Iraqi Militants Encourage People of Khuzestan to Launch Jihad against Iran

Iraqi Militants Encourage People of Khuzestan to Launch Jihad against Iran
Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 9 Issue: 37
October 14, 2011 05:07 PM 
 

Influenced by the upheaval that has stricken many Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa, the people of southwest Iran's Khuzestan Province have tried to start their own protest movement. Khuzestan is inhabited by a majority of Arabs and is home to more than 80% of Iran's oil reserves. In the Arabic literature of the political and cultural organizations of the province, the area is called al-Ahwaz. [1]

The calls for an uprising in the province earlier this year tried to emulate the April 2005 protests in Khuzestan, which were quelled by the use of violence by Iranian authorities. The Iranian state media reported no news from the province during the current protests but opposition sources claimed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards opened fire on the protesters and killed three people. It was also reported that dozens were arrested (Alarab.net, April 18).

Although the movement did not develop into anything like the uprising of 2005, it attracted the attention of Iraqi Islamist insurgent groups. The Salafi-Jihadi Ansar al-Islam (AI) group released a communiqu� named "Message of solidarity with our brothers in Ahwaz," calling on them to unify their efforts and launch a jihad against Iran (alboraq.info, May 11).Cooperation between the Iraqi insurgents and Ahwazi groups reportedly started soon after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. During the 2005 uprising in Khuzestan, the first agreement between activists from the province and Iraqi insurgents became known and a series of bombs struck Iranian government buildings and targets the following years (Islammemo.cc, June 12, 2005).

Arabs in the province accuse successive Iranian governments of pursuing a policy aimed at changing the demographic nature of the region by encouraging non-Arab Iranians to migrate to the province in large numbers. They are also critical of changes in the province's borders that have seen southern areas with a majority Arab population detached and areas with Arab minority populations added in the north.

In an interview with the Jamestown Foundation, the leader of the disbanded Hizb al-Nahda al-Arabi al-Ahwazi (Ahwazi Arab Renaissance Party), Sabah al-Mossawi, revealed that there were Ahwazi fighters who had joined the Iraqi insurgency: "They went to fight the occupation [i.e. Coalition forces] but also to fight the Iranian-backed parties. They mainly joined the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Ba'ath party."

Throughout centuries of conflict between Iran and the Ottoman Empire, the Khuzestan region managed to maintain a degree of relative independence, being ruled by a series of local tribal leaders. The last of these was toppled by the Iranian authorities in 1925 and the area came under the direct control of Tehran. After the Islamic revolution of 1979, the community's demands for more rights and recognition of their distinct identity were not accepted by the new government. Subsequently a large-scale uprising broke out in the province. The Iranian authorities in turn repressed the protest movement ruthlessly and the area came under military rule. Iraqi-backed organizations launched a series of attacks on military and civilian targets during the uprising. The Ahwazi issue attracted international attention when a group of Ahwazi gunmen belonging to the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan (DRFLA) occupied the Iranian embassy in London in 1980 and took hostages. After a six-day siege of the embassy by police, the gunmen killed one hostage, leading to a successful raid to release the hostages in the embassy by the British Special Air Service (SAS), a Special Forces Regiment.

There are various opposition groups which claim to represent the Arab population of Khuzestan. All of them are banned in Iran but operate in exile while claiming to have an active presence in the province. However the most prominent group that claims to be militarily active is the Ba'athist Arab Struggle Movement to Liberate Ahwaz (ASMLA) and its armed wing, the Martyr Mohye al-Din al-Nasir Brigade (MMDNB). The latter's strategy is to target oil production facilities in the province as a means of weakening the Iranian economy, which depends heavily on the oil of Khuzestan Province. In 2007 the MMDNB recognized Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri as the new leader of the Iraqi Ba'ath party (Albasrah.net, June 24, 2007)

The majority of the people of Khuzestan are Sh'ia Muslims but there has been a growing movement among them to convert to Sunni Islam. This trend has escalated significantly over the last few years, driven mainly by a local identity problem. Resentment of Iran by some Shi'a Ahwazis is reflected in a number or ways, including a rejection of the Shi'a faith. None of the prominent Shi'a clerics in Iran or Iraq have clearly supported the Ahwazi cause. The most senior Ahwazi cleric and the most influential community leader, Shaykh Muhammad Tahir al-Khaqani, was forced to leave Khuzestan after the uprising of 1979 and put under house arrest in Qom until his death in 1986. No other local cleric emerged to preserve the Shi'a-Arab nationalist identity of the population.

Salafi-Jihadi groups from Iraq regard the conversions to Sunni Islam in Khuzestan-Ahwaz as genuine and are encouraging the integration of Ahwazi converts in the international jihadi movement. According to the AI communiqu�: "The origin of the people of Ahwaz is that they are a Sunni nation. The Iranian occupation has imposed Persian and Shi'a culture on them. The policy of Persianization is based on the Rafidah faith (i.e. Shi'a Islam). Therefore there should be a clear distinction of the right faith (i.e. Sunni Islam). This distinction should be the foundation to be relied on for achieving political and geographical independence for the state of Ahwaz." The AI message went on to set a strategy for the confrontation in Khuzestan, calling for its people to build a Sunni religious and political leadership: "There should be a unified Sunni-Jihadi movement in Ahwaz and it should join the global jihad" (Alboraq.info, May11).

The AI communiqu� is very important. It is picking up on a growing trend and trying to direct it towards a jihadi goal. So far the revolutionary movements in Khuzestan have been based on the community's Arab identity within a Persian and Shi'a Iran. With the increase of conversions to Sunni Islam among the population, it is not possible to rule out that a base for a Salafi-Jihadi organization could be established in the province. Such a development might well change the relationship between Salafi-Jihadi groups and Iran. The former have avoided a direct confrontation with Tehran so far, despite the often severe confrontations between the Shi'a and Sunni communities in the Middle East. Iraqi Sunni Islamists will be heavily involved in such a struggle, putting the Salafi-Jihadists at the centre of one of the most significant geo-political conflicts in the region.

Notes:

1. Khuzestan was historically named Arabistan (the land of the Arabs). In 1935 the Iranian government of Shah Reza Pahlavi renamed it Khuzestan i.e. "the Land of the Khuzis," referring to the ancient name used for sugar cane farmers in the ancient kingdom of Susa.

Local Arab people call the province al-Ahwaz and emphasize its history of independence under Arab rulers since the Arab invasion of 639 C.E. Ahwaz is also the name of the Khuzestan capital.

http://www.jamestown.org/programs/gta/single/?tx_ttnews

America’s ‘Primal Scream’

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

IT’S fascinating that many Americans intuitively understood the outrage and frustration that drove Egyptians to protest at Tahrir Square, but don’t comprehend similar resentments that drive disgruntled fellow citizens to “occupy Wall Street.”

There are differences, of course: the New York Police Department isn’t dispatching camels to run down protesters. Americans may feel disenfranchised, but we do live in a democracy, a flawed democracy — which is the best hope for Egypt’s evolution in the coming years.

Yet my interviews with protesters in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park seemed to rhyme with my interviews in Tahrir earlier this year. There’s a parallel sense that the political/economic system is tilted against the 99 percent. Al Gore, who supports the Wall Street protests, described them perfectly as a “primal scream of democracy.”

The frustration in America isn’t so much with inequality in the political and legal worlds, as it was in Arab countries, although those are concerns too. Here the critical issue is economic inequity. According to the C.I.A.’s own ranking of countries by income inequality, the United States is more unequal a society than either Tunisia or Egypt.

Three factoids underscore that inequality:

¶The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

¶The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent.

¶In the Bush expansion from 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent.

As my Times colleague Catherine Rampell noted a few days ago, in 1981, the average salary in the securities industry in New York City was twice the average in other private sector jobs. At last count, in 2010, it was 5.5 times as much. (In case you want to gnash your teeth, the average is now $361,330.)

More broadly, there’s a growing sense that lopsided outcomes are a result of tycoons’ manipulating the system, lobbying for loopholes and getting away with murder. Of the 100 highest-paid chief executives in the United States in 2010, 25 took home more pay than their company paid in federal corporate income taxes, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.

Living under Communism in China made me a fervent enthusiast of capitalism. I believe that over the last couple of centuries banks have enormously raised living standards in the West by allocating capital to more efficient uses. But anyone who believes in markets should be outraged that banks rig the system so that they enjoy profits in good years and bailouts in bad years.

The banks have gotten away with privatizing profits and socializing risks, and that’s just another form of bank robbery.

“We have a catastrophically bad misregulation of the financial system,” said Amar Bhidé, a finance expert at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “Its consequences led to a taint of the entire system of modern enterprise.”

Economists used to believe that we had to hold our noses and put up with high inequality as the price of robust growth. But more recent research suggests the opposite: inequality not only stinks, but also damages economies.

In his important new book, “The Darwin Economy,” Robert H. Frank of Cornell University cites a study showing that among 65 industrial nations, the more unequal ones experience slower growth on average. Likewise, individual countries grow more rapidly in periods when incomes are more equal, and slow down when incomes are skewed.

That’s certainly true of the United States. We enjoyed considerable equality from the 1940s through the 1970s, and growth was strong. Since then inequality has surged, and growth has slowed.

One reason may be that inequality is linked to financial distress and financial crises. There is mounting evidence that inequality leads to bankruptcies and to financial panics.

“The recent global economic crisis, with its roots in U.S. financial markets, may have resulted, in part at least, from the increase in inequality,” Andrew G. Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry of the International Monetary Fund wrote last month. They argued that “equality appears to be an important ingredient in promoting and sustaining growth.”

Inequality also leads to early deaths and more divorces — a reminder that we’re talking not about data sets here, but about human beings.

Some critics think that Occupy Wall Street is simply tapping into the public’s resentment and covetousness, nurturing class warfare. Sure, there’s a dollop of envy. But inequality is also a cancer on our national well-being.

I don’t know whether the Occupy Wall Street movement will survive once Zuccotti Park fills with snow and the novelty wears off. But I do hope that the protesters have lofted the issue of inequality onto our national agenda to stay — and to grapple with in the 2012 election year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-americas-primal-scream.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Barber cuts dalit’s nose in Mandya

Rajendrakumar K R, TNN Oct 11, 2011, 07.47AM IST

MANDYA: A barber and his father allegedly severed the nose of a dalit when he went to them for a shave in Kirugavalu of Malavalli taluk on Sunday.
Police said Chikkamanchaiah , 51, requested Mahadev and his father Mariyayya to shave his beard. The duo not only refused to do it, but also asked him to leave the shop. A quarrel ensued, and Mariyayya grabbed Chikkamanchaiah's hands and Mahadev chopped off his nose. He was rushed to the district hospital where doctors reattached the nose.

Chikkamanchaiah said poor dalits in the village are not allowed to enter shops. According to him, only rich and powerful dalits have access to barber shops. He requested police and the district administration to act against the culprits and put an end to untouchability.
Dr Prakash, who treated Chikkamanchaiah, said he won't have any problems in breathing and the injury would heal.SP Koushalendrakumar told TOI that Malavalli DySP Uttappa would investigate the case. "The culprits fled the village but we'll arrest them soon. We have also taken note of untouchability in the village." A case has been registered under the SC, ST (prevention of atrocities) Act, 1989 in the Kiragavalu police station.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-10-11/bangalore/30266542_1_dalits-nose-barber

Whistleblowers Act coming soon: Manmohan Singh

Himanshi Dhawan, TNN | Oct 14, 2011, 02.44PM IST

Review of RTI Act needs to be undertaken: PM

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday said that the government would soon bring the whistleblowers act to protect those using the Right To Information (RTI) Act.


The prime minister, however, said that the exemptions under the RTI Act should be looked at critically. "There is a concern in the administration over the misuse of the act," he adds.


Manmohan Singh exhorted public authorities to proactively disclose information that was not exempted. He said he was against the dilution of the RTI Act.


However, "RTI should not affect deliberative process of the government," he said.


Addressing the two-day annual convention of the Central Information Commission here, Singh said "we wish to make the Right to Information an even more effective instrument for ensuring transparency and accountability in administration".


He said there was a need to strike a balance between disclosure of information and the limited time and resources available with public authorities.


"The Right to Information should not adversly affect the deliberative processes in the Government," he said adding, "We must take a critical look at it. There are concerns that need to be discussed and addressed."


There have been demands for amending the transparency law by certain sections of government who feel it is "transgressing" into their functioning.


Amendments to the RTI Act and exemptions given to security agencies from making disclosures under it are expected to be debated at the conference being attended by information commissioners.


"Another concern that has been raised is that the Right to Information could end up discouraging honest, well meaning public servants from giving full expression to their views.


"I think we need to remember here that a point of view brought under public scrutiny and discussion in an isolated manner may sometimes present a distorted or incomplete picture of what really happened in the processes of making the final decisions," he said. (Inputs from PTI)


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Whistleblowers-Act-coming-soon-Manmohan-Singh/articleshow/10353025.cms

BJP Agent Kejriwal Sole Driver of Anna Team – Santosh Hedge

BJP Agent Kejriwal Sole Driver of Anna Team – Santosh Hedge

BJP Agent Kejriwal Sole Driver of Anna Team – Santosh Hedge

 

 

With the statement Santosh Hedge that he didn’t approve ‘Don’t Vote for Congress in Hissar’ it is clear Kejriwal was running Anna Team solely as BJP RSS agent.

BJP RSS has successfully ejected Bhushans, Santosh Hedge and Kiran Bedi by elaborate conspiracy – Ignoring Santosh Hedge and Kiran Bedi who has no mass base, Santosh Hedge maintained dignity of a retire Supreme Court judge was never seen Roaring & Abusing Congress hence was useless to BJP RSS for any political purpose, Kiran Bedi roaring turned out to be Nautanki.

Bhushans were ideologically apart didn’t gel with Looting Banias and Communal RSS BJP agenda.

Attack on Prashant Bushan was to tell Bhushans they are no longer wanted in BJP RSS show of Anna Hazare.

Team Anna is on one leg Arvind Kejriwal with anchored in Ralegan Siddhi.

Ravinder Singh

October15, 2011

Team Anna rift? Santosh Hegde takes dig at Arvind Kejriwal

TNN | Oct 15, 2011, 12.29AM IST

NEW DELHI: Cracks have appeared in Team Anna just a couple of months after they pushed the political class to agree to create a strong Lokpal and galvanized popular opinion against corruption, as members pursue their individual agendas.

On Friday, Anna Hazare and other members of the group distanced themselves from their comrade Prashant Bhushan's advocacy to allow a plebiscite in Kashmir Valley on whether it should remain with India, while Justice Santosh Hegde hit out at Arvind Kejriwal for siding with Congress's opponents in Hisar Lok Sabha by-election.

Hegde, who was a representative of Team Anna in the joint drafting committee on Lokpal Bill, also took a dig at Kejriwal for his remarks that Hazare was above Parliament, observing that such things happen when somebody talks "too much".

With divisions sharpening on whether the group should campaign against Congress before seeing whether the government passes the Lokpal Bill in the winter session, the group also announced the postponement of Hazare's plan to take out a yatra in Uttar Pradesh.

Even as the spotlight remained focused on the brutal assault on Bhushan by right-wing activists who were angry with him for saying that Kashmiris should be allowed to go their separate way if they don't wish to be part of India, Kejriwal issued a statement saying that Team Anna was against plebiscite. The statement also stressed that the solution to J&K problem, which was a complex one, had to be found within the constitutional framework.

Early on, speaking in his village Ralegan Siddhi, Hazare was more forthright in his criticism of Bhushan. "Whatever views he has articulated is not right," he said in response to Bhushan's radical proposal on the challenge in J&K.

Agency reports that Hazare was ambivalent on Bhushan's continuation in the core team led to widespread speculation, leading the Gandhian to issue a statement later saying, "I would like to state here, that besides Prashant Bhushan's opinion on the Kashmir issue, he is still an integral part of our team," Hazare said.

Kejriwal too rushed in to issue a denial that Bhushan could be dropped. "He is an integral part of the team. He is a very respected citizen who has worked in several areas including environment and human rights. He has played a crucial role in the anti-corruption movement also," Kejriwal said referring to Bhushan.

He also clarified that Bhushan had been read out the draft statement before he left for the US.

But as he struggled to scotch the state of equations among leading members of Team Anna, Kejriwal himself came under attack from fellow member of the core committee Justice Hegde for campaigning against Congress in the Hisar Lok Sabha by-election. Saying that Kejriwal, said to be instrumental in Team Anna's decision to oppose Congress in the by-election, "jumped the gun", the retired SC judge said, "I believe (Hazare) movement is and should be apolitical. Even before Parliament could debate the Lokpal Bill, they went to Hisar and campaigned against the Congress. I don't think it was the right thing to do."

In an interview to an newsmagazine, Justice Hegde suggested that in Hisar, there was little to chose between Congress and the candidates its opponents fielded. Emphasising that he was not pro-Congress, he said he did not know much about the Congress candidate in Hisar but claimed that Kuldeep Bishnoi (of Haryana Janhit Congress) and Ajay Chautala (INLD) were not above board. "How then do we ask people to vote against the Congress," he said.

The retired SC judge said there was no specific consultation on campaigning in Hisar and after he raised his opposition, Kejriwal called him to clarify that the plan to oppose candidates had been shared and discussed. "But to my knowledge, that was to be done only if Parliament and parties had reneged on their promise to pass the Lokpal Bill. I had to tell Kejriwal that, as far as Hisar was concerned, we had jumped the gun. Now, what happens if the Congress passes the Bill during the winter session? By the way, it is not just about the Congress, it is the UPA. However eager one may be to bring about change, we should allow the system to work. We should be patient," he said.

He also said that corrupt candidates were in all parties and not just in Congress. "If Anna and the other team members felt compelled to intervene in the electoral process, they should have only asked the people to choose the best candidate. That would have been the ideal thing to do," Hegde said when asked whether he was uncomfortable with the Hisar episode.

Asked about the 'Anna-above-Parliament' remark by Kejriwal, Hegde said it was "unwarranted" and "this is what happens when you talk too much". He recalled that when politicians said that Parliament was supreme, "I opposed it. That is because the Supreme Court can strike down any unconstitutional move by Parliament".

Team Anna members said they feared further attacks against their members and it appeared that this was a conspiracy by the government to take attention away from the issue of corruption.

Meanwhile, Hazare has put off his planned 'yatra' till the end of the winter session of Parliament. "Anna will not say anything now. Wait till the winter session is over. He will wait for the winter session. Let us see whether Congress brings the Bill," Kejriwal said.

However, other members of the team will visit Uttar Pradesh from October 17 educating people about the need for a strong Lokpal. "We will ask people to wait till the winter session and will ask them not to vote for Congress if they do not bring the Bill in the winter session," he said.

On October 17, the team will go to Banda in Bundelkhand and Kanpur and the next day, they will be in Unnao and Lucknow.

Asked why they were not opposing BSP, Kejriwal said, "There is no need for that. Even if Mayawati desires (that the Bill is enacted), the Lokpal Bill will not come. But if Sonia Gandhi desires, it will come in two minutes. So we need to scare Sonia and not Maya."

'US claim insults global intelligence'

'US claim insults global intelligence'

Thu Oct 13, 2011 1:33PM GMT

Iran's Ambassador to the UN Mohammad Khazaei

Iran's envoy to the UN says US allegations about Tehran's involvement in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington are an “insult to the intelligence” of the people of the world.

“We are used to the baseless allegations made by some US officials over the past three decades, but the big lie they have told today is so unfounded that it sounds like the work of Hollywood's scenario writers,” Mohammad Khazaei said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday.

“It is a major insult to the intelligence of ordinary people in the US and the world,” he added.

He said the accusation that Iran attempted to assassinate the envoy of a neighboring Muslim country in Washington is a fabrication created by “warmongers” who seek to poison the atmosphere and create fear in the people's minds.

They fabricate false security threats to advance their political objectives, Khazaei said, adding that the move was a testimony to the West's unquenchable thirst to create imaginary enemies.

Khazaei said Iran categorically rejects the allegations and cautions the Americans not to fall for such malicious propaganda campaigns aimed at mounting political pressure on Iran.

Khazaei's remarks came in response to the recent claims made by the US Justice Department that Iran was involved in a plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to Washington Adel Al-Jubeir with help from a suspected member of a Mexican drug cartel.

Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast rejected the accusation, saying such 'ludicrous' claims hinged on the hostile joint stances adopted by the US and Israel against the country.

"These threadbare attitudes, which are based on the age-old and hostile American-Zionist policies, are a ridiculous show in line with certain [instances of] scenario fabrication of divisive ends on the part of the enemies of Islam and the region," he said.

Iran has also sent a letter of complaint to the UN over Washington's allegations.

AR/MYA/HGH

http://www.presstv.com/detail/204337.html

The Planning Commission defines India’s “Nothing Class”

The Planning Commission defines India’s “Nothing Class”

K.P. Prabhakaran Nair

14 Oct 2011

India, it would seem, has only two classes of people, the “upper class” and the “middle class”.  Yet there is another, the totally forgotten “nothing class”, which the vast majority of educated, elite and intellectual Indians have chosen to ignore, which the Planning Commission has now defined. This article is about this class, which is drowning in deprivation. Very recently, the Planning Commission submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court, which defined the country’s poor in a totally new, and bewildering, to say the least, light. The heartless manner in which this affidavit was submitted to the apex court comes to light when it defines a rural poor person as “one spending less than Rs 781/- per month or Rs 26/- a day”, and an urban poor person as “one spending less than Rs 965/- per month or Rs 32/- a day”.  The most telling commentary on this heartless definition of the poor in India is dramatically highlighted by Ghanshyam, a street vendor who makes a living by selling peanuts outside the gates of the Planning Commission building, the “Yojana Bhavan,” who said, “Let the Planning Commission members step out and teach us how to live on Rs 32/- a day… I will work free for them for the rest of my life”.   While there has been widespread protest, both from the knowledgeable and the sundry, on this queer definition of the country’s poor, hardly anyone has attempted to critically examine the question in its entirety and see where it makes nonsense of current Indian economics, in particular that of food economics that is at the very centre of human life. Word has it that the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, in response to widespread national anguish, met Dr Manmohan Singh to “explain” the logic behind his “new” definition of the poor, and the Commission is sticking to its guns! The writer examines some crucial facts and shows the absurdity of this meaningless and heartless exercise. The very tenor of the definition borders on defining destitution, not poverty. This is a blatant attack on the very notion of food security. Even a child can understand that the working health of an individual cannot be maintained, nor necessities obtained, by spending as little as Rs 26/- a day. The above mentioned paltry sums are not merely supposed to cover the cost of food, but all non-food essentials, including clothing, foot wear, cooking fuel, transport , light (if there is electricity in the villages where the poor live), education, medical costs and house rent, where applicable. The tragic fact in India today is that more than a third  (more than 450 million) of its current slightly more than 1.2 billion population “live” (emphasis mine, because at these abysmally low levels of expenditure it is not “living”, but just keeping body and soul together) on such pathetically low levels of daily expenditure. This pathetic condition one can see among dalits, backward castes, and adivasis. They have been deliberately pushed out of the contorted notion of “inclusive growth”, (recall P. Chidambaram’s heartless, arrogant and demeaning definition of these deprived peoples as belonging to “Museum Culture”) that one sees only in budgets and Planning Commission papers. With bulging food stocks in the godowns of the Food Corporation of India, the primary concern of the Planning Commission and Food Ministry ought to have been how to reach these millions of tons of stocked food that is beginning to rot in FCI godowns for lack of proper storage facilities, to the hungry and needy. But, the neo-liberal thinking is different. Its concern seems to be targeted on reducing the food subsidy. And that explains why a new definition of the rural and urban poor is being dished out. Going back to the basic question of food, the primary concern has to be how much calorie an adult needs to maintain a reasonably fair state of health. Once this is agreed upon, one can extrapolate on how much money one needs to spend to buy food to obtain this level of calorie intake. The accepted and generalised notion of “food” refers only to staples like rice and wheat, and to a much smaller extent millets, both major (sorghum or bajra) or minor (ragi), which the poor consume in large rainfed tracts of the country, primarily in central India and parts of southern India, like Karnataka. But, this “generalised notion of food” does not include other items of nutrition in the food basket, such as vegetables, fish/meat/egg/milk and fruit etc., making it look as though the consumption of these “luxury items” is the “exclusive privilege” of only the upper class and middle class, and the “nothing class” will have no access to these items. The original definition of poverty line made sense because it was based on the recommendations of an expert committee, using national sample surveys (NSS) data in 1979, which said that a person in a rural setting needs to spend as much money  to obtain 2400 kilo calorie per day and one in an urban setting to obtain 2100 kilo calorie, the difference being the energy needs in a rustic setting is higher as compared to an urban setting where the expense of energy is relatively less on a day-to-day basis. Subsequently, the rural figure was scaled down to 2200 calories. The Planning Commission then accepted the recommendation of the expert committee based on nutrition-based definition, and concluded by applying this principle to the 1973-74 data, that the equivalent spend will be Rs 49/- and Rs 56/- per month in the rural and urban settings respectively. This was done only once. According to this, 56 per cent of rural population and 49 per cent of urban population were classified as “poor”. The entire exercise of the current distorted indexing of poverty line came about when the Planning Commission, for reasons not explained clearly, switched from the “nutrition based indexing” to a “commodity /consumer price based index “(CPI). The notion of the latter procedure does not take into consideration how the purchasing power of the poor can be so very adversely affected when the core focus is taken away from the dialogue. Take this example. As a Senior Associate Professor in the premier G.B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar, Uttar Pradesh, I started my academic tenure on a basic salary of Rs 800/- plus the permissible allowances, in 1971. My family and I, with two children and a domestic help, could lead a very comfortable life, and even thought of buying a car, though it was difficult to buy one in those days, given the stranglehold of a particular automobile house of the country – not allowing any other foreign companies to venture into the field, as has happened subsequent to the “opening up” of the Indian economy. But we were content with a brand new Bajaj scooter. Applying the CPI yardstick for urban non-manual work force, my salary today would have been close to Rs 20,000/-, by the Planning Commission’s logic. But, this amount cannot support the most modest “middle class” lifestyle of four decades earlier, for a family of four with a domestic help and a private transport facility. A newly appointed Senior Associate Professor would start now on a salary of not less than Rs 45-50000/-, because of successive revisions of the Central Pay Commission. The crucial question is, what can a helpless rural or urban uneducated (migrated) poor man / woman do with a daily wage around Rs 150? Take this example. By 2005, a rural person needed Rs 19/- a day to access 2200 calories, as mentioned above, while at the official figure derived by the Planning Commission he/she could access just 1800 calories. Mind you, we are speaking only of food. What about the other basic necessities of life? The CPI does not capture long range inflationary pressures.  It only captures the short term ones. An egg that cost 25 paise in the 1970s now costs close to Rs 3/-, and a kilo of cheap mackerel costs Rs 35-40/-, when it cost just Rs 5/- in the seventies. And the less said about fruits, milk and meat, the better.  At the centre of all this dialogue is that the country is not producing enough food to make it cheap, never mind the so-called “green revolution” which is supposed to have filled our granaries, which has now fallen on its face ruining our once fertile soil resources and polluting it with unwanted chemicals. Our grain production increase rate is trailing at a snail’s pace at 1.3 per cent annually, while population growth is ballooning at more than 1.9 per cent. Clearing the “Malthusian Effect” has been set in motion, but our policy planners, politicians, and agricultural messiahs are looking the other way. For a comparable population of 1.3 billon, China harvested more than 550 million tons of grain last year; our slightly more than 200 million tons (I am not including the pulses here, because they do not constitute the staples) pales in comparison.   The claim that poverty has declined in India does not hold water, because the indexation that is now used does not focus on the important core “nutritional indexing” system. Current poverty lines which allow a nutrition norm of 2200 calories for the rural poor and 2100 for the urban poor would approximate to a spend of Rs 36/- and Rs 60/- a day respectively. In other words, the Planning Commission wants to trim this to just two-thirds for the rural poor and just half for the urban, respectively.  The hidden agenda is clear – eliminate millions of helpless Indians from the State cover. Alternatively, help the rich get richer. This article is only about the “poor” – the “nothing class”. Where is the place for the old, ill, and infirm in this grand strategy of mass elimination from State protection? As always, the poor can simply be thrown to the dogs. Are Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh listening? http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=2007