india – Nemonia

ISI’s Attempt to Influence General Elections in India?

Enough has been said and written about the recent Indo-Pak Crisis. But one possible dimension of the Pulwama attack stands ignored.

That is,the attack in Pulwama was clearly engineered by the ISI- both in it’s scale and timing- to influence the General elections in India. Foreign influences in elections of different countries have been acknowledged all over the world through history. Russia’s alleged involvement in USA’s polls is just one recent example. Although ISI’s attempt to influence has been pretty implicit,compared to that of other events in history,it can,at no cost, be ignored by historians and psephologists alike.

A couple of month left for the elections,and the outcome seeming pretty uncertain with the rise of the opposition in the 3 states of the Hindi(cow) belt, there was a large-scale blast in South Kashmir- a very intricately planned attack killing 40 men of a Central Armed Police Forces unit.

With the Kashmir and internal security being pretty high-value issues of the 2014 General elections, Modi’s reaction, or the lack of it, would have surely affected polls.

Then,the attack splintered- being the deadliest of it on Kashmiri soil in no less than 4 decades. This couldn’t have (and as per NIA Investigations, hasn’t) been done without heavy support of the Pakistani sponsorship.

With these attacks coming at a very decisive juncture of the 2019 General Elections,when all the parties seems very much in a fair competition,
there are contrast Pulwama attack could have sent the elections going.

There is no clarity of what the ISIS had in mind as goal of this influence of the General elections. There are two such possibilities, which one can think of.

The first and more surprising goal could have been throwing the polls into Modi’s lap. First clearing how would that helped Modi? Look how it has,now. After those air-strikes,Modi does stand out as a stronger head of state than UPA. After the fanning of public anger by the air-strikes, people have an image of Modi in their head as someone who fulfilled his promise of a stronger Indian response to terrorism,and UPA as a pussilanimous government or as a complicit part of the ISI strategy.

It may seem startling at first why ISI would want Modi at Delhi, but at closer look the fog does look somewhat thin. No, Modi has no connections with the ISI Top brass . But When a right wing conservative PM is in New Delhi, it gives the dystopian-like rule of the Pakistani Army and the obscene expenditure on it some validation among the general population of Pakistan. The hysteria they can spread among the gullibe Pakistani common man of this Saffron-clad Hindu from India helps them a lot in their backdoor administration of Pakistan.

The other direction this election could have turned,but hasn’t turned out is the ending of Modi’s hope of another term. With the turn of recent events,this seem more likely,from the way terrorists were shifted from PoK to Pakistan Proper,or how hard the Pakistan Army tried to outdo Modi in the Perception game.

With the Pakistani army expecting a response this time, due to having seen the Surgical strike response last time,and the close proximity to elections of the Pulwama attacks, Pakistan army could have easily foiled and thwarted any land-based cross-border/LoC strike massacring many men and would have shown Modi as a big-mouth who knows not more than a penny about military maneuvers and just makes big promises. Remember loss of lives have much more influence than some loose unsubstantiated corruption allegation by some failed politician. Had this happened, Modi would have lost it in the General elections.

Why ISI might have wanted this? It’s not unclear that UPA has been very soft to Pakistan in the diplomatic and military actions, with just sitting hand-upon-hand after the bloodbath of 26/11. Modi ,as a strong leader,would have tried strangling Pakistan and it’s sponsorship of terror,if he got another chance. Pakistani Senate passed a motion last year against Modi and ways of combating his effect in India. That’s how hated he is in Pakistan.

Lastly, we can’t say for sure which way did the ISI wanted it to happen,and if at all, it really wanted it to influence elections. That’s just what I see – as a reader of history,foreign affairs and psephology.

economics, farming, history, india, indian politics, politics, Uncategorized

Dharti Kahe Pukar ke: A Study of India’s History of Romanticiscing Agriculture

In auteur Bimal Roy’s 1953 magnum opus,”Do Bigha Zameen” set in times when the nation was ravaged by serious drought and agricultural crisis, the protagonist Shambu Mahto,played by the legendry Balraj Sahni,owns two bighas(or 2/3rd of an acre) of land in between a large plot of land owned by the local Zamindar who plans to collaborate with a city businessman to set up a mill on his plot,for which he needs the two bighas of the protagonist for that. The zamindar asks Shambu to sell his land in exchange for some money,a job in the mill and waiving away of the debt,he was in, to the zamindar due to a drought for years. Shambu rejects the offer rhetorically asking the Zamindar how can he sell his mother. The zamindar asks him to pay off the debt or face the auction of his land,and the plot thickens with Shambu taking a leaf of faith to Calcutta to earn the money to pay off the debt.

The movie was an absolute masterclass and had many parallels with Vittorio De Sica’s incredibly popular “Bicycle Theives”(1948).

Although the movie also exposed the many malpractices of the local zamindars like forging records to increase the debt and will be remembered forever for showing the plight of the poor in both villages and ities,it also showcased an interesting cultural trend in the Indian rural scene that romanticises agriculture. Shambu could have sold his land which due to drought didn’t use to produce much yield anyways and had just pushed him into debt,and cleared up his debt,got some amount of money and a permanent job at the planned mill which would bring a regular flow of income to feed the family. But he didn’t because for him, agriculture was divine and sacred and the land his mother.

Belonging to a country,where multiple Prime Ministers boast and roar of agricultural past(God knows why) and “Jai Jawan ,jai Kishan”(Coined by once-PM Lal Bahadur Shastri), Indians have romanticised the idea of farming a lot,and this has hindered India’s growth in more ways than one can think. How often you hear someone saying that they will start farming after retirement, or mourning that the farmlands of the cities had to give way for industries and residential areas.

On the eve of Independence,around 85% of the populace was in the agricultural sector workforce,and this has decreased to 30.1% in 2016. With globalisation and the failure of agriculture to feed all mouths of the family,lots of young men from rural India shifted to industries and services.

Years after the tectonic shift started taking place, there are still widespread romantic notions surrounding agriculture. The bourgeois middle class which shapes the opinion of a nation by being vocal worships the farmers and farming in their opinions and consider it as some sort of a divine occupation, at least when it comes to basing their political believes,and hence the situation of farmers in the country become a very important factor to the voters.

Ask yourself? Which Developed nation has 30% of its population pulling the plough and milking the calf? None,and what is needed is a less percentage of people taking agriculture under their command and producing just the right quantity of food grains we can use and also export. After the Green Revolution in Punjab,Haryana and some other states, every year we see tonnes and Quintals of foodgrains going waste as there is moderate demand,but an enormous supply and the prices hitting bottom of the pit.

In recent times,this has led to a rat race with various political parties in the reins of the various states to appease the farmers by waiving off loans adding to crores and crores of money.

The farmers take agricultural loans,sometimes not even for agricultural purposes like for a wedding ceremony,from government banks and after their inability to pay back,they mobilize widespread protests for waiving off of their loans,in which they eventually succeed because they command a massive votebank which no political party can afford to ignore. This wastes lots and lots of tax money which could have been used in a lot more beneficial ways.

Some farmers,in areas with massive flood-relief grants due to being prone to flood, take undue benefits of the policy by cashing on the grant even when the land is not flooded,by proving it flooded on paper by unfair means.

Manu Joseph,in a tweet recently pointed out that in winter,in India,we should change the epithet of the farmers from the “hands who feed us” to the “hands who choke us”,because their stubble-burnng tactic being one of the major causes of incredibly high levels of air pollution in the National Capital Region. Why shouldn’t the government take actions against these? Because they are farmers who are the “annadata” or the “Food-giver”.

A lot of protests plague the nation everytime a government introduces a land acquisition bill in the Assembly when it has farmers facing the axe though they are compensated in both monetary and other ways.

There is no argument that the majority of farmers are poor,but is it not the case that romantiscising agriculture,appeasing the farmers by making short term changes like a loan waiver,and dwelling in old times not trying to change the sectoral composition of population in agriculture.

We are no longer in the ’60s when the food was scarce,and we had to cut away forests and so for arable land. We are progressing,and so must are ways.

Instead of waiving off loans, can’t the government eliminate the middleman from the system which eats a lot of profit? Despite a lot of talk,none of it has been done successfully in most cases. Instead of pandering to populist and unrealistic demands of the farmers, can’t the government thrive for a change?

The society must also try to decrease romantiscising agriculture. No,the farmers shoudn’t get repetetive loan waivers. It isn’t as if the money is godsend,it has serious implications on the fiscal policy of the government. That money could have been used for a canal which could have turned the drought-hit areas of Vidarbha fertile. It could have been used for hospitals,schools and skill development training centres,so that the unemployed youth can get skills that can make him employable and bring a large-scale reform in India bringing crores of young able men to the production process.

Finally ,a post scriptum::No,this isn’t an attempt trying to antagonise farmers. Despite know it to be bad defence, but as a person from Bihar, a state heavily dependent on the agricultural sector,I would put forward that a lot of my family members are farmers and landholders. I have seen and heard about their toil from close quarters. The farmer of India is in legit bad condition,with droughts and other problems, but short-term appeasement goals and romanticiscing agriculture must go.

bangla, Etymology, history, india, language, niramish

“Aami Niramish Khabo”:How a culture speaks through its words

Amidst a non-Vegetarian Durga Puja feast in my locality in South Kolkata , I found a religious lady telling the organizers of the feast that she would eat vegetarian, “niramish” being the Bangla word for “vegetarian”. A couple of meters away, the linguist in me started tossing up the word in his mind,while munching on the cushy mutton meat.

A minute into the dissection of the word,I found an interesting and unique character of the Bangla word,” niramish ” ,parallel to the culture to which the word belongs. “niramish“, is a word formed by affixing the prefix “nir” to the word “amish“Which means non-vegetarian. So,the root is “amish” and ” niramish” is the affixated form. The principal noun here is “amish” or non-vegetarian and the affixation is “niramish” or vegetarian. This is a unique character of the Bangla language as most other Indian languages having affixated terms for meat-eater and non-meat eater have the word for non-meat eater as the principal noun, and the word-for meat-eater being the conjugate. For example,the word for vegetarian in Tamil is “caiva” and for non-vegetarian is “allata caiva“. the Malayalam word for vegetarian is “vejirreriyam” and for non-vegetarian is “nean-vejirreriyam” . This is also found in Indian English where “non-vegetarian” is a affixation of the principal noun “vegetarian”. Note that Non-vegetarian is a word of the Indian dialect of English and is relatively unheard in native-English countries.

After seeing this Linguistic Uniqueness of Bangla, let the Picture be zoomed out and observe the scene in the larger context. West Bengal,the homeland of Bangla, is primarily a state with culture where Non-vegetarianism isn’t ostracized a and is accepted with the 2nd largest number of Meat-eating percentage in any state of India . With the local Cultural values accepting meat-eating and no bar on eating meat even in Festivals like Navratri when most of North India practices Abstinence from meat, the Bangla counterpart for “Non-vegetarian” has earned a principal status in the Bangla Vocabulary pushing “vegetarian” counterpart to less importance.

Herein, due to large scale acceptance “amish” or non-vegetarian is the principal word and “niramish” the affixation. This is in the line of how most people in the State are non-vegetarians ,which makes the usage of “amish” or non-vegetarian very natural,it being a meat-eating culture.

This is how words serve only as transluscent windows to the culture of some place. If one goes by the logic of “non-vegetarian” and “Vegetarian“, one might end up mistaking Kerala for a Vegetarianism-based state,which it is not by any parameter . This is because words tell not the culture of present,but of the past when they were conceived. When the Malayalam was being conceived in ancient times, Malayali culture was prominently vegetarian,with Malayali festivals still ostracizing non-vegetarian food in their festive cuisine.

Languages and words are interesting ways to study culture and history,but are a slopy incline and hence must be handled with care. Chaos sets when,in the study, a lot of oversimplifications are made one over the another. The Infamous “Aryan Invasion Theory” finds its foundation in etymology and the connection of Sanskrit with familial languages like Latin of the west. Modern genetic studies and carbon dating are slowly eroding the theory away exposing fault lines in the lens of Language to study history.