Smriti Irani a low-level actress; deserves jail, not HRD ministry: Mysuru professor

Mangaluru, Mar 28: Dakshina Kannada District observed a total shutdown on Saturday with closure of all shops, barring milk booths and pharmacy, to prevent spread of deadly Coronavirus.

The Central Market, a hub of activities where vegetables, groceries, flowers are sold, remained closed. Despite the milk booths and pharmacies being exempted from the purview of bandh, only a few milk booths remained open here.

The administration decided to go far bandh ion the wake of people failing to follow the lockdown guidelines of maintaining social distance and some wandering on the streets without valid reason. Moreover, there was increase in the number of corona cases despite measures taken, Deputy Commissioner Sindhu B Rupesh said.

Bengaluru, Mar 11: Heated verbal exchange between Minister K Sudhakar and former Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar in the assembly over disqualification of 17 MLAs last year, continued to disrupt the proceedings on Wednesday, with both opposition and treasury benches pushing for a privilege motion and demanding action.

Chaotic scenes and adjournments marked the House proceedings, with both sides not ready to budge.

As the House met for the day, around 11 am, senior Minister K S Eshwarappa accusing Congress MLA Ramesh Kumar of using "expletive" during a debate last evening, demanded his apology and that he be kept out of the proceedings.

Sudhakar, against whom expletive was allegedly used by Kumar, said, the words used were unpardonable and he should be heard, as he has given notice.

Leader of Opposition Siddaramaiah then demanded that he be allowed to speak first as he had given notice on Tuesday itself.

The Congress leader on his part has accused Sudhakar of breaching Kumar's privilege by allegedly making derogatory remarks against him.

Intervening, Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri said he has received breach of privilege notice from both sides and would allow it only after the question hour as per rules.

Though Congress expressed its agreement with the Speaker about letting them raise the matter after question hour, BJP legislators including Ministers said, Ramesh Kumar should be suspended.

Pointing out that Kumar was not inside the House, some ruling party MLAs even called him "escapist" and demanded action against him.

Strongly objecting to it, Siddaramaiah questioned the ruling party's intentions in running the house smoothly.

As this was followed by heated arguments between both sides, the Speaker adjourned the House for 15 minutes.

When the house met after much delay at 12:55 pm, the chaos continued.

As the Speaker allowed Minister Jagadish Shettar to speak, who was requesting permission to raise a point, Siddaramaiah objected to it and said he had given notice first.

He said, "this is not correct, it looks like government doesn't want the House to function, they don't want discussion on the budget, they are purposely blocking the proceedings of the House".

However, some BJP MLAs reacted to this by shouting slogans "shame shame Ramesh Kumar".

As his repeated attempts to conduct the proceedings failed, the Speaker adjourned the House for lunch.

Sudhakar, while speaking during a special discussion on the Constitution on Tuesday evening had made critical remarks against the decision of Kumar, as speaker, to disqualify 17 Congress-JD(S) MLAs under the anti-defection law, including him.

Angered by this Kumar, who opposed discussion on the subject, amid heated argument between BJP and Congress members allegedly uttered the expletive, which aggravated the situation and had resulted in pandemonium in the House last evening.

As democracy is seeping in slowly all over the world, there is an organization which is monitoring the degree of democracy in the individual countries, The Economist Intelligence Unit. As such in each country there are diverse factors which on one hand work to deepen it, while others weaken it. Overall there is a march from theoretical democracy to substantive one. The substantive democracy will herald not just the formal equality, freedom and community feeling in the country but will be founded on the substantive quality of these values. In India while the introduction of modern education, transport, communication laid the backdrop of beginning of the process, the direction towards deepening of the process begins with Mahatma Gandhi when he led the non-cooperation movement in 1920, in which average people participated. The movement of freedom for India went on to become the ‘greatest ever mass movement’ in the World.

The approval and standards for democracy were enshrined in Indian Constitution, which begins ‘We the people of India’, and was adopted on 26th January 1950. With this Constitution and the policies adopted by Nehru the process of democratization started seeping further, the dreaded Emergency in 1975, which was lifted later restored democratic freedoms in some degree. This process of democratisation is facing an opposition since the decade of 1990s after the launch of Ram Temple agitation, and has seen the further erosion with BJP led Government coming to power in 2014. The state has been proactively attacking civil liberties, pluralism and participative political culture with democracy becoming flawed in a serious way. And this is what got reflected in the slipping of India by ten places, to 51st, in 2019. On the index of democracy India slipped down from the score of 7.23 to 6.90. The impact of sectarian BJP politics is writ on the state of the nation, country.

Ironically this lowering of score has come at a time when the popular protests, the deepening of democracy has been given a boost and is picking up with the Shaheen Bagh protests. The protest which began in Shaheen Bagh, Delhi in the backdrop of this Government getting the Citizenship amendment Bill getting converted into an act and mercilessly attacking the students of Jamia Milia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University along with high handed approach in Jamia Nagar and neighbouring areas.  From 15th December 2019, the laudable protest is on.

It is interesting to note that the lead in this protest has been taken by the Muslim women, from the Burqa-Hijab clad to ‘not looking Muslim’ women and was joined by students and youth from all the communities, and later by the people from all the communities. Interestingly this time around this Muslim women initiated protest has contrast from all the protests which earlier had begun by Muslims. The protests opposing Shah Bano Judgment, the protests opposing entry of women in Haji Ali, the protests opposing the Government move to abolish triple Talaq. So far the maulanas from top were initiating the protests, with beard and skull cap dominating the marches and protests. The protests were by and large for protecting Sharia, Islam and were restricted to Muslim community participating.

This time around while Narendra Modi pronounced that ‘protesters can be identified by their clothes’, those who can be identified by their external appearance are greatly outnumbered by all those identified or not identified by their appearance.

The protests are not to save Islam or any other religion but to protect Indian Constitution. The slogans are structured around ‘Defence of democracy and Indian Constitution’. The theme slogans are not Allahu Akbar’ or Nara-E-Tadbeer’ but around preamble of Indian Constitution. The lead songs have come to be Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s ‘Hum Dekhenge’, a protest against Zia Ul Haq’s attempts to crush democracy in the name of religion. Another leading protest song is from Varun Grover, ‘Tanashah Aayenge…Hum Kagaz nahin Dikhayenge’, a call to civil disobedience against the CAA-NRC exercise and characterising the dictatorial nature of the current ruling regime.

While BJP was telling us that primary problem of Muslim women is Triple talaq, the Muslim women led movements has articulated that primary problem is the very threat to Muslim community. All other communities, cutting across religious lines, those below poverty line, those landless and shelter less people also see that if the citizenship of Muslims can be threatened because of lack of some papers, they will be not far behind in the victimization process being unleashed by this Government.

While CAA-NRC has acted as the precipitating factor, the policies of Modi regime, starting from failure to fulfil the tall promises of bringing back black money, the cruel impact of demonetisation, the rising process of commodities, the rising unemployment, the divisive policies of the ruling dispensation are the base on which these protest movements are standing. The spread of the protest movement, spontaneous but having similar message is remarkable. Shaheen Bagh is no more just a physical space; it’s a symbol of resistance against the divisive policies, against the policies which are increasing the sufferings of poor workers, the farmers and the average sections of society.

What is clear is that as identity issues, emotive issues like Ram Temple, Cow Beef, Love Jihad and Ghar Wapasi aimed to divide the society, Shaheen Bagh is uniting the society like never before. The democratisation process which faced erosion is getting a boost through people coming together around the Preamble of Indian Constitution, singing of Jan Gan Man, waving of tricolour and upholding the national icons like Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, Ambedkar and Maulana Azad. One can feel the sentiments which built India; one can see the courage of people to protect what India’s freedom movement and Indian Constitution gave them.

Surely the communal forces are spreading canards and falsehood against the protests. As such these protests which is a solid foundation of our democracy. The spontaneity of the movement is a strength which needs to be channelized to uphold Indian Constitution and democratic ethos of our beloved country.