India from Chaos to Cohesion

INDIA: FROM CHAOS TO COHESION | 
Yes, we can make that happen- please feel free to share, let's restore India to its greatness
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India Together - Fostering a cohesive India

I am a volunteer like each one of you, wanting, among other things to do my share of work in contributing towards a cohesive India, where no Indian has to live in apprehension or fear of the other. 

Given the divisiveness we are witnessing in India, we have to take steps to restore the Dharma, the righteousness in a society where people trust each other, live their lives and let others live theirs.

Here is the preamble for an India together Campaign;

India has an impeccable history of welcoming the stranger and giving refuge to the oppressed, rejected and the evicted. She has welcomed Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and the Baha’is. Indeed the very first mosque built outside of Arabia was in India by a Hindu King in the state of Malabar. The Tibetan Buddhist refugees found a home in India; the Ahmadiyya Muslims felt secure, so were the displaced Bangladeshi and Afghan refugees.

This beautiful pluralistic 5000-year-old tradition of India is in peril now.  A few politicians are hell-bent on destroying that heritage. They want to force minorities into obedience and tell them what they can eat or believe, and whom they can marry or live as 2nd class citizens.  We can ignore this if it is a random individual screaming on the streets, but it has the backing of many members of the ruling party.  We cannot compromise on our integrity to satisfy the short-term urges of the radicals.  We cannot let this continue even if someone has pulled a joke, this fire will envelop everyone, and in the end, it will destroy our civilization. 

Make no mistake about it; the problem is not between people of faith, but the radicals. A good Hindu, Muslim, Christian or other will never hurt another individual, let alone kill. As a society we need to invest our time and energy in finding why a few people hate the others so much, much of it is injected by their parents, teachers, friends, and politicians, poor souls need to be free from such influences. 

India together Campaign

When you are watching a movie, invariably you go through a range of emotions, but at the end, there is a sense of joy when you see the family members making it up to each other, or when a couple is reunited or when justice is served. It is because you are inherently good and the sense of goodness is evoked in every human with a few exceptions.  

The new routine for many of us is to watch short video clips on WhatsApp or Facebook. Is there anyone out there who does not feel good when the Indian Army personnel is talking about treating all soldiers fairly, when one needs blood, he does not care if the blood is coming from a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Dalit, Jain or a Parsee. A good video example;-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5XptU6-Vm0

Don't we feel good when we help each other? When you support a disabled person crossing the street, don't you feel good? Don't you share that clip with your friends?

If you are a Muslim stand up for the rights of Dalits, and if you are a Sikh stand up for the rights of Christians, and if you are a Christian stand up for the rights of Hindus..... in the end, it opens our hearts and minds to stand up for each other. We have to kill the selfishness in us to serve our own, and instead server others for the long-term good.

On the other hand, when you watch a clip full of hate, what does it do to you? Does it make you angry, hateful and revengeful? It zaps your energy. Being at peace is a natural state, getting worked up ain't. 

Humans are drawn to greater good, and they feel good when a family comes together, they feel good when they can stop a bad guy from beating a child or a woman, they feel good when you prevent a woman from being harassed. 

We have a responsiblity now to encourage what is right, not because it is noble or God wants it, but because it makes us feel good and secure and live in peace with each other. 

Dr. Frank Islam has chosen to encourage good news, every week I see an article promoted by him that awakens a sense of goodness. I see Nupur Sharma, Vinod Dua, Ram Punyani, Arfa Khanum, Acharya Laksmishankracharya, Acharya Pramod Krishnan and a whole lot of them committed to bringing about a change.  None of us would know everyone, but those whom we know, we must be appreciated.    I am sure there a many of you out there who are doing great things. If we can pull our resources and invest our time, energy and money in shaping the society, we will find purpose and meaning in our lives, at least it will bring relief from apprehension. 

Social media has become the most powerful medium to communicate ideas, and Whatsapp and Facebook have become the vehicles to carry the chosen message. 

We have an opportunity to mitigate chaos spread by a few and flood the market with excellent videos and positive news to build up positive energy. If the people around us are secure, our security is guaranteed. 

Proposal

Produce one to two minutes videos and share it on the social media - and see how you can bring about the change.

It's easy to produce videos that we can cheer, but the purpose is to for the angry ones to see the goodness. We can cause them to dig in their heels or we can work on having them see another point of view - that of getting along and live their lives and letting others live theirs.

You can bring a gradual, sustainable and positive change through this campaign

It takes thinking, commitment,  effort, and money to do this, if you can, welcome. Come up with ideas, write the script, discuss with friends and produce it.  

Mike Ghouse
www.TheGhouseDiary.com

Thank you

What do we do at the Center for Pluralism

Pluralism studies in Religion, politics, society, culture and workplace

http://centerforpluralism.com/what-do-we-do-at-center-for-pluralism/ ;

Mike Ghouse
Center for Pluralism
Washington, DC
(214) 325-1916
Mike@CenterforPluralism.com
www.CenterforPluralism.com

Modi on Track to Cripple India

Mike Ghouse at http://MikeGhouseforIndia.blogspot.com 
Also at:  

This article has appeared in over 25 newspapers with a few different cartoons to go with it. 

• http://muslimmirror.com/eng/modi-on-track-to-cripple-india/
• http://www.mareeg.com/somalianews/india-modi/
• http://www.countercurrents.org/ghouse051115.htm
• http://www.opednews.com/articles/India-s-Modi-on-Track-to-C-by-Mike-Ghouse-Civility_Economic-Collapse_India-Elections_India-Expert-Mike-Ghouse-151106-147.html
• http://www.onenewspage.com/n/World/755blzvpa/Modi-On-Track-To-Cripple-India-OpEd.htm
• https://www.facebook.com/bhartiyamuslim/
• TheSaudiTimes.com
• SaudiGazette.com
• Arabnews.com
• http://www.eurasiareview.com/11112015-modi-on-track-to-cripple-india-oped/
• https://www.facebook.com/sanjivbhattips/posts/10207972138322487

If Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India does not speak up on the issues that are tearing the nation apart, and if he fails to restore freedom to speak, eat, drink, wear and believe what India’s constitution guarantees, and if he fails to warn the extremists in his party from destroying the social fabric of India, he will cripple the nation, making it a Langda India as we call it in Hindi.

For India to succeed as a nation, it has to stand on its own two firm feet; prosperity and social cohesion. The two are dependent on each other; one will not happen without the other. Indeed, prosperity will be short-lived if the social structure crumbles.

Bringing prosperity comes through raising income levels of all the sons and daughters of India;  pulling the ones in ditches onto a level playing field to build a larger middle class and to expand the consumer base, whose consumption will create jobs, builds up the economy,  and raise the standards of living. The more people do well, the better the nation does.  Modi is talking big about it, and we can give him two full years to produce results.

Social cohesion on the other hand is like the cohesion in the human body, where the heart, brain, kidneys, liver, lungs, digestive track and all parts of the body need to function cohesively to live a normal life.

Failure of one organ can cause dysfunction in others.   If you think the discharge part of the body is less important, wait till it stops, it will give headaches and will affect how we function. Likewise, all people in a society have to function cohesively, and it is in the interest of the body that it makes up for deficiencies in our part through a system of integration. As humans, and as Indians we have to meet those deficiencies in fellow Indians for the common good, and our own security and well being.


Remember, I cannot be safe if people around me are not, and if I threaten others, I am equally frightened at my vulnerable moments. No one will be safe, including Hindus who may not think much of the situation in India now, but eventually they will get hit too.

Those of you who are blinded by the love for Mr. Modi, I appeal to you to look for greater love for the nation. Modis will come and go, but the Nation will continue. I am challenging your patriotism;  none of us want India to go down, so let our loyalty be to India and not Modi, until he proves that he can keep these two functions in shape, I will hold my praise for him, will you?

We have to be truthful and brutally honest.  For the sake of the long term security of each one of us, we have to learn to openly express and listen to it with civility. We need to criticize the inept government and cut them down to pieces. Indeed, that is our patriotic duty to prevent our nation from falling apart.


I can never forget Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule. Her goons got away with sordid acts of blackmailing, harassment and vandalizing.  Now, I see a replication of the same under Modi. He lives in a bubble surrounded by Chamchas (sycophants) who say everything is alright… but everything is not alright.

I cannot thank Ramnath Goenka of Indian Express and others who went to jail instead of pandering to Indira.  I cannot thank enough Mahatma Gandhi and the freedom fighters that took the beatings and went to jail for disobeying and criticizing the British colonial governments. God bless them!  Because of them we have that freedom, and I thank all those men and women who are protesting and standing up against the goons.
 

Nehrus, Indiras and Modis will come and go, but India will continue and we have an obligation to save India.  Indeed, by doing so, we are protecting the future of every Indian.

Do you remember the song?

Sikander bhi aaye, khalandar bhi aaye,
No koi raha hai, na koi rahega;
Mera desh azaad hoke rahega,

Mera desh azaad hoke rahega.

Those of you cheering for Modi now, will come to regret it, unless Modi gets his act together.  All that prosperity will go down the tube if no one feels secure. When injustice waxes to the extreme, it will tear the nation apart; the rich will run out of the country for safety, and ugly communism may run in under the banner of redistribution of wealth and equalizing inequality.

 It is time to wake up!  Remember: Modi had given terrorists three days to finish their slaughter during the Gujarat Riots, and now he has probably given three years to finish freedom in India. Possibly the process has begun.

Thank God for the conscience of Indians!  They are speaking up against bad governance. Modi better not mess with Narayan Murthy, Raghuram Rajan and Siddaramaiah, – if he does, or does not stop inciting his goons, the whole nation could revolt. 

I don't want my India to be a Langda India, do you? If we all wake up and criticize Mr. Modi, guess what will happen? He will be compelled to do the right thing. Don't you want that?

WHAT DO WE WANT?

Mr. Modi to speak up! That is it.  

He can address the nation this way; “I am the Prime Minister of all Indians. I will get blamed for the bad things that happen in India, and I am not going to put up with that.  From this moment, everyone who messes with their fellow Indians will be punished severely, and if they have staged acts like the one in Dadri, everyone involved will be punished severely.  This is my last warning and action will follow.” 

“Furthermore, I declare that no one will compel or tell other Indians what to read, write, eat, drink, wear or believe.”

This is all we want. 

Arise! Awake! and stop not till the goal is reached.
Swami Vivekananda must have meant this for Indians in 2015.
Dr. Mike Ghouse is a community consultant, social scientist, thinker, writer and a speaker on Pluralism, Interfaith, Islam, politics, human rights, foreign policy and building cohesive societies. Mike offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day. More about him in 63 links at www.MikeGhouse.net and his writings are at TheGhousediary.com, and all about India athttp://MikeGhouseforIndia.Blogspot.com  

Could Modi be a development disaster? By Ashish Kothari

Modi sounds more and more like Bush, bullying others into making decisions. If he wins, the only hope to save India would be a stronger opposition, who would have the balls to oppose frivilous bills in the interests of the common good. Sadly in America, the first and supposedly mature democracy, the senators and congresspersons were cowards and betrayed America by not standing up to the bully and going to war and destroying America and its economy. Could this happen in India? I hope not.

Continued - http://mikeghouseforindia.blogspot.com/2014/04/could-modi-be-development-disaster-by.html

Mike Ghouse
www.MikeGhouse.net

Courtesy - India Together

Could Modi be a development disaster? By Ashish Kothari


Perhaps those who will cheer most if Modi becomes PM are the corporate sector and a part of the upwardly mobile middle classes. To them, people's struggles for justice, movements by the poor to resist displacement and land acquisition, and environmental activism are all 'hurdles' to the profits and prosperity they dream of.

According to Prajapati and Shah, Gujarat today has 30 per cent of India's major "accident hazard" industries and over 4500 hazardous chemical factories. Moreover, Anklesaria and Vapi in Gujarat have topped India's 'critical polluted areas' list in 2009, 2011 and 2013.Yet, as the duo found out from information generated using the RTI Act, there is as yet no disaster emergency plan, and the Gujarat State Disaster Management Agency (which has the Chief Minister as chairman) does not even have consolidated information on the industries. So much for Modi's much-touted efficient governance!

To add to this is the evidence of the poor state of health and education in the midst of the so-called Gujarat miracle. It has abysmally high school dropout rates (58 per cent), especially amongst adivasis (78 per cent) and Dalits (65 per cent), and it scores low on a number of health indicators. That is not surprising perhaps, given that its expenditure on education and health is significantly below the national average.

Full Report:
 
As real as the fears of Narendra Modi being a socially divisive Prime Minister are the dangers of his brand of development. In a recent campaign speech in Goa, Modi declared that if he becomes PM, he will ensure that mining is re-opened in the state; never mind the fact that it is the Supreme Court that has stayed it, due to its severe impacts on water, environment, and people's livelihoods.

In fact, Modi's tenure as Gujarat Chief Minister has been marked by a spate of such decisions with scant regard for either nature or for the poor, and a disdain of democracy. His penchant for mega-follies, such as the Rs. 2063-crore statue of Patel that he is getting installed by the Narmada river, only make the prospects of his taking over the country's reins that much more scary.

The UPA's record is not particularly positive, what with nearly 2.5 lakh hectares of forest land having been diverted in just a decade for such projects and continued forcible acquisition of land resulting in dispossession of farmers, adivasis, fisherfolk and others. Communities, people's movements and NGOs are up in arms over the rapidity with which the Union Environment minister, Mr. Moily, has given environmental and forest clearances to mining, industrial and infrastructural projects. But even this vast scale of social and ecological disruption could be overshadowed if Modinomics is given free rein.

If anyone still has doubts that sacrificing the environment for so-called development is justified for a country like India, look no further than a recent report by that most aggressive promoter of the current model of development, the World Bank. It estimates that the environmental damages India is subjected to, such as disease caused by air pollution, knocks 5.7 percentage points off its economic growth.

Given that growth in the last few years has not been much above this, and that the Bank report accounts for only some of the many kinds of damage, it is more than likely that even by measures of conventional GDP indicators, the economy is on decline. Not to mention that hidden in these figures is the horrifying and incalculable socio-cultural impact of displacement, dispossession, disease, premature death, malnutrition, and loss of employment that such damage entails.

The Gujarat model is a classic example of all this. In a recent report, labour and environmental activists Rohit Prajapati and Trupti Shah have laid bare the ecological and social impacts of Modinomics. To be sure, they have been outspoken critics of the excesses of past regimes too. Their analysis of the government's own records show seriously inflated figures of new employment creation, chronic underpayment, deliberate dispossession of farmers to create a mass of cheap labour for industries and coercive land acquisition. Both Prajapati and Shah are based in Vadodara, Gujarat, and members of the organisation Radical Socialist.

According to Prajapati and Shah, Gujarat today has 30 per cent of India's major "accident hazard" industries and over 4500 hazardous chemical factories. Moreover, Anklesaria and Vapi in Gujarat have topped India's 'critical polluted areas' list in 2009, 2011 and 2013.Yet, as the duo found out from information generated using the RTI Act, there is as yet no disaster emergency plan, and the Gujarat State Disaster Management Agency (which has the Chief Minister as chairman) does not even have consolidated information on the industries. So much for Modi's much-touted efficient governance!

To add to this is the evidence of the poor state of health and education in the midst of the so-called Gujarat miracle. It has abysmally high school dropout rates (58 per cent), especially amongst adivasis (78 per cent) and Dalits (65 per cent), and it scores low on a number of health indicators. That is not surprising perhaps, given that its expenditure on education and health is significantly below the national average.

There is a serious neglect of the poorer or socially marginalised regions of the state (with northern Gujarat and tribal areas being the most neglected) and of already marginalised sections like Muslims. This does not even factor in the ill-health being caused by chemical and other forms of pollution. The fact that Modinomics has been particularly iniquitous and socially disruptive is laid out in great detail by a number of analysts in the book Poverty Amidst Prosperity: Essays on the Trajectory of Development in Gujarat, edited by Atul Sood.

Modi's developmental paradigm includes sidestepping all norms to make land and water available to corporates such as the Adanis, Reliance and Tatas, including environmental clearances based on flimsy impact assessment, hugely subsidised land and resource allocations, and forcible land acquisition. It also has more than a touch of megalomania.

His plans for the Patel statue are symptomatic; envisioned as the world's largest (and possibly the costliest too), the tourism associated with it will take away lands, water and other resources of 70 villages. A substantial part of this is adivasi agricultural land, and the state government has created a Kevadia Area Development Authority with special powers to acquire such land or declare it non-agricultural.

Then there is the Kalpasar project, in which Modi wants to dam the Gulf of Khambhat to create the world's largest freshwater reservoir, purportedly to fulfil the state's water needs. Apart from the colossal social and ecological costs of such a project, this completely ignores much cheaper, more sustainable, and more democratically managed alternatives to water security such as those demonstrated by civil society groups in Kachchh and Saurashtra.

It is unlikely that Modi will change his developmental outlook should he take the seat in Delhi. He will instruct the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to carry on Mr. Moily's good work of clearing every project that comes its way and if some of the environmental laws that people fought to get in the 1980s and 1990s seem to be in the way, he will initiate measures to dilute them. This has in any case been the trend since economic globalisation was introduced into India and Modi will take it much further.

It is also possible that some of the progressive rights-based legislation and programmes that the UPA brought in, largely due to civil society initiatives it was open to, will be modified. Activists in Gujarat report that there is an atmosphere of intolerance and authoritarianism that discourages ay form of dissent. A fifth of the murders of RTI activists in the country in recent times, have taken place in Gujarat; one of these was of environmental and social activist Amit Jethwa, who had exposed the links of BJP MP Dinu Solanki with illegal mining near Gir forest.

According to Prajapati and Shah, when villagers and activists announced a peaceful protest against Modi's visit to the Narmada river to 'break the ground' for the Patel statue on 31 October 2013, they were detained and told that no-one should speak out when the CM is there.

Earlier in 2013, a public hearing for a proposed nuclear power station in Bhavnagar district was held under heavy police bandobast, in an atmosphere of repression and fear. Protests by fisherfolk, farmers, adivasis, marginalised people in villages and cities who are being displaced or whose lands are being taken away to be given at a pittance to private companies have been ignored or ruthlessly quelled.

Across India, many of the struggles for rights-based laws, such as the Right to Information Act, have been driven by citizens asking for greater voice and more direct democracy. If Gujarat's record is an indication, it is likely that such struggles will be dealt with harshly by Modi as PM.

In respect of all the above, particularly the model of globalised 'development', Modi and the BJP are no different from other mainstream political leaders and parties. They perpetuate a longer history of appropriation and centralised control of land and natural resources (which saw the biggest thrust during colonial times) and build on the blind adoption of the western model of development by our leaders since independence. But Modi's combination of undemocratic functioning, megalomania, faith in big private corporations, and social divisiveness could take the destructive model to new heights.

Modi will also accentuate further the utter disregard for alternative forms of well-being that have characterised previous regimes. India has thousands of on-ground practical alternatives, such as sustainable agriculture and forestry, rural and urban small scale manufacturing, crafts-based jobs, artisanal fisheries, localised service sector employment, decentralised water harvesting and energy production in villages and cities, direct self-governance by gram sabhas and struggles for social justice for women, Dalits and others, among many more. Several of these are in Gujarat, and a small sample can be seen at www.vikalpsangam.org.

Perhaps those who will cheer most if Modi becomes PM are the corporate sector and a part of the upwardly mobile middle classes. To them, people's struggles for justice, movements by the poor to resist displacement and land acquisition, and environmental activism are all 'hurdles' to the profits and prosperity they dream of.

Some of UPA's rights-based legislations, the revision of the Land Acquisition Act, or moves by individual ministers, such as the conscientious current Minister for Tribal Affairs, have also alarmed these sections. These are seen as brakes on India's ascendance to global superpower status.

It is of little consequence to these supporters of the globalised growth model that it has created almost no net growth in employment in the formal sector, has left well over half the country's population in poverty and ill-health and that it is undermining the prospects of healthy, decent living of future generations. This has been analysed in great detail in Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India (Viking/Penguin 2012).

Unfortunately, it is possible that large parts of even other classes will vote for Modi, dreaming of reaching the same status as the 10 per cent of Indians who own 53 per cent of its wealth today. That will be a colossal folly, for in such a model of development, these dreams will only become nightmares, just as they have wherever it has been imposed by whichever party in power.

And so, the final question: who then does one vote for? The UPA has unfortunately not shown itself to be particularly respectful of ecological issues, social and economic equity, or the needs of dignified employment (though one must not deny their contribution to rights-based legislation and programmes). The Aam Aadmi Party shows some promise of a different kind of politics and economic strategies that may benefit the 'common' person, but with no policy statement or manifesto till now, it is difficult to gauge.

Separately, I have written how all this makes it imperative to make national elections far less consequential than they are now. But that's in the long run, and one needs to decide on the upcoming elections. All I can say is that most constituencies are likely to have at least one person who is known to be honest, has worked his or her way up through social causes, and is upfront in defending sustainability, social justice and secularism. Let us hope that enough such people enter Parliament, so that irrespective of which party forms the government and who becomes the Prime Minister, no one shall have the free rein to ruin the country through short-sighted policies and sell-out to corporations.

http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=30853

—(Courtesy: India Together)