INDIA

No thanks

A small magazine in Karnataka declines a UNFPA award

Dear [name removed],
Thank you for informing us that Population First has selected Namma Manasa for the UNFPA-Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity 2006-07 (Southern Region). We regret to inform you that we would like to decline the award and take this opportunity to explain our reasons for doing so.

Namma Manasa is a non-funded women’s collective, bringing out a monthly Kannada-language magazine on women’s issues for the past 23 years. In our experience, donor aid creates unfortunate divisions within movements; co-opts and blunts the radical edge of struggles; and leads to a narrow single-issue focus where, typically, the issue is stripped from the larger context. We regret that the last point is particularly evident in the approach advocated by Population First.

Although your website states that “population is not an issue of numbers alone”, contradictorily, a key objective of Population First is listed as “reaching the goal of family size of two children per couple”. In a context where the majority of women are totally marginalised from decision-making processes, the two-child norm is an added tool of oppression. The elitism, we fear, is also manifest in the central message of your Youth Campaign: “The enormous Indian crowds reduce the quality of life and cause ecological and social problems in the country.” The ‘enormous crowds’ that you speak of are the poor of this country. Avaricious resource consumption and monumental waste generation are not, however, by the poor but by the profligate elites. We are also alarmed to note that Population First takes no stand on hazardous contraceptives. Undoubtedly, effective contraception is a burning necessity but not at the cost of women’s safety and wellbeing.

From “family planning” to “family welfare” to the more current “reproductive health”, India’s population reduction programme has always savagely targeted the poorest and the weakest. There is nothing to suggest that Population First is in any way working to change this unfortunate reality: a core issue of the women’s health movement in India. In the circumstances, we would find it difficult to accept your award without compromising our basic beliefs and politics.

– Champavathi, for the Namma Manasa Women’s Collective, Bangalore

BANGLADESH

According to Indian press reports…

James F Moriarty, US Ambassador-designate to Bangladesh, at a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing

I would like to turn now to the US interest in denying terrorists the use of Bangladesh’s territory. Despite a long and admirable history of religious tolerance, Bangladesh has become a target of extremists in recent years. Poverty and political turmoil have provided some space for terrorists. Home-grown terrorists called the Jama-atul Mujahideen Bangladesh simultaneously exploded over 400 small bombs throughout Bangladesh in August 2005; shortly thereafter, the JMB embarked on a terror campaign of suicide attacks against judges, other prominent figures, and crowded markets. The subsequent execution of six JMB leaders appears to have left the terrorist organisation on the run.

A number of press reports also indicate, however, that Pakistan-based militant groups are using Bangladesh as a staging area and transit point to facilitate attacks directed at targets in India, and at least one of these groups, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LT), has been able to tap into resources provided by local militant groups such as Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami, Bangladesh (HUJI-B) to support their operations. Indian press reports allege that Bangladeshi HUJI-B members and individuals affiliated with the LT are involved in an active terrorist network, operating from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Press reports also suggest that this particular network is responsible for a string of attacks in India, including the October 2005, May 2007 and August 2007 bombings in Hyderabad, and probably the October 2007 bombing of a shrine in Ajmer, Rajasthan as well.

– US State Department

NEPAL

We will remain honest to the people’s mandate

Excerpts from Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s (aka ‘Prachanda’) victory speech

I have taken this victory as the people’s mandate to us to consolidate lasting peace. We will remain honest to that mandate. Our commitment on multi-party democracy has been expressed through this election as well.

We will work together with not only the seven parties but also the new parties that will be established through this election and the old parties in existence in the forthcoming constitution making process.

For the international community and especially our neighbours India and China, I want to say that our party wants good relations with all of them and is willing to work together on development cooperation and peace process.

All eyes are upon us. This is a positive challenge for us. I want to clarify that the path of cooperation that we adopted since 12-point agreement will continue.

– Pushpa Kamal Dahal

Hisila Yami, senior Maoist politburo member, Minister of Physical Planning and Works in the interim government, and recently elected member of the Constituent Assembly responding to a question from a member of the public:

Question: When other parties were in power and raised fuel prices, the Maoists burned tyres in the street. Now you are the government and fuel prices are likely to go up in the coming months – who will burn tyres in the streets?

Yami: The janata [people] burned tyres when prices went up earlier, if we raise fuel prices the janata will once again take to the streets and burn tyres.

– Hami Janata Programme, Avenues TV

BHUTAN

How the election was won and lost

First of all, I did not vote. So this is an unbiased analysis of the unexpected results.

In hindsight, we realise that the vote had to be completely one-sided. Either people voted for Sangay Ngedup and his band of young candidates offering complete change. Or they voted for DPT’s quiet, un-confrontational offer of stability and continuance of the present policies of the king. The constant bickering and accusations ensured people would have to take sides. Our people simply wondered whether the new government would be stable and ensure that their present peace and way of life would remain. The older people played their part in extolling the virtues of one party’s stress on culture and traditions, and remaining true to the country’s past and to the king’s vision. Civil servants played a big part as they predominantly sided with that same party, and they managed to convince their families and communities in the villages.

We don’t need hindsight to say that Sangay Ngedup relied too heavily on people who ingratiated themselves to him, and on close relatives whose weaknesses and unpopularity he failed to see. That was a mistake from the start; but who among them was going to tell the emperor he had no clothes, having dressed him themselves? When PDP offered change, people wondered whether the change would be good only for this close circle of people.

– T Dolma, Bhutan Observer forums

TIBET

Unzipping my mouth: Han thoughts on Tibet

I’ve wanted to write something for a while in the wake of the latest developments in Tibetan regions. The key is, a lot of Han and some ethnic Tibetans with vested interests don’t know that many aspects of the Tibetan way of life, religion and custom, culture and values are gradually being dismantled.

What I write has no intention to be separatist or to damage ethnic solidarity. I love my motherland, love my people and love all my compatriots. I only hope that in this huge family, we can truly understand and tolerate one another.

We always stress the importance of Mandarin. Many Tibetan students work hard on Mandarin for their futures, and many forget their own language. Of course there are a lot of reasons for this: for example, some schools don’t have Tibetan-language curriculum at all. Han people have their own holidays and customs; so do the Tibetans. In Lhasa, many Tibetans started to celebrate Han holidays. But few Han people spend Tibetan holidays with Tibetans.

– Anonymous

REGION

Load-shedding, a poem

– Lakshmi Gopinathan Nair, www.indiastar.com