The End of Imagination (45 page)

1. Ibid.
   
2. Patrick Laurence, “South Africa Fights to Put the Past to Rest,”
   Irish Times
   ,
   December 28, 2000, 57.
   
3. Anthony Stoppard, “South Africa: Water, Electricity Cutoffs Affect 10 Million,” Inter Press Service, March 21, 2002.
   
4. Henri E. Cauvin, “Hunger in Southern Africa Imperils Lives of Millions,”
   New York Times
   ,
   April 26, 2002, A8; James Lamont, “Nobody Says ‘No' to Mandela,”
   Financial Times
   (London), December 10, 2002, 4; and Patrick Laurence, “South Africans Sceptical of Official Data,”
   Irish Times
   ,
   June 6, 2003, 30.
   
5. See Ashwin Desai,
   We Are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa
   (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002)
   .
   
6. South African Press Association, “Gauteng Municipalities to Target Service Defaulters,” May 4, 1999; Alison Maitland, “Combining to Harness the Power of Private Enterprise,”
   Financial Times
   (London), August 23, 2002, survey: “Sustainable Business,” 2.
   
7. Nicol Degli Innocenti and John Reed, “SA Govt Opposes Reparations Lawsuit,”
   Financial Times
   (London), May 19, 2003, 15.
   
8. South African Press Association, “SAfrica Asks US Court to Dismiss Apartheid Reparations Cases,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, July 30, 2003.
   
9. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
   A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.
   ,
   ed. James M. Washington (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 233.
   
10. Ibid., 233.
    
11. “Men of Vietnam,”
    New York Times
    ,
    April 9, 1967, Week in Review, 2E. Quoted in Mike Marqusee,
    Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties
    (New York: Verso, 1999), 217.
    
12. King,
    Testament of Hope
    , 245.
    
13. David M. Halbfinger and Steven A. Holmes, “Military Mirrors a Working-Class America,”
    New York Times
    ,
    March 30, 2003, A1; Darryl Fears, “Draft Bill Stirs Debate over the Military, Race and Equity,”
    Washington Post
    ,
    February 4, 2003, A3.
    
14. David Cole, “Denying Felons Vote Hurts Them, Society,”
    USA Today
    ,
    February 3, 2000, 17A; “From Prison to the Polls,” editorial,
    Christian Science Monitor
    ,
    May 24, 2001, 10.
    
15. King,
    Testament of Hope
    , 239.
    
16. Quoted in Marqusee,
    Redemption Song
    , 218.
    
17. King,
    Testament of Hope
    , 250.
    
18. Marqusee,
    Redemption Song
    ,
    1–4, 292.
    

4. In Memory of Shankar Guha Niyogi

1. Human Rights Watch, “India: Human Rights Developments,”
   Human Rights Watch World Report 1993
   , www.hrw.org/reports/1993/WR93/Asw-06.htm.
   

5. How Deep Shall We Dig?

1. Hina Kausar Alam and P. Balu, “J&K [Jammu and Kashmir] Fudges DNA Samples to Cover Up Killings,”
   Times of India
   ,
   March 7, 2002.
   
2. See “Democracy: Who Is She When She's at Home?” 65–79, above.
   
3. Somit Sen, “Shooting Turns Spotlight on Encounter Cops,”
   Times of India
   ,
   August 23, 2003.
   
4. W. Chandrakanth, “Crackdown on Civil Liberties Activists
   in the Offing?”
   Hindu
   ,
   October 4, 2003: “Several activists have gone underground fearing police reprisals. Their fears are not unfounded, as the State police have been staging encounters at will. While the police frequently release the statistics on naxalite violence, they avoid mentioning the victims of their own violence. The Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC), which is keeping track of the police killings, has listed more than 4,000 deaths, 2,000 of them in the last eight years alone.” See also K. T. Sangameswaran, “Rights Activists Allege Ganglord-Cop Nexus,”
   Hindu
   ,
   October 22, 2003.
   
5. David Rohde, “India and Kashmir Separatists Begin Talks on Ending Strife,”
   New York Times
   ,
   January 23, 2004, A8; Deutsche Presse-Agentur, “Thousands Missing, Unmarked Graves Tell Kashmir Story,” October 7, 2003.
   
6. Unpublished reports from the Association of Parents of Disappeared People (APDP), Srinagar.
   
7. See also Edward Luce, “Kashmir's New Leader Promises ‘Healing Touch,'”
   Financial Times
   (London), October 28, 2002, 12.
   
8. Ray Marcelo, “Anti-terrorism Law Backed by India's Supreme Court,”
   Financial Times
   (London), December 17, 2003, 2.
   
9. People's Union for Civil Liberties, “In Jharkhand All the Laws of the Land Are Replaced by POTA,” Delhi, India, May 2, 2003, www.pucl.org/Topics/Law/2003/poto-jharkhand.htm.
   
10. “People's Tribunal Highlights Misuse of POTA,”
    Hindu
    ,
    March 18, 2004.
    
11. “People's Tribunal.” See also “Human Rights Watch Ask Centre to Repeal POTA,” Press Trust of India, September 8, 2002.
    
12. Leena Misra, “240 POTA Cases, All against Minorities,”
    Times of India
    ,
    September 15, 2003; “People's Tribunal.” The
    Times of India
    misreported the testimony presented. As the Press Trust of India article notes, in Gujarat “the only non-Muslim in the list is a Sikh, Liversingh Tej Singh Sikligar, who figured in it for an attempt on the life of Surat lawyer Hasmukh Lalwala, and allegedly hung himself in a police lock-up in Surat in April [2003].” On Gujarat, see “Democracy: Who Is She,” above.
    
13. “A Pro-Police Report,”
    Hindu
    ,
    March 20, 2004; Amnesty International, “India: Report of the Malimath Committee on Reforms of the Criminal Justice System: Some Comments,” September 19, 2003 (ASA 20/025/2003).
    
14. “J&K [Jammu and Kashmir] Panel Wants Draconian Laws Withdrawn,”
    Hindu
    ,
    March 23, 2003. See also South Asian Human Rights Documentation Center, “Armed Forces Special Powers Act: A Study in National Security Tyranny,” November 1995.
    
15. “Growth of a Demon: Genesis of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958” and related documents in
    Manipur Update
    ,
    December 1999.
    

1. On the lack of any convictions for the massacres in Gujarat, see Edward Luce, “Master of Ambiguity,”
   Financial Times
   (London), April 3–4, 2004, 16. On the March 31, 1997, murder of Chandrashekhar Prasad, see Andrew Nash, “An Election at JNU,”
   Him
   ā
   l
   ,
   December 2003. For more information on the additional crimes listed here, see 313–15, above.
   
2. N. A. Mujumdar, “Eliminate Hunger Now, Poverty Later,”
   Business Line
   ,
   January 8, 2003.
   
3. “Foodgrain Exports May Slow Down This Fiscal [Year],”
   India Business Insight
   ,
   June 2, 2003; “India—Agriculture Sector: Paradox of Plenty,”
   Business Line
   ,
   June 26, 2001; and Ranjit Devraj, “Farmers Protest against Globalization,” Inter Press Service, January 25, 2001.
   
4. Utsa Patnaik, “Falling Per Capita Availability of Foodgrains for Human Consumption in the Reform Period in India,”
   Akhbar
   2 (October 2001); P. Sainath, “Have Tornado, Will Travel,”
   Hindu Magazine
   ,
   August 18, 2002; Sylvia Nasar, “Profile: The Conscience of the Dismal Science,”
   New York Times
   ,
   January 9, 1994, 8; and Maria Misra, “Heart of Smugness: Unlike Belgium, Britain Is Still Complacently Ignoring the Gory Cruelties of Its Empire,”
   Guardian
   (London), July 23, 2002, 15. See also Utsa Patnaik, “On Measuring ‘Famine' Deaths: Different Criteria for Socialism and Capitalism?”
   Akhbar
   6 (November–December 1999), www.indowindow.com/akhbar/article.php?article=74&category=8&issue=9.
   
5. Amartya Sen,
   Development as Freedom
   (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).
   
6. “The Wasted India,”
   Statesman
   (India), February 17, 2001; “Child-Blain,”
   Statesman
   (India), November 24, 2001.
   
7. Utsa Patnaik, “The Republic of Hunger,” lecture, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, April 10, 2004, macroscan.com/fet/apr04/fet210404Republic
   _Hunger.htm.
   
8. Praful Bidwai, “India amidst Serious Agrarian Crisis,”
   Central Chronicle
   (Bhopal), April 9, 2004.
   
9. See “Power Politics,” 151–76, above.
   
10. See Mike Davis,
    Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
    (New York: Verso, 2002).
    
11. Among other sources, see Edwin Black,
    IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation
    (New York: Three Rivers, 2003).
    
12. “For India Inc., Silence Protects the Bottom Line,”
    Times of India
    ,
    February 17, 2003; “CII Apologises to Modi,”
    Hindu
    ,
    March 7, 2003.
    
13. In May 2004, the right-wing BJP-led coalition was not just voted out of power, it was humiliated by the Indian electorate. None of the political pundits had predicted this decisive vote against communalism and neoliberalism's economic “reforms.” Yet even as we celebrate, we know that on every major issue other than overt Hindu nationalism—nuclear bombs, Big Dams, privatization—the newly elected Congress Party and the BJP have no major ideological differences. We know that it was the legacy of the Congress that led us to the horror of the BJP. Still we celebrated, because surely a darkness has passed. Or has it? Even before it formed a government, the Congress made overt reassurances that “reforms” would continue. Exactly what kind of reforms, we'll have to wait and see. Fortunately the Congress will be hobbled by the fact that it needs the support of left parties—the only parties to be overtly (if ineffectively) critical of the reforms—to make up a majority in order to form a government. The Left parties have been given an unprecedented mandate. Hopefully, things will change. A little. It's been a pretty hellish six years.
    

1. India was the only country to abstain on December 22, 2003, from UN General Assembly Resolution, “Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism,” A/RES/58/187,
   http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/58/187&Area=UNDOC
   . Quoted in Amnesty International India, “Security Legislation and State Accountability: A Presentation for the POTA People's Hearing, March 13–14, New Delhi.”
   

6. The Greater Common Good

1. Jawaharlal Nehru,
   Modern Temples of India: Selected Speeches of Jawaharlal Nehru at Irrigation and Power Projects
   , ed. C. V. J. Sharma (Delhi: Central Board of Irrigation and Power, 1989), 40–49.
   
2. Patrick McCully,
   Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams
   (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1998), 80.
   
3. From (uncut) film footage of Bargi dam oustees, Anurag Singh and Jharana Jhaveri, Jan Madhyam, New Delhi, 1995.
   
4. J. Nehru,
   Modern Temples
   , 52–56. In a speech given before the Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Central Board of Irrigation and Power (November 17, 1958) Nehru said, “For some time past, however, I have been beginning to think that we are suffering from what we may call ‘the disease of gigantism.' We want to show that we can build big dams and do big things. This is a dangerous outlook developing in India . . . the idea of big—having big undertakings and doing big things for the sake of showing that we can do big things—is not a good outlook at all.” And “it is . . . the small irrigation projects, the small industries and the small plants for electric power, which will change the face of the country far more than half a dozen big projects in half a dozen places.”
   
5. Centre for Science and Environment,
   Dying Wisdom: Rise, Fall and Potential of India's Traditional Water Harvesting Systems
   (New Delhi: CSE, 1997), 399; Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha,
   Ecology and Equity
   (New Delhi: Penguin India, 1995), 39.
   
6. Indian Water Resources Society,
   Five Decades of Water, Resources Development in India
   (1998), 7.
   
7. World Resource Institute,
   World Resources 1998–99
   (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 251.
   
8. McCully,
   Silenced Rivers
   , 26–29. See also
   The Ecologist Asia
   6, no. 5 (September–October 1998): 50–51 for excerpts of speech by Bruce Babbitt, US interior secretary, in August 1998.
   
9. Besides McCully,
   Silenced Rivers
   , see the CSE's
   State of India's Environment
   , 1999, 1985, and 1982; Nicholas Hildyard and Edward Goldsmith, 1984,
   The Social and Environmental Impacts of Large Dams
   (Cornwall, UK: Wadebridge Ecological Centre, 1984); Satyajit Singh,
   Taming the Waters: The Political Economy of Large Dams
   (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997); World Bank,
   India: Irrigation Sector Review
   (1991); and Anthony H. J. Dorcey, ed.,
   Large Dams: Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future
   (1997).
   

1. Mihir Shah, Debashis Banerji, P. S. Vijayshankar, and Pramathesh Ambasta,
   India's Drylands: Tribal Societies and Development through Environmental Regeneration
   (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 51–103.
   
2. Ann Danaiya Usher,
   Dams as Aid: A Political Anatomy of Nordic Development Thinking
   (London: Routledge, 1997).
   
3. $1 US = Rs 43.35. A crore is 10 million. Equal to Rs 2,200,000 crore, at constant 1996–97 prices.
   
4. D. K. Mishra and R. Rangachari,
   The Embankment Trap and Some Disturbing Questions
   , Seminar 478 (June 1999), 46–48 and 62–63, respectively; CSE,
   Floods, Floodplains and Environmental Myths
   .
   
5. Shah et al.,
   India's Drylands
   , 51–103.
   
6. Singh,
   Taming the Waters
   , 188–90; also, government of India (GOI) figures for actual displacement.
   
7. At a January 21, 1999, meeting in New Delhi organized by the Union Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment, for discussions on the draft National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy and the amendment to the draft Land Acquisition Act.
   
8. Bradford Morse and Thomas Berger,
   Sardar Sarovar: The Report of the Independent Review
   (Ottawa: Resource Futures International [RFI], 1992), 62.
   
9. GOI,
   28th and 29th Report of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
   [New Delhi, 1988–89].
   
10. Indian Express
    (New Delhi), April 10, 1999, front page.
    
11. GOI,
    Ninth Five Year Plan, 1997–2002
    (1999), 2:437.
    
12. Siddharth Dube,
    Words like Freedom
    (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 1998); Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy, 1996. See also
    World Bank Poverty Update
    , quoted in
    Business Line
    , June 4, 1999.
    
13. National Human Rights Commission,
    Report of the Visit of the Official Team of the NHRC to the Scarcity Affected Areas of Orissa
    , December 1996.
    
14. GOI,
    Award of the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal
    , 1978–79.
    
15. GOI,
    Report of the FMG-2 on SSP
    (1995); also see various affidavits of the goverment of India and government of Madhya Pradesh before the Supreme Court of India, 1994–98.
    
16. Central Water Commission,
    Monthly Observed Flows of the Narmada at Garudeshwar
    (New Delhi: Hydrology Studies Organisation, Central Water Commission, 1992).
    
17. Written Submission on Behalf of Union of India, February 1999, p. 7, clause 1.7.
    
18. Tigerlink News
    5, no. 2 (June 1999): 28.
    
19. World Bank Annual Reports
    , 1993–98.
    
20. McCully,
    Silenced Rivers
    , 274.
    
21. Ibid., 21. The World Bank started funding dams in China in 1984. Since then it has lent around $3.4 billion (not adjusted for inflation) to finance thirteen Big Dams that will cause the displacement of 360,000 people. The centerpiece of the World Bank's dam financing in China is the Xiaolangdi dam on the Yellow River, which will singlehandedly displace 181,000 people.