For whom the Farm Bill tolls? - Suresh Kodoor

 

For whom the Farm Bill tolls?

The new farm acts are detrimental to farmers

-         Suresh Kodoor

Even in this freezing winter, Delhi is now burning!  The power centres in Delhi are now sweating in the heat of an unprecedented storm of rage. Farmers are waging a determined struggle against those who are hell-bent on making their lives a hell, the ones who are ruling this country for and on behalf of the corporate elite at the cost of the people of this nation. This struggle is not for just the farmers though. Just like how the farmers of this country sow and reap for all of us, to feed all of us, they are now fighting on behalf of all of us, the people of this country, whose food security is at stake, whose democratic rights are at stake and eventually whose very survival would be at stake. That is why the farmer’s struggle needs the support of the whole of India, every single citizen, including you and me. 

What was the motivation for the government to rush in the new farm bills now when the whole nation is pre-occupied in the fight against the pandemic, even flouting all democratic norms and procedures?  NITI Aayog gives the answer. It says “The country is witnessing the accumulation of a large surplus of grain and sugar, which is getting increasingly difficult to dispose of in the overseas markets due to poor price competitiveness of our produce. We need to reduce the logistics cost at least by half”. It adds, “According to the emerging scenario of demand and supply, India will be required to sell 20–25% of the incremental agri-food production in overseas markets in the coming years”. NITI Aayog CEO’s worry is “As India transitioned from a food deficit nation to a surplus one, the focus of policy has rightly shifted to surplus management from deficit management”. So, it becomes evident that the Government’s eye is on the profiteering opportunity of the export-market making use of these surplus and it wants to handover the Indian Agriculture sector to the corporate on a platter for them to leverage and exploit the said opportunity. No wonder as many corporate companies have mushroomed in the recent times to exploit and profit from the farmer’s toil. They aim to reduce the cost by engaging only a few big players in the agriculture sector and hence want to drive away all the marginal, small and medium farmers from the field. These new farm bills target to achieve exactly that. Where those poor farmers who eventually would get evicted from their own land because of these so called “reforms” should go to? Well, the Government is least concerned about that. They simply don’t care. The new farm bills are nothing but a move to remove all the obstacles for the corporate to operate seamlessly, unhindered and unquestioned. These acts are essentially to allay the fears of the corporate and investors of any regulatory interference by state or anyone else in their business operation, and give the corporate a free-hand to go ahead with their green-conquest, a conquest that would make Indian agriculture fields an assembly line for the agro-corporate while turning them to death fields for the farmers.  

While the bureaucrats of the NITI Aayog talk about surplus, look at what the Global Hunger Index says.  As per the GHI, India is almost at the rock bottom of the list, having highest number of people who stay hungry.  India has in recent times further fallen to an embarrassingly low position in the list, 94^th rank among 107 countries, even below the likes of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The glaring number says it all! It leave no room for doubt that our farmers, who are giving us this surplus, are staying hungry! Does one need any expert economists to suggest where that surplus must go?  Isn’t it criminal to talk about surplus and export on the face of those millions of small children who go to bed every day empty stomach? An estimate shows 3000 children die of hunger every day in India.  Isn’t it utterly shameful to know that 65 lakhs tonnes of grain went rotten in the godowns in just four months while the people were going hungry in these difficult times of extreme distress due to COVID pandemic? Shouldn’t those empty stomachs be the priority of any government which has at least an iota of sympathy towards its own people? Clearly, the priorities of those in power lie elsewhere. Their priority is to feed the corporate, for whom they rule, even at the cost of farmers, workers and those who are toiling day in and day out to meet the ends. This is exactly what the ‘neo-liberal’ politics is. NITI Aayog has spelt in no uncertain terms what the objectives of these new farm acts are as they say “the new acts take forward the unfinished agenda of reforms started in 1991”. No wonder the NITI CEO argues there is “too much democracy” as it is these remaining little democratic forces in the country that come in their way, trying to scuttle their attempts to loot this nation to fill the coffers of a few corporate neo-rich. Farmers realise that the bell tolls for them and the toiling poor around. The farmers do realise that they have no option but to fight for survival lest perish.

The three farm acts are clearly an attempt to offer the Indian Agriculture sector to the agro-corporate houses, throwing the farmers into deep untold, unending miseries, even to the extent of leading them to extinction. Farmers are well aware that these acts will make their lives more miserable and hence they have joined hands to host one of the massive people upraising against the government that India has not witnessed for a long while.  But, as said, the current struggle is not for the sake of farmers alone.  The new farm acts would impact not only farmers, but a vast majority of people, particularly the poorer section of this country. Our food security, our democratic rights, our country’s future are all at stake and thus we all owe our support to farmers in this historic struggle.  The true nefarious intend, underpinning agenda and the far-reaching implications of these acts must be thoroughly exposed and publicised among the mass and gather widespread support for the farmer’s struggle.

To start with, these bills are completely undemocratic and unconstitutional, both in their content as well as the manner in which they were made into laws.  The three new farm acts were initially brought in as ordinances in the month of June, 2020. In fact the farmers were staging protests in various parts of the country immediately after the ordinances were brought in and the struggle has only grown big and intense since then. New bills were brought in the parliament to replace the earlier ordinances and were made into laws in the month of September in a most undemocratic manner. Not only that these bills were formulated without holding any consultations with any of the key stake holders, especially the farmers or their organizations, the Government didn’t even allow any meaningful debate in the parliament and instead the whole democratic process was scuttled by suspending the opposition members, avoiding any discussion in the upper house and opting to pass the bill by voice voting. No wonder the bills reflect a complete lack of understanding of the ground realities of rural India and the crucial role agriculture play in the livelihood of the people living in there. The bills were dictated by the corporate and the government acted as a willing partner in this crime.

The new farm acts should be objected for 3 key reasons

i) The farm acts are a total farce on democracy and constitution and are an attack on the very federal structure of our nation. If we go by the spirit of the constitution and the federalism it advocates,  agriculture is primarily a state subject and it is left to individual states to form necessary acts and guidelines that would best suit their unique needs, though some of the other provisions mentioned in the constitution may be cited as legal justification for the union government’s intervention in the subject. The new acts have no place for the voice of the States and thus give scant regard to the federal structure and principles of our constitution. The Act reads “This act will have overriding effect on all State APMC acts” (Act1, section-14). Such arrogance and audacity of power to simply void state powers is a grave threat to our co-operative federalism and should not go unopposed. Another equally important transgression into constitutional rights is how the fundamental constitutional right of every citizen to seek legal remedies in courts is taken away. This may be used as template in the future legislations as well, if it is allowed to go unopposed, where our democratic constitutional right to take our grievances to courts will be curtailed and the government will start positioning itself as the complainant, prosecutor and the judge, all in one. Thus, the bills must be questioned for its violation of all democratic and constitutional norms.

ii) The acts are against the interest of the farmers. The bills would evict millions of farmers from their land and their traditional livelihood, making them jobless, and would convert Indian agriculture into a pure corporate monopoly. Our policy makers say there are too many people engaged in the agriculture sector and the numbers should be drastically reduced. What they don’t say is where the millions of displaced poor farmers should turn to for their livelihood. 

iii) The acts will have far-reaching consequences affecting adversely our hard-earned agricultural self-sufficiency and most importantly, our food security. The acts will also pave way for endangering the bio-diversity and crops pattern as it would be the agro-corporate who would be in control of the agro-inputs, including the seeds and choice of crops, and would be the one deciding  what to grow, when, where and who.

It is very ironical and amusing to notice how misleading the names of these acts are. In fact the names suggest desperate attempt by those involved to conceal the real intent of the bills. It is as if the label reads ‘sugar’ while the bottle is filled with ‘cyanide’!

The first two acts are named ‘Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020’ and ‘Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance, Farm Services Act, 2020’. What the bills lack for farmers is exactly what are there in the titles, namely protection, empowerment, price assurance and promotion. The bills take away all the above from the farmers. The third bill read “Essential Commodity (amendment) Act 2020’ and what it does is exactly the opposite, defining the very essential foodstuffs, including the basic food items like rice, wheat, potato and onion as ‘non-essential’.  So, we must strictly warn those unsuspecting ‘innocents’ who want to go by the titles and government’s hollow words not to go by the label and swallow what is there in those bottles.

India still remains predominantly an agriculture economy. Almost half of our population (42%) is engaged in farming and associated activities for their livelihood. 86% of these farmers are marginal and small-scale farmers having less than 2 acres to 5 acres of land. What this implies is that any change in the agriculture sector in our country will directly impact almost half of the population. Thus, for a huge section of our population, these farm acts are a matter of their life and death and that is why they dare all odds to wage the battle of their lives. With more than 12000 farmers resorting to suicide every year, these acts will only worsen their plight.

If we dive a little deeper into the content of these acts, we would realise how draconian and anti-farmer they are.

Act1: Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020

This act primarily lifts the existing restrictions on farmers and traders to do transactions outside the APMC Markets. Farmers will be allowed to trade their agricultural produce outside the market areas operated under various state APMC acts. This act essentially ‘bypass’ the APMC systems and override all the state-level legislations in force which regulate market for the agricultural produce in various states. Thus, the states will no more have any say on a subject that is designated as a state-subject in the constitution. The act also prohibits state governments or APMC from charging any cess, levy or any taxes at these ‘private market trade areas’, which is outside the APMC market yards. The government version is that this act gives freedom to the farmers to sell their produce wherever they want and to whomever they want. Government projects this act creating an alternate ‘free-market’ where farmers will get “freedom of choice” to trade with anyone, anywhere in India.

On the face of it, this would look like a step to help farmers to fetch higher price for their produce. However, this argument will not stand the scrutiny of anyone who has even basic understanding of how the so called ‘free-markets’ operates. In reality, the farm acts are akin to pulling away the security net provided to the farmers and in turn pushing them into the shark-infested deep waters and claiming they are being offered the ‘freedom’ to swim wherever they want. Leave alone swimming, they would only be eaten up by the sharks in there.  This so called ‘freedom’ narrative is only a cover to conceal the actual intent underneath. It is like unbolting the chicken coop (hen house) on the pretext of freeing the chickens while the actual intent is to let the fox enter the coop.

The APMC trade restrictions are meant to protect farmers from exploitation rather than curtailing freedom. For a guy who earn barely 100 rupee a day, it is absurd and cruel to offer so called ‘freedom’ to dine at any of the five-star restaurants in any of the cities across India. The so called ‘freedom of choice’ in this instance means absolutely nothing for him. It is rather a mockery on his plight. What would make sense for him is to have his nearby dhaba able to offer him his daily meals with what he can afford to pay. So, this whole argument of ‘freedom to sell’ anywhere to anyone is totally bogus and a complete eyewash. If the government think majority of the farmers will have wherewithal to travel to faraway places to sell his produce, they are living in fool’s heaven removed far from the reality. But it is not that they are not aware of it. They just want to act ignorant as the actual intent is to lure the farmers away from the safety-net of APMC and make them perish so that the corporate can take over all for themselves. The farmers do realise this and they are not interested in the promise of hollow ‘freedom’. For them, the existing APMC system that has worked well despite all its limitations is what matters the most. They foresee a grave threat to the existence of APMC mandis once the new acts become operational, which will turn them helpless and leave them exposed to the potential gruesome attack by the corporate predators.

What is concealed in this misleading government narrative of “freedom of choice” is that the restriction inbuilt into the current APMC system is in fact an inherent safety net to protect farmers from being pressurised to sell their produce in distress to their lenders and other scrupulous traders and intermediaries.  APMC system is essentially to protect farmers from exploitation and to ensure they get a minimum support price (MSP) for their produce. APMC (Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees) Markets or Mandis were established to enable farmers to sell their produce at a fare price and to protect them from traders, money lenders and middle-men taking away their produce for pittance. APMCs divide the states into several zones and all the farmers in a particular zone are supposed to trade their produce only in the APMC Mandis designated for them. The traders are not allowed to enter into trade outside these mandis. This restriction is to actually avoid traders coercing farmers into selling their produce at much a lower price than the minimum support price (MSP). Thus, the restrictions imposed on trades outside the APMC Mandis are in fact to ensure that the farmers are not forced to give away their produce to the traders and agents as many of these traders/agents would be the ones extending financial loans as well to these farmers. In other words, the insistence to sell only inside the APMC Mandis is not a restraint, but a mechanism to protect the farmer’s interest. The produces are auctioned in the mandis and the arhtiyas (registered commission agents) purchase the produce from the farmers on behalf of government agencies like FCI or other private traders and exporters. Arhtiyas also provide other services like cleaning, loading, packaging etc of the produce and also many of them finance the farmers. These agents are paid commission by the buyers like FCI and private traders. Mandis also charge taxes, which are used by the state Governments to improve the infrastructure and other agricultural related services. To ensure the safeguarding of farmer’s interest, the APMC Mandis impose the conditions like 1) for all the produces where the Government has announced MSPs, the products can’t be sold at a price below MSP 2) Inside all APMC regions, the farmers and traders can enter into wholesale trades only inside the designated mandis, not outside.  

The new act provides to create private markets or ‘trade areas’ outside the APMC system where both these conditions are not applicable. There will be no Minimum Support Price and neither there will be any restrictions on where and whom the traders and companies can buy produce from the farmers. There would be no need to register or obtain licenses for the traders and thus any individual, groups or corporate can buy produce from the farmers. State government is prohibited to charge any cess, levies or taxes in these private markets from anyone.  With the new found license and golden opportunity to force farmers to sell their produce anywhere at any price, the traders, agents and other corporate entities will desert the APMC mandis and take the trade outside and coerce farmers to submit to them through various means. This will only weaken the mandi system and will force farmers to sell their produce at much lower price at these private ‘trade areas’ as no alternative avenues will be available for them to dispose of their produce.  

As we know, farming involves lot of uncertainties and risks. Between the sowing and harvesting, lot many factors may adversely impact the outcome. So, it is critical to make sure that the farmers get a reasonable income above and beyond what they have to spend to produce crops. Only then they can sustain farming and produce foodstuffs to feed the nation.  Enforcement of Minimum Support Price (MSPs) on selected produces are to ensure that the farmers would get at least a minimum price to cover their cost of production. If not for MSP, traders will bring down the price at the time of harvesting and the farmers will be forced to sell at throw away prices, pushing them into huge debts. Thus, MSP is very crucial in providing support to the farmers. Telling farmers, most of who live in small houses with one or two rooms, that they could store their produce as long as they wish and sell whenever they want at the price they decide is totally unrealistic. These farmers won’t have adequate storage facilities and hence will be looking to dispose of their produce at the earliest. Moreover, the farmers will have to sell their produce immediately after the harvest to settle their loans and pay for their other living expenses, including children’s education, medical needs etc. So the agents and financiers will try to take advantage of this distress situation and will try to squeeze maximum out of the poor farmers. Eventually the farmers would be left with nothing. They would be forced to ultimately sell their land to come out of the debt trap. It is precisely to avoid this situation and save farmers from this distress sale that the APMC mandi system was introduced. The new act is destroying farmer’s life-support echo system by paving the way for dismantling the APMC mandis. Government should rather focus on expanding the APMC system and build more mandis, fixing the loopholes, than completely destroying the APMC system for all practical purposes and leaving farmers at the mercy of traders and corporate. Majority of the marginal, small and medium farmers with very little bargaining power will be pushed out of the new system and rapidly will move out of farming, which is precisely what the corporate and the government are looking for. So, this act is not an accident, but a well planned strategy to get rid of all small farmers and handover the agriculture entirely to the mega agro-corporate. Bihar provides one of the glaring example of what can be expected to happen if APMC vanishes. In Bihar where the APMC system was discontinued in 2006, farmers are forced to sell paddy for Rs.600 and 700 a quintal while the government MSP stands at Rs.1800. In fact the plight of the farmers there is so pathetic that majority of them don’t produce enough to even to take to market for trading. Many farmers have left farming forever and were forced to migrate to other states in search of daily wages and casual labour. This farm act targets to replicate the same story across the country so that the field would be left open for the corporate to play at their will and by their own rules.

The act also takes utmost care to protect corporate from having to face any legal consequences. Not only farmers, even no citizen are allowed to take their grievances to court. Corporate don’t want to be bothered with the law of the land and the government readily oblige, taking away the fundamental rights of the citizen in the process.

Section 13:  “No suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall lie against the Central Govt or the State govt or any other person in respect of anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done under this Ordinance or of any rules or orders made thereunder”

Section 15: No civil court have jurisdiction to entertain any suit or proceedings in respect of any matter, the cognizance of which can be taken and disposed of by any authority empowered by or under this Ordinance or the rules made thereunder

Such blatant disregard for the citizen’s constitutional rights is unheard of.   

Act2: Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance, Farm Services Act, 2020

The second farm act is about contract farming. The act puts in place a framework for the farmers to enter into agreement with buyers and other third parties involved in advance, before they sow the crop, to sell the final produce at a pre-fixed price. It is an agreement based cultivation of pre-decided crops of pre-determined quality, quantity, grade and variety by farmers on behalf of a sponsor, who can be a trader, a corporate company or any other entity. The farmers are obligated to fulfil the contract conditions and the sponsor is liable to purchase and pay for the produce only if all the conditions, including quality, quantity and other parameters like even pesticide residue left on the grain, moisture content etc, stipulated in the agreement  are met.

The act talks about two forms of agreement

Trade and commerce agreement – farmers are paid when they deliver the final produce. The buyer is not responsible for anything if the produce is not delivered. i.e the farmer will be solely responsible if their crop is damaged for some reason or the other. The entire loss will have to be born only by the farmer

2.  Production agreement – The buyer will be providing ‘farm services’, including providing seed, fertilizers, machinery and other inputs and advice and the farmers are paid just for whatever service the farmer provides, not necessarily the price for the produce

The contract doesn’t need to specify any minimum support price. The contract will specify though the quality and standard that should be met by the final product for the sponsor to take the delivery. The sponsor can always decline to purchase the product citing any reason like the final produce not meeting any of the terms specified in the agreement and can use it to either reject the entire lot or to lower the price considerably. Even the amount of pesticide residue on the final produce can be a reason to decline the product. With no option to seek legal remedies and absolutely no means to fight with the battery of corporate lawyers, farmers will be completely at the mercy of the corporate houses.

Clause 4(1) The parties entering into a farming agreement may identify and require as a condition for the performance of such agreement compliance with mutually acceptable quality, grade and standards of a farming produce.

Clause 4(3) The quality, grade and standards for pesticide residue, food safety standards, good farming practices and labour and social development standards may also be adopted in the farming agreement

Clause 6(2) The Sponsor may, before accepting the delivery of any farming produce, inspect the quality or any other feature of such produce as specified in the farming agreement…

With farmers or anyone else not in a position to predict or control the outcome of the production, farmers will be always running the risk of their final produce getting rejected by the sponsors. If the market prices are lower than the price agreed in the contract, the sponsor can always use this clause to entirely decline to purchase or to force the farmer to sell at lower price. This farm act would lead to a situation where the sponsors, a bunch of agro-corporate companies, would start deciding what crops, when, where and how much to produce. The crop pattern could easily get aligned with the export market as that would be more attractive and profitable for the companies. With the corporate in full control of all the inputs, including the seed varieties, the entire crop pattern will undergo a shift and the bio-diversity and richness would be put severely under threat. Farmers will be forced to produce what the sponsors want and will be turned into mere contract labourers of the companies in their own land. Even none of the state laws can come to their rescue as the clause 7(1) completely exempt the commodities produced under farming agreements from all state laws.

7. (1) Where a farming agreement has been entered into in respect of any farming produce under this Act, such produce shall be exempt from the application of any State Act, by whatever name called, established for the purpose of regulation of sale and purchase of such farming produce.

Is the middle-man removed by all this as claimed? Of course not. Apart from the fact that the corporate themselves become the new middlemen, it also brings in ‘aggregators’ and ‘Farm Service Providers’ as the new middlemen in the farming agreements. The clause 10 reads

10) Save as otherwise provided in this Act, an aggregator or farm service provider may become a party to the farming agreement and in such case, the role and services of such aggregator or farm service provider shall be explicitly mentioned in such farming agreement.

Thus, it is a total free-hand for the corporate to decide how they want to shape Indian agriculture so as to profit to the maximum. If these are not enough, the third act free them from the essential commodities act’s provisions as well so as to allay any fears the corporate may have about state intervention in their business.

Act3: Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020

This act pretty much nullifies the Essential Commodities Act of 1955. Most of us would think foodstuffs are the most essential commodities. Strangely, our Government thinks otherwise. May be, for them, the corporate profit tops the list. The act removes the foodstuffs, including cereals like rice and wheat, pulses, potato, onion, oilseeds and edible oil etc, pretty much every single food item that we need for our day-to-day life, from the list of essential commodities. What that implies is that government neither can intervene to prevent hoarding and black-marketing of these items nor can regulate the prices of these commodities.  The original act was established to ensure the availability of commodities that are essential for us to lead a normal life and to be vigilant against hoarding and black marketing and deliberate obstruction of the supply of these essential products. In effect, the new act is making hoarding and black-marketing legal for the corporate. The act severely restraints government from exercising any control over hoarders. Government is not allowed to impose any stock holding limits for these newly delisted produces, except for extreme exceptions like war, famine etc. The method of calculating ‘extreme price rise’ is a joke. Corporate can keep increasing the price as long as they make sure the moving average of the price over 12 months remains just below 50%. Another strange rider is that even these limited criteria cannot be applied if “the stock limit doesn’t exceed the overall ceiling of installed capacity of processing or the demand for export in case of an exporter”.  So, if the company has huge warehouses, they can stock as much they want even if the price skyrocket! Government takes extreme care to make sure that the operation of private businesses and corporate do not face any difficulties from anyone, including government agencies, judiciary or citizens in their quest for profit. The act will be a huge threat to the food security of the country and will kill the already weakened PDS system as the State governments will have to now beg the corporate for grains and other foodstuffs to distribute through the PDS outlets for the poor.  Instead of strengthening the essential commodities act and PDS systems to ensure availability of most essential stuffs like food to all, the Government is encouraging the corporate to profit from even people’s hunger. At a time when people are unemployed and hardly have any purchasing power, subjecting them to food price inflation is simply an unpardonable crime against humanity.

Eyeing the new found opportunity and Government’s willingness to even sell India to appropriate wealth for a few elites, dozens of ago-corporate entities have mushroomed in the last couple of years. More than fifty agro companies have been registered in the last two years by the likes of reliance, adani, patanjali etc. These corporate are now going to decide what Indians should eat and even how much they should eat as a greater share of agriculture produce may be set aside for export. Government is going all-out to ensure a free-hand for the domestic and foreign corporate to have a field day with the newly opened up agriculture sector. Those in power with no concern whatsoever for the poor may use any crude tactics to realise their agenda. For example, the laws banning cattle sale evoking the religious sentiments of ‘gau-matha’ and ‘love for cows’ was nothing but a condemnable move to drive away local people from cattle-rearing so that the corporate could establish its  monopoly on the dairy produce market. The label was ‘gau-matha’, but the real content was ‘corporate pitha’! The government forces engaged in mass campaigning to mislead the innocent unsuspecting minds to flock behind the ‘gau-matha’, while they struck a back-door deal with the corporate.

It is not only domestic conglomerates like Ambanis, but foreign corporate like walmart, kargil etc are also eyeing the Indian agriculture sector to get their share of the pie where they can ensure more export from India at a much higher profit by paying as cheap as possible to the farmers, especially now that the MSP is out of the picture. The unregulated and unlimited export of food grains will lead to massive food shortage and crisis with rampant hoarding and black-marketing and the eventual victims would be poor farmers and the disposed majority of this country. Ultimately it is the life of the poor, who hardly own any equity in the nation’s wealth, which is going to be more miserable. Therefore, it is important to educate the people about the threat posed by these new farm acts to their livelihood and their future in order to evoke wide-spread mass support for the historic struggle being led by the farmers. A strong and relentless people resistance alone can force the government to repeal the new farm acts that are anti-farmer, anti-people and anti-nation. 

- Suresh Kodoor

Corona and Capitalist Amnesia - Suresh Kodoor

As the US President continues to attack World Health Organization accusing them as ‘China-Centric’ and is eager to put the blame on China for the COVID-19 pandemic, even with some quarters going to the extent of accusing China of starting it all, if not deliberately at least inadvertently, it may be worth to remind the American President some of the bitter truths on how America has been using its own people as guinea pigs, both knowingly and unknowingly, voluntarily and coercively to develop and fine-tune a whole array of biological, chemical and nuclear warfare in the past. It is also a grim refresher for those who have suddenly woken up to the ‘enlightenment’ that the current pandemic is all due to ‘communist evil’ in China and the answer to all the problems lies in ‘capitalist messiah’. The new-found fans of ‘capitalist democracy’ mustn’t hide behind selective amnesia forgetting how the so called ‘democracy’ had let down its own people, subjecting them to horrific and most inhuman biological, chemical, nuclear and genetic warfare experiments under the pretext of various secret missions spearheaded by CIA, US Army and other governmental agencies. There isn’t much love lost even in America for these agencies due to their past sins.   

Before getting under the hood of those chilling stories, let us look at how the US Government, under the so called ‘democracy’, responded to the Corona outbreak. This is only to remind those who are quick to put the onus on the ‘communist rule’ for China ignoring the early warning and shunting out the doctor who had raised the early alarm on the corona virus (which certainly has been a miss for which the Chinese government had apologised later. But the point is, such overlooks are neither new nor unique to any country and have been happening across the world irrespective of which political side they adhere to). As per an article published in the Washington Post, the US President downplayed for months the corona warning from his own senior advisers and has been avoiding taking any action that could have controlled the virus spread in the country. An official in the government is quoted as saying “Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were – they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it. The system was blinking red”. The story has clearly documented how Mr.Trump was dragging his feet for the whole of January and February even though “a majority of the intelligence reporting included in daily briefing papers was about COVID-19”. Whenever the administration officials tried to bring the topic to Mr.Trump’s attention, seems he had changed the subject. The experience of the Health and Human Services Secretary Mr.Alex Azar sums it up well. As per the Washington Post, Mr.Alex got Mr.Trump on phone on 18 January (as he couldn’t get through to Trump until then), a full three weeks after US administration officials became aware of the Corona outbreak in China, and when he tried to impress upon Mr.Trump about the Corona virus situation, the article says, “the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavoured vaping products would be back on the market”. Even in early February, Trump showed minimum interest though it was becoming increasingly clear that virus will severely impact US health and safety. As per the post, “he even predicted the virus would go away by April and even praised the Chinese President’s response as ‘strong, sharp and powerfully focused’”. Mr.Trump, as of course as a true capitalist, was more concerned about the adverse impact a ‘wide-spread panic’ would create on the stock market. When Nancy Messonnier, an official from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told the press on 25 February that “disruption to everyday life might be severe”, Trump complained that “Messonnier is scaring the stock markets”. So, if anyone is under the illusion that the initial response to the outbreak of the pandemic would have been better or quicker if it had been in the ‘Capitalist Democracy’, they are living in a fool’s heaven. 

Coming back to the conspiracy theories doing rounds that the virus is an offshoot of a bio-warfare project that the ‘Communist China’ has been indulging in, the conspirators once again want us to believe that the corona is an ‘evil’ and the ‘evil designs’ are the hallmark of ‘Communists’. For the sake of these lovers of the ‘capitalist democracy’, let us revisit  some of the scariest and most inhuman instances of  state-sponsored experiments in the fields of biological, chemical and nuclear warfare which sacrificed tens of thousands of unsuspecting innocent souls living in those very ‘democracies’.  Jonathan Moreno, who led the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, has recounted some of these evil experiments and the horrifying experiences of the victims in vivid detail in his book ‘Undue Risk – Secret State Experiments on Humans’. Huge heaps of de-classified documents of yesteryears will tell us terrible stories of how citizens were coerced and ferried into secret places where they would be disposed off after being used as ‘guinea pigs’ without leaving any trace of their existence, experience or disappearance, all with the active connivance and under the complete control of the so called ‘democratic government’ and its agencies. 

Even before the first atomic bomb fell on Japan, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, unsuspecting 4,00,000 American soldiers were made to watch nuclear explosion from a distance of as close as a mile or two from the ground zero. This moment of horror was part of the ‘field experiment’ to ‘study’ the effect of a nuclear bomb explosion on humans. None of them knew what they were being subjected to. Worse still, all of the soldiers who were already traumatized by the experience and radiation exposure were made to take an ‘oath of secrecy’ that they would not talk to anyone about it. Breaking this oath of secrecy, even talking among themselves, was considered as nothing less than ‘treason’ and was punishable by 10,000 dollar fine and 10 or more years of imprisonment.  Silence was forced on the victims, own citizens and soldiers, by the very ‘democracy’ that some people want us to hail now. Many have died due to leukaemia and other radiation related diseases and had to live the rest of their lives, those unfortunate ones who were left to live, haunted by scariest nightmares. These victims are referred as ‘Atomic Veterans’. They were not even eligible for any compensation as the government refused to even acknowledge that there was any radiation exposure at all. By the time the oath of secrecy was lifted finally in 1994, many veterans have had already taken their secrets with them to their graves. Some of them who had survived long enough to break their forced silence had described how the blast had knocked them down to the ground and how they could see the blood vessels and bones in their body like viewing under an X-ray. The account of terror they had to go through was unimaginable and horribly painful. The documentary ‘The Atomic Soldiers’ by Morgan Knibbe had relived the horror through the experiences of hundreds of victims who lived to tell their painful tales. One of them says in the documentary, “It haunts me to think of what I had witnessed and not realised at the time the importance of what we were doing… serving as guinea pigs”. The book ‘Undue Risk’ quotes a Navy veteran as saying “The government has lied to us for 50 years over and over again. If I would have been shot on the front lines at least I would have had it on my record and would have received medical treatment”.  It is a grim reminder to all those who think the ‘capitalist democracy’ offer them a democratic heaven. They must be under no false illusion about its transparency and commitment to its own people. Between 1946 and 1992, US government must have conducted more than 1000+ nuclear tests during which unsuspecting soldiers were exposed to nuclear radiations, says the book. Report of the Committee on Human Radiation Experiments describes in detail how American citizens were injected with plutonium as part of radiation experiments. One of the chilling stories narrated in there is a classic tale of deception and horror of state sponsored terror that thousands of innocents men and women were subjected to go through in the name of ‘medical research’. The victim, named Ebb Cade, a 53 year old cement worker, was met with a car accident and had a broken bone when he was admitted to a local facility. He was later taken to the Manhattan project (Atomic project headquarters) Army hospital for operation, but was fated to become the first of the 17 victims who got injected with the nuclear fissile material called Plutonium. He never knew he was being exposed to one of the most lethal radioactive material and what consequences awaited him. A women from Tennessee filed suit alleging many pregnant women and their foetuses were used as guinea pigs exposing them to radiation. Radiation experiments on human didn’t spare even children. The news, released in the late 90s, about Quaker Oats Cereal Company and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) settling a lawsuit brought by a group of unwitting test victims shocked many and raised a huge public outrage. The victims were young boys at the Fernald School in Waltham, Massachusetts, where they “were fed cereal containing trace amounts of radiation to identify the pathway of nutrients in the human digestive system”. 

Chemical and Biological weapon experiments had even larger shares of guinea pigs. National Academy of Sciences in one of its reports released in 1993 has estimated that during Second World War alone around 60,000 army men were used in the research with chemical weapons like Mustard Gas and other toxic agents. Many were locked in gas chambers filled with Mustard Gad during the infamous Mustard Gas experiments. The objective of the experiment was to find out at what point the toxic gas agents would ‘break a man’. As part of a study on venery diseases, US Public Health Services worked with Federal Bureau of Prisons and arranged for two hundred “volunteer prisoners” who were deliberately infected with gonorrhoea disease forcing them to have sex with infected females or by injecting them with pus taken from the urethra of the infected females. One wouldn’t even dare to imagine, even in dreams, the pain, sufferings and horror the victims might have endured during these blatant crime on humanity. The widely reported Yellow-Fever experiments in Cuba used innocent Spanish migrant workers, apart from the soldiers themselves, as guinea pigs.  Camp American University was used as Army’s Chemical Warfare Center where all sort of experiments with toxic chemical warfare agents were conducted on humans. George Temple, an electrical engineer with the Army and one of the few survivors from the Camp University research ‘experiments’, is quoted as saying “one day, in the pitch black interior of the smoke lab, three men were burned by a deadly dose of gas. The bodies were hauled away on a cart, the flesh jiggling off their bones”. They were exposed with deadly chemicals like phosgene and white phosphorous. Temple recollects “more men were killed by gas on the experimental side than in actual use”. All were subjected to extreme tortures by exposing them to series of various poisonous and incendiary gas agents as part of the experiments in the Camp AU. An investigation report on “CIA activities” is filled with horror stories of instances of covet operations executed by CIA to experiment with mind-controlling agents like LSD on unsuspecting victims. One of the most infamous tragedies of the LSD experiment was the death of its own scientist Dr.Frank Olson by crashing down from the 10^th floor of a hotel while being under the influence of LSD. He was a specialist in air-born delivery of diseases used as biological weapon. Sidney Gottlieb, the one who led LSD experiments and secretly mixed LSD in the drinks, as a key member of the Technical Service Staff of CIA had helped CIA in planning several of their assassination plots designing poison handkerchief and other lethal devices to take out their targets, which included even Fidel Castro. A similar case where a 42-year old Harold Blauer lost his life in the ‘secret experiment’ performed on him by the Psychiatric Institute (PI) in Newyork in collusion with the US Army further reveals the uglier underbelly of the so called ‘democratic messiah’. The experiment, spearheaded by the US Army, was to collect sufficient data “for the utilization of psycho-chemical agents both for offensive use as sabotage weapons and for protection against them”, quotes the report. Accordingly, patients were to be injected with mescaline chemical substance, a variant that was never tried on humans before. Blauer was coerced into the experiment by threatening him that he would be sent to mental asylum. He was injected upon multiple times irrespective of his protest and the experiment continued for days until he slipped into a coma and died after the fifth injection he received. Army and New York state authorities conspired to cover it up in the name of national security. There will be no dearth for even more chilling stories in the CIA archives. 

The Biological warfare program was covered with greater secrecy than even nuclear weapons programs. Later revelation about the open-air field testing of biological weapons conducted in Minneapolis in 1960 had stunned many, including the Congress representative from the constituency as even he was kept in the dark. The Army had made elaborate arrangements to keep the public unaware of field tests of biological weapons. Testing of biological weapons was conducted in the Camp Detrick and the Army was extremely careful of keeping everything about the tests secret from the public. Body remains of the People died due to exposure were secretly disposed off. The report describes the modus operandi, citing army officials involved, as “deceased personnel might be placed in a hermetically sealed metal casket and interred by military personnel in the area, without disclosing by certificate, report or statement the nature or cause of death”. Some of the young male and female soldiers Mr.Morena interviewed for the book had revealed to him that “they understood that occasionally they would be invited to serve as subjects in medical experiments having to do with the Infectious Disease Institute's bio-protection mission”. Many were used as ‘subjects’ in genetic warfare experiments or vaccine development studies and were either lured into it offering money or coerced into it with threats of repercussions. 

A few cases referred in here are only a tiny tip of the mammoth proverbial iceberg as revealed by de-classified secret documents and various enquiry commission reports. The vast underbelly of one of the biggest ‘democracies’ may stay in the dark for ever as hundreds of thousands of souls sacrificed on the ‘altar of weapon research’ would never come back to tell their torture tales.   It is anybody’s guess that no single country on the face of the earth, irrespective of which political spectrum they belong to, if they have technical and economical wherewithal, would be shying away from the pursuit of genetic weaponry.  With the boundary between biology and chemistry becoming increasingly blurred with every advance in the field of genetics, the modern weaponry could be more sophisticated and potent than one could imagine.  Possibilities of biological weapons that can be ‘managed’ so as not to affect the forces who have released it (‘return’ effect) is very much a reality today. Many scientific breakthroughs have found their way to military (mis)use and genetics research wouldn’t be any exemption.  It would be foolhardy to argue that the ‘Capitalist Democracy’ is the means to guard against such self-destructive adventures on humanity.  Its past history in fact guarantees exactly the reverse. 

- Suresh Kodoor

Corona and Conspiracy Mongers

Corona Is Not Bioengineered

(Corona and Conspiracy Mongers)

Suresh Kodoor

We are confronting two deadly viruses these days. One is of course the deadly COVID-19 Corona Virus and the other is the more venomous and malicious ‘Conspiracy’ virus. We may soon find vaccine for the first one. However, the second one may never find a cure as it constantly mutates to various forms and the ‘lie DNA’ of this ‘virus’ has a special knack of evading any ‘truth’ vaccine.  

All the conspiracy stories doing rounds around CORONA virus are not simple innocuous ones, especially the ones that have its origin in the ultra-right ‘propaganda manufacturing labs’. These lies have clear agenda and targets. The fact that the current pandemic is being misused as an opportunity to reignite the jingoism and hatred with lies and gross misinformation is of great concern as there may be many unsuspecting takers to the stories, innocently ingesting whatever is served. 

One of the conspiracy theories goes like this. China deliberately unleashed the Corona virus on themselves and the world so that the stock market will crash, following which China can buy all the shares of all the American companies. Ridiculous it is, but, as usual, blatant lies, misinformation, fake stories, manufactured data and fictitious sources are skilfully stitched together to deliver the venom.

World Health Organization has named the corona disease as Corona Virus Diseas-2019 or COVID-19 and the virus causing the disease as ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus 2’ or SARS-CoV-2. However, many still like to call it Chinese Virus, Wuhan Virus etc. to implicate China as the conscious perpetrators of the disease though the US President himself has recently pulled back from calling the virus as ‘China Virus’.  

Is the SARS-CoV-2 a genetically engineered virus manufactured in a lab as Biological weapon as these ‘Conspirators’ want us to believe? No. The answer is in absolute negative. The scientific community has categorically ruled out the possibility that the virus is genetically engineered and rather has established that it is a product of evolution having undergone numerous mutations and got transmitted from the wild-life to human. In fact scientists did get to the root of this conspiracy theory and had comprehensively debunked them, as it is important to know the origin of the virus in order to develop effective vaccines. How did the scientists rule out that it is not engineered in labs? By analysing the genetic structure or to be more specific the RNA sequence and the characteristics of the virus’s receptor-binding domain (RBD), a feature of the virus that helps them to attach to the host cells. The fact that the virus does possess the feature, acquired in the process of its evolution, to evade human immune system also points to the fact that it wasn’t created, neither deliberately nor accidentally, through cell-culture, a process used in labs for conducting virological studies and experimental research.   

The study has revealed that the corona pandemic is caused by a natural virus, not one made in a lab. As per the study published on March-17 in the Science journal ‘Nature Medicine’, the genetic structure of the SARS-CoV-2 virus reveals that it isn’t a mix and match of any known viruses, as might be expected if it were human-made (Ref: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9). The virus has unusual features that have only recently been identified in scaly anteaters called pangolins, an evidence that the virus came from nature, reports the study. Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in California and a team of scientists from other research centers carried out the study. Anderson has said “It was clear that the virus wasn’t human-made. Anyone hoping to create a virus would need to work with already known viruses and engineer them to have desired properties. But the SARS-CoV-2 virus has components that differ from those of previously known viruses, so they had to come from an unknown virus or viruses in nature”. The paper says, “Genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone. This is not a virus somebody would have conceived of and cobbled together. It has too many distinct features, some of which are counterintuitive. One wouldn’t do this if you were trying to make a more deadly virus. Similarity of SARS-CoV-2 to bat and pangolin viruses is some of the best evidences that the virus is natural”. “This was just another animal spillover into humans. All the data show it’s natural”, say the scientists who were part of the research team. Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (USA) says "This study leaves little room to refute a natural origin for COVID-19". Most likely the COVID-19 virus arose from a recombination of a virus found in bats and another virus, possibly in pangolins.

So, the story of China manufacturing the virus is a total bogus and has been completely debunked through scientific studies. Now, what is portrayed as the motivation behind such an action is even more ridiculous. The fake narrative goes on to say that China bought in bulk the shares of American Companies to take control of the US firms and the world economy in general. This is not only absurd but in fact the American analysts fear exactly the opposite, i.e would American investors go and put their money in so many Chinese companies using this crash as an opportunity. In fact there are also counter propaganda, especially in the Arab media, which portrays the pandemic as an American plot to destabilise Chinese economy. 

Did Chinese really buy shares of American companies, either at Chinese exchanges or the American stock exchanges? First and foremost, Chinese investors can’t buy American stocks in the Chinese stock market. Why? The answer is simple. They aren’t listed in the Chinese stock market. Chinese stock market was opened for foreign companies only in the mid-2019 and no companies have been listed yet. So, Chinese investors buying American Stocks from Chinese market is ruled out. Of course it doesn’t matter to the fakers anyway. So, that leaves the possibility of Chinese investors buying American stocks from the American market. Did it really happen? Just a cursory glance of the American market indexes would reveal that there was hardly any buying happening at all and rather the market indexes were consistently hitting lower circuits undergoing severe crash. The index trends reflect no such bulk buying at all. In fact, the American stock analysts and policy makers fear exactly the reverse. Their fear is that US investors would end up investing hugely in Chinese companies, that too of dubious background.   The US had already started stopping its investors from investing in Chinese companies as part of US-China trade war even before the Corona outbreak. America is trying its level best to stop its investors from investing money in Chinese companies. The US is also said to be looking at limiting the ability of government pension funds to participate in Chinese markets. US has been considering de-listing Chinese companies from US stock exchanges as part of a ‘broader effort to curb US investment in China’. More than 150 Chinese companies are listed on the major US exchanges, worth a total of $1.2 trillion in market value as in February. If one goes by this theory, not only US companies but also these 150+ Chinese companies would be equally vulnerable to being bought over. Thus the fake narrative of Chinese buying major stakes in the US companies has absolutely no merit in it. 

Chinese stock market didn’t crash much compared to many of the other world markets though it did indeed witness a setback. The Chinese market benchmark the Shanghai Composite Index had marked its recent highpoint 3115 on 13 January and slipped to 3095 on 20^th January when China officially announced the corona virus outbreak. It fell to 2746 on Feb 3 after the market was opened after their New Year holidays. It is hovering around that value even now in the mid March. What was the reason for the Chinese markets to fare relatively better? One reason is that China has infused $174 billion stimuli package to their economy and that kept the sentiments in the Chinese market in good spirit. The tremendous progress China made in controlling the spread of the pandemic also added to improved stock market sentiments. There is one more likely reason for the less volatility seen in China's share markets. The reason is that the foreign capital accounts for only less than four per cent of the entire share market in China. So, there isn’t anything to be bought over from the ‘foreign hands’ in the Chinese market. Rather, the Chinese investors are in fact being encouraged to invest money in the Chinese companies in the Chinese stock market to showcase the resilience of their economy. 

Again, for the fakers, the data doesn’t need to be accurate, rather data is conveniently manufactured by hook or crook to suit the fake narrative, and the truth remains the immediate causality. For example, they would insist that Beijing didn’t have any corona cases and that is a good enough proof for China’s hands behind the pandemic.  The fact is of course Beijing was very much impacted as well.  There are of course many countries which are not impacted by Corona, including Singapore. Hopefully the Conspirators won’t get any new ideas to run their imaginations wild. The faker behind one of the stories wonders how Chinese could create a vaccine and that is the proof that the formula of the virus was already with them. The only problem with that statement is that only the faker seems to know about the existence of such a vaccine while WHO has no knowledge about any such vaccine existing at all till date. Same sources that project China building a hospital in 2 weeks as proof of their prior-knowledge of the pandemic will have no qualm in spreading fake message about a hospital being built in Rajasthan in 2 days by Indian Army and going jingo about it! Well, the conspirator wouldn’t even spare the US house speaker Nancy Pelosi. As per the narrative, Ms.Pelosi is behind the deadly virus, engineered by colluding with Chinese, in an attempt to cripple American economy by bringing down Trump. Of course sky is the limit when it comes to fictitious fake stories.  

The Covid-19 is a challenge to the whole world. We need to be united in the fight against this deadly disease and cooperation beyond national boundaries to promote pursuit of science and knowledge alone will make us emerge victorious in this battle as well. All those who indulge in fake propaganda to serve their narrow interests are only harming this cause and are enemies of the humanity. 

Suresh Kodoor

sureshkodoor@gmail.com

Ph: +91 9845853362

No, we still won't be safe from Corona after the Sunday 'Curfew'! - Suresh Kodoor

No, we still won't be safe after the Sunday 'Curfew'! 

- Suresh Kodoor

There is a message going around in the social media forums now saying we will emerge as a safe country once the Sunday 'Curfew' is over! Reason? Because the life span of the virus is 12 hours and the curfew is for 14 hours and thus corona virus present at the public places would have died by then. 

This is more of a 'made up' justification by the 'bhakth brigade' (as an afterthought to conceal the embarrassment in the face of widespread criticism of PM's speech, which did not lay out any concrete strategy and steps to deal with the Corona challenges), than with any scientific basis (just like the justifications that were 'manufactured' one after the other (as each one flopped) after demonetisation) 

The said message doing rounds at present is totally wrong, misleading and dangerous. Unless there is a total lockdown for 2-3 weeks (which may not be practical), one can not be completely 'safe' from the virus. A 14 hr curfew WILL NOT make the country emerge safe out of the virus scare. Believing such misleading information will only instil a false sense of security and will lead to people throwing their caution to wind post Sunday curfew. 

1. Life span of the Corona virus range from a few hours to couple of days depending on the surface (Copper - 4hrs, Cardboard - 48 hrs, Steel - 48 hrs, Plastic - 72 hrs (source: Economist))

2. Only those Virus that are stuck to the outside surfaces will die after its lifespan is over. The Virus inside an affected person will not die until he/she is completely cured. So, if an affected person get out and roam around after the 14-hr curfew, he/she will again spread the virus to other people. Until all the already affected people as well as those who are presently the carriers (difficult to identify until they develop symptoms) are in isolation without any outside contacts for at least next 3 weeks, nobody is safe from the virus. So, be aware that you are not still 'safe' even after the 14-hr curfew as affected people and 'virus carriers' could be still out there and thus the virus is not going to disappear all of a sudden post Sunday curfew

So, irrespective of you observing the 14-hr curfew, please do not get out and roam around for next 2-3 weeks unless absolutely necessary. For some people, especially for those whose daily bread depends on their going out for work, it may be difficult to stay back at home. The community and government will have to come forward to help them pass this difficult period. However, all those who can stay home may please observe self-restraint for next 3 weeks and take all precautions in case they have to go out for any valid reason. 

When there is already a standing instruction and advisory from multiple agencies asking people not to venture out for next couple of weeks unless absolutely necessary, another call for one-day curfew will only do more harm than good, as is evident from the messages doing rounds. The 'break the chain' is a strategy which needs meticulous execution extending for a few weeks. It is not a 14-hr showbiz! Please do not get misled by misinformation. This is not a time for trivia. 

- Suresh Kodoor

The CAA/NRC Distilled - Suresh Kodoor

The CAA/NRC Distilled

CAA/NRC is against the Constitution. CAA/NRC is against the people of India

Suresh Kodoor

·         Constitution – The Blueprint for building a modern India:  Indian Constitution has been a magnificent response from our founding visionaries to the question of how to transition the Independent India into a modern nationhood. Indian Constitution put forth a magnificent blueprint for the generations to internalise and put in practice as they get engrossed in the process of nation building.  The architects of our Constitution were confronted with a stark reality that India is a society where ‘inequality’ and ‘injustice’ are accepted norms in every sphere of social and economic life, institutionalised through the deep-rooted caste system. Constitution was to undertake the herculean task of freeing the people from the clutches of ‘laws of Manu’ and walks them into the new world of Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

Dr.Ambedkar was emphatic in his final speech to the constituent assembly where he said, “If the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost forever. This eventuality we must all resolutely guard against. We must be determined to defend our independence with the last drop of our blood”. We must resist firmly and fiercely all attempts to put creed above the country lest the Constitution is undermined and eventually our hard-fought freedom is lost forever. In hindsight, Dr.Ambedkar appears perfectly prophetic when one revisits his warning, “Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero- worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship”.  Proponents of our Constitutional ideals wanted us to never lay our liberties at the feet of anyone, or to trust anyone with power which would enable him/her to subvert our institutions.

·         Constitution and Citizenship: Part II, the Chapter titled ‘Citizenship’, of the Indian Constitution governs the Indian Citizenship. ‘The Citizenship Act 1955’ legislation was framed aligning well with the Constitution, which never linked religion and the citizenship. There are five ways to become an Indian citizen as enlisted in the Constitution. By birth, descend, naturalisation, registration and territorial incorporation. Religion has never been a criterion in any of these five methods. As per the Constitution, if one is born inside the territory of India, he/she becomes an Indian Citizen (by birth).

·         Amendments to ‘The Citizenship Act 1955’: The Citizenship Act 1955 has been amended multiple times in the past. The first amendment was in 1986 following the signing of ‘Assam Accord’ between the Central Government and Assam Students Union following an extended agitation by the AASU demanding deportation of illegal migrants. Thus, 1986 amendment added a clause which mandated that at least one of the parents has to be an Indian citizen for someone to be eligible for Indian citizenship by birth. In the year 2003, Vajpayee’s BJP Government brought in another amendment to the Act. For the first time, 2003 amendment introduced the term ‘illegal migrant’ in the Act and amended the requirement for availing citizenship by birth by making it mandatory that the parent who is not a citizen of India could not be an ‘illegal migrant’.  i.e After 2003 amendment, someone will be qualified for Indian citizenship by birth only if a) he/she is born in India, b) at least one parent is an Indian citizen and c) the parent who is not an Indian citizen is not an ‘illegal migrant’. However, the definition of the ‘illegal migrant’ was still not based on religion, but was someone who had travelled to India without passport and other travel documents or someone who had overstayed his/her visa period. The 2003 amendment also directed the central government to construct a nationwide citizenship register (NRC).

·         CAA brings in religion to the citizenship: The current amendment, Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019, under Modi’s BJP Government has linked religion to the Indian citizenship for the first time in the history of Independent India. CAA has essentially altered the definition of ‘illegal migrants’ included in the Citizenship Act by the previous BJP Government in 2003, thus completing the task left ‘unfinished’ earlier. The intent was always to deny one section of the population, namely Muslims, their rights.

·         What CAA amended:  Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 primarily added following clauses to completely sabotage the secular essence of the Indian Constitution and for the first time ever in the history of India started treating people based on their race and religion in front of the law.

Ø  CAA added the following paragraph to the definition of the word ‘illegal migrants’:

“Provided that any person belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, who entered into India on or before the 31st day of December, 2014…. shall not be treated as illegal migrant for the purposes of this Act;"

Thus declaring that the people belonging to any of the six religions from any of the stated three countries (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan) are not to be treated as ‘illegal migrants’ even if they had entered Indian territory without passport or other valid documents or had overstayed their allowed visa period.

Ø  CAA changed the time duration one had to reside in India before he/she could apply for the Indian citizenship. Before the amendment, one of the requirements for citizenship by naturalisation was that the applicant must have resided in India during the last 12 months, and for 11 of the previous 14 years.  The Act relaxes this 11 year requirement to 5 years for persons belonging to the same six religions and three countries.

Ø  The amendment also has added a clause to provide for cancellation of OCI. The registration of Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cardholders can now be cancelled if they violate any law, thus practically leaving them at the mercy of the government.

·         Subverting the Constitution since 2014:  Even prior to CAA, effort to segregate people on the basis of Religion has been ongoing since the Modi government came to power. Passport Act and Foreigners Act were amended in 2015 itself. These amendments permitted the same selected groups chosen on religious grounds to stay on in India if they had come before Dec 31, 2014. Same wordings that are part of CAA now were added to these two rules in 2015. The intention of the government to exclude people of a specific religious faith from exercising their rights and denying them the equality that the Constitution guarantees are very evident and been part of a larger plot.

·         Penalty is Rs.500 for the chosen six and Rs.35000 for others:  The extent to which the sinister design to alter the structures and procedures of various institutions had spread its claws would alarm anyone who is concerned about the democratic and secular fabric of India. Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) altered its penalty fee structure in 2019. As per the new fee structure, anyone who overstays their visa period by more than two years will have to pay USD 500 (Rs.35000/-), of course with a caveat that the violator is not someone who belongs to any of the selected six religions (Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, Christian)  from the chosen three countries (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan).  If you belong to any of the non-Muslim communities, you need to pay only Rs.500/-. For the same crime, a Muslim has to pay Rs.35000 while a Hindu needs to pay a mere Rs.500/-.  If the period of overstay is between 3 months to 2 years, the penalty amount is Rs.21000 (USD 300) for Muslims and Rs.100 for others.  And worst, the amount for these six communities are specified in Indian rupees while it is shown in terms of USD for others. The message ‘India is for Hindus’ cannot be conveyed any more blatantly than this by an official agency.  

·         CAA mocks at Article 14: Part III of the Constitution lists out at length our Fundamental Rights. No Governments has powers to pass any acts that violates or takes away these fundamental rights. Equality has been one of the hallmark values and rights that the Constitution upheld and guaranteed its people. Article 14 under ‘Right to Equality’ in Part III of the Constitution mandates that all persons inside the territory of India must be treated equally in front of the law. Article 14 reads as below:

“The state shall not deny to any person equality before law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India”

The usage of the word ‘person’ may be noted in particular. Article 14 guarantees that once someone is inside the territory of India, he/she is entitled to be treated equally before law irrespective of whether the person is an Indian citizen or not. While the word ‘citizen’ was used in the very next section, which is Article 15 (which states that the State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex and place of birth or any of them), usage of the word ‘person’ in Article 14 reveals without any doubt the intent of the founders of the Constitution and their insistence to ensure equality, the touchstone of a modern human civilization, to everyone who enters Indian territory.  CAA mocks at this very fundamental pronouncement in the Constitution and thus violates the Constitution.

How concerned and aware the Architects of our Constitution was about the deep rooted inequality in our society is evident from the below sentence in the Article 15.

“(2) No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them, be subject to any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to— (a) access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment; or (b) the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort maintained wholly or partly out of State funds or dedicated to the use of the general public”

Probably no Constitution in the world would have had to go into such specific details where the Constitution had to direct its people not to discriminate and restrict some sections of their own fellow citizens from using wells, tanks etc! The realization that there existed (and still exists) a large section of people who were denied the rights to use even public wells, tanks and roads in the name of caste hierarchies and practice of ‘untouchability’ forced the founders not to leave anything to chance. It also speaks volumes on how serious the founders were when they spoke about equality. We must be extra vigilant not to allow anyone to tinker with it and take away from us one of the most key fundamental rights that the Constitution guaranteed us.

It would be ironical that those who gain citizenship by virtue of the discriminatory clause of CAA over their counterparts who would be denied the same privilege only because they chose to exercise the right given to Indian citizens by Article 15 (freedom to practice the religion of choice) would pledge by the same constitution that guarantees no discrimination on the basis of religion.

·         CAA Classification has no rational relation with the Act’s objectives:  The Supreme Court has time and again made it amply clear that the Article 14 forbids any class legislation (legislation that discriminates on the basis of religion, caste, race etc). However, the court has also observed that it is permissible to make classifications under Article 14 provided certain conditions are met. The court also has interpreted ‘equality’ in no uncertain terms on numerous occasions and has stated unequivocally that such classifications must be ‘non-arbitrary’. The court has stated that ‘equality and arbitrariness are sworn enemies’ and the arbitrariness is nothing but ‘whim and caprice of an absolute monarch’ (Supreme Court in EP.Royappa vs Tamil Nadu Case (Nov 1973).

CAA makes following classifications:

o   It distinguishes migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan from migrants from all other countries

o   It  separates those belonging to the Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi or Christian faiths from all other persons, including  Muslims

o   The privilege is conferred only to those who have entered India before December 31, 2014.

The above classifications do not qualify the criterion of being ‘reasonable’ and do not have a rational relation with the objectives of CAA (as stated in the Statement of Objects and Purpose of the Act), which is to offer protection to the ‘persecuted’ who have come to India. 

o   If objective is to protect only minorities from neighboring countries with a state religion: the exclusion of Bhutan and Sri Lanka defy any rational relation between the object of the Act and the classification it creates

o   If to offer the law’s protection only to migrants from neighboring countries where Islam is a state religion: the Act then leaves out certain communities of Muslims from these countries (who are minorities in those country, like Ahmadiyyas, Hazaras etc) as well as the Jews, agnostics and atheists

o   If the objective of the CAA is to protect migrants from countries that were originally a part of pre-partition India: then the inclusion of Afghanistan and exclusion of Myanmar means that the classification can have no rational relation to its objective.

o   The Act also separates religious persecution from other forms of persecution, while in reality someone persecuted for political reason is in no way in a better position than those persecuted on religious grounds 

o   The Act seems to assume that it is only persons from countries with a state religion are subjected to persecution. The case of  Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar proves otherwise

o   Finally, there is no rational in arbitrarily deciding a cut-off date of 31 December 2014

Thus, the CAA is blatantly discriminatory in nature and hence wouldn’t stand the scrutiny of the law of the land

·         The immediate trigger for CAA: The trigger that led to the introduction of CAA is the shock and embarrassment BJP had to suffer from the NRC experience in the state of Assam. The NRC in Assam busted the false claims of BJP that millions of Bangladeshi Muslims are staying as illegal migrants. Out of the 19.07 lakhs who were missing from the final Assam NRC list, 14 lakhs turned out to be non-Muslims. The reality that most of the people migrate looking for livelihood and has nothing to do with religion of course is not in line with BJP’s divisive agenda and hence they were spreading the false narrative of ‘religious persecution’ as the primary reason for migration. Since only 5 Lakhs ‘illegal migrants’ were Muslims and other 14 Lakhs belonged to Hindu and other communities, BJP had to find a way to ‘save’ the Hindus from being branded as ‘illegal migrants’ and hence the CAA to exclude them from the purview of the definition of ‘illegal migrants’. The disappointment was too evident as BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma made no effort to conceal his anguish as he stated “The NRC has names of people which should not be in it and has left out names of people which should have been in it”. It is nobody’s guess who the people he was expecting ‘not to be in the list’. Thus came the CAA into picture so as to ensure that all those excluded from the list, except Muslims, would not have to go ‘stateless’ and be ‘illegal’. 

·         Horrendous experience of Assam NRC: If Assam NRC (National Register of Citizens) experience is anything to go by, the amount of suffering and miseries an India-wide NRC would bring in is unimaginable. The horrific experiences and heart-breaking stories that the Assam people had to endure going through the process of NRC is countless.   The NRC saga in Assam had its beginning in the year 1951. After the student struggle shook the state in the 80s, the ‘Assam Accord’ was signed in 1985 and one of the conditions in there was to update the NRC. An NGO organization (Assam Public Works) approached the Supreme Court in 2009 asking to update the NRC and to remove undocumented migrants from the voter’s list. That is how the NRC made its first appearance in the Supreme Court. SC ordered updating of NRC in Dec-2013. After almost a five-year long ordeal and 1500+ crore wasted, the draft released in July 2018 found 40 lakhs missing from the list! One could only imagine the extreme agony those 40 lakhs must have gone through in their desperate attempt to get back into that ‘holy list’.  Prayers of almost half of the ‘fortunate’ ones were answered it seems as the final NRC version released on 31 Aug 2019 brought the number down to 19.07 lakhs. Sadly, some of the names present in the earlier list were missing in the final list and vice versa. The entire exercise was simply chaotic and thoroughly mismanaged. The missing names include former MLAs, retired Army Officers and their families, former Indian President’s family, Government officials and lakhs and lakhs of genuine Indian citizens and their families from all walks of life and faiths. Some of the families found themselves in deep mess with a few of the members declared as ‘Citizens’ while others were dumped as ‘illegal migrants’. They all, irrespective of which faith they belonged to, had to endure the agony of taking endless trips to Foreigners Tribunals, running from post to pillars and pleading with whomever they could get hold of, just to prove that India very much belongs to them as well. Imagine how worst the situation could slip into if such an exercise had to be undertaken India-wide, especially with the communal animosity prevailing in the country at this juncture.  

The most glaring and shocking omission was when 60 small children were left out of the NRC whose parents were part of the list.  These small children were facing with the horrifying prospect of being sent to detention centres. Only the Supreme Court intervention in the last minute saved them from the nerve-wrecking experience. SC ordered that the children should not be sent to detention camps or separated from their loved ones at any cost. The case was brought to Court’s attention only because an NGO intervened. How many such cases would come up and how many of the affected families would be able to afford going to Courts is anybody guess. 

·         All Indian citizens, especially the poor and marginalised, will be most impacted by NRC: The narrative being propagated is that no Indian citizens will be impacted by the NRC. Really? As we know, 3.29 crore people of Assam had to apply for being included in the NRC, out of which 40 lakhs were omitted for some or other reason. They all had to run around desperately for weeks and months to arrange for the ‘legacy data’ to prove that their parents were born in India and are not illegal immigrants. While lot many people wouldn’t even have their own birth records, leave alone their parent’s, the most impacted are poor and marginalised. Where are they supposed to bring the documents from to prove their parent’s birthplace? A similar India-wide exercise would only create complete chaos, panic, wide-spread corruption, religious profiling and a large scale civil unrest. Everyone will be put through the ignominy of havening to prove that he/she belongs to this place where his/her ancestors of so many generations lived and died. Every single citizen, irrespective of his/her religious affiliation, will be under the mercy of the government and that is exactly BJP is trying to achieve so that people would be under terrible fear and will not raise any dissenting voice against the government or their agenda of hatred.

·         CAA has everything to do with NRC: Another lie being propagated is that the CAA has no link with NRC. Nothing can be farther from the truth. The CAA and NRC are closely interconnected. The plan is to first implement the CAA which will give citizenship to all non-Muslims from the three countries and then to implement NRC to identify ‘infiltrators’. This link has been made clear many times by the BJP leaders and the ministers in the government.

Home Minister (April 2019):  “First the CAB will come. All refugees will get citizenship. Then NRC will come. This is why refugees should not worry, but infiltrators should. Understand the chronology—CAB will come and then NRC. NRC is not just for Bengal, it’s for the entire country.”

Home Minister (Nov 21, 2019) in Rajyasabha: “The process of National Register of Citizens (NRC) will be carried out across the country.” 

Home Minister (Dec 21, 2019) in Parliament: “We will bring the NRC across the country. Not a single infiltrator will be spared.”

·         NPR and NRC are linked: National Population Register (NPR) is the means to achieve the NRC. Thus, NPR is inseparable from NRC. The relation is simple; NRC is the list of Citizens, NPR is the means to add names into the NRC (and a way to filter out the ‘unwanted’) and CAA is to selectively sneak in Hindu ‘illegal migrants’ into the NRC while keeping out the Muslims. The NRC requires no separate new law to be passed as it is already part of the Citizenship law via the 2003 amendment. The rules detailing the process through which the NRC will be implemented were also adopted in 2003. The rule clearly states “a population register will be prepared by collecting information relating to all persons who are usually residing within the jurisdiction of the local registrar. The local register of Indian citizens (as part of the national register) shall contain details of persons after due verification made from the population register.”

The link between NRC and NPR was unambiguously stated by the Minister of State for Home Affairs Mr. Kiran Rijju in Parliament in the year 2014 itself where he pronounced, “The Government has now decided to create the National Register of Indian Citizens based on the information collected under the scheme of NPR by verifying the citizenship status of all individuals in the country.”

The Home Ministry’s annual report of 2018-2019 (Ch 15, Para 15) says, “Government of India has approved a scheme of creation of National Population Register (NPR) in the country by collecting specific information of all usual residents. NPR is the first step towards creation of National Register of Indian Citizen (NRIC).”  

Now that the blatant lies about NPR and NRC (that they are not linked) perpetrated by BJP Ministers and leaders, right from the Prime Minister himself, have fallen flat, the Government has started claiming that the NPR is part of the census. This also is completely untrue. Census and NPR are completely two separate things with different questionnaire, format and purpose.  Government has included six new questions to the NPR survey questionnaire. The new questions include name of the father and mother, their places and dates of birth and the details of Aadhaar. The objective is to create basis for rejection as per the 2003 amendment to the Citizenship Act (which states that at least one parent should be Indian citizen and the other should not be an ‘illegal migrant’). It is a lie to say that the NPR is part of the census. 

The NPR information, after the enumeration, will be cross checked with the AADHAR data and is entered into the Local Population Register where the letter “D” (to indicate ‘Doubtful Citizen’) will be placed against those individuals who the enumerator feels have not submitted sufficient ‘legacy’ data to convincingly prove their citizenship! The onus would be then on those who have received “D” stamping to prove their credentials, by hook or crook, opening the flood gate for widespread targeted profiling, discrimination, harassment, bribery and persecution of the masses, especially of those belonging to the minority communities and others who raise dissenting voices and do not fall in line with the RSS racist divisive agenda. 

  

·        CAA/NRC is a step towards realising RSS dream of ‘Hindu Rashtra’: The real objective behind the act is to fast forward the journey towards ‘Hindu Rashtra’, widening the polarisation by targeting people of a particular faith. RSS is committed to convert India into a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ where other religious minorities are forced to live as second class citizens without any fundamental rights or privileges. The key to unravel the bigger plot behind CAA/NRC lies with reading M.S.Golwalker, the RSS ideologue who idolized Hitler and German Nazis and wanted to adopt the Nazi model of racist annihilation to purge India of religious minorities.  Golwalker suggested that the minorities live in India wholly subjugated to the majority Hindus, claiming nothing, not even citizen’s rights. And, the CAA/NRC is an attempt by his disciples to strip the minorities of their citizen rights as desired by their master. 

“The non-Hindu people of Hindustan must either adopt Hindu culture and language, must learn and respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but of those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture ... In a word they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizens' rights” (Golwalkjer, “We or Our Nationhood Defined”)

“To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races - the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by” (Golwalker, “We or Our Nationhood Defined”)

RSS and their ultra rightist associates are desperately trying to make Golwalkar dream come true. They are accelerating the path to his ‘Hindu Rashtra’, destroying our constitution, all its institutions and the very heart of Idea of India in the process.  They know that the Constitution of India is the biggest hurdles in their march towards destroying the idea of a liberal, secular India and hence the desperate drive to destroy the Constitution itself. RSS never had accepted the Indian Constitution as they always held the view that “Manu Smrithi” should be the Constitution of India, as written in their mouth piece ‘Organizer’ on Nov 30, 1949, “The worst about the new constitution of Bharat is that there is nothing Bharatiya about it. The drafters of the Constitution have incorporated in it elements of British, American, Canadian, Swiss and sundry other constitutions. But there is no trace of ancient Bharatiya constitutional laws, institutions, nomenclature and phraseology in it… But in our constitution, there is no mention of the unique constitutional development in ancient Bharat. Manu’s laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing”

The CAA/NRC is strikingly and horrifyingly similar to the Nuremberg Laws the Nazis implemented in Germany in 1935 as a precursor to strip the Jews of their citizen rights. The message is not lost on anyone about what BJP/RSS is trying to do with this country. They are throwing our great country to the dogs. They are dividing the heart and soul of our nation into pieces. Instead of drawing strength and inspiration from the diversity of this great garden, they want to pluck out the roses and orchids and destroy the whole Garden itself.

·         Real issues sidelined: In this time of extreme distress and with an economy in complete shambles, the need of the hour is to focus on the real issues affecting the lives of the common people and restore the trust. An insecure state can hardly instil confidence in people or encourage them to focus on productive endeavours. Instead of inspiring people to stay united, BJP/RSS is busy inventing new ways of dividing people and making them suffer even more. A party which cannot see people of India as a whole and can see them only as races and sectors has no moral right to be ruling this great country. The present struggle is to preserve the Constitution and to protect the very idea of India that celebrates diversity and embrace equality and liberty. The struggle against CAA/NRC therefore is also a struggle to save India from the fascist forces of hatred and division.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suresh Kodoor

Email: sureshkodoor@gmail.com

Ph: 9845853362