News Wrap
AGD

Real estate projects in India are increasingly tainted by financial corruption. In the cities multi-storeyed residential buildings are coming up with apartments provided with a private lily pond, a car elevator and parking spaces for three cars next to the living room. Rooms for ‘‘parking’’, which the developer did to pay municipal fees because they were not considered living spaces, are sold to buyers as a way to add banquet facilities, extra rooms, or whatever else for utilization. Mumbai has lost potential revenue of Rs 200 billion ($3.6 billion) in fiscal 2012-13, because of such violations of rules. Developers, bureaucrats and politicians are involved in the deep rooted nexus of corruption. There are numerous examples of prime plots of government land in Mumbai, being sold at a low price to powerful lobbies, bureaucrats and former army officers. However, recent changes in building rules of Mumbai, are bringing in millions of rupees in extra revenue. Inflow of extra tax revenue has put resources behind big public works projects, like a 22-kilometre bridge that will connect Mumbai island city to the mainland. Housing and commercial development will gain wider access to new vast tracts of land.

In Kolkata, operators camping in ruling party local office premises, openly demand money, in the name of elected representatives to facilitate illegal construction. Exchange of huge sums of money can help evict tenants, facilitate illegal construction, and ensure co-operation from police and civic officials for developing property without clearances.

Tribals Assaulted
In the tribal belt of Thane district (Maharashtra), a number of Christian Missionary Organizations have been working for several years. Jesus for all Nations, Church of North India, Blessing Church, the Voice of Holy Spirit and New Life hold prayer meetings among the tribal community. Hindu extremist elements and those who attend Christian prayer meetings are in conflict. Since the last few months, tribal Christians have been attacked by right wing Hindu elements in nearby Vikramgad and Wada. Sometimes the attacks are led by other tribals. Many non-Christians join the prayer meetings voluntarily. Christian evangelists never press for conversion, though it is emphasized that there is one god.

On 30 December 2012, in Tamsai village of Palghar Tehsil (Thane district), a mob of around 150 tribal villagers vandalized prayer meetings, damaged harmoniums and wooden floors, and tore up Bibles. Many in the mob were allegedly drunk. The mob also vandalized prayer meetings in Kaspada village. Pastors have been warned not to enter the villages. Police have not registered any complaints against the attackers. The panchayats have not given permission for the construction of any religious structure. Newly started constructions are being misconstrued as for a new church. The communal bias of the police is encouraging a spate of attacks by extremist elements on Christian places of worship.

Chagos Islands
From 1814, the Chagos archipelago of coral islands in the Indian ocean has been a British colony. USA obtained Brish sanction in 1966 to use the islands as a defence base for 50 years. About 1200 islanders were shifted to prevent them from pursuing any claim to independence or protection under the UN charter. The original inhabitants were evacuated to Mauritius and the Seychelles. Some have formed a community in Crawley, West Sussex. USA established the airbase of Diego Garcia, with the islanders cleared out in the 1960s and 1970s. The 1000 islanders, who were removed from the British colony to make way for a US military base, suffered inhuman and degrading treatment during deportation. Their pets were killed as families were removed by ship, leaving behind their homes and furniture.

Recently the Chagos people have lost their claims at the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg. The Court rejected a compensation claim for 150 million Euro on behalf of 2000 original islanders and descendents. The judges ruled that the territory was geographically beyond their reach; and that the islanders had agreed to give up their damages claims in 1982, when Britain paid them 4 million Pound. The exiles had been pursuing to overturn a formal ban on resettlement, since the US military base has brought American, British, Filipino and Singaporean people to live in the islands, while the natives remained banned. Terrorist attacks have made Dieogo Garcia more useful as a strategic US base, albeit Britain has declared the Chagos reef as the world’s largest marine protected area.

Drug wars in Latin America
The drug trafficking gang, known as the Primeiro Commando de capital (PCC), or First Command of the Capital has a tight grip over the vast impoverished neighbourhoods and metropolitan regions of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The PCC controls more than half of the trade in crack, cocaine and marijuana in Brazil. It has members in Bolivia, the source of 80% of the cocaine in Brazil, Paraguay and Colombia, where it has ties with the rebel FACRC group. Started in 1993, as a prisoners’ union to defend inmates’ rights, the PCC now controls 135 to 152 of Sao Paulo’s prisons, imposing its rule like a statute, similar to a revolutionary manifesto. The organization’s leaders, mostly in jails, run the PCC from their cells. Seizures of Cocaine by the authorities in Brazil tripled between 2004 and 2010, where much of the drug is bound for Europe, even though Brazil has invested billions in border control. A truce between the PCC and the police authorities was broken in May 2012, when Sao Paulo’s elite police unit, the Rota, killed six PCC members. The gang retaliated by killing launching their own reprisals, the violence has spiralled.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 33, February 24-Mar 2, 2013

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