National

State Gazette

A page on the state(s) of the nation -- states covered: Kerala, Gujarat, Karnataka, West Bengal, AP and MP.

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State Gazette
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THIRUVANANANTHAPURAM, KERALA
Mao’sChildren In God’s Own Country
Mao Ze Dong is dead. Long live Mao. That, of late, has become the subcontinent’scredo. And after Nepal, pan-Maoism has trained its sights on Kerala. The April 30 raid byPorattam, a self-styled Maoist group, on the nodal office of the Asian Development Bank(ADB) in Thiruvananthapuram only emphasises that threat. South India, particularly AndhraPradesh and Kerala, has had a tradition of ultra-left politics ever since the ’70s.The legacy is still alive and ticking in Andhra, while in Kerala it had witnessed a longlull. But the latent ‘radicalism’ has come to the fore now, thanks to thegovernment’s five-year-long pursuit of an ADB loan.

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A 10-member squad ransacked the ADB office, though they spared the officials. Thepolice estimate a loss of Rs 5 lakh.

Highlights of the 15-year loan: $300 million this year for fiscal reforms and $200million in 2003 for power-sector reforms. Kerala’s interest burden is 12 per cent.The ADB loan is a sticky political point. The Opposition is objecting to the"conditionalities" put by the bank. A government source, however, counters thatit was the previous Left dispensation that okayed the terms and the aide memoire for thefiscal reform studies prepared by the ADB in August 2000.
John Mary

AHMEDABAD, GUJARAT
The Technology OfDeceit

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History will perhaps call it Modi Xerox. It’s a peculiar technology by whichall FIRs filed from minority areas in Gujarat appear the same. The accused are not namedapart from some vague mention of "mobs" along with a list of human casualties orburnt premises. This is sharply contradicted by what you encounter when you walk into anyrelief camp in Ahmedabad—hordes of people there will say they saw BJP ministers, MLAsor VHP leaders letting out war speeches on the lines of "Looto, maaro".

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Some of them, who show burn and stab wounds, are willing not just to name thepoliticians but also be photographed as witnesses. Surprisingly, however, none of thepolice stations across the city have registered a single FIR in which a name of somereckoning crops up. People allege that the police rejected complaints that specificallynamed a minister or an MLA. In many cases, the police registered FIRs on behalf of thestate, giving details of a specific carnage and saying that it was caused by a faceless,nameless "mob".

In Naroda—Ahmedabad’s worst-affected area, where there have been innumerableeyewitness accounts of women being raped and torched—many say they saw a BJP MLA anda top VHP general with the mobs. There is, however, only a‘complaint’—which technically is not an FIR—that names the local MLA.And it’s the same story everywhere else too. Many eye-witnesses, but no named FIR.
Manu Joseph

BANGALORE, KARNATAKA
Summering InBannerghatta

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It’s a zoo story with a difference. The National Park at Bannerghatta, 25km from Bangalore, isn’t merely a place for displaying confined animals, it’sAsia’s prime rehabilitation centre for big cats—rescued from circuses andill-managed zoos—too.

A new feather was added to its cap when, on April 29, it took in six Siberian tigersfrom the Sussex-based Born Free Foundation.

The Siberian tigers were rescued from circuses in Italy, a zoo in Belgium and a petshop in Spain. It would be at least six months before the public can see the tigers.Officials want the felines to get acclimatised first and taken special care of.
B.R. Srikanth

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CALCUTTA, WEST BENGAL
Mohun Bagan’sSelf-Goals

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In Bengal’s football-crazed society, it enjoys an exalted pedigree,but that’s melting away like a dream as the 113-year-old Mohun Bagan Athletic Clubfinds itself in an unseemly tug of war between traditionalists and the upstarts.

Having topped this year’s National Football League, the club should have beenfinalising its team for the Asian Football Cup. Instead, its office-bearers are busyfighting for its reins.

At the core of the crisis is the Mohun Bagan’s—as also its rival EastBengal’s—takeover by the United Breweries group. Under the contract, to beginwith, its team will have to sport the UB logo. That apart, the club will be registered asa private limited company. The plan is to eventually list them on the stock market andmake them public. All these changes were thanks to Mohun Bagan’s hallowed patron TutuBose, a shipping magnate, and the club’s secretary, Anjan Mitra.

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The traditionalists have fought and won a case challenging the contract in a Calcuttalower court. What seems to have upset them most is the proposed change of name—fromMohun Bagan to United Mohun Bagan. The case is gone in appeal before the high court.

All this wrangling has put the club’s participation in the Asian Football Cup injeopardy. Mitra has declared that unless the case against him and Bose was not withdrawn,the club would not have a new team this season.

The uncertainty has, meanwhile, compelled many Mohun Bagan players to sign up withother clubs and its star footballer, Baretto, has demanded that Mohun Bagan renew (readrevise) its contract with him in the next few days. The message is that if this isn’tdone, he’ll look for other pastures.
Nikhil Mookerji

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HYDERABAD, AP
Fruits Of A FailedRevolution

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Chief minister Chandrababu Naidu’s second-most importantpreoccupation, after IT, has been Naxal-baiting. So, the surrender of 46CPI(ML)-Janashakti members before him on April 28 was quite a stirring occasion for hisgovernment and his police force. The Janashakti is second only to the better-known PWG instrength in Andhra.

The government announced rewards for the surrendering rebels, with each one receivingRs 5,000. Dalam (squad) members get an additional Rs 1 lakh, district committee members Rs2 lakh and surrendered district committee secretary Ranadheer—the senior-most leaderof the outfit—a special Rs 3 lakh. Plots and assistance for building houses have alsobeen promised.

After the surrender, the Medak police gave certificates of good conduct to the 1,250ex-Naxals. The move has "liberated" them from the police records and they willnow no longer have to report to the local thana.

Hopes of a negotiated settlement to the state’s three-decade-old Naxal menace hadarisen when both the PWG and the government announced their readiness to hold talks lessthan two months ago, but that has made little or no progress.
Savitri Choudhury

BHOPAL, MADHYA PRADESH
The State’sTwisted Arms
That there is an undercurrent of tension between the IAS and theIPS has long been an open secret. But when the police refused to come to the aid of an SDMgheraoed by a hostile crowd at Satna, the pretence of saving the appearances gave way. Andwhen a shocked government transferred the SP, policemen threatened to strike work.

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The crisis was precipitated by the decision to introduce, on an experimental basis, thepolice commissioner system in Indore.
In this, people’s representatives would comprise a city police authority overseeingthe functioning of the police commissioner.

The powerful IAS lobby fears this would erode the executive’s rights. The districtcollector would, for all practical purposes, lose the power to impose curfew, orderfiring, issue arms licenses, etc, to the police commissioner.

This has resulted in a cynical power struggle and has paralysed the administrativemachinery in many parts of the state.
K.S. Shaini

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