Rahul to fight Centre's choke on dissent, free expression

Congress workers across country to support civil society groups

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi (pictured) on Thursday said he would raise “within Parliament and outside” the issue of the Centre’s clampdown on democracy, right to dissent and freedom of expression.
 
He assured a delegation of civil society and peoples movement group — including Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai and Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan’s Nikhil De — that the Congress would take the initiative to build alliances with other non-National Democratic Alliance (NDA) political parties to highlight the threat to democratic freedom. He also assured the delegation that Congress workers across the country would be directed to reach out to civil society groups and support grassroots struggles for natural resource and livelihood rights and justice.

 
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had taken civil society on board through the National Advisory Council and enunciated several rights-based legislations, including the Right to Information, Right to Education and the National Food Security Bill.
 

Environmentalist Ashish Kothari of Kalpavriksh told Business Standard, “We see a definite erosion of the few social welfare measures in favour of the poor and marginalised in our society, and the measures to safeguard the environment on which we all depend. We see a diminution of space for dissent whether in the voluntary sector, the trade union movement, the minorities, Dalits, adivasis and other forest-dwelling communities.”

 
Priya Pillai from Greenpeace, for instance, was in the news when she was “offloaded” from a flight to London where she was scheduled to make a presentation before British members of Parliament regarding alleged human rights violation at Mahan in Madhya Pradesh. The activist group has been in trouble for receiving foreign funding. The government had alleged the group’s activities were affecting the economic interests of the state.
 
Gandhi told the delegation the “Congress, through its initiatives like the RTI, had decentralised governance.” This, he said, had altered government functioning many times to the peril of the Congress themselves, but the party was committed to upholding constitutional freedoms.

 
The group included representatives from the All India Union of Forest Working People, the Kanhar Dam land acquisition protest movement, New Trade Union Initiative, National Alliance of People’s Movements, among others, and Dalit leader Ramesh Nathan. They would meet CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury next week and have interactions with JD(U)’s Nitish Kumar and RJD’s Laloo Prasad.
 
J Vijayan, General Secretary, Programme for Social Action, who accompanied the delegation, said: “It is not just the draconian changes in the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act and its misuse, but the targeted attack on all those who do not believe in the Hindutva ideology and orientation — be that in free speech, expression, rising intolerance. We are also witnessing under the (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi regime a growing corporate build-up and ugly fringe elements raising their head. This needs to be thwarted and we need to wage a long political battle for it. Hence we approached Rahul Gandhi, and soon other political parties would be approached.”