December 2017 Archives

Medicine in 2017 Saw Big Breakthroughs in Child Neurology

An AIIMS paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine on treatment of children suffering from drug-resistant epilepsy provided high levels of evidence about treatment.

Credit: UCI Research/Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0

The year 2017 saw significant advances in medicine including approval of new treatments for a wide variety of diseases such as CAR-T cell therapy for treatment of leukemia, safinamide for Parkinson’s disease and neratinib for treatment of breast cancer. Additionally, new understanding was achieved for several conditions such as hypertension, autism and hypercholesterolemia.

But the most dramatic breakthroughs were reserved for a field that is somewhat obscure for the lay person – the field of child neurology – and interestingly India made a contribution to it as well.

By far the biggest news-maker of the year was a drug called nusinersen. It is an agent that is effective in the treatment of a rare neurogenetic disease called spinal muscular atrophy. The severe form of this disease is characterised by development of progressive paralysis leading to inability to move and death from respiratory failure in infancy without treatment. Promising results of a phase 2 trial of nusinersen were published in December 2016 and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US granted approval of the drug in the same month. However, it was only this year that nusinersen started being used relatively routinely in clinical practice in the US. The drug also received approval for use in various other countries beyond the US in 2017.

Moreover, the results of a successful phase 3 trial of nusinersen were published in late 2017 in the New England Journal of Medicine reinforcing the phase 2 outcomes. Long term results are awaited but I personally have seen infants achieving motor milestones with nusinersen which they would not be expected to without treatment. It indeed is a paradigm shift as far as treatment of rare neurogenetic diseases is concerned.

Promising results of an unrelated treatment in the form of replacement gene therapy for 15 spinal muscular atrophy patients were also published this year in the New England Journal of Medicine. While nusinersen requires repeated delivery directly into the spinal fluid, the gene therapy consists of only a single intravenous injection to replace the defective gene by using a viral vector. The next challenge for treatment of this disease is likely going to be measurement of head-to-head performance to assess which one of the two is more efficacious and safer.

A third major breakthrough for the year in child neurology involved the use of stem-cell gene therapy for a disease called adrenoleukodystrophy. This disease is the result of a mutation of gene called ABCD1, and primarily affects boys. It is characterized by degeneration of brain regions primarily responsible for motor function and vision, and ultimately death. Promising early results of gene therapy, again using a viral vector, were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in October 2017.

Credit: Reuters

The last but not the least of the major advancements in child neurology for the year came in the form of a research paper published by doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in October, again in the New England Journal of Medicine. The paper described results of a trial that assessed efficacy of surgery and medical treatment versus medical treatment alone in children 18 years and younger with drug-resistant epilepsy. The trial was funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research, and randomly enrolled 57 subjects in the surgical plus medical treatment arm and 59 children in the medical treatment only arm. The outcomes were assessed at 12 months and were found to be significantly superior for the group that received surgery in addition to appropriate medical treatment.

All the patients enrolled in the study, in either arm, were already confirmed to be good candidates for surgical treatment beforehand and then randomized. Those who were randomly assigned to the medical treatment only arm went on to a waiting list for surgery. Randomization was felt to be ethically acceptable since the usual wait times for surgical treatment of childhood epilepsy are more than 12 months at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Such a study perhaps has not been possible in the West because the wait times are shorter after a child with drug-resistant epilepsy is deemed to be a good candidate for surgery. It is important to note here that not all patients with drug-resistant epilepsy are appropriate candidates for surgical treatment.

This paper is of particular importance since epilepsy is a relatively common neurologic condition with a worldwide prevalence of about 50 million according to the World Health Organization. Approximately 20 to 40% of those with epilepsy are refractory to medications. The treatment options for epilepsy besides medications include special diets, nerve stimulators and surgery.

This is the only such randomized controlled trial ever conducted, and provides the highest level of evidence as far as surgical treatment of childhood epilepsy is concerned.

Jay Desai is a California-based doctor

Disclosures: The author has received grants from the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles and Novartis; has acted as an expert in legal proceedings; and has been on the editorial boards of the Journal of Child Neurology and Pediatric Neurology.

The Wire’s Most Read Articles of 2017

They were on topics as diverse as the sand mafia, an attempted kidnapping, corporate corruption, ISRO and the RSS.

This is a list of ten articles that were read the most on The Wire in 2017. They were on topics as diverse as the sand mafia, an attempted kidnapping, corporate corruption, ISRO and the RSS. And they’re worth revisiting on this last day of the year: for a snapshot of 2017’s most popular preoccupations.

1. The Golden Touch of Jay Amit Shah

Though the Ahmedabad civil court lifted its injunction against The Wire discussing the contents of its October 8, 2017 story, it stayed the lifting for 14 days to allow Jay Shah time to appeal in the high court, which he has done. Arguments in the high court on the issue took place on December 28 and will continue on January 10. The trial court’s stay will operate until then.

2. The Law is Clear: Reserved Category Candidates Are Entitled to General Seats on the Basis of Merit

Second on the list is Anurag Bhaskar’s article on the Supreme Court’s judgment in Deepa EV v. Union of India.

Thus, there is no law prescribing reservation for general category candidates in public employment and therefore there does not arise any question of the reserved category candidates occupying or being selected against “their seats”. Since there is no concept of providing reservation to general category candidates, there cannot be any concept of “their fixed seats”. Such seats can be claimed by everyone on basis of merit. The judgment in the Deepa E.V. case is incomplete. Based on the precedents mentioned, the correct position would be that there can’t be any limitation on the reserved category candidates to claim a seat in the general category on the basis of merit. The relaxations provided are merely to bring the candidates of the reserved” category in a level-playing field, which is the spirit under the text of Article 16(4) of the Indian constitution.

3. The Countdown Begins For Tamil Nadu’s Beach Sand Mining Cartel

Third is Sandhya Ravishankar’s series on the beach sand mining mafia in Tamil Nadu. As she wrote in the first article in the series:

The Centre and the Tamil Nadu state governments finally seem to be taking seriously the blatant irregularities and violations committed along the southern shores of the country. The allegations are numerous and amply documented and are being fiercely litigated in the Madras high court in the form of a suo motu PIL taken up by the first bench. Before the court are major questions: Did the beach sand miners cart away Rs 1 lakh crore worth of rare and precious atomic minerals, as one petitioner alleged? Did state and central government officials actively collude with the miners to sell national resources? Is monazite (thorium) being exported illegally to countries like China and Korea?

While we await definitive answers to these questions, what is certain is that laws have been tweaked, ignored, blatantly violated, falsehoods written in official reports, and illegalities which are obvious have been condoned by the authorities at the state and central level. The environment has been destroyed in the miners’ hunger for more money and more power, and the national exchequer drained.

The stakes are high when it comes to mining beach sand. The law is complex and should necessarily be unyielding, as it also concerns radioactive material allegedly being mined and illegally exported. The stakes, then, also concern national security.

4. Attempted Kidnapping Case: CCTV Footage ‘Unavailable’, BJP Leader’s Family Resorts to Victim-Shaming

Next is a staff copy on an attempted kidnapping in Chandigarh involving the son of the Haryana state BJP chief, Subhash Barala. Both party leaders and the family of the accused took to social media to try and blame the victim for the incident and undermine her testimony.

In a Facebook post, that has now been deleted, a member of the Barala family, Kuldeep Barala – who also describes himself as having “worked at Bharatiya Janata party” – shared a photo of the victim with two men and implied that she was drunk at the time of the incident.

In another post, the man shared an old photograph of Kundu with glasses of alcohol in the foreground, again trying to raise questions about her character, and claimed that the incident was being blown our of proportion by the Opposition to malign the BJP leader’s image. The images were lifted from her Facebook page.

Curiously, Kuldeep Barala also slammed the police for speaking to the media about the incident – he used the word ‘leak’ – and said this meant that the police would not be willing to go back on its word of slapping serious charges on the goons. In fact, the police has gone back on its word, with the same officer, DSP Satish Kumar first telling reporters that non-bailable charges had been filed and then later saying that those charges were not found suitable to the crime.

5. ISRO Is Not Going to Mine the Moon for Helium-3

The bunking of a bit of fake news that went viral in April is the fifth on our list. Multiple people had quoted the words of Sivathanu Pillai out of context, and suggested the Indian Space Research Organisation was going to mine helium-3 on the Moon and use it to power nuclear fusion reactors on Earth. As one scientist said, it was just moonshine. Excerpt:

The report is referring to comments made by the noted space scientist Sivathanu Pillai at the Observer Research Foundation’s Kalpana Chawla Space Policy Dialogue 2017, held in New Delhi in February. Those who attended the conference say that Pillai had said mining helium-3 from the Moon was possible – but that he didn’t say anything about ISRO planning to do it.

“Although helium-3 fusion may be an attractive alternative if sufficient quantities can be mined and transported at an economical rate, the main difficulty is technological,” Jayant Murthy, a senior professor at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, told The Wire. “Helium-3 fusion requires temperatures much higher than the deuterium-tritium fusion that is the basis of current fusion research. It would only be prudent to wait until the technology is mature before even planning for helium-3 extraction from the Moon.”

… Even others have questioned the wisdom of using helium-3 for nuclear fusion altogether. The most prominent critique was penned by physicist Frank Close for Physics World in August 2007. He wrote that in a reactor like ITER’s tokamak – a donut-shaped hollow in which light atoms are confined by magnetic fields, heated to 150 million degrees C, made to form a plasma and then fused – “deuterium reacts up to 100 times more slowly with helium-3 than it does with tritium”.

And then there’s the jurisprudential barrier. According to Ashok G.V., an advocate and space law expert, Moon-mining is a “very, very dicey area”.

6. History Shows How Patriotic the RSS Really Is

Sixth on the list is Pavan Kulkarni’s article that looked by at the RSS’s actions during the freedom struggle, and how the organisation was subservient to the British, with its leadership prohibiting participation in mass movements.

A year-and-a-half after the Quit India movement was launched, the Bombay government of the British Raj noted in a memo, with considerable satisfaction, that “the Sangh has scrupulously kept itself within the law, and in particular, has refrained from taking part in the disturbances that broke out in August 1942.”

However, as in the previous case of the Dandi March, the cadres of the RSS were frustrated by their leaders who were holding them back from participating in the movement. “In 1942 also”, Golwalkar himself pointed out, “there was a strong sentiment in the hearts of many…. Sangh is an organisation of inactive persons, their talks are useless, not only outsiders but also many of our volunteers did talk like this. They were greatly disgusted too.”

But the RSS leadership had a curious reason for not participating in the struggle for independence. In a speech given on June 1942 – months before an unnecessary, British-made famine was to kill at least three million Indians in Bengal – Golwalkar said that the “Sangh does not want to blame anybody else for the present degraded state of the society. When the people start blaming others, then there is basically weakness in them. It is futile to blame the strong for the injustice done to the weak…Sangh does not want to waste its invaluable time in abusing or criticising others. If we know that large fish eat the smaller ones, it is outright madness to blame the big fish. Law of nature whether good or bad is true all the time. This rule does not change by terming it unjust.”

7. ‘It’s a Decentralised Emergency… A Pyramidal Mafia State’: Arun Shourie on Modi Sarkar

Next is Swati Chaturvedi’s interview of former BJP leader Arun Shourie, where he talked about some of the Centre’s decision and his disagreement with them, and his unhappiness with the manner in which things were run. On being asked if the current situation is at all similar to the Emergency, he said:

It’s a decentralised emergency. What we are going towards is a pyramidal decentralised mafia state, where local goons will belabour anyone whom they think is doing something wrong. The central people will look the other way. The central people will provide a rationale for the goondas at the local level. Like “gau rakshaks’’, like “love jihad” – this becomes the rationale for me to beat up anybody. It’s not love for the cow but just an instrument for domination.

The one big difference is at that time Mrs [Indira] Gandhi still used the law. Now it is not the law. These people are acting outside the law. This is true fascism because you say what is the law? I am the law. All this action is being done outside the government, worse, things are being done inside the government to choke the existing laws – for instance the Right to Information (RTI) is being choked, the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) is being denigrated unless it’s in your favour. The judiciary is being denigrated, therefore you keep the vacancies going the same way, probably about a hundred vacancies. The judiciary keeps saying, and these people keep denying on one ground or another. And, to hell with the people who suffer because of want of courts.

8. Of Government, God and Gharial: The Ecological Pogrom in Chambal’s Badlands

A chronicle of infrastructural recklessness around the Chambal river by Tarun Nair, a conservation biologist, revealed the sorry plight of the gharial native to this region. At over 6,800 words, our eighth most read article in 2017 was also our longread of that month. Excerpt:

For how long the Chambal continues to flow, and for how long we will continue to see and hear its untamed sights and sounds, will depend on how soon we can wean away from our exploitative dependence on this river, on how effectively we keep the many ecologically divisive forces at bay, and on when we finally restore its natural flow regimes. Our rivers are deserving of reverence for their ability to nourish and nurture life, not merely to wash away our sins and sewage. According rights, and even personhood, to our rivers may help reverse the damage, and countries like Bolivia, Ecuador and New Zealand have shown us the way. But are we willing?

The gharial may never again ‘abound in all great rivers of Northern India‘, as Andrew Leith Adams (1867) had once observed in the latter half of the nineteenth century. But we can surely allow it to survive and flourish in the few remaining areas that the species lives on in, and hope that it eventually recolonises at least parts of its historic range. The gharial certainly has the tenacity to do so. We just must play our part.

9. ‘Thanks for 90 Votes’: In Four Words, an Elegy for Indian Democracy

This article by Krishna Kant looked at the electoral performance of Manipuri activist Irom Sharmila, who was on hunger strike for 16 years demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act.

Sharmila decided that she would fight against this black law by taking part in electoral politics. In the assembly elections this time, she contested against the chief minister of Manipur and secured only 90 votes. The very people whose right to live she had fought to defend for over 16 years have brutally killed her political dream. Irom had entered the electoral arena with a dream in her eyes; on Saturday, her eyes brimming with tears, she announced her departure from the ring. ‘I will never set foot in here again’, she declared. For 16 years, she denied herself food, and love and companionship. Now she has been forced by the system to renounce electoral politics without ever having the chance to experience what a life in politics would look like.

Irom Sharmila, who went on an epic fast against AFSPA for 16 years, has lost, just as Manorama, the woman killed in custody in 2005 by the Assam Rifles lost, just as the women of Manipur who staged a naked protest to demand justice for Manorama lost, just as Madkam Hidme and Sukhmati in Bastar have lost. Responding to this defeat, Irom Sharmila’s supporters stoically said, ‘Thanks for 90 votes’.

Sharmila has been struggling and losing for 16 years. All she is saying is that the army should not be given the right to shoot whoever it likes merely because it suspects them of wrongdoing.

10. ICICI Officials Accused of Tricking Hundreds Into Buying Insurance Instead of FD Schemes

The last article on the list was published earlier this week, and looks at how Rajasthan’s state police special operations group is investigating multiple ICICI officials for misleading customers and violating IRDAI norms.

When Sohandas, a 75-year-old farmer from Udaipur, sold the only piece of land he owned, he hoped the money would help him and his 65-year-old wife with financial security during old age. After building a small house, he deposited the rest of his money (Rs 7,50,000) in a fixed deposit at ICICI bank’s Udaipur branch.

“Nine months later, I started receiving calls from Mumbai asking me to deposit another Rs 7,50,000, failing which I’d lose my original deposit. When I showed the bank documents to a lawyer, I was told it was an insurance policy, which required me to deposit the same amount every year”.

“I don’t know what to do now,” he said. “Both my wife and I are too old to find labour jobs. We have medical bills of Rs 5-7,000 every month. We don’t have 7.5 lakh rupees to deposit every year”.

Sohandas, however, is not alone. There are hundreds like him – a labourer who was relieved of the insurance money she received upon her husband’s death; a government employee whose gratuity melted away; a poor farmer whose agricultural loan was appropriated.

The Kamala Mills Fire, and Other Accidents Waiting to Happen

In central Mumbai’s metamorphosis from an old working-class area to a rich people’s playground, zoning laws and safety regulations have been ignored.

A view from the street after a fire broke out in a building in Mumbai on Friday. Credit: PTI

Mumbai: On the face of it, the stampede at the Elphinstone Road railway station in September 2017 and last week’s fire in a upscale rooftop bar are totally different and unconnected mishaps. But the roots of the tragedies are interlinked – they happened in the old mill district of Mumbai which is now home to chrome and steel buildings, offices, expensive tower blocks, malls and tony restaurants. In this metamorphosis from an old working-class area to a rich people’s playground, zoning laws and safety regulations have been ignored.

Serving as corporate spaces for many multinational companies and media houses during the day time, its landscape transforms into a heady party space by the evening. These otherwise dull-looking office spaces suddenly turn lively, with people visiting pubs and restaurants which have come up in the recent years. Central Mumbai, where Kamala Mills and Elphinstone Road are, is now a favourite hangout for both office-goers and college youngsters. The mix-use means that at no time is the area uncrowded. During its heyday as a mill district, the ebb and flow was linked to mill shifts and at night there was hardly anyone there.

This transformation, however, has not been smooth. The 14 deaths in the early hours of December 28 at a high-end restaurant, 1Above, in the Kamala Mills compound in Lower Parel is only a grim reminder of this haphazard conversion. The sprawling 37-acre compound is now bursting at the seams and several major restaurant companies have opened outlets here; but little or no fundamental alteration was made to the space. In Kamala Mills as well as other former industrial spaces, restaurants and high-end bars operate in former storage spaces, where alterations such as making emergency exits are simply not possible.

Movement in these former mills is restricted. Only in Kamala Mills, where at least 35 restaurants operate, cars are constantly dropping off customers. In other places, there is no room for one car to pass, forget a fire engine. The building are in terribly crammed spaces and sticking to each other, and the number of exits is far from enough. The victims at 1Above were unable to make their way outside and were asphyxiated while taking shelter in toilets.

Civic authorities have gone on a demolition spree against irregular extensions and structures in restaurants all over Mumbai, but it now emerges that 1Above was given a fire safety certificate barely a week before the tragedy. That there is corruption in the civic body is well known, but owners too want to take the easy way out instead of genuinely looking for ways to improve safety. “Had they done their duty and acted against the restaurant for flouting norms, this would not have happened,” civic chief Ajoy Mehta said.

But the problem is not just at the implementation level, policies too are flawed. Soon after the November 26, 2008 terror attacks in the city, an eight-member committee led by former IAS officer N.V. Mirani was set up to take stock of security measures in the city. In its six-volume report, the committee dealt with ‘fire’ as a separate topic and recommended guidelines to make buildings in the city explosive-resistant to avert fire mishaps. “These recommendations were to be implemented on an urgent basis,” said I.C. Sisodiya, a former vigilance officer of the municipal corporation. He further added, “The committee had submitted a detailed manual on fire safety directives. Regular auditing and evaluation of buildings against fire hazards due to electrical short circuits was one of its most crucial recommendations.” The committee recommended that the security staff should be trained to fight fire. Mock drills were also to be carried out.

But this is more an exception than the rule. The owner of a small café in the Raghuvanshi Mills building in the area said, “We have two fire extinguishers here. But my staff is not trained to handle them.” The reason, she said, is that fire drills are never conducted. “Hygiene and food quality is within our control and we take full care of it. But the fire drill needs to be done by specialised teams and at a regular intervals. We don’t have the know-how and have never got any instructions from the fire brigade on handling fire,” she claimed.

Madhav Pai, India director of the WRI Ross Centre for Sustainable Cities, claims one cannot look at the recent tragedy in isolation. It goes back to the 1990s, when mills were shutting down and the government, through a series of decisions, allowed mill owners to commercially exploit their properties without any concern for civic good.

People try to rescue those stuck in the stampede on the Parel-Elphinstone foot over bridge. Credit: PTI/Files

A committee led by by town planner and architect Charles Correa had suggested keeping one-third of the available land as free space; this was overridden as the the mill owners won a challenge to this change in the Supreme Court. Of the nearly 600 acres in the mills, only a small percentage was set aside for homes for former mill workers; the rest was for free commercial exploitation. Within a few short years, the entire Lower Parel-Elphinstone area changed, with shiny new structures coming up and a demographic shift that sidelined the old workers. The area’s infrastructure just couldn’t handle it: traffic jams are routine and huge numbers of people pour out of the trains every few minutes, whether day and night.

But it is not just the cramped conditions that are responsible. The complete lack of safety protocols and the poor enforcement of the few regulations that do exist play a big role in such tragedies. R.A. Venkitachalam, an advisor at the Centre for Safety Engineering, IIT Gandhinagar, says that the raw material widely used in designing most of the newly set- up office and restaurant spaces make them highly prone to fire accidents. “The calorific value of the raw material used is much higher and when fire breaks, and with no ventilation, people are bound to choke. Almost 90% deaths in fire accidents occur due to inhaling toxic gases,” Venkitachalam said.

According to the National Crime Record Bureau, a total of 18,450 cases of fire accidents were reported in India in 2015, with 1,193 persons injured and 17,700 killed. A majority of the fire accidents were reported in Maharashtra, accounting for 22% of the total number. Mumbai remains a major contributor to this statistic. In Mumbai alone, according to the data, 223 persons died in fire incidents in 2015. In the last ten years, 3,781 persons have died in the city because of this cause.

In a rapidly-growing city like Mumbai with a population of over 20 million, growth of commercial spaces and urban centres are inevitable. When commercial spaces shifted from south to central Mumbai over a decade ago, the burden shifted onto the existing infrastructure. “The stampede at Elphinstone railway station is a classic example of that. I do not see any difference in what happened at the railway station and what happened at the restaurant. The only difference is one was in the public realm and other in a private space,” Pai said.

For Mumbai citizens, the sudden burst of activity on the part of civic authorities to demolish illegal structures is all too familiar. It is a knee-jerk reaction to show that something is being done. Soon enough, things will return to normal – both owners and the authorities will lapse into their usual way of doing things. Until the basics – fire drills, infrastructure changes such as fire exits, up to date fire fighting equipment – are attended to, there are fears that more such tragedies will happen.

Is Rajinikanth Really the Change Tamil Nadu’s Politics Needs?

Some say that his use of the word ‘spiritual’ and invocation of the Bhagavad Gita mean that the superstar is planning to align with the BJP.

Rajinikanth greeting the audience. Credit: Rajinikanth’s office

Chennai: “Let’s get to the point,” he says to the crowds that throng a quaint hall in the middle of Chennai’s Kodambakkam area. His voice reverberates across the hall, spilling onto the roads. If it is the voice of Rajinikanth, it must be met with crackers, screeching and hurrahs.

It is time.

“Naan arasiyalil varuvadhu urudhi,” he says to raucous applause and cheers from the adoring crowd. Rajinikanth has confirmed that he will enter electoral politics.

Superstar Rajinikanth, fondly called Thalaivaa (leader), is a powerhouse, despite his weary, tired body. He takes to the stage and commands the audience, making a joke about his fear of the media. Rajinikanth said that it was time for political change and that he was entering the political arena now as he perceived a lack of governance in the past year in the state and also felt that democracy was being destroyed. “The political developments in the state over the past year have made us the laughing stock of the country,” he said. Rajini clarified – “If I were after power and position, I would have entered politics in 1996 itself. What I did not want at 45 years of age, would I want now at 65?” he laughed.

He added that his party would contest in all 234 seats in the next assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, at present scheduled for 2021, and that he would discuss the party’s agenda and strategy with his team. “No one needs to speak about politics except for me,” said Rajini firmly to his fans. “Let us not comment on other politicians or leaders.”

Rajini emphasised only two points during his speech. One was that of his not tolerating corruption. “We will resign if we do not deliver on our promises within three years,” he said. The other was a strangely worded phrase – “Jaadhi madham illaadha aanmiga arasiyal” – literally translating into “Spiritual politics without communalism or casteism”.

And this is what has set the cat amongst the pigeons, as far as the political fraternity is concerned. Political watchers feel that Rajini is the herald of the post-Dravidian era, the first would-be politician to speak openly of spirituality and religion. Tamil Nadu has, for the past six decades, been ruled by Dravidian parties, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), whose ideology is rooted in atheism and rationalism.

This phrase has also enhanced the perception amongst political analysts that Rajini and the BJP are flirting with each other. Political analyst Aazhi Senthilnathan says, “The word ‘spiritual’ in very normal terms can only be associated with a particular ideology, the pictures on his stage, the quote from Bhagavad Gita which he used in his opening lines, the invocation of late editor of Tughlaq magazine and political commentator Cho Ramaswamy – all point to the fact that he is associating with the (Bharatiya Janata) party, although subtly. It’s a disastrous move because he would only be a proxy for a communal political party.”

Other political parties are more cautious. “He has said that he will enter politics. He has not made his ideology clear. Unless he makes it clear, we cannot say whether his ideology is aligned to Dravidianism or against it. It is too early to decide,” says Avadi Kumar, spokesperson of the AIADMK. Kumar dismisses conjecture that Rajini could possibly be a pawn for the BJP. “Most say that the BJP is keen on piggybacking on Rajini and not the other way round. The BJP is trying its best to strengthen the party in Tamil Nadu,” he says.

This does not seem implausible, considering Tamil Nadu’s RSS ideologue S. Gurumurthy was quick to attempt ownership over the superstar soon after the announcement. “Rajni’s entry into Tamil Nadu politics will hopefully bring about tectonic changes in the 60 year old frozen Dravidian politics. His spiritual politics is nearer to Modi’s than to anyone else in Tamil Nadu or outside,” he tweeted.

But could Rajinikanth be the change that the people of Tamil Nadu seek? “Rajini’s brand of politics is not in tune with the overwhelming ideologies that the Tamil electorate subscribes to. He could be seen as an anti-Dravidian politician in that sense,” says Senthilnathan.

Professor Ramu Manivannan, head of the department of political science at Madras University, is positive about the growth of Dravidian politics in the state, however weak it may currently be. “Dravidian politics will find its rejuvenation. The DMK finds it difficult to make a comeback and they have to reinvent themselves. This is not a decay of Dravidian politics. It will find its pace,” he says.

Manivannan also asks – “But assume he (Rajinikanth) says his politics is not Dravidian in a Dravidian population, then what does he represent? What is the post-Dravidian identity?” That is the million-dollar question that Rajinikanth is going to have to answer in the near future.

Rajinikanth. Credit: Rajinikanth’s office

A political vacuum

There has been, no doubt, a political vacuum in the state after the passing of AIADMK leader and late chief minister J. Jayalalithaa in 2016, especially with DMK chief M.K. Karunanidhi currently out of active politics due to ill health.

Rajinikanth appears to be making an attempt to tap into that perceived vacuum. “In the past year, there has been no governance at all in Tamil Nadu,” roared the actor on stage as fans cheered in a frenzy. And he has good reason to say so, although it has not been only one year of poor governance.

Unemployment rates had risen by 0.5% in Tamil Nadu in 2015-16 as compared to 2013-14, according to the employment and unemployment surveys conducted by the Union Ministry of Labour. Fiscal deficit of the state has risen to alarming levels and debt is at an all-time high.

“If he launches a political party soon and starts working for the elections, he may be able to manage 2-3% of the vote share in my view. These may be derived from the vote share of DMK, AIADMK and even the Congress. He could potentially make or break an alliance,” says Senthilnathan. “But remember, Chiranjeevi (former Telugu cine star and Praja Rajyam leader) was forced to merge his party with the Congress after three years. Sustaining a political party is difficult,” he warns..

Rajinikanth’s likely rivals are quick to dismiss even this role for the superstar. “Rajini will have to face much opposition and many losses. He may get some votes because of the impact of films. But he can never win,” says Nanjil Sampath, supporter of MLA T.T.V. Dhinakaran.

“We have seen many actors. We are not going to be intimidated. Let him first announce his policies,” says T.K.S. Elangovan, Rajya Sabha MP and a spokesperson of the DMK.

Historical political overtures

The 1990s were when Rajinikanth emerged as a formidable game-changer thanks to his massive fan following in Tamil Nadu. The first apparent instance of the superstar using this to influence the political course in the state was in 1996. Reports suggest that the actor was keen on campaigning for the Congress party if it ran alone in the 1996 elections, but dropped the idea due to the lack of enthusiasm shown by then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.

When Tamil Congress leader G.K. Moopanar split from the party protesting its alliance with the AIADMK and floated the Tamil Maanila Congress joining hands with the DMK, Rajinikanth enthusiastically took their side. He famously said, “Even God cannot save Tamil Nadu if Jayalalithaa is voted back to power.” This, many believe, contributed to the AIADMK’s defeat that year. Many also point this out as a lost opportunity for Rajinikanth to have made an impactful political entry.

In 1998, the actor again extended his support to the same alliance, but with little impact. AIADMK meanwhile won 18 seats in the same election.

In 2002, Rajinikanth observed a nine-hour fast, leading a ‘people’s movement’ urging Karnataka to implement the Supreme Court ruling on releasing Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu. The actor was spearheading a campaign to interlink the major rivers in the country, which he saw as a permanent solution to the issue. Notably, the fast was held a day after filmmaker Bharathiraaja taunted him for not participating in a protest organised by the film industry on the issue. Rajinikanth’s movement received massive support from the film industry and fans alike. But the actor maintained in an interview that he did not see himself as a ‘political leader or a statesman’.

When the BJP took up river interlinking as an agenda in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, Rajinikanth pledged his support to the Vajpayee-led NDA, which had allied with Jayalalithaa by then. “I will vote for the Vajpayee-led BJP front in Tamil Nadu,” he had announced, adding that he would not ‘wrest the voting rights’ of his fans. But this time too, the actor’s support could not placate the electorate and the BJP-AIADMK combine could not win a single seat in the election.

In 2008, the actor participated in a rally organised to protest Karnataka’s stance in releasing water from Hogenakkal to Tamil Nadu. “It is a question of time and circumstances,” the superstar told his fans at a meeting the same year.

Rajinikanth’s meeting with Narendra Modi in 2014 had also sparked rumours of his political entry, though he quelled them by calling it a courtesy meeting. Since then, the BJP had reportedly intensified its efforts to rope the actor into its fold.

“He goes to meet former DMK chief Karunanidhi, former AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa, how does he talk about corruption? He enjoys the patronage of power. How can you bring corruption-free politics then?” asks Ramu Manivannan. To him, Rajinikanth’s vague statements on “spiritual politics” ring similar to a term coined by yesteryear chief minister M.G. Ramachandran, called Annaism – an amalgam of Gandhian, communist and capitalist politics. “No one,” he says, “wanted to question MGR and he was let off easily. But Rajinikanth needs to explain exactly he means.”

One thing is for sure. Thanks to Rajinikanth, religion and spirituality are no longer a bad words in Tamil politics.

Prathibha Parameswaran is a freelance journalist with The Lede in Chennai and has close to 15 years of experience in covering Tamil cinema. Divya Karthikeyan is an independent journalist based in Chennai.

How the Women of Tamil Cinema Notched up New Highs in 2017

Women have probably never had it this good in the hugely misogynistic landscape of Tamil cinema. And backing them up is a new batch of young filmmakers.

Jyothika in Magalir Mattum (2017)

In the prime of her acting career, Jyothika typified the quintessential Tamil cinema heroine: the attractive yet stupid woman. Just shortly before getting married to actor Surya in 2006, Jyothika could explore roles that would give her scope to perform. In Mozhi (2007), she played a confident, modern woman who was hearing and speaking impaired. In Pachaikili Muthucharam (2007), she was a villain. However, such characters remained few and far between.

After a hiatus, when Jyothika made a comeback in 2015, with 36 Vayathinile (a remake of Malayalam’s How Old Are You?), many thought her appearance onscreen was a fad that would soon go away. In 2017, she shut the skeptics up. Unlike in 36 Vayathinile, where she played a sari-clad, diffident woman trying to find her own space, in Magalir Mattum (2017), Jyothika was a jeans-clad, bullet-riding documentary filmmaker.

From being Tamil cinema’s silly, bubbly girl in Vaali (1999), Jyothika has come a long way. And so have the women of Tamil cinema – from being just a sidekick or a dancer in the background, from being a glamour add-in or waiting to be ‘tamed’ by the hero so he becomes a superstar, she has begun to assert her presence more.

Now, she could be divorced and start a new relationship without shocking the world and it’s ‘morals’. She could be a college student and watch soft-porn without being judged. She could be affected by HIV and go about her life without stigma. She could be a bureaucrat who fights the system for justice.

Increasingly, women in Tamil cinema are doing things that only a man has done and gotten away with before. Better still, in 2017, women have managed to do what the men could afford only on rare occasions: go solo. Nayanthara in Aramm and debutante Aditi Balan in Aruvi sparkled in roles that did not even need a hero.

Women have probably never had it this good in the hugely misogynistic landscape of Tamil cinema. Backing them up is a bunch of new, young minds that have been negotiating for a better space for them. So if director Brahmma gave Jyothika a swing-over in Magalir Mattum, debut director Gopi Nainar helped actor Nayanthara consolidate her position as Tamil cinema’s woman superstar with his brilliant Aramm.

In Magalir Mattum, Jyothika helps her mother-in-law reconnect with her school mates and in the process brings them out, albeit briefly, from the drudgery of their domestic lives. The film, whose title means ‘Women Only’, also eloquently portrayed the issue of emotional violence – something that Tamil cinema has been keen to elide over in the past (e.g., Saranya, one of the school mates, is harassed by her husband emotionally). It also discusses the issue of women unpaid labourers.

Nayanthara plays a district collector in Aramm, fighting a morbidly callous system to save a four-year-old girl trapped in a bore-well. Even among the set of new films that offer a greater role to women, Aramm stands out because Nayanthara addresses a social issue as the protagonist and not the subset of a ‘women’s issue’ because she is one.

In asserting herself as an actor to reckon with, Nayanthara began to negotiate her screen space between acting alongside heroes (in roles that were still substantial) and playing the lead herself. If she received praise for her role as the deaf girl Kadhambari in Naanum Rowdy Dhaan (2015) opposite Vijay Sethupathi, she also won critical acclaim for her role in Maya (2015), a horror film in which she is a single mother with a mysterious past.

With Aruvi (2017), Tamil cinema notched up another level in its unabashed portrayal of a heroine with all her imperfections. The film is all about an HIV-infected heroine’s quest to get back at a world that has wronged her. In the process, debut director Arun Prabhu effortlessly smashes several stereotypes that have made up the typical heroine of Tamil cinema. According to him, Aruvi seeks to unravel the wide range of emotions a woman can have and not restrict it to love, sentiment and/or hatred, as has been the industry’s habit.

And the women were political in their own ways. Jyothika was a Periyarist in Magalir Mattum; Nayanthara was seen quoting Ambedkar in Aramm.

Like Prabhu, many young directors seem to take their stories from the lives of women around them. They couldn’t stereotype women in their movies because they don’t cast cinema into any stereotypes. The award-winning director Seenu Ramasamy, for example, has challenged the stereotypes in his own way. In Thenmerku Paruvakaatru (2010), Saranya Ponvannan essayed a powerful role as a single mother. In Dharma Durai (2016), Tamannaah is deglamourised, presented as a divorced woman on the cusp of a new relationship.

While such young, right-thinking directors have been becoming more confident now, Tamil cinema itself has had a small clutch of women actors who have always stood out. In her seminal work Tamil Cinemavil Pengal (‘The Women in Tamil cinema’), author K. Bharathi singles out Savithri, the female lead of the 1939 movie Thyagabhoomi. She steadfastly refuses to live with her husband after he deserts her for another woman and then returns. She even offers him alimony. It would be 42 years before a similarly strong woman came to the silver screen: Sevanthi (played by Saritha) in Thaneer Thaneer (1981), fighting for a social cause. “It is probably the first time in Tamil cinema where a heroine puts her personal issues behind a social issue and spiritedly puts up a fight for a social cause,” Bharathi writes.

As Bharathi herself acknowledges in her work, such characters were exceptions. Women have remained largely stereotyped in Tamil cinema. But in 2017, the success and critical acclaim achieved by game changers like Gopi Nainar and Arun Prabhu promise to make the exceptions the norm.

In 2017, Pakistan’s Army Proved It Still Has a Firm Grip on the Civilian Administration

Within Pakistan, a quasi-democratic government structure is expected to continue, though very much under the army’s heel.

A file image of Pakistan army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa. Credit: Reuters

In 2017, Pakistan took a great leap backwards with the country’s army successfully orchestrating the ouster of its nemesis, Nawaz Sharif – the country’s three-time elected prime minister. The army has regained completely what it had lost with the removal of dictator General Pervez Musharraf a full decade ago. Nawaz’s cardinal sin was his attempt to bring General Musharraf to book for subverting democracy in a 1999 coup d’état. The Pakistan army saw General Musharraf’s trial as the touchstone of civil-military balance and was unwilling to see its former chief tried for high treason. Two successive army chiefs – General Raheel Sharif and the incumbent General Qamar Javed Bajwa – leaned on the judicial system, the former to get Musharraf off the hook, as he has claimed himself, and the latter to ensure that the legal proceedings against him remain stalled. Nawaz’s lesser faults, in the eyes of the army, were his soft approaches to India and Afghanistan. But even his tepid quest to normalise relations with the region at large has been unacceptable to the brass.

Ironically, the Supreme Court of Pakistan disqualified Nawaz in July 2017 for not disclosing a resident’s permit for the UAE and not declaring a paltry salary, which he was entitled to but had not received, as his asset. The decision was widely perceived as the judiciary doing a hatchet job on behalf of the army. Nawaz was roped in when the so-called Panama Papers surfaced in 2016 in which his family, but not him, were implicated in offshore capital holdings. Though the Panama Papers disclosures had nothing to do with the army, the army-friendly media and politicians smelled blood off the bat and wasted no time in piling up on Nawaz. At the very least, the Supreme Court pandered to the army and the rabble-rousing anti-Nawaz politicians, and sent him packing. After failing to topple Nawaz through the ISI-orchestrated street protests in 2014, the army had exacted its pound of flesh. While the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had been consistently ceding political space first to General Raheel and then to General Bajwa, with the ouster of Prime Minister Nawaz, the civil-military balance thus tilted firmly in favour of the army.

An unrelenting shakedown

The army, however, did not relent in its attempt to shakedown the PML-N government, seemingly to make an example out of it. This time around it deployed religious outfits, first to gnaw away at Nawaz’s conservative vote bank and then to browbeat his party’s government through yet more street protests. As soon as the former prime minister’s national assembly seat fell vacant, two groups announced they would contest against his wife, who was his proxy candidate. The first one, Milli Muslim League (MML), which is the political fig leaf for the Salafi terrorist group Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD), polled just under 6,000 votes and the other one, Tehrik-e-Labayk-Ya-Rasoolallah (TLYR), a band of radical Barelvi zealots, bagged 7,000+ votes. About 30 years ago, the army had put together an electoral alliance of disparate right-wing religious and political groups around its then favourite Nawaz to counter the left-of-centre Benazir Bhutto. Now the same army was formally “mainstreaming” jihadist terrorists and zealots to neutralise a now-centrist Nawaz who – after gaining political maturity and popular support over the years – had tried to buck its dictates.

Former PM Nawaz Sharif. Credit: Reuters

This election bid by the religious radicals was not the end of it. In early November, Sunni extremists of Barelvi denomination, under the aegis of TLYR, staged a blockade of a major road intersection between the federal capital Islamabad and Rawalpindi for several days. They were ostensibly protesting watering down of the wording of an oath pertaining to the “Finality of the Prophethood of Muhammad” in a recent legislative revision. They demanded that the federal law minister should resign. The poor minister had to broadcast a proclamation of his faith in the “Finality of the Prophethood” via social media, but the zealots could not be placated.

When the government, under instructions from the high court, tried to dislodge the protestors, they turned violent and six people were killed in the clashes. The army was called to help the civilian administration but it refused to act, in flagrant violation of the constitution that mandates it to aid the civilian power when called upon to do so. It was clear that after prodding on the protestors, the army wanted to further squeeze the PML-N government. Finally, the army intervened to broker an agreement between the government and the protestors, which lauded the army chief. The icing on the cake was a major general caught on camera while distributing cash money to the protestors. On the army’s crutches, a wheelchair-bound cleric and his 5000 goons had successfully crippled an elected government. It was not that the government failed to assert the writ of the state but that the army had wilfully flouted the constitution itself and enabled religious fundamentalists to trample upon state institutions.

Ex-PM Nawaz and his daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif have tried to rally their cadres against the military-mullah-judiciary combine with relatively good success in the street but face a divided house within the party leadership. The father-daughter duo seems keen to slog their way to the next elections, due in August 2018, while many in the PML-N believe that the army may wrap up the whole democratic dispensation before that. The latter section of the party wishes to roll over and play dead till an important upcoming indirect election for the country’s senate in March 2018.

Also read: Looking Back at the Geopolitics Behind Pakistan’s Genocidal Split of 1971

There seems to be little appetite in most of the PML-N leadership, including ex-prime minster’s brother Shehbaz Sharif, for any campaign that takes the army head-on. Operating within the confines of a judicial bar on his political career, an assertive army and a party with no stomach for protest, the former prime minister seems resigned to taking his chances in the next polls, while murmuring against his unjust dismissal along the way. For all practical purposes, Shehbaz seems set to replace his brother as prime minister should their party score a victory that is looking increasingly difficult at this point. The army, for its part, would like to see a hung parliament in 2018, which makes it easier to manipulate and even topple or change governments in-house, without applying outside pressure. The political engineering of the type witnessed in Nawaz’s constituency is a step to help his opponents, especially the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, to gain an advantage. In an era where election-day rigging is difficult due to omnipresent phone cameras, pre-poll manipulations are heavily relied upon.

What’s next?

What do the happenings of 2017 portend for Pakistan and the region in 2018? It is a safe bet to predict that what’s past is the prologue.

Within Pakistan, a quasi-democratic government structure is expected to continue, though firmly under the army’s heel. Barring a major upheaval, the political parties will plod along in this uneasy relationship where the army chief is seen announcing development projects and inaugurating road tunnels. An army takeover can be ruled out since it can have its cake and eat it too, without imposing an overt martial law. Launching an overt coup and imposing martial law does two things immediately: unite the political forces at home and draw international ire. The army has no need to go through these hassles, when its whim is already treated as command, lowly major generals can repeatedly chastise elected federal ministers and no one dare think about curtailing the military spending and the army’s sprawling business empire. Interestingly, Pakistan’s first coup was launched by General Ayub Khan in 1958 after the cabinet had been considering a no war declaration offer by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and contemplating cutting defense spending. Not much has changed since and is unlikely to do so in 2018.

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (R) talks with Qamar Javed Bajwa, Pakistan’s army chief, at the Prime Minister’s House in Islamabad, Pakistan, November 26, 2016. Credit: PID/Handout via Reuters/Files

The shenanigans inside Pakistan also means that the India-oriented jihadists will operate now under the façade of a political party. While they are unlikely to score electoral victories, they would serve as an intense pressure group from outside to constrain the parliament from making even cosmetic changes to Pakistan’s infamous anti-minority laws, vicious blasphemy regulations and any course-correction attempts in the foreign policy arena. In practical terms, jingoism at home and the jihadist venture in Kashmir will continue unabated, leaving little possibility for normalisation in Indo-Pak relations. On the Western frontier, Pakistan is unlikely to change its tack in Afghanistan, as the army’s spokesman has asserted, despite the diplomatic pressure that has been applied by the US in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s Afghanistan policy. Pakistan continues to count on four things for the success of its Afghanistan misadventure: lethality of its Taliban/Haqqani Network jihadist proxies; inability of a fractured Afghan polity to counter them; the US abandoning Afghanistan; and, above all, Chinese support in case of a sustained US attack.

The US, Afghanistan and India can bet on it that they do not have any effective civilian interlocutor in Pakistan now. Whether Imran Khan becomes the next prime minister or Shehbaz does, they are the political Tweedledum and Tweedledee as far as asserting civilian supremacy against the army goes.

Also read: Pakistan Is Trying to ‘Play It Again’ With the US

After the gruesome assassination of Benazir Bhutto a decade ago and the 2017 political elimination of Nawaz, the army’s diktat is unchallenged and is likely to remain thus. Unless the US is willing to prosecute Trump’s policy through punitive diplomatic, economic and even military measures, Pakistan will continue to stoke the jihadist pyres in Afghanistan. However, Pakistan is likely to stick to its late military dictator General Zia-ul-Haque’s practice in Afghanistan against Soviet Union: keep the pot simmering but don’t bring it to boil lest the Russians retaliated militarily. The US should not dither where the Soviets did as General Stanley McChrystal pointed out in his recent Foreign Affairs article: “A purely defensive strategy against these threats will never be sufficient; highly focused offensive operations, primarily in Afghanistan but, when necessary, also inside Pakistan, are required.”

The US certainly has the capacity to carry out such operations, as demonstrated in its raid to capture and kill Osama bin Laden. And the Pakistan army’s sabre-rattling notwithstanding, it has neither the capacity nor the will to respond to effective US action in a meaningful way. After all, the US drone strikes have continued despite the Pakistan Air Force’s chief threatening to shoot them down. Left to its own devices, Pakistan would love to see Afghanistan return to the hands of its Taliban proxies – a scenario which is unacceptable to majority of the Afghan people as well as the US. The US will have to make some tough choices regarding Pakistan. It would do well to continue to support Pakistan’s people and political dispensation while attempting to induce a change in its army’s behaviour.

Mohammad Taqi is a Pakistani-American columnist. He tweets @mazdaki

A Peaceful, Mature Fight for and Against Independence in Catalonia

Most Catalans made it clear, peacefully, that the status quo is not an option any more.

People gather during a protest against police actions during the banned independence referendum in front of city hall in Pineda de Mar, Spain, October 3, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Albert Gea

On the threshold of 2018, The Wire revisits some uplifting moments from 2017. Here’s 2017: The Year in Hope.

2017 was the year Catalonian nationalists pinned their hopes on obtaining a brand new country.

The regional government organised a referendum amidst unprecedented riot police presence and international attention. A declaration of independence led to Madrid exploiting constitutional powers. Results of snap elections in Catalonia also displayed sharp divisions on this issue.

However, for all the emotional streets protests and unique legal powers invoked this year in Spain’s northeastern region, it has remained non-violent. There has been no stone-pelting, despite the use of police force on referendum day. No credible separatist leaders have called for violent action, nor has the Spanish government in Madrid called for a massive security crackdown. Rather, all the charges and arrests have been at the behest of Spain’s fiercely-independent judiciary.

During Franco’s dictatorship, Catalan language and culture was suppressed. After his death, the new nascent democracy had a constitution which gave substantial self-governance powers to its 17 autonomous regions.

The latest independence movement was catalysed by Spain’s Constitutional Tribunal partially striking down amendments in the autonomy statute that would have given the regional governments much wider powers. After the June 28, 2010 order, more than one million people came out to the streets in a peaceful protest in July.

Catalonia accounts for 6% of Spain’s land and 16% of the population, but contributes 20% to the economy. Grievances were exacerbated by the 2008 economic crisis, with many Catalans unhappy that their contribution to the Spanish economy had not yielded proportional returns for their region.

However, Catalans themselves are not united, with less than 50% wanting full independence, as per Genralitat pollsters. The skepticism is largely over the future of Catalonia in the EU, with the EU making it clear that it will have to apply for membership. The uncertainty has already led to over 1,000 companies moving out of the region.

Catalonia’s efforts to becoming a free country have largely been subjected to legal football. The regional parliament usually passes a legislation on the right to sovereignty and self-determination, but it inevitably gets suspended or struck down by the Spanish constitutional court. Till now, Madrid has made noises, but has largely not used physical force to keep the rebellious Generalitat in line.

The peaceful nature of the protest and the political and legal response from Madrid was the reason why the widespread presence of Madrid’s Civil Guards led to a sense of shock among Catalans. As per Generalitat, over 800 were injured in clashes on referendum day.

Ninety percent voted ‘yes’ for independence – but voter turnout for the referendum was only about 43%.

In the aftermath, Spanish judges stepped in and jailed nine pro-independence leaders. Carles Puigdemont fled to Brussels after charges of sedition and misappropriation of funds were slapped on him. Pro-independent Catalans blamed Madrid for the arrests, but the judiciary in Spain has largely taken its own path.

The politico-legal theatre came to a head on October 27 – when the Catalan parliament declared independence. Within minutes, the Spanish Senate permitted Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to invoke the constitution’s Article 155 for the first time.

Rajoy dissolved the Catalan parliament, but took away the sting by announcing snap elections in Catalonia within two months.

The December 21 polls showed that the separatists have maintained their support. They obtained less than 50% of the votes, but they have got an absolute majority in parliament – 70 out 135 seats.

With Puigdemont’s self-exile and other leaders incarcerated, Madrid sees an opportunity to block this majority. This could allow the second-largest party, unionist and centre-right Ciudadanos, to form a minority government. But, if Madrid is seen as interfering or overstepping, this could breed wider resentment.

What has made the Catalonian movement a fascinating study? There are no bombs going off on the street, no pellet guns and no disappearances. The police force on October 1 was technically within constitution. The December21 poll was free and fair.

While manoeuvres are still being made – using politics and legal loopholes – and a resolution is still some way away, it is heartening to see that neither side has resorted to violence to drive home their point.

The Dalit Women Who Made Their Voices Heard in 2017

Those like Roshmita Harimurthy and Radhika Vemula shattered public myths of what Dalit women could do, look like or mean.

Roshmita Harimurthy. Credit: Facebook/Roshmita Harimurthy

On the threshold of 2018, The Wire revisits some uplifting moments from 2017. Here’s 2017: The Year in Hope.

It’s been a hard few thousand years to be Dalit and clearly, 2017 was no exception. But it was also a year in which Dalit men and women spun threads of hope everyone could cling to, except Dalit women shined especially bright. They shattered public myths of what Dalit women could do, look like or mean for the country as a whole.

In early January, Roshmita Harimurthy glided through the Miss Universe pageant in Manila. Last year back home, she effortlessly switched between sharing B.R. Ambedkar’s ideas on women’s equality and what her crown meant for her community. Harimurthy not only embraced her Dalit roots (her father is Dalit) but unlike most beauty-pageant contestants, who balk at meaningful politics, Hairmurthy unflinchingly declared Ambedkar as her inspiration. Her win flouted the public perception of what Dalit women could look like – among others also as mainstream (albeit white) ideals of beauty. But it was her openness about caste that drove home just how big a deal it was for a Dalit, Ambedkar-quoting girl to become a beauty queen representing India.

But not all Dalit women participate in beauty pageants, or even in live in cities. Savita Devi, from the village of Dibra near Patna, showed that rural Dalit women are just as good at wrecking stereotypes as their urban counterparts. As the leader of the first women-led Mahadalit drum band in eastern India, Savita Devi defied protests to learn and practice drumming, traditionally an art-form for men. The band of over ten Dalit women now performs at weddings and other occasions, even at temples – and sometimes in front of homes of domestic abusers, when they hear a woman inside being attacked.

Nari Gunjan Sangam Mahila Band. Credit: YouTube

Dalit women have it a lot worse than even Dalit men – abused not only because of caste but also gender. Since the death of her son Rohith in 2016, Radhika Vemula has been the face of resistance to such abuse – which she received from local authorities (who were more interested in her private relationships than her son’s life), her husband (who suddenly reappeared in time to refute their Dalitness) and even the state. At the start of this year, she and her older son Raja were arrested for trying to visit Rohith’s statue at the University of Hyderabad campus on the first anniversary of his death. Only days later, the state government declared their caste certificates ‘fraudulent’. This level of harassment could easily warrant her withdrawal from the fight. But Radhika persisted.

Through 2017, she leaned in to make her demand for justice even harder to ignore. The middle-aged Radhika attended protests across the country, led marches and visited Dalit settlements to discuss their common struggles and advocate for the anti-discrimination Rohith Act to protect Dalit students on campuses.

While her work places her as a formidable Dalit leader, Radhika is hardly just that. By aligning her fight with Fathima Nafees – the mother of Najeeb, the JNU student who ‘mysteriously disappeared’ a year before – and supporting Adivasi and trans movements, Radhika is building a resistance that stands for all marginalised communities.

Radhika Vemula. Credit: PTI

As Dalit resistance grows stronger at home, a groundbreaking book jolted the international literary world and forced it to pay attention to the reality of Dalit lives. Sujatha Gidla published her memoir Ants Among Elephants, which the Economist called the “most striking work of non-fiction set in India since Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers”. Based mainly on the lives of her mother Manjula, and her uncle K G Satyamurthy, the prominent poet and co-founder of the People’s War Group, Gidla recounts lives on the intersection of ‘lower’ caste, poverty and gender. She describes eye-opening years at college, where she met ‘Brahmin Christian’ girls for the first time, who treated her with the same disdain she received from ‘upper’ caste Hindus. In the US, she realised she wasn’t so ‘untouchable’ after all. Ants Among Elephants is a tremendous literary achievement, but equal among Gidla’s victories is that she puts the rightfully severe spotlight on Dalit abuse that’s escaped international scrutiny for decades.

Gidla wasn’t the only NRI Dalit woman who made headlines. Raya Sarkar, a 24-year law student at UC-Davis, published a list on Facebook of alleged sexual predators in South Asian academia. With over 61 names, including prominent professors in Indian and Western universities, ‘The List’ created a maelstrom in academic circles and among established feminists that lasted for months. Sarkar’s revolutionary intervention was a new, radical thrust against sexual harassment. From shifting the attention away from the ‘victims’, it restored power where it usually deserves to be – with the women.

Yashica Dutt is a writer covering issues of gender, identity and culture.

‘Wide Angle’ Episode 16: ‘China’s India War’ and the Rohingya

Maya Mirchandani speaks to journalist and author Bertil Lintner about his new book China’s India War and the Rohingya crisis.

2017: A Year of Elite Amnesia and Mass Resistance in the US

2016 was a revolutionary year in American politics, and the political elite has been trying to wipe it from its own and popular memory.

Donald Trump. Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar

As we bid farewell to 2017, The Wire looks back at some of the markers of disruption that affected different spheres, from politics and economics to technology and films.

2016 was a revolutionary watershed year in American politics – one that the political establishment would rather forget. But there is no going back, no easy road to ‘normalcy’. 2017 has, therefore, been a year of selective elite amnesia while the broad mass of Americans rediscover the politics of street protest and popular resistance to the onslaught of the most reactionary presidency in living memory – of the extreme right-wing Republican Donald Trump.

Recall this analysis from this time last year in The Wire – why 2016 was a great year in American politics:

“Wall Street lost the presidential election. Conservative ideology lost out to massive demands for bigger government for the people and heavier taxation of the corporate class and the very rich. The American establishment, it’s billionaire class, was, and is, on the ropes – its principal candidate, Hillary Clinton, was found guilty by the American electorate of standing for the status quo among other ‘crimes and misdemeanours’. A self-declared socialist won over 13 million votes in the primaries and is building a progressive campaign to change the US by inaugurating a new post-partisan politics.

Millions voted for candidates who demanded the US step back from its global policeman role and reduce its military footprint. Its post-1945 global military and other alliances were challenged and questioned and its Middle Eastern wars denounced, especially the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The US’s ineffectiveness and role in fighting the so-called ISIS was brought into public debate. The very grounds of the Pax Americana were interrogated for the first time by one of the main contenders for the presidency.

Protests over the election of Trump criss-crossed the nation and funds began flowing in their millions to campaigns against intolerance, hate crimes and xenophobia. The politics of progressivism has taken a huge leap forward. It looks like it’s going to continue to do so. At the local level, where ordinary Americans actually live, millions voted to raise the minimum wage in many states. US politics has been changed for the better in 2016….”

2016 dealt a severe blow to conventional politics and parties – the winning candidate, Trump, had to bend over backwards to present himself as the ‘man of the people’. That’s why the entire Republican establishment and its allies sought to undermine Trump’s rollercoaster campaign; and has spent all of 2017 trying to manage, contain and channel the Trump juggernaut, this blunt instrument, and has largely succeeded with tokenistic opposition from Trump himself – because in the end, it is only his methods that differ from right-wing Republicans, not his underlying principles or goals.

A government for the 1%

The radical Trump has turned out to be, in the main, a hard right-wing Republican after all, dispensing tax cuts to the richest 1%, massive corporate deregulation across the board, appointing billionaires to high office despite promises to ‘drain the swamp’ and being rewarded with sky-high market confidence from Dow Jones plutocrats, as well as the makers of the munitions of war enjoying a bonanza of arms sales to every unstable global region.

He has reversed himself at the behest of the so-called grown-ups in the White House – Generals Kelly, Mattis and McMaster – on NATO, South Korea, China and the Middle East. His ‘principled realism’ – the projection of power in international politics as the first priority of this regime – and America First-ism reveals only the opposite – the cynical rejection of principle and the adoption of elite interest as national interest, the interests of the 1% as those of 325 million Americans, most of whom see the present and future in the bleakest terms. I wonder if Trump or any of the political establishment polled those still suffering the devastations of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, not to mention storm Maria in Puerto Rico – to see if their interests count as national interests?

Meanwhile, the Democrats declare intellectual and political bankruptcy on a daily basis, echoing their intelligence community and corporate media allies. It’s Russia “that won it” for Trump, they proclaimed only a few hours after the November 2016 ‘shock’ defeat. So they launched probes galore in the optimistic hope of an impeachment of a pro-corporate Republican POTUS with GOP majorities in House and Senate, not to mention Trump’s overwhelmingly loyal support among GOP voters.

With around 300 million guns in private ownership in the US, many millions in hardcore Trumpista hands, any successful impeachment strategy could prove an exercise in utter folly, which is not to say that it won’t happen. The American elite has refused to cover itself in glory as its celebration of its own permanent greatness continues.

There is hardly any point in rehearsing the full panoply of Trump acts and laws. Only three major points need making here: first, that Trump is remaking the American state by privatising the White House into a family corporation and turning over governmental functions to corporate control; secondly, that the official opposition has failed miserably to oppose; worse, the Democrats have allowed themselves, as a devotees of the Church of Wall Street, to be pulled along by the Trump money machine.

And thirdly, and more importantly, that the American people are learning from bitter experience that their future is in their own hands. And they are moving largely to the Left. Look at the evidence – almost half of all millennials would rather they lived in a socialist or communist society and system of government, according to a recent YouGov poll.

Think about that – in a land where books entitled Why is there no socialism in the United States? were common.

The challenge of 2016

But 2016 changed all that – the Trump/Bernie Sanders challenges to elite/establishment power tapped into a deep-seated level of frustration, anger, hope and desire for change. Out with the old, they have nothing to give but war and austerity to the masses and vast profits to the rich.

The US is on the march – around one-third of registered Democrats have engaged in street politics in the past 12 months. Within a day of the killing by white supremacists of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville in August, over 600 solidarity marches and meetings were held across the US. Indivisible has hundreds of chapters across the country, a groundswell of anger against the hated Trump administration and against a Democratic party committed to nothing other than re-election, hijacking popular protest and harnessing it to its own political wagon.

Women marched in hundreds of thousands before the inauguration and plan to do so again to mark one year of Trump’s rule. Let him count the crowds in Washington, DC, they may be truly record-breaking.

People gather for the Women’s March in Washington US, January 21, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

NFL players continue to protest police racism and brutality through their take a knee protest movement that’s inspired millions including in other sports and countries.

The Muslim travel ban, promulgated in the very first week of the Trump administration’s life, was unceremoniously rejected at airport after airport as spontaneous and organised protests and legal challenges prevailed.

The ‘autopsy’ of the Democratic party – which had sabotaged the Sanders campaign, as Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Donna Brazile revealed in her opportunistic memoir, drawing the ire of the party’s godfathers and consigning Brazile to the status of a Putin dupe – revealed a dead body lying in a morgue.

How to breathe life back into the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, of collective bargaining rights, of the Glass-Steagall and social security acts, the GI Bill? Move to the Left, they concluded, and harness mass anger and rebellion to the electoral machine.

The Sanders machine rolls on as it prepares for the November 2018 mid-term elections, mobilising candidates registered with both main parties to stand as independents to challenge the GOP-Democratic stranglehold on power and politics.

But the party of Barack Obama – a mere husk of the party he inherited after losing hundreds of seats at all levels of American politics, a party he ran principally for his own welfare – decided it’s first post-2016 defeat decision would be to re-open the coffers of the DNC to Wall Street donors.

2016 was a revolutionary year in American politics. That’s why the role of the political elite in 2017 has been to try to wipe out 2016 from its own and popular memory.

While the Dow Jones index of corporate greed breaks all records for the portfolios and powers of the rich, the miserable approval ratings of President Trump, the Republican and Democratic parties, of Congress and Senate, tell their own story.

The US’s plutocrats and their political allies may try to erase 2016, but the forces unleashed in 2016 have refused to go away. There is a civil war raging in the US, more or less peacefully for the time being.

2018 will be an even better year in American politics.

Inderjeet Parmar is professor of international politics at City, University of London, and a columnist for The Wire. His twitter handle is @USEmpire