Press Clips-1 Index

60. SAINATH - The Food, the Bad and the Ugly Food not reaching those who need it. A file photograph of wheat being loaded at an open FCI godown at Sonepat, Haryana. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/sainath/article3025560.ece?css=print

61. RAJIV SHANKAR (CRISIL)

62. Black market

63. How to Be Creative (Lehrer, Jonah. Wall Street Journal )

64. Anxious Japan prepares for life without nuclear power

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3391100.ece?css=print

65. Media cannot reject regulation

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article3374529.ece?css=print

66. Chomsky, others seek justice for Soni Sori

http://www.thehindu.com/news/article3373044.ece?css=print

67. A candle in the dark

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3377562.ece?css=print

68. New York Times Company

Justice Katju’s Media Press Regulations

http://www.nytco.com/press/index.html

69. Sainath Poverty British Cotton - Reaping gold through cotton, and newsprint

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3401466.ece?homepage=true&css=print

70 Supreme Court sets up panel to study woes of Vrindavan widows

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article3402423.ece?css=print

71. Sainath - To fix BPL, nix CPL

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/sainath/article3223573.ece?homepage=true&css=print

72. “Occupy'' protesters take to streets across Europe

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article3415724.ece?css=print

73. Hope springs a trap

74. Hard Labor By Josh Sanburn (reprinted from Time Magazine, May 21, 2012)

75. Increase in violence against SCs and STs, reveals report

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/article3435469.ece?css=print

76. Protests in London against Kudankulam project

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3433314.ece?css=print

77. Calcium pills may up heart attack risk

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Calcium-pills-may-up-heart-attack-risk/articleshow/13464553.cms?prtpage=1

78. As Grain Piles Up, India’s Poor Still Go Hungry

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/business/global/a-failed-food-system-in-india-prompts-an-intense-review.html?_r=1&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print

79. Gandhi : Democracy and Fundamental Rights

http://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/democracy.htm

80. GANDHIRAMA 2012-A Feast of Ideas and a Festival of Art

http://www.mkgandhi.org/newannou/gandhirama2012.htm

Press Clips

Anti-Wall Street movement spreads in US

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/antiwall-street-movement-spreads-inus/860731/

Associated Press Posted Street movement spreads in US online: Mon Oct 17 2011, 00:32 hrs

New York : About 175 protesters who were part of a growing anti-Wall Street movement were arrested in Chicago early Sunday when they refused to take down their tents and leave a city park when it closed, the police said, after a day of protests in cities around the world where tens of thousands gathered to rally against what they see as corporate greed.

Most of the marches were largely nonconfrontational, though dozens were arrested in New York and elsewhere in the US when the police moved to contain overflowing crowds or keep them off private property. Two officers in New York were injured and had to be hospitalised.

At least one protest grew violent. In Rome, rioters hijacked what had been a peaceful gathering by tens of thousands and smashed windows, tore up sidewalks and torched vehicles. Repair costs were estimated at $1.4 million, the mayor said Sunday. Around 70 people were injured.

In Chicago, about 500 people set up camp at the entrance to Grant Park after a protest earlier in the day involving about 2,000, the Chicago Tribune reported. The police said they gave protesters repeated warnings after the park closed at 11 pm and began making arrests when they refused to leave. They could face fines for violating a municipal ordinance.

In New York, two dozen were arrested late Saturday when demonstrators entered a Citibank branch and refused to leave, the police said. Earlier, as many as 1,000 demonstrators also paraded to a Chase bank branch, banging drums, blowing horns and carrying signs decrying corporate greed. The day culminated in an event in the city’s Times Square, where thousands of demonstrators mixed with gawkers, Broadway showgoers, tourists and police to create a chaotic scene in the midst of Manhattan. “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!’’ protesters chanted from within police barricades.

In New York City, the protesters at the heart of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement were planning a day of rest Sunday. The group that insists on being leaderless had nothing on its agenda save its nightly assembly and one committee meeting.

Throughout the US, from several dozen people in Jackson, Mississippi, to some 2,000 each in Pittsburgh and Chicago, the protest gained momentum. Nearly 1,500 gathered for a march past banks in downtown Orlando, Florida. Hundreds marched on a Key Bank branch in Anchorage, Alaska, and declared it should be foreclosed.

Overseas, tens of thousands nicknamed “the indignant’’ marched in cities across Europe. Around 250 protesters set up camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral in the heart of London on Sunday, promising to occupy the site indefinitely to show their anger at bankers and politicians over the global economic crisis.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-dark-side-of-bangalore-shining-its-no.1-in-suicides-in-country/860804/2

The dark side of Bangalore Shining: It’s No.1 in suicides in country

Saritha Rai Posted online: Mon Oct 17 2011, 02:54 hrs

Bangalore : Earlier this week, Baldev ‘Baldy’ Singh, 58, a distinguished test pilot and a director with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, hanged himself on the outskirts of Bangalore. A few weeks ago, a 24-year old MBA student, Malini Murmu, killed herself in her IIM-Bangalore hostel. Both cases made national headlines.

But in Bangalore, hundreds of lesser-known suicide cases are catalogued in police records. According to the National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) chief statistical officer Akhilesh Kumar, for many years Bangalore has been India’s number one city in suicides. The data for 2010, as yet unreleased, reinforces that India’s Silicon City is also its Suicide Capital.

In 2009, Bangalore recorded 2,167 suicides versus 1,051 in teeming Mumbai, and 1,215 in the more-populous Delhi city. Data published by the NCRB shows that Bangalore is also number one in suicide rate (suicides per 100,000 population), a trend that the big city shares with smaller towns like Jabalpur, Rajkot and Coimbatore.

Dr N Satish Chandra, the director of NIMHANS, blames it on rapid socio-cultural changes in the face of furious development. Bangalore is a city of wannabe achievers who want the maximum, he says. “It is a city where failure is not an option.”

Every Tuesday afternoon, counsellor Anita Gracias becomes “Anu” and works the suicide helpline at SAHAI. “Bangalore has a large population pouring in from every remote corner to study and work. They ask, ‘Who do I trust?’ Where can I make a genuine friend?’.” Many callers at the helpline, she adds, dial in to ask about the most painless form of suicide.

Bangalore is the country’s third most-populous city alright. But it is also India’s loneliest city, says Gracias.

Dr Mohan Isaac has extensively studied the suicide trend in Bangalore. Now at the School of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Western Australia, he points to the data from Bangalore and Kolkata. During the past few years, Bangalore has seen more than 2,000 suicides annually, a rate of 38 per lakh population. Kolkata’s annual number of suicides during this time was around 200. Slow-to-modernise Kolkata has retained the lowest suicide rate amongst 35 Indian cities, says Dr Isaac.

Silicon City as ‘Suicide Capital’

* As per National Crime Records Bureau, Bangalore India’s No. 1 city in suicides

* Its suicide rate (suicides per 100,000 population) is also highest in country

* It accounts for about 16% of all suicides in India’s 30 biggest cities

* Most of the suicides are by those in their prime — between the ages of 16 and 40

October 28, 2011 01:53 IST | Updated: October 28, 2011 09:29 IST NEW DELHI, October 28, 2011

Delhi, Mumbai top rape cases, conviction rate poor

Vinay Kumar

About conviction, the less said the better

New figures released by the National Crime Records Bureau show India's two largest cities accounted for one-third of the rape cases registered in 2010, and underline depressing infirmities in the prosecution of perpetrators — just over a quarter of them were convicted.

Last year, the national capital recorded 414 rape cases, the biggest number among 35 major cities monitored by the Bureau, followed by 194 in Mumbai. Delhi accounted for 23 per cent of all rape cases recorded in urban areas, while Mumbai made up 10.3 per cent.

In population-adjusted terms, however, several mid-size cities emerged as even more dangerous for women than the two big cities: in Jabalpur, 7.3 in every 1,00,000 people — both men and women — reported having been raped, followed by 5.5 in Bhopal, 5 in Faridabad, 4.8 in Visakhapatnam, and 4.2 in Indore.

The rape cases were just part of a larger mass of crime directed at women: Delhi alone recorded 1,422 cases of kidnap or abduction, a staggering 37.7 per cent of the total cases in the cities.

Delhi, however, was the most dangerous of the five megapolises, with 3.2 in every 1,00,000 population reporting having been raped in 2010, followed by 1.2 in Mumbai, 1.1 in Bangalore, 0.7 in Chennai and 0.2 in Kolkata — the last the lowest figure in any Indian city, along with Varanasi.

Even though the police filed charges against 94.5 per cent of the alleged rapists, just 26.6 per cent were eventually convicted — bearing out criticism that police investigators and public prosecutors lack the capacities needed to make the charges stick. Prosecutors did better in securing convictions in dowry-death cases, at 33.6 per cent, but in no category of crime did conviction rates exceed 39 per cent.

Frightening numbers

In Mumbai, there were 146 incidents of kidnapping of women, 21 dowry deaths and 312 incidents of cruelty by husband or his relatives during the last year. Pune reported the third highest figure of 91 rape cases in 2010, followed by Jabalpur (81) last year.

Software city Bangalore recorded 65 incidents of rape and Indore 69 last year. Among the States, Madhya Pradesh reported the highest number — 3,135 — in 2010 followed by West Bengal, where it was 2,311. Assam, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh reported 1,721, 1,599, 1,563 and 1,362 cases respectively. There were 1,012 incidents of rape in Chhattisgarh, 1,025 in Orissa and 795 in Bihar.

There were 112 dowry deaths and 1,273 incidents of cruelty by husband or relatives in Delhi last year, according to the NCRB report for 2010.

Experts at the NCRB told The Hindu that the data needed to be read with caution. For, the low figures in some areas could reflect the fact that women there face extreme social obstacles in reporting rape to authorities or hostility at the police station level.

“In my experience,” one senior officer said, “you will tend to have high reporting of rape where women's organisations are active and are able to push the authorities to register criminal complaints — not necessarily where the crime is most prevalent.”

Keywords: National Crime Records Bureau, crimes against women, rape case, dowry death, crime in India

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open page/article2562901.ece#.TqWFVg6hOtA.mailto

This article conforms to the teachings of our Vedic seers that all the universe is pure energy and all that you have to do to remain healthy is to ensure that this energy vibrates synchronously throughout the body and mind

M.B.Lal

October 22, 2011 23:14 IST | Updated: October 23, 2011 03:02 IST October 22, 2011

The way to get man back on his feet

Professor B. M. Hegde

Time has come to abandon the disease era of medicine. We have to concentrate on the whole human organism for the future management of altered physiologies.

“There is no science of man,” wrote Nobel Laureate Alexis Carrel in his celebrated book Man, the Unknown. Modern medicine, even today, nearly 85 years after the death of conventional science following Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, is buried in the linear science of Newtonian Physics which believes that man is made up of matter, which follows certain deterministic predictability patterns. That was before the new awareness in science of the atom having been made up of smaller sub-atomic elements. Even more earth- shattering was the discovery that atoms emit various strange energies such as X-rays and radioactivity.

Newer discoveries in physics showed that matter and energy are the two sides of the same coin — a duality. (Hans Peter Durr). One should read his article, Matter is not made out of matter, for the lay people to get a better idea. The human body is but the human mind in an illusory solid shape. As the famous Johns Hopkins physicist, Richard Conn Henry, put it in 2005, “This world is immaterial — mental and spiritual.” Atoms are made out of invisible energy; not tangible matter. Quantum physics speaks a strange language of “now you see it, now you don't.” Each atom or molecule has its own unique energy signature.

Everything in this world, including you and me, radiates our unique energy signature. This new science, which will be the new science of man, nullifies our idea of organ based diseases, which we started 450 years ago from the time of Vesalius. All organs have their cells and atoms that have their unique energy signature. Human body is a colony of 50 trillion happy individual human cells that did exist as unicellular organisms for millions of years before getting together as this multicellular colony. Fritz-Albert Popp, a German physicist, has been able to map all our cells using his biophoton camera where he defines “health as a state where the cells are vibrating in synch with one another; disease is when they fall out of synch!” The latest development of science has now accepted the definition of Whole Person Healing (WPH) for future. (Late Professor Rustum Roy at the IOM meeting in February 2010). Time has come to abandon the disease era of medicine. We have to concentrate on the whole human organism for the future management of altered physiologies. The new definition of health is “enthusiasm to work and enthusiasm to be compassionate.” This comes close to the definition of health in Ayurveda, a much more scientific healing art, which followed quantum physics from day one long before physicists discovered quantum physics. Durr does write that the concept of Indian advaita is a better understanding of quantum world compared to his definition of a-duality.

Our old model had a linear structure which followed the Ford Motor style assembly line. If biochemical transmission failed between points A and B, the precursor chemical could accumulate at point A and point B will be depleted of it. The holistic model is that if there is any such lapse, the effect could be felt in multiple areas and systems. One example will clarify this. When you are bitten by a spider you get a severe swelling and itching in the area due to release of the powerful histamine, locally. But if you treat that with an antihistamine, the latter will go round everywhere and have dangerous distant effects even in the brain. While histamine increases capillary permeability locally producing swelling, in the brain histamine enhances the neuronal function for better output. In our present thinking we give you antihistamine and your itching stops but the same antihistamine blocks the brain histamine levels and your brain cells function less, making you very drowsy! This tells us why the biggest killer today is Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR). Further studies have shown that any drug we give helps only because of the faith the patient has got in the doctor (placebo) and the drug has only side-effects! This earth-shaking discovery was made recently in a multi-centric study in the four leading universities. (Science Translational Medicine March 2011).

Biological systems like man are redundant. This redundancy makes the same signal to be used in multiple places in the body to achieve many things economically with varied behavioural functions. This was the fallacy of our old reductionist model where we thought one defect one effect and one drug molecule to rectify it. That is why nature has just given us 25,000 genes. One gene could look after so many functions. In addition, we have trillions of genes acquired from a multitude of germs that have become a part of us over millions of years and they live a symbiotic existence, the so called human meta-genome. When we disturb the germs inside us, we fall sick! This shows how foolish our expensive search for genetic modelling and genetic engineering, including stem cell research is. In fact, studies have elegantly shown that body cells, if needed, could transform themselves into pluripotent stem cells. Richard Becker showed way back in the 1950s that while a bone fractures, the blood clot seen under the periosteum could make the red blood cells there to gradually acquire a nucleus and then put out pseudopodia to become stem cells to heal the fracture — holistic natural healing!

Physicists have failed to inform the lay public of the purely mental nature of the universe (man included) and biologists and physicians are yet to understand quantum physics. There is a nice simple book by a Nobel Laureate biologist; Albert-Szent Gyorgyi, Introduction to Submolecular Biology. Today bio-chemistry provides the mechanistic foundation for biomedicine. That branch of science is so out dated that our researchers have no understanding of the molecular mechanisms that truly provide for life. The very word animate comes from the proteins in the genetic chain. They twist and bend like a snake to give us mobility at the molecular level right up to our movements! In truth, quantum properties of matter can influence the biochemical reactions as shown above. It is the invisible forces of electromagnetic energy that keep us alive and all those frequencies like cellphones, microwave ovens, radio frequencies and even the scalar energy affect our DNA, RNA and protein synthesis. Similarly the right frequencies of electromagnetic energy could be used for healing any cell in any organ under any circumstance. We are using such frequencies to treat killer diseases like heart attacks, brain attacks and any other damage in the cells of any organ. An added advantage is that energy signals travel at a phenomenal speed of 1, 86,000 miles per second, while chemical transmission is just one centimetre per second!! While drugs take months to get one back on one's feet after a major illness, energy healing takes only hours to days!

Living organisms must receive and interpret environmental signals in order to survive. The signals reach the single cells through their antenna in the cell wall. So our connection with the outside world is through the cell wall, our true brain. The environmental signals are our true saviours, God if you like (Bruce Lipton). When this signal dies, organism dies only to enter another shell to be reborn! Eastern wisdoms like Ayurveda, Tibetan medicine, Chinese medicine and many other systems adopted quantum physics eons ago and their ideas of energy channels in the human body are now proving to be highly scientific. We condemned the whole lot of them as unscientific mainly because of the pressures from the drug and instrument lobbies.

Instead of understanding human physiology properly, modern medicine created the monsters of “killer diseases” which are nothing but deviations in physiology and behaviour from some hypothetical norm as unique disorders and dysfunctions. The gullible public thinks that they are all killer diseases, thanks to the 24X7-hour advertisements. Let us understand the human being and try and set the deranged cell frequencies with suitable alternatives to get man back on his feet.

(The writer is a former professor of cardiology, Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London and former Vice-Chancellor, Manipal University. His email is: hegdebm @gmail.com)

Keywords: modern medicine, human physiology, quantum physics, killer diseases

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2577635.ece

Published: October 29, 2011 03:32 IST | Updated: October 29, 2011 16:12 IST Mumbai, October 29, 2011

SAINATH - In 16 years, farm suicides cross a quarter million

P. Sainath

The Hindu Marutrao Dhoke looks at the mangalsutra of his wife Babytai, the main farmer of their household, who had pawned it to raise cash before committing suicide. A January 2011 photograph by P. Sainath.

It's official. The country has seen over a quarter of a million farmers’ suicides between 1995 and 2010. The National Crime Records Bureau’s latest report on ‘Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India’ places the number for 2010 at 15,964. That brings the cumulative 16-year total from 1995 — when the NCRB started recording farm suicide data — to 2,56,913, the worst-ever recorded wave of suicides of this kind in human history.

Maharashtra posts a dismal picture with over 50,000 farmers killing themselves in the country's richest State in that period. It also remains the worst State for such deaths for a decade now. Close to two-thirds of all farm suicides have occurred in five States: Maharashtra, Karnataka, A.P., Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

The data show clearly that the last eight years were much worse than the preceding eight. As many as 1,35,756 farmers killed themselves in the 2003-10 period. For 1995-2002, the total was 1,21,157. On average, this means the number of farmers killing themselves each year between 2003 and 2010 is 1,825 higher than the numbers that took their lives in the earlier period. Which is alarming since the total number of farmers is declining significantly. Compared to the 1991 Census, the 2001 Census saw a drop of over seven million in the population of cultivators (main workers). The corresponding census data for 2011 are yet to come in, but their population has surely dipped further. In other words, farm suicides are rising through the period of India's agrarian crisis, even as the number of farmers is shrinking.

While the 2010 numbers show a dip of 1,404 from the 2009 figure of 17,368, there is little to cheer about. “There was a similar dip in 2008, only to be followed by the worst numbers in six years in 2009,” points out Professor K. Nagaraj, an economist at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, who did the largest ever study of the farm suicides covering a decade (The Hindu, November 12-15, 2007). “This one-year decline does not in any way indicate we have turned the corner. This dip happened mostly because of one-off falls in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. In fact, a look at the ‘Big 5' who drive the numbers shows the fallout of the agrarian crisis to be as grim as ever. They have actually increased their share of the farm suicides.”

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2577740.ece

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2577740.ece?css=print

Published: October 29, 2011 03:32 IST | Updated: October 29, 2011 12:23 IST Mumbai, October 29, 2011

SAINATH - Maharashtra leads in statistic of shame

P. Sainath

The five States with the largest share of the quarter-of-a-million farm suicides recorded in India over the past 16 years are Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

While the total number of farmers who took their own life in 2010 showed a dip from the preceding year, the share of the Big 5, in fact, rose to 66.49 per cent of all farm suicides in 2010. It was 62 per cent in 2009. Three of the Big 5 States have shown significant increases over 2009: Maharashtra (+269), Karnataka (+303), and Andhra Pradesh (+111). Nationally, the last eight years have seen on average, farmers killing themselves at a rate of one every 30 minutes.

In all, 14 of 28 States reported increases in 2010, while four have recorded declines of five or fewer suicides. The dip in 2010 comes with big falls in Chhattisgarh (-676), Tamil Nadu (-519) and Rajasthan (-461) and significant falls in Madhya Pradesh (-158), Puducherry (-150), and Uttar Pradesh (-108). West Bengal and Gujarat also report declines of 61 and 65. But the overall trend remains dismal.

In 1995, the first time the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) tabulated farm suicide data, the Big 5 accounted for 56.04 per cent of all farm suicides . In 2010, despite a one-year decline, they accounted for 66.49 per cent. Maharashtra's story is alarming. It saw 20,066 farmers kill themselves between 1995 and 2002. That stands dwarfed by the 30,415 farmers who took their lives in the next eight years. The latter period saw an annual average increase of nearly 1,155 such deaths in the State. This was also the period when money was poured into relief ‘packages' of the Prime Minister, the Chief Minister, through the loan waiver of 2008, and other measures.

During the very decade in which it reigned without break as the worst State to be a farmer in, Maharashtra rose to the first position among the big States in per capita income. Overall at Rs. 74,027, it is behind only much smaller States like Haryana and Goa. The Union Agriculture Minister is from this State and has held that post for six of those 10 years.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2526285.ece?css=print

Published: October 11, 2011 01:23 IST | Updated: October 11, 2011 01:23 IST October 11, 2011

Marking the birth of modern China

Cheng ZhiliangWang Jianhua

Li Yunlu

AP Researchers test China's first space station module Tiangong-1 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province. Photo: AP

The Xinhai Revolution that ended 2,000 years of imperial rule is a testament to the people's desire for reform and rejuvenation.

The rise of China is the definitive economic and political story of the time, yet the 1911 Revolution should not be overlooked as it was the catalyst that enabled the nation to terminate more than 2,000 years of imperial rule — one of the longest periods of autocratic rule in the world.

China

commemorated the centennial anniversary of the 1911 Revolution, or Xinhai Revolution, with a grand ceremony on Sunday. The legacies of the revolution are set to inspire the world's most populous country with an ancient civilization to continue swimming with the tide of the times, to keep marching on the road to becoming an empowered modern nation.

The 1911 Revolution, which began on October 10, 1911 with an armed uprising, ended the imperial rule established by Emperor Qinshihuang in 221 B.C. and established a republican government, the first in Asia.

Behind the revolution were a burgeoning democratic movement and the rising influence of western civilization.

The revolution not only rid Chinese men of the humiliating ponytails and women of the excruciatingly painful foot-binding, but also removed the people's blind faith in the emperor and fear of foreign powers. The event has since been emancipating people's minds from thousands of years of oppression and self-enclosure.

Over the past century, the nation has united to fight for its destiny and independence. From the Opium War (1840-1842) to the Xinhai Revolution, patriots from all walks of life have always come together to fight imperial autocracy and foreign invasion, with the aim of national rejuvenation and building a country that is respected by the world. Now, China is a rising power in sharp contrast with 100 years ago, when any country could bully it.

Rejuvenation is the common will of a civilization that has existed for over 5,000 years, and no one can halt the process.

The 1911 Revolution, led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, overthrew imperial rule and opened the gate for China's modernisation. Yet the dreams of Sun were not fully accomplished, as leaders of the revolution were from the capitalist class and the masses of workers and farmers were not given full play. They still lived in poverty, their democracy and freedom not guaranteed. Ten years after the 1911 Revolution, the Communist Party of China (CPC) was founded. It took the banner from Sun and shouldered the responsibility of rejuvenating the nation.

History has proven that only those who fight for the interests of the people can lead a country to success.

Looking back at the past 100 years, it is clear that the Chinese nation swam with the tide of the times, moving forward in the right direction.

In world history, China was among the first countries that shifted from a slave society to feudalism and moved toward advanced technologies and outstanding institutions and culture.

However, imperial China failed to embrace reform while western countries overthrew feudalism and emancipated the productive forces after the Renaissance. The failure of the Middle Kingdom was a result of standing still and refusing to make progress by insisting on imperial autocracy.

The 1911 Revolution was a positive response from China, a result of the country's pioneers applying lessons learned from the outside world. It was also a move from an agricultural society to an industrial society, from autocracy to democracy, and from the emperor's courtyard to the home of ordinary people.

But it failed to establish a modern system to eliminate long-standing malpractices and push forward the country's development. China was mired in civil wars and foreign invasions in the first half of the 20th century before the mantle of leadership was handed over to the CPC.

Economic progress

Looking to the future, the Chinese people have realized they cannot rest on their achievements. They need to be vigilant against unexpected changes and learn from advanced civilizations with open minds. They must exert effort for domestic economic construction rather than seek world hegemony.

The rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will be a long and difficult process, and development still deserves to be a top priority.

Although China has become the world's second largest economy, it remains a developing country, and its GDP per capita ranks at only about 100th in the world. Poverty and backwardness can still be seen in many parts of the country.

And the ancient feudal tradition, including the rule of man in certain areas, is still one of the major obstacles hindering China from realizing its modernisation goal.

During his speech, entitled “The Path to China's Future,” at Britain's renowned Royal Society in June, Premier Wen Jiabao said: “China was long under the influence of feudalism. After the founding of New China, the country went through the turmoil of the decade-long Cultural Revolution. Since China opened itself, some new developments and problems have occurred.” Promoting democracy, improving the legal system and strengthening effective oversight of power remains a long and arduous task for the nation.

To commemorate the 1911 Revolution with a keen sense of responsibility and democracy, people should spur social progress. The more the people participate in social management and public affairs, the greater the momentum will be on social progress.

As for China's development, worldwide observers need to take a more patient and milder attitude.

It is better to bear in mind that China has never feared difficulties and is pushing forward reform and opening up with greater resolve.

China

has conformed to the universal values of humanity and is on its way to becoming a modern and progressive country that seeks common development and interests with other countries.

One hundred years after the revolution, China is again at a crucial point. The world is undergoing fundamental changes, with scientific and technological revolution and economic globalisation progressing every day. Faced with the financial crisis and other problems, the future of the world is uncertain.

Only by swimming with the tide of the times can China achieve complete rejuvenation and make greater contributions to humanity. — Xinhua

Keywords: 1911 Revolution, China reform

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Jonathan MirskyMANY POISONED RIVERS

When a Billion Chinese Jump: How

China

Will Save Mankind - Or Destroy It
By Jonathan Watts (Faber & Faber 483pp £14.99)

Exclusive from the Literary Review print edition. Subscribe now!

Only last year, Thomas Friedman, three-times Pulitzer Prize winner and a regular columnist in the New York Times, wrote: 'One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages ... It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power.' A year earlier, Friedman wished that 'we could be like China for a day' so that the US could really get things done on saving the environment. Friedman could not have read The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage by Alexandra Harney (2008), an exposé of the hell-hole which is Chinese manufacturing for the cheap Western market. Nor could he have read Mark Elvin's The Retreat of the Elephants (2004), or Elizabeth Economy's The River Runs Black (also 2004; both books were reviewed here), which deal with China's historic and current ravaging of its environment. Now comes Jonathan Watts's meticulously documented, wide-ranging account of this destruction - from the near extermination of the Tibetan chiru, an antelope whose coat is used to make the fashionable shahtoosh shawl, to China's role as the greatest polluter of the Pacific through its overuse of chemicals, in fertilisers and factories, that flow down the country's many poisoned rivers to the sea.

Watts's brilliant title comes from a warning he learned as a child: 'If everyone in China jumps at exactly the same time, it will shake the earth off its axis and kill us all.' He remembered this during his time in Beijing as Asia environment correspondent for The Guardian and it spurred him to make an arduous trip through much of China, from the satanic mills of Guangdong to the new railway that is hastening the cultural ruin of Tibet. Soon after he moved to China in 2003, Watts suspected that 'the decisions taken in Beijing, more than anywhere else, would determine whether humanity thrived or perished ... No other country was in such a mess.'

At first you might imagine that Watts is peddling the latest version of the Yellow Peril. After you've read about fifty pages you will find his occasional attempts at fairness bizarre, as in his clichéd conclusion that, faced with two 'extremes', 'the truth was probably somewhere in between'. But there is no 'in between'. China is destroying itself and threatening the rest of us. And, like useful idiots, we are helping the Chinese do it.

It is hard to single out the most repulsive examples of self-destruction. Millions of tons of sewage down the Yellow River; the North China water table now sucked so dry that it has become nearly impossible to plumb; the squillions of acres of denuded grasslands and felled forests. The mind denies and goes numb. But some horrors can be comprehended because they are small. Chinese authorities, ever on the qui vive to lure tourists, have been identifying famed beauty spots as Shangri-la - 'a remarkable act of chutzpah', Watts writes, 'for a government that was, in theory, at least, communist, atheist, and scientifically orientated'. One such designated treasure was Lake Bigu in Yunnan province. Once a place of great beauty, it has since been 'violated'. In 2001, one of China's most respected filmmakers, Chen Kaige, came to the lake to make The Promise. Encouraged by the local authority - typically keen to make a fast yuan - Chen drove 100 pilings into the lake for a bridge and built a five-storey house for the love scenes. After he finished shooting he left, but the house and the rotting bridge across the lake remain, and sheep choke to death on discarded rubbish.

Here's where Westerners come in. We love ourselves for recycling, but where do you suppose all those obsolete computers and plastic bottles go? Why, to China, at so much per ton. In one town, Watts saw small recycling shops 'breaking down the world's discarded plastic bags, bottles and wrappers': 'bales of Dutch Kinder Eggs, Italian nappies, French-packaged Lego ... Tesco milk cartons, Marks and Spencer's cranberry juice, Kellogg's cornflakes boxes, Walkers crisp packets, Snickers wrappers and Persil powder containers'. These were turned into hundreds of thousands of plastic pellets sorted by colour, and made into low grade sheeting for holdalls and wrapping. 'The cost was ditches full of garbage and a population plagued by health concerns.' In another town, where 'hundreds of millions of computers, mobile phones and other devices [had been] discarded', he saw women and children stripping circuit boards and exposing themselves to a 'toxic cocktail' of chemicals. Children in that town had 50 per cent more lead in their blood than the limit set in the US; it can result in mental retardation. According to Watts, 'American companies ... claim to be recycling domestically while actually shipping e-waste to China and elsewhere using shell companies in Hong Kong and Singapore.'

Species are dying in China (the chapter on the Yangtze River dolphin is especially grim, although Watts has missed the best book on the subject, Witness to Extinction, by Samuel Turvey, reviewed here in December 2008), fish stocks are depleting, water grows ever scarcer, climate change is ignored, and climate itself becomes an adversary. Local governments encourage 'growth', the new middle class buys like billy-o, and China's national leaders accuse the West of being unfair about China not being green enough, since - true enough - we did our despoiling during the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution.

During years travelling around China, I saw the beginnings of what Watts describes. What staggered me in his book was this: in the West we are suffering fear and loathing of the Chinese Century and China's impressive 10 per cent national growth, compared with our paltry advances. But I didn't know that the World Bank, as Watts shows, has calculated the annual bill for Chinese pollution - health costs, premature deaths, damaged infrastructure and crops - at 5.8 per cent of GDP. That lowers the Chinese miracle to our level. And if you add in erosion, desertification and environmental degradation, the World Bank calculates there is an 8 to 12 per cent bite into China's GDP, stopping the miracle in its eroded tracks. Watts suggests that if we factor in climate change and the gobbling up of non-renewable resources around the planet, 'it becomes conceivable that China's environmental crunch contributed to the global financial crash of 2008'.

This is a revealing and depressing book. There is no 'middle truth' in it. During his painstaking investigative journeys, which called on all his powers as a top-class reporter, Jonathan Watts concluded that 'China has felt at times like the end of the world.'

Published: October 22, 2011 21:52 IST | Updated: October 23, 2011 03:48 IST LONDON, October 22, 2011

St. Paul's looms over protests

Hasan Suroor

AFP ALARM BELLS: Protestors gather outside Saint-Paul's Cathedral in London on Saturday.

Normally, the City of London — Britain's equivalent of Wall Street — is all pinstriped suits and bowler hats with high-flying bankers and financial traders rushing in and out of their gleaming glass-and-chrome offices or popping in and out of scores of champagne bars in the area, but for the past one week it has become the open-air “headquarters” of the country's anti-capitalist movement.

In a symbolic “occupation” of the City, protesters demanding an end to “corporate greed and inequality,” have been camping outside the historic St. Paul's Cathedral, close to the London Stock Exchange, in colourful tents complete with portable toilets and improvised kitchens. A large banner with the message “Capitalism is crisis” flies across the churchyard under the shadow of the imposing dome of St. Paul's.

What began as a small gathering has swelled to several hundred, prompting a backlash from the cathedral authorities who want the protesters to quit citing “health and safety” considerations. There had also been complaints from tourists that the protesters were obstructing the approach to the 350-year-old cathedral. Souvenir shops and restaurants reported drop in business as tourist numbers fell.

On Saturday, the cathedral was shut down after the protesters refused to leave insisting that they were determined to stay put “for as long as it takes” to put across their message. This is the first time since the Second World War that it has been closed. The last time it was done was for four days in September 1940.

The Dean of St Paul's, the Rev. Graeme Knowles, said the decision to close the cathedral to the public was made with “heavy hearts.” It was “simply not possible to fulfil our day to day obligations to worshippers, visitors and pilgrims in current circumstances”.

“With so many stoves and fires and lots of different types of fuel around, there is a clear fire hazard,” he said.

Ironically, it was at the intervention of the cathedral authorities that police had allowed the protesters to set up the camps.

When they first arrived last Saturday, police wanted to move them saying it would be “illegal and disrespectful” to camp in front of the cathedral. But the canon chancellor of St. Paul's, Reverend Giles Fraser, said he was happy for people to “exercise their right to protest peacefully.”

A spokesman for protesters said they had already reorganised the camp in response to concerns about safety and were in talks with the police and cathedral officials to resolve the stand-off.

Keywords: Occupy Wall Street, Occupy London Stock Exchange, Wall Street protests, financial crisis

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-11-01/delhi/30345348_1_circle-rates-money-in-property-transactions-black-money

Delhi

Delhi govt hikes minimum property rates by up to 250%

TNN Nov 1, 2011, 05.39AM IST

NEW DELHI : For the second time this year, the Delhi government announced a steep hike in circle rates in a bid to garner more revenue and check the use of black money in property transactions.

Circle rates are the government's valuation of land in the city - differentiated into eight categories, A to H - below which a realty deal cannot be registered. After doubling the circle rates in February this year, the government on Monday further revised the rates with a hike in the range of 15% to 250%. The new circle rate regime is unlikely to affect real estate prices in the city. If anything, the hike may result in a price correction in certain areas as the black money component in property deals comes down. Property analysts said even the revised rates were much below real property values in the city.

The city government expects the revised rates to bring in additional revenue to the tune of Rs 800 crore annually.

Chief minister Sheila Dikshit said the revision was an attempt to bring circle rates closer to real property prices, although these were still lower than market values in many posh colonies. According to senior revenue department officials, in most cases , the actual rates of properties are not shown on paper due to which the government suffers loss in revenue in stamp duty and registration fees.

HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times

Email Author

New Delhi, October 31, 2011

First Published: 23:24 IST(31/10/2011)

Last Updated: 01:19 IST(1/11/2011)

Circle rates hiked by up to 250%

Registering your properties is all set to get costlier after the Delhi government's decision to hike circle rates by up to 250%. But experts claim that revision of these rates won't have a huge impact on real estate prices in the Capital.

The decision was taken in a cabinet meeting presided over by Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit on Monday.

Circle rates are charged on the basis of categories prescribed by MCD for calculation of property tax under unit area method. Under the system, the city has been divided into eight categories - A to H, wherein A stands for posh colonies.

"The growth of the real estate market and instances of under valuation of properties necessitated this decision. Delhi government is keen to make property rates more close to market rates to eliminate the role of black money. This will increase revenue and bring transparency in property deals," said Dikshit.

The rates in category A has been increased by 250%, for B, C and D categories by 100%, for E category by 25%, for F category by 20%, and for G and H categories by 15%. Category A includes areas like Vasant Kunj and New Friends Colony. Its circle rate has been increased from the existing R86,000 per square metre to R2,15,000.

Meanwhile experts have welcomed this move. "This upward revision will help bring some level of rationalisation in the market. It will minimise the difference between the prevailing 'market rate' and the existing 'circle rate'. But the rise in rates by 250% may adversely affect consumer sentiment as property registration will become costlier," said Sachin Sandhir, managing director, RICS South Asia, a real estate consultancy.

Delhi government officials said the hiked circle rates are still less than the prevailing market rates in Delhi and those in NCR towns of Gurgaon and Noida. The new rates will come into force only after the issue of a notification of this effect.

In June 2010, Delhi government had increased circle rates by up to 300%. But the Lt. Governor had asked the government to review it. Finally in February 2011, the circle rates were increased by 100% across the city.

The Times of India, Delhi

Circle rate hike way to go: Experts

Will Initially Burden Consumers But Prove To Be Beneficial In Long Run

TIMESNEWSNETWORK

New Delhi: With the Delhi government hiking the circle rates substantially on Monday,the citys realty market is expected to be impacted somewhat.Its going to be a twopronged impact,say property experts.While the white component of the transaction will be going up as circle rates try to catch up with the grossly deflated market prices,the good news is that more genuine buyers are now expected to enter the market with financiers taking a backseat.

Said real estate analyst Pradeep Mishra: The reason for the impact on the property prices is that the component of the price that was white,comprising the stamp duty that was usually undervalued,will now go up. Its not going to be a huge jump though,say experts,despite the staggering 250 per cent hike in circle rates of upmarket colonies in Category A.Said Harish Sabharwal,a Mayur Vihar broker: The circle rates are finally becoming more realistic,reflective of the market.Since this means that the stamp duty is going up,there will be a short-term impact. The hike will be passed on to the buyer,who will bear the additional load,said experts.Both Mishra and Sabharwal,however,feel the impact will be absorbed in the next few months.Transactions will be affected only for a couple of months and then itll go back to normal.The increase will also be absorbed, added Mishra.

In fact,properties in the region of more than a crore may see a rate correction,feel market watchers.That is because of the larger role of genuine buyers in this market.With the revision in circle rates,the financier will not invest as heavily now.There are several reasons for this,like the stricter general power of attorney norms as well as higher stamp duty.The financiers profit margin is smaller in this scenario, added GP Tiwari (name changed),who invests in real estate.The impact of financiers taking a backseat,added Mishra,will be felt the most in properties in the range of Rs 1.5-2 crore and above.A 5-10 per cent rate correction may happen in this category of properties, said Mishra.
In a market already impacted by rising interest rates,the hike in circle rates will play spoilsport,rue most industry watchers.While Delhis circle rates are comparatively lower than that of the other NCR areas,its a substantial hike - between 100-250 % in all the upmarket colonies.Even G and H will have a 15% increase.Property rates will obviously be affected, said Sabharwal.The hike however,isexpected to be beneficial in the long run,as it will check transactions in black money and undervaluation of property,add experts.

http://www.naredco.in/news-updates-details.asp?id=3650&prYear=2011

Times of India

Page: 4 TIMES NEWS NETWORK, NEW DELHI

November 1, 2011

In upscale areas, market rate 4 times higher

New Delhi:The Delhi government has announced a steep hike in circle rates to garner more revenue and check the use of black money in property transactions. The revised rates, approved by the Delhi cabinet, are expected to be notifed within a week by the lieutenant-governor.

For category A colonies such as Jor Bagh, Vasant Vihar, Friends Colony, Siri Fort and Ring Road bunglows, the new circle rate is Rs 2.15 lakh per square metre, a 250% hike over the existing rate of Rs 86,000.

This means nobody would be allowed to register land and immovable properties in these colonies for less than Rs 2.15 lakh per square metre. The market price in these colonies is still about four times higher than the revised rates.

In category B colonies -Greater Kailash Park-1 & II, Green Park, Neeti Bagh and Hauz Khas - the rates have been increased by 100% to Rs 1,36,400 per sq metre. Even in this case the market prices are two to three times higher.

"We have decided to hike the circle rates in the range of 15% to 250% so that property transactions reflect the real value. The government would be able to generate an additional revenue of Rs 800 crore annually," CM Sheila Dikshit said after the Cabinet meeting.

The circle rate has been increased by 100% in C & D category colonies too. Colonies such as Kailash Hills, East of Kailash and Saket fall in C category and the rates here stand revised from Rs 54,600 per sq metre to Rs 1,09,200 per sq metre. In D category colonies like Amar Colony, Jangpura A and Janakpuri, the rate has been increased by 100% from 43,600 per sq metre to Rs 87,200 per sq metre.

In E category colonies, which includes Jama Masjid, Khirki Extension and urban villages like Adhchini, the hike is 30% from Rs 36,800 per sq metre to rs 47,840 per sq metre.

In category F colonies, the circle rate are up 20%. So for those staying in Adarsh Nagar, Bhajanpura, Jamia Nagar and Neb Sarai, the rates are now going to be Rs 38,640 per sq metre. In category G - Jahangirpuri, Badarpur, Jasola and others - the rate increase is 15% (Rs 31,510). In the lowest category, H, which includes Burari, Chhatarpur and Bapraula, the new rate is Rs 15870 per sq metre, a hike of 15%.

In the case of DDA and cooperative group housing society flats, the minim um rates for calculating the registration value of the property has been doubled. So, if you own a flat of around 100 sq metre (1,000 sq feet), the minimum value for registration will be Rs 45,20,000.

In case of flats constructed by developers, the minimum value will be increased by up to 1.25 times that of DDA flats of the same size. In case of independent floors on a plot of land, the value of the floor will be calculated by computing the total cost of the building including the land cost divided by the number of floors.

The revised rates shall be taken into consideration for registration of instruments relating to land and immovable properties in Delhi by all the registration authorities under the provision of Indian Stamp Act at the time of registration of instruments under the Registration Act.

The circle rates were first introduced in Delhi in 2007, dividing the capital into eight categories, and were notified under the provisions of the Delhi Stamp (Prevention of Undervaluation of Instruments) Rules, 2007 on July 18, 2007.

Times of India

Page: 4 TIMES NEWS NETWORK, NEW DELHI

November 1, 2011

Gender bias: Only Af fares worse than India in S Asia

Rukmini Shrinivasan | TIMES INSIGHT GROUP

New Delhi: Far from improving,Indias abysmal gender inequality statistics seem to have taken a turn for the worse.New data shows that Indias Gender Inequality Index (GII) worsened slightly between 2008 and 2011,and India now ranks 129 out of 146 countries on the GII,better only than Afghanistan in south Asia.

On the Human Development Index (HDI),India ranks 134 out of 187 countries.When inequality is factored in,it experiences a 30% drop in human development values,ranking 129th out of 146 countries.

Indias decline is accounted for by a fall in female labour force participation rate and a worsening of its adolescent fertility rate.Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh,who helped release 2011 UNDP Human Development Report on Wednesday,said a decline in female labour force participation could indicate improved status or better education opportunities.

The GII,introduced by United Nations Development Programme last year,measures female disadvantage in three areas: reproductive health as measured by the maternal mortality ratio and adolescent fertility rate;empowerment measured by proportion of seats in Parliament and proportion with at least secondary education;and the labour market measured by the labour force participation rate.

However,the UNDP report shows that the proportion of women with at least secondary education is still just half that of men.Globally,richer countries with higher human development,have higher female labour force participation too.

Within Indias neighbourhood,Sri Lanka has overtaken China on human development and with an HDI of 0.691,is now within touching distance of the high human development category.Sri Lanka performs particularly well on gender equality indicators;its maternal mortality ratio is the same as

Russias

Economic growth is a necessary but not sufficient condition for human development.Recent data shows that high growth states like Gujarat have worse human development measures,particularly on malnutrition,than many of the northern states, Ramesh said.He went on to praise the role of non-government players,including Anna Hazare,in bringing about change in sanitation.

Biz bribes abroad fall,but India still at bottom of pile

When it comes to companies bribing public officials for business overseas,Indias score improved the most globally since 2008,rights group Transparency International said,but India still ranked near the bottom of the global Bribe Payers Index,ranking 19th among 28 countries.P 9

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/article2597367.ece

Published: November 4, 2011 10:27 IST | Updated: November 4, 2011 10:37 IST NEW DELHI, November 4, 2011

Delhiites third richest in country

Special Correspondent

‘They love their drinks, mobile phones'

On an average, a Delhiite earns Rs.1.16 lakh a year, owns 2.5 mobile phones, watches nearly two movies annually, gets a supply of 50 gallons of water each day and consumes over a case and quarter of liquor in a year.

These are some of the interesting facts revealed by the Delhi Statistical Handbook-2011 released by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit here on Thursday.

Addressing the media, Ms. Dikshit said Delhi was rapidly acquiring a very urban look and noted that the rural population has declined by over 55 per cent over the past decade. Of Delhi's total population of 1.68 crore, the urban population constitutes 1.65 crore.

The city has registered a 26 per cent growth in urban population over the past decade with North-West Delhi recording the highest growth rate of 21.79 per cent and New Delhi district the lowest at 0.80 per cent.

Despite the high population growth, the literacy rate has managed to keep pace and there are 86.34 per cent literates in Delhi now. About 92 per cent of males are literate, while among females this percentage is 80.99. The rural population has not lagged behind too much with 79.65 per cent being literate as against 87.06 per cent in the urban areas.

The report says Delhi's per capita income at current prices was Rs.116,886 during 2009-10, recording an increase of Rs.13,446 over the previous year. It, therefore, ranks third in the country behind Goa at Rs.132,719 and Chandigarh at Rs.120,912.

3.88 crore mobile connections

Delhi's economic well-being is reflected in its mobile phone use.

The number of connections over the past year rose by over a crore to touch 3.88 crore in 2011 as against 2.82 crore in 2010. The growth of landline connections was comparatively moderate – rising by about 11.28 lakh during the same period and increasing to 28.38 lakh in 2011.

The number of vehicles rose sharply from 6,451,883 in 2009-10 to 6,932,706 in 2010-11, an addition of 5 lakh vehicles to the city roads.

Brought out by the Delhi Government's Directorate of Economics and Statistics, the 36th issue of the handbook has 23 chapters covering various socio- economic parameters of the city.

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article2573461.ece

Published: October 29, 2011 17:17 IST | Updated: October 29, 2011 17:17 IST October 29, 2011

America shOWS its soul

NARAYAN LAKSHMAN

A protester gets vocal in Zuccotti Park, New York. Photo: AP

Winds of Change: Blowing not just in America. Protesters gather in Finsbury Square, London. Photo: AFP

A demonstrator in Zuccotti Park. Photo: AFP

By insisting that America's socio-economic renewal must be more just and equitable, the Occupy Wall Street movement has captured the imagination of the world. But can it really transform the political landscape?

For many of us covering politics in the United States for foreign publications, no mystery has been greater than the power of resurgent conservatism in recent years.

While nearly two decades of laissez-faire policies under former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush succeeded in bankrupting the American middle class and driving it to Depression-era despair, the initial, angry response came not from the Left but the Right. Thus the Tea Party was born, warts and all.

When the Tea Party then went on to enjoy a stunning success in getting its sympathisers elected to Congress in last year's mid-term polls, that made the footprint of the American Right on policymaking impossible to ignore. More recently, the colourful, if sometimes hateful, debates between potential Republican Presidential contenders have proved to be a handy platform for bashing President Barack Obama's record in office.

Late response

Yet it was only as late as September 17 this year that a movement appeared on the national stage that not only identified the true malaise of governance during the Clinton and Bush years but also finally showed that America had a soul, a sense of balance in its understanding of history, and a recognition of the harsh toll of the recession years. That movement is Occupy Wall Street (OWS).

In the brief five weeks that it has been alive OWS has not only been the first real locus of rightful indignation of a disenchanted middle class reeling from the onslaught of the downturn, but it has captured the imagination of many across the world, from Beijing to Tehran.

Ironically, assuming a leaderless and loosely organised structure like its antithesis the Tea Party movement, OWS strikes at what is now widely recognised as the epicentre of the financial markets collapse of 2008 — the traditional home of the world's largest banks in New York City's financial district.

Although it was initially said to have been instigated by a Canadian activist group called Adbusters, it quickly ballooned into a massively popular series of marches that aimed to highlight inequality and corporate greed.

Its statistics-based war cry of “We are the 99 per cent” reaches to the very core of the problem with American economics today, that the rules of the game have led to a deeply unequal distribution of wealth in the world's only superpower.

With almost 40 per cent of that wealth held by the top percentile of the population, who further pay a far lower tax rate than those much poorer than them, widespread anger has centred on the fact that ordinary Americans are trapped in the vice-like grip of housing foreclosures and job losses and have borne the brunt of the crisis.

Thus what began as a march on Wall Street by approximately five thousand protestors at Manhattan's Zuccotti Park rapidly mushroomed into a movement of many hundreds of thousands in other major U.S. cities too, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston.

By the time the movement hit the one-month mark it began to spread to other nations as well, with copycat demonstrations being held across Asia and Europe, in many cases again pulling in thousands of protestors.

Yet, similar to the Indian government's clumsy early response to the Jan Lokpal movement, the New York Police Department unwittingly gave OWS even more publicity when, on September 24, one of its officers viciously attacked an unarmed, penned-in group of four female protestors with pepper spray.

Insensitive handling

With the NYPD's heavy-handed action against the protestors being captured live on film and going viral on the Internet within the hour, the officer in question, Anthony Bologna, faces an internal disciplinary charge.

New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared to learn a lesson from this episode, about the dangers of violently repressing peaceful demonstrators, especially when thousands of cell phone cameras were silently recording and transmitting every such incident to millions of viewers across the world.

While NYPD arrested over 700 demonstrators marching north from Zuccotti Park on October 1, Mr. Bloomberg softened his stance two weeks later. Although he had issued an evacuation order to clean up Zuccotti Park he however backed off from that course of action and avoided another confrontation with the demonstrators.

By this time the rest of mainstream American politics was quickly waking up to the emotive power of the new movement, with Democrats unsurprisingly voicing sympathy for it and Republicans and the Tea Party questioning its credibility.

Even as major U.S. labour unions such as AFL-CIO, the Transport Workers Union, the Service Employees International Union and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union joined OWS, the Democratic leadership expressed cautious support.

Mr. Obama spoke through the voice of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, when he said at the unveiling of a statue of Dr. King that if he were still alive, “I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonising all who work there.”

The powerful denizens of Wall Street either remained mute in the face of OWS' direct criticism of their role in the economic meltdown or joined Democratic leaders in expressing sympathy. Even when OWS embarked on a “Millionaires March” targeting the private homes of captains of industry such as Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan and Jeff Immelt of GE, it only received a positive response.

Mr. Immelt was quoted as saying, “Unemployment is 9.1 per cent and underemployment is much higher than that, particularly among young people that don't have a college degree. It is natural to assume people are angry, and so I think we have to be empathetic and understand that people are not feeling great.”

Expected Republican response

Many mainstream Republican leaders too indicated a sense of understanding about people's frustration at the high unemployment rate and depressed state of the economy. Yet some of the more radical among them, such as Herman Cain, former Godfather Pizza CEO and current Republican Presidential race contender, insinuated that OWS protestors were “jealous” Americans who “play the victim card” and want to “take somebody else's” Cadillac.

Mr. Cain's rivals, such as former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, however chose to sympathise with the protestors' sentiment but lay blame for their plight on the Obama administration's policies. Mr. Gingrich said, “There are a lot of people in America who are angry... This is the natural product of President Obama's class warfare.”

At the heart of these diverse responses is the question of what the rise of OWS could mean for American politics today, particularly the question of whether it could challenge the assumptions of the Tea Party movement and thus bringing the battle to the Right-wing group's doorstep.

What was most remarkable about the Tea Party's meteoric rise in U.S. politics since 2009 was not so much that a horizontally-structured movement could capture the imagination of so many ordinary Americans, but the fact that it could do so despite representing a conservative view of American history that completely repudiated blame for engendering the worst economic downturn this country has seen since the 1930s.

Thus the Tea Party has relentlessly pressed legislators to cut the size of government spending and roll back regulation in a majority of industries, even though it was obvious that an utter lack of regulation of financial market players such as mortgage lenders had contributed to the unprecedented housing market collapse in this country.

Similarly, Tea Party-backed legislators such as Michele Bachmann, also a Republican Presidential hopeful for 2012, have vowed to have what they pejoratively refer to as “Obamacare” repealed, unmindful of the fact that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated the path-breaking healthcare reform will cut the U.S. deficit by $138 billion over the first decade of its implementation and by $1.2 trillion over the second.

But wasn't deficit reduction at the heart of the debt limit negotiations over the summer, in which Republicans held the government and indeed the entire nation hostage through their veto power in Congress?

The fact that the Tea Party has been so politically successful despite such glaring contradictions is down to one major attribute of the movement — it taps into widespread public anger over the large-scale regulatory failure that led to the country's economic woes in the first place.

OWS could present the ultimate challenge to the Tea Party's partisan answer to the problem, because it directly links laissez-faire policies, rather than over-regulation, to the crisis. If this means more support to the unemployed, more medical care for the elderly and more educational resources for poorer students, then OWS may well ring true with impoverished American voters in 2012 where the Tea Party does not.

At the crossroads

Yet, even as it heads towards its two-month birthday, OWS is at a crossroads and the choices it makes in the weeks ahead will determine whether the movement will retain salience in terms of what matters most to middle class Americans, or whether it will become another catch-all Leftist, or even worse, “hippy,” movement.

For, while it is certainly commendable that OWS protestors have spoken of numerous, wide-ranging ills that plague American society today, from environmental destruction to minority discrimination, nothing would give the movement coherence as much as a well-defined set of core demands that the political leadership could adopt if they so chose.

It is hard to imagine Obama or indeed even a far more Left-leaning member of Congress take up the variegated rainbow portfolio of OWS as it stands in its current form. The argument that OWS has made in favour of thus far avoiding the core-demands question would appear to be that its Declaration of the Occupation of New York City document is sufficient, and “The open democracy of Zuccotti Park is the point of the movement,” as the New York Times noted.

Instead, it would be a welcome irony if OWS took a page out of the Tea Party's book and focused on its impact on mainstream American politics through grassroots mobilisation. This step alone could mark an inflection point for a transformative phase in the movement. It could also endow OWS with the power to remake the political landscape of a country in dire need of socioeconomic renewal.

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article2573480.ece

Published: October 29, 2011 17:15 IST | Updated: October 29, 2011 17:15 IST October 29, 2011

Resistance with a human face

Rajeev Ravisankar

The OWS 'General Assembly' in progress. Photo: Rajeev Ravisankar

Rajeev Ravisankar recounts what it was like to be there at the Liberty Plaza, the nerve centre of the Occupy movement.

In the midst of an ongoing economic recession, the Occupy Wall Street movement has sparked the imagination of people across the United States The “occupiers from below” decry the concentration of wealth and power in the top one percent and increasing economic inequality in American society.

“Occupy” started over a month ago and has branched out with demonstrations of solidarity in over 1,000 cities around the U.S. and the world. Mainstream media outlets provided little coverage until protestors endured police repression, including pepper spray, baton attacks, and hundreds of arrests. Recently, protestors based in Zuccotti Park near Wall Street, the movement's primary staging ground, avoided potential eviction under the guise of cleaning the park as city officials and park owners backed down.

Consensus-based

I arrived at Zuccotti Park, called Liberty Plaza by the occupiers, on a weekday afternoon in late September. I came just in time to experience the General Assembly, where hundreds of people participate in a democratic decision-making process based on consensus.

Initially, I found it strange that almost everyone was repeating the words of the person speaking, but I soon found out that this human microphone is a clever way to get around city restrictions on using voice amplifying devices. As General Assembly participants continued deliberating, I decided to walk around the park to get a better sense of what was happening.

People talked and played guitars softly while others napped. Onlookers watched curiously, taking photos from time to time. Protest signs were lying around in different areas, and like many other people, I peered over the messages about putting “people over profit,” undue corporate influence in the political sphere, home foreclosures, environmental degradation, and worker rights.

The space facilitated diverse interactions among people. I overheard two bankers arguing that government and regulations are to blame for the economic crisis rather than financial institutions. When they left, the man sitting next to me shared his views as one of the many jobless. A few of us engaged about the meaning of the Occupy movement; one was from Wisconsin and we talked about struggles to preserve labour union rights in our respective states.

The occupation seemed almost ordinary, and I wondered “Is this it?” But there are many faces of protest and resistance beyond pitched confrontations between police and demonstrators. That day, the inner workings of the alternative presented by the movement were on display.

Support networks

Networks of mutuality had already developed, ensuring the occupation's viability. I passed by a food table offering free pizza, bread, and fruit and a medical station with volunteers. At the media centre, a team updates the website and maintains the movement's online presence. The space also includes a performance area and a makeshift library. Later, I learned that the sanitation working group helps clean the park and has developed a system to treat and recycle wastewater.

The occupiers are living an alternative to the status quo of a consumer-based society and profit-driven economic system in which individuals are reduced to self-interested utility maximizers. Their horizontal organising and democratic decision-making challenges technocratic governance driven by credentialed ‘experts'.

Rajeev Ravisankar is a freelance writer from Columbus, Ohio.

PROLIFERATION GOOD; NEEDED QUALITY

With a plethora of TV channels and hundreds of newspapers, Kerala's media scene looks already overcrowded. Four more channels are poised to go on air before the end of the year. Now joining the maddening media scene will be three editions of Times of India. All these mean more numbers, no doubt. Have they contributed to quality improvement? Veteran journalist P K Ravindranath finds out With four more channels to take off before the year ends (with Madhyamam and Manorama Rainbow, Mathrubhumi and Kaumudi) Kerala’s media scene is likely to develop into a dogfight for TRP ratings and consequent lowering of quality.

Kerala’s print media scene is already overcrowded with the Deccan Chronicle having pitched its tent at Kochi and still struggling to find adequate readers, The Times of India is set to invade Kerala with three editions in Kochi, Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram. TOI, with its over gracious bow to market forces, it is feared, would force the others to give a go by to professional standards and ethics. In Mumbai, the base of the paper, it is notorious for having besmirched the high standards it had once set for itself. The leader in ushering in the concept of celebrity journalism, the Page Three phenomenon and now paid news, The Times of India will literally have to undertake a blitzkrieg, if it is not to repeat its dismal record of having folded up its Kolkatta edition within months in the 1950s.

A phenomenon that has overtaken most other news papers – the sharp decline of quality editing of copy- is most explicit in The Times of India ever since computers dispensed with typewriters and teleprinters in its offices. Reporters with questionable credentials type their copy on the computer and click it to the News Editor or the News Desk, complete with a byline even if the story is about a commonplace event. Kaumudi

The News Editor places the story with a headline, if necessary, on the page and clicks it off to the printer or the page designer. The report appears with mistakes, repetitions and everything else to proclaim that it could have been better if it had gone under a blue pencil.

For almost two decades now, the functions of the editorial desk in that august publication has been taken over by the Response Department – an euphemism for the department that handles all advertising. It is often known to decide what items should go where and with what importance. Mathrubhumi With the recent outcry against paid news, the paper confines its outpourings in the “Bombay Times”, which has expanded considerably to cover as many as 16 pages. The supplement to the daily paper is crammed with photographs of social, political and film personalities and “articles” pertaining to be exclusive interviews or byline pieces. Most of the material in this special supplement is quality stuff and could stand some expert rewriting and editing. But none of them carry any indication that it has anything to do with advertising.

Since most film personalities and socialites swear by the Bombay Times, the most frequent sponsors of this supplement are film actors and producers whose films are due for

release – mostly about their imagined romances and relationships with the tacit understanding between the two consenting parties that it will not stretch beyond the Friday when the film is released.

Kerala has been free till now of such blatant concocted stories even in its “thaniniram” (real character) publications. There are several other tricks the publication can push into the Kerala “market” – in the political, film and industrial spheres. The class of “socialites” that one finds in Mumbai and Delhi are mercifully rare in Kerala. They can, however, be created without much effort, to fill the pages of the new entrant to journalism in Kerala.

Rupert Murdoch’s entry into Malayalam television through Asianet has already helped debase the quality of its entertainment wing – with puerile items like “Dance Dance” and “F I R” which in some ways have touched its main news channel too. Witness the number of commercial items, which have no news value, that get aired every day during prime news time on this channel. The opening of a commercial computer class, handing over keys of luxury flats, or opening of new showrooms of jewellery marts and sari emporia. The mere presence of a minister or a prominent film star at the function does not make it newsworthy.

There are other ways in which the premier Malayalam channel overlooks standards – in the quality of its anchors, correct pronunciations and selection of items according to their importance on prime time news.

The eminent jurist Soli Sorabjee recently pointed out how even the prominent English Channels take liberties with the English language. “One way to spoil your English especially pronunciation, is by listening to some anchors of English channels,” he had said. It is worse still in Malayalam channels. Since the teleprompter carries text of the broadcast in Malayalam words like “not, note” and “four, for, fore” all sound alike when written (and read) in Malayalam. Most anchors also ignore the fact that the common word “film” has only one I. It just is not “Filim”. The tragedy is that they also mispronounce Indian names and words. Irfan Pathan comes through with a soft “tha” instead of the harsh “ttha”. The Maharashtra Chief Minister’s surname – Chavan- is never pronounced as it is in Marathi.

Television channels have their eyes glued to the mysterious TRP ratings, which determine the quantum of advertising they can garner. Ratings go up when more channel surfers watch the particular channel. To get more viewers to tune in, the need arises to sensationalise any story or play any sensational story with all gruesome details to keep the viewer glued to the channel or return to it more often. Anna Hazare

In this process, most English channels have converted the prime time news hour into predominantly chat shows, picking on some story each one fancies and having a panel to discuss it threadbare. One would expect the experts to be knowledgeable at least about the subjects they pontificate on. Far from it, the most noticeable faces on such chat shows are Event Managers, film producers, socialites, easily available journalists, and stray public figures who have little to contribute by way of knowledgeable or informed comment on the subject. Some of them are there because they could divert funds through advertising to the channels. Some others are there because the Event Manager see to it that they are called. All these are in addition to the regular party spokesmen. One of the brashest of this lot is mercifully out since he mouthed profanities against Anna Hazare, as briefed by a BJP leader who had been unseated by Anna Hazare in the past. There are other

ways in which the premier Malayalam channel overlooks standards – in the quality of its anchors, correct pronunciations and selection of items according to their importance on prime time news.Abhishekh Manu Singhvi Kerala has a grouse against one of the Congress party spokesmen, Abhishekh Manu Singhvi, who has pleaded the cause of Endosulfan, as a lawyer. Singhvi, like the Agriculture Minister pleads that it has not been scientifically proved that the pesticide is responsible for the genetic problems that have plagued part of Northern Kerala where it is widely used. They forget that the benefit of doubt should go to the people not to the multinational corporation that markets it.

The Press Council had recently come out with a report on the paid news phenomenon. It was duly suppressed. Today, film makers, actors, politicians, socialites, fashion designers, cricketers, industrialists all need the service of event managers – to manage and manipulate the press. And therein lies the danger when the media scene grows to an extent where it can burst.

This growth no doubt has led to the expansion of the public sphere. But in the process it has given up its role as the watchdog of society - the hallmark of excellence in journalism.

The newest entrant into the Kerala “market” is perhaps the worst offender in the game of erosion of values with commodification of the product with the imprint line proclaiming the name of its Editor (local market) from the centre of publication. Time was when the Editor of The Times of India claimed that he held the “second most important job in the country” next to the Prime Minister. Dilip Padgaonkar, where are you today?

http://www.thehindu.com/news/article2600319.ece

November 5, 2011

Justice Markandey Katju on the role of media in India

by Justice Markandey Katju, (former Judge, Supreme Court of India ), Chairman, Press Council of India

To understand the role which the media should be playing in India we have to first understand the historical context.

India

is presently passing through a transitional period in its history, transition from feudal agricultural society to modern industrial society.

This is a very painful and agonizing period in history. The old feudal society is being uprooted and torn apart, but the new, modern, industrial society has not yet been entirely established. Old values are crumbling, everything is in turmoil. We may recollect the line in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth: “Fair is foul and foul is fair”. What was regarded good earlier e.g. the caste system is regarded bad today (at least by the enlightened section of society), and what was regarded bad earlier, e.g. love marriage, is acceptable today (at least to the modern minded persons).

One is reminded of Firaq Gorakhpuri’s Urdu couplet:

“Har zarre par ek qaifiyat-e-neemshabi hai

Ai saaqi-e- dauraan yeh gunahon ki ghadi hai”

In a marvel of condensation this sher (couplet) reflects the transitional age. Zarra means particle, qaifiyat means condition, e means of, neem means half, and shab means night. So the first line in the couplet literally means

“Every particle is in a condition of half night”.

Urdu poetry is often to be understood figuratively, not literally. So this line really means that (in the transitional age) everything is in flux, neither night nor day, neither the old order nor the new. Also, in the middle of the night if we get up we are dazed, in a state of mental confusion, and so are people in a transitional age.

In the second line, saaqi is the girl who fills the wine cup, but she is also the person to whom one can confide the innermost thoughts in one’s mind. The poet is imagining a girl, to whom he is describing the features of the transitional era. ‘Yeh gunahon ki ghadi hai’, i.e. it is the time of sin. In this transitional age it is a ‘gunahon ki ghadi’ from both points of view. From the point of view of people of the old, feudal order it is a sin to marry according to your choice, and particularly outside one’s caste or religion, it is a sin to give education to women, it is a sin to treat everyone as equal. At the same time, from the point of view of modern minded people the caste system is a sin, denying education to girls is a sin, and love marriage is quite acceptable. Thus old and new ideas are battling with each other in the transitional age.

It is the duty of all patriotic people, including the media, to help our society get over this transition period quickly and with less pain. The media has a very important role to play in this transition period, as it deals with ideas, not commodities. So by its very nature the media cannot be like an ordinary business.

If we study the history of Europe when it was passing through its transition period, i.e. from the 16th to the 19th Centuries, we find that this was a terrible period in Europe, full of turbulence, turmoil, revolutions, wars, chaos, social churning and intellectual ferment. It was only after passing through this fire that modern society emerged in Europe . India is presently going through this fire. We are passing through a very painful period in our history.

Historically, the print media emerged in Europe as an organ of the people against feudal oppression. At that time the established organs were all in the hands of the feudal despotic authorities (the king, aristocrats, etc). Hence the people had to create new organs which could represent them. That is why the print media became known as the fourth estate. In Europe and America it represented the voice of the future, as contrasted to the established feudal organs which wanted to preserve the status quo. The media thus played an important role in transforming feudal Europe to modern Europe .

In the Age of Enlightenment in Europe the print media represented the voice of reason. Voltaire attacked religious bigotry and superstitions, and Rousseau attacked feudal despotism. Diderot said that “Man will be free when the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”. Thomas Paine proclaimed the Rights of Man, and Junius (whose real name we still do not know) attacked the despotic George III and his ministers (see Will Durant’s ‘The Story of Civilization: Rousseau and Revolution’). Louis XVI, while in the Temple prison saw books by Voltaire and Rousseau in the prison library and said that these two persons have destroyed

France

. In fact what they had destroyed was not France but the feudal order. In the 19th Century the famous writer Emile Zola in his article ‘J’ Accuse’ accused the French Government of falsely imprisoning Captain Dreyfus in Devil’s Island only because he was a Jew.

In my opinion the Indian media should be playing a role similar to the progressive role played by the media in Europe during the transitional period in Europe . In other words, the Indian media should help our country get over the transition period and became a modern industrial state. This it can do by attacking backward, feudal ideas and practices e.g. casteism, communalism and superstitions, and promoting modern scientific and rational ideas. But is it doing so?

In my opinion a large section of the Indian media (particularly the electronic media) does not serve the interest of the people, in fact some of it is positively anti-people.

There are three major defects in the Indian media which I would like to highlight.

1. The media often diverts the attention of the people from the real issues to non issues. The real issues in India are socio-economic, the terrible poverty in which 80% of our people are living, the massive unemployment, the price rise, lack of medical care, education, and backward social practices like honour killing and caste oppression and religious fundamentalism etc. Instead of devoting most of its coverage to these issues the media focuses on non issues like film stars and their lives, fashion parades, pop music, disco dancing, astrology, cricket, reality shows, etc.

There can be no objection to the media providing entertainment to the people, provided this is not overdone. But if 90% of its coverage is related to entertainment, and only 10% to the real issues facing the nation (mentioned above) then there is something seriously wrong with the media. The whole question is of proportion. In the Indian media the sense of proportion has gone crazy. Entertainment got 9 times the coverage that health, education , labour, agriculture and environment together got. Does a hungry or unemployed man want entertainment or food and a job?

To give an example, I switched on the T.V. yesterday and what did I see? Lady Gaga has come to India, Kareena Kapoor standing next to her statue in Madame Tussand’s, tourism award being given to a business house, Formula one car race etc. etc. What has all this to do with the problems of the people?

Many channels show cricket day in and day out. Cricket is really the opium of the Indian masses. The Roman Emperors used to say “If you cannot give the people bread give them circuses”. This is precisely the approach of the Indian establishment, duly supported by our media. Keep the people involved in cricket so that they forget their social and economic plight. What is important is not poverty or unemployment or price rise or farmers suicides or lack of housing or healthcare or education, what is important is whether India has beaten New Zealand (or better still Pakistan) in a cricket match, or whether Tendulkar or Yuvraj Singh have scored a century. The Indian media so much hyped up the cricket match at Mohali between India and Pakistan that it became a veritable Mahabharat War!

Enormous space is given by our media to business, and very little to social sectors like health and education. Most media correspondents attend the film stars, fashion parades, pop music, etc. and very few attend to the lives and problems of workers, farmers, students, sex workers, etc.

Recently ‘The Hindu’ published that a quarter million farmers committed suicide in the last fifteen years. A Lakme Fashion week was covered by 512 accredited journalists. In that fashion week women were displaying cotton garments, while the men and women who grew that cotton were killing themselves an hour’s flight from Nagpur in the Vidarbha region. Nobody told that story except one or two journalists locally.

The media coverage of the education field concentrates (if at all) on the elite colleges like the I.I.Ts, but there is very little coverage of the plight of the tens of thousands of primary schools, particularly in rural areas where education begins.

In Europe the displaced peasants got jobs in the factories which were coming up because of the Industrial Revolution. In

India

, an the other hand industrial jobs are now hard to come by. Many mills have closed down and have become real estate. The job trend in manufacturing has seen a sharp decline over the last 15 years. For instance, TISCO employed 85,000 workers in 1991 in its steel plant which then manufactured 1 million tons of steel. In 2005 it manufactured 5 million tons of steel but with only 44,000 workers. In mid 90s Bajaj was producing 1 million two wheelers with 24,000 workers. By 2004 it was producing 2.4 million units with 10,500 workers.

Where then do these millions of displaced peasants go? They go to cities where they became domestic servants, street hawkers, or even criminals. It is estimated that there are 1 to 2 lac adolescent girls from Jharkhand working as maids in Delhi . Prostitution is rampant in all cities, due to abject poverty.

In the field of health care, it may be pointed out that the number of quacks in every city in India is several times the number of regular doctors. This is because the poor people cannot afford going to a regular doctor. In rural areas the condition is worse. The government doctors posted to primary health centres usually come for a day or two each month, and run their private nursing homes in the cities the rest of the time.

In ‘Shining’

India

, the child malnutrition figures are the worst in the world. According to U.N. data, the percentage of under weight children below the age of 5 years in the poorest countries in the world is 25 per cent in Guinea Bissau, 27 per cent in Sierra Leone , 38 per cent in Ethiopia , and 47 per cent in

India

. The average family in India is consuming 100 kilograms of food grains less than it did 10 years ago (see P. Sainath’s article ‘Slumdogs and Millionaires’).

All this is largely ignored by our media which turns a Nelson’s eye to the harsh economic realities facing upto 80 per cent of our people, and instead concentrates on some Potempkin villages where all is glamour and show biz. Our media is largely like Queen Marie Autoinette, who when told that the people have no bread, said that they could eat cake.

2. The media often divides the people: Whenever a bomb blast takes place anywhere in India (whether in Bombay or Bangalore or Delhi or anywhere) within a few hours most T.V. channels starts showing that an e-mail or SMS has been received from Indian Mujahideen or Jaish-e-Muhammad or Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islam claiming responsibility. The name will always be a Muslim name. Now an e-mail or SMS can be sent by any mischievous person who wants communal hatred. Why should they be shown on T.V. screens, and next day in print (the T.V. news at night often sets the agenda for the print media news next morning)? The subtle message being sent by showing this is that all Muslims are terrorists or bomb throwers. In this way the entire Muslim community in India is demonized, when the truth is that 99 per cent people of all communities are good, whether they are Hindus or Muslims or Sikhs or Christians, and of whatever caste, region or language.

India

is broadly a country of immigrants. About 92 to 93 per cent people living in India today are descendants of immigrants, and not the original inhabitants (who are the pre-Dravidian tribals or adivasis, comprising of only 7 to 8 per cent of our population). Because we are broadly a country of immigrants there is tremendous diversity in India – so many religions, castes, languages, ethnic groups, etc. Hence it is absolutely essential if we wish to keep united and prosper that there must be tolerance and equal respect to all communities living in

India

. Those who sow seeds of discord among our people, whether on religious or caste or lingual or regional lines, are really enemies of our people.

The senders of such e-mails and SMS messages are therefore enemies of

India

, who wish to sow the seeds of discord among us on religious lines. Why should the media, wittingly or unwittingly, become abettors of this national crime?

3. The media promotes superstitions

As I have already mentioned, in this transitional age, the media should help our people to move forward into the modern, scientific age. For this purpose the media should propagate rational and scientific ideas, but instead of doing so a large section of our media propagates superstitions of various kinds.

It is true that the intellectual level of the vast majority of Indians is very low, they are steeped in casteism, communalism, and superstitions. The question, however, is whether the media should try to lift up the intellectual level of our people by propagating rational and scientific ideas, or whether it should go down to that low level and seek to perpetuate it?

In Europe during the Age of Enlightenment the media (which was only the print medium at that time) sought to uplift the mental level of the people and change their mindset by propagating ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity and rational thinking. Voltaire attacked superstitions, and Dickens criticized the horrible conditions in jails, schools, orphanages, courts, etc. Should not our media be doing the same?

At one time courageous people like Raja Ram Mohan Roy wrote against sati, child marriage, purdah system etc. (in his newspaper ‘Miratul Akhbar’ and ‘Sambad Kaumudi’). Nikhil Chakraborty wrote about the horrors of the Bengal Famine of 1943. Munshi Premchand an d Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyaya wrote against feudal practices and women’s oppression. Manto wrote about the horrors of Partition.

But what do we see in the media today?

Many T.V. channels show astrology. Astrology is not to be confused with astronomy. While astronomy is a science, astrology is pure superstition and humbug. Even a little common sense can tell us that there is no rational connection between the movements of the stars and planets, and whether a person will die at the age of 50 years or 80 years, or whether he will be a doctor or engineer or lawyer. No doubt most people in our country believe in astrology, but that is because their mental level is very low. The media should try to bring up that level, rather than to descend to it and perpetuate it.

Many channels mention and show the place where a Hindu god was born, where he lived, etc. Is this is not spreading superstitions.

I am not saying that there are no good journalists at all in the media. There are many excellent journalists. P. Sainath is one of them, whose name should be written in letters of gold in the history of Indian journalism. Had it not been for his highlighting of the farmers suicides in certain states the story (which was suppressed for several years) may never have been told. But such good journalists are the exceptions. The majority consists of people who do not seem to have the desire to serve the public interest.

To remedy this defect in the media I have done two things (1) I propose to have regular meetings with the media (including electronic media) every two months or so. These will not be regular meetings of the entire Press Council, but informal get-togethers where we will discuss issues relating to the media and try to resolve them in the democratic way, that is, by discussion, consultation and dialogue. I believe 90% problems can be resolved in this way (2) In extreme cases, where a section of the media proves incorrigible despite trying the democratic method mentioned above, harsher measures may be required. In this connection I have written to the Prime Minister requesting him to amend the Press Council Act by bringing the electronic media also under the purview of the Press Council (which may be renamed the Media Council) and by giving it more teeth e.g. power to suspend government advertisements, or in extreme cases even the licence of the media houses for some time. As Goswami Tulsidas said ‘Bin bhaya hot na preet’. This, however, will be resorted to only in extreme cases and after the democratic method has failed.

It may be objected that this is interfering with the freedom of the media. There is no freedom which is absolute. All freedoms are subject to reasonable restrictions, and are also coupled with responsibilities. In a democracy everyone is accountable to the people, and so is the media.

To sum up: The Indian media must now introspect and develop a sense of responsibility and maturity.That does not mean that it cannot be reformed. My belief is that 80 per cent people who are doing wrong things can be made good people by patient persuasion, pointing out their errors, and gently leading them to the honourable path which the print media in Europe in the Age of Enlightenment was following.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article3528407.ece?css=print

The Hindu

Web ‘snooping’ plans of U.K. government under fire

Hasan Suroor

AP Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May. File photo

Despite protests from rights campaigners and many of its own MPs, the British Government is to go ahead with plans to give unprecedented powers to police and intelligence agencies to access details of phone calls and online activity of ordinary people irrespective of whether they are suspected of any unlawful action.

Under the controversial Communications Data Bill, published in draft form on Thursday amid criticism that it amounted to a “snooper’s charter”, security agencies will be able to demand from internet providers details of every phone call, e-mail, text message, and website visit made by their customers.

Currently, communications companies are supposed keep records of only phone calls and emails for 12 months but under the new plans they would be required to store details of a much wider range of data including use of social network sites, webmail, voice calls over the internet, and gaming.

A similar move by the erstwhile Labour government in 2003 was dropped in the face of strong opposition.

Home Secretary Theresa May insisted that the measure was needed to “catch criminals and stop terrorists’’.

“It's not about the content, it's not about reading people's emails or listening to their telephone calls. This is purely about the who, when and where made these communications and it's about ensuring we catch criminals and stop terrorists,” she said.

Metropolitan Police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe claimed that it was essential for police to have greater powers to access data in waging a “total war on crime”.

“Put simply, the police need access to this information to keep up with the criminals who bring so much harm to victims and our society,” he said.

But the move was attacked not only by rights groups but by the ruling Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s own backbench MPs.

Senior Tory MP David Davis called the proposals “incredibly intrusive”.

More than 160,000 people were reported to have signed an online petition by the campaign group 38 Degrees saying: “Our civil liberties have taken a battering in recent years from politicians of all backgrounds. Now it's time to for us to push back.”

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2607285.ece

Published: November 8, 2011 02:12 IST | Updated: November 9, 2011 20:14 IST New Delhi, November 8, 2011

Self-regulation is no regulation, says Katju

If TV channels don't want to come under Press Council they should choose Lokpal

Dismissive of the news broadcast industry's self-regulatory mechanism, Press Council of India Chairman Justice Markandey Katju has said if TV channels do not want to come under the PCI they should choose another body like the Lokpal.

“Self-regulation is no regulation and news organisations are private bodies whose activities have a large influence on the public and they also must be answerable to the public,” he said.

On Sunday, Justice Katju wrote to News Broadcasting Association secretary N.K. Singh: “I would like to know whether the Association is willing to be placed under the Lokpal, which is proposed to be set up in the winter session of Parliament? You seem to be reluctant to come under the Press Council. Are you also reluctant to come under the Lokpal,” he asked.

“You claim the right of self-regulation. May I remind you that even judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts do not have that absolute right. They can be impeached by Parliament for misconduct…” he wrote.

“Lawyers come under the Bar Council and their licence can be suspended or cancelled for professional misconduct. Similarly, doctors come under the Medical Council, chartered accountants under their council, etc.” He said: “In the recent Anna Hazare movement, wide publicity was given to it by the media. What is the demand of Anna Hazare? That politicians, bureaucrats, judges, etc, should all be placed under the Jan Lokpal Bill. By what logic do you claim to be exempt from being placed under the Lokpal?”

The letter said: “You claim the right of self-regulation. By the same logic, politicians, bureaucrats, etc, will also claim the right of self-regulation. Or, do you claim to be so doodh ka dhula [cleansed by milk] that you should not be regulated by anyone else except yourself? What then were paid news, Radia tapes, etc.”

Keywords: Katju, media Katju spat, media responsibility

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/parents-held-for-abandoning-7yrold-girl/873708/

Parents held for abandoning 7-yr-old girl

Express News Service Tags : Ansal Plaza, Pramod Paswan, Chhaya Sharma Posted: Thu Nov 10 2011, 01:30 hrs New Delhi:

A 50-year-old man and his wife were arrested on Wednesday for abandoning their seven-year-old daughter at Ansal Plaza, South Delhi, on January 25.

The accused have been identified as Pramod Paswan and his wife Sunita. They belong to Bihar’s Munger district. “The girl told police that she had come to Delhi with her parents from Bihar a few days ago. They had brought her to Ansal Plaza and left after a while, promising to return soon,” said Chhaya Sharma, Deputy Commissioner of Police (South).

She was sent to NGO Prayas.

The Paswans reportedly told police that they had six daughters and were too poor to take care of them.

http://www.economist.com/node/21556568/print

Philanthro-journalism

Reporters without orders

Can journalism funded by private generosity compensate for the decline of the commercial kind?

Jun 9th 2012 | from the print edition

BANDITS, terrorists, clan rivalries, lawless security forces and corrupt officials make Russia’s north Caucasus the murkiest part of an often opaque country. Journalism there is difficult and dangerous. Much of the best reporting is done by Caucasian Knot, a bilingual online news service. Whereas most of the Russian national media is owned and controlled either by the Kremlin or by tycoons wary of incurring its displeasure, Caucasian Knot is financed by donations.
Media philanthropists are active in calmer places, too. Readers and advertisers have switched to the internet. Profit margins have shrunk or vanished. Papers are dying and journalists being sacked. Costly foreign and investigative reporting has been particularly squeezed, as has local news. One increasingly popular—if limited—response to these travails is the sort of “philanthro-journalism” long practised elsewhere by the likes of Caucasian Knot.
Thanks to its charitable traditions, this trend is most visible in America. A few philanthropically financed operations have been around for decades, but recently they have been joined by many more. Jan Schaffer of J-Lab, a journalism think-tank at American University in Washington, DC, estimates that American foundations have donated at least $250m to non-profit journalism ventures since 2005.
Many of these, such as the Texas Tribune, cover state politics. The highest-profile is arguably ProPublica, an investigative-reporting unit set up in 2008 with help from the Sandler Foundation. It has already won two Pulitzer prizes. Its managing editor Stephen Engelberg argues that, since investigative journalism is now too expensive to be sustained by commercial business models, it ought to be considered a public good.
The trend is spreading to other countries, including Australia and Britain, where regulators and politicians have fretted about the decline of old-fashioned media without doing much about it. Money from the David and Elaine Potter Foundation is funding the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), based at City University in London. Iain Overton, its editor, reckons that many traditional outlets lack the forensic skills, as well as the cash, to crunch data and hold the powerful to account.
Such subsidies aren’t new. Plenty of newspapers in what now looks like their golden age survived on plutocrats’ generosity. That continues today. Several American local papers, one of the most fragile parts of the industry, have been taken over by rich businessmen. Some of Britain’s upmarket dailies are scarcely commercial. The loss-making Guardian is run by a trust (which also owns the moneymaking Auto Trader). The Independent was saved by a Russian billionaire. Some might call that philanthropy, too.
But the likes of ProPublica and the BIJ have some distinct features. They do not seek to make a profit, even hypothetically. Most try hard to ensure donors have no editorial influence. Many give away their content (both those outfits’ websites sport a “steal our stories” button). ProPublica shares its underlying data on, say, doctors’ links with pharmaceutical firms, helping to generate more coverage. It is arguably closer to the world of campaigns and think-tanks than the media industry.
The main lesson of these experiments in philanthro-journalism is that giving up on profit does not mean an end to the concern about either money or readers. For some, legal and tax issues contribute to the money worry. In Britain the model has been hampered by the struggle to secure charitable status, which comes with tax and reputational benefits. The BIJ’s applications have twice been rejected by the charity regulator, whose criteria include broad restrictions on political activity. Jonathan Heawood, the founder of Wilkes, a new, non-profit parliamentary reporting service (named after a great journalist-politician of the 18th century) worries that it, too, might struggle to surmount the regulator’s high hurdles.
On the record, off the books
America’s Internal Revenue Service is willing to grant tax exemptions for non-profit journalism. That makes fund-raising easier, but only a bit. Like Caucasian Knot—which was set up in 2001 with a donation from George Soros’s Open Society Institute but has since diversified its funding—new ventures typically begin with one big donor, but quickly need to find others. John Bracken of the Knight Foundation, America’s biggest donor to journalism, warns start-ups that “we will not be providing perpetual support”. Many try to boost revenue through advertising, or cost-sharing agreements with other outlets.
Donors also tend to require evidence that their largesse is having an impact—which means a perpetual hunt for readers. Almost all philanthro-journalism is initially published online: it helps that, these days, readers often arrive at stories via social-media links and search engines, rather than simply by browsing a popular website. That means small operations can gain big readerships for timely articles.
Still, for the moment commercial titles continue to have the lion’s share of readers—so the charitable lot needs to attract its attention to promote their work. It is a mutually beneficial relationship: cash-strapped papers get free content; philanthro-journalists get publicity. Donors seem content, even eager, to subsidise commercial titles in this way. And the subsidies flow both ways: small investigative teams often rely on the leads and legwork provided by bigger outfits.
All that means, though, that the new-model journalism depends heavily on the old kind it is designed to replace. That is one reason why it can only be a partial solution to the woes of newspapers.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article2612532.ece

Published: November 9, 2011 23:00 IST | Updated: November 9, 2011 23:37 IST LONDON, November 9, 2011

British students in no mood to relent

Hasan Suroor

The three-week old “Occupy London'' campaign against corporate greed appeared to be spreading at one stage on Wednesday as thousands of students protesting against what they see as creeping privatisation of higher education briefly “occupied'' Trafalgar Square, a major tourist attraction in the heart of Central London, and pitched tents at the base of historic Nelson's column.

Though they had vowed to stay on for “as long as it takes'' for their message to get through, police moved in quickly and forcibly evicted them. There were fears that they could return.

“Trafalgar Square has been a focal point for demonstrations for years. We all know something is wrong, something needs to change, and the more people who realise that they are not alone in this the better,” said one student watching the police remove the tents.

The “occupation'' happened as protesters marched to the City of London, Britain's financial hub to join the anti-capitalist campaigners camping outside St Paul's Cathedral, near the London Stock Exchange.

The area swarmed with banner-waving protesters, some wearing masks and hoods, and scuffles broke out as police in riot helmets and carrying batons tried to restrict their movements.

Television reporters on the scene were forced to apologise to viewers several times for the “strong language'' used by some marchers to criticise the police and the government.

Demonstrators alleged that police were trying to intimidate them with the threat of use of rubber bullets.

“It is ludicrous. It is antagonistic, it is like they are egging on a fight, which is frankly embarrassing,” Beth Atkinson (27) fumed while another said that many of his friends had stayed for fear of police action.

“I have got friends who haven't come along because of the threat of rubber bullets,” he said.

Students had travelled from across the country to join the march organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts and supported by a range of groups opposed to the Tory-led ruling coalition's economic policies.

“We are being told by a Cabinet of millionaires that we will have to pay triple tuition fees,” campaign leader Michael Chessum told the BBC.

After a similar march last year descended into mayhem with some protesters attacking the motorcade of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Windsor, police were taking no chances this time.

Hundreds of extra police were deployed and helicopters hovered in the sky as students raising slogans and carrying banners that read “Scrap Tuition Fees” and “Free Education” wound their way through central London.

There was palpable tension throughout the march but, in the end, barring occasional clashes it passed off peacefully.

Keywords: Occupy London protest, Trafalgar Square

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article2612528.ece

EDITORIAL

Published: November 10, 2011 00:08 IST | Updated: November 10, 2011 00:08 IST November 10, 2011

A low score

The Human Development Report 2011 of the UNDP affirms what critical scholars have been saying for years now: the high economic growth achieved by

India

has not translated into a better quality of life for the vast majority of its citizens. For all its ambitions to power ahead in the global economy, India suffers from basic policy and structural failures that prevent its people from enjoying the fruits of a higher national income. Among 187 countries ranked in the HDR, India comes in at a dismal 134 in the main composite index that looks at life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling, Gross National Income per capita, and other metrics. Failure to invest in core areas, such as education and health care, has led to the incongruity of better per capita GNI but not a higher HDI. Again, in the gender inequality index, India fares poorly, trailing neighbours Bangladesh and Pakistan, although it is better placed in terms of GNI per capita. These are proof positive that a serious course correction is needed in government policy. The first order priority should be to massively scale up public investments in education and health care in the coming Plan period.

HDR 2011 makes the important point that environmental degradation and climate change will exacerbate inequalities, a trend already in evidence. India has been modifying the natural environment at a feverish pace and without adequate study and thought. In a recent essay published by Outlook magazine, economist Jean Dreze and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen highlight destructive aspects of India's growth, such as the razing of forests, indiscriminate mining, the drying of rivers, and the massacre of fauna. This thoughtless course has invited a strong public backlash in some places as vulnerable communities feel the effects. Moreover, as the UNDP points out, long-term environmental degradation in the form of soil erosion, water stress, desertification and deforestation is expected to continue. These factors are likely to intensify climate change, with impoverishing consequences. What the patterns underscore is the need for India to strengthen the social protection floor. Obviously, big investments are needed to reduce multidimensional poverty — in education, health care, and sanitation. But only political will and decisive action can raise capacity and incomes, and make communities more resilient. As things stand in the South Asian region, emerging India lags behind Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in basic indicators such as life expectancy at birth and mean years of schooling. The big question is: can it change the focus of its growth to meet the aspirations of all its people and move up the HDI ranking?

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2630733.ece

November 15, 2011 22:55 IST November 15, 2011

‘Every particle is in a condition of half night'

Nirupama Subramanian

The Hindu Journalists get constantly told by those who claim to know better to ‘lighten up,' that Indian readers are getting younger, they have short attention spans, and they do not want to read gloom and doom stories about India not shining

Justice Katju's criticism has triggered a welcome debate and introspection in the media but it is also expected of the Press Council chairman to take a more nuanced view of the complex terrain before him.

A Pakistani columnist once asked me: “What is it with you all? You claim to have a free media and yet, when I was in Delhi last year, it took me less than 15 minutes to run through some six or seven papers. They're full of trivia. There's nothing to read in them, not even on the front pages.”

His words came back to me after Justice Markandey Katju's outburst against Indian journalism. It is not just the two of them either.

Some months ago, a well-known Delhi-based Bharatanatyam dancer told me how “sad” she felt about the Indian media scene. She was an aggrieved party: “I cannot understand this,” she said, “no paper will review my performances. They have all done away with their review pages. Yet journalists call me all the time to find out what my favourite restaurant is, or what my favourite food is. There is an excessive focus on me, and none on my work.”

Let's face it: plenty of journalists too would agree that both Indian electronic and print media are obsessed with celebrity and trivia and are given to sensationalism. In fact, journalists have long been concerned — much before the Press Council chairman voiced his criticism — about the amount of journalistic energies and space/time devoted to the coverage of fluff, and the shallow treatment meted out to what Justice Katju described as the “real” issues.

The impulse to dumb down is only increasing under the pressure of 24x7 news cycles, and as the competition to snare young readers and viewers grows. On television, all news is spectacle, and even the irrelevant gains importance as ‘breaking news.' I remember switching on the television in my hotel room in Jaisalmer some years ago, to be greeted by this important Breaking News: “Jail mey karva chauth” — a report about women prisoners celebrating this north Indian festival of wifely piety.

Journalists get constantly told by those who claim to know better to ‘lighten up,' that Indian readers are getting younger, they have short attention spans, and they do not want to read gloom and doom stories about India not shining; if these stories have to be covered, they must be delivered to these attention-deficit readers/viewers in bite-sized pieces; coverage must be about personalities, even if about politicians; the coverage must cater to young, aspirational India's race for upwardly mobile lifestyles rather than the multiple crises in the country, even if these crises will ultimately work towards thwarting those very aspirations.

So bring in the beautiful people, go easy on farmers' suicides and rural employment generation. In this model, science journalism cannot get more cerebral than whether mobile phones give you cancer; international news would ideally feature breaking up — or breaking down — teenage pop stars, film stars, and supermodels, and the Jasmine Revolution would fare better as a new line of perfume, and Arab Spring a brand of sparkling mineral water that Angelina Jolie drinks on her UNHCR trips.

“This is what young people want today” is the market mantra. If that is correct, and we do not know that, the question is, as media — presuming that media are a substantially different entity from a fizzy drink — do we lead our ‘consumers,' or should we allow ourselves to be led by what sections of these consumers consider ‘boring' or ‘interesting'? Steve Jobs, whose market strategies are much admired by the pundits, is said to have nursed a healthy disrespect for market research, saying “customers don't know what they want until we've shown them.”

Dumbing down aside, in the past couple of years, the gory stories of media corruption, paid news, and the Radia tapes controversy have all taken the sheen off Indian journalism.

Yet I find myself disagreeing with Justice Katju's broad swipe. It is easy to tar the entire media with one broad brush of criticism. But not all journalists are the same, just as not all judges are the same. There are many journalists who are doing exactly what Justice Katju thinks journalists should be doing, and they are not necessarily all high-profile. It also needs to be said that the media have made a lot more positive contribution than they are given credit for. Much of the corruption that has come to light over the last one year, all the scams that are currently churning the Indian polity, would have gone unnoticed had it not been for exposés by news organisations. Just in the last year, the government has had to sack Cabinet Ministers and Chief Ministers in response to the great 2G heist, the CWG and the Adarsh scams, all of which were unearthed by the media.

We are living through a complex period of economic, social and demographic change. Even Justice Katju, in an article inThe Hinduon the media that was a forerunner to his interview with Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN's Devil's Advocate programme, quoted his favourite Firaq Gorkahpuri couplet to make this point:Har zarre par ek qaifiyat-e-neemshabi hai, Ai saaqi-e- dauraan yeh gunahon ki ghadi hai. Translating this literally as “every particle is in a condition of half-night; it's a time of sin,” Justice Katju spoke of the pains of living through an era of transition.

It is a nice thought that the media must separate themselves from the flux in which they exist, but the truth is that the media, and the people who work in them, are also a reflection — a snapshot — of society at any particular time. My Pakistani columnist friend who complained about the lightness of Indian newspapers is used to the steady high-fibre fare of strategic and political analyses offered up in the Pakistani papers. But that is a reflection of Pakistan's country situation.

India

's situation is a bit more mixed than that. For that reason, any newspaper or television channel has the challenging job of accommodating a wide variety of interests, and there is no point being in denial about this. At one end is the need to cater to a mass of people who seem to be on an endless buying spree, from cars to clothes and everything in between; at the other, the need to remind them that there are people who cannot buy even one square meal a day. The challenge for media organisations is to get the mix right, without compromising on the essentials of journalism. The world's best newspapers (not necessarily the ones with the largest circulation) are the ones that have mastered this mix.

For instance, the visit of the Pakistan Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, excited much criticism that the coverage focussed more on her looks, clothes, Birken bag, and her glasses than on the substance of her discussions with her Indian counterpart, S.M. Krishna. From a reporter's perspective, when a Minister of a country with a worse Human Development Index than yours lands at your airport with a $10,000 handbag, pricey shades, and “classy pearls,” it is bound to attract media comment. This is not trivialising news. It is news. The criticism that the coverage of her film star looks was excessive and breathless may not be misplaced. But there is nothing startlingly wrong if a newspaper's fashion reporter dissects the pearls, and a foreign affairs reporter covers the substance of the visit, as most mainline newspapers did.

Yes, it is true that journalists could be better informed about the subjects they cover, and could be possessed of more general knowledge. But that is more a commentary on our education system than on journalism itself. Some of the best journalists may not know their Shakespeare or Emile Zola, but that has not been known to affect the quality of their work.

It must also be said in defence of my tribe that journalism is far more open to criticism than some other professions. Who can criticise the judiciary this way and get away with it? Partly, this is in the nature of the work we do — the ‘product' of our labour and its authors are out there in the public realm, for everyone to evaluate. There is no hiding.

Journalism may lack a capacity for introspection, though that too is not entirely true. But there is absolutely no doubt that outside regulation, such as by using government advertisements as a weapon against media organisations as Justice Katju suggests, is dangerous. It is already used by the government to silence media criticism, and it is hardly a solution that one would expect someone of Justice Katju's calibre to come up with. To the extent his comments have triggered debate and introspection in the media and jolted us out of smug back-slapping complacency, he has made a positive contribution. But it is also expected of the chairman of the Press Council to separate himself from Everyman, and take a more nuanced view of the complex terrain before him.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2630600.ece

November 16, 2011 00:17 IST November 15, 2011

‘I am a votary of liberty; my criticism of the media is aimed at making them better'

Markandey Katju

The Hindu MARKANDEY KATJU: "All freedoms are subject to reasonable restrictions in the public interest, and are coupled with responsibilities."

‘There is no such thing as self-regulation, every institution is accountable to the people.' We publish here an edited excerpt from a clarification issued by Press Council chairman Markandey Katju. The full text of his clarification can be read at www.thehindu.com. ‘No doubt, the media should provide some entertainment also to the people. But if 90 per cent of their coverage is devoted to entertainment, and only 10 per cent to all the socio-economic issues put together, then the sense of priorities of the media has gone haywire.'

I have expressed my views relating to the media in several TV interviews I gave as well as in my articles in some newspapers. However, many people, including media people, wanted clarification and amplification of some of the issues I had raised. Since some controversy appears to have been raised about what I said, a clarification is in order.

Today India is passing through a transitional period in our history, the transition being from feudal agricultural society to modern industrial society. This is a very painful and agonising period in history. The old feudal society is being uprooted and torn apart, but the new modern industrial society has not been fully and firmly established. Old values are crumbling, but new modern values have not yet been put in place. Everything is in flux, in turmoil. As Shakespeare said in Macbeth, “Fair is foul and foul is fair.”

If one studies the history of Europe from the 16th to the 19th centuries, when the transition from feudalism to modern society was taking place, one realises that this transitional period was full of turbulence, turmoil, wars, revolutions, chaos, social churning, and intellectual ferment. It was only after going through this fire that modern society emerged in Europe. India is presently going through that fire. We are going through a very painful period in our country's history, which, I guess, will last another 15 to 20 years. I wish this transition would take place painlessly and immediately but unfortunately that is not how history functions.

In this transition period, the role of ideas, and therefore of the media, becomes extremely important. At a particular historical juncture, ideas become a material force. For instance, the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity, and of religious freedom (secularism) became powerful material forces during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, and particularly during the American and French Revolutions. In the age of transition in Europe, the media (which were only the print media at that time) played a great, historical role in the transformation of feudal Europe to modern Europe.

In my opinion, the Indian media too should play a progressive role similar to the one played by the European media [during that age of transition]. This it can do by attacking backward and feudal ideas and practices like casteism, communalism, superstitions, women's oppression, etc. and propagating modern, rational and scientific ideas, secularism, and tolerance. At one time, a section of our media played a great role in our country.

Manner of functioning

When I criticised the Indian media, and particularly the broadcast media, for not playing such a progressive and socially responsible role, I was furiously attacked by a section of the media for my views. Some even launched a personal attack on me saying that I was an agent of the government. When serious issues are raised about the functioning of the media, it was expected that those issues would be addressed seriously.

By criticising the media, I wanted to persuade them to change their manner of functioning — not that I wanted to destroy them. The Indian media have a historical role to play in the age of transition, and I wanted to remind media persons of their historical duty to the nation. Instead of taking my criticism in the correct spirit, a veritable diatribe was launched against me by a section of the media, which painted me as some kind of dictatorial monster.

More focus on entertainment

The media should regard me as their well-wisher. I criticised them because I wanted media persons to give up many of their defects and follow the path of honour which the European press was following, and which will give them the respect of the Indian people.

I mentioned that 80 per cent of our countrymen are living in horrible poverty; there is massive unemployment, skyrocketing prices, lack of medical care, education, etc. and barbaric social practices like honour killings, dowry deaths, caste oppression, and religious bigotry. Instead of seriously addressing these issues, 90 per cent of the coverage of our media goes to entertainment, for example, the lives of film stars, fashion parades, pop music, disco dancing, cricket, etc, or showing superstitions like astrology.

No doubt, the media should provide some entertainment also to the people. But if 90 per cent of their coverage is devoted to entertainment, and only 10 per cent to all the socio-economic issues put together, then the sense of priorities of the media has gone haywire. The real issues before the people are socio-economic, and the media are seeking to divert their attention to the non-issues like film stars, fashion parades, disco, pop, cricket, and so on. It is for this lack of a sense of priorities, and for showing superstitions, that I criticised the media.

What I said

One should not be afraid of criticism, nor should one resent it. People can criticise me as much as they like, I will not resent it, and maybe I will benefit from it. But similarly the media should not mind if I criticise them. My aim in doing so is to make them better media people.

While criticising, however, fairness requires that one should report the words of one's opponent accurately, without twisting or distorting them. That was the method used by our philosophers. They would first state the views of their opponent, in what was called as the ‘purvapaksha.' This was done with such accuracy and intellectual honesty that if the opponent were present, he could not have stated his views better. Thereafter it was sought to be refuted.

Unfortunately, this practice is often not followed by our media.

First, I did not make a statement aboutallmedia people but only of the majority. There are many media people for whom I have great respect. So I wish to clarify here that I did not paint the entire media with the same brush. Second, I did not say that this majority was uneducated or illiterate. This again was a deliberate distortion of what I said. I never used the word ‘uneducated.' I said that the majority is of a poor intellectual level. A person may have passed B.A. or M.A. but yet may be of a poor intellectual level.

I have again and again said in my articles, speeches, and TV interviews that I am not in favour of harsh measures against the media.

In a democracy, issues are ordinarily resolved by discussion, persuasion, consultation, and dialogue, and that is the method I prefer, rather than using harsh measures. If a channel or newspaper has done something wrong I would prefer to call the persons responsible and patiently explain to them that what they have done is not proper. I am sure that in 90 per cent or more cases that would be sufficient. I strongly believe that 90 per cent of people who are doing wrong things can be reformed and made good people.

It is only in extreme cases, which would only be about five to 10 per cent, that harsh measures would be required, and that too after repeated use of the democratic method has failed and the person proves incorrigible.

This statement of mine was again distorted and a false impression created that I wanted to impose emergency in the country. Cartoons were published in some newspapers showing me as some kind of dictator.

The truth is that I have always been a strong votary for liberty, and the proof of this is my judgments in the Supreme Court and the High Court in which I have consistently held that judges are guardians of the liberties of the citizens, and they will be failing in their duties if they do not uphold these liberties. However, liberty does not mean licence to do anything one wishes. All freedoms are subject to reasonable restrictions in the public interest, and are coupled with responsibilities.

We may now discuss the question of self-regulation.

Self-regulation by broadcast media

At present, there is no regulatory authority to cover the electronic media. The Press Council of India governs only the print media, and even in cases of violation of journalistic ethics by the latter, the only punishment that can be given is admonition or censure. I have written to the Prime Minister requesting him to initiate legislation to amend the Press Council Act by (1) bringing the electronic media also under the ambit of the Press Council, and (2) giving more teeth to the Press Council.

The electronic media have strongly opposed bringing them under the Press Council. Their claim is of self-regulation. But even Judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts do not have such an absolute right. They can be impeached by Parliament for misconduct. Lawyers are under the Bar Council of India, which can suspend or cancel their licence for professional misconduct. Doctors come under the Medical Council of India, which can suspend or cancel their licence. Auditors are in the same position. Why then are the electronic media shy of coming under any regulatory authority? Why these double standards? If they do not wish to come under the Press Council of India (because the present Chairman is a wicked and/or undesirable person) then the NBA (News Broadcasters Association), and BEA (Broadcast Editors Association) should indicate which regulatory authority they wish to come under. Are they willing to come under the proposed Lokpal? I have repeatedly raised this question in several newspapers, but my question has always been met either by stony silence on the part of the NBA and the BEA or by dismissing the very question as ‘irresponsible.'

TV news and shows have a large influence on a wide section of our public. Hence in my opinion, TV channels must also be made accountable to the public.

If the broadcast media insist on self-regulation, then by the same logic, politicians, bureaucrats, and so on must also be granted the right of self-regulation, instead of being placed under the Lokpal. Or do the broadcast media regard themselves so holy that nobody should regulate them except themselves? In that case, what is paid news, the Radia tapes, etc? Is that the work of saints?

In fact there is no such thing as self-regulation, which is an oxymoron. Everybody is accountable to the people in a democracy — and so are the media.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2678501.ece

December 2, 2011 07:58 IST NEW DELHI, December 1, 2011

The government's listening to us

Ever since 26/11, India has made massive purchases of communications intelligence equipment from secretive companies from India and abroad. In the absence of effective legal oversight, it threatens the democracy it was bought to defend.

In the summer of 1999, an officer at a Research and Analysis Wing communications station in western India flipped a switch, and helped change the course of the Kargil conflict. RAW's equipment had picked up Pakistan's army chief and later military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, speaking to his chief of staff, General Muhammad Aziz, from a hotel room in Beijing. “The entire reason for the success of this operation,” the RAW officer heard General Aziz saying on May 29, 1999, “was this total secrecy.” He probably smiled.

For the first time, India had hard evidence that Pakistan's army, not jihadists, had planned and executed a war that had brought two nuclear-armed states to the edge of a catastrophic confrontation. RAW's computers established that the voices were indeed those of Generals Musharraf and Aziz, pinpointed their locations – and undermined Pakistan's diplomatic position beyond redemption.

India

's strategic community finally awoke to the possibilities of modern communications intelligence, and unleashed a massive effort to upgrade the country's technical capabilities. A new organisation, the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), was set up; scientists in the Indian Institutes of Technology were tapped, and quiet efforts to acquire technology worldwide were initiated.

Late into the night the 26/11 attacks began in Mumbai, that investment paid off: equipment flown in from New Delhi by the Intelligence Bureau allowed investigators to intercept the assault team's communications with the Lashkar-e-Taiba's headquarters in Pakistan. Police forces across the country have since scrambled to purchase similar equipment, making India one of the largest markets for global vendors.

But this isn't good news: India has no appropriate legal framework to regulate its vast, and growing, communications intelligence capabilities. There is almost no real institutional oversight by political institutions like Parliament — which means there is a clear and imminent danger that the technology could undermine the very democracy it was purchased to defend.

Who is selling?

From a trove of documents obtained by The Hindu, working in collaboration with WikiLeaks and an international consortium of media and privacy organisations monitoring the communications intelligence industry, it is evident Indian companies are already offering technologies very similar to the most formidable available in the world.

Himachal Pradesh-based Shoghi — once blacklisted by the government pending investigation of its relationship with corruption-linked former telecommunications Minister Sukh Ram — has become one of the largest suppliers to the Indian armed forces and RAW. It offers a range of equipment to monitor satellite, mobile phone, and strategic military communications.

Shoghi's SCL-3412 satellite communications link monitoring system can, its literature says, even “passively monitor C and Ku-band satellite compressed and non-compressed telecom carriers from Intelsat, Eutelsat, Arabsat, Turksat.” The company also claims its equipment can automatically analyse “bulk speech data” — in other words, listen in and pick particular languages, words, or even voices out of millions of simultaneous conversations taking place across the world.

India

's other large communications intelligence firm, Indore-headquartered ClearTrail, says its products “help communication service providers, law enforcement, and government agencies worldwide to counteract the exploitation of today's communication networks, fight terrorism and organised crime.” The company's brochures say it has portable equipment that can pluck mobile phone voice and text messages off the air, without the support of service providers — service providers who must, by law, be served with legal authorisation to allow monitoring.

The Hindu telephoned officials at both companies, and then e-mailed them requesting meetings to discuss issues raised in its investigation. Neither company responded; one said it was barred from discussing technical questions with the media by its terms of contract with its military clients.

Large parts of the most sophisticated equipment, defence sources told The Hindu, come in from Israel — itself a beneficiary of a special relationship with the United States. “Israeli vendors often tell us that they're charging extraordinarily high prices in return for breaking embargos on sharing these technologies,” one officer said, “but there's no way of knowing this is the case.”

“If we get what we need,” he said, “we're willing to pay — there's no point quibbling over a few million dollars.”

Ever since 26/11, companies like Shoghi and ClearTrail haven't been short of customers: police forces have queued up to purchase passive interception technologies, which allow them to maintain surveillance not just on phone numbers specified in legally-mandatory warrants from the Home Secretary, but on all conversations in an area, or region. There are even cases of out-of-state operations: the Delhi Police have periodically maintained a passive interception capability at the Awantipora military station in Jammu and Kashmir, an act with no basis in law. The Army also has significant passive interception capabilities along the Line of Control (LoC) — which also pick up civilian communication.

Computers at key net hubs

India

's National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) has also deployed computers fitted at key internet hubs — the junction boxes, as it were, through which all of the country's internet traffic must pass. Police forces in several States, among them Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh, have followed suit, with smaller variants of the same technology.

The risks of this proliferation of technology have become evident over the last two years. In Punjab, one of four passive interception units is reported to be missing, feared to have been lost to a political party or corporate institution. Andhra Pradesh actually shut down its passive interception capabilities after it accidentally intercepted sensitive conversations between high officials. Karnataka officials also accidentally intercepted conversations involving a romantic relationship between a leading politician and a movie star — while Mumbai has had several scandals involving unauthorised listening-in to phones owned by corporate figures and movie stars.

Intelligence Bureau sources told The Hindu they had been working, for the past several months, to get States to shut down the 33 passive interception units in their possession — but with little success. The pervasive attitude in a federal or quasi-federal polity seems to be: if the Centre can do it, why can't we?

Police do require warrants to tap individual phones, but in practice authorisations are handed out with little thought. In one notorious case, the politician Amar Singh's phone conversations were recorded with the consent of his service provider on the basis of what turned out to be a faked government e-mail. Mr. Singh's personal life became a subject of public discussion, but no one has yet been held accountable for the outrageously unlawful intrusion into his privacy.

Last year, journalist Saikat Datta authored a disturbing exposé, alleging the NTRO's passive interception capabilities were being misused for political purposes — and even activities closely resembling blackmail. Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram denied such activities were taking place, although he has no supervisory power over the NTRO — but there has been no investigation.

The fact is that the government has no real interest in rigorous oversight. The Intelligence Bureau, for example, has long been summoning call data records for individuals from service providers with no legal cause, allowing it to maintain a watch on behalf of the Union Home Ministry of contacts maintained among journalists, politicians, corporate figures, and government.

In the absence of a full investigation into malpractices, and proper oversight, there is simply no way of knowing who might, and in what circumstances, have been targeted through passive interception means — and that's the whole problem.

“When an officer on a salary of Rs.8,000 a month has pretty much unrestricted access to this kind of technology,” a senior Maharashtra Police officer admitted, “things will go wrong, and have gone wrong.”

Earlier this year, Congress spokesperson and Member of Parliament, Manish Tewari, introduced a private member's bill that would enable Parliamentary oversight over the intelligence services — the worldwide pattern in democracies. “The advancement of communications interception warrants that a very robust legal architecture to protect the privacy of individuals needs to be put in place,” he says. “The intrusive power of the state has to be counter-balanced with the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.”

In his case, no one seems to have been listening.

Ever-larger investments

India

is set to make ever-larger investments in these technologies, making the case for oversight ever more urgent. In 2014, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), aided by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), is scheduled to launch India's first dedicated spy satellite, the Rs.100-crore communications intelligence satellite, tentatively named CCISat. Like similar systems operated by the United States, Russia, and Japan, among others, CCISat will suck up gigabites of electronic information from its orbital position 500 kilometres above the earth, passing it on to military supercomputers that will scan it for information of military and intelligence value.

From the public sector giant, Bharat Electronics, India's principal electronics intelligence manufacturer, we know that CCISat is just a small part of the country's overall spy technology programme: in 2009-2010, it supplied some Rs.700 crore worth of electronic warfare equipment, and was scheduled to make deliveries worth Rs.900 crore in 2010-2011. Electronic warfare systems, both offensive and defensive, were reported to make up over half its order book of Rs.15,000 crore last year.

Larsen & Toubro, as well as the Tatas' Strategic Electronics Division, have also expanded their capacities to meet an acquisitions drive that Indian military officials estimate will cost the country Rs.22,500 crore (about $4.5 billion) before the end of the decade.

This may be money well spent: there can be little doubt that communication intelligence has contributed significantly to defending India. However, the failure to regulate the technology will have far-reaching consequences for our democracy — and could even mean its subversion.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2678511.ece

December 2, 2011 16:28 IST December 1, 2011

The art and science of communications intelligence

Praveen Swami

Ever since World War II, technology has allowed nations unprecedented — and potentially dangerous — access into our lives. After 9/11, the risks of abuse have grown exponentially.

In March 1950, the National Security Council of the United States of America issued a top-secret directive that, in ways few people fully understood then or since, transformed our world. “The special nature of Communications Intelligence activities,” it reads, “requires that they be treated in all respects as being outside the framework of other or general intelligence activities. Orders, directives, policies or recommendations of the Executive Branch relating to the collection, production, security, handling, dissemination or utilisation of intelligence and/or classified material shall not be applicable to Communications Intelligence activities.”

Less than two decades after that directive was signed, the U.S. controlled the most formidable system of surveillance the world has ever seen: satellites and listening posts strung across the planet picked up everything from radio-telephone conversations from cars in Moscow to transatlantic telephone conversations and data on India's nuclear programme. Known as Echelon, the system provided the western powers with an unprecedented information edge over their adversaries.

From data obtained by WikiLeaks, working with an international consortium of media organisations, including The Hindu, and other partners, we have the first real public domain insights into how much more advanced — and how much more widely available — this surveillance system has become.

The South African firm Vastech, for example, offers systems that can capture data flowing across telecommunications and internet networks in multiples of ten gigabites, and scan it for pre-determined parameters — the voice of an individual; a particular language; a phone number; an e-mail address. The Indian companies, Shoghi and ClearTrail, The Hindu found, market systems that can capture giant volumes of traffic from mobile phone and satellite networks and subject it to similar analysis. France's Amesys is among several companies to have provided equipment like this to states like Libya — enabling their parent state access to the buyer's own communications, through electronic back-doors, but at the price of allowing them to spy on dissidents, with often horrific consequences.

In coming days, The Hindu will report on the consequences of the proliferation of surveillance technology — but it is important, first, to understand the state of the science of communications espionage.

Evolving technology

Interception technologies are as old as communications. Julius Caesar, the imperial historian Suetonius recorded, was concerned enough about the prospect of his military communications being intercepted — in general, by the simple expedient of corrupting or capturing his messengers — to use what cryptographers call a substitution cipher — replacing the letter A with D, B with E and so on. Had one of Caesar's military messages contained a reference to The Hindu, it would have read Wkh Klqgx. Elizabeth I's spymaster, Robert Walsingham, excelled in using spies to capture information on Spain's military ambitions, and plots against his queen.

Early ciphers were easy to crack with techniques like frequency analysis, leading intelligence services to design ever more complex codes. The eminent science journalist Simon Singh's Virtual Black Chamber — so named for the rooms espionage agencies used to crack enemy codes — has a fascinating historical account of the never-ending battle between cryptographers and cryptanalysts (as well as online tools for aspiring amateur code-makers and code-breakers).

The rise of wireless communication in the early decades of the twentieth century, though, made it possible for information to be passed instantly across great distances — and for states to begin intercepting it. From 1925, Germany began deploying a path-breaking mechanical encrypted-communication system code-named Enigma, which resisted the combined efforts of cryptanalysts — thus allowing the Nazi military machine an unprecedented degree of secrecy in its military communications, and facilitating its new strategy of high-speed mechanised war.

In 1939, the Polish mathematician, Marian Rejewski, led a team that made some breakthroughs against Enigma, based on studies of a machine stolen by the country's spies. Then, in 1943, a top-secret British team, made up of an eclectic collection of scholars, technicians, and scientists led by the mercurial Alan Turing, used electromechanical devices — the first computers — to finally crack the Enigma code. Even then, full penetration of Enigma's naval variant needed a daring raid that allowed code-books to be salvaged from the submarine U559, without allowing Germany to suspect the vital information had not gone to the sea-bed.

Experts have claimed that breaking Enigma hastened the end of the war by two years. Winston Churchill, the United Kingdom's wartime Prime Minister, described the work of the code-breakers as a “secret war, whose battles were lost or won unknown to the public, and only with difficulty comprehended, even now, by those outside the small, high scientific circles concerned.” “No such warfare had ever been waged by mortal men,” he said. The secret war involved hideous choices — for instance, allowing German air and naval attacks to kill allied soldiers when they could have been pre-empted, in order not to raise suspicions that Enigma had been compromised.

Big Brother Science

Learning from their experience, the allied powers invested heavily in communications intelligence after the end of World War II. In 1947, the four English-speaking powers — the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand — signed a treaty allowing for the sharing of intelligence. Listening stations run by the four countries across the world, supplemented from the 1970s by satellites, allowed a new software system — known as Echelon — to suck up virtually all electronic communication from around the planet. For example, part of the inter-city microwave signals carrying phone traffic went into space, because of the curvature of the earth. The NSA's satellites would pick up the data—and Echelon would mine it for useful data.

In the 1990s, a steady flow of information in Echelon came into the public domain, based on disclosures by the former Canadian spy Mike Frost, New Zealand's Nicky Hager, American James Bamford, and British journalist Duncan Campbell. India itself was using some Echelon-like signals intelligence technologies by this time. The United States had begun to supply the Research and Analysis Wing's Aviation Research Centre equipment to spy on China's nuclear programme and naval assets from 1962; acquisitions were also made from the Soviet Union.

Public disclosure of Echelon raised growing concerns that it might be misused for states to conduct espionage against their own citizens, as well as to further their commercial interests. In 2000 and 2001, the European Parliament released reports addressing these issues.

The furore forced former CIA director James Woolsey to admit, at a press conference held in 2000, that the United States did conduct espionage in Europe. Mr Woolsey said, however, that just 5 per cent of his country's economic intelligence was derived from stolen secrets — and used to target states or corporations that were either violating international sanctions or paying bribes to gain contracts. He said intelligence of this kind was not passed on to companies in the United States — adding that to harvest usable commercial information would mean resources were sucked away from the core national-security mandate of his organisation.

Fred Stock, a former Canadian intelligence officer, earlier gave testimony that suggested Mr. Woolsey's claims were, at best, a part of the truth. Mr. Stock said he had been expelled from his service in 1993 for criticising its targeting of economic and civilian targets — among them, information on negotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Chinese grain purchases, and French weapons sales. He claimed Canada's spies also routinely monitored high-seas protests by the environmental organisation, Greenpeace.

Evidence also exists that the NSA spied on U.S. targets — though not on U.S. soil, thus bypassing national legislation. Margaret Newsham, who worked at Echelon's Menwith Hill facility from 1977 to 1981, testified that conversations involving the late Senator Strom Thurmond had been intercepted. The technology to target conversations involving particular people, she said, had existed from 1978. Ms Newsham's revelations seemed to buttress what many had long suspected — which is that the 1947 agreement allowed the U.S. and the U.K. to spy on their own citizens, by the simple expedient of subcontracting the task to their alliance partner.

Few people, however, remained willing to deal with these concerns after 9/11: increasingly, western governments allowed enhanced surveillance against their citizens, as part of the so-called war against terror. The data gathered by WikiLeaks and its partners graphically demonstrate that almost every aspect of our everyday lives — everything from the hubs of the fibre-optic cables which carry the world's e-mail and internet traffic to mobile and landline phone conversations — can, and are, scanned by intelligence services. The odds are that when you read this article, replete with words like “terrorism,” a computer somewhere is recording your activity, automatically recording your computer's precise geographical location, and matching all this against public records that contain your details.

In most democracies, there are stringent legislative safeguards against the abuse of these capabilities: the United States Senate maintains a relatively tight leash on the country's intelligence services; in Australia, a commissioner can even conduct raids at the offices of its spies without a warrant. India, however, has only a rudimentary legal infrastructure — and no worthwhile legislative oversight, raising concerns described in a story in The Hindu.

Few people, as Churchill pointed out so many decades ago, fully understand the consequences the capacities of states to monitor our wired world — but it is time citizens started marking the effort, for the alternative is to lose the rights these technologies were created to defend.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article2678603.ece

December 2, 2011 19:07 IST LONDON, December 2, 2011

Big Brother is everywhere now

Hasan Suroor

AP WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during a news conference in central London, on Thursday.

“How many of you here have an iPhone, a Blackberry or any other mobile device?'' WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asked surveying a hall full of people at the City University here on Thursday. As hand after hand went up, he told them that everyone of them, irrespective of what kind of mobile device they carried, was a potential target of spying.

This was how stark the threat from a booming multi-billion dollar global mass surveillance industry was, Mr. Assange said as he released a cache of 287 files providing a rare glimpse into how the industry was operating without any checks.

The Spy Files, spanning 25 countries, are first of a series of sensitive data that WikiLeaks plans to publish in coming months.

“Working with Bugged Planet and Privacy International, as well as media organisations from six countries – ARD in Germany, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK, The Hindu in India, L'Espresso in Italy, OWNI in France and the Washington Post in the U.S. Wikileaks is shining a light on this secret industry that has boomed since September 11, 2001 and is worth billions of dollars per year. WikiLeaks has released 287 documents today [Thursday], but the Spy Files project is ongoing and further information will be released this week and into next year,'' Mr. Assange said at a crowded press conference.

N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, speaking through a video-link, expressed concern over a fast growing and completely unregulated surveillance industry in India. At least two Indian companies were selling surveillance technology without any regulation.

“We are very concerned about our privacy violations,'' he said.

Mr. Ram said that working with WikiLeaks had been a “very valuable experience.” The issue highlighted by WikiLeaks was of “great international significance'' and of “significance to India.”

Mr. Assange said that it might sound like something out of Hollywood but mass interception systems built by Western “intelligence contractors'' were a reality. Over the past decade, the surveillance industry had grown from a covert operation which primarily supplied equipment to government intelligence agencies such as the NSA in America and Britain's GCHQ, into a huge transnational business.

Dramatically illustrating the threat, Mr. Assange said that potentially everyone who carried any mobile device was a sitting duck for anyone wanting to spy on them. The threat to investigative journalism from these new and covert surveillance techniques was particularly dire.

“The only way we are going to win this war is by developing counter-surveillance systems,'' he said.

WikiLeaks, which itself has been a victim of surveillance by intelligence agencies and their proxies and has had its site hacked, is in the process of developing a more secure system to submit information to the site.

Mr. Assange said that international surveillance companies were based in the more technologically sophisticated countries, and sold their technology to every country of the world. Intelligence agencies, military forces and police authorities were able to silently and secretly intercept calls and take over computers without the help or knowledge of the telecommunication providers.

Experts who worked on the files called for new laws to regulate export of surveillance technology.

“Western governments cannot stand idly by while this technology is still being sold,” said Eric King of the Privacy International campaign group.

Jacob Appelbaum, a computer expert at the University of Washington, said the systems revealed in the files were as deadly as murder weapons.

“These systems have been sold by Western companies to places for example like Syria, and Libya and Tunisia and Egypt. These systems are used to hunt people down and to murder,” he said, while Pratap Chatterjee of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism said a French firm offered to sell such systems to the erstwhile Qadhafi regime to spy on dissidents living in Britain.

Mr. Assange warned that with entire populations being subjected to surveillance nobody anywhere in the world was safe anymore.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Press Clips-1 Index

1. Anti-Wall Street movement spreads in US

2. The dark side of Bangalore Shining: It’s No.1 in suicides in country

3. Delhi, Mumbai top rape cases, conviction rate poor

4. The way to get man back on his feet

5. In 16 years, farm suicides cross a quarter million

6. SAINATH - Maharashtra leads in statistic of shame

7. Marking the birth of modern China

11. Circle rates hiked by up to 250%

14. Delhiites third richest in country

15. America shOWS its soul

16. Resistance with a human face

19. Self-regulation is no regulation, says Katju

21. British students in no mood to relent

22. A low score

23. ‘Every particle is in a condition of half night'

24. ‘I am a votary of liberty; my criticism of the media is aimed at making them better'

25. The government's listening to us

26. The art and science of communications intelligence

27. Big Brother is everywhere now

66. Chomsky, others seek justice for Soni Sori

67. A candle in the dark

Anti-Wall Street movement spreads in US

The dark side of Bangalore Shining: It’s No.1 in suicides in country

Delhi, Mumbai top rape cases, conviction rate poor

The way to get man back on his feet

SAINATH - In 16 years, farm suicides cross a quarter million

SAINATH - Maharashtra leads in statistic of shame

Marking the birth of modern China

Economic progress

St. Paul's looms over protests

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-11-01/delhi/30345348_1_circle-rates-money-in-property-transactions-black-money

Delhi govt hikes minimum property rates by up to 250%

Delhiites third richest in country

America shOWS its soul

Resistance with a human face

Justice Markandey Katju on the role of media in India

Web ‘snooping’ plans of U.K. government under fire

Self-regulation is no regulation, says Katju

http://www.economist.com/node/21556568/print

Philanthro-journalism

Reporters without orders

Can journalism funded by private generosity compensate for the decline of the commercial kind?

British students in no mood to relent

A low score

‘Every particle is in a condition of half night'

‘I am a votary of liberty; my criticism of the media is aimed at making them better'

The government's listening to us

The art and science of communications intelligence

Big Brother is everywhere now