Realise Your Potential

The purpose of yoga is to create the awareness to separate the negative from the positive. We have to reject the negative and connect with the positive. Why do we react? Why do we desire one thing and not another? Reactions are a result of identification with negativity and dislikes. Actions follow positivity. We can practise asanas only as long as we are fit. We practise meditation only as long as there is the desire. If there is no desire to practise yoga, we give it up. If we just revolve around our likes and dislikes, actions and reactions, desires and rejections all our life, it means we have not learnt the lesson to bring out the positivity. That positivity has to be expressed in every situation, whether it is an exam, a human relationship, social living or reclusive living. This is the understanding that yoga tries to give. We go through various experiences, good and bad. Whenever we react, it is a bad experience, and whenever we accept and act, it is a positive experience. Positivity and acceptance have to be our focus if we want to succeed in life. If this focus is lost, we cannot claim to be practitioners of yoga, only practitioners of asana, or meditation. Change has to come from within. In the third sutra of the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali discusses being established in one’s own nature as the seer, the drashta. To be established in one’s own nature means there has to be harmony, a flow in life. This optimism and balance does not encounter nor is affected by blocks.

Source: Economic Times, 7/02/2020

Quote of the Day

February 6, 2020

“Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.”

‐ Anonymous

“खुश होने का मतलब यह नहीं कि सब कुछ उत्तम है। इसका मतलब है कि आपने कमियों के परे देखना शुरू कर दिया।”

‐ अज्ञात

Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy

Volume 8 Issue 3, December 2019

Table of Contents

The Agrarian Question and Coffee in Costa Rica Nicholas Babin First Published October 30, 2019; pp. 323–348 Abstract Preview |

Thirty Years of Urban Bias: An Estimation of the Rising Disparities in Female Rural and Female Urban Unemployment and Income in Egypt Heba E. Helmy First Published November 8, 2019; pp. 349–390 Abstract Preview |

Farmers’ Seed Systems in Southern Africa: Alternatives to Philanthrocapitalism Andrew Mushita, Carol Thompson First Published November 8, 2019; pp. 391–413 Abstract Preview |

Conditions of Employment and Livelihood Security of Informal Workers: A Study of Four Villages in Jalpaiguri District, West Bengal Mampi Bose, Shantanu De Roy First Published October 30, 2019; pp. 414–439 Abstract Preview |

The Agribusiness Model in South African Land Reform? Land Use Implications for the Land Reform Beneficiaries Clemence Rusenga First Published November 6, 2019; pp. 440–461 Abstract Preview |

Book Review

Book review: Hugo Chávez (2013), Mi Primera Vida: Conversaciones con Ignacio Ramonet [My First Life: Conversations with Ignacio Ramonet] Vitor E. Schincariol First Published December 29, 2019; pp. 462–465 Abstract Preview |

CAA negates everything that the Assam accord had sought to protect

For “identity is shaped by participation in ‘cultural communities’ which need appropriate institutional protection” and that “groups. need to have rights in order to foster individuals’ well-being” (MacCormick, Kymlicka).

The Supreme Court of India, by deciding to hear the cases of Assam and Tripura against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act separately, appears to has acknowledged what mainland India — with its habitual disconnect with the Northeast’s core problems — fails to see: That it is not only the communal nature of the new law that troubles these states. That as the movement against the CAA, which germinated in Assam, snowballed into a pan-India phenomenon, the narrative about existential threat to the ethnic communities of Assam in particular and the Northeast in general, went unnoticed. And this remains largely unregistered in the pan-Indian as well as the international consciousness.

In Assam, the outrage against the state and central government is not merely because the CAA is communal, and discriminates against one particular religious community; but primarily because it negates all that was promised after the six-year-long Assam Movement from 1979 for the protection of the ethnic communities of the state, whose identity is entwined with the language, culture and land of Assam. An identity now endangered by illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The Assam Movement was triggered when, ahead of the 1980 general elections, the then chief election commissioner, S L Shakdhar, issued a circular legitimising illegal voters as bona fide citizens on the orders of Indira Gandhi, making a mockery of the People’s Representation Act and aborting the revision process of the electoral rolls. This same Shakdhar, in 1978, had spoken of attempts by political parties to include the names of foreigners in electoral rolls without “questioning and determining their citizenship status”.

Indira Gandhi was merely continuing the policies of Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel regarding immigrants in Assam. Unlike Gandhiji, both Nehru and Patel were impervious to the legitimate fears of the people of Assam — of being reduced to a minority in their own state, their political rights clipped like the Tripuris next door because of the changing demographic profile. Gandhiji foresaw the calamitous fallout and even urged the Assamese leadership to sit in satyagraha against the Congress itself if necessary. The truth was that, although Assam had become a part of the Indian Union, the central leadership, since the beginning felt no obligation to engage with the problems of Assam as Indian problems. This is unsurprising: Indigenous people across the world are victims of colonial policies which disregard their basic rights and thrust upon them policies that take away their land, resources as well as their political power, forcing them to be subsumed in colonial society and culture.

The Assam Movement ended in 1985 with the signing of the Assam Accord, which promised to safeguard the interests of the people of Assam. Yet, the promises as per the Accord regarding the detection, deportation and deletion of names of illegal immigrants who entered after 1971, sealing of the Indo-Bangladesh border, and ensuring full political rights of the Assamese have not been addressed. Instead, the central government is offering citizenship to all Hindu illegal immigrants till 2014 when over 50 lakh illegal immigrants are already squeezing the local inhabitants’ space. The unkindest cut of all is that the state government, whose subservience to the Centre is total, comprises leaders who led the Assam Movement, then promising total implementation of the Assam Accord in their manifesto. It is pertinent to also recall how in 1836, Bengali was made the official language of Assam. With the support of American baptist missionaries, Assamese intellectuals had to fight to restore Assamese as the official language in 1872.

The new law shows no respect for the sense of “identity” of the Assamese. For “identity is shaped by participation in ‘cultural communities’ which need appropriate institutional protection” and that “groups. need to have rights in order to foster individuals’ well-being” (MacCormick, Kymlicka). The protest against the CAA in Assam continues because the people of Assam see it as part of a design to systematically dispossess them of their land, culture, language and, therefore, identity, by allowing the demographic balance to be disturbed recklessly. Their cry echoes the cry of indigenes the world over for survival.

This article first appeared in the print edition on February 6, 2020 under the title “Rage and reason”. The writer is president, Policy Group For Peoples’ Rights (PGPR), Dibrugarh, Assam, and convenor, INTACH, Dibrugarh chapter

Source: Indian Express, 6/02/2020

Meaningful Meditation

The criterion for wholesome thinking is to determine whether thought is born of equanimity or not. Two kinds of feelings dominate your life: like and dislike; craving and aversion. Totally unconditioned thinking is rare. Someone dear to us says something and we appreciate it; but the same thing uttered by an adversary and we feel contempt or fear. All action is conditioned or motivated by passion or disgust, approbation or disapprobation, attachment or indifference, attraction or revulsion. A man shops for the best quality food; he does not want his family to consume adulterated foodstuff. Yet, the same person sells adulterated medicines to others, because he is indifferent to their fate. Due to lack of affection, he indulges in corruption. This feeling of attachment or unattachment powerfully affects one’s approach and all perversions in thought and action originate from there. True meditation helps you go beyond like and dislike, craving and aversion, to awaken in you a state of dispassion. Meditation is meaningless if it does not bring about a complete transformation. If a meditator keeps tranquil enough in the meditation hall, but on returning home continues fighting and quarrelling, his family would rightly look upon such a person and his meditation with misgiving. Meditation should awaken inner consciousness. The conscious mind becomes inert, but the inward consciousness becomes so active and expands so much that it transcends all conditioning. It remains steadfast and unchanging.

Source: Economic Times, 6/02/2020

How the Bodo Accord was accomplished, establishing a wider template for peace in the Northeast

 Wasbir Hussain 

On January 27,

New Delhi succeeded in bringing the curtains down on more than three decades of militancy in one of South Asia’s hottest insurgency theatres. The government signed the new Bodo Accord with all the rebel factions: the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), the All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU), and a civil society body, United Bodo People’s Organisation (UBPO). This agreement can be called the Bodoland Territorial Region or BTR Accord as the existing Bodoland Territorial Areas District or BTAD has been renamed as BTR. The BTR Accord is unique in that it is the first peace agreement in the Northeast where all the existing insurgent groups in a particular area have put their signatures, with a joint commitment to end violence and strive for progress and development. A masterstroke by government negotiators is their flexible approach in letting the area’s frontline student organisation, the ABSU, be a signatory to the deal. After the 1986 Mizo Accord, at least five major peace agreements have been clinched with insurgent groups. But for the first time a student organisation which had acted as a catalyst and unifier has become a signatory to an accord along with a civil society conglomeration. This could well be a new peace template for the region. After two earlier Bodo agreements – the 1993 Bodoland Autonomous Council Accord and the 2003 deal with the rebel Bodo Liberation Tigers – this time the government was keen on a comprehensive settlement of the Bodo issue where the key demand for a separate Bodoland state was given up once and for all in lieu of adequate provisions for the uplift of Bodo people. The new Accord says on the issue: “Negotiations were held with Bodo organisations for a comprehensive and final solution to their demands while keeping intact the territorial integrity of the State of Assam.” One of the signatories, NDFB chief Gobinda Basumatary, told this writer that since most of the powers and aspirations of people seeking a separate state have been provided for in the new Accord, there is no need any more to demand a separate state. Apart from more legislative, executive, administrative and financial powers, BTR will now see exchange of villages. A commission headed by a retired judge will work out a mechanism for inclusion of villages with a majority tribal population, contiguous to the present Bodo Council area, into BTR. Similarly, villages with a majority non-tribal population currently under the Bodo Council, but contiguous to nonSixth Schedule areas (meaning areas outside the Council jurisdiction), will be excluded from the Council. This is expected to address the issues of both tribals currently outside the Bodo Council as well as nontribals currently living within the Council. Again, from 40 seats, the BTR Council will now have 60 seats. Up to 16 of these 60 seats could be open seats, meaning seats where non-tribals can also contest elections. Besides, there will be six nominated members in the BTR Council, including two women members and two from unrepresented communities. Therefore, for anyone to think that non-tribals have no reservations in the new BTR Accord is unfounded
Other significant provisions of the new accord is the decision to set up a Bodo-Kachari Welfare Council for ‘focussed development’ of Bodo villages located outside the Bodo Council area, and declaring Bodo language in Devnagri script as an associate official language of Assam. Besides, measures for protection of the Bodo language and culture and setting up several institutions of higher and technical education have also been provided in the Accord. The deal has also made it mandatory for the Assam government to earmark an amount of Rs 250 crore per annum for a period of three years for development of areas under the BTR Council. The Centre will contribute an equal amount of Rs 250 crore per annum for the same period. On the whole, the new Bodo Accord has many firsts and it can well be taken as a peace template as and when the government pushes its peace efforts in states like Manipur, for instance, where, too, there is a strong civil society presence which could well assist efforts at ending militancy.

The writer is Executive Director of the Centre for Development and Peace Studies in Guwahati

Source: Times of India, 6/02/2020

Quote of the Day

February 4, 2020

“A book is a gift you can open again and again.”

‐ Garrison Keillor

“पुस्तक एक ऐसा तोहफ़ा है जो आप बार बार खोल सकते हैं।”

‐ गैरीसन कीलर