Yonathan Listik: The True Meaning of Autonomy

Yonathan Listik looks at Cornelius Castoriadis’s Socialism and Autonomous Society, from Telos 43 (Spring 1980).

“A just society is not a society that has adopted just laws, once and for all, rather it is a society where the question of justice remains constantly open—in other words, where there is always the socially real possibility of questioning the law and it foundations”

Cornelius Castoriadis’s opening line in “Socialism and Autonomous Society”—”Henceforth, the terms ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ will have to be abandoned”—clearly indicate that he is breaking with orthodox Marxism. But one must not rush to a conclusion since upon closer inspection the dissonances are not that relevant to Marx’s overall project as presented by Castoriadis. His criticism of notions such as the “dictatorship of the proletariat” could automatically place him outside the Marxist discourse. Nevertheless he manages to illustrate, even within orthodox Marxism, the minor position of canonical notions, compared to Marx’s essential project of an autonomous society: a society composed of free and sovereign people.

According to Castoriadis the essential issue debated by society is the balance between liberty and equality, and this is the core difference between socialism and capitalism: capitalism values liberty, and socialism values equality. Neither extreme would be perfect, but the discussion centers on what level of freedom is worth sacrificing for the desired level of equality. Castoriadis argues that this is false since the two concepts are not truly separate; society makes the two concepts exclusionary where in fact they are complementary. Capitalism presents this inherent contradiction of the two concepts because it assumes that total equality and liberty are impossible together. This creates a problematic society because the exploitation of the poor by the rich is legitimized as the only possible system. In this sense, the Soviet Union was as capitalist as America. It assumed that the exploitation of the majority by the few was inevitable in the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Socialism, according to Castoriadis, must combine both liberty and equality. Socialism aims at creating an autonomous society through the ultimate realization of both these values. A socialist society must be just, and in order to be so it must not diminish liberty or equality: for Castoriadis, there is no fight for equality if there is no fight for autonomy. Castoriadis is not concerned only with enlarging individual autonomy. Indeed, autonomy here does not share the same meaning that it has in liberalism. Real liberty and equality are not distinct from one another (as in liberalism) but are rather complementary in the exercise of democratic society.

Many before Castoriadis have emphasized that economic equality is not Marxism’s final goal; rather, it is a freer society of autonomous individuals. However, Castoriadis’s innovation lies in the idea that a perfect society is not desirable. Nevertheless, this does not mean that we should not try, with a measure of humility, to recognize and correct the errors on the way to this goal: “A just society is not a society that has adopted just laws, once and for all, rather it is a society where the question of justice remains constantly open—in other words, where there is always the socially real possibility of questioning the law and it foundations” (104, italics in original).

Castoriadis’s argument remains relevant today. The problem lies not in implementing the laws but in changing them. Even the best laws become outdated, so the solution is not the perfection of the ultimate societal structure. The objective is to create an open system, one that people are empowered to change it. The people must rule themselves, as only autonomy brings equality and freedom. Liberty is not an exemption but an action in the public space, and it requires the individual to take action. In its essence, liberty means to “give oneself one’s own law.” Moreover, in order for liberty to create an autonomous society, the participation must be equalitarian: “[S]ince the idea of a society without any power is an incoherent fiction, the first answer to the question of liberty is the equality of all in the participation in power. A free society where power is really exercised by a collectivity in which all participate effectively in equality” (94).

Castoriadis goes beyond the notion that cultural and moral issues are at play. He introduced the notion that Marxism is not absolutely right but that at least it has the right principles. Marxism must not be a vision of the perfect world but the critical posture of perfecting it. Since the aim is an autonomous society and the system is bound to fail, it must be open for the collective to challenge and fix it. This is the only form of realizing the democracy to which socialism aspires: “To abolish heteronomy does not mean to abolish the difference between instituting society and instituted society—which would be impossible anyway—but to abolish the enslavement of the first by the second. The collectivity will give itself rules, knowing that it gives them to itself, that they are or will always become inadequate, that it can change them—and they bind it as long as it has not changed them in a regular manner” (105).

http://www.telospress.com/the-true-meaning-of-autonomy/

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Hungary warned its democracy could be put under international scrutiny

Hungary has been warned it could be the first country in the EU to have its democracy placed under international scrutiny. An influential committee of the Council of Europe, the Strasbourg-based human rights watchdog (not part of the EU), proposed that Hungary be subject to a "monitoring procedure" that would place the country's democratic rights and liberties under international monitoring, something that has never happened in any of the EU's 27 countries.

The final decision to push ahead with the scrutiny needs to be taken by the council's parliamentary assembly which brings together lawmakers from the organisation's 47 member states. Ten countries outside the EU but members of the council, including Russia and Turkey, are being monitored. The "opinion" delivered by the council's monitoring committee accused Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orbán of seeking to take control of independent institutions in Hungary, of using the constitutional rewriting to cement the power of his own political party, Fidesz, and of ignoring the country's supreme court.

Budapest and Brussels have been at odds for months over curbs on freedom in Hungary, including restrictions on media expression, pressure on judges, control of the central bank. Orbán has consistently and robustly rejected the charges, with his government and diplomats mounting a loud and detailed campaign aimed at disproving the criticism. The committee said Orbán had acted hastily and opaquely in breach of democratic principles, had bypassed the country's constitutional court and was constantly changing the basic law and undermining the constitution in pursuit of "narrow party political interests."

Orbán's Fidesz has a two-thirds majority in the parliament in Budapest. Orbán has used that ascendancy to revise the constitution four times in the past 18 months. The legal changes are also being scrutinised by lawyers at the European commission and in another body of the Council of Europe. "Each of the concerns outlined in this decision is inherently serious in terms of democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights," the statement said. "Taken separately, they would already warrant close scrutiny by the monitoring committee. In the present case, however, what is striking is the sheer accumulation of reforms that aim at establishing political control of most key institutions while in parallel weakening the system of checks and balances."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/26/hungary-democracy-scrutiny-europe-orban

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Mihir Srivastava: How Big Business Gets Its Way in India

Ratan Tata, weeks before relinquishing control of the Tata Group, has warned India of crony capitalism. In a recent interview with PTI, asked if the problem was getting worse, he replied, “Yes. It’s just an observation, I have no facts or figures to prove it.” Asked about a statement he made on the erosion of values and ethics in India, especially within the business community, he said, “I hold that view.”

» Indian Parliament has come to a standstill again as reports surface that the US-based retailer Walmart has spent Rs 125 crore since 2008 on ‘lobbying’ in India for market access among other things.

LANJIGARH, ODISHA ~ Since late 2010, when transcripts of the Radia Tapes were published in Open, questions of corporate governance and the influence of business houses over government policy have dominated public discussions in India. But as Ratan Tata’s statement reveals, the problem only seems to be getting worse.

In this report, we focus on the case of Vedanta, and specifically, on its Lanjigarh refinery in Odisha, where despite reports of problems on the ground and consistent local opposition, the government is going out of its way to ensure that the bauxite refinery’s closure is only a temporary setback to the company.

Vedanta Resources, a conglomerate owned by the Patna-born and London-based billionaire Anil Agarwal, has always been controversial. Currently, it is engaged in two cases at the Supreme Court. One is a case involving its purchase of Cairn Energy’s stake in Cairn India, which shares oilwells in Rajasthan with the Government-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp Ltd. On this, The Herald of Scotland has reported: ‘Westminster secretly lobbied the Indian government to give the go-ahead to a controversial multi-billion pound deal with a leading Scottish oil company, internal emails passed to the Sunday Heraldreveal… UK government officials, briefed ‘over dinner’ by Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy, offered to ‘polish’ and send a letter drafted by the company. At a lunch, they also urged a key Indian government minister to back the deal. The Indian government subsequently gave permission for Cairn’s £5.5 billion agreement to sell off the bulk of its Indian oil business to Vedanta…’

The other is a case filed by the state-owned Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) challenging a decision of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) to withdraw its clearance for bauxite mining in Niyamgiri, a tribal belt in Kalahandi district of Odisha. From the very beginning, mining operations here—by OMC to supply Vedanta—have been controversial, with opposition parties in Odisha and at the national level demanding a CBI probe of all mining agreements, alleging that they violate forest laws and the state’s mineral policy—a sellout of the state’s interests.

The MoEF had cancelled its Niyamgiri forest clearance to the OMC-Vedanta project in 2011, after protests by tribals that got wide media coverage. The Ministry had also admonished Vedanta for its violation of ecological norms and expanding its refinery—a facility to turn bauxite into alumina, used as raw material to yield aluminium via electrolysis—without a mandatory environmental clearance. But no explanation has yet been offered for the ease with which the MoEF let the project go ahead in the first place.

When Vedanta shut its refinery in Lanjigarh on 5 December, it was a move widely seen as aimed at exerting pressure on the state government... read more

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/how-big-business-gets-its-way

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Rahul Pandita - Under Pressure: Migrants flee from religious persecution in Pakistan

When it comes to protecting minorities, Pakistan has a terrible record. There are hardly any convictions for crimes against them. Even arrests are rare. There are a staggering number of bonded labourers in Pakistan, a vast majority of them Hindu. According to Hanuman, another recent arrival as a refugee, he has seen about a thousand Hindus—men, women and children—held in captivity as slaves by a landlord..

By the time her visa arrived, Bharti had given birth to a baby boy in Pakistan’s Sindh province. There was no time to apply for his passport. The visa for India, for a holy dip at the Kumbh in Allahabad, had been hard to come by. Not everyone had been as lucky. Many others who had applied did not get one. Moreover, her family could pay for the visa only because their Hindu neighbours had collected money and given it to them. She knew they would get no second chance. So Bharti took her newborn in her arms, and, together with her labourer husband and six other children, reached the last checkpost in Pakistan at its border with India’s Rajasthan.

“Where is the baby’s passport?” demanded the guard at the border. “He was just born. Please have mercy on me, let him go,” Bharti pleaded. But the baby was snatched from her arms and given to her husband’s brother who had not got a visa. Tormented by pangs of separation, Bharti crossed the border. The group of 479 Hindus she was with attended the Kumbh and then made its way to Delhi’s Bijwasan area, where they have been living in a couple of buildings. Bharti spends the day looking at a picture of her baby taken on a relative’s cellphone. “I am writhing like a fish without water,” she says. Outside her room, volunteers of a Hindu group are distributing foodgrain. But she has no appetite, she says.

There are more than 2.5 million Hindus in Pakistan, most of them poor Dalits who live in Sindh. Life has always been hard for Hindus in that country ever since its formation. But things turned worse for them after the Babri Masjid demolition of 1992. In the past few years, thousands have been reported killed, and hundreds of women abducted, raped or forcibly married off. There are also reports of forced conversions to Islam. Things are so bad that many feel that it is impossible for them to live in Pakistan any longer.

In March last year, Indian middle-order batsman Virat Kohli scored an unbeaten 183 against Pakistan in the Asia Cup. The same night, three Hindu girls of the Kolhi tribe were abducted from a village in Sindh. “We make sure that our daughters get married by the age of 10-11. But even that does not guarantee their safety,” says Nehru Lal, one of the refugees from Hyderabad. Among those who managed to flee this time is 36-year-old Lakshman, a fruit seller from Sindh. His six-month-old granddaughter died of an unknown illness soon after they reached Delhi. But he himself is lucky to be alive. About two years ago, he was abducted by Muslim extremists who wanted him to convert. When he refused, they abducted him one night and kept him chained for three months. “They would slit my wrist every day, asking me to convert,” he says, “But I refused.” Then one night, he got a chance to escape. But his abductors chased him and stabbed him in the back. They left him on the border of Balochistan, assuming him dead.

The recent phase of persecution of minorities in Pakistan has been attributed to rising religious extremism, some of which stems from the State-sanctioned school curriculum. According to Pakistani historians, the tilt towards religious studies began in 1971 under the leadership of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and was encouraged by the military regime of General Zia ul-Haq. A Los Angeles Times report says that a study of the country’s public school curriculum and textbooks by 29 Pakistani academics in 2002 concluded that their ‘textbooks tell lies, create hatred, inculcate militancy and much more.’ In 2007, two Pakistani students from America’s Middlebury College conducted a review of State-approved school textbooks and found that revisionism in Social Sciences had reached dangerous levels. While passages on the festivals of Hindus and other minorities had been removed, menacing ideas like ‘Pakistan is for Muslims alone’ or ‘Muslims are urged to fight Jihad against infidels’ had been introduced. What is taught at thousands of madrassas across Pakistan is presumably even more intolerant. Such invective manifests itself in the brutalisation of its minorities... 

read more:

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/under-pressure-in-pakistan

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The Law That Saved a Billion Lives

On 1 April 2013, Supreme Court Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai upheld previous decisions of the Intellectual Property Apellate Board (IPAB) and the Patent Controller in deciding that Novartis’ application covering a modification to the original imatinib compound was not worthy of patent protection—and thereby, market monopoly —in India. It was a judgment heard around the world. Mainstream media exploded with news of the Indian Supreme Court decision, marking a first for a lengthy document that put forth a complex technical argument based on the arcane workings of intellectual property, itself an arcane subject.

The other popular line of argument is that this judgment will have no effect on access to imatinib since most people get it free anyway. These exact words have appeared in the editorials and news reports of several publications over the past few weeks, never mind that the opposite is true. Consider the dissimulation that produces this argument. There are an estimated 42,000 people being treated for CML with imatinib in India today. Of these, Novartis claims 16,000 patients use its brand of imatinib, Gleevec. Novartis further claims that 90 per cent of these Gleevec users—about 15,000 patients—get the medicine free through a charitable programme run by the company. (The Cancer Patients Aid Association—CPAA—disputes these claims). Even if we take Novartis at its word, there are at least 27,000 patients—65 per cent of all people diagnosed with CML—who are paying for their imatinib, either directly or via their employers. Now hear Paul Herrling, head of corporate research at Novartis, conveniently mixing up his numbers, magically expanding the scope of his company’s charity, and setting the narrative: “90 per cent of all people diagnosed with that specific form of leukemia get Gleevec free.”

Regardless of the intent, perhaps we ought to be grateful for the sudden spurt of attention towards Indian patent law. It is well worth understanding. After all, it is the reason we are alive.

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The Nobel Prize-winning relief organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) calls India ‘the pharmacy of the developing world’. It is a well-deserved distinction, and it took the better part of five decades to achieve. The Indian generic pharmaceutical industry took off in the 1970s, and continues to provide patients across India with what are arguably the cheapest certified medicines available in the world. After an early phase of consolidation, the Indian generic industry looked outwards—and began exporting its medicines with some success. Today, large swathes of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia (not to mention some sections of the American and European market) depend on Indian generic medicines to a significant extent. An industry born of a straightforward strategy for pharmaceutical self-sufficiency has transformed into a world-class hub of low-cost medicine production.

It was no accident. Like so many transformations that mark our time, it began in the 1960s. Justice Bakshi Tek Chand and Justice Rajagopala Ayyangar, two pioneering patent law reformers of the period, laid the foundations on which the generic industry would be built. The Tek Chand Committee reviewed the Indian Patents and Designs Act of 1911, and argued that it did not encourage scientific research in India. The committee recommended that patents be put to use for the good of the Indian public, and that patented products be reasonably priced, failing which, compulsory licences ought to be issued (which would legally revoke the time-bound monopoly conferred by patent protection).

The Ayyangar Committee took the argument further, noting that far more patents were being granted to foreigners than Indians, and that Indian patents were not proving commercially successful. The Ayyangar Committee asked for the country’s patent law to be redesigned to respond to India’s needs as a developing country, and drew upon European precedents to exempt food, medicines and chemicals from product patents. This legal provision formed the cornerstone of India’s Patents Act of 1970, and enabled the emergence of the generic pharmaceutical industry we know today... read more:

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/the-law-that-saved-a-billion-lives

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NAPM - ACTION ALERT AGAINST MIS-BEHAVIOUR OF PUBLIC SERVANT

Narmada Valley

Call and Fax Badwani Collector, Minister, MoEF, CM

A Public Servant Tells this to People in a Democracy.

Let Him Know What You Think About It. CALL, SMS Mob: 09425790303

“I have not come here for any dialogue with any of you (villagers) or the activists. Canal construction must be completed by 15th June, at any cost. The work will go on with police force, arresting your family, women and children as well if canal work is questioned.If any of you have problems, come to meet me at 10 p.m. or 2 p.m. in the mid-night at the police station. Contractors need not be worried about anything. Take my number, SDM’s number directly, if canal work is questioned. I am the law” Mr. Shriman Sahukla, Collector, District Badwani

Friends,

The events at Village Nandra, last month, must be fresh in your mind, where the farmers valiantly questioning the Omkareshwar canal work in violation of all environmental norms and rehabilitation were arrested, false case foisted and forcible excavation undertaken, by destroying standing crop. Your support is once again urgently needed, this time by the adivasis and farmers from other villagesincluding Mandil, Mundla, Khadkal (Rajpur Tehsil, Badwani Dist) and Malangaon, Karoli, Chhota Barda etc. (Tehsil Manavar, Dist. Dhar), who are facing the repression of the BJP-led Madhya Pradesh Govt, which is pushing ahead the canal work in violation of all norms on agricultural safeguards, environmental compliance and rehabilitation.

The Collector, Badwani with the BJP leaders and local MLA went to some of the adivasi villages Mandil, Mundla, in the Rajpur Tehsil yesterday (villages which MoEF Expert Committee had visited last year and issued recommendations), purportedly for inspection, but virtually had no meaningful dialogue with the poor adivasi-farmers and instead resorted to most vulgar abuse of the adivasis and unjustifiable threats given to the people and activists.

The Collector was in no mood to listen to any of the issues raised by the people and was only harping on canal construction at any cost. The issue is not just of canals, but the absolutely arrogant and repressive attitude of the Collector and the ‘people’s representatives, which is being questioned by the adivasis and farmers in the notified scheduled area.

The Collector in the presence of BJP leaders, contractors, enginners and NVDA officials virtually threatened the adivasis-farmers that no questioning of any sort with be tolerated. All this happened when the people were trying to tell them that while the canal has been dug many years ago, rest of the lands are also affected either by huge rubble deposited on un-acquired potions of land, severe water logging, 60% land oustees not provided alternative cultivable land etc. None of these issues were seriously heard or considered by the Collector and the politicians, including the local MLA,Mr. Devisingh Patel, who threatened the adivasis and insulted them, abusing them and the activist with most vulgar words, calling us ‘foreign agents! This situation of repression is similar in Malangaon, Karoli, Nandra and other villages and people are having to question this with the Expert Committee’s report in their hands.

This approach is despite the fact that even the most recent MoEF Expert Committee’s 2nd Field Visit Report has concluded huge gaps in Narmada canal planning and work. The Expert Committee after visit to the villages in January, 2012 and February 2013 recommended that farmers who have faced impacts of muck disposal or destruction of un-acquired land must be compensated, 60% land oustees not provided alternative cultivable land, on-farm safeguard measures must be completed before canal work, canals should not be pushed in irrigated villages at a distance of 3 kms from Narmada etc. The Collctor and politicians did not care to listen to any of these.

The Expert Committee’s recommendation that the administration and NVDA must have dialogue with NBA and the farmers is being completely flouted and the Collector himself has taken an extremely arrogant position that ‘no dialogue with NBA and the farmers’ will be tolerated. 

In this situation of complete repression and arrogance of the ruling party and the district / state administration, we request you to intervene most immediately since the excavation in complete disregard of all law and environmental sagfeguards may start anytime from today morning at Mandil and other villages.

DEMAND:

·  Immediate implementation of all the recommendations of the MoEF Expert Monitoring Committee and execution of command area and farm safeguard measures before any canal construction and mitigation of health impacts.

·  Annual compensation for muck disposal on un-acquired land, destruction of standing crop due to water logging and alternative land based rehabilitation to farmers losing more than 60% land

·  Demand review of canals in irrigated villages and detailed consultation with farmers

Please do register your protest with: Call/Fax/ Mail

Shri Shivraj Singh Chauhan Chief Minister, Government of Madhya Pradesh, Vallabh Bhawan, Bhopal, M.P Fax: 011-2441781 E-mail: cm@mp.nic.in

Ms. Jayanthi Natarjan Hon'ble Minister,   and Dr. B.B. Durman, Director Ministry of Environment and Forests, Paryavaran Bhavan, CGO Complex,  Lodhi Road, New Delhi Fax: 011-24362222 / 24361727 Email: mosefgoi@nic.in , bidhu-mef@nic.in

Mr. Shriman Shukla, Collector, District Badwani 07290-224001 07290-224002 Mob: 09425790303 E-mail: dmbarwani@nic.in Ph: 09425790303

More details are in our enclosed letter to the Director, MoEF. Hoping you will act fast for justice, which hundreds to a few thousands are waiting.

With sincere regards,

Medha Patkar (09423965153) Mukesh Bhagoria (09826811982)

Meera (09179148973) Kailash Awasya (09009147868) 

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JAMAL KIDWAI: Nitish Kumar's Desperate Posturing

The acrimonious spat between the JD(U) and the BJP over Narendra Modi’s candidature for prime-ministership is just a symptom of a far deeper political crisis that the JD(U) is facing. Being a seasoned politician, Nitish Kumar is well aware of the fact that amongst all the major political parties in Bihar, the JD(U) stands to lose the most in either case, that is, if it breaks the alliance with the BJP over the Narendra Modi issue or continues to remain an NDA partner with Modi as a PM candidate. Nitish knows very well that the only way he can retain the 20 seats his JD(U) got in Bihar in the last Lok Sabha election is by ensuring that the JD(U)-BJP alliance remains intact and someone like Lal Krishna Advani or Sushma Sawarj is declared the NDA’s PM candidate. His anti-Modi posturing and the December deadline that he has given the BJP to declare the PM candidate is a desperate tactical move to galvanise the other NDA partners to veto Modi’s candidature. Nitish is also trying to force the BJP to take a step back and realize that with Modi at its helm, it will lose an alliance partner in the JD(U), which could otherwise be the second biggest contributor to the NDA kitty in terms of seats when the next Lok Sabha results are declared.

As in the rest of India, the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar in 2014 and the subsequent Assembly polls in 2015 will be a combination and interplay of caste-communal-class arithmetic and the prevailing political perception at the time. And the kind of matrix that is emerging after the Modi crisis certainly does not look good for Nitish’s JD(U).

Let’s first do a quick survey of the numbers and vote share of the last assembly elections held in Bihar in 2010 that indicate the dilemma for the JD(U) in the next Lok Sabha elections. The JD(U) polled 22.60% votes, the BJP 16.5%, RJD 18.4 %, Ram Vilas Paswans LJP 6.7 % and the Congress 8.3%. The BJP-JD(U) combine together polled 39 % votes and won 206 seats out of 243. Almost all caste groups voted for the alliance, but it was the BJP that mobilized the upper castes like the powerful Bhumihars, the Rajputs and the Brahmins. Nitish was able to create a powerful alliance of the middle castes and the extremely backward castes. What made the alliance extremely potent was that Muslims, who constitute 16 % of voters in Bihar, voted for Nitish in large numbers. Lalu Yadav's RJD and Paswan’s LJP alliance were left with mostly Yadav and Paswan's Dalit votes, with Muslims voting for them only in some pockets.

Given these numbers, let’s first look at what will happen if Nitish breaks ties with the BJP over Modi and decides to contest alone. The upper castes are bound to desert him and vote for Modi’s BJP, which effectively means that the JD(U) vote share of 22.6 % will drop significantly. And as politics in Bihar stands today, Lalu and Paswan are most likely to continue their alliance. Learning from its mistakes in going it alone in the 2010 assembly elections, the Congress may also join them and make their alliance more powerful with its additional 8 % vote. This means they will be comfortably ahead of Nitish, with a vote share of over 30 %. On the other hand, if Nitish decides to remain in the NDA, with Modi as the PM candidate, the Muslims are certain to desert Nitish and go with the Lalu-Paswan alliance, yet again bringing down JD(U) votes and seats significantly and putting the JD(U) on the margins in national politics after the next general elections. But more importantly, these results will carry forward their impact in the assembly elections that will follow soon in 2015.
Bihar is a deeply caste-ridden polity, and now with the added debate of communalism versus secularism triggered by Modi’s arrival on the national stage, arithmetic and percentages are numbers that reflect prevailing political perceptions.

Analysing the three year rule of Nitish’s government, the perception gaining ground amongst Muslims is that Nitish’s government has become hostage to the rabid Hindutva politics of the Sangh Parivar. These perceptions are not just prevalent amongst Muslims but among Dalits and the backwards castes as well, who feel that there is a resurgence of landed, upper caste dominance. These beliefs, based on significant political events, both at the level of practice and policy, are deeply ideological in nature.

The brutal killing of six Muslims, which included an eight-month-old infant and a pregnant woman, by the Bihar police in Forbesgnaj town of Araria district in June 2011 is seen as an incident where there was a direct nexus between the local BJP and RSS cadre and the police. Shocking video images of a policeman jumping over a hapless man lying injured amidst the flames added insult to injury. Muslims were protesting against a land acquisition drive by the government to hand over land to a private industrialist who had close links to a BJP leader. But more significantly, just two weeks ago, the local police issued arrest warrants against 50 people, which included the six dead, making a mockery of not only the investigation process but sending a clear signal that there is a growing influence of the BJP/RSS in the administration.

Exactly one year later, in June 2012, Brahmeshwar Singh `Mukhiya’, the dreaded chief of the banned upper caste paramilitary Ranvir Sena, was gunned down in broad daylight in Ara, allegedly by the Maoists. What followed during his funeral procession on the streets of Patna was a display of violence and aggression by upper caste groups who were publicly egged on and supported by leading upper caste politicians mostly belonging to the BJP. Nitish and his government, which has trumpeted its achievements in improving the law and order situation of Bihar has, however, been seen as helpless every time the Sangh Parivar has decided to flex its muscles and take the law and order into its own hands, as is evident in the Forbesganj killings and the `Mukhiya’ funeral.

To add to these incidents, the subversion of two important commissions that would have had far reaching political consequences is again seen as Nitish’s appeasement of the Sangh Parivar. The implementation of the recommendations of both these commissions would have badly hurt the BJP and its core upper caste constituency. Nitish’s decision to abruptly disband the Amir Das Commission report that was set up by Lalu after the Laxmanpur Bathe massacre to investigate the link between politicians and the Ranvir Sena is clearly seen as an act to suppress findings which, most likely, would have indicated a link between the BJP/RSS leadership and the Ranvir Sena.

Similarly, Nitish's government has been completely silent on the Bihar Land Reform Commission. The commission had recommended providing land to share-croppers with secure cultivation rights as well as making available surplus land for distribution to the landless by implementing ceilings on land holdings. Nitish's inaction on these commissions has, once again, given strength to the perception that because of his dependence on the BJP, he will never do anything that hurts the interests of the landed upper castes.

Nitish realizes that the honeymoon with the BJP is over. The BJP has found roots in Bihar’s state machinery and polity. Unlike the JD(U), BJP is a deeply ideological party with a committed cadre. JD(U), like Lalu’s RJD, is a one-man party. Nitish realises that if he gets discredited amongst the Muslims and Dalits, JD(U) will suffer a fate similar to RJD. He also understands that the JD(U) will lose a large number of seats if there is a small swing of votes in favour of Lalu and Paswan. Which is how we should see Nitish’s diatribe against Modi: desperate posturing in the hope that the BJP will find a compromise candidate to keep intact the JD(U)-BJP alliance. Nitish knows that his immediate survival in Bihar and national politics is directly linked to the health of the alliance.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?285114#.UXtBUeMEWsY.facebook

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