Such "precautionary" moves are putting the cart before the horse; they value the state over the freedoms of the people. They are incompatible with any honest representative government.
Well I am from the effected area. Believe it or not this move has surely helped to maintain peace. No doubt it has effected many peoples work. But this was one of quickest way to control mass communication.
Plus the ban is on 2G/3G & SMS on mobile network not on broad band or usual wired network.
On wired network probably only fb & whatsapp are banned.
Sometimes, when the fit hits the shan, governments must act decisively to protect the public interest. So they call a timeout on civil society. Not quite state of war, but heading that way. But when that's not explicit, it becomes hard to tell whether or not one is living in a police state.
I say this as an Indian and with sadness: The notion and importance of free speech is at worst alien and at best a concept with little or no respect in India. If you exercise your right to free speech (you can only do so when you indulge in speech not welcome by anyone who holds influence) you seriously risk physical harm. This is the reason you dont have Jon Stewart show in India, wont have in the near future.
If someone drops his pants, or more accurately does something much worse (multi-homicide level worse) and claims "I did because BTNM said so", no one will seriously question his/her judgement or responsibility of listening to BTNM but will fall over themselves in their eagerness to blame BTNM exclusively and put a blanket ban on anything that is deemed unpopular by the people who have influence: think of the women and children that may be harmed.
I am sick and tired of waiting for us to behave like adults and treat people like adults with the full set of responsibilities that comes with it. But no, we want to be treated like kids incapable of taking responsibility of our own actions and elect such people to high places.
I expect this to be downvoted if there is a large Indian audience hanging out here. This is definitely a minority view here, going by multiple conversations I have had on this topic.
I wish I could bury it under that rug, but such views are held quite strongly by the apparently educated and "literate" class. Those who do not hold on to such beliefs are typically labelled "communist", "unpatriotic" or some such.
My experience is on the contrary. I have seen people being branded right wing extremists just for having a different point of view. So I think both sides are guilty of this crime.
India has decided over the years, for better or for worse, that keeping the nation together is more important to them than freedom of speech. This is why the film censorship board is so strong here compared to most other democracies, for instance.
I'm an American expat living in India and it's still quite alien to me after a few years. The government really can tell you to stop saying something because it offends someone else. They can do that because the alternative is that hundreds or even thousands of people die.
My opinion on that decision isn't terribly important because I'm not Indian; it's not my decision to make. It's a very deliberate compromise that the Indian people have found over the decades.
So they decided to sign over people's future to a bunch of caste elders who demand that you walk on eggshells to preserve some construct with colonial boundaries?
Bro if you need any verification from me let me know. I am from effected area. I have seen 3 bus stands burning in front of my eyes. Reached home with difficulty. No one stopped any one from protesting but destroying public property is not a way to protest.
This guys had gone highly out of control. Banning their communication was one of the way to control them. Atleast I feel so. I am from affected area.
If you want I can send you some photos I took from my mob while going home shivering.
...and the way to fix it, the only effective intervention, the only conceivable intervention is to ban / censor mobile communication, to take away the ability of all people in the area from communicating over mobile. Fair enough, seems the obvious and logical thing to do. Government caught in the noble act of governance.
They havent banned mobile calls. They have just blocked mobile internet for 24 hours.
No doubt that should have been last option. But yes they did it at last. People started pelting stones on Army. So even Army couldnt control mob via flag march or any such thing.
That sounds terrifying. You have my sympathies. Could there be a better way, though? Some way to calm the mobs without silencing everyone else? In what way are the mobs using mobile Internet that requires shutting it down?
I hope order and safety are restored quickly, and in a judicious and democratic way. All the best from here in the US.
Another Indian here (Currently living in the US). Unfortunately, whatsapp rumors have become a huge cause of concern in recent times.
"Forwarded messages" on whatsapp is an extremely common practice and a lot of times, false videos/news start trending which were originally sourced specifically to incite people.
There have been instances where I have had to explain my relatives to not worry about the forwarded message they got showing some disturbing images (because in reality, they were taken from the net from some war in a distant part of the world).
I am a huge proponent of Free speech but in those very tense moments in parts of the country, disrupting / stopping these false rumors from spreading can result in saving lives.
Yes, certainly. In fact the media is pretty active and usually reliable. They also help by letting people know to "Stop believing in rumors and stay calm".
But I think the problem here is similar to that of older, non-tech savvy generation falling victims to Nigeriam mail scams. The thing in India is, a vast majority of the new mobile net users in India (majority belonging to lower income category) have been introduced to the internet very recently and hence are bad at judging what's spam and what's not.
So imagine an area which is already tense and then the local youth get forwarded messages with an Image (pulled from the internet) of a burnt body and then some poorly edited text at the bottom saying "This is what xyz community did to our brothers. We have to stand up to this!". That's when things go terribly wrong. Please note that this is just an example and that is definitely not what happened here in Gujarat this time, but it has occured a few times in the recent past (Muzaffarnagar riots) and so the government takes no chances.
But yes, I agree there has to be a better solution than just an outright disruption in services.
Instead of asking questions, why don't you come up with some solutions. You see, reasoning doesn't quite work well with mobs. It is good that the government resorted to cutting the communications rather than resorting to violence.
This is very common in India, for the government to take bizarre actions and then retreat shamefully when they figure they're exposed. The porn ban is just one example — for those of you who don't follow, the Indian government tried to ban porn and did it, albeit half-heartedly, and then were forced to undo and lift the ban.
Even the story in reference here isn't an uncommon sight. In Jammu & Kashmir (A state which has a disputed status, yet is claimed to be an "integral part" of India by the ruling political party) it is very common for the government to shut down mobile internet and all mobile facilities on 14th and 15t h August (Which are the countries independence day)
Heck they had even banned text messaging here until 2013. Some "freedom of speech", eh?
A state which has a disputed status, yet is claimed to be an "integral part" of India by the ruling political party - Its considered integral part of India by its citizens does not matter which political party is at power.
Sure it is a factually incorrect statement. J&K is special in that it has been given special powers of autonomy etc. But I wonder what you mean when you say disputed, just because someone starts to dispute that something of mine belongs to them doesn't make it disputed. The agreement of accession into India should make it pretty clear.
The agreement of accession was basically signed under duress by a Hindu ruler of a primarily Muslim state in 1947 when he was being attacked by Pakistani tribal lords. Our prime minister basically said - "Sign the agreement of accession or I am not protecting you". I don't think that agreement means anything. You might disagree but lets present facts as they were.
The story of Kashmir is full of broken promises by the Indian government and people. So before we call it an integral part of India, lets at least own our mistakes. Lets remove AFSPA in Kashmir. Lets hold the bloody referendum. Lets at least grant them more autonomy.
But thats not gonna happen. Any government which grants more autonomy to Kashmir will be voted out and hence they will not do it.
In my opinion, residents of J&K already get a number of privileges that other states don't. For example, laws passed by Parliament don't apply there until they're ratified by the State Assembly. Granting them additional autonomy and privileges isn't simple, because it doesn't square with the Constitution's tenet that all citizens are equal and deserve equal protection of laws. For example, Kashmiris can own property in the rest of India but other Indians can't own property in Kashmir.
You correctly call into question the agreement signed by the Maharaja of Kashmir, but I could just as easily ask about every other territory that's a part of the Union of India. Why should the writ of New Delhi run to places where the people are ethnically, linguistically and culturally different, such as Tamil Nadu? After all, at no point did Tamils accede to the Union and they have suffered discrimination before - such as when Delhi tried to impose Hindi on a Tamil-speaking population in 1965. Do Tamils deserve special privileges then? No, that's absurd.
To clarify, I think Article 370 that grants Kashmir special status should be scrapped, because they don't deserve special treatment. Apart from that, I think a referendum should be held there. I don't think it will bury the issue (look at Scotland), but it will mollify most people who live there for some time.
Hyderabad, Goa were acceded under duress/pressure. So let's break India apart and make some people happy? Naga separatists want separate nation too, let's do that as well. Nations are not built this way. Each and every inch of India is an integral part of India. J&K is special because a certain politician had some fancies.
Nations change their borders, break up and reform all the time, and they agree to stay together all the time too. "Each and every inch of India is an integral part of India" is meaningless, countries are political constructs.
Man, you really need to read up on stuff. There is a difference between saying "No you don't get a separate nation" and saying "No you don't get a separate nation, and yea I'm just going to put 800,000 armed troops here to shoot you without being subject to jurisdiction if you ever ask. yes that includes innocent children and women"
Here is the thing, dude — 70% of all people from outside Kashmir don't know what is going on there. They immediately resolve to cursing Pakistan or Kashmiris, portraying their troops and their dirty politics as a favor they're doing to us. You know why that referendum was never held? Because the answer is clear — Go away, or at the very least stop shooting our people.
Sadly most of India will never understand, because they aren't listening. Impose AFSPA in Delhi and Mumbai and tell me how that goes.
Don't try to wildly justify everything your people do just to show your kinship to them. It makes you a fanatic, not a patriot. Most of my friends are from India. I love them, and have deep admiration for them. India is a great nation, but sadly it has been very unfair to Kashmir. And successfully made it appear as though they are trying to help, being portrayed as martyrs to their own people.
Research. That will fill in the knowledge gaps you have with regard to kashmir. Then think about it on the grounds of humanity. You will be one step closer to realizing that the situation is actually much different from what you hear about in the news or what your politicians tell you.
Sure I am out of touch of reality and I need to read up. I watched in horror as the 800000 troops coerced millions to vote for a sham government while killing innocent children who refused to vote. Meanwhile Pakistani army had been sending flowers from across the border which resulted in some people dying. Some people from Pakistan cross over from time to time to deliver those flowers personally defying the evil Indian army which also drowned Kashmiris in the recent floods.
Flowerpots are hurled at Indian Army by fringe elements which results in casualties of evil Indian Army persons. A new trend has been seen in the peace loving Kashmiris led by ISI agents in disguise, who chose not to participate in the elections and instead have been seen showing the most peaceful organisation ISIS's flag to the media and the evil army.
Ok enough with the sarcasm, a minister of the elected government (who belongs to Kashmir) recently appeared on a television program to complaint about the media. She said the media only shows the 4k separatists (ISIS lovers) in the news and not the 4000k people who voted and want tourism from the rest of the country. I am more likely to believe her than the propaganda spewed by a random commenter.
Playing the gentleman and branding me a troll doesn't make you right. Whatever I said above can be verified with some googling. If you actually had a point you would call out my lies.
My friend hyderabad and Goa never saw an armed uprising like kashmmir did against India if you remember. You have little or no knowledge regarding the politics of India in general and Kashmir in particular. The politician that granted special status to J and K was your very own Mr. Nehru. One of the greatest Indian leaders. So when you say "Nations are not built that way", you are contradicting the person who probably contributed the most to building the Indian nation.
Everyone has left this thread so this comes late, but I wish the existence of Sundarlal's report and what it has to say is made more available and accessible.
Understanding does not come by hiding ugly thruths. In India its a common belief (among Hindus) that Hindus have never done anyone any wrong and were mind their own business peacefully an then all shit happened to them. False historical constructs are dangerous. Study of clear and open history backed by grassroots records is super important. If you, your dad is in Pakistan now, here's greetings from near his older home.
Well it has been seared at the time of its modern birth.
Its importance varies by region though. Some parts haven't been touched by communal violence ever since partition (apart from Babri related ones) whereas others are repeat offenders.
I will wait till you realise the sarcasm in the last sentence I wrote. Please do enlighten me, which armed uprising you are talking about.
And no, Nehru did not contributed the most, the whole of India was united by Sardar Patel with the exception of J&K which Nehru insisted on taking up. If you call that contribution ...
Look, as a Pakistani descent person, I am sympathetic to you, but this issue of the Pandits is a bleeding wound on international credibility that pretty much destroys any chance of Kashmir seceding. Maybe you were around in 1989, what the hell was going on? Why did you allow your Hindu neighbors to be driven out? All the expatriate Muslim Kashmiris start calling me a boot licking traitor when I ask this (and all the Pannu Kashmir people look like they are about to kill me)
No, of course not, but is the only way they're going to feel safe by oppressing you? When these masjids broadcast threats why were they allowed to be used as an arena in the conflict? Why give the Indian Army an excuse to turn those into a battleground too ( a la Golden Temple)
> shut down mobile internet and all mobile facilities on 14th and 15th August
That is not correct, I stay in Jammu & Kashmir and have been able to use mobile services on 14th and 15th without any issues. It might be true from some region (not that i know off) but it is certainly not true for the entire state.
As your username suggests, you're from Jammu. I think it's a completely different story there. Although I agree, I didn't make that clear in my original comment.
I would really like to hear your solution to the problem. When millions have to relocate to avoid being murdered/raped. When thousands are killed/raped and a lot of people take up guns and start killing innocents. I would love to see your solution to protect freedom of speech and contain the situation. However I must say, winds of change are arriving and the situation has improved a lot despite continuous and desperate attempts by ISI fringe groups to portray otherwise.
The website http://thenextweb.com/ accesses your FB credentials without asking for your consent.
The headline can't be more misleading by the way. It was done to contain spread of violence, not to stop discussions.
How would their website accomplish that?
That seems to be an interesting first post, especially considering people communicating openly seems a way to prevent violence and rumors.
It seems you might want to provide more detail or justification behind your words, or people may consider you an astroturfer.
I'm in two minds regarding this. This reminds me of the clampdown in many of the middle-eastern countries during the Arab spring. On Principle I don't believe that the state should be allowed to place such restrictions on civilian freedom. However, I can't deny that the measures worked. The protest had become extremely violent and needed to be defused instantly. This measure possibly saved lives.
Could the revolt have been defused by Britain granting more voting power to American colonial authorities? Or would they continue to demand placing their community above the rest by being completely autonomous?
Poland is the prime example of getting rid of unwanted government(communist in this case) without resorting to violence, and that's despite the entire country being under martial law with severe restrictions on travel and trade for a few years. It can be done.
Indians made this (see Gandhi & Indian independence movement), but I don't sure "americans"(mostly english people living overseas those days) were capable for that(especially with taking natives genocide & slavery into account).
In India's case Britain was already in a situation where it half-wanted to leave (due to the war, etc). This was not the case with the US.
I'm pretty sure India would have had a violent movement too if WW2 hadn't happened and Indians had better access to firearms and stuff. Violence was less of an option because the British government deliberately ensured that the locals were suppressed. Whereas in the U.S. the British were exploitative of the colonies, but they did not suppress the people (until the movement started); after all, those were their own people.
We did, in fact, have a violent movement, in 1857, just that it didn't work out too well.
I don't think that "Indians are less violent" is really an argument to be made here.
How much time have you spent in India? I've been for half an year there, and 1.5 months in US. My feeling is americans are MUCH more aggressive in general
Born and brought up in the US, been in India for the last ... 8 years. (Indian origin).
That's quite anecdotal at best. My experience has not been the same, I've seen ample violent elements in both places. Indians are generally subtler in our social cues, and that might make Americans "louder" (which feels like aggression), but certainly not more violent.
It also might matter which area of either country you've lived in. Boston(-ish) and Mumbai here.
An acceptable argument for India being more nonviolent would be the entire NAM movement among other initiatives, but there are still many, many other reasons why India's nonviolent independence movement worked -- Indians being nonviolent, if true, would be a small contributor to it, not the main reason. Besides, like I said, we had a violent independence movement and failed. Technically, two, if you count the INA, which actually managed to liberate many areas.
Like almost all policy & law there are trade-offs. Good governance is about enacting policy which attempts to benefit as many people as possible on average (but there will always be losers).
People need to understand that issues are NOT black and white, and that "the thin end of the wedge" often needs to be broached in order to benefit wider society.
There is a certain threshold below which this will work and beyond which it will backfire bad; if the majority is big, the message spreads nevertheless and more underground and uncontrollable ways.
In general, freedom of expression, communication should not be curbed but that freedom also brings in misinformation, rumour, and anti-social activities. When panic can cause unnecessary destruction, government should be able to control communication channels for a short period of time. Remember, if government is wrong, it will not be able to hide the truth for a long.
In first look it doesn't speak well of a democratic country. But loads of false information is spread using SMS, other messaging services (like watsapp) and social platforms. If lives can be saved and bring back things to normal by doing so, then it is very much justified. The people who are being killed or facing inconvenience because of the protests are also citizen of the same democracy. Right to live is more important than right to have internet.
Loads of "false information" which happens to be true is also spread using SMS, other messaging services, and social platforms. This is the excuse of every authoritarian state.
mmm so the digital world will also be part of bans/strikes going forward. So parties will now call for bundh will ensure online shops are also closed. <joke>If telephone booth and post office is closed why should the 2g/3g/4g and land line should work they should also stop..</joke>
Not a freedom of speech issue. whatsapp messages spread quite virally. A large number of users of such services who have got access to mobile internet quite recently are susceptible to take a spam/hoax message as an authentic piece of information, specially the ones which can directly affect the person. Also, you need to keep in mind that services like whatsapp have become a significant source of information for many people.
A large number of such messages that I have come across are photoshopped images, mix it with the ease of sending bulk messages and you get an explosive mixture.
One way to tackle such situation will be, IMO, to make bulk messaging an expensive (computationally) operation, something of the nature of HashCash.
No, no government should ever be able to do this. Why? Because when you track it down to the person getting the switch flipped, it is always someone with an interest not serving the whole, a.k.a. private interest. And the government should serve the whole, otherwise it is oppressing a part.
And in regards to your argument — the longer you keep the immune system from exposure to a threat — the longer you allow the threat to evolve and become even more dangerous. Let the people learn what is hoax and fake. Yes, they are perfectly able to do that.
This is not a lot of oppressed people standing up for their civil rights.
The issue is very different than that. More over, the size of crowd is way to large for the law enforcement to handle swiftly.
This is not a flashpoint event, huge number of people were mobilized from the neighboring states for the main rally that took place before the violence broke. (the number of people gathered there were more than 100K, and this will a very conservative estimate)
In such a politically charged environment, the spamming ease becomes a real threat to the law and order, and above all, to human lives.
I would very much like the system to evolve, but not at the expense of innocent lives.
The threat is a large mass of illiterate people being riled up by inflammatory rumors they see on their phone. They aren't the kind of people who know what the words "fact check" means.
Add to that a semi-educated police force and you end up with 3 people dead and a whole bunch of public infrastructure burning.
If you are in government, you don't really have the option to call the protesters in to have a nuanced debate.
Even if the majority was doing it, banning it solves nothing. It only serves as a gateway. Specifically about acid, I needed it to clean my toilet so went around asking; I was escorted to a black-market shop in Noida which served other illegal things alongside like gas cylinders and hand-made guns.
Justice is the solution. Punish the criminals and people will stop doing it.
This is freedom of speech issue. Imagine if the Egyptian government takes down fb stating similar concerns during protests, would you still defend it?
Additionally, government should not be in the business of controlling and determining the veracity of the messages people are sending among themselves.
India has quite a history of communal riots[0], and Gujarat is a state where violence tends to become really wacky. As a kid I've lived a few years in Rajkot, Gujarat, during and after the Ayodhya riots and violence spread easily based on rumour. But it also has a long history of censorship.
I can understand why the Indian government shuts down a service like mobile internet, they have had a great number of casualties due to these communal riots. But it seems far from the right thing to do.
But the root of the problem is so much a social problem, and the current government (as well as the past governments) have done way too little to introduce more social equality. The backward class programs have not fixed the problem of the caste society, and the country still benefits largely of the enormous cast differences. Modi and his BJP have used the caste system, both for their businesses (Gujarat mainly is a booming business state) and political benefit (it is way easier to get your election going through the system of castes).
Modi and his group had a strange role during the Muslim-Hindu riots of Ghodra, and his stance towards Muslims is highly doubtful [1].
I wonder what more will come up on this story in the following days.
Nice, carry on the FUD. You are conveniently ignoring UP, Bengal and several other states where violence is a daily norm. But because Modi is closely related to Gujarat, so it is the one singled out.
It's amazing how many people on this thread are keen to go for the easy, rights-restricting solution (just turn off the internet locally for a bit!) rather than the harder question: why are people primed to riot? Like Ferguson, it's usually a combination of longstanding grievance and trigger event.
Because Indians have accepted that justice won't be served. If you assume that mob justice is what there is, it's the right thing to do. Very sad to say this.
> it's usually a combination of longstanding grievance and trigger event
That's because riots and such protests are rare in the US; and Ferguson brought new issues to light, not the same old issues.
That's not the case in India. The concept of a "bandh" (close the city and shops, if your shop doesn't comply, you might get beaten up by party thugs) is a common one used by political parties for various reasons. If someone told me that there was a bandh in Mumbai tomorrow, I'd not be surprised, not even really annoyed. One gets used to this stuff.
Riots are a few steps above this, but aren't too uncommon either. Many of them have legit motivations. India is a country of many, many communities and many, many views and it's common for some community to feel aggrieved by something; often rightly so.
This one, I don't think it has a legit motivation either, but I'm not so sure. The reservation system is a rather broken one -- not that I'm saying it should be removed (affirmative action can be quite effective) -- but that it could be improved quite a bit, checking against income and with more safety nets for students/etc who are boosted by this but don't do well. This case seems to be one of people from a non-suppressed community clamoring for reservation, motivated by other non-suppressed communities who got reservation due to a political move (ICBW here).
Thing is, fixing the overall reservation system is a really, really hard problem in practice. There's a lot of politics involved -- anything perceived to weaken it will severely affect your image, and besides, most of these laws need a majority of folks from the relevant minority group to approve them, and due to the way folks vote here, politicians from a minority group depend on that minority group for votes, and if they were portrayed as weakening the reservation system, their political career would be doomed. So the reservation system is something that can only monotonically get worse. Most folks have resigned themselves to this fact.
On the other hand, in Ferguson, the issue is something which the minority group was very aware of, but not the majority group. Many people are now realizing that African Americans look at the police very differently due to the way the police treats them. There's a lot of new information in the system, and there are many proposed solutions, most of which do not qualify as political suicide. It's not the case here, everyone already knows about the issues here, and most if not all solutions are political suicide.
I meant the other way around. If you are using affirmative action to benefit minorities[1], try not to benefit folks who are already well off (for a reasonably high definition of "well off"). This issue would be a lot less contentious then. I don't know the stats on this, but anecdotally speaking (this also seems to be a commonly held belief), the majority of the folks who benefit from these things are much, much better off than many of the folks who don't benefit. (Note that the total reservation of seats is around 50% in most places, often more).
Of course, it's not as easy as simply filtering by income by setting a threshhold. In some cases you may want a income-agnostic reservation, too, to prevent caste-based discrimination (not so common in cities, but it still exists), in cases where there are strong human elements in the selection process (i.e. it's not just based on the results of a test, but where there are people in the pipeline who may discriminate). This is something that may need to be handled in a nuanced way.
(Not that I'm saying that reservation is the only solution, just saying that if we want to stay within the confines of this system, it can be improved a lot)
[1] FWIW, in India, everyone is technically a minority, though of course not all minorities have been downtrodden. In this specific case a possibly-non-downtrodden (as far as public opinion goes, this group is in general quite well off) minority is requesting special treatment, which is receiving opposition.
[Note: here when I say "new" issues, I mean issues that a LOT of people weren't aware of. Not trying to say that the issues haven't been around for a while, because of course they have :)]
What is happening is not a religious issue or in any way related to the communal riots 15 years ago.
From Wikipedia:
In India, the Other Backward Castes (OBC) status invokes affirmative action which provides reserved quotas in education and government jobs. In Gujarat, 27% of seats are reserved for OBC (Other Backward Castes), 7.5% for Scheduled Castes and 15% for Scheduled Tribes for a total of 49.5% of all seats. The Supreme Court has capped the maximum reservation at 50% in their 1992 judgement.
What decides if you are OBC, SC, or ST? Your surname, and the community your family belongs to. Note that membership to one of these segments used to strongly correlate once with lower economic status (and therefore opportunities), but in recent years this correlation is significantly weaker.
The agitation is a result of the unsustainable caste politics quoted above. 49.5% of people getting in through a quota is absurd. Now I think that elevating downtrodden sections of society (through economic incentives, or even a reasonable quota) is a good thing. but when half of all seats in universities and stable government jobs are tied to a quota, the playing field for the "general category" is significantly shrunk, and people are going to get frustrated.
The community that is protesting are the Patels. They are huge in Gujarat; they're all over the strong middle class spectrum, and parts of the upper class. What I mean to say is that they are not even remotely an oppressed downtrodden segment of society. They happen to be an entrepreneurial and dynamic class; if you're in the UK or the US, you probably are aware of Patels because they constitute a huge percentage of Indian immigrants/expats.
My point being: Patels asking for reservation is ridiculous.
I guess only in India can a community demand to be labelled as "backward".
But when the playing field is so small, is it a surprise that everyone now wants their own space carved out?
I hope this protest will die, because animosity between such a large segment of society and others can become a source of problems in the future. But I also hope that it will force the government to rethink the crazy huge reservation system.
People in Ahmedabad are feeling scared and angry right now. Just outside my parents' home, protestors/vandals lit three buses and a bus terminal on fire yesterday. Then there's the police, here's a video of the them going on a power trip: https://twitter.com/ndtv/status/636808983131525120
PS: Not all Patels are asking for reservations, there are a number of dissenting factions as well.
The forward castes are 30% of the population and can still get 50.5 % of the seats, and actually even more in practice.
So, the numbers are not absurd, but quotas are reviewed every ten years, and not permanent. And the quotas don't apply to the rich backward caste members. See creamy layer.
I'm not sure of the proportion of the Patel community within/outside that, but the creamy layer is a bit of a joke. :/
1. It applies only to OBC (not even SC/ST)
2. You need to declare your family's total gross income to be entered into the creamy layer. If you declare such an income, you need to pay taxes. And we know how rampant tax fraud is everywhere... The incentives are all wrongly aligned.
The Egyptian government did the exact same thing during the January 2011 revolution. And they even took it a step further by cutting all mobile communications (calls and texts) and cutting landline internet (ADSL). Surprisingly, not a single person was asked or blamed till now.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] threadAlso to stop mobs to communicate in mass with each other.
On wired network probably only fb & whatsapp are banned.
Edit: Yes[0]
[0] http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/indian-army-deployed-r...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law
That would require declaring an Emergency AFAIK.
If someone drops his pants, or more accurately does something much worse (multi-homicide level worse) and claims "I did because BTNM said so", no one will seriously question his/her judgement or responsibility of listening to BTNM but will fall over themselves in their eagerness to blame BTNM exclusively and put a blanket ban on anything that is deemed unpopular by the people who have influence: think of the women and children that may be harmed.
I am sick and tired of waiting for us to behave like adults and treat people like adults with the full set of responsibilities that comes with it. But no, we want to be treated like kids incapable of taking responsibility of our own actions and elect such people to high places.
I expect this to be downvoted if there is a large Indian audience hanging out here. This is definitely a minority view here, going by multiple conversations I have had on this topic.
I'm an American expat living in India and it's still quite alien to me after a few years. The government really can tell you to stop saying something because it offends someone else. They can do that because the alternative is that hundreds or even thousands of people die.
My opinion on that decision isn't terribly important because I'm not Indian; it's not my decision to make. It's a very deliberate compromise that the Indian people have found over the decades.
This guys had gone highly out of control. Banning their communication was one of the way to control them. Atleast I feel so. I am from affected area.
If you want I can send you some photos I took from my mob while going home shivering.
No doubt that should have been last option. But yes they did it at last. People started pelting stones on Army. So even Army couldnt control mob via flag march or any such thing.
Or real ones, for that matter (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashimpura_massacre)
I hope order and safety are restored quickly, and in a judicious and democratic way. All the best from here in the US.
"Forwarded messages" on whatsapp is an extremely common practice and a lot of times, false videos/news start trending which were originally sourced specifically to incite people.
There have been instances where I have had to explain my relatives to not worry about the forwarded message they got showing some disturbing images (because in reality, they were taken from the net from some war in a distant part of the world).
I am a huge proponent of Free speech but in those very tense moments in parts of the country, disrupting / stopping these false rumors from spreading can result in saving lives.
So imagine an area which is already tense and then the local youth get forwarded messages with an Image (pulled from the internet) of a burnt body and then some poorly edited text at the bottom saying "This is what xyz community did to our brothers. We have to stand up to this!". That's when things go terribly wrong. Please note that this is just an example and that is definitely not what happened here in Gujarat this time, but it has occured a few times in the recent past (Muzaffarnagar riots) and so the government takes no chances.
But yes, I agree there has to be a better solution than just an outright disruption in services.
Even the story in reference here isn't an uncommon sight. In Jammu & Kashmir (A state which has a disputed status, yet is claimed to be an "integral part" of India by the ruling political party) it is very common for the government to shut down mobile internet and all mobile facilities on 14th and 15t h August (Which are the countries independence day)
Heck they had even banned text messaging here until 2013. Some "freedom of speech", eh?
> Heck they had even banned text messaging here until 2013.
Looks like you've earned it.
The story of Kashmir is full of broken promises by the Indian government and people. So before we call it an integral part of India, lets at least own our mistakes. Lets remove AFSPA in Kashmir. Lets hold the bloody referendum. Lets at least grant them more autonomy.
But thats not gonna happen. Any government which grants more autonomy to Kashmir will be voted out and hence they will not do it.
You correctly call into question the agreement signed by the Maharaja of Kashmir, but I could just as easily ask about every other territory that's a part of the Union of India. Why should the writ of New Delhi run to places where the people are ethnically, linguistically and culturally different, such as Tamil Nadu? After all, at no point did Tamils accede to the Union and they have suffered discrimination before - such as when Delhi tried to impose Hindi on a Tamil-speaking population in 1965. Do Tamils deserve special privileges then? No, that's absurd.
To clarify, I think Article 370 that grants Kashmir special status should be scrapped, because they don't deserve special treatment. Apart from that, I think a referendum should be held there. I don't think it will bury the issue (look at Scotland), but it will mollify most people who live there for some time.
Here is the thing, dude — 70% of all people from outside Kashmir don't know what is going on there. They immediately resolve to cursing Pakistan or Kashmiris, portraying their troops and their dirty politics as a favor they're doing to us. You know why that referendum was never held? Because the answer is clear — Go away, or at the very least stop shooting our people.
Sadly most of India will never understand, because they aren't listening. Impose AFSPA in Delhi and Mumbai and tell me how that goes.
Don't try to wildly justify everything your people do just to show your kinship to them. It makes you a fanatic, not a patriot. Most of my friends are from India. I love them, and have deep admiration for them. India is a great nation, but sadly it has been very unfair to Kashmir. And successfully made it appear as though they are trying to help, being portrayed as martyrs to their own people.
Research. That will fill in the knowledge gaps you have with regard to kashmir. Then think about it on the grounds of humanity. You will be one step closer to realizing that the situation is actually much different from what you hear about in the news or what your politicians tell you.
Love and respect from Kashmir.
Flowerpots are hurled at Indian Army by fringe elements which results in casualties of evil Indian Army persons. A new trend has been seen in the peace loving Kashmiris led by ISI agents in disguise, who chose not to participate in the elections and instead have been seen showing the most peaceful organisation ISIS's flag to the media and the evil army.
Ok enough with the sarcasm, a minister of the elected government (who belongs to Kashmir) recently appeared on a television program to complaint about the media. She said the media only shows the 4k separatists (ISIS lovers) in the news and not the 4000k people who voted and want tourism from the rest of the country. I am more likely to believe her than the propaganda spewed by a random commenter.
Understanding does not come by hiding ugly thruths. In India its a common belief (among Hindus) that Hindus have never done anyone any wrong and were mind their own business peacefully an then all shit happened to them. False historical constructs are dangerous. Study of clear and open history backed by grassroots records is super important. If you, your dad is in Pakistan now, here's greetings from near his older home.
Its importance varies by region though. Some parts haven't been touched by communal violence ever since partition (apart from Babri related ones) whereas others are repeat offenders.
And no, Nehru did not contributed the most, the whole of India was united by Sardar Patel with the exception of J&K which Nehru insisted on taking up. If you call that contribution ...
"You cannot change the truth, but the truth can change you"
That is not correct, I stay in Jammu & Kashmir and have been able to use mobile services on 14th and 15th without any issues. It might be true from some region (not that i know off) but it is certainly not true for the entire state.
It seems you might want to provide more detail or justification behind your words, or people may consider you an astroturfer.
I'm pretty sure India would have had a violent movement too if WW2 hadn't happened and Indians had better access to firearms and stuff. Violence was less of an option because the British government deliberately ensured that the locals were suppressed. Whereas in the U.S. the British were exploitative of the colonies, but they did not suppress the people (until the movement started); after all, those were their own people.
We did, in fact, have a violent movement, in 1857, just that it didn't work out too well.
I don't think that "Indians are less violent" is really an argument to be made here.
That's quite anecdotal at best. My experience has not been the same, I've seen ample violent elements in both places. Indians are generally subtler in our social cues, and that might make Americans "louder" (which feels like aggression), but certainly not more violent.
It also might matter which area of either country you've lived in. Boston(-ish) and Mumbai here.
An acceptable argument for India being more nonviolent would be the entire NAM movement among other initiatives, but there are still many, many other reasons why India's nonviolent independence movement worked -- Indians being nonviolent, if true, would be a small contributor to it, not the main reason. Besides, like I said, we had a violent independence movement and failed. Technically, two, if you count the INA, which actually managed to liberate many areas.
People need to understand that issues are NOT black and white, and that "the thin end of the wedge" often needs to be broached in order to benefit wider society.
Also, this is not justice & anti-freedom.
The truth that the NSA is massively spying was hidden for a very long time (or rather: Hardly anybody really believed those who told the truth).
Plugging everyone into the matrix will also save lives.
Instead of cutting off information it should be directed and rumors dispelled through disseminating the truth.
A large number of such messages that I have come across are photoshopped images, mix it with the ease of sending bulk messages and you get an explosive mixture.
One way to tackle such situation will be, IMO, to make bulk messaging an expensive (computationally) operation, something of the nature of HashCash.
And in regards to your argument — the longer you keep the immune system from exposure to a threat — the longer you allow the threat to evolve and become even more dangerous. Let the people learn what is hoax and fake. Yes, they are perfectly able to do that.
This is not a flashpoint event, huge number of people were mobilized from the neighboring states for the main rally that took place before the violence broke. (the number of people gathered there were more than 100K, and this will a very conservative estimate)
In such a politically charged environment, the spamming ease becomes a real threat to the law and order, and above all, to human lives.
I would very much like the system to evolve, but not at the expense of innocent lives.
Add to that a semi-educated police force and you end up with 3 people dead and a whole bunch of public infrastructure burning.
If you are in government, you don't really have the option to call the protesters in to have a nuanced debate.
The same always. Definitely a freedom-of-speech issue, but nothing new.
This had become a regular occurrence and the government only acted due to increasing number of such cases.
Justice is the solution. Punish the criminals and people will stop doing it.
Or the many examples of crime increasing as sentence length increases?
Or the studies that have shown people sent to prison for a crime have higher reoffending rates than people given community sentences?
Study after study, and real life example after example shows that punishment is a very ineffective way of changing behaviour.
Additionally, government should not be in the business of controlling and determining the veracity of the messages people are sending among themselves.
I can understand why the Indian government shuts down a service like mobile internet, they have had a great number of casualties due to these communal riots. But it seems far from the right thing to do.
But the root of the problem is so much a social problem, and the current government (as well as the past governments) have done way too little to introduce more social equality. The backward class programs have not fixed the problem of the caste society, and the country still benefits largely of the enormous cast differences. Modi and his BJP have used the caste system, both for their businesses (Gujarat mainly is a booming business state) and political benefit (it is way easier to get your election going through the system of castes).
Modi and his group had a strange role during the Muslim-Hindu riots of Ghodra, and his stance towards Muslims is highly doubtful [1].
I wonder what more will come up on this story in the following days.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence_in_India#Gu... [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/opinion/being-muslim-under...
India turned off SMS facility for ~4 years from 2009 to 2014 in the state of J&K.
That's because riots and such protests are rare in the US; and Ferguson brought new issues to light, not the same old issues.
That's not the case in India. The concept of a "bandh" (close the city and shops, if your shop doesn't comply, you might get beaten up by party thugs) is a common one used by political parties for various reasons. If someone told me that there was a bandh in Mumbai tomorrow, I'd not be surprised, not even really annoyed. One gets used to this stuff.
Riots are a few steps above this, but aren't too uncommon either. Many of them have legit motivations. India is a country of many, many communities and many, many views and it's common for some community to feel aggrieved by something; often rightly so.
This one, I don't think it has a legit motivation either, but I'm not so sure. The reservation system is a rather broken one -- not that I'm saying it should be removed (affirmative action can be quite effective) -- but that it could be improved quite a bit, checking against income and with more safety nets for students/etc who are boosted by this but don't do well. This case seems to be one of people from a non-suppressed community clamoring for reservation, motivated by other non-suppressed communities who got reservation due to a political move (ICBW here).
Thing is, fixing the overall reservation system is a really, really hard problem in practice. There's a lot of politics involved -- anything perceived to weaken it will severely affect your image, and besides, most of these laws need a majority of folks from the relevant minority group to approve them, and due to the way folks vote here, politicians from a minority group depend on that minority group for votes, and if they were portrayed as weakening the reservation system, their political career would be doomed. So the reservation system is something that can only monotonically get worse. Most folks have resigned themselves to this fact.
On the other hand, in Ferguson, the issue is something which the minority group was very aware of, but not the majority group. Many people are now realizing that African Americans look at the police very differently due to the way the police treats them. There's a lot of new information in the system, and there are many proposed solutions, most of which do not qualify as political suicide. It's not the case here, everyone already knows about the issues here, and most if not all solutions are political suicide.
Schools do that, and it heavily favors whites. (alumni/donor preference)
Maybe not exactly what you were suggesting
Of course, it's not as easy as simply filtering by income by setting a threshhold. In some cases you may want a income-agnostic reservation, too, to prevent caste-based discrimination (not so common in cities, but it still exists), in cases where there are strong human elements in the selection process (i.e. it's not just based on the results of a test, but where there are people in the pipeline who may discriminate). This is something that may need to be handled in a nuanced way.
(Not that I'm saying that reservation is the only solution, just saying that if we want to stay within the confines of this system, it can be improved a lot)
[1] FWIW, in India, everyone is technically a minority, though of course not all minorities have been downtrodden. In this specific case a possibly-non-downtrodden (as far as public opinion goes, this group is in general quite well off) minority is requesting special treatment, which is receiving opposition.
Background information:
What is happening is not a religious issue or in any way related to the communal riots 15 years ago.
From Wikipedia:
In India, the Other Backward Castes (OBC) status invokes affirmative action which provides reserved quotas in education and government jobs. In Gujarat, 27% of seats are reserved for OBC (Other Backward Castes), 7.5% for Scheduled Castes and 15% for Scheduled Tribes for a total of 49.5% of all seats. The Supreme Court has capped the maximum reservation at 50% in their 1992 judgement.
What decides if you are OBC, SC, or ST? Your surname, and the community your family belongs to. Note that membership to one of these segments used to strongly correlate once with lower economic status (and therefore opportunities), but in recent years this correlation is significantly weaker.
The agitation is a result of the unsustainable caste politics quoted above. 49.5% of people getting in through a quota is absurd. Now I think that elevating downtrodden sections of society (through economic incentives, or even a reasonable quota) is a good thing. but when half of all seats in universities and stable government jobs are tied to a quota, the playing field for the "general category" is significantly shrunk, and people are going to get frustrated.
The community that is protesting are the Patels. They are huge in Gujarat; they're all over the strong middle class spectrum, and parts of the upper class. What I mean to say is that they are not even remotely an oppressed downtrodden segment of society. They happen to be an entrepreneurial and dynamic class; if you're in the UK or the US, you probably are aware of Patels because they constitute a huge percentage of Indian immigrants/expats. My point being: Patels asking for reservation is ridiculous. I guess only in India can a community demand to be labelled as "backward".
But when the playing field is so small, is it a surprise that everyone now wants their own space carved out?
I hope this protest will die, because animosity between such a large segment of society and others can become a source of problems in the future. But I also hope that it will force the government to rethink the crazy huge reservation system.
People in Ahmedabad are feeling scared and angry right now. Just outside my parents' home, protestors/vandals lit three buses and a bus terminal on fire yesterday. Then there's the police, here's a video of the them going on a power trip: https://twitter.com/ndtv/status/636808983131525120
PS: Not all Patels are asking for reservations, there are a number of dissenting factions as well.
The forward castes are 30% of the population and can still get 50.5 % of the seats, and actually even more in practice. So, the numbers are not absurd, but quotas are reviewed every ten years, and not permanent. And the quotas don't apply to the rich backward caste members. See creamy layer.
1. It applies only to OBC (not even SC/ST)
2. You need to declare your family's total gross income to be entered into the creamy layer. If you declare such an income, you need to pay taxes. And we know how rampant tax fraud is everywhere... The incentives are all wrongly aligned.
Very sad to see the same situation happen again!