Prof Sugata Bose makes an intervention on The Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2018

FULL TRANSCRIPT

But I wanted to just correct an error in the listing of the business at number 15 because it’s such an important Bill, it says that this Bill is being moved to persecute offenders. I am sure this is probably a typographical error but it could also be a Freudian slip since so many vulnerable people are being persecuted in our country. I know that Shrimati Maneka Gandhi is a very kind-hearted person, she would not wish to persecute anyone, so before we proceed any further I think we should make a correction at number 15 of the List of Business, to say that this Bill will prosecute offenders. There is a big difference between persecution and prosecution.

75 years of Quit India Movement: Trinamool MPs make stirring speeches in both Houses

Trinamool MPs Sukhendu Sekhar Roy and Sugata Bose made impressive speeches in both Houses of the Parliament during a special discussion to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Quit India Movement.

In Rajya Sabha

Sukhendu Sekhar Roy began his speech quoting Gandhi Ji’s iconic slogan, “Karenge ya marenge” and Nehru’s clarion call of “We shall fight to the finish” at Congress’s historic session in Bombay on August 8, 1942.

He referred to the contributions of several leaders – Jayprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia, Sucheta Kripalani among others – to the movement. He also read out portions from a leaflet issued by the Bihar Pradesh Congress in September, 1942.

He fondly remembered the clarion call of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, “Chalo Dilli”. He said this movement will stay alive in our hearts as long as the tricolour flies high atop the ramparts of Red Fort.

He also referred, with a heavy heart, to the Mir Jafars at that time, who colluded with the British to defeat the August Kranti Andolan. He said such Mir Jafars still exist in the country. He said BJP was following the British policy of ‘Divide and Rule’, against which Mamata Banerjee has launched the ‘BJP Bharat Chhoro’ movement at Tamluk, which saw active participation by people in the Quit India Movement.

 

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT OF HIS SPEECH

WATCH HIS FULL SPEECH BY CLICKING HERE

 

In Lok Sabha

Sugata Bose, in his eloquent and stirring speech, called August 9 a ‘red letter day’ in Indian history. He reminisced how his own father was severely wounded as he led a procession of students on the streets of Calcutta in September, 1942.

He highlighted the role played by Adivasis and peasants. Netaji had wanted to be in India by August, 1942, he said. “Had the armed thrust of the Azad Hind Fauj coincided with the rebellion of the Quit India Movement, then the history of India might have taken an even more glorious turn,” he remarked.

Sugata Bose lamented that there was a “gap between sankalp and siddhi in 1947”. He said, “We got independent India but not united India.” He said that the 75th anniversary of Quit India Movement, and the 70th anniversary of independence, call for “soul-searching introspection, rather than chest-thumping celebration”.

“The final five and a half months of Gandhi Ji’s life constituted a message for the predicament we face in India today. Today we see irreligion masquerading as religion,” Sugata Bose said. He reminded the Government of Gandhi Ji’s message to the then Government in mid-November, 1947: “No Muslim in the Indian Union should feel his life unsafe”.

“The 75th anniversary of Quit India Movement, and the 70th anniversary of freedom may be an apt occasion to ponder the relation between the past and the future, the old and the new,” was his message for the Prime Minister.

Sugata Bose also quoted Swami Vivekananda’s vision for India, one of religious harmony and tolerance. He quoted verses penned by Tagore – passages from the song which later was adopted as the National Anthem – to give a strong message against cow vigilantism and communal violence.

He appealed to the Prime Minister to “stop the engines of coercion on its tracks”. We need to be clear about what our sankalp is for 2022, he remarked and demanded “strong action against those who are spreading the poison of hatred and killing in the name of religion”.

We have to make sure we do not have a dominance of one community and one language, Sugata Bose said, adding: “We must counterpose an alternative and a better vision of a new India based on cultural intimacy of all communities of the country.”
“We must celebrate and respect our differences to rise above them. We must avoid all temptations to be chauvinistic and jingoistic,” was his message for his colleagues in the Lok Sabha.

 

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT OF HIS SPEECH

WATCH HIS FULL SPEECH BY CLICKING HERE

Sugata Bose demands an update to the Statement by External Affairs Minister regarding the situation in Mosul

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Within one hour of External Affairs Minister’s statement we saw pictures in the media that mass graves have been found around the Badush Jail. We appreciate the statement of External Affairs Minister. But, she also could have appreciated the work of a woman reporter from India who had sent the investigative report from the ground, telling us that the Badush Jail was in ruins.

So, I would urge the External Affairs Minister to provide an update to her statement and also provide the full circumstantial evidence of what is going on in Mosul and Badush area. We want to hear from the Government. We do not want to rely only on media reports. There should be an authoritative statement from the Government about the full and detailed position in Mosul.

 

Sugata Bose asks a Question on the expansion and modernisation of major ports in eastern India

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Madam, the Minister has said in his reply that expansion and modernisation of major ports in the country is an ongoing process to keep the ports abreast with new technologies and also to meet state traffic requirements.

In Bengal, the eastern State corridor being built by the Railways will stop in Dankuni and we have a deep-sea port in Haldia. We need better passenger ferry and water-based goods transport to connect Dankuni with Haldia, the deep-sea port.

We have to think ambitiously. We can consider a Kolkata super-port which will include the neighboring regions of 24 Parganas – North and South – Howrah and Medinipur.

If such a proposal comes from the Bengal Government, will the Shipping Minister respond positively to rejuvenate that region of eastern India?

Thank you.

Trinamool Congress’ Lok Sabha MPs complete three years in the 16th Lok Sabha

June 5 was the third anniversary of the All India Trinamool Congress’ Members of Parliament (MP) taking oath for the 16th Lok Sabha. It has been three eventful years (since June 5, 2014) for the party in Parliament. Speeches by the party’s MPs have had a major impact on national politics. The strategies adopted, and debates participated in, in Parliament, by the MPs have left a lasting impression on parliamentary politics in this largest democracy in the world.

Now Trinamool Congress is the fourth largest party in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.

Here are a few of the important speeches that Trinamool Congress MPs have given over the last three years:

LOK SABHA

 

August 14, 2014: Sugata Bose on the need for a mechanism to tackle the rising incidents of communal violence in the country

May 5, 2015: Kalyan Banerjee on the GST Bill

May 12, 2015: Sudip Bandyopadhyay on The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation & Resettlement (Amendment) Bill, 2015 (Land Bill)

February 24, 2016: Sugata Bose on the prevalent situation in universities in the country

March 8, 2016: Satabdi Roy on International Women’s Day

February 7, 2017: Saugata Roy speaks on The Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Bill, 2017

March 9, 2017: Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar on The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016

April 11, 2017: Ratna De Nag on The HIV and AIDS (Prevention and Control) Bill, 2017

RAJYA SABHA

 

November 25, 2014: Debabrata Bandyopadhyay on The Labour Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2014

August 13, 2014: Derek O’Brien on the working of the Ministry of Women and Child Development

May 6, 2015: Sukhendu Sekhar Roy on The Constitution (One Hundred and Nineteenth Amendment) Bill, 2013 (Land Boundary Agreement)

November 24, 2016: Derek O’Brien on demonetisation

April 5, 2017: Derek O’Brien on the GST Bill

 

Sugata Bose speaks on The Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2016

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to take a part in the discussion on The Taxation Laws Amendments Bill brought before this House by Hon’ble Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley.

After the passage of a major tax reform, The Constitution Amendment Bill enabling GST, this is of course a small and somewhat technical amendment to the IT Act and the Customs Tariff Act. Let me at the outset take this opportunity to congratulate our Finance Minister for piloting through The Constitution Amendment Bill. A genuine co-operative federalism requires powers of taxation to be shared by the Centre and the States. And that perspective on federalism means that we should not restrict ourselves simply to working out a fair share of taxes. Seen in that light the States have been extremely farsighted and generous and I hope that the Central Government will recognize the farsightedness and generosity in future in strengthening our federal structure.

After supporting the government on such a major taxation reforms it would be churlish on my part to be overly critical of this Bill that has been brought somewhat suddenly; we have not had the opportunity to study its implications clearly. But as the Finance Minister clearly stated in his opening remarks, this legislation has three limbs and I will make some brief remarks about these three aspects of the legislative amendment that has been brought before us.

First of all there is going to be a change in relation to granite and marble sector. Here I would say that generally speaking our manufacturers ought to be encouraged to be more competitive both in terms of cost and quality.

We should not generally be encouraging protectionist tendencies in our industry and it seems to me that it is little premature to change this particular law increasing the customs duty from 10 percent to the WTO bound rate of 40 percent.

Since the Finance Minister has just considered a little while ago that various non-tariff barriers and the 10 percent customs duty together have been providing effective and adequate protection, we seem to be anticipating something that is happening with the nontariff barriers and I hope that in the course of his reply, Hon’ble Finance Minister will spell out who are the manufacturers and located in which States, who will be the main gainers from this.

At first sight it seems to me there are some manufacturers in Rajasthan who will probably benefit from this raising of customs duties – Nishikant Dubey ji was saying about the beautiful marble used in our historical monuments; that is not particularly relevant to the legislative amendment that is before us today. So I don’t think that it was strictly necessary at this stage but this is a small enough amendment of the customs duty in one particular sector. So we will not go to the extent of objecting to it or opposing it when it is put to vote.

The second limb is something that we have absolutely no difficulty with it. This is because it relates to the de-merger of the public sector companies; there is a particular history to this. BSNL was in fact a sold off in parts and we do not wish the Government which will be in the possession of land and similar assets to be subject to the capital gains tax. So, on the second limb of this tax legislation we are prepared to support the government unequivocally.

I now come to the third limb of this tax legislation and here I think we need to take a broad perspective. What is going to happen here is that there will be attractive incentive, I imagine, being given to manufacturers of governments and apparels. There is going to be a reduction in the requirement of number of days that they have to provide employment to their workers in order to get a particular exemption to the income tax.

As has already been pointed out by my friend from the Indian National Congress, India had a great opportunity as China moved up the scale of manufacturing industries and we could have actually filled the gap left by China in the garments and apparels sector. But I am afraid that we are losing that opportunity, if we have already not lost it. As has been pointed out that there are a number of manufacturers in South East Asia, countries have been mentioned Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia who are filling the lacuna left by China. Then there is our friendly neighbour Bangladesh where the garments industry is flourishing and Bangladeshi export garments are breaking into the world markets. I think we need to ponder here and the Prime Minister’s ‘Make In India’ slogan remains upto this point a slogan and is not being transformed into reality.

I would like to add here that if we reflect on this point carefully, we really need our garments and apparel manufacturers to create more employment, not less. We are allowing them to provide less employment in order to get a particular incentive but we need encourage them to provide more employment and this kind of employment is directly related to empowerment of women. If we look at Bangladesh today, women have been empowered because they have an independent source of income. We do hear of terrible accidents, perhaps of a fire that have taken place in Bangladesh, but overall we see that the garments industry has employed a large number of women, and they have been empowered in terms of gender relations. And that is why I say that the policy of our Government ought to be to generate more employment and provide a safe working environment for the women in the garment and apparel sector. That should be the thrust of the policy.

This has to be said in the larger macroeconomic scenario where in India where we are expecting high output growth accompanied by anemic jobs growth. Everyone in India is concerned about the jobless growth that we are experiencing. There is a raging public debate going on in that particular context and therefore overall I wish to say that the government needs to pay attention to creating more employment-generating industries and the government needs to focus on labour quite as much as the capitalists.

We have very little private domestic investment. Our economies are being powered by FDI inflows and public investment in infrastructure. So, I appreciate that these three changes in our taxation laws will provide incentive to our manufacturers particularly in the granite and marbles sector and the textiles and apparels sector.

But there is far more to  be done if the promise that our Prime Minister made to the youth of this country – that they will have well paying jobs – is to be fulfilled. If that promise remains unfulfilled then it would be a betrayal of the younger generations in our country and the political cost of such betrayal is something this government will have to pay, in many ways.

From the Opposition we are suggesting to the government that in their own interest they need to look more closely at creating more jobs, creating more employment-generating industries and I hope that the incentives provided in these taxation law amendments will provide a way forward in that direction.

Thank you so much, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir.

 

 

Intervention by Sugata Bose during a discussion on Supplementary Demands for Grants

I take your point that we have to optimize our tax revenues both at the Central level and at the level of the State. However, you have correctly identified the problem that our economy is facing right now. There are two engines of growth – FDI flows and public investment in infrastructure.

You have conceded on the floor of this House several times and also today, that there is practically no new domestic private investment. Our captains of industry, our capitalist class had heavily invested in you, the BJP, during the election campaign but they are refusing to invest in India today. Now, if in fact, private investors remain in slumber and you have to make higher levels of public investment particularly for our infrastructure needs, this will have a bearing on the fiscal deficit that you just spoke about.

Therefore, I would like to ask you one question. You announced that you would have an Expert Committee to review the FRBM Act in the course of your Budget speech. Please take this House into confidence as to the status of that Expert Committee because we must spend both at the Central level and also in our States on the vital social sector schemes. We cannot ignore the poor and the downtrodden people in our State.

That is why, we say in West Bengal that we have such a terrible debt burden, yet we have an obligation and the responsibility to provide health, education and social infrastructure.

Sugata Bose speaks in LS during Question Hour on Project Mausam

Thank you Madam Speaker. India has played a very major role historically in creating a shared cultural universe across the Indian ocean arena. In fact when our poet Rabindranath embarked on his Indian Ocean voyage, he described his journey as a pilgrimage to retrace India’s entry into the universe. This is a worthy initiative. However, this is not just an academic project, it is very much projecting India’s soft power in the entire Indian Ocean world.

I would like to ask the minister if his ministry faced any obstacles from any other country in pursuing this project and whether the Ministry of Culture is coordinating with the Ministry of External Affairs to ensure that we can successfully implement project Mausam.
Thank you.

Sugata Bose speaks on The Lokpal and Lokayuktas (Amendment) Bill

Madam, may I just say one sentence that this is a sensible move on the part of the Government and I hope that the Standing Committee will make sure that genuine philanthropic and charitable work does not get adversely affected by the provisions of the Act. The phrase public servant has to be properly defined when the larger amendment comes.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Sugata Bose speaks in Lok Sabha on The Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2016

Six new IITs will be set up at Tirupati, Palakkad, Dharwar, Bhilai, Goa and Jammu and the Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad which is just across the border of West Bengal in Jharkhand is going to be upgraded to an IIT. Just reciting the name of these places is a wonderful reminder of the diversity of our country. Whenever I rise to speak in this august House on the subject of education there is a general expectation that I will speak about quality, excellence and merit.

Today I would want this House to think carefully over the question, what is merit? I posed this question because I feel that in our country there is a great danger of passing of accumulated caste privilege as merit. If there are huge sections of our people who have suffered historic injustice then we should be very careful not to label them as people who lack merit. It is our fault that they have not got adequate opportunities to excel in our schools of higher education.

Now it is often forgotten that the IIT Act was of course passed in 1961. But reservations for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, 22.5 per cent, were not extended to the IITs until 1973. That was done under the Prime Ministership of Smt Indira Gandhi. And the OBC reservations were not extended until as late as 2006. I was reading an article by an anthropologist at Harvard University, named Ajanta Subramaniam, titled ‘Making Merit’, published in the Comparative Studies of Society and History, and I was startled to read some of the statistics that were given in that article about IIT, Madras.

Mr Deputy Speaker you know better than anyone else that our state of Tamil Nadu led ever since the great figure Annadurai showed us the way. The state of Tamil Nadu has empowered the backward class, schedule caste and scheduled tribes for decades.

But IIT Chennai is a Central institute, and as of 2015 (the numbers may have changed slightly since then), if we look at the figures for faculty members, there were 464 faculty members in the general category, 59 in the OBC category, only 11 in the scheduled castes category and a mere two in the scheduled tribes category.

These numbers cannot be explained by merit alone. These numbers can only be explained by conscious and subconscious bias against the disadvantaged sections of the people in our country. And that is why I said, please do not confuse accumulated past privilege as merit. Let us not have traditional cultural capital be transformed into modern capital in our institutes of technology, which are institutes of national importance.

Whenever the question of IIM comes up, we talk of autonomy. Now, of course, it is important to give autonomy to IIT directors, to chairpersons of governing boards of the IITs, and this Parliament must always preserve its prerogative which was under challenge by the HRD Ministry to declare institutes of national importance.

Now, the Hon’ble Human Resources Development Minister talks about accessibility as being one of his four mantras, and we have actually now given some accessibility in our IITs and our Central universities to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. But the question is that have we given the feeling of equal citizenship inside the portals of our great institutions of higher learning? That is why, when students at IIT Chennai want to set up an Ambedkar and Periyar Study Circle, why should the Dean of Students, at the direction of the Central Government, derecognise such a study circle? Everyone should be reading the works of Dr Ambedkar and of Periyar. So that is why it is very important to go beyond the accessibility and give a sense of inclusiveness to Dalit students or Adivasi students or OBC students who are beginning to enter in large numbers into institutes such as the IITs.

In conclusion, let me elaborate a little bit on a point that I raised during Questions Hour this morning. For some time now, in this Parliament, in response to the Budget presented by this Government, I have been saying that we should not make a ritual of setting up five new IITs, five new IIMs every year; and I think the Finance Minister listened to that point when he announced that he was going to have 10 public and 10 private institutions that would be selected to become globally competitive.

I say this because we have to think very carefully about when we should set up new institutes and when we should strengthen our existing institutes. And I say this not because I feel that the brand name of the IITs will be diluted by setting up new IITs. I’m actually in favour of having at least one IIT in every State, and I hate importing the terminology of the world of commerce into the world of learning. I don’t like the word ‘brand’ which was even used by my friend Shashi Tharoor in which he wrote on the brand IIT, but I am more concerned that we should make sure that we have the human resources to staff the new institutes that we are setting up and that is why when we select those 20 institutions that will have a special enabling regulatory framework, I think, we should choose the most promising existing institutions, a few IITs or Indian Institutes of Science, a few central universities and a few state universities.

Finally, we have paid tribute to our tribute to our Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru under whose leadership the IITs were set up in the early 1960’s but I would like to mention today, one great scientist from Bengal whose vision lost out in the post-independence period. His name was Meghnad Saha; he was the scientist who was appointed to the National Planning Committee by none other than Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1938 and of this National Planning Committee he also made Jawaharlal Nehru, the Chairperson. But there was a debate between Dr Homi Bhabha on one hand and Meghnad Saha on the other in the immediate post-independence decade. Meghnad Saha was a member of this august House but Jawaharlal Nehru listened to Homi Bhabha so that scientific research especially the atomic energy research became secretive state-controlled enterprise. Meghnad Saha had suggested that even nuclear physics research should take place in our finest universities. These were the days before the IITs.

So, I would like to also suggest to the government that while building on the achievements of the past, they should also show a new direction of policy for the future so that the IITs which are a good teaching institutions also become the venues of cutting-edge research. Let us support the best central and state universities as also incubators of innovative research, if we do that we will be paying a genuine tribute to a figure like Meghnad Saha whose grand farsighted vision was not accepted the way it should have been in the early 1950s.

With these words I would like to thank you once again, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to speak on the IIT (Amendment) Bill. These are occasions on which we can actually deliberate more broadly on education policy as a whole. Thank you very much.