V-C to be Probed After Arunachal State Seeks Removal

By Anubhuti Vishnoi

New Delhi, Jun 8 : The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has set up a committee to probe allegations against the vice-chancellor of a central university in Arunachal Pradesh, after the state government requested he be removed.

Prof K C Beliappa, the vice-chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi University in Itanagar, was arrested late last month on account of the charges and is now out on bail.

Beliappa has been accused of sending sexually explicit and abusive e-mails to a female colleague. Inefficiency, autocratic behavior, immoral conduct and drunkenness are other allegations leveled against him.

Arunachal has said Beliappa’s “gross misconduct” is embarrassing and is also bringing disrepute to the varsity and V-C’s office. Beliappa, now in Delhi, was appointed when the varsity was given central status in 2007. Rejecting allegations, he claims, he requested the HRD Ministry to set up a fact-finding committee, which they did.

This January angry students beat Beliappa with rods. With the student unions demanding his ouster, Beliappa has since then largely been confined to his residence. He claims “powerful people” in the state are conspiring against him and also passing illegal orders and making appointments in contravention of UGC rules.

“I am being targeted. The violence is being funded by some powerful people in the state,” Beliappa said, adding he saw no point in returning even though his term ends in 2012.

“My mobile was stolen by some students and sexually explicit messages sent to people. It is true that I received a sexually explicit mail from a female colleague... I did not know then that her account was hacked, so in the heat of the moment I responded in anger and it led to my arrest,” Beliappa said.

Indian Govt Aid to Uplift Northeast India’s Poor

New Delhi, Jun 8 : The rural development ministry Monday released aid to four northeastern states under a government scheme that aims to organize the rural poor into self-help groups and ultimately raise them above the poverty line.

The four northeastern states to which aid has been released are Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura.

‘The self-help group approach of the centrally-sponsored Swarnjayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana helps the poor build self-confidence through community action. Interactions in group meetings and collective decision-making enables them in identification and prioritization of their needs and resources,’ an official statement said.

‘This process would ultimately lead to the strengthening and socio-economic empowerment of the rural poor as well as improve their collective bargaining power,’ it added.

Under the first installment, the ministry released Rs.12,046,000 to eight districts of Arunachal Pradesh for the financial year 2010-11, the statement said.

For the state of Meghalaya, Rs.13,788,000 was released for three districts. The aid, the statement said will be disbursed to the respective district rural development agencies.

The ministry released grant in aid worth Rs.23,096,000 for nine districts of Nagaland and for Tripura’s four districts, Rs.65,310,000 was released.

Manipur Govt Declares 2 Naga Leaders as Wanted For Imposing Blockade

Imphal, Jun 8 : The Manipur government today declared two leaders of Naga frontal organizations as 'wanted' persons with a cash reward of Rs one lakh each for their arrest.

Director General of Police Y Joykumar here said as per decision of the state Home Department, the police declared two persons as wanted with cash awards for their arrest or providing information leading to their arrest.

David Charo(38), acting president of All Naga Students' Association, Manipur(ANSAM), and Samson Remmei(50), acting president of United Naga Council (UNC), were declared as the wanted persons. The DGP said the information had been made public so that the people might provide assistance in arresting the two persons.

The ANSAM has been imposing indefinite economic blockade since April 11 last on the highways of Manipur, opposing holding of Autonomous District Council elections in hill areas.

Muivah Heads to New Delhi For Talks

By Sujit Chakraborty

New Delhi, Jun 8 : The Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland(Isak Muivah) general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah has finally given up his mission to visit his birth place, Somdal in Ukhrul district and left Nagaland for New Delhi to participate in another round of peace talks with the centre's interlocutor R S Pandey.

The fresh round of talks are likely to be held later this week or early next week.

According to NSCN-IM sources in Nagaland, 'this time, talks are progressing well. Most of the issues are almost resolved. The ticklish item like the incorporation of Naga areas of neighbouring states is, however, yet to be resolved.

In his last meeting with Mr R S Pandey in Kohima, Mr Muivah had pointed out that 'although I understand Centre's limitations on this burning issue, a decision can not be imposed upon the Nagas.'

Pandey also admitted that this issue was discussed with Muivah, but no progress has been made on this particular issue. He also reiterated that Manipur state's boundary would not be redrawn.

While Muivah and his men are making all possible efforts to organize meetings and rallies to mobilize support for Muivah in Nagaland, and other Naga inhabited areas, the NSCN(K) faction led by S S Khaplang and general secretary Khitobi, ridiculed and criticized Muivah's rigid stand on visiting his birth place Somdal and not asking for the formation of a 'greater Nagalim.'

Meanwhile, the Union Home Secretary G K Pillai, talking to rediff.com, indicated that the 55-day long economic blocade might be withdrawn by next week.

Only two days earlier, Pillai stated in Shillong that 'the centre will come out with heavy hand and take stern action against those who are organizing economic blockade on the national highways in Manipur, if the concerned state governments of Nagaland and Manipur fail to work out a solution soon.'

It is reliably learnt that the Nagaland government and Naga elders including village Council leaders and various NGOs are trying to influence on the United Naga Council of Manipur to withdraw the blockade at the earliest.

Activists Dig Out Climate Policy Gaps With India's Right to Information Act

A rickshaw puller wades through a flooded road after heavy rains in the northeastern Indian city of Guwahati on June 4, 2010. Activists in India are using the country's landmark Right to Information Act to get access to details on the country's policies on climate change. REUTERS/Utpal Baruah

By Teresa Rehman

Guwahati, Jun 8 : Climate activists in India have discovered a crucial tool in their battle to hold the government accountable on its climate policies: the country's landmark Right to Information (RTI) Act.

Passed in 2005, the act requires all government bodies to respond to citizen requests for information within 30 days. Many bodies, threatened with legal action after initially failing to respond, are now delivering information that shows big gaps in the country's knowledge and planning on climate issues, activists say.

"RTI is an excellent tool for a citizen and India has one of the most powerful freedom of information acts in the world," said Manu Sharma, a climate activist who filed 124 of the requests last year and is now getting answers.

Sharma in 2008 launched Climate Revolution, a non-profit organization that aims "to see India adopt reduction in greenhouse gas concentration as the overriding central goal from which all internal development and growth policies...originate."

ACCESSING INFORMATION

But getting basic information on government initiatives on climate change proved a struggle. That led Sharma to the Right to Information Act, which he used last October and November to file requests with a variety of government agencies, particularly the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the prime minister's office, the Ministry of Power, and the Planning Commission.

Under the act, all government ministries, departments and institutions are required to store information in a manner that makes it easily accessible. Any citizen of India can seek any information available from a public authority with few exemptions. Even in the case of an exemption, the authority must provide the information if its disclosure is in the greater public interest.

On receipt of an application, the public authority must reply within 30 days or transfer the application to another concerned authority within five days if the request does not concern its own department. If it fails to reply within the stipulated period or its answer is unsatisfactory, an appeal can be filed through an internal appeals body at that agency.

If that fails, a second appeal can be filed with a provincial Chief Information Commissioner (CIC). The office of the CIC has powers equivalent to a civil court, and can summon witnesses, order an enquiry, punish the offending officers and award compensation.

Since being passed, the act has been used by citizens as well as activists throughout the country to get information on a wide range of issues, from scarcity of medicines in a government hospital to misuse of government vehicles.

Sharma's requests covered a wide range of subjects, including climate policy, emissions levels, energy efficiency, spending on nuclear power and renewable energy, dissemination of scientific knowledge about climate change within the government and public awareness about climate issues.

EXCELLENT REPLY RATE A SURPRISE

He was happily surprised at the reply rate. While many agencies responded to his requests only after he filed a first appeal, he eventually received responses to about 95 percent of his filings, he said.

The bulk of the replies were received within about two to three months of filing applications and following them up with appeals, he said.

The contents of the replies was another matter. The first instinct of most government departments is to try and evade a detailed reply, especially if the application poses an embarrassing question, Sharma said. The prime minister's office forwarded most of the applications it received to the Ministry of Environment and Forests, even though the prime minister himself chairs the national council on climate change and has a major role in shaping climate policy, the activist said.

Other times, his questions were answered, even though the answers could be seen as embarrassing for the government.

The responses "reveal a government ignorant of the state of climate science, ill-prepared to face resource depletion, unwilling to act as science demands, unconcerned about public safety, unable to determine the right developmental priorities, and ill-prepared to defend its own claims," he charged.

His organization has used the material to issue press releases highlighting areas in which they judge the government's response to the challenges of climate change seriously deficient.

MATERIAL SHOWS POLICY GAPS

One Right to Information application, for instance, revealed that no process exists within the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the prime minister's office to identify, prioritise and pass on new scientific knowledge about climate change to the heads of the two institutions, which play the most significant role in determining India's climate policy.

"A list of notable scientific literature, analyses and climate anomalies ...provided to the ministry of Environment and Forests have not only not been acted upon but ... even find no mention in the records of the ministry," Sharma said.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests also admitted in one of its replies that no evaluation has been carried out of how well members of parliament and bureaucrats perceive the science and urgency of climate change. Nor has there been any capacity building programme for members of parliament and bureaucrats on the subject, he said.

Sharma feels that if the government of a nation as large as India is ignorant of climate science to the extent revealed by his information requests, it cannot hope to effectively address the problem. This ignorance and denial poses a danger to Indian citizens and to people elsewhere, Sharma said.

He pointed to the fact that information applications he made seeking copies of briefs given to Indian negotiators at international climate negotiations, and reports submitted by them to the prime minister's office, have been rejected by the government.

Filed with the prime minister's office and forwarded to the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the requests have been rejected on the ground that the disclosures "may affect the scientific and economic interests of the country."

"Lack of transparency in the international and national climate policy formation process signifies that government is hiding information which could be embarrassing if released," Sharma said.

Right to Information Act authorities call the act an "important tool" for Indian citizens trying to hold government accountable.

"We expect more and more people to use RTI to get information from government departments on pertinent issues like climate change," said D.N. Dutt, Assam province's Chief Information Commissioner. "RTI is an important tool even to bring certain issues to the notice of the government. Citizens should make the best use of it and we are there to help them."

Teresa Rehman is a journalist based in Northeast India. She can be reached at www.teresarehman.net

We Need Arundhati Roy Like a Hole in The Head

By Nandini Krishnan

I would begin with a quote if I cared for Arundhati Roy’s speeches or fifty-page essays. But I don’t.

Unfortunately, a lot of people do.

Even more sadly, they believe the approval of someone who is in the public eye counts as universal validation of their actions.

More than a decade after her first (and probably last) novel received a Booker for exotifying India, Roy is more famous for her anti-government activism than anything else - be it declaring independence from India, defending militancy and terrorism in Kashmir or sympathising with Maoist violence.

“I am on this side of the line. I do not care…pick me up, put me in jail,” she declared boldly, referring to her espousal of the Naxal cause, at a lecture organised by the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights last week.

Yeah, right - jail another self-proclaimed activist and stir up a storm of support in the media, which is at present largely disgruntled with her rants.

She has been forced to backtrack on several comments and issue clarifications like “I never called them ‘Gandhians with Guns’. What I meant was…” and “while 99 per cent of Naxals are tribals, 99 per cent of tribals are not Maoists”.

This from the woman who saluted the ‘people of Dantewada’ after 76 CRPF and police personnel were ambushed and killed by Red Rebels. 

Did she stop to think that these 76 men were risking their lives and making do with terrible conditions for a monthly salary that those of us who have the privilege of access to forums of expression might very well blow up on a few dinners? That these men defending the country’s land are not agents of the industries that mint money from the projects they run on this land?
What people like Arundhati Roy and Mahasweta Devi, who have marketed themselves well enough to find an audience wherever they go, often forget is that anger - their own and that of the people they erect pedestals for - can be misdirected.

The innocuously named People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA) is being increasingly associated with activity of this kind. Sources from investigation agencies have spoken about their likely involvement in the Gyaneshwari Express derailment that killed 150 people on May 28.

Media reports quoted PCPA doing an "oopsy-daisy!", saying their intention was to derail a goods train and not murder people. Maoists claimed they were attacking the state apparatus (twenty Special Police Officers) when they blew up a passenger bus in Dantewada on May 17.

Resentment against the government has been finding an outlet in the torture and death of citizens of this country, whose only crime is that they haven’t joined a band of guerrillas. Or that they don’t like them.
They’ve beheaded a policeman (Inspector Francis Induwar) and several villagers (the last incident happened in Munger on March 2, when Naxals kidnapped Kamleshwari and Kailash, whom they claimed were police informers.) The name Daniel Pearl ring a bell, anyone?

Strategy expert Bhaskar Roy has spoken of how Maoist leader Koteswar Rao expressed his admiration for the Mumbai terror attack.

How long before the Maoists decide to follow suit? How difficult could it be for them to hijack a plane or blow it up? How much time before they break into corporate offices and luxury hotels and hold hostages to ransom?

Ill-informed ‘activists’ like Arundhati Roy quote statistics about profits companies are raking in, and invite Indians to join the Maoists in their war, claiming they have stopped these corporates in their tracks.

But which corporate honcho was travelling in that train or that bus? Most of the passengers were returning home to see their families, after months away. Are these the industrialists drinking the blood of the poor villagers whom circumstances have purportedly forced into Naxalism?

Roy seems to believe the likes of Chhatradhar Mahato and Kishenji are Indian versions of Robin Hood, fighting with “bows and arrows” against the “sophisticated weapons” of the security forces.
Ummm…seen video footage of the arms the Maoists have surrendered, Ms Roy? Some might well be of a higher grade than those used by our armed forces. Ever thought about who’s funding these poor, downtrodden innocents who’ve been forced to fight the armed version of the Gandhian battle?

And yet, the verbose Ms Roy couldn’t answer the question of what would happen if the Maoists were to gain control of the areas that house the mining industry.

Why not look for an antecedent in the birthplace of ‘guerrilla’? The rather cutely-named ‘Little War’ in Cuba went on to produce an iron-fisted regime that controlled and suppressed the rights it had fought for against General Batista.

Why not look at the LTTE? A liberation army that was vanquished after 30 years of governing its territories like a kingdom-unto-itself, and at irreparable cost to the people it claimed to be protecting.

Yes, why not arm the Maoists? Didn’t the state support the Salwa Judum? Hasn’t every powerhouse created its Frankenstein’s Monster? Weren’t Saddam, Osama and Prabhakaran the darlings of some government or the other before they were branded terrorists? 

Perhaps these Voices of the Maoists do have a point about the neglect of the people. Perhaps they are right about the Memoranda of Understanding that have looted tribal habitats of minerals and wealth. Perhaps they are even right in speaking of the Home Minister’s links to Vedanta (and not the philosophy). 

But while Home Minister P Chidambaram and West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee are engaged in a tug-of-war over passing the buck, surrounded by their security men, the guerrilla force is not attacking the government. They’re waging a war against people even more hapless than they themselves once were.

Is an “armed struggle” the solution to government apathy? If every poor person in India decided to become a Maoist, where would this country be? If they were all to be given weapons, whom would they shoot and kill?

The Maoists have consistently turned down invitations to hold talks. India doesn’t have the best record where ‘talks’ are concerned - we’ve been ‘talking’ to Pakistan for half a century - but is killing non-Naxals a solution to this?

It may have been Abraham Lincoln who famously quoted the Bible and said “a house divided against itself cannot stand”.  But the adage hasn’t been proved true as many times in any other country as in India. It is this quality which saw parts being swallowed whole by the Mughals and then raped by the British.

We can debate about a government attacking its own citizens, but how can those who claim to be exempt from the law qualify as citizens? We live in far more dangerous times than the Colonial Era, and the world is watching as the big candidate for the United Nations Security Council struggles with ‘internal security threats’.

In an age of neo-colonialism and terrorism, with far too many vested interests to keep track of, what are we opening ourselves to in providing forums for Maoist sympathisers?

The author is a journalist based in Chennai. She blogs at http://disbursedmeditations.blogspot.com

Mizoram Govt Promises Regular Power Supply During World Cup

Aizawl, Jun 8 : Mizoram is gripped with World Cup fever. The soccer crazy state in the north eastern India is gearing for the big event, World Cup to be kick-started on Friday next in South Africa.

Preparation for enjoying live telecast of the matches were also up in the minds of the people as unlike the previous editions, live matches will be telecast at around 7:30 in the evening.

Parliamentary Secretary of the Mizoram government Lal Thanzara has said that the state government is taking every possible measure so that no  load-shedding and power cuts during the World Cup season.

“For a smooth and stable power supply during the World Cup the state government of Mizoram is doing its level best now and I hope that no one will be left angry due to power cuts during the big event,” said Lal Thanzara.

Meanwhile, sources from the power department said that the state electricity department will ensure regular viewing of World Cup matches even as Mizoram battles acute power shortage.

The authority, however, appealed the public for minimal use of available power by switching off unnecessary electrical gadgets other than the television set during the matches.

[ via Newmai News Network ]

US Army Intelligence Analyst, Arrested In Wikileaks Video Investigation

According to Wired, federal officials have arrested 22-year-old SPC Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst with the US Army, for allegedly leaking the "Collateral Murder" Wikileaks video. The controversial video, released in April 2010, shows a 2007 Apache helicopter attack that left several noncombatants dead, including two Reuters employees and three civilians.

Manning was reportedly arrested two weeks ago at Forward Operating Base Hammer near Baghdad, by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. "Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online," Wired divulges. The hacker, Adrian Lamo, who has also contributed to Wikileaks, notified the Army when Manning claimed "he leaked a quarter-million classified embassy cables."

Wired reports:

Manning told Lamo that he enlisted in the Army in 2007 and held a Top Secret/SCI clearance, details confirmed by his friends and family members. He claimed to have been rummaging through classified military and government networks for more than a year and said that the networks contained "incredible things, awful things ... that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC.

"I wouldn't have done this if lives weren't in danger," Lamo told Wired. "He was in a war zone and basically trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and just throwing it up into the air."

The US Army has called Wikileaks exposés "potentially actionable information" and the Pentagon labeled the organization a "national security threat."

Read more at Wired.