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Indian queer cyberspace has evolved drastically over the years. The internet arrived in India in 1995, and high-speed broadband technologies started only in 2004. Before that, queer mobilizing mostly took place through informal and clandestine channels. It was only in 1991 that the first Indian queer organization was formed in London, the Naz Project, which eventually established a presence in Delhi through its sister group, the Naz Foundation, in 1996.
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The late 1990s were a time when offline contact between Indian queers for non-sexual purposes was largely unimaginable, possibly because homosexuality itself was still a crime back then. Moreover, public attitudes toward homosexuals were fiercely negative, even among liberals. “When I was active in the women’s movement in Delhi from 1978 to 1990 as founding co-editor of Manushi, India’s first feminist journal, homosexuality was rarely if ever discussed in left-wing, civil rights, or women’s movements, or at Delhi University, where I taught,” recounts historian Ruth Vanita.
Globalization of Gay Rights
With time, things began to change. The policies of globalization, liberalization and privatization of the late 1990s opened up sections of the Indian economy to the world market in novel ways. These policies, which were a part of India’s overall structural adjustment program, marked a tectonic shift from old dirigiste ways of working and heralded a new era of sweeping economic reforms.
A chief consequence of these changes was the information technology boom of the 1990s. Starting in the 1970s, it eventually led the way for the proliferation of new technologies on the Indian market throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. These included Nokia smartphones, desktop computers like the famed HEC-2M, black-and-white television sets and so on. Over the years, not only did these technologies evolve, but so did their ownership patterns. In 2012, Neilsen reported that the number of smartphone users in urban India was approximately 27 million. That number shot up to 76 million in 2013 for urban and rural India, and has been rising steadily ever since. By 2025, India is projected to have approximately 974 million smartphone users.
These economic changes, however, weren’t merely restricted to urban areas. A 2019 report by the Internet & Mobile Association of India and Nielsen found that with 227 million active internet users, rural India had already surpassed urban India’s 205 million users. With 504 million active internet users over five years of age in 2019, India was the second-largest internet-user market in the world, just behind China with its 850 million users. The United States, by comparison, has 280-300 million users.
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What did the changing contours of the digital landscape in India mean for queer people? The late 1990s were a time when the Indian government finally allowed certain sectors of the economy like IT and telecommunications to engage private investment. As the strangleholds of the erstwhile permit-license raj began to loosen, queer activism also witnessed a genesis of sorts. In 1994, AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA) filed the first-ever petition in the country’s history against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, an infamous British-era law that criminalized homosexuality in postcolonial India.
Various lesbian support groups also emerged during this time in response to widespread protests by Hindu right-wing groups that displayed violent disdain over the screening of Deepa Mehta’s lesbian romance film, “Fire.”
These changes were intimately related to the economic transformations of the time resulting from the transnational circulation of capital, ideas, people and funding that helped give the queer movement the impetus it needed to thrive and survive. The advent of gay rights mobilization in India, for instance, arose as a consequence of international funding for HIV/AIDS prevention in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The easing of certain regulations in the Indian economy and the greater flow of capital and people from abroad also paved the way, directly and indirectly, for the eventual scrapping of Section 377. As one scholar succinctly put it, “queer politics in India has come to be embroiled in the politics of globalization, and many believe that this history of queer politics is inseparable from the rise of neoliberal agendas in the Indian sub continent.”
Queering Cyberspace
A lot has changed over the years. Most notably, in 2014, India’s Supreme Court recognized the third gender in its landmark NALSA judgment. In 2018, the same court decriminalized homosexuality. By constitutionally recognizing these hitherto delegitimized subjects, the very shape and form of queer politics had radically transformed. Today, queer identification in urban pockets is more common than ever before. Corporations have also joined the queer bandwagon by placating homocapitalist sentiments under the problematic guise of LGBTQ+ inclusivity.
With the COVID-19 pandemic having haltered in-person queer events around the world, much of queer organizing, dating, socializing and networking has now shifted online. This is a space that continues to boom.
On the one hand, online spaces can be liberating for those who can access them. These spaces promise queer people the possibility of digitally connecting with others with a mere click of a button. This is why the IT boom was so significant: It paved the way for greater internet access and made it possible for marginalized and discreet queer people to explore their identities in ways their geographic locations wouldn’t otherwise allow.
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While no official government data on queer populations exist (for obvious reasons), and despite the police and the state actively harassing queer people over the years — even after decriminalization, they continue to do so — technology has ushered in what some are calling a “sexual revolution in India.” The technological boom has ignited and kindled a new generation of young Indians’ desires for sex, romance, intimacy, and even sex work in unimaginable ways.
These desires and aspirations are being facilitated through chat rooms, instant messaging applications like WhatsApp and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Indeed, these changes have “teased the imagination of a young India, expanding her horizons and aspirations with the click of the button.”
However, such spaces also feature as sites of discrimination, bullying and violence. Take, for instance, Rohit Dasgupta’s assertion in his 2017 book, “Digital Queer Cultures in India,” that “The concept of being ‘too transgressive’ is a growing issue within queer representations in India.” Thus, only certain queer bodies and identities are typically seen as normative in queer spaces; for example, gay men who pass as straight. Those who transgress cis-normative and heteronormative ideals — like effeminate gay men — are typically shunned by queer people (mostly gay men).
Caste Supremacy
It has been argued that even though the 1991 reforms had a positive impact on India’s economic performance, their uneven implementation exacerbated existing socio-cultural inequalities. We see these inequalities manifest in queer cyberspace today, where certain privileged queer voices (mostly dominant caste, urbanized and Westernized gay men) dominate, while others (mostly queer women, and queer people from marginalized castes and classes) are systematically silenced by those in power.
On the issue of caste, for example, there is a deafening silence among queer activists in India to even acknowledge the presence of caste inequalities within the movement. This should come as no surprise because most queer activists in India (including the author of this article) belong to oppressor castes. Because of this, the issues, concerns and traumas of queer people from marginalized castes such as those from Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi communities are sidelined.
While most of this marginalization is implicit, some of it also happens explicitly. Take, for example, writer-director Aroh Akunth’s account of how caste intimately shapes desires on gay dating platforms. Thus, “attractiveness,” skin color and a “good background” become ideas projected onto a caste, while politics of “respectability” becomes a politics of caste supremacy.
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Another pressing issue in queer cyberspace is the growing popularity of right-wing homo-Hindu nationalist aspirations. It should be noted that this problem plagued the queer movement long before the pandemic pushed everyone online. It’s just that these groups, like many others, have adapted to the new normal by moving online. They fashion themselves as advocates for queer rights while simultaneously peddling jingoism, Islamophobia anti-Black Lives Matter/Dalit Lives Matter propaganda as well as casteism.
Take for instance, “hindu_lgbt,” an Instagram handle that affiliates itself with the right-wing Hindu nationalist group, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which supports the decriminalization of homosexuality in India but not the legalization of same-sex marriage. As an ideology, Hindu nationalism is premised on the political and cultural construction of citizen-state relationships and subjectivities that are homogenized and in synch with orthodox notions of the Hindu faith, sometimes referred to as Hindutva philosophy.
It should be noted that there are many social formations in India that support this ideology. The protests against Deepa Mehta’s film “Fire,” for instance, were spearheaded by the Mahila Aghadi of Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and others, while resistance to decriminalize homosexuality in India came, in part, from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and RSS ideologues.
However, RSS views of gay rights have drastically changed over the years — perhaps more so than the views of orthodox Christian and Muslim organizations — partly due to the ruling BJP Hindu nationalist government’s relative silence on the issue, and partly because the RSS is itself trying to grapple with the ongoing social changes in India. In order to brand itself as an upholder of “inclusive” traditional family values, the RSS approach seems, on the one hand, to respect the Supreme Court’s judgment on Section 377 while, on the other hand, refuse to support any further legislation, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage, that might radically challenge existing family structures in India.
Web Citizenship
With the third COVID-19 wave expected to hit India in the coming months, online spaces will, in all likelihood, continue to facilitate queer networking for the foreseeable future. But with greater smartphone access and the increased democratization of content creation — what some scholars have called the rise of “web citizenship” — queer advocacy in contemporary India faces newer challenges.
The first is an issue of privacy. In its 2017 Puttaswamy judgment, the Supreme Court of India recognized sexual orientation as an intrinsic part of privacy but was silent about its applicability in the online realm, where catfishing and identity theft are rampant. The second is an issue of legality. Digital spaces transcend the boundaries of nation-states, thereby calling into question the juridical purview of national privacy and security laws. How do queer people facing harassment, bullying and extortion from international actors report such crimes to the police in India?
A contemporary example of this was the infamous gay marriage scam, as detailed in a UK-based investigation by VICE. This expose sent shockwaves through sections of the queer circles both in India and abroad, bringing to the fore the inadequacy of Indian laws, which, unlike those in the UK, neither recognize gay marriage nor extortion that specifically targets queer populations.
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The queer movement in India is currently at a crossroads. On the one hand, it has to tackle the increasing popularity of right-wing Hindu nationalist sentiments; on the other, manage the tensions and contradictions associated with Indian law.
Indeed, the challenges are many and the means to address them are few. One way of effecting change is by pursuing the law and lobbying lawmakers like Dr. Shashi Tharoor of the Indian National Congress, Supriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress Party and Tejasvi Surya of the ruling BJP, all of whom have expressed support for queer rights in India. While some scholars are skeptical of using the law as a vehicle for bringing about social change in India, others, like Arvind Narrain, are less skeptical. To date, this dispute remains unsettled — as does the inclusion of the BJP into this discussion.
The other way of effecting change is by radically reimagining queer spaces as zones where people of all identities can be made to feel safer. This exercise is perhaps harder to carry out because it has no prescriptions and is contingent on the ability of privileged queers to self-reflect. Thus, would dominant-caste queer men be willing to cede space to marginalized-caste queer women and transgender people? We should hope so. All in all, queer cyberspace in India is both a stuffy and an expansive zone. Its contradictions and contestations make it an exciting site for further scholarship into queer mobilization in India.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
September 11, 2001, is internationally recognized as a date associated with terrorism and mass murder by al-Qaeda militants based in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Yet the current situation in the country means that September 11, 2021, could see another tragedy: the ethnic cleansing of the Hazara minority. In April, President Joe Biden announced that US forces, and NATO troops along with them, will depart from Afghanistan after 20 years of conflict. This is despite the absence of a peace treaty between the Afghan government and Taliban insurgents.
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Unconstrained by the presence of foreign forces or the binding conditions of a peace agreement, Afghan civilians will be vulnerable to attacks by the Taliban and other terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State in Khurasan Province (IS-KP). Yet if history and the current situation are indicators, the Hazaras are at the greatest risk.
The Hazara of Afghanistan
Before the 19th century, Shia Hazaras were the largest minority in Afghanistan, making up 67% of the population. Between 1890 and 1893, Pashtun Sunni leader Amir Abdur Rahman Khan declared jihaduponHazaras, who resisted by declaring jihad against the ruling forces. Although their fighting was fierce, over half the Hazara population was killed or forced into exile, their lands confiscated and thousands sold via slave markets that remained active until 1920. Women were coerced into marriage with Pashtun men, a practice intended to destroy the cultural integrity and identity of Hazaras.
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This period has been described as the “most significant example of genocide in the modern history of Afghanistan.” The historic significance of Khan’s jihad not only galvanized Pashtun and other Afghan tribes against the Hazaras, but it institutionalized their relegated status within Afghan society to an inferior position. This continued until the invasion of US and NATO forces in 2001.
Today, Hazaras make up around 20% of Afghanistan’s 38-million population. Some, such as international relations scholar Niamatullah Ibrahimi, put this figure at 25%. Yet regardless of how many remain, one thing is clear: The Hazaras are amongst the most discriminated against and persecuted people in the world. As such, they form one of the largest groups of asylum seekers and refugees.
The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 precipitated the largest exodus of Hazaras since 1890. After 10 years of war, the Soviets withdrew. A vacuum ensued that led to various factions vying for power. The Taliban seized control and ruled the country from 1996 to 2001. The Taliban soon launched another era of persecution of Hazaras. Two years after taking control of the Afghan capital, Kabul, the Taliban slaughtered 2,000 Hazaras in Mazar-e-Sharif. An estimated 15,000 Hazaras lost their lives under the Taliban regime. The US-led invasion removed the Taliban from power and resulted in less violence against the Hazaras. Yet the community continued to be deemed an inferior group in Afghanistan. Historically, Hazaras were relegated to menial labor.
Despite the legacy of persecution, marginalization and exclusion from the highest levels of government, Hazaras have achieved important gains in the fields of education and culture since 2001. The Hazaras advocate and practice democratic participation, universal education and tolerance for religious and ethnic pluralism. These values are indispensable for the creation and maintenance of a healthy civil society. Yet Hazaras are anathema to the Taliban and IS-KP.
Targeting the Hazara
With the US departure imminent and the return of the Taliban inevitable, the identity, values and achievements of the Hazara people make them a primary target. The formula was repeated throughout the 20th century: An ideologically intolerant group obtains political power and accentuates salient differences of a minority. The dominant group discriminates against minorities, marginalizes them to the lowest caste in society and then systematically eliminates them.
The pattern of violence often appears to the outside world as random. But to the Hazaras, the violence is systematic. Due to their religious and ethnic identity, passion for education and procreation, the minority community has been targeted for ethnic cleansing.
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Since December 6, 2011, when thousands of Hazaras were attacked in Kabul during the holy day of Ashura, the violence has resembled a genocidal character. The bombings, which killed 70 in Kabul and four in Mazar-e-Sharif, were claimed to be conducted by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (Lei) a Pakistan-based group strongly affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In May of this year, triple bombings left nearly 100 dead, 85 of whom were students at Syed-Al-Shuhada high school, which is predominantly attended by teenage girls. Last year, a maternity ward of a hospital operated by Médecins Sans Frontières was attacked. Twenty-four people died, including 16 mothers and two children. In the same year, 40 students were killed at the Kawsar Danish tutoring center.
Currently, the Taliban control more than half of Afghanistan’s territory. This includes 17 out of 19 districts in Herat’s province, which is densely populated by Hazaras. With repeated attacks against Hazaras, it is clear that ethnic cleansing is taking place in Afghanistan.
The Taliban have applied this formula before and are deliberately using it again with renewed expectation for its all-out assault on Afghanistan after the US departs. Vulnerable groups in the country are already arming themselves and realigning their relationship with the Taliban. Yet not all of these groups support or embrace the Taliban. Rather, they are only doing so out of political necessity and survival. In other words, act supportively of the Taliban or die.
The litmus test of loyalty will be measured by the degree to which other ethnic groups hold the Hazaras in contempt and advance the Taliban’s agenda against them. The phenomenon is called a “cascade,” wherein acts of violence against a marginalized group establishes one’s legitimacy in the eyes of the dominant group.
What Can Be Done?
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has called for the UN to appoint a commission of inquiry to investigate the murder of Hazara school children and attacks on Shia worshippers. The International Criminal Court has authorized the chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to investigate war crimes committed by all responsible parties, including the Taliban.
Yet more needs to be done. The international community should acknowledge the emerging signs that genocide is underway against the Hazaras and will only escalate. Global powers, such as the United States, must call for the protection of the most vulnerable people. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) should place Hazara refugees on the high-priority list for asylum.
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In response to the Taliban’s territorial gains, several mujahedeen commanders, including Hazara leader Mohammed Mohaqiq, have organized local civilian forces whose presence has strengthened and inspired government troops. In the recent past, the government armed Hazara civilians, who successfully defended mosques and sacred celebrations from Taliban attacks. Kabul must consider this strategy again.
Yet local civilian forces, the Afghan army and international troops alone will never bring peace, security and stability to Afghanistan. If Hazaras are to remain in the country with any expectation of a recognizable civil existence, a political solution is required. But a settlement without involving Pakistan, China, Iran and the US is doomed to fail.
Pakistan continues to provide safe harbor and assistance to the Afghanistan-based Taliban. China, a key ally of Islamabad, is the only global power with credible influence over the Pakistanis. Iran now supports the Taliban. It does so in order to counter the emergence of an anti-Iranian Islamic state in Afghanistan. The long-term interest of the United States is to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a training ground for anti-Western terrorists. The presence of all these parties, particularly the Iranians and Americans, is required at the negotiating table.
International leadership capable of identifying and appealing to these four powers, whose current relationship is shaped more by enmity than commonality, has yet to emerge. The situation on the ground requires immediate remedies specifically addressed to the threats posed to the Hazaras. It is time to take notice.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
The COVID-19 pandemic has detrimentally impacted education systems worldwide. Of the 1.2 billion children that the coronavirus has thrown out of classrooms, at least one-third have no access to remote learning and hence no access to education. The UN estimates that 24 million children will not return to school due to the fallout from the pandemic. Solving the education crisis needs to be a priority for governments.
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This issue is of particular significance in India, where the pandemic has steeply, and perhaps irreversibly, increased education inequality. Over 1.5 million schools have closed down, depriving 6 million children of basic education. The government has been preoccupied with issues such as the pandemic, the migrant crisis, the farmer protests and state elections. It has failed to focus on education.
Exacerbated Negatives
Even as capitalist a country as the United States provides its populace with free public schooling. In contrast, a supposedly socialist India is unable to educate its children. India, currently in its youth-bulge phase, has 600 million citizens under the age of 25. The education of these young people can and should be India’s catalyst for economic, social and political growth.
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The socioeconomic benefits of education outweigh its costs. For example, the pervasiveness of child marriage among girls with no education is 30.8% versus 2.4% for girls who have received higher education. Bearing in mind the fact that more than one out of four Indian child brides become teenage mothers, providing girls with education could help solve the problem of child marriage, which would subsequently combat teenage pregnancy and high infant mortality rates. Education could also reduce the rampancy of child labor while also reducing rates of preventable diseases.
Unfortunately, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE) and India’s new education policy have no provision for dealing with the current crisis. Its Constitution declares India to be a “sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic.” Many politicians claim to be socialists. Yet the pandemic has proven that socialism is merely an empty slogan in India. Health and education are highly privatized. Citizens have to pay for basic treatments and for half-decent schools.
The education system had many issues long before COVID-19 made matters worse. The pandemic has only exacerbated the negatives. The RTE had noble intentions but mixed results. India needs a modern education system that expands both the minds of the young and the arc of their opportunities. The pandemic has been terrible for students, but it provides a great opportunity for reform. It remains to be seen if the government will grasp the opportunity.
Legislating Education
Under the current legislation, both the central government in Delhi and the state governments individually can pass laws concerning education. Generally, schools are administered by the state departments of education, while the central government dictates overall guidelines and policy. The Ministry of Human Resource Development oversees the education and literacy of the entire country, conducted in three types of schools: private unaided, private aided, and government-funded and government-run public schools. According to data from the Indian Education Ministry, 75% of all schools are government-owned, responsible for the education of approximately 65% of all school students, or 113 million, across 20 states.
According to Oxfam India, 80% of students in government schools have received no education since the pandemic began. Furthermore, despite the government broadcasting certain classes on television, many students have been unable to access them because they lack basic infrastructure at home. Over 200 million Indians do not own a television, phone or radio. Additionally, this method of teaching and learning is not interactive, with students finding it difficult to grasp the material.
While poor government schools remain closed, private schools have adapted to virtual learning. However, only 23% of all Indian households have access to a computer. This figure drops to only 4% among the rural population. Rural areas in particular are struggling with the fallout from the pandemic such as the migrant crisis and rampant unemployment, so education ranks low on local governments’ priority lists.
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To make matters worse, the closing of schools in early 2020 translated to the effective cancellation of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme that provided 116 million schoolchildren with hot meals. The central government has drafted guidelines for states and union territories to supply cooked meals or food-security allowances to schoolchildren. However, it is clear that various municipalities have failed to implement these guidelines. For instance, Bihar took 44.6 million tons of grains from the central government in 2019 to feed schoolchildren; in 2020, this figure dropped to zero. Children are not only missing out on education but also on nutrients. This is reversing years of progress that India had made in combating malnutrition. It is well known that malnutrition hinders intellectual development and can lead to poor academic performance, disease and even death. Children in poor families now face an increased risk of malnutrition as the gap between them and their more prosperous counterparts increases by the day.
But even children from more affluent families are struggling to cope with online learning. Depression and anxiety are on the rise. In India, board examinations — the final set of tests for students graduating from high school — have been canceled. This has left millions of students worrying about their future.
Misguided Provisions
One of the key problems with the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act is that it is poorly drafted. It is unclear and repetitive. According to the District Information System of Education, as of 2016, only 13% of all Indian schools achieved compliance with RTE norms. As a national act, the RTE establishes certain parameters, procedures and standards for both private and public schools to follow. It places a primary emphasis on the idea of education for all by dictating that every child between the ages of six and 14 must be eligible to receive free education. However, Indian children are still struggling to obtain the education promised to them.
The most adversely affected are the children living in rural areas who make up 73% of Indian youth. About 90% of the facilities in these districts are government-run public schools that struggle with untrained teachers and poor infrastructure, failing to meet the standards set by the RTE. Schools that do not follow these standards are forced to shut down. In many cases, these schools are the only option available.
According to the India School Closure Report published by Centre for Civil Society in India, between April 2015 to March 2018, 2,469 schools were closed in 14 states due to RTE non-compliance, while 4,482 were threatened with closure and a further 13,546 were served closure notices. In line with Luis Miranda’s analysis for Forbes India, if we assume an average of 200 students per institution in Punjab, the closure of 1,170 schools there as of August 2015 amounted to 234,000 students being unable to attend a school of their choice or to receive an education at all in just one state.
For several states, data on the extent of school closures remain missing. As of 2016, total enrolment in public schools was only 1% higher for elementary schools and 2% higher for secondary schools compared to 2000. Data from 2016 reveal that enrolment decreased in states such as Madhya Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal.
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The RTE has misguided provisions that may be well-meaning but are highly damaging. The act mandates a 25% quota to be reserved at the entry-level of educational institutions for students from economically weaker sections and disadvantaged groups. The law states that the central government must reimburse schools for the costs incurred due to the quota by either paying schools’ per-child expenses or the fees charged, whichever is lower.
However, this provision has been implemented unevenly. In 2013-14, Madhya Pradesh filled 88.2% of the 25% quota and Rajasthan filled 69.3%, while states like Uttar Pradesh managed only 3.62% and Andhra Pradesh just 0.21%. Furthermore, corruption under the quota provision is also rampant. Parents often issue fraudulent income certificates to qualify under the quota, and schools do not oppose bribery as they favor students from affluent families. When wealthy private schools try to integrate economically weaker students, existing students often withdraw their admission due to a broad physical, infrastructural and cultural chasm between the classes. In India, there is still a stigma around studying with someone from a vastly differing economic background.
Adding Insult to Injury
There is another problem with the quota system for economically underprivileged children. The central government is supposed to reimburse state governments who fund schools for filling their quota. Unfortunately, there is no methodology for this. The central government decides on an ad hoc basis what any state is supposed to get. For example, in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, expenditure per child per year is 3,064 rupees, or approximately $41. However, the central government gives this state of 236 million people only 450 rupees, or around $6, for every poor child. Naturally, schools have little incentive to fill their quota for economically underprivileged children, meaning that a mere 3.62% of the seats are filled.
More significantly, the RTE has failed to address the fundamental issue of the lack of quality in Indian education. According to the 2018 “Annual Status of Education Report,” 55% of fifth graders in public schools could not read a second-grade textbook. The quality of teachers tends to be poor. Their pedagogies are almost invariably outdated. Teachers often lack motivation and training. In 2015-16, 512,000 teachers — or one in six — in elementary government schools were untrained.
One nationwide survey revealed a teacher absentee rate of 23.6% in rural areas. In states like Uttar Pradesh, teachers are hired by paying bribes. Often, they are barely literate. When teachers are qualified, they often run private coaching businesses instead of teaching in the schools.
To add insult to injury, untrained teachers use curricula that have little relevance to the lives of poor schoolchildren. They champion rote-based learning and, more often than not, destroy creativity. Many schools lack proper buildings, decent roofs and proper toilet facilities, especially for girls. Blackboards, basic learning aids and even chalk can run short. In 2018-19, only 28% of all government schools had computers and only 12% had an internet connection. Despite the government campaigning for a digital India, it has done little to provide computers and internet connectivity to schools across the country.
Time for Reform
As of 2020, India spent just 3.1% of its GDP on education. Importantly, every national policy since 1968 has recommended a figure of 6%. Other developing countries such as South Africa and Brazil spend 6.5% and 6.3% respectively. The government of India could start with emulating its BRICS counterparts in increasing the amount it spends on rearing the next generation.
Even the little amount India spends on education often does not reach schoolchildren, the intended beneficiaries of the system. Like all aspects of Indian life, corruption causes much harm to the most vulnerable of the country’s citizens. The upper and middle classes almost invariably send their children to private schools, as do officials in charge of drafting India’s education policy. It is only the children of the poor who end up in government education, with parents having little knowledge or influence to demand either accountability or quality.
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Officers of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) preside over all ministries in India from finance and industry to culture and education. These IAS officers have little if any experience in education. These officers often spend their time trying to get postings to departments with more power and greater opportunities for corruption. They have little incentive to reform the broken system either at the level of the state or national government. Politicians see little gain from focusing on education either. They are always too busy with the next election.
India’s citizens have to demand better use of their taxpayer money. The best use of that money in the long term is investment in education, not only in as funding but also good policymaking. Politicians must entrust this policy to educationists, not IAS officers. In the past, India’s great institutions were set up by the likes of Rabindranath Tagore, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, not faceless bureaucrats.
India needs educational reform now more than ever. The pandemic has been devastating for hundreds of millions of students. If the government fails to act now, India will become an even more unequal and divided nation than it is today. Without high-quality mass education, the country will never have the skill or the knowledge base to be a truly dynamic economy. India’s government schools need to be good enough for the children of top politicians, not just for its poor downtrodden masses.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Gwen Berry recently protested the playing of the US national anthem by turning away from the flag and holding up a shirt that read “activist athlete.” The protest took place at the Olympic trials in Oregon where Berry had placed third in the hammer throw competition. Her action immediately drew angry responses from the right-wing side of the political spectrum.
A number of right-wing politicians and commentators called her unpatriotic and demanded that she be kicked off the Olympic team. As Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas, put it: “If Gwen Berry is so embarrassed by America, then there’s no reason she needs to compete for our country at the Olympics.”
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Conservative outrage at protests against the American flag and the national anthem is not unusual. When NFL player Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem in the 2016 season to protest racial injustice in the United States, he was roundly criticized in conservative circles. When he became a free agent the next year, no football team would sign him, despite his obvious talents as a quarterback.
Taking a Stand
Gwen Berry and Colin Kaepernick are both African Americans. At one level, they are protesting the history of racial injustice in the United States, represented by the national anthem. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was written by Francis Scott Key, who once declared that black people were “a distinct and inferior race.” His composition includes a verse, rarely sung, that criticizes black Americans who fought on the British side in the War of 1812 in order to gain their freedom from slavery. “The Star-Spangled Banner” became the national anthem only through the efforts of groups that supported the losing Confederate side of the Civil War.
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At another level, Berry and Kaepernick are protesting the current racial injustices in the United States, particularly the police violence against African Americans. The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 is only the most famous example of the brutality that African Americans have experienced at the hands of police forces throughout the country.
Berry and Kaepernick are not alone in their outrage. The demonstrations in the wake of Floyd’s murder, which involved between 15 and 26 million people, were the largest in American history. Protests also spread to over 60 countries around the world. So right-wing critics are not just responding to the symbolism of these athletes taking a stand. They are deeply uncomfortable with the popularity of those sentiments. Most of these critics are the white men and women who dominate the Republican Party and the right-wing media. But one voice raised against Gwen Berry’s action was truly unexpected. It came from a North Korean defector.
Yeonmi Park is a human rights activist who was born in North Korea and left the country as a teenager with her mother. She has acquired an international reputation on the basis of several speeches and a book that details her harrowing experiences leaving North Korea and making her way, eventually, to the United States. Her story has also generated considerable controversy for its numerous inconsistencies.
Park has become something of a celebrity in right-wing circles in America. After Berry’s protest, Park appeared on the Fox News show “Fox & Friends” to denounce the American athlete. “If she did the exact same thing at this very moment, if she was North Korean, not only herself will be executed, [also] eight generations of her family can be sent to political prison camp and execution,” Park declared. “And the fact that she’s complaining about this country, the most tolerant country, she doesn’t really understand history.”
Park’s comments are exceptionally strange. By her reasoning, no one should protest anything in the United States because the conditions here are better than in North Korea. And American protesters shouldn’t exercise their freedom to protest … because no such freedom exists in North Korea.
A Better Place
Of course, the opposite is true. The ability to protest peacefully is what makes the United States a great country, and Gwen Berry and fellow protestors are proving that point, over and over again. Indeed, the country has made great strides because of peaceful protests, not despite them. The civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the peace movement, the LGBTQ movement: All of these protests have made America an infinitely better place. America is not a particularly tolerant country, as the response to Gwen Berry’s protest demonstrates. But it has become a more tolerant country over time because of this history of protest. That is the history that Yeonmi Park so obviously doesn’t understand.
There is another implication in Park’s words: that the suffering of African Americans is somehow less painful or legitimate than the suffering of North Koreans. “I was a slave,” Park told the Fox program. “I was sold in China in 2007 as a child at 13 years old … There is actual injustice.”
Suffering is not a competitive sport. What many North Koreans experience in their country and North Korean defectors suffer in China is truly awful. And what many African Americans experience in the United States is also truly awful. They are not comparable, however. They have to be understood in their own contexts. And activists must fight against these injustices here, there and everywhere — preferably together rather than at cross-purposes.
The sad truth is that Yeonmi Park has become a mouthpiece for the American right wing. Fox News delights in showcasing her views. On one program, for instance, she compares her studies at Columbia University to the brainwashing that she experienced in North Korea, leading her to conclude that the US future “is as bleak as North Korea.”
On another occasion, she combined both her own knowledge of North Korean rhetoric with the similar-sounding nationalist slogans of Trump supporters when she told Fox Business that the American ”education system is brainwashing our children to make them think that this country is racist and make them believe that they are victims. It’s time for us to fight back. Otherwise, it might be too late for us to bring the glory of this country back.”
Since she knows a thing or two about brainwashing, Yeonmi Park might want to take a more critical look at the propaganda of the American right wing. If she does, she might just see that Gwen Berry’s protest is what makes America great. And she might understand how the nationalism and intolerance of Fox News and the Republican Party are pushing the United States ever closer to the North Korean reality that she so despises.
*[This article was originally published by Hankyoreh.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
On June 1, the UK defense and home secretaries announced that the local staff who worked for the British government in Afghanistan, including many interpreters for the British military, would be eligible for expedited relocation to the UK under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP).
The new policy states that “any current or former locally employed staff who are assessed to be under serious threat to life are offered priority relocation to the UK regardless of their employment status, rank or role, or length of time served.” To date, more than 1,300 Afghans and their families have been relocated to the United Kingdom. Another 3,000 more are expected to relocate.
Scholars Under Threat
The ARAP rightly assesses that the local Afghan staff who have worked for the British over the past 20 years are at risk. However, it fails to recognize that Afghan graduates of British universities face a similar threat. These graduates have been one of the main drivers of development in Afghanistan. They have worked for the United Nations, the World Bank and various government entities around the country. They have also promoted British cultural values in Afghanistan. Naturally, the Taliban does not view them favorably.
In particular, the Chevening scholars attract the ire of the Taliban. Over the years, the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has given out scholarships to some of the most promising Afghan students. Their identification with Britain has attracted special attention from the Taliban, who have called them the “spies of the Englishmen” and “children of the devil ” among other things. Such sayings have not been reported in Western media, but Afghans know this only too well.
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International forces have just withdrawn from the Bagram airbase. The Taliban are gaining ground and have even captured the main border crossing to Tajikistan. The Afghan government forces are crumbling. Kabul is already a dystopian city. The progress Afghanistan made around human rights, women’s empowerment, education, economic development and in other areas is already being rolled back. The Taliban view of the world is almost medieval. Harsh Islamic law that bans modern banking, women’s rights and fundamentals such as freedom of expression will soon hold sway again. Chevening scholars are likely to be hunted down and slaughtered, often publicly, because they are tarred by their association with Britain.
The Taliban have a terrible track record. In the past, they have killed thousands of people, closed down schools for girls and imposed draconian punishments, often as a public spectacle. It is an open secret that al-Qaeda used Afghanistan as a base during the reign of the Taliban. Those dark days are about to return, and anyone associated with the West will be targeted. Those associated with the US and the UK are already paying with their lives.
Three Good Reasons
The British government has a moral obligation not only to the local staff but also to the Chevening scholars. The ARAP should cover the latter too. The very scholarship the FCDO granted to promising Afghan students has now become a noose around their necks. The Chevening scholarship has opened new doors for Afghan graduates, but it has also marked them down as Western collaborators in the eyes of the Taliban. Women scholars in particular face a risk. They are often seen as corrupted by Western values and a threat to the traditional Islamic order. Abandoning these scholars to their fate would be the wrong decision for any fair-minded British government.
There is also an economic argument for admitting Afghanistan’s Chevening scholars. In the post-Brexit era, the UK wants to be a global hub for talent. It is in the self-interest of the British government to attract highly skilled and driven professionals from around the world. The Chevening scholars have been trained in the finest British universities. Many of them have also worked abroad or have professional experience with international organizations. They have the skills, the resilience and the initiative to contribute greatly to the British economy.
There is a social argument for Chevening scholars too. They are some of the most cosmopolitan and cultured people in Afghanistan. While studying in the UK, many were active in student life, organizing discussions, volunteering with charities and hosting cultural events. They have an ability to assimilate into the British culture while adding a distinctive flavor to an increasingly multicultural nation. The Afghan scholars are likely to contribute to the arts, civic engagement and the communities they join. They will be an asset to the UK just as the Huguenots, the Jews, the Pakistanis, the Indians and countless others have been in the past.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Recent comments by US Vice-President Kamala Harris over migration from Guatemala are part of an unfortunate pattern. Like Harris, other members of the Biden administration have been telling Central American migrants — many of whom are forced to leave home — “do not come” to the United States because they will be turned away at the US-Mexico border.
Harris walked back these statements last week, partly in response to criticism from groups like Refugees International that swiftly highlighted the right to seek asylum and international protection. In an interview following her trip to Guatemala and Mexico, she said, “Let me be very clear, I am committed to making sure we provide a safe haven for those seeking asylum, period.” But it remains an open question whether this commitment will be reflected in concrete policy change.
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It is time for the United States to show a stronger commitment to the protection needs of Central American migrants. The Biden administration can do so by taking five important steps.
Rights of Central American Migrants
First, the administration must commit to increasing resettlement. Politicians who want to emphasize protection sometimes speak about having migrants apply for asylum from home. This confuses asylum, which is requested at the border or from within the US, with resettlement, which is usually applied for from a third country rather than the home country, where it is too dangerous for people seeking protection to await processing.
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Unfortunately, no significant US refugee resettlement program for Central Americans currently exists. Harris did not discuss plans to create one, even for the women the administration acknowledges flee violence in Guatemala. The statement that Guatemalans should not come undermines not only the right to seek asylum under US law, but it also bolsters a long history of American refusal to recognize Guatemalans as refugees or the role of US policies in causing forced displacement in the region.
The Biden administration has allocated some additional refugee visa slots for Central Americans and established a Migration Resource Center in Guatemala to advise people about the availability of refugee resettlement. However, much more needs to be done by the State Department, Homeland Security (DHS) and Congress to build a substantial resettlement program for Guatemalans. The administration should work with Congress to ensure that more Central Americans are referred and are eligible for refugee resettlement.
Second, the United States must make it possible for additional at-risk youth from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to qualify as refugees through the Central American Minors (CAM) program. On June 15, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced an expansion of the renewed program, which existed under the Obama administration. It allows parents based in the United States to apply to have their children come to the country from Central America as refugees.
This is welcome news. But the devil is in the details. It remains to be seen if, unlike during the Obama-era CAM program, significant numbers of Guatemalan parents will actually be eligible and helped to apply and if US officials sent to interview children will recognize them as refugees. It is also unclear if, this time around, the US government will ensure the safety of children while they are interviewed in Guatemala and provide them with needed support after they arrive in the US. The Biden administration must revise eligibility, retrain adjudicators and commit resources to make this program a true pathway to security for Guatemalan kids.
Third, the Biden administration must also restore asylum at the border. Harris’ description of the border as closed does not accurately represent precisely what is happening, only further adding to the confusion. On the one hand, newly arriving migrants cannot ask for asylum at ports of entry along the US southern border and they could be expelled under an unjustified COVID-19-related order. On the other hand, the administration has exempted unaccompanied minors from Central America from this order and is admitting rather than expelling the majority of arriving families. Yet single adult asylum seekers who enter between ports of entry are an enforcement priority. These migrants are either expelled without any screening for their protection needs or detained at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities for long periods.
Further, the Biden administration recently announced that asylum-seeking families admitted at the border will have their cases adjudicated on a faster timeline in immigration court without ensuring they will have access to counsel. Refugees International encourages the administration to end the COVID-19 expulsion policy, process asylum seekers at ports of entry, release asylum seekers to pursue their claims at their destination locations, and expand access to legal counsel for asylum seekers.
Fourth, the Biden administration must listen to the voices of Central Americans. Harris’ comments will likely do little to affect migration and may take away from other issues that are of the utmost importance for Guatemalans. Smugglers are not swayed by such remarks and continue to profit off a booming business that feeds on the lack of legal pathways available to Central Americans.
Guatemalans themselves often have no control over the conditions that force them to migrate, little of which have to do with US immigration policies. Two devastating hurricanes, pervasive violence and crime, and endemic corruption are some of the main reasons why people flee. These drivers will take years to diminish. In the meantime, the United States should work to build trust with Guatemalan civil society and prioritize support to areas that Guatemalans are specifically calling for help. Most notably, the US needs to support Guatemala in reducing corruption, as several prominent organizations in the country have asked for.
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Finally, the Biden administration must work with Mexico on a holistic approach to migration that goes beyond deterrence and the prevention of northward movement. For decades, the US has asked the Mexican government to help keep migrants from the border through increased enforcement at Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala and ramped up detention and deportation in Mexico. This limits many with international protection concerns from seeking asylum in Mexico or the US.
It remains to be seen whether policy changes like the proposed US-Mexico “Operations Group on Human Smuggling and Human Trafficking” will offer protection to victims of human trafficking at the border, whose needs have been ignored in the past. On his trip to Mexico last week, Secretary Mayorkas met with officials from the National Institute of Immigration (INM), but not with representatives of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR). Nor did the delegation from the United States traveling with Mayorkas include officials focused on asylum and humanitarian concerns. In bilateral discussions about migration with Mexico, the Biden administration needs to increase emphasis on access to protection.
Following Through
If President Joe Biden is serious about providing protection to Central Americans, his administration must more clearly and consistently articulate its commitment to this goal. It must follow through on the commitment via increased access to refugee resettlement and asylum and to humble and holistic cooperation with regional partners.
Harris’ approach was a political mistake and a lost opportunity. Other plans announced by the administration indicate a more productive approach that can be best fulfilled by adopting the five steps we have outlined.
*[Yael Schacher is a senior US advocate and Rachel Schmidtke is an advocate for Latin America at Refugees International.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
In April, the UK House of Commons formally approved a new directive requiring Northern Ireland’s Department of Health to take “concrete steps” to ensure full abortion services in the north before summer. The directive, which came after years of pressure from inside and outside the north, is the result of the Northern Ireland executive’s delay in commissioning services that were formally decriminalized in 2019.
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It is time for Northern Ireland’s secretary of state, Brandon Lewis, to ensure that reproductive rights in the north are safe, legal and accessible to all who need them. The complicated politics of Northern Ireland have led to this dilemma of jurisdiction. The House of Commons was able to decriminalize abortion services in the north specifically because there was no sitting Northern Ireland executive in Stormont. However, now that there has been a sitting government in Stormont for over a year, many are calling for an end to the executive’s stall tactics.
How Did We Get Here?
Abortion services in the United Kingdom were legalized by the 1967 Abortion Act. Despite the fact that Unionists in the north of Ireland repeatedly call for increased recognition as part of the UK, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has refused to allow this to extend to reproductive rights. Northern Ireland remains home to one of the most restrictive abortion regimes in the world, forcing pregnant people to travel across the Irish Sea to access services.
UN committees and the Human Rights Council have released numerous reports stating that the UK has been breaching the rights of pregnant people in the north by limiting their access to abortion services. These same reports were a driving force behind the 2018 referendum on abortion in the Republic of Ireland, which passed affirmatively with nearly 70% of civilians supporting wide-reaching abortion reform. Pregnant people in the north have been forced to travel either to the republic or to mainland UK, which presents an enormous barrier to access.
Despite the majority of Northern Ireland’s citizens saying that they would like abortion to be legalized, consistent vetoes by the DUP have blocked the power-sharing government from passing abortion reform.
Lack of Government: An Opportunity
The legacy of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland requires a power-sharing government between the nationalist and unionist communities. This means that neither party can be in position without the other. While this has been the reality for the past two decades, the issue rose to prominence in January 2017, with the resignation of the nationalist Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness as deputy first minister. This led to the collapse of the executive in Stormont, which continued until January 11, 2020.
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During this period of three years, the country had no power-sharing assembly to carry it through Brexit negotiations with the European Union, deal with rising turmoil in the north over the impact of these talks, and no opportunity to potentially build on momentum around abortion rights coming from the Republic of Ireland.
The collapse of the executive allowed the British Parliament to pass legislation legalizing gay marriage and abortion in the north, bringing it in line with mainland UK laws, the Republic of Ireland’s laws since 2018 and international human rights norms. The move — which is only possible due to the legacy of The Troubles and the Good Friday Agreement, which allows for direct rule from London — was cause for enormous celebration by abortion rights activists.
The proposal from Labour MP Stella Creasy was supported by 332 votes to 99, which forced decriminalization on October 21, 2019, if the Northern Ireland government was not restored. Despite attempts by the DUP to form a government in order to avoid the decriminalization, Michelle O’Neill and Sinn Fein resisted efforts, allowing the laws to be passed. Notwithstanding arguments against direct intervention from Westminster, the decision was applauded by pro-choice activists across the island.
The new directive requires the Department of Health to take “concrete steps” to ensure full abortion services in Northern Ireland before the summer. This comes after pressure from within and without, with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission recently issuing legal action against the Stormont executive over the delay in commissioning services.
What Does the Decision Mean?
Over a year and a half after the British Parliament decriminalized abortion, the UK government has formally reprimanded the Northern Ireland executive for “dragging its feet.” Parliament has formally approved regulations that enable Secretary Lewis to roll out abortion services across the north. This move is long overdue and is a response to stall tactics by the DUP government over the past year.
The delays have meant that the burden has fallen on health trusts to carry out interim services for abortions up to 10 weeks, forcing pregnant people seeking terminations beyond 10 weeks to travel to mainland UK for services. Without adequate funding or resources from the Department of Health, these trusts have been had to either provide limited services or suspend them altogether.
The Northern Irish executive must move, without delay, to create an abortion regime that adheres to international human rights norms and that is accessible to all those who need to access care. However, it appears unlikely that the two majority parties, the DUP and Sinn Fein, will be able to reach an agreement on the services after the resignation of First Minister Arlene Foster. Her successor, Edwin Poots, caters toward the hyper-Christian base of the DUP, publicly opposing adoption by gay couples, supporting conversion practices and restrictions on abortion.
Through the rules that govern the Northern Ireland executive and power-sharing agreement, Lewis has both the legal authority and the financial abilities to “compel Stormont to commission full abortion services if there is no movement by the summer.” However, in the absence of clear decisions from Lewis, coupled with a Stormont executive that refuses to move forward with their own directives, the responsibility has fallen on community organizations such as the Alliance for Choice to provide access to abortion services across the north.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the fact that health professionals are already stretched thin throughout the north. Many of them do not have the financial or staffing resources to continue to provide services for those seeking an abortion. While a truly free, safe and legal abortion regime will look different everywhere, it is clear that the current model in the north is not working. In the absence of appropriate action from the Northern Ireland executive, and to assume the burden from already-stretched-thin community organizations, Secretary Lewis must act now to create a government-financed and government-run centralized model for abortions without restrictions in the north.
*[Fair Observer is a media partner of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
