Indian National Interest (INI) requires
that our environment be ruined, our people displaced, our resources
thoughtlessly mined, all for the benefit of foreign companies, and for the
private benefit of people in power. This is the only conclusion that we can
draw after reading the recent Indian Express revelations on Essar alongside the
Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) affidavit in the Delhi High Court responding to Greenpeace
activist Priya Pillai’s plea that her constitutional rights were being
curtailed by the government stopping her from flying abroad to testify before a
British parliamentary committee.
The MHA affidavit says it was necessary to
stop Pillai speaking about the “alleged poor state of tribal people in India
and the manner in which the government had allegedly increased their efforts to
rob them of their rights which is an absolutely false allegation.” Even if
economists, demographers, health specialists and the Government appointed Xaxa
Committee tell us that about one in every four adivasis in India has been
displaced, that there is a gap of at least 30% between the human development
index of STs and the all India figure, and that over 40% of STs in rural India
have a body mass index less than 18.5 which indicates chronic malnutrition,
Indian National Interest demands that we not talk about such seditious
findings. Instead, we should focus on how these displaced adivasis are being
given alternative employment as dance troupes at the National Tribal Festival,
Vanaj 2015.
The central thrust of the ‘intelligence’ in
the MHA document is that by deposing before a foreign parliamentary committee, Pillai
was endangering India’s rankings in the reports on human rights and associated
issues brought out by foreign governments. Along with our new comrades like
Russia, North Korea and Iran – (never mind that India contributed to the
sanctioning of Teheran by voting to refer their nuclear file to the UN Security
Council) - we might even be slapped with sanctions.
If, as the MHA affidavit bemoans, the
European Parliament’s Working Group report on religious freedom places India in
the lowest category as a ‘country of particular concern’, the fault must surely
lie with those who attack churches, conduct ‘ghar wapsi’ programs, vandalise cinema
halls and so on. Fault can hardly lie with the victims of this bigotry who
publicise their situation as a means of self-defence. If there are adverse
reports on the conditions of dalits, women, adivasis, does the fault lie with
companies like Essar who violate Indian laws like PESA and the Forest Rights
Act and suborn Indian institutions with payments or with the Indian
Constitution and those who are struggling to implement it?
As for the idea that foreign governments
want to stop India’s progress at a time when India wants foreign direct
investment (para 29 i of the MHA affidavit), nothing could be less logical. Left
to themselves these governments would happily ignore any human rights violations
so long as their companies get business.
If the government was worried about foreign
sanctions, perhaps it should not have appointed Arvind Subramanian as Chief
Economic Advisor, a man who urged the US to initiate a dispute against India in
the WTO. Yet, an attempt by Kavita Krishnan to point this out during a debate on
Times Now, was quickly deflected by
the anchor. Indian National Interest demands that he crucify an activist before
bedtime every evening as spectator sport.
Some parts of the government’s affidavit
are so effortlessly ironic that one is left gasping. In para 20, the MHA
describes the fact that Greenpeace collects money from hundreds of small Indian
donors as opaque; why does this need for transparency not apply when it comes
to political parties like the Congress or BJP? Moreover, if these parties can get
funds from Vedanta or Dow Chemicals, why should NGOs not get funds from their
supporters at home and abroad to protest against these companies?
Giving what amounts to a ‘good character
certificate’ to those who hold fasts, dharnas
and file cases inside the country, the MHA says there is “no restriction on the
petitioner to follow the same or similar route.” The Mahan Sangharsh Samiti has
been fighting legally inside, but since Essar is registered as a British
company, why shouldn’t they take the issue to a British parliamentary
committee? If capital wants the right to travel globally, how can it deny that
right to those who are its victims?
Besides, activists who work within India hardly
have an easy time. Medha Patkar has been arrested more times than one can
count. Apart from thermal power plants, the affidavit tells us, Greenpeace is
targeting “nuclear power plants, genetically modified food trials and India’s
tea industry”. The unstated assumption here is that these are issues about
which there can be no debate. When the fisherfolk of Koodankulam who live in
the shadow of the nuclear plant, with the memory of a tsunami and the example
of the Fukushima disaster before them, carried out dharnas, they were arrested
and charged with sedition.
There was a time was when Hindu sants wore saffron cloths with Sri Ram
written all over. Now, their followers have dispensed with God and prefer to
wear their own names. There was a time
when our poets and mystics sang paeans to our forests, our mountains, our
rivers and the ocean. Our national anthem reflects this (Vindya, Himachal..). Today, our rulers allow only the praise of
foreign direct investment. Indian National Interest commands on affidavit, that
Indians must abandon their old gods in favour of the new God that is corporate
profit.
