LETTERS

Issn 0012-9976
Ever since the rst issue in 1966, EPW has been Indias premier journal for comment on current affairs and research in the social sciences. It succeeded Economic Weekly (1949-1965), which was launched and shepherded by Sachin Chaudhuri, who was also the founder-editor of EPW. As editor for thirty-ve years (1969-2004) K rishna R aj gave EPW the reputation it now enjoys.

No Precedence in Bengal Elections

part of the article (West Bengal Panchayat Elections: What Does It Mean for the Left? by Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya and Kumar Rana, EPW, 14 September 2013) comes dangerously close to the writings on Bengal which tend to look at the anti-democratic practices of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) as the continuation of past practices. While analysing the role of terror and violence in the panchayat elections of 2013, the authors admit that terrorisation and violence had been used extensively by the TMC, the ruling party, for winning the elections, but dispute the claim of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI(M) leaders that these were unprecedented. It is necessary to draw conclusions from full facts, not from selective facts. Yes, the 2003 panchayat election was a violence-prone election and the seats won without contest constituted approximately 11% of the total seats of gram panchayats (GPs). Needless to say, most of these seats went in favour of the ruling party, the CPI(M), and its partners. But, as many as seven panchayat elections were held during the Left Front regime. How many of them were like the one in 2003? In the 1978 and 1983 elections, the seats won uncontested were less than 1%, in 1993 they constituted 2.81% and in 1998 1.36% of the total GP seats. In 1988, however, 8% of the GP seats went uncontested. In 2008, as the authors mentioned, around 5% of the GP seats were won by candidates without contest. So, if the number of seats won uncontested is taken as a measure of the ruling partys terrorising activities for monopolising the political space, then the 2003 election (and also partly the 1988 elections) were exceptions. Second, the distortions of 2003 elections in the form of preventing candidates from ling nominations were restricted mainly to four districts, namely, Hooghly, Paschim Medinipur, Bardhaman and Bankura and were engineered by the local satraps of the CPI(M). Such malpractices had embarrassed those
september 28, 2013

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leaders of the party who were running the government, so much that while drafting the West Bengal Panchayat Election Act a special (and a unique) provision was inserted (Subsection 2 of Section 46), giving special powers to the State Election Commission (SEC) to open parallel centres for receiving nominations at the ofces of the subdivisional ofcer (SDO). In this years election, the SEC had made liberal use of this provision to give protection to the opposition candidates. What I want to emphasise here is that in 2003 one did not notice support for this kind of electoral malpractice being provided by the policymaking level of the government. But this time the story is different. The distinction between the government and the party, which used to be maintained at least outwardly during election time, was totally obliterated in the 2013 panchayat elections. Obliteration of the distinction between party and government at such a scale and the total surrender of the bureaucracy and police to the ruling party are phenomena that really do not seem to have any precedent. The attack of the TMC on the rule of law is too serious an issue to be dismissed as the repetition of the same kind of political malpractice during the Left Fronts rule.
Buddhadeb Ghosh Institute of Social Sciences,
Kolkata

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Futility of Capital Punishment

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he judgment on the 16 December 2012 Delhi gang rape case awarding death penalty to all four accused seems to have brought nality to the cries for justice. While this judgment is found to be in consonance with the majoritys demand, Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) yet again reafrms its stand on the futility of capital punishment. In opposing the punishment of death to the four accused, we do not defend the crime for which they have been penalised. PUDR believes that the act
EPW Economic & Political Weekly

vol xlviII no 39

LETTERS

committed by the accused was a brutal, inhuman and gruesome one that called for serious punishment. However, we are convinced that the death penalty cannot be the answer. We reiterate that the purpose of any punishment is not vengeance but construction of conditions that enable transformation of the guilty, who must expiate the harm done by them. The idea of retributive justice embodied by death penalty is against the very idea of justice. Our opposition to the death penalty is a principled one that argues against its deployment even in the rarest of rare cases as there can be no denitional understanding of the said clause. There has been no substantial empirical ground to prove any link between the death penalty and deterrence, an argument often oated to justify the death sentence. The death sentence is irreversible and leaves no scope for correctives in case of an error in judgment. It is also our understanding based on subjective evidence that the award of the death penalty is predominantly reective of the class and caste biases prevalent in our society. The dominant sections and power holders get away with the same crime for which those on the margins are awarded the death sentence. The death sentence in this case has also completely absolved the State of misperformance of law and order functions. The fact that the gang rape was facilitated by lapses on the part of (also in compliance with) authorities, be it the trafc administration or the police, has completely been eliminated. While the alacrity, speed and seriousness with which this case has been brought to a conclusion are noteworthy, the same should mark all similar cases where a womans body is violated and her life is snuffed out only to assert false male superiority. PUDR strongly believes that a democratic and just society cannot be envisioned on the idea of retributive justice and disdain for an individuals right to life. The way forward is the reform of a society infested by a perverted patriarchal psyche, which is the root cause of brutality against women.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW

An attack must be made on such a mentality and not on a life.

D Manjit, Asish Gupta Secretaries, PUDR
NEW DELHI

Police in the University

n Thursday, 12 September 2013, a 50 strong police contingent drawn from the Maharashtra Police Force, the Delhi Police Special Cell and the Maurice Nagar police thana, raided the residence of G N Saibaba, an assistant professor in English at Ram Lal Anand College. They brought computer technicians with them. Saibaba, his wife and their 15-year-old daughter were detained for about four hours from 3 PM onwards for an investigation into the use of his residence as a place for the deposit of stolen property. Saibaba was not allowed to contact his lawyer, or his colleagues to ensure that the investigation would be a fair and transparent one. During the course of this wholly baseless investigation, the entire family was kept captive, prevented from making or receiving calls, or meeting anyone who sought to meet them. The police left sometime after some Delhi University (DU) teachers arrived, began questioning the police and informing the media about the incident. After much persistence, the teachers managed to get the terried child produced. The police conscated a large number of college documents, pen-drives, a laptop, a tablet microchip, mobile phones (including the minor daughters phone), debit and credit cards, and bank passbooks, none of which were stolen property. The university community is deeply concerned that a pattern of targeting, thrashing, molesting and otherwise intimidating and bullying university students and teachers, including persons with disabilities (PwDs), has developed. It is a

matter of grave concern that an employee of the university and a wheelchairbound person with 90% disability has been subject to this manner of intimidation, invasion of privacy, and violation of civil and human rights. The DU administrations complicity in the hefty police presence on campus per se, and in the increasingly frequent incidents of police brutality against students and teachers on campus, is now clear, as the police may enter the campus only with the knowledge and explicit permission of the university administration. Rather than fostering the spirit and culture of critical inquiry and free speech, both of which fundamentally characterise the university as a space, the vice chancellor (VC) and his team have turned the university into a shameful, rankly sycophantic, anti-intellectual hub for police brutality, impunity, and the unapologetic violation of all human rights and norms of decency. While the police forces of the country are now best known for their track record of human rights violations and for vicious repression of any form of dissent in the name of national security, it is unforgivable that the VC of DU, who took upon himself the responsibility of protecting the intellectual and physical space of the university from abuse, is himself the architect of its destruction. We condemn the attempts by the police to fabricate a specious case against Saibaba in the strongest terms. We condemn the complicity of the university authorities in this outrage. We demand that the university administration prevent any further compromise of the university space in general, and the harassment of this unfortunate family in particular.
Karen Gabriel, Hany Babu, P K Vijayan, and others
DELHI

Web Exclusives
The following articles have been uploaded in the past week in the Web Exclusives section of the EPW website. They have not been published in the print edition. (1) Chin Peng: A Left Wing Nationalist P Ramasamy (2) The Moral of Vanzaras Letter N Bhanutej Articles posted before 14 September 2013 remain available in the Web Exclusives section.
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september 28, 2013

LETTERS

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Economic & Political Weekly

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vol xlviII no 39
EPW Economic & Political Weekly