HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: A PERSPERCTIVE   M.KUNHAMAN ( Professor of Economics, University of Kerala ) Conflating human development and human rights in discourses, a heterodox and welcome intellectual project of relatively recent origin, is by now very popular. It is ironical that more and more violations of human rights are occurring even as there has been a proliferation of agencies and mechanisms for protecting and promoting such rights. Similarly, there has occurred a proliferation of development agencies focusing on human development; yet, deprivations are taking place at an incredible pace. The current conjuncture in the ongoing process of globalisation is characterized by heightened awareness about human rights and increasing popularity of the concept of human development. While this augurs well for humanity’s forward march toward attaining a paradigm that is inclusive, equitable and sustainable, complaints galore about denial of both to increasing numbers, spawning apprehension that even the little achievement made over the years since the Second World War is lost and the process is retarded and reversed. Even as human rights and human development are desiderata and notwithstanding their reciprocal influence, it is our contention that human development is a precondition for protecting and promoting human rights on a sustainable basis. In this sense, the denial of the opportunities for human development ipso facto means the denial of rights. Marginalised groups in India such as dalits, adivasis and women have been denied the opportunities for human development and therefore human rights. Human Development Development is an evolving concept. Development discourse is characterized by differences of opinion with regard to the objective, source and index of development. Of late, a clear polarization of development thinking has occurred. On the checker board of development discourse, we have the World Development Report (WDR) of the World Bank and the Human Development Report (HDR) of the UNDP. Both in intent and content, the two reports represent two distinct positions. The WDR is under girded by growth-centeredness, neo-classical economics, neo-liberal philosophy, short-termism, market-mediated growth and competitive economy. Source of growth is capital. In contradistinction to growth fetishism, the HDR places the human being at the center- stage. Human being is the source of development as well as its end. As a counter-theorizing, the approach advocated is interventionist. Growth is not a sufficient condition for development. The leit motif that “human destiny is not a chance but a choice” is particularly relevant for marginalized that should acknowledge and undertake the gency role of their own development. The ruling class and the policy-makers’ denial of this role to them is tantamount to the denial of human rights. This is particularly pertinent in the context of the plethora of state - and the World Bank - sponsored programmes of empowerment; programmes purporting to pre-empt the grounds-well of protest against globalisation qua privatization of the world economy, for the realization that nobody can empower anybody is sought to be nipped in the bud. Human Rights In the Indian social context, where the power structure continues to be controlled by the caste-class-gender axis, an understanding of the ontological status compulsively calls for taxonomy of human rights. After all, these rights are not paradigm-neutral. It has been rightly maintained, for instance, that while economic and social rights are primary in socialist societies, capitalist societies place accent on civil and political rights. And such a paradigm is yet to be tried. Human rights discourses are overwhelmingly centred around violations and seldom on perpetual denial of such rights. The marginalized groups are primarily victims of perpetual denial of basic human rights. Human rights in the context of Human Development Human Development requires as a prerequisite, “ the seven freedoms” adumbrated in the HDR 2000. In the case of the marginalized sections, right to development must be considered as the basic human right. This right, in its component elements, must comprise inter alia : (a) right to food ;(b) right to livelihood;(c) right to education; (d) right to health; and (e) right to shelter. In essence, it is the right to sustainable livelihood, for there is no basic freedom other than freedom from poverty, illiteracy and disease. Thus mainstream development discourse and policy making necessitate a new bench-marking, and an altogether different casual structure. Poverty eradication rather than an end must be an entry-point in development. Transmogrification of the Indian Social Order and the Marginalised Sections. India never had a human rights - centric or poor-centric development strategy. In the pre-independence feudal phase, characterized by the caste-ordained structure of property ownership and caste-based division of labour, the subaltern categories were subject to social exclusion. Under the welfare state, launched soon after independence, integration of the marginalized into the socio-economic mainstream was earnestly sought. However, they could reap the benefits of only some constitutionally mandated mobility limited to education, politics and government service. Wherever there is no reservation, the dalits and adivasis have no presence. Example: industry, business, science and technology, journalism, creative writing etc. Even the Communist parties deny their right to contest in general constituencies. The Central Universities and research centres have denied with impunity their right to appointment in faculty positions. Their land right has not been recognized even by Communist parties. Naturally, these social groups feel that they are a “part but apart” of the Indian society. The replacement of the welfare state by the liberal state has inexorably entailed the reordering of priorities. The state has abandoned its commitment under the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution to integrate the marginalized into the national mainstream. Instead, under the totalising pressure of global finance capital, it has committed itself to integrating the Indian economy with the global economy. The inevitable consequence is the denial, even in principle, of human rights of the poor and marginalized, for state minimalism, first and foremost, leads to drastic reduction or total abolition of services provided to these groups. It needs no reiteration that, in an egregiously unequal society, public provision of services like education and health is central to protecting the human rights of the indigent. Market marginalizes the poor. Market-led marginalisation is secular in nature as legitimacy to exclusion today is sort in terms of merit and competitive efficiency. Thus, if in the pre-reform India , it was the caste system and patriarchy that excluded the dalits and women respectively from the mainstream processes, today, it is market that is excluding both these categories. In other words, market’s function in India is precisely the same as that of caste-system and patriarchy. Even the peripheral incorporation that some of the marginalized got into the mixed economy framework was through the agency role of the state. Of course, the state guaranteed human rights regime has not worked well for the marginalized sections. However, the abdication of state responsibility has not been preceded by putting in place another mechanism for the purpose. It is true that the state did not succeed in ensuring the social mobility of all the dalits and adivasis; however, those among them who have experienced some mobility did so principally through state-sponsored programmes. In this sense, the fate of the scheduled categories is integrally tied to the public sector. And, therefore, privatisation, the legacy and consequence of the ascendancy of the political right, is denial of their human rights. Derivatively, the scheduled categories even as they fight for reservation in the private sector should mobilize against privatisation. It has to be noted that the propaganda blitzkrieg of the protagonist of globalisation could, so far, cut no ice with the marginalized sections of society. This is as it should be.   MEDIA PRACTICES AND RIGHTS CONSCIOUSNESS IN SOUTH ASIA : A Preface to the Critique T.G. Suresh ( Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi ) Anil G. Nair ( Hindustan Times, New Delhi ) The way mass movements take shape in the contemporary world may look paradoxical. On the one hand, there are resistance movements challenging the national political establishments and increasingly radicalising popular consciousness. New solidarities are formed, social alliances are created and collective actions are imagined all over the world to fight against the unjust wars, predatory capitalism and other forms of reaction in a scale and intensity not witnessed since Vietnam . The most striking feature of these waves of collective social dissent in the Americas , Europe and Asia is the reinvention of peoples’ rights. In other words, they are inspired by a profound sense of rights, freedom and democracy and are provoked by rights violations. These movements seek to redefine the concept of rights, understood more in terms of sovereign political community in Iraq , right to live in the homeland in Palestine and right to livelihood in the case of Muthanga. What we witness today is a spectacular rainbow of resistance movements against unpopular regimes and their wars, conquests and exploitation of nations, peoples and resources. And the idea of rights and freedom have become so central to these solidarities that cut across nations, race, religions, languages and cultures. But, on the other side, we have massive popular mobilisation around the ideologies of religious nationalism, right-wing radicalism and communal sectarianism. Such movements seek to deny the rights of people belonging to the “other” communities. They have succeeded not only in enlisting the support of masses, but also in ensuring the active participation of the ordinary men and women as the storm troopers of their divisive agenda. Thus, the mass movements in recent times present a striking political contrast in terms of their intellectual origin, moral foundations and conception of justice.   The idea of rights and justice is central to the origin, development and sustenance of the popular resistance movements sprang up in defence of rights understood in terms of its universal or provincial context. Their rhetorical substance evokes the concept of rights and asserts its inalienability from individuals and social groups and calls for resistance when they are infringed upon by the state or its accomplices. It is this vision that makes the collective popular interventions in Iraq , Palestine , Spain , the United States and Indian villages possible. In contrast, the mass movements articulated by the ideologies of religious nationalism and right-wing radicalism are fundamentally opposed to any conception of rights and the ideas of justice arising from it. For the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) cadres in India and the supporters of the racist movement in France , the religious minorities in India or the Asian and African immigrants in Europe are not eligible for rights and liberties. Hate ooze out of their rhetoric while violence is their principal means of intervention. These conflicts, in a way, are defining markers of our times and are deeply anchored in social relations, public institutions and economic interactions as well as the cultures of their specific context of origin and the concrete forms their articulations. These problems can be understood by examining the terrain of social consciousness of individuals that makes them aware of the rights and enable them to make sense of it in the context to which they are organically linked. In modern times, public discourses initiated by the media are the major sources of awareness for populations linked by national identities. A cursory glance at the news flow from across the world will bring to the fore the unpleasant fact that South Asian populations have very low levels of rights consciousness. In other words, human rights as it is understood today seems have too little bearing on the social imagination of people of the subcontinent. South Asia is the origin of most of the reports about deprivation and denial of justice. But there are far less reports about rights activists and their resistance. The shocking level of human deprivation, it appears, is left unattended not only by the ruling regimes, but also by the society and the intellectuals. More disturbing is the fact that these violations are perpetuated on an everyday basis by the constituting elements of the society such as family, village communities, dominant groups and the state. And these violations seldom make it to the media discourse and, in turn, to public discourse of the nations. The concept of human rights needs to be understood in the specific context it being raised, debated upon and contested. In South Asia , and India in particular, rights are thought of more as groups rights of various communities. In the context of increasing mass mobilisations around identities such as religion, ethnicity and caste, the rights are more sharply defined in terms of groups rights and individual rights are shadowed by these overarching identities. Owing to a markedly traumatic nation building process in the postcolonial period, the tension between the individual and the community could never be addressed adequately. This postponement of individual–community tension is an underlying antinomy of India ’s modern democratic experience. The point is that the populations in South Asia have a long way to go before they evolve into national social collectives which are aware of their rights vis-à-vis the state, on the one hand, and the community, on the other. A fundamental question being raised quite often in the context of these issues is that why media ignore, distort or misrepresent rights violations perpetuated by the state, corporates, the dominant castes and majority communities. In this part of the world, media does take part in social, political and ideological conflicts directly. But the newspapers and TV channels lend their services to the dominant interests to skillfully and efficiently defend their interests. How do we explain this complex relationship between social realities of rights violations and the public discourse constituted by media practices? One of the most popular explanations is the one linking media with capital. It is indeed an important proposition to begin with. Nevertheless, any inquiry into this proposition needs to reflect a number of other issues pertinent to it. The process through which the media influences public discourses can be interpreted in terms of the materiality as well as in the discursive realm. Such an understanding proposed here calls for a new understanding of the media that questions the generally shared view of it as a means of dissemination and communication. The media should be seen as a modern cultural artifact that mediate between a literate population, nation state, capital and culture. In an era when it is increasingly becoming difficult to evade the all-pervasive presence of visual media, this aspect is extremely relevant. Television footages shown as part of news programmes have more pretensions of being the truth. What is shown as part of a news report is presented as a visual documentation that is innocent of politics or ideologies. It is this promise of direct access to those real events that makes television more appealing. The point is not much of suspecting the images shown on television, but one must understand the arbitrary way the visuals are selected and documented. In ordinary situations these images would only contribute to the construction or a narrative about the reality. The evolution of print capitalism and vernaculars in Europe and India presents a study in contrast. While they developed in Europe by fulfilling a progressive social role against the absolute power of monarchies and the church, in India , they grew by narrating the epics of the classical language, glorifying the archaic social and production relations of a bygone era. This process was helped by a distorted capitalist development marked by an alliance between the landed interests, industrial capital and state. Therefore, India ’s print capitalism, vernacular languages and local idioms are conservative in their views on society, culture and women. The population in the subcontinent is largely monoglot. The market for the printed word, both English and vernacular, is structurally anchored in its religious, caste and class affiliations. Therefore, these markets demand narratives that strengthen its value system. This has been achieved through a presentation that includes their rights and excludes the rights of the ‘other’. @pages designed by VM Sathish Dubai Media City		Home