{"id":15335,"date":"2024-04-20T06:22:51","date_gmt":"2024-04-20T13:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=15335"},"modified":"2025-11-15T23:18:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T07:18:05","slug":"issue-of-the-week-human-rights-economic-opportunity-population-hunger-disease-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=15335","title":{"rendered":"Issue of the Week: Human Rights, Economic Opportunity, Population, Hunger, Disease, Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back to News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
India\u2019s National Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi, as his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra (Unite India March for Justice) passed through Varanasi.Credit…Chinky Shukla for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The largest democracy in the world, soon to be the largest nation in the world in population, is India. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lengthy voting process is underway as this is written, for the Parliament, and for Prime Minister of India. The New York Times Magazine posted an engaging article of the utmost importance today about this election, the history of and challenges to democracy in India, the rise of Hindu nationalism and oppression of Muslims–and the campaign of Rahul Gandhi, of the storied family involved in the independence movement that produced three prime ministers (two assassinated) and one most recently with the power behind the Prime Minister–in an effort to fight inequality, poverty, human rights abuses, anti-democratic actions of the current government and to restore the flagging fortunes of the Congress Party, which led the fight for independence and dominated Indian politics for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The odds for success in this venture seem slim. But what may or may not come from seeds sown now could be critical for the survival of real democracy in India. And the article is a fascinating journey through the history of India from Independence to today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What an irony that this was posted on the day that the most important and powerful democracy in the world, the United States, passed in the House of Representatives a series of absolutely critical foreign aid bills for Ukraine, Israel, humanitarian aid for Gaza and for Taiwan. It should be passed by the Senate and signed by the President in days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ve written extensively about these subjects before and will again, but the most salient points at the moment are that the lion’s share of aid was for Ukraine in its fight for democracy against Russian agression and autocracy, and the political impact on the attack on numerous fronts on democracy in the US. An improbable turnaround at the last minute gave democracy a desperately needed transfusion, in the US, Ukraine, and directly and indirectly, worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India has been increasingly anti-democratic, autocratic, mired in inequality and anti-human rights on various levels for some time. It’s had many problems from the start, but could be counted on, in the main, as a staunch follower of secular democracy. In that sense it was a model and hope for democracy in the world, and had a framework within which issues such as hunger and poverty and the related religious intolerance and hatred could have abated. The writer here has been in India extensively in past years and while heartbroken by the suffering witnessed, was deeply impressed by the people and the possibilities for the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenges to democracy and equality in India today are greater than ever in many ways. And it bears remembering, in keeping with our recent focus on the threat of regional and global nuclear war, that India is nuclear armed, as is its long-time terribly impoverished and unstable enemy Pakistan (they have fought wars and semi-wars for years) bordering on the north, which was part of India until partition, with India being mainly Hindu and Pakistan being mainly Muslim. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then just to scramble your brain a bit more, there’s China, more nuclear armed by the minute, which has also had short wars with India. China of course is the most powerful practitioner of dictatorship versus democracy on the planet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But India will soon surpass China in population. And if a nation has the biggest population on earth and nukes in the holster and you’re not paying attention, then you have a serious level of kiss-your-ass-goodbye disorder. If so, start your treatment for recovery by reading this article. And for the things you don’t know or understand, use it as a lauching pad to learn more:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Time Is Running Out for Rahul Gandhi\u2019s Vision for India”<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Samanth Subramanian, Published April 20, 2024. Samanth Subramanian is a writer and journalist based in London. He has covered Indian politics, culture and the rise of Hindu nationalism for The New Yorker, The Guardian and The New York Times.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in this year\u2019s elections, the scion of India\u2019s most storied political family is still trying to unseat Modi \u2014 and change the nation\u2019s course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rahul Gandhi stood in a red Jeep, amid a churning crowd in Varanasi, trying to unseat the Indian government with a microphone in his hand. \u201cThe mic isn\u2019t good,\u201d he said. \u201cPlease quiet down and listen.\u201d It was the morning of Feb. 17 \u2014 Day 35 of a journey that began in the hills of Manipur, in India\u2019s northeast, and would end by the ocean in Mumbai, in mid-March. In total, Gandhi would cover 15 states and 4,100 miles, traveling across a country that once voted for his party, the Indian National Congress, almost by reflex. No longer, though. For a decade, the Congress Party has been so deep in the political wilderness, occupying fewer than a tenth of the seats in Parliament, that even its well-wishers wonder if Gandhi is merely the custodian of its end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gandhi called his expedition the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra \u2014 roughly, the Unite India March for Justice. He never said it in so many words, but the yatra was an appeal to voters to deny Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party a third straight term in parliamentary elections starting on April 19. Congress, the only other party with a national presence, is the fulcrum of an anti-B.J.P. coalition. Indian pundits and journalists bicker about many things, but on this point they\u2019re unanimous: Only a miracle will halt the B.J.P. Still, it falls to Gandhi, steward of his enfeebled party, to try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The speech lasted barely 15 minutes. Gandhi is a fidgety orator, unable to shrug off the routine disturbances of a rally. He kept calling for silence, and scolding overzealous policemen regulating the mob. He didn\u2019t ramble, exactly, but eddied around the point he wanted to make. \u201cThis is a country of love, not of hate,\u201d he said. He talked of two Indias, populated respectively by the millionaires and the impoverished. He laid into TV news channels, many of which have been captured by oligarchs prospering under the B.J.P.: \u201cThey won\u2019t show the farmers, or the workers or the poor,\u201d he said. \u201cBut they will show Narendra Modi 24 hours a day.\u201d Then he helped onto his Jeep a member of the audience, a young man who complained that, despite spending hundreds of thousands of rupees on his education, he still had no job. His is a common story in Modi\u2019s India. Two out of every five recent college graduates are out of work, and young people make up 83 percent of the unemployed. To his crowd, Gandhi called out: \u201cThese are the two issues facing India: unemployment and \u2014 ?\u201d He received only a tepid response of \u201cpoverty.\u201d When he finished, there was no applause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crush of people at the rally was suffocating, although in India a crowd is no index of popularity. People may gawk and then go vote for the other guy \u2014 and Gandhi is, after all, one of the country\u2019s most recognizable men. Officially, he is no longer his party\u2019s president, but he is undoubtedly its face. At 53, with a well-salted beard and serious eyes, he\u2019s too old to be called Congress\u2019s \u201cscion,\u201d but he still wears the sheen of dynasty. His great-grandfather, the unflinchingly secular Jawaharlal Nehru, was India\u2019s first prime minister. His grandmother, Indira, and his father, Rajiv, both became prime ministers; both were assassinated. His mother, Sonia, steered Congress into government in 2004 and 2009, but declined the top post. Then, on the heels of several corruption scandals, the mighty party \u2014 140 years old next year \u2014 came unstuck. Out of 543 seats in the lower house of Parliament, Congress holds just 46, compared to the B.J.P.\u2019s 288. Gandhi embodies all this history: the triumphs as well as the failures. For the crowds, that is the fascination he exerts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of Modi\u2019s successes has been not just to trounce the Congress Party but also to persuade people that the party has weakened India and emasculated its Hindus. Through his cult of personality, Modi<\/a> is fulfilling a century-old project, recasting India as a Hindu nation, in which minorities, particularly Muslims, live at the sufferance of the majority. Emblematic of this is a new law offering fast-tracked citizenship to people fleeing Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan \u2014 as long as they aren\u2019t Muslim. It is the B.J.P.\u2019s totemic achievement: the use of religion to decide who can be called \u201cIndian.\u201d Opposing this law or indeed resisting the B.J.P. in any way has proved difficult. Investigating agencies mount flimsy cases against critics of the government, as Amnesty International has frequently noted. (Amnesty itself halted its work in India in 2020, in the midst of what it later called an \u201cincessant witch hunt\u201d by the government.) Activists are regularly imprisoned, sometimes on the basis of planted evidence; journalists are sent to jail or otherwise bullied so frequently that India has slipped to 161st out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index<\/a>, just three spots above Russia. Pliant courts often endorse it all. Such is the mood in India that one of the plainest sentences in Congress\u2019s election manifesto is also one of its most resonant: \u201cWe promise you freedom from fear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Supporters of Gandhi in Amethi.Credit…Chinky Shukla for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As the election neared, the quelling of dissent grew more visible still. This year, in an unprecedented move, Modi\u2019s administration arrested two chief ministers of states<\/a> run by small opposition parties. (One stepped down hours before his arrest.) In both instances, the government claimed corruption, but many critics noted that the arrests were uncannily timed to pull two popular politicians out of campaign season in states where the B.J.P. has struggled. Income-tax authorities froze Congress\u2019s bank accounts, supposedly over a late filing. \u201cIt has been orchestrated to cripple us in the elections,\u201d Gandhi told reporters. If so, it feels like overkill, because it is common wisdom that Congress can\u2019t win. Those who want nothing to do with the B.J.P. watch Gandhi with conflicted anguish. He is, by all accounts, sincere, empathetic and committed to a pluralistic India. This is a man who forgave his father\u2019s killers, and who said on the sidelines of a private New York event last year, according to one of those present: \u201cI don\u2019t hate Modi. The day I hate, I will leave politics.\u201d But he\u2019s also the latest in a lineage under whom Congress grew undemocratic and sometimes wildly corrupt. The great liberal hope is that Gandhi can achieve contradictory things: use his dynastic privilege to resuscitate his party, and dissolve the dynasty at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a steep demand, but Gandhi\u2019s priorities are altogether more Himalayan. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t say it,\u201d Sitaram Yechury, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) who knows Gandhi well, told me, \u201cbut he\u2019s modeling himself after Mahatma Gandhi. He doesn\u2019t want to take any position of power.\u201d In January, Gandhi told his colleagues that he has \u201cone foot in and one foot out of the party,\u201d and that he plans to be \u201ca bridge to activists outside.\u201d As he explained it then, the B.J.P., with its undiluted majoritarianism, \u201cis a political-ideological machine. It can\u2019t be defeated by a political machine alone.\u201d His role, as he sees it, is to be the counter ideology \u2014 to go out into the country, rouse Indians to the dangers of the B.J.P. and offer them his dream of a fairer, more tolerant India instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The yatra is a<\/strong> well-worn exercise in Indian politics. Its most famous practitioner, Mahatma Gandhi, returned from South Africa in 1915 hungering to know more about his country. Go travel the land, one of his mentors told him, \u201cwith eyes and ears open, but mouth shut.\u201d After using the yatra to gain an education, he employed it for political purpose. In 1930, he walked 240 miles to the Arabian Sea to protest the British monopoly on salt; hundreds of people joined him, and he spoke to thousands en route. On reaching the beach, he scooped out a fist of salty sand and announced he had broken the monopoly, setting off a wave of civil disobedience. There have been plenty of other yatras since. In 1983, Smita Gupta, a retired journalist who was then a cub reporter, walked part of a 2,650-mile yatra by a politician named Chandra Shekhar, as he tried to enlist support against Indira Gandhi. As Gupta recalled, for people who live far from the centers of power, \u201cwhen a politician descends from the skies and comes to your home, it\u2019s a big deal \u2014 I was swept away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n