News Alerts – India

This Series of papers on India’s path to full health coverage reveals that a failing health system is perhaps India’s greatest predicament. The papers in this Series reveal the full extent of opportunities and difficulties in Indian healthcare, by…

Dhananjay Rai Relationship of dalits and globalization has been construed in many ways. This paper proposes that interpretations centring on mere economism have profoundly eclipsed various facets of this relationship. ‘Economic’ construal entails that not only defenders of globalization…

The life sentence handed down to Binayak Sen by a Chhattisgarh trial court on Friday is so over the top and outrageous that it calls into question the fundamentals of the Indian justice system. The trial judge shocked the conscience of the nation by finding the eminent doctor and rights activist guilty of sedition and conspiring to wage war against the state under Sections 120(B) and 124(A) of the Indian Penal Code, Sections 8(1), (2), (3), and (5) of the draconian Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, and Section 39 (2) of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (as amended in 2004). The fact that the Chhattisgarh police’s case against Dr. Sen consisted of pretty thin material was taken into the realm of the absurd by the public prosecutor tying himself in knots in an attempt to burnish the doctor’s alleged sins. So it was that an innocuous email message sent by his wife, Ilina, to the director of the Indian Social Institute — a Delhi-based institution which happens to share an acronym with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate — got converted into “suspicious communication” with the dreaded “ISI.” Another email referring to an occupant of the White House as a “chimpanzee” was introduced by the prosecutor as evidence of the kind of “code language” terrorists resort to. But tragically, it is the Chhattisgarh police that have had the last laugh in this round.

An Indian court Friday is scheduled to deliver a verdict in the trial of Binayak Sen, a doctor accused of aiding India’s Maoists in a closely watched case that activists have labeled a referendum on whether India, the world’s largest democracy, supports human rights or squashes them in the name of national security.

Dr. Sen was arrested in May 2007 in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, which in the last decade has become a center for India’s Maoist rebels, locally known as Naxalites. The insurgency, which began in a village called Naxalbari in the eastern state of West Bengal in 1967, seeks to overthrow the Indian government in a bid to present a communist paradigm of development. The rebels have attracted support by playing up local grievances such a lack of school and health facilities and the perceived abuse of land rights in the name of industrialization.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said Naxalism is the single largest threat to India’s internal security. The government’s approach at the national and state levels has been to counter the insurgency with a two-pronged strategy of police mobilization and infrastructure development.

A joint meeting of human rights activists and delegates of civil liberties organisations today sought the Centre’s intervention for release of rights campaigner and doctor Binayak Sen who has been sentenced to life for sedition.A resolution adopted at the meeting, organised here by People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), said Sen had been fighting for the well-being of scheduled tribes in Chhattisgarh.

But he had been charged with sedition and awarded life term by a Raipur court, it said.

“This is utterly unacceptable and the leader should be released unconditionally and the Centre should intervene in the matter,” the activists said.

Amnesty International has urged authorities in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir to release a 14-year-old child who has been detained without charge or trial for seven months, for allegedly taking part in anti-government protests.

The authorities claim that Mushtag Ahmad Sheikh was part of a large crowd which threw stones at police and security forces in the state capital Srinagar in April, as part of the ongoing unrest in Kashmir.

Police say that Mushtag Ahmad Sheikh is 19-years-old but his family claim that he was born in 1996 and is 14-years-old. Prison records reportedly confirm that he is a child.

AARTI DHAR Eight Indian States are home to 421 million multidimensionally poor people, more than the figure of 410 million in 26 poorest African countries. The Multidimensional Poverty Index — which identifies serious simultaneous deprivations in health, education and…

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission

The argument between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan concerning Kashmir during the UN General Assembly debate exposes the lack of respect both these governments entertain for their people, particularly to those living in Kashmir and for international human rights norms. Pakistan, as a member state of the UN has every right to publically point fingers at its neighbour, India, concerning human rights abuses committed by India in Kashmir. So has India a right to highlight the accuser’s appalling human rights standards in reply.

Accusation and counter accusation will not help to ameliorate the current situation of Kashmiris living on both sides of the border. To say the least, the debate only resulted in the folly of the pot calling the kettle black. Unfortunately it is at the expense of the taxpayers’ money. It is anybody’s guess what these ministers could achieve by holding a bilateral discussion in New York, though it is certain that the meeting will do nothing to end the ongoing violence in Kashmir, irrespective of which side of the international border it is committed.

R. RAMAKUMAR

The UID project has both ‘security’ and ‘developmental’ dimensions. The former leads to an invasive state; the latter leaves us with a retreating state.

Is identity the “missing link” in India’s efforts to rise as an “inclusive” economic superpower? Can an identity-linked and technology-based solution change the face of governance in India? Given the euphoria around the Unique Identification (UID) project, one is tempted to believe so. However, a careful look at the project would show that the euphoria is just hyperbole; only the politically naïve can afford to ignore the far-reaching implications of this Orwellian project.

One can summarise the criticisms of the UID project under four heads. First, the project would necessarily entail the violation of privacy and civil liberties of people. Second, it remains unclear whether biometric technology — the cornerstone of the project – is capable of the gigantic task of de-duplication. The Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) “Biometrics Standards Committee” has noted that retaining biometric efficiency for a database of more than one billion persons “has not been adequately analysed” and the problem of fingerprint quality in India “has not been studied in depth”. Third, there has been no cost-benefit analysis or feasibility report for the project till now.Finally, the purported benefits of the project in the social sector, such as in the Public Distribution System (PDS), are largely illusive. The problem of duplicate ration cards is often hugely exaggerated. Even so, some States have largely eliminated duplicate ration cards using “lower” technologies like hologram-enabled ration cards.