Politics of mistrust and insecurity

1) The ascendance of Donald Trump to the White House is in consonance with the broader trend of political discourse in many countries across the world. There is a new stress on political discourse based on ‘identity’, ‘security’ and ‘nationalism’ in the foreground of political process. The political discourse based on universal normative framework and ideological conviction (liberty, fraternity, equality, human rights, and universal human responsibility) were pushed back to the background of the political arguments and discourse (for a detailed analysis of this refer to annex I).
2) The neo-liberal economic framework and policies that dominated the political and policy discourse ever since the 1990s got saturated in the last few years. Those who preached and pushed ‘free market global capitalism’ are increasingly worried about ‘keeping jobs and money’ within their ‘national confines’. With the rise of political hyper-nationalism, there are more ‘protectionist’ economic trends and also more restrictions even for international travel and migration.
3) There is a rise of right-wing and new populist authoritarian politics emerging all over the world. In Asia, except few countries (such as Mongolia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and to some extent Nepal), all countries are witnessing different shades of new populist authoritarian politics. Even in the countries that provided support for human rights and democracy, there is a rise of neo-conservative right wing politics. Hence, there is a decreasing trend of the international aid by the traditional donors posing grate challenges for the available bilateral and multilateral funds for development, democracy and human rights. This context is posing great challenges to the national, regional and international organizations depended fully on ‘foreign funding’ or international development cooperation.
4) With the rise of China and India as economic power blocks within the larger Asia-Pacific region, there is a consequent shift in the geo-politics within Asia and also the larger political economy with in Asia, in relation to the regional formations, institutions and dynamics international relations within the world. The stagnation of European Economy and the increasingly inward looking American economic policy approach will have immense implications for the international development cooperation based on the old ‘global marshal plan’ framework.
5) All these means immense challenges for civil society organisations working on human rights, democratic governance and sustainable development at the national and international level. Most of the existing Foundations and new CSR oriented foundations will begin to focus more on service delivery ‘tangible’ results and without questioning injustice or inequality or authoritarianism.

World is moving into a deeper flux, in to an era of new protectionism, neo-conservative nationalism and a politics based on fear, insecurity and hate.

Why I stopped reading News Papers and stopped watching TV shows?

Our mode and manner of reading are shifting drastically. Will printed News Paper exist after twenty years? I hardly watch any TV programme. For a long time I have not used TV at my home. This is partly due to the fact that I get real time news and views online- and well informed on a real time basis. News reach faster than TV or News Paper. I also wonder how many of the younger generation watch TV or read printed News Paper on a daily basis. Technology transformed the way we read, think, communicate and act. I often read on my phone and also write on my phone. I write in Malayalam on my phone often sitting in a car or a cafe or at the airport or in a que.

I no longer read a printed news paper. But I read at least twenty news papers on and online news articles a day. There is a significant change in the mode and manner of reading. With the emergence of multiple modes of social media, there is a wide range of choices available for reading. So I end up reading articles from four Malayalam News Papers and at least ten English News Papers and online news portals. This also means the average time I spend on a online Malayalam News channel is around fifteen minute a day. And I might be spending two hours a day to read articles and analysis all over the world. While most of these I read on my android phone, I also read many on my Laptop. I read book when I am flying - as I get totally uninterrupted time to complete a book. The last book I read on my flight was Herbarium- a recent novel in Malayalam.
In my office there is a detailed plan and budget discussion happening. And there is not even a page printed as my colleges made all data available on a pen-drive and also online.
And this shift is happening fast among those who are younger. Many of them read on their smart phone- and also write on the phone. This also means the attention span has reduced drastically. This will have other sociological and political consequences.

കേരള സമൂഹത്തിന്റെ രോഗാതുര അവസ്ഥ

സമൂഹ മാധ്യമങ്ങളിലും ചില ഓൺലൈൻ മാധ്യമങ്ങളിലും ലോ അക്കാഡമി പ്രശ്നം ചർച്ച ചെയ്യപ്പെടുന്നതിൽ ഒരു ഇക്കിളി ചുവ കലർത്തി വിളമ്പുന്നതിനു ഒരു പരിധി വരെ കാരണം ഒരു സ്ത്രീയാണ് വിമർശിക്കപ്പെടുന്നത് എന്നതാണ് . ഒരു പുരുഷൻ ആണെങ്കിൽ ചർച്ച ഇത് പോലെ ആയിരിക്കില്ല.
അതും ടീവി മാധ്യമങ്ങളിൽ പരസ്യമായ ഒരു പേരും ഗ്ലാമർ മുഖവും ഉള്ള ഒരു സ്ത്രീ ആണെന്നതാണ് ഈ വിഷയം ഒരു മസാല കഥകൂട്ടായി മാറുന്നതിന്റ കാരണം . ഇതിൽ ഇക്കിളി കലർത്താനായി ഒരു മാധ്യ മ മാനേജരിന്റെ പേരു വലിച്ചിഴക്കുന്നതും ഒരു എത്തിനോക്കൽ സാമൂഹിക സമീപനത്തിന്റ വികലതയെ ആണ് സൂചിപ്പിക്കുന്നത്.
ഇവിടെ സ്വാശ്രയ കോളജുകളിലെ വിദ്യഭാസ നിലവാരമോ , പഠന ഗുണമേന്മയോ ചർച്ച ചെയ്യപ്പെടുന്നില്ല. ഇവിടെ സർക്കാരിന്റെ ഇരട്ടതാപ്പു വിമര്ശിക്കപെടുന്നില്ല. ഇവിടെ ഇങ്ങനെയുള്ള സാമൂഹിക മനസ്ഥിതി ചോദ്യം ചെയ്യപ്പെടുന്നില്ല . ലോ അക്കാഡമിയുടെ പ്രിൻസിപ്പാൾ ഒരു പുരുഷൻ ആയിരുന്നെങ്കിൽ ഈ ഇക്കിളി പത്രപ്രവത്തനത്തിനു ഇത്രയും സ്കോപ്പില്ലായിരുന്നു .
പല പോസ്റ്റുകളിലും കാണുന്നത് തികഞ്ഞ സ്ത്രീ വിരുദ്ധ സമീപനമാണ് . കഴിഞ്ഞ കുറെ വർഷങ്ങൾ ആയി ബിജൂ രാധാ ക്രിഷ്ണൻ എന്ന ക്രിമിനലിനേക്കാൾ മാധ്യമങ്ങൾ സരിതയെ ഫോക്കസ് ചെയ്തതും ഇക്കിളി രാഷ്ട്രീയ ചേരുവയും എത്തിനോക്കൽ കൊതിയും കാരണമാണ്. ഇതിൽ ഇവിടുത്തെ രാഷ്ട്രീയ നേതാക്കൾക്കും ഒരു പങ്കുണ്ട്. അവർ പലപ്പോഴും ചർച്ച ചെയ്യുന്നത് പോളിസി ഇഷ്യുവോ കാമ്പുള്ള രാഷ്ട്രീയ പ്രശ്ങ്ങളോ അല്ല മറിച്ചു മാധ്യമങ്ങളുടെ മസാലകൂട്ട് കാഴ്ചകളുടെ കൂട്ടത്തിൽ പാടി കലക്ക വെള്ളത്തിൽ എങ്ങനെ ഒക്കെ മീൻ പിടിക്കാമെന്ന രാഷ്ട്രീയ കുരുട്ട് ബുദ്ധിയാണ് .തിരഞ്ഞെടുപ്പ് കഴിഞ്ഞതോട് കൂടി സരിതാ സീരിയൽ അവസാനിച്ചു .
ഇത് പറഞ്ഞത് ലോ അക്കാഡമിയോ അതിൽ ഉൾപ്പെട്ട ആളുകളെയോ ഒരു തരത്തിലും ന്യായീകരിക്കാനല്ല. മറിച്ചു നമ്മുടെ സാമൂഹിക മാധ്യമങ്ങളിൽ കാണുന്ന സ്ത്രീ വിരുദ്ധ ഇക്കിളി എത്തി നോക്കൽ മാനസികാവസ്ഥയും മസാല മാധ്യമ കഥകൂട്ടുകൾക്കു ഉള്ള വിപണിയും കേരള സമൂഹത്തിന്റെ രോഗാതുര അവസ്ഥയെയെ ആണ് കാണിക്കുന്നത് എന്നു പറയാനാണ് .

FB Notes on Negotiating freedom, Republic Day and Demonetization

Living is an art of negotiating freedom and spaces of ideals, interests and identity with institutions and within institutions of power relations. Such institutions include language, culture, religion, family, civil society, market, knowledge, employment and nation-state. Institutions are standardization and ordering power relations for various functions and outcome in the broader human ecology and habitat. We are all born in to institutions. And our identities are shaped by the institutions that we are attached and affiliated to. And the very act of giving a 'name' is given. 'Naming' is also an act of co-opting a child in to given institutional network that is entrenched and established in a socio-cultural ecology. Hence, we are all only free enough to make choices within the scope of our given or affiliated institutional network of power relations within the social, cultural and historic context of a society.. And the most evident signifier of this is your 'name'. And 99.99% people are given their 'name' by the institutional network that link family to religion and language.

Republic Day is to remember and celebrate the idea, values and practice the Republic of India as enshrined in our Constitution and articulated so well in the very preamble of the Constitution of India.

Let us remember how we became a REPUBLIC. Let us remember who struggled for making us a RE-PUBLIC. Let us not forget who all betrayed the struggle. Let us be aware that who all undermine the core principles and values of our Republic. Let us be aware who are all trying to sell our Republic. Let us be beware about those who undermine the Constutution of India, the foundation of our Republic.

Dancing with Dreams

Bodhigram is a nurturing  flow  of imagination to dance with the dreams. It is a call to action to experiment with creative possibilities of life and get excited to discover the beauty of the self, to go beyond the self to touch, sense and feel the life within and beyond time and space. It is a space to seek and discover the transformative options for people and planet. It is a work of art in progress.

Dancing with your dream in a playful rhythm is what make you and your dreams alive and exciting. Many a time many people are either prisoners of their dreams or end up imprisoning their dreams. Freeing your dreams and then dancing with your dreams as partners in the symphony of life make the world brighter with hope.

Daring to dream and dreaming dreams beyond yourselves require immense sense of freedom within and beyond to unleash your imagination and ability to inspire others to join the dream to translate it in to a work of art, an act of collective enterprise.
Never be fearful about realizing freedom. Freedom within comes in with immense responsibility to expand freedom beyond you and make change, happen within, around and beyond.

Fearless minds can only become real change-makers. And real change-makers do not seek quick return, or recognition or name or fame or wealth. They dance with their dreams; they play with history and they make change happen within and beyond. They dare to dream beyond their life-span.They dream beyond time and space. Their work is the creative expression of life.
Transformative leadership seeks to challenge and change within and beyond.

Transfomative leaders continuously seek to bridge the 'Being'- 'Doing' and 'Becoming'.It is the capacity to be honest with oneself; continuously transform oneself, be aware about the world deep with in ; and it is the freedom to learn and unlearn continuously with a sense of your being and growing and outgrowing within and beyond.
Transformative leaders transform gently with a sense of sharing and caring. They often transform the words, and deeds in a playful manner with a sense of meditative mission to softly dancing playfully with lives and making their life like a flute where dreams flow and spread like music.

Dancing with your dreams and playing with the music of life make life a creative journey of excitement.

In life , the mode and manner of travel is often more important than destination itself. 

 We need begin an exciting journey  within and beyond to touch, feel and sense life in its billions of manifestation. We need to touch lives of people in a gentle way to feel them and to identify with their joys, sorrows, hope and anxieties. We need to go beyond being prisoners of our own dream or simply imprisoning our dreams. We need to go beyond the self to touch and feel  the flow of life beyond the constraints of time and space. We need to love people everywhere irrespective of the caste, creed, gender, nationality and location. When we begin to listen to the songs of leaves, the hope of a tree, the resilience of roots, the flow of a spring, the ripples of water, waves of the sea, the mountains that touch the sky, the mood of  a bird, and beauty of life in all its expression, we begin to feel the rhythms of life and we learn to move beyond the little confines of the self. When we learn to love everyone, we also learn to truly love our  own life with a  detached sense of joy.  

Dancing with you dreams help to discover the aesthetics of the self to go beyond the self to touch, feel and sense life everywhere, in all its expressions.

Life is exciting. Live every moment with gratitude and love.

Attappady Diary

It was indeed a learning experience to spent a day to have some basic direct understanding of the process of marginalization and 'development' among the adivasi/tribal communities of the Attappady. I was in Attappady to conduct a workshop for the adivasi youth leaders and elected representatives of the panchayats on budget, TSP and local governance at Agali, jointly organised by Thampu and the ISDG.

What is known as Attappady is relatively a big region , as big as the Alapuzha district.
There are around 33500 Adivasies in the region adjoining the silent valley national park., in Palakkad district of Kerala. There are also number of rivers. However, the adivasi communities have been displaced from the natural and traditional habitat and also from their their livelihood over the last five decades. This is partly due to 'development' by the new settlers in the area who outnumber the tribal communities in many parts and also due to some government development projects, to 'develop' adivasies.
In fact, the biggest enterprise near Agali is a very popular Sehion meditation centre, which is fast becoming another centre like Potta.
And with the influx of new settlers from the 'Mainstream' over the last many decades, there also seems to be cumulative land alienation of tribal habitat.

Here the settler communities from the mainstream represent almost all communities. Over the decades, many of the adivasi communities moved up the hills with less acess to water and also alienated from the traditional livelihood, based on minor forests produce.
We have visited a relatively new adivasi habitat(Poothu vazhi) that came up few years ago when these communities were displaced from their earlier habitat near AHADS , Agali.. There are three hundred households. Many of them have concrete houses funded through TSP and other government schemes, though there is no livelihood. The relief efforts by the government is visible here.There is also a community kitchen. They have been given land on the hillside, though they can't use the land as there is no access to water and hence remain barren land.
Here the mode 'of development' indicates more a politics and governance of of patronisation rather than development that is enabling, empowering and sustainable in the long run. As a result, the habitat that I visited reminded me of the old Laksham veedu colonies for dalit communities ( another form of gattoisation) . Without any means for sustainable livelihood, their food security depends on the community kitchen(which is a short term relief measure). Most of them work as agricultural daily wage labours in the farms of settler communities.

There is a well designed government tribal mission hospital with in three km away from the hamlet. There are supposed to be 24 doctors there. I am told many of them are there to fulfill the criteria for getting admission for postgraduate degrees. My friends from Thampu, a grassroots civil society organisation of adivasies, tell me that there are no doctors for gynecology and pediatrics, particularly in the context of high rates of maternal and infant mortality among the adivasi communities.
However, there are also many good things happening. My friend Shaji KAgave many positive examples
There are more and more children from tribal communities completing 12 standard and joining college. There is a government college in Attappady. Last year seven children got admission in Sainik school due to the training efforts of one NGO. There are few engineers(with BTech) from the adivasi communities and one among them happened to be a young friend of mine. There is also a good school by a philanthropic activist, making a difference. I heard good things about Bethany Hospital by the Tribal Mission, a non-governmental charity initiative. I agree with Shaji that the best possible option in the long term is to invest in health, education and regeneration of environment.
Any mode of development become sustainable when people are empowered to claim their rights, choose the modes of livelihood and protect their habitat and environment.
I am told that there are some committed government officers such as the present sub collector and an officer from the Rural Development Ministry in Delhi who are trying to make a positive difference. And it is important to have organisations like Thampu that facilitates a process of dignity, empowerment and human rights among the tribal communities.

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Politics as 'Spin' and 'spin' and Spin': How lies get recycled.

Mr Rijiju said the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) and state police forces personnel must take the lead as the nation is poised to join the leading economies of the world. " What does this indicate? Police and armed forces can make India a 'leading economy of the world'?
The entire story of the government version is a classic example of the 'spin' and 'spin' instead of telling the whole truth, tell what they want to project and mislead the people. When they say only 1% pay income tax, most may believe that 99% don't pay tax. And that is the biggest lie. Because almost everyone who buy anything from the market pay tax in India.

Every Indian pay tax as in India most of taxes are indirect taxes. The Union Budget for 2016-17 has projected net tax collections at Rs 10.54 lakh crore, out of which indirect tax collections, a reflection of production and trade activities in the country, are estimated to be Rs 7.79 lakh crore. This means major chunk is from indirect taxes. If I go for a lunch or dinner in a restaurant in Trivandrum, I pay 18.5 % as tax. I did a study of the rural household in Kerala, during an economic literacy workshop in my own village, with women from relatively poor household. They have to buy everything from the market. And they brought a sample of things they usually buy and the indirect taxes were at an average of more than 10%. It was the first time they realized that they pay tax everyday to the government. And one of them said : "government' pick pocket us'everyday".

So those who say only 1% pay income tax say only part of the story. If only one percent pay income tax , it akso means there are less than one percent of Indians earn enough income from a regular job in the government or private sector, where there is tax deduction at source. And the reason that relatively very less people pay income tax simply because most of the people in India do not have income to pay tax.

And India is emerging as one of the most unequal societies in the world.In India, 75 % of people live less than 2 dollars a day and 25% still form the largest number of poor people and millions don't have access to land or livelihood. So the straight reason for relatively less income tax in India (compared to developed countries) is that a vast majority of Indians simply don't have enough income to pay income tax.

Income inequality, along with social and political inequality, is on the rise in India. There are 65 dollar billionaires in India. And they pay relatively less tax( in relation to their high income) than the rest( due to the higher percent of the indirect taxes in India) and most of
the tax evaders happened to belong to the rich class in India. In India, the richest 1% own 53% of the country’s wealth, according to the latest data from Credit Suisse. The richest 5% own 68.6%, while the top 10% have 76.3%. At the other end of the pyramid, the poorer half jostles for a mere 4.1% of national wealth. compare this with the data in 2000.The Credit Suisse data shows that India’s richest 1% owned just 36.8% of the country’s wealth in 2000, while the share of the top 10% was 65.9%. Since then they have steadily increased their share of the pie. The share of the top 1% now exceeds 50%. As per the various estimates 95% of Indians have assets worth less than 6 Lakhs. And there are 125,000(1.25 Lakhs) dollar millionaires in India. So instead of addressing the real problem of inequality, poverty, lack of assets and lack of livelihood for the majority of Indians, there is no point in worrying that only one percent pay income tax.

Just 1% Indians Pay Income Tax, Says NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant - NDTV

Chief Executive Officer of NITI Aayog Amitabh Kant on Wednesday said just one per cent of India's more than 1.25 billion population pays Income Tax.

PROFIT.NDTV.COM

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