hindustan hamara - by k kak

[Guest guest]

Namaskar Mitra,

Hindustan Hamara": Big People & Double Standards By Krishen Kak

http://esamskriti.com/html/inside.asp?cat=643&subcat=642&cname=hindustan

 

It is a year since our English-language media invented a hero and the

anniversary is an appropriate occasion to look at some discoveries to which

that invention led. Gita Dewan Verma (Slumming India, 2002) divides the

citizenry into four categories - The Big People, The Little People, The Other

People, and Whistle-blowers - and this little homily is addressed to those she

calls The Other People, "who wonder about what is happening and think it is not

their doing and I hope they see it is still their tragedy".

On March 20, 2002, the Times of India published "Hindustan Hamara" that at once

propelled its author Mr Harsh Mander, IAS into the very front rank of our

country’s conscience-keepers. Mr Mander is the head of the Indian operations of

the British NGO Action Aid that is among the world leaders of the child

sponsorship industry, and he is one of The Big People "who fabricate the

stories". As it happens, Mander’s own fabrications in the past one-year have

unraveled. For one, his anguished conscience at the Gujarat violence and his

moral outrage that led him to proclaim his resignation from the IAS are exposed

to have been a deliberate self-serving lie. For another, the politico-communal

agenda of the British NGO he furthers in India has been revealed. Weeks after

these discoveries were made public in the national press*, not one has been

publicly repudiated by anyone, leading to a greater discovery of significant

connections amongst Mander, the British NGO, the British government, Indian

governments, Indian NGOs, and the IAS, so that now Mander/Action Aid have found

it necessary to retain one of the world’s largest "brand building" firms, the

British PR giant Ogilvy & Mather, to cover up the emperor’s nakedness with a

huge advertising campaign.

The British government is a substantial donor to Action Aid and quite expectedly

the money is given in furtherance of British policy for India. Mr. Mander, for a

munificent salary, assisted by two other IAS officers in Action Aid, used his

IAS connections to further that policy, till it was opportune for him to retire

from IAS employ. Working for the British government in India, again on lucrative

salaries far in excess of their IAS entitlement, are other IAS officers, whose

ACRs are written by their British employers. Again, quite expectedly, their

competence will be judged by how effectively they implement that British

department’s policy. And the Britain-supported Action Aid has been on a massive

expansion spree in India not only directly but also through

link/sponsored/satellite agencies/companies, some of which are connected to

Indian governments.

There is a vocal movement in India called the National Campaign for People’s

Right to Information whose leading representatives include Mr. Shekhar Singh

and Mr Harsh Mander. Mr. Shekhar Singh, though asked, will not say whether he

or his NGOs have received money from Action Aid. The NCPRI, requiring

transparency and accountability from others, prefers not to practice what it

preaches, and so there is reason to suspect the double standards of NCPRI

leaders with strong government connections who, advocating NGO inclusion in the

new right to information law, may quietly have lobbied to ensure exclusion, so

that they and their organizations can escape Indian public scrutiny. A former

Action Aid executive has publicly detailed the duplicity of Action Aid’s top

management.** The duplicity of its India head is not a secret in IAS circles.

And surely the strong support Action Aid receives not just from the British

government but from the IAS and Indian governments too cannot be mere

coincidence.

The British NGO through its leader is a promoter of the Congress Party and its

suprema and the return include the Rajiv Gandhi Sadbhavana Award and a

financial nexus with the Rajasthan, Chattisgarh and Delhi governments. Its

India budget is about one-and-a-half times the Bofors bribe. That,

notwithstanding the government’s FCRA inspectors, spun with spokes of foreign

silk is a large web of political and financial connections with friendly

neighborhood spider Mander in the center should be evident. And there are

interconnecting webs. Consider the World Bank-supported American-sponsored

Global Alliance for Workers & Communities which justifies American-style

capitalism and whitewashes two American MNCs that earned notoriety for their

sweatshop procurement from the "Third World".

In the center of its India web sits Amita Joseph who’d earlier helped implement

British and American government policy in India. She categorically denied any

official connection with Action Aid, till confronted with the record of one.

Likewise, Shabnam Hashmi representing SAHMAT emphatically denied foreign

financial support, till confronted with the names of sponsors of her foreign

travel. Such prevarication comes easily to our Spiderman and Spiderwoman who

represent a prevaricating species, The Big People, that arrogates to itself the

knowledge of what is best for The Little People, "the People of India". As

Hashmi claims, it is people like her "who have been struggling to keep the

country together", and implicitly this country would fall apart without these

spiderwebs!

An identifying characteristic of this species is its double standards;

self-righteous for itself and holier-than-thou for others, and to dare question

its icons is blasphemy that is met with personal invective or arrogant silence.

Take, for example, the Principal of St Stephen’s College who held forth Mander

as a role model for Indian youth; when challenged, Principal Anil Wilson

responded with an ad hominem attack; when confronted with a direct question of

a specific financial nexus between his College and Action Aid, he retreated

behind a smokescreen of evasive bluster. These double standards are tellingly

and colorfully typified by the resounding protests that quite rightly erupted

when a political leader was labeled a female canine from Italy, and then the

deafening silence of the same class when the country’s prime minister was far

more viciously called a cow/mother-eater.

And such double standards also characterize Big People institutions statutorily

set up ostensibly to protect the secular weal. The Press Council of India,

presented with a complaint that shows chapter and verse how Mander's TOI

article of a year ago violated the Council’s own guidelines on the reporting of

communal violence, 11 months and 6 reminders later has not broken its silence.

The National Human Rights Commission, presented with a detailed complaint that

shows its one standard for Gujarat and another for Kashmir, 9 months and 9

reminders later, too has not broken its silence. Hopefully the President of

India, to whom petitions in both these matters have now been addressed, will

show that he holds the same standard for all citizens. And the Indian

government must require its officials applying to serve foreign

NGOs/governments to first resign from its own employ.

Unless The Other People rouse themselves from their apathy over the double

standards of The Big People in collusion with Indian political and

administrative elites, often suborned by suspect foreign money, they will soon

find themselves joining The Little People as spider prey.

* see, for example, "Conspiracy of silence" at http://www.hvk.org/articles/0103/211.html

** see, for example, "An Open Letter to Harsh Mander, Country Director, Action Aid India" at

www.vigilonline.com/news/whats_new/harsh_mander.htm

April 2003 - (Krishen Kak was of the IAS, and is a Whistle-blower)

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