well documented.
But the myriad conflicts generated by the transformation of India are
heard about less often.

Bhatta-Parsaul made headlines in the summer when police attacked
farmers who had been protesting about the compulsory purchase of their
lands by the government of Uttar Pradesh.

"We were out in the fields as we had been every morning for nearly
three months to demonstrate, when the state police arrived and started
shooting," said Manoj Kumar, a farmer. "Then they went through the
village, smashing things up, beating people and assaulting women."

Allegations of police brutality and violence provoked by land disputes
are commonplace. This is particularly true on the outskirts of cities
where exploding populations, growing wealth and rampant property
speculation combine with repressive colonial-era laws and corrupt
officials.

The Buddh circuit has been built as a flagship development for a
bigger project: a new town with a population of several hundred
thousand, which will have malls, sports and education facilities, and
will sit astride a new motorway linking it to Delhi, 32km away, and
Agra, 190km away. The government wanted to sell the land, belonging to
Kumar and other farmers, to the developers behind the motorway and the
town. Greater Noida will be a satellite of a satellite town of Delhi,
a city with a population of about 20 million. The result is that, only
a few miles from the Indian capital, lies a vast swath of land
undergoing extraordinary change at an extraordinary pace.

Tourists rarely come here – although they will pass through this
weekend on the way to the circuit. If they did, they would find a no
man's-land stuck between the new India, with its wealth and
information technology and fashion industries, and the old India,
rural and grotesquely underdeveloped.

The six-lane road that leads to Greater Noida is flanked by scores of
half-built tower blocks. The frames of hoardings bereft of adverts
loom above the traffic. Modern hotels back on to rivers black with
human waste. On the fringes of this zone are villages such as
Bhatta-Parsaul, just a few minutes' drive from the "Grand Venezia"
development that, says the blurb, will provide shoppers with an
authentically Venetian experience, right down to gondolas on
artificial canals.

Although it might be tempting to portray the farmers resisting this
development as rural heroes fighting to preserve a bucolic existence,
the situation is more complex. First, life in rural villages is far
from bucolic, and almost all Bhatta-Parsaul's inhabitants would prefer
to live in a city. Second, their main grievance is that the state
government does not pay sufficient compensation not that the viability
of their community is threatened.

Third, the farmers of Bhatta-Parsaul are not exactly horny-handed sons
of toil. Instead, they employ landless day labourers for a pittance.
Illiterate, effectively homeless and unprotected, these are almost all
migrants from the poorest parts of Uttar Pradesh or nearby states.
They are from the lowest ranks of India's entrenched social hierarchy
of "castes". Some are "tribal people" who are at the very bottom of
the scale."We are higher caste than them and have held land for
generations," said Kumar, "so, it's normal that they work for us."

Inevitably, the lines of conflict are being exploited by politicians.
Uttar Pradesh has a population of 200 million, and the outcome of next
year's elections will have a significant impact at national level. One
visitor to Bhatta-Parsaul after the summer violence was Rahul Gandhi,
41, who is being groomed as the next prime minister by the ruling
Congress party.The son of Sonia Gandhi, the party's current president,
he evaded a police cordon to sit with farmers and discuss their
problems. Gandhi's main opponent in Uttar Pradesh is the outspoken
chief minister, Mayawati Kumari, who has mobilised the state's Dalits,
or untouchables, as a power base.

One of the biggest developments in Noida is a huge park with giant
bronze statues of Mayawati, as she is known, who is herself a Dalit,
and other low-caste heroes. The park has yet to formally open but is
already drawing visitors."We will vote for Mayawati, and when we are
dead our children will vote for her. We are Dalit and this makes us
feel proud," said Vinod, 38, who had come to the park from Agra to see
the monuments.

Naturally, all parties are seeking to exploit the grand prix. Last
week it was reported that Mayawati's government had given the
developers a giant tax break to build the circuit. Posters featuring
the chief minister that have gone up in Greater Noida might explain
why. "Speed is progress," they say.

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[ZESTCaste] ‘Finally, a place that’s our own’

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-10-30/special-report/30338821_1_symbols-of-dalit-assertion-parks-mayawati

'Finally, a place that's our own'
Parakram Rautela, TNN Oct 30, 2011, 07.44AM IST

With Rs 685 crore, a government can do a lot. It can build primary
schools for thousands of children , much-needed hospitals for the
sick, roads for those still unconnected. Instead, Mayawati chose to
use the money to build a park in Noida in memory of dalit leaders and
herself. An earlier park in Lucknow was built at a whopping Rs 1,200
crore. So how does a park, which seems largely decorative, serve the
dalit community? Isn't it a colossal waste of money?

The dalit community, however, stands solidly behind Mayawati's
creations, be it parks or monuments. For them, the money could not
have been spent better. Vinod Arya, 29, an assistant professor at the
Central University of B i h a r i n Patna, says, " N o b o dy seems to
complain when a Nehru or a Gandhi park is bu i l t . N o r when crores
are spent on t h e Kumbh Mela or the Haj. But when dalits build
something, everybody has a problem."

Vivek Kumar, associate professor of sociology at JNU, says dalits were
excluded from every walk of life. They were not allowed to enter
temples and were isolated in villages where they did menial jobs which
no one else would deign to do. And because of their backwardness ,
they were not found in large numbers in the government or the private
sector. The parks have changed the way they perceive themselves .
"Finally," says Kumar , "we have a place that is our own." He says he
spoke to 5,000 dalits - rich, poor and Muslim - for a research project
he was doing on UP and nowhere did he come across anyone who was
"embarrassed by the monuments" .

But could the money have been better used? Commentator Gurcharan Das
says that economically speaking, yes. The money could have been used
on schools, hospitals and infrastructure . At the same time, it would
be foolish to underestimate these symbols of dalit assertion, he adds.

And that's exactly how Surendra Singh felt on October 14, the day
Prerna Sthal was inaugurated by Mayawati in Noida. Singh, 30, is
president of Youth for Social Justice, an organization that works for
dalits. "I was there that day," he says. "And just like your belief is
strengthened when you go to a temple, my belief was strengthened as I
stood in the middle of the Sthal."

The parks, then, asserts Kumar, will foster confidence among dalits.
"In fact, the parks announce that the cultural hegemony of nondalits
and the exclusion of dalits are finally over. They are more than mere
ornamental entities."

As Arya says, when Kanshi Ram first began campaigning, he often had
trouble finding space to hold a rally. With these parks, that will
never be a problem again. In that sense, they serve a very tangible
purpose.

Kumar adds another qualification. It's not as if infrastructure
suffered during Mayawati's regime, he says, rattling off a list of
statistics: 1,47,500 homes built for dalits under the Kanshi Ram
Shahri Garibi Awas Yojana and 22,000 Ambedkar villages with roads,
electricity, schools and polling booths. In 2007, UP's GDP stood at
5.2%; today , it's 7.2%. UP has become a revenue surplus state and in
2009 was the highest producer of jobs. But there's still a long way to
go. Perhaps, as Arya says, Mayawati should now focus on education and
health.

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[ZESTCaste] F1 race: Mayawati, Jaypee show Delhi, Gurgaon how to get it right

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/mayawati-jaypee-show-delhi-gurgaon-how-to-get-it-right/articleshow/10550170.cms

31 Oct, 2011, 08.31AM IST, Vandana Keelor,TNN
F1 race: Mayawati, Jaypee show Delhi, Gurgaon how to get it right

GREATER NOIDA: Finally, an international event flawlessly executed and
delivered by India . After failing to successfully organize even a
concert last week and the stuttering buildup and rather embarrassing
wind-down of the Commonwealth Games last year, the stunning success of
India's first F1 race brought out not just wide smiles on Sunday but
an unmistakable sense of pride in the 95,000-strong crowd. It was also
a shining moment for the country's private sector, showcasing what it
is capable of achieving.

The infrastructure was amazing - the new Yamuna Expressway to Agra
when fully built will vie to be India's best highway. Add to that the
great management of the huge crowd and thousands of vehicles , precise
road signage and 2,500 helpful cops, and it all seconded what champion
Sebastian Vettel said: India has a way of doing things right.

In many ways, the much maligned Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati,
who lent her quiet support to the event, the F1 circuit builder Jaypee
Group and the Greater Noida administration not only salvaged some of
India's prestige , but also held out a lesson to the babus of Delhi
and Gurgaon where multiple authorities and myriad permissions often
throttle attempts to hold international events.

Noida resident Tanay Sharma said: "Though I didn't know much about
Formula 1, the excitement all around and the flow of information
provided by the organizers got me interested. Except for battling a
few traffic congestion pockets in Noida, I am amazed at Greater
Noida's infrastructure."

There were nearly 3,000 foreign tourists, special invitees and team
personnel. Most of them will be going back with happy memories, as a
great advertisement for India.

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[ZESTCaste] Sadashiva Commission's Appeal on Status of SC/STs in State

http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=120521

Saturday, October 29, 2011 6:58:21 PM (IST)
1
Bangalore: Sadashiva Commission's Appeal on Status of SC/STs in State

From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore

Bangalore, Oct 29: Karnataka has taken upon itself the task to
ascertain whether the people belonging to Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes are uniformly benefitted by the facilities of
reservation for education and employment provided under Articles 15
and 16 of the Constitution.

A judicial inquiry commission headed by retired High Court judge, Mr
Justice A J Sadashiva, has been entrusted with the responsibility of
finding out whether all the people belonging to SC/ST communities are
uniformly benefitted and whether some sections are denied of the
benefits and also to suggest ways and means for redressing the
situation.

As many as 101 sub-castes or tribes have been included in the
Scheduled Tribes category in the State under Article 341 of the
Constitution.

In view of the fact that reliable and authentic data pertaining to
social, economical, educational, political and cultural status of all
families belonging to different sub-castes or tribes among the
Scheduled Tribes was not readily available, the A J Sadashiva
Commission is conducting two specific surveys.

Under the surveys, data pertaining to persons employed in the Central
and State Governments as well as Central and State Government
undertakings and also to ascertain the economic, social, political and
cultural status of all ST communities.

The Sadashiva Commission has already completed the data entry process
pertaining to 24 lakh ST families, which has been entrusted to the
State-owned KEONICS Ltd. The State undertaking has also prepared the
necessary software for compiling and analyzing the data. The final
report will be prepared after studying the data with facts and
figures, the Commission has said in a press release.

As part of the study, the Commission has appealed to social
scientists, prominent leaders and organisations and those involved in
the work of upliftment of the SC/ST people to give their views and
suggestions to the Commission at its office on 21st Floor,
Visveshwaraya Podium Block, Dr B R Ambedkar Veedhi, Bangalore, by
November 15.