Tuesday, February 10, 2009

India: The ticking "minority" time bomb (Part I)


Asma Jahangir, Pakistani human rights activist, UN special rapporteur has reported India in a poor light in terms of freedom of religion and beliefs. The report alludes to a real risk of religious strife in India.

In her report to the UN, Asma raises several issues of concern on

1. The situation of religious and beleief minorities
2. Justice for victims and survivors of communal violence
3. Freedom of religion and belief in Jammu and Kashmir
4. Negative impact of laws on religious conversion in several states
5. Implications of religion based personal laws

Asma, reports about the plight of Christians in Kandhamal, Orissa where Communal violence had claimed 40 christian lives, 4000 christian homes destroyed, 50 churches demolished. 20000 people are living in relief cmapigns and 40000 hiding in jungles. Access to food, drinking water, clothes, sanitation and healthcare to these people is abysmal

Asma also brings to light the "ghetto"ization of Muslim community in certain parts of India. It speaks about discrimation in work space, economic activity and civic liberties. The Militant strikes only exacerbate the situation hardenning the rift lines. Within the ghetto, Communalism breeds in poor living and flawed communal education. This in turn becomes the breeding ground for militants!

The report expressses concern on the extended timeframe of investigations in cases involving communal riots, violence and massacres. Cases in point are Operation Blue Star (Punjab 1984), Babri Masjid Demolition (Ayodhya, 1992), Godhra (Gujarat, 2002). While these memories haunt the victims, the impunity olny emboldens the perpetrators of such violence!

J&K has been an old issue in these UN rapporteurs! Discrimination against Muslims and Expulsion of the Kashmiri pandits is still a wedge stuck between the communities in J&K. The Muslim population is vulnerable to the excesses of the security forces while the entire population is victim of violence perpetrated by the Islamic militants! Lately, there has been a de-escalation fo the violence but Muslims from Srinagar are still denies rights such as admission to hotels in other parst of the country because they are muslims from Kashmir!

In absence of a proper legislative framework and understanding, laws against religious conversions, these can be seen as a violation of personal rights! Inadequate legislaturehas adverse consequences for religious minorities and has reportedly fostered mob violence aganist them!

Of Economy, Environment and Human Development: Failure of the GDP concept!

Gross Domestic product (GDP) as a progress indicator/paradigm was a part of the post 1940s era world reconstruction. Over the last 70 years GDP has become a construct for mesauring guman progress and all economic policy making is directed squarely at increasing/maximizing GDP! GDP as a part of national accounts was created by Richard Stone and James Meade with support from John Maynard Keynes as a means to keep track of the economic activity in a state.

However, the challenges faced by the world have now grown from economic/financial to environmental in nature. Then there are challenges on the human development side of things as well. Unfortunately, both the environment and the socio demographic human state is not measured as a indictator of progress. For example, the rich oil producing countries in middle east are the richest in nature and yet most parts of it have people living in the 17th century with no access to basic amenities. Likewise, China is a model for economic growth and yet its Human rights index and environment development index is amongst the poorest!

Interestingly Richard Stone, in his Nobel Memorial Speech in 1984 had himself stated that apart from economic growth, the analysis of a society's progress has to be based on socio demographic as well as the environmental phenoma. To be quoted "...environmental issues, such as poluution, land use and non renewable resources offer plenty of scope for accounting". Unfortunately, the world has continued to pay attention to the economic activity side stepping the environmental and human issues.

Given the socio demographic and environmental issues faced, the world today needs to create additional metrices such as Human Developmental Index and Carbon Footprint. There is a possibility that three metrics may not be preffered, in which case GDP has to be recaliberated to reflect genuine values to things like air and water pollution, deforestation, land degradation, use of alternate energies, health, education, crime etc. The result would be a new GDP number that would truely reflect value generated/consumed by human activities. A striking instance of how the new GDP calliberation would affect the old GDP system is the case of Uttar Pradesh. In just accounting for water quality in rivers in UP, 17.5% of the old GDP would be reduced! Imagine China going from a 11% GDP growth economy to 3% economy GDP growth economy because of the heavy inductrial pollution and bad human development indicators! US would go negative by two digit decimals!

What this would also mean is viability studies that are more rounded. For instance the economic surplus because of a new dam could get negated fully and more by the deficit in the ecological shifts and change in population demographics! That would provide an excellent allround development metric. It is time to move towarsd this sooner!