'Demonetisation, NRC are Futile Exercises'
IAS Officers who resigned from Govt. dub these diversionary ploys
Bengaluru: The two IAS cadre officers who recently resigned from the Government service in protest against abrogation of the Article 370 and measures like NRC, on Sunday (December 1) called for protest against anti-people policies of the Modi Government.
The two officers—Kannan Gopinathan and Sasikanth Senthil—were speaking at a meeting organized to discuss ‘Challenges to Democracy’. Kannan was Collector of Kollam (Quilon district in Kerala) while Senthil was Deputy Commissioner of Mangalore district in Karnataka. The session was moderated by Ms. Rohini Mohan, an independent journalist based in Bengaluru.
Sparing the rich
Mr. Kannan said the Modi Government’s policy to demonetize currency notes of Rs. 500 and 1,000 notes only caused inconvenience to the common men but spared the rich, the hoarders of ill-gotten money and ones who evade taxes. He said it is quite well known that informal economy is very large in India and one who buys a bread, pays a medical fee to the local doctors, shells out money for school fee of kids and brings homes vegetables and grocery, does all the transaction only through cash. But the Modi-Shah duo only attacked this section and the ones who had stashed the black money in millions. They simply got away by bribing the bankers and further facilitating the process by releasing the Rs. 2,000 notes in place of their previous Rs. 1,000 notes.
More than dumb
Kannan said the Modi-Shah duo running the country was more than dumb and has learnt no lesson from futile exercise in Assam where Rs. 1,600 crore were spent over a period of six years to identify foreigners from among three crore people. Furthermore, the people also spent Rs. 800 crore to gather documents validating their claim for citizenship.
Aimed against Poor, Women
Kannan dubbed the exercise anti-women, anti-minorities, anti-dalit and anti-poor. He said by expanding the NRC exercise over the entire nation, they would like to harass the poor who do not generally possess any documents. He said women too become easy victims as they are married away from their ancestral homes and do not carry their identity proof to new homes. He said while demonetization shifted the burden of proving their money to be legitimate to the poor, the NRC puts the onus of proving their citizen bona fides to the citizens while this was a duty of the government.
Exclusion of Muslims
He said the NRC and Citizenship Amendment Act when read together make it clear that the Government is now planning to exclude Muslims from the mainstream by making them ‘foreigners’ and thereby declaring them stateless and incarcerating them in detention camps. He said in Assam, of the 19 lakh people declared ‘illegal residents’, nearly 12.5 lakh were Hindus and remaining Muslims. But through the Citizenship Amendment Act the Union Government would declare Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians as ‘refugees’ and eligible for grant of citizenship. He said it is Islamophobic exercise and is akin to Hitler’s exclusion of Jews who were asked to carry yellow tags in public.
Kannan asked, if identifying illegal residents among three crore people took six years, how long it would take to scrutinize the claims and documents of 130 crore people.
‘Dehumanizing’
Sasikanth Senthil dubbed the NRC and Demonetisation as clear-cut fascist in nature as they are being implemented to create an ‘out-group’ and kick up a phobia against them. He said all such measures were diversionary ploys and meant to trigger hyper nationalism and a ruse for dubbing anyone questioning it as deshdrohi (anti-national). He dubbed NRC an exercise aimed at dehumanizing an outgroup. He said the initiatives were clearly aimed at hiding the Government’s failure in arresting economic slowdown and all-pervasive unrest over unemployment.
During an interaction, Kannan said all institutions that sustain democracy are being systematically sabotaged by the current dispensation in Delhi. He said the first symptom of authoritarian regime is to demand complete loyalty while democracy welcomes dissenting voices and differing opinion. He asked the intellectuals, students and all those who were anxious to retain the peace, amity in a plural India to protest the anti-people measure of the Modi Government. He said they resigned in protest against the anti-people measures of the Union government responding to the call of their conscience. “Love for nation demands that one should protest when something is being done to damage the national social fabric”, he added.
They also questioned the legitimacy of the abrogation of Article 370 and said national integration did not mean imprisoning people and politicians.
The audiences in the packed hall of the Institutions of Agricultural Technologists listened to the two former officers in rapt attention.
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BJP workers allegedly attack children during Christmas carol roadshow in Kerala’s Palakkad: Reports
Palakkad: A group of children celebrating Christmas through a carol roadshow was allegedly attacked by BJP workers in Kerala’s Palakkad district on Sunday night.
According to local reports, the incident occurred in Pudussery area of Palakkad, where over 25 children, mostly aged around 13, were moving from house to house singing Christmas carols. Reports state that a BJP worker identified as Ashwin Raj, along with others, allegedly assaulted the children and vandalised their musical equipment.
According to the police and eyewitness accounts, the children were using a band set that belonged to a local CPI(M) office, which had the party’s name written on it.
Allegedly objecting to this, the accused and his associates reportedly lured the children on the pretext of offering them money and then assaulted them. The band set used by the children was also smashed.
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The Town Police have arrested Ashwin Raj, a local BJP worker who has been named as the prime accused in the case. Efforts are underway to trace and arrest the remaining accused who fled the scene.
Speaking to the media, one of the injured children said, “We were using the band just for fun. When they saw that it had CPM written on it, they took us aside and beat us.”
"We had given the band set that was in our office out of love when the children asked for it. The fact that these young children, who do not know the intricacies of politics, were attacked shows the criminal mentality of the BJP workers," local CPIM leaders expressed outrage.
A police officer told PTI that the arrested accused is already booked under the Kerala Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act (KAAPA).
The sections invoked include Section 192 (provocation with intent to cause a riot), Section 115(2) (voluntarily causing hurt), and Section 110 (attempt to commit culpable homicide), police added.
