Video Lecture Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMjJZjFH4Ek&t=38s
Sterlite fracas: Companies
can’t ignore human rights
Sudeep Chakravarti in Livemint
Here’s something about firing
from someone else’s shoulder. On 21 May in Thoothukudi, a fisheries, port
and industry hub in south-eastern Tamil Nadu, police shot dead 11
protesters and injured over 50. A crowd estimated at 20,000 was protesting the planned
expansion of Sterlite Industries Ltd’s copper smelter in the area, to
double production to 800,000 tonnes a year.
The facility, which runs a copper
refinery and also makes sulphuric and phosphoric acid, has remained shut
since end-March. Vedanta Resources Plc, Sterlite’s parent, admitted to
investors in early May that the plant did not possess “the consent to
operate”. Protesters led by Chennai-based environment and human
rights watchdogs, in conjunction with local communities, have
for long demanded closure of the plant. They cite toxic gas leaks, waste
polluting farmland and water bodies, and health issues among communities of
the area.
The local administration
claimed that protesters ignored orders banning their march, and became
violent, indulging in arson and stone-pelting. The police were compelled
to shoot. But why permit the situation to get so out of hand, and why
did outreach from Sterlite, by itself or in conjunction with the local
administration, to defuse the situation, either remain absent or amount
to little?
This is a case of a community
that has every right to protest and seek answers and redress, and a
business that has every right to do business according to the law of the
land—but, equally, ensure compliance with human rights. Especially as
protesters have always maintained they aren’t against industries, but against
hazardous ones with suspect practices. They protested in 2013 after an alleged
toxic gas leak from Sterlite’s plant. That year, the Supreme Court fined
Sterlite Rs100 crore for “such damages caused to the environment from 1997 to
2012 and for operating the plant without a valid renewal for a fairly
long period...”
The UN Global Compact, a
gathering of multilateral agencies, businesses and civil society groups to
which Vedanta is a signatory, details 10 principles that cover the heads
of human rights, labour, environment and corruption. Principle 2 urges
businesses to “make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses”.
And Principle 8, that businesses should “undertake initiatives to promote
greater environmental responsibility”.
Oslo-based Fafo Institute for
Applied International Studies has pleaded more emphatically: “The use of
disproportionate force by government or private security forces acting on
behalf of a company can create liabilities for the company itself,” the
institute maintained in a red-flag document. “These liabilities may arise
even where the actions of the security forces (for example, killing, beating,
abduction, rape) were neither ordered nor intended by the company.”
The escalating situation in
Thoothukudi underscores again India’s reality, where permitting
or overlooking use of force, usually applied by government as an extension
of corporate will, is commonplace. Moreover, it’s not the first time
a Vedanta operation has faced this taint. Vedanta’s bauxite refining and
aluminium smelting operation in Odisha’s Lanjigarh has been accused of
remaining aloof over repeated police excesses against local citizens and
protesters who have pointed out major pollution risks at the plant. Police have
also harassed and arrested tribal folk who declined, legally, to allow the
adjacent Niyamgiri Hills, their home and sacred lands, to be
mined by Vedanta for bauxite.
Investors have taken note. In May
2016, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global’s council on ethics wrote to
Tom Albanese, Vedanta’s CEO at the time, of its review of several Vedanta-owned
operations since 2007, the year it dumped Vedanta stock: “The Council has
assessed Sterlite Copper, Bharat Aluminium Company, Lanjigarh Alumina and
Konkola Copper Mines [in Zambia]. Following its assessment, the Council has
decided not to recommend the re-inclusion of Vedanta in the Government Pension
Fund Global’s investment universe. In the Council’s view, there continues
to be an unacceptable risk that your company will cause or contribute to severe
environmental damage and serious or systematic human rights violations.”
The events of 21 May in Thoothukudi will surely reach such observers.
Sudeep Chakravarti’s books
include Clear.Hold.Build: Hard Lessons of Business and Human Rights in
India, Red Sun and Highway 39. This column focuses on
conflict situations and the convergence of businesses and human rights and runs
on Thursdays
XXX
Thoothukudi firing: Entirely
preventable
24.05.18 TH Editorial
The protest against the copper
smelter plant of Sterlite Copper in Thoothukudi has witnessed its deadliest
turn so far, with the death
of 12 people in police firing. It was clear the movement would put up a
show of strength on May 22, the 100th day of this phase of protests — in fact,
the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court had predicted that it
was “likely to trigger a law and order situation” and declared that the
“protesters do not have any intention of conducting a peaceful protest”.
Yet, the Tamil Nadu government failed to gauge the intensity of what was
coming. It is a tragic irony that such an angry and violent demonstration could
have been staged at a time when the plant is not operational and after
the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board refused to renew
its consent to operate. It raises questions about the government’s
failure to drive this point home forcefully, and casts a doubt about the
real intent of some of the protesters, possibly a small section
comprising hardline groups. The immediate task is to compensate the
public for its losses and end the alienation of the affected
communities through talks. But the commission of inquiry headed by
retired judge Aruna Jagadeesan must examine why 12 lives were brutally snuffed
out, more specifically, the chilling accusation that snipers were deployed by
the police force to pick out protesters in a premeditated manner. Any police
response must be commensurate with the gravity of the situation; there is
no place for heavy-handedness and a disproportionate use of force.
The inquiry must establish who gave the orders to fire and on what basis. Also,
why the police failed to intervene well before the protest developed an angry
head of steam.
Sterlite stakes claim to
be India’s largest copper producer and is a major presence in Tamil
Nadu’s industrial mix. But it has had mixed fortunes over the two decades of
its production, including periods when it was under administrative orders of
closure, a ₹100-crore
fine imposed for pollution by the Supreme Court in 2013, and
consistent opposition from fishermen. Now, there is a fresh injunction
and the Madras High Court has restrained it from a proposed capacity expansion
plan. This, together with the decision to not renew consent for operation,
gives a moment for pause for all sides. An urgent process, such as an all-party
meeting, is needed to heal the wounds, and infuse confidence in the
community. A credible environmental audit should be undertaken,
without compromising on the ‘polluter pays’ principle. The TNPCB, which
usually scores poorly on transparency, should commission credible experts to
assess the quality of air and water in Thoothukudi. Only such verifiable
measures will build public confidence, and make orderly
industrialisation viable.
XXX
The Thoothukudi fables
08.06.18 TH OPINION
The Thoothukudi firings of May 22
have been read as linear narratives, as specific reports without possessing the
power of storytelling. The Thoothukudi violence needs a storyteller to capture
the eloquence, the poignancy of anecdotes. One has to see the fables not as
remote fragments, morsels of a marginal India, but as a microcosm of what is
happening everywhere. Thoothukudi has to be treated as an early warning system
for the emerging threats to Indian democracy.
Three tales
One cannot even begin with a
“once there was” because Thoothukudi is a collection of three tales. Time
determines the depth and level of story. It is, first, a tale that began over
20 years ago when the Sterlite plant shifted from Maharastra to Tamil
Nadu. It is also a tale that began 100 days before the firing, when
housewives, children and villagers created a community of protest which found
its one-lakh-strong epicentre at Thoothukudi. Yet the tale from Thoothukudi is
just over a fortnight old when we focus around the scandal of the firings.
TUTICORIN KILLINGS A SYMBOL OF
STATE TERROR? The euphemism of media reports is intriguing. They are generally
dubbed as shootings or firings, they are not called killings, blatant acts of
murder. The symbolism of a sniper and the needlessness of his violence no
longer belongs to the Gaza strip. Terror is at home in Thoothukudi and
elsewhere as state terror extends its tentacles world-wide.
Thoothukudi is global and local
in a different sense. It reflects the new conversation between a decade of oral
history, the complaints, the everyday gossip of people dying, of children
fainting in school, the moment when the eventless history of environmentalism
clashes with the trauma of the Internet. That the Internet was suspended in the
area after the killings makes one realise that it is not in Kashmir alone that
such events take place. Time becomes critical because suddenly the silence of
waiting, the epidemic of little prayers, the little protests around every
village combine to show that Sterlite is not just one company town but a state
of mind. It introduces us to the company towns of the mind, the new panopticons
which are spreading like dictatorships across the world. The ease with which
environmental tribunals and scientific laboratories are subverted needs to be
chronicled. Words such as sustainability or corporate social responsibility
become acts of hypocrisy, the new oxymorons of ethics created by a corporate
world indifferent to everyday suffering. As an ecologist friend of mine
observes, there are more protests outside the Vedanta office in London than in
India. It is almost as if patriotism and security are concepts designed to
protect corporate greed.
About Section 144
GROSS MISUSE OF SECTION 144: As a
fable, the events at Thoothukudi threaten the very fabric of democracy.
It is a strange democracy where people are suspect and hunted down. As a DIG
investigating Thoothukudi told me, “I have never seen a more cynical use of
Section 144.” What the police confronted
was a community of women and children carrying food, school bags. Instead
of facing a community in a democratic sense, the government created the myth
of outsiders as anti-socials. It is almost as if ordinary people are not
citizens but subjects to be continuously disempowered. It is evident now that police
went far beyond the area under Section 144 of the CrPC and killed people.
Yet our bureaucrats hide truth behind the norms of procedure, as if table
manners are more important than the truths of governance. The police
reportedly beating disabled people makes one wonder if barbarity is a part
of the new training, where every citizen is to be treated as a Naxal by
definition. The psychology of fear that they have created is the new model
of Section 144 where an old law and order project now becomes an effort to
create an ecology of fear, where every citizen is suspect by definition.
CONCEPTS OF ‘DEMOCRACY’ ‘PUBLIC’
‘CITIZEN’ NEED TO BE PRESERVED IN THEIR SANCTITY: In fact, it is around areas
like Thoothukudi that one has to write the new history of violence around the
body. The state of the body is symptomatic of the vulnerability of the body
politic. Ironically, it is the people who look for democracy, while the
state and Sterlite seek to subvert it. Words like ‘public and citizens’,
once anchors of the democratic imagination, now have become suspect words in
the new games of corporate life. Doctors who meet patients from Thoothukudi
villages complaining of cancer, skin diseases call these symptoms ‘Sterlite
symptoms’. In a similar way, we can talk of the symptoms of a ‘Sterlite
democracy’, a disease as debilitating as majoritarian authoritarianism. Yet
the answer to the death of democracy is a more intense democracy, stemming
from the inventiveness of the community. We have to understand it is
communities rather than movements which are resisting the regime, a fact that
the regime finds difficult to respect.
IMPORTANT ROLE THAT PROFESSIONS
LIKE LAW AND MEDICINE AS WELL AS CIVIL SOCIETY HAVE TO PLAY IN OUR DEMOCRACY:
Thoothukudi demonstrated this through the resilience of the bar and traders’
associations which worked day and night to get arrested people released. It
reminded one of what the sociologist Èmile Durkheim said in his
classic Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, that only the ethics
of professions like law and medicine can counter the rapacity of corporations
and the emptiness of the state. Thoothukudi proved this in ample measure.
It also demonstrated that civil society has to be an embedded part of
the new knowledge society. The reports of civil society have to become
testaments and testimonies for the emerging issues of democracy. For
example, the government inquiry commission, State Human Rights Commission or
National Human Rights Commission reports are unlikely to go beyond legal and
procedural issues. Civil society reports carry a wider burden and
responsibility, playing sociologist, ethicist, environmentalist and storyteller.
A civil society report on an act of violence has to relate law and order to law
and justice, and also to law and democracy, reflecting on knowledge and truth
in new ways. For example, experts should not be allowed to get away behind
esoteric language. A people’s sensorium of touch, taste, smell has to be
translated into science to create new warning signals. Thoothukudi showed
the importance of a people’s idea of knowledge to counter expert knowledge. In
fact, it suggests the importance of a people’s ombudsman to accompany so-called
expert committees.
Proactive citizenship
Yet such civil society reports
cover not just past and present. They are warning bells for the future. If one
juxtaposes the reports on Thoothukudi with the nuclear site at Koodankulam, one
senses the deep suspicion about proactive citizenship. Government attempts to
create the bogey of the outsider as antisocial, alien, intruder, missionary,
Christian are dangerous steps and need to be challenged. The citizen as a
person of knowledge must be seen as central to democracy. Only a proactive
citizenship and an experimentally open civil society can challenge, question
and domesticate the emerging “Sterlite democracies” as the new diseases of our
age. This then is the emerging fable of Thoothukudi.
Shiv Visvanathan is an
academic associated with the Compost Heap, a group in pursuit of alternative
ideas and imagination
XXX
Bloodstained copper
10.06.18 TW
Mallika, 42, is inconsolable.
Clad in a pink nightgown, with a thin dupatta around her neck, the mother of
three cries out in anger. For the past few days, she has been falling at the
feet of every policeman in sight, asking for the whereabouts of her elder son.
She runs up and down the stairs of the Thoothukudi Government Hospital, while
her daughter, 17, tries in vain to console her.
On May 22, protesters marched
towards collector N. Venkatesh’s office, demanding that the Sterlite Copper
smelting plant be shut down. Mallika’s younger son, 22-year-old Thangaraj (name
changed), was standing nearby, his interest piqued. Suddenly, he was shot in
his right leg. He fell into the crowd and was further injured during the
commotion. He was taken to the government hospital, and his family was
informed. His elder brother rushed to the hospital. However, as the brother was
wearing a black T-shirt, the police grew suspicious—protesters had been wearing
black—and he was taken into custody. It was a twin blow for Mallika. “I need
medical help for my younger son to get the bullet removed, and I want to know
the whereabouts of my elder son,” she says. “Which station is he at?”
The mother’s inner turmoil was
reflected on the streets. After 13 people were killed in police firing
on May
22 and 23, Thoothukudi resembled a war zone. The roads were littered with
remains of burnt
vehicles, broken barricades and chappals left behind in the
scramble for survival. The collector’s office fared worse. Barricades were
destroyed, stones littered the reception and the windows lay shattered.
Policemen stood guard on either side of the road that connects the collector’s
office to the government hospital, where the injured were admitted.
“We have lost peace and our
family, only to get rid of a private company that was contaminating our
environment,” says Bharath Anandhi, 37. “The water is dark yellow here. Every
week, there is at least one death in my locality because of cancer. Let Prime
Minister [Narendra] Modi come here to see us. Ask [Chief Minister] Edappadi
Palaniswami to come here and live among us for at least two days. They cannot.”
She then walks into a small lane behind the Our Lady of Snows Shrine Basilica
at Mini Sagayapuram. A lone black flag in front of the lane and small boards on
the lampposts mourn the death of a young girl. Snowlin Jekson, 17, was shot in
her face, during the march, on May 22 . She had led the protest from her
locality, about 10km away, to the collector’s office. “Did I get this beautiful
photo of my loving daughter just to show it to all of you like this?” asks
Vasanthi, 46, leaning on the shoulder of her husband, Jekson. He and son Godwin
were the only ones who saw Snowlin’s body before the family signed the
post-mortem consent form. “My daughter was shot in the neck,” says Jekson. “All
her teeth flew out. The police had noted her because she was vociferous [in her
criticism of] police atrocities and Sterlite. She was holding a black flag when
she died.”
The whole family—Vasanthi,
Jekson, Snowlin, Godwin, his wife and their eight-month-old child—went for the
protest. However, as they reached the collector’s office, the police apparently
used tear gas and let loose three oxen to disperse the crowd. Snowlin got
separated from her family. “The police did it on purpose,” says Vasanthi.
“Snowlin is dead now. They announced Rs 10 lakh as compensation, and have now
increased it to Rs 20 lakh. But, will it give me back my daughter? I shall give
this money to the people in the government. Will they die for the money?”
Snowlin would have soon started
college, and studied human rights and law to, in her words, help the people of
Thoothukudi reclaim their environment. The residents have for long complained
of several health hazards because of the Sterlite plant, which has been
operational for more than two decades. In recent years, according to experts,
more than 2,800 people have succumbed to cancer in Thoothukudi and surrounding
villages. “The water, air and soil are contaminated,” says Nityanand Jayaraman,
an environmental activist. “The iron content in the groundwater in
Kumareddiapuram and Therku Veerapandipuram, where the protests began, are 17 to
20 times higher than the permissible levels.”
In fact, more such data is to be
found in a 2008 report by the Tirunelveli Medical College, which studied the
health status within a 5km radius of the plant. “There is much proof for how
the copper smelter has ruined our lives over the years,” says 33-year-old S.
Selvi, a resident of nearby Anna Nagar, which saw riots a day after the march.
“My cousin is just 22. He died last week because of cancer in his eyes. It is
because of the water we drink and the air we breathe.”
Though people have been demanding
the plant’s closure for a long time, it was the deaths that catapulted the
issue to the national level. The question, however, was, who ordered the
shooting? FIRs filed by the police have revealed that three officials holding
the rank of deputy tehsildar—P. Sekar, M. Kannan and S. Chandran—gave the order
to open fire. According to Sekar, on whose complaint one of the three FIRs was
based, more than 10,000 people with weapons and petrol bombs were heading
towards the collectorate at 11am on May 22. They were vandalising public
property and disregarding police orders. “When they did not listen, I ordered
for tear gas shells to be used,” Sekar says in his complaint. “The crowd,
however, continued to be violent. They began attacking the police with
dangerous weapons and stones. So, I ordered firing in the air and then below
the knees.”
The FIRs, however, also revealed
how the district administration and the state intelligence failed to anticipate
such a mass protest. “There was a peace committee meeting (attended by members
of local organisations) a day before the protests,” says advocate E. Athisaya
Kumar, who was at the meeting. “The collector was absent. We only had
negotiations with the deputy collector and the district superintendent of
police. They didn’t give permission for the rally. But, we told them that the rally
would go on as planned.”
Interestingly, none of the FIRs
mentions any sections regarding the death of the 13 people. “They want to
establish that there was rioting, only to save the police when the inquiry
commission questions them,” says Justice K. Chandru, a former Madras High Court
judge. “Usually, the police get into action and then records are created to
support them. Same will be the case here.”
As per section 21 of the Code of
Criminal Procedure, the tehsildar is allowed to execute special powers as an
executive magistrate. But, the question is, why was the collector not available
to order the firing, when section 144 was in place?
However, the FIRs mention several
other sections regarding rioting, attempt to murder and criminal intimidation.
The protesters have also been booked under the Tamil Nadu Public Property
(Prevention of Damage and Loss) Act and the Explosive Substances Act. “The
narration in the FIR itself is untenable. When there is an encounter, you will
have to file a case under section 302 (punishment for murder),” says former
bureaucrat M.G. Devasahayam.
Henri Tiphagne, the executive
director of People’s Watch, an NGO, says the people took to stone pelting only
when the police began the lathi charge. “The people didn’t carry any dangerous
weapons. It is a fabricated FIR. We will challenge it in court,” he says.
While the administration is in
damage control mode, the hamlets in Thoothukudi are still simmering with rage.
At Terespuram, a fishing village near the city, every family is demanding
justice for Jhansi Jesubalan. The villagers allege that police shot the
47-year-old in the head when she came out from her daughter’s house in the
evening, on May 22. “She served lunch for me and my father,” says her son,
Paulraj, 19. “She went to give fish curry to my sister, who lives nearby. But,
she didn’t come back. Later, we heard that the police shot her from their van,
wrapped her body in a sheet and drove away. Her head was not there. We could
not identify the body. We identified her because of her mangalsutra.”
His father, Jesuraj, asks: “Will
the Rs 10 lakh or Rs 20 lakh bring back my wife?”
Interestingly, Jesubalan did not
even go for the protest. Villagers say she was shot to instil fear in the
locals. But, though there is reportedly pressure on the families from
government officials, Jesuraj has refused to sign the postmortem consent form.
Meanwhile, at Peikulam, near the
city, Masanam has not eaten since her son, Selva Sekar, 42, succumbed to
injuries at the Thoothukudi Government Hospital on May 23. “The revenue
officials have been calling me, pressuring us to sign the consent form,” says
M. Jayakumar, Selva Sekar’s cousin. “We want to wait till the court order. But,
the revenue inspector says the body is lying on the floor of the mortuary and
they cannot preserve it if the postmortem is not conducted. I fear that the
officials themselves will do the postmortem without our consent.”
Jayakumar was shocked when he
went to the government hospital’s mortuary. “[When] Sekar’s sister and I went [there],
the officials showed us three papers. One was the consent form, one was a plain
letter saying that we want to take the body for cremation after the postmortem,
and the last said that my cousin died in an accident. How can we accept this?”
Seeing their bewilderment at the
third letter, the officials apparently told them that they could take the body
by signing just the first two letters.
Amid all the tension, the
district administration lifted section 144 and the state government has issued
an order to close the plant. Collector Sandeep Nanduri, who replaced Venkatesh
after the protests, himself went with his team to seal the plant. Said DMK
working president M.K. Stalin: “I welcome this move by the government. But, the
[government should convene a] cabinet meeting and take a policy decision to
close the plant.”
The state government and the
Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board have responded positively to public concern
and pressure. However, it is being said that the government order is not
legally watertight. It mainly endorsed recent TNPCB orders, in which the board
refused to renew the Sterlite plant’s licence and called for a shutdown of the
plant. “The TNPCB has to come out with much stronger reasons to shut down the
plant,” says Jayaraman. “But, the TNPCB will not do it as they will be pulled
up in court. Pointing to certain violations will raise questions about the
TNPCB’s own complicity in allowing those violations. The TNPCB is also guilty.
The state government, in order to save itself, needs to detach itself from the
TNPCB and those legal violations and take a cabinet decision.”
The plant has been shut down for
now. The injured—more than 170—are being treated and the families of the 13 who
died have been promised compensation. However, the district administration has
still not released the exact number of the injured. Reportedly, some of them
have been transferred to public health centres in villages near Thoothukudi, to
Tirunelveli and also to Madurai. Locals suspect the number of dead to be more
than 20. “They brought in 21 bodies to the hospital on May 22,” says a female
staff member at the government hospital mortuary. “But, I don’t know if all of
them were riot victims.”
XXX
Smelts like team spirit
The Congress and the BJP are
blaming each other for giving environmental clearance to the controversial
copper smelting plant owned by Sterlite Industries in Thoothukudi. But, the two
parties are on the same page when it comes to receiving funding from the
Vedanta group and its twin subsidiaries—Sterlite and Sesa. Vedanta’s charm was
such that, in 2013, both the BJP and the Congress argued together in the Delhi
High Court to continue receiving funding from Sterlite and Sesa.
Records with the Union home
ministry show that Sterlite and Sesa are registered in India under the Companies
Act, 1956. More than 50 per cent of their issued share capital is held by Vedanta
Resources PLC, a company incorporated under the UK’s Companies Act, 1985 , and
registered in England and Wales under registration number Rs 4740415. The controlling
stake of more than 50 per cent is held by Anil Agarwal, an Indian citizen.
The Congress and the BJP had
cited Agarwal’s stake to argue that Vedanta was not a ‘foreign company’ as
defined by section 591 of India’s Companies Act, and that neither Vedanta nor
its subsidiaries can be treated as a ‘foreign source’ within the ambit of the
Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 1976.
The legal tussle began after the
Association for Democratic Reforms, represented by advocates Prashant Bhushan
and Pranav Sachdeva, petitioned the High Court asserting that both the Congress
and the BJP had violated the Representation of People Act, 1951, which
prohibits political parties from accepting donations from government companies
and foreign sources. The primary issue in the public interest litigation was
the contribution made by two government companies to the Congress. But, it also
saw the Congress and the BJP coming together to defend the legality of
donations they had received from Sterlite and Sesa.
In March 2014, the High Court
concluded that both parties had flouted FCRA provisions, and directed the
Election Commission and the Union home ministry to “relook and reappraise the
receipts of political parties” to identify foreign donations and take action in
six months.
K.C. Mittal, the Congress’s
counsel in the case, said an appeal against the verdict had been filed in the
Supreme Court. He said Vedanta was not a “foreign source”, as an Indian citizen
held controlling stake. “Since Vedanta is not a foreign company, its subsidiaries—Sterlite
and Sesa—cannot also be construed as a foreign source. The PIL was baseless,”
he said.
Delhi High Court lawyer Parth
Goswami, however, said the High Court verdict was correct, as far as
interpreting FCRA provisions was concerned. “The High Court even considered
parliamentary debates in order to understand the true intent of the legislature
in formulating the Act, before coming to its conclusion and holding that the
respondents had fallen foul of the ban imposed under it,” he said.
Vedanta’s donations to the BJP
and the Congress have been spared legal scrutiny only recently. In 2016, the
finance ministry under Arun Jaitley moved amendments in the Finance Bill to
bring changes to the FCRA. The changes tweaked the definition of what constitutes
a foreign company, in a way that political parties were not liable to undergo
scrutiny for receiving donations from 2010 onwards.
It had the Association for
Demo-cratic Reforms accusing the Union home ministry of not adhering to the
High Court directions. So, the government took the next step. In February this
year, it amended the FCRA through the 2018 Finance Bill. The changed law, which
has retrospective effect, legalises all donations received by the BJP and the
Congress from Vedanta.
XXX
The changing nature of violence
15.06.18 TH OPINION
CHANGING NATURE OF PROTESTS AND
VIOLENCE REQUIRE DIFFERENT RESPONSE: Events in Thoothukudi on May 22 and 23
have helped turn the spotlight on the changing nature of violence, and the
inadequacy of existing rules and procedures to deal with new-era protests.
This should be instructive, for new-era protests are redefining the internal
security landscape. At present no one, the courts of judicature included,
seems to understand the shifting taxonomy of violence.
Industry vs. environment
BHOPAL, KANPUR, GOA &
THOOTHUKUDI: Current challenges to order are multifaceted. Thoothukudi is yet
another incident in the expanding saga of industry versus the environment.
This segment embraces pollution issues, from Sterlite’s copper smelters in
Thoothukudi to the tanneries spewing effluents in Kanpur, to the iron mines in
Goa today. The mother of all environmental tragedies remains the Bhopal
Gas Tragedy of 1984.
AXIS OF VIOLENCE:
CASTE/RAPES/ETHNIC/LIFESTYLE/ECONOMIC: Added to this list are the escalating
violence resulting from caste conflicts — including the most recent Dalit
uprising; farmers’ woes across the country; the rape of young women and
children; issues revolving around tradition versus modernity; the
outsider versus insider syndrome, especially in the Northeast — and
we have an unfolding vista of incessant conflict and violence. The issues
involved in each of them are highly complex and need careful attention.
VIOLENCE IN THOOTHUKUDI WAS
EXCEPTIONAL FOR THE KIND OF PROTEST AND SUDDEN SPURT IN VIOLENCE ON 100TH
DAY: Reverting to the violence in Thoothukudi, resulting in at least three
police firings and the death of over a dozen individuals, there remain many
unanswered questions. The number of deaths in the police firing were
unusually high for a situation of this kind, but no one has definitively
disputed that the firing did not take place according to prescribed law and
order procedures. References to intelligence failure and police excesses are
inevitable in a situation of this kind, but do not answer the question of how
peace could be maintained for 99 days, and it was the march to the Thoothukudi
Collectorate on the 100th day that seemed to have triggered widespread violence.
In instances of this kind, it is
vital to try to determine the actual trigger that led to the violence. For
instance, in the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape case, it was the ‘unsynchronised
eruption of simmering anger’ which seemed to have been the tipping point. A
mere reference to failure of intelligence, the usual litany of charges against
the administration, or to excessive use of force by the police is inadequate to
explain the turn of events in Thoothukudi. The official version of the events
on May 22, including that all procedures had been followed and that the orders
to open fire were issued by empowered magistrates, have been openly challenged
by the protesters. No answers are forthcoming as to what actually happened or
transpired.
The widest gap separating the
official version from that of the public is about the presence/absence of
‘agent provocateurs’ among the protesters. The official version highlights the
role of such elements; the administration has identified quite a few such
elements, some of whom reportedly belong to known militant outfits. However,
reports of the presence of outsiders have been totally rejected by the
protesters. It is no secret that many of today’s large-scale protests across
the country are prompted by militant elements from outside, who are
pre-programmed to create chaos.
NATURE OF PROTESTS –
ALL-EMBRACING, LEADERLESS, DEEP SUSPISCION OF ADMINISTRATION: The Sterlite
story is hardly unique. There are many parallels available, some that have an
even longer gestation period. The qualitative difference from the past is that protests
today are beginning to embrace entire communities. Agitations also tend more
and more to be ‘leaderless’. This is both a strength and weakness. Governments
and even tribunals are today viewed by protesters with deep suspicion,
limiting opportunities for adjudication. Contrary judgments at different
times by the High Courts and the Supreme Court have hardly helped.
WHEN AREA OF PROTEST WIDENED AND
RANKS WERE SWELLED BY MILITANTS, NATURE OF PROTEST TRANSMUTED: There could be
many possible explanations for the unbridled violence on May 22. One could be
that as long as the agitation was confined to a limited area, it was
easy to contain it. It was when the agitation on the 100th day moved beyond
this arc that the character of the protests seemed to change. The likely additions
to the initial ranks of protesters, of militants espousing different causes,
appear to have led to a transmutation of the character of the movement and
altered its trajectory. This is a phenomenon seen in other protest movements
elsewhere as well.
Age of repressed anger
ARE THESE REVOLTS AN EXPRESSION
OF REPRESSED ANGST? This is the age of ‘high voltage’ revolt, basically an
expression of repressed anger. Much of this arises from an “embedded
wisdom” that the system is being “manipulated” in favour of the
rich, the powerful, and the big multinationals. This is something that is not
confined to India alone. It is not uncommon, even in the U.S., to hear
accusations against big business of creating an economy built on deals,
employing exotic and risky financial instruments, separating those taking risk
from those who would bear consequences, etc. Government regulatory agencies
often tend to be overwhelmed by the phalanx of lawyers that the big
multinationals can throw at them, challenging and delaying for years on end
decisions, especially when they believe that the verdict would go against them.
With several hundreds of workers now thrown out of work following the
closure of the Sterlite factory, the danger is that they could become new nodes
for instigating fresh rounds of violence. This is an aspect that will need
to be closely watched.
PROTESTS INITIATED WITH BENIGN
OBJECTIVES AND ORGANISATIONS GET TAKEN OVER BY MILITANT ELEMENTS: In Thoothukudi,
the revolt was against Sterlite and its so-called disdain for the environment
and the suffering of the locals. Far away in Bhangar, West Bengal, just
a few miles away from Kolkata, for months villagers have been up in arms
against a power grid project for which land had been acquired many years
ago. The conditions may be different, but the opposition remains equally
intense. In both instances, we see organisations genuinely interested in the
welfare of the locals initially launching the agitations, which gradually tend
to be taken over by extreme right-wing and left-wing organisations. The
result remains the same: widespread disruption.
POLICE NEEDS TO BE WARY OF
METASTASIS CATALYSED BY SOCIAL MEDIA: It is possible that the initial peaceful
nature of the protests lulled the authorities into believing that matters were
well under control. What they failed to understand was the metastasising
nature of the protests and signs of the growing revolt of an ‘underclass’
against the so-called ‘elite’. The police also do not seem to have taken
into consideration the kind of impetus provided to agitational methodologies by
the ‘digital wave’.
Unfortunately, even now the
authorities tend to be look at current agitations through simple equations.
They remain prisoners to Newton’s Third Law. This is no longer a valid
proposition. Physics today incorporates quantum mechanics which describes a
micro-world of uncertainty and ambiguity. This is harder to measure. The same
applies to the current world of agitations. Outdated ideas can no longer explain
the complex nature of today’s agitations.
This qualitative difference has
not filtered down enough to effect changes in administrative policies and
police methodologies. The latter consequently find themselves severely
handicapped in handling agitations, especially those agitations sponsored by
today’s newest ‘elite’, viz. the middle class.
Police effectiveness
Advice from old-timers in the
police on how to manage today’s crowds, including the erection of barricades
and promulgation of Section 144, have little relevance in the circumstances
prevailing today. Police effectiveness is also hampered on account of several
other reasons, including that they are often outnumbered by mobilised crowds,
driven by indignation and rage, predisposed towards creating disorder. The
police on their part need to realise that existing laws and procedures
notwithstanding, merely putting faith and focus on strength is not likely to
succeed. It ignores the asymmetrical measures available to today’s mobs,
and the limits that these impose on tactics and policies of a bygone era.
One final word — whenever
situations of this kind arise, there are a spate of reports regarding revamping
intelligence and introduction of new methods to overcome the lacunae in
intelligence collection. These are equally unlikely to succeed, unless the
police strengthen their ‘contextual’ intelligence to deal with today’s
situations. This involves anticipating the meaning of ‘street power’ –
enhanced by information technology and the presence of flash mobs. New
‘smart tactics’ have to be developed. Simply blaming the police is no answer
to the growing volumes of protests everywhere.
M.K. Narayanan is a former
National Security Advisor and former Governor of West Bengal
xxx
2016 SC Judgement
The Bench observed that holding
peaceful demonstration in order to air their grievances and to see
that their
voice is heard in the relevant quarters is the right of the people.
Such a right can be traced to the
fundamental freedom that is guaranteed under Articles 19(1)(a), 19(1)(b) and
19(1)(c) of the Constitution.
Article 19(1)(a) confers freedom
of speech to the citizens of this country and, thus, this provision ensures
that the petitioners could raise slogan, albeit in a peaceful and orderly
manner, without using offensive language.
Article 19(1)(b) confers the
right to assemble and, thus, guarantees that all citizens have the right to
assemble peacefully and without arms.
A distinguishing feature of any
democracy is the space offered for legitimate dissent. One cherished and
valuable aspect of political life in India is a tradition to express grievances
through direct action or peaceful protest.
Organised, non-violent protest
marches were a key weapon in the struggle for independence, and the right to
peaceful protest is now recognised as a fundamental right in the Constitution.
It is unfortunate that more often
than not, such protestors take to hooliganism, vandalism and even destroy
public / private property.
“Unruly groups and violent
demonstrations are so common that people have become to see them as an
appendage of Indian democracy. All these situations frequently result in police
using force. This in turn exacerbates public anger against the police. In
Kashmir itself there have been numerous instances where separatist groups have
provoked violence. In this scenario, task of the police and law enforcing
agencies becomes more difficult and delicate. In curbing such violence or
dispersing unlawful assemblies, police has to accomplish its task with utmost
care, deftness and precision. Thus, on the one hand, law and order needs to be
restored and at the same time, it is also to be ensured that unnecessary force
or the force beyond what is absolutely essential is not used. Policemen are
required to undergo special training to deal with these situations. Many times
the situations turn ugly or go out of control because of lack of sufficient
training to the police personnel to deal with violence and challenges to their
authority.”
However, in those situations
where crowd or assembly becomes violent it may necessitate and justify using
reasonable police force.
However, it becomes a more
serious problem when taking recourse to such an action, police indulges in
excesses and crosses the limit by using excessive force thereby becoming
barbaric or by not halting even after controlling the situation and continuing
its tirade. This results in violation of human rights and human dignity. That
is the reason that human rights activists feel that police frequently abuses
its power to use force and that becomes a serious threat to the rule of law”,
it added.
Xxx
Importance of Protests:
People realise that they are not
alone
By protesting, we alter the
agenda and start a debate
In an electoral democracy,
protest provides an essential voice for minority groups
Historically, protests have often
inspired positive social change and the advancement of human rights, and they
continue to help define and protect civic space in all parts of the world.
Highlighting that the right to
protest embodies the exercise of a number of indivisible, interdependent and
interconnected human rights, in particular the rights to freedom of expression,
freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, the right to take part in the
conduct of public affairs
Xxx
On October 31, 1570, Martin
Luther nailed on the door of a church in Germany 95 objections to the Catholic
faith that led to the emergence of Protestanism.
Galileo Galilei challenged the
Church by stating that the Earth and other planets revolve round the Sun. He
died under house arrest.
India’s independence movement led
by Gandhiji was a result of repeated protests.
Right to Information Act
Nirbhaya Fund
Ordinance making child rapes an
offence punishable by Death penalty
Xxx
Why Growth Rate should not become
a reason to suppress dissent and protest?
Our experience of high growth
rate in some recent years has by no means been satisfactory, for it has barely
touched the bottom 80 per cent of our population and has vastly increased the
economic gap between the top 20 and bottom 80 per cent.
So if a Dam, or Nuclear Plant, or
a Smelting Plant, or a Mine is against the interests of local community, and
the local community thinks that cost benefit analysis is adverse for them –
they have a right to protest. In this case it becomes the duty of government to
satisfy all stake-holders.
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