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Thursday, July 25, 2019
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Protests by Karnataka garment workers against no salary, police lathicharge
The protesters pelted stones at factory security guards and the police. Lathi charge and tear gas was used to disperse the crowd.
A massive protest broke out in Karnataka’s Hassan district on Wednesday as workers of a private garment factory accused the factory supervisors of assaulting them repeatedly. Over 200 workers of the Himmath Singh Garment Factory located in the Special Economic Zone in Hassan sat down to protest the alleged physical and mental abuse they said they were facing at the hands of the factory’s management. According to Hassan SP AN Prakash Gowda, over 5,000 people work at the Himmat Singh Garment Factory and over 200 of them had taken permission to stage a protest outside the factory’s premises on Wednesday morning. The protesters, who were shouting slogans against the management on Wednesday morning, grew restless by the afternoon when it seemed evident that the management was not willing to address their issues. According to the Hassan Police, the garment workers have alleged that the supervisors in the factory constantly physically assaulted the workers over minor issues and that the workers were not paid their wages for the last one month. “Some of the protesters had injuries on their bodies, which they said were caused due to the beatings they received from the supervisors. There were a few women, who claimed that they were sexually harassed by the supervisors. They claimed that they were not being paid wages and that despite several complaints to the management, they were ignored,” the police added. On Wednesday, angry protesters began to pelt stones at the 15 security guards deployed outside the factory gate. The police, who intervened, resorted to lathicharge to disperse protesters. Although it seemed like the protesters were dispersing initially, within minutes, they began pelting stones at the police officials as well and at the police van parked near the gate. “The protesters began to throw stones at the police officers. The police van was damaged severely and the protestors overturned it. Seven police officers were injured. Two of them were injured grievously as they suffered head injuries due to the stone-pelting. They have all undergone treatment at the district government hospital,” SP AN Prakash Gowda added. Soon, the police fired gunshots in the air and used tear gas to disperse the crowds. As many as 25 protesters were detained.
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This 74-yr-old inspired a Bengaluru artist to shine a light on public safety for women
Artist Indu Antony’s project, titled Cecilia’ed after the neighbourhood’s 74-year-old, will have safety workshops with women of the area, distribution of pamphlets and visits to local bars.
Pic by Indu Antony
All women know this one junction, corner or street that we want to avoid. We take a detour to avoid being cat-called, stared at and harassed. Out of several such locations in Bengaluru, one is 9th Main Hennur Road and Abdul Kalam Cross Road in HBR Layout. For years, women living in the area have avoided it for fear of getting sexually harassed, molested and abused. In an unprecedented move, the street is going to ‘reopen’ on July 26, with the star of the evening being Cecilia, a 74-year-old who lives by her own rules. Cecilia is being brought into our consciousness by way of ‘Cecilia’ed’, a public art project conceived by artist Indu Antony. The project is also a recipient of FICA Public Art Grant 2018. As a resident of this area, Indu has been keenly observing the gendered spaces for quite some time. In addition to that, her own experiences in the street planted the seed in her mind. “I have been studying feminist geography for a while and also looking at patriarchal urban designing. How does feminist geography play into these urban spaces? I personally have been attacked on the street multiple times. Once, two guys on a bike came and spat on me. A lot of women also told me that they were grabbed here, grabbed there. Consciously they have started to avoid certain streets. Nobody goes to those places,” explains Indu, who is known for her strong photographic series like ManiFest, It’s a beautiful world ‘Outside’, Vincent Uncle and others. Indu’s inspiration Cecilia had entered the artist’s life much before she thought of the project. Indu was fascinated by the flamboyantly dressed lady riding a bicycle. “I met Cecilia on the road once when she was cycling somewhere. She didn’t care about anyone around her and was conducting herself in a very natural gender disrupting way. I was so inspired by her. Initially when I met her I had no idea that she would become part of the project. I just went and spent time with her. I live alone here. She lives alone and we used to have a good time together. I started taking pictures of her in her home,” says the artist. Indu’s portraits of Cecilia form an important part of the project. Over two years, Indu has clicked Cecilia at the same spot in her house in different dresses, most of which are hand-stitched by Cecilia. A great performer with an innate sense of style, Cecilia selects the dresses for the shoot and even the poses. For every picture shot of her, Cecilia is paid a certain amount which gets her even more excited to work with Indu. What the project aims to do On July 26, Cecilia in a brand new dress along with TV actor Sharada GS, and Kanaka Lakshmi, a police officer from Banaswadi Police Station, will cut the ribbon tied around the street. The event is a symbolic opening of the street to represent attempts to make it a safer space for women. “They will cut a cake, and will be felicitated. Cecilia is excited about the whole thing but she didn’t like the dress we bought because it doesn’t have that ‘jazz’ according to her, so she is adding her touches to it. Similarly, when I showed her the photographs once, she didn’t approve as she felt they didn’t have any ‘oomph’ factor, so she started posing,” Indu says. In addition to Cecilia, there are other elements to the project as well, such as safety workshops with women of the area in the anganwadi, distribution of pamphlets and visits to local bars. Through these exercises, Indu wants to trigger conversations with the community. A women's workshop in progress “I wanted to engage the community as much as possible. Just going to a street and saying that we are going to reopen it doesn’t make any sense. Who are these people living here? Do we know them? How big is the ward? We needed to make some kind of intervention, so we decided on these workshops where women come and talk about any issue of their interest. While one session was devoted to installing the Suraksha safety app and about the helplines launched by Bangalore Police, in the others, the participants ended up discussing their personal problems. “We sit in a circle and talk. One day we showed them a film because we wanted to see their reactions. Patriarchy also exists in these women who come. One remarked, ‘Why do women have to go out at 6 in the evening, that’s why they are getting attacked’. Multiple things started coming out of those meetings. The women are not sure of the way I look, the fact that I am not married. They ask me why I am not married yet. We have a woman whose son has cancer. She has to spend Rs 9 lakh per year. We are trying to figure out if we can start a community bank,” Indu adds. Another intervention was to disrupt a gendered space in the locality. About 20 women visited Appu Bar and drank while the customers at the bar looked at them in disbelief. To begin with, women were told that they were not allowed. “We said there’s no rule like that in Karnataka and barged in. We stood at the counter and started ordering drinks. People started talking to us and they were like ‘All our lives we never saw girls drinking’ and ‘You seem like a homely girl then why are you drinking’,” Indu says. Indu says that she witnessed a significant shift during the four hours that the group was there – from outright resistance to a few empathetic voices. “A lot of them were curious about why we were there drinking. We told them we find it hard to cross these roads, that we have faced harassment on these roads. Some of them understood, some of them listened, some didn’t care. One man burst out crying. He said he didn’t know women had these issues. It was great to start a conversation,” expresses the artist. Indu is appreciative of the support from the area corporator P Anand and the police. The one-year long engagement ends in January 2020 but Indu intends to continue it. Since the project consumes a lot of funds, in order for it to go on Indu will have to apply for other grants and scholarships. One year is also a very short time for any community-related arts project to show results. “Especially in a community-related public art project, it takes at least 10 years to show some kind of change. I have seen some projects go on for years and then one person will come and tell you that because of you I have got this job. This project is very young but a lot of people are aware of it, they recognise me. I have started going for the ward-committee meetings. It’s a very lower-middle class area and when you work at the grassroots level, change doesn’t take place quickly. I am aware and conscious of the fact that it is not something that will happen overnight,” the artist says. Indu has also started working on a personal project – a feminist library exclusively for women to come and read. “I researched the libraries around, made a proposal and submitted to the corporator. It is budgeted and comes to Rs 10 lakh and they are building a structure for that on top of the anganwadi,” Indu says.
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Will resignation of 'accidental CM' Kumaraswamy spell doom for the JD(S) in K'taka?
With the JD(S) losing the trust vote in the Assembly weeks after suffering a rout in the Lok Sabha Elections, political analysts say that the party could be staring at more defections.
PTI
History repeated itself on Tuesday and life came a full circle for HD Kumaraswamy, the third son of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda and the 25th Chief Minister of Karnataka, as he resigned as the Chief Minister of Karnataka after losing a trust vote. For the second time in his political career, he had to unceremoniously tender his resignation to the Governor after losing the trust vote that brought an end to a three-week-long episode of political instability in Karnataka. While Kumaraswamy along with his coalition partners allege it was the BJP who engineered the dissidence, it was Deve Gowda three decades ago who had taken 19 rebel MLAs to the Governor which led to the collapse of the SR Bommai government. “In 1989, Deve Gowda who had taken 19 MLAs to Governor and announced the withdrawal of support for the Bommai government. This later turned into a landmark case which stated that the Raj Bhavan is not the place to decide the majority of the government. The same thing happened this time, 15 MLAs went to Raj Bhavan and submitted their resignations. But Governor could not take any further action because of the Bommai case ruling, even though at that time, the Governor had dismissed the government. This time, Kumaraswamy has been defeated on the floor of the House,” Mahadev Prakash, political commentator and analyst, recounted. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bommai case is cited every time there is a hung Assembly. In its 1994 judgement, the nine-bench Constitution Bench had held that state governments could not be dismissed arbitrarily by citing Article 356 at the behest of the Governor on the assumption that the government has lost majority status. It meant that the President’s power to dismiss a government is not absolute and his proclamation can only be put into effect only after the approval of both the Houses of Parliament. In today’s case, Kumaraswamy’s government was in power for less than 20 months which was the tenure of his last stint as Chief Minister, in 2006-07. This time, his tenure has lasted only 13 months, after dramatic developments post the 2018 Assembly elections made him an ‘accidental Chief Minister,’ despite his party winning the least number of seats among the three prime political forces in the state. “In 2008, he (Kumaraswamy) had ditched Yeddyurappa and that had led to re-election in the state, and then Yeddyurappa came back to power with a majority on his own,” he added. In fact, the possibility of Kumaraswamy becoming the chief minister had come into the picture only after UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi had called former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda on May 15, 2018 (the day of the results of Karnataka Assembly elections) to forge a post-poll alliance. The leader of the JD(S) legislature party, who was blessed by the top brass of the Congress, had won the floor test on May 25, 2018. The BJP had then staged a walkout even though BS Yeddyurappa had occupied the Chief Minister’s chair for two days. Regarded the “son of the soil,” Kumaraswamy then had the support of 36 of his party MLAs, 1 BSP MLA – a pre-poll ally of the JD(S) – and 78 Congress MLAs voting for him through voice vote. However, after losing Tuesday’s trust vote, this is the second time that Kumaraswamy’s tenure as the Chief Minister is ending well ahead of the five years’ tenure. Right from the day he took his oath as Chief Minister to the recent crisis, Kumaraswamy had earned the moniker of being the ‘crying chief minister,’ complaining about the coalition and the highhandedness of the Congress. He had called himself a “clerk,” who has been forced to endure a “lot of interference”. The development on Tuesday incidentally ensures that the record of his predecessor Siddaraimaiah, who is the only Karnataka CM to last a full tenure in 42 years, remains intact till 2024. “Even in this case, the glue that held coalition together was an anti-BJP sentiment to prevent it from coming to power. Now that the BJP has got the power, I don't think there is anything that holds them together. I am not sure alliance will continue,” Sandeep Shastri, a political analyst, said. This time around, however, more than the alliance, Deve Gowda has more reasons to be worried. Though many obituaries of the JD(S) have been written in the past, Mahadev Prakash opines this is the beginning of the end for the party founded by HD Deve Gowda. “The BJP has won even the Tumakuru parliamentary constituency where the JD(S) was very strong. Chikkabalura and Mysuru-Kodagu also are with the BJP and the BJP is spreading its wings in Hassan, Mandya and other former JD(S) strongholds. I think in the next Assembly elections, JD(S) cannot secure more than 20 seats. In the coming years, they will be further decimated,” Mahadev Prakash said. He further speculated that the JD(S) might further be affected by defections, which may benefit the BJP further in the coming days. “Like in Goa, some MLAs of the JD(S) may join BJP as they are unhappy with the Deve Gowda family. They earlier had 34 MLAs and already, three of them have defected,” he added.
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Resignation or disqualification? Rebel Karnataka MLAs await Speaker’s decision
BJP MLAs R Ashok and Ashwath Narayana flew to Mumbai to meet the rebels and assure them that would not face disqualification, say sources.
The collapse of the Congress-JD(S) coalition in Karnataka has brought forth a crucial question: What happens to the 15 rebel legislators, who have been staying at a star hotel in Mumbai? Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar o will decide their fate and Congress leaders are hopeful that their plea for disqualification of the rebels will come through before BJP’s BS Yeddyurappa takes oath as the next Chief Minister of Karnataka. The Congress has alleged that the rebels were lured into the BJP’s plot to topple the coalition on the assurance that they would not face disqualification. In case of disqualification, the rebels will have to wait until the results of the bye-elections are announced to become ministers. However, if the Speaker accepts their resignations, then the rebel MLAs can become ministers immediately but they will have to win the bye-elections to continue holding the ministries. Worried about their future, BJP insiders say that the rebels have begun to rethink their actions. BJP MLAs R Ashok and Ashwath Narayana on Wednesday flew to Mumbai to meet the rebels and assure them that they would not face disqualification, say sources. Furthermore, 12 rebels have also been promised ministerial portfolios by the BJP, say sources. The rebels are also expected to return to Bengaluru in the next couple of days following a decision on their resignations is made. Speaking to TNM, a Congress source said that Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar held a hearing on Wednesday, where the counsel representing the Congress Legislature Party appealed for the disqualification of 17 rebel MLAs including KPJP MLA from Ranebennur R Shankar and Kagwad MLA Srimanth Patil, who did not attend the crucial trust vote session claiming a heart ailment. Congress leaders say that the party has submitted proof to the Speaker that Srimanth Patil was allegedly faking a heart ailment and that he was admitted to a hospital in Mumbai that did not have a cardiology wing. “The Congress had submitted proof of BJP’s involvement in the MLAs rebellion before the Assembly session began on July 12. We have also submitted disqualification petition for the MLAs involvement in anti-party activities. The whip issue does not have to be something that needs to be discussed for their disqualification anymore. We have ample proof of BJP involvement and we are confident that they will be disqualified tomorrow,” the Congress source said. Congress leaders claim that CLP Leader Siddaramaiah has also submitted proof of KPJP MLA R Shankar merging his party with the Congress. Drawing parallels with the 2017 case of 18 AIADMK MLAs in Tamil Nadu who were disqualified by the Speaker for approaching the Governor withdrawing support to Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami, a Congress leader said, “R Shankar did not even tender his resignation. He merely sent a letter to the Governor just like the AIADMK rebels had. The Tamil Nadu Speaker had disqualified them. The same will happen to R Shankar. He is an associate member of the Congress party.” Meanwhile, the BJP leaders are slated to hold the legislature party meeting at 5 pm on Wednesday, where they are likely to elect BS Yeddyurappa as leader. The Governor Vajubhai Vala has granted the BJP time for a meeting on Thursday morning. “We will request the Governor to grant us permission to prove majority in the Assembly. We are expecting Yeddyurappa to be sworn in as the Chief Minister of Karnataka by the end of this week,” a BJP leader said. “We are confident that the rebel MLAs will be re-elected to the Assembly and that they will not be disqualified. If the Speaker disqualifies anyone but Ramesh Jarkiholi, Mahesh Kumatahalli and R Shankar, then that would only show how unfair the Speaker can be. The Supreme Court has said that the whip is not applicable to the rebels,” BJP MLA from Chikkamagaluru CT Ravi said.
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A fraternal fight that brought down the Karnataka government and threatens the next one
The downfall of the government started from the powerful Jarkiholis of Belagavi, a family riven by politics and mutual antipathy that almost rivals the Mahabharata in its intensity.
A fraternal fight between two brothers for a cabinet berth was the starting point of the ball of intrigue that unspooled unchecked and led to the fall of the Kumaraswamy led JD(S)-Congress coalition government in Karnataka. All sorts of root causes are being pointed at: Congress strongman DK Shivakumar’s “interference” in the taluk level elections of a primary rural bank in the northern district of Belagavi; the internecine warfare and essential incompatibility between the JD(S) and the Congress in south Karnataka; the unending animosity that Congress legislature party leader Siddaramaiah has for his JD(S) counterpart HD Kumaraswamy; the infallible ground-level planning by BJP national president Amit Shah that seems to invariably get results. Many or all of the above may be factors that pushed the ball of intrigue along its inevitable path. The first ember was, however, lit within the family of the powerful Jarkiholis of Belagavi. An ember that has been fuelling itself from at least 15 years, led by driving ambition, ruthless power games, and a family riven by politics and mutual antipathy that almost rivals the Mahabharata in its intensity. Picture this scene in 2008: the eldest son of the family, Ramesh Jarkiholi, was contesting as the Congress candidate from Gokak. He was already a two-term MLA seeking re-election in that constituency. The next brother in line after him, Satish, an MLC and the first minister from the family in the Congress-JD(S) government of 2004, had identified himself as an acolyte and funder of Siddaramaiah of the JD(S). He had just moved along with his mentor to the Congress party. Siddaramaiah ensured his follower was accommodated with the Congress ticket to the Yamakanmardi constituency, neighbouring Gokak. The third Jarkiholi brother, Balachandra, was contesting his second term on the JD(S) ticket in yet another neighbouring constituency, Arabhavi. Enter brother number four Bhimshi, a doctor who perhaps felt the family was not sufficiently represented in the political arena or that he was not getting sufficient visibility. He got the BJP ticket for Gokak and stood against his eldest brother Ramesh. The youngest son, Lakhan, threw in his fortunes with Ramesh, who also had the loyalty of their sister Lagumavva, then Belagavi town municipal council president. All Gokak spoke in whispers, wondering how to vote against one or the other brother and not get into deep trouble. Nobody knew where Satish stood on the matter (though he had moved to the Congress) while Balachandra washed his hands off the matter and concentrated on his own constituency. The family matriarch Bhimavva cried copiously, as her husband, excise contractor Laxmanrao Jarkiholi, the man responsible for the huge fortune that his sons have now multiplied, lay bedridden, unable to arbitrate. “Politics has destroyed my family. My sons don’t even talk to each other, only one (Balachandra) even comes to see us,” she told this reporter. Ramesh, Satish and Balachandra won that election, Bhimshi lost and disappeared from direct politics. Since then, a lot of water has flown down the Ghataprabha river, but the power struggle within the family hasn’t. Siddaramaiah as chief minister gave Satish a cabinet rank ministry, which made Ramesh (who was senior to his brother in the number of terms as legislator as well as an old Congressman) furious. The eldest in the family demanded that he get the post. Siddaramaiah walked the tightrope for a while, requested Satish to yield, dropped him from his ministry in 2016 – leading to a great deal of bitterness from his former close follower and funder – and gave the post to Ramesh. Siddaramaiah managed to firefight to an extent by ensuring that Satish was made an AICC secretary, but the bitterness did not totally go away. In 2018, Lakhan, still loyal to Ramesh, made noises that he would take on Satish in Yamakanamardi on a BJP ticket. Ramesh, however, reigned him in, as at that point the political perception was that the Congress could come back to power. Satish put aside his bitterness to ensure Siddaramaiah’s close-shave victory in Badami in the 2018 elections. Siddaramaiah was facing B Sreeramulu of the BJP, who belongs to the same Valmini-Nayaka ST community as the Jarkiholis. It is said that Siddaramaiah would have certainly lost in that constituency as well if Satish had not stepped in. In the JD(S)-Congress coalition government that followed, Ramesh made sure he got the ministry and not Satish, leading to nothing short of a tremor in the region. Six months into the new government, Siddaramaiah paid his dues to Satish by getting Ramesh replaced by Satish in the Kumaraswamy ministry. The time was ripe for brother number 3, Balachandra, to step in. In 2008, Balachandra was part of the first Operation Kamala (where the BJP got opposition legislators to resign and get re-elected on their party ticket in bye-elections), engineered by mining baron Janardhan Reddy and the same Sreeramulu mentioned above. Balachandra was a minister in the BJP government of 2008, while both his elder brothers sat in the opposition. Balachandra moved swiftly as Ramesh sulked and kept threatening to resign from the Congress party. Siddaramaiah did nothing to sort the matter. The BJP leadership swung into action and began fanning the fire that finally became a blaze, as Ramesh coordinated to help their plans. The story now cycles back to the very beginning of the problem. The BJP will form the government and has reportedly promised plum ministries to all those who abandoned the Congress and the JD(S) to switch sides. The party, however, has two brothers of the Jarkiholi family on their side now: Balachandra and Ramesh. The Damocles sword hangs over their heads now: which of the two do they placate with a ministry? And how to ensure the other brother does not repeat history? The solution might be that two of Bhimavva’s sons will be given minister berths in the same cabinet. But that does not solve the quagmire of Belagavi intra-family power politics and one-upmanship that has already brought down one fragile government. In picture from the left: Satish Jarkiholi, Ramesh Jarkiholi, Balachadra Jarkiholi and Lakhan Jarkiholi
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