weber and protestant ethic

Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a study of the relationship between the ethics of ascetic Protestantism and the emergence of the spirit of modern capitalism. Weber argues that the religious ideas of groups such as the Calvinists played a role in creating the capitalistic spirit. Weber first observes a correlation between being Protestant and being involved in business, and declares his intent to explore religion as a potential cause of the modern economic conditions. He argues that the modern spirit of capitalism sees profit as an end in itself, and pursuing profit as virtuous. Weber's goal is to understand the source of this spirit. He turns to Protestantism for a potential explanation. Protestantism offers a concept of the worldly "calling," and gives worldly activity a religious character. While important, this alone cannot explain the need to pursue profit. One branch of Protestantism, Calvinism, does provide this explanation. Calvinists believe in predestination--that God has already determined who is saved and damned. As Calvinism developed, a deep psychological need for clues about whether one was actually saved arose, and Calvinists looked to their success in worldly activity for those clues. Thus, they came to value profit and material success as signs of God's favor. Other religious groups, such as the Pietists, Methodists, and the Baptist sects had similar attitudes to a lesser degree. Weber argues that this new attitude broke down the traditional economic system, paving the way for modern capitalism. However, once capitalism emerged, the Protestant values were no longer necessary, and their ethic took on a life of its own. We are now locked into the spirit of capitalism because it is so useful for modern economic activity.

Chapter 3 - Luther's Conception of the Calling. Task of the Investigation.

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Summary

Weber begins this chapter by looking at the word "calling." Both the German word "Beruf" and the English word "calling" have a religious connotation of a task set by God. This type of word has existed for all Protestant peoples, but not for Catholics or in antiquity. Like the word itself, the idea of a calling is new; it is a product of the Reformation. Its newness comes in giving worldly activity a religious significance. People have a duty to fulfill the obligations imposed upon them by their position in the world. Martin Luther developed this idea; each legitimate calling has the same worth to God. This "moral justification of worldly activity" was one of the most important contributions of the Reformation, and particularly of Luther's role in it.

However, it cannot be said that Luther actually had the spirit of capitalism. The way in which the idea of worldly labor in a calling would evolve depended on the evolution of different Protestant churches. The Bible itself suggested a traditionalistic interpretation, and Luther himself was a traditionalist. He came to believe in absolute obedience to God's will, and acceptance of the way things are. Thus, Weber concludes that the simple idea of the calling in Lutheranism is at best of limited importance to his study. This does not mean that Lutheranism had no practical significance for the development of the capitalistic spirit. Rather, it means that this development cannot be directly derived from Luther's attitude toward worldly activity. We should then look to a branch of Protestantism that has a clearer connection--Calvinism.

Thus, Weber makes his starting point the investigation of the relationship between the spirit of capitalism and the ascetic ethic of the Calvinists and other Puritans. The capitalistic spirit was not the goal of these religious reformers; their cultural impact was unforeseen and maybe undesired. The following study will hopefully contribute to the understanding of how ideas become effective forces in history.

post modernism ethics

Look at how truth is constructed in the news today compared to the way that it was in earlier eras.  Walter Cronkite told the news in a way that attempted to tell the truth.  Most cable news shows have two people with opposing viewpoints yelling back and forth at each other with the anchor serving as an mediator between them.  There is often little attempt to decide what is, ultimately, correct or to call out either of the opposing sides - even when they're saying things that are demonstrably wrong.  So, there is no longer any gold standard of truth that they are looking for - just different versions.

Similarly, look at the way that political news talks about perceptions of the President.  A while ago Bush announced that he was reading lots of books, and most media commentary on that announcement (as far as I recall) was not focused on the books themselves.  Nobody asked Bush what he thought about the specific books he claimed to read, or how he managed to read so much given his demanding job.  Rather, you had various people asking, "How will this announcement influence people's perception of the president?"  Nobody was interested in the reality of the statement, but on how the statement would reflect the way that people talked about things.

Postmodern literature serves as a reaction to the supposed stylistic and ideological limitations of modernist literature and the radical changes the world underwent after the end of World War II. While modernist literary writers often depicted the world as fragmented, troubled and on the edge of disaster, which is best displayed in the stories and novels of such modernist authors as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Albert Camus, Virginia Woolf and Thomas Mann, postmodern authors tend to depict the world as having already undergone countless disasters and being beyond redemption or understanding.

For many postmodern writers, the various disasters that occurred in the last half of the 20th century left a number of writers with a profound sense of paranoia. They also gave them an awareness of the possibility of utter disaster and apocalypse on the horizon. The notion of locating precise meanings and reasons behind any event became seen as impossible.

Postmodern literary writers have also been greatly influenced by various movements and ideas taken from postmodern philosophy. Postmodern philosophy tends to conceptualize the world as being impossible to strictly define or understand. Postmodern philosophy argues that knowledge and facts are always relative to particular situations and that it's both futile and impossible to attempt to locate any precise meaning to any idea, concept or event.

Postmodern philosophy tends to renounce the possibility of 'grand narratives' and, instead, argues that all belief systems and ideologies are developed for the express purpose of controlling others and maintaining particular political and social systems. The postmodern philosophical perspective is pretty cynical and takes nothing that is presented at face value or as being legitimate.

Similarly, at the core of many postmodern literary writer's imaginations is a belief that the world has already fallen apart and that actual, singular meaning is impossible to locate (if it can be said to exist at all), and that literature, instead, should serve to reveal the world's absurdities, countless paradoxes and ironies.

 Camus opens the essay by asking if this latter conclusion that life is meaningless necessarily leads one to commit suicide. If life has no meaning, does that mean life is not worth living? If that were the case, we would have no option but to make a leap of faith or to commit suicide, says Camus. Camus is interested in pursuing a third possibility: that we can accept and live in a world devoid of meaning or purpose.

Sartre’s basic philosophy, existentialism, is neither a narrowly definable school of thought nor limited to Sartre and his French contemporaries such as Camus. Although in a certain sense Sartre and Camus were the first to name and define existentialism, it is best understood as a long-running current in Europe’s philosophical history, a current that emerged in the late nineteenth century. Existentialist philosophers believe that philosophy should emphasize the individual human experience of the world, and they consider ideas of individual freedom; individual responsibility; and how it is possible, if it is possible at all, for individual human beings to act meaningfully in the world.

These ideas themselves belong to a larger philosophic trend that sought to expose the ostensible bankruptcy of traditional philosophy, in particular the philosophy of the Enlightenment. During the Enlightenment, philosophy had put its faith in the idea that reason and rationality hold the answer to all of humanity’s problems. To nineteenth-century thinkers, such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and twentieth-century existentialists, such as Sartre, a radically different approach was needed if philosophy was to rediscover its urgency. Instead of attempting to contain reality within an absolute theoretical framework, iconoclastic philosophers like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard felt that philosophy should emphasize the individual’s subjective experience rather than the individual as the bearer of abstract, universal rights. As adopted by Sartre, this emphasis on individual experience emanated from the belief that, ultimately, people cannot appeal to universal notions of morality or ethics to guide their behavior. Any attempt to generalize human nature, and hence any attempt to construct a system based on these universals, is doomed to fail.

Sartre was unique within this current of thought largely because of the way he wedded phenomenology to his rejection of traditional philosophy. Phenomenology can be described as the study of consciousness, or how the external world appears to our minds. Phenomenology poses the question of whether it is possible to find the objective reality behind how something appears to us—a question that weighed heavily on Sartre’s own meditations on the individual’s experience of and interaction with the world.

Sartre’s thought also comprises elements of Marxism. Sartre strongly self-identified as a Marxist and was a firm believer in certain key tenets of Marxist thought, including the inherently exploitative nature of the capitalist system, the fact of class conflict as the animating engine of history, and the dialectical nature of all being. That said, Sartre’s Marxism did not act so much as an influence on his existentialist philosophy as something that existed alongside it. 

Douglas Murray McGregor (1906 – 1 October 1964) was a management professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and president of Antioch College from 1948 to 1954.^[1] He also taught at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. His 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise had a profound influence on education practices.

Douglas McGregor is a contemporary of Abraham Maslow. Likewise, he also contributed much to the development of the management and motivational theory. He is best known for his Theory X and Theory Y as presented in his book ‘The Human Side of Enterprise’ (1960), which proposed that manager’s individual assumptions about human nature and behaviour determined how individual manages their employees.^[2]

In the book The Human Side of Enterprise, McGregor identified an approach of creating an environment within which employees are motivated via authoritative, direction and control or integration and self-control, which he called theory X and theory Y,^[4] respectively. Theory Y is the practical application of Dr. Abraham Maslow's Humanistic School of Psychology, or Third Force psychology, applied to scientific management.(Read on Transactional influence in class notes)

He is commonly thought of as being a proponent of Theory Y, but, as Edgar Schein tells in his introduction to McGregor's subsequent, posthumous (1967), book The Professional Manager : "In my own contacts with Doug, I often found him to be discouraged by the degree to which theory Y had become as monolithic a set of principles as those of Theory X, the over-generalization which Doug was fighting....Yet few readers were willing to acknowledge that the content of Doug's book made such a neutral point or that Doug's own presentation of his point of view was that coldly scientific".

Graham Cleverley in Managers & Magic (Longman's, 1971) comments: "...he coined the two terms Theory X and theory Y and used them to label two sets of beliefs a manager might hold about the origins of human behaviour. He pointed out that the manager's own behaviour would be largely determined by the particular beliefs that he subscribed to....McGregor hoped that his book would lead managers to investigate the two sets of beliefs, invent others, test out the assumptions underlying them, and develop managerial strategies that made sense in terms of those tested views of reality. "But that isn't what happened. Instead McGregor was interpreted as advocating Theory Y as a new and superior ethic - a set of moral values that ought to replace the values managers usually accept."

McGregor died, age 58, in Massachusetts.

Likert scale

Jake is a consultant who has just been hired by a company to improve its organizational structure. One of the first things that Jake decides to do is figure out how the employees feel about their jobs. Jake creates a short survey that each employee must complete. The survey has five statements that must be rated either 'strongly agree,' 'agree,' 'neutral,' 'disagree,' or 'strongly disagree.'

Jake has just created a Likert scale.

A Likert scale is a psychological measurement device that is used to gauge attitudes, values, and opinions. It functions by having a person complete a questionnaire that requires them to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with a series of statements. The Likert scale is named after its creator, Rensis Likert, who developed it in 1932. In survey research, Likert scales are the most commonly used type of scale. In the example earlier, those who completed Jake's survey had five different options to choose from to indicate the extent to which they agree with each statement.

Mary Parker Follett (September 3, 1868 – December 18, 1933) was an American social worker, management consultant,philosopher, and pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and organizational behavior. Along with Lillian Gilbreth, Mary Parker Follett was one of two great women management gurus in the early days of classical management theory. Follett is known to be "Mother of Modern Management".^[2]

A shot in the arm for irrigation and agri.

Pradhan mantri sichayi yojna covers under it AIBP, IWM and National mission on sustainable agriculture. Now this years budget has allocated a higher share to irrigation. Only 40% area irrigated, even there only 60% of this 40 is underground water irrigation through highly subsidised electricity provided to farmers.


The NDA government has launched the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayi Yojana tries to replace the fragmented approach with an integrated approach aiming at convergence of investments in irrigation. This scheme has amalgamated three ongoing programmes of three different ministries as follows: Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme of the Ministry of Water Resources Integrated Watershed Management Programme of the Ministry of Rural Development Farm water management component of the National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture. Thus, with the launch of this scheme, it is believed that various ministries, departments, agencies, financial institutions engaged in creation, use and recycling of water will be brought under one platform to take into account the entire water-cycle and does proper water budgeting for all sectors such as households, agriculture and industries.
 Objectives The broad objectives of PMKSY are as follows: 
1.Converge investments in irrigation at the farm level and provide end-to-end solution 
2.Har Khet ko Pani: Enhance the physical access of water on the farm and expand cultivable area under assured irrigation Integration of source, distribution, efficient use of water through appropriate technology and practice Enhance adoption of precision-irrigation and other water saving technologies under 
3.More Crop Per Drop. Promotion of micro-irrigation in the form of drips, sprinklers, pivots, rain-guns in the farm (Jal Sinchan) 
4.Enhance recharge of aquifers; promote sustainable water conservation Ensure integrated development of Rainfed areas Water harvesting, water management and crop alignment, explore feasibility of reusing treated municipal waste water for peri-urban agriculture and attarct greater private investments in irrigation.

The PMSKY works on Project mode. The planning and execution is decentralized. The cornerstone of planning and implementation of PMKSY are District Irrigation Plans (DIPs). This DIP will identify the gaps in irrigation infrastructure of a district.  A DIP can be prepared on two levels viz. Block and District. The DIPs will be vetted by the Governing body of Zila Panchayat and subsequently be incorporated in the State Irrigation Plan (SIP). Thus, an SIP is a consolidation of DIPs and it also takes into consideration the State Agricultural Plans created under the Rastriya Krishi Vikas Yojana.

Nabard has been allowed to issue tax free bonds and collect money from the market for irrigation projects. CWC also has been asked to ensure that the projects already completed under AIBP are running at their full capacity.

Suggestions were made to link MGNREGA with PKSY so that rural employment as well as irrigation could be linked.

Drought management

i. The primary responsibility of managing drought (or any other natural calamity) is that of the respective State Government. The criteria followed for drought declaration and the time when the drought is declared differs across the states. There is no time limit for declaration of drought by the States.

ii.Involvement of various Ministries/Departments/Organisations in one or the other shortterm or long term activities of drought management results in delay in effective and timely coordination. The indicators used and the methodology followed for drought intensity assessment and drought monitoring differ largely from state to state.

iii. Slow setting in of drought makes it difficult to determine the onset and end of drought.

Lack of community participation in drought management activities at the village/Tehsil level, and the low levels of involvement of Self Help Groups, NGOs and the corporate sector in drought management reduces the overall value of the effort.

Inefficient functioning of Drought monitoring committees at state level

At the National level, droughts are monitored by various agencies such as rainfall and aridity anomaly by the IMD, reservoir storage position by the Central Water Commission (CWC). At State-level Departments like Agriculture, Irrigation, Economics and Statistics monitor crop and seasonal conditions

It is possible that parts of districts which are declared as drought affected may not be facing drought. As a result some States use Bolcks/Tehsils as unit for declaring drought. Some States such as Rajasthan have used village as unit for declaring drought. This may lead to problems in implementation of drought relief measures vis-a vis neighbouring villages. There is therefore a need to standardise State specific units for declaration of drought to exclude areas not affected by drought and at the same time enable effective targeted relief measures. Unit of deceleration of drought should be standardised and alternative methods of quicker assessment of crop yield need to be evolved so as to mitigate the impact of drought in time.

Efforts will be made to integrate the ground-based information with the space-based information for comprehensive reporting. The role of all departments engaged in drought management will be clearly spelt out.

DMC will facilitate the integration of data and expertise from multiple institutions such as ICAR, NRSC, IMD, Agricultural Universities, State Departments of Irrigation, Ground Water, Revenue, Agriculture etc., to evolve a robust method for drought intensity assessment on the lines of US Drought Monitor. Once the indicators cross the defined threshold level (level to be decided by the state), the SDMA Secretariat will help in declaring drought at sub-district levels.

It is necessary to take up more experiments in the country to assess the aerosol characteristics, suitability of nuclides for cloud seeding and alternative types of cloud seeding – (ground based or aerial, warm or cold cloud seeding etc). A cloud seeding policy needs to be formulated at National level and State level for creating required environment to regulate these measures.

Impact Analysis In the industrial sector, agro-based industries are directly affected. Lower domestic production of agriculture based inputs for agroprocessing units reduces non-agricultural production and employment opportunities. Availability of water for domestic consumption also diminishes. This has implications for health and household activities, including substantial increase in the time spent on collecting water. As water becomes scarce, competition among and within sectors usually increases. Droughts have other important implications for government policies, as it reduces tax revenues through declines in income, employment and exports. On the expenditure side, the government is faced with increased expenditure on relief, social welfare, health and water supplies, consumption-related subsidies on food distribution, and the logistical costs of droughtrelated imports. The law and order structure is put under greater pressure by a rise in crime, in turn associated with temporary unemployment, migration and increased destitution. In addition, there are likely to be pressures for the increased provision of subsidies and credit to the affected productive sectors,

4.3.8 Afforestation with Bio-diesel species

"Kashmir has been handled by the NCMC, which has held daily meetings," said an official. "The NEC (national executive committee) has met only once. With the NDMA and the NEC out of the equation, the NDRF, which is answerable to the NDMA, is being run by the home ministry." The official adds the fact that multiple agencies perform similar roles delays the response to a disaster. "Decisions are delayed when more hands touch a file. This happens between the home secretary and the NDMA secretary. They duplicate each other's roles. In an ideal situation, one should be made secretary for disaster management, with complete responsibility and powers."
Though Jammu & Kashmir has a disaster management agency, it has little capacity to interpret data. According to news reports, days before Srinagar was inundated, Central Water Commission data indicated rising water levels in the Jhelum river; yet, this didn't trigger a flood warning.

"The problem is neither states nor the Centre have a robust decision-support system," said an NDMA official. "If the meteorological department indicates heavy rainfall, what are the implications? Who should we evacuate, and from where to where?"

"We need to move from simple forecasting to impact forecasting," said Anand Sharma, director of India Meteorological Department, Dehradun, "Also, we must ensure information flows faster than the floodwater. In such situations, the communication system is the first to collapse."

• Either home secretary or NDMA secretary should be given the entire responsibility to manage a disaster. This will reduce response time
   
• NDMA should be empowered to give directions to a state to comply with its guidelines
   
• Fire and civil defence authorities should be brought under NDMA
   
• NDMA clearance should be taken before construction in flood-prone and earthquake-prone areas
   
• National Disaster Mitigation Fund should be created

• National Plan for Disaster Management had not been formulated even after six years of the enactment of the Disaster Management Act, 2005
   
• National Executive Committee responsible for preparation of the National Plan had not met between May 2008 and December 2012, although the country faced many disasters during this period
   
• The national guidelines developed by NDMA were not adopted and applied by the nodal agencies and state governments. NDMA did not take effective measures to ensure the application of its guidelines
   
• NDMA's project management capacity was found deficient. No major project taken up by NDMA had seen completion so far. Due to deficient planning, either the projects were abandoned midway or were still incomplete
   
• In many cases, audit report found projects with similar objectives being executed by NDMA and also by nodal ministries, indicating lack of coordination
   

 in the image here NDMA is both under MHA secretary and NDMA secrecretary-- violation of unity of command and delay and overlapping and confusion --an anthema in disaster management

The NEC includes the secretary to the GoI of the ministry or department having 13 Institutional Framework and Financial Arrangements administrative control of DM, as well as the chairperson and secretaries to the GoI in the Ministries/Departments of Agriculture, Atomic Energy, Defence, Drinking Water Supply, Environment and Forests, Finance (Expenditure), Health, Power, Rural Development, Science and Technology, Space, Communications, Urban Development, Water Resources, and the Chief of the Integrated Defence Staff of the Chiefs of Staff Committee as members.
 The NEC is the executive committee of the NDMA and is mandated to assist the NDMA in the discharge of its functions and also ensure compliance of the directions issued by the Central Government. The NEC is to coordinate the response in the event of any threatening disaster situation or disaster. The NEC will prepare the National Plan based on the National Policy on DM. The NEC will monitor the implementation of Guidelines issued by NDMA. It will also perform such other functions as may be prescribed by the Central Government in consultation with the NDMA.

The 2 nd Administrative Reforms Commission has recommended setting up of a National Drought Management Institute. The Government has accepted the recommendations and the DAC is considering setting up of IDMC. This Centre will be set up as an autonomous body under the DAC, which will initiate plans for its establishment. IDMC will have adequate operational flexibility and freedom in operation and functioning to enable innovative and creative experimentation. It will have on-line access to the data/information/reports of IMD, CWC, CGWB, MoA, MoES, ICAR, NRSA and DMC of State Governments. IDMC will help in selecting appropriate drought mitigation and preparedness measures and methodologies.

weberian criticism

Talcott Parson talked of the internal inconsistency in the weberian model. Claims of expertise and claims of hierarchy -- which one to be followed. This can only be ensured if the person in hierarchy has, expertise as well which cannot happen. Moreover applying Peter's principle of promotion this would be even more problematic.

Now developing this problem of following rules or authority Alvin Gouldner comes up with his concept of punishment centeric  bureaucracy. As compared to Mock bureaucracy where the rules and regulations are externally imposed and the organisation as a whole only follows them on paper (Defying Weber's legal rational, as rules are there but not being followed by bureaucracy.)

And representative bureaucracy where the rules and regulations are informally agreed to and therefore followed by the members. In case of punishment centered bureaucracy the rules are imposed on the organisation to become more rational, however due to a certain section being antigonised to the rules doesnot follow it and comes up with counter measures to circumvent or hinder the rules ensuring only minimum acceptable performance.


Peter Blau felt that Weberian model cannot be applied to all time and places. Members need to identify with organisational goal.

• Mock bureaucracy: this type comes from outside agency and is implemented officially, but not in daily behaviors. Both management and workers agree in this case to act the same way. The rules are not enforced in this case, neither by management, nor by the workers. No conflict seem to emerge in this case. “Smoking” is in this case seen as inevitable. The no-smoking rule is an example of mock-bureaucracy.
• Representative bureaucracy: both management and workers enforced this rule and it generated very few tensions. In this context, the focus was on the education of workers as management considered them as ignorant and careless regarding security rules. The safety program is an example of representative. Meetings happened regularly to implement this program and it was as well the occasion to voice some concerns for workers. For the management, this program was a way to tighten the control over workers.
• Punishment-centered bureaucracy: this type of program was initiated by management and generated many tensions. Management viewed workers as deliberately willing to be absent. Therefore, punishment was installed in order to force the workers not to be absent. For example, the “no-absenteism” rule is an example of the punishment-centered bureaucracy.

Ethics

So In the debate between Parliament VS Judiciary, ie judicial activism or separation of power. In ethics stand can be taken that Democracy ie parliament is vulnerable to populism and irrationality. Democracy has its merit in that it ensures accountability of powerholders, voice to all ie political democracy, breeds Mutual respect, Trust (as here the trusteeship of power is given by the people), Freedom of expression etc.


But also Democracy if not fully established can lead to Confusion, majoritarianism. Hobbes had said that man is essentially selfish and therefore has little capacity for self rule. The dark side of Indian democracy has been put as "buy the people, off the people, far the people "

Plato had criticised democracy ie rule by masses as unworthy and he believed in the philosopher king.

The thing is democracy at time can go astray, particularly in a society whose values and aspirations are changing rapidly.  Therefore institution of justice has to intervene in the form of judicial activism to check misuse of power in the name of democracy.

However it must also be noted that the during the emergency when the judiciary too had failed to uphold Habeaus Corpus and FR of citizens it was democracy that had taken roots in the Indian society that saved the day.

Also democracy itself isnt inherently good or bad but the decline or success of democracy reflects our decline and growth respectively.

Now civil service activism / whistle blowing vs resigning and taking action- This fact was recognized by the great minds, such as Socrates, or Plato, who continually repeated that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it. Socrates drunk the poison from the goblet rather than allow injustice to prevail. Over here Is KANTIAN Categorical Imperative in play as it ensures that you dont do any injustice to prevent any other injustice. No act of injustice despite good or bad consequences can be allowed. An act is inherently good or bad irrespective of its consequences.

So Socrates death would mean he would no longer be able to help guide the society and injustice may increase, but as far as Socrates is concerned he feels that he won't take to beguiling and cheat to save the society ie He will ask the king to let him live and in return he will stop he teachings, but through subterfuge or deceit or  whatever he would continue on his revolutionary activities. Socrates doesn't chose a wrong to do right. He choses righteousness ie Kantian categorical imperative and Dies.

So a civil servant cannot just be inside the system and be a part of something wrong to do right later. He should resign and do NGO work.

Otherwise consequentialism would exonerate him by saying that he actions are moral if they are bringing about eventual good. Utilitarianism bitch.

India Bangladesh article 2013

Among all our neighbours, the nation whose birth is indelibly linked to India is Bangladesh. That this nation, uniquely in the Islamic world, is struggling to be a modern secular state, has always acknowledged India’s support for its independence from Pakistan and now looks forward to developing an all encompassing positive relationship with us is inexplicably underplayed in this country.

Economic & political linkages

For long, India has looked at the West as the centre of gravity of its strategic interests, but to little avail. Our much heralded ‘Look East Policy,’ though initiated in 1993 by the late Narasimha Rao when he was Prime Minister, has only received some impetus. Bangladesh is a natural pillar of this policy, be as it can a ‘bridge’ to economic and political linkages with South East Asia and beyond. A friendly Bangladesh that ensures no anti-India terror or insurgent activities can be carried out from its soil unlike in the past will substantially assist India in handling security problems in some of its restive north-east States. Importantly, a ‘neutral’ Bangladesh also ensures containment of an assertive China in this region, including along the strategic sea-lanes of the Bay of Bengal.

Since Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League came to power five years ago, there has been tremendous goodwill for India in Bangladesh. In December, she faces a bitter general election in which her adversaries are the congenitally anti-India Islamic fundamentalists. That India has a stake in the victory of secular forces in Bangladesh is a factor it can disregard only at its peril.

It is accepted by all that Sheikh Hasina has largely delivered on Indian security concerns by cracking down on terrorism directed against India from Bangladeshi soil. Additionally, the current government is doing its utmost to keep Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh, represented by the likes of Harkat-al-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the recently banned political outfit Jamaat-e-Islami, others like Hefajat-e-Islam, Jagrata Muslim Janata, and HUJI-B whose links to al Qaeda are well known, at bay at some cost to the Awami League rank and file.

It must also be noted that when India’s President Pranab Mukherjee recently visited Bangladesh, the other prime ministerial aspirant in Dhaka, Begum Khaleda Zia, whose Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is known to encourage anti-India sentiments and has traditionally colluded with fundamentalists in the past, did not bother to meet him. Electoral battle-lines between the two parties in Bangladesh are also drawn over their regional priorities.

Unfortunately, there exist many contentious issues between the two countries, primarily in the division of common river waters. Not surprising considering we share 54 trans-boundary rivers, big and small! In 1996, the sharing of the Ganga waters was successfully agreed upon between the two nations. However, the major area of dispute has been India’s construction and operation of the Farakka Barrage to increase water supply to the river Hooghly. Bangladesh complains that it does not get a fair share of the water in the dry season and some of its areas get flooded when India releases excess waters during the monsoons. In addition, the sharing of the waters of the Teesta river is being vehemently opposed by India’s West Bengal government though many Indian security and water experts in that State empathise with Bangladesh’s stand. The sluggish execution of the Tipaimukh hydroelectric project on the Barak River in Bangladesh is another problem area. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has, however, graciously offered a reasonable partnership stake in this project to Bangladesh.

Then, there is the land corridor that India wants through Bangladesh, to connect West Bengal to the north-eastern States. Right now, the only land connection between these two parts of India is the 20 to 25 km wide Siliguri corridor (also known as India’s Chicken Neck). It appears that Bangladesh will grant this only after it gets its demand of water requirements. Importantly, its internal political situation has to ease enough for Dhaka to make such a concession to India.

India’s other concern is the issue of the continuing huge influx of undocumented Bangladesh migrants through a 4000 km-long porous international border, and despite a crackdown by the Sheikh Hasina government, the continuing presence of anti-India forces across the border. Problems like trade imbalances and tariff barriers between the two nations are easily surmountable and India providing some business incentives recently to Bangladesh have been appreciated.

One other issue that could have been solved, but has been allowed to fester, is India’s inability to ratify the protocol to the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) of 1974 with Bangladesh. Under this, 161 adversely held small enclaves are to be exchanged by the two countries; 7,100 acres of land will be transferred to India and nearly 17,000 acres go to Bangladesh. The Union Cabinet had in February 2013 approved the draft LBA Bill for introduction in the monsoon session of Parliament for ratification of the swap deal. However, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the BJP have strongly opposed this deal much to the discomfiture of the Centre and annoyance of the Bangladesh government.

Legitimate demand

Overall, India has to consider if West Bengal, under Ms Banerjee, is unnecessarily spoiling the relationship between the two nations by putting spokes in New Delhi’s efforts to address Bangladesh’s legitimate demands. If this continues, India risks missing the larger picture. Even West Bengal economists lament that their government’s failure to view the big picture and ‘putting politics before development’ has prevented the State from becoming India’s gateway to South East Asia and the Far East as a whole. That the Centre could have taken more efforts to bring the West Bengal Chief Minister on board prior to the Prime Minister’s Bangladesh visit is another story.

Addressing a dialogue organised recently by two think tanks of the two nations in New Delhi, Bangladesh High Commissioner to India Tariq Karim succinctly pointed out that “India’s growth is Bangladesh’s growth because Bangladesh can grow only when India grows.” He reminded his Indian audience of President Pranab Mukherjee’s observation that the “agenda for the future for both the countries has to be sub-regional.”

India-Bangladesh relations have more than an academic strategic content. In the long run, India’s national interests primarily lie towards and beyond its eastern flanks to South East Asia and the new geographical and strategic construct namely Indo-Pacific Asia. India thus needs to strengthen the various regional groupings in this region like the ASEAN and the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation). Importantly, by pragmatically reaching out to Bangladesh now, it will be able to strengthen the secular democratic forces in Islamic Bangladesh to our east — an imperative which must always be borne in our strategic formulations, for let us never forget that towards our western flank violent Islamic fundamentalism is on an alarming ascendant.

Bangladesh Hacking of secular bloggers by machete and moltov wielding islamic conservatives

Why 
1. Bangladesh liberation 1971 history -- Razkaars (a volunteer organisation ) unleashed by the then governor of east bengal to resist liberation. These Razkaars were islamic fundamentalists and were responsible for largescale atrocities of rape and murder. A member organ of this body of volunteer was the Jamat-e-islami. 

2. Post liberation, President Muzbir ur Rehman assasinated by the army in 1975 . the military gvt under Zia ur Rahman was affiliated with Pakistan's army head Zia ul Haq. Both the leaders contributed to significant islamisation of their nations. 

3. Awami league party in its election manifesto of 2008 general elections promised justice to perpetrators of 1971 crimes by forming a tribunal.

4. The tribunal in 2011 gave a punishment of life imprisonment to Mollah, rejecting the earlier death penalty.

5. So came  the shahbag square protest that was a spontaneous outburst of liberal secular citizens against the lenient judgment of the tribunal. They not only wanted death penalty to the criminals but also a ban on Jamat-e-islami. This protest movement had no leader or wasnt any sort of political mobilisation, however it was certainly influenced by the secular group of netizens active of blogger and facebook. 

Another case of social media led spontaneous uprising (showing the power of increasing connectivity and participative democracy) is the Tahir square protest in Egypt against 
hosani mobarq -arab spring.

6. Now muslim fundamentalists started attacking the blogger and hacking them to death. Some sad examples are Avijit roy (mukto mon) Neeloy neel etc. Shahbag increased the polarisation in the society and therefore the jamat-e-islami party has struck back. Now the awami league gvt which already took  a draconian step against the islamic fundamentalist by forming the tribunal does not want to totally severe of the orthodox muslim vote bank altogether, so it has taken a soft stand against the hacking issue.  The fact that Awami league opposition under Khalid Zia capitalises on the islamic votebank, limits actions of Sheikh Hasina

7. What should india be doing here. If nothing then at least RSS should note that some of the bloggers killed were Hindus!!! Oh damn!!


Here is what Faiz sahab penned in response to dictatorship of Zia ul haq... 

hum dekhenge
laazim hai ke hum bhii dekhenge
hum dekhenge

woh din ke jis kaa waada hai
hum dekhenge

jo lauh-e-azal mein likhaa hai

hum dekhenge

jab zulm-o-sitam ke koh-e-giraan
rooii kii tarah uR jaayenge
hum mahkoomon ke paaoon tale
yeh dhartii dhaR dhaR dhaRkegii
aur ahl-e-hakam ke sar uupar
jab bijlii kaR kaR kaRkegii

hum dekhenge

jab arz-e-Khudaa ke kaabe se
sab but uThwaaye jaayenge
hum ahl-e-safaa mardood-e-haram
masnad pe biThaaye jaayenge
sab taaj uchhaale jaayenge
sab taKhth giraaye jaayenge

hum dekhenge

bus naam rahegaa Allah kaa
jo Gaayab bhii hai haazir bhii
jo manzar bhii hai naazir bhii
uThegaa "ina-l-haqq" kaa naaraa
jo main bhii hoon aur tum bhii ho
aur raaj karegii Khalq-e-Khudaa
jo main bhii hoon aur tum bhii ho

hum dekhenge
laazim hai ke hum bhii dekhenge
hum dekhenge

bitch is back

The Lakshadweep is a group of coral reef islands. 

How do coral reefs form? 
Coral reefs are nothing but the accumulated exoskeleton of corals.  When a coral dies, it's body is left behind. On top of this body, another coral lives. When it dies, it leaves behind a body that serves as a base for another coral.

The reefs of the Lakshadweep islands were created around marine volcanoes. These marine volcanoes would rise up above the sea level and corals would inhabit the shallow water created by the volcano. Eventually, the volcano will stop erupting and start subsiding. Eventually, it will fall below sea level, leaving behind the coral reef. This reef will now appear to be an island, like the Lakshadweep islands.

EXTRA TIDBIT: The volcanoes that the Lakshadweep islands were created around were created when the India plate travelled over a hotspot. A hotspot is a spot where a tube from inside the earth brings lava to the surface. Imagine holding a pen with one hand and placing base of the Palm on the tip of the pen. Then, if you pulled your hand back, whilst maintaining contact between the pen and your hand, the pen would draw a line over your palm. 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Similarly, the hotspot was stationary and active for millions of years, and the Indian plate moved over it. If you look at the map, the Lakshadweep and Maldives islands for a straight line. That represents the path that the Indian plate took over the hotspot (called the Reunion hotspot after the island Reunion). Remember the line draw on your palm?

---

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are more interesting to me.

You might have heard that the Himalayas were created when India collided with Asia, around 40 million years ago. The Himalayas represent the northern edge of the Indian plate and the southern edge of the Eurasian plate. A similar thing happened to create the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

 They are found at the eastern edge of the Indian plate. The eastern edge of the Indian Plate is the western edge of the Burma Plate. The two plates collided around 40 million years ago. This collision led to the rise of mountain chains. On land, this mountain chain is called the Arakan Yoma, on the sea these islands are called the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Yes, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are in fact the peaks of submerged mountains

The 2010 report had pointed out several institutional problems. It observed that the high cost of credit, requirements of collateral, limited access to equity capital, lack of access to global markets, and the absence of a mechanism for the revival of sick enterprises were some of the major concerns of SMEs.

The report had also recommended a series of measures to address these concerns. The task force had recommended a target of 20 per cent year-on-year growth for micro and small enterprises lending by commercial banks. It had also advocated a public procurement policy for MSMEs that would mandate a goal for government departments and public sector undertakings (PSUs) to reach a target of at least 20 per cent of their annual purchases from SMEs and report the same in their annual reports.

Problems with the MFI model

The proposal to run the MUDRA Bank on the MFI model has also come in for criticism. Sudha Sundararaman, national vice-president of the All India Democratic Women’s Association, highlighted some of the existing problems with the MFI model of financial inclusion. “The proposal to route the funding for the new bank through MFIs is a move towards increasing the profits of these institutions and encouraging the private sector instead of strengthening public sector banks. Our women’s groups working in the States of Odisha, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh continue to report large numbers of women falling into the debt trap because of the exorbitant interest charged by MFIs. MFIs continue to function largely as exploitative institutions and not as arbiters of financial inclusion. About three months ago, women in Odisha united in an effort to refuse to pay the exorbitant interest rates charged by MFIs. There is an ongoing movement in Andhra Pradesh by women to strengthen the linkages between banks and self-help groups [SHGs] and avoid dependence on MFIs,” she said. “The government has to reach out to SMEs with substantial allocation of funds. These are labour-intensive industries which generate considerable employment. They continue to have problems with credit availability. In a situation where the government clearly sides with large corporations, small industries are facing challenges of survival.”

DAlits

On the night of December 1, 1997, in Laxmanpur Bathe, a village in Bihar’s Arwal district 90 km from Patna, 58 Dalits were slaughtered by a gang of dominant caste men that went by the name of Ranvir Sena. One of the worst instances of caste violence in independent India, the then President K.R. Narayanan called it a “national shame”.

For the next 12 years, this atrocity wound its way through the tortuous intestines of the Indian judicial system. Finally, on April 7, 2010, a Sessions Court sentenced 16 of the 46 accused to death, and 10 more to life imprisonment. Three years later, on October 9, 2013, the Patna High Court acquitted all the 26 who had been convicted, citing lack of evidence. Narayanan was no longer alive by then. So we don’t know what he might have said about the way our criminal justice system handled this national shame.

Earlier this week, the investigative news portal Cobrapost released a video. In it, the very members of the Ranvir Sena who had been acquitted by the Patna High Court are seen boasting about their murderous exploits, including how they executed the massacre in Laxmanpur Bathe. The emergence of this video has two implications.

First, it suggests that lack of evidence – though cited often by our courts — may not be the real reason why cases of caste atrocity almost never end in convictions, or if they do, don’t survive the appeals process. It is clear that evidence is available for those serious about finding it.

Second, the pattern of interminable delays in trial proceedings, followed by conviction by a lower court (though rarely under the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989), followed by acquittal at the High Court, has become too glaring to be ignored any longer, especially in the light of the Cobrapost video, which is effectively an 80-minute commercial that advertises guaranteed impunity for caste atrocities in India.

One could easily cite several cases that fit the Laxmanpur Bathe trajectory. For instance, in the Bathani Tola massacre of 1996, 21 Scheduled Caste (SC) and Muslim farm labourers were killed by dominant caste landlords. The trial court convicted 23. The High Court set aside the convictions.

In the Nagari Bazaar massacre of 1998 in which 10 Dalits were killed, the trial court convicted 11. The High Court set aside the convictions. In the Miyapur massacre of 2000, 34 SC and Backward Class (BC) labourers were killed. Nine landlords were convicted by the lower court. All were acquitted by the High Court.

This trend goes back to the Kilvenmani massacre of 1968, in which 44 Dalits were killed by upper caste landlords. The lower court found eight of the 23 accused guilty. The Madras High Court acquitted everyone.

Legislative remedy

Clearly, from the perspective of Dalit victims, the Indian criminal justice system has failed to deliver. Yet the only recourse open to them seems to be the legal one.

India has seen several pieces of legislation enacted for the express purpose of deterring caste-based violence. We began by abolishing the primal atrocity of untouchability under Article 17 of the Constitution. Since it wouldn’t get abolished, however, we enacted the Untouchability (Offenses) Act, 1955. This was found to be not stringent enough, so it was amended and became the Protection of Civil Rights Act (PCR), 1955. The PCR Act was still not effective in protecting SCs from caste violence. So we made the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (SC/ST POA Act).

It may be noted that all but one of the atrocities cited above took place after the 1989 POA Act was enacted. So this legislation too hasn’t been effective, as its conviction rate is also abysmal.

The solution? Another legislation: the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Bill, 2015 (henceforth the Amendment Bill).

To deter caste atrocities

According to Ramesh Nathan of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), the 1989 SC/ST POA Act did not have answers to several implementation-related problems.

Describing the experience of Dalit victims who sought redress through this law, Mr. Nathan says, “In most cases, the police would not file FIRs, or do so under the wrong section. The accused are not arrested on time. The investigations are not done on time. The charge sheets are not filed on time. Compensation to victims is not given on time.”

Apart from these, other problems included the frequent filing of counter-cases against Dalit victims, thereby forcing them into a “compromise” with the accused. According to D. Shyam Babu, senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, a common stratagem adopted by the police is to “turn every atrocity into a group clash”, and file cases against both Dalits and upper caste aggressors.” This would automatically ensure that the POA Act would not be applicable.

Mr. Babu adds that typically the police, tasked with maintaining law and order, would put the onus on the Dalit. “If a Dalit groom wanted to ride a horse or a bike, they would say to him, ‘Why do you want to provoke?’ Or ‘Why not take a different route?’ Given that Dalits are a minority in many rural communities, the police are not really going to risk a law and order situation just so that SCs can exercise their equal rights.”

It is to address these problems with the 1989 legislation that Dalit human rights organisations, in consultation with Adivasi rights groups, came up with the draft Amendment Bill, which they submitted to the government in 2010. The UPA-II, however, failed to pass it, and notified it as an ordinance in March 2014.

Earlier this month, the NDA government finally passed the SC/ST POA Amendment Bill, 2015 in the Lok Sabha. The Bill’s provisions are virtually the same as the ordinance passed by UPA-II. It needs to be passed by the Rajya Sabha and notified by the government in order to become law.

Will it make a difference?

The big question is: will this latest legislative salvo against caste atrocities fare any better than its predecessors? Or will it once again, like the 1989 Act, be subverted by a criminal justice system that is itself steeped in caste prejudice?

Dalit activists are cautiously optimistic. Mr. Nathan explains that their hopes stem specifically from four aspects of the newly amended law.

First, the 1989 POA Act had merely provided for re-designating existing courts as special courts for prosecution of crimes under the POA Act. This meant that these “special courts” were also burdened with non-atrocity cases, as a result of which atrocity cases began to pile up, defeating the very purpose of a “special court”.

The Amendment Bill, however, mandates the setting up of “exclusive special courts” that will only try offences under the POA Act. Eliminating the bottleneck created by the burden of non-atrocity cases is expected to ensure speedier completion of trials.

Second, the Amendment Bill extends the roster of punishable offences to include new ones hitherto not covered, such as garlanding with chappals, defiling objects sacred to SC/STs, forced tonsuring of head, etc. The number of casteist offences that did not have a section under which prosecution could be initiated has thus been minimised.

Third, to address the problem of endless delays, the Amendment mandates that trials must be completed within two months, “as far as possible”.

Finally, the Bill defines the content of “wilful negligence” by public servants, which had been left vague in the 1989 legislation. It specifies, for instance, that the duties whose negligence would attract penal provisions under the POA Act include not registering a FIR under the Act, not reading out to the victims the information given orally and recorded in writing, not registering a FIR under the appropriate sections of the Act, and so on.

The overall expectation from the Amendment Bill is that it will address the two major challenges for SC/STs seeking justice: endless delays, and the police either refusing to co-operate or colluding with the non-SC accused.

The law and its limitations

While the activists who have campaigned for this legislation remain hopeful that it will empower them in the battle to protect SC/STs from atrocities, they are also conscious of its limitations, both social and juridical.

At the social level, the Bill follows the definition of SCs as laid down in the Constitution. This means that only Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist Dalits are recognised as SCs under the law. Thus, Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims will not benefit from it. This is a serious flaw as Dalits from other faiths also face caste violence. For instance, the victims of the infamous Karamchedu massacre of 1985 included Dalit Christians.

Says Mr. Nathan, “We wanted to expand the law to include Muslims and Christians. But the feedback we received from the government was that since this needs a constitutional amendment, it could take a long time. So even this proposed amendment would get delayed. So we decided to take one step at a time.”

Second, the Bill cannot help migrant Dalits either, since the legal definitions of SCs are geographically grounded, linking specific castes to specific States and districts.

These shortcomings apart, legal experts are of the view that even juridically, this legislation may not yield a dramatic change in legal outcomes — at least not in the short term. Saurav Datta, a criminal justice reforms activist, elaborates. “What has been the main reason why convictions don’t happen in cases of caste atrocities? It is because our courts have steadfastly refused to see caste prejudice or caste hatred as a key component of what we call the mens rea or criminal intention. Take the 2006 Khairlanji massacre, for example. The courts refused to accept that the brutalities inflicted were because of caste. There were convictions, but they were for murder, not for any offence under the POA Act.”

The law makes a distinction between a crime and an atrocity: a crime is any act punishable by law; but an atrocity denotes “the quality of being shockingly cruel and inhumane”. It also implies “any offence under the IPC committed against SCs by non-SC persons”. Caste considerations as a motive are “not necessary to make such an offence an atrocity.”

Yet, as Mr. Datta points out, the Indian judiciary, including the Supreme Court, has repeatedly chosen to treat atrocities rooted in caste like any ‘normal’ crime under the IPC. “If an SC woman is raped by a non-SC, the courts might give a conviction for rape. But that still doesn’t recognise the caste origin of the atrocity — in which case, it doesn’t really help the Dalit cause.”

Everyone agrees that the best thing about this Bill is that it will make it easier for Dalits to file cases. “But when prosecution happens, will the cases stand in court? Or will we see cases simply piling up?” asks Mr. Datta. “Only when this law yields a precedent or two of successful prosecutions in the higher courts will the Dalits finally have something concrete. For this to happen, the judiciary must first make a conscious effort to rid itself of caste prejudice.”

Professor G. Mohan Gopal, director, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies, presents a different view. “It won’t be easy to get the new Bill implemented in its spirit,” he admits. “But it is nevertheless an important tool from the perspective of Dalit rights. It has given the Dalits a useful lever to mobilise around, and deepen their struggle. As their movement gains in strength, the law’s implementation will also gradually improve.”

All said and done, laws alone do not deter atrocities; convictions do. The SC/ST POA Amendment Bill, 2015 is a step in the right direction. But Dalit rights activists and civil society have their task cut out to make the judiciary and the state responsive to this legislation. A lot will depend on their success in sensitising the public to the insidious nature and wide prevalence of caste prejudice and privilege.

 Power of Special Courts and Exclusive Special Courts, to take direct cognizance of offence and as far as possible, completion of trial of the case within two months, from the date of filing of the charge sheet.