MUMBAI: More than six decades after Independence, freedom fighters who helped overthrow foreign rule are struggling against the bureaucracy of modern India.

“We were better under British rule,’’ wrote 82-year-old S J Chughani, president of the Mumbai Freedom Fighters Sabha, in recent letters to the state and central governments to express the sabha’s frustration at the slow pace at which applications for freedom fighter status, under the Centre’s Swatantra Sainik Samman Scheme, are approved.

Thousands across the nation still await ‘freedom fighter’ status and the pension and benefits that come with it. This includes at least 350 people from Mumbai and hundreds more across Maharashtra, which was a hotbed of the freedom movement.

Speaking of the Mumbai sabha’s experience, Chughani said, “I have exchanged innumerable letters with the President and written to various chief ministers of Maharashtra, but they do not even bother to reply.’’ The Mumbai sabha has around 380 members, but only 30 or so are recognised as patriots. The other 350 have been writing to officials for 20 years.

“I am sorry to say that in my last letter to the government I went to the extent of saying that we were better under British rule,’’ Chughani told TOI.

In fact, as recently as May 2010, the Bombay High Court had to tell the state government not to be unfair to Namdeo Gaikwad, whose plea for a pension had been pending before a state panel for several years. Gaikwad, in his 90s, fought for the liberation of Goa.

Pension has been granted to 1.71 lakh freedom fighters or their eligible dependents across the country under the Centre’s Swatantra Sainik Samman Scheme, the main one for this purpose in the country, since its inception in 1972 and till October 2009.

Till January 2010, 17,909 people from Maharashtra had received pension under the scheme, but many more await this recognition even as they and their dependents get along in years.

According to official sources, the Ministry of Home Affairs is in the final stages of clearing the names of 1,614 people who took part in the movements to liberate Goa and Hyderabad. Many of those who fought to liberate Goa are from Maharashtra.

If the recognition to those involved in the Goa Liberation Movement during 1954-55 (Phase II in the documents) comes this year, it would come 55 years after their sacrifice. Likewise, participants of the Hyderabad Liberation Movement during 1947-48 would be getting recognition 62 years after their efforts. Such recognition might be too late, because the freedom fighters and their kin would be well advanced in years or even deceased. Kin like unmarried daughters, widows or parents also get benefits.

One reason for such delays is that certain historical events were not considered part of the freedom struggle for several decades by the government. For instance, only in 2003 did the government allow participants of the Goa Liberation Movement and those of the Hyderabad Liberation Movement to be included on the list of freedom fighters. This also means they can be eligible for pension and benefits only from 2003 onwards.

Chughani recounted the pitched battles that freedom fighters in Mumbai fought with colonial police to challenge foreign rule. His office at Grant Road is now the nodal point for several freedom fighters to come together and share their problems. “I have met almost every minister and MP who matters. But nothing has been done. We just want our due, but what really hurts is that in many cases they do not even reply to our letters,’’ Chughani said.

Pension is granted according to guidelines in the Swatantra Sainik Samman Scheme. In 2009-10 alone, the central government spent Rs 578 crore on benefits such as free railway passes, medical facilities, accommodation and monthly pensions, which can be as high as Rs 7,000 depending on which movement the freedom fighter was involved in.
The largest number of beneficiaries of the scheme are from Bihar, followed by West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. A large contingent of freedom fighters who fought under the banner of the Subhas Chandra Bose-led Indian National Army have been recognised by the government.

There have even been fake claimants, with the authorities coming across 35 cases last year in which details had been fudged to portray oneself as a freedom fighter.

India is among the least peaceful of major countries in the world and is getting even less peaceful year on year.

This was the major finding of the Global Peace Index (GPI) Report an annual publication by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), a global think tank focused on researching the relationship between economics, business and peace.

According to the 2010 report, which considered a range of peace-related variables among 149 countries, India’s rank was 128, six ranks lower than its 2009 position.

Some of India’s key neighbours in South Asia ranked in the bottom 20 per cent along with India — Sri Lanka was ranked 133rd, Pakistan 145th, Afghanistan 147th. However, Nepal did much better, ranked in 82nd place and Bangladesh in 87th. Bhutan, ranked at 36th, narrowly missed being in the top 20 per cent of nations.

Commenting on the results, the IEP said, “South Asia saw the greatest decrease in peacefulness, as a result of increased involvement in conflicts, a rise in deaths from internal conflict and human rights abuses. It added, “The main countries experiencing decreases in peacefulness were India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.”

The report’s authors also observed that, overall, the world became “slightly less peaceful in the past year”, adding that in some nations, an intensification of conflicts and growing instability appears to be linked to the global economic downturn in late 2008 and early 2009.

Hinting at the possibility that rapid development might have brought more conflict in its wake the IEP also noted, “Three BRIC countries — Russia (143), India (128) and China (80) — saw substantial declines in peacefulness.” However Brazil’s score remained essentially stable (83) compared to the 2009 Index.

While most developed countries including those of Western Europe and Canada, ranked in the top 20 per cent of peaceful nations, the United States was an anomaly in this regard, ranking at 85th, outranked by countries such as Rwanda, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ranked low in Asia-Pacific region

India also ranked 19th out of 25 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The leader in the region, New Zealand, was also the most peaceful nation globally. Close on its heels were Iceland and Japan. Iraq was estimated to be the least peaceful among all countries, accompanied at the bottom of the table by Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan.

The identification and weighting of indicators in the GPI, which is compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, was undertaken by an international panel of experts in the study of peace.

“How peaceful a country is depends on the internal structures, institutions, and attitudes that sustain and promote peace as well as on external factors,” said Clyde McConaghy, board director of the IEP.

He added, “This year’s top five countries, and more peaceful countries in general, have certain things in common: well functioning governments, stable business environments, respect for human rights, low levels of corruption, high rates of participation in education, and freedom of information.”

Founded three seasons ago, the Indian Premier League managed to make the sport of cricket sexy.India ’s corporate titans bought teams, Bollywood stars infused matches with celebrity glamour and fans from Mumbai to Dubai to New Jersey followed the league on television as its value rose to more than $4 billion.

Lalit Kumar Modi, center, commissioner of the Indian Premier League, is under scrutiny.

For many Indians, the league, known as the I.P.L., became a symbol of a newly dynamic and confident India that was expanding its influence in the world. Yet after weeks of allegations of graft and financial malfeasance, the resignation of a government minister and the suspension of the league’s charismatic commissioner, the league has become emblematic of something else: how much the old and often corrupt political and business elite still dominates the country.

“The great pity in India is that creations like the I.P.L. became a victim of their own success,” the editor in chief of the magazine India Today, Aroon Purie, wrote this month. “Where there is money involved, especially large sums, corruption is not far behind.”

Cricket may befuddle much of the world, but the sport is an obsession in India, which is one reason the cricket scandal — dubbed I.P.L. Gate by the Indian news media — has assumed such import. Government tax examiners have confiscated accounting records, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the sport’s regulatory body, is expected to hold a pivotal hearing in coming days for the league’s suspended commissioner, Lalit Kumar Modi.

Insiders on the cricket board depict Mr. Modi as a visionary who operated the league by fiat and enriched himself and his family members through hidden shares in teams or fees from television and Internet contracts. But the board is also in a compromised position. It is a nongovernmental organization dominated by some of the country’s most powerful politicians, including Arun Jaitley, a top leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, and Sharad Pawar, the agriculture minister.

Many commentators are skeptical that the board could have been completely ignorant of Mr. Modi’s actions. Mr. Modi says he did nothing wrong. Even before the scandal, the board was criticized as lacking transparency and was accused of conflicts of interest. One board member is also the owner of an I.P.L. team.

For decades, politicians have had their fingers in the game. Cricket has been organized around state teams competing in regional and national tournaments, with elite players selected for India’s national team. Every state has a cricket association, often led by the state’s chief minister or some other influential politician or bureaucrat. Today, political figures lead cricket associations in at least six states.

G. Rajaraman, a longtime cricket journalist, said these relationships initially benefited the sport because the politician could help a team get resources. But that equation changed since money began entering the sport, first with television in the 1990s and then with the advent of the I.P.L. Soon, more politicians were vying for control. Mr. Pawar, the agriculture minister, took over the national cricket board in 2005, with Mr. Modi as his protégé.

Having lived in the United States, Mr. Modi saw how commercial leagues like the N.B.A. promoted stars and hometown teams to excite fans and generate revenues. European soccer, especially the English Premier League, was already televised across Asia just as an emerging Indian middle class was starting to discover sports as a leisure spectator activity.

“Modi saw this and he said, ‘We need to create our own icons,’ ” Mr. Rajaraman said.

Mr. Modi formatted the I.P.L. as a made-for-television product. He outraged purists by adopting a condensed version of the sport that reduced the length of a match from a day, or several days, to three television-friendly hours. Mr. Modi also brought in cheerleaders and movie stars.

Bollywood’s biggest star, Shah Rukh Khan, bought part of a team, and some fans paid hundreds of dollars to mingle with players, fashion models and celebrities at postgame parties that continued into the early morning hours. Celebrity Web sites began carrying photos of the parties or gossip about which Bollywood stars were seen in the stands.

“A lot of women started watching,” Mr. Rajaraman said. “There are a lot of people who watch to see what Shah Rukh Khan is doing at the end of the game, or what new T-shirt he is wearing.”

Ramachandra Guha, a historian who has written a book about cricket, said the I.P.L. tailored itself to the aspirations, and alienation, of an Indian middle class disillusioned with the country’s corruption and poverty. But Mr. Guha said the organization of the league — with teams located in India’s most affluent cities as opposed to having one in every state — has effectively mirrored the deep inequality in society.

“It is the India that is doing well economically,” he said. “It shuts itself off from the other 800 million Indians who live in the hinterlands.”

Now, Mr. Modi is gathering documents for his hearing, while government officials have come under scrutiny. A junior minister of foreign affairs, Shashi Tharoor, was forced to resign because of his involvement with a consortium that won a bid for a team in his home state.

Others who seem closely linked to the league have so far stayed in power as the scandal has assumed political overtones. Mr. Pawar heads a regional political party that is part of the coalition government led by the Congress Party. As yet, investigators have not accused him of any wrongdoing.

And the country’s civil aviation minister, Praful Patel, has faced questions on whether he was involved in the bidding process for a new franchise and whether his ministry had showed favoritism to his daughter, a former model who helps coordinate the I.P.L.’s travel. In late April, the state-owned airline, Air India, canceled a scheduled flight, delaying passengers, so that Mr. Patel’s daughter and several I.P.L. players could use it as a paid charter.

Dhiraj Nayyar, a senior editor at The Financial Express, said the cricket scandal was best understood in the context of India’s economic evolution. When India’s stock exchange took off in the late 1980s and early 1990s, scandals erupted over market manipulation until regulatory structures were strengthened. Today, the same absence of transparency and regulation exists in cricket.

“The I.P.L. is a curious creature that combines the best and worst of Indian capitalism — fabulous enterprise and outcomes on the one side, riddled with cronyism, patronage and power politics on the other,” Mr. Nayyar wrote recently. “In many ways the I.P.L. is a confirmation of what India really is: an emerging economy.”