Dilip Simeon's blog

Press Release Opposition parties must support villagers of Mundra against Adani's shipbreaking project Adani's proposal for shipbreaking unit in Mundra disregards grave lessons from Alang's environmental crisis New Delhi/Mundra April 28, 2014: Opposition parties must unite in  support of villagers of Mundra Taluk of Kachchh district, Gujarat  against the new ship breaking/recycling facility proposed by Gautam  Adani led Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited (APSEZL).  There is an urgent need for a White Paper on the cumulative impact of  dismantling of more than 6000 end-of-life ships of developed countries  on Bhavnagar's Alang beach since 1983 before considering Adani's  proposal for environmental clearance. Alang beach has been colonized  by the global shipping companies and they have turned it into the most  polluted beach in the world with the complicity of Gujarat and Central  Government. The plan to replicate the...

Revisiting a Muslim ghetto in a Gujarat city in poll time Hindus and Muslims have traditionally lived next to each other instead of in the same building or even the same lane. Their lifestyles, including their food habits, accounted for this separation. There was an element of self-segregation in this ancestral arrangement — which, however, did not preclude interaction. In the old cities, Hindu and Muslim elites cohabited, whereas the poor — whether Hindu or Muslim — lived outside the walled space. In Ahmedabad, for instance, the Jain pols (residential lanes) lay next to the Patel pols and the Pathan pols. This kind of mosaic — there were hundreds of pols in the walled city — was somewhat replicated in the industrial belt after Ahmedabad became the “Manchester of India” during the Raj. The Dalit and Muslim workers did not live together but next to each other in the chawls that the textile mill owners had built for them. Similarly, when bridges permitted the rich to flee the increasi...

The run-up to the 2014 general elections in India has been an unprecedented demonstration of the massive infusion of money in electoral campaigning. A veritable carpet-bombing of India’s voters with the opposition BJP’s message is everywhere to be seen, from advertisements in newspapers, on TV, Youtube, Radio, Mobile Phones, CDs and the Internet, to billboards in all metropolitan cities and small towns and on transport vehicles, including inside the Delhi Metro trains. In effect, it has blocked out all other political parties as far as public advertising goes. This vast campaign has been on a scale never seen in history, estimated by some to be costing Rs 5000-6000 crores or more (from 800 to over 900 million dollars). These are astronomical figures for any one political party to be spending in an election campaign, when its earnings just a few years ago were shown to be far more limited. So who on earth is funding such a gigantic publicity blitz? There should be no doubt in our m...

When carnage is reduced to numbers and development to just economic growth, real human beings and their tragedies remain forgotten. Empires collapse. Gang leaders/Are strutting about like statesmen. The peoples/Can no longer be seen under all those armaments —  Bertolt Brecht German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt gave the world the phrase, “the banality of evil”. In 1963, she published the book  Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil , her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi military officer and one of the key figures of the Holocaust. Eichmann was hanged to death for war crimes. Arendt’s fundamental thesis is that ghastly crimes like the Holocaust are not necessarily committed by psychopaths and sadists, but, often, by normal, sane and ordinary human beings who perform their tasks with a bureaucratic diligence. Maya Kodnani, MLA from Naroda, handed out swords to the mobs that massacred 95 people in the Gujarat riots of 2002. She wa...

Cops confused as more complaints on Ramdev pour in BJP's advertisement plan may cost a whopping Rs. 5,000 cr Pick up any newspaper, switch on any TV channel, drive down any main street or tune into any FM channel and chances are that you will be bombarded with advertisements exhorting you to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.  The tab? Media buyers and sources close to the BJP’s campaign said the party could end up spending about  Rs. 5,000 crore by May 12, when the last phase of polling takes place. Sam Balsara, chairman and managing director, Madison World, which is handling the BJP’s media planning, refused to say anything beyond “we are moving as per the approved plan”. But a veteran media planner, who is working closely with the BJP, told HT on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media: “Planned spends on all media, including print, television, outdoor, internet and radio would be close...

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Pravin Togadia has said things that threw the Narendra Modi narrative off, but only for a couple of days. Togadia gave a neighbourhood gathering in Bhavnagar a few tips on how to get rid of a Dawoodi Bohra who bought a property in their area. One way was to do what had been done in others parts of Gujarat, which is to declare the area disturbed. The other way was just to muscle in and kick the occupants out. They could be kept out, Togadia said, through fear, and this was done with the help of the Bajrang Dal, the lumpen end of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Togadia said the offended neighbourhood could also create the atmosphere of a riot which would compel the government to take their side. And they could harass the Muslims by spitting on them and pelting them with tomatoes. There was outrage in the media when the video was shown, and the Election Commission, which governs India in this period, asked the police to act against him. Modi condemned Togadi...

What is gender violence? When does aggressive behaviour become unacceptable? Is it when a door slams in someone’s face; a push turns into a shove; a gesture spirals into a slap; banter becomes abuse; “no” is taken to mean “yes”? On paper we know the answers but in reality the distinctions are still deeply blurred. The question played on my mind earlier this month as I sat in the sterile surrounds of the European Parliament in Brussels, listening to new research which exposes the shocking scale of gender violence in modern Europe. Compiled by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), who interviewed 42,000 women from 28 member states, it revealed that one in three women has been either physically or sexually abused (8 per cent in the last 12 months). I have always believed that the closer we come to a gender equal society, the less gender violence there will naturally be. The coverage of this emotive issue in the western media confirms this view—it is typecast as endemic to other...