Seventy years as an independent country is a good enough period to reflect on how we have evolved as a nation and how our polity has evolved. It will be incorrect to generalize our observations across the length and breadth of our country as India is very diverse in culture, religion, language, ethnicities and class. India lives in many time periods. While the primitive tribes in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Orissa, Bihar live in the first millennium, or even earlier, the IT professionals and CEOs of national and multinational corporations live in jet age and are part of the first world elite using latest technology, living in palaces and consuming luxuries that would shame the most powerful and eccentric of Emperors. Between the two time zones, communities occupy various time spaces. Primitive indigenous communities, feudal hierarchical cultural systems (caste and gender hierarchies, institutions of khap panchayats), communities accumulating capital in primitive modes, international finance capital, neo-liberalism and crony capitalism are all here to stay carving out their own spaces in time zones. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar had warned in his speech delivered after the Constitution had been adopted – either the social inequality would consume our democracy unless democracy triumphed over social inequalities.
Freedom at midnight seventy years ago did not have the same meaning for all sections of the society. The sethjis (economic elite and Indian capitalists) and the bhatjis (the social elite – upper caste males from the majority community) were more masters of their destiny than the SCs, the STs, bonded labourers and women, though they had made huge sacrifices for freedom. For the bonded labourers, SCs, STs and women, same bondage and life of unfreedom would continue in morning after the midnight. They just had hopes and promises of freedom.
Democracy in India has marched one step forward and two steps backward. The two big steps towards equality that benefitted a large section were partial land reforms and implementation of some recommendations of Mandal Commission Report. Land reforms were implemented half heartedly and met with a lot of resistance from the then rural elite – upper caste landlords. Some states implemented it better than others, particularly the Left Front ruled states and the states where the social justice movements were stronger, viz. in the South. The pace of implementation of land reforms in North India was slow. The tenants who worked hard, tilled the land and produced food grains and other cash crops but were themselves underfed and lived in poverty, became owners of the land they tilled. Along with green revolution, India not only became self sufficient in food grains, millions of tillers of land lived more secure and lives.
The tillers of land who now became land owners, but were excluded from political representation. The Indian Parliament and state legislatures had disproportionate numbers of upper castes. It is here that implementation of the Mandal Commission Report meant much more than merely reservations in educational institutions and Government jobs. Getting Mandal Commission Recommendations implemented required great amount of awakening among the other backward classes and organizational efforts resisting the dominance of upper caste in rural areas. Land reforms had reduced the dependence of a section of other backward classes on the upper caste and made it possible for them to resist the dominance of upper caste. Yet, it was democracy and the principal of one person one vote that was crucially necessary to win the battle of representation without violence. But for the vote that every citizen has under the Constitution, the Indian state would not have accepted the Mandal Commission Report, even if only partially, in teeth of resistance from the entrenched upper caste politicians.
Equality for Women:
Women are in better position and enjoy more equality in law than seventy years ago. However, practically, they enjoy little freedom and we have a long long way to go on the path of gender equality. Indian Parliament has strengthened the law to physically secure women. Banning Sati, child marriages, polygamy (except for the Muslim community) and dowry are a few examples. In order to secure women against domestic violence, the Parliament passed legislation. The law against sexual assaults on women has been strengthened. Women, particularly in urban pockets are better included in jobs and livelihood. For example, a very tiny number of them are employed in army, police force, as pilots, railway engine drivers, given cab driver licenses, etc. Hindu women now can inherit equal share with her brother in ancestral property. However, this is too little an achievement for seventy years of independence.
Yet we see very little change on the ground in spite of changes in law. Crime against women is increasing and women are more insecure in family as well as public spaces despite all the laws. Family and khap panchayats have tighter control over women and consider women as second class citizens born to serve men in the family, community and polity. The issue of ‘dignity’ of caste and community has become more salient in the recent times. The dignity of community / caste means tremendous pressure on women to uphold feudal traditions and play subservient roles. This also means that in conflicts between castes and communities, women’s bodies and dignity are targeted to demonstrate ‘prowess’ of the men. Women too are being mobilized in the inter-caste and communal conflicts against their own enlightened interests of gender justice. Identity centric politics brings forth stronger patriarchal regimes within the community. Muslim women still suffer the indignity of having to face instant divorce and other deprivations. Parliament has no more than 10% representation of women in the 16th Lok Sabha and yet this is the highest representation women have got.
Miles and miles to go:
The OBCs were included economically (making them owners of the land they till), socially (partly through their sanskritization of OBCs and partly through reinventing Brahmanism) and politically (Mandalization of Parliament and state legislatures). The social, political and economic inclusion of a section of OBCs has left out a large section of citizens out of the march towards equality.
A section of tenant-tillers of land were made owners, but what about those who did not have any access to land, viz. the landless and did not have access to even primary education, either because there wasn’t a school in her village, or if there was one, her parents could not afford even if there were no fees? Or if she was sent to school, there was no teacher to teach? This is the story of many adivasi villages. Dalits are discriminated within school space with high dropout rates. If there is no basic schooling, reservations in higher educational institutions do not mean anything. The OBCs whose traditional occupation was not cultivation of land like the Yadavs and Jats had very little opportunities of upward mobility. No political party has any concrete programmes to include these sections and provide them with the democratic space to march towards equality.
Centralized, non-accountable and non-transparent democracy:
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar as well as Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel wanted stronger centre to enable rapid growth and Industrialization to create jobs. Dr. Ambedkar also wanted stronger Central Government to be able to combat the strong Brahmin lobby. Babasaheb knew at the state level and within local bodies, dalits would not be able to resist the upper caste oppression. However, stronger centre has put the steel frame of bureaucracy farther and beyond the reach of the marginalized sections.
Centralization of power has benefitted the sethjis and bhatjis. Law and policy making structures and implementation mechanisms readily serves their interests, particularly that of the International financial capital and the richest Indian industrialists. The ideology of market and anti-people discourse of development are being deployed to appropriate common community resources by the state. The state then readily transfers these resources in the hands of crony capitalists who have the ability to influence decision making in the capital through their powerful lobbies. This is how adivasis have been disappropriated of their common resources like forests, water bodies, land and environment. Adivasis have suffered massive and constant displacements. Their way of life and their culture marginalized to give way ideology of growth and profits for few. The displaced adivasis have been forced out of their habitats and reduced to bonded labour or lowest paid seasonal migrant labourers.
Disappropriation of communities together with jobless growth is exacerbating the inequalities. The richest 1% Indians, according to the report of Oxfam, own 58% of India’s wealth. The growing inequality is creating army of slave labourers. While the richest enjoy vulgar luxuries, there are millions of children sleeping hungry and farmers committing suicides unable to pay their debts. Yet the government subsidizes the Industrialists by extending tax concessions to attract more and more foreign capital. The growing inequality is distorting democracy.
Gandhiji wanted democracy to benefit the most marginalized person, and decision making nearer common people. His idea of democracy was decentralization of power and transparent decision making. Gandhiji wanted power to hold the elected representatives and the bureaucrats accountable to be in the hands of people. Some of these mechanisms came as late as about a decade ago under the UPA. The right to information and right to education are two such examples. However, both these legislations are poorly implemented and increasingly undermined. National Commission of Minorities is a toothless body doing little to ameliorate the violation of their rights. The Annual Reports which must be tabled in the Parliament are amiss. The National Human Rights Commission has only slightly more teeth – power to award compensation to the victims of abuse of Human Rights. NHRC has however played little role and ignored systematic violations of human rights of the marginalized.
There is no effective mechanism to protect the victims against police excesses in form of fake encounters, torture, malicious arrests and prosecutions. In absence of effective mechanism to lodge complaints against such abuse of power, the voice of the marginalised is suppressed. In fact there are laws which protect the power wielders like the UAPA and the AFSPA.
Media which is supposed to be watchdog of democracy and people’s rights has been corporatized and protecting the Government.
The sethji-bhatji class is spinning ideologies that would ignore the growing inequalities. Cultural entrepreneurs are essentializing culture that would embalm the new class of slaves being created by the sethji-bhatji. Aggressive patriotism is reducing citizens to instruments worshipping its army and even corrupt undemocratic and illegal actions of individual officers. Cow nationalism is imposing sethji-bhatji culture on the bahujans under the label of nationalism. Cow nationalism is reducing citizen to merely follower and bhakt of sethji-bhatji and accept whatever crumbs distributed by them as prasad with gratitude to them.
For democracy to thrive, we need active citizenship on one hand and structures and institutions that hold the power wielders accountable. The priority of nationalism has to be to educate all in order to make them thinking and active citizens, and provide equitable opportunities for the most marginalized to develop. Equal Opportunity Commission and legislations that hold bureaucrats accountable to the citizens for their actions are the agenda of democracy in the coming years.
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He has been a radio producer (Earthstar Radio, San Francisco), organized and worked with the homeless, and is an advocate/activist in the nonviolent protest movement for safe energy, human rights, and peaceful solutions.
He is USA Vice President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association whose mission is to build a parallel world body to the United Nations, an emerging Earth Federation with a Provisional World Parliament under the Earth Constitution.
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">Roger Kotila PhD Dr Gary G Kohls MD[/caption]
is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his forty year family practice career. He is a contributor to and an endorser of the efforts of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and was a member of MindFreedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
While running his independent clinic, he published over 400 issues of his Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter, which was emailed to a variety of subscribers. (They have not been archived at any website.) In the early 2000s, Dr Kohls taught a graduate level psychology course at the University of Minnesota Duluth. It was titled “The Science and Psychology of the Mind-Body Connection”.
Since his retirement, Dr Kohls has been writing a weekly column (titled “Duty to Warn”) for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota. He offers teaching seminars to the public and to healthcare professionals.
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">Gary G Kohls George Monbiot[/caption]
Studied in Oxford University, columnist with The Guardian newspaper, also the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed, No Man’s Land, How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature and other.
Prof Johan Galtung was born in Oslo. He earned the PhD degree in mathematics at the University of Oslo in 1956, and in 1957 a year later completed the PhD degree in sociology at the same university.
Prof Johan Galtung received nine honorary doctorates in the fields of Peace studies, Future studies, Social sciences, Buddhism, Sociology of law, Philosophy, Sociology and Law.
State Councilor of St. Petersburg, Russia. Founding President, Global Harmony Association (GHA) since 2005. Honorary President, GHA since 2016. Director: Tetrasociology Public Institute, Russia. Philosopher, Sociologist and Peacemaker from Harmony. Author of more than 400 scientific publications, including 18 books in 1-12 languages. Author of Tetrism as the unity of Tetraphilosophy and Tetrasociology – science of social harmony, global peace and harmonious civilisation. Director, GHA Web portal “Peace from Harmony”. Initiator, Manager, Coauthor and Editor in Chief of the book project “Global Peace Science” (GPS).
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First published at :
">Leo M Semashko Robert C Koehler[/caption]
writes for the Huffington Post, Common Dreams, OpEd News and TruthOut. He considers himself a “peace journalist.” He has been an editor at Tribune Media Services and a reporter, columnist and copy desk chief at Lerner Newspapers, Chicago. Koehler launched his column in 1999. Robert Koehler has received numerous writing and journalism awards over a 30-year career in USA. He writes about values and meaning with reverence for life. He is praised as “blatantly relevant” and “a hero of democracy”.
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First published at :
">Robert C Koehler Robert J Burrowes PhD[/caption]
has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
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">Robert J Burrowes Prof Richard Falk[/caption]
an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.
Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).
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First published at :
">Richard Falk Dr Gray Corseri, PhD[/caption]
is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including, TMS, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and Counterpunch.
He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons.
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First published at :
">Gary Corseri Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa, Editor, TMS[/caption]
born 1946, is the editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, and Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
He completed the required coursework for a Ph.D. in Political Science-Peace Studies (1994), has a Masters in Political Science-International Relations (1990), and a B.A. in Communication (1988) from the University of Hawai’i.
Originally from Brazil, he lives presently in Porto, Portugal. Antonio was educated in the USA where he lived for 20 years; in Europe/India since 1994.
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First published at :
">Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist, Associate Professor Emeritus, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory.
He is an Indian citizen & permanent resident of Australia and a scholar, an author, a social-policy critic, a frequent social wayfarer, a social entrepreneur and a journalist;He has been exploring, understanding and implementing the ideas of social-economy, participatory local governance, education, citizen-media, ground-journalism, rural-journalism, freedom of expression, bureaucratic accountability, tribal development, village development, reliefs & rehabilitation, village revival and other.
For Ground Report India editions, Vivek had been organising national or semi-national tours for exploring ground realities covering 5000 to 15000 kilometres in one or two months to establish Ground Report India, a constructive ground journalism platform with social accountability.
He has written a book “मानसिक, सामाजिक, आर्थिक स्वराज्य की ओर”on various social issues, development community practices, water, agriculture, his ground works & efforts and conditioning of thoughts & mind. Reviewers say it is a practical book which answers “What” “Why” “How” practically for the development and social solution in India.
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">Vivek SAMAJIK YAYAVAR Prof Ravi Bhatia[/caption]
worked as a mediator for the church in Belfast; as faculty at The School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, and as Executive Director, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. He has founded several Indian NGOs, is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
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First published at -
">Vithal Rajan Rene Wadlow[/caption]
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
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">Rene Wadlow Baher Kamal[/caption]
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Baher Kamal
Egyptian-born, Spanish-national secular journalist. He is founder and publisher of Human Wrongs Watch. Kamal is a pro-peace, non-violence, human rights, coexistence defender, with more than 45 years of professional experience. With these issues in sight, he covered practically all professional posts, from correspondent to chief editor of dailies and international news agencies.
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Credits :
">Baher Kamal Rosa Dalmiglio with Lama Mongolia[/caption]
She is a member of the China Council Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe (special art, culture and humanity), which touches the hearts of all people and portrays the strong willpower so encouraging to 60 million Chinese disabled persons.
Ms. Dalmiglio is Intermediary Agent of CICE, Centre International Cultural Exchange, a direct subsidiary of the Ministry of Culture, People’s Republic of China. CICE is a comprehensive institution engaged in cultural exchange programs, professional publication and presentation of cultural art works such as exhibits, receiving foreign art troupes and artists, holding international cultural research programs, and producing intercultural and interreligious documentary films.
She is a member of China Disabled Person’s Federation, CDPF. She is also a member of the International Women Federation, which is concerned with the financial ethics of women s enterprises in underdeveloped areas.
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credits:
">Rosa Dalmiglio
Director, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies.
A recipient of Cultural Doctorate of Philosophy of Economics from USA. He is an active member of various professional bodies, namely -
He participated and presented papers in various International/national/regional seminars, conferences etc.. He remained member of the Academic Council of Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar. An unwearied researcher has about 200 research papers published in various international and national journals of repute and 15 research monographs to his kitty. Besides, he has authored/co-authored /edited 15 books which have been well received and highly acclaimed during his three decades of professional career. He was honoured by various national and international awards, namely, Guru Draunacharya Samman, Vijay Rattan Award and so on.
Dr Ron Paul served in U.S. House of Representatives three different periods: first from 1976 to 1977, after he won a special election, then from 1979 to 1985, and finally from 1997 to 2013.
During his first term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul founded the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), a non-profit think tank dedicated to promoting principles of limited government and free-market economics. In 1984, Paul became the first chairman of the Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a conservative political group founded by Charles Koch and David Koch 'to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation.' CSE started a Tea Party protest against high taxes in 2002. In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two new organizations, with Citizens for a Sound Economy being renamed as FreedomWorks, and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation becoming Americans for Prosperity. The two organizations would become key players in the Tea Party movement from 2009 onward.
Dr Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, while himself serving a few terms in the House of Representatives. In 1984, he decided to retire from the House in order to run for the U.S. Senate, complaining in his House farewell address that 'Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare.... It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic.'
He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry.
In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces.
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Credits:
">Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D. Jason Hickel[/caption]
He is international consultant of the UN – FAO and international consultant for sustainable development and sustainable future of humankind of Universal State of the Earth - USE.
On 8th October 2016 he was appointed as The Chairman of the Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment protection Committee of the USE, the Supreme Council of Humanity - SCH from Athens, Greece and London, UK.
He is researcher working on: Nature; the Nature, Space and Environment protection; the Climate change system; System thinking; Globalization and global studies; Networking, Complexity and Swarm research: Sustainable Development and Sustainable Future of Humankind. He was among the pioneers researchers (1986 – 1994) to apply nature, space, and environment protection in a local community by activities we call today Local Agenda 21 Processes – a holistic program for survival of our civilization under new challenges of the third millennium.“Commencing from Local Community Sustainable Future and moving towards Sustainable Future of the Global Community of Humankind”.
He is independent researchers with many domestic and international publications and talks. Together with many researchers in co-operation worldwide within philosophy, operational research, global studies, case studies and complex problem solving research, system thinking, requisitely holism, networking and complexity, swarm research, integration and disintegration of matter and energy and universal upbringing, education and lifelong learning. He is contributing a systemic, requisitely holistic and a better understanding of the present. His latest research within the system theory, system thinking, networking, complexity and swarm research may provide a possible answer enabling people to better understand our world of humans.
During 2014 he completed 50 years of research work (1964 - 2014). This year he completed 50 years of been Dr. Vet. Med. Since 1986 he worked on the protection of Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment and completed 30 years of research.
For research on the climate change system and the book “System Thinking and Climate Change System (Against a big “Tragedy of Commons” of all of us), Ecimovic, Mayur, Mulej and co-authors, 2002, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize 2003. His work on “The Information Theory of Nature” was his second nomination for The Nobel Prize during 2007 in Physics. His third nomination for The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was for “The Environment Theory of the Nature”, published in the book “Three Applications of the System Thinking”, Ecimovic, 2010. Within last 10 years he has contributed trilogies: “The Nature”, “The Sustainable Future of Mankind” and “The Life 2017” – please see at: www.institut-climatechange.si
I grew up in Chile, got my medical degree there, began an academic career in 1970, and left for the USA due to the military coup in early 1974. My first job in the USA was working as a public nutrition professor in the international programme of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.
I started to travel to Africa in 1975, and worked a year in Cameroun in 1980 helping to prepare their five-year nutrition plan. I then moved to New Orleans, to Tulane University’s School of Public Health, and taught in the department of nutrition for ten years, before moving to Nairobi where I was an advisor in the Ministry of Health. Seven years there got me into extensive consulting in Africa, often on nutritional issues. In 1995 moved to Vietnam where I worked for two and a half years in the Ministry of Health as a senior primary health care advisor.
Many years of touching the reality on the ground, in Latin America, then the USA, then Africa and Asia, has made me understand that the real challenge is in the social and political determinants of malnutrition. I have devoted my writings and teaching to that. Over the years, I have found an important shift in my colleagues’ attitude and understanding towards acknowledging the basic causes of malnutrition. But yet I see little happening as a result. I submit that it is our guild’s lack of experience in the political arena that explains this dichotomy. I devote much of my energy to bridge this gap, and am a fervent advocate of empowering claim holders to demand needed changes from duty bearers. Nutrition is a perfect port of entry for that. Equity, social justice and people’s empowerment in a human rights sense is what really will make a difference.
There is no alternative but to deal with nutrition problems as indivisibly linked to social, political and environmental problems. We need to address them as such. The question is: are we all prepared to do that? The answer, in my view, decides whether we are part of the solution or part of the problem. Travelling and living in different parts of the world has reinforced my conviction that we need to get down from our academic ivory towers, and need to change the curricula of our young and upcoming colleagues, to give them the tools to act in such a context. To me, public health nutrition cannot be anything but that.
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">Claudio Schuftan Dr MD Prof. Ram Puniyani[/caption]