'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.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Mumbai family deaths: FDA finds no watermelon vendor in area to check for affected stock
Mumbai (PTI): The Food and Drug Administration team probing the cause of death of four members of a family in south Mumbai's JJ Marg area have not been able to zero in on any watermelon vendor in the vicinity to check if the fruit had a role to play in the ill-fated incident, an official said on Thursday.
The Dokadia family, residents of Ghari Mohalla on Ismail Kurte Road, had hosted a get-together of relatives on the night of April 25. At around 1 am, hours after the guests had left, Abdullah Dokadia (40), his wife Nasreen (35), and daughters Ayesha (16) and Zaineb (13) ate pieces of a watermelon.
They suffered severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea in the early hours of April 26 and were rushed to a local hospital before being referred to the government-run J J Hospital where all four died during treatment.
"The FDA team visited the house of Dokadia and collected samples of chicken pulao and watermelon pieces. After two days, the leftover chicken pulao had developed fungus growth. The team also tried to locate watermelon vendors to check for any affected lots," he said.
But no vendors were found in the area for the past two days, preventing the FDA team from getting samples, the official added.
The FDA has requested the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) to share the report on the food samples collected by them, he added.
A senior Mumbai police official said the force is waiting for FSL reports in the case, adding that questions on presence of sedatives etc in the fruit could be answered only then.
The statements of the kin of the deceased are being recorded to ascertain if it is a case of mass suicide, and it is being checked if the Dokadia family were in debt or distressed over some issue, the police official said.
