Fat Police and Lithe Hostesses

If any definitive evidence was ever needed about the existence of overt, not covert patriarchy in the workplace was ever needed, the Delhi High Court has provided the same. The recent Delhi High Court decision to disallow the appeal of the air hostesses of Air India and Indian that their being grounded on account of being overweight was illegal should spark off some debate on the need for fitness as a criteria for employment – fitness in the medical sense as well as here in the case of the air hostesses on aesthetic grounds. This is because, typically in india , the only profession where fitness is really insisted upon is the Armed Forces – soldiers and officers who are medically unfit are routinely discharged and the practice is fairly well entrenched.

It may perhaps be argued that fitness is more important in some professions than in others and this could be true. But one still wonders if this is another subtle manifestation of the patriarchal streak in Indian society that lays over emphasis on a woman’s beauty and physical attributes than on her effectiveness and capability at work. Of course, if one looks at the letter of the judgment, the Court only emphasizes the obvious – it was written into the contracts of the air hostesses that they would be required to remain slim and trim and the airlines management is merely enforcing the contract. In fact till 1970, the retirement age of air-hostess in Air India was 30 and married women were not allowed to serve as hostess. Currently women are put to pasture by being assigned ground duties at the age of 50, while the male cabin crew can fly till they retire.

If there were not evidence enough, look at this. One place where the fitness factor is most critical but is often ignored is our police force. The police force in Karnataka, Chandigarh, Maharastra, and Punjab at the very least seem to have problems with fitness, obesity and alcoholism though I am sure these state polices are by no means the exception. In fact, we of late have become so fixated with the odd, glamorous encounter specialist that we seem to have forgotten that the fat, obese policeman armed with a stick and huffing after the culprit who has been caricatured plenty of time before I countless Hindi films is really the norm. This is even other wise a common enough sight in urban policing.

Now I am no feminist in any way, but on reading the news about the air hostesses, I could not help feel that contractual obligations in employment seem to be enforced some what selectively in the land. At a time, when terrorist attacks; big or small are becoming so common, the emphasis ought to have been on ensuring that the existing police forces are strong, not just in numbers and weaponry but on fitness too. After all after every such attack, there is a hue and cry about the number of lives lost and the amount of property damaged. And yet, there seems to be no hurry any where to enforce fitness obligations and ”ground” fat and obese police men, the way a bunch of air hostesses are being grounded. I mean, look at it this way – between an overweight air hostess and an overweight policeman, who would be a bigger liability in their job setting ? The answer should be obvious.

We have such thin skins.....

Some months ago, I got a chance to see Deepa Mehta’s film titled “Water”. It is part of the trilogy of “Fire”, “Earth” and Water. The film had made news for two reasons- Deepa had courted controversy when “Fire” delved into lesbian relationships, and then “Water” began shooing the plight of child widows at Benares, igniting the wrath of Hindu Fundamentalists and also attracting a law suit from the noted author Sunil Gangopadhyay who claimed that the film was based on his acclaimed novel “Those Days”.

“Water” is a pale shadow of what it might have been. After shooting was disrupted at Benares, the cast as well as location got dismantled; Deepa Mehta shifted her location o Sri Lanka and recruited a new cast. She tried to recreate with very plastic success, the ghats of Benares in Sri Lanka but the artificial umbrellas and ghat props would not deceive any one who has been to Varanasi.

Of course “Water” is not the only film thus affected. Films in recent memory that have run into problems include the recently released “Jodhaa Akbar”, The Da Vinci Code, as well and of course politically tinged films like “Mangal Pandey-The Rising”, Shyam Benegal’s film – “Netaji, the Forgotten Hero”.

The Indian Express has been worrying about a growing tribe of Indians who have a thin skin and flaunt it too and is wondering as to why we are so quick off the block to take offence? It is an important question to ask ourselves. Of course the editorial speculates that perhaps the reason is that India is a democracy all right and so there is freedom of expression and which people feel free to use but society is not liberal enough and so the space for tolerance is limited.

But perhaps the issue to investigate is not so much the problem but the solution. Yes India is a democracy but we have a long way to go and to so we have learnt to take the freedom of expression that the constitution has given for ourselves but perhaps not learnt to provide the same right to others who think and act differently from us. But since India is a society which is millennia old, it can not easily shed its norm cannot be dragged by the scruff of its neck into a liberalized climate. So perhaps, while learn to accept the fact that we do indeed have a thin skin, perhaps we should also look at solutions that provide platforms for various points of view to be expressed in a way that is not so openly divisive.

Is that possible? Can we at least become thick skinned enough to at least others to speak, write and make films of their kind and at least allow them to live even if we never get to quite like them? A truly liberal society of course would allow a climate where a lot could be said and then the dissenters would also know how to express their dissent without fear of either courting or cultivating civil unrest. But we are yet far from those gates.

In school, there was a word that we learnt – xenophobia – the fear of all things foreign. In all those years since school, it seems that the word and the world in which we live today have both shrunk their borders and today the line between “them” and “us” is often as fragile as glass. Or to put it differently, if you are not with me in my opinions and it may be in the shallowest of matters, you are against me and different from me.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to look for signs of our common humanity and build on that. I would rather reach for the stone that will smash your window pane or your head, so that I can retreat to the privacy of my den and preen that I have been a bully yet one more day, ridding the world of that dreadful menace – those who do not think the way I do. Yes, Xenophobia is a frightening word, especially when it has shrunk so much that the borders are constantly closing in around us.

Agression in the Air

A few weeks ago Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor, Tejinder Khanna made a faux pas when he admitted in public what most people living in North India at least would admit to in private, though not perhaps in public that adherence to the Law in the Northern Parts of the country is quite a bit tardy. This is what Tejinder Khanna said “

“In this region, the situation is such that commonly it is a matter of pride to violate the law. The behavior pattern in south India is such that the people naturally stay within the limits of the law,” he said, addressing a function to launch Delhi police’s traffic patrol scheme. He remarked that there is much better compliance of law in south India and that too without any external pressure. “It is a specialty of north and west India that the people feel a sense of honor and pride in violating law and boasting that no action has been taken against them,” Khanna said.

Was Tejinder Khannna too way off the mark ? Breaking or not breaking the law and how many do or do not is a matter for the statisticians to data crunch and tell us what the powers that be want to hear but those who live in India would know of a certain aggression in the air, every time one leaves the house. This aggression need not always translate into crime but often does and the newspapers – especially the city sections reflect it in several ways – be it in the tracking of the number of people killed in blue line buses running over people in their hurry to get their faster or the squabbles with by the scruffily bus conductor as whether the fare to a particular point costs Rs.7 worth of a bus ticket or a Rs.10 one.

Certain kinds of aggression can be liberating in that they set you free to pursue the goals of Citius, Altius, Fortius." "Swifter, Higher, Stronger which are of course the motto of the Olympic movement but can be used else where to pursue any noble goal in life. But the bottom pinching , high speeding, vulgar speech driven aggression visible in North India and even more so in Delhi where I live and read some of these things in the morning paper, experience a few in the course of the day, and then come back to watch some more in the news channels on television is no customized meritocracy to move society to upward levels. this leering, domineering aggression is all about getting ahead not by raising the bar for myself but by lowering the bar in general by brutally crushing self esteem, and then crossing over the lowered bar in a crude wild west fashion. It is easy to cross the finish line by lowering the bar and then crippling the opposition, so that there is no legitimate opposition left in the race but there is little pride of achievement in such a victory, only the shallow gloat of the winner of the rigged race.

So deeply embedded is aggression, that it has been appropriated by the State even, and often no symbol of authority is so disgusting than the sound of the police lathi banging menacingly on the street, bazaar or the railway platform as the constable signals his presence and authority by dashing his stick on the ground as he moves clearing space for himself. The lathi of the police man is not even a semblance of safety and security as much a tool of undisguised aggression and dominance.

There is no point in issuing cosmetic statements to ruffle feathers and talk of misquotes when aggression, quarrels and violence with open contempt and disdain for the law is so openly visible. Any one who even expresses a desire to do things the right way( try accosting a Delhi auto rickshaw driver to go where you wish and at the rates prescribed…..) is immediately turned into an object of ridicule and snigger…. No irrespective of whether the Lieutenant Governor said things which are politically incorrect or not, the import of his statement can not be just swept away like dust under the carpet. Aggression very much lies in the air. You have to just step outside the threshold of our houses to sniff and inhale it….. Not a far distance

Saving the Indian Soldier

Many years ago, I began my working life with the Indian Air Force. At that time, the armed forces were the pride of the nation and people looked upon servicemen with a rare respect and honor. It was the dream of many young mean to be part of the Armed Forces as officers or as soldiers. The civilian population typically loved the serviceman with the same ardor worth which they disliked the police which they viewed as an instrument of corruption, coercion and harassment. In times of trouble – be it riots, floods or earthquakes or any thing else, there was no one else you would like to have on your side than the army man.

The civil administration knew this and called on the army with unfailing regularity to its aid. The police was perceived to be biased and riddled with caste and religious prejudices and often known to be politicized; the army was above all that in being every thing that the police was not – secular, disciplined, apolitical and fair. Every body loved a soldier and many wanted to be one and partake of all the love and affection.

That was then. Today it seems to be a different world with hardly a day passing without allegations of fake encounters, sexual harassment, rape, illegal confinement and what have you being hurled at the once venerated army from all sides. Things have come to such a pass that what once considered an extreme aberration is now splashed about as headlines in the international media to such a length that denials are now passé. Even the government has decided to take notice of allegations of fake encounters leveled against security forces in Jammu and Kashmir and the Court of Enquiry had been instituted in a number of cases. The Indian Army of course has a hoary history with the origins of some of its units going back to the East India Company. However after 1857, when the crown took over the governance of India, they basically set up two kinds of security agencies. The first one was the police to look after law and order and look after their interests with in the country’s borders. The Indian Police Act of 1861 which still provides the legislative backbone for the police was enacted around this time.
The second security force the British created was the Army for external warfare. The army saw action in the British Afghan wars, Anglo-Sikh wars and many others and of course in the First and Second world wars. Post independence the Army was engaged in operations in Kashmir following the tribal invasion in 1948 and then of course in 1962, 1965, 1971 and in a limited way in the Kargil operations.

However, post 1971, the army has slowly lost its direction as the distinction between the work the police did and the army was increasingly being called upon to do began to blur. With the nuclearization of the neighborhood, conventional warfare has become an unlikely possibility. At the same time with increasing unrest and insurgency with in the country’s own borders and the conventional police unable to cope, the temptation to turn to the Army to do the same policing jobs was high and the establishment succumbed leading to a collective schizophrenia in the Army.

The soldier’s induction and training are all geared towards annihilation of the “enemy” who is not one of “us”. This is reinforced by the British engineered cantonment system where the Army is largely invisible to the common man and is exposed only in military parades and as a savior in times of calamity. This limited exposure added to the aura and the mystique of military life. Once that mystique disappeared with increasing exposure to the civilian population, the fear and reverence for the soldier slowly began to evaporate.

With conventional warfare unlikely in view of the developing strategic scenario, the political as well as the military establishment both need to think of reinventing a modern role for the Armed Forces in view of India’s larger geo political positioning and emerging identity as an economic power. Using it as a quasi police force to quell internal insurgencies is not will only lead to more repression as the Army’ psyche is to defend the nation against external threats and asking them to battle their own country men produces an internal contradiction in the soldier’s mind which is not easily resolvable.