India and the Indian: Inequitable majority-minority relations no longer a fringe phenomenon

By Angana P Chatterji, Thomas Blom Hansen And Christophe Jaffrelot,Jun 30, 2019 12:04:56 IST

This essay is part of Firstpost’s ‘India and the Indian’ series, which examines the renewed idea of nationalism in vogue today, and what it means.

Read more from this series.

It is excerpted from the introduction to 'Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism is Changing India', edited by Angana P Chatterji, Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot, with due permission from HarperCollins India.

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The 2014 elections witnessed the culmination of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) longstanding efforts to rule India. This second ascent of the BJP to power in New Delhi was markedly different from its first under the prime ministership of AB Vajpayee (1998–2004). The triumph of the BJP in 2014 brought about two unprecedented events: never had the Hindu nationalist movement won an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, and never had this movement, known for its hostility to the personalisation of power and for its collegial governance, been so influenced by one politician, Narendra Modi.

The new dispensation combined four features that have also emerged in other countries in recent years, including in Donald J Trump’s America: populism, nationalism, authoritarianism, and majoritarianism. The majoritarian dispensation in India combines two further elements: the implementation of a more unvarnished pro-corporate and pro-upper caste compound of policies than ever before, paired with the normalisation of anti-minority rhetoric, routine assertions of the imminent danger posed by internal as well as external enemies to the nation, and a systematic deployment of false claims and partisan facts. The vision of a Hindu majoritarian polity held by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the BJP combines cultural nationalism and political strategies aiming at flagrant social dominance by the upper castes, rapid economic development, cultural conservatism, intensified misogyny, and a firm grip on the instruments of state power.

Modi’s neo-sultanism

Nationalism is the bedrock of most populists and Modi is no exception. Modi is a product of the RSS and has clearly shown his deep commitment to the Hindutva doctrine, but he did not emphasise this aspect of his personal convictions during the 2014 campaign. He hardly needed to. The organised mass violence of 2002 in Gujarat, which had resulted in a pogrom against Muslims when he was chief minister, had already earned him the status of a ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ (Emperor of the Hindu Heart). Following the pogrom in Gujarat in 2002, Hindu majoritarianism was further consolidated across various states; through orchestrated attacks on minorities in Orissa in 2007 and 2008 and in Muzaffarnagar in 2013. The legitimacy of such Hindu domination harked back to their autochthony, while also augmenting their numbers. Hence, majoritarianism is inherent to Modi’s populism because the people he claims to represent are made up of Hindus only. The main goal of the BJP is to ‘defend’ the interests of Hindus first and foremost, at the expense of the rights of the Othered/minorities in the country.

Majoritarian national-populists are authoritarian by definition, since they claim that they embody the people and as the people can only be one/singular, there is no room for pluralism. This explains their tendency to disqualify their adversaries as ‘anti-national’ or even traitors, and even reject the multiparty system of democracy. The BJP has made it clear that no other party should compete with it, or is even needed, as indicative from its slogan of a ‘Congress Mukt Bharat’ (a Congress-free India).

While Modi exemplifies the authoritarian, majoritarian, national-populists of today, his regime is not merely sultanistic. India continues to organise reasonably free and fair elections; its government interferes with the appointment of judges but cannot prevent the most independently-minded lawyers from attempting to do their jobs; the government and the BJP influence and curtail the media but indirectly, not via official censorship. If anything, Modi is a ‘neo-sultan’ who observes some facets of democracy while pushing India further towards an illiberal ethnic democracy.

India and the Indian: Inequitable majority-minority relations no longer a fringe phenomenon

The allure of the strong leader

Now written upon a much larger national canvas, distinct divisions of labour organise the relationships between the BJP, Modi, and the Sangh Parivar. The most remarkable shift is perhaps that the Modi government has reframed the force of modernity in a new and compelling way. The promises of modernity, national strength and development were for decades the pre-dominant rallying points in national politics for the left and Congress, with inclusiveness, social justice and a measure of austerity as secondary components. For Modi, the focus is on operationalising mega-development in India via globalisation to position the country as an emergent, modern world power and, simultaneously, a well-defined Hindu state.

The citizen patriot and the security state

The BJP’s plan is focused on winning elections and using the existing provisions of law and administrative decrees to impose a more restrictive but not fully authoritarian regime. The exception to this norm lies in unleashing, in a more aggressive form, the full force of India’s illiberal security state in the tribal belts, in the Northeast and in Kashmir. We note that the process of securitisation of state in India also delimits the state’s constantly shifting relations to its internal and external enemies, and ‘builds and fortifies the national collective and protects state sovereignty’.

This contemporary ascendance of Hindu nationalist dominance to establish a majoritarian state in India under Modi’s leadership of the BJP has rendered porous the associations between government and ultra-nationalist groups. In India today, a plethora of organisations and outfits disburse violence, intimidation and the enforcement of morality and majoritarian ‘standards’. These outfits operate quite freely under the gaze of the police, possibly colluding with the BJP and institutions of law enforcement, or, at a minimum, banking on the inability and the hesitation of the state authorities to restrain and constrict them. This project of weaponising and militarising society through organisation, vigilance and a capacity for violence has been an objective of the Sangh Parivar through the many decades during which Hindu nationalists were distant from elected office. This form of vigilante violence, or the threat of it, is executed through the capillaries of the RSS-led Sangh Parivar’s vast network, and generally reinforce already existing caste, gender, class, and communal-racial attitudes prevalent among upper caste Hindus and aspirational lower caste groups.

The result is a broad nationalist and communal majoritarianism that targets liberal elites, castigated as excessively emancipated, immoral, westernised and pro-minority, and of course the country’s minority communities. Persistently gender/hetero-normative and deeply xenophobic, these inequitable relations between majority and minority/Othered can no longer be viewed as an aberration or a fringe phenomenon. They now occupy centre stage in government and within public discourse, impacting policy, law, and the everyday functioning of marginalised lives as well as institutions such as universities and the media. The minority/Othered is now officially reconfigured as an obstacle to development, a drain on resources, an alien and socially divisive element that weakens cultural cohesion, a primitive, non-modern and unassimilable remnant of the past.

Angana P Chatterji is founding co-chair of the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative and visiting research anthropologist at the Center for Race and Gender at University of California, Berkeley. Thomas Blom Hansen is Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani professor in South Asian Studies and professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. Christophe Jaffrelot is research director at CNRS, Sciences Po and professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King's India Institute.

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Water crisis in India: Changing cropping patterns, recharging ground reserves imperative to avert disaster

By Ankita Virmani, Jun 30, 2019 22:32:07 IST

Narendra urged citizens to use water resources judiciously in Sunday's 'Mann ki Baat'.
The NITI Aayog’s 2018 composite water management index reveals that India is facing its worst water crisis in history.
A year on, parts of south India face an acute shortage of water.

On Sunday, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned with his monthly radio broadcast, "Mann ki Baat," he urged citizens to use water resources judiciously. He said, “There can be no one formula to solve the water crisis in the entire country. For this, diverse efforts are being made in different parts of the country. However, they all have a common goal — to save water.”

This is not the first time that the prime minister urged the nation to prioritise water conservation and make appropriate interventions in this regard. Recently, when Modi was replying to the Motion of Thanks on the President’s address, he emphasised the need to deal with the water crises in the country. He said, “We have to save water. The water crisis impacts the poor and women the most. We have created a Ministry of Jal Shakti.”

Noting that 80 percent of rural people are yet to get piped water supply, Modi has already announced a target of ensuring piped water for all rural homes in the countryside by 2024.

Yogesh Paithankar, chief engineer at the National Water Academy, said, “The government will soon launch a nationwide ‘Jal Kranti Abhiyan’. More than 200 senior government officials have been identified from across the country to run the awareness programme. There is a need to create awareness about the importance of saving every single drop of water. The focus will be on groundwater recharge and storage.”

Water crisis in India: Changing cropping patterns, recharging ground reserves imperative to avert disaster

A boy rides a bicycle behind a water tanker to cool himself at a road construction site in Agra. File image. Reuters

The ‘Jal Kranti Abhiyan’ will start from 1 July. Officers of the level of director/deputy secretary have been appointed as block nodal officers, and "prabhari officers" will work with them. Further, groundwater scientists and engineers will also be roped in. These teams will visit several blocks to implement water harvesting and conservation measures.

NITI Aayog sounds warning bell

The NITI Aayog’s 2018 composite water management index reveals that India is facing its worst water crisis in history. About 200,000 Indians die every year due to inadequate access to safe water and 600 million face high to extreme water stress, the index states, citing data by independent agencies.

The report warns that twenty-one cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Hyderabad will run out of groundwater by 2020, affecting 100 million people. If the present situation continues, there will be a 6 percent loss to the country’s GDP by 2050. The combination of rapidly declining groundwater levels and limited policy action is likely to be a significant food security risk for the country, says the report.

A year on, parts of south India face an acute shortage of water. In Chennai, whose metropolitan area is home to almost 9 million people- the four main reservoirs that supply water to the city are currently at less than one percent of their storage level. The successive failure of the Northeast monsoon in the past three years has dried up wells and water bodies. Schools, hospitals, offices, restaurants are struggling in Chennai, despite rainwater harvesting being mandatory in Tamil Nadu.

GP Sharma, president of metrology at Skymet Weather said that the present crisis is a severe one. He said, "The prime reason for this is the deficit monsoon last year. The post-monsoon, which we also know as Northeast monsoon, saw a deficit of 44 percent. Although winter ended on an overall positive note, rainfall during the pre-monsoon period, from April to May, had a 25 percent deficit."

However, Chennai is not the only city which is struggling with the crisis. Of 91 major reservoirs in the country, 11 have zero percent storage. Further, almost two-thirds of the country's reservoirs have below normal levels, a report by the Central Water Commission’s report revealed in June.

Amid the crises, the Karnataka government is planning to ban the construction of new multi-storeyed residential buildings for the next five years.

Just last year, an acute shortage of water had hit Shimla, and massive tourist footfalls at the same time had made the situation worse. Shimla has a population of 0.17 million and during the peak tourist season in summer, approximately 10,000 tourists visit the city every day.

Man-made crisis

Speaking on the crisis, water conservationist and environmentalist Rajendra Singh said, “This is the most severe crisis in the history of the country. Earlier, there used to be a crisis of food and other things, but today, we are struggling for water. As many as 256 districts in 17 states are in the red zone."

He added, “We humans are so focused towards development that we have not even given rivers a right to flow. Water bodies such as lakes, ponds and tanks have never been on the radar of policymakers. These water bodies had a role in recharging groundwater and in preventing floods by absorbing excess rainwater. Earlier, there were 30 lakh such water bodies across the country, while today, there are just 10 lakh of them. In Delhi alone, 800 such bodies existed, and today, the number is 380 and that too, just on paper. We have encroached on them to construct buildings, bus stops, etc. Floods and droughts are inevitable if this continues.”

Encroachment of such water bodies has been identified as one of the prime reasons for the 2013 flash floods of Uttarakhand, and floods in Chennai (2015) and Mumbai (2005).

Speaking on the human causes behind the water crisis, Sharma said, “The utilisation of a resource as important as water has to be judicious. Where water is available, we are consuming it carelessly. The importance of water and the need to save it has to sink in. A small example is an RO water purifier, which is commonly used. Two-third of water is wasted through such machines.

File image of water conservationist Rajendra Singh. Ajay Singh/Firstpost

Cropping Patterns

As per a 2018 study by NABARD and Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, shifting a major chunk of the rice production to India’s central and eastern states like Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, while encouraging wheat cultivation through sustainable irrigation in the rice-growing regions of Punjab and Haryana, could help India prevent an impending water crisis by 2030.

Speaking on how sowing patterns have worsened matters, Rajendra Singh said, "Earlier, farmers would sow crops when it rained. But now, with the uncertain monsoons, everything from the sowing of crops to irrigating the land, is done with groundwater. Producing food with groundwater will hit the country in the long run.”

As per the Central Water Commission, 85.3 percent of the total water consumed in India was for agriculture in 2000, and the figure is likely to decrease to 83.3 percent by 2025. Singh said, “One of the prime reasons for this unregulated use of groundwater is the commercialisation of crops. The government pays the highest subsidies and rate for three of the most water-intensive crops — sugarcane, rice and wheat. It is high time for the government to educate farmers about employing cropping patterns as per the availability of water.”

Rice and wheat, two of India’s most important food crops, are the most water-intensive. Producing a kilogram of rice requires an average of 2,800 liters of water, while a kilogram of wheat requires 1,654 liters of water, as per a recent report by WaterAid India.

A report on groundwater resources of Punjab by the Central Ground Water Board and the state’s Water Resources and Environment Directorate has found that there is over-exploitation of groundwater to meet the agricultural requirements in the state. Out of 138 blocks, 109 blocks are "over-exploited", two blocks are "critical", five are "semi-critical" and only 22 fall in the safe category.

Water harvesting: A priority

Groundwater makes up 40 percent of the country’s water supply. The erratic monsoon and successive droughts have led to excessive depletion of groundwater, which resulted in the decline of groundwater by 61 percent between 2007 and 2017. A 2018 report by WaterAid has already put India at the top of a list of countries with the worst access to clean water close to homes.

Failure to recharge groundwater at the same pace at which it is withdrawn will only aggravate the crisis.

Speaking on the need to harvest water, Singh said, “There is this simple formula for this. Where water is 'running', we must make it 'walk', and when it 'walks', we must make it 'crawl.' Where water 'crawls', we need to make it rest on the ground. That way, it will not evaporate, and it can be used when needed."

Right to Water

Madhya Pradesh is mulling a law granting "right to water" — which would guarantee a certain amount of water per person per day. The law may also have stringent provisions against wastage of water.

Sanjay Upadhyay, an environmental lawyer and founder of the Enviro Legal Defence Firm, said, “We certainly need this law to ensure basic quantum of water to every citizen on a daily basis, whether in urban or rural areas. The maximum use of water is in agriculture, after which comes domestic, industrial and commercial consumption. Pricing mechanisms for these are important and have to be clarified through this law.”

In fact, the time is ripe for stringent laws to ensure the saving of water across the country, not just in Madhya Pradesh.

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Delay in arrival of monsoon over Maharashtra causes 25% rain shortfall in June, says IMD; Vidarbha sees highest deficit of 47%

By Press Trust Of India, Jun 30, 2019 22:27:44 IST

An IMD report found that the delayed arrival of Southwest Monsoon over Maharashtra has brought about a shortage of 25 percent rainfall in June
It showed the shortfall was 47 percent in Vidarbha, 33 percent in Marathwada and 21 percent in central Maharashtra
Konkan and Goa subdivisions have reported a shortfall of 7 percent rainfall

Mumbai: The delayed arrival of Southwest Monsoon over Maharashtra has brought about a shortage of 25
percent rainfall in June, the normal precipitation for the month being 207.6 millimetres, an India Meteorological Department (IMD) report stated.

It showed the shortfall was 47 percent in Vidarbha, 33 percent in Marathwada and 21 percent in central Maharashtra, leading to all these divisions being categorised as 'D', signifying "deficient" rainfall.

Konkan and Goa subdivisions have reported a shortfall of 7 percent rainfall and have been categorised as 'N' or
"normal", the IMD said.

Delay in arrival of monsoon over Maharashtra causes 25% rain shortfall in June, says IMD; Vidarbha sees highest deficit of 47%

Vehicles ply on the Eastern Express Highway during heavy monsoon rainfall, in Mumbai on Sunday. PTI

"In a good sign; Thane district has received 503 millimetres rainfall in June this year, which is nine percent more than the normal 461.9 millimetres. Palghar has got 373.6 millimetres rainfall. The dams supplying water to Mumbai are from these districts and with such good precipitation, the looming fear of water shortage may no longer exist," said an IMD official.

"Generally, Marathwada and parts of central Maharashtra receive rainfall a little late as these areas are known as rain-shadow regions," he said.

The IMD on Sunday also issued a forecast of central Maharashtra and Marathwada region getting good showers from Tuesday onwards.

"The system is progressing. We are hopeful of central Maharashtra and Marathwada receiving widespread showers," the official said.

"As of now, catchment areas of dams in western Maharashtra such as Kolhapur, Satara and Pune have received
some showers. But more rain is needed to get the dams to fill," the official said.

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Dubai-bound Air India Express flight skids off taxiway at Mangaluru airport; all passengers safe

By Press Trust Of India, Jun 30, 2019 22:14:40 IST

An Air India Express flight veered off the taxiway after landing and got stuck into soft ground at the Mangaluru airport on Sunday
All passengers and crew on board the Dubai-Mangaluru flight are safe, the airport and the airlines said in separate statements
Tailwind and wet runway with inadequate braking action were reported to be the reasons behind the incident

New Delhi: An Air India Express flight veered off the taxiway after landing and got stuck into soft ground at the Mangaluru airport on Sunday. All passengers and crew on board the Dubai-Mangaluru flight are safe, the airport and the airlines said in separate statements.

According to a statement issued by the Mangaluru airport, the Air India Express Dubai to Mangaluru plane veered off the taxiway after landing. The aircraft got stuck in the grass, it said. The operations at the airport are normal and the aircraft will be towed soon.

"AI Express aircraft VT-AYA, operating IX 384, Dubai to Mangaluru on 30 June, after landing on runway 24 while vacating the runway to the right side, has gone off the taxiway into soft ground," the airlines said.

Tailwind and wet runway with inadequate braking action were reported to be the reasons behind the incident, it said. All passengers and crew are safe, and they deplaned using a step ladder, it said.

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Firstpost Editor's Picks: Modi's 'Mann ki Baat', India at G20 Summit, ICC Cricket World Cup; today's must-read stories

By FP Staff, Jun 30, 2019 21:12:36 IST

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India and the Indian: Inequitable majority-minority relations no longer a fringe phenomenon

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Sunday, 30 June 2019