P Chidambaram writes: Freedom, food and fuel

When people are deprived of freedom or food or fuel or any other dire necessity, they will rise in protest.  Currently, there are massive protests, especially by the youth, in France, Albania, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Italy, Morocco and Portugal — and India. The government is blamed because it is not seen as doing enough to mitigate the crisis or rectify the wrongs. Some protests in Europe have turned violent which is deplorable.

In the United States, people complain that food prices are “unaffordable” and fuel prices have become “unbearable”. Mr Trump is blamed.  In France, people complain of deprivation of a good eduction because of poor school facilities and teacher shortages. Mr Macron is blamed.  In Albania, the complaint is about surrendering a precious wetland ecosystem to an American capitalist for commercial exploitation. Mr Edi Rama is blamed.  Each of these protests is part of the citizen’s sense that ‘I am free only if I can afford food, have a good education, and I am able to protect my environment’. It is like the protest against the salt tax: a tax on salt does not exactly restrict one’s freedom but the idea of a salt tax levied by a colonial power was abhorrent to Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of freedom.

Unbelievably dense

The right to vote is, inarguably, the most precious right of a citizen in a free country.  I cannot believe that the BJP government can be so dense that it convinced itself that the deletion of 13,30,00,000 names (14 per cent of the adult population of 26 states) from the electoral rolls will not raise a storm of protest. The Election Commission of India said that the names were deleted after following a ‘process’. A process is not due process.  The ECI has confessed to the offence.  Now the ECI is organising  ‘special camps’ to re-enrol voters who were ‘left out’!  ‘Left out’ is obfuscation: the names were unlawfully deleted.

The SIR was conducted in three phases in 26 states (see table).

How many crores of rupees were spent on SIR? How many crores of rupees will be spent on re-enrolment? Who will be surcharged for the double expenditure?

Re-enroll deleted

The entire SIR process has been comprehensively challenged in the Supreme Court on multiple grounds. The Court issued notice. The next day, the ECI did an about-turn, abandoned SIR for the remaining states, and reverted to the customary Special Summary Revision (SSR). This is the ‘confession’ that I referred to above.

The persons whose names were deleted in West Bengal alone were allowed by the Supreme Court to file appeals. Of the 22,00,000 Appeals filed, approximately 1,26,000 Appeals were disposed of in six months.  Around 91-93 per cent of the Appeals were allowed and the names directed to be included in the electoral rolls; but they could not vote in the Assembly elections that had been just concluded.  Crores of deleted names elsewhere (excluding the dead) have no provision of an Appeal. They cannot vote in any election until their names are re-enrolled.  Re-enrolment is at the mercy of the ECI.

Fight for rights

This is no ordinary protest.  This is a fight for freedom and the right to vote.

The next will be a fight for food. Food prices have soared putting food beyond the capacity of the household.  While government gives 5 kg of grain free to 80 crore persons, several crores of persons, especially the internal-migrant labour, do not get the free grain. Juxtapose the rise in food prices with the fact that real wages have stagnated or declined for casual/daily workers who constitute 20 per cent of the labour force, and the extent of suffering will be clear.

Another fight is brewing— the fight for affordable fuel.  Petrol, diesel, electricity, gas, kerosene, firewood, and travel by bus, train or air, have all become dearer.

The last reading of WPI was 11.39 per cent, of CPI was 5.54 per cent and of food prices inflation was 7.74 per cent.  There are many external factors such as wars and tariffs that have caused the price rise.  But the government must bear responsibility.  Remember, the BJP blamed the UPA government for inflation in 2009-2011 (cause: international financial crisis) and 2013-14 (cause: taper tantrum).

The fight will continue for other rights which are suppressed or curtailed. I am aware that ‘regime change’ has acquired a pejorative connotation. Read it as ‘change of government’. No one can quarrel with the right of the Opposition parties and civil society groups to organise peaceful protests to vote out a government.  HV Kamath (December I, 1964) and Pranab Mukherjee (November 19, 2016) said that: “It is the Opposition’s duty to oppose, expose and depose” the government. Why deny this right to the Congress. INDIA bloc, CJP, AISA and others?

The next stops will be Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat and four other states in 2027.