Swami Vivekananda and Nation building

Swami Vivekananda was a dreamer.  He dreamt big day and night.   But, the only theme of his dream was India.  This one word stirred extraordinary feelings in the deepest regions of his heart.  Perhaps, he was the greatest patriot to have ever been born in this country.  The testimony of Mahatma Gandhi vouches for this assertion.  Mahatma Gandhi visited Belur Math in 1921 and before leaving he wrote in the Visitors’ Book that after reading Swami Vivekananda’s works, his patriotism for the country had increased thousand fold.  One of the Western disciples of Swami Vivekananda, Sister Christine, wrote in her reminiscences, “Our love for India came to birth, I think, when we first heard him (Swami Vivekananda) say the word, “India”, in that marvelous voice of his.  It seems incredible that so much could have been put into one small word of five letters.  There was love, passion, pride, longing, adoration, tragedy, chivalry, himweh, and again love.  Whole volumes could not have produced such a feeling in others.  It had the magic power of creating love in those who heard it.”    In fact, his love for our motherland was perhaps the singular factor which held him tied to this earth.  He was a born Yogi. He was  a great contemplative and diving deep into meditation was the natural drift of his mind.  However, he sacrificed all these to serve our motherland. 

Swami Vivekananda knew everything about India like the palm of his hand.  What was the source and basis of his knowledge?  He was a keen student of history and had a thorough knowledge of India’s glorious past.  He was immensely practical in his outlook and that helped him understand the then condition of our country.  After the passing away of his Guru and mentor, Sri Ramakrishna, he had gone on a pilgrimage of the entire country on foot.  He met people from every segment of the society, from the richest to the poorest, from the most learned to the most ignorant, from high caste priests to those condemned as the low caste, from Maharajas to penniless beggars.  The firsthand knowledge which he gained through his explorations gave him a complete understanding of our country including the causes for its downfall.  Being a visionary and endowed with an extraordinary intellect and even a more feeling heart, he could find out the cure for India’s maladies and for restoring her to her former glory.  He predicted that India’s future glory would far surpass her past glory.  He felt deeply concerned and pained by the degradation of our country.  He said, “If there are holes in this national ship, this society of ours, we are its children, let us go and stop the holes. Let us gladly do it with our hearts' blood; and if we cannot, then let us die. We will make a plug of our brains and put them into the ship, but condemn it never.”  After a stay of four years in the West, during which he achieved extraordinary fame and recognition and was virtually lionized by the society; when he was about to depart for India, a Westerner asked him how he was feeling about returning to his motherland.  In reply he said, “India I loved before I came away.  Now the very dust of India has become holy to me, the very air is now to me holy; it is now the holy land, the place of pilgrimage, the Tirtha." 

Swami Vivekananda clearly identified the causes for our downfall, one of which was the neglect of the masses which he labeled as the great national sin.  He said, “The poor, the low, the sinner in India have no friends, no help – they cannot rise, try however they may.  They sink lower and lower every day, they feel the blows showered upon them by a cruel society, and they do not know whence the blow comes.”  He said that millions were oppressed in the name of religion and one of the chief causes of India’s ruin was the monopoly of education by a few belonging to the privileged classes. 

Swami Vivekananda said that the whole difference between the West and the East is in that, they are nations i.e. civilizations, whereas we are not.  While the higher classes in India and the West are the same, but there is infinite distance between the lower classes of these countries.  He lamented that for centuries people had been taught theories of degradation and have been told that they were nothing.  The masses have been repeatedly told that they are not human beings and frightened for centuries till that they have become animals.  Laziness, lack of energy, want of sympathy and appreciation for others were at the root of all miseries and that they should be given up. 

Another cause according to him was our exclusiveness. India went into her shell as the oyster does, and refused to give her jewels and her treasures to the other races of mankind, refused to give the life-giving truths to thirsting nations outside the Aryan fold.  He said that we shut ourselves from the outside world, did not go out and did not compare notes with other nations.  One of the drawbacks of our nation according to him was that it totally lacked in the faculty of organization and that we are altogether averse to making a common cause for anything.   He said that the first requisite for organisation was obedience which we lacked as a race.  He said, “In spite of the greatness of the Upanishads, in spite of our boasted ancestry of sages, compared to many other races, I must tell you that we are weak, very weak. First of all is our physical weakness. That physical weakness is the cause of at least one-third of our miseries. We are lazy, we cannot work; we cannot combine, we do not love each other; we are intensely selfish, not three of us can come together without hating each other, without being jealous of each other.”  According to him another major reason for India’s degradation was the trampling of the women.  He said that our country is one of the weakest in the world because Shakti was held in dishonor here.  In addition to the causes identified by Swamiji, corruption, particularly in public life has become yet another major cause.  But, then the solutions given by Swamiji cover this malady also. 

What is the way to regeneration?  The first step in this regard is uplifting the masses by restoring their lost individuality and faith in themselves.  Swami Vivekananda said that we should remember that the nation lives in the cottages and that no amount of politics will be of any avail until the masses of India are once more well educated, well fed and well cared for.  He said, “our mission is for the destitute, the poor, and the illiterate peasantry and labouring classes, and if, after everything has been done for them first, there is spare time, then only for the gentry.”  He said emphatically that we should feel proud of our past and derive our strength and inspiration from those glorious chapters of the bygone days.  Along with this he also advocated respect for the great men of the country.  He was of the firm view that material civilization was absolutely necessary to create work for the poor.  He said, “Bread! Bread! I do not believe in a God, who cannot give me bread here, giving me eternal bliss in heaven! Pooh! India is to be raised, the poor are to be fed,education is to be spread...”  He said that uplift of women deserves utmost priority and only after that can there be hope for any real good for the nation.  He said, “All nations have attained greatness by paying proper respect to women. That country and that nation which does not respect women has never become great”. 

Swami Vivekananda laid the greatest emphasis on education for the regeneration of our motherland.  He said, “Education, education, education alone! Travelling through many cities of Europe and observing in them the comforts and education of even the poor people, these brought to my mind the state of our own poor people, and I used to shed tears. What made the difference? Education was the answer I got.”  According to him, a nation is advanced in proportion as education is spread among the masses.  But, what was the education that he advocated?  According to him “education is the manifestation of perfection already in man and that what a man ‘learns’ is really what he ‘discovers’ by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.”  Hence he said that our process of education should be such that it helps the students to manifest their innate knowledge and power.  He advocated a man-making character-building education.  He said, “We want that education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one's own feet.”  He said that education must make the students self-reliant and help them face the challenges of life.  He was highly critical of the so-called educated who do not care for the poor and downtrodden.  He said, “So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them.”  According to him, three things are necessary to make every man great, every nation great and that is we should have conviction in the powers of goodness, the absence of jealousy and suspicion and helping all those who are trying to be and do good. 

Swami Vivekananda had immense faith in the youth of this country and said that they would work out his ideas like lions. “That you may catch my fire, that you may be intensely sincere, that you may die the heroes' death on the field of battle — is the constant prayer of Vivekananda.”

Indians to rise 100th anniversary of the Mahatma's return to India

Mohandas K Gandhi was 45 when he returned to India after spending 21 years in South Africa. Discounting the three years that he spent as a student in London, his life had been divided exactly half and half between the land of his birth and South Africa.

"I was born in India", he was to say "but made in South Africa."

We should know, in our 'Make in India' times, how important it was for Gandhi and for India that he was "made" in South Africa. We should know, too, what it was that went into that "making".

"You sent to us a lawyer", Nelson Mandela said, addressing India and Indians, "we returned to you a Mahatma".

Gandhi became what he became in the country of his adoption, not just because he was hurled out of a train one traumatic morning in Pietermaritzburg but because he came to meet, to get to know and to work with, in terms of exhilarating camaraderie and challenging colleagueship, in that distant land, a cross-section of the people of India. Had he lived and worked as a suburban lawyer in Bombay, he would have co-existed with their prototypes, rubbed shoulders with them indifferently on buses and trains, lived 'back to back' with them. But in South Africa, the dislocation, dispossession, disempowerment of immigrant life placed him in the eye of a growing storm. He saw in indenture, injustice. He saw in voicelessness, slavery, in votelessness, serfdom. He saw in racial discrimination, the very antithesis of what as a student in London he had come to value as Victorian England's political high-ground. But in this very 'hell' of adversities, Gandhi saw an enormous chance for Indians to rise above their circumstances, above the 'hollows' and the 'deeps'.

In the response to his appeal for political action, he saw in his fellow Indians extraordinary guts, unexpected stamina and above all, a readiness that he had not known in himself for sacrifice. He also saw that riven by caste and religious divisions and distrust, the Indian South African was being unjust to himself and to his fellow Indians. Would he, could he rise above the injustices heaped on him and the injustices he heaped on himself and his kind?

The answer he found from among the men and women he worked with was a resounding 'Yes!'. More, he also found bursts of solidarity - inter-caste, inter-religious, inter-language - among them. He found, in other words, not just the need but the scope for what has become a cliche - Indian pluralism.

Gandhi had been 'hired' by a Muslim firm, Dada Abdulla Seth's. He lodged, for various times, with a Parsi family, 'Parsee' Rustomji's. He, his wife and children, became part of a Hindu Tamil family - Tambi Naidoo's. He appeared in court for every segment of Indian society, charging nothing from the poor, charging the rich heftily.

Did he get to know, get to feel with and for the Africans of South Africa, for their future as the true 'owners' of South Africa? He did not, not nearly as well as he could and should have. A century after he left South Africa, this valid criticism is made by Gandhi's critics in India and elsewhere very trenchantly but very comfortably from the vantage of political evolution. But we should hear Mandela on the subject. The greatest South African, and father of that nation in freedom, has educated us on Gandhi's political and personal colleagueship with John Dube, the first President of the African National Congress.

Did Gandhi become a complete human being, a flawless leader, author of a perfect blueprint for India's greatness? No, he did not. He has been criticised, with validity but not without malice, for being a domineering husband, a unilateral householder, a very self-willed leader. But on what basis? That of his own self-excoriating writings, his own self-criticism.

The Gandhi who returned to India on January 9, 1915, as one 'made' in South Africa, was still as fallible as any, as evolving, as 'in the making', as anyone in his mid-40s. But he was almost complete in two roles - that of a satyagrahi with two major disciplined, non-violent 'mass' campaigns under his Gujarati 'belt', and that of what he called himself in his 'Farewell Letter' to Indians in South Africa - a girmitya, 'the community's indentured labourer'.

He saw India's ills beyond political servitude to Britain - her self-inflicted woes, sectarian distrust among her people, casteism, the urban-rural divide, economic disparities, sloth, squalor, superstition, and a proclivity to violence, physical, verbal, emotional. He came determined to labour for their removal. Within the very first week of his landing in Bombay, he met the foremost political leader of the time, Lokamanya Tilak, his political mentor Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the 'GOM of India' Dadabhai Naoroji, the liberal leader Srinivasa Sastri, his future political counter-point Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the Governor of Bombay and a future Governor General, Lord Willingdon. And saw a play - a rare occurrence for him - on the life of the Great Renunciate and spiritual inspiration for India's future Constitution-maker, Babasaheb Ambedkar - in 'Buddhadeva'.

Gandhi's indentured labour for a secular and egalitarian India, committed to non-violence and human dignity began thus, this week, a hundred years ago.

That India clamours to go beyond a nationalism that benumbs its pains with the fantasy of past 'greatness' and the fiction of future glory in super-powerism.

Time to honour all our founding father

 Malaviya rose to prominence as a populariser of Hindi in the United Province (present Uttar Pradesh). He attended the second annual conference of the Indian Congress and subsequently became Congress President for four times, 1909, 1913, 1919 and 1932. This feat was matched only by Jawaharlal Nehru. In Nehru’s case, twice he became president as Gandhi wanted it;  in the first instance to fulfil Motilal Nehru’s desire and in the second instance to help Nehru come out of his grief on the death of Kamala Nehru. Malaviya’s achievement was that these Presidentships meant acceptance of him by a wide range of leaderships in different circumstances.

Malaviya was a believer in the varnashrama system but had no caste prejudices. He facilitated Jagjivan Ram’s education at BHU and Calcutta University. He was the President of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1906 and retained that position for many years even after leaving the Congress in 1934. He had serious differences with Gandhi regarding the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1920-22 but participated in the subsequent Salt Satyagraha and was also arrested. His opposition to Gandhi in 1920 was about the mode and timing of the movement.

As a constitutionalist Malaviya wanted dialogue to take place within a constitutional framework in which both the views of the rulers and the ruled would be exchanged. Denial of rights and non-inclusion of the ruled cannot last long as democratic institutions were an essential pre-requisite for proper administration in a modern society.  In this context he pointed out that the 1857 revolt was because of the absence of representative institutions. He rejected the notion of ‘White Man’s burden’ as Hindus and Muslims had practiced self -government for centuries, something which the British ignored. Like the early Liberals and Gandhi he too believed in the innate British sense of justice. Echoing Gandhi, he too believed that the attention of the colonial administration is through patience and suffering and not merely by raising slogans or organising meetings.

Malaviya considered the right of self-determination to be non-negotiable and as the basic condition anywhere in the world and cited the example of Great Britain which fought the two World Wars in order to preserve the right of self-determination not only for itself but for others also. The Russo-Japanese war also demonstrated that no power could be subdued forever. History taught us, he noted, that legitimate rights whether of individuals or nations, had to be conceded and that even a generous and benevolent rule cannot be an alternative to self-rule. He also prophesied that the age of imperialism and colonialism was coming to a close. He emphasised on the need to develop conscious educated citizenship while equally stressing the evils of subordination. Despite his unshakeable belief in constitutional struggle, he appealed to the Viceroy for mercy in the case of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev to commute the death sentence to life sentence as their lives could be saved. Calling for clemency on grounds of humanity, he pointed out that the actions of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev was not for advancing any personal cause but motivated by their deep sense of patriotism. Execution on the contrary would be a severe shock to the Indian people in general. Commutation to life sentence would be beneficial to the British as the Indian public earnestly hoped for commutation and if that happened, then the popular perception of the British rulers would change for the better.

Malaviya looked to the past with pride, glorifying both the Hindu and Muslim periods though both have fallen from ancient glory. He pleaded for limited measure of autonomy and self -rule as a way of revival. Malaviya concurred with Besant that Indian nationalism originated in ancient times. The Vedic culture and the Vedas and the Upanisads reflected the continuity of Indian civilisation which emphasised persuasion and debarred the use of force. Believing in the contemporary relevance of the ancient Indian texts as he did, one of the important motives of his establishing the BHU was that apart from teaching modern disciplines of both natural and social sciences it would also concentrate on studying Indology.

Malaviya popularised the phrase satyameva jayata, an Upanisadic one, which has been accepted as our national motto. Believing in some important rituals, he started the popular arati at the Harki pauri in Hardwar. He was also closely associated with the construction of Laksmi Narain temples by the Birlas in New Delhi and elsewhere.  He fought equally against untouchability and wholeheartedly supported Gandhi’s demand of temple entry for the Harijans. Like Gandhi, he was a modernizer of tradition and believed in secular values which the BHU embodies. His emphasis was on culture and religion. Even the Ali brothers accepted Malviya was broadminded.

As Mr Siddiqui correctly points out, unlike Gandhi, Malaviya supported industrialisation for poverty alleviation. He popularised the sentiment of ‘buy Indian’ in order to reinforce swadeshi. He was of the view that for disseminating the nationalist view a free press was an essential requirement. With that in mind, he started an English paper, The Leader from Allahabad in 1909.  He, along with G.D. Birla and Lajpat Rai, founded the English daily, The Hindustan Times and its Hindi version, the Hindustan in 1936. He was a member of the Imperial Legislature from 1912-19. Along with Tilak, Besant and Jinnah, he played a crucial role in the historic Lucknow Pact in 1916. Though he had given up a lucrative legal practice, in 1911 he defended the accused in the Chaura Chauri case and got 156 out of 177 acquitted. He opposed the Khilafat movement as he did not want to mix religion with politics. Along with Jawarharlal Nehru and Lajpat Rai he opposed the Simon commission in 1928. He was a delegate to the first RTC in 1930. Malaviya’s idea of composite nationalism did not have any place for separate electorates, which is why he criticised the 1919 Montford Reforms and the 1932 Ramsay MacDonald communal award. Along with Madhav Shrihari Aney he founded the Congress Nationalist Party after leaving the Congress in 1934. In the same year, in the elections to the Central Legislature, the CNP won 12 seats.  Malaviya bid good bye to active politics in 1937.

Malviya is one of the finest propagators of constitutional mechanism for change, and is comparable to early liberals like Ranade, Naroji, Gokhale and Surendranth Banerjee and later liberals like Srinivasa Shastri and Sapru.

He dedicated his life to social reform, constitutional struggle and self-government. In honouring Malaviya with the Bharat Ratna it is way of reminding ourselves that many streams formed the nationalist movement to make it a success. The time has come to remember all of them, in the American way, as India’s Founding Fathers.

India Water Week to be Celebrated from 13 to 17 January

In an effort to raise awareness, conserve and use water resources in an integrated manner, the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Government of India will be observing India Water Week from 13 to 17th of this month to use it as a platform to elicit ideas and opinions from global level decision makers, politicians, researchers and entrepreneurs in the field of water resources for mutual benefit and goodwill. The theme for water week will be “Water Management for Sustainable Development". India Water Week-2015 will address the issues of sustainability of water resources development and management in line with Sustainable Development Goals 2015 being finalized by UN. Australia will be the partner country for this event and 30 Australian companies will be participating in the exhibition to showcase the technological advancement in the area of water resources. Maharashtra will be associated as partner State. The main function will be held at New Delhi with a conference cum policy dialogue forum coupled with a Business to Business exhibition organized professionally. The event is targeted at international and national audience comprising of policy planners and technologists involved with water resources management in all key sectors of economy like agriculture, irrigation, energy, industry and drinking water supply. The event is being organized in co-ordination with nodal Ministries of Agriculture, Environment & Forests and Climate Change, Rural Development, Urban Development, Drinking Water and Sanitation, Power and NITI Ayog along with their associated expert organizations and Public Sector Units, key international bodies and private and public business houses. The IWW-2015 will be celebrated with a multi- disciplinary conference and a concurrently running exhibition enriching the theme and showcasing the technologies and solutions available for the areas under deliberation of the meet. The event will have the following major components: A multi- disciplinary dialogue in form of a conference discussing issues of water management for sustainable development in, water for sustaining life, agriculture and irrigation, drinking water supplies in rural and urban, industrial water use, energy generation applications. A large group of international and national persons of eminence will be sharing their experiences in the field of water management. In addition, there will be three special sessions involving dignitaries, delegates, politicians, experts on various topics of the event. Expert professional bodies and think tanks are invited to put up side events addressing specific issues under the theme. There will also be an exhibition running in parallel supporting the theme and showcasing the technologies, latest development and solutions available for the areas of water management for sustainable development in agriculture and irrigation, drinking water supplies in rural and urban, industrial water use. The exhibition will provide a unique networking opportunity to the exhibitors for exposing their products and services to the practicing water resource professionals from various countries. Exhibitors will also have a unique opportunity to spread their network in this region and find new joint ventures and profit from the growing business in this emerging and technologically important area. Business firms will have the opportunity of direct contact with thousands of potential clients, highly qualified visitors including decision makers, enormous PR and promotional opportunities, to find joint ventures to enable them to expand their business in the rapidly growing India water market and to increase brand visibility/image and free hosting of exhibitors profiles and company website links on event web portal. During the week Hamara Jal – Hamara Jeewan initiative will be observed in every district of the country. This will be an initiative to engage scientists, engineers, water communities, PRIs, other stakeholders and NGOs to address the issues of water resources planning at the local level and to generate awareness regarding need for water conservation. Participation from school students will be an integral part of the programme for sensitizing the next generation for water conservation. This will also spread awareness regarding need to conserve water in the light of growing water scarcity. One day workshop will be organized in every district during the week to find indigenous solution for meeting the water related demands and suggest future road map to manage water for growth. During the workshop it is planned to prepare a profile of each district covering its source of water, utilization for various uses and constraint, possible local solutions for meeting the unsatisfied demands and future roadmap to manage water for growth. The States have been asked to submit a report in this regard after the workshop is over. The recommendations received during the deliberations of the workshop will also be used for preparation of an overview of State level recommendations. Such recommendations would enable Ministry to utilize the same for policy making. Conceptualised and organised for the first time in 2012, the India Water Week is an annual forum where the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Government of India discusses, talks, strategizes with eminent stakeholders through seminars, exhibitions and sessions to build public awareness to get support to implement key strategies for conservation, preservation and optimum use of available water. This is the third event in line with the theme “Water management for sustainable development”. The second event namely India Water Week-2013 with the theme “Efficient Water Management: Challenges and Opportunities” was organised during 8-12 April, 2013 at New Delhi.

Improving an unworkable law

For the land-acquirer, the land act ordinance tries to lessen the indirect price of acquisition and transaction by diluting requirements for social impact assessments and referenda. For the land-loser, it not only retains all forms of compensation and rehabilitation, but also grows the number of those eligible for lucrative pay-offs

The government of India continues to search for the right way to do land acquisition. Last week, the Union Finance Minister announced an ordinance to amend the Land Acquisition Bill that his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had helped vote into law a mere 15 months ago. It had been in force for less than one year. That law, the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR), had been pushed through by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in its dying days. It had many detractors. Private industry said that it was the biggest obstacle to growth. Most State governments, including several Congress-led ones, thought it was unworkable. I wrote that embedded in LARR were the seeds of its own destruction.

That LARR would be changed was obvious in the first weeks after the BJP stormed to power at the Centre. There were whispers and much speculation, but nothing official. Now, it is out in the open and we can pass judgement. So, what does this ordinance reveal about the thought processes of the leaders of the Modi government? Is this a new approach? Is it any better than the old one? What could have been done differently?

Focussing on the land-loser

We need to ignore the predictable noises being made by the usual suspects. The pro-business crowd, from Goldman Sachs to Dalal Street, can barely suppress its elation. Several pro-farmer groups, especially significant non-governmental organisations like the National Alliance of People’s Movements, whose ideas had formed the initial blueprint of LARR, have called this a giveaway to the corporate sector. Anti-BJP political parties like the Congress, the CPI(M), the Samajwadi Party and the Trinamool Congress have vowed to fight these changes with all their might. All these people cannot simultaneously be right.

“Compensating non-owners is a vital and non-negotiable element of LARR. How that will be achieved without the social impact assessments remains unclear.”

To get analytical clarity, we need to start from basics. LARR was meant to make the acquisition process just. It was designed in the mode of the Congress’s other landmark laws on information, education, and food — using a rights-based approach — where the primary objective was to deliver “fairness” to the people affected by land acquisition. LARR expanded the definition of project-affected people and expanded the rights, protections and compensations for people who lose land or livelihood as a result of acquisition. All these were laudable and necessary. But LARR was also a purely political and fundamentally bureaucratic approach based on little or no recognition of some simple economic principles — on land markets and on transaction and opportunity costs. The underlying presumption was that the price of land matters to the land-loser but not to the land-acquirer; as a result, LARR raised the price of land acquisition to unsustainable levels.

Price matters to acquirer and loser

This price is not simply the money paid for acquisition and rehabilitation and resettlement. That is just one component of price, its direct component. There is a second component, an indirect price. This includes (a) transaction costs, which include the cost of doing social impact assessments, conducting referenda, running the massive new multilayered acquisition bureaucracy, etc. and (b) opportunity costs, which arise from the time taken to conclude an acquisition — doing social impact assessments, conducting referenda, etc. — time during which capital is not invested, infrastructure is not created, and production does not take place. If all the steps defined in LARR were accomplished in the allotted time, each acquisition would require about five years; in practice, it could take a lot longer.

The Modi government’s ordinance — unlike the UPA government’s law — is based on the principle that price matters to both the land-acquirer and the land-loser. Their interests are opposed, because the land-acquirer would like to pay the least he or it can get away with, and the land-loser would like to get the most he or it can manage. So, how does the ordinance solve this problem? Quite simply, as a matter fact, by splitting the direct and indirect prices for acquisition and keeping the direct prices unchanged while attacking the indirect prices.

For the land-acquirer, the ordinance tries to lessen, as much as it can, the indirect price of acquisition, the transaction and opportunity costs that have been listed. This it does by weakening or removing the requirements for social impact assessments and referenda. For the land-loser, the ordinance not only retains all forms of compensation and resettlement and rehabilitation, but also grows the number of land-losers eligible for these lucrative pay-offs by bringing into the ambit of LARR, 13 categories of acquisition that had been excluded earlier. These include the Land Acquisition (Mines) Act, the Atomic Energy Act, the Railways Act, the National Highways Act, and the Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act. These inclusions were indicated in LARR, but are accomplished in this ordinance.

The reason this ordinance is likely to work in the short term and the reason it may run into trouble in the long term is the same — the underlying land market in India. Land prices in India are now the highest in the world (with the possible exception of China, where, for approximately the same reasons as in India, prices have reached unprecedented levels). For most pieces of agricultural land, these market prices are several times higher than the possible returns from keeping the land in agricultural use. When these very high prices are quadrupled or doubled, it creates a windfall for land-losers, a fortune they could never earn from agriculture. The Modi government is betting that the vast majority of people will be dazzled by the money and will acquiesce to acquisition. And by vastly increasing the scope of LARR, by bringing under its ambit several more types of acquisition and many more people, the government and the BJP can claim to be as pro-farmer as anyone else (even if the enlargement had been envisaged in the original law).

For the land-acquiring interest — be it the private or public sector — reducing the time for acquisition by several years, and thereby reducing the opportunity cost, is a huge benefit. When this is topped up with the reduction or removal of the cash cost of social impact assessments and referenda, it becomes a windfall for the acquirers too. LARR had placed an impossible double-burden on land acquirers: pay double or quadruple the highest prices in the world, and wait for several years to begin work on the ground. The first burden remains and its consequences are grave. What those consequences may be must be carefully worked out by people competent to do so. But the second burden has been mitigated by this ordinance. It should make life easier for the land-acquirer.

Price factor

What, aside from partisan politics, could go wrong? There are many things, but I will mention just three. First, the assumption that everyone responds to price is incorrect in India. There are priceless pieces of land that no amount of money can buy. The Niyamgiri hill region in Odisha where the Vedanta mining project ran aground is an example. Without referenda it may be very difficult to identify priceless land; which means that deadly face-offs over acquisition will continue to flare up. Second, the social impact assessment was meant primarily to take stock of the non-land-owning project-affected population. Compensating non-owners is a vital and non-negotiable element of LARR. How that will be achieved without the social impact assessments remains unclear.

Third and most important: the price of peri-urban land has reached such levels in the most dynamic urban regions of the country, that just doubling it (even without the added transaction and opportunity costs) may make many public projects unaffordable and private projects uncompetitive (especially in a globalised economy). The blunt instrument of acquisition is already inappropriate in many such settings; using LARR, even after the ordinance, it may be impossible. New, creative methods that make stakeholders out of landholders must be devised, perhaps by following the better outcomes of some of the experiments being attempted in some States.

Is this ordinance a better way than LARR? Yes. Is there a better way than this? Very much so, and it is based on finding State-level solutions rather than these top-down, one-size-fits-all strategies devised by the Centre. And above all, as a friend says, what we need are good intentions combined with clear analysis and hard, detailed work. Unfortunately, all these are in short supply.

Dictatorial democra

It has recently been claimed that Jawaharlal Nehru was an ardent democrat and that he always upheld the democratic spirit in his belief and activities. In reality, however, history recounts a very different story.

When he became the Prime Minister of India, he seemed to be a power-monger and in order to retain authority, he discarded all democratic values. First, his relationship with the President suggests that he was a strong believer in Prime Ministerial ascendancy, emphasising that we had adopted the cabinet system as in Britain. In his reckoning, the President must act upon the advice of the cabinet and, thus assume a passive role. But, obviously, the President, as the Head of State had a dignified role to play and, as a person, he was entitled to have his own ideas, prejudices and beliefs. This was the reason why, soon after the Constitution came into force, the then President, Dr Rajendra Prasad, was not able to maintain cordial relations with Nehru.

In fact, Dr Prasad once wrote to him that in certain matters, he would take his own decision. Nehru sent two copies of the letter to Alladi Krishnaswami Ayar, one of the framers of the Constitution, and MC Setalvad, the Attorney-General, for their opinion. However, both of them stressed that in a cabinet system, the President must accept a passive role and abide by the ministerial advice. Inspired by this favourable opinion, Nehru intended to belittle the President. Dr Prasad once again raised the issue before the Delhi Law Institute and claimed that the Constitution did not ask the President to act upon the ministerial advice in all matters. Surely, for Nehru, it was fuel to the fire.

In certain minor matters such as the religious ceremony in Varanasi in which Dr Prasad washed the feet of the priests and pundits, his visit to Somnath temple and presence at the funeral of Sardar Patel, he acted against the wishes of Nehru. As regards General Thimaya’s resignation, Nehru’s Tibet policy and corruption in high places, Dr Prasad expressed considerable dissatisfaction. He did not support the imposition of President’s rule in Kerala in 1959 and the introduction of the Hindu Code Bill in Parliament. He even sent a message, under Article 86(2), urging Parliament to carefully and cautiously consider the Bill as it was awfully defective (Editorial, the Modern Review, November 1978).

As Nehru felt slighted, he wanted to reach a parting of the ways with Dr Prasad after the conclusion of his first term. But, it was Abul Kalam Azad who persuaded the Prime Minister to offer a second term to Dr Prasad. But when the latter sought a third term, Nehru firmly opposed the proposal. Dr Prasad reluctantly resigned office in 1962.

Nehru picked Dr Radhakrishnan for President with the fond hope that the distinguished philosopher would be immersed in his library and would hardly interfere in political affairs. But the Prime Minister was disillusioned because the new President also wanted to play a positive role in matters of State. He was annoyed with Nehru’s defence policy which led to our military debacle against China in 1962 and he had reportedly wanted to remove Nehru from the office of Prime Minister. The rift soon widened and Nehru decided to give him an honoured farewell after the end of his first term.

Similarly, as head of the cabinet, Nehru behaved like a political colossus. Of course, under Article 75(2) of the Constitution, the cabinet is ‘collectively responsible’ to the Lok Sabha and, hence, the cabinet collectively takes the decision in all matters. But Nehru discussed such matters with only a few colleagues of his choice and expected others to readily agree. As VK Kulkarni has pointed out, Nehru merely raised the issues at cabinet meetings and such meetings ended there (Problems of Indian Democracy, page 158). In this way, the cabinet became, as Percival Spear wrote, a mere ‘registering body’ (A Modern History, p 437). In 1956, Bombay was bifurcated by Nehru without the resolution of the cabinet. CD Deshmukh, Finance Minister, promptly resigned. But, Nehru bluntly observed that he was the Prime Minister and that ‘the Prime Minister can lay down the policy of the government’. During his time, a number of ministers notably RR Diwakar, Dr KM Munshi, S Chetty, KC Neogi and C Biswas, had resigned. Nehru functioned in league with some “yes men”.

Of course, Sardar Patel, the Home Minister and No. 2 in the cabinet, believed that the Prime Minister was primus inter pares. No wonder he couldn’t suffer Nehru’s attitude. In the Prime Minister’s scheme of things, though the cabinet was the ultimate policy-maker, ‘the Prime Minister is supposed to play an outstanding role’. Sardar Patel wanted to resign, but Mahatma Gandhi persuaded him to continue.

Within the Congress, Nehru sought to play the role of supreme head. In 1950, a contest for the office of the party president led to a major crisis. JB Kripalani and P Tandon were two rival candidates, the former represented the Nehru group and Tandon stood for Patel. Eventually, Mr Tandon won the election. But Nehru, in order to keep the party within his grip, observed that the Congress must choose either him or Mr Tandon. As Chalapati Rau has observed, ‘The struggle really was who was to lead the Congress, Tandon or Jawaharlal’ (Jawaharlal Nehru, p 205). Though Mr Tandon was duly elected in a democratic manner, he had to step down. Nehru became the party president and retained the office till the early part of 1954. To quote Rajni Kothari, ‘All future incumbents of the post until his death owed their position to Nehru’s will” (Politics In India, p 169). Some of his colleagues, like C Rajagopalachari and JB Kripalani parted with him and founded separate political parties, in order to fight against the Congress.

Moreover, Nehru virtually reduced Parliament to a subordinate institution. Constitutionally, of course, the cabinet is responsible to the Lok Sabha. But Nehru held the Prime Ministerial office three times and, on each occasion, he was backed by an overwhelming majority. So, he was never worried about the stability of the government which was actually made independent of the Lok Sabha. On occasions, he even dared to incur the wrath of the judiciary for his irresponsible comments. He was truly a dictator in the democratic structure.

No end to battle over land

When the National Democratic Alliance government amended the land acquisition Act through an ordinance last week, it promised to set farmers and industry on an amiable path to mutual benefits and development.

Land acquisition under the 1894 Act had been marked by violent protests, even police firings at farmers. The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act, 2013, is the first law on acquiring land post-Independence. Does this ordinance amending the law before it was even fully implemented make the acquisition of land more transparent and fair?

Non-transparent resource allocation

The LARR Act was passed unanimously by all political parties last September. Commenting on the changes back then, Vinayak Chatterjee, Chairman, Confederation of Indian Industry’s National Task Force on Infrastructure, said: “The term ‘public purpose’ has now been clearly defined. The misuse of this clause under ‘eminent domain’ was the bane of the earlier legislation. It led to forcible, heartless acquisition programmes as well as ‘lazy acquisitions where acquired land was hugely in excess of needs or just left unutilised.’”

After the ordinance was passed last week, Mr. Chatterjee maintained, “All I can say is I am positive about the ordinance as it includes public-private partnership for social infrastructure in the exempt category.”

Among the main changes, the ordinance exempts special categories of projects from the requirements of social impact assessment (SIA) and obtaining consent of affected families mandated by the LARR Act. It dilutes the time limit of five years put on projects, after which if land remained utilised, it would go back to the landowner. Instead, the period of five years has been substituted by unspecified period. Another dilution is of the “retrospective clause” to exclude time spent under litigation in cases where a stay order has been passed.

CAG Report revelations

A month before the ordinance was cleared, a Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) report on special economic zones (SEZs) was tabled in Parliament. It found that of the 45,635 hectares of land notified for the development of SEZs, no operations had taken place in 38 per cent of the notified land even after several years of acquisition. It criticised developers, including Reliance, DLF and Essar, for acquiring land but using only “a fraction of it.”

“Many tracts of lands were acquired invoking the ‘public purpose’ clause,” it noted. For instance, the CAG found that the Mukesh Ambani-promoted SEZ in Navi Mumbai had got over 1,250 hectares of land at Dronagiri in Maharashtra in 2006 for a multi-product SEZ. But no industrial unit had been built on the land till now. The CAG found that several industrial houses had raised loans of Rs. 6,309.53 crore mortgaging leasehold government land.

The SEZs, along with private health and educational institutions, are in the broad category of public-private social infrastructure projects now exempted from the SIA’s scrutiny and consent clause under the ordinance. “By giving up the consent clause, you are opening the door for forcible land acquisition which is not acceptable and should not happen under any circumstances. By giving up SIA, you are opening the door for diversion of land,” said Jairam Ramesh, under whose tenure as Union Rural Development Minister the LARR Act was passed in 2013.

While industry bodies such as the CII have welcomed the ordinance, describing it as a sign of the government’s “serious commitment to economic reforms,” farmers’ unions have announced protests when Parliament meets for the Budget Session. “Hundreds of farmers were martyred protesting unfair acquisition. The Modi government has done this to hand over land to acquire land and hand it over to builders and industry,” said B.S. Rajwal, president, Bharat Kisan Union.

Environmentalists, too, have questioned the dilutions in favour of developers. “The government wants to empower companies to acquire land and do nothing with it. The ordinance says five years, or a specified time period whichever is later, but it does not say who will specify this time period, can it be changed or extended,” pointed out Shankar Gopalakrishnan of Campaign for Survival and Dignity.

Intensifying conflicts

A study released by a U.S.-based think-tank, Rights and Resources Initiative and Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development, studied Supreme Court and High Court judgments from the past 10 years, and newspaper reports on land disputes and found that land conflicts affect one-fourth of India’s 610 districts. In instances such as the ongoing struggle over POSCO land in Odisha, the Bengaluru-based Alternative Law Forum found that between 2006 and 2012, 230 cases were filed against over 2,000 villagers resisting POSCO.

Several of the conflicts have resulted from takeover of agricultural and irrigated land. But the ordinance dilutes the provision in the 2013 to acquire multi-crop, irrigated land only as a last resort but exempting special categories.

“Even if the company offers Rs. 50 lakh, we will not give up agricultural land,” said Deepak Das (35), who leads the North Karanpura Bachao Samiti in Hazaribagh in Jharkhand and is an accused in four cases related to land acquisition protests. The samiti comprises over 10,000 families at 23 villages in Hazaribagh opposing a NTPC project to mine coal here since 2005.

The land ordinance does little to check the real bottlenecks posed by cronyism, lack of accountability or arbitrariness in the decision-making processes. A “reform” such as this may fail to check social conflict with little improvement in vital infrastructure.

There is a need to make history more inclusive

It is unusual, if not sacrilegious, to invite a person who does not have history bred in his bones to a conclave of men and women steeped in the intricacies of a much talked about but inadequately understood human pursuit that dwells on the past and seeks to enlighten or confound the present. I, therefore, deem it a great privilege to be invited by the Indian History Congress to inaugurate its 75th session.

My own academic discipline in the distant past was political science and I do recall Professor John Seeley's jingle, well-known in my time and presumably not forgotten today, that "History without political science has no fruit and political science without history has no roots."

In more recent times, and for professional reasons, I came to value Winston Churchill's aphorism: "Study history, study history; in history lies all the secrets of statecraft."

Historians at all times have endeavoured, as Herodotus put it, "to preserve from decay the remembrance of what men have done." Historians have dwelt on the facts of the past and sought to make implicit or explicit judgements about those facts. Not to be ignored is a mid-nineteenth century caution that historians "have been seduced from truth not by their imagination but by their reason" pursuant to the impulse of "distorting facts to suit general principles."

Equally hazardous is the propensity to read the past into the present or the present into the past; so is the temptation to ignore the distinction between memory and history. Memory is based on identification with the past and is unavoidably egocentric, while history is based on its treatment as an external object and not a part of the self. History also cannot be faith-based. The domains of the two exist separately and conflation does not further the cause of either. To a lay person, a number of questions are unavoidable. What then is history, and with what does it deal? What is the task of the historian? Is history a science, or an art, or a bit of both?

A simple answer is that it is a method of inquiry, which deals with what has reportedly happened and not exactly as it happened. It is a narrative of change. It has been suggested that historical objectivity is seen to be not a single idea but rather sprawling sets of assumptions, attitudes, aspirations and antipathies. It is evident that on most if not all occasions, the narrative is contested. Such contestations nevertheless need to have a basis in facts, demonstrable and logically sustainable. As E H Carr put it, "the historian without facts is rootless and futile; facts without their historian are dead and meaningless." He added that "the study of history is inescapably the study of causes." This would exclude what has been called "counterfactuals" or the "what if" category and its simplistic assumptions and premises.

It is thus evident that methodology is critical to the study of history. Efforts to curb "intellectual efflorescence" through official dicta can only be viewed as undesirable. Furthermore, contestations over the historical past need civility of discourse to ensure that it does not cross the imperatives of ensuring social peace and societal cohesion. Carr also dwelt on history's wider relevance: "an individual stripped of memory finds the world a confusing place: a society with no sense of history is unaware of where it has come from or where it is going."

Is there a more practical relevance of history? To my mind, it helps us know and learn from the mistakes of the past. Those mistakes relate to frailties in judgement leading to mistakes in statecraft and governance. These as one historian has put it, could be due to tyranny or oppression, excessive ambition, incompetence or decadence, and folly or perversity. In each, the inability or the unwillingness of society or its ruling establishment to pay heed to reason and realism, to dissentingopinion and to alternative courses of policy or action, led to unfounded certitude resulting in mistakes. It is for this reason that in every period of the past, beginning perhaps with the 30th century BC Egyptian King Menes, codes for dispensing justice were enunciated. Alongside, manuals were penned for the guidance of rulers. Departures from these and the resulting consequences is what historians have dwelt upon.

History writing, and history teaching, has a contemporary relevance in a more evident sense. We live in a world of nation states but the idea of a homogenous nation state is clearly problematic. Diversity is identifiable even in the most homogeneous of societies today. The global scene in modern times has been replete with complexities and tensions of what has been called the national question.

In our own country the sheer diversity of identities, 4,635 communities according to the Anthropological Survey of India, is a terse reminder about the care that needs to be taken while putting together the profile of a national identity. It has of necessity to be liberal and accommodative; marked, to quote an eminent scholar, neither by complete homogenisation nor by the particularism of closed communities. Instead, it is a balance struck by "the mutual gravitational pull of disparate sections that make the whole." Our sagacity in building pluralist structures that have stood the test for over six decades, stands in contrast to many strait-jacket edifices in other societies that came to grief. By the same token, these structures need constant nurturing.

It is no longer a matter of debate that history has to be more than narrowly political or economic. The imperative is to make it comprehensive and inclusive of neglected groups in society. These subaltern classes, as Gramsci had pointed out, are not unified and their history, therefore, has to be intertwined with that of civil society. It has challenged what has been called "the univocality of statist discourse." It has sought to focus on Dalit and gender issues. The methodology of studying these opened up new and enriching vistas of study for historians.

The pasture of stupidity, said the great medieval historian Ibn Khaldun, is unwholesome for mankind. He warned historians not to succumb to the "temptation of sensationalism", adding that "a hidden pitfall of historiography is disregard for the fact that conditions within nations and regions change with the change of period and the passage of time."