Freedom in the World 1998 - India

1998 Scores

Status: Free
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Civil Liberties: 3
Political Rights: 2

Ratings Change

India's civil liberties rating changed from 4 to 3, and its status changed from Partly Free to Free, due to the continued growth of civic organizations that are actively working to strengthen human rights protections, and for methodological reasons.

Overview

The right-wing Indian People's Party (BJP) formed a coalition government following the winter 1998 elections, capping a decade's old drive for political power and legitimacy by India's Hindu nationalist movement. The balloting, however, gave no party an outright majority and suggested no clear policy direction. Voters indicated disillusionment with India's corrupt, criminalized political system by rejecting incumbents.

India achieved independence from Britain in 1947 with the partition of the subcontinent into a predominantly-Hindu India, under premier Jawaharlal Nehru, and a Muslim Pakistan. The 1950 constitution provides for a lower Lok Sabha (House of the People), with 543 seats elected for a five year term (plus two appointed Anglo-Indian seats), and an upper Rajya Sabha (Council of States) with executive power vested in a prime minister, who is the leader of the party commanding the most support in the lower house.

The centrist, secular Congress party ruled continuously except for periods in opposition in 1977-80 and 1989-91. In the late 1980's, a non-Congress administration introduced government job quotas for "backward" castes, triggering violent protests. In the aftermath, lower caste-based parties increasingly championed caste causes, and angry upper caste voters increasingly supported the BJP. During the campaign for the 1991 elections, a suspected Sri Lankan Tamil separatist assassinated the former premier Rajiv Gandhi, heir to the political dynasty of Congress standard bearers Nehru and Indira Gandhi. With India facing a balance of payments crisis, new Congress premier P.V. Narasimha Rao introduced reforms aimed at transforming an autarkic, control-bound economy into a market-based system partially open to foreign investment.

In December 1992, Hindu fundamentalists, incited by the BJP and militant Hindu organizations, destroyed the 16th century Babri mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya, setting off weeks of deadly communal violence. In the mid-1990's, Congress lost eleven state elections due to a string of corruption scandals, a backlash against economic reforms by poor and lower caste voters, and Muslim anger over the government's failure to prevent communal violence. Regional parties in southern India, and lower caste-based parties and the BJP in the northern Hindi-speaking belt, made large gains.

In the April-May 1996 elections, the BJP surged to 161 seats, mainly in five northern and western states. Congress had its worst showing ever with 140 seats, as low caste Hindus and Muslims deserted the party in droves. In May, a BJP-led minority government resigned after 13 days after failing to attract secular allies. The United Front (UF), a 13-party minority coalition of regional and leftist parties, took power in June backed by Congress.

UF governments led by H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral proved fractious and ineffective. In November 1997, a commission investigating Rajiv Gandhi's death linked a tiny, Tamil Nadu-based UF constituent party to Sri Lankan guerrillas implicated in the assassination. Congress withdrew its support from the UF, leading President K.R. Narayanan to call fresh elections.

With Congress suffering splits and defections and apparently headed for a worse defeat than in 1996, Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi's widow, broke a long political silence and galvanized the party with more than 140 campaign speeches nationwide in January and February 1998. Gandhi, 51, apologized for past Congressional mistakes and attacked the BJP as divisive and inimical to India's secular traditions. The BJP campaigned as the only party that could deliver strong, stable government and fight corruption. The party also promised to introduce protectionist economic policies, eliminate the separate Sharia (Islamic law) code for marriage, divorce and inheritance followed by the country's 120 million Muslims, build a Hindu temple at the site of the Babri mosque, and consider "inducting" nuclear weapons into the country's arsenal.

However, for many Indians the primary concern appeared to be rising food and fuel prices, unemployment, and the need for better housing and services. In voting staggered over three weeks between February 16 and March 7, the BJP (178 seats) and its allies won 245 seats; Congress (140 seats) and its allies, 166; the UF, 95; minor parties and vacant, 39. Throughout India, voters rejected parties in power at the state level. The BJP made inroads in southern Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu states, but lost seats in two former strongholds, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. Commentators said the "Sonia effect" had prevented Congress from being routed.

In the aftermath, Gandhi consolidated her control of the Congress party by becoming president and parliamentary leader, even though she did not stand in the elections. In late March, the BJP and more than a dozen allies won a vote of confidence with 274 votes, and formed a government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The BJP gave up most of its sectarian agenda in order to attract secular parties into its coalition. But in May, India carried out a series of underground nuclear tests, which the government said were in response to a growing Chinese military threat. The opposition accused the government of isolating India diplomatically, of incurring trade, banking, and aid sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries, and of betraying the 350 million Indians living in absolute poverty. Many urban Hindus initially supported the tests as an assertion of the country's geopolitical aspirations, although anti-nuclear activists later sharply criticized the government's decision. Significantly, the June budget raised military spending by 14 percent.

By the fall, the coalition government's internal instability contributed to policy drift. With inflation rising and the federal deficit at nearly five percent of GDP, the government offered few solutions to the country's slowing economic growth. In November, the soaring price of onions and other staples helped Congress oust BJP governments in elections in Delhi and Rajasthan. Congress also fought off a BJP challenge in populous Madhya Pradesh.

Many observers believe Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, the hardline BJP leader, is the real power behind the Vajpayee government. More broadly, observers suggest that the government is ultimately controlled by the National Volunteer Service (RSS), a far-right Hindu group modeled after 1930's European fascist parties. Vajpayee and other BJP leaders are RSS members, and the RSS reportedly vetted key cabinet appointments. The Vajpayee government reportedly replaced the governors of several key states with RSS supporters, and placed pro-RSS bureaucrats into top posts.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Indian citizens can change their government democratically; however, widespread official corruption and the criminalization of politics perpetuate poverty, disease, and illiteracy, and contribute to civil liberties violations.

The 1996 and 1998 elections were the fairest in India's history. Authorities monitored compliance with campaign spending limits and restricted the use of state resources for campaigning. Photo identity cards helped prevent fraud. Nevertheless, in the 1998 elections, the independent election commission ordered repolling in 1,420 of the 350,000 stations involved in the first stage of balloting. In Bihar, left-wing militants attacked polling stations, while in Assam and other northeastern states separatist militants exploded landmines and killed several election officials and candidates. On February 14, a series of bomb explosions in the southern city of Coimbatore killed 56 people shortly before a rally headed by L.K. Advani, the BJP president. Police blamed the explosions on two underground Islamic militant organizations. Overall, election violence killed more than 150 people.

In 1998, the election commission tightened the restrictions against participation by convicted criminals. Nevertheless, since the 1970's the criminalization of politics has accelerated. In February, the New York Times cited studies showing that more than a third of state legislators in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, have criminal records. The London-based Financial Times reported that Indian newspapers claimed it took three kidnappings to pay for a poll campaign in the state. Nationwide, in 1997, the Election Commission estimated that 40 MP's and 700 state assembly representatives faced charges or had been convicted of offenses ranging from murder to extortion. In the 1996 vote, one study found that more than 1,500 of the 13,886 candidates had criminal records, including murder, kidnapping, rape, and extortion.

The situation is worst in the impoverished northern state of Bihar. Many legislators reportedly lead criminal gangs and buy their way into politics; gang warfare often pits upper caste landowners against lower caste tenant farmers; political killings are routine; and in 1997 the chief minister resigned after allegations that he and his associates stole nearly $300 million in state funds. The constitution allows the central government to dissolve state governments following a breakdown in normal administration. Successive governments have misused this power to gain control of states under opposition administration, although in 1997 and 1998 President Narayanan persuaded central governments not to impose central rule on Uttar Pradesh despite political turmoil there. Overall, economic reforms are steadily devolving power to the states.

The judiciary is independent and in recent years has exercised unprecedented activism in response to public interest litigation over official corruption, environmental issues, and other matters. However, the judicial system has a backlog of more than 30 million cases, is widely considered to be subject to corruption and manipulation at the lower levels, and is largely inaccessible to the poor.

Police, army, and paramilitary forces are responsible for rape, torture, arbitrary detentions, "disappearances," and staged "encounter killings," and occasionally destroy homes, particularly in Kashmir, Punjab, and the northeastern states. (A separate report on Kashmir appears in the Related Territories section). The 1983 Armed Forces (Punjab and Chandigarh) Special Powers Act grants security forces wide latitude to use lethal force in Punjab, where a brutal army crackdown in the early 1990's largely ended a Sikh insurgency that began in the early 1980's.

The broadly drawn 1980 National Security Act allows police to detain suspects for up to one year (two years in Punjab) without charges. Police torture of suspects and abuse of ordinary prisoners, particularly low caste members, is routine, and rape of female convicts remains a problem. Since its establishment in 1993, the National Human Rights Commission has monitored custodial deaths and other incidences of torture, although it cannot investigate complaints of human rights violations committed by security forces. The Criminal Procedure Code requires central or state government approval for prosecutions of armed forces members, and in practice, this generally protects security forces from prosecution.

The seven states of northeast India, a resource-rich, strategic region awash in arms and drugs from Burma, continued to be swept by anti-government militancy and intertribal, internecine conflict among its 200 ethnic groups. In recent decades, hundreds of thousands of migrants from other parts of India and Bangladesh have settled in the region, generating local unrest over land tenure and underdevelopment. More than 40 mainly indigenous-based rebel armies are seeking either greater autonomy or independence. The 1958 Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act grants security forces broad powers to use lethal force and detention in Assam and four nearby states, and provides near immunity from prosecution for security forces acting under it. The army has committed atrocities with impunity during counterinsurgency operations in Assam, Manipur, and other states. Guerrillas commit hundreds of killings, abductions, and rapes each year, and extort millions of dollars annually from tea gardens and merchants. In May, Amnesty International reported that security forces are increasingly subjecting children in Manipur to torture, "disappearance," and extrajudicial executions, and occasionally rape mothers in front of their children.

Maoist Naxalite guerrillas control large areas and kill dozens of police, politicians, landlords and villagers each year in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa. Guerrillas run parallel courts in parts of Bihar.

The private press is vigorous. The Official Secrets Act empowers authorities to censor security-related articles; in practice, authorities occasionally use the Act to limit criticism of the government. Journalists are occasionally harassed and attacked by government officials, party activists, militant Hindu groups and others. In 1998, police and soldiers increasingly arrested and attacked journalists in Assam and other northeastern states. Radio is both public and private, although the state-owned All India Radio is dominant, and its news coverage favors the government. The government maintains a monopoly on domestic television broadcasting. In recent years, foreign-backed satellite television channels have proliferated, although only about one-third of Indians have access to television, and only about one-eighth have access to any satellite channel. BJP leaders have proposed setting foreign equity limits on satellite channels.

Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code empowers state authorities to declare a state of emergency, restrict free assembly, and impose curfews. Authorities occasionally use Section 144 to prevent demonstrations. In recent years, authorities have forcibly suppressed protests against foreign-sponsored power projects. In April, Human Rights Watch reported that in recent months police and hired thugs had beaten and arbitrarily detained villagers who were protesting their forced relocation from the sites of two World Bank supported power projects in central India. Police occasionally react to demonstrations that turn violent by opening fire on protesters.

Nongovernmental human rights organizations generally operate freely, but face harassment in rural areas from landlords and other powerful interests. In June, a court released on bail Rongthong Kuenley Dorji, the exile-based Bhutanese opposition leader. Authorities had arrested Kuenley in 1997 in response to a Bhutanese government extradition request.

Each year, dowry disputes cause several thousand women to be burnt to death, driven to suicide, or otherwise killed, and cause countless others to be harassed, beaten, or deserted by husbands. Although dowry is illegal, convictions in dowry deaths are rare. Rape and other violence against women is prevalent, and authorities take little action. Many of the hundreds of thousands of women and children in Indian brothels, including tens of thousands of Nepalese trafficking victims, are held in debt servitude and subjected to rape, beatings, and other torture in a system that thrives with the complicity of local officials. Hindu women are often denied inheritances, and under Shari'a (Islamic law), Muslim daughters generally receive half the inheritance a son receives. Tribal land systems, particularly in Bihar, deny tribal women the right to own land.

The constitution bars discrimination based on caste, but in practice members of so-called scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, as well as religious and ethnic minorities, routinely face discrimination. Scores of people are killed each year in caste-related violence. Freedom of religion is respected. However, the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, a lay Christian NGO, recorded more than 90 cases of rape, assault, Bible burning, and other violence against Christians in 1998, more violence than in any other year since independence. Most of the attacks took place in the BJP-controlled western state of Gujarat, where mobs also attacked several churches late in the year. Christian activists blamed several militant Hindu organizations linked to the BJP. The militant Hindu organizations denied responsibility but suggested the attacks were in retaliation for conversions by Christian missionaries.

Numerous religious traditions that place children in positions of servitude contribute to child sexual exploitation in rural India. Major cities have tens of thousands of street children, many of whom work as porters, vendors, and in other informal sector jobs. A 1996 Human Rights Watch/Asia report detailed illegal detentions, beatings, and torture of street children by police.

UNICEF estimates that up to 60 million children, mostly from lower castes and ethnic minorities, work in fireworks, carpet, and glass factories, as well as in agriculture and other sectors. Several million are bonded laborers. In 1996, the Supreme Court ordered states to enforce the 1986 Child Labor Act, which bans child labor in 16 industries but excludes agriculture and the informal sector, and directed employers to provide compensation to children in nine major industries. Notoriously corrupt inspectors compromise implementation. Trade unions are powerful and independent, and workers exercise their rights to bargain collectively and strike.

Most of the 70,000 Bangladeshi Chakma refugees in northeast India returned home in 1998.