Around and About

Why do men drink so much ?

2010-07-10T15:45:00.001+05:30

Recently while on a visit to our program in the slums of Chennai, i noticed that all our programs were structured around women. The program was a very successful one and the team had worked hard with the slum community as well as the local slum clearance board to make thinngs happen and very visibly, the impact was there for all to see. But no men. Of course it was day time and men might be at work; but still I asked. Any programs with men ? No. why ? Some whispers and murmurs, but no answers forthcoming. But curious , i keep probing. In a way, i know what the answer will be, over the years, I have worked with many slum communities and the work is always or almost always with women. So the answer , when it does come, does not surprise me. We do not have any program with the men in the slums because they are either at work or if not , they are drunk.

so why do men drink, I ask ? Well, another round of familiar answers follow. Men go to work and get tired and need a drink for recreation. Oh, they have lots of worries and tensions and alcohol helps them forget their worries and tensions for that period of time when they are drunk. And so they drink. I probe further – what do women do and why don't they drink ? Well, women don't go to work and are not involved in manual labor , so they do not have the compulsions that men have. But they do have their worries and fears don't they ? Oh, yes, I am told- the women have their own fears and worries. So what do they do ? .... well they throw the household utensils around and then go to the neighbour's house to gossip. So in the evening , all the slum women are huddled around gossiping , while the men are slumbering, dead drunk. Neat. Very neat.

For years, i have been observing programs planned with men almost always fail, despite the same dedicated staff, the same meticulous planning and the same effort put in. programs with women succeed; programs with men fail; and usually because nothing consistent can be planned with the menl because of this alcoholism problem among men in the slums. This is case with us in Oasis, it is often the case else where too. Alcohol seems to be the almost universal sopoforic of recreation in the slums and almost the only one it would seem. So can any thing be done for men or are all developmental programs in the slums destined to succeed with women ?

some thing about Oasis's programs among young men gives me a ray of hope. I don't know where we will ever be able to break the scourge of alcohol and its hold among rhe older men, although I should not be pessimistic. But our program with the young men form the slums and others on the verge of dropping out of society which focuses on sports as a tool might be the answer, at least for the younger people. Using football as a glue, Oasis is able to bring together young men who might all have gone their own separate and destructive ways. These young men learn the value and worth of discipline, sportsmanship, fairness and respect for rules and perhaps most importantly make lasting friendships and bondings that may, if they are lucky , last a life time.

The Oasis progam is only a few years old and it could be said that in many ways, it is in its infancy. There is very certainly a long way to ago, and it will be a long time , before we can draw any definitive conclusions. Perhaps , I am being a fool to anticipate so much , expect so much to happen from a program that is so new , so nascent. But even so..I dream that way. I dream that one day it will be possible to walk into a slum and ask the question – not “ why do men drink so much ?” but on the contrary “ why do men play so much ? ”. it will be the day when the brawls caused by drink wll be replaced by the laughter and the banter of sport. That would be change. That would be transformation. That would indeed be life.

Bored meetings or Board Meetings

2010-07-10T15:42:00.001+05:30

My organization's Board meeting took place on Saturday. Though the meeting was planned as a whole day event, all business had been conducted by lunch time. There were several eminent people present, all spoke and shared their views articulately and freely. Yet it was still possible to have a vibrant discussion and still all the transactions could be completed earlier than what was anticipated. Every one found time to listen to each other and although by the end of the meeting, a lot of decisions had been, they had been made so collaboratively that it would be very difficult for any one person to have claimed credit for the decision.

The free afternoon time left with lots of time to think of other Board meetings where I have participated, usually as a member, but sometimes as a participant. I remembered meetings of different hues; but the most common memory is that of dull, listless meetings dominated by one person, usually a man, while others sat around with a bored look, wondering what they were really doing there. Some basic, legal requirements were hurriedly gone through monotonously and then the crowd quickly dispersed. They would gather together in a similar fashion in another 6 months or a year for a repetition of this mindless ritual.

Sadly, governance in India is not taken that seriously; at least not in the nonprofit sector where I have spent a lot of my life. It is assumed that because the organizations involved in charity work, are supposedly there with highly altruistic motives, everything is just fine with the way they are run and with the way they are governed. And so Boards and such, by whatever name called, are considered a necessary evil, thrust upon us by the nasty arm of the law. Governance thus is something that is considered an intrusion demanded and required by the law and not something to be pursued for its own intrinsic merit. And so a lot of boards and governing bodies are filled by sycophants and toadies- hangers on with nothing of worth to contribute. The worst case scenario – and yet not uncommon either, are boards staffed by family members and relatives of the founder or the CEO.

This of course is a pity. My own board meeting has impressed upon me the value of having caring, involved people of integrity on the Board. They perform all the necessary statutory duties of course; but go far beyond that limited statutory duty. By virtue of the eminence they have in different fields of occupation, they become helpful sources of information, guidance and most importantly – of advice. They do not intrude in the day to day running of the organization – an activity for which they are too busy any way; but remain available to advise, guide and provide valuable insights – something that only the foolish would overlook.

Although it would see that governance can fall by the way side even in the corporate sector as evidenced by the experience of Satyam, it is an unfortunate fact that in the NGO sector, we do not know enough to educate our board members on what their individual roles and responsibilities are and what they can and cannot do. The sad result is that often NGO boards are either complete rubber stamps nodding assent to everything that the Chief Executive does or at the other extreme, an over bearing, micro managing body, stifling every initiative.

Perhaps , the trick is in having the right composition for your Board. In choosing people, who are eminent in their profession and are also adequately informed about the work of the organization. Individuals, who are committed without being too interfering or intimidating. When a bunch of such people gathers, animated conversation crystallizes into sagely counsel and wise decisions. And Board meetings are no longer bored meetings.

Stop chasing those numbers

2010-06-28T19:49:00.003+05:30

A lot of this month seems to have been occupied by numbers – we were writing a proposal for one of donors and if the project were approved, it would mean that we could continue to do the good work that we do. The exercise involved a lot of wrestling with numbers. Numbers to be filled in the budget column ; numbers to be filled in explaining how many people would benefit from the grant and how to make sure that enough number of people had access to the program without us spreading ourselves so thin, that quality itself would be compromised.

Having worked for a funder before, I can understand their compulsions. Funders have to calculate hard data like cost per beneficiary and if that is too high, then the manner in which the program has been designed may not be feasible to run and fund; no matter how good the rationale, the bottom line is always economics – the final question before any funder will sign off – does it make economic sense to fund this program – will enough numbers of people benefit from the grant or a tiny number of them will? If the answer is not satisfactory enough, the application will not be accepted. Working for a donor, I used to examine those numbers and determine whether they were consistent with financial prudence. Today as someone who works for Oasis, an implementing agency, I have to supply those numbers and apply the same parameters.

But just how much should an organization be driven by numbers, is a question I still have not been able to resolve. Numbers are important I know. It costs a lot of effort to raise money and if it is not used in the most efficient and cost effective way, the donor is very likely to feel short changed. Yet as someone dealing with people and their suffering, just to what extent can this be quantified? and even if it can be , to what extent is it fair or right to measure the efficacy and success of our efforts through numbers alone.

At Oasis, a large part of our work is with victims off trafficking. Often they have suffered immensely and in a manner that we can hardly imagine or understand. They have been exploited, abused and brutalized in the most unimaginable ways possible. At Oasis, we try and restore to them some of the lost years of their lives, through a host of interventions. Those interventions are costly. That intervention s is intense. Those interventions take time to work. If at all they work. And sometimes, they don’t because some hurts and experiences human beings cannot deal with, no matter how proficient their methods and how professional their staff. Only God can heal every one, we at Oasis can only try and does our little bit as His agents and instruments.

So is it fair to always ask that question” How many”? How many women did you rescue from the brothels? And how many children? Why so many women? Why so few children? Why did only so many women enrol for your livelihoods program? Why did so few get successfully counselled and come to terms with their past? Why? Why? Why?

As a donor, I used to know how to ask the right questions, and I still do; but today I know how easy it is to ask questions than it is to provide the answers to some unfathomable mysteries. But one thing too I know, that numbers are one piece of the puzzle. Yes money is important, cost benefit ratios are important, effectiveness is important, professionalism is important. All of those things are important. But infinitely more important than all those numbers is the human spirit which we try to heal.

Why Prakash Jha should make another movie

2010-06-25T19:00:00.002+05:30

I went to see Rajneeti over the weekend with my daughter. After all the press coverage about how the movie was largely based on the life of Sonia Gandhi and all that, one expected a lot of that, but unless the censors have completely distorted the film by cutting of big chunks of the film, one can hardly see evidence of that. Katrina Kaif for some moments in the film does play a widow and her mannerisms do like one of the Gandhis – could be Sonia or he daughter, the similarity about ends there. The movie is not anything about the Gandhis – Sonia or Priyanka. Rather the movie is about the lumpenization of Indian politics.

We have all grown up with the notion that politics is bad and politicians are the baddies. If one had somehow missed out this bit of a middle class Indian’s education, Prakash Jha can fill the gap. His depiction of Indian politicians – not the underground Maoist types; but the types that fight elections is such that one would come out of the theatre shuddering with horror at our plight as we think about how we are ruled and by whom. And that raises a question.

That politics and politicians are corrupt, inept and amoral has been taught to us from the time we learnt to listen to stories in our mother’s lap. It began with stories of wicked kings and as we grew older, began to be replaced with other people we recognized or knew. Eventually the media created bigger ogres of our ruler and politicians. But coming back to the question that arose after watching the film, I fail to understand one thing – if all our politicians are like the ones portrayed in “Rajneeti”, how are we surviving as a nation?

Rajneeeti’s political figures are barely human. Ranbir Kapoor is supposedly cast in the role analogous to Arjun (the film has shades of the Mahabharata in it), but could well have played the Biblical Satan with ease. Though there is a whole lot of dark side to the so-called democratic Indian political system, but murdering someone from the rival side at the broad daylight in front of masses as shown in the film is like a little too far stretched.

Of course, bad and even villainous politicians live and thrive; we all know that. But what about the good ones, they too exist, don’t they? they may not be saints, and possibly don’t even claim to be one, but they are the ones who ensure that anarchy doesn’t run amuck, and that there is at least some attempt at governance and the rule of law.

Take for example our freedom fighters- people whose birthdays we love to celebrate and whose statues and portraits adorn all public squares and several calendars all over the country. Bhagat Singh, Mahatma Gandhi, Veer Savarkar , Sardar Patel, Nehru... and many , many others. Weren’t they politicians of one hue or another, whose beliefs differed widely, usually vary widely, but because of that they wouldn’t kill each other and cause mayhem. They did give each other that space.

Even today such people exist; politicians who are quietly and silently burning the mid night oil so that they can serve the country as best as they can. They may not make it to the newspaper headlines because they are not looting the exchequer and amassing assets; neither are they plotting intrigue and communal violence in the dead of the night. Such people exist; and it is because of such politicians that the nation still runs and that we are not yet a failed state. Their story too deserves to be told. Prakash Jha ought to write the script of another movie. He has exposed the gory side of Indian politics. Now he ought to project its golden side.

Whores and Prostitutes : the baggage that words carry

2010-06-23T01:55:00.001+05:30

One of my colleagues was orienting some newly inducted staff about our work among the prostitutes of Mumbai, when an indignant hand shot up to protest. “prostitute” was not a word to be used – especially by our kind of people who were involved in the development sector who ought to know better. After a sheepish apology, the session continued and eventually we proceeded to enumerate the number of "beneficiaries" whom we had rescued from the "flesh trade".

Soon other hands had shot up. The word “ beneficiary” was too patronizing – who did we think we were any way.... and “flesh trade” .... well wasn't the word so coarse and harsh and how could we even think of using such a word, didn't we have any sensitivity at all or what ? I began to have deep sympathies for our communications manager , who presumably has to learn to walk around with a lot of dictionaries and thesauruses to avoid tripping over a charge about the wrong use of words. I was thrilled that I didn't have her role.

Later that day, I was leaving to board a flight. The weather was wet and it had been raining heavily causing traffic jams all the way from my home to the airport. The humidity and the rain had ensured that all all my clothes were soaked to the bone. As the taxi entered the crowded and disorderly airport terminal, i spotted a relatively empty gate meant for “ persons with special needs”. I immediately cataloged all my special needs – I was occasionally breathless, more often than not short tempered and hot headed,m terribly impatient too. Some minor medical ailments were accompaniments too. But the CISF jawan at the gate wouldn't let me in.stripping aside jargon, he told me that the gate was meant for “apang log”, the disabled”. Special needs was an euphemism for disability.

Since then i have been wondering a lot about the words we use. A lot of them have become so much a part of common usage that we use them without thinking and without intending any harm. Yet words carry a lot of weight, can be stigmatizing and devastating for the self esteem. But we seldom know, because we live and breathe in a different world. As a child , I was taught , never , ever to use the word” leper” because it had a certain connotation of exclusion, isolation and neglect. On street corners and traffic signals , I have seen plenty of people who would qualify for the use of the word in its classical sense, but so ingrained is the lesson, that perhaps this is one word that I am most unlikely to use.

Some of course can of course can so completely swing the other way, that they are more concerned about the correctness of their jargon than sensitivity to the person. Indeed it is possible that the people most busy in serving those in need have the least time to update their vocabulary , while those who are right in their nuances of speech are the most indifferent when it comes to doing things that really matter.

So which way does one turn ? While it is perhaps correct to say that one should not be unduly obsessed with words and phrases and that the motive of the heart is far more important than the utterances of the tongue, we should never forget though that words carry a lot of weight and a stray word spoken out of turn and without the slightest ill will intended, can cause paralyzing harm and trauma which we may neither see nor recognize. So let us weigh our words wisely and choose our phrases carefully , in as much as we are able. There is enough hurt in the world, without we needing to add unwittingly, an extra ton.

Volunteers : The silent worker bee

2010-06-21T23:06:00.002+05:30

Volunteers are one of the most valuable resources and a voluntary organization can have, especially today when a lot or most voluntary organizations are largely staffed by paid professionals who work for a salary. While the changing nature of the sector and the increasing demands and scrutiny made by government, donors and funders and even the general public may mean that this shift is largely inevitable, volunteers still help to remind us of our roots.

At Oasis, we have been fortunate in being blessed by many volunteers – short term and long term. Some of them have been around for years and while having cost the organization next to nothing, have enriched Oasis in ways that might be difficult to quantify. The other day, we were trying to calculate in monetary terms what the worth of a few specific volunteers with their particular skills and experience might be. I do not know what figure was finally arrived at, but we agreed that if we had to hire all those people and pay them the salaries that they could command, it could hit the organisational balance sheet quite badly.

But money and salaries are one thing. Often volunteers bring with them skills and experiences that are not readily available in the market place. It is not a matter of being able to pay the salaries, often the right people with a suitable combination of commitment and skill are just not around.

When volunteers come from another culture or country, they also enrich local staff in providing them a platform to work in a multi ethnic and multi cultural environment. They usually bring perspectives on a particular situation or a way of doing things that are fresh and new and can help challenge existing notions of how business has always been conducted. More importantly, by their very presence and the dedication they display, they may end up challenging or changing local work culture and practice.

It is worth considering why volunteerism, even for a short spell is not at all entrenched in India. The concept of the ‘gap year’ is not prevalent in India at all unfortunately. It is one straight and long ride from school to college and university and then onto your first job. In most situations, a gap in the resume that does not follow this beaten track would raise eye brows in most interview situation. The concept of taking some time off now and then and follow the call of the heart is not too well understood or accepted in India.

Of course there is also an economic dimension to this that must not be missed. Volunteerism costs. It may not cost the receiving organisation like Oasis directly, but some one obviously is paying the bills that the volunteer worker is incurring in the country- their housing, their grocery bills, utility bills and others. Depending on organisational policy, possibly the office may absorb some bills, but that still leaves a substantial chunk that the volunteer ultimately is responsible for.

We at the receiving end of a volunteer's untainted service are often unaware of what it takes to raise that sort of money that would pay your bills, no matter how frugally you ultimately choose to live. Occasionally mid career professionals have worked long enough and saved enough to manage their own finances, but ever so often we get younger people who are not likely to have reached that stage and need to reach out to friends and family to raise the necessary resources to come.

Volunteers are the silent worker bees that often quietly and unobtrusively keep the bee hive of activity running. More importantly perhaps they keep a much needed notion alive; that in a materialistic society where every one seemingly works for money- not every one really is.
Volunteers represent the incarnational model that often enough it is more blessed to give than to receive and enough people still exist who believe that and live by that.

A new kind of business

2010-06-21T23:02:00.002+05:30

Corporate Social responsibility has been around as a concept for some time. It has been increasingly picking up momentum and allowing corporate bodies, hitherto focused only on making profits for shareholders and promoters to look beyond these horizons. CSR initiatives are now in place in many business entities and can take many forms – from simply writing a cheque and funding a favourite charity to encouraging employees to get involved in specific tasks that encourage more than just passive fund giving. CSR has in certain situations got to the point where business entities have set up non profit organizations which operate within the overall ambit off the corporate brand but with their own mandate.

CSR of course means many things to many people. Some entities genuinely pursue it with a passion. In India, the Tatas have traditionally been known to have been those who have promoted CSR initiatives from long before the term itself was coined --- from the early 20th century in fact, when the town of Jamshedpur was being planned and built. Today there are several others like Infosys, Wipro and others who have their own CSR initiatives. An offshoot of CSR perhaps is when individuals associated with corporates, with their own private wealth set up funds and ventures and become philanthropists. A well known example would example would be Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.

But like every paradigm, this one too is changing. Charities are evolving too like everyone else. If businesses are becoming altruistic and looking at more than just their balance sheet , charities are also looking at more innovative ways to raise money than continually wait at funder’s doorsteps and dance in tandem to a donor’s footsteps. Donor fatigue may ensure that yesterday’s need has become today’s burden and no longer do fundable; but human needs not just fade away like the last season’s autumnal dress selection. Needs remain, require to be addressed and no responsible agency can walk away because yesterday’s fad is no longer fashionable to fund and resources therefore are beginning to dry up. So why not set up your own business and do what the corporates are doing – generate profits and generate them ethically with a framework of values underpinning the whole enterprise and then send the profits back to fund the core charitable activities.

The Jacobs Well project of Oasis is one such model; where the core charitable activities of Oasis remain the focus and yet the entity is run as a viable business with fair trade practices and the ethos of Oasis guiding it in what it will and will not do and how it will do them. Legally and in terms of its identity and branding, it is a separate entity doing business, striving to compete aggressively but fairly in the marketplace and make money and as much of it as possible. And when money is made, after retaining enough for ongoing business expansion and consolidation, the surplus is handed over to fund charity.

So it is a classic case of reverse engineering. Typically NGOs and charities have gone to big businesses and asked for money to sustain themselves and their work. Often they have to constantly keep tweaking their work to make sure it meets donor requirements and preferences. It is not unusual for an organization’s work to be diluted or affected in the process; after all, money is a big influencer. Jacobs Well attempts to keep Oasis’ core charitable focus and activities at its heart , even while it ventures to a competitive market place and remain a viable and sustainable business entity that is not just selling its products to a captive charity market , but out there in the more demanding public bazaar.

This word called sustainabilty

2010-06-18T12:55:00.004+05:30

One very common word in the charity sector is the word “sustainable”. We are constantly asked by various well wishers, donors and others about the sustainability of our work. Often, after a visitor has had a long tour of the work being done and the change that is happening in peoples’ lives, in the final debriefing session, the question inevitably gets asked.... “but is your work sustainable ?. What is your outcome? What has been your impact so far? What are your goals for the next three to five years and how much will it cost to achieve these goals?”

All of the above are valid questions, but I can never respond to these questions without relating an incident that occurred long ago, but which still plays on my mind. I was attending a conference where the subject of discussion was that institutional and residential care was costly and not sustainable in the long run and needed to be weeded out. Many arguments were presented by speakers from different disciplines with irrefutable facts and figures. Near the end, a diminutive figure stood up to speak. He introduced himself as a consultant to the World Bank on urban planning and began by saying that in his infancy, he had been abandoned outside a hospital, in a garbage bin, presumably by his parents. He was then picked up from there and taken to a children’s’ home where he received his education.

After he finished his schooling, he chose to become a priest and joined the Jesuit order. The Jesuits then furthered his education and sent him to study urban infrastructure planning and he became a person of such rare distinction that the World Bank picked him to advise governments around the world so that they could contain unplanned urban growth in the world’s growing mega cities. He summed up his talk by saying that although there was great merit in all these debates, a wholesome human being who was given the opportunity to realize his gifts and who then in turn used his vocation to serve his generation was the greatest definition of sustainability and something whose worth could never be factored in financial terms.

For the last few months, those thoughts have been constantly resonating in my mind. For indeed the cost of restoring broken lives and restoring them to a point where people are no longer “beneficiaries” of aid, but active and empowered participants in society is huge. When we talk of costs, bills and finances are the imagery that most commonly come to mind, but I am not just talking about the money involved here. The human cost involved and the sheer diversity of people and skills needed at different stages in a person’s transition to wholeness is immense and the task can seem daunting.

Human Trafficking : What Can I do ?

2010-06-13T20:19:00.002+05:30

In the movie "The Verdict", Paul Newman plays am alcoholic down and out lawyer who has hardly any clients and is yet some how moved to take on the case of a woman who is paralysed and rendered comatose during surgery as a result of medical negligience. he takes on a very powerful medical and social establishment armed with powerful, well connected judges and lots of money. he fumbles , despairs and often is on the verge of giving up , but perseveres and wins the case and erven greater damages than what he had asked for.

Lawyers involved in cases dealing with human trafiicking , perhaps often feel the same way, puny pygmies fighting a powerful, well entrenched set up whose tentacles seemingly reach every where. And even the puny pygmies are few. In a field dominated by corporate law, taxation law, property law and criminal law and the incredible wealth associated with them, human rights lawyers are not easy to come by and the field itself can get immensely politicized with a lot of negative fallout for all concerned.

It is in that context that the judgment of the 3rd of May, 2010 in Kolkata where two men and one woman were sentenced to 10 years in prison for the trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of three minor girls must be seen. The girls, 12, 14 and 16 years old, had been lured by traffickers from their rural villages in Nepal and West Bengal with the prospect of legitimate work in Kolkata. Instead, they were “sold” to the accused persons, who in turn forced them to provide sexual services to as many as 12 customers a day.

The numbers are important because convictions in instances of trafficking are few and far between thus discouraging investigators and agencies involved in anti trafficking work, work that is in any case, demanding, unrewarding and life threatening. According to an US State Department report released in late 2009, 1,970 traffickers had been arrested within the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Goa and West Bengal, resulting in just 30 convictions – a mere 1.5% of trafficking-related arrests.

Trafficking is not a priority for policing activity in most situations – short of manpower as well as equipment, the police are often required to deploy their limited resources according to the political priorities of the day – tackling terrorism, internal security issues and major economic offences are the big ticket concerns of the day. So anti human trafficking agencies often have to actively assist the police in arresting such traffickers, framing charges and making sure that adequate evidence is available for a conviction to occur. In the Kolkata cases, the agency involved was the International Justice Mission.

What can you and I do? Well a raid and rescue operations are complex processes and part of the reason that conviction rates are so low is that at the time of trial, very few witnesses are available and those that are usually turn hostile. church members as well as common citizens of integrity can come forward to accompany raiding parties and serve as credible witnesses when cases come up for trial. Although India has according to some estimates over a million lawyers and over 80,000 graduates every year, very few come forward to pursue careers in human rights law and trafficking related activities.

Then after the raids are over and done with, the long journey of rehabilitation and reintegration of the victims begins and there again there a dearth of resources and people. Counselors, half way homes, skilled wardens and care takers and a whole range of other professionals are needed. Of church congregations have an incredible amount of human resources avaailble in their pews , whch anti trafficking agencies like, IJM, Oasis and others could use. In all these areas more and more people are needed to be active and get involved and engaged and in the end, though the process is long and winding, persistence pays off as the Kolkata judgment proves.

Apna Asmaan : Be content with what you have

2010-03-01T10:09:00.004+05:30

Propaganda films are easily recognizable. They mouth a cliché in a dry, ham handed and rather preachy manner and are generally boring to watch. Old timers will remember the newsreels that used to be compulsorily shown in the cinema halls before the main movie feature began. They used to beat the drum about the government of the day and its achievements in the most obvious way possible.

So I approached a film about an autistic child with some trepidation. The film being Apna Aasmaan released about three years ago and directed by Kausik Roy. It makes a point sure, it would have been criminal if a message had not been in built in to the movie given the topic that the subject is chosen is one that certainly needs a lot of social education and awareness.

Irfan Khan and Shobana are a typical middle class couple with an autistic child. The child has put a strain on their marriage for two reasons – the simple act of looking after such a child when all around people are ridiculing and laughing at the child is stressful enough. And then on top of that, the dreams that they had for their son that he would grow become a mathematician , they know are now never going to be realized. And the couple have been never been able to reconcile themselves to that. The husband busies himself in work and drink and the wife in the simple tasks that are involved in taking care of her son.

Several treatments are tried but nothing works till they run into a maverick scientist who claims to have a treatment that is quite off beat, has never been tested on humans but a treatment that the doctor claims will work. However the treatment doesn’t have a side effect; but the doctor does not elaborate except to say that should it be needed, an antidote is available. Much against the wishes of their family physician who has been encouraging the couple to stand with their son in all that he is gifted at – for instance sketching, they opt for the unconventional treatment.( the couple don’t see much use for their son’s paintings).

The treatment works apparently and almost overnight their son becomes “normal” and develops a gift in mathematics and music and becomes known as a prodigy. Meanwhile changes in the child’s personality are also noticed… the gentle, albeit different child now becomes rude, abrasive and insensitive. The family doctor informs that that he has noticed changes in the child’s brain’s limbic system which has shrunk- and the limbic system is the one that makes a person human by controlling the emotions. Meanwhile as the child becomes increasingly violent, the parents begin thinking as different as the child was in his pre treatment days, he was someone who could be loved and understood…. Their son was not the stranger that he had become. Eventually they have the treatment reversed and their son becomes the autistic child that they knew and loved.

As I said before, the film leaves you with a message but it is not a preachy film. But it does convey a very valuable truth – that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence and that in our quest for what looks more attractive, more desirable, we often devalue or not often even notice the gifts that are present among us; because we are seeking some other reward, some other prize. … That is just beyond the horizon, just beyond our reach….

When roots die...

2010-02-21T20:27:00.003+05:30

I have just returned from a place in Assam which is particularly notorious for its bandhs. The area is tribal and the tribes are forever fidgeting to preserve their language, culture and identity by calling strikes and bandhs and generally shutting normal life down. It seemed to be a big nuisance to us big city people bound by our deadlines and calendars, but preserving their uniqueness is a big ticket issue for the tribals. They are prepared to die for it. If needed, they are prepared to kill for it too.

In the jeep, pass through this bandh prone territory; we discovered a truth that is disturbing. And that is that the real reason why, we dwelling in big cities or something similar, find all this agitation about self identity, so very odd and parochial is that perhaps many of us have no identity left to talk about. People like me, who have largely lived in neutered cities all our lives, can probably with some minor hiccups adjust anywhere and live anywhere, but we don’t really belong anywhere in particular. Like the Bedouin nomad of yester years, we are the vagabonds of today. We can pitch our tent at any place that allows us to do so, that is to say, we can off load our back packs, charge up our lap tops and hook up our data cards and within minutes we are functional. We can live anywhere, sleep anywhere, work anywhere, but many of us just don’t belong anywhere and that is the plain truth. In the old days, when people asked you (as they still do), “where are you from”, they had an answer. Today many of us would be hard pressed to say where we are from because we aren’t from anywhere really.

Is the question about self identity and the isolation that inevitably follows when one becomes aware of it merely a philosophical question or is there more to it. And it is because there is a lot more to it than we care to understand or discern; that we skirt so uneasily around the subject. Choices for example. The choices that I make or I choose not to make are largely shaped by the way I have created my identity ; by the way I have chosen to see myself. If I see myself as an Indian, then all of my world view would be detrmined by that one lens – typically I would do all I can to further the interests of my country through my education, through my career choices, through whether I choose to emigrate to another country and many other such. If I see my identity reflected in my religion that would dictate my choices: religion would be the prism that would determine how I dress, what I eat, how I perceive people of other faiths who are “different”. And the same follows for distinctiveness that is centered around language, tribe, ethnicity or any other shared commonality among peoples.

Identify is important; no matter how deep we try to bury it deep within the layers of our consciousness. Without it we are nothing but dressed up mercenaries ; prepared to ship in and ship out depending on how green the grass is at any given point of time. Identity begets loyalty, commitment and passion. The challenge as always is finding the balance – oscillating between rootless drift and deep rooted intolerance.

the Great Indian Nurse Drain

2010-02-11T15:57:00.001+05:30

A big neighborhood hospital near my office is having a strike. The nurses are on strike. A whole bunch of them are sitting hunched up under a tree opposite the hospital gates with slogans and banners. There is shouting or sloganeering and a small posse of police women who have posted in the area are bored to death, because there is nothing happening that demands or needs their intervention. Inside, the hospital looks crowded as usual and I can see a few nurses in their uniforms rushing to and fro, busy as usual. The media has not taken too much note, though a local paper did publish a small column recently mentioning that the strike had entered the 8th day without any resolution in sight.

Come to think of it, in India’s hierarchical and rarefied medical fraternity, nurses don’t unfortunately figure very high for all the hard work they do and for all the skills that they possess. The glamour, the money and the recognition all go to the doctors alone, almost always. For instance, look at this year’s Padma awardees. The list contained the name of the doctor who treated the Prime Minister during his bye pass. The doctor is eminent in his field no doubt, but on his own he could have achieved little. Yet the entire Para medical team consisting of highly skilled technicians and nurses did not warrant any merit or attention.

Many countries now recognize the important role that nurses play and in fact in Europe where immigration rules are otherwise tightening, nurses are still being welcomed with open arms. But in India, there is little appreciation of the career of Nursing and also little effort has been made to challenge the stereotyped image of the servile and inferior position that nurses usually have in society. Though there is great disparity in the pay, position and benefits between the doctors and nurses, they are the key ingredients in the high tech health care world of today

One of the results of the way we treat our nurses is that many of them are migrating in droves to countries where they will be paid better and treated a lot better. The Times of India carried an article some time ago, where it quoted a nursing college principal as saying that 80%--yes, 80%--of her students apply to recruiters for foreign nations. For instance, although Filipinas traditionally filled many nursing vacancies in US hospitals, the trend is now moving toward Indian nurses. "Dr. Mark J. McKenney," a U.S. recruiter who directs Nurses for International Cooperative Exchange (NICE), notes that nurses can earn $50,000 per year in the U.S. according to the same article.

Speaking on the occasion of the National Florence Nightingale Awards last year (possibly the only day we pause for a day to remember nurses!)To mark the International Nurses Day, the President had remarked that it was a matter of pride that the quality and commitment of Indian nurses was getting recognition. She had also commented on the acute shortage of nurses in the country by pointing out that there are about 3.7 lakh nurses in India while the requirement is going to be about 10.5 lakh nurses by 2012. But dreaming of filling up this gap may be wishful thinking. While the shortage of nurses is a global phenomenon, most other countries have realized their worth and treat them well as pay them better. We are falling short on both counts.

Starvation or Death

2010-02-10T14:23:00.005+05:30

Yesterday, the government of India made a decision, for the moment not to allow genetically modified Brinjals for sale in India. The decision that India has made will perhaps influence other countries. Particularly, a leading daily has reported that Bangladesh and Philippines are eagerly watching the course that India sets and that might guide them too.

Both Bangladesh and Philippines have large populations to feed and therein perhaps lays the commonality. And that too to a large measure will be the guiding factor in any decision that the government makes.

It is not that the dangers and the uncertainties of the genetically modified revolution driven by bio-technology and often called the second green revolution by its votaries are not known. They are known. The concept is new and no one knows fully the long term implications that going this route will have. And this is a fact. Those who love the hate the multi nationals talk of how a few giants will eventually come to monopolize seeds and then acting as a cartel control seed prices and threatening national food security, bring nations to their knees.

Possible.

If OPEC countries can act as a cartel and to a large extent control global oil prices, why not seed companies? Multi nationals after all are beholden to no one but the balance sheet and the shareholders. This is true.

There are also environmental and health hazards up on the radar; some of them are known or can be predicted but there are many which may be totally unknown at the present time. All of this is known and it is true; but yet in this present day and time, there may be no other options but to go this route.

Looking back at history, at the time of the first green revolution when fertilizers, pesticides and hybrid seeds began to be used in a big way in the 60s, the dangers that could be posed were known then too. But again there was no alternative.

Traditionally practiced forms of farming had peaked in terms of what could be produced in terms of yields and the population was growing. India was literally surviving from “ship to mouth” as it was called then with food imports literally being rushed to ration shops to ward off impending starvation and the memories of the Great Bengal Famine of the 40s which killed close to 3 million people or more were still fresh.

And so the government of Indira Gandhi went ahead to back the efforts of MS Swaminathan and others. The dangers that fertilizers, chemical pesticides and such were not and could not be avoided but systemic famine and mass starvation became history. It is not that fertilizers and pesticides were good; it is just that the alternative is worse.

Today again, we are standing at just such a perch. According to the economist Yogendra Alagh, with the emphasis on infrastructure, SEZ and so on, and the resultant neglect of agriculture from the ’90s, the agricultural growth rate went down.

For nearly a decade, agricultural production had stagnated. The spectacular yield growth recorded in the post-Green Revolution years in Punjab and Haryana has receded into history. Of the multiple problems confronting agriculture, rapid fragmentation of land holdings is keeping pace with increasing population. In 1976-77, the average size of the holdings was estimated at 2 hectares, while in 1980-81, it came down to 1.8 hectares. Today, it stands at a mere 0.2 hectares.

The total number of land holdings in 1981 were around 89 million; today these have crossed 100 million. By the turn of the century, the average land holding will come down to 0.11 hectares. It is quite obvious that with such small land holdings, Indian agriculture cannot adopt high-tech farm practices. So in the long run , do we really have the choice to avoid genetically modified foods on our dining table? I think not. The choice it would seem is inevitable…. Tomorrow if not today.

Living in Debt

2010-02-09T00:53:00.001+05:30

Recently I ran into a friend whom I had not met in some years. It turned out that like many who have been affected by the economic downturn, he too has been hit and has been out of a job for a year or more now. Having exhausted all his savings, he was in a situation where his children’s school was telling him that they would drop their names from the school register if he didn’t pay up their fees on which he had been defaulting for some months. After exploring all possible alternatives, he approached a kabuliwallah, the dreaded traditional money lender of Afghan origins immortalized in Tagore’s short story of the same name and its subsequent movie version.

The kabuliwallah lent him money at the horrific interest rate of 80 percent per month and fully aware that his client was unemployed and possibly unable to return his money immediately, further added a stipulation that if my friend failed to pay the interest at least, he would further pay a penalty of 60 percent per month on the interest. This left the family, already in considerable difficulty, in dire financial straits. Of course, the situation of my friend was not of his own making ; he was not spending or living ostentatiously; he was simply unemployed for so long that his savings ran out, pushing him into a corner. But around me, I do see people who seem to have control over their spending, live beyond their means and eventually get into a debt trap.

While the debate between living frugally (as our parents usually did) or the times today , where we often live to spend will always be debatable, going into a debt and then staying there is a point where surely a line has been crossed. And while living off credit cards and personal loans itself is a nightmare, taking loans at incredible rates from unorganized but dreaded money lenders like the kabuliwallahs is perhaps an inevitable step towards doom. And yet money lenders are an integral part of the Indian horizon and according to S. Parasuraman of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences Moneylenders are now an inextricable part of the rural economy," So much so the bank has become secondary, or even redundant in rural India."

And then for a picture of urban India, just look at this: Outstanding loans on credit cards reached $6 billion at the end of 2008, up 85 percent from the previous year, according to CRISIL, a ratings agency. In New Delhi alone, already overburdened courts are dealing with 400,000 cases of bounced checks, mostly payments for credit card purchases, according to government figures.India currently has 30 million credit card holders, triple the number half a decade ago. In the past two years, the average credit card spending by an Indian has jumped about 30 percent, to Rs 2,400 per month ($48). Indians took on credit-card debt worth $14 billion in 2008, three times higher than just four years ago.

Although slowly counseling facilities like DISHA and Debt doctor and others like them are beginning to emerge to provide advice, counseling and even debt negotiation with the organized sector like banks and other financial institutions, just how deep is their reach? And just exactly how many people actually know about their existence? Few? And how many of the clients of these credit counseling services are those who have borrowed money from money lenders? Probably none. And considering that Self help groups and cooperative societies where interest rates are more affordable are the fourth and fifth preferred choices for sourcing loans according to the Invest India Savings and Income survey for June 2007, and have a share of 9 per cent and 6 per cent respectively in unorganized sector, the demon of debt is not likely to go away any time soon.

India’s Elderly: A long and lonely walk

2010-02-04T14:46:00.001+05:30

Now that the political tributes to the late Jyoti Basu have sort of ceased, examining the last years of his life, highlights for me a concern that we in this country have largely neglected. The thought first came to mind when the outgoing west Bengal governor, Gopal Krishna Gandhi went to pay his farewell calls to the late Jyoti Basu. As a gift, Gandhi, brought along a stack of books for Basu.

Jyoti Basu accepted the gifts graciously but commented wryly through his aide, Jyoti Krishna Ghosh, that due to age, he could neither see, nor hear nor read properly and could even barely carry out a conversation. It would have been a difficult time for a man whose mind remained sharp to the end and who in his time led the state for over two decades to be reduced to such a sad state.

While India is often hailed as the land of young people, it is also a land with a significant number of elderly people. The number of people who are elderly in India was 77 million in 2001and it is anticipated that by 2021 it will reach 137 million. India now has the second largest aged population in the world. Yet while the young are hailed as the citizens and leaders of tomorrow and other such soubriquets, the elderly, the leader and builder of our yesterdays usually are left to live lonely and unfulfilled lives with little attention paid to their wants and needs.

Euthanasia or even assisted suicide is banned in India, although given the physical and emotional deprivation that many of our elderly population are forced to live in, many have from time to time opted for this. Some traditional practices like the Jain practice of Santhara or voluntary fasting to death when one believes that one’s life has served its purpose are tolerated; this is not a mainstream tradition. So given that advances in medical science usually now ensures a longer life span than was possible a generation ago and given that euthanasia and its likes are banned and rightly so, what is one to do? Is it fine to just consign the elderly to the pages of history and allow them to live physically but deprived of all that makes life meaningful.

The fact that Indian society is getting fragmented today has only added to the problem. Not only is the extended family passé, event the sense of community is fast disappearing. Elderly grandparents are now opening Facebook and Skype accounts to keep some semblance of family in a widely dispersed universe. We know, they know , everyone knows that a virtual community is just that “virtual” and it can never replace actual face to face human bonding , and neither do social networking sites have any such pretensions.

Although it looks for the moment that there is no way out of this one way ticket to gloom, it would be nice if gerontology had a higher profile in the country than it currently does. While geriatrics, while deals with the medical aspects of ageing has some visibility, there is very little going on in terms of the social, mental and other processes that have to do with ageing and tries to come up with solutions and options. Civil society responses to the elderly and their plight are limited in scope and number, although this is slowly changing. Meanwhile, denied death and also denied an abundant life, our senior citizens live in a perpetual twilight of despair.

Population and Identity

2010-02-03T15:55:00.004+05:30

All this talk of Mumbai for Mumbaikars is making me very nervous. I don’t know to what part of the country I can lay claim to. As a man from Bengal, largely brought up in Delhi, partly educated in Pune and also owning a small flat there and further married to a lady from the Philippines, just who am I? The identity question is beginning to haunt me, for over years, having travelled to practically every part of India, I realize that I can largely live and adjust everywhere. I have no food fads, no clannish tendencies to hang out with my own kind (just who would they be any way?), or any other parochial tendencies that I am aware of or any one has pointed out. Further, having served a stint in the Armed Forces, I have imbibed the ideals of secularism and national integration to the brim. I am the living, walking and talking model of the Nehruvian cliché of “unity in diversity”.

But today I wonder where I belong. Do I belong to Bengal? May be because I speak, read and write the language. One good thing about the Left Front government is that it has been socially inclusive in keeping with its ideology and so linguistic and ethnic differentiations are rarely talked about or a matter of debate.

But identity is obviously something important to Indians and the Indian identity; notwithstanding the heroic efforts of the RSS and other nationalistic entities is clearly not enough. Although the RSS has mistakenly tried to propagate an idealistic myth that a common religion (read Hinduism) will automatically lead to a unifying pan Indian identity, this is clearly not the case. Religion is obviously not very unifying in Mumbai where the Shiv Sena and the RSS are speaking in a different tongue, even though they espouse the same faith and do so with passion and fervor.

So “mile sur mera tumhara” is out and linguistic and ethnic based xenophobia is in. Treading the fine line between being conscious of and being proud of one’s identity – be it ethnic, religious or linguistic on one hand and being intolerant of those who are different on the other is always a delicate matter , but we seem to be losing the battle here. Clearly the Indian identity is a tenuous one at best and dangerously at threat at its best.

At the root of all this battle for identity is some thing that was once recognized as a national priority ; but is now consigned to the dustbin of history. India’s family planning program , driven by its burgeoning population. In my childhood and youth, I lived through slogans like “do ya teen bus” and even later “ hum do, hamare do’, slogans, today’s population hasn’t heard of. As the population keeps growing, opportunities diminish – be it for education or jobs, or houses or basic civic amenities.

As these diminish, migration ensures that people move elsewhere in search of these opportunities and in the process swamp languages and cultures and ethnicities by the sheer power of numbers. If you need examples look at Tripura , once tribal dominated but today effectively controlled and even governed by Bengalis, the same with Silchar in Assam and of course – the much talked about Mumbai, the door to opportunity for supposedly all.

It is a pity that in today’s consumer driven market , high populations are an asset, though on the overall balance sheet , an exploding and uncontrolled population growth is really a liability , threatening life and livelihood in every possible way and thereby eventually beginning to threaten identities and nationhood as we have known and understood it. It is a pity that the Family Planning program is dead. We need it back and badly and soon.

Sunlight, shadows and Dhoop

2010-02-02T18:46:00.001+05:30

Perhaps it was a matter of chance that I was watching the film Dhoop which deals with the subject of the family of a Kargil martyr on Republic Day. Perhaps it was incidental that the film has a shot of the ritual laying of the wreath at the Amar Jawan Jyoti by the Prime Minister as a sequence. Watching the movie raised two questions in my mind – the first perhaps has been addressed often enough though not remedied ; and the second question – well that is perhaps very little asked.

The story line is simple. There is a middle aged couple – Om Puri – who is a professor and his wife(Revathy) who is a librarian. Their only son (Sanjay Suri), initially somewhat against their wishes to join the Army and eventually does so. He is posted to Kargil as a Captain and in the 1999 hostiles is martyred. After the initial ceremony honoring the dead is over , the family including Sanjay’s fiancée (Gul Panang) begin moderating their grief and begin to pick up the pieces of their life.

It is at this time that a letter arrives from the government allotting the family with a petrol pump plot – apparently a routine bureaucratic gesture to the families of the martyred. The middle class family is initially reluctant to accept the offer – they are middle class professionals content with their jobs and salaries but are persuaded to accept the pump as a memorial to their dead son.

It is at this point that reality hit home . The harsh reality that after the garlanding of the body is done with and the Last Post has been played , the martyrs are just another statistic. As they begin the journey to take possession of the plot where the petrol pump is to be located , they encounter apathy, corruption and behavior of the vilest kid possible. One police man who(among others) has to give an NOC and needs a bribe to do so, gleefully informs the parents that is a windfall for him as so many people have been martyred from Haryana and each martyred family is a potential bribe giver.

Coming back to the two questions , I started this write up with. I have heard the first question posed often enough on television channels and a lot of breast beating at the apathetic treatment that is meted out to martyrs’ families. And this is a sad fact and must be deplored. But the other question that tormented me as I watched Om Puri on his scooter go from office to office and in almost every instance be confronted by the demand for a bribe was this : in the dance between the one who gives bribe and the one who takes it, who actually is the villain ? So often , we paint the giver and the taker with the same brush of criminality and sin when the one who empties out his pocket is often a victim of extortion and utter helplessness.

In the film , the grit and determination of Om Puri and Revathy, aided by the spunky Gul Panang is commendable , but how many people in real life can really sustain the pressure of being surrounded on every side by venal, greedy, vulture like people with no semblance of feeling except that of becoming richer at the hapless expense of the other. Can you ? Can I ? Every time I bribe, am I the sinner or sinned against ? Makes me wonder.

When ambition goes awry

2009-11-17T20:11:00.002+05:30

" Company Limited” is on three films that Satyajit Ray made on the effects of big city life on an individual. The effects are mostly negative and this film studies how naked and ruthless ambition can erode a man’s moral and ethical character. Needless to say, this sort of temptation to get ahead of your fellow rival is something that is innate to man, but perhaps the tendency and the temptation to “keep up with the Jones” is stronger in the cities where Jones is more often your colleague sitting across the table.

So, Shyamal, a middle ranking officer in a Kolkata based company making ceiling fans aspires to become a Director on the Board. But there are other aspirants too and one of them has a relative on the Board already and so Shyamal has to play his cards really well. Observing all this is his sister in law, who idealizes her brother in law and is in awe of him. Shyamal too dotes on her and is thrilled when he learns that she is coming to visit and stay with them for a while.

When all is going well, comes the bad news. A consignment of fans meant for export has been found to be defective and has to be recalled. This is a crippling setback because as per the terms with the contractor, any delays would render the deal null and void. After studying the fine print, Shyamal discovers the loop hole. If production were to be halted due to a “force majeure”, something beyond his immediate control, then the company is not liable for damages.

Shyamal moves further to exploit this loophole. In collaboration with a labor union leader, he engineers unrest in the factory – not a difficult thing to do in Bengal at the best of times. An explosion occurs and a faithful watchman dies and in the midst of the chaos, the company declares a lock out shutting down the factory for a time. Everyone is happy or so it seems. The labor union get some of their demands met as a quid pro quo, the company is not required to pay any damages due to the delayed shipment and of course Shyamal gets his promotion as a reward.

Shyamal’s adoring sister in law sees her idol fall from the pedestal; but more importantly Shyamal sees himself fall from in his eyes. It is said that when you fall in the esteem of others, you can with effort rise back again, but when you have fallen in your own esteem, it is an inestimably difficult task to brush aside the debris and rise again from where you fell.

The film shows what ambition can do to you ; transform you from a gentle soul into a insensitive , callous and charming intriguer , who has no regret or remorse even if people are killed as part of the plot to go further in life and career. And the indifference and annonynimity of the city only fuels this dehumanization.

Change happens slowly; and often like Shyamal’s sister in law; it is often the people we betray who detect the earliest signs of our change and decay.

A middle class girl

2009-11-15T13:48:00.001+05:30

“And Quiet Rolls the Day” was a Bengali movie made in 1979; but the story line and the ambivalent attitude of society towards women who go out to work will not go out of date any time soon. May be in the cities, it assumes a different form and expression; but nevertheless the reality doesn’t go away. In the film, a lower middle class family is dependent on their elder daughter’s income. The father is retired with a meager pension, their elder son is one of the ranks of the “educated unemployed” and the other siblings are still in school. On one particular night, the girls do not return home at her usual time from work and the family routine is upset.

Each one reacts in their own way and once again as in many occasions in life, there aren’t any black and white answers. The father walks down to the bus stop and scans every bus that stops and discharges its passengers till the last one has gone by. He is as much worried as a father, a s by the unspoken elephant in the room: has something happened to their daughter – an accident may be? If so, how would they manage their family budget now, without her income? But of course he doesn’t say it; to do so would be tactless. The father is one who cuts a decidedly sorry figure; as the one with the most moral authority in a patriarchal society, he nevertheless has very little actual power; given that he earns but a pittance through his pension and it is his daughter who provides for the household- a reality that he still has not been able to fully internalize.

The mother is able to give vent to her fears a little more transparently; she has no appearances to keep up. She is also relatively immobile; not physically but socially. Norms dictated that women of her generation rarely if ever ventured out of the house, so she cannot go and wait at the bus stop and vent her anxiety that way. All she can do is to express her veiled fears to the other children in the house. The fears are the same as those of her husband though – there is motherly love, but more importantly the larger survival question – what if an accident has happened and she is dead or maimed … how will they live without her salary. As a woman, she has other fears too; has her daughter a boy friend, a lover / has she run away with him? None of these fears are expressly articulated though; but they are subliminally conveyed.

It is interesting to see the way the younger siblings react. One of the sisters goes to a nearby shop which has a telephone and tries to call her sister’s office; the phone rings and rings but of course no one answers. The younger brother goes to the police station and eventually the morgue; just in case she is the unidentified accident victim whom the police have recorded earlier in the day.

In the midst of all this chaos, the girl turns up home just before dawn and immediately the focus of the story changes. The unspoken question: where was the girl the previous night? Given the family’s economic dependence on the daughter, the question is never voiced openly; but suspicious glances and inquiring looks abound. The girl herself offers no explanation. Eventually, the landlord goaded on by his other tenants , comes and loudly tells the girl’s father that they should vacate the palce soon as his house was meant for rent to “decent” people and not for families where daughters were “loose”. So I guess , Indian women ( may be other women too ?), are stuck between a rock and a hard place, often families need their earnings to live on or else they would be doomed to destitution ; and yet , they are expected to abide by norms of behavior codified generations earlier and which do not really work any more…. It is a complicated time … a society in transition indeed…..

A sad Bengali movie

2009-11-13T21:58:00.002+05:30

For the last few months, I have not written anything; my blog page has been vacant all this while. But I have been watching and reading a lot. Watching a lot of movies – the dull, grainy black and white Bengali movies of the seventies and eighties of the kind that Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and others used to make.

Along the way, I must say that I have learnt a lot about the times in which my parents grew up in and the happenings that shaped their lives and why they behaved they way did on so many occasions. I also discovered that many of those so called “art movies”- parallel cinema as they call them these days struck a chord with me. The movies were usually dark, gloomy and had sad endings; but more of that later; but one could identify with the characters – they thought and behaved and acted like people I would know. They were not all black or all white. But rather like the color of the film in which they were filmed, they were various shades of grey.

This has been an important experience for me for my father spoke little of what his life as a young man was like and watching these classics from decades long gone by have helped me to try and understand the world as perhaps he might have understood it.

The film “Distant Thunder” is one that I particularly like to remember for it tells so poignantly that words like globalization might be of very recent coinage; but the events that make it all up have always been there. “Distant Thunder” is the story of the effects of the Second World War on an obscure Bengal village with the scarcity of food grain, the consequent rise in prices and all of that leading up to what is now widely known as the Great Bengal Famine which according to official figures alone killed 1.5 million people between 1942 and 43.

In the film (and the book of the same name), the principal characters know very little about the war and where the fighting is happening. The “distant thunder” alluded to is the drone of fighter planes overflying the village as move on to the war theatre in Singapore where the Allied forces and the Japanese were locked in battle. In fact, no one in the village really knows where a Singapore I located; their world revolves around their village and a few neighboring ones; the rare villager has even visited Kolkata, the state capital. In a casual conversation when one of the villagers asks where this Singapore is, the one man who knows is at a loss to explain. He finally says that Singapore is a little East of Midnapore – the district head quarters which the village has heard of but again very few have visited.

Although the Bengal famine is now part of Bengal’s racial memory and of all those who lived through it, it has not received the attention or empathy that it perhaps deserved. The partition and the misery and violence it caused received a lot more attention and visibility from the political leadership and the media of the day and the BBC has as late as in 2008 described the famine as an event that we forgot to remember. To that extent perhaps, people like my father who were of that generation and perhaps knew of friends and relatives who were affected by the famine, perhaps lived with wounds that never healed……and may be never will….

In search of famine ...

2009-09-10T16:42:00.001+05:30

Many years ago, the renowned Bengali film maker, Mrinal Sen made a film titled “Akaler Sandhane” (In search of Famine). The film, rich in symbolism is about a film unit who travels to a remote Bengal village to make a movie on the Great Bengal Famine of 1942. This was a man made famine as food was diverted from the market to provide supplies to the Allied armies involved in the Second World War. At the conclusion of the war, the famine inquiry commission estimated that 1.5 million people had died in the period due to lack of food. This is now widely accepted to be a very low and inaccurate estimate and today, it is guessed that the figure might be 3-4 million, since a vast majority of the people died in the country side without their names appearing on any official record.

Coming back to the film. The unit is off to a remote village and they have hired a manager to take care of the logistics. He would be responsible for arranging board and accommodation while the unit would be busy filming. Initially, the movie makers are welcomed enthusiastically; but then things happen. As the Unit manager goes shopping in the tiny village market he is buying up most of the products in the market. An artificial shortage of food items begins to occur and pushes the cost of food items beyond the reach of the ordinary villager, thus creating an artificial food shortage and a famine of sorts. Meanwhile, the Unit carries on with its filming oblivious to the local food shortages and tensions that they are generating as they dig up the past…. Many of the affluent villagers who are grumbling today are actually the children of war profiteers – those who prospered by hoarding food grains, selling them at inflated prices as their fellow men died around them – and then by buying up their property at throw away prices.

The film unit people are essentially decent people; they are just getting on with their lives and doing what they came to do, viz. make a film. If their presence is causing food prices to rise, if their probing into history is causing old ghosts to surface and haunt ; if poor people are being put to hardship because the rather extravagant consumption of the film crew has created shortages , well they are quite ignorant about the consequences their way of life on others.

Considering that India is now passing through a time where half the country is drought hit, it seems pertinent that the other half of the country and for the moment it includes me and practically every one that I know is living like the film unit in Mrinal Sen’s film unit; living our own lives and doing so in relative comfort while others commit suicide or starve at our doors.

Very often we tend to demonize the hoarder, the black marketer and the profiteer, the ones who very obviously and blatantly prosper while others suffer; but it is not too often that we ponder over the choices that we make in our lives and how it might affect others. In that sense, while we may not be breaking any laws of the land; in terms of what we consume and how much, we may well be lacking in moral sensitivity. But then , perhaps that is another story…..

Ji Huzoor Democracy

2009-09-04T13:43:00.002+05:30

India recently celebrated (or is it observed?) its 62nd independence day and the Prime Minister dutifully addressed the people from the Red Fort. Another few months, it will be Republic day time and we will up celebrating the installation of democracy. And yet we find that democracy in India, while better evolved than many others in the neighborhood, is still rooted in feudalism. How else can we explain or understand the fact that the Rajasthan government is demanding that bureaucrats and other employees stand up when public representatives, including MPs or MLAs, arrive. “Officers (IAS, RAS) should get up from their seat when Member of Parliament (MPs) or Member of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) visit their chambers and see them off with great respect and dignity,” sources said in Jaipur on Tuesday (September 1), quoting an official order issued by the Administrative Reforms and Coordination Department. A government order threatens that if they don't, adverse entries will be recorded in their annual appraisals.

Feudal traits in our democracy obviously have other and perhaps more sinister manifestations. If Narendra Modi was able to ban Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah simply because it allegedly contains “objectionable remarks” against Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and reaches “whimsical conclusions” about the Freedom movement, this is because other parties and other state governments have banned works of history on grounds that were equally capricious. In 2004, the Congress-NCP coalition in Maharashtra imposed a ban on James Laine’s scholarly biography of Shivaji. This after goons, who obviously had the protection of the state establishment, had vandalized the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune where Professor Laine had done some of his research. Elsewhere in India, uber-regionalists, hyper-nationalists and religious fanatics pose as self-appointed guardians of literary, historical or religious icons and threaten violence on authors, playwrights, actors, artists, poets and musicians who do not conform to their hagiographic standards. The slightest deviation from the norm in representation or analysis is treated as blasphemy, defamation. And, in the absence of the rule of law being properly enforced, writers and cultural workers are forced to appease their extremist detractors.

62 years after independence during which we have only seen a steady consistent decline in the quality of our politicians, it has now dawned upon them that respect needs to be demanded rather than commanded. Isn't it a shame that the very politicians whom we elect as our representatives are more concerned about the treatment and the respect meted out to them by the government babus rather than keep an eye over the work that the bureaucrats are entrusted to carry out in public service. Lord Meghnad Desai has an interesting take on this. Writing in the DNA Newspaper, he observes that the Indian State has actually regressed over the last 60 years and observes that India was a modern polity in the 1950s and even before Independence had a well functioning legislature but has now become a feudal democracy with legislators behaving like minor rajas and nawabs.

Not that the rest of the world isn’t noticing. The Economist Intelligence Unit has developed a Democracy Index in 2007 and has been tracking the evolution of democracy worldwide since then. India is placed along with many others – Israel ,Sri Lanka , Indonesia, Philippines for instance as a country with a flawed democracy with a ranking of 35 out of 167 countries surveyed ( North Korea hits the 167th spot , Sweden the 1st and India’s bête noir – Pakistan the 108th spot in the 2008 ranking). While our relatively high ranking may be of some comfort, the fact remains that we are still considered a flawed democracy and that is something to worry about.

Needed : A space for Independents

2009-08-30T21:50:00.005+05:30

Jaswant Singh is not contemplating retirement from active politics and the RSS or anyone else isn’t working out a rehabilitation package for him, presumably he is doing some thinking and chintan of his own. And wondering what the options before him might be – he hasn’t had much experience in party hopping; having served the BJP for the last thirty years. The publicly extended invitation to him join the Samajwadi Party is one option of course , but one can’t really stomach the thought of the urbane and very proper Jaswant Singh to share television space with the likes of Amar Singh and his party. Just as an aide memoire, one of the Samajwadi Party’s objectives as outlined in its last election manifesto was to minimize the use of English(since an outright ban is not viable any more) and to bring back more babus who would then replace computers and other more efficient technology; ostensibly to create more jobs.

And that might be Jaswant’s biggest problem ; the educated and articulate don’t have much in the way of choices; given the fact that they have an image of integrity , consistency and honesty which they would not only like to protect but also live by. Typically, for instance , a man of Jaswant’s liberal and broad minded views would be best comfortable in the Congress. But for reasons best known to him, he c hose to join the BJP and stay on there for all these decades till his recent expulsion. We would expect a typical opportunist to cozy up to any party willing to now welcome him – as say as his erstwhile colleague Kalyan Singh has done by joining Mulayam’s Samajwadi Party. But while, one may have such expectations from Kalyan , most of Jaswant’s supporters, and needless to say the man himself in all probability would be mortified at the thought of kow towing to Mulayam or the Congress. And so Jaswant Singh finds himself an unattached independent member of parliament; which is not such a bad thing in itself, but for the fact that in our political landscape, there is little space for independent members.

One of the difficulties in our system is that there is little space available to the independent member who usually is forced to fade away into oblivion. Members of parliament , who are unattached to a political party have very little scope to play any meaningful role in shaping or influencing public policy or even speaking in parliament debates, no matter how outstanding a parliamentarian one might be. Witness the fate of Private Members Bills in parliament. Although in theory , parliament can take up for consideration and even enact legislation by discussing and then passing them, the fact is that Parliament passes very few private bills. According to constitutional expert Subhash Kashyap, only 14 private members’ bills have been passed in India so far.

The fact that the culture of independent politicians cannot often make any visible impact in the running and governance of the state usually keeps many meritorious people out of politics and parliament as several such people would not like to subvert their thinking and beliefs to the ideology of any particular party. Over the years, the country has failed to benefit from the experience and wisdom of many people ; because typically to enter parliament, contest elections and make one’s presence felt, one has to be aligned to one or the other political party. Even as look at reforms in several areas of our national life, we need to work at creating a role and promoting a culture where independent parliamentarians are given the opportunity to be part of nation building and law making without depending on the crutches of political parties of one hue or the other.

The right kind of heroes

2009-08-30T21:28:00.001+05:30

Many of us might have been following the news pertaining to the members of the judicial community in India trying for a long time; not to make their financial assets public in spite of an increasing demand to do so. That they eventually agreed was not so much a voluntary act in the usually understood sense of the term; rather it was more of a capitulation to a growing chorus of public opinion. Though a large number of the establishment seemed to side with the judges – the government tied to introduce a bill that would make it unnecessary for the judges to disclose their worth.

The wide acclaim with which the Supreme Court’s final decision that the judges would up details about their assets on the Supreme Court website shows one thing very clearly; we love transparency. Whether it is in public life, or insurance forms, or anything else. We like things out in the open and people who live at the tax payers expense to be accountable; especially when the judiciary is no longer pristinely pure and the news of their misdemeanors are frequently reported in the media. In fact, the former Chief Justice of Supreme Court of India S. P. Bharucha had suggested that up to 20 per cent of judges in India were corrupt and that was a while ago. There is no reason to believe that things are necessarily any different.

It is in this context that the act of Justice D V Shlyendra Kumar of the Karnataka High Court and Justice K Kannan of Punjab and Haryana High Court who went ahead and unilaterally declared their assets without any pressure to do so must be lauded. They are truly brave hearts. After all, the Indian establishment has an elephantine memory and long after the public adulation has faded, their act of displeasing the Chief Justice of India, might have cost them their promotions as Chief Justices in the High Courts or elevation to the bench of the Supreme Court.

If we are going to have more such brave hearts in our midst; or even want to have the days and years to come, it seems that we need to learn to honor and cherish them – not in the sense of giving them awards and medals , but by giving them an abiding space in the public memory. That unfortunately rarely happens. Rogues and criminals like Abdul Karim Telgi of the stamp paper scandal or terrorist s like Ajmal Kasab will keep appearing in the papers for months or years, but the faces of true pioneers, trend setters and Heros vanish within days. We have created false celebrities of people we really ought to erase from the public memory nice they are in the custody of the law and recognize our true heroes.

Like everywhere else, the opinion makers and movers and shakers in the country need to take the responsibility to ensure that we eulogize the right people; and the media – be it the traditional media or the emerging media of blogs, citizen journalism etc need to do all that can be done to ensure that we keep preventing the disappearance of good and positive role models from the radar screen of our memories.

Turned cheeks and closed eyes.

2009-07-21T15:11:00.003+05:30

Shortly after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the new regime was rounding up sympathizers of the old regime of the Shah of Iran. Among the people they rounded up was a wealthy Iranian Jew, who was a merchant dealing in precious stones. He had prospered under the Shah’s regime and indeed at a point of time had presented a diamond pendant to the former Empress. But now he was being held as an alleged “Zionist spy”.

It turns out that his interrogator in prison is a man called Mohsen who was himself imprisoned and tortured by SAVAK, the Shah’s notorious secret police which used brutally coercive methods to keep down dissenters. Obviously his heart is now bitter towards those who were sympathetic to the Shah and his rule. As the interrogator describes his experiences in the Shah’s prison, Isaac, the Jewish merchant rushes t defend himself by saying that he was apolitical and had nothing to do with the torture and the human rights abuse that prevailed at the time. But Mohsen responds “But you do! You looked the way, and that’s enough to make you an accomplice. “

If looking the other way makes one an accomplice, I wonder, of how many things I may be guilty of. There is a quote of the author Shiv Khera that I see painted on Delhi auto rickshaws, which says something like this “If robbers are breaking into your neighbors’ house and you are sleeping indifferently then be sure that the next house to be robbed will be yours”.

The philosophy of turning the other cheek to the aggressor when one is being oppressed is rather too difficult to follow. But we do turn the other cheek, except that we turn it away and in the process close our eyes that we may not see and deafen our ears that we may not hear. We have divided society, community people into two rather inconsistent boxes – the black and the white; the bad people and the good people and while that is rather convenient, it is not wholly an accurate classification; for most of us are indifferent and grey.

Isaac the merchant, busy signing contracts, chasing supplies and deliveries and updating his bank statements never expected that the world he knew would suddenly change around him till two bearded young men came by to get him. We too, busy doing the same or similar dreams, plans and ambitions are busy looking the other way…. Anything to avoid involved, anything to avoid disruption to the carefully laid out plans in our PDAs and diaries.

There is this famous quote attributed to the German pastor Martin Niemöller which goes like this

“When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. Then they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. Then they came for the trade unionists, I did not protest; I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, I did not speak out; I was not a Jew. When they came for me, There was no one left to speak out for me.
I must say that I love reading. I have read Shiv Khera. I have read Martin Niemöller and the words are quite moving to read. But like Isaac in Tehran, and like many others I could talk about, my eyes remain closed and my hand s and feet remain paralyzed.

Morality and the State

2009-07-20T16:19:00.001+05:30

Two men were murdered recently; nothing unusual in a country of India’s size you might say, except for a curious detail. They both worked for the Railways and were killed by members of their own family. The Railways have a convention that if one of their employees dies in harness, they offer a job to one of the family members on compassionate grounds. So to get that job, the two men were killed. In one case, the murder was plotted by the man’s wife so that their son could get the job; in another instance, the killing was plotted by the son himself. Both instances took place in Bihar.

Another disturbing piece of news last week was the revelation that drug dealers have now become more creative than ever in plying their trade. They now use terminally ill people to act as carriers of illicit drugs from one point to another. People who are terminally ill are more amenable to taking risks as they have little to lose and are more open to taking risks to provide for their families while they still can in whatever way possible.

Both stories tell of the moral degradation and the loss of human sensitivity that we are increasingly experiencing. While world institutions and governments are hard at work, trying to revive the economy and providing stimulus packages, there is today nobody working to provide a moral stimulus package which is just as badly needed.

Of course, it would be incorrect to say that these sorts of issues are not being addressed at all; perhaps they are being addressed, but being addressed rather inadequately. They will be addressed and dealt with as issues of crime, which of course they are, but obviously they are much more than that. When a son murders his own mother, or a wife murders her own husband, it is foolish to simply dismiss such incidents as simply a “crime”, any more than long standing forms of protest against the state which occasionally turn violent can be simply termed as “law and order problems” and dealt with by a lathi charge or police firing.

Given that morality cannot be enforced by law by the State ; but is yet necessary for the preservation of the larger social order, there is a dilemma here for the secular state which has no place for moral arbiters. Theocracies have no such problem, they own up to a particular moral code and they enforce it, fairly ruthlessly one may say, though one could argue from examples drawn from within India as well as outside, moral policing in a society is as ineffectual as the lack of morality.

What is needed but often lacking is moral persuasion and the people who have the ability to don the garb and have the stature to do so. People who hold no formal position, but are able to influence ethics, morality and conduct within their domain of influence by sheer persuasion. Mahatma Gandhi was perhaps the most notable example of this in spite of his one spectacular failure – his inability to dissuade Jawaharlal Nehru and his team in the Congress from accepting the partition of the country. Meanwhile, even as the state enforces law and order . we need a way to reinforce morality and dharma in society ; not through the route of crude regimentation ; but through more and more people ; who can help tug at our heart strings and persuade us to listen to our steadily diminishing inner voice.

Empty Nests, Empty Chairs

2009-07-13T21:22:00.001+05:30

My bookshelves are all covered with dust. The windows open outward and they are gathering all the dust that arises as laborers hammer down the house alongside chip by chip; bit by bit. Eventually, the house will be all gone, and the sun will shine through the gaping hole for a while. Eventually, after a sabbatical of barrenness, a new group of masons and laborers will arrive and construct an ugly concrete monster that we in Delhi delicately term as “builder’s flats”.

This is the third housed that I have lived in this area and they have this one thing in common – they have had no landlords and the monthly rent has always been handed over the widowed land lady. Most of the properties were constructed by the refugees who migrated into Delhi at partition time and subsequently purchased plots in what was then considered an area in the back of beyond. Now the land lords are largely dead and the few that are left are old and infirm. But the new trend of demolishing houses indicates that now perhaps the land ladies are beginning to disappear.

Most of these families had one or a maximum of two children. And in these days of mobility, those children are no longer around to live in these houses. There was a time when boys were meant to be there for the parents in the old age and thereafter look after the ancestral property, even though the girls would get married and go. But today, boys or girls, sons or daughters, it is all the same now days.

Houses and nests are emptier these days and getting so faster. Looking at the hammers bringing down walls and roofs with each blow, and eventually leveling the ground, I wonder what it must have been 20-30 years ago, when these houses were getting built, spacious houses with two to three floors , possibly meant to accommodate not just the children , but even the children’s’ children. But it never happened. Even the children did not choose to live there; and a house bought or built with so much expense and longing was inhabited for perhaps two decades, the last of them by lonely widows finding kinship in their tenants because their own family was so far away.

Things are moving much faster these days, a lot is happening in a far shorter time. The house that my grandfather built in Kolkata still stands; crumbling away to its inevitable doom no doubt, and yet it has sheltered four generations of people who have lived and played and mourned within its walls. I am not sure if the house will be around twenty years from now; but if eventually it is torn down as many houses in the vicinity am; it would after embracing four generations be good return on my late grandfather’s emotional and financial investment.

My thoughts drift off as the dust from the crumbling walls wafts into my room and coat everything in sight, I think of my own current land lady. Her nest has long been empty and an empty chair at the entrance is potently symbolic: that there is more of furniture in the house than people; and then wistfully I think of my own modest flat. In these days where everything is so fast and so uncertain, there is possibly no assurance that even I will come to live there sometime, and for the moment, there is no saying what my child will do. Empty halls and empty nests are the markers of tmorrow.

Gay lifestyles : The public opinion isnt there

2009-07-11T23:28:00.002+05:30

I remember the first time I met a person who was openly gay. Like many people, I had a certain mental picture of what a gay man would look like, would talk, and would dress and so on. But this man was unlike any one of those stereotypes. A well educated man, he spoke openly about his struggles as a gay person trying very hard to be hetero sexual and along with his parents doing everything possible to get therapeutic help. It is after everything that was tried, failed that he decided to try and come to terms with his situation. And that is where he ran into this massive brick wall called stigma. And alas, a large part of this stigma is fuelled by religion.

In fact religious leaders of different faiths in the country talking united on one voice on any issue is something that does not often happen. But the subject of gay rights and whether homosexuality ought to be decriminalized brought together all of them. Initially, it was the Christian clergy who seemed to be more vocal and was the religious face on television channels but later others joined in too. But is the matter of gay rights, a religious issue? Partly yes, partly no, perhaps.

But there is also the matter of distinguishing between homosexual attitudes and homosexual practice, a distinction that is often not made. Most people do not delve deeply enough to distinguish between some who may be gay by orientation but celibate in practice.
However, even as the Union Cabinet debates about the stand that it will take on the contentious Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, one thing is clear. The fact that there is such a strong and vocal opposition to the move to decriminalize homosexuality obviously proves that the gay and lesbian community has as of now, not been able to create the necessary public opinion to promote their cause. Gay parades held here and there in a couple of cities – and with concepts basically borrowed from the West , only serve to prove that only a bunch of Westernized urbanites are the ones concerned about this and they are airing their concerns in what is essentially an Western idiom.

Although rights may be granted legally, they cannot be enforced unless there is a necessary and conducive social climate. There are enough examples: untouchability has been abolished in India for long; but Dalits are exploited in sufficiently large numbers; child marriages are banned; but every Akshay Tritiya, lots of children gets married in full media and public glare g socially morality ought to be enforced through law or preached persuasively as a lifestyle. History proves that criminalizing anything merely drives people underground. A century or more of the provision of law penalizing “act of carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal an offence” has obviously not prevented the development of a robust gay movement in the country. Neither has for instance, more than 60 years of keeping Gujarat a dry state done much to keep people from consuming illicit hooch and dying.

So clearly the matter is far more complex. Clearly the government will not find it easy to break this impasse. Obviously, social laws cannot be passed by ignoring religious sentiments when all the major religions have united to raise a chorus of support against the granting of gay rights, because it is against bharatiya sanskriti or Indian culture. But we must remember that in 1829, when the practice of Sati was being banned through the efforts of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, William Carey and others, obscurantist elements had sought shelter under the same veneer of culture and tradition. So, in the mean while rather than trying to be God and pass judgment on those individuals, a better option may be to offer prayers to those struggling with their homosexuality and society’s largely hostile responses to them.

Gay Rights and Wrongs

2009-07-10T19:50:00.004+05:30

I remember the first time I met a person who was openly gay. Like many people, I had a certain mental picture of what a gay man would look like, would talk, and would dress and so on. But this man was unlike any one of those stereotypes. A well educated man, he spoke openly about his struggles as a gay person trying very hard to be hetero sexual and along with his parents doing everything possible to get therapeutic help. It is after everything that was tried, failed that he decided to try and come to terms with his situation. And that is where he ran into this massive brick wall called stigma. And alas, a large part of this stigma is fuelled by religion.

In fact religious leaders of different faiths in the country talking united on one voice on any issue is something that does not often happen. But the subject of gay rights and whether homosexuality ought to be decriminalized brought together all of them. Initially, it was the Christian clergy who seemed to be more vocal and was the religious face on television channels but later others joined in too. But is the matter of gay rights, a religious issue? Partly yes, partly no, perhaps.

The Bible of course has a lot to say about homosexuality. “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."(1 Corinthians 6:9-10)
While the scripture may sound clear, the debate actually surrounds the use of the Greek word that this particular version of the Bible translates as "homosexual offenders." The term is "arsenokoite." Some say that it is a reference to male prostitutes rather than to two committed homosexuals. Yet, others argue that Paul, who wrote the passage, would not have repeated "male prostitutes" twice. Even others argue that the two root words in arsenokoite are the same terms used to prohibit any premarital or extramarital sexual relations, so they may not refer to homosexual relations alone.

But there is also the matter of distinguishing between homosexual attitudes and homosexual practice, a distinction that is often not made. Most people do not delve deeply enough to distinguish between some who may be gay by orientation but celibate in practice. The Bible , wherever it alludes to homosexuality , talks about homosexual behavior – not orientation- Leviticus 20:13 - "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable and Romans 1:26-27 - "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion."

A larger question to be confronted is whether morality ought be enforced through law or preached persuasively as a lifestyle. History proves that criminalizing anything merely drives people underground. A century or more of the provision of law penalizing “act of carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal an offence” has obviously not prevented the development of a robust gay movement in the country. Neither has for instance, more than 60 years of keeping Gujarat a dry state done much to keep people from consuming illicit hooch and dying.

So clearly the matter is far more complex. Clearly the government will not find it easy to break this impasse. Obviously, social laws cannot be passed by ignoring religious sentiments when all the major religions have united to raise a chorus of support against the granting of gay rights, because it is against bharatiya sanskriti or Indian culture. But we must remember that in 1829, when the practice of Sati was being banned through the efforts of Raja Ram MohanRoy, William Carey and others, obscurantist elements had sought shelter under the same veneer of culture and tradition. So, in the mean while rather than trying to be God and pass judgment on those individuals, a better option may be to offer prayers to those struggling with their homosexuality and society’s largely hostile responses to them.

The Budget : A Jholawallah's perspective

2009-07-07T15:52:00.002+05:30

For years, it has been accepted that budgetary allocations would be largely for defense, internal security and industry. Allocations for the social sector have been declining for years , ever the structural adjustment programnes began in the nineties , with the government handing over more and more segments of the development sector to the private sector under the nominal guise of the public-private sector partnerships. This year’s budget therefore, at least in its pronouncement is a welcome break, though the old demons of the PP partnerships still remain in the infrastructure sector – and it is on the backbone of infrastructure that most social development – be it health or education or economic empowerment occurs.

Some of the salient areas where the social sector has been assisted include :

• The total allocation for the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh, which works towards credit support to poor women for innovative schemes, will be increased from Rs.100 crore to Rs.500 crore.

• Another highlight of the budget was that all services under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) will be made available to all children under the age of six by March 2012.

• The National Mission for Female Literacy will aim at reducing female illiteracy by half in three years.

The government’s increased expenditure on infrastructure, agriculture and urban development should boost growth and receipts, and new incentives for private investment in education, social security and energy security should provide an impetus to these sectors while strengthening India’s competitiveness. To ensure balanced and equitable development, the government has widely increased the allocations to social development schemes, which should also play a vital role in boosting rural development and demand.

Baits are being provided for NGOs and charities to be involved in environmental concerns, tax benefits being one. At the moment , a charitable purpose under the present provisions of section 2 (15) of the Income Tax Act, ‘charitable purpose’ includes relief of the poor, education, medical relief, and the ‘advancement of any other object of general public utility’… The budget proposes to provide the same tax treatment to trusts engaged in preserving and improving our environment (including watersheds, forests and wildlife) and preserving our monuments or places or objects of artistic or historic interest bringing these activities under the ambit of charity.

Of course, not every will be satisfied. As someone who is working with issues of children at risk, I cannot but remember that India has the world's largest population of children, accounting for around 375 million of the country's billion-strong people. But budgetary allocation for them has for years been pitiable at a meager 1.2 per cent of the Budget and this year does not appear to be too different.

However, the focus of this Budget and of the government is to use a combination of pragmatic, humane and bold policy making to create the economic foundation upon which we can build a progressive and prosperous nation in consonance with the concerns and aspirations of all sections of society and that certainly ought to be commended, but a certain sincerity of approach that is visible here, that one failed to see for instance in the Railway Budget, presented just days before.

Private Public Partnerships : Who is the boss ?

2009-07-01T15:51:00.001+05:30

The most preferred model of building infrastructure today has become the public –private partnership. It is almost as if the government has somewhat shamefacedly admitted that their attempts to create infrastructure of any kind has not kept pace with the demands of the growing population and its requirements. But since complete privatization is still considered taboo, the state attempts to keep a foothold under the guise of a partnership with the private sector. But the word partnership is more or less a sham as the government , intentionally or otherwise is really a sleeping partner, having more or less abdicated key decision making powers, even when there is a key public interest involved and the government has on occasion a stake as high as 49 percent in the company’s equity holding.

Witness Delhi’s current power woes. The electricity distribution companies have lost all control over the situation and the electricity situation is as bad or worse as when power was supplied by the government run Delhi Vidyut Board. The government is not doing any thing more than having “stock taking” meetings and the chief minister is wringing her hands more or less expressing her helplessness to do any thing in the matter. Now of course, we all know that the fundamental issue is a shortage of power and of course we know that Delhi produces less than 50 percent of its power requirements. We also know that power plants can not come up in a day or even in a year and there are limitations on how much any one can immediately do. But surely, the situation can be managed a lot more tidily ?

Electricity is not the only field. Take airports for instance. In most of the airports that are being modernized today, the government is a stakeholder along with the private developers. Yet here too, the government remains a sleeping partner, appearing to rubber stamp decisions made by the private players involved. The user development fees charged at airports were mostly rubber stamped by the ministry of civil aviation , even though a an industry body as respected as the IATA recently commented that the charging of fees in lieu of amenities that would only be provided in the future after the airport is fully modernized is unethical.

Then look at schools and hospitals. Again after acknowledging that the government has on its own been unable to provide quality education , it has roped in the private sector as a partner. Private institutions got land at throw away prices and a host of other exemptions, with the proviso that in lieu of this , the public=private partnership based institutions would offer concessions and facilities to the poorer sections of society.

Have we noted the inherent flaws in the PP model ? It is essential to take note of the fact that the private sector will only penetrate sectors that are fairly certain to be money-spinning. Private investment will be ready to move into communications), but the same eagerness will not be seen in the case of rural sanitation. The distinction between the public and private sectors is not primarily in terms of operational efficiency as is often maintained (favoring the latter, often considered to be self-evident too), but in the manner in which the two recognize public need and respond to it. From this perspective, the private sector ought to be only be the junior partner in PPP, and the public sector must retain considerable powers to intervene when the acknowledged service obligations are not being met. But will it happen ? Not likely in the near future, by the looks of it.

Of statues and icons

2009-06-28T00:43:00.000+05:30

It is good to have iconoclasts in society at any given point of time. They make you think; challenge the status quo and generally make wake society of somnolence. In Bengal, people still remember with gratitude the contribution of people like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and the others who founded and ran the Brahma Samaj, which pulled Hindu society out of the clutches of obscurantism.

Later on, you had Mahatma Gandhi, who was so much of an iconoclast that at one point, he became an icon himself. Dr Ambedkar was another iconoclast who became an icon. His ubiquitous statues in a coat and tie and holding the constitution close to his chest are every where. In the South, Periyar was one iconoclast that I know of whose influence lasts to this day and doubtless there are others.

But unlike the worthies above, who became icons by default and their iconoclasm was one of reform and inclusion; today we have a different class of people. If there is a Mahatma Gandhi Road in practically every town, it was not because Gandhiji wrote it up in his will, or that Ambedkar issued a dictat instructing those statues be erected in every village in the country.

But today in Mayawati , we have an upside down icon ; some one who insists on demolishing the work that others have done – however incomplete that work might have been (yes, I am referring to recent references to Gandhiji’s efforts for the upliftment of Harijans( as Dalits were called then as mere natakbaji or theatrics. And then to round it up, while she is busy rubbishing the work that others have done, the only visible activity that she herself seems to have done is constructing and erecting her own statues all over Uttar Pradesh.

Mayawati seems to be under the illusion that one can become an icon simply by erecting statues and then issuing a dictat that they should be suitably garlanded and venerated on all important occasions – her birthday for instance. As far as I know, in the current Dalit calendar at least in Uttar Pradesh, there is no other day more important than Mayawati’s birthday. Lives can be lost if this day is not celebrated properly. An engineer in UP, \ M K Gupta was murdered , allegedly due to Gupta’s refusal to contribute to the fund collection drive before Chief Minister Mayawati’s birthday.

Reminds me of the story of Herod the Great, a king of Bibilcal times. He was a tyrant and hugely unpopular and he had no expectation that even one person would be there who would mourn his death. So as he neared death, he had several prominent subjects of his kingdom imprisoned, with instructions that at his death, they all ought to be executed en mass. That way, he reasoned, at least some mourning would take place and some tears would be shed at his death, even though, the tears would not be for his death.

Erecting statues of yourself and seeking sainthood through the backdoor is a bit like the instance of Herod… but of course they say that history repeats itself, so this must be it, even though she claims that she is in this game only because the BSP founder, the late Kanshi Ram had willed that alongside his statue, that of his protégé (Ms. Mayawati) should be built. And then you have to get the statue right. A statue of Mayawati had been removed from a prominent location by the authorities here barely 45 days after she unveiled it as she wanted a bigger statue of herself in its place. Apparently Mayawati was not happy with the quality of the sculpture, and so she had also expressed her displeasure over the fact that it was smaller than the statue of her political mentor Kanshi Ram. So the statue got smashed, well! In Mayawati, today we have a wannabe icon and an anarchist iconoclast; but alas though you can raise the height of a statue with some ease, it takes a lot more work and to raise the height of your stature. And that leader or icon of stature is what people might be looking for and haven’t found yet!

Life at the Ajanta Hotel

2009-06-21T00:58:00.001+05:30

Our contact in Bangalore had forgotten to book our hotel and was untraceable on his mobile; we were in a bit of a jam as we were taking an evening flight from Delhi and would reach fairly late into the city after the commute from the new airport. Staying at one of the many hotels who have counters at the airport was not a possibility given their tariffs and the size of our wallets so I went online to identify a budget hotel in a part of the city with which we were familiar. A hotel, the Ajanta Hotel on M.G.Road was identified and a couple of rooms were quickly booked. Still a nagging worry remained as MG Road is after all a big and crowded place.

The first surprise came at Bangalore airport when we mentioned the Ajanta Hotel to the taxi driver and he nodded matter of factly. He didn’t seem surprised or worried or have any questions about the location and after about an hour’s ride, he whisked out of the car and announced that we had arrived at our hotel. It was getting late and after a quick dinner, we retired to our rooms. Since that trip, I have made many, many trips to Bangalore, but whenever I can, I have always made it a point to stay there.

There are some hotels that either because of their age or long followed traditions and customs, acquire an “atmosphere” that can certainly not be ever described but fully experienced. At first glance, the Ajanta looks like a small township. It is located just off the proposed Trinity Circle metro station on the perennially busy M.G.Road and yet it is sufficiently tucked away from it to cut off practically all noise and bustle. And yet inside, it is another kind of bustle and the township is thriving.

The hotel has been popular as a hotel that hosts wedding parties and inside there are two wedding halls which seem huge. The small township inside much like a shopping colonnade that one might find in a luxury hotel but much more utilitarian has shops to cater to practically all needs. There is a florist; a big sized travel agency with several taxis parked outside, a well stocked provision shop, a snack shop, phone booths, internet cafes. Though a bit away from the main road, none of the shops are apparently lacking in business.

There is a restaurant attached to the hotel that serves you a very filling lunch or dinner for Rs 35.00, a practically unheard of price in most places ; much less in a business hot spot. The restaurant is no hole in the wall outfit; in the mornings, breakfast can be had for as little as Rs 20.00 and the fact is not secret. The dining hall is quite full in the mornings, particularly with young working couples usually dropping in for a bite, something quite affordable at these rates.

In spite of all that is happening in the hotel complex, the pace is languid and easy paced. The staff is polite, helpful and refuses to be caught up in the rapid pace of life, just a few hundred meters away and best exemplified by the construction of the Metro Station, just outside the hotel. At times, when it is no longer the wedding season, uniformed waiters (of whom there are many), wander around the lounges - one in each floor –waiting to take orders for tea or coffee or room service, at their usual leisurely pace. As I checked out one more time out of the Ajanta Hotel, one more time last week, I couldn’t hope but wander as to how long such a leisurely pace of life, tracing its ancestry from the time when Bangalore was a pensioner’s paradise would last. And yet watching the crowded dining room full of laptop wielding techies, it seems that the hotel is currently a much sought after bridge between the mad house outside and the measured grace inside. And hopefully sooner, rather than later, I will be back again.

Veg ya Non Veg : The Saga of Railway Food

2009-06-21T00:56:00.001+05:30

Unlike most people, I rather love the train food and the elaborate ritual surrounding it – and no, I am not talking about the Rajdhanis and the Shatabdis. The exercise begins with a railway staff approaching you with the question “Veg ya Non Veg? although I don’t remember the train menus ever having changed , since the day I started using trains – which is quite a long while ago, some or the other passenger will always ask “ veg me kya hai ? “. After the waiter has rattled off the fare, orders are placed. Then the waiter disappears and after a couple of hours arrives with a tray full of food, brought either from the pantry car if the train has one or loaded from some way side station.

I look forward to this whole thing. And so, when the other day I went to the railway station in the evening to board my train and found that it was running about 10 and a half hours late ( that bit of railways , not one minister has been able to change !), I was a bit disappointed. I was expecting to have my dinner on the train and this unexpected wait meant that dinner had to be arranged some where. I made my way across the long and unending platform toward s the place where the vegetarian and non vegetarian refreshment rooms would be.

A Vegetarian thali along with an omlette was tasty, filling and at Rs 30.00 was extremely affordable. The railways ensured quality control by listing details of the thali on a notice board hung on the wall – 150 gm of rice, 100 ml of dal, and 50 ml of curd and so on. But looking around, it was with quite some surprise that I found that the familiar room where I had lunch and dinner innumerable times over the years was quite deserted and was being remodeled. A McDonald’s banner was put up in flaming red and signage proclaimed that I would be opening up soon. I thought that may be the refreshment room has shifted some where else, and having time on my hands, I looked around, but there was no refreshment room in sight, although I located a multi cuisine food court in another part of the station.

Though I love food and enjoy the variety of the food court and love my Mcburger as well, it was disappointing to see that the time honored railway run canteens and refreshment rooms have gone and replacing them are McDonalds and the other food courts, serving overpriced food, albeit of a much greater variety than was previously available and served in disposable plastic trays and accompanied by cheap paper napkins.

I am no socialist by inclination, but it seems that we are pursuing privatization with a rather unnecessary frenzy, dismantling even those pieces of the public sector that did work. The so called private public partnerships seem to be so often a sellout by the government to the private sector because so often in such partnerships, only the face and culture and share holder value driven culture is visible and almost always at the cost of the common public good.

Railway cuisine is obviously not gourmet food, but each railway refreshment room captures the local flavor and dishes in its menu, and so eating at the refreshment rooms in stations across the country is an interesting and varied experience and the diversity of the food in long distance trains as they pass through different states is a story in itself. I for one would hate to be served an alu tikki burger from McDonald as the vegetarian meal on my next train journey. I want my veg thali with the watery dal, the oily pickle and subzi and the curd to wash it down with. Just for this one reason at least, I protest against the Mcdonaldisation of the railway kitchen.

The Stock Exchange Obsession

2009-06-21T00:54:00.001+05:30

Every body these days has a new hobby – predicting when the economic downturn or recession or meltdown or slow down or whatever will end and as a corollary they are also predicting the rise and the fall of the Sensex; in fact its rise. Sensex to cross 21,000 by December 2010 screams one headline, while on the business channels, talking heads in suits and ties and with a clipped accent speculate on the same thing. They could well be astrologers; except that astrologers usually have ash smeared on their forehead and sit on a gaudily decorated stages or dais from where they can give darshan and distribute gyan.

I for one feel rather uneasy with this constant Sensex gazing from morning till night; with a ticker running down the bottom of most television channels indicating which stock is up and down. Indeed arguably, it is not cricket but the stock exchange that is the media’s abiding interest. And it is a misplaced interest and priority. For in a population of a billion plus people, just how many people really invest in the stock market directly or indirectly? Just two per cent of Indians invest in stocks through the stock exchange and are affected by its hops and skips though monitored with closer interest than the ECG of a patient in critical care.

More people put their money in various micro finance schemes run by several micro finance institutions than in all the country’s stock exchanges together. And though investment in stocks is touted as the way to get wealthy, that works mostly for those who are already middle class or wealthy. But in terms of scale, micro finance is fast emerging as a hot opportunity for global players with an estimated USD 20 billion to be invested globally and around USD 3 billion in India, by 2010. The volume of total micro finance loans globally rose from USD 4 billion in 2001 to around USD 25 billion in 2006, according to a research recently conducted by Deutsche Bank.

So does micro finance make people rich? Arguably no, though it is certain that by making banking facilities available at the doorstep of a strata of people that banks would not normally touch, it is surely keeping them from becoming poorer, often making savings and credit available. Soft loans do remove cash poverty, but only elusively. Unless loans are converted into investments in on-farm productive activities, rural poverty will not go away.

But although micro credit may have its chink, it touches many, many more lives economically than the Sensex does, and so the Sensex has huge limitations as an indicator of development. After all, economic growth has to include the welfare and development of the country as a whole? The reach of the Sensex is limited to the rich and middle class who invest there..even if the Sensex keeps reviving at this current rate and captures the measure of the eradication of poor rather than the poverty, the success of India will not be measured appropriately.

The Sensex is nothing but a mirage of the economic growth of our country representing something that is there but never achieved. We, as the citizens of the country, need to wake up and learn that the Sensex is not reliable and it only indicates that we are getting richer from the surface and poorer from the core. If the basis of our very development is hollow from inside any milestones or success achieved will be extremely short lived and will vanish before we know it.

Deemed University and a Doomed Education

2009-06-09T20:44:00.001+05:30

t is all very well that Kapil Sibal, the new HRD minister has decided to put on hold any further affiliation of private universities under Section 3 of the UGC Act which empowers the government to accord deemed university status to institutions of higher education – both in the private as well as the public sector. According to the UGC website, there are 124 deemed universities which have been accorded approvals and while some of these are reputed institutions like Jamia Hamdard and Delhi School of Planning and Architecture, there are several which have sprung up almost overnight and are connected to politicians. Under Section 3 of the UGC Act, deemed-to-be university status is granted by the central government to “educational institutions of repute who fulfill prescribed standards”.

While the provision has facilitated the private education sector, it has also provided a window to avaricious politicians and bureaucrats to create a web of money-spinning institutions. Of course the recent expose by the television channel Times Now the investigation exposes how Chennai-based colleges violate an SC order and state legislation banning capitation fee. Officials of Sri Ramachandra University (SRU) and Shree Balaji Medical College and Hospital were caught on camera demanding donations from a student who cleared his Class XII exams this year and the news spread rapidly because of the alleged involvement of a UPA government minister, who was sworn in barely days before.

There is a fundamental flaw about a policy wherein organizations which did not even exist till the other day, are straight away made universities while colleges of repute which have been in existence for half a century or more and have established a pedigree and a reputation struggle on as affiliated colleges and are only occasionally allowed to be autonomous colleges. When the first three universities of pre-Independence India started functioning in 1857, all the 27 colleges running at that time were brought under their ambit. From that modest beginning a century-and-a-half ago — when the Madras, Calcutta and Bombay universities were set up — the number of colleges has seen an exponential increase. Today, there are 343 university-level institutions, managing no less than 16,885 affiliated colleges.

But ultimately, it is not a matter of whether you are a deemed university or an autonomous college; it is all about the values that you profess; and that is some thing the honorable minister will not be able to do much about. It is a sad truth that educational institutions which is where values would be typically taught and practiced are corroding on the inside.

We find it convenient these days to condemn the racism against Indian students in Australia , but the inconvenient truth also is that while education in Australia or any where else outside may be expensive, they largely come with some assurance of quality and stamp of assurance. In India on the other hand, it is quite possible that if you have burnt hard earned money to go to a newly deemed university , you might only be getting a deemed education.

George Fernandes bows out

2009-06-09T20:38:00.000+05:30

The first time I saw George Fernandes was outside Pune railway station when he was addressing a rather sparsely attended public meeting. Although the crowd was not large, they were also those who were listening with rapt attention with an attitude akin to hero worship. He was in his usual crumpled kurta and pajama, speaking on a subject which I can’t remember. But I do remember stopping in my tracks, watching to gawk at a person, who in his time had become a mythical figure. He had arrived on the political scene by emerging as a major trade union leader from Mumbai, and had defeated the local Congress satrap, S.K.Patil in a surprise defeat that ended his political career.

Of course, the legend of George Fernandes was born during the emergency or a little before in 1974 when he organized a railway strike of such proportions that it is still remembered. The railway strike is considered to be one of the factors that eventually pushed Indira Gandhi to the wall and made her declare a state of emergency. His escapades on numerous occasions and eventual arrest further added to his aura. Post emergency, “ giant killer”, George Fernandes became known for espousing socialism by kicking out giant companies like Coca Cola and IBM out of the country.

George in his time was an effective leader who began well but has ended his political career miserably losing as an independent candidate from Muzaffarpur to an octogenarian Ram Sundar Das, after being disowned by his own party, the Janta Dal (United). The journey from his native Mangalore to Muzaffarpur via Mumbai has taken George 79 years, but the unnoticed fading into oblivion in the last election, where the once famed giant killer managed just 22, 00 odd votes’ shows that the lion has roared its last roar and has now no bark left. Vajpayee has earned much more respect after fading out gracefully after losing the 2004 elections and not contesting at all this time.

The debate as to whether politicians should have a retirement age will never end. After all, politics is a form of public service which typically a citizen ought to be engaged in all of his or her active life. May be politics has become a debased form of public service – but let us not forget that in its essence that is what it is. But whether it is the sports field, or the political arena or the field of public service, the discernment to guess when one’s time is over and to retire gracefully while some luster still remains attached to the name is an art not many learn.

Consider the case of the Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu. After serving as the chief minister of West Bengal for more than 25 years, he stepped down from the post and then gradually from other party positions within his party – the CPI (M) but remains widely consulted and relevant and possibly more astute than those in formal positions of authority. He knew when to bow out and there by only increased his influence and standing in public life.

George saab began well as an activist who could bring the most powerful powers and personalities to their knees. That time he was altruistic. But along the way, he jettisoned not only his socialist and secular ideology but acquired for himself the sobriquet of the supreme opportunist. Who could sell his soul not once, but perhaps many times over?

The George Fernandes era is over and he is not coming back. But by not knowing when to step out of the arena and leave the team to others, he might have lost, not just his soul but his legacy too.

The Cost of Living

2009-05-26T15:10:00.000+05:30

It was late night when the accident occurred. He roads were supposed to be empty, or so the car driver thought as speeded through the main road without noticing a rickshaw slowly crawling carrying its lone passenger, the weary driver getting ready to set his last passenger down before heading home.

The inevitable happened and the two crashed. The cycle rickshaw was reduced to a mass of twisted metal while the driver was thrown of his seat but escaped with a few minor scratches. The lone passenger, a doctor heading back after along day was however hit hard and lay writhing in pain. Some one from the gathered crowd, called his wife by recovering the doctor’s cell phone that ran out of her home and rushed her husband to the nearest hospital casualty.

The young doctor on duty ordered the mandatory X-rays and discovered more than one broken bone. He consulted the orthopedic surgeon on call, who advised immediate surgery and suggested that the patient be prepared for this while he arrived. In due course, after the patient was administered pr anesthetic procedures, the surgeon arrived. But just as he was about to begin, a messenger rushed in from the Billing Section to inform that the cash deposit paid on arrival was insufficient and the operation could not begin till an adequate advance was paid.

It was midnight and the wife was in a fix. Her husband was lying on his surgical table, the surgeon was waiting to start but money was short. The amount of money required was not available at home, the ATM would dispense would only a limited amount; and so the only way finally was to phone all of her office colleagues living in the area and some how take up a collective offering. The money deposited, the surgery finally took place after a harrowing wait of close to two to three years.

After recovering the ordeal, the family has become one of the most strident advocates of health insurance, which they did not have as they were entirely dependant on medical reimbursements offered by their employers. Of course the family hardly lacks company. According to National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), health insurance penetration in India stands at a dismal 1.2 percent. On a macro level, very few households in India have contingency plans to meet their health expenses. Health risks in India are perceived differently than the western population. Prior planning in health issues is yet to be a major priority.

Without an aggressive thrust on insurance, things can only get worse. India is the most privatized health market in the world. Public support for healthcare has been historically low in India, averaging less than 1 per cent of the GDP, but what is worse is that in the last decade public health investment and expenditure has seen a secular declining trend.

The poor have to increasingly resort to taking debt or selling assets to meet costs of hospital care. It is estimated that 20 million people each year fall below the poverty line because of indebtedness due to healthcare. This is worrisome given the fact that more than two-thirds of the country’s population is already either poor or living at subsistence levels

There are a couple of reasons that Health insurance has not taken off a great deal in the country. Firstly, unlike life insurance, which is marketed in India, largely as an investment product , the value o health insurance kicks in only if and when one is seriously ill ; or else the premium is paid is seen as a waste of money. In some places, talking explicitly about illnesses and planning to deal with them is considered a sure fire invitation to sickness and an ill omen. So with al these complexities, the private insurance industry in India is still at a nascent stage and growing. To date, only approximately 20% of the total insurable population of India is covered under various life insurance schemes. Let us hope that the health insurance industry will not exploit this market but also educate it about the social net that health insurance can provide.

please do not spit

2009-05-22T10:42:00.000+05:30

One of the announcements that are being blared out on the public address system of the Delhi Metro these days is rather stark. It pleads repeatedly a simple message “please do not spit”, meaning of course, please do not spit in the train. For effect, they are being aired over and over again in both English and Hindi. interspersed I between are other messages of course, like for instance, one requesting passengers to leave seats for the elderly and the infirm and another asking passengers not to squat in the standing area of the train but the message about spitting sticks out in the spic and span but crowded train.

You look around the train and wonder who would spit within the Metro coaches; things look pretty clean and neat. There does not seem to be any one who is puffing up their mouth as a prelude to letting off a blob of spit. But obviously there are those who do, hence the necessity of the message.

More relevant is the other message that is coming on: please do not play loud music on the train. Lots of wired people around with the wires disappearing into invisible mobile phones, iPods or other MP3 players. Again, you never really hear any loud music, but again, one never knows- there must be a reason for those repetitive messages.

Back to the train again, although I still don’t spot any one spitting , I do notice elderly gents with their crutches and walking sticks grimly holding on to a rung which is just out of their reach with one hand while they clutch their stick with the other. Muscular and mustachioed young men occupy the seats which have signage both in English and Hindi marking them reserved for the women and the elderly. As the train stops at a station, a bunch of girls who are too far away from the hand rails and are basically holding onto each other lose their footing and crash in a heap, a few of them sheepishly landing in the laps of the eager young men who are thrilled at this unexpected moment of bliss.

The doors open and a fresh crowd surges in. there isn’t any more space to stand; well not really. There is space really, except that in a portion of the floor, oblivious of the milling crowd, there is a heap of people who have sprawled out with their legs stretched out. There is a pack of cards being shuffled and then being laid out on the front page of today’s Hindustan Times which serves as a portable card table. There is lots of fun and laughter among the group; but they are quite oblivious to the mass of passengers clinging to each other’s shirt tails like bees in a hive because that is all the space there is.

The train resumes and the repetitive messages begin again. “Kripaya thukiye nahin” “please do not spit”, “please do not squat”, please do not play music. Piteous, pleading messages hoping some one, some where would look up from their game of cards and listen. Listen to them day after day, trip after trip and take note one day. But looking at the crowd and its demeanor, it looks that it could be quite a long journey.

India , the emerging imperialist ?

2009-05-08T09:49:00.001+05:30

The old style imperialist that we all know about used to eye a nice, prosperous piece of land and then find some means of possessing it. The means have varied from time to time; a couple of centuries ago, it would have meant sending in your army to capture that piece of land and govern it my sending in your own people. That is the most classic form and that has now fallen in to disuse. However, a modified version is in place. Here you identify a stooge who is from the local people and get him to dance in your tune as you play the music. This form is still popular and quite in vogue and here the army plays an important but supposedly subservient role. And a more recent form is the economic variety of imperialism where countries subvert the economic backbone of a country to protect its own interests. This too has been in vogue in recent decades but is of course more subtle.

We in India have always considered ourselves as the victims – and so the annual breast beating rituals that occur on the 26th of January and the 15th of August. No disrespect to the freedom fighters and all those who laid down their lives for the cause. The point here is that perhaps the Indians of today – no doubt to protect the interests of Indians like myself are going about doing the same thing as the British did in their time. What did the East India Company primarily do? Trade, right? The political action that buzzed in the background was all to ensure that trade interests were always protected. We read all that in our history books – nothing new so far.

Have you imagined India in that role? Probably never. But India, plagued by an increased specter of food shortages is joining a growing band of Asian nations in eyeing the last continent left to be still eyed for trade – usually one sided trade. Weak nations with even weaker governments are willing to trade in arable land for the right prices so that we in India as well as other such emerging giants might eat well. How much land has been sold? Between 15 million to 20 million hectares, which is more than all of Germany’s farmland it seems.

Many governments, either directly or through state-owned entities and public-private partnerships, are in negotiations for, or have already closed deals on, arable land leases, concessions, or purchases abroad. Is agricultural land only available in Africa? Of course not! But it is relatively speaking much easier to strike deals with governments or more accurately individuals who control government in Africa where institutional checks and balance mechanisms are weak and prices are cheaper. So the Indian government and several companies have intensified the chase for farmland abroad and even farmers from Andhra Pradesh have gone and invested in land in Kenya.

Now our patriotic sensibilities will be deeply offended at the thought of some one calling us and our motivations imperialistic for we all like to walk the high moral ground and this is perfectly understandable. But in our neighborhood at least, India is quite known the as the neighborhood king, strutting and flaunting its strength in the tiny part of the world called South India. Check out Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and what they have to say about how India throws its weight around in its immediate neighborhood. The national interest is supreme as it was then, as it is now. From trade to imperialism, India can not be faulted on not learning its lessons from the East India Company!

Tum ho toh..... Celebrating Friendships

2009-04-24T21:39:00.002+05:30

It was one of the new Airbus 321 planes that Air India has begun to introduce on its domestic routes. I tried on the in flight entertainment for the sheer experience of it. For long, I have been used to carrying my own entertainment on board in the form of a book. I tuned into a video channel. The Farhan Akhtar film Rock On was showing. In fact it was about the end when the band Magick is getting ready to play for one lest time. It is a very different world from the one where they began playing as a band in their early youth.

Two of the four have moved on from their youthful sojourn with music and made some thing of their lives – they are successful... success in terms of what we usually define as success. Two others had not been so lucky. At the time of this final concert, one of them n fact was dying and one other was emigrating after not managing to make any thing much of his life in India. How the men bonded together after having drifted away and celebrated their friendship seeing in that bond an imperishable treasure was some thing that stayed with me long after I picked my bags and left the flight.

Friendships form rather easily in youth and wither away almost quite as easily as in the film as we pass out of our schools and colleges and get busy with our lives. If we happen to be in the same line or business or profession, we may stay in touch in the form of an old boy’s club or an alumni association … but the connections remain tenuous at best. Social pleasantries may be exchanged and hands shaken but they remain rituals of inveterate shallowness

We don’t have time for investing in relationships that truly last ; for we are too busy networking – that is the power play of today – seeking out time to meet and connect with people who matter – matter in the professional and career sphere, that is ; not in the ethereal space called friendship.

so we go to parties , seminars and conferences armed to the teeth with our wallets stuffed with our calling cards because we can’t afford not to; not going or going unarmed may mean a lost business deal – a successful deal will mean more parties and networking events and a more power packed business card. And along the way what is often sacrificed at the altar of professional networking is the rich flavor of friendships – friendships that may or may not open professional or career goals for us but will always be a healing spa for our tired and weary spirits.

as my flight descended to land in Mumbai , the closing credits of Rock On came on screen. it said that long after Magick played their last song together, they continued to meet together every week and they were not weary. not in one-dimensional networking where selfishness and self gain is couched in velvet gloves, but in inhibited friendship, they found the lyric of their lives.

“tum ho toh gaata hai dil tum nahin toh geet kahan tum ho toh hai sab haasil tum nahin toh kya hai yahan “tum ho toh hai har ek pal meherbaan ye jahaan”

Surely few gifts and few joys are worth more !

Happy Birthday Sir !

2009-04-22T23:17:00.000+05:30

The first birth day greeting I received a few days ago wasn’t from any of my friends. It was from an online dining portal who wished me a very happy birthday and very quickly followed up with a query as to how I was planning on celebrating it and could they suggest some options for a nice and quiet meal from their catalogue.

I managed to send them on their way; but soon there was another one coming and this was from my financial planner. he had been suggesting for some time that I was under insured and that I ought to buy some more insurance – from him of course and after his good wishes and all, he didn’t waste any time in reminding me that in buying insurance , age was every thing and that on my birth day , I had become a year older and in all likelihood the premiums would now go up a bit… if only I had bought the policy a little earlier , the cost would have been lesser… but it was not still too late….

A little later, it was the relationship manager at the bank. He went through the motions and then went on to tell me that this was a very auspicious day to begin investments in SIPs of some high grade mutual funds that he would be of course be very happy to recommend. After a brief talk about rupee cost averaging, he urged me to consider buying some gold for the kid’s education and all that. Akshay Tritiya, the Hindu New Year was at hand and what better time to buy gold which was guaranteed to be pure. There were a couple of more phone calls from assorted people some of whom I did not know even existed, much less they knowing and remembering my birthday. By the time my friends and family got around to wishing me eventually, I could tell them with a smirk that they were rather late in the queue.

Makes me think as to how commercialized we have become and we have taken our intimate moments into that commercialized zone, where there are no barriers and boundaries to privacy ; no thinking twice before making what is often an absurdly stupid social transaction.? I mean how can you really greet any one who you have never met in your life and are unlikely to ; or at best some one you meet a couple of times a year and for perhaps for no more than an hour at a time

Less intrusive but no less bothersome are the numerous e mail messages from friends who seem to sprout like mushrooms in the monsoon around your birthday. scroll down a bit, and there is the pitch – a discounted flight ticket for the spouse , a cheap holiday package , home delivered movie tickets and there was even a free pen drive provided I shopped for a certain amount at a shopping portal.

While wanting to sell your product if you have some thing of worth is a good thing ; demeaning special days and occasions in such a shallow way that you know it is phony and I know it is phony is crass ! relationships are sacred and precious and although admittedly the state of most of them is not what it should be and we and our friends often forget dates we ought not to, few of us would like to be greeted on our birthdays by an insurance agent selling a policy on our birthday…..just in case…… that is grotesque and there is no other better way to describe the consumer age we live in!

Indentured Laborers - The First Non-Resident Indians

2009-04-08T17:00:00.000+05:30

When we think of NRIs today, we probably largely think of wealthy movers and shakers like Lakshmi Mittal or Swaraj Paul or Bobby Jindal and the likes of them. a few will perhaps recall the many numbers of Indians who sweat it out in the Gulf countries and some others will recall the professionals – the doctors, the scientists and the IT professionals. But not many perhaps will think of the first NRIs as slaves or rather glorified slaves as the indentured laborers from India in a way were.

If you have read Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Sea of Poppies, you will know. In the 18th century, the labor needs of the rapidly expanding British Empire were met by the slave trade.This was opposed by Christian reformers like William Wilberforce in Britain and William Pitt, the British Prime Minister, tabled a motion in Parliament in 1792 to gradually abolish slavery. In 1807, the shipping of slaves to British colonies was forbidden and in 1808, the slave trade was prohibited. The gap in the labour market was filled by indentured labourers or contract labourers, and these came largely from india. Although these men( and some women); mostly from the cow belt of India and usually victims of political machinations as well as poverty and often both were treated marginally better than slaves, they too were permanently uprooted from their home lands which they would never see again. India was the source for the greatest number of indentured workers to the New World, and approximately 1.3 million individuals crossed the oceans under contracts of indenture.

As Amitav Ghosh’s book recounts, poverty, political upheaval, ecological disasters such as droughts, floods, and famines, and overcrowding were causing increased internal migration and large refugee populations. Conditions were often so bad that although many Indian communities were close-knit and, in some cases, migration overseas actually violated certain caste restrictions, many individuals often felt compelled to abandon their homes and families and seek employment in other areas of India or across the ocean in an effort to improve their situations

Many of the indentured labourers were convicts. Indian convicts transported out in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries helped settle and colonize the overseas European empires. Such workers filled a critical need for labor, playing an especially significant role in carrying out the building and infrastructure projects that were so critical to the institution and consolidation of the Empire. For instance, Indian convicts sent to Singapore built some of the finest colonial buildings here, including the St Andrews Cathedral and Government House. With the convicts came indentured labourers to provide manpower for the ports and railway, Sepoys and Sikh policemen, milkman, tailors and artisans, merchants and moneylenders

The end of indentured labour from India was actually decided through the intervention of the growing clout of the Indian nationalist movement; and it happened as later as in the earliest years of the 20th century- that is barely a hundred years ago. Curzon was the first Viceroy to India to actually consider the plight of the indentured labourer an issue and, although he often had to accept the commands of his superiors in England, he was staunch in pressing the issue and raising awareness. Gandhiji was also instrumental in bringing to light the racism and inequality suffered through the indenture system and low-paying labour. In fact 2016, just eight years away, will mark the centenary of the struggle spearheaded by Gandhiji against continued Indian indentureship from India to Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Fiji and Mauritius, among several other countries, at the height of British colonialism, an event that might well go unrecognized in spite of the now institutionalized pravasi bharatiya divas observed every year.

Coaching Classes : Sweat Shops of Education

2009-04-02T11:08:00.003+05:30

The son of a friend recently went away all the way from Delhi to Kerala to prepare for the medical entrance tests. It seems that they have coaching centers there which have tracked the entrance tests of some medical colleges for years and have now got the requisite expertise to say that any one that enrolls with them has a much better chance of cracking the tests than the man on the road who can’t access these privileges.

Nearer home, my newspaper vendor puts in with the daily newspaper, pamphlets of institutes some well known and some not, that would put the neighborhood kids through their board exams, their medical entrance tests, their IIT entrance exams and all other kinds. That there is so much demand for them and that they are mushrooming by the day, makes me feel extremely uneasy. however in the rather bizarre imitation of keeping up with the Jones, and try and beat the competition which is getting stiffer by the day, most people I know will have to make use of one or the other of them. may be some will enroll in more than one such coach shop , leading to the piquant situation where a bright student – may be some one who has topped the IIT–JEE is claimed by more than one institution.

What started in a small way with Agrawal Classes and Brilliant Tutorials nearly 30 years ago has transformed into a big business today. In north India, Kota is a well known hub where the coaching school industry has grown and multiplied. In fact, it has even given rise to ancillary industries like those who rent out rooms and those who supply meals to the numerous people who turn up from the remotest parts of India who take up lodgings here and take rigorous tuitions so that they can crack the IIT entrance tests.

While coaching classes are certainly churning out would be scholars in an assembly line fashion and for small town India, where often there is wealth but lack of opportunity, this seems to be a god sent opportunity to pursue higher education. Very likely, given the state of the formal education system in India, these children would never be able to clear the entrance examinations without the coaching that these institutes would provide.

But what about aptitude? The entrance tests to IIT and elsewhere were conceived to evaluate aptitude as much as or even more than merits. By quantifying examination results, we have ensured that aptitude has been thrown in to a never never land of oblivion. Says Prof. M.S. Ananth, Director, IIT-M “by attending the IIT coaching classes, students were learning a wrong lesson that the ends justify the means.” They (students) think there is nothing wrong in missing school to attend coaching. But the student does not realize his real loss." he further says that the coaching institutes were enabling many among the less-than-best students to crack the test and keeping girls from qualifying.

Meanwhile industry body Assocham's estimate of size of the Coaching Class Industry is based on about 6 lakh students attending these classes every year at an average cost of Rs.1.7 lakhs per year and average cost of each student is 1.7 lakhs ,as given by a spokesman of the Industry body provided to TOI. According to Assocham, the staggering sum of Rs.10, 000 crore is being netted every year by private Academies that coach students for admission test,

Meanwhile the common man is caught between a rock and a hard place. There are heaps of private universities and even foreign universities, where admissions are relatively easier but the costs are unaffordable. Publicly funded institutions are relatively cheap (though they are getting expensive), but the road to their door leads through very expensive coaching institutions. and with the state steadily privatizing education in guise or the other, things presumably can only get worse for the present.

The Party Manifesto : Promising Milk and Honey

2009-03-26T11:49:00.002+05:30

Political party manifestos will never be great literature but they can be great works of fantasy. One that I have been reading states that Kolkata, the city of my birth could soon dazzle like London, if the electors in West Bengal do the right thing and vote the Trinamool Congress into power. So says Mamata Banerjee, and since she is the sole policy maker in the party, her words can be said to be authoritative. Further, Digha, the Bengal coast line, could rival Goa and the North Bengal hills where the Gorkhas agitate temperamentally could wean away tourists from Switzerland. Of course these are the Lok Sabha elections that are looming on the horizon, so how will Trinamool implement these promises without governing the State. No matter, just wait – the Trinamool vision of a resurgent Bengal promises to turn Bengal into a land of milk and honey.

If you are looking for gravitas here in what was said by Mamata Banerjee in the press conference where she released the party’s election manifesto, you won’t get any. But irony is available in plenty: We've great talents (in the state) but the only thing missing here is clear political vision and mission in our ruling Left Front government," she added, while releasing the party's manifesto for the April-May Lok Sabha polls. So we know now – the Left Front doesn’t have any vision for governance – not a wrong vision, not an obsolete vision, but simply no vision. Trinamool on the other hand, possesses the elixir of life and is just waiting spoon in hand to administer it to the hapless people of the state.

Of course one is used to hyperbole at election times. There is that famous one about Bihar’s roads and Hema Malini’s cheeks; that the roads would be as smooth as her cheeks. That statement is usually attributed to Lalu Yadav but he has claimed that it was former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who made these comments.

In the light of all that goes into party manifestos, just how seriously should they be taken? The Congress party manifesto released the other day claims that they had made promises in their manifesto of 2004 and that they have substantially delivered on them. Perhaps they have indeed; though this will always be a matter of debate. but what makes the party manifestoes a little more than a glorified academic document – a mere statement of intent at best or even a journey into fantasy land like the Trinamool wish list ; or the quasi academic document produced by the CPI(M), whose manifesto would not be worth even the paper they printed it on, since even the leadership is not expecting to get numbers in parliament that would allow them to get any where near to implementing it.

Perhaps one day, party or coalition manifestoes would become contractual legally enforceable document and not a statement of intent or even worse an exercise in futile fairy tale writing hoping that out of the dense wordy documents that emerge out of the woodwork, in the election season, some vestige of reality would be visible…. and the dream of visiting Switzerland for the cost of a train ticket in Magmata’s Bengal would be realized. After all, isn’t there a slogan …” hum honge kamyaad ek din…”

India : 85th on the Corruption Index

2009-03-25T06:32:00.001+05:30

India’s Central Vigilance Commission has taken umbrage at a recent report of the Transparency International the global corruption tracking watch dog. Transparency International has downgraded India’s ranking from 72 to 85 in the list of world’s corruption-plagued countries. That has upset the chief babu of India’s own corruption watchdog, the Central Vigilance Commission, Pratyush Sinha, who has taken up the matter of India’s downgrading and wanted to know the methodology used to measure corruption across countries. TI’s reply hasn’t been to their satisfaction and that has upset the CVC more.

To most of us living in the country, the CVC’s gesture would look to be mere posturing. this attempt to play around with statistics. It is a bit like the data on inflation – inflation may have dropped to below 1 percent as per the official gazettes, but the potatoes and the cauliflowers at the local vegetable seller don’t seem to be getting any cheaper.

The way things are set up in India, the climate is more favourable to bribe taking and opacity than simplicity of procedures and transparency. Let me give an example: the other day, a friend and a colleague had to get a Trust deed registered at the office of the Registrar of Trusts. After we had put together the Trust deed with the help of a lawyer, and got our photographs and other papers ready, we proceeded to the Registrar’s office. The lawyer encouraged us to leave the matter to him and his staff “Have coffee in my office and I will call you when it is time” was his advice. Once we reached the Registrar’s office, we understood the poignancy of the lawyer’s counsel. There were a bunch of windows and surrounding each was a motley crowd of hands and feet; each trying to make eye contact with the clerk at the other end and simultaneously push through a cluster of papers. The sight would make a typical citizen shudder.

One of the reasons corruption thrives in India is the fact that procedures to get any thing done are so incredibly complex and opaque and there seems to be a deliberate attempt at several levels of officialdom to keep things thus; so that almost invariably, the common man has to take recourse to brokers and middle men to get things done. These men then not only get the things fixed but also act as a conduit for the money that cannot be obviously exposed to the public gaze.

Although e governance has made some difference to the common man by making some aspects of government accessible to the common man, there is a lot to be done. In many instances, complicated and antiquated procedures have simply been mounted on line, and that does not help much.

Coming back to Transparency International and their corruption index, how are the neighbors doing? Well, Bangladesh is at number 147, Pakistan at 134, Nepal at 121, Myanmar at 178, Sri, Lanka at 92. India could pat itself on the back for its South Asia region, except for the fact that tiny and impoverished Bhutan stands at number 45, standing tall.

the Central Vigilance Commission is complaining about the data that Transparency International and quibbling that the number that India ought to occupy ought to be 71 or 73 or some thing in that region. may be instead of squabbling about data, the CVC should send some babus on a study tour of Bhutan to check out just what is it that they do right that we can copy. May copy book style India “jugaar” to reduce corruption will get us better rankings next year than a representation to Transparency International!

Incest : India's Hidden Shame

2009-03-20T19:28:00.000+05:30

Incest : Our hidden shame

Two instances of incest were widely talked about in the media over the last week. The first pertained to the Austrian Josef Fritzl who has just been sentenced to life imprisonment for incarcerating his daughter in a purpose-built prison beneath the family home in Amstetten for 24 years, raping her more than 3,000 times, fathering seven children with her and causing the death of a twin son. Sounds too horrible to be true; and the fact that it was his own daughter make it sound even more monstrous.

The other story, more home grown, is that of a businessman, who allegedly raped his daughter over a period of nine years following a tantrik’s advice for getting rich. The traumatised girl, now 21, had been silent about her ordeal but mustered courage to approach the police after her father attempted to rape her 15-year-old younger sister, again on the advice of the tantrik. The mother was arrested by for abetting the crime, and if any thing, the fact that the mother actively helped out as her daughter was being violated makes it if anything; more ghastly.

Just how big an issue is incest in India? Well obviously a topic like this will always be in the shadows and one may have even to look at the definition of the word “incest”. In South India, marriages happen between cousins (especially cross-cousins, that is, the children of a brother and sister) and even between uncles and nieces (especially a man and his elder sister’s daughter). That is culturally acceptable and would not be termed as an incestuous relationship.

A report produced by the BBC a decade ago had opined citing research sources that Close-knit family life in India masks an alarming amount of sexual abuse of children and teenage girls by family members. It said that that disbelief, denial and cover-up to preserve the family reputation is often put before the individual child and its abuse. A report from RAHI, a Delhi based NGO working with child sexual abuse titled “ Voices from the Silent Zone,” suggests that nearly three-quarters of upper and middle class Indian women are abused by a family member - more than often an uncle, a cousin or an elder brother.

Indeed, sexual abuse of children in any form of household setting by a family member in India is among the most urgent forms of child abuse which our society must address. As per women’s organizations and activists nearly ninety-five percent of the abused are girls and more than ninety-five percent abusers are males. Surveys carried out in schools and informal chats reveal that around 40% girls experience incest abuse or sexual abuse in one or the other form in India. How deep the ice berg is can perhaps be gauged by the fact that 6% of all calls made to CHILDLINE (a 24-hour Indian helpline for children in distress) in the last ten years have reported Child Sexual Abuse(CSA) — 6% of 10 million calls! There probably could not be greater statistical validation that CSA/incest is the most under-reported child rights violations in India.

In India, there is no single law that specifically deals with child abuse, and there is no clear delineation of sexual abuse in the Indian Penal Code. Indian laws consider only “assault to outrage the modesty of a woman,” rape by penile penetration, and “unnatural sexual intercourse” like sodomy as punishable sexual crimes.

Although, there are lawyers and child rights activists who are ready to spell, explain, and act against incest and abuse they are still not a critical mass and their views strong enough to be able to impact consciousness of the policymakers, police, lawyers, judges, teachers, schools, mental, physical and sexual health professionals, and all those who could take up the issue.

Although the issues of shame, family honour and plain depravity means that very little statistics are available, it also means that every statistic available speaks not just for itself for a lot many others in the shadows, children and girls who invisible and will because of the abuse and betrayal they have faced, retreat further into the darkness and possibly out of reach of help. For organizations like RAHI, the RAASTA is indeed long and a lot more RAAHGIRs are needed to fight this mammoth dark monster.

Jade Goody and the Sanctity of Death

2009-03-19T23:17:00.000+05:30

I have always been fascinated by the Jain practice of Santhara. In this practice, when some one from the Jain community believes that he or she has lived a full life and has fulfilled all their social and familial obligations, they can opt to voluntarily hasten the process of death by going on a fast which lasts till death. Unlike the fasts that Gandhiji popularized and others have also undertaken, this fast is not a protest fast; these men and women are not having any demands that they want met.

Although this practice has some times been understood as suicide; Santhara has none of the emotional turbulence that is typically associated with the term best translated as atma hatya - the taking of one’s life. Here death is welcomed through a peaceful, tranquil process providing peace of mind for everyone involved and is a ritual of great dignity.

The question of how private and how dignified should death be is an important one and the question has been raised before. Probably in recent times, it was first raised while reflecting on the media coverage of the death of Princess Diana in an accident. The editors of many of the leading British tabloids had agreed that they had helped create a mood in which the paparazzi, who were hounding Diana when her car crashed in a Paris underpass, were out of control. Phil Hall, who was editor of the News of the World, said it was a circle of culpability involving the readers who demanded more photographs, the photographers who chased her and the newspapers that published the pictures. “A big Diana story could add 150,000 sales. So we were all responsible,” he said.

I guess that that began the commercialization of death and there has been no looking back ever since. But even so, death and the private life of individuals has been some thing that the Indian media has generally not intruded into. But the rules seem to be changing.

Times Now, the news channel has literally been giving a ball by ball commentary of Jade Goody on her death bed; which really looks macabre. Of course unlike the Diana episode, all this is happening with Jade’s full consent. As she herself says, I’ve lived in front of the restraint cameras. And maybe I’ll die in front of them. And I know some people don’t like what I’m doing but at this point I really don’t care what other people think. Now, it’s about what I want.” And since what Jade really wants is to earn enough cash for her children even in her dying days, the picture is some what complicated.

But while the motives may some what blur the issue of the sanctity of death, it does not obliterate it. A death bed scene cannot really be telecast like a 20-20 cricket match of the IPL. There was a time when terminal illness was treated with a decorum that mirrored a society which was, for all its faults, essentially at peace with itself in respect to the eternal truths of life and death. But today, in a bizarre circus that is scarcely imaginable, tributes to Jade Goody are printed while she still lives, there was an interest in filming her as she breathed her last and apparently her reality show producer, Max Clifford is planning stories as he in true vulture fashion , waits for her death. Even the venerable BBC is readying itself to cover the event when it occurs. It has long been said of our time that we have lost the sanctity of life; now it would appear that we have lost the sanctity for death too.

Lonely at 60

2009-03-07T20:40:00.004+05:30

A couple of days ago, I opened up the newspaper to read that an elderly couple living in an upper middle class locality had committed suicide suddenly. There was no ostensible reason for this, but the newspaper reported that they were desperately lonely and a point came when they felt that they could not endure it any longer. They had several children; their youngest lived with them, but the others; married and with families of their own lived within a couple of hundred miles away from Delhi.

This one of course was not the first suicide occurring among the elderly in Delhi, and neither will it be the last. Although the government in Delhi has tried to be responsive to the needs of him elderly in much way – it has a helpline for access by senior citizens, increased policing, free medical aid, bus travel and what not. But all the help that government and civil society organizations can and do provide does not alleviate the pain of loneliness and abandonment that our senior citizens go through.

But this is not just a Delhi thing, though this could well be an urban thing. Last year, BBC had covered the story of Laxmibai Laxmidas Paleja in Mumbai, whose grandson and daughter in law were abusing her and speaks of Laxmi bai’s hapless condition “"I'm old. I couldn't defend myself. I was bleeding all over. I've got bruises all over my body. Then they just bundled me in a car and dumped me here at my daughter's house."

There has been a steady rise recently in reports of cases of elderly being abused, harassed and abandoned in India and it does not need the BBC to tell us that Joint family systems - where three or more generations lived under one roof - were a strong support network for the elderly and they have more or less disappeared – at least in the cities.

But more children are now leaving their parental homes to set up their own. Sociologists say the pressures of modern life and the more individualistic aspirations of the young are among reasons why the elderly are being abandoned or, in some cases, abused.

Delhi University professor Kum Kum Srivastava makes a telling comment when she says that "I think this a child-oriented society, not a parent-oriented one anymore." Meanwhile, demographically, India is getting younger as a nation and the problems and aspirations of the youth alone are increasingly getting centre stage. But even so, India has more 60m men and women older than 65 and the problems of the elderly are multiplying, and with societal trends going the way they are, the problems of the elderly are likely to get more and more sidelined.

Although organizations like Helpage have long been around, typically NGOs and other organizations have a bias towards the poor and the marginalized. This is a bit irrelevant hee considering that many of the emotional deprivation that the elderly suffer are likely to more accentuated in the isolation that upper or middle class living brings. Despite there being a National Policy on Older Persons and several schemes for the physical welfare of our senior citizens, the emotional gap and loneliness is a need that looks set to grow at a much faster pace than can typically be met.

What has befallen us ….A look at Child Sexual Abuse

2009-03-04T16:49:00.003+05:30

The word ‘disgrace’ seems inadequate to describe a society in which human beings are lured or forced into activities that our sense of common humanity. It is difficult to do justice to the moral repugnance and outrage felt by civilised people when the facts about child trafficking are brought home to them. The fact that such appalling suffering is deliberately inflicted on men, women and children by criminals who regard them as commodities to be abused and sold for financial gain, is so far removed from most people’s experience that it is easy for our minds simply to recoil from it. Therefore, the subject of sexual exploitation of children is an issue where a lot needs to be done to bring about awareness on an issue we would much rather keep under wraps.

Commercial sexual exploitation of children is defined as ‘sexual abuse by the adult and remuneration in cash or kind to the child or a third person or persons. The child is treated as a sexual object and as a commercial object’. It includes the prostitution of children, child pornography and other forms of transactional sex where a child engages in sexual activity to have basic needs of food, shelter or clothing fulfilled. It includes forms of transactional sex where the sexual abuse of children is not stopped or reported by household members, due to benefits derived by the household from the perpetrator.

Research has proved that children are especially victimised in the commercial sex trade. They are forced to accept a large number of clients can almost never negotiate safe sex and are often beaten and ill-treated. Due to the illegal and clandestine nature of the commercial sexual exploitation of children, their ‘keepers’ keep them in captivity — hidden from public view. Thus, children condemned in commercial sexual exploitation continue to suffer in silence.

India is fast emerging as a favoured destination for sex tourists from Europe, the US and other western countries. The favoured destinations are Goa, Kerala, Maharashtra, and more recently, West Bengal and Orissa. Goa continues to be a haven for sex tourists from Europe and the US. After Thailand, Vietnam and Sri Lanka strengthened legislations to combat the growing menace of sex tourism and paedophiles, the jugger naut rolled on to Goa. The state was a popular choice as it was cheap and easy to procure a child and sexually abuse him/her. The inadequacy of the existing legislations to combat this growing menace and the apathy of law enforcement officials adds to the attraction

Trafficking of children is also a serious problem in India. The nature and scope of trafficking range from industrial and domestic labour, to forced early marriages and commercial sexual exploitation. Existing studies show that over 40 per cent of women sex workers enter into prostitution before the age of 18 years. Moreover, for children who have been trafficked and rescued, opportunities for rehabilitation remains scarce and reintegration process arduous?

While systematic data and information on child protection issues are still not always available, evidence suggests that children in need of special protection belong to communities suffering disadvantage and social exclusion such as scheduled casts and tribes, and the poor. The lack of available services, as well as the gaps persisting in law enforcement and in rehabilitation schemes also constitute a major cause of concern.

Child sexual abuse has so far been largely ignored by the Indian legal system. The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, does not address children as a separate category. The only legal provision that is most often used to bring about a conviction is Section 377 of the IPC that criminalises ‘unnatural sex’ and is abused by the police to violate the human rights of same sex couples.

According to figures provided by the National Crime Records Bureau, in 2004, as many as 2,265 cases of kidnapping and abduction of children qualified as forms of trafficking and were reported to the police. Of these, 1,593 cases were of kidnapping for marriage, 414 were for illicit sex, 92 for unlawful activity, 101 for prostitution and the rest for various other things like slavery, begging and even selling body parts. Most of these children (72 per cent) were between 16 and18 years of age. Twenty-five per cent were children aged 11-15 years. This is the tip of the iceberg; the malaise runs much deeper and many cases go unreported. And with trafficking having overtaken the arms trade and drugs as the world’s largest illicit industry, we need more hands on the deck than we have at present fighting this sickening menance.

Educating our Kids : The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan

2009-03-03T09:34:00.002+05:30

A school that I visited last week in Dehradun awakened me to one of the many changes that are quietly taking place in the country. The school, which usually fell silent after the last student had left for home in the afternoon, is buzzing with activity all through the day. Till the evening shadows lengthen, the class rooms are full, the play grounds abuzz with activity and the staff room is busy. No, the school is not running a double shift. It is just that after the regular fee paying students have left, another batch of students from the near by slum communities come in and utilize the school facilities and the classrooms. The arrangement is sponsored and paid for by the government under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) program.

Contrary to the usual belief that nothing in the government works, the SSA is a great endeavor to universalize elementary education. Although the 1990s saw noteworthy progress in education indicators in India, wide-ranging gaps were prevailing across states and districts. For example, the net primary enrolment ratios ranged from 63 percent in Bihar to 98 percent in Kerala. Inequity across scheduled castes and scheduled tribes was pronounced. However because of efforts like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the number of Indian children out of school went down from 25 million in 2003 to about 7 million in 2006 (exceeding the target), thus steadily moving towards universal enrolment (about 185 million children were enrolled at the elementary level in 2006).

Although, there is no doubt that the average drop-out rate in primary classes suggests a consistent decline; but the same is still too high to attain the status of universal retention at the primary level of education. Universalisation of education comprises four components- universal access, universal enrolment, universal retention and universal quality of education.

The SSA has ambitious goals. It was launched in 2001 to universalize and improve the quality of elementary education in India through community ownership of elementary education. In order to effectively decentralize the management, it has involved Panchayati Raj institutions, School Management Committees, Village and Urban Slum Level Education Committees, Parents’ Teachers’ Associations, Mother Teacher Associations, Tribal Autonomous Councils and other grassroots level structures.

SSA, apart from being a programme with clear time frame for Elementary Education, also offers opportunities to the states to develop their own vision of elementary education. It had set 2007 as the deadline for providing primary education in India and 2010 as the deadline for providing useful and relevant elementary education to all children in the 6 to 14 age group. In order to improve the quality of elementary education in India, the SSA has emphasized on improving the student teacher ratio, teachers training, academic support, facilitating development of teaching learning material and providing textbooks to children from special focus groups etc.

The SSA is getting carried out in collaboration with state governments to cover the entire country and address the needs of its children in 1.1 million locations. Keeping an eye on sanitation and the girl child, the government has built under the programme nearly 222,000 toilets at primary schools. Similarly, nearly 187,000 new schools have been opened in the last seven years - courtesy the SSA.The campaign has also helped construction of over 656,000 additional classrooms and provided drinking water facilities at 175,413 schools.

The programme seeks to open new schools in locations which do not have schooling facilities and reinforce existing school infrastructure through provision of additional classrooms, toilets, drinking water, maintenance grant and school improvement grants. In the budget of the last two years (2007-08, 2008-09), the government has allocated over Rs.262 billion ($6 billion) for universalising elementary education to achieve the millennium development goal (MDG) of universal primary education.

The challenge has been a sizeable one but the rewards have been many. The achievement stories range from children in far-flung villages to slum clusters in India’s many expansive cities. As always, it is evident most effectively not in figures but in real life stories like the children in the school I visited in Dehradun last week, whose education is being taken care of by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. And for once I am happy that the educational surcharge levied every time I pay a service tax on any transaction is reaching the right people in the right way, and the government machinery is working. The story is not all bad.

Girls,Women and the Legacy of Mahatma Phule

2009-03-01T21:29:00.003+05:30

It is common wisdom that literacy is a reasonably good indicator of development in a society. Increase and distribution of literacy is generally associated with necessary traits of today’s civilization such as modernization, urbanization, industrialization, communication and commerce. For the purpose of census, a person aged seven and above, who can both read and write with any understanding in any language, is treated as literate.

As per the 2001 Census, the overall literacy rate of India is 65.38%. The male literacy rate is 75.96% and female literacy rate is 54.28% Historically, a variety of factors have been found to be responsible for poor female literate rate,viz Gender based inequality, Social discrimination and economic exploitation, Occupation of girl child in domestic chores, Low enrolment of girls in schools, Low retention rate and high dropout rate.

A literacy rate of 54 percent means that there is a long way to go yet for women’s’ literacy in India to get to where it ought to be – a literacy rate of close to 100. But we should still be grateful for where we are in the journey and for the man who began it all, the mahatma of the 19th century who has been some what obscured by time – Mahatma Jyotiba Phule.

Mahatma Jyotiba Phule and his wife Savitribai were remarkable personalities, especially for their times. He started the first school for girls, at Pune, in the year 1848. He advocated Education for women- female students from the downtrodden (Shudras/ Atee Shudras) communities and adults. He started schools. He established institutes like the ‘Pune Female Native Schools’ and the ‘Society for Promoting Education for Mahar, Mangs’.

But of course Pune has forgotten all that. The historical structure where the school functioned was taken over by a builder, demolished and replaced with a commercial complex, but the government has now realised its mistake and wants this piece of history back. The structure was taken over by a builder, demolished and replaced with a commercial complex, but the government has now realised its mistake and wants this piece of history back.

More importantly or equally importantly, he engaged in his education at home too. Jotirao prepared his wife Savitribai to teach in the girls’ school, with a view to educating the women first, in order to bring in the value of equality at home. Savitribai had to face bitter opposition from the orthodox society of the time for teaching girls and people from the underprivileged groups in the school. Despite this bitter opposition, Jotirao and Savitribai continued their work with sincerity.

Interestingly, Mahatma Phule nurtured a favourable perspective on the British Rule in India because he thought it at least introduced the modern notions of justice and equality into the Indian society. Phule vehemently advocated widow-remarriage and even got a home built for housing upper caste widows during 1854. In order to set an example before the people, he opened his own house and let all make use of the well water without any prejudice. Similarly he started the infanticide prevention centre (’Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha’) for infants born to hapless widows because of their deviant behaviour or exploitation.

Considering the legacy that Mahatma Phule has left; grappling with issues that we have still not resolved more than 125 years after his death in 1890, he could have deserved better name recognition than having the building from where he ran his school for the education of the girl child being demolished by a nameless builder. May be Aamir Khan can add some other slices to his campaign to the defacing and destruction of historical monuments and give his legacy a facelift!

Have it, Show it....

2009-03-01T11:30:00.000+05:30

I ran down the stairs like every morning to find that the gate outside my home wouldn’t open fully and I would have to some how squeeze myself out through the partially blocked gate and get out. A Toyota Qualis stood parked outside the gate.

In the evening when I returned home, it was still parked there. When the next day, and then the day following, the Qualis stayed parked there, it was clear that the vehicle wasn’t one that belonged to some one who had come visiting. It had been purchased by one or the other of my many neighbors. Not having any parking space, he bought his out sized vehicle and not having any parking space, decided that it was quite all right to dump it on the road; not in front of his house necessarily, but wherever he found the space; which happened to be in front of my house. A gaudily painted sign at the back of the car said that it was a “gift of god”.

On the eve of independence India’s newly elected Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru made an impassioned and oft-quoted speech saying India had made a tryst with destiny. It was an austere, simple time when idealism was at its height and the distribution of wealth was a priority. Even decades later, in my own childhood, it was implicitly taught and understood, that today, it would seem that India has taken a slightly different route towards its destiny.

Flaunting your wealth? Is it a good or noble thing? In general, it has always been considered bad form to flaunt your money if you’ve got it. And it’s considered really bad form to flaunt your money these days when so many are losing their jobs or living with massive salary cuts. whereas traditionally “old money” has always been discreet and not ostentatious, the merchant princes of Mumbai and Kolkata for instance, it is the nouveau riche, who have made the money but never had the education to use it well, who are the real problem – the ones who will buy a Qualis and then not having the space to park it or the wherewithal to figure out a solution, dump it on the public space.

“The have it shows it “attitude is even more insensitive these days when scores of jobs have already been lost. For a while at least turning their backs towards globalization, countries turn back towards a protectionist economy and look after their own. As a result of policy changes under way currently, Over 50,000 IT professionals in the country may lose their jobs over the next six months as the situation in the sector is expected to worsen due to the impact of global economic meltdown on the export-driven industry, a forecast by a union of IT Enabled Services warned.

Addressing corporate honchos, the Prime Minister had remarked once that “Rising income and wealth inequalities, if not matched by a corresponding rise of incomes across the nation, can lead to social unrest. The electronic media carries the lifestyles of the rich and famous into every village and slum. Media often highlights the vulgar display of their wealth. An area of great concern is the level of ostentatious expenditure on weddings and other family events. Such vulgarity insults the poverty of the less privileged, it is socially wasteful and it plants seeds of resentment in the minds of the have-nots”. If I recall correctly, that address of Manmohan Singh was greeted by a stony silence by the functionaries of CII. Perhaps they weren’t yet too ready to abandon their conspicuous consumption patterns. Flaunting it if you have it is here to stay, be it private jets, ostentatious weddings or the Qualis at my door

Hepatitis B : Lurking in HIV's Shadow

2009-02-22T19:24:00.003+05:30

The story of the hepatitis B outbreak in Gujarat has not received the attention it deserves. More so because Hepatitis B is not the typical jaundice that comes around in the monsoon season every year and then trails off as the rains dry up. This variety of Hepatitis is chronic in nature; has no cure and is potentially more dangerous than HIV and AIDS, the mode of transmission for both being the same.

At last count thirty four people had been felled by the virus and this piece of news need not be the last word on the subject as The Gujarat health department says that this death toll could raise, as about 50 persons are still being treated in different hospitals. It has now been established that unsafe syringes and injection needles has caused the spread of hepatitis B in the Gujarat town, what is now being seen as one of the biggest hepatitis B outbreaks in the country.

Following the inevitable knee jerk reaction, the government has clamped down on many doctors and chemists claiming medical negligence. Doctors have apparently been using unsterilized and used recyclable syringes meant for single use but it is quite likely to be a case of too little action and too late. Although the cases of hepatitis B have thus far been found in Modasa taluka of the Sabarkantha district, it is quirt possible that the virus may be spreading in neighbouring districts also as the use of unboiled syringes and disposable syringes being recycled is not likely to be confined to just one location. The hepatitis B virus is transmitted through contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person. The virus can be transmitted via unprotected sex or sharing of contaminated needles. Pregnant mothers also tend to pass it on to their babies.

Chronic carriers have an increased risk of developing liver disease such as cirrhosis or liver cancer, because the hepatitis B virus steadily attacks the liver. Considering that these are exactly the methods by which HIV spreads, Hepatitis-B virus (HBV) remains a major public health problem with an estimated 350 million carriers worldwide, out of which 40 million are in India. HBV is more infectious than Hepatitis-C or the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and chronically infected individuals readily infect unvaccinated members and sexual partners. Hepatitis B is a disease more lethal than AIDS, claiming more lives in a day than the latter does in a year.

The whole episode highlights at least three things. Firstly, the depths to which the medical profession continues to sink: doctors, let alone contribute to any cure or healing are now actively contributing to patient deaths, breaching the sine qua non of the medical profession of doing no harm. Secondly, the need for blood safety and prevention of transfusion associated infections in the country has come to the fore and though because of the spotlight has been there for long on the blood banks to screen blood, not just to rule out Hepatitis B but also HIV, a lot still remains to be done.

Thirdly Hepatitis B is an expensive disease to treat and the results are not usually so encouraging, with an efficacy of only 30-40 percent. However, a relatively affordable vaccine is available to prevent it and Hepatitis-B vaccination has now become the part of the primary immunization of infants in many countries and is being administered in many parts of India in the National Immunization Program. But this is not generally known and widely administered in India, which is why the people in Sabarkantha fell victim to it in the first place. May be the deaths occurring in Gujarat and the international attention it is drawing, will make a difference in the numbers of people queuing up for the vaccine and the government making it available at far more cheaper rates than presently available.

Vignettes from time

2009-02-14T14:43:00.005+05:30

1) I love the very old song “Those were the days. It brings back so many happy memories...

2) I have had some of the most wonderful friends in the world. Some of them, it seems, I have known half my life... or is it more?

3) I miss my father who died in my arms twenty years ago every day. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of him, in spite of all those years….

4) I also remember Mr. P.K. Madan, my principal at the Mother’s International School, New Delhi when I was studying there. He saw hope in me when no one else did, even I didn’t and showed me what a teacher is meant to be.

5) Remembering all these people and writing about them is making me cry and it is nice that it is ok for men to cry these days.

6) I am a very shy person, there is so much that I want to say; but I don’t know how to make up the words.

7) I don’t have a very healthy sense of self esteem these days; perhaps never did have one.

8) People find it hard to believe that I used to be an Air Force doctor once.

9) Some works of art like the Sistine Chapel just have to be inspired by God alone.

10) I wish that magic really existed; that you just waved a wand and things became better and different.

11) I love history ; it would be nice if time travel became possible and I could see all those historical events that you only read about in history books

12) Every time you want to really cry, just read “ The Little Prince”

13) Shakespaeare had some of the most amazing insights into human nature.

14) If I were an old style maharajah, with lots of money and nothing to do, I would travel around exploring the world.

15) Bach’s Sleeper’s Awake is a divinely inspired piece of music. You can actually feel the resurrection that will happen when the Lord Jesus comes again.

16) I don’t like greetings like “Happy Birthday”, “Happy New Year “and the like. Que Sera Sera. What will be, will be.

17) I don’t like ice cream so much. I love the sweet curd that they sell in baked clay pots from creaky, old refrigerators in Kolkata.

18) it is nice to speak many languages; I know so few.

19) Some day I want to visit the pyramids of Egypt.

20) The New Testament parable of the prodigal son is one of the most timeless stories ever written.

21) Along with the parable of the Good Samaritan, the lost sheep, the lost coin. they give you hope.

22) When you meet a truly good and holy man, you just know.

23) It is great when you scan your computer and there is no virus.

24) Not many are going to read this; but still talking about you is so agonizing.

25) I am haunted by the thought of the kind of legacy I will and frightened that I won’t leave one at all.

Dead in the teens : The trauma of India's Students

2009-02-08T13:13:00.001+05:30

One of my friends whose whereabouts are usually not traceable, because he is involved in hectic travel has grounded himself for the next month or so. He has stationed himself at home ; well not exactly at home, but like a tame pet, he goes off to the office in the morning and is safely back to home base by evening. after hearing that piece of news, I haven been given similar instructions on the home front and my wife herself has taken leave a month’s leave and has parked herself at home. In both our families, a child is going through that iconic rite of passage – the board exam….. An event talked about in awe and hushed whispers.

I do not know the number of students who sit for the Board examinations in India every year, with practically each state having its own board of secondary education apart from the grand daddy of them all, the Central Board of Secondary Education. But whatever be the number, the ides of March bring with them the news of the examination season and the country it would seem defers to the phenomenon. elections if due, are scheduled and rescheduled to ensure that the examination schedule is not trifled with ; the election commission , typically a law unto itself , defers to the board examinations – elections will never be scheduled in a way that they interfere with the examination time table.

But stress for exam going students and increasingly their families is becoming a major issue in the last decade and it is a matter of concern that young people are being exposed to stress at such an early stage of their lives when their coping mechanism is so weak. Eexamination stress pushes students to various kinds of perversions, not only affecting concentration and memory but also forcing them to adopt abnormal behavior. Stressed out children are increasingly consuming tobacco, drinking tea, coffee and taking commonly-available amphetamine drugs such as cough syrups to keep up while preparing for exams.

And then there are those who simply can’t cope and end their lives. According to government reports, over 5000 students committed suicide in 2006. The unofficial figures are even higher. It seems stress is pushing our students to the brink; many of them just in class six. Boys are more vulnerable to committing suicide than girls, because adolescent girls seek support from family and friends to deal with emotional stress during examination. But as boys are less expressive, they tend to suppress their feelings of inadequacy and fear of poor performance. This often drives them to suicide to end their frustration

What’s pushing today’s Indian students - a bright generation with a global reputation for their high intelligence quotient - to the brink? Parental and peer pressure, rising ambitions and fierce competition are brewing a deadly cocktail for these young minds. Moreover, a nation racing towards affluence, an economy on a remarkable upward growth trajectory and skyrocketing salaries are putting unprecedented pressure on youth to succeed.

Although some note has been taken of the phenomenon, the changes are till date largely cosmetic. helplines set up by the central board of secondary education and other NGOs that function in these months of the year certainly serve a useful purpose, educational reforms that will evaluate performance and learning by means other than examinations alone or an over haul of the syllabi have been slow in coming. The reform of India’s Macaulayan system of education based on rote learning and memorisation requires urgent attention.

Besides, though the UPA government has imposed a 2 percent cess on all Central taxes, decades of under-investment in education has created shocking shortages of buildings, laboratories, libraries, even drinking water and sanitation facilities in the nation’s dilapidated education sector. A national consensus has to be built on the premise that higher education outlays are vitally important investments in the nation’s future and that this outlay is needed to be accompanied by revamp of the educational system so that young lives are not snuffed out under the burden of school syllabi and examinations, which currently passes for education in India

The Lathi Charge : Police Brutality in India

2009-02-05T19:48:00.001+05:30

The other day, Kiran Bedi, the generally respected police officer (now retired) was on a talk show on television. She was an invited guest on a program which was discussing police brutality. The context was where in U.P, the police brutality which we have now come to take for granted reached a nadir when they beat up a six or seven year old girl in Etawah. She had apparently stolen an amount of Rs 280.00 and was caught. Kiran Bedi did not of course say that the police were doing the right thing. but her statement that the police were an underpaid, over worked force who tended to get angry and then ventilate it on any one who came their way came pretty close to retelling an old story from my school days.

That story is all about how a man came back from office one evening annoyed because his boss had shouted at him. upset with his wife because his tea wasn’t waiting for him when he got home, he shouted at his wife, who turn, later in the evening yelled at their son because he was taking too long over his home work. The son bade his time and next morning kicked the family dog hard in the stomach on his way out to school. the wheel turned full circle when the husband on his way to work a couple of hours later, trod on the dog’s tail who in turn snapped and bit the man on his ankle starting off a fresh cycle of feuding.

Jokes apart, Kiran Bedi’s evidence sounded pretty much like this. Sure the police are underpaid and over worked and are subject to all manner of political interference that further undermines their work. But by their manner of functioning, the police have dome nothing much to improve their image of an institution of almost uniform loathing. A police station should be a place of protection but instead it feels extremely unsafe and unwelcoming, a place most people want to avoid. Beating, torture and illegal arrests are common, so common that complaints about them are few. a NOIDA police station officer blandly told a research team from the Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties that a suspect always needs `thukai pitai’ (sound trashing) to tell the truth. Brutality is so institutionalized that People in general have an acquired fear, however little it may be, towards the police. Children are frightened by the parents by telling that they would call the police if they do not eat food; do not obey them. The policemen are pictured as cruel people by films.

The police of course have a history of ruthless suppression of the population that they have inherited from the British regime but sadly even after so many decades after independence the police machinery has not evolved very much from the colonial police, including in the police weapon of choice – the lathi. At a time, when there is so much of terror and insecurity that is coming from the outside, one would expect the police to be an institution where one could turn to for safety, protection and comfort. that is the way it is in other countries ; that is the way of a civilized society – that you turn to the State and arguably its most visible instrument – the police for safety and security – but alas – not yet so in India. Here it would seem, one is better off, the further one is from the police.

Ode to a Mosquito

2009-02-03T16:08:00.006+05:30

Amitabh Ghosh’s book, The Calcutta Chromosome reminds us in

India

of the country’s long association with Malaria. On 20 August 1897, in Secunderabad, Sir Ronald Ross, an Army doctor with the Indian medical service, in the course of experiments conducted in Kolkata’s Presidency General Hospital(PG Hospital to you and me !) and Secundrabad ,he found the malaria parasite and went on to prove the role of Anopheles mosquitoes in the transmission of malaria parasites in humans. Despite

India

’s historical association with malaria, (Sir Ronald Ross later went on to win the Nobel Prize for medicine),

India

’s tryst with malaria has far from ended. Malaria is endemic in all of

India

except at elevations above 1800 meters and in some coastal areas.

Two-thirds of all cases are reported from Gujarat, Karnatka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.

- Orissa, Assam & Maharashtra account for 80 percent of all _plasmodium falciparum_ malaria which is potentially fatal

- Malaria is reported nationwide, including Delhi and Bombay; but not in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Sikkim, isolated coastal areas around Western Ghats, Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Transmission begins with the onset of the Monsoon season in mid-June.

- _P. vivax_ predominates until August, with _P. falciparum_ infection rising to a peak in September.

At the time of independence in 1947, there were an estimated 75 million malaria cases and 0.8 million deaths annually. National Malaria Eradication Programme was launched in 1958, based mainly on widespread DDT spraying. The number of reported cases was reduced to about 100,000 by 1965-66. After global eradication was called off in 1969, funding decreased steeply, and by 1976 reported cases peaked at 6.47 million. Malaria was nearly eradicated from India during the early 1960’s.

Malaria and poverty are intimately connected. Judged as both a root cause and a consequence of poverty, malaria is most intractable for the poorest countries in the world and it affects the health and economic growth of nations. Its epidemiology and its control are complicated by poverty as it is a dominant disease in poverty stricken societies. The economic loss due to the loss of man-days due to malaria was estimated to be at Rs. 10,000 million per year in 1935. The annual incidence of malaria was estimated at around 75 million cases in 1953 with about 8 lakhs deaths annually

The fact that malaria is fundamentally a disease of the poor has meant that malaria has received comparatively scant attention in recent times. By the early 1990s, worldwide funding on malaria research had practically dried up.

While older vaccines for diseases like mumps and measles are more widely and cheaply available, vaccines for malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS, the developing world's top killers, are so risky and costly to bring to market that little progress has been made in these areas. The malaria vaccine about to be tested has been under development for two decades -- and at one point it was nearly abandoned. Till the millennium development goals, once again put malaria on the world map, the disease was literally out of sight of the world. In recent years, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has been the most high profile philanthropist involved in malaria control. The Gates couple began handing out research grants for malaria in late 1998, even before they had formalized the structure of their foundation. Since then, they have poured more than $860 million into just malaria research and another $650 million into the Global Fund for fighting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

The latest review of the national programme was carried out in early 2007 as an international collaborative Joint Monitoring Mission following a sample survey in households and health facilities of malaria control implementation carried out by the National Institute of Malaria Research, New Delhi. An interesting finding of the review was that the malaria burden in the country is unknown despite an elaborate surveillance system. The number of officially reported malaria deaths is about 1000 per year, but a study of medically certified deaths in the country suggest that the real figure is at least 40 times as high.

A hundred and ten years and more after Ronald Ross made his breakthrough discovery of the malarial parasite on Indian soil, there is still a lot that remains to be done in reducing malaria deaths and one can only hope that malaria will be the next disease selected for eradication after the long suffering polio.

Slumdog Millionaire... and what should a movie be ?

2009-01-23T16:19:00.001+05:30

A question that will never be quite settled is related to the extent of realism in cinema: should cinema expose harsh truth or should it portray a carefully sanitized picture of society. This question has again come to the fore front with release of Slum dog Millionaire , which on one hand has been nominated for the Oscars and on the other is dogged by controversy with actors like Amitabh Bachchan having panned it – ( though reportedly, he has retracted those comments).

Partly this is because of the different expectations that people have from cinema and the role that cinema has in society – and this question too will never be satisfactorily answered. Actors like Amitabh, who have been principally entertainers, see the medium as principally a vehicle of entertainment – some thing affordable and accessible to the common manta the end of a day’s work.
Other film makers have thought and acted differently, Satyajit Ray being the one most well known of them. He used films to portray the stark realities of Indian society – the poverty, the corruption and the decadence of a country in transition. of Ray was a lot more than a chronicler of penury and hardship ; his films made money, won praise and gave Indian films their first ever visibility on the world stage.

The films that Amitabh made and makes are of course quite different – escapist, mainstream masala fare is what we call them, where the money and fame is and parallel cinema is the homely cousin which wins awards and acclaim but don’t necessarily entertain the common man who sees on screen the reality that he has been part of all day long.

Parallel cinema of course decidedly doesn’t entertain; what it does is make a statement on aspects of society which ought to be noticed and attended to but sadly no one does or did till the movie came along. While Satyajit Ray did make pure entertainers, especially his children’s’ films in particular, his contemporary, Ritwik Ghatak, the noted Bengali film maker made movies inspired by the partition of Bengal in 1947 and its aftermath among people uprooted from places where they had lived for centuries.

Of course Amitabh is not incorrect when he says that “If Slumdog Millionaire’ projects India as Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations,” It is just that there is and always be a difference of opinion about just which aspect of reality should the creative artiste; be it a movie maker or a journalist or a novelist focus on ….. The subjects of celebration and veneration or the objects of ridicule and revulsion.

Using depictions of poverty solely as a means of publicity or getting recognition is definitely pandering. But we cannot get away from the fact that a very large fraction of the billion-strong population of India does not have access to the basic amenities of life, and this is the most obvious thing that will strike an observer from a Western country where these amenities are taken for granted and where these films are getting mileage and Oscar nominations. Meanwhile both kinds of movies deserve a place in the sun. it is the typical Bollywood movie, of the kind in which Amitabh acts that have made Hindi films the force that they are today…. when they are watched more by people outside India than within. And it is the kind of film that Satyajit Ray and others like him make that initially gave Indian films a foothold in places like Cannes. Slumdog Millionaire is incidentally a bridge. It is not the kind of film that Shyam Benegal or Adoor Gopalakrishnan would make; it also obviously is not the kind of film that Amitabh Bachchan would have acted in. a perfect balance, one must say.

A School and a Schoolboy

2009-01-21T11:17:00.001+05:30

Many of us India have always wondered about where the tax payer’s money is going. Ever since Rajiv Gandhi made that famous statement about 15 paisa of every rupee allocated by the state was actually utilised for the given purpose, the figure has slid down now to 5 paisa! So this story of a young man who told this story and who boasts that half of his body belongs to the government of India because he was brought up and fed and sheltered at the expense of the state is a touching one indeed.

The story of Viswas begins in a small Andhra coastal village where his father was a family physician to the local landlords of the area. The father was not a qualified physician; he was a traditional healer who had learnt the craft from his family. Although he and his family were not living in penury, they were not rich either. The father had enrolled Viswas in the local village school and in time was expected to take up an apprenticeship with his father and learn the trade.

Slowly he crept up the ladder in the village school till class V when the elderly school headmaster called him to his office and got him to fill in some forms. Viswas filled in the forms because he trusted the headmaster and he was a kind man who cared for his students and the child had grown to be fond of him. Shortly after filling in the forms, he was called by his class teacher and told that he would have to appear for a set of examinations based on his Class V subjects. Viswas was good in his studies and he sat for his examinations with out any difficulty.

A day came when Visas was called to the headmaster’s office again and told that he would no longer be studying in the local village school. He had gained admission to the Navodaya Vidayala, where he would get free education in the residential schools of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Society till he passed his Standard XII. There would be other opportunities for him to apply for scholarships to further pursue higher education in a congenial environment. By the time he finished his education, he had finished his M.Tech

The Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya were first set up in 1985 cater to the educational needs of the talented students generally belonging to the rural areas of the nation. The schools were a brainchild of P.V. Narasimha Rao when he was the minister for human resources development in the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet. One can come across Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas everywhere in the nation, except in the state of Tamil Nadu with approximately five hundred and fifty seven of them operating all over the country. Even the teachers in these institutes are selected with care with a national level competitive examination recruiting trained and qualified teachers for the schools.

Visas finished his Class XII and then went on to study M.Tech. Among his friends are an NRI academic, an income tax commissioner, a software engineer and a college lecturer. Viswas himself too teaches in a private college and is busy guiding other small town boys and girls about the way to a bright career. Viswas has company. There have been Navodians who have joined the elite Indian Administrative Service. The Navodaya Schools, by picking up students from some of the remotest parts of the country and giving them an education that they might never had and providing them with opportunities they would perhaps have never even dreamt of are one small example of Bharat Nirman. A small illustration that there is plenty of good in government; with all the rot, decay and corruption that we talk about day in and day out.

Silent Labor

2009-01-18T17:54:00.001+05:30

Innocent victims of the Satyam saga are the close to 53,000 employees of the Satyam group who obviously have done nothing wrong; they were slogging away at their posts doing their assigned tasks. One of the many priorities of the new government appointed board is to protect the interests of the employees. While the board is to be commended for taking its responsibilities seriously and laying out its priorities, the government seems to have acted as it were to keep the “India Shining” image gleaming and polished for the world’s gaze.

While the government has acted with alacrity, to protect the interests of the well educated and well paid Satyam workers, who are able to generate media attention, bog on line, and basically lobby to protect their interests, it would be great to see the government react with equal speed for those who don’t have that kind of clouts. India is home to the second largest labour force in the world. And more than 90 percent of those eligible to work are employed in the unorganized sector. Despite tough labour laws, unorganized sector workers remain deprived of legal protections

The first National Commission on Labour (1966-69) defined unorganised labour as those who have not been able to organise themselves in pursuit of common objectives on account of constraints like casual nature of employment, ignorance and illiteracy, small and scattered size of establishments and position of power enjoyed by employers because of the nature of industry etc. Nearly 20 years later the National Commission on Rural Labour (NCRL: 1987-91) visualised the same scenario and the same contributory factors leading to the present status of unorganised rural labour in India.

The unorganized / informal employment consists of causal and contributing family workers; self employed persons in un-organized sector and private households; and other employed in organized and unorganized enterprises that are not eligible either for paid, sick or annual leave or for any social security benefits given by the employer. The bulk of the working population is in the unorganized sector (i.e. 91% of the total population) and this workforce is as yet not actively unionized. The organized sector, which is generally extant around urban settlements, accounts for only 9% of the total work force.

The contribution of the unorganized workforce to the economic health of India society has largely remained neglected. In India, this sector accounts for

- 60% of Net Domestic Product (i.e., GDP minus depreciation),

- 68% of income, 60% of savings,

- 31% of agricultural exports, and

- 41% of manufactured exports.

Women workers in the unorganized sector – the farm workers, vendors, casual construction labour, domestic help, home-based workers – are even far more neglected and unaccounted-for part of the informal economy. This is so, since the self-employed women work from homes and their contribution is mostly not calculated into the national economic data. However, according to the National Sample Survey ’05, one-third of the informal sector workforce (about 120mn) comprises of women. Collectively, they accounted for 96% of the female workforce in the country, and contribute to about 20% GDP of India.

But this is a largely docile, silent and submissive work force more pre occupied with making ends meet and putting a meal in the stomachs of their families every evening, they don’t hunch in front of computers writing blogs and signing on line petitions. Their cause championed only by an increasingly irrelevant Left. This silent cause will cause will therefore will trawl through the corridors of power at the proverbial pace of the snail.

The Human Body : The Great Commodity Exchange

2009-01-17T10:17:00.001+05:30

Every year, The U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 mandates the State Department to report as a way of combating human trafficking around the world and punishing those responsible, the annual Trafficking in Persons report. The document for 2007, the latest available, says that as many as 800,000 people -- largely women and children -- are trafficked across borders each year around the world. Many are forced into prostitution, sweatshops, domestic labour, farming and child armies.

Most of us Indians would not like to know that India is a key source, destination, and transit country for humans trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation. While no comprehensive study of forced and bonded labour can ever be completed, there are estimates that the trafficking “industry” touches 20 to 65 million Indians. Women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage. Children are subjected to forced labour as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agriculture workers, and have been used as armed combatants by some terrorist and insurgent groups. India is also a destination for women and girls from Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation.

Due to the clandestine nature of the problem, little is known about those who carry out human trafficking. Studies show that they may be family members or friends, brothel owners and brokers, community leaders, women in sex-work or people in powerful positions such as police and other government employees. Data collected from victims of trafficking for the UNIFEM study, suggests that 50% of traffickers are women (reported in Sen, A. 2005: A Report on Trafficking of Women and Children, UNIFEM).

And India, says Global Citizens Trust (GCT), is becoming a hub for prostitution, pornography and cyber crime and a growing destination for sex tourists from the west. A large number of women and children from neighbouring countries are also trafficked into the country, with around 10,000 persons brought in from Nepal annually, according to Kumar Yaru, editor of Rajdhani national daily, a Nepalese newspaper.

“Trafficking can be disguised as migration, commercial sex or marriage. But what begins as a voluntary decision often ends up as trafficking as victims find themselves in unfamiliar destinations, subjected to unexpected work,” A BBC report for instance quoting the Assam police informs that since 1996 3,184 women and 3,840 female children have gone missing in the state and many have ended up working as call-girls around Delhi or used as “sex slaves” by wealthy landlords in states like Punjab and Haryana. That piece of statistic means that we are talking of about two women a day.

The market rate for a bride currently it seems is between 4,000 and 30,000 rupees ($88 to $660) and the custom of buying brides has not just infected the states of Haryana and Punjab only, it is spreading. In a district where the urban sex ratio is the lowest in the country at 678/1,000 and where the largest tehsil has a sex ratio of 535/1,000, the system of bride buying has become quite rampant in the last five years. Shahjahanpur’s block Bhawaal Kheda has several villages where, due to the low sex ratio, men have been buying brides from states like West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar.

Article 23 of the Constitution of India prohibits trafficking in any form. We have special legislations like the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA), 1956, the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2000.

However , several members of the Indian parliament (from various political parties), the country’s law makers have been implicated in a scandal where these elected representatives, the diplomatic passport-holders, were trafficking people out to foreign countries by taking them along as spouses or children, and helping them clear the immigration check-points at India’s international airports.

So, even as Trafficking is understood and interpreted as modern-day slavery, and a matter of global concern, with India as one of the worst affected countries, clearly a lot needs to be done before the great commodity exchange trading in human bodies is controlled , let alone wiped out.

Life of a Cow

2009-01-15T21:14:00.000+05:30

Cows and pigs are emotive animals in India. They are what you need if you want to start a communal riot. Time tested and effective. If you slaughter a cow and throw some pieces in a temple or a pig and throw its carcass in a mosque, you have it made. A potent prescription for creating social unrest and chaos. After all, cows are sacred to Hindus and pigs are unclean to Muslims.

So it might come as some news that in Muslim Bangladesh, every third cow that is used in the country is “imported” or rather smuggled in from India. A large number of cattle worth crores of rupees from as far as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab and Haryana are smuggled into Bangladesh through the porous borders of the North East. By the time the harried animals reach Bangladesh, they are half-dead while many perish on the way and the government does not receive any revenue from this illegal trade. The Rs 2,500 crore Bangladeshi leather industries reportedly thrive on cattle smuggled from India… According to BSF sources cattle worth Rs 25 lakh were seized along the Indo-Bangladesh borders in the North East in November, 2008 alone. The volume of the illegal trade involving those not caught may run into crores of rupees.

So what is to be done? Meghalaya Governor Ranjit Shekhar Mooshahary has a solution; set up beef processing units in the North Eastern states. In this largely tribal part of the country, beef is widely consumed, and the cow, quite literally is now holy cow. And going by India’s weather beaten, unity in diversity” dharma, the people in the North East ought to be allowed to eat their cow, if that is what they want. So will Governor Mooshahary’s proposal that state governments should set up beef processing units in the region where cattle meat can be used for consumption and even exports to foreign countries including Bangladesh work?

Cow slaughter is a politically charged issue in India. In 1966, barely months after Indira Gandhi had become the Prime Minister; she had hiccups when a movement demanding cow slaughter culminated in a massive demonstration outside parliament on 7th November, 1966. The government is not helped much by the fact that cow slaughter is enshrined as a Directive Principle of State Policy in the Constitution. Though this is not binding, it does serve as a moral pointer. Besides, other public figures like Acharya Vinoba Bhave, who commanded wide respect supported anti cow slaughter movement.

If Mooshahary wants beef processing units set up in the North East, another group of Indians feels that not enough is being done to protect the cow. The Sankaracharya of Gokarna Peetha, Karnataka, Jagadguru Swami Raghaveshwar Bharati has just urged the Centre to declare cow as a national animal and ban its slaughter. He proposes to hold a 108-day Rath Yatra to spread the massage of ‘save cow and save village’ across the country during which signatures of about 50 crore people will be collected and it will be submitted to the President. in another part of the country, when the Khasi Jaintia Butchers’ Welfare Association (KJBWA), in its general meeting decided to hike prices of beef from the existing rate of Rs 90 per kg to Rs 100, and from Rs 100 a kg to Rs 120 for the thigh portions, the news made it to the newspapers as a matter of concern.

so there is the cow for you in India- an animal who is the object of politics and economic gain between neighbours at one end, an object of agitation by some ; an object of veneration by some other and a business opportunity for the butchers’ association and its customers. how we manage these amazing contradictions, is part of the story of incredible India.

A roof above our heads

2009-01-14T11:33:00.000+05:30

For the larger part of 2008, middle class people in Delhi looked forward to the housing scheme of the Delhi Development Authority who offered 5,238 flats n various sizes and prices by lottery among 5.67 lakh applicants. What made the flats attractive was the fact that they were priced 50 percent lesser than the market rates. In 2006, the DDA had put up 3,000 flats for sale for which it received over two lakh applications.

And of course hundreds of thousands of Mumbaikars lined up on Monday for a chance to own a flat in prime areas, as the Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority (MHADA) opened the process of allotting low cost flats. 3,863 low-cost flats are being allotted in prime areas like Versova, Ghatkopar, Chembur and Goregaon. There are different housing schemes for different income groups and again the flats are being offered at nearly half the market price, ranging from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 50 lakh. And of course the political potential of a roof above your house has been well exploited by the Shiv Sena who has demanded an 80 percent reservation for Maharashtrians in the allotment.

Housing is a hot potato…. riven with shortages, land mafias and crime; all playing on the shortages for housing units; particularly low cost housing units. According to a 2007 report of the National Sample Survey Organisation, one out of every seven urban households in India today lives in slums. About eight million households live in slums now — two million more than those lived there a decade ago. Further, according to data provided by National Buildings Organisation, combined housing shortage in the country has increased by 134% during the last six years from 10.56 million units in 2001 to 24.71 million units in 2007. The number of urban households during this period has increased by 11.5 million. Many of them found their ways to slums for shelter.

Of course you wouldn’t guess that there is a housing shortage by looking at the housing portals and the Sunday classifieds in any of the leading newspapers. A recent television commercial recently even offered a free Mercedes car thrown in with a high end villa. The economic melt down has frozen or brought down property prices to an extent, but of course, recession or no, the advertised houses will forever be out of reach for those lining up to collect the forms for the DDA or the MHADA flats.

One of the reforms that are urgently needed in the housing sector is the need for a regulator. The sector doesn’t have one despite its size and importance and the fact that the government recently saw it fit to nudge housing loan interest rates downwards in a bid to increase demand. The lack of a regulator means that builders can be any body with cash – and possibly muscle power to invest and acquire land. There is no universal service obligation to ensure that a certain portion of houses and private builders build are for the lower income sections of society. This is much needed much like airlines are required to fly to financially unlucrative locations because they are in the strategic national interest. or the telecom companies which pay a universal service obligation service fee to the state so that remote parts of the country can receive connectivity.

the housing sector so far has received none of these attentions and has become the domain of big private builders who build only for the rich. as long as this climate stays the way it is, with only a few state players building a miniscule number of flats and then selling them by lottery, the misery of those get passed over in the drawof lots will know no end.

How Sacred is Life ?

2009-01-12T21:14:00.002+05:30

Certain themes tend to be the proverbial red rag before the bull. For the Church, particularly the Catholic Church, euthanasia or mercy killing is one of them. As of course is abortion. And when the church finds itself in a position where it finds itself confronted by a piece of legislation that is being enacted precisely to this en d and that too by godless communists the stage is set for a confrontation. As is happening in Kerala at the moment.

While no one will dispute that life is sacred, it is the very sacredness of life itself that is now seen through a variety of prisms and what different people see reflected through the prism is quite different. Advocates of mercy killing will say that a man living as a vegetable dependant on others for very existence is an affront to the dignity of a human being and there must be a way out with adequate safeguards where a man can choose to take his life either through conventional suicide or assisted means where his friends and family carry out the wishes of a person expressed and willed earlier.

The more socially conservative would say that no safeguards are adequate enough and that in an unscrupulous society, society would find it very easy to get rid of those it considers an unwanted burden; those who are no longer economically productive, the weak and the elderly. This is of course entirely plausible; human kind has an intermittent history of having exactly that.

Then of course there is a third strand – the spiritual strand which claims that life is created by God and can only be extinguished by God alone. This is the Judeo- Christian view and the view that has traditionally influenced our law making till the recent times. If suicide is a crime under the Indian Penal Code thus far, it is precisely because of this influence.

But the Indian tradition is not so uniform. There is a long tradition in the Indic religions of the wise and enlightened being able to discern as to when their useful span of life is over. And when that discernment dawns, they then intentionally withdraw from life in various ways. The Mahabharata story of the Pandavas retreating to the bitter cold of the Himalyas where all of them except Yudhishthira died of cold and exhaustion is a well known example. In recent times, Acharya Vinoba Bhave is another personality who chose to embrace the Jain tradition of santhara which involves fasting to death after living a rich and long life. Many others also follow this practice from time to time.

But clearly issues like mercy killing must be viewed with in the social context in which they are enacted and a just question that deserves to be asked is about the quality of life that citizen’s experience. One must not forget the many that are able and agile and are in the prime of life who aren’t waiting for laws to enact to take their life. The stressed students who die before and after our back breaking board exams, the farmers whose suicide we no longer read about because terrorism captures every headline, are they able to live lives of dignity ? life is sacred all right but the essence of its sacredness needs to be affirmed in many ways and not just by forcing a man or woman to live when there is nothing much to live for.

Ross Island : A slice of incredible India

2009-01-11T21:42:00.000+05:30

If one were looking for an authentic location for a “horror film” with a period touch to it, they should try out Ross Island in the Andamans. Just a short boat ride away from Port Blair, the place reeks of history and the ruins – of very recent vintage are so kept that they provide an “atmosphere” to the small island and it is quite possible to realistically imagine what life might have been like two handed years ago on the island. 81also to imagine the manner in which with efficiency and vigor, the British colonizers of the time were able to provide for every imaginable comfort of the time in that fairly small sized island.

In fact, although the Andamans are best known for the famous cellular jail in Port Blair where celebrities like Veer Savarkar and many others were imprisoned, the Cellular Jail was only completed in 1906. In 1857, when the Bitish needed to quickly exile the perpetuators of what they called the Sepoy Mutiny, it was to Ross Island that they turned to for setting up the penal settlement where convicts were kept till the cellular jail was completed. In fact the Andaman government functioned out of Ross Island till the Japanese occupied them in 1941 and the National Tricolor under the auspices of the INA’s Azad Hind government was hoisted here in 1943 by Netaji, when he stayed here as a guest of the Japanese commander of the islands.

Today’s visitor of course is greeted by a bunch of ruins but what will immediately strike is the organized manner in which the British administration ran the islands and how self contained it was; and true to character; preserved the class distinctions of the time; a club for the White who is who, a subordinate’s club for the other Whites, and of course a native’s club for those served the white masters – each with their mess, tennis courts, billiards table and all other amenities.

Considering that the ruins are just about iffy years or so old and that the island was a bustling township till the Japanese left, the buildings – a run down church, a cemetery, abandoned offices and buildings (– all the staple ingredients of a Bollywood horror film of the Ramsay Brothers genre are present on Ross!), the buildings look a bit gaunt and haunted. Of course, nature and the saline water and the all pervasive nature of the forests have all played their part – looking at the density of the forests in the Andamans, one would never think that afforestation is even an issue.

Ross Island of course is only one out of the many treasures of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, a place most people may never visit; simply because it is too far from our radars. The government too has not entirely encouraged tourism; with sensitivities around defence installations the indigenous people – the Jarwas and others, and the gritty determination to preserve the last of the truly virginal forests that India has. Infrastructure outside Port Blair and a couple of other centers tends to be patchy and a lot of the travel has to be done by ferries and country boats as most of the islands are not connected among themselves by bridges. But that rustic and rugged terrain only adds to the charm of a place that a large number of us will only read about occasionally in the newspapers and may be in our history books.

Techie Husbands and the Dowry Index

2008-12-12T17:04:00.000+05:30

When reading up about a home loan, some time back, I noticed one common piece of advice all around; that a housing loan was a long term product and ought not to make decisions and choices merely by looking at the economic climate of the time. Over the 15-20 time period horizon over which a home loan usually operates, lots of things would happen; politically and economically.

And sure enough, in the couple of years that have passed by, Home loans first kept going down and every body wanted a floating rate of interest , then they started going up and up and up , and now they seem to be coming down again, albeit, a lot slower than many of us would have liked.

Some thing that lasts longer than houses and flats or at least is meant to traditionally are marriages and it seems that they are guided in the same manner insofar as the marriage alliance market is concerned. According to a report in the Hindustan Times, the current economic meltdown has not spared the matrimonial market and the “Dowry Index”. According to the report, the most sought after husbands in the country are no longer the folks in the IT sector; the tide it would seems has turned against them and the eternal favorites – the civil services are back in the reckoning at the top of the pile.

Some thing that is unfortunate though is that the insidious business of giving dowry is not going away with the more “modern” professions, only their positions in the hierarchy is shifting. One could have had the right to expect that the newer professions would come unencumbered with the baggage that some of the older professions have and would be socially progressive and gender sensitive. But that has not unfortunately happened. Like any newly listed company at the Stock Exchange, the emerging professions have found their place in the sun and have acquired a value that they now demand on the matrimonial market.

Sadly though the fact that the newly created professions are gender neutral in many ways hasn’t done any thing to dent the pernicious dowry system. Sangeeta Gupta, VP, Nasscom, had said in 205 that in the software industry, the male to female ratio is 76:24. However, by 2007, this ratio was likely to be 65:35. The trend is likely to continue and in fact gain momentum. But IT industry sources have also claimed the larger numbers of women in the sector not withstanding “gender relations have been largely ignored in studies of offshore software development. Much of the labour process is highly labour-intensive and is seen to breed a ‘masculine culture‘ as technical skill is intimately entwined with masculinity.”

What makes the story particularly unpalatable is the fact that in the older and more “established” professions, women were typically not expected to join in as employees – the Railways, the Armed Forces and the old school corporate would be a good example. But in the “new generation” professions, no such legacy exists and women and men work and are employed on relatively level playing fields. But that sadly has done nothing for the dowry system which carries on unaffected with the dowry index going up and down incorporating and imitating the vagaries of the economy into the unrelenting demands of society.

The Faith Journey of Chand Muhammad

2008-12-10T12:47:00.001+05:30

Why do people convert and what are the foul motivations of those who do is a question that comes up for frequent speculation. So while people are still frothing at the mouth at the recent conversion to Islam of former Deputy Chief Minister of Haryana, Chander Mohan, the answer is worth investigating. It has all the ingredients of a pot boiler. Bhajan Lal, the wily former chief minister has perhaps done the smart and politically correct thing by distancing himself from his son and his conversion by disowning him from the family.

But jokes apart, the story of Chander Mohan, the eldest son of former Haryana Chief Minister, Bhajan Lal is worth recounting for a reason. Chander Mohan was already married and had two children when he got to know a lady by the name of Anuradha Bali, a former Deputy Advocate General in Punjab. After an acquaintance of about five years, they landed up at a TV station on December 7th to announce that they had both converted to Islam and had subsequently got married according to Islamic law. Chander Mohan had become Chand Muhammad and Anuradha Bali had become Mrs. Fiza.

The story of Chand Muhammad and Fiza who have developed faith in Allah in rather odd circumstances explain the more common and earthy reasons for conversion that most people have…..the inducements and enticements are there for all to see and examine….. reasons that are beyond control and regulation by any Freedom of Religion Act enacted any where in the country.

If only we would get politics out of the way, we would soon recognize that just as few conversions are for spiritual reasons, few are also at the other extreme for crass political reasons. There was of course a time when all or most conversions happened because of purely pious reasons. There was also a time when a lot of conversions happened because of purely political reasons – possibly in the middle ages. But today the reasons for an apparent change in one’s faith and belief are far simpler and therefore paradoxically more complex to interpret. The journey from Mohan to Muhammad has got shorter; even more brazen but not much simpler to understand.

The sad thing about conversions today is that the individual story behind each conversion – with all its motives, drama, pain, anguish as well as ecstasy are completely concealed. It is presented as a conspiracy full of social and political intrigue, funded exclusively by American dollars or Middle Eastern petro dollars. Well this is not to say that these kind of monetary incentives and tools do not exist or have no influence at all. But in every conversion of every individual, genuine or not, driven by love of lucre or not, caused by inducement or fraud or not, there is a human element, which is no longer considered of any value; for we are so busy chasing the foreign hand – or is it the hidden hand?

Whether the reasons for a conversion are the most sublime or the crassest, it is, was and will bean individual phenomena. Whether it is to gain a new wife, a new job or a new identity, who is to define an inducement? And for those interested, we can now follow the faith journey of Fiza and Chand Muhammad to observe if they become the new pillars of Islamic piety.

Ayodha, Dec 6th

2008-12-07T21:36:00.000+05:30

I was in Mathura on the 6th of December, 1992 when I heard the news of the Babri Masjid was being demolished and the first thought was if there would be rioting and firing and all these disturbances that they are usually associated. After all the Krishna Janma Bhumi was next on the list of shrines to be recovered.

Sixteen years have passed by since that day. Days then were not marked as 9/11 and 26/11 or else 6/12 would have been legend by now, as a day not just black marked for all the things that the day has any way come to be associated with but also as the day when a section of our own people literally took hammer and tongs and smashed a piece of our own heritage and history.

The towering Bamian Buddhas in Afghanistan were also similarly destroyed in March 2001. These giant statues had been standing since about the 5th century AD and had withstood ravages of time and invasions through the centuries. Then one fine morning, the Taliban leadership decided that these images were not in consonance with the spirit of Islam and off they went. The way Khaleid Husseini describes the statues in his book The Kite Runner where he talks about how he went picnicking there as a child with his father and then the giant vacuum in the hillside that appeared when he read on the news that the statues had been demolished.

This post is not about fundamentalism or terrorism or communal divides or any thing like that which it could be. It is simply about the way in which we view our history and culture and the way we seem to presume that with a few blows of the hammer, we can shape or alter our history and our legacy. No one knows conclusively as to who really had constructed the mosque – Babur or his commander or any one else, but does it matter? Just as no one knows the exact spot where Ram was born or Krishna was born but do they matter, they are venerated any way, so the mosque that was destroyed on the 6th of December was part of our past.

Similar thoughts could be said of the attack on the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai. May be those involved were foreign nationals or not , the picture is still muddled on that point but the fact here is that when the Taj Mahal Hotel was built in 906, there was of course only one country – India. The hotel – a potent, very visible symbol of Indian nationalistic pride and entrepreneurship, was once considered the finest hotel in Asia and was the first building to be electrified in the country. The damage to the building s, antiques, library and other memorabilia are still being assessed but it is safe enough to say that though the hotel may be repaired and reconstructed, there is no question of restoring it to its former glory.

India has no shortage of history and historical monuments. Every day, in some corner of the country some monument, some artifact is being damaged, destroyed, or encroached up on, because we have neither the money, nor it would seem the historical consciousness, to preserve and keep them to bequeath them to a future generation.

But December the 6th is a day to weep as the day when some of our own people decided that the unpalatable parts of our history – where we have lost sovereignty, lost political power and been subjugated –and all the monuments and symbols associated with them do not deserve a life ; they deserve to be physically annihilated. On the 6th of December in Ayodha, a bunch of Hindus destroyed a Muslim monument. In March 2001, a bunch of Muslims having learnt their lesson well it would seem from Ayodha, blew up the Bamian Buddhas. May be there was a direct connection between the two- may be there was not. But on both occasions, an immense piece of our heritage was lost and like Humpty Dumpty, all the world’s efforts and archaeologists can never ever bring them back to life again.

Bhopal, Dec 3rd

2008-12-07T21:33:00.001+05:30

Rachel Carlason wrote her epic book called “Silent Spring” in 1962. The book exposed the hazards of the pesticide DDT, eloquently questioned humanity’s faith in technological progress and helped set the stage for the environmental movement. It is reckoned that Silent Spring was to the environmental movement, what Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to slavery or “To Kill a Mockingbird” was to racial discrimination.

In rural communities where household food security is always an issue, increasing the productivity of the land has always been an issue. The Green revolution of the late sixties and seventies ushered in an era where India became able to feed its own people after centuries of famine and deprivation. In the immediate post independence era, India depended so heavily on PL 480 food imports from the United States that it was often termed a “ship to mouth “ existence as food grains were freighted out barely after the ships had docked. The Green Revolution changed all that … for a time.

In the West, where food security hasn’t been an issue in large measure since the Irish potato famines of the 19th century, the emergence of the environmental lobby did not create any immediate difficulties; perhaps was even welcome. But in india, barely having overcome food shortages a decade ago and still living off he Public Distribution System – (ill the early nineties, the ration card was the unique identity document of Indians – not the PAN card or the voter ID), an inevitable clash of paradigms resulted.

The agronomists (not unjustifiably) were focussed on consolidating the gains of the green revolution and busy spreading the message of hybrid seeds and the increased use of pesticides and fertilizer, coupled with lesser dependence on monsoon irrigation and increased dependence on dams and canals for irrigation. The fledgling environmental movement was saying what could be construed to be just the opposite – talking of soil degradation, the menace of pesticides, the many dangers of big dams and the human as well as the economic and environmental causes involved.

Then Bhopal happened – on Dec 3rd 1984, when leaks from a pesticide plant in Bhopal killed many thousands …. 3000 immediately according to Wikipedia followed by many more in the months and years to come. Shortly thereafter in 1986, the Chernobyl, nuclear plant disaster happened and environmental concerns became big ticket.

Bhopal was a seminal event not just because it signalled the beginning of the time when environmental concerns began to be taken seriously but also because it was with the agitation to demand compensation from the owners of the pesticide plant –Union Carbide, that militant NGO activism became known. Hitherto, NGO activism did happen, but it was more of the peaceable, some what docile Gandhian variety. It was the many activists who came together around Bhopal who provided NGO work, till now part volunteerism and philanthropic and part academic, an edge that was if not quite violent, certainly very confrontational with the State. It would be many of these very same groups, that would later form the core of the anti globalization movement.

Many of the issues associated with the Bhopal gas leakage tragedy have never been resolved, and never will be. India has had many more tragedies; questionably more complex, if not bigger. Even many of the doctrinal issues will remain unresolved. Have the agricultural scientists with their obsession with high yields and more crops won? Or have the environmentalists with their own fad for all things organic – suicidal fad agronomists will say; for India is now a billion plus and with land under agricultural yielding place to airports, houses and malls, increasing productivity is about the only way out. These issues will continue to debate in the foreseeable future till one or the other lobby decisively wins; and that is unlikely to be any time soon. And till that happens, Bhopal will continue to be invoked. In that sense, Bhopal is yesterday’s story. It is also tomorrow’s.

Bhopal, Dec 3rd .......

2008-12-06T18:45:00.002+05:30

Rachel Spring wrote her epic book called “Silent Spring” in 1962. The book exposed the hazards of the pesticide DDT, eloquently questioned humanity’s faith in technological progress and helped set the stage for the environmental movement. It is reckoned that Silent Spring was to the environmental movement, what Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to slavery or “To Kill a Mockingbird” was to racial discrimination.

Sounds of Silence

2008-12-04T13:47:00.001+05:30

One of the things that stand out a bit starkly is the relative silence of the minority groups in condemning the recent anarchy in Mumbai. This is not to say that Muslim and Christian or other minority groups have stayed silent necessarily, but if they did speak up and condemn all that happened, the voices were perhaps not that loud enough.

By not speaking out at moments of national mourning and grief – if mourning is the word, they run the risk of marginalisation and being labeled as sectarian – which of course some but not all are. While being concerned about the fate and welfare of your own people is important, it is unhealthy if that happens or appears to happen at the expense of a larger concern and identification with one’s fellow human beings and citizens.

After all, terror is no respecter of faith or ethnicity or any of the recognised markers of identity – at last count 44 Muslims were killed and 35 injured in last week’s Mumbai blasts. Of course this piece isn’t about Muslims alone; it is merely a handy example from a context where all leads uncovered so far are leading to people who claim to be acting inspired by that particular faith and that of course is unfortunate.

Should minorities be in particular being asked to proclaim their solidarity by being loud and vocal? Is that a healthy thing to ask for or expect? Probably not. But perhaps eminently desirable; partly because the voices that were decrying the events at Kandmahal and Batla House were loud and vociferous and suddenly when those voices become quiet in the face of an equally colossal tragedy, if not more, the silence looks deafening.

But this is not about Mumbai and how to react to that either. It is merely to amplify the human identity that we fundamentally share and pay lip service to and ever so often love to forget

t is merely to amplify the human identity that we fundamentally share and pay lip service to and ever so often love to forget.

And so Hindus who speak up only when Hindu terrorist groupings are unearthed and seek to justify them as cultural terrorists count. So do Christian leaders who lament only when one of their flocks is in trouble in Orissa or else where. As do militants from the North East who find a common religious faith not good enough and called Bandhs at the slightest perceived slights to their ethnic (and only their) ethnic pride. Silence is also cruel when North Indians react only when one of their own is lynched or killed. And of course it is cruel when Maharasthrians only worry about their own home grown Marathi manoos.

Is it wrong to care about your own and air your own slights? No, of course not. Especially when it is a matter of minorities, in insensitive times, if you don’t care about your own, may be no one will. But there is a problem if we all suddenly start retreating into our fortresses and peep out of the ramparts looking out through our spy glasses for just our own kind. For then, we have to conclude that we are not just short sighted but truly blind!

Proud to be Indian....

2008-12-01T11:34:00.000+05:30

Airtel has a new jingle. “Proud to be Indian”is the by line … followed a little later by the fine print …” Proud by Bharati”. The advert sounded good to hear till the other day. But now it kind of jars in the ear. Not that I am not proud to be an Indian any more- make no mistake, I still am but there is some thing of an embarrassment that is pricking me since the Mumbai incidents of the last few days.

The jingle talks about harnessing the power of a billion people but some times it looks like a fitting illustration of the Biblical “Sheep without a shepherd”. Actually at last count, we were 1.2 billion people and growing but it would seem that all those numbers don’t count for much. If people and we are not talking of straying fishermen clad in a loin cloth here; but people with the most evil of intentions setting sail in a boat or a ship, landing casually on the coast and then spreading themselves across the city and spread mayhem.

Law abiding citizens face a million harassments every day and they have learnt to take it all in their stride. Be it a family outing with a movie in the multiplex, or a shopping trip to the mall or boarding a flight in the airport , you need to be prepared to be frisked, empty out your luggage, not carry this or not carry that and be subjected to a hundred inconveniences every day. And people have got used to it over time. And yet any blooming terrorist – doesn’t matter what their ideology is or from where what accent they speak Hindustani in, can just saunter across without as much as a by your leave…. And no body stops them, forget about stopping them… no one even notices that they are there.

We make a lot of noise about illegal Bangladeshi migrants in the country. This is not to say that they should be condoned or nothing ought to be done about them. But what comparison is a large bunch of illiterate and unskilled refuges from Bangladesh or else where who are here because they would be starving in their home land or may be even executed or imprisoned in their home land – like say refugees from Myanmar compared to the bunch of ideologically committed killers. People from the poorer neighbors who are making a living cleaning our toilets or washing our dishes are hounded out like cattle and deported while those who kill and murder our people and vandalize our heritage – (those who do not know the history of how the Taj Mahal Hotel came to be built ought to read that up in Wikipedia) can simply saunter into our coast as if on a cruise and try to wipe it off the map.

Of course there are elements to be proud of in all this and the press and television channels have done the right thing by paying tribute to the many unsung heroes of Mumbai. But the irony is that the real irony is that the real heroes will remain unsung – after the Last Post has resonated out and the mourning and funerals are over, the unsung will be required to retreat into their conventional silence. And those people we really need to be proud of, the ones who don’t give press conferences; whom television channels don’t interview will once again disappear into the proud woodwork. Proud to be Indian – yes; proud to be Bharatiya, yes – but proud of the right people —- like the memorial to the Unknown Soldier; we need a way to honor the unknown citizens of all hues – the ones who really make us proud to be an Indian

Faith at the Stock Exchange : The Dharma Index

2008-11-29T16:09:00.001+05:30

Although only close to two percent of Indians invest in stocks the sensex occupies awesome media and public space. It ups and downs are reported across the length and breadth of the country and over numerous television channels and news papers. It is as if the sensex does not merely mirror the economic health of the nation but its numerous intangible complexities too.

If mathematical tools are indeed so useful that they can calculate just about anything, then they can perhaps measure something as nebulous as morality and righteousness? Well it appears that they can and sometime earlier this year, a tool appeared under the auspices of the venerable financial news powerhouse Dow Jones & Company. The company has launched new “dharma indexes” to track the stocks of companies that observe the values of dharma-based religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

“The principle of dharma contains precepts relevant to good conduct, but also the implicit requirement of mindfulness about the sources of wealth — and therefore responsible investing,” says Nitesg Gor, the CEO OF Dharma Investments, a private equity firm that is partnering Dow Jones in rolling out the index. Shorn of CEO speak, it really means that Dow Jones is now capable of measuring a company’s ethics and moral conduct and will accordingly enable it to advise its clients to invest in companies that uphold high ethical and moral standards. Implicit of course is the assumption that ethical business practices translate in to good business returns in the long run; if not in the short run. Remember that neither Dow Jones, nor Dharma Investments nor their clients are into philanthropy!

The Dharma index is no joke. Review committees of religious leaders and scholars will screen companies’ environmental policies, corporate governance, labour relations and human rights, among other measure. By upholding the premise of dharma, companies will demonstrate conscientious practices about the groundwork of wealth and in turn support equally conscious investing.

While Shariah based indices and investment practices have been around for a while, largely stemming out of roots in the Islamic banking, they are somewhat easier to implement, since Islamic law is codified and therefore relatively black and white in its interpretation. But codifying and then tracking righteousness and the concept of ethical duty in a dry, mechanical way and making business decisions would be an interesting path to follow.

May be one day some one will replicate and customize this tool for nations to use and mirror themselves against a code. Rating agencies like Standard and Poor would then regulate Indian notions like rajdharma and raajneeti and Ram Rajya and then rate them from time to time with regular reviews and assessments. In a world and time that measures the GNP and GDP and of late, the human development index; this would be a fascinating development in a very materialistic world.
The closest tool there is today that resembles any thing like the Dharma Index, is Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness index, which acknowledges that it takes a lot more than wealth to create and generate happiness and has been measuring the happiness of its people for years even though it has never become really popular.

As a parting shot, if India, the nation that is – and not just the entity often called India inc. were to be assessed on the Dharma index, where would it find a place ? On the higher echelons or the lower? Furthermore, every day here we find news that the Sensex is plummeting new depths. Would it be true of the state of Dharma in the country too, were the Dharma index to track it?

Leprosy : The shadow lingers

2008-11-19T14:43:00.000+05:30

One of the hallmarks of a developing and progressive society is the degree to which it is inclusive – inclusive of minorities, marginalized and other vulnerable sections of society who may normally not expect to find a place under the sun. Such a place of equality is what the Indian constitution guarantees in Article 14(equality) and Article 15(no discrimination)

It is this provision that one takes shelter under to fight for one’s rights; whether it be gay activists, or those who are fighting discrimination against one’s HIV status. And yet, in the gargantuan labyrinths of the Indian states, discrimination is in built in to our laws itself; effectively legitimizing them.

Usually it is assumed that the law is ahead of times when it comes to social legislation for it is understood that while society has many obscurantist and divisive influences, law makers at least in theory are above such influences and will enact laws that are progressive and inclusive. That was how laws that made Sati illegal or raised the age of marriage got into the statute books ; not because society as such was ready for them but because legislators of the time thought beyond their times and into an equitable future.

So what is one to make of the recent Supreme Court ruling that those leprosy patients cannot contest a civic election or hold municipal office in Orissa state? The case was brought to court by two men who were elected to a civic body in Orissa in 2003, but were later disqualified as they had leprosy. The Orissa Municipal Act of 1950 bars people suffering from tuberculosis or leprosy from holding such posts. “The legislature in its wisdom has thought it fit to retain such provisions in the statute in order to eliminate the danger of the disease being transmitted to other people from the person affected,” Supreme Court judges CK Thakker and DK Jain said in their ruling,

In the colonial era, the central government passed the Lepers Act of 1898, which provided legal provision for forcible confinement of leprosy sufferers in India. A hundred and more years have passed by ; politically India is an independent state, has become a signatory to the UN resolution which says discrimination against leprosy patients must be ended. Medically, leprosy is detected early and thanks to a multi drug regime, cured early too. And yet a few years short of the second decade of the 21st century, piles of archaic legislation keep those who happened to have contracted leprosy at some point on the margins of society.

The Life Insurance Corporation Act of 1956, which specifies a higher premium to the leprosy-affected, is one such law. The Special Marriage Act, Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act 1939, The Hindu Marriage Act, 1956 or the India Divorce Act, 1869, all have provisions for divorce on the grounds of a partner suffering from incurable and virulent leprosy. Similarly, the Juvenile Justice Care and Protection Act 2000 says a child found to be affected by leprosy should be dealt with separately.

A leprosy patient cannot stand for local body or panchayat elections in states like Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.This prohibition extends to tuberculosis patients in Orissa’s Panchayati Raj Act. Further, if a member of local office contracts tuberculosis or leprosy during his/her tenure he/she may be declared ineligible for the job. While there are heaps of organizations fighting for the rights of those who are HIV positive, and there is pressure to constantly enact laws that are sensitive to some one who is HIV positive. There is a ringing silence when it comes to the rights of those who are being victimized for having once contracted a disease that is now completely curable.

Mahatma Gandhi, in his life time had made tending to leprosy patients and bandaging to their wounds as a personal initiative in his mission to create a society that was inclusive. Sixty years after his death, the work of fighting stigma and discrimination in alls spheres of course continues; but more pertinently in leprosy; the battle is even against an insensitive State and the laws it has kept on the books; not only sanctioning discrimination; but actually making it legal. And that feels worse !

"Uncle Sam" ki Jai

2008-11-07T12:46:00.001+05:30

One of the things that should be appreciated about the American system of democracy is the manner in which they are able to things to a closure. During the election campaign, they campaigned viciously and arguably as shabbily as one could with no holds barred. But within hours of the results being announced, McCain had made a very graceful speech conceding defeat and pledging full support to the man who would now be “ my president”. No further bitching or griping or whining but a simple acceptance that he and his campaign had done their best to win but that best wasn’t good enough; and now it was time to put all that behind and get back to normal living. The victorious candidate was just as magnanimous in victory – no gloating and abuse and no vindictiveness ; once in office. Of course all of this is as much a matter of the nature of the personalities involved as much of the electoral system and conventions that have evolved over two centuries of democratic evolution.

It can be argued that if the United States took that long to evolve its conventions, that much of time should surely be allowed to India too to get where the American system has got and there may be some logic in that argument too. But it would be nicer if countries did not to choose to reinvent the wheel and crystallized some conventions on the fast track. After every election in India, there is so much of bickering, grumbling and vendetta that could be avoided. Reviews reversals of the previous regime’s policies, usually for petty reasons , some times after crores of Rupees have been spent are hardly a good use of the tax payer’s money !

Political parties in India seem to have so much of venom reserved for each other ; that one wonders at the depravity of it all….. There is Mamata Banerjee throwing a spanner at West Bengal’s industrialization ; not because she cares a damn for farmers or agriculture( if the Trinamool Congress has got any policy document on agriculture or land use, it has still to be seen !) but because if industrialization had picked up , it would have meant that that Left Front government would have notched up some successes. Or look at the politics of the Maharashtra Nav Nirman Sena, trying to occupy the space vacated by Bal Thackeray, who has now more or less fully retired and trying to ensure that cousin Uddhav doesn’t get to succeed. Or the abominable incident that happened the other day – if you don’t like your opponent or ideological opposite - , just spit on his face and humiliate him as strongly and as badly as you can.

The one thing to learn from the American election campaigns perhaps is the whole idea of “closure”. There may be a time in the heat and the dust of the campaign trail, when on the odd occasion, there is a hit below the belt. But the bulk of the campaign is fought around the articulation of issues – the well conducted debates, the knowledge and the erudition of the candidates, the background and the credibility of their aides and advisors. Witness the outrage for instance at the fact of Sarah Palin’s ignorance of the fact that Africa is a continent and not a country ! Who cares what politicians here know or don’t know !

But coming back to closure, when the last ballot has been cast and the results are out , the once bitter rivals were able to put rivalry behind themselves, agree that differences still remain and will remain, but come to remember that the nation is bigger than all of them and pledge to work together, putting minimal hurdles in governance. We fall a bit short there. For even as we revv up our lungs to yell full throated “ Bharat Mata ki Jai”, we are busy gathering up our bricks… for the next round of bickering and brick batting. There is a time to break down .. and we know that well, but there is also a time to build up… and we haven’t quite got there yet…..

Red : The other color of terror

2008-11-06T09:41:00.004+05:30

The news that the convoy of Buddhadev Bhattacharya, the West Bengal chief minister escaped being mined and that naxalites are the ones being accused, will draw attention to Left wing terrorism once again. Although left wing terrorism and insurgency affects large pieces of the country, it has never had the kind of visibility that it needs to have, mostly because their terror is wielded largely in rural India where television cameras don’t whir.

This violence of course shows the level of fragmentation in the leftist movement within india over the decades and the “establishment” left – those who get to speak in parliament or the state assembly and become ministers and the others. The establishment leftists ride those white ambassadors, go to television studios and give press conferences and in states like West Bengal and Kerala, run industrial establishments that can give any traditional capitalist a run for their money.

The contradictions that are becoming evident between the ultra left and the left (ironically there was a time when the CPI (M) itself was considered ultra left!) will add another twist to the convoluted history of the communist movement of India. The Communist Party in India was founded in Kanpur on December 25, 1925 in the midst of an anti-colonial struggle which attempted changed India’s political landscape in a fundamental way. It placed on the agenda the creation of a state power of workers and peasants by workers and peasants to end all forms of oppression and exploitation.

The policies of the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Part of India (Maoist) and most other fragments of the communist movement that began 80 years ago is today a far cry from the revolutionary rhetoric posted in their web sites. The largest communist groups today are fine tuning their political positions to come to power just like any other bourgeoisie party that they supposedly have contempt for. The many fragments of the underground communists – supposedly allied to Maoist ideologies of various shades have only one thing in common – their penchant for violence.

Left wing violence( not calling it terrorism) is probably the oldest form of organized ideology terrorism that exists in India with its roots in the pre independence and immediate post independence era when BT Ranadive had launched an armed struggle in Telengana in the period around 1948-50. This was subsequently called off and Ranadive accused of “adventurism” but subsequently rehabilitated.

The next major bout of violence is now the subject of folklore and inserted the word”Naxalite” in the Indian political lexicon. It also was the first instance when insurgency and terror was successfully tackled by equally tough counter insurgency measures and state repression. State repression thought not new by this time – (it was always in use in the troubled North East), had matured enough.

Yet Naxalites were never completely wiped out, not quite. The Naxalite terror now extends to a dozen States, affecting 509 police stations. For the first time naxal activity has been recorded in two police stations in Haryana. The menace has spread to nearly 40 per cent of the country’s geographical area with the affected population going up to 35 per cent. Areas in many States, which looked too obscure to fall for naxal influence, are today witnessing naxal activity.

Although the cousins of the Naxalites in Nepal, the Maoists have been won over to the ballot, the Indian Maoists have so far resisted this – partly because they see the example of the main line communists which did join parliamentary politics and what they see of left front politics is not too inspiring or different from the bourgeoisie parties which they had sought to uproot.

Further more the government’s own response of treating this only as a law and order problem hasn’t helped very much, as it only made the Naxalites dig in their heels deeper and go further underground. One does not know where the left wing insurgents would be placed in the spectrum between cultural nationalists and plain terrorists given that this classification is religion based and the Naxalites are of course atheistic in their ideology. However, whatever it may be, given that this has been around much longer than most other forms of terror and insurgency, it wont get lost in the current melee where we seem to have time for only right wing terrorism and nothing else.

I the Nationalist ; You the Terrorist

2008-11-02T23:19:00.001+05:30

The Bharatiya Janata Party president has condemned the hype around the Sadhvi Pragya Singh saying that some one like her was a “cultural nationalist “and not a terrorist. There it seems is a difference and I am trying to break the code. It is a bit convoluted really ….. If you are my kind of person and you kill or maim the kind of people I dislike, then you are a buddy and you are a flag waving nationalist. But if you look different kind of name and look different or worse – dress different and speak a different kind of language, then you are my mortal enemy.

This kind of labeling can get very confusing, for before using the right wording and vocabulary is important before I can place any one. Not only that, once done, people need to constantly be aware of what ideology, people are currently professing and adjust the label accordingly to avoid becoming out of date. To quote just an instance, “nationalists” of yester year like Chagan Bhujbal or Narayan Rane or Shankar Singh Waghela are today not to be mistaken for being one but rather are pseudo secularists today. These changes happen so frequently that one can not always keep track unless one makes the effort. And using the right term could be every thing – terrorists after all deserve death by hanging, and cultural nationalists in all probability an amnesty, immunity from arrest and possibly some award of recognition.

One of the difficulties of electoral politics and democracy even is the divisiveness that the whole exercise brings. And as the elections approach closer, more the name calling and the polarization between religions, states, communities and languages. These then become symbolized based through these nomenclatures and semantics. And so it goes on, though the scars will linger long after the original provocation has come and gone.

And what to make of those who are not even nationalists – those who espouse a base kind of sub nationalism that looks base but obviously has a mass base of a kind that was waiting to be exploited. What would you call the ones lynching their own people because they speak a different language and celebrate a different festival? We protested when a couple of years ago, those who spoke Bengali were indiscriminately chased out and deported without as much a by your leave – particularly Bengalis who were of Muslim – and except for the left front government in West Bengal, the rest of the nation looked on askance. A generation ago it was the South Indians who were similarly the victims.

Although L.K. Advani, the Prime Ministerial aspirant has today said that it is not the role of the police to look at the pedigree of an accused, he could be just acting have is part as the leader of the opposition and elder statesman. Others certainly aren’t so circumspect and the Hindu Maha Sabha and the Shiv Sena have rallied around the cultural nationalist and it is not very different from the various Jammats coming together in the name of Muslim solidarity. While the posturing of both groups of people is unfortunate, it is at least possible to understand the ghetto like thinking of the minority muslim community. But it would appear now that the majority community – not withstanding their huge numbers are just as insecure and juvenile in their responses in classifying different classes of citizens differently.

JNU Elections : Somethig to be learnt here

2008-10-29T14:03:00.001+05:30

don’t think that the Lyngdoh commission had Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University in mind when they put together the guidelines to manage university elections in the country. The much larger Delhi University certainly, and definitely the many universities of North India known for violent student unrest like Lucknow or Aligarh may be. But by putting in umbrella restrictions across the board, the commission’s dragnet has pulled in the elections of JNU, which although unabashedly elitist in character, were at least conducted in a manner that elections ought to be conducted any where- with reasoned debates and discussions and eminent speakers and thinkers pitching in for their respective ideologies and then of course- finally the vote.

Of course one could wonder what use debates on climate change or gender based budgeting or neo colonialism might be on a university campus where arguments ought to be about clean toilets or the quality of the mess food. But by raising issues in a campus election that are well above the narrow university or hostel interests, these elections having teaching us about what elections really ought to be – not quite forgetting the local muhalla politics, but very clearly recognizing that there is a bigger world out there and the concerns of that bigger world matter in our little world even if we don’t quite see that bigger world and don’t quite understand all that there is to understand about what goes on in it.

That education is important for all of us. For so often our elections are dominated by the pettiest of issues and the larger sense of connectedness, of belonging to a shared world, competing for shared resources and sharing a shared fortune escape us; for they are never discussed; never debated, never conversed; except in the paneled world of academics. And if at all, at any point, the common man gets to know that there is indeed a world outside his or her immediate domestic concerns, it is at election time, when people turn up, if not exactly at their door step, at least in the their neighborhood, and make speeches in which potentially at least, issues of global or national import can touched on.

I have never been enamored of the numerous street corner meetings that the CPI (M) and its partners routinely organizes all over Kolkata. The sound system is loud and crackly, the chairs are rickety and the seating and the crowds spill over out into the streets. But one thing the leftists have done – they have ensured through their dull, dowdy and yet well prepared speeches that even the casual passer by pausing for a few minutes is exposed to a grounding of world affairs that he on his own might never have got.

Admittedly the world view presented is biased and there is a lot more to be said on practically any subject than what the comrades present; but a kind of political education is beginning to happen. The speech and the conversation in these discourses isn’t about the shortage of rice in the ration shop alone though this too would be taken up. It is of course up to the other parties now to counter the leftist world view with other ways of looking at the world and how well they take up the cudgels and make use of this opportunity and that is a different matter. But an election based on rational argument and debate, rather than the battle of a bunch of goons and hoodlums is JNU’s contribution to India’s culture of elections… And that relatively important contribution is worth preserving; if only because the commodity is so scarce.