Police Reforms in Kashmir

First published in daily Greater Kashmir, 9 Aug, 2009

Don’t ignore sticks

It is time Omar initiates police reforms

By: Arjimand Hussain Talib

The show of political clamour in the State Assembly in on. Every day is a battle of wits – fought on regional, ideological, partisan and even communal frontiers. There is little of substance in the debates. Playing to the galleries has become a culture now.

The political and regional divides in the State look the sharpest today. From the ruling coalition to the constituent regions, hardly anything seems to bind things together other than marriages of convenience. There is urgency for a change. And a new thinking.

Rule of law is critical for bringing in a qualitative change in J&K today. Doubtlessly, demilitarisation is beyond the purview of any government in the State. No degree of the opposition’s hullabaloo and the government’s pointless point-scoring in the Assembly would help our crises.

From the infamous sex scandal to the recent Shopian tragedy, there is one clear lesson: J&K badly needs police reforms. The quality of the rule of law and governance in J&K is closely linked to these reforms. Our current right to information law is of little consequence as long as police reforms remain elusive. Omar needs to act now.

Police reforms are a reality in India today after decades of reluctant political pedalling. The Supreme Court of India has already put the central and state governments on notice - to ensure replacement of the old Police Act. We should we delay?

J&K needs police reforms the most, primarily because it is grinding under a twin saw: carrying the heavy baggage of the colonial rule and the Dogra Maharajas’ autocratic legacies. Then we have the laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Disturbed Areas Act, Public Safety Act and a serious Official Secrets Act. No genuine democracy and such laws can go together.

In our political system, myriad powers and interests of the political executive, police and bureaucracy often converge. The result is a unique power bloc wherein the checks and balances of a normal democratic system simply dissipate. The Model Police Act emphasises law enforcement as the basic role of the police. It advocates impartial service to the law, without any heed to the wishes, indications or desires expressed by the government. That is something that J&K badly needs today.

J&K needs a kind of policing today which is humane and accountable. Undue political interference with its work needs a check. Accountability and performance evaluation need a new approach. Basic police stations continue to be ill equipped. Policemen at lower levels need better salaries and modern gadgets in dealing with hi-tech and cyber crimes. Police stations need to be networked with computers. Filing of complaints needs to be simplified.

Quite a few states in India are today addressing the issue of promotions and transfers of police officers. The Model Police Act recommends a pre-promotion course before promotion to the rank of an SP, DIG and IG, followed by an examination and an objective selection process. This procedure needs to be adopted for both IPS and KPS cadres in J&K. Merit must be rewarded. It is widely recognised that the threat of transfer or suspension is the most potent weapon in the hands of the politicians to bend the police to their will. Such discretionary powers in the hands of the political class erode the rule of law and dents police’s professionalism.

One grave problem in J&K’s policing system is that it is highly influenced by the colonial police law passed in India in 1861. Policing in India is a state subject, yet J&K has little say in its matters. J&K’s original constitution is no more a reference guide. New Delhi wields significant influence in the decision-making process in this area. So, for all practical reasons, it is hardly a State subject for us today.

The extra constitutional laws and colonial policing practices reinforce the culture of impunity. A decent degree of transparency is very much possible, even as the ‘sensitive’ areas are guarded from undue ‘exposure’. The Model Police Act in circulation must serve as a reference guide on that. It takes care of the ‘State sensitivities’ by advocating discretion when it comes to information on ‘areas of operations’, intelligence used to plan investigations, privacy of the individual citizen and judicial requirements. Making these exceptions possible in J&K’s context could help in overcoming the inhibitions.

Another issue concerns the powers of the District Magistrate (DM) in our State. There is lack of clarity in the exact role and powers of a DM here. The complex ‘division of powers’ between the DM, the police, the army, etc. often leads to a situation of flux. We need clarity if our police are accountable to the law or the District Magistrate. We also need clarity on the roles of the army and the political executive. This state of flux often manifests in confused official response to crisis situations. What happened in the immediate aftermath of the Shopian tragedy is an important pointer of that.

The Model Police Act stresses that police performance not be evaluated on the basis of crime statistics or number of cases solved. In our case, police officials’ performance is often evaluated on the basis of the number of ‘militants’ killed/arrested, arms seized, information got on “anti national activities” and so on. This system of performance evaluation is a recipe for gross indiscipline. It blatantly undermines the rule of law. In the past, custodial murders of innocent civilians have often been lured by promotions and cash prizes. There could be better performance indicators. For instance, busting crimes which impact common people’s lives. Motivation and incentives could be more professional.

The serious dearth of women police officers and police stations in J&K also needs attention. The way policemen generally deal with women filing complaints in police stations is little gloomy. The manner policemen treat peaceful women protests on the streets doesn’t make a good sight either.

Governance is undoubtedly one area which needs drastic amends in J&K today. And that could happen only when the supremacy of the rule of law is established with meaningful police reforms. Omar Abdullah continues to have a burden of expectations. Time has come for him to initiate these long-pending reforms. And create a State Security Commission and a State Police Commission. Then he could go further to set up Complaint Cells at district and State levels.

Feedback at arjiamnd@greaterkashmir.com

Zanzibar diary - I

First published in daily Greater Kashmir , 16 Aug, 2009

Zanzibar diary - I

Arjimand Hussain Talib

In the deep blue seas of the Indian Ocean, there is an island called Pemba. The island, popularly known as 'Al Jazeera Al Khadra' (in Arabic, meaning the green island) lies between Tanzania and the Arabian Peninsula. The population of the place is a mix of Arab and the original Waswahili inhabitants of the island. It is part of the historic Zanzibar archipelago, another island, which for many centuries has acted as a launching pad for the Arab and western trade and colonial expeditions in this region. Together, they are known as Spice Islands, since Arabs started spice cultivation here.

Last week, my study of global warming took me to this wonderland land. This island is part of the semi autonomous region of Zanzibar, but technically a part of Tanzania. Pemba sends representatives to the parliament at Zanzibar.

The easiest access to the island is from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital. It is a 50 by 28 kms island, and has a small air strip. Only small airplanes operate to and from the island, though the sea travel is also a possibility. I, along with a colleague, flew from Dar es Salaam in a tiny Cessna airplane on a windy and cloudy afternoon. It was something of a roller coaster ride over vast seas of the Indian Ocean before we finally landed in Pemba. The island from a distance looks a spectacle of virgin greenery.

As one steps out of the airport building, the only thing one could notice outside is a mosque just opposite the road. There is nothing else. No buildings, no shops, fewer people. It is just exotic greenery all around.

A drive to the town centre, called Chake Chake, is breath taking. One rarely sees the kind of greenery like Pemba has. Variety of fruit trees, like banana, papaya, mango, orange, coconut, etc. are part of the green landscape. Pemba is a very fertile place. Besides being one of the largest producers of clove in the world, the inhabitants of the island grow rice, cassava and red beans, called maharagwe in Kiswahili.

Pemba has a population of over 362,000 of whom 98 per cent are Muslim. In previous years, the island is said to have visitors very rarely, mainly due to its inaccessibility and a reputation for political violence. It is also widely known as a centre for traditional medicine. There is a quite large Arab community on the island who emigrated from Oman many centuries back.

Pemba’s inhabitants are deeply religious. All Muslim women put on Islamic ‘abayya’ and cover their faces, some completely. Men wear the traditional Arab dress. Almost after every 200 meters in towns and villages one comes across a mosque. In the markets, one can only hear Quranic recitation being played through public speakers. And when there is a call for prayer from the mosque, a big majority of the people heeds the call. Markets turn deserted.

In the town centre, Chake-Chake, one can find the Mkama Ndume ruins at Pujini village. This fortification is the only known early fortification on the whole coast of East Africa; dated to the fifteenth century.

Pemba is one of those islands which remain at a high risk because of rising sea levels as a result of global warming. We visited many villages along its coast to understand the impact of the rising sea levels.

In the coastal village of Micheweni, large swathes of agricultural land would regularly swell with sea water now on high tide days. As sea waters bring salt content with it, the land, even up to two kilometres from the coast, has become largely uncultivable. Earlier they used to cultivate paddy here.

I asked a farmer, Omar Ali, who was busy raising an earth bund to prevent sea water from coming into his field, if sea water did not reach their field earlier. He told me that would never happen in the past. Waters did rise in the past but they did not come this far. Waters do ebb too once high tide time is over, but the fact is that waters never came so deep onto the land.

The farmers whose land has been affected have been offered land for cultivation by other wealthy land holders in higher up areas. Such is the community brotherhood; the owners will not charge these farmers anything. But there would be no ownership transfer. It is just an act out of compassion.

Although the intruding sea waters offer an opportunity for producing salt, the local people lack in the necessary skills and tools to make that possible. They say they had tried to harvest salt, but it met little success. As part of the communities’ efforts to prevent sea water to intrude deep into their lands, farmers are today trying to raise earth bunds. It is a herculean task for them, as they do this job for themselves. Moreover, there is no guarantee that such a measure will succeed.

Some local government departments encourage cultivation of mangroves as a protection to prevent ferocious ebbing sea waters sucking out fertile soils from the land. In fact farmers have grown mangroves. This measure too is a piecemeal effort. For now, no one has a real cost-effective and practical solution to the problem of rising seas. The only option for now seems withdrawal. People are vacating their lands to go to higher planes of the island. But the problem with the Pemba is that the land is very scarce here. Its population growth has put intense pressure on the land.

In other coastal areas we saw coconut and other trees close to the seas dying out, the reason being increasing salination of the soil due to intruding waters. We saw swathes of land which had a tree cover losing that fast.

Pemba is surely one of the most unspoilt places on the planet, yet it is threatened by global warming. As I was writing these lines we were about to begin our journey to the bigger Zanzibar island, another very historical place. Zanzibar Island is special to Muslims: it is the place where the Arabs built the first mosque outside the Arab land in the southern hemisphere after the revelation of the Quran.

Feedback at: Arjimand@greaterkashmir.com

South Africa today - II

Dateline Srinagar (Daily Greater Kashmir, 2 Aug, 2009)

South Africa today - II

Robotics in a place of separateness

Arjimand Hussain Talib

Apartheid in the Afrikaans language means separateness. Racial and cultural separateness of a little different kind is a reality in South Africa even today. Like London or Nairobi, this separateness – or ghettoisation - is strikingly visible among the South Asian community in Johannesburg. Identity, race and crass economic inequality fuel this apartheid.

Johannesburg’s Mayfair neighbourhood is a South Asian settlement. For all practical reasons it is a mini South Asia – Muslims and Hindus live here side by side as a single community. They are mainly Indians and Pakistanis. Their usual political and religious fault lines are hardly visible here.

The Oriental Plaza in the neighbourhood is a grand trade and shopping centre, symbolising the cultural, trade and artistic marvels of the Orient. Here again it is the Orient which is the dominant symbol, not the religious identity.

Amidst the feel of ghettoisation, this place offers a little silver lining: despite having everything Oriental about it, it has some non-Oriental visitors as well.

The question of assimilation and integration haunts South Africa like any other place seeking a globalist cosmopolitan outlook. Its races continue to live in ghettos – of identities and races. This ghettoisation looks painfully stark.

It is not only this separateness which seems to have taken the soul of this nation away. You feel confused with the electronic and physical fortification of houses and office places. Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town are like robotic cities. If one isn’t so technology savvy, it won’t be an easy going. Normally, the entrances of offices, hotels, universities, etc. are controlled by robots, linked to security alarms. So you need a smart card or a security code to get access. Some places have even toilets requiring access by smart cards or security codes!

Doors and windows of hotel rooms are iron-grilled. You carry at least two keys for two locked doors for your hotel or hostel room. Razor wire is commonly used to secure external walls of almost every establishment.

Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town are cities where you would hardly find people walking on the streets. If at all someone walks, it is mostly poor Black residents. I didn’t see a single person from the middle or the upper class walking on the streets of Johannesburg, except for in secluded shopping places. People live by cars!

Public transport, again, is used by extremely poor people. Even the middle class locals seldom risk using public transport. And this is no over statement. As a foreigner, you can hardly afford to take the risk of walking on the roadside; you are programmed with the do’s and don’ts from the very first day you arrive here.

There are those who tell you that this alarmist tendency to look at things is inflated. That might be true. But those in the past who have taken risks, and defied conventional wisdom, have paid a price. So risk aversion has turned into a culture here.

While visiting the local UN office I was surprised to see there were no sign boards displaying the UN logo on the huge building. I was told many such organisations and companies prefer to avoid visibility because of crime-related risks!

There is another side to South Africa. Despite making considerable progress in social and economic development, the country continues to remain one of the most unequal societies among the middle-income countries today. Human security continues to remain perpetually at risk due to a number of social, economic and political factors, which perpetuate socio-economic inequality. Moreover, the day-to-day violence as a result of poverty, organised crime, wage inequities, xenophobia, pulls and pressures of racism is a part of the country’s life.

Droughts and climate change have already begun to manifest in some degree of food insecurity and reduced agricultural production in some areas of South Africa. The scarce water resources are under strain from large commercial farming activities, while small subsistence farmers remain at risk. I learnt that food insecurity; tardy pace of land reforms and lack of access of poor Black people to productive arable land undermine human security in this country.

Violence and crime in South Africa, however, needs to be seen from a humane angle – understanding the drivers like poverty, inequality, lack of access to land and historical injustice. This country is blessed with great mineral resources. It continues to be world’s biggest gold, diamond and platinum exporter. But mostly these resources are controlled by the rich multi national companies or the White people.

Johannesburg is mostly built on a barren landscape, although it has highly advanced infrastructure and good standards of living. While driving past a neighbourhood, I asked a friend, Mthandazo, what was special about Johannesburg to have attracted so many European colonial settlements? He smiled and replied, ‘We are driving over gold and diamond mines.’

Johannesburg in the local language is called Goli, a place with gold. It was way back in 1886 when gold was first discovered at Langlaagte in the city. Till then the town is said to have been much the same as any small prospecting settlement. But as word spread, people flocked to the area from North America, the United Kingdom and Europe. Some Blacks also arrived here from other parts of the country.

We drove past by a small hillock where one could observe some mining activity. I was told that today it is the Chinese who are mining Platinum there. Chinese are today the most favourite lot in Africa for trade and business. They are an investment darling. Governments throughout the continent are finding it politically convenient to enter into joint ventures with Chinese companies. They are emerging as the principal miners here.

See it from whatever angle; South Africa needs a peaceful land reform, which is inclusive and equitable. It needs a land redistribution system that basically addresses the needs of the poorest people. It needs the poorest of its people benefit from the fruits of its mineral wealth. That alone may help in mending fences between the races and the haves and the haves not. And, eventually, contain crime and violence. Everything else will be band aids, which never do the real healing.

Feedback at Arjimand@greaterkashmir.com

Kashmir's national schizophrenia

Guest Column - Daily Rising Kashmir, Aug 2, 2009

Omar, the ‘martyr’

Reflections on Kashmir's national schizophrenia

Being judgmental is in our DNA. We love to sling mud. In the moral law of our land, everybody is guilty until proven innocent. We love to hate our enemies. But we don’t mind acting predators to our comrades in arms, as well. Now we don’t mind dehumanisation, either.

We have mastered the art of inventing conspiracy theories. Making martyrs out of vulnerable men is our national pass-time. To thrive on chaos is part of our culture now. Mistakes, even the small ones, are unpardonable. We prefer a mass suicide to an individual one. We love to label people. Slander them. Spin the turbans in the air. Yet we get tears in our eyes too easily.

By: Arjimand Hussain Talib

How do we reflect on all that happened in the State Assembly past week? Inspire disgust? Pride? Introspection? Or a mixture of all these?

Yet again we made international headlines.Kashmir was talked about all over - for a ‘scandal’, evoking global curiosity and laughter. South Africa’s most popular FM radio ran a full fledged program on the matter. The radio’s jockeys giggled and shared jokes.

Let us don’t take sides here. Or pass judgements on morality, sins and innocence. Let us just talk.

Ruling National Conference and PDP’s political rivalry has reached a crescendo. Both are fighting battles for survival. Both need to constantly reinvent their political raison d’être. But what does Muzaffar Hussain Beig’s diatribe symbolize? How to see his volte face during a discussion with Dr Abdullah on a TV channel the same evening?

Lately, a new thinking has evolved in our intellectual circles in Srinagar. Call it a renaissance of Kashmiri thought. This thinking sees all our traits from the prism of ‘survival instincts’ – survival in an environment where our enemy is not the sole predator. This thinking tends to see the intense aggression within us as a by-product of oppression. Even the kind that sometimes borders illogic.

This theory of ‘survival instinct’, interestingly, seeks to justify all that we do in our daily lives. It makes the boundaries between morality and immorality evaporate. It diminishes the line between principle and compromise. It makes brazen impossibilities possible. And contradictions accepted as ethical.

There is another theory which is also popular – the theory of ‘slave mentality.’ All these theories are not totally unfounded. Some are valid. Some are simply bizarre.

In the Assembly when Beigh made the accusation against Omar, he looked a different person. The very next day he sounded different. And when everything is justified as a ‘survival instinct’, then it doesn’t really matter if he was right or wrong.

And look at the other contrast of our national character. We continue to be one of the most humane, hospitable species on the planet. Our social cohesion and love for others makes our visitors envy. When a fellow citizen gets a slap or a kick from a soldier; slogans reverberate and flags flutter in no time. When faced with an onslaught, revolutions are not far away. Mention prostitution or a comment by a soldier on our women, and swords cross. The minds of the researchers of our anthropology spin.

We are yet to switch over to professional funeral companies. When facing a calamity or an illness, the flood of friends, relatives and foes acting as helpers remains a part of our social reality. We don’t have the heart to see our poor go hungry. Or be badly dressed. Our small place is a paradise for even non-local beggars. Yet our national schizophrenia remains.

An alcoholic remains an untouchable in our society. Violence against women is somewhat alien to us. Thank God, HIV/AIDS is a distant issue. For our women to be home well before dusk remains a must. Life beyond the permissible hours of social life is still frowned upon.

We continue to value and live our traditions which hold a deep meaning, the essence of life. Even as most of the East is lost in the whirlwind of globalisation, we nurture the values of the Orient - values which celebrate humanity.

And look at the way Nyla Ali Khan, Sheikh Abdullah’s grand daughter, responded to the affair. ‘I thought an Ivy League institution like Harvard produced the likes of John F. Kennedy and Barrack Obama. Didn’t Muzaffar Beigh imbibe any of the political, academic, and social values that permeate the privileged spaces of Harvard? , she questioned. And she sounded a true Kashmiri, and even cute, when she administered a dose of moral advice to Mehbooba Mufti, ‘Mahbooba would do herself an enormous favor if she emulates the likes of Begum Akbar Jehan, Zainab Begum, and Zooni alias Goori’.

And then came Khalida Shah, Omar’s long-estranged aunt. She issued her own bit of clean chit to Omar, making it amply visible where her heart was.

So, don’t we make an interesting species? God bless Kashmir.