FN: Frederick Noronha’s blog

AsiaOSS Home Page is a network of promoters of Free/Libre and Open Source Software in Asia. Including governments, academia (mainly them) and a lesser number of techies too. A better start page might be this.

Self-description: “We, Asia Open Source Software Community, are just starting to collaborate each other.
Background

“The popularity of Open Source Software (OSS) has grown at an astonishing rate such that government, business sector, academy, R&D related organizations, and community groups have been expecting its policy to promote the use of open source software. The major advantage of open source software includes operation/development cost reduction, computer security raise, and, ultimately, competitiveness gain in software business and industry. However, in those economies which are slow in their economic development, the main focus concerns distribution of low-cost, rather than the most powerful PCs. open source software can contribute greatly to this issues.

“Another issues involves the growing gap in the information society or the problem of digital divide, due to enormously varied degrees of technological advances, Government policy, and knowledge and understanding of open source software among the participating economies. This leads to the need for Asian economies to cooperate in order to bridge the growing gap. This also involves promoting open source software.

“At the same time, whereas various kinds of organizations and communities conduct development and promotion activities under different circumstances/levels in order for information sharing, regional and international cooperative network including organizations and communities, have not been fully connected to share their knowledge and experience.

“Considering above background, peoples who are eager to develop their own software technology by their hands are gathered from various areas in Asia. We held the “Asia Open Source Software Symposium 2003″ in March, 2003 at Phuket, Thailand. “

This is a link to a presentation on Free/Libre and Open Source Software in Bangladesh by Ms. Tazrian Khan presented at The 6th Asia Open Source Software Symposium held in Colombo in September, 2005.

Read this story Technorati Weblog: Technorati Teams With The Associated Press to Connect Bloggers To More Than 440 Newspapers Nationwide. So America (rather, the US) talking to America (the US) again? What happens to the rest of cyberspace? Bulk of the planet on the fringes?

It was a summer Friday evening and, having some time to spare, one
ventured into the crowded and colourful Mapusa marketn. After taking a
look at cursory look at all the many plants for sale (some vendors even
speak fluent English!), the next stop was the earthernware section.
There, they nowadays sell the earthernware ‘cock-shaped’ drinking-water
pot in sizes tiny enough to hold just a glassful of water. An
interesting toy for the kids; maybe more innovation could take our
age-old pottery skills ahead….

After a while, one ran into a familiar face. It was Olga Martins, the
lady who served a lifetime (or so I think) in the Goa government’s
Department of Information which many of us rub shoulders with as
journos.

Ms Martins and her husband were near the section selling
traditionally-grown (not the high-yielding IR8s and Jayas) rice.

After exchanging a few pleasantaries, she mentioned that her son was
running Mum’s Kitchen, the new restaurant focussing on Goan food in the
Taleigao-Caranzalem (if I got it right) area. Her daughter-in-law was
into designing. Another son ran the Lemon Tree school, which some of us
might have passed by en route to the Goa University or the International
Centre.

Nice to catch up with old times. As I realised later, she was scouting
around for Goa-grown traditional rice for the family restaurant.

It was nice to meet up after these years. She wanted to know where all
the old-time journalists were and what they were doing. G R Singbal,
Flaviano Dias, Jagdish Wagh… When the topic veered around to Africa,
Ms Martins mentioned that she had grown up in Tanzania (or Tanganika, as
it was then called) including at Arusha.

Just thought of sharing this as a link to all those whom we tend to
forget when they go out of the world of work which we too have been
associated with. Unfortunately, Ms Martins is not email otherwise we
could have invited her to join the Goajourno mailing list.

Goa’s press accreditation committee met on May 11, 2006 — exactly ten
months after its earlier meet held on July 11, 2005.

It may be recalled that the issue of accreditations was raised at the
recent Goa Union of Journalists general body meeting, with special
debate on the accreditations granted to representatives of the
electronic media and the contentious issue of ‘provisional
accreditations’ being given out by the government even while meetings
were not being regularly held to take a formal decision on the same.

Deccan Herald’s special correspondent in Goa Devika Sequeira was elected
chair of the press accreditation committee.

GUJ is represented on the PAC by Devika Sequeira, Umesh Mahambre
(2006-07 president), Ashley do Rosario (past president of GUJ) and
Sandesh Prabhudesai.

According to unofficial accounts of decisions taken, accreditations were
approved for Flaviano Dias (former PTI bureau chief), Mario Cabral e Sa,
Pushpa Iyengar (back in Goa and working for the DNA), Prakash Kamat (who
recently changed over from the ET to the Hindu), Bagli, Mayuresh Pawar,
Rupesh Samant (who recently moved to UNI, from Sunaparant), and S
Shanbhag of Navhind Times.

Further details were sought from (or accreditation was turned down) in
the case of Shareen, Sanjay Sinha, Ms Yadav, Devidas Gawde, Preetu Nair
(GT), Nilesh Naik (Pudhari), Jyoti Dhond, Tara Narayan (Goan Observer)
and Nandesh Kambli.

For a confirmed version of the list above, details may be obtained from
the information department itself. Or talk to someone who attended the
meeting; I didn’t.

Its jacket terms it an “exciting collection of original
essays”, and to add weight to the claim this books has some
big names contributing to it. But surely an understanding of
Indian journalism needs to go beyond the metros and big
newspaper editors; for a country the size and diversity of
India, what we see of Indian journalism obviously depends on
where we stand.

That said, this is an interesting publication. Some 26
contributors discuss a range of thems, from media laws
(including the often-neglected in India right to privacy
against media intrusion) to the social role of journalists;
gender, caste and communal issues in journalism; journalistic
practice in war and peace; censorship and repression by the
state; the role of media technology and future trends; sports
journalism; urban reporting; and alternative media such as
community radio.

Editor Nalini Rajan is associate professor at the Asian
College of Journalism in Chennai. She says the book “is not
envisaged strictly as a textbook for a journalism school” but
more as a general collection reflecting trends and visions
within the profession. Her fifteen-page introduction gives a
fair idea of what the book is about.

BRP Bhaskar, formerly with the United News of India and many
Indian English-language newspapers — including the Deccan
Herald, during this reviewer’s longish stint there — takes a
large over-view of the growth of India’s press and the law.
Coming from a veteran, this is clearly an essay worth a close
reading, specially by anyone who has entered journalism in
the last decade or two.

>From the British control of the Indian media, to its takeover
by industrialists, and the lack of any mention of a free
press in the Indian Constitution… these are some of the
issues that get touched on. Then we move over to various laws
passed by the government — the Press (Objectionable Matters)
Act of 1951, the press commission headed by Justice G S
Rajadhyaksha, the attempt at a Daily Newspaper (Price and
Page) Act in 1956, the second press commission under Justice
K K Mathew in 1977, and more.

Bhaskar also looks at the growth of the regional and
‘national’ media in India. As an aside, one could perhaps
ask: do we really have a paper that really reflects the
diversity of the country, or are these just overgrown
editions of Mumbai and Delhi newspapers, pretending to do so?

N Ram, the blunt-speaking editor-owner of The Hindu and, in a
way, the Friedrich Engels of Indian journalism, has a reprint
of an earlier editorial titled here as ‘Defining the
Principles of Ethical Journalism’. He explains what his
family-owned newspaper stands for.

His unequivocally-described “five principles” stand as
inspiration both for its clarity and vision. These are:
truth telling, freedom and independence, the principle of
justice, humaneness, and contributing to the social good. But
how do these play themselves out in the day-to-day operations
of his influential Chennai-headquartered daily? Maybe we’ll
have to ask someone from his staff.

Harivansh is the editor of the editor of the Jharkhand-based
Prabhat Khabar for a decade-and-half, and makes the case that
a commercially-run newspaper can also play a sharp role in
development journalism. He claims his publication has been
doing just this by way of giving people “information on
science, information technology, economics and the
comparitive financial progress of different states”.
Interestingly, his paper has conducted “readers’ courts”,
where readers could interact with journalists, and discuss
ways of improving the product. In days when the
advertisers-rupee-is-all logic tends to predominate, such
perspectives come as a breath of fresh air.

“From the most backward region of Bihar, Ranchi — which is
now the capital of Jharkhand state — the almost defunct
‘Prabhat Khabar’ forged ahead and is today published from
five centres in three states,” Harivansh writes with
percpetible pride. He reminds us that being a journalist in
metros like Mumbai or Kolkata “is very different from being
one in Ranchi”. You bet! His narration of experiences in
turning-around a near-defunct paper have a lot of lessons for
anyone in journalism.

Engineer-turned-journalist, the Mumbai-based Dilip D’Souza
tells the story of what happens to those who dare to dabble
in investigative journalism.

Corruption and crime flourish in our societies because the
media pay too little attention, dig too infrequently and
rarely deep enough, he argues. (That the recent hidden-camera
sting operations have shown it hugely profitable, in
viewership figures too, to expose grand-scale corruption is
an issue which emerged only after this essay was penned.)

Besides, as D’Souza points out, stories are hardly followed
beyond initial reports. Crimes and scandals come at us at a
“fearful rate” too. More importantly, nobody of consequence
– in India’s nearly six decades of Independence — has been
punsihed for their crimes. Crimes themselves prosper despite
being exposed. (Bal Thackeray, named for instigating several
riots, rode to power in riots after 1995. Sukh Ram commands
adulation in his home state. Harshad Mehta, the prime figure
in the stocks scam, was not just never punished but became a
sought-after speaker and columnist in several publications,
as we are reminded.)

Investigators also themselves face vicious reprisals, notes
D’Souza. Just take the case of what happened to the Tehelka
after its dramatic pointing out of corruption when the BJP
was at the helm.

Mukund Padmanabhan, associate editor with The Hindu, focuses
on the right to privacy against media intrusion. He has
another take on the Tehelka investigation and says it stands
out “not very well”. He argues: “Even call girls (deployed by
Tehelka) have privacy rights and the contracts to hire them
for sex did not include permission to secretly film them in
the act.”

Valerie Kaye — journalist, TV researcher and producer — has
an unusual story about a two-week contract with the BBC while
filming in Argentina. That just shows the difference between
a media organisation’s image from the outside, and the
reality within. Darryl D’Monte, who could probably be called
the poster boy of Indian environmental journalism, writes on
“the greening of India’s scribes”. His chapter looks at the
growth and erosion of green writing in India.

It is D’Monte’s view — and one you can’t quite disagree with
– that since economic liberalisation of the 1990s, the
Indian media has “been more preoccupied with economic than
environmental issues, and there is no saying whether green
scribes will continue to flourish in future”. D’Monte has an
interesting story about how Anil Agarwal’s report on the
Indian environment came to be, following a visit to Malaysia
and the Consumers Association of Penang.

Indian Express associate editor Pamela Philipose looks at how
women’s activism prompted changes in news coverage in some
cases. V Geetha, an author, looks at gender, identity and the
Tamil “popular” press. One of the generes there is the
telling of female victim tales. “Part-sensational,
part-sincere and possessed of a will to ‘tell the truth’, ‘to
report the unreported’, this mode of writing has come to stay
in the Tamil media,” Geetha writes.

The Hindu sports editor Nirmal Shekar says sports journalism
can be “so different from” journalims. He sees it as “a
hybrid and a maverick, an island that revels in its
isolation, constantly celebrating its independence by
skillfully violating all time-tested norms of sound
journalism”.

Agricultural scientist-turned-journalist Devinder Sharma
finds agriculture to be a “missing dimension” in the media.
He writes bluntly, “Politics is important, but perhaps more
important is the role that the corporate houses play to woo
the political powers in a desperate effort to bring in a
genetically engineered food product or technology.”

Mumbai-based veteran development journalism Kalpana Sharma
has a chapter on urban reporting. She notes: “Cities are a
reporter’s dream. They represent the variety, the excitement,
the drama and the complexity that can yield endless stories.”
As anyone who worked beyond India’s four (or, at best, six)
metros should know, if you don’t work in a big city your copy
could simply be dooomed into non-existance. But then, there
is a challenge writing a good story away from the beaten
track too.

Sharma goes on to the new trends such as ‘celebrity
journalism’ and ‘page 3 journalism’.

This text also contains a number of other interesting papers
– lawyer Lawrence Liang on issues related to the new media
and so-called ‘piracy’; S Anand squarely raising blunt issues
of casteism in the newsroom (a rather insightful piece); M H
Lakdawala on the Urdu-language media; Praveen Swami on the
many flaws of defence reporting in India; Shyam Tekwani on
the risks of “embedded journalism”; Bindu Bhaskar on the
mainstream Indian media after the 1990s; Robert Brown on the
need to be “earnest as well as entertaining”; Robin Jeffrey
on “the public sphere of print journalism”; S Gautham on
alternative spaces in the broadcast media; and KP Jayasankar
and Anjali Monteiro in a almost-flippantly titled take on a
serious issue ‘Censorship ke peeche kya hai?’ about film
censorship.

Mahalakshami Jayaram writes on News in the Age of Instant
Communications; Stephen S Ross on Teaching Computer-Assisted
Reporting in South India; and Ashish Sen on Community Radio
– Luxury or Necessity? Anjali Kamat also has a text on
‘Youth’ and the Indian media. –Frederick Noronha, December
2005.

ABOUT THE BOOK: Practising Journalism: Values, Constraints,
Implications. Nalini Rajan (ed). 2005.Sage Publications India
Pvt Ltd. 81-7829-522-9 and ISBN 0-7619-3379-4. Paperback, pp
358, Rs 450.

Gova Doot, perceived as being close to the BJP if not propped up by it,
completes a year of publication on May 22, 2006. It invites its readers
to have their say on how the paper functioned over the past year.

Sunaparant goes tabloid. The paper has come out in a new format on
Sunday. Its new format announces a story — or is it speculation –
that Margaret Alva could become the next governor of Goa.

Rashtramat’s former editor Sitaram Tengse says readers are a must for
any newspaper to gain stability. He was talking at a Sunaparant
function, and called for the paper to target a growth in readership.

[ACCREDITATION RULES, published by the Department of
Information Series I No 39 dated December 26, 2002.
Notification DI/INF/Acc.Com/2002/3502] The Government of Goa,
in supersession of all previous notifications published in
the Official Gazette, in this behalf, hereby makes the
following rules, namely:-

1. SHORT TITLE AND COMMENCEMENT: (1) These rules may be
called the Goa State Media Representative Accreditation
Rules, 2002.

(2) They shall come into force from the date of their
publication in the Official Gazette.

2. DEFINITION: In these rules, unless the context otherwise
requires:

(a) “Committee” means the Press Accreditation Committee
constituted by the Government to advise the Government in
respect of accreditation of media representatives working at
the headquarters of the Government;

(b) “Government” means the Government of Goa;

(c) “editor” means the person defined as editor under the
Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867 (25 of 1867);

(d) “media representatives” means the correspondent, press
photographer, sports journalist or representative of any
newspaper, news agencies, broadcasting concern or electronic
media, provided he/she is a working journalist;

(e) “Member Secretary” means the Director of Information of
the Government;

(f) “newspaper” means any publication, printed and
distributed at fixed intervals, which contains news and
comment of public interest as defined in the Press and
Registration of Books Act (25 of 1867) but not a publication
containing information of sectional interest such as house
journals;

(g) “State” means the State of Goa;

(h) “working journalist” means a working journalist as
defined in the Working Journalists and Other Newspaper
Employees (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous
Provisions Act, 1955 (45 of 1955), as amended from time to
time;

(i) “accreditation” means recognition of media
representatives by the Government for the purpose of access
to sources of information in the Government and also to news
materials, written or pictorial, released by the Department of
Information and/or other agencies of the Government.

3. AMENDMENT TO RULES: These rules may be
amended/altered/modified/added to on the recommendation of
the Committee, if a proposal to this effect is made to the
Committee, by at least three of its members or the Member
Secretary.

4. APPLICATION OF RULES: These rules shall apply to the
accreditation of media representatives to the Government at
headquarters at Panaji.

5. CONSTITUTION OF COMMITTEE: (1) The committee shall consist
of nine members including the Member Secretary.

(2) Three members shall be the nominees of the Goa Editors’
Guild, or, in its absence, of the editors of daily newspapers
published from Goa and four members will be nominees of the
Goa Union of Journalists which shall include one
photographer, besides one sports journalist, nominated by the
Sports Journalists Association of Goa.

(3) The members of the Committee shall elect a Chairman from
among themselves by a simple majority.

6 TERM OF COMMITTEE: (1) The normal term of the Committee
shall be two years commencing from the date of its first
meeting, but shall continue till a new Committee is
constituted.

(2) The constitution of the new Committee shall not be
delayed for more than three months after the expiry of the
term of the existing Committee.

7 MEETINGS: The Committee shall meet once in every three
months. The Member Secretary shall convene the meeting by
fixing the date of the meeting and the agenda, inc
consultation with the Chairman of the Committee.

8 QUORUM: Five members, excluding the Member Secretary, shall
form a quorum of a meeting;

Provided that, if a meeting be adjourned to some other date
for want of quorum, the adjourned meeting shall be held on
such other date whether there be quorum present or not.

9 NOTICE: Seven clear days notice shall be given for
convening a meeting of the Committee. But emergent meeting
may however, be held after giving a 48 hour’s notice.

10 APPLICATION FOR ACCREDITATION: (1) The application for the
accreditation shall be submitted by the Editor of the
newspaper, editor of a news agency, in-charge of news unit of
the broadcasting concern and by the concerned head of news
unit of the electronic media, etc., to the Member Secretary.
Full details about the professional experience of the media
representative shall be furnished with the application for
accreditation, on a prescribed form available with the Member
Secretary. The Member Secretary shall refer the applications
to the Committee for consideration in its next meeting;

(2) The application referred to in sub-rule (1) shall also be
accompanied by a letter from the Editor (or Resident Editor
in case of outstation newspapers), recommending accreditation
on behalf of the newspaper concerned. The application shall
be accompanied by a letter from the in-charge of news unit of
the broadcasting concern, concerned head of news unit in case
of electronic media, and by the editor in case of a news
agency.

(3) Accreditation on a provisional/temporary basis may be
granted by the Member Secretary in consultation with the
Chairman of the Committee, till such time as the committee
meets thereafter, provided the applicant fulfils the
conditions laid down for grant of accreditation on a regular
basis and provided that he/she was accredited earlier to any
other media organisation or has been posted as a replacement
for a duly accredited correspondent and the media
organisation concerned has no other accredited correspondent
in Goa. No provisional accreditation shall be granted to a
fresh applicant.

11. CONDITIONS FOR ACCREDITATION: (1) The media
representative shall fulfil the following conditions for
accreditation —

(i) His/her office should be normally in Panaji and he/she
should submit contact address in Panaji at the time of
application for accreditation and thereafter during the
period of accreditation for the purpose of official
correspondence.

(ii) The applicant should be a working journalist.

(iii) At the time of the application, the applicant who seeks
accreditation should have spent not less than five years as a
journalist. However, these requirements may be waived in case
of new newspapers.

(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in clauses (i) and
(iii) of sub-rule (1), the Committee shall be guided by the
following aspect in recommending either grant or withdrawal
of accreditation;

(a) regularity of newspaper/news agencies;

(b) submission of necessary papers in respect of salary,
income, etc, by the applicant whenever the Committee so
requires

(c) Newspapers shall publish minimum 350 issues, a weekly
shall publish minimum 50 issues, a monthly shall publish
minimum 12 issues and a fortnightly shall publish minimum 23
issues, per annum.

(3) In case of news agencies, etc, the factors to be taken
into consideration to determine accreditation are:

(i) nature and type of the agency

(ii) method of distribution of its service

12 VALIDITY OF ACCREDITATION: accreditation shall be valid for
a period of one year with effect from 30th June.

13 NUMBER OF CORRESPONDENTS TO BE ACCREDITED: (1) Newspapers
shall not be entitled to have more than three accreditations
for the daily published and printed in Goa. All other media
organisations, including outstation daily newspapers, shall
be entitled to one accreditation only.

(2) Any publication printed and published in Goa, which
fulfils the conditions laid down in rule 11(2)(c), shall
have, in addition to the above one accreditation each for a
photographer and a sports journalist.

(3) A senior journalist may be granted accreditation on
account of his/her retirement or otherwise, provided he/she
has completed 25 years in the profession and 15 years as an
accredited journalist or editor of a daily newspaper, and
continues to be active as a journalist.

(4) Notwithstanding anything contained in subrules (1) and
(2) above, the committee may change the number of
accreditations for any daily newspaper arising out of its
professional requirements after recording reasons in writing
and being satisfied about the same.

14 EFFECT OF ACCREDITATIONS: (1) Accreditation does not
confer any official status on the media representatives but
shall recognise and identify him/her as a professional
journalist dealing with news of public interest. He/she
should not have letter heads, visiting cards and display
boards with the words “Accredited to the Government of Goa”
or any words to similar effect.

(2) Accreditation shall be used for journalistic purposes and
for no other purposes.

15. ACCREDITATION IS PERSONAL: Accreditation is personal and
not transferable.

16. ACCREDITATION CARD FOR PRESS REPRESENTATIVES: (1)
Accreditation card bearing a passport size photograph of the
media representatives will be issued to an accredited media
representative by the Member Secretary.

(2) The accreditation card will normally be utilised for
attending press conferences convened by the Government, or
any authorised Government officer and for entry into
Government offices.

(3) The accreditation card shall not be admissible for
attending special functions or conferences, where entry is
covered by special invitation cards and security passes.

(4) The accreditation card will entitle the holder to receive
the facilities provided to him/her by the Government from
time to time in respect of medical, transport, housing,
Government accommodation in the State of Goa.

(5) Accreditation card shall be renewed each year between 1st
June to 10th June.

17 LIST OF ACCREDITED MEDIA REPRESENTATIVES: The Member
Secretary shall maintain a list of accredited media
representatives representing any newspapers or news agency or
a broadcasting concern or electronic media.

18 REVIEW OF LIST OF ACCREDITED MEDIA REPRESENTATIVES: (1)
The list of accredited media representatives will be brought
upto date once during the year by the Member Secretary in
consultation with the Chairman of the Committee, in the light
of changes in respect of accredited media representatives of
outside newspapers, and dailies of the State.

(2) For the purpose of such a review, information regarding
circulation may be called for and media representatives be
asked to provide clippings of published dispatches or
photographic or audio/visual clips from the news media
organisation concerned.

19 WITHDRAWAL OF ACCREDITATION OF MEDIA REPRESENTATIVES: A
media representative will be liable to dis-accreditation, if:

(a) he/she uses the information and facilities accorded to
him/her for non-journalistic purposes;

(b) in the course of his/her duties as a correspondent,
he/she behaves in an undignified or unprofessional manner;

(c) he/she ignores or violates the condition on which
information and facilities are provided by the Government, or
acts contrary to any provisions of these rules;

(d) the organisation on whose behalf the representative is
accredited ceases its publication or the network ceases to
function except for a short period for reasons of industrial
disputes or natural calamities.

(e) the accredited representative is found to have given
false information about himself/herself or about his/her
organisation and if the Committee, after giving a reasonable
opportunity to the representative concerned to defend
himself/herself, is satisfied that the charges are true, the
accreditation may be suspended/withdrawn for a period not
exceeding two years, and during this period he/she shall not
be eligible for the grant of further accreditation.

(f) He/she causes wilful publication of news that is
incorrect or false, in so far as Government is concerned. But
in case the newspaper itself is responsible and not the
accredited media representatives for such wilful publication
of false, malafide or incorrect reports, or abuse of
confidence, the newspaper concerned shall be liable to
dis-accreditation i.e. an action under these rules shall be
taken by the Chairman of the Committee after the matter has
been referred to him in writing by the aggrieved party. The
Committee, after due study of the complaint, shall recommend
appropriate action to be taken by the Government against the
concerned media representative or newspaper and the
Government decision in this regard shall be final.

(g) Provided that no decision to suspend/withdraw the
accreditation of a media representative shall be taken by the
committee except at a meeting attended by at least two-third
of its members.

20 NOTICE OF TERMINATION OF ACCREDITATION OF A PRESS
REPRESENTATIVE: When an accredited media representative
ceases to represent a newspaper, news agency, broadcasting
concern or electronic media on behalf of which he is
accredited, the fact should be brought to the notice of the
Member Secretary in writing by the media representative, or
by the Editor, or the Manager concerned, within fifteen days,
failing which the matter may be reported to the Committee by
the Member Secretary for necessary action.

21 CONTINUOUS ABSENCE FROM THE HEADQUARTERS: An accredited
media representative who is continuously absent for three
months from the headquarters shall forfeit his/her
accreditation, except on a written permission from the Editor
or the Manager of the newspaper concerned to that effect,
duly conveyed to the Member Secretary.

22 REPRESENTATION AGAINST DECISION: Newspapers/agencies and
correspondents can make representation to the Secretary of
Information to the Government against any decision related to
dis-accreditation which is prejudicial to them. Such
representation should reach the Secretary of Information to
the Government within two calendar months from the date on
which such decision was communicated to the newspaper, agency
or media representative concerned.

23 POWER OF GOVERNMENT TO TAKE ACTION DEEMED FIT:
Notwithstanding anything contained in these rules, the
Government shall be free to take any action warranted by
circumstances in matters relating to accreditation and
dis-accreditation and in giving press facilities and in all
these cases, the Government decision shall be final.

By order and in the name of the Governor of Goa.

Rajesh Singh, Director of Information and Publicity.

Panaji, 17th December, 2002.

It was at one of those artificially-busy importance-assuming
conferences that actually change little in the real world
where an old friend thrust a copy of the ‘Struggle India
Reader’ into my distracted hands. Welcome relief it was. From
air-conditioned halls and mindless chatter.

Here are indeed some issues deep from the grassroots. Issues
that most of us might be hardly even aware of. If there are
two clear messages that emerge from this 185-page book it’s
simply that, firstly, there’s a lot happening in today’s
India which is simply invisible to the average eye. And,
secondly, that alternative publishing is quickly finding its
own feet here. If only we’re willing to sit up and take note.

Slickly yet inexpensively produced, this title was published
by the New Delhi-based PEACE (Popular Education and Action
Centre) group some time back. Reviews for it are overdue; but
then does the media take note of books not churned out via
the mainstream, commercial setup?

As made clear by its preface, the goal is to question the
impact of so-called “development” happening across India
since economic liberalisation, privatisation and
globalisation was “unleashed” on India since the mid-eighties.

This fairly slim volume tries to introduce the reader to the
‘other India’, as it were. It focuses on people fighting for
their resources, a fair deal and their right to life. It is
divided into five sections, showing how the simple (and often
poor) Indian citizen has fought back, valiantly if sometimes
unsuccessfully, on various issues.

Sub-sections of this book deal with land struggles, workers’
struggles, forest struggles, struggles for water, and
struggles against displacement. For those of us who live in
contemporary India, these faces of the 21st century
superpower-wannabee are not alien or unreal.

We’ve all encountered this harsh face of the Indian state and
its capitalist class at one time or another. A face which can
be harshly efficient, if only it chooses to so be, or if the
stakes (financial that is, people don’t matter) are high
enough for the business-politician-bureaucrat class nexus to
move into overdrive.

This book explains the logic behind land struggles thus:
“(India’s) highly unequal distribution of land leads to, and
is maintained by, various forms of oppression and violence in
rural society. The caste system provides an ideological
justification for this exploitative structure. Caste
hierarchy bears a close resemblance to the land-owning
patterns; on the one end, the landlords are predominantly
from the upper castes, whereas, on the other, the Dalits are
mostly landless.”

There’s an interesting story of land struggles from central
Bihar — a state today mocked by the rest of India, but which
was once the home of knowledge and enlightenment and the land
of the admirable philosophy of the Buddha centuries ago.

We are reminded that in a region with an extremely low level
of industrialization, agriculture forms the basis of
livelihood of nearly 82% of the population. That’s about 60%
in Patna and around 90% in the other districts.

So there are many complex issues: land is a source of
conflict, land-reforms and other state interventions, tenancy
reforms, minimum wages, feudal power today, movements
fighting back since the late ’seventies, and more. This acts
as a good primer for anyone wanting an understanding of a
complex issue.

In the case of workers, the focus of this book goes to
struggles in Hindustan Lever (one of India’s largest
companies, a subsidiary of Unilever the giant multinational,
which runs over 60 plants all over the country) and a
resource paper on “globalisation and workers’ rights”.

Hindustan Lever today has a product range from tea and coffee
beverages to ice creams, processed foods, soaps, detergents
and shampoo, to thermometers and industrial products. It
acquired Indian subsidiaries such as Kwality Food and the
erstwhile public sector company Modern Foods.

Over 9000 men are employed by the corporate. But the
treatment of workers comes out sharply in this text.

“When you bite into a burger at McDonalds, you probably
don’t realise where some of it comes from: an obscure
factory in Sahibabad in Uttar Pradesh. Workers there
process and package sesame seeds (’til’). But they put
in 12-hour shifts, don’t get any overtime allowances and
earn just about Rs 1800 to 2400 (around $50) per month!”

By offering case-studies of diverse ‘globalised’ factories
with ‘localised’ working conditions, this section gives a
good insight into the realities of the modern ‘global
village’. PUDR, the rights’ group, also gives an insight into
the politics of outsourcing, the contractualization of
labour, ‘lean’ production, mobility of capital, mechanization
and jobless growth, and more.

For the issue of forest struggles, we need to shift to the
southern Indian state of Kerala, and its north-eastern pocket
called Wayanad. If you go there as a tourist, this looks like
some scenic land out of God’s Own Country. But a closer look
would throw up the harsh face of class- and caste-based
exploitation.

But don’t forget the context: over 200 million Indians are
partially or wholly dependent on forest resources for their
livelihood. This includes seven percent of the country’s
population, comprising the forest-dwelling ‘adivasi’
(aboriginal) communities, whose very existence is intricately
linked to the forests.

In this book, we have a useful recounting of the history of
the all-India situation, and also a zoom-in to the current
reality of Wayanad.

Also from Kerala comes the story of Plachimada, a name which
has become synonymous with the anti-Coca Cola struggle there.

To get the setting, we are reminded: “There was a time when
rivers, streams and lakes were full to the brim and water
nurtured the people of the earth. But over the centuries, the
overuse and misuse of water has made it a scarce resource.”

So one could well imagine, or read up, on what happens when a
multinational giant bottling a soft-drink gets sited on 40
acres of “what used to be multi-cropped paddy growing lands”
in Palakkad, Kerala.

But the people have fought on, even if this issue doesn’t get
the coverage it deserves in much of the rest of India.

Displacement is a huge issue for the weak and powerless in
today’s India. Naturally, a significant section is devoted to
this — covering bauxite mining in Kashipur in southern
Orissa, the Koel Karo dam in Jharkhand, the lower Sukhtel
project in Orissa, the Mansi Wakal dam in Udaipur, the Tehri
dam project which is one of the most controversial
hydro-power projects in India and the second-largest dam
project in Asia in the new state of Uttaranchal, the giant
Tipaimukh high dam on the Manipur-Mizoram border.

Some figures: since 1947, development projects have uprooted
nearly 500,000 persons each year. At least 40 million people
have been already forced out of their lands and homes, many
of them more than once. Most were not even relocated in
planned resettlement, let alone “rehabilitated”. This book
says one estimate puts dams alone as having displaced 21.6
million people in India.

“We believe that the capitalist media allow little space for
information and pro-people analyses on people’s struggles.
Professional journalists often feel they have done their duty
by merely touching the surface of a few well-known movements
in occasional news stories,” say the StruggleIndia team which
compiled this work.

Obviously, they have a point.

This text reminds us of the harsh realities that many in
India face in their daily struggles to exist. While it might
seem depressing, the optimism flows from the fact that people
are willing to stand up and make their voices heard. It is a
useful contribution to the understanding of the ‘other
India’, one which urban dwellers and those having it good
often forget in their haste to make the second-largest country
of the planet a not-so-underdeveloped one.

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Struggle India Reader is published by the
Popular Education and Action Centre (PEACE), F93 Katwaria
Sarai, New Delhi 110016. http://www.struggleindia.com Pp 185.
Price not mentioned.