LETTERS

Issn 0012-9976
Ever since the first 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-five years (1969-2004)
Krishna Raj
gave EPW the reputation it now enjoys.

editor

C Rammanohar Reddy
Deputy Editor

Bernard DMello
web Editor

subhash rai
chief copy editor

roger alexander
Senior Assistant Editors

Lina Mathias
aniket Alam
Srinivasan ramani
copy editors

Prabha Pillai
jyoti shetty
Assistant editor

P S Leela
editorial Assistant

lubna duggal
production

u raghunathan
s lesline corera
suneethi nair
Circulation

Gauraang Pradhan Manager

B S Sharma
Advertisement Manager

Kamal G Fanibanda
General Manager & Publisher

K Vijayakumar
editorial
edit@epw.in

Circulation
circulation@epw.in

Advertising
advertisement@epw.in

Economic and Political Weekly

320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate
Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel
Mumbai 400 013
Phone: (022) 4063 8282
FAX: (022) 2493 4515

EPW Research Foundation

EPW Research Foundation, established in 1993, conducts
research on financial and macro-economic issues in India.

Director

k kanagasabapathy
C 212, Akurli Industrial Estate
Kandivali (East), Mumbai 400 101
Phones: (022) 2887 3038/41
Fax: (022) 2887 3038
epwrf@vsnl.com
Printed by K Vijayakumar at Modern Arts and Industries,
151, A-Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai-400 013 and
published by him on behalf of Sameeksha Trust
from 320-321, A-Z Industrial Estate,
Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai-400 013.
Editor: C Rammanohar Reddy.

More on Participatory
Aquifer Mapping

propos of the letter Dangers in Participatory Aquifer Mapping (16 February 2013), it is important to understand
the background regarding the groundwater crisis in India. Eshwer Kale cautions us about the need to think about
participatory aquifer mapping and regulation before rolling these out on a large
scale. Such caution is required, but it
should not be a deterrent to an exercise
that promises a common pool approach to
managing groundwater resources. Indias
approach until quite recently was programmed towards searching for newer
groundwater sources even as we took
giant steps in applying water for irrigation and other needs.
The introduction of a common pool
approach to groundwater management
cannot move forward without an understanding of the diverse aquifer setting in
India at the scales of villages, habitations, watersheds, river basins and
even towns and cities. Decentralised
groundwater access has helped improve
the lives and livelihoods of millions of
Indian farmers but has led to resource
anarchy. The consequences have been
groundwater depletion, scarcity and contamination, leading to a gross vulnerability in about 60% of Indias districts.
It is being stated that the 1972 drought
was about food scarcity, whereas the
2013 drought is about an extremely
serious water crisis, the magnitude of
which cannot be easily fathomed.
The Twelfth Plan approach on water
resources clearly states the need to move
significantly away from an exploratorynew sources-development approach to a
resource-management centric approach.
Managing demand for water poses
the biggest challenge in the reformed
approach to water resources. The proposition, as envisioned, is not so much about
mapping to identify new aquifers that
people can exploit, but to mark the
characteristics of aquifers and help
communities understand their boundaries, their stocks and flows with the purpose of promoting a common pool perspective to the large mass of groundwater
march 9, 2013

users. This exercise will also help streamline groundwater recharge at scale,
one of the important tenets of groundwater governance.
Community participation is important in
any demand-based regulation of natural
resources. Groundwater is no different.
However, getting people to participate in
socially regulated processes for managing resources like groundwater is difficult
unless they participate in the process of
understanding the resource. There are
promising and interesting experiences
emerging on participatory groundwater
management. Groundwater is a partly
visible and complex resource, making it
all the more important to link participatory understanding to the management and regulation of such a resource.
While everyone can act as auditors on
how the government strategises the
promise of sustainable groundwater
management, it would be pertinent to
also think about how researchers and
experts can play an active role in the
exercise itself, to prevent misuse of information for individual benefits, in the
pursuit of not only sustainable management of groundwater but also equitable
utilisation of a resource that has become
vulnerable and fragile, often outside
the access of marginalised sections of
the community.
Himanshu Kulkarni, Pune
P S Vijayshankar, Bagli, Dewas Dt, MP

Inequality within Dalit

Community

S S Pandian deserves much appreciation for his article Caste in

Tamil Nadu-III: Denying Difference
(EPW, 23 February 2013). It is rather
easy to criticise brahmins and brahmanism but it needs courage to analyse
the present scenario of dalit dogmas.
His article on the Arunthathiyar inner
reservation is an example of the existing caste hierarchy among the dalits.
Inner reservation is steadfastly opposed
by the elite dalit communities for their
own material and political gains. As the
article shows, this is not merely a story
of Arunthathiyars and Tamil Nadu, but
a national issue.
vol xlviII no 10

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly

LETTERS

It is pathetic that even the selfproclaimed dalit intellectuals hide the fact
of internal differentiation among dalit
communities. When feeble voices for
subcategorisation/inner reservation for
SCs are raised, they are literally threatened by dalit professors/intelligentsia.
The issue of inner reservation has been
examined in three commission reports by
justice Janardanan (Tamil Nadu), justice
Usha Mehra (central government commission on Andhra Pradesh SC-subcategorisation) and justice Sadashivam (SC-subcategorisation in Karnataka). Further,
the chief minister of Bihar has recently
announced maha-dalit status for underrepresented SCs. One needs to remember
that intra-reservation among the dalits was
in operation for more than two decades
in Punjab and Haryana.
P Venkatesan

Asish Gupta, D Manjit

PUDR, DELHI

Bangalore

Throttling Freedom
in Kashmir

eoples Union for Democratic Rights

(PUDR) strongly condemns the imposition of curfew accompanied by a
blanket gag on all media, including television, print and online, in the Kashmir
Valley following the hanging of Afzal
Guru on 9 February.
On 9 February, Kashmir Valley was
placed under a pre-emptive curfew forcing people to stay locked inside their
houses. Satellite and cable TV, internet
and even mobile sms had been blacked
out in the Valley. On the night of 9 February, the police also stopped the publication and distribution of all newspapers. This continued for four days.
The authorities did not allow copy to
reach the press. Police teams visited
various printing presses of daily newspapers and asked the managements to
stop publishing. With internet services
withdrawn, online editions too could
not get updated on time.
This was done to silence the protests
against the cold-blooded judicial killing
of Guru and to keep the people in the
dark about dissenting voices and popular
opinion in Kashmir. Evidently, putting
the entire population of the Valley under
house-arrest and the blatant violation of
Economic & Political Weekly

the right to free speech, expression and

assembly did not prick the conscience of
the self-styled keepers of the collective
conscience of the country.
Gagging of the media is nothing new
in Kashmir, and by and large it goes
unreported in the media. In fact, Indias
media watchdogs have acquired a notoriety in consistently acquiescing to the
throttling of the freedom of expression
and assembly through their silence
where Kashmir is concerned. PUDR
sincerely hopes that the Indian mainstream media and its apex bodies like
the Press Council of India, Editors Guild
and the News Broadcasters Association
will find the courage to speak out
against this outrageous attack on the
freedom of the press and the systematic
throttling of democratic rights of the
people of Kashmir.

EPW

march 9, 2013

Death of Kalandar Bears

ne More Sloth Bear Dies. So ran

the headline of a news item in
the Bangalore edition of Deccan Herald
(1 February 2013, p 2). Ratnakar, as the
bear was called, had been rescued in
June 2009 from Hampikatte, Bellary
from Kalandars and died because the
Bear Rescue and Rehabilitation Center
(BRRC) could not diagnose and treat
the animal for TB infection.
How were the bears rescued from
their Kalandar captors and tormentors?
It began by luring the Kalandars into
getting their bears micro-chipped and
the rest fell into place when the Kalandar
men with their bears set out on their
savaari, a Kalandar expression signifying
a journey when they roamed to make a
living. The Kalandar men, innocent of

the machinations of the wildlife activists,

were picked up and in some cases jailed.
Provisions of the Wild Life Protection
Act, 1972 were invoked in this rescuing.
This private and public partnership intimidated the Kalandars into surrendering
their bears to the BRRC, a collaborative
project between wildlife organisations
both local and foreign and the state
which was inaugurated in 2002. The
Kalandars, with little knowledge of the
larger world and bereft of any resources,
now experienced the terrifying powers
of the law and jails. Raju, the last
Kalandar bear, was surrendered to the
BRRC in 2009 and with this the profession of bear-dancing of the Kalandar
people ended officially.
The Kalandars number about 500
families and live in 11 villages spread
over five districts in Karnataka. A Muslim
nomadic tribe treated as untouchables
by the mainstream Muslim community,
the Kalandars are syncretic in their
religious practices. Their community in
Manglapura village (Koppal district) numbering about 30 families is the guardian
of the village shrine of two Hindu deities:
Bothana and Chaudeswari.
Two ideas animate the discourse of
animal rights activism. The wild is the
natural habitat for bears and once in
captivity they are bound to be ill-treated.
Who then could be more criminal than
the Kalandar people? But with the BRRC
losing more than 24 sloth bears to TB in
the past two years, freedom from the
Kalandars has turned out to be as deadly
as Kalandar captivity. The Kalandar
people with a history going back to the
pre-Mughal era are now getting sedentarised into a labouring poor class that
carries the stigma of criminality.
Ajit Kumar
Nagpur

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.
Read them at http://epw.in
(1) Quashing Dissent: Where National Security and Commercial Media Converge
Sukumar Muralidharan
(2) All Out Crackdown on the Working Class in Noida Kavita Krishnan
Articles posted before 2 March 2013 remain available in the Web Exclusives section.

vol xlviII no 10

LETTERS

Subscription Rates
(Revised rates effective January 1, 2013)

Print Edition For India

Web Edition/Digital Archives

Rates for Six Months (in Rs)

The full content of the EPW and the entire archives are also available to those who do not wish to
subscribe to the print edition.

Category
Individuals

Print (Plus free web access to issues of previous two years)

875

Print + Digital Archives

1,200

Category

Rates for One Year (in Rs)

Category

Print (Plus free web access

to issues of previous two years)

Institutions
Individuals
Teachers/Researchers
Students

3,000
1,650
1,325
825

Print + Digital Archives

(According to Number of Concurrent Users)
Up to 5
5,000

6 to 10
6,000

More than 10 Single User

7,500
1,975
1,550
975

Rates for Three Years (in Rs)

Category

Print (Plus free web access to

issues of previous two years)
4,600
3,600

Individuals
Teachers/Researchers

Print + Digital Archives

Single User
5,600
4,400

Concessional rates are restricted to students, teachers and researchers in India. To subscribe
at concessional rates, please submit proof of eligibility from an institution.
Print Edition: All subscribers to the print edition can download from the web, without making
any extra payment, articles published in the previous two calendar years.
Print plus Digital Archives: Subscriber receives the print copy and has access to the entire archives
on the EPW web site.

Print Edition For SAARC and Rest of the World (Air Mail)
Airmail Subscription for One Year (in US $)
Print (Plus free web access to issues
of previous two years)
Institutions
SAARC
Rest of the World
Individuals
SAARC
Rest of the World

140
250

Print + Digital Archives

(According to Number of Concurrent Users)
Up to 5

6 to 10

300

400

More than 10 Single User

160
500

110
170

120
200

India (in Rs)

Number of
Concurrent Users

Institutions

Individuals

SAARC (in US $)
Number of
Concurrent Users

Rest of the World (in US $)

Number of
Concurrent Users

Up to Five

2,500

Up to Five

200

Six to 10

4,000

Six to 10

320

More than 10

6,000

More than 10

50

More than 10

410

Single User

1,000

Single User

20

Single User

40

Types of Web Access to the Digital Archives

Individual subscribers can access the site by a username and a password, while
institutional subscribers get access by specifying IP ranges.
To know more about online access to the archives and how to access the archives send
us an email at circulation@epw.in and we will be pleased to explain the process.

How to Subscribe:
Payment can be made by either sending a demand draft/cheque in favour of
Economic and Political Weekly or by making online payment with a credit card/net
banking on our secure site at www.epw.in. (For Inland subscriptions if making
payment by cheque, please add Rs 35 to cheques drawn on banks outside Mumbai,
when collection is not at par).

Address for communication:

Economic & Political Weekly

320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate
Ganpatrao Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013, India

Notes for Contributors

Contributors are requested to follow EPW's style
sheet while preparing their articles. The style
sheet is posted on EPW's website at
http://www.epw.in/terms-policy/style-sheet.html.
It will help immensely for faster processing and
error-free editing if writers follow the recommended
style sheet, especially with regard to citation and
preparation of the bibliography.

Special Articles
welcomes original research papers in any of the
social sciences.
Articles must be no more than 8,000 words,
including notes and references. Longer articles will
not be processed.
Contributions should be sent preferably by email.
Special articles should be accompanied by an
abstract of a maximum of 150-200 words.
Papers should not have been simultaneously
submitted for publication to another journal or
newspaper. If the paper has appeared earlier in a
different version, we would appreciate a copy of
this along with the submitted paper.
Graphs and charts need to be prepared
in MS Office (Word/Excel) and not in jpeg or
other formats.
Receipt of articles will be immediately
acknowledged by email.
Every effort is taken to complete early processing
of the papers we receive. However, we receive 70
articles every week and adequate time has to be
provided for internal reading and external refereeing.
It can therefore take up to four months for a final
EPW

decision on whether the paper for the Special Article

section is accepted for publication.
Articles accepted for publication can take up to
six to eight months from date of acceptance to
appear in the EPW. Papers with immediate relevance
for policy would be considered for early publication.
Please note that this is a matter of editorial judgment.

Commentary
invites short contributions to the Commentary
section on topical social, economic and political
developments. These should ideally be between 1,000
and 2,500 words.
A decision on Commentary-length articles will be
communicated within 6-8 weeks, or earlier.

EPW

Keywords
Authors are requested to list six to eight keywords
for their articles.

Book Reviews
sends out books for review. It does not normally
accept unsolicited reviews. However, all reviews that
are received are read with interest and unsolicited
review on occasion is considered for publication.

EPW

General Guidelines
Writers are requested to provide full details for
correspondence: postal address, day-time phone
numbers and email address.
EPW requests writers not to send revised versions
based on stylistic changes/additions, deletions of
references, minor changes, etc, as this poses
challenges in processing. Revised versions will not be
processed. When there are major developments in
the field of study after the first submission, authors
can send a revised version.

Copyright
EPW posts all published articles on its website
and may reproduce them on CDs.
EPW also posts all published articles on select
databases.
Copyright of all articles published in the Journal
belongs to the author or to the organisation where
the author is employed as determined by the
authors terms of employment.

Permission for Reproduction

encourages researchers to comment on

articles published in EPW. Submissions should be 800
to 1,600 words.

No published article or part thereof should be

reproduced in any form without prior permission of
the author(s).
A soft/hard copy of the author(s)s approval should
be sent to EPW.
Address for communication:

Letters

Economic & Political Weekly

Readers of EPW are encouraged to comment

(300 words) on published articles.
All letters should have the writers full
name and postal address.

320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate

Ganpatrao Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013, India
Email: edit@epw.in, epw.mumbai@gmail.com

Discussion
EPW

march 9, 2013

vol xlviII no 10

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly