Spotlight Series « Blogbharti

Archive for the ‘Spotlight Series’ Category

All this hustle and bustle

Monday, May 11th, 2009

[ This is Essay No. 38 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

All this hustle and bustle

by Usha

———–

As a nation we seem to have great tolerance for noise. It is silence that makes us uneasy. 25 years ago our neighbourhood was considered a suburban area and there were few houses and fewer vehicles. We saw a bus an hour. People who visited us from the heart of the city always commented on how quiet it was and they also said that it was a bit scary. Those were also the time when we could distinctly hear the rain fall, bird-cries and the rustle of leaves in the wind but they wanted man-made noises to feel comfortable.

We seem to need a minimum level of noise to feel secure. And if we want to celebrate, the noise levels go up. Any community celebration is flagged off with the arrival of the loud speaker and sound systems. Days before the festival the music begins to blare starting from the early hours of dawn well into midnight. It is the same with marriages too. The joy and celebration seem to be calibrated by the decibel levels at the occasion. As a nation we literally scream with joy.

We are so immune to noise levels that we don’t think it is rude to blare horns while driving or play loud music with the windows rolled down. I wonder if such people even consider it a public service – sharing their great music with fellow travelers on the road. I see people playing the radio on their mobile phones in trains and buses and even in parks while walking and no, they think it is too selfish to use the ear phones. In India we like to share everything – including our phone conversations – we shout into our phones in public places. Even hospitals are noisy here.

A French national on a visit to India developed some allergy and had to be hospitalised. She had to share the room with another lady who seemed in her sixties. I went to visit this girl during the visiting hours and was shocked at the level of activity in the room. The other lady had 3 visitors all of whom seemed to be speaking at the same time. The television was tuned to a serial and one of the visitors was updating the patient on the previous episode which she had missed. The French girl was in tears – she hadn’t been able to sleep at all which had made her allergy worse. So I went to the nurse’s station to request for a private room and the noise at the nurse’s station was unbelievable too.

And this was in one of the expensive private hospitals. One can imagine the state in government hospitals.

Personally I am not a great fan of crowds and high decibel levels and seek out places which are relatively quiet. Since we live in a big city out of economic necessity our choices are limited but then until a few years ago, it was always possible to find some noise-free hours - a few hours before dawn when there would be no vehicular traffic and people would still be in bed. Vehicular traffic would have thinned gradually around midnight and it would be some hours before the first travelers would hit the road. A five hour window to cleanse the system of the effects of the previous day’s noise-pollution and get it ready for another day’s assault. It was the only hours when light sleepers could hope to sleep without being rudely shaken awake by a horn of an auto or the loudspeaker from the temple nearby. A time when students could study undisturbed. A time when one could choose to quietly sit at the window and hear the wind on the trees or the birds announcing the arrival of dawn.

Of late I notice that this window is narrowing more and more and there is hardly an hour even in the night when the streets are noise-free. It doesn’t help that we live in an area that is a hub for call centers and IT companies. Round the clock vehicles ply ferrying employees in and out of call centers. And this is also the time trucks are allowed to pass through the city roads. With the shifting of the airport so far away, people with early flights start using the roads in the early hours. And these drivers have no hesitation about using the horns at any time of the night and an Indian driver has got to do what he’s got to do – honk.! Too bad if you can’t sleep. We are like this only.

I complained about the increase in noise levels in the city in recent years and my friend smiled and shrugged it off: “problem with all cities. Haven’t you heard the term ‘the hustle and bustle’ of city life?’ I have been in some of the large cities in other countries but their ‘hustle and bustle’ didn’t seem characterized by so much noise as here. It is just that our normal noise levels are so much higher than necessary that we seem to adapt easily to further increases in noise levels without complaining.

But there is a price to pay in terms of higher stress levels, increased blood pressure and loss of hearing. According to Wikipedia:

‘Noise health effects are both health and behavioural in nature. The unwanted sound is called noise. This unwanted sound can damage physiological and psychological health. Noise pollution can cause annoyance and aggression, hypertension, high stress levels, tinnitus, hearing loss, sleep disturbances, and other harmful effects.Furthermore, stress and hypertension are the leading causes to health problems, whereas tinnitus can lead to forgetfulness, severe depression and at times panic attacks.’

‘Chronic exposure to noise may cause noise-induced hearing loss. Older males exposed to significant occupational noise demonstrate significantly reduced hearing sensitivity than their non-exposed peers, though differences in hearing sensitivity decrease with time and the two groups are indistinguishable by age 79.A comparison of Maaban tribesmen who were insignificantly exposed to transportation or industrial noise, to a typical U.S. population showed that chronic exposure to moderately high levels of environmental noise contributes to hearing loss.’

‘High noise levels can contribute to cardiovascular effects and exposure to moderately high levels during a single eight hour period causes a statistical rise in blood pressure of five to ten points and an increase in stress and vasoconstriction leading to the increased blood pressure noted above as well as to increased incidence of coronary artery disease.’

WHO studies conclude that exposure for more than 8 hours to sound levels in excess of 85 dB is potentially hazardous to health. In most of the big cities in India the decibel levels are close to 90 and increasing. This is harmful not only for our hearing but the nervous and cardio-vascular systems too. Though we seem not to notice this, the effects are visible in the level of aggression, road rage , increased levels of stress and heart problems.

Apparently there are laws in this country too about the maximum levels of noise on the roads and use of loudspeakers. The trouble is that we have got so used to these noise levels that no one complains. All of us shout, all of us honk. It seems to have become a part of our cultural identity. Noisy Indians! My cousin tells me that this is how desis are viewed by the Americans – that we are too noisy. We are quite used to blaming ‘others’ for all our problems. Here is one issue where we can make a beginning by taking corrective steps – speak softly, have softer ringtones for our cellular phones or set them to vibration mode in public places, avoid using the horn more than necessary, reduce the volume of the television and radio even if it is inside our own houses, teach children not to scream. Have you noticed that when we lower our volume the others reduce theirs too?

I think it is also a good idea to teach ourselves and our children to appreciate the beauty and value of silence and quietness. Like the Bahai temple in New Delhi. You feel purified after a few minutes of silence inside the prayer hall. The pity is that most cities do not have areas still untouched by noise pollution. Perhaps the Himalayas? Like our ancestors, should we seek peace and silence in the Himalayas? But I would certainly not be surprised if we go all the way seeking silence and the first thing we hear is the loud ringtone of a few cellular phones! Haven’t you heard the threat:‘Wherever you go, our network follows.”

Let us stop turning a deaf ear ( pun intended) to all this unwanted noise that is adding stress to our lives. Or else we may one day end up being a nation of people with hearing defects.

——————————————————-

Usha blogs at Agelessbonding.

Posted in Culture, Environment, Health, India, Misc, Society, Spotlight Series | 2 Comments »

The Assam Agitation: A Subjective History

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

[ This is Essay No. 37 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

The Assam Agitation: A Subjective History

by Nitoo Das

—————-

But then, I believe, all histories are subjective.

I was seven when the Assam Agitation started in 1979. I was ‘promoted’ to the next class without a final examination. I do not remember whether that made me happy or sad. Things at home seemed different. I would get very worried if I had to ask my parents for even the tiniest of new things. I managed with one pencil for weeks and when it eroded into a stump and became impossible to write with, I attached the dry, hollow body of an old pen to make it longer. I knew my parents had not received their salaries and they were struggling hard not to show the wrinkles in their small world.

My father’s youngest sister and a cousin who stayed with us joined the Agitation. Both were young and full of anger. They were constantly at meetings, mobilising people, picketing and sitting on dharnas and going for long, protest marches all over the city. I began to find it exciting. I did not know what they were fighting for. I only knew that Bangladeshi was a dirty word. Miyan was a dirty word.

I went with my aunt to early morning classes where we were taught to use lathis as weapons. I became quite adept at moving lathis in circular motions around my shoulders. As the youngest in the group, I received a lot of affection from my aunt’s friends. Most of them were students at Gauhati University and belonged to the AASU–the All Assam Students’ Union. Many had already dropped out of university. They created catchy slogans and painted posters after the lathi drill. We also sang songs. I think my father objected to my aunt taking me with her to such places and the 4 a.m. trips stopped as abruptly as they had started. I was heartbroken, but school soon reopened and I forgot about the intoxication of holding a lathi in my child-hands.

My aunt, whom I called Na-pehi, and my cousin, Anjan-da, became more and more embroiled in the movement. Whenever talk of unscheduled checking of houses took place, they frantically went around burning incriminating documents in the backyard. The flowers would be covered with bits of burnt-black paper for days afterward. Once, we ‘saved’ a young man who was running away from the CRPF by hiding him at our home. I was not allowed to see him. While escaping through the dry sandbanks of the Brahmaputra, Na-pehi was photographed by some intrepid photographer and her picture appeared on the front page of The Assam Tribune. I remember feeling proud.

The nightmares started quite early, though. The blackouts, the continuous fear of searches, the relentless patrolling by the CRPF, the lathi-charges, the protest marches, tales of torture inside jails, all this took a toll on me. My sleeping hours were peopled by demons, screams in the dark, cries of wolves from across the city, swollen corpses pulled from the river.

One night, I participated in a long, silent march. All of us were given torches to carry. I have no idea why I was taken, but I remember being with my father. I walked fearfully with my torch in my hands, uneasy about the lighted drops of kerosene falling from it. The silence, the faces radiant with sweat and reflected fire, the terror with which I walked–these are images that remain with me, memories intense with the scars of witnessing something beyond my grasp.

I did not know what was right and what was wrong. I did not understand the idea of a ‘pure’ Assam. I did not know why the Bangladeshi immigrants were targeted. I only saw them as fishermen selling fish by the river, sometimes as rickshaw-pullers. They were poor–people who could not speak ‘proper’ Assamese. Most of them were also Muslim. The fact that I was a child could easily be used to throttle guilt. I have used it, still use it.

When Nellie happened in February 1983, I was three months away from turning eleven. When news started trickling in to the city, the hush at home, in the streets was palpable. The silence throbbed with something unspeakable. I overheard a neighbour whisper, “They are cutting off the breasts of Bangladeshi women.” Even now, I wish I had never heard it. Besieged as I was by the panic caused by a body I could no longer recognise as mine, this statement reverberated within me. It has lived with me and grown with me through 1984, 1992, 2002. It stays with me like a canker that refuses to heal.

The Agitation, which had mostly remained peaceful through the years, had to come face to face with this aberration. Or was it an aberration? What if this was the natural outcome of a movement founded on intolerance? I think both Na-pehi and Anjan-da had to deal with this. Even if they did not, I would forever have to deal with it on their behalf.

Those mornings when I walked to Jurpukhuri Paar with a lathi in my hand and slogans on my lips–mornings sweet with birdsong and dew and the chatter of young men and women with a vision in their hearts–are forever tainted in my memories. Nothing will ever cleanse them. They will always droop like flowers heavy with the weight of burnt evidence.

——————————-

Nitoo Das blogs at river’s blue elephants.

Posted in Children, History, Human Rights, India, Language, Law and order, North East, Politics, Prejudice, Religion, Spotlight Series, Terrorism, Travel, Violence, Women | 2 Comments »

Is this really a ‘reform’?

Monday, April 13th, 2009

[ This is Essay No. 36 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

Is this really a ‘reform’?

by T.A.Abinandanan

—————————-

Hemali Chhapia reports that the hub-and-spoke system of colleges being affiliated to universities may come to an end soon, at least in some Indian states. Under this move, universities will not have colleges affiliated to them; those colleges will now be affiliated to ‘undergraduate boards’.

1. Is it good for the universities?The argument appears to be that this move will “liberate overburdened universities from the grunt work and tedium of a college overseer”; they can now concentrate on post-graduate teaching and research.

But let’s face it: our universities don’t do undergraduate teaching; they do only undergraduate examinations. I’m sure a lot of administrative effort goes into this stuff; but does it also consume a lot of a university professor’s time?

But, look at the potential cost: exams may be a burden, but it is this burden that brings some money to the universities — both grants from the government and exam fees from the students. Even more important, it seems to me, is that the affiliation system gave faculty in our universities some power over the colleges — in curriculum development, examinations, quality assessment, etc. If you take away both this money and this power, it’s not clear to me that the universities are better off.

2. Is it good for the colleges?My initial assessment is that this is a negative for our colleges. Instead of an affiliation with a university, they will now be affiliated to an ‘undergraduate board’ much like our schools belonging to an ‘education board’. Doesn’t sound nice, does it?

The ToI report doesn’t say much about what will happen to the ‘autonomous’ colleges — colleges that enjoyed a lot of autonomy in academic matters in the present system. Will they continue to enjoy this autonomy?

3. Is it good for our students?A criticism of our current system is that it separates UG teaching (which happens predominantly in colleges) and active research (which happens in universities). One may quibble with the details, but that’s a fair description of our current state. This ‘reform’ — at least the version reported by ToI — doesn’t do anything to address this problem.

The dismantling of the system of affiliation would make sense if (a) our universities are asked to develop and teach undergraduate programs and courses, and (b) our colleges — at least those with enlightened managements — are given incentives and a roadmap for transforming themselves into mini-universities with a teaching-research mix of their choice.

4. Is it progress if we replace 10-15 universities in a big state like Tamil Nadu with one ‘undergraduate board’? All said and done, there’s something to be said about diversity — in programs, in curricula, in approaches to knowledge. What are the chances that an undergraduate board will encourage innovation in education?

5. Finally, what good is this move if it encourages creation of more colleges — tiny, non-autonomous, offering programs in narrow disciplines? What good is this move if it doesn’t do anything to create and nurture Real Universities — universities that combine research with large-scale UG teaching, offer programs in many, many fields, and encourage interdisciplinary thinking?

—————————————–

T.A.Abinandanan blogs at Nanopolitan and Materialia Indica.

Posted in Education, India, Policy, Science & Technology, Spotlight Series | 2 Comments »

The Big School Admission Travails

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

[ This is Essay No. 35 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

The Big School Admission Travails

by The Mad Momma

———————————–

Three and a half years ago when I moved to Delhi, I had people asking me which school I planned to put the 6 month old Brat into. I was a little surprised because I was still trying to work out how to start him on solids and whether baby poop should be green.

I later on learnt to ignore it because well, there were the more important matters of teething, walking, speaking and generally, enjoying all the things that come with motherhood. Time flew by and before we realised it was time to put the Brat into school. Big school, with a uniform and a school bus. I went through my period of mommy angst, not wanting to send him and whining to the OA about how my son would become just another brick in the wall, blah blah. Yes, of course I’m over that now!

In all this, the OA and I had some err… heated discussions. My stand is simple, yes, school is useful for a degree but after a point the school is a bit of an equalizer. And what really matters is your home atmosphere and upbringing. I grew up with my grandfather teaching us chess (he was a national level badminton and football player in the good old days) and he taught my brother all the finer points of the game (I wasn’t interested!), my grandmother taught us all she knew about art – she was a good artist and we grew up poring over her books and learning to recognise Renoir and appreciate Van Gogh. The house was full of nudes painted by her and I had many a school mate come over and die of shock when they realised that the nudes on display were done by the little, grey lady. And even before I could read she was reading Jane Austen to us and reading us Reader’s Digest abridged editions. My dad spent hours playing games with us in a huge Reader’s Digest atlas and that is how we learnt our geography and my aunt who was a geography student would spend hours helping us. My uncle who was a math whiz taught us simple tricks to solve sums.

No, not all parents have that kind of time but the point I was making to the OA was that since the two of us do have a lot of time for our children, we don’t need to panic. We do take them out a lot and they do get many experiences. And once I can trust them to be silent, we can start with the museums and galleries that I so love and miss. We have our club memberships and take them swimming etc – so why should we panic? Let them get into a nice middle class school without the fancy school mates in big cars and we’ll be better off.

His logic? His family wasn’t really into art or literature and didn’t have much time and so he went to one of the best schools in town and he owes the school a lot. Fair enough. But that doesn’t mean our kids need it because we do have a lot of time for them. All I want is a school close to the house so that the kids don’t spend the day travelling.

So while a good school would be nice, it’s not a matter of life and death for us. As I often point out to the OA – he from his best school in a big city and I from my regular school in a little town ended up working for the same big organisation which is where we met and he still found in me something that made him want to marry me. So it’s okay. No need to panic.

Which is easier said than done when you see people around you going into overdrive. Putting aside money to buy that 13 lakh seat at the infamous but much in demand school in CP. Yes, The Boy is going to kill me for this one!

The OA had two colleagues last year whose kids didn’t get into ANY school. That’s right – not a single school and so he was paranoid. I mean its a basic assumption that your kids will go to school. That they will get an education. Right? Also – everything depends on the Brat. He gets into a good school this year and drags the Bean in along with him.

Wrong. And so it was that the OA filled EIGHTEEN forms for the Brat across November and December. Yes, you can pick your jaw up off the floor. Eighteen schools. And it’s not a joke. Picking up the forms. Standing in queues. Adding in information about vaccinations and birth and phone bills and rent receipts.

And boy what a nightmare it was. You had to write about your hopes for the child, your expectations from the school – and wait for it, this one’s the killer – the child’s achievements. Excuse me? The child should be anything between 2.5 and 3.5 – what achievements are we looking for. It was 2 am. We were tired of forms and I was wild eyed and hysterical. I grabbed the pen from the OA and said, that’s it. I’m going to write he can pee in the toilet bowl without sprinkling.

The OA looked at me in horror. What?? What achievements is a 3 years old kid supposed to have, for chrissake??

And so it went on. Finally I made a word document, aptly labelled ‘Bullshit’ and mailed it to the OA. And there I waxed eloquent on what we wanted from the schools and what we hoped for our child. The OA just kept changing the school name and bunging the quotes in. And finally after days of form filling, attesting documents, getting pictures taken (schools want all sorts of combinations – a couple of them wanted a passport size picture of the entire family in it – why?! Do they think we’re faking this?!), medical certificates it was done. It all seems easy – but try fitting this in with your regular day at office. EIGHTEEN forms to be deposited between 10 am and 11.30 am. On a working day. Thats taking the morning off almost every day for half the month! But we managed somehow and then awaited the calls with bated breath.

And they began. And they wanted both parents – which is something we were more than willing to do. Friends and family made encouraging sounds -’You’re just what the schools want’, ‘young professional couple’, ‘modern’, ‘educated’, blah blah.. ’speak well’

Right. Whatever. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and the morning of the first interview my stomach made peculiar sounds and I felt slightly nervous. This year the Delhi government has banned interviewing the kids so it was all up to us. We were going to be grilled and if we fared well our son would get into a good school. As I got dressed that morning I subconsciously picked up the aged old maroon raw silk saree that belonged to my grandmother. It made me feel safer and it was a classic. Most of all, it reminded me of how proud I used to feel when my parents came to PTA meetings, looking well put together. The OA dressed in a conservative grey suit.

And so we reached the first school. We were grilled. Boy, were we grilled. On our parenting, our policies, our principles, our vision for our child. And in the midst of all this they’d slip in a question on whether we lived in rented accomodation. Err… excuse me? How is that relevant to my child’s admission?

Day after day we went to schools and at times we weren’t interviewed. We just had to submit forms that proved that we lived in a certain area, what we paid as rent, income tax returns and much more. By the end of it, my bum knee was aching, I was rushed between home, office and school interviews, the timings clashed with everything and I was just exhausted. I’d walk into work in a saree and colleagues would look up and say – ‘Ah – another interview? How bad was today?’

Some weren’t too bad. One of the principals chatted with the OA about the recession and funds investing in India in a knowledgeable way and asked me pertinent questions about my job. She told the OA and me outright that our son was through and that she wanted children of parents like us – whatever that might be!

The OA and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. We had nothing going for us. The Delhi Govt ruling says the schools must give points and so the schools gave points – for the area you live in, to girl children, to second children, to children of single parents, to children of alumni and to poor children.

So our firstborn, male child with parents who weren’t from Delhi and by some sad quirk of fate were still much in love and together – got barely any points. The only quota I didn’t grudge was the economically weaker class because I totally support their kids getting a chance.

The thing with schooling in Delhi at this point is that there’s no point looking for a school whose philosophy matches yours. Simply because there’s no guarantee you’ll get through. So all you do is apply to the schools in your area and hope for the best. Acting fussy will get you nowhere because this year 1 lakh 75 thousand kids didnt get admission into any school in Delhi. Yes.

So you see, by the time you hear this bit of news you’re no longer acting pricey – you’re willing to take any school you get. The whole term ‘best school’ too takes on a new meaning. What is the best school for you, may not be the best school for me. And in the last few months of speaking to older parents, our views have changed too.

For instance, there are a few schools in Delhi that are more lenient and follow a more modern philosophy of never writing a negative remark in the report card like ‘Talks in class and disrupts.’ A remark I got year after year in my card. In theory that sounded good to us.

Until we met many parents who sent their kids there and said the kids were turning out rude, lazy and indisciplined. They believed that this system wasn’t really working for the average teenager in Delhi. It works wonders with the younger children but the older they get, the more insolent, spoilt and disruptive. One father who sent his kids to a school that gained popularity after Priyanka Gandhi sent her kids there, said he was very happy until his kids reached the senior classes because of the school philisophy. I quote – ‘Teenagers everywhere are unmanageable, they’re worse if they’re rich and the worst is if they’re rich teenagers in Delhi.’

Right.

It doesn’t help that the moment a school begins to give a good education, the rich can pay their way in. And there is always a clerk or a principal who learns that ethics are nice, but there is a price at which they’re willing to lose them. So invariably all the good schools soon have rich kids and long waiting lists and longer cars waiting at the gate. Thirteen lakhs for a seat in a popular school and annual fees for most of them are close to 2 lakhs a year.

Which leaves us with nice, subdued middle class schools with old fashioned methods of discipline and fewer facilities. Suits me fine. I don’t need my son learning horse riding and pottery in school. I want him to learn math and some discipline. The rest can be organised outside of school. I don’t want him to have this sense of entitlement.

So the results came out and the Brat got through four decent, middle class, old fashioned schools. Most of his class hadn’t got through anywhere because they’d applied to the top three schools in the city that the whole world had applied to. There were two schools I had badly wanted that he didn’t get into and I was so mad when I realised that all the richest kids in his class had got through despite living further away from the school than we did. Obviously the income tax returns helped.

The OA and I breathed a sigh of relief and picked one, paid up the fees and relaxed over a cup of tea. The Brat was thrilled when we went for the orientation and called it a ‘beautiful school.’ We’re duly grateful to get his stamp of approval.

The orientation began and as we settled in and saw the crowd around us, some richer, some poorer … some just like us- it was rather reassuring. The show started with a simple Saraswati Vandana sung beautifully by the standard 3 girls.

And then – oh horror – six 8-year olds came on stage to dance to some disco number in skimpy outfits. The little girls’ outfits were clingy and obscenely transparent and rather sad considering the little girls were just at that stage where they were developing.

I looked at the OA in horror. We looked around the hall to notice most of the parents looking rather pleased and clapping. Just a few other faces mirrored our horror.

The lady doing the introductory talk couldn’t string together a sentence in English and I wished she’d just stuck to Hindi. Whats wrong with speaking Hindi if you can’t speak English? And proceeded to tell us how the display was to show that the school believed in Indian culture and well as Western modernity. Err… alright.

As we left, I groaned to the OA that I would have to spend my day making the Brat unlearn the mispronounciations he was taught in school, and then teaching him the correct pronunciation.

The OA grinned and said I was a typical mother… Nothing was good enough for my child.

Hmm… maybe he’s right!

Sigh – why didn’t anyone tell me how traumatic getting your child into school in Delhi is? Oh wait – they did try. I just wasn’t listening!!

PS: The Brat starts school tomorrow. Pray for him and wish him a happy 14 years ahead.

—————————————

The Mad Momma blogs here.

Posted in Children, Education, Humour, India, Policy, Society, Spotlight Series, Women | 4 Comments »

Physical structures– Mothers and Others

Monday, April 6th, 2009

[ This is Essay No. 34 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

Physical structures– Mothers and Others

By Anu

——————————-

I have started to feel physical spaces change, ever since I became a mother a few years back. They appear changed in response to my changed status. Not in their form, function or appearance but in their behavior towards me, some though have remained the same (I don’t feel them). This is sometimes funny, disconcerting and strange, but mostly has made me feel very sensitized to physical structures. I now attribute attitude to them. They may be kind or rude to me, may include, exclude, discriminate or embrace me warmly.

Changes during travel

One of the earliest memories associated with motherhood and the changed physical space was the first overnight train trip, after delivery. My growing apprehension of the trip in my favorite mode of transport, was how am I going to nurse the barely two months old infant?

Advice given: In our country it is acceptable to nurse in public, just look around.
Ok.

What about me? Knowing that other women do it did not mean that I was ready and comfortable about it. Anyway, this and subsequent trips saw a steady decrease in my love for travel by train. I somehow managed to learn the nursing part with the dupata draped just right without smothering the baby. This involved a pretty intricate set of movements in the limited seat space during the day; with co-passengers all around you, being mindful of their space, it was a game of anticipating and coordinating everything before the baby decides to let all know that he was being starved by his mother. (Note: formula food was not affordable on my fellowship, if it was, I may or may not have used that option. Hence, this post is not an argument for or against nursing.)

Soon another structure within the train started to harass me -the narrow berth! Being of average height and build, this space worked fine for me before. But now, with baby steadily growing with each trip, the berth started to be a different thing. All my life I had seen mothers sleep in this narrow space with their children, but to actually experience it was plain uncomfortable. Seeing future trips spent commuting in this cramped fashion, I started to desperately ask, when can the baby have his own seat? Answer: when he turns five!! This is unnatural, mother and child are to morph into one being in the nights, because the train seats, a paid for physical space does not recognize them as two people?

All this left me with ‘before and after’ memories of train trips. The toilets, the food, the smells they were all the same, but the train now made me intensely conscious and announced to the world my well hidden shyness. The berth, however, was blind to my changed status. Believe me, they did not do this before. I had never felt their meanness or blindness. They just got me where I wanted to go, let make new friends, dream endlessly, read and stare outside. Now, they were almost hostile and mute to reason. They wouldn’t talk. That is one thing they seem to have cleverly left out while transforming into live monsters. These creatures could be ignored. They were not part of my everyday life and there was a choice of not being in that space.

At the workspace

Unfortunately for me, old familiar structures at the workspace started to take on aforementioned attitudes of the train. Ignoring and avoiding these spaces was not going help. My work was within laboratory buildings, with 24hour access to conduct experiments. I returned here after maternity leave, prepared for many changes including constraints on time. Anticipated changes were manageable, and the higher levels of energy combined with guilt at leaving the baby at a daycare translated into brisk efficiency. Everything was streamlined, nevertheless some experiments would not fit within daycare schedules. Unanticipated space constraints became a challenge. Before the motherhood, I would not think twice about going in the middle of the night to do follow up work, and if the mood took me, do more work. Now, extraordinary effort went into plans to reduce the number and length of such visits, leaving scope for just the essential monitoring, switch on/off kind of stuff. This too, did not work. Tried taking the nuclear family to the lab, while I tinkered rapidly. This, however, got me pulled by the authorities “how would we explain the presence of a baby should something go wrong in the building?” This was not a high security, radiation-spewing kind of lab, just a regular plant and harmless microbe research one. Yet, they had a point, and I agreed.

This kind of transition to work pattern was difficult. I also started to observe and talk to other mothers handling this transition; some had stopped working on the longer experiments, some had learned to delegate, while others moved to administrative kind of work. These were smart decisions at the individual levels to adapt but to me all of this screamed compromise. Most mothers had some support in the form of spouse or friends, who were willing to hold the baby for the short periods of time, when we worked during non-office hours. So what was stopping us? The building? The non-availability of a little space marked out for such times was the only hindrance (not lobbies, stuff happens with babies and many of these buildings don’t even have lobbies). Really, it is just a little a space; a chair, a makeshift screen would do.

I then started to work on what I convinced myself were more elegant experiments, ones that could be left behind at the end of the day. But at heart I knew, and missed the hands-on, getting fingers dirty, elbows scratched kind of work that really allowed the ‘finding a way’ rather than following a way. The natural intensity and passion towards work was being replaced with cool efficiency. The spontaneity was leaving the mothers. And the race was happening without me.

As working women in Science, we were aware of the challenges that such careers presented and regularly discussed their impact, but ‘space’ as a significant factor was never articulated and hence left me quite unprepared to deal with it. The stony refusal of the buildings to accommodate the changing needs of some of its workforce, added to all other known factors, in a hidden manner. The rigidity of the physical space could not be blamed on anybody or anything we just learn to live with it. Because, it was we who had changed, I thought.

Workspace in a different land

Two years later, space in the form of an unknown alien land became my destination, landed in a small university town in the US. The laboratories, however, are the same anywhere, but I had no fear of non-existent spaces, for the baby was just weaned. I launched into work with the complete intent of regaining lost ground.

In a meeting with an external committee, evaluating the department, I found myself with a bunch of others (lower echelons) being asked about our levels of satisfaction in this place (If as a group we were figuratively tossed back to the countries of origin we would fall in almost all the different continents). Everybody said that the move here was good, a mother of two, however, had an issue. She said this building, did not provide her space where she could pump breast milk for her infant. I observed everybody, each came from a culture that had a different take on breastfeeding in public in their home countries, but here they had probably adapted to the local practice. The younger males probably had wives with the same issues as this woman, the older committee members with hazy memories of parenting days may have had daughters who were nursing. Their expressions were not readable my own feelings were of envy and fellow feeling. Envy, because she had circumvented the prolonged guilt that troubled me when the baby was in daycare and the tiring consequences; nursing through the night, sleepless nights, worry about infant tooth caries etc. The practice of pumping breast milk released women from this trauma, however, this mother was faced with another obstacle: the process required space for short periods and the 11- storied building did not and would not cater to that.

Physical space built around one

The answer to these dilemmas propped up during an all-women meeting, trying to understand why their career graphs looked squiggly and the strain it took to keep it straight. This naturally involves talk about motherhood impacting careers and invariably gets everybody upset and bothered. One member said “you know, Universities were built for a man in the forties, with a wife at home, and the spaces reflect that”. A sardonic reply, “actually for a medieval man.” Much needed tension releasing laughter followed this remark. But in this conversation was the answer that I had been seeking.

As always answers to problems that vex me are usually the simplest, obvious and general: Spaces are built for a certain type of individual with certain types of need and functions, and since it is concrete, it remains that way. And all other different individuals will have to adapt around it or stay out of it.

Imagining physical space for ‘the other’

What does different mean with respect to a building space? It could be specific to age, gender, class, professions and so on. Anybody who does not fit the original ‘form’ around which it was designed is different, requiring adjustment of that individual to the physical structure. One could become different for short periods and be impacted significantly (pregnancy, broken limbs, illness etc).

Does this mean, if the original design of the structure right from the design boards were drawn and executed to include different individuals they would serve a wider spectrum of people? How do we do this? Can we imagine the ‘different’ and anticipate their needs with the physical space?

Let me attempt this while talking about one physical structure that embraced mother and child: the handicap access route -a slope made of wood, concrete or steel.

As a mother with a toddler in a new country, our access with a stroller to most public and private buildings was made simple and easy via the handicap access routes. Not for me the Empire State or other iconic buildings, instead it is this simple structure that gets my maximum appreciation.

This small town’s total number of handicapped persons would not exceed the numbers in a couple of Bangalore neighborhoods. Yet, one can feel their presence all around in these thoughtful physical structures, including public transport vehicles.

Each time I hit a handicap access sign, my thoughts went to my friends and neighbors in the Paraplegic Rehab Centre housing wounded Ex servicemen in Khadki, Pune. The residents were from far away places in India; many were war veterans, and some who were injured at work. These men were very important in the city’s collective consciousness. They reminded us of the horrors of War, and disrupted lives and mostly symbolized a human spirit that was best expressed by their slogan “Please, no pity” while they exhibited paintings done with foot and mouth.

Down the road from this centre was the University with libraries and public meeting venues. Across from it were two popular temples hosting many cultural events. I had never seen them participating in meetings and events within these buildings and never wondered about it. For, I did know that a small concrete slant could have been used and that it was missing.

I am not sure if they articulated, but I know we did not imagine that need. This absent physical space restricted them to just watch the cultural events from the entrance of rehab centre, seated in wheelchairs. This is a 5year old memory and I really hope it has changed and these structures have appeared, at least in the University buildings and temples.

This is not a solution for all the handicapped in India, every design will have to be rethought, footpaths, elevators, schools, colleges, offices, and other public buildings in villages, towns and cities. A long overhaul surely, but by not thinking about it, we are not just unimaginative, we are indulging in callousness.

Then, there are others who are different in social status and society accords scant respect for their needs, not by lack of imagination but by deliberate omission. Look at any construction site employing few to large numbers of laborers, do we wonder about the lack of onsite restrooms for them? Structures that we demand for ourselves in any place that we would spend more than a couple of hours. And, there are other vivid memories of women in the neighborhoods throwing tantrums “should the housemaid ask to use the bathroom!” That is a human attitude. And I have no wish to dissect that now.

No, I am not making a case for just a sloped concrete structure or a wider berth, but a case to imagine and implement physical structures that can serve more than just the ideal individual.

——————————————

Anu blogs at Time and Us.

Posted in Children, Gender & Sexuality, Human Rights, India, Indiaspora, Prejudice, Science & Technology, Society, Spotlight Series, Women | 9 Comments »

An Equal Love

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

An Equal Love

By Sam

Another Valentine’s Day is here. A day to honour love and lovers. A day when many couples exchange flowers, romantic notes, gifts and cards to each other. A day when many lucky ones go out and celebrate their love. It’s a nice feeling to love and be loved, to feel that you mean everything for someone, to feel that you can count on this one person to share your innermost feelings. And there are many of us who are still hanging on to that “single” – tag, waiting for love to happen or just enjoying being single. But even then no one can deny the fact, Valentine’s Day is that day of the year when love overshadows any other sentiment.

But this year’s Valentine’s Day is not just about love alone. Many of us are surprised and angered to hear from a bunch of narrow-minded goons that spending time with our lover in open places and celebrating Valentine’s Day is wrong, that it is against our “culture”. Many of us are raising questions about who are these people to decide on what we should or should not do and what right they have to interfere in our personal lives. It is so ridiculous for someone to dictate that we will not be allowed to celebrate our love on a Valentines Day! This all seems so absurd, right?

Now just think about a small percentage of population who always has felt this unfairness that you are all feeling right now, every single day! Yes I’m talking about gays. For us gays, we could never think of celebrating Valentine’s Day with our special person in open places because we never felt secure to express our love. There is this fear always echoing in our minds (and not on Valentine’s Day alone) about what others would think and react if they see us holding hands or sitting across a table looking into each others eyes or giving a peck on the cheeks. It is not a good feel to always search for a secluded place to exchange such small tokens of love.

What is it that makes gay love be considered second class by many? Why does it face so much scorn? Why do some feel the need to preach hate and pass judgments? Many of us enter into gay relationships knowing the bitter truth that this could be ephemeral because sooner or later, we will be forced to marry someone whom our folks have searched and found “suitable”. And that true love yields to parental and societal pressures. Many gays prefer one night stands because they know gay relationships do not stand a chance in our country. Why does it have to happen this way? Why do we have to forfeit our happiness for the sake of gratifying a society who by the way, doesn’t care a hoot about us?

I say it is high time to realize that the love between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman is equally sublime as the love between a man and a woman. Because we too nurture that concept of growing old together. We too dream of waking up beside our lover. We too enjoy walking on beaches and parks holding hands. We too desire on introducing our sweetheart to friends and families. But this all can happen only if you accept us; if you accept us in the same way we are accepting you. Love is not something that should be forced to hide. It deserves to be respected and acknowledged. And we should be able to express our love with no fear or shame because it is after all an emotion we feel for that special person whom our heart beats for.

Image source: Internet.

Sam, or Crazy Sam as he calls himself, blogs at The Straight-Friendly Gay Blog.

[Check out more articles from our Spotlight Series]

Posted in Gender & Sexuality, Human Rights, LGBT, Spotlight Series | 1 Comment »

Every photograph comes with a story

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

[ This is Essay No. 32 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

Every photograph comes with a story

By Neha Viswanathan

————-

It’s a ritual with my mother. When I was younger, I used to cringe when she brought out old family albums. As an adolescent, I found nothing precious in those photographs. To me, many of them were a testimony to bad fashion for children. The frilly frocks, the hair tied up in a ponytail right on top of one’s head, looking somewhat like a fountain. At some point my mother even had collages made out of them. It wasn’t till I was in my twenties that I could look at these photographs without squinting. And what a world it opened.

We forget everyday. We forget the precise flavour of the raw mangoes that we feasted over the summer vacations. We forget the colour of the skirt that was bought after much pleading. We forget how small and incomprehensibly tiny our joys were. Our memory becomes more and more selective. But with old photographs, I attempt to patch my memory. At some point I started scanning these photographs, which is a little harder than it sounds.

For one thing many of them were glued into the albums. This was before the plastic ones flooded the market. The older ones had thick black sheets on which you pasted the photographs with unforgiving glue. They were bound and thick. If you tried yanking them out, the photographs would tear. Since my mother threatened me with physical harm if that was to happen, I had to sit and patiently take these photographs off the black paper, little by little. When you spend that much time just taking one photograph out of the album, stories start to tumble. And I couldn’t help but ask. Where was this photograph taken? Do you still have that saree? Was my little sister really that cute? And were you so beautiful?

And then I scanned them. One by one. It’s at that very moment that I realized that these weren’t exactly my memories either. They were the sum of my parents’ memories over the years. This is how we must have appeared through the lens of the camera. The gaze of a parent is very strong. We didn’t pose for most of these photographs. In the days of film, you had to put great thought before you actually clicked. You had no idea how it would turn out. Each photograph had to do justice to that moment and place.

I dug further back, and found photographs of my parents in their younger years. Before they met each other. When they were still studying in school. Of course I knew that my mother had a childhood. And yes, she had told me stories. But nothing quite prepares you for the visuals of their early years. You cannot stop gasping at their youth. Even more wonderful were the photographs of my grandparents. These people who we know only as our parents or grandparents, they have these entirely different identities before we came in on the scene. Scanning these photographs, I didn’t just stumble upon things that I had forgotten, but things that I had never known. Every photograph comes with a story.

———————————

Neha Viswanathan (aka nehavish) is an avid blogger and blogs at http://withinandwithout.com. She lives and works in London, and is an amateur poet and photographer.

Posted in Photography, Spotlight Series | 2 Comments »

The Shampoo Sheikh

Monday, August 25th, 2008

[ This is Essay No. 31 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

The Shampoo Sheikh

By Fëanor

———-

During the height of the Regency, it was the very thing to betake oneself to Brighton, there to enjoy the sea, dance with the best people, flirt with dashing Army officers, be introduced to the Princes Royal, and play genteel parlour games [Picture credit: The Republic of Pemberly]. And when all the whirling and swirling was done and one was exhausted, the place to go to recover and refresh was Mahomed’s.

To miss going to Mahomed’s is like going to town and forgetting to take a peep at St Paul’s… ¹

Inside an imposing building on King’s Road in Brighton, a man in Mughal court dress welcomed the gentry. He offered a luxurious establishment at the height of ton, and a series of medicated vapour baths. The specialty of the house was a massage with medicated oils. Customers sweated their poisons out in a hot aromatic bath, and then moved into a tent with flannel sleeves. Here, an unseen masseur would pummel them invigoratingly, with his arms through the cloth walls. This last, the man said, was the Indian art of the Shampoo, and it would cure all ills.

[The Baths are] daily thronged, not only with the ailing but the hale … their powerful efficacy … have brought foreigners to him from all quarters of the world …

What was this Shampoo? And how did this word become English? The tale is a curious one, intercontinental in its reach, transcending origins, race and class.

It begins in 1759 in Patna where was born a scion of the Nabobs of Murshidabad. A noble lineage is one thing; the reality of life is another. The Nabobs were a shadow of their former selves after the disaster at Plassey, and Din Mohammed’s father, having set aside all pride, was a minor soldier in the East India Company’s Bengal Army. When Din was eleven years old, his father was killed, his elder brother took on the parental commission, and despite his mother’s vigilance – she knew Din was already smitten by the glamour of soldiery – he ran away from home to become a camp follower. Soon, he was in the service of a Captain Baker, under whose watchful eye he bloomed into a well-read man, widely travelled and keenly observant.

There is scarcely any disease to which the human frame is liable which may not be relieved by the use of these baths.

In 1784, Baker returned to Ireland, taking Din with him. Din perfected his English in Cork, and, after Baker died two years later, married a young Irishwoman, Mary Daly. They spent the next 25 years in Ireland, where Din’s charm and intelligence endeared him to the Irish upper class [Picture credit: Brighton Ourstory].

sake mohd A popular genre of books at the time was the epistolary travelogue, and Din jumped into the business with panache. The Irish gentry² paid 2 shillings 6 pence for “The Travels of Dean Mahomet, A Native of Patna in Bengal, Through Several Parts of India, While in the Service of The Honourable The East India Company Written by Himself, In a series of Letters to a Friend.” It was a charming read, in turns poetically descriptive and hair-raisingly adventurous. Interspersed in true intellectual style with quotations from Seneca and Goldsmith, among others, he wrote of the Company’s conquest of India, the gracious Mughals and the elegance of the Company’s Calcutta; he waxed eloquently on the riches of Dacca, and the terrors of being hunted by peasants, wrathful at Din’s tax-collection, baying for his blood.

This unlikely tome turned out to be the first book in English written by an Indian, and it brought to its readers a particular sensibility – an appreciation for victorious England and her East India Company, but also an unapologetic love for the grandeur of India that Din missed so sorely.

You will here behold a generous soil crowned with plenty; the garden beautifully diversified by the gayest flowers diffusing their fragrance into the bosom of the air; and the very bowels of the earth enriched with inestimable mines of gold and diamonds. ³

Hindustani Coffee House In 1807, Din and his family moved to London, where he opened an Indian restaurant. The Hindustanee Coffee House in the Portman Estate [Picture credit: BBC News] was the first ever in a series of Indianised British eateries that has continued to this day. While his intention had been to attract the Indian gentry, they tended to look down upon his establishment as one fit only for ignorant Londoners. The British loved it.

Here the gentry may enjoy the Hooakha, with real Chilm tobacco, and Indian dishes in the highest perfection, and allowed by the greatest epicures to be unequalled to any curries ever made in England.⁴

Simultaneously, in the service of a Basil Cochrane, he was providing a full body massage service at steam baths opened in Portman Square. Din could easily counter imitators, stating that his was the only genuine massage; only an Indian native could provide a treatment superior to all others; only he, equipped with the correct medicinal herbs, could cure illnesses. In a time of burgeoning excess and a thirst for the exotic, Din was able to provide each in luxuriant quantities.

But setting a trend to be followed by most curry houses after him, Din’s outgoings overwhelmed his income, and he declared bankruptcy in 1812. He let it be known that he was ready for employ as a butler or a valet, with no objection to town or country, and this advertisement brought him to Brighton’s bath houses.

Brighton was the Nonesuch town of the Regency, its wealth and fashion attracting the finest artists and bon viveurs in the land. The Prince Regent’s fanciful Royal Pavilion was then being constructed. The demand for Oriental chic and exotica continued unabated. Din began to purvey esoteric Indian medicines, aromatic herbs and oils, treatments, and promoted steam baths and Shampooing.

shampoo (v.)

1762, “to massage,” from Anglo-Indian shampoo, from Hindi champo, imperative of champna “to press, knead the muscles” ⁴

The last two became immensely popular; the Prince of Wales invited Din to supervise the construction of an aromatic steam bath in the Pavilion. Din so impressed the Prince that he was anointed Royal Shampoo Surgeon. The gentry poured into his establishment, allowing him to expand, build the elegant Mahomed’s Baths [Picture credit: Victorian Turkish Baths] overlooking the sea, and create new branches in London.

Meanwhile, Din worked on his magnum opus, “Shampooing, or, Benefits Resulting from the Use of the Indian Medicated Vapour Bath,” a book of testimonials from satisfied clients, dealing with the putative medical benefits of massages, aromatic oil therapy and sea-water baths, claiming to cure rheumatism, fix problems of the muscles, and restore ailing joints. His book was a bestseller, going into further editions in 1826 and 1838, adumbrated with fulsome praise from a fawning clientele.

The greatest blessing that we know,
In health is said to be;
That blessing, under God I owe,
Oh Mahomed! to thee;
My lips the gratitude shall show,
That in my heart doth glow,
For ah! I feel too well assured,
(Let all deride, and laugh who will,)
That had I never try’d thy skill,
I never had been cured!!’ ⁶

The royal warrant by George IV was the final imprimatur on his social eminence, but his financial situation was precarious, dependent as he was on his sleeping partner, Thomas Brown, for funding. Brown died in 1841, and Din was unable to raise the capital required to win the auction of his baths. He offered to manage the property on behalf of the higher bidder, but unfortunately, his services were no longer required, and he had to relocate to a small property on Black Lion Street. He tried to compete with his old establishment, continuing to advertise his services till 1845. He became more and more impecunious in the ensuing years, and in 1851, this extraordinary Renaissance man died.

References:

Victorian Turkish Baths, Malcolm Shifrin.
Sake Dean Mahomet: Traveller and Shampooing Surgeon, Niaz Zaman.
The Travels of Dean Mahomet, Michael Fisher.
An Indian with a triple first, William Dalrymple, The Spectator, Jan 3, 1998
shampoo. (n.d.). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved May 14, 2008, from Dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shampoo
Shampooing, Sake Dean Mahomed..

Posted in Spotlight Series | 6 Comments »

The Hand That Wields the Pen

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

[ This is Essay No. 30 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

The Hand That Wields the Pen

By Anindita Sengupta

——-

Civilisations are judged and remembered not by their most successful businessmen but by the art they leave behind.
~ Kwame Kwei-Armah

That art is important for a civilization is undeniable. That it oils its rusty wheels, provides beauty, meaning and sanguinity, and keeps us from becoming animals or machines—both of which we threaten with unfailing regularity—is obvious to many. But it remains an undernourished market; few people or organisations are willing to spend money on it. It is seldom part of corporate social responsibility programs and in a country where poverty looms wall-high, it is difficult for art to command a share of the charity pie. It is neither as urgent nor as poignant, and its contribution to life is often, to quote Margaret Atwood, ‘as unnoticed and as necessary’ as the air we breathe. If art in general is underfunded and under-prioritized, the case for specific subcategories such as women’s writing is even weaker.

On the battle lines drawn between art and activism, there are heated arguments about ‘protectionism’ towards women’s writing or other gender-based categories. Artists will often spurn such categories for their ‘limited’ notion, and they do have a point. It is difficult for art to flourish within laxman rekhas of any kind, even those drawn with the best intentions. Art can benefit from political and social awareness but there are enough propagandists trying to pass of pamphlets as poetry. Anthologies of women’s writing inevitably spawn a host of terrible pieces that are painstakingly (and painfully) ‘woman-oriented’. There are those who argue that there is little justification for categories such as women’s writing. The questions they raise are these: why should art be judged on any other basis other than its own merit? And why should politically defined writing be privileged in any way?

For feminist publishing houses like Zubaan and Kali for Women, the question seems to have a clear answer. Urvashi Butalia has talked about the logic behind setting up Zubaan here, pointing out clearly their goal of “reflecting the debates within the women’s movement, and disseminating them as far as possible.” She looks at feminist publishing “centrally as a developmental activity – for social change, developing certain skills, developing certain strains of thought.” But the question of women’s writing or art that is not categorically ‘feminist’ is more problematic because it cannot be defended as ‘developmental’ activity. Or can it?

If one goes back to the original premise – that a civilization is remembered for its art, then it is clear that each work of art has a value that transcends its immediate, individual aesthetic or artistic value. It has larger cultural and historical importance. In which case, it would be wrong and dangerous for a civilization’s art to not reflect the lives and thoughts of its women. Yet, this particular sort of silence has plagued literature for centuries. Reasons range from girl’s illiteracy to harsher censorship of women’s writing. This article talks about the number of problems women writers have to face. At the most fundamental level, girls lag behind in education. (In nine of India’s 35 states and territories, illiteracy rates among women are 50 percent or higher, according to figures from the 2001 India census. In contrast, no state or territory has an illiteracy rate of 50 percent or higher among males.) Then, very few women can manage the time to pursue artistic proclivities. Even parents who encourage daughters to work are more likely to understand a desire to work in a bank than to paint or write seriously (as opposed to as a hobby). Familial resistance and the ‘good girl syndrome’ clamp down on women’s thoughts. Religious fundamentalism browbeats them. Male critics and editors often dismiss their writing as ‘recreational and decorative’. They face social censure and censorship when they write about things that don’t fit within rigid constructs of morality—and these rules are much stricter for women than for men.

Only a handful of women surmount these hurdles to become artists at all.

I’m reluctant to sign my name to essentialist theories; I’ve known women as different from each other as bicycles and fish. Yet, it is undeniable that there are certain experiences common to women: menstruation, labour, childbirth, menopause, female orgasm. Biological, social and political constructs also affect most of us in similar ways, influencing the ways we inhabit spaces, negotiate relationships, manage the little things.

When Tharu and Lalita wrote Women Writing in India in 1993, they said in their introduction that they had tried to…

“create a context in which women’s writings can be read, not as new monuments to existing institutions and cultures (classics, are by definition, monuments) but as documents that display what is at stake in the embattled practices of self and agency and in the making of a habitable world, at the margins of patriarchies reconstituted by the emerging bourgeoisies of empire and nation.”

I find this distinction between monuments and documents important. Art created by women may not always be monuments or classics; but it serves to document the lives and histories of women living at a particular time. Unless an atmosphere is provided for it to flourish, these histories will be lost. It is to prevent this loss that women’s art must receive a certain amount of protection and encouragement, some nudges to help it along.

Having said that, there are issues of readership, reach and marketing that need to be addressed. For one, publishers and editors should apply the same stringency within the defined category as they would outside it and bring out thinner anthologies if necessary. I also wonder how many men pick up anthologies of women’s writing. Personally, I know many who avoid so-called ‘women-centric’ books. While we need to keep talking to each other, it would be great if we could also find ways of communicating across the gender divide. (After all, preaching to the converted only has limited uses.)

But despite these limitations, preserving and celebrating the female gaze is important for civilization—if not for art—and usually for both. Perhaps, someday we will have a world where women tell their stories and everyone stops to listen. Until then, we’ll have to accept that affirmative action is required on this, as on many other fronts.

—————–

As reported by Elizabeth Yuan in ‘For a girl in rural India, education is a difficult pursuit’ in CNN.com, 23 March 2007

—————–

Anindita is a poet, writer and journalist in Bangalore, India. Her poetry has appeared in Muse India, Talking Poetry, Kritya, Asian Cha, and In Other Voices (an anthology by Delhi Poetree). She was the winner of the Toto Awards for Creative Writing in 2008. When not penning verse, she works at the India Foundation of Arts (IFA) and is a consultant with Iconoculture and Fida. Deeply committed to gender issues, she is founder and editor of Ultra Violet, India ’s first online community of feminists.

She can be contacted at: anu[dot] sengupta[at]gmail.com

Posted in Art, Spotlight Series, Women | 10 Comments »

Spotlight Series

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

Starting tomorrow, Blogbharti will publish posts (on Friday, Monday and Wednesday) by three well known, and much admired, bloggers as a part of the latest, and unfortunately very short, round of the Spotlight Series (please click here for the archives). Your comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Posted in Announcement, Spotlight Series | 1 Comment »

‘The Mourning Forest’, an exposition of grief and rebirth

Monday, March 24th, 2008

[ This is Essay # 29 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

‘The Mourning Forest’, an exposition of grief and rebirth

———

Batul Mukhtiar

Most of us come out of the closing film of MAMI 2008, ‘The Mourning Forest‘ silent. A long film at the end of a long day. Outside Imax, an actor friend says, “You can’t see it as a film, the film maker wants you to experience something, it’s like meditation.” I say, “Yes, like meditation, it makes you restless, the mind wanders.”

Later in the car, a cinematographer friend says, “The hand-held camera was so bad. Terrible.” I say, “Yes, it was almost as if the cameraman did hand-held because he couldn’t be bothered to set up a tripod.” Another cameraman said, “Why did the girl (Machiko, a staff worker in the retirement home) go off for a trip with a patient who was disturbed? Was she mad?” echoing the first thought that struck me when I was watching the film. In a way that sometimes happens when 4-5 people are together, we started laughing about the film. We couldn’t understand how it had won the Grand Prix at Cannes 2007. Though, a director friend did say, “The shots of the wind in the trees were beautiful.”

At night though, I wondered about the film. Sometimes, you can’t see a film very logically, or approach it through the narrative. The story telling is abbreviated; it only evokes sensations. When the old man, Shigeki, senile, locked up in his grief, asks the Buddhist monk, “Am I alive?” the monk replies, “You are alive because you eat. You are alive when you feel sensations.”

And the film in fact, is an awakening of the sensations that both the old man and the girl, trapped in their grief, have stopped feeling. Through their journey with each other, they rediscover playfulness, heat, danger, cold, hunger, thirst, and life itself, as they move through the forest.

They rediscover touch. At a family picnic, a couple of years ago, my mother teased her friend, “Oh all our legs are aching, but you can go back home and ask your husband to massage your legs.” And I looked at my mother, and thought, “Yes, this is what she misses about Daddy. Howlonely it must be, not to have that touch.”

When the girl strips to hold the old man, and save him from the cold, it’s not a sexual touch, but basic human warmth which she gives him, which has slowly drained out of him in the 33 years he has mourned his wife.

So often, even when we care for the old people in our midst, give them food, clothing, shelter, we forget that they need too, laughter and touch. Perhaps that is why, grandparents love grandchildren so much, because when their own children forget to touch them, the children clamber all over, with little regard for distance or dignity.

(more…)

Posted in Cinema, Spotlight Series | 1 Comment »

Harjit Sodhi’s story

Friday, March 21st, 2008

[ This is Essay # 28 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

Harjit Sodhi’s story

———

Hari Balasubramanian

Harjit Singh

I was a student at Arizona State University in the Phoenix metro area when 9/11 happened. The days after were quite tense. On Saturday, the 15th, there were rumors among Indian students that a gang in a car was firing at people who looked Middle-Eastern, and that they were on their way to Tempe, the suburb the university was in.

The rumor wasn’t true but it wasn’t entirely false either. That afternoon, Balbir Singh Sodhi, an Indian immigrant who owned a gas station store had been shot dead. Balbir was the first victim of a dozen or so hate crimes involving South Asians and Middle-Easterners that happened in the aftermath of 9/11 all over the country. Balbir was Sikh and his turban had given the shooter the impression he was Muslim. The shooter, Frank Roque – who had apparently declared at a local restaurant that he was going to target some “towel-heads” – was arrested and is now serving a life sentence.

Balbir’s death was a terrible tragedy, but, as I learned recently, it wasn’t the complete story. The complete story had to do the Sodhi family’s immigration to the United States. In a strange kind of twist, that immigration had been spurred in the first place by the sectarian conflict in India involving Sikhs, just less than two decades before 9/11.

Harjit Singh Sodhi, Balbir’s brother and the first member of the family to have left India, talked of his experiences recently on Dick Gordon’s radio show The Story, on National Public Radio. I’ve pieced together most of this story from that interview (look in the archives for the show on Thursday, March 6th, 2008).

___

As clashes between Sikhs and the Indian government escalated in the early 1980s, Harjit, who had seen death from the conflict first hand, felt he and family would never be safe in India, and decided to leave for the United States. Why the United States? Because he had read in schoolbooks that it was a wonderful place, a “heaven” of sorts; that had made a strong impression on him. He left alone leaving his wife and children behind. But since he only had a forged passport, no contacts and little money, the process wasn’t easy: he was knocked back and forth across the world; in his quest to reach the US, he had to travel to Mexico, Cuba, Thailand, Jordan, Moscow, and back to Mexico. Finally, Harjit walked from Mexico, crossed the US border and illegally entered the United States. He first went to Los Angeles, and then did odd jobs – pruning grape vines in Fresno, working at a 7-11 store – before moving to Phoenix and starting an Indian restaurant.

(more…)

Posted in Prejudice, Racism, Spotlight Series | No Comments »

Calling Into Question

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

[ This is Essay # 27 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

Calling Into Question

———

Swar Thounaojam

“In the old days, they didn’t even know they were Kurds. And it was that way through the Ottoman period: None of the people who chose to stay went around beating their chests and crying, ‘We are the Ottomans!’. The Turkmens, the Posof Laz, the Germans who had been exiled here by the czar – we had them all, but none took any pride in proclaiming themselves different. It was the Communists and their Tiflis Radio who spread tribal pride, and they did it because they wanted to divide and destroy Turkey. Now everyone is prouder – and poorer”.

My mind has been recycling this quote for the past few years. I like to think it is a very important summary of what’s happening around me. It is also crucial because if I substitute the self-inflicted sectionalisation with an imposed one, it becomes the gist of what has happened to me.

Let me start with an unusual source that has made it easier to identify the category I belong to. Sepia Mutiny. Whenever a mutineer posts a length touching on the immigrant position of Indians in America, hundreds of pronounced comments flood that blog. It is an outspoken rostrum, built and surrounded by an articulate immigrant group. The opinions, digressions and emotions that fill its comment space come very close to the ones North East Indians negotiate daily, living in mainland India. The only major difference is that North East Indians have never been sufficiently articulate. The resentment that each of us harbour at our quasi-immigrant status in India has never been adequately transmuted into a critical dialogue with the rest of the country. This is a shameful failure for both sides.

I am done with the introductory officialese. It’s time to get personal.

When Sridala asked me for an essay that can purposefully cast a perspective on the North-East, she added another question on assimilation. It is in connection with a comment that I have left on a blog post on identity. I am assuming it is the one by Meena Kandasamy to which I have left this comment:

“I think you have to be very conscious of your background, of where your roots lie.”

- After a period of being conscious of my background and roots, I have almost become rootless and anonymous. Its been a conscious decision. Why? It just happened – I got tired of people prefixing my name. Rootlessness has become my new form of freedom. People still peg me for their own understanding but me, myself – its a different story.

(more…)

Posted in India, North East, Prejudice, Spotlight Series | 1 Comment »

In search of Ramrajya – Part III

Monday, March 17th, 2008

[ This is Essay # 26 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

In search of Ramrajya [Continued from here - First part, Second part]

———

V Ramaswamy

(7)

A tolerant society must be built through large-scale, effective public action by citizens and civic organizations. This must build upon past and existing initiatives. A peace / conflict-resolution orientation needs to be infused into to the building of communal amity in India. Large numbers of people across the country must work to inculcate harmony in the new generation. A vital part of this has to be action-education, of children, students and youth, to be able citizens of a democratic and pluralist society.

Education in post-independent India has failed in this task. Negative and bigoted socialization has continued to distort minds and hearts. Education and curriculum emerge as key requirements. Teachers and trainers assume a profound role.

Notwithstanding good intention and enthusiasm for positive change, especially among youth, direction is lacking. Critical social awareness, strategic thinking and action in the public domain – are weak, and are not normal outcomes of the social process. Voluntary action and social movement have decayed considerably over the last decade. A generational change is taking place in society, with weak bridges between the old and new. A ‘culture’ and practice, of aware, strategic social action has to be renewed.

A beginning has to be made, towards catalyzing a wider people’s movement. We have to frontally address the Hindu-Muslim conflict and define the vital and imperative work of peace-building in India. This would catalyze initiatives towards peace, and thus help to generate a people’s movement that begins to transform the situation. ‘Civil society’- in the sense of non-state formations for the public weal – must be built. And a key issues in a civic agenda is harmony.

Harmonious relations between Hindus and Muslims in India are closely linked to realizing enduring peace in south Asia. And peace in the subcontinent, could be a vital force for peace in Middle East as well as in the world at large.

Intolerance also resides outside the reach of the state – within individuals, in families, in community groups. Intolerance results from negative socialization, but also stems from an un-well psyche. It is vital to create means for closer communication and mutual understanding between Hindus and Muslims from all walks of life. But it is also vital to effectively and creatively address the underlying psycho-social factors of bigotry, for instance as a vital part of the education of children to live as citizens of a pluralist, democratic society.

(more…)

Posted in Human Rights, Poverty, Spotlight Series | No Comments »

In search of Ramrajya – Part II

Friday, March 14th, 2008

[ This is Essay # 26 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

In search of Ramrajya [Continued from here]

———

V Ramaswamy

(4)

In his poem Yahaan Sey Sheher Ko Dekho, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the great Urdu poet of the subcontinent, talks about the ugly underbelly of the city, of exploitation, suffering, injustice. He says that once you’ve seen that, all the charms and beauties of the city do not appear so charming and beautiful any more, instead they take on an ugly hue.

Here are Faiz’s lines in Agha Shahid Ali’s translation:

There are flames dancing in the farthest corners,
throwing their shadows on a group of mourners.
Or are they lighting up a feast of poetry and wine?
From here you cannot tell, as you cannot tell
whether the colour clinging to those distant doors and walls
is that of roses or of blood.

My work in the bastis of Howrah – forever changed my perception, and alienated me completely from the society I had so far been a part of. I wait for a series of articles, in Urdu, titled Yahaan Sey Sheher Ko Dekho, which look at the situation in metropolitan Calcutta’s Muslim slums.

The educated Hindu typically really believes that Muslims are a backward and troublesome group, having only themselves to blame for their plight, which they also see as fundamentally stemming from their faith, which makes them very different – irrational, belligerent and extremist. They detest politicians for practicing vote-bank politics and appeasing Muslims. And they are ever ready to emphasise that most criminals in the land are Muslims.

The overwhelming number of the poor – are not engaged in crime. (That a large part of their life is lived outside the law – for instance in matters of obtaining water, or electricity – is another matter; this is how “governance” operates at the grassroots, in the absence of basic services.) Yes, poverty leads to crime. But that is at an advanced stage in the life of a community, when there is utter hopelessness and all-round stagnation. And the criminal activities are also closely linked to external crime lords, political parties as well as the police.

Second, the fact is that in many parts of India – in Mumbai, in Gujarat, in Calcutta and West Bengal, in Kashmir – Muslims are routinely picked up, taken into custody, tortured, their families harassed. Several people simply disappear. All Muslims are seen as terrorists – whether by the police, or the middle class Hindu society. For any crime in a neighbourhood, the police will break into the homes of poor Muslim slumdwellers in the dead of night, beat people up, pick up youths and put them into lock-up. Lacking any assistance, some would then find themselves serving a jail sentence, with hardened criminals. This is also a way of pushing youths into crime.

(more…)

Posted in Human Rights, Poverty, Spotlight Series | 2 Comments »

In search of Ramrajya – Part I

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

[ This is Essay # 26 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

In search of Ramrajya

———

V Ramaswamy

“Let no one commit the mistake of thinking that Ramrajya means a rule of the Hindus. My Ram is another name for Khuda or God. I want Khuda Raj, which is the same thing as the Kingdom of God on Earth.”

Mahatma Gandhi
26 February 1947

(1)

In 1998, I came upon a graphic by the sculptor, Somenath Hoare. This is an image of a public meeting of Mahatma Gandhi. Amidst a sea of humanity, in the foreground, is a Muslim couple, with the man carrying a small boy on his shoulder. The boy’s arm is stretched out, his finger pointing to the Mahatma, who is seated in the dais in the distance. I was really struck by this image. To me it seemed an appropriate image to place on the cover of a book that remained to be written, which could be titled In search of Ram Rajya: Muslims in Independent India.

It was only in the aftermath of 6 December 1992 that I came alive to the question of Muslims in India. I was an atheist, and a left-oriented social activist working on issues of urban poverty, low-income housing, slums and squatters. Riots had hit Calcutta too, with Muslim bastis being torched in Tangra in east Calcutta and in Metiabruz in the west. This was the first time in my life that I knew communal riots in my city. The enforced stay at home when Calcutta was under curfew in the days following 6 December 1992, led to an enforced engagement with this question, the Muslim question, something I had hardly thought about earlier. Afterwards, my friend, photographer Achinto, and I went to Tangra. The people from the burnt out slum were sheltered in the municipal slaughterhouse. I will never forget that sight, a vision of hell.

A germ was planted in me. And that germ went on to take over and transform my life within 5 years. But before that all the habitual assumptions and notions, all the socialised conditioning and subtle prejudice in me had to be plucked out. I was fortunate to meet friends who aided in this.

During 1995-97, I was working as a social development consultant on a government project for environmental management. We came upon some statistics from the Howrah Municipal Corporation that made me sit up. The infant mortality rate for the majority Hindu population of Howrah (a million-plus city near Calcutta.) was just under 45 per 1,000 in 1992, while that for the Muslim minority population was about 105 per 1,000. By 1993, the figures were about 37 and 83 respectively. Trying to understand why there was such a big difference in the infant mortality rates, and more importantly wanting to and trying to do something that could make a positive impact on such a situation – took over my life. As a father, and having gone through the traumatic experience of my infant son being very sick, doing all one can to help sick children, whether one’s own or anyone else’s, whatever the cost – I think that is one of the most important things in life. In late-1996, I began working in Muslim bastis in Shibpur, Howrah. First as the leader of a team entrusted with implementing various environmental improvement works in collaboration with the local community; and when that was concluded, independently, through Howrah Pilot Project, a grassroots organisation established to work for long-term community renewal.

That was the beginning of my personal journey to build a bridge between my life and the lives of ordinary Muslim fellow-citizens. That was a personal mission. It was rooted in a programme to initiate and sustain community empowerment efforts, focussed on poor women and children, in Priya Manna Basti, Howrah.

(2)

It is in the dis-aggregated health statistics of cities that we see the starkest implications of the continued mal-distribution of social, environmental and political resources. Given that the Muslim population of Howrah is made up predominantly of labouring people, living in bastis, while the Hindu population comprises both labouring as well as more affluent sections and is distributed across both slum and non-slum areas, the infant mortality statistics may be read as a proxy indicator of slum – non-slum differentials in infant mortality. These figures may also suggest that there may be deep-rooted and institutionalised attitudinal constraints to development in Muslim settlements. For there is near complete segregation of Muslims, a resultant of earlier riots in the city (1946-64), as well as prejudice in the majority community. Even today, it would be very difficult for a Muslim individual or family to get a dwelling on rent in a Hindu neighbourhood.

The key issue in a degraded, poverty-ridden slum environment is water-sanitation, owing to the absence of which the incidence of infant mortality and gastrointestinal diseases is very high. It did also occur to me that a book could be written, called “Why the children die”, giving a kind of X-ray / ultra-sound / MRI image, and a sort of forensic flowchart, of how and why this happens; and how exactly it can stop and what must be done, at various levels, from institutions, to ordinary people.

A ‘service latrine’ is a toilet that has to be manually cleaned out, by lowly sweepers. This is an arrangement that was widespread in old towns and cities across India. The image of a person carrying a basket of excreta on his / her head – had been the subject of a call to conscience by Mahatma Gandhi. But it was only in 1993 that the govt. of India finally enacted a law banning such ‘manual scavenging’.

The govt. also introduced a programme to be implemented through the urban local bodies to subsidise the conversion of these service latrines into sanitary toilets. But service latrines continued to be in use on a massive scale in Howrah, with all the attendant adverse environmental health risks to the community and the conservancy workers (apart from the violation of the latter’s human dignity).

The problem was that in many cases, there were a large number of people using the service latrine. In the slums of Howrah, a plot would typically house 15-20 households, and over 100 persons would be using the latrine, typically a hole in the floor of a small raised cubicle-shed. The govt. subsidy was, however, designed keeping a single (5-7 member) household in view. The slum plots were also congested with the hutments, leaving no spare space. Hence service latrines simply continued to exist and be used.

In some of the worst areas, the service latrines made the neighbourhood extremely foul and dangerous. These were the areas where the incidence of water-borne and gastro-intestinal diseases was high, with high infant mortality and morbidity.

During 1996-97, I was in charge of a community-based environmental improvement project of the West Bengal govt in slum neighbourhoods of Howrah. Not surprisingly, it was emphasised by the slum communities that proper toilets were their most vital need. Through dialogue and interactions with the households, it became clear that they were willing do as much as they could for the toilets.

The technical solution, under the circumstances, was a twin-pit latrine. This meant knocking down the existing toilet structure, cleaning up the spot, constructing two large, deep brick pits and erecting a multi-seat toilet shed block over the pits. The inert soil generated in turn in the non-used pits would be removed by the dwellers and used or sold as manure. As the plot was very congested, space had to be created to accommodate the two large pits (needed because of the large number of users). Some structures would have to be knocked down or shifted.

The construction cost of such a toilet was about Rupees 22,000 per unit (in 1997), while the govt subsidy was about Rupees 5,000. The slum landlords were persuaded to pay Rupees 5,000. Ten demonstration units were constructed, with the local people’s assistance and involvement. We had found and demonstrated the solution to an apparently insoluble but serious problem. I felt like a scientist who has made an earth-shattering new discovery, expanding the frontiers of knowledge and transforming human life.

In August 1997, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of India’s independence, I felt that the best way to commemorate the occasion and to pay homage to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, was to work to eliminate service latrines from the slums of Howrah. So a service latrine elimination programme was developed. Surveys were conducted in slum pockets of Howrah. The cost factor was explained. With the necessary cost likely to be about Rupees 25,000, and Rupees 5,000 coming from the govt. subsidy and another Rupees 5,000 from the landlord, the remaining Rupees 15,000 would have to be contributed by the user households, who were willing to do so. A leading housing finance company was persuaded to extend credit, which the households would repay. The metropolitan development authority agreed to approve the scheme and provide the govt subsidy in advance.

The scheme was detailed and submitted to the Howrah Municipal Corporation. One municipal ward was to be taken up for complete elimination of service latrines in slums. And that would enable an appropriate city-wide scaling-up subsequently.

But nothing happened. Despite repeated efforts, over many months, and letters and meetings with officials – the service latrine elimination programme was a non-starter.

Much later, it became clear that this had been simply sabotaged by people within the Corporation. There was a happy and neat arrangement between officials and contractors, to appropriate the subsidy. A bogus toilet would be built – which would be non-functional immediately after. The subsidy was then approved, released and pocketed. Our programme would have interfered with this happy arrangement. Hence it was simply killed.

I tried hard to make a difference, but failed completely, whether because of my own incapability or the sheer enormity and deep-rootedness of the problem, or serious systemic failures and widespread apathy – I don’t know. I got completely burnt out in the process. But the effort continues in small ways, and surely big things take their own time to be cooked. A lot has been learned, a huge amount of rich experience has been gained.

(3)

Muslims constitute just over a fifth of the population of Calcutta city. Over three fourths of the city’s Muslim population may be living in slum neighbourhoods.

Given that bastis are spread all over the city (rather than in a separate shanty-town), the basti lands are very valuable. With the existence of a large demand for housing among the lower-income groups and middle class, the blighted bastis represent a site for considerable profiteering through building construction, and thus attract ‘money power’ and ‘muscle power’, the whole operation being supervised by the ruling party. The tenant dwellers are the most disempowered section within this environment.

With the supply-demand gap in housing, and especially among Muslims, the large tracts of basti land have become caught up in illegal real estate projects. These have also meant a considerable increase in the strain on the already overstretched slum and city services. Large Muslim bastis in different parts of Calcutta have become the centre of large-scale illegal construction.

The tenant basti dwellers are today in a situation of great insecurity as the housing scarcity and real estate forces work to push out the poor and low income – either to fringe areas, or to unrecognised dwelling.

Given the already severely degraded conditions in the bastis, such illegal construction further complicates the possibility of improvements, or of planned basti development.

Basti land is the only potential source to meet the social and environmental justice deficit in Calcutta. Thus basti development, that is led by an empowered community-based institution is the objective that has to be worked towards. But a revolution in institutional arrangements is needed to take this up. The people on top, who could drive such a venture – are oblivious to such concerns; and there does not exist any other force in this city which cares, or is capable of doing anything unless it is for its own narrow interests.

Today, bastis in Calcutta do not offer any hope of such dweller-led development, to realise dweller-owned housing. The present trend of illegal constructions in slums puts paid to such thinking. Basti dwellers are not organised as a class, and in the bastis it is the thika tenants, promoters and their allies (often political party activists) who are more powerful. The very possibility of social and environmental justice in Calcutta is being foreclosed by the lengthening shadow of illegal buildings.

Without any exaggeration one can say that small children are being murdered by the apathy of the authorities and privileged citizens – because they succumb to diseases whose fundamental cause is the severe environmental degradation caused by illegal constructions.

There is a conspiracy of silence surrounding this, even as it takes place blatantly, flagrantly. And the most shameful part is that city life goes on, oblivious to this murderous reality… And sadly, the Govt of India’s urban renewal mission has become a means for slumdwellers’ land to be handed over to private developers to profit from, and what’s more, get govt subsidy to do so.

Environmental improvement and poverty reduction in metropolitan Calcutta can succeed only by building capable leadership for community development at the grassroots. And this is what Howrah Pilot Project has been doing.

[To be continued...]

—————-

V Ramaswamy is a Calcutta-based business executive, social planner, grassroots organiser, teacher and writer. Address for correspondence: hpp@vsnl.com.

Posted in Human Rights, Poverty, Religion, Spotlight Series | 3 Comments »

Is bad governance in our Constitution?

Monday, March 10th, 2008

[ This is Essay # 25 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

Is bad governance in our Constitution?

———

Shruti Rajagopalan

I enjoy following politics and, even more so, observing politicians. Watching the frontrunners through the debates for the primaries and general mud slinging in the US Presidential Elections or the Cypriots pick a leader from the Communist Party is interesting at the very least, if not entertaining. Far less entertaining is watching the Thackeray tactics of building a following through regionalism. And witnessing Modi win for the third time is, of course, an absolutely distasteful experience.

In India I have heard too many speeches, fewer debates and virtually no distinction in the politics between parties and candidates. The promises are almost always the same, usually focusing on a particular region, caste or community or invoking the names of the same dead people.

Another worrying trend is that demands for good governance are rarely on the forefront of these elections. Governance, among security, law and order, college admission, promises to farmers, and other things is in the long list, but rarely the moot issue. Which brings me to the question – if not governance, which should be the main function of candidates, what is the moot issue during Indian elections? Here I will take liberty to generalize, but often elections are won by (a) appealing to a particular religion, caste, community, region by making specific promises; (b) identity politics through the illustrious family name, (c) by identifying with a small group (large enough to make one win) and, if one is lucky, a combination of the above married with an anti-incumbency wave.

Now I don’t mean to berate our politics and say it is less developed than US or Cyprus, quite the contrary. But it makes me wonder, that despite being the vibrant democracy that we are, why do we not demand good governance?

Since I am a lawyer, I look at the constitution to find answers to these questions. So, is bad governance in our Constitution? It might as well be. There are constitutional provisions which are the reason for the regional and caste based politics in our country. What is worse is they are clubbed under the equality clause!

The story, like most stories with bad endings, begins with a constitutional amendment. Article 14 guarantees equal protection and Article 15 specifically prohibits discrimination based on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. Nehru, who wanted to uplift the backward classes in his first term, was prevented from making “socially beneficial legislation” because of such a ‘narrow’ equality clause. So Nehru did what he usually did when the judiciary got in the way. He amended the constitution. In the First Amendment Act, 1951 he added a fourth clause to Article 15 that permitted the State to make special provisions for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes and Schedule Castes and Tribes. While this sounds wonderful on paper, much like most of Nehru’s development agenda, it has a huge consequence on how elections are fought in this country.

To begin with, God did not declare who are “scheduled” to be in the SC/ST list or determine the cut off for “socially, economically, culturally or educationally” backward. It is a creation of man. Usually a man who is sitting in the legislature or is hoping to get there soon.

Imagine a class in primary school where the rule is that the students sit according to their height. The short ones in front and the tall ones behind. This implies the short ones never get to have much fun in class, since they are sitting right under the teachers’ nose. Students elect the class leader among students, usually a popularity vote, and one of the duties of the class leader is seating arrangement. The other duties such as keeping the board clean and ensuring supply of chalk are fairly irrelevant to the current situation. If there are 2 candidates; short and tall (since this is as good a random sample as any) standing for the post of class leader, what might happen?

If the short candidate is also a smart kid (and why shouldn’t he be?) he will promise the short people who like to have fun that he will seat them at the back. There is some immediate support for his cause, though he doesn’t have the numbers to back it. The tall students have no such agenda because they already sit at the back in the current regime. And the short student manages the numbers to win. If there had been more than 2 candidates in this class leader election, he would have the numbers to back him, since the percentage required to win gets smaller. Of course, if there is no election and the teacher picks the candidate, then the one who is picked is usually the geekiest, insufferable know-it-all student who sucks up to the teacher and couldn’t be bothered with class seating. This would be the primary school equivalent of a totalitarian regime.

This is precisely what happens in elections in India. The community is divided into narrow groups that are as easily distinguishable as tall and short people. The constitution encourages such divisions for the purpose of “targeted” beneficial legislation. It becomes easy to round up people from one caste or region, find a leader who supports that caste and promises them seats. Not seats in the front or the back of the class. But in engineering and medical colleges and job appointments in the government. The groups, that feel they have been persecuted historically, engage in this dialogue. This is the political equivalent of economic rent seeking.

How do the numbers work? Let me give you a real example not involving primary schools, since real elections never do involve primary schools. In the 2004 Parliamentary Elections, Uttar Pradesh had voter turnout of only 48% – one of the lowest in the country. Of the 80 seats in UP, 65 seats had over 10 candidates per constituency with some constituencies having up to 32 candidates. In the Mohanlalganj constituency where there were 10 contestants, the winner won by a margin of 0.004%. The winner won only 25.8% of the votes implying three quarters of the electorate was not in favor of the winning candidate. His policies will reflect the choices of only a fourth of the electorate. All you need to unseat the incumbent is 25% in this case and even lesser in other cases where fractionism is even greater in the constituency. This is also known as the First-Past-the-Post system of elections.

This is precisely what we see in Indian politics. The candidates do their homework on the demographics of their constituency. They round up the backward communities and minorities (and minorities can be the majority vote bank in the First-Past-the-Post system) and make their particular cause the election agenda.

Bijli-sadak-paani is reduced to rhetoric, behind which the important agenda of social advancement and seats in engineering colleges and job appointments is cleverly hidden. Of late, they are not even cleverly hidden. It is all out in the open. Clear appeals are made to voters on the basis of religion, caste, race, and as in the Thackeray case, place of birth and residence.

So, am I seriously suggesting that the constitutional provision for social advancement of the backward communities is a bad idea and must be done away with? Absolutely not! That is the subject of another piece, perhaps even a book.

Am I saying that such populist and caste based politics is an unintended consequence of this constitutional provision? Again the answer is no; it is not an unintended consequence. The legislators intended precisely this when they supported the constitutional amendment and passed such beneficial legislations. The ‘educationally backward’ figured this out and the rest of us are just deluding ourselves with the equality and development agenda.

All I am saying is that we must stop expecting good governance. There is no point. The numbers will not allow it, nor will the people. The special interest groups are way ahead in this game. Unless we prohibit legislation which violates equality and benefits a certain class of people (which would have to be done constitutionally since legislators are going to show no such restraint); policies and governance will never be at the forefront of political debate. But the unintended consequence downside will be that political news on television will be far less entertaining!

—————-

Shruti Rajagopalan is an Erasmus Mundus Scholar currently pursuing her Masters in Law and Economics in Europe.

Posted in Government, India, Politics, Spotlight Series | 7 Comments »

On Indian Education

Friday, March 7th, 2008

[ This is Essay # 24 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

On Indian Education

————-

Atanu Dey

These are some commonly agreed upon facts related to education. First, it is an investment and the benefits arise much after the costs have been paid. It therefore requires foresight and will, and also disposable resources. Second, it is a process which takes time. The time taken can be somewhat shortened if sufficient resources are available but it cannot be arbitrarily speeded up. Third, the level of education determines the future capacity to produce and be productive. Fourth, an appropriate education provides more benefits than it costs. Fifth, in our contemporary world of dynamism and rapid change, education is indispensable.

Those facts and many others like them hold both at the individual level and the collective level. An economy cannot prosper without an educated population in just the same way that an uneducated person cannot. One good predictor of the success of an economy – which generally means that it is able to meet the requirements of its population in terms of producing goods and services – is the level of education. By that measure, India’s historical and contemporary poor economic performance is understandable given that its educational system is extremely poor.

Why India has a flawed education system can be explained at least in part by recognizing that it was an instrument created by and for the benefit of its colonial rulers. By restricting education to only a select minority, they were able to control the economy more effectively. The colonial objective was to exploit the economy for extractive purposes and it was never development oriented, as is natural for a colonial government. But even after political independence, the objective of the government did not change. The institutions and processes established by the British served the narrow interests of the post-colonial rulers just fine and so the education system continued to be controlled by the state. It remains so today and unsurprisingly the system is dysfunctional at its core.

Universal primary education is guaranteed by the constitution of India but the system fails to deliver. The literacy rate is around 60 percent. India has the largest number of illiterates, around 400 million, in the world. That is, India has more illiterates than the combined population of the US and Mexico. Secondary school enrollment is around 25 percent and higher education only 8 percent of the relevant population. Furthermore, tertiary education is poor as only about one of four college graduates is employable.

Very few receive any vocational education. China has 500,000 vocational schools which train 60 million a year; India has only 12,000 vocational schools and graduates only 3 million students.

Hundreds of thousands of Indian students study abroad at an annual estimated cost of around US$ 1 billion. There are very few foreign students in India. India has around 27,000 foreign students. Compare that to tiny Singapore (population 5 million) which has 100,000 and Australia (population 22 million) which has 400,000 foreign students.

The public expenditure by the center and state governments is of the order of Rs 100,000 crores which is around 3.5 percent of GDP. What explains the dismal failure of the education system? One possible explanation is the license permit quota control raj.

Briefly, the government bureaucracy has a monopolistic hold on the Indian educational system. Monopolies maximize profits by restricting quantities so that the prices people are forced to pay are much higher than the costs. The established rules and regulations do not allow the supply of educational services (through schools and colleges) to expand to meet the demand. The excess profits are siphoned off by the politically connected. The presence of these excess profits acts as a powerful deterrent against the liberalization of the education system.

Aside from the profit motive, there is another very powerful reason why the supply is kept limited. Where there are shortages, political fortunes can be made by rationing out the limited supply to groups in exchange for their patronage. This is what reservations based on caste and religious lines achieve.

The general solution to much of India’s educational problem is to liberalize the sector so that the market is free to adjust its supply to meet the demand. The government must be fully out of the education business; its role must be restricted to regulating the sector. As in all other markets, the educational market will also have its share of market failures. Correcting for these market failures will be the job of the regulator. The regulator must be independent of the government.

The foreseeable market failures can be dealt with simply and cheaply. First consider primary education. Very poor people cannot afford to pay market prices for primary education. They need financial support. This can be delivered via vouchers that allow them to choose among various supplier of primary education. Once universal primary education has been ensured, the same method can be used for secondary education. And as for tertiary education, it should be entirely merit based. That is, if everyone has had an equal opportunity to be educated to the secondary level, they can compete for entry into tertiary education.

Tertiary education should be priced at full cost. Those who are eligible for tertiary education but are credit constrained, the role of the government would be to create the credit market for such students to be able to borrow what is required. This not only helps those who need the help but also does not subsidize those who can afford to pay. In the current system, the rich benefit more. They are able to afford a good education up to the secondary level and then are able to compete for the limited seats in tertiary education and often are the only ones who enjoy the subsidies in tertiary education.

When a way of doing something for decades does not work, it is reasonable to consider alternatives. The market and for profit entities have been barred from participating in the education sector. This needs to change. We do know that markets deliver a wide range of goods and services quite efficiently. There is no reason to believe that education as a service cannot be as effectively and efficiently delivered by the market. And where there are obvious market failures, the solutions are well known and can be implemented without difficulty. It is time for a different way of approaching the problem.

Posted in Education, Spotlight Series | 13 Comments »

Ready to buy the new Tata Nano?

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

[ This is Essay # 23 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

Ready to buy the new Tata Nano?

————-

Sharique Ahmed

Tata Nano is, without even a shadow of doubt, the most eagerly awaited car in India. The attention it drew in the recently concluded Auto Expo 2008, was tremendous by any standard. I reached Pragati Maidan last Saturday to catch a glimpse of the ‘talk of the town’, but seeing the mad rush at the venue, I headed over to Nehru place to see the 1 lac laptop, the MacBook Pro.

Tata Nano is the cheapest car ever built. But is this really the ‘People’s car’?

Interestingly the cost of production of Nano comes to 1.2 lacs which is 20,000 more than the ex-showroom price of lowest version of Nano. But to keep the promise of Ratan Tata, Tata Motors is planning to sell first 1000 Nanos at loss. The actual price might be somewhere between 1.3-1.5 lacs when the car finally settles down in the market. With this price tag, second hand Maruti 800 and Omni might give it a tough fight.

But the big question remains, would a scooter user shift to Nano?

My profession requires us to spend a lot of time in making theories and proving it wrong so as to justify our final conclusion. This question popped up in a discussion with my friend and we were eager to do some ‘brainstorming’. He was of the opinion that this car will be a huge success with Aam Aadmi because for him the safety of his family comes first. Nano is a car that runs on 4 wheels, something more than enough to guarantee more safety than a two wheeler. People who buy two wheelers for 30-40 k would love to invest a lac more to buy a safe mode of transportation. Petrol version might be costly but diesel version is coming soon. Safety is the key!

I had my own apprehensions:

Investing a lac more isn’t as easy as going to Taj for a dinner. EMI is a viable option which is definitely a plus for Nano.
Tata claims to have conducted the crash tests on Nano (Delhi’s blue line bus drivers might be eager to conduct their own tests once Nano hits road in August). The car has the spare tire in the front (the engine is at back) for better resistance to front collision. Safety seems to be acceptable as far as city limits are concerned but definitely not for highways. The height of tyres is a major concern even; this required the bumpers to be big for safety reasons.
What about petrol? A scooter gives a mileage of about 60 km per litre but Nano will give only 20. That means a threefold jump in the household expenditure on travel. So the car would not just increase the initial expenditure, the recurring too takes a leap. And I strongly believe that this would seriously undermine the success of Nano with lower middle class. The upper middle class can afford it but then they were already happy with Maruti 800s and Santros. Who is going to buy Nano? Definitely not a Aam Aadmi!
Status symbol is another attraction for buyers. But would a car made especially for Aam Aadmi, raise the status of the buyer to the ‘elite’ class? Even psychologically the car doesn’t seem to be a viable option.

I strongly believe that this car would still cater to the elite who previously had access to cars. They perhaps will add few more to their garage for city use by other family members. An Aam Aadmi who is really concerned about safety of his children/parents/wife might give it a go but long term usage might just be too costly for him.

This car is definitely a wonderful piece of engineering but just not perfect.

Tags: Automobile, Nano
Posted in Spotlight Series | 8 Comments »

Beyond the Open Road, Wandering and Wondering

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

[ This is Essay # 22 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

Beyond the Open Road, Wandering and Wondering

—————————

Anil P

Now when I look back I wonder if I’ve been lucky to not confront, even once, any introspective thought on the merits of travel. However, I’ve been asked just that by people. This is not to say that people question the merits of travel per se, actually it is the choice of my destinations they question, reflected no doubt in the contrast their own choice usually presents with those of mine.

Years ago, after a rewarding trip with a friend through Maharashtra and beyond, to Madhya Pradesh, I was asked on my return, “What on Earth made you plough ankle deep through muddy fields to go digging for fossils in the heart of a Gond tribal village?” I struggled to answer it. I would struggle even now. How does one explain the thrill of unearthing fossil after fossil, knowing full well that for millions of years life that lay trapped in sedimentation saw light that day. To hold a life form kept intact by fossilization is to peel away layers of time right back to the very start and see it the way life shaped it, and be the first one to do so.

To understand where we come from and of what or who preceded us will continue to shape our curiosity, occasionally nudging it sufficiently enough to spur travel, on the road and off it, in the mind, in effect fitting imagination with legs and letting it run free. Without either travel will be poorer for, in traveling to a destination it is imagination that often makes for the journey.

When time is measured in millions of years it adds a touch of the mystic to the mystery, and when the journey turns a shade philosophical, like it did for Jags and I when we unearthed an intact tree trunk that day, possibly spanning geological eras, its every sinew intact as time wore down ages, the moment acquired reverence, turning the experience a shade spiritual. It was the mystery of the unknown that excited our imagination that day for, it is in the gaps in knowledge or understanding that our imagination can play out, and when the possibilities are many, and the traveler can choose his pick, the journey acquires the personality of the traveler. I would find history less appealing if its documentation left little latitude for possibilities. A bit of the unknown adds mystery to the magic of travel.

In traveling to the Gond tribal village that day we passed their burial grounds, a series of circles, made with loose stones, marking them. A Pied Crested Cuckoo took off as we made a turn in the direction of the village where we met with the village headman. While curious villagers gathered outside the door we ate from wooden plates he offered us before making our way through slushy fields randomly strewn with colourful beads. I picked some up and wondered how they came to be here; women working fields? From how long back? The stone patterns from their burial grounds kept at me from the back of my mind; what might the circular patterns signify? Before leaving the Headman’s dwelling Jags was shown a Sandalwood tree by Tina’s father, while villagers gathered to watch Jags run his hand along the trunk. This was the first time he had seen a Sandalwood tree. The next day we learned that the word that went around the village spoke of ‘Sandalwood Smugglers’ from the city!

On our way back from the fossil dig we opened the plastic bags each time a curious tribal motioned us to show him the contents, and having sated their curiosity or maybe allayed their suspicions after seeing what were essentially a few ‘stones’ they would wave us through with a smile. Even as I walked, the thought of the long sessions that mapping the fossils would now take was far from my mind, instead occupying it were images of burial grounds (who were they?), the colourful beads (whom did they once belong to?), and the fossils (what creatures roamed the planet in the lifetimes of these fossilized remains?)

I was intrigued at finding fossilized remains of shells, and they were aplenty. Did a river once flow where we now squatted? Behind us, trees grew handsome, and tall. Could a river really have run through here once upon a time?

Impressions from the road are shaped as much from impressions gathered beforehand in anticipation of the journey as from impressions that play out to passing milestones. It is when something that you’ve not read about and are least expecting confronts you, compelling a change in visual perception, that imagination takes hold.

Driving through the plains to get to the Gond village there was little in the landscape to suggest that a river might have flowed there once, but there was ample indication to suggest just that, and I held ‘it’ in my hands. Water ‘obliterates’ physical features, unless they whip up the current like rocky outcrops do in fast flowing rivers descending from the mountains. There is a certain solidity to landscapes. It is partly due to physical features that mark them, unchanging, immune to time. That they must have lain at the bottom of a river once is hard to imagine, let alone contemplate.

The next day we headed to Ramtek where remains of two Buddhist Stupas were discovered when excavating a hillock at the ancient site of Mansar only a few months earlier. As we begun our ascent up the partially excavated hillock I paused every now and then to take in portions of the Stupa, running my eyes over remains of tools and pottery. Though their voices fell silent centuries ago, in the shards of pottery, scattered whispers sounded again. Freed from the embrace of earth, they would speak to a ready ear, but would their tongue make sense now? How might their spoken language sound to the ready ear? Would nuances usually peculiar to diverse tongues likewise characterize their language as well? I could only imagine. Were I to know for sure they might only make for academic interest. Not knowing made them come alive in my mind.

The remains were traced to the Mauryan and the Wakataka periods, reportedly dating back to ‘200 BC and 400 AD’ respectively. There is little that’ll ever be known of the people that lived there, even less of what must have engaged them as they went about their lives by the lake that drew into view to our right as we gained height. There was not a soul around, and as rows upon rows of exposed brick gave shape to contours that human endeavour once laboured to put up, I could only imagine the setting and the activity that must have accompanied it. Turning to face the lake, now bereft of life, my thoughts went quiet. Were they like me? What might they speak of if we were to somehow span the centuries that now separate us? It was here that Archaeologists stumbled upon tools dating back to the Stone Age, between 80,000 to 30,000 years ago.

From the hillock, the countryside, including the lake now cast in reflective light of an overcast sky, lay like an open palm, its lines of destiny having changed with time over the centuries. A few cows grazed in the grass in the distance even as rains threatened overhead, faint sounds of cow bells floating on the breeze to where I stood, looking out. Standing there it is difficult not to be affected by thoughts that meandered askance where excavated debris exposed traces of life centuries gone. Seeking ‘closure’ to the unknown even while reveling in the mystery, I wondered if some amongst them foresaw the end that would befall their memories, leaving behind their stories so that one day they might be discovered, and remembered.

Much as I seek to learn, understand and assimilate, sometimes I actually draw solace from not knowing, for it makes me wonder even as I wander.

The road from Nagpur, through Balaghat and beyond runs long, and for long stretches it runs straight, so when we slowed down behind a few other vehicles on coming upon a column of as yet undetermined features I put my head out the window as we inched ahead, only to draw my head back in in awe, half shouting, “Are you seeing this?” Jags sat riveted to the windshield.

Before us, stretching as far back as my eyes could see, and partly covered in haze at the far end, gypsies were on the move by their hundreds if not thousands. On carts laden with their worldly possessions and distinct from the others in their attire, the just born, the young, the middle-aged, and the old inched past in a colourful parade, made surreal by the ordinariness of the setting the landscape lent the caravan literally emerging out of thin air where haze erased the far end of the column. A scene one might have imagined of the pioneers setting off to make a home out of a land where no one had been before, or returned to tell the tale except that this was in the middle of the highway connecting Maharashtra to Madhya Pradesh. Where might they be headed ahead of the monsoons? What might have they left behind where they once lived? What would generations to come make out on stumbling upon their traces?

Day journeys reveal the joys of the open road. On the road the why of where you’re going reveals itself in small yet significant portions, like it once did years ago when we went trekking five days in the Nilgiris.

The Annamalai hills made for a permanent bearing on our treks. No amount of trekking seemed to bring them any closer, and it was in an open grassland, heavy with slush and where a herd of elephants had foraged not too long ago, leaving enough evidence behind, that the hills rising in the distance, glinting a deep brown in the mid-day sun, made me truly understand what it must mean to stand still and provide a permanent bearing to a passing fragrance of life, even if it smelled of elephant dung. Elsewhere, the grave marking the site where Hugo Wood, a British Officer and a Teak Planter born in 1870, and largely credited with saving the Annamalai forests in his capacity as an officer in the Indian Forest Service in early 1900s, lay buried in solitude, and acquired the same permanence of the hills that ringed it, not far from where he lived, and died, becoming one with the land he cherished, protected, and nurtured.

His home lay empty on a rise up the short incline from his resting place, fronted by a gentle drop covered by a dense tangle of trees. It was surprisingly well painted for a house that lay abandoned in the jungle. I walked from room to room, gently turning doors that creaked as they swung free on infrequently used hinges, as if protesting our intrusion into their world. I had no face to go with the form of Hugo Wood as I imagined him doing the same. We were told that the house was used recently in a local film; that explained its relative freshness in the December of that year. It is a unique experience to come across an empty dwelling in a jungle, even if not as elaborate as Hugo Wood’s. But stepping through the outer threshold of this neat, almost majestic dwelling (the wild lends majesty to all that it embraces), with doors swinging freely on creaking hinges, made the experience mysterious in as much as it provoked thought.

I felt that if I put my ears to the walls and listened long and hard enough they might whisper of days long gone by, maybe I might even hear voices that lived and died here. Looking up, I wondered what shadows must have played on the walls and the ceilings in the nights the tigers roared their presence in the vicinity, maybe stepping in the veranda for a sniff and a stroll. What sort of a life might its inhabitants have lived in in so isolated a place? Did it make of them quiet folks, given to prolonged silences that echoed the melodies of their hearts? And what melodies might these have been? I wondered what might Hugo Wood have been like? He was a Teak Planter alright, and a forest officer dedicated to preserving the Nilgiris, but living in the wondrous setting of the Annamalai hills, what changes must nature at her bountiful best wrought in his soul, and who were the people whose lives he touched? Did those who served him love him as a master? Did he read books and gaze at the faraway hills in the distance? Did he love the land he had made his home, far away from the shores his ancestors had left to seek their fortunes in India? Or was he a lone ranger coming ashore to a land none of his ancestors had ever set foot on? If so, what must have drawn him to this patch of Southern India? Was he fleeing his demons, finding succor in the heart of the Nilgiris? I could only look around and wonder, and imagine. In its silence the jungle hides many noises, and in its noises it hides its silences.

We were told that sightings of a mother bear with cubs had been made in the house a few days ago. To the back of the house lay low squares with missing ceilings, in an unbroken stillness of the moment when the last of Hugo Wood’s servants had ceased to live there. Silence has its abode in myriad settings; not necessarily in the permanence of a visible landmark or in the remembered memory of a moment lost to time.

Now when I remember of swinging the door free on its hinges as we left the forest dwelling, down the trail where it joined a path that disappeared round the bend in the bush, I’m reminded of Lewis Caroll who once said: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”

And what a journey not knowing would make for, indeed.

Posted in Spotlight Series, Travel | 1 Comment »

Reality Shows

Friday, February 29th, 2008

[ This is Essay # 21 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

Reality Shows

————-

Pradip Somasundaran

People have started referring to me as the first reality show winner since the success of reality shows here in Kerala. Well in a way that’s true as there was more reality to the program that I won in 1996 than the manipulated reality that’s being shown nowadays! Though I am not against reality shows in general, I am really concerned about the message they have been putting across to the younger generation. It’s all about money power and SMS power now. The most dangerous aspect of these music reality shows is that they tend to give a wrong notion of music to the younger generation who are led to the belief that this is the way music has to be presented and this is music, which is seldom true. Real mastery in music takes years of perseverance and hard work to achieve and there is never a short cut to success. Music should always aim the ears and the hearts of the listener. When it is combined with dance and acting, it becomes a mockery of pure music and insult to those who have set high standards in this divine art form.

The judges in these shows are mostly ornamental. Even though they pass on their views, it’s the total count of SMS’s that finally matters. Many a times we find very weak contestants going up to the final phases of such competitions. The results are engineered as many of them even though musically ignorant of even the basics of pitching need to be kept in the fray for obvious commercial reasons by the T.V Channels. Some also reach peak levels of stardom in a few weeks and finally when are out of the competition, their fall to oblivion is catastrophic! The mass has a weak memory. They carry you to dizzy heights and then drop you when another reality show hero emerges. If singers were to go by the temporary reaction of the masses he or she would be doomed in the longer run. Though I have not forayed into the commercial playback arena in a large scale for my own personal reasons, I have managed to survive the test of time even after 12 long years of my euphoric win along with “Sunidhi Chauhan” in 1996. Today, Sunidhi is the most sought after playback singer in India!

Those days, singing was considered supreme and stage histrionics were not used to fool the audience into rhapsody. Today, singers hide their weakness behind dancing and acting. On the stage they could do a few numbers but can they sing 20 odd songs in a stretch as our greats did? I have always wondered at the purity of music and the dedication that our legends like Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Lataji, Yesudas, S.P.B, S. Janaki, Chitra…etc. had. Some of them were natural entertainers like the great Kishore Kumar. He was not “trained” to act or sing. Whatever he did was being his natural self. Hariharan or Shanker Mahadevan or Sunidhi Chauhan are not “trained” to do what they do on stage. Yet they captivate the audience with their electrifying presence on stage. Yes, reality shows do help the younger generation to get noticed fast and get a platform to show their talents. I also admire the immense talent some of these singers display! It also boosts their confidence by leaps and bounds but sometimes makes them believe too much in themselves and they find it hard to survive when the real test begins. Finally I would say that only the fittest and the talented would survive the real test of time. You could get fame and money for a short span, but then talent and hard work reigns supreme and that’s the only merit that would get you going in the longer run.

————————————

Pradip Somasundaran is the winner of Lata Mangeshkar award for the best male singer in India, chosen through the first musical reality show Meri Awaz Suno broadcasted in Doordarshan in 1996. He has also sung for Malayalam films and is a music blogger.

Posted in Music, Spotlight Series | 2 Comments »

The Growth ‘Miracle’

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

[ This is Essay # 20 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

The Growth ‘Miracle’

——————-

Shromon Das

‘Growth’ is an issue that gains importance in almost any context; firms worrying about business growth, teenagers worrying about how tall they can grow, and of course, economists worrying about economic growth. One of the most fascinating case studies on economic growth happens to be the East Asian Miracle. What is the East Asian miracle all about? After the Second World War, many East Asian nations embarked on a massive and well thought out industrialization and economic development program.

Over the period 1965 to 1990, these nations experienced growth rates much higher than any other region in the world. These economies included Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, among others. Not only did these nations experience rapid rates of GDP growth, but also significant development as far as standard of living and general human welfare are concerned. Because the rate of growth and development was so rapid, it has often been termed as a miracle.

Economists have spent considerable amount of effort in analyzing the fundamentals beneath the East Asian growth story. Of course, we all know hind-sight is 20/20, and it’s easy to critically evaluate something that has already occurred in the past. But the idea is to learn something out of it, and apply the learnings to similar events that may occur in future.

A very popular and intuitively-appealing growth model is the Harrod-Domar model, on which the Marshal Plan was approved. A version of it has been shown below.

G = I / ICOR

Where G = growth rate, I = investment rate, and ICOR = incremental capital output ratio.

Basically, the model argues that growth can occur by two broad means, by increasing investment, or decreasing the ICOR.

We are well aware of what is meant by investment, denoted by ‘I’. It includes investments of all kinds, on roads, airports, docks, schools, educational institutions, etc. ICOR is basically the amount of capital required to generate one unit of output. In simpler words, it’s a measure of efficiency in the economy. Naturally, a lower ICOR would be desirable to a higher one. And how can we attain a lower ICOR in the economy? Simple…technology! The more technologically efficient you are, the lesser the amount of capital you need to churn out a unit of output, which is in turn measured by a lower ICOR.

So what can we take away from this model? First and foremost, that the East Asian miracle wasn’t a miracle at all! These nations basically put to practice a slightly modified version of the above mentioned model. The governments of these nations put emphasis on investment, both in physical and social terms. Social investment in turn made the work-force more efficient. The governments also took many other steps to bring in more efficient labor in the workforce, such as encouraging women to take up jobs in the industrial and services sector.

Now, the above model does not work in isolation. Take a look at Africa. Millions and millions of aid money flows in every year. In spite of that, have they progressed? They haven’t! The reason is that savings and investment are only sufficient conditions for economic growth. An economy needs a stable and efficient infrastructure, on which further economic growth and development can take place. What do we mean by such infrastructure? Everything from roads, legal system, political system, banking and financial system, education system, and so on.

What then is the second lesson we can learn? That growth does not arise out of miracles. Take a look at china. They save close to 40% of their GDP, and invest a similar amount too. No wonder it has been growing at phenomenal rates over the past few years! And mind you, Chinese goods are not all about mass production in workshops. A recent study by the IMF shows how Chinese exports have been shifting towards high-skill and technology-intensive goods, though China’s foray into service exports is still restricted.

What I’m trying to convey is that economic growth is no rocket-science! Take a look at the above figures for the nature of Chinese exports, and you will see that basically the ICOR in China has been decreasing, a factor that plays an important role in determining the growth rate.

As I had said earlier, hindsight is 20/20. Today, a few decades down the line, we are able to appreciate what the East Asian miracle was all about. We know how exactly they brought about such a phenomenal change in their economies and in the lives of the people. We know china has managed to attain such high growth rates for decades by carefully planning out its investment policy, while at the same time keeping an eye on technological development as well.

What can India learn from these case studies? Not that our economy has not been growing, but the pace of growth has been highly erratic and subject to political whims. But a look at the brighter side tells us that there still is tremendous scope for growth. By conceptualizing growth as a function of investment and ICOR, it’s easy to spot the weak areas in our economy. Are we investing enough? Not really! Are we doing enough to make our economy more productive?

I guess we have been trying to do so for a long time, but unfortunately the skilled and productive labour we have in our country would rather provide their services to the West than us! But in spite of these short comings, one cannot really dispute the fact that our country has come a long way since the days of Nehruvian Socialism, though political processes and mindsets are sticky, and tend to change very gradually over a period of time. But the future’s bright, and fundamentally our economy seems to be on the right track, and I believe we can churn more out of our existing resources and fundamentals by getting to strengthen our political will.

Posted in Development, India, Spotlight Series | No Comments »

A Valentine to the City

Monday, February 25th, 2008

[ This is Essay # 19 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

A Valentine to the City

————————

Sharanya Manivannan

Sometimes, I hate this city. I don’t deny that. There is so much to hate here. It is merciless. A crude, cruel, unforgiving bitch of a city. The meanness of its people. Sycophancy, moral (dis)order, parochialism pimped out to the tune of “heritage”. Sanctimony. There is the deliberate Anglophilia and its darker – in colour, too – twin, self-loathing. I abhor its hypocrisy, its incestuous orbits, the claustrophobia it induces. How it is its women who are the torchbearers of its patriarchies. The oddness of an illogical concept like caste running this whole machine. I cannot stand its Edenizing of the tremendously racist nation of Malaysia, its unexceptional immigrant dreams; nor can I stand the chest-thumping that trivializes the very real defects of our own. The weather. Hell on earth is Madras in May. Even the rains cannot soften this city.

Sometimes, I hate this city. I do.

And sometimes I take an auto through a road strewn with rose petals, a funeral wake having passed through minutes before. I breathe in that macabre glory. Sometimes I carry my little camera along with a group of mostly large men with large cameras, men who know this city, who can speak of its architecture and its history, who can point to a place one might have seen a thousand times and illuminate it, suddenly. I fall in love this way. Like Rushdie’s man who viewed his bride in pieces, through a perforated sheet, so too I fall for my city, mutilate it, make it mine.

“Istanbul’s fate is my fate,” wrote Orhan Pamuk in his definitive book on the city of his soul. “I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.”

And in its distance, the irrevocability of never having grown up here, and then the inevitability of having had to return nonetheless, it wields the same influence over me.

And so this is my secret. I have been speaking to this city, in my head. I call it, typically perhaps, her. I make this city mine just as she unmakes and reassembles me. The dialogue between us is one of cause and consequence. Will you hurt me this time? I ask. What if I never told anyone when I hate you? What if I never let myself speak about leaving? What if I act like I never will, I say sometimes, and that is the most poignant of questions – because sometimes, I think I never will.

So here I am. And here I am. And here I may always be. And even if I leave, to here I will return and return and return, each time in a different sentiment. I will return with rancour. I will return with regret. I will return without routes in mind. Uprooted. Belligerently. In cavalier attitudes, have holidays I will barely remember later. Bouyant and broken and beyond description. I will return, and return, and return.

She has never known the smell of jasmines, doesn’t give a damn about henna on the hands or the hair. She is nothing like who she thinks she is. She stands at the bottoms of hoardings and stares up at misrepresentations of her face, her cleavage, the look in her eyes. And not one passerby recognizes her. She’s slutty: she belongs to millions, and like all of them, I like to think she comes home to me. Still, nothing makes her melt more than S.P. Balasubramaniam’s voice in a flick from the ’80s, nothing breaks her heart quite so sweetly like being called Kannamma. In arguments, and only then, she mixes her V’s and her W’s. She may suggest otherwise in certain company, but cannot speak a word of Hindi. Not a word.

Petulant as a child on a summer holiday trying to sleep in the backseat of a 1994 Maruti 800, neither her hands nor her eyelids able to shield her from the sunlight. Powerful as an MGR speech - Thaimakale! En rathathin rathame! Kitschy and tasteless as a political poster, and just as tactful as a man pissing against it. Coy. Cunning. Deceptively simple.

Living here has turned me from being spiritual to a blasé agnostic. Trees that inspire awe and humility are rare – but one of the better things I did the week before last was to walk the entire stretch of the rather long road on which I live and found, to my surprise, some decent ones. The Marina looms fifteen minutes from home, but too many paces from the call of the soul; even disappearing into the coast in this city by the sea is perhaps too obvious an escape to be worth it. I could stand on the terrace of my family’s apartment, toss pieces of coloured paper into the air, and have each one land on a church, a mosque, but mostly some small roadside shrine. It doesn’t matter. I find myself worshipping nothing but the City. My awful and wonderful god. Dictator of my future, arbitrator of my past.

You don’t inspire me anymore, I tell her. You’re just another city, like the hundreds out there. You’re just another place on the map. You don’t even smell like you used to.

Silence. The persistence of horns. The particular sound of the engines of autorickshaws. Someone whispering nasties to a girl who pretends not to hear as she walks by, someone else uncurdling phlegm from her throat and spitting.

So – what then? I demand. You think you own me?

And that’s when she gathers her skirts – yes, in the plural, she is mad and dramatic and imperious that way – and flees to a more considerate lover. Cruel mistress of mine.

And I am left still sitting here, penning paeans, shooting pictures. Smitten. Sodden. Gone.

——————————-

Sharanya Manivannan was born in India in 1985, grew up in other places, and currently lives in Chennai. Her book of poems, “Witchcraft” will be published later this year. More about her, including a blog and an events schedule, can be found at http://sharanyamanivannan.wordpress.com

Posted in Spotlight Series | 1 Comment »

Rural Poor- Human Rights, Inhuman State?

Friday, February 22nd, 2008

[ This is Essay # 18 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

Rural Poor- Human Rights, Inhuman State?
Theory and Practice in a Liberal Democracy

———————————

Rahul Banerjee

Over the past two years or so the normally un-newsworthy rural poor in India have time and again made the headlines with their vehement opposition to the forced acquisition of their lands by the state at prices much lower than their market value. The role of state has thus been seen as favouring the industrialists at the expense of the rural poor.

This has brought the spotlight to bear on the role of the state in a framework that is both liberal democratic and capitalist. Classical Marxist theory has asserted that the state in a capitalist society is a handmaiden of the ruling classes and the democracy that is practiced is a sham.

Liberal democrats, however, have demurred and asserted that while the liberal democratic state has the monopoly of the use of force to subordinate the individual to the common good nevertheless it is possible to ensure that the state’s use of force is curtailed through the rule of law.

The first person to grapple with this problem of legitimising the liberal democratic state was the English political philosopher John Locke. He showed how a regulatory state would necessarily develop from an anarchistic “state of nature” situation given the need for ensuring individual freedom of all citizens.

Many philosophers have followed this up and enhanced this line of argument. The most cogent exposition about how a state is bound to evolve so as to maintain the maximum amount of freedom is the one put forward by the American libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick. In perhaps the most seminal libertarian text of all times- “Anarchy, State and Utopia”, he argues that the liberal democratic state is there to ensure freedom for all its citizens. It has to intervene if this freedom is jeopardised and if necessary use force against the “culprits”.

This use of force by the state is, however, governed by laws that the state cannot bypass by unleashing its armed forces or police on its citizens if they decide to protest against what they perceive to be an infringement of their rights or the implementation of an unjust law.

A case in point in India is the colonial Land Acquisition Act 1894 which is brought into play to displace people from their lands for a project that is purportedly in “public interest”. Every citizen has the right to a due process of law and should under a truly liberal democratic dispensation be able to challenge whether a project is really in “public interest” or not.

This understanding forms the basis of human rights activists’ criticism of the state for stepping in on behalf of the industrialists to acquire land for a song from poor rural people.

It is a tribute to the wisdom of even illiterate people that they have learnt the basics of the rule of law the hard way in the course of repeated displacements as well as their participation in the formal democratic processes. They rightly feel that in reality some people in this ostensibly democratic dispensation are more equal than others.

They feel that the state- contrary to the role ordained by the constitution- is illegally upholding this inequality and violating the rule of law.

Apart from ensuring freedom and equality among citizens, another important function of the liberal democratic state is to uphold justice for all its citizens.

Here too there has been a lot of debate regarding the definition of justice and once again the most powerful exposition of justice to date is by another American philosopher John Rawls in his seminal book called “A Theory of Justice”. According to him, justice within a liberal democratic state envisages that social and economic inequalities are so arranged that they are both to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and attached to offices and positions of governance open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

This implies that the state should so operate that its most disadvantaged citizens, in this case the rural poor of this country, are benefited by its actions.

Can we say that this is true of the actions of the independent Indian state to date?

If anything the rural poor in this country have not only not benefited from the actions of the Indian state but on the contrary have continuously been sacrificed to the illegality of these actions. Millions of people have been displaced through direct and indirect means since independence without rehabilitation and resettlement and this mountain of injustice has now begun breaking down on the state and those well heeled industrialists who have consistently used its monopoly over the use of force to subvert the rule of law.

What is of prime concern from the human rights point of view is that even the judiciary condones the illegal actions of the state as it has done in the Singur case by saying that the acquisition of land for the Tata car plant by the state government was legally valid.

Nevertheless, today the only line of hope that remains within the democratic setup for the establishment of the rule of law is still the judiciary. Even with all its deficiencies it does provide some relief sometimes.

One of the greatest judgments of the Supreme Court is undoubtedly the one delivered in the Samatha Case (Samatha vs State of Andhra Pradesh, 1997 8 SCC 191) against the granting of mining leases by the Andhra Pradesh government to a private non-Adivasi company in an area that had been notified as a scheduled tribal area under the provisions of the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution.

The state contended that the provisions of the Fifth Schedule regarding the non-transfer of adivasi land or government land in a scheduled tribal area to non-adivasis is not binding because the operative word in the constitution is that the governor of a state “may” advise the government to enact such affirmative laws for the adivasis but it was not mandatory for the state to do so or having done so not to repeal them.

In a fascinating majority judgment quoting extensively legal luminaries from across the world and from the debates in the constituent assembly the supreme court laid down that even though the operative word is “may” the intention of the framers of the constitution was that it should be “shall” and that the provisions are binding on the state to protect
the adivasis’ entitlements!

We need more such judgments to further deepen liberal democratic principles in the country as more and more protests gather strength- as indeed they must- against illegal laws of colonial vintage and the violation of the rule of law by the state in favour of industrialists.

Posted in Adivasi, Human Rights, India, Spotlight Series | 7 Comments »

India and the Politics of Climate Change Negotiations

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008

[ This is Essay # 17 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

India and the Politics of Climate Change Negotiations

—————————————————–

Dweep

The Bali Conference on climate change concluded last December much as had been expected – with no real agreement on a post-Kyoto framework. Throughout the discussions India maintained its principled stance of a “common but differentiated responsibility.” However, as pressure continues to mount on India and China to take action on the issue, the question of what strategy is best in emerging negotiations becomes particularly pressing. Should it engage the world, or remain aloof?

Discussions on this issue generally take either an ethical or an economic perspective, with very few considering the politics of climate change negotiations. Yet, that analysis is particularly important for India, because the costs of climate change are so high for it.

By some measures, India has the most to lose from climate change, which is unsurprising given its vast rural population, overwhelmingly dependent on natural weather patterns that can be easily disrupted by rising temperatures. Therefore, India should be at the forefront of efforts to establish a post-Kyoto treaty for collective action. Even as its involvement is sought, it should be encouraging developed economies to tackle climate change. Yet, it has resisted calls for binding emission cuts that would spur other countries to do likewise, and has not participated actively in current negotiations.

Such resistance can perhaps be explained by the fact that western policymakers have seldom acknowledged the vulnerability of the developing world. Nor have their policy proposals, including Kyoto, included substantive provisions for helping vulnerable countries adapt. In the absence of assistance on adaptation, India has little incentive to participate in global mitigation efforts. Instead, India’s approach reflects the advice of Nobel Prize winning economist Thomas Schelling that given their limited ability to adapt, “the best way for developing countries to mitigate global warming is through economic growth.”

We are presented, therefore, with a dilemma. In the long run, India would benefit from a collective response to global warming. But in the short term and with no current agreement on a post-Kyoto framework, a unilateral strategy of high emissions growth would be more beneficial. Both parties in this situation would benefit from cooperating, but cooperation is hindered both by trust and the asymmetrical cost of cooperation.

The Case for Engagement

There are compelling reasons for India to engage. Economically, anything India can do to encourage the developed world to reduce emissions is welcome. But a more compelling argument is political – by not participating in negotiations India risks the creation of a framework that does not reflect its concerns.

There are increasing signs that this will happen, particularly with American business lobbying for a “global framework” that reduces their uncertainty and prevents dilution of their competitive advantages. Not surprisingly, the American Congress has proposed legislation proposing to tax imports from countries that do not restrict carbon emissions. Earlier this year, the European Commission announced it too was considering import taxes for carbon-heavy imports, triggering the prospects of a future trade war with China and India.

There are some parallels from the incorporation in 1995, of the TRIPS agreement, into the World Trade Organization. Then, the US, Europe, Japan, and Canada (known then as “the Quad”) together decided to create a new international framework encompassing intellectual property. To do so, the Quad created the WTO and forced developing countries to accept all three agreements. Few developing country concerns were reflected therein – a bias that has not been adequately corrected since despite the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and the currently stalled “Doha development round”.

The lesson is simple – it is better to establish a favorable international policy, rather than try to change such a policy after the fact.

The Case for Disengagement

If the case for engagement is strong, the case for waiting for action by others is even stronger, though less obvious. Arguments for not participating in negotiations lie in the dynamics of bargaining power – and how participation in negotiations affects that power.

International negotiations result in agreement not because there is an economic or ethical case for it. Rather, agreements are based on quid pro quo. Countries that loose from the agreement sign on when they are appropriately compensated by those that gain.

So, who loses and who gains from climate change?

The economic models of Nordhaus & Boyer estimate the economic cost of global warming will be highest for India, Africa, and Europe. In comparison, Russia will gain a boost to its GDP, while the impact on America and China is likely to be relatively low. This explains why America has historically been resistant to Kyoto – because Kyoto did not compensate it sufficiently for the economic costs of carbon mitigation. It also explains Europe and Africa’s enthusiasm for a collective response.

Most importantly, it suggests it may be smart for India not to participate in negotiations right now. As a country that loses from climate change and benefits directly from a collective response to it, India’s case for compensation for its own mitigating action is weak. India’s bargaining power derives not from its ability for give-and-take, but rather from the world’s desire to include it in a future treaty. The moment India indicates a desire to participate in negotiations it weakens its own bargaining power.

A Middle Path: Free Riding on China

How then is India to proceed? The best option, perhaps, may be to free ride on China’s negotiations with the US. Within the developing world, China is the counter-point to the US – it loses little from climate change, yet its involvement is essential to any future treaty. Therefore, China is much better positioned to bargain for compensation (e.g. technology transfer, R&D financing, or adaptation assistance). In terms of bargaining power, therefore, it is China not India that should be at the vanguard of negotiating a climate treaty with the US and EU.

There is still much India can do, even as it reiterates the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility.” For instance, India needs to reframe the issue as one of adaptation, not mitigation (which is a Euro-centric view). It also should work closely with China, as well as Brazil, South Africa, and Russia to define what the developing world needs in return for signing a climate change treaty. Not only would such collective bargaining improve the potential outcome in favor of the developing world, it would also support and reflect India’s political rise and ability to convene.

Conclusion

A climate change treaty that binds India to mitigation action is no longer an option but a virtual certainty. Such a treaty will become fact either through negotiation or through unilateral measures of the developed world. To avoid lockout, India must have a strategy to approach such negotiations.

Current disagreement rests on a vast gap in perceptions between India on the one hand, and Europe and the US on the other. A solution is unlikely until a new climate treaty narrows this gap, essentially by allowing payments from winners of the agreement, to the loosers. This will involve establishing a payment mechanism, similar to Kyoto and its Adaptation Fund, through which developed countries pay for economic growth and adaptation in the developing world. India should continue to cherry-pick initiatives that are domestically economically viable. But at the international level, India can only prepare for the negotiations both by promoting collective bargaining with China, and by signaling its resistance to such bargaining – a signal which would strengthen India’s position.

——————————————–

Dweep writes on international politics, public policy and development issues at The Discomfort Zone.

Posted in Environment, Spotlight Series | 1 Comment »

Blogbharti

Archive for the ‘Spotlight Series’ Category

All this hustle and bustle

The Assam Agitation: A Subjective History

Is this really a ‘reform’?

The Big School Admission Travails

Physical structures– Mothers and Others

An Equal Love

An Equal Love

By Sam

Every photograph comes with a story

The Shampoo Sheikh

The Hand That Wields the Pen

Spotlight Series

‘The Mourning Forest’, an exposition of grief and rebirth

Harjit Sodhi’s story

Calling Into Question

In search of Ramrajya – Part III

In search of Ramrajya – Part II

In search of Ramrajya – Part I

Is bad governance in our Constitution?

On Indian Education

Ready to buy the new Tata Nano?

Beyond the Open Road, Wandering and Wondering

Reality Shows

The Growth ‘Miracle’

A Valentine to the City

Rural Poor- Human Rights, Inhuman State?

India and the Politics of Climate Change Negotiations

Indian Blog Directory

Get Blogbharti Content

Contact us:

Categories

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Active Discussions

September 2010
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Aug
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30