Fighting urban fires

Cityscapes column on InfoChange India News & Features

By Kalpana Sharma The urban poor do not worry about earthquakes or floods as much as they do about fires that frequently destroy their inflammable, densely-packed dwellings. In Mumbai, where half the population lives and works from slums, there is no disaster management plan, and only 1,503 fire hydrants out of 10,371 work. This year the monsoon seems to be taking its time to recede. Just when reports began appearing in the media about the monsoon ending, vast swathes of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and parts of Maharashtra were flooded as unusually heavy rains led to widespread devastation. While seasonal floods are a hazard faced in many parts of India (and they usually get more coverage in the media if they also affect the bigger cities), the frequent disasters that visit particularly poor people in urban areas throughout the year are often overlooked. Even during the rains, the poor suffer far more than those living in permanent housing. Each year, the monsoon rains in Mumbai bring with them landslides that bury scores of hutments occupied by the city’s burgeoning population of urban poor. Despite repeated notices from the municipal corporation, these people continue to perch on hill slopes and remain optimistic that they will survive the monsoon, because they simply do not have an alternative. Perhaps in recognition of this, the Slum Improvement Board, under the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), builds retaining walls on vulnerable hillsides. But every year, most of these retaining walls give way under the weight of accumulated silt and water seepage, which weaken the walls. When the wall breaks, it is like a dam that has burst. The force of the water, boulders and mud is much greater than in a normal landslide. In its path, flimsy homes and the belongings of scores of poor people are swept away. On September 4, 2009, a huge landslide killed 11 people in Mumbai’s Saki Naka area. Not far from the site of this disaster is another site that was affected during the July 26, 2005, rains and where 73 people died. Earlier, in the year 2000, 78 people were killed in a landslide in Azad Nagar, Ghatkopar. Of the 107 landslide-prone areas identified by the BMC, most are in the Saki Naka area. Many of the retaining walls are, in any case, notional. In 2009, for instance, according to newspapers, the Maharashtra government sanctioned Rs 17.4 crore for 183 retaining walls to be repaired, constructed or built. But work sanctioned in 2007 was still pending -- of the 199 works sanctioned that year, only 111 were completed, 58 were still being worked on, and 30 had not yet started. Such disasters cannot be called ‘natural’. Nature might help speed them up, but they are waiting to happen at any time. And the solution for these disasters is not just emergency measures and disaster plans but a long-term vision of how to deal with the housing crisis for the poor in cities like Mumbai. Even landslides get their due in the media when they happen. But there is one category of urban disaster that is not taken seriously; nor are the root causes of these accidents or disasters acknowledged. This is the disaster caused by fires that break out with uncanny regularity in the slums of most big cities. Fires in well-known locations -- in high-rises where the better-off live and work -- draw considerable attention from the government and the media. Usually, after a fire in an office building in a metro city, the media runs articles on fire hazards in high-rises, raises questions about whether the fire department is adequately equipped to deal with such fires, whether buildings are following the fire safety norms, whether the space around the buildings is adequate for fire engines and for firemen to operate during such disasters, etc. But increasingly, a major section of India’s urban population does not work and live in such buildings. In Mumbai, for instance, more than half the population lives and works out of informal structures, many built of extremely inflammable material. Fires in slums are so common that they pass unnoticed except when they spread and threaten nearby formal structures, or when there is notable loss of life. Mike Davis, in his book Planet of Slums, points out: “The urban poor do not lose much sleep at night worrying about earthquakes or even floods. Their chief anxiety is a more frequent and omnipresent threat: fire. Slums, not Mediterranean brush or Australian eucalypti as claimed in some textbooks, are the world’s premier fire ecology. The mixture of inflammable dwellings, extraordinary density, and dependence on open fires for heat and cooking is a superlative recipe for spontaneous combustion. A simple accident with cooking gas or kerosene can quickly become a mega-fire that destroys hundreds or even thousands of dwellings. Fire spreads through shanties at extraordinary velocity and fire-fighting vehicles, if they respond, are often unable to negotiate narrow slum lanes.” (To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)

A different politics

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, October 4, 2009

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

Women in Kavthepiran, a village in western Maharashtra, show how it is possible for ordinary people to have a stake in electoral politics and transform public life.

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Sanghi and Kavthepiran are two sides of the same coin....

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Photo: D.B. Patil

Mandate for change: Women representatives at a zilla panchayat meeting in Belgaum.

Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana are just around the corner. In Maharashtra, the scene is even more confused than it was during the General Elections. The only thing people can state with certainty is that it will be a fractured mandate. And that dynastic politics is a bug that has bitten all political parties, not just the Congress. So the sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law of a range of politicians of different hues are contesting these elections. Yet, what they have to promise is neither new nor, it would seem, interesting for the aam admi or aurat. In fact, the one fact that comes through in the media reports where journalists have spoken to ordinary people is the increasing disillusionment with politicians and with politics.

In the midst of this rather bleak scenario, reports of a different kind of politics come as a breath of fresh air, and also provide a sliver of hope that another way is possible. In September, communal riots broke out in some villages and towns of Sangli district in Maharashtra’s sugar belt. As usually happens with this kind of news, there is a flurry of stories. And then, when peace returns, there is no further news. But from the initial spate of stories, the name of one village stood out — Kavthepiran.

Not your typical village

In some ways, Kavthepiran is just another typical village in western Maharashtra with a population of around 15,000 people. But it is exceptional for a variety of reasons.

This difference is what made the story of Kavthepiran so interesting. The village came into the news because the communal incidents, sparked by a provocative video circulating through the Internet and the depiction of the fight between Shivaji and Afzal Khan on a Ganesh pandal, led to a mosque in the village being damaged. The hundred-odd Muslim families who had lived for generations in the village took fright and wanted to leave.

The women of Kavthepiran intervened and prevented such an exodus from taking place. The 17-member Panchayat in the village consists entirely of women. They decided not just to repair the mosque but also to personally approach the Muslim families and assure them that they would be looked after. Since then Kavthepiran has disappeared from the news. Good news and peace are not really news.

Possibility of change

But the story of the transformation of this village needs to be told again because it is an example of what is possible even within existing systems of electoral politics. Until 2000, Kavthepiran had nothing to distinguish itself from other villages. Its claim to fame was excessive alcoholism, crime and filth. One man, Bhimrao Mane, ruled the village with his acolytes. No one else could have a say.

In 2001, Bhimrao went through something of a change of heart. On October 2, he called a meeting of the village, a Gram Sabha. Kavthepiran’s women used the occasion to express their disgust with the state of affairs and threatened to migrate from the village en masse. Bhimrao listened and publicly promised to personally give up alcohol and to ensure that it was not sold in the village. Taking the cue from him, the village women went around and destroyed all the liquor shops and stills in the village. Their campaign did not end there. If anyone was caught drunk in the village, his head was shaved and he was paraded on a donkey. Not exactly a democratic way of functioning but perhaps they felt that public shaming was the only effective way of curbing alcoholism.

In the elections that followed, women got elected to the Panchayat. With enthusiasm, they went about cleaning the village and successfully won the State Government’s Sant Gadebaba Abhiyan award for the cleanest village. Three years later, in 2006, they won the Nirmal Gram village award from the Central Government for having completely stopped open defecation. The majority of the houses in the village now have private toilets and public toilets have been built for those who cannot afford to build their own.

(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)

Invisible people

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, September 20, 2009

THE OTHER HALF

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Unappreciated work: A still from the documentary “At my doorstep”.

Every morning, before most people in the multi-storied building where I live in Mumbai wake up and virtually unnoticed by its residents, a silent army of men do their work. A young boy, a student during the rest of the day, delivers newspapers, the g arbage bag left outside our doors is cleared and the corridor swept and swabbed by the sweeper and the milkman delivers packets of milk, perching them on a ledge or placing them in a bag hung on front doors. And even as we stir, the “breadman” delivers freshly baked local bread and eggs, the sabziwallah comes to the door with a selection of vegetables, the fruit man brings your choice of fruit, the istriwallah comes to collect and deliver your ironing and the local kirana (grocery) store delivers whatever you order on the phone. This is apart from your domestic help arriving to sweep and swab your house, wash your clothes, cook your meal and wash your dishes. And also apart from the security men at the gate of the building, who check everyone who enters the building and make sure you are not disturbed by strangers coming to your door.

Question we don’t ask

So who are these people? Do we know their names? Where do they come from? How do they survive in Mumbai? Where do they live? Do we care?

Nishtha Jain, a film-maker already known for her remarkable film on the life of her domestic help, “Lakshmi and me”, that brought out the world of the women who literally hold up the homes of the middle class and the rich in Mumbai, has now made another film on the world of these virtually invisible people who hold up the city of Mumbai. “At my doorstep” is the story of the security guards, the men who iron clothes, the boys who deliver newspapers and groceries and the men who clear the garbage from Mumbai’s multi-storied and high-rise buildings.

Set against the background of Mumbai’s Film City, and the dreams that Bollywood weaves for so many who come to the city seeking work, Jain opens our eyes to the world that these men inhabit. Through the words of Dayanand, a poet and writer originally from Bokaro in Jharkhand, who works as a security guard, Jain portrays the philosophical mindset that helps these men to survive.

Dayanand’s arrival in Mumbai begins with the ticket collector fining him for travelling from Bokaro to Mumbai on an Express Train with an ordinary ticket. Unable to pay the fine, he spends his first night in the lockup. His journey then progresses to the point he has a job but no home. A hut in a slum becomes home, embellished with posters and poems pasted on its flimsy walls. In his spare time, Dayanand uses his skill as a writer to help others like him to write home to their loved ones.

While the film fleshes out Dayanand, it leaves us asking questions about some of the other men. Like the young boy who delivers and collects clothes for ironing every day. And his colleagues, who spend the whole day ironing clothes in a hot room and say that if they do such work for more than eight months they fall sick. We watch them cook dal and rice and eat it in the same room where they have worked all day, and where they will sleep. The lucky ones sleep on the ironing tables; the others, like the delivery boy, sleep in the space below the tables. Who are these men? Where did they come from? What is their future?

(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)

Uma's world

This morning, as I made my way down the hill where I live, I passed by the family of ragpickers that live on the road. The mother, her two children, a boy and a girl, and another little boy who belongs to another woman, were sleepily making their way up towards the public toilet. Further down, the other woman, a thin tall woman who I see everyday, was fast asleep, on the parapet of a fence not more than 18 inches wide.

Through the rains, this family of five have been allowed to seek temporary shelter in the Central Government officer's colony on this road. Now the rains have ended. And they are once again on the road.

Uma, also called Ruby, the little girl I saw earlier, has luminous eyes. And a wide smile. Most mornings I see her dressed in the dark blue uniform of municipal schools in Mumbai. She trudges uphill each morning to a school that is little more than a shed. Probably illegal. Claiming legality by naming itself the Ambedkar school.

Uma, alias Ruby, is the new India. Yet she is also the old India -- or an India that stubbornly refuses to change. Uma has no home. She sleeps during most of the year, barring the monsoon months, with her little brother and mother, and the other woman and her son, behind large sacks of recyclable material foraged by her mother from the brimming dustbins of the denizens of elite Malabar Hill. For all accounts and purposes Uma's address, if you can call it that, is also Malabar Hill. But neither her mother, or her brother, or she can lay claim to the 10 ft on the side of the road, next to the garbage dump, where they sleep each night.

But Uma is the new India because millions like her, even if they have no roofs over their heads, are now going to school. Will this make a difference? Will she grow up and find some shelter, because she is lettered? Will she escape the indignity and abuse that have been a part of her mother's life?

Call me an unrepentant bleeding heart, but every morning when I bump into Uma, and she gives me a shy smile, I am forced to think about her, and millions of other children. In the new India, what is their future? Will it be any different from that of their parents?

The truth about Ishrat Jahan

Now that the police team in Gujarat has established that Ishrat Jahan, the suspected "terrorist" was gunned down by the Gujarat police on June 15, 2004 and not killed in an "encounter" as they had claimed, we in the media must ask ourselves why we believe everything that is handed to us on a platter by officials without even asking the rudimentary questions that we should. I'm posting again a piece I wrote after Ishrat's killing, that never saw the light of day. I think the news of this fake encounter, as well as the recent one in Manipur where a young man was shot in broad daylight and the police there tried to pass it off as an encounter killing, should wake up the media in this country. Our job is to report but also to question and to investigate, not to easily accept everything at face value. "National security" should not dilute our commitment to journalism.

See my column on The Hoot on Reporting Encounters:

http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=4072&mod=1&pg=1&sectionId=10&valid=true

This piece was written a couple of days after Ishrat's killing:

A question of guilt or innocence

By Kalpana Sharma

The recent gunning down of four suspected “terrorists” in Ahmedabad on June 15 raises several important and uncomfortable questions. To date, there is no clear explanation either from the Gujarat police or the intelligence agencies (the glaring loopholes in the various versions were evident from the stories carried in this paper recently) about how the information about the intentions of these four was ascertained and why they were killed. The unease is compounded by the death in the encounter of the 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan. What was a young Mumbai college girl doing with a group of “alleged” terrorists? Was she also one?

Everyone who knew Ishrat said it was improbable that she would knowingly join such a group. No one had heard her voice an opinion about Gujarat or about the injustice meted out to her community. She was perceived as a cheerful, hard-working girl who filled her day with activities to generate money to support an impoverished family. Had she been duped? Had her desperation for money got her into something about which she did not know all the details? Or was she a willing accomplice?

We will never know because the girl is dead. In fact, that is the frustrating aspect of all these stories. The public has to accept what the State puts out as the alleged motives of those gunned down. No one will ever know the complete truth because the dead cannot defend themselves.

So far, all that has appeared in the media about Ishrat’s “motives”, “intentions”, “sentiments” is conjecture. The Gujarat police have quoted from her diary but no forensic test has established whether in fact it is her handwriting. The results of the post mortem report on her death have also not yet been released. We still do not know whether she was shot in the back or how she died. One unpublished photograph shows her slumped back in the front seat but there is no sign of a bullet mark on her clothes. Javed lies slumped sideways, sitting in the driver’s seat but with his head on her lap. The only photograph that has appeared in the media shows Ishrat laid out next to the other three slain men.

The Gujarat police have records of Ishrat’s phone calls to the driver of the car, Javed Sheikh who is alleged to be a Lashkar operative. That too has not been conclusively established although intelligence agencies are convinced. The nature of Ishrat’s conversations with the dead Javed will never be known. Just the fact that she spoke to a man who is allegedly a terrorist does not make the girl guilty by association. Yet, a Home Ministry official is quoted as saying, “Legally and morally, she too was a terrorist”. How has such a conclusion been reached?

The media has also carried stories about a possible “love angle” between her and Javed. Would that explain the phone calls? Her mother, Shamima, has compounded the mystery by first refusing to acknowledge that Ishrat or she knew Javed and then acknowledging, during her interrogation by the Gujarat police, that she did know him. In the end, no one really knows whether Ishrat was duped by Javed, infatuated with him, or was a willing and knowing accomplice. And no one, except Ishrat’s family will speak up for her because they fear that if they do, they too will be questioned, and possibly implicated.

What is worse is that in this rush to establish guilt by association all of Mumbra, a township of 600,000 people on the outskirts of Mumbai is being referred to as a “hotbed” of terrorists activities. It is true that some suspected terrorists have been apprehended from this area. But a handful of such characters do not justify calling a place, which is a Muslim majority area, “terrorist infested”. Mumbra and Kausa are old settlements that grew when many Muslim families were forced to leave their homes in Mumbai after the 1992-93 communal riots. Some families moved because they found they could get a bigger place for the value of just one room in the overcrowded areas of central Mumbai.

Yet, the emergence of a Muslim ghetto on the outskirts does not automatically mean that its youth will turn to terrorism. In fact, one of the striking aspects of the changes that have taken place in Muslims in and around Mumbai since 1992-93 is the thrust given to education, particularly education of girls. In successive matriculation examinations, Muslims girls have done exceedingly well in the last decade. The community’s welfare organisations have made a deliberate effort to push for both education and employment.

At the same time, it is also true that organisations like the banned Students Islamic Movement of India have grown and recruited young men. But the existence of such extremist groups in any community, Hindu or Muslim, does not mean that large swathes of that community have the same mindset.

It is entirely possible that the intelligence agencies will be able to prove their suspicion about the four killed in Ahmedabad. But there is also a good possibility that Ishrat was innocent, that she was the “collateral damage” of the State’s “war against terror”. The chances of proving that are slim because there is no independent authority to investigate such encounter killings. Yet, we must remember that after the Godhra tragedy, the Gujarat police and government had a watertight story about what happened. Yet in the last weeks, the testimonies before the Nanavati Commission are exposing the many holes in that story. Given the lack of credibility in the case made out by the state in many such instances, it is perfectly legitimate to ask questions about what really happened on June 15 in Ahmedabad.

If indeed the authorities conclusively prove that Ishrat was a terrorist, a girl who knew what she was doing and that she aided and abetted men with guns, the import of such a finding will be enormous. This will be a first, for a young Indian Muslim girl to actually join the ranks of terrorists, that too one with their roots in Pakistan. So far we have known of women in the ranks of the LTTE, or women supporters of the militants in Kashmir, or women who are prominent in the ranks of the “naxalites”. But there has not been a “mainstream” Muslim women implicated in terrorist activities in India. In the twin bomb blasts in Mumbai on August 25 last year, a woman, the wife of Sayad Mohammed Hanif, has been implicated. But the charges have only just been filed in the special POTA court. And their daughter Farheen, who was also held on grounds of suspicion, was discharged when no evidence was found against her.

Ishrat’s death is not going to be forgotten, particularly in parts of Mumbai. Already, young Muslim women who are in college or venturing in a career are apprehensive about how other communities will view them. One such woman told this writer that she fears that her parents will now stop her frequent trips with the social service league in her college. Muslim women activists fear that the backlash from the Ishrat case will result in a rise in conservatism, particularly in areas like Mumbra, leading to young Muslim girls being sequestered and ordered to stay indoors. Ishrat, on the other hand, like many young men and women from Mumbra, travelled a couple of hours every day to attend college in Mumbai city.

The Ahmedabad encounter has played into the hands of those who want to reinforce the stereotype of the Muslim as terrorist. Initially questions were raised and Ishrat’s killing in particular was close to becoming politicized. But once the media began putting out the different versions set out by the police or the intelligence, this questioning was silenced.

But the questions remain and they must be asked. Can terrorism be stamped out if the State kills every single “suspected” terrorist? Or as we have seen in so many other countries, such extra-judicial killings will isolate and anger people of one community and destroy their faith in the rule of law and in justice, thus laying the grounds for more violence. Surely, the answer to terror and injustice is not more terror, and more injustice.

Reservation works

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, September 6, 2009

THE OTHER HALF

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Photo: Sandeep Saxena

Against tremendous odds: A delegation of Women Panchayat representatives with the President.

Most people cheered when the government announced that it would raise the percentage of reserved seats for women in panchayats and nagar palikasfrom the current one third to half. Ironically, the State that has led the way in this is Bihar, one that is hardly ever held up as an example. Three years ago, Bihar enhanced the percentage of reserved seats for women to 50 per cent.

Now with the rule applying all over India, the number of elected women representatives in panchayati raj institutions alone will jump from the current 1,038,989 (2006 data) to an estimated 1,400,000. To do this, the government plans to amend article 243D of the Constitution that relates to reservation of seats for women, in the winter session of Parliament. There is some talk of the Women’s Reservation Bill for seats in Parliament also being tabled at the same time although no one is placing any bets on it.

Not the full story

Numbers, however, never tell the full story as we well know. The participation of women in panchayats has been a fascinating and flawed story. Fascinating because it has shown that even deprived, illiterate, marginalised women can become competent and concerned elected representatives. But flawed because the women have to function in a society that will not accept that they can think independently, understand matters of governance, and take responsibility outside the four walls of their homes. Thus, for every success story there are many more of women who front ambitious men.

Women have made a difference where they have been trained and educated about their rights and responsibilities. Sometimes the initiative has come from a committed official, sometime from a non-governmental group. Kerala has been a pioneer in training women in panchayats and its Kumdumbashree Initiative is rightly lauded as imaginative and effective (http://www.kudumbashree.org/). Studies and surveys have established that without such specific input, the majority of elected women would not have been able to function effectively. The Panchayati Raj ministry also initiated with the National Commission for Women a Panchayat Mahila Shakti Abhiyan specifically to inject a level of confidence in the women. The ministry’s report on “The State of the Panchayats” (2006) states, “At present, many women in Panchayats feel isolated and powerless, particularly because of the persistence of gender prejudices and gender discrimination in the social mores of village life.”

Apart from prejudice, these women function against the background of the reality of women’s status in the country. An increase in the number of elected women does not necessarily alter this reality. Take just four indicators that are also used to judge the status of women in the Global Gender Gap Index — economic participation, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival. In 2007, India’s overall ranking was a dismal 114 out of 128 countries surveyed. As if this was not depressing enough, its ranking in the specific areas is even worse. In economic participation and opportunities for women, it is 122; in educational attainment it is 116 (41 per cent of Indian women in the 15-49 age group have never been to school); in health and survival it is 126 (India’s maternal mortality rate is 301 per 100,000 live births) with only Azerbaijan and Armenia lower. Only in political empowerment does it score higher at 21, probably thanks to the million and more women elected to Panchayati Raj institutions.

(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)

A Reprieve for Dharavi

A reprieve for Dharavi
Cityscapes
(Column posted on InfoChange India News&Features)





Urban planners have proposed alternative approaches to Dharavi’s redevelopment, which would view Dharavi as a thriving and functioning urban settlement and not as a slum that needs to be flattened and rebuilt. The October assembly elections may just have given Dharavi the breathing space required to discuss these alternatives, writes Kalpana Sharma


For months it appeared as if nothing could stop progress on the massive Rs 15,000 crore Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP). Everything was finalised. Only the final bids had to be confirmed. Suddenly, with the announcement of state assembly elections in Maharashtra scheduled for October 13, the project has come to a grinding halt. With the electoral code of conduct in place, the state government cannot initiate any projects. For many people in Dharavi, this comes as a huge relief.

The history of the project, mired in controversy from the start, is a story of how such redevelopment should not be done. It all began when a developer, who already had a couple of projects in Dharavi through the existing Slum Rehabilitation Scheme (SRS) of the Maharashtra government, noticed the potential of developing the entire area. Its location next to the Bandra Kurla complex, where land prices were going through the roof, made it even more attractive. Mukesh Mehta of MM Consultants outlined a plan to develop all of Dharavi in 2003. He divided the area into 10 sectors and proposed that each sector should be handed over to a developer through open bidding.

Mehta successfully sold the idea to the then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the centre led by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. The Maharashtra government responded by following up on Mehta’s proposal, appointed him initially as an adviser and eventually as the consultant for the Dharavi Redevelopment Project.

In the course of time, the original 10 sectors got collapsed into five, a separate authority was created to oversee the project and the government set about finding ways to give special incentives to attract private developers to take on the project. One of these was to increase the FSI (Floor Space Index) from the current 1.33 to 4 and allowing developers to use all the additional FSI in Dharavi itself rather than converting it into TDR (Transfer of Development Rights) to be used in other projects elsewhere in the city.

In the initial years, the project was estimated to cost Rs 9,300 crore. Today it is valued at Rs 15,000 crore. The delay has helped increase profit margins as land prices have steadily gone upwards, by 30 to 40%, although there was a slight dip in the last year. But between the date the project was initiated and the present day, there has been a notable increase in land prices. All of this benefits developers who are aiming to win bids to develop one of the five sectors.

Also in the interim, to pacify Dharavi residents who have argued that their existing spaces are considerably larger than the 225 sq ft apartments promised free to them under the DRP, the government agreed as a special case to increase the size of each apartment to nearly 300 sq ft. For this the relevant Development Control Rule (DCR) needed to be amended.

The project has inched forward, with the government inviting bids, shortlisting 14 possible developers and promising that by July 30 the final bids would be announced. Inexplicably, on that day, the entire process ground to a halt. The government claimed it had not yet amended the DCR to accommodate the bigger apartments for Dharavi’s residents. Hence the bidding process could not go through. In fact, this was a mere technicality. The thought of the impending elections, and having to face the ire of disgruntled residents in Dharavi, was probably a much bigger reason for postponing the final phase of getting the project underway. Now, with the election code of conduct, this government cannot take any more steps and the project will have to be revisited, or revived, by the new government that takes office at the end of October.

(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)

Manipur, once more

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, August 23, 2009

THE OTHER HALF


Manipuri women staging a protest in Delhi (photo: Sandeep Saxena, courtesy The Hindu)



While the rest of India celebrated its 62nd year as an independent country, in its northeast corner there was little to celebrate. On July 23, “an ordinary day” in the Manipur capital, Imphal — if indeed there is such a thing as an “ordinary day” — Rabina Devi, a pregnant woman, was going to the market when she was shot dead as the police chased a young man. At the same time, a “suspected militant” was pushed into a pharmacy and shot. The police claimed he had shot at them. But the fake “encounter” killing was captured by a photographer (who is petrified of being discovered) and leaked to the magazine Tehelka. The 12 pictures are a damning indictment as they clearly show an unarmed Chongkham Sanjit being pushed into the pharmacy and then being brought out dead and loaded onto a truck. All this happened in a crowded market place in broad daylight (at 10.30 a.m.).

Anger on the streets

The Tehelka expose has led to an explosion of anger on the streets of Imphal. Women, men, young people are out on the streets, agitating, demanding justice and an end to the impunity granted security forces under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). This demand is not new. It surfaces every now and then but refuses to die out. It requires only one incident for the anger to spill out on the streets. The State’s response to such agitations is also not new. Dusk to dawn curfew, tear gas used against agitators, a show of force. In turn, people respond by calling bandhs, defying curfew and courting arrest. And so the cycle of violence continues.

This time, the problem is not limited to the Imphal valley, inhabited by the majority Meitei. Even in the hills where the Tanghkul Nagas live there have been bandhs and protests over the killing of two “suspected militants” on August 12. Manipur, according to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s address at the recent meeting of Chief Ministers in New Delhi, accounts for a third of all violent incidents in India’s Northeast.

Amazing resilience

What always continues to amaze the outsider looking in to Manipur is the mobilisation of women and their fearlessness. Amateur videos on You Tube show scores of women on the streets, throwing down the gauntlet literally (they spread the cloth they wear as the upper garment as a sign of defiance as no one is supposed to trample on these) and facing a phalanx of police personnel armed with rifles and tear gas shells. The women from Imphal’s remarkable all-women market, the Ema Keithel, have been courting arrest in droves as their mark of protest. The women are calling this another “Nupila” (women’s war), reminiscent of the struggle against the British.

“We women cannot bear anymore as it has reached beyond a tolerable limit. That’s why we have come out unitedly to get ourselves killed or get arrested by the police”, Chaoba Devi, one of the women leading the agitation, told the press. Women talk about how curfew has disrupted education and the livelihood of thousands who depend on daily wages. A visit to Manipur earlier this year showed us the challenge of living under dusk to dawn curfew — and the burden women have to bear to ensure that their children are fed, that there is enough water, and that they can reach a healthcare facility if someone falls ill.

(To read the rest click on the link above)

Did the media catch the flu?

From The Hoot, August, 2009


The tempering words of a few individuals cannot possible negate this overall picture that comes through the visuals. KALPANA SHARMA asks if the media lost perspective in the way it covered the HINI Flu.

Posted Wednesday, Aug 12 16:48:10, 2009



SECOND TAKE
Kalpana Sharma


Is the media responsible for the current swine flu panic in India or is the government’s response to blame? This question is being asked and will continue to be asked. While the government could be faulted on many counts, we have to consider the media’s responsibilities when there are health emergencies.

First of all, is this a health emergency? Union Health Secretary Naresh Dayal was heard on television within a day of the first death being reported appealing to the media to have a sense of perspective on the issue. He pointed out that in India, of every 1,000 live births, 55 children die. Yet, the media never considers this a health emergency worth their attention. But with swine flu, every news channel and newspaper has led with this story for days on end.

So has the media lost perspective? If you look at just the numbers affected and the fatalities, you would conclude that it has. More people die each day from malaria, infection, diarrhoea and other gastro-intestinal infections, and tuberculosis than have died of swine flu since the first incidents were reported. Therefore why the overdrive by the media?

One obvious reason is that when a disease hits the metros or the middle classes, it becomes a subject worth pursuing but when it affects people in remote areas, no news organisation is willing to invest in sending people to cover it. Every year, hundreds of people die of kala azar, malaria and other infectious diseases in non-metro areas in India. Yet the coverage is only perfunctory. Only if the spread of infection threatens our cities does the media wake up and take note.

Typically, television news focused almost exclusively on the swine flu for days on end. On August 11, the Centre asked TV channels to show restraint in their coverage. Although NDTV was one channel that did run a programme reminding viewers about other diseases and deaths caused by them that are a daily occurrence in a country like India, the main news bulletins on all channels were filled with non-stop visuals of people in face masks, crowds lining up in front of hospitals and grief stricken families who have lost a loved one. The problem with this type of coverage is that it tends to make the problem larger than it is. The tempering words of a few individuals cannot possible negate this overall picture that comes through the visuals. And when one issue is covered to the exclusion of all else, then the general public is forced to believe that the problem is acute and out of control when it actually is not.

Print, because of the nature of the media, was a little more moderate although not across the board. Some newspapers did try and place the health crisis within the larger framework of health care and other diseases. Yet, as with television, the message that the front pages of newspapers conveyed cancelled any moderation that might have been there in the coverage on inside pages.

On August 11, for instance, three of Mumbai’s English language papers that I monitored led with a swine flu story and had banner headlines. The fourth carried it as the first lead but had another story on the top of the fold as the second.

The Times of India had a banner headline “Not ready for H1N1: City pvt hosps” and carried a photograph of doctors in white protective clothing at the Haffkine Institute where tests are conducted. At the same time, also on the front page was a story by Nirmala M. Nagaraj under the heading, “India’s public health spend amongst lowest” and stated that health spending was even less than in some sub-Saharan countries. The placing was significant as it used the swine flu to bring home the larger issue of health spending.

On an inside page, TOI carried a diagram explaining how and why H1N1 affects the young and healthy. At the bottom of the diagram it raised the question: Where is India headed? And answered it: “The last four-five months experience has led doctors to ask whether the endemic influenza strains of the country actually make us more immune. Incidentally, our mortality rates have been one of the lowest”.

The paper also had a five-column item on what other countries did to contain the spread of H1N1, including a graphic setting forth best practices. It gave a chart with the top 10 countries where deaths caused by the virus had been reported. The highest number was from the US. India did not feature anywhere on the list.

But do readers read this fine print? Probably not. Most of them will read headlines, look at visuals and get into panic mode.

DNA on the same day had a banner headline: “Govt expands war on H1N1” followed by a front-page edit with the headline “A 26/11 challenge for public health”. “War”? Comparisons to “26/11”, the short form for the terror attack on Mumbai last November? Are these really called for? The edit went on to state: “While the death toll is still small, there is little doubt that in a few weeks from now we will see a dramatic escalation. Nothing less than all-out war on H1N1 will suffice anymore.” The next day, August 12, it tried to substantiate this point by running a story, based on projected trends, under a banner headline: “Swine flu cases may hit 1 crore in December”. Are these kinds of projections and the hyperbole in the editorial justified in the current situation where in a country of over one billion people, there have been 11 deaths and less than a thousand cases of infection?

The Hindustan Times on August 11, interestingly enough, tried to bring in some kind of perspective even in its page one banner headline that read: “H1N1 kills 3 more, common flu could be killing 572 a day.” The story that followed explained how many people die of the common flu in a country like the United States and through extrapolation worked out the figure for India. One could quibble about the arithmetic but at least an attempt was made to place the issue in some kind of larger perspective. The paper also pointed out that in the US, there were 6,506 cases of infection from H1N1 and 436 deaths until August 6. Despite this schools were not closed. As we know, in India, dozens of schools have closed if even one student is found to have an infection.

On August 12, the Hindustan Times carried an editorial, “Don’t press the panic button” that acknowledged that media had “gone into overdrive and are reporting on the issue as though it were the Black Death itself.” Targeting the electronic media, the editorial went on to state, “Ill-informed interviews and the all-pervasive ‘breaking news’ logo have created a frightening scenario that has obscured the real facts about the virus and how to combat it.”

The Indian Express on August 11 led with a Pune datelined story and reported on how it had affected the city. As it is the place with the highest incidence of infection, the story would not have added to the panic. And it carried a second lead on a totally different subject. A full page was devoted inside to flu related stories but otherwise the paper carried news from all parts of India.

In some ways, even this partial survey of the print media underlines its importance at times like this. The newspapers that have attempted to place the issue in perspective would have helped calm the panic, that is if we assume people read at all, or read beyond the headlines.

Television news, on the other hand, contributed to the panic reaction that led hundreds of people to rush to hospitals to get tested even if they had the mildest symptoms. Even the best-equipped public health system cannot survive such a battering and India certainly does not have the best of such systems.

If the swine flu can teach the media something, it should be this: that there are areas like health that require constant and sustained attention and not just when a “pandemic” is declared. In many countries, newspapers and news channels have dedicated reporters who cover medical and public health issues. Over time, these individuals build up a background, contacts and a perspective that becomes particularly important at times like this. For instance, The Hindustan Times story mentioned above, is written by Sanchita Sharma who has been covering health for many years. But most Indian newspapers are not willing to assign a person specifically for this beat. As a result, when there is a crisis, no senior journalist on the staff is equipped to bring in a perspective and guide the coverage.

Power dressing

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, August 9, 2009

THE OTHER HALF

Power dressing





Meira Kumar: First woman Speaker

Does anyone care or comment on the colour of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s turban when he appears in public? Do the looks of a man or woman define their efficacy as leaders – of countries or businesses? The answers to both questions are fairly obvious and should not be a subject of debate. And yet, women in positions of power never seem to be able to escape public discussion about their looks and their appearance.

Recall the recent visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to India. For a week she was on the front pages of our newspapers and on every television channel. She had official meetings and unofficial ones. She met businessmen and politicians but also self-employed women and students. Most of the media coverage centered on these meetings. Yet Hillary Clinton could not escape the inevitable personal comments about her looks, what she wore, how she did her hair etc. One newspaper ran a feature asking local fashion designers to comment on Ms Clinton’s dress sense.

Occupational hazard

On her very first day in India, Hillary Clinton held a breakfast meeting with top industrialists in Mumbai. The headline? “Clinton makes fashion statement with red business suit.” And the news item about the meeting began as follows: “Her short blonde hair neatly pinned back perfectly complemented her attire with the ensemble being completed with smart cream and black pumps that seemed more than adequate for the long day ahead.” Are such comments necessary? When the foreign minister of any other country comes visiting, do we observe the clothes these gentlemen (and most often they are men) wear?

Personal comments are an occupational hazard most women in public life have to face. Hillary Clinton has survived the most vicious attacks on her looks, personality, way of speaking etc not just in the years when she was the First Lady and her husband Bill Clinton was the President of the United States but more recently when she tried to win the nomination to become the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party and lost to the present incumbent in the White House, Barrack Obama. She has probably developed a very thick skin after that kind of assault by the media.

In an entertaining book “Why women should rule the world”, Dee Dee Myers, who was Press Secretary in the Clinton White House, describes the constant focus on Hillary’s looks: “For more than a decade, her (Hillary’s) appearance has been the subject of an on-going and robust national conversation. She should wear pants. No, skirts. Her hair is too long. No, it is too short. Her gown is too conservative…”

Working their way

Media coverage in recent years continues on the same lines and the comments on the Internet, especially in the US, are full of personal invective against Hillary Clinton based on the superficial – usually how she looks or the way she says something. Only lately are some people acknowledging that she is actually doing a fairly good job as the Secretary of State

Ms Myers too faced this kind of attention in her first few weeks in office. “From the time I joined the Clinton campaign”, she writes, “virtually every story written about me included observations about my hair, my earrings, my makeup, my clothes, my coat.” When she became White House Press Secretary, a choice that was considered unusual at that time, the attention became even more pointed.

Women are supposed to laugh this off, take it on the chin and even be flattered by such attention. Yet, it is irritating and insulting. Women who make it to positions of prominence work their way up just as men do. Yet, when they get there, they are confronted by a barrage of speculation about how they made it followed by all-out attempts to trivialize their very presence in public life. If this happens once or twice, you can write it off as an aberration. But if it happens consistently, admittedly in some countries more than others, then you realise that it is a norm.

In India, partly due to our willingness to be utterly mindful of hierarchies, there is rarely an open comment about the looks or dress sense of the most powerful women in this country. No news item on Sonia Gandhi, for instance, makes a personal reference. Mayawati has been the butt of some jokes about her choice of clothes and handbags but the routine news item about the UP Chief Minister will not mention either. And even the top women in business escape this kind of personal attention. The reason is not that the media in India is particularly gender sensitive. It is because it is hierarchy conscious.

Effective voice

I suppose prominent women in this country should be grateful for such small mercies. When Meira Kumar was chosen Speaker of the 15th Lok Sabha, one wondered how the press would report on her performance. Thankfully there were no reports on what she wore on her first day as Speaker. But India’s first woman Speaker has surprised not just Members of Parliament from the treasury and opposition benches but also the media. A news item on August 3 in a national daily had the following headline: “House in order, thanks to Meira”. It described how effective Speaker Meira Kumar had been in controlling unruly Parliamentarians during the Budget session of the Lok Sabha. “Her small voice, almost languid demeanour and understated style have been deceptive”, writes the correspondent. Comparing her to the previous Speaker, the imposing Somnath Chatterjee, the correspondent writes, “Meira employs a tone of soft reasonableness and invariably get her way. In short, her softness and economy with words – which were initially viewed as handicaps – have actually turned into her strong points.” He goes on to ask why these attributes had not been recognised earlier either by MPs or by the media. “Would it be because of male bias?” he asks.

Good question. However, the attributes that this reporter describes, her “softness”, the tone of her voice or her “languid demeanour”, are not the ones that have worked for Ms Kumar. What has worked is her ability to negotiate, make peace, find the middle ground, persuade and calm tempers.

This does not come naturally to either men or women but I think women are better equipped because they have to use these skills more often in daily life. Hence, their ability to play the role of moderator – regardless of the pitch of their voices – or the clothes they wear.

(Click on the link above to read the original)

This volcano need not erupt

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, July 26, 2009

THE OTHER HALF


An open letter to the Union Minister for Health…


Dear Mr. Azad,

After your intriguing remarks on limiting the growth of India’s population, many people must have written to you. Some, including members of my tribe, have poked fun at you, especially in your belief that late night television is an effective contraceptive. Many are not so amused. In fact, some people are more than a little upset. They wonder whether you are being misled, or misinformed, or whether you really want to turn the clock back.

In an interview to an English newspaper, you are quoted as saying that “India is sitting on a volatile volcano”. Volcanoes, when they are volatile, generally explode. So I presume you meant the same thing as those, in the distant 1970s, who spoke of a “population bomb” or of “population explosion”. In July 2003, even our honourable Supreme Court, while upholding the Haryana Government’s decision to impose a two-child norm on all Panchayati Raj elected officials, mentioned the “torrential increase in population”. The thrust of all these different turns of phrase is precisely the same: that Indians are producing children at an uncontrolled rate and that this must be stopped at all costs.

Wrong reasoning

The reasoning behind wanting to stop this “torrent” or “explosion” also remains much the same. In your words, “When population increases, land area decreases. Each development programme means further reduction of land, causing further shortage of food. Large population means greater number of have-nots which is the root cause of poverty, unemployment and law and order. That’s how Naxalism came up.”

You seem to have spent time reading the works of Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) whose most famous premise was: “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.” Malthus has been proved wrong yet new crops of Malthusians keep emerging.

What is surprising about your recent statements on population is that they seem to reflect a total absence of knowledge about the discussions conducted over the last two decades worldwide about the close relationship between population and development. Concepts such as “population control” have long been replaced by “family welfare” and now “reproductive health and rights” even in India. This is not a question of politically correct terminology. The change in the words reflects the growing evidence that population growth decreases as the economic and social status of people, and especially women, improves. This has been more than evident in the countries from where Mr. Malthus originates. And even in a poor country like ours, this trend is evident.

Latest trends

I would draw your attention to data from the latest National Family Health Survey (2005-06). According to it, India’s total fertility rate (TFR) is now down to 2.7 as compared to 3.4 in 1993 when the first NFHS was conducted. In other words, an average Indian woman is likely to produce the equivalent of 2.7 children (we know, of course, that this is just a mathematical calculation and that no woman would produce 2.7 children).

More telling than that is the fact that in no less than nine States, namely Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi and Punjab — the TFR is now between 2.1 and 1.8, or what is termed the replacement rate. The decline has been steady in all these States, as also in others, but is more marked in the States that also have better indicators for women’s education and social status.

Even in a State like Uttar Pradesh, the TFR has declined, from 4.82 in 1993 to 3.8 in 2005-06. In Bihar, unfortunately, it has gone up — from 3.49 in 2000 to 4.0 in 2005-06. Both States, as you well know, also lag far behind other States in economic and social development.

In 1994, as you surely know, India was one of 179 countries to endorse a Programme for Action at the United Nations Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt, that upheld the concept of women’s rights as an essential part of any programme on population. It specifically advised against coercive policies that deprive women of choice and their human rights. As a result of this, India dropped its policy of punitive disincentives to push its population policy.

Discriminatory

Yet, we know some States continue to use disincentives, such as the two-child norm for all elected officials in Panchayati Raj institutions. Apart from Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhatisgarh and Orissa have adopted similar policies. Only Andhra Pradesh, amongst these, falls within the group of States that have reached replacement rates. Therefore, such policies are clearly not effective and on the contrary end up penalising women officials and encouraging sex selection and sex-selective abortions. If you were permitted to have only two children, most Indians would prefer two boys, or at most one boy and one girl.

In that regard, one must compliment you. In the same interview quoted above, you did say, “We have to drill into people’s mind that a child is a child, no matter if it’s a boy or a girl.” Well said, Mr. Minister.

But such good sense will get negated if the imagery of volcanoes exploding catches on in the context of population. Before long, policies to justify controlling women’s fertility could once again find a place under another guise. Meantime the reality that what matters is whether children survive after birth and whether mothers come out alive during and after their pregnancy will remain unaddressed.

Before there is any temptation to change direction, do spend some time talking to women who are, after all, central to any policy for checking population growth. What do they want? According to the NFHS, there is a 13 per cent unmet need for contraception. In other words, women who would like advice, contraceptives, health interventions, are not getting it. This is where your ministry needs to focus.

If you speak to women, you will also realise that their concerns are basic. India’s maternal mortality rate is 301 for 100,000 live births. These women who do not survive childbirth are malnourished, and die from excess bleeding and the absence of basic healthcare. In a State like Bihar, the figure goes up to 371. And even if the mother survives, there is no guarantee that her child will. Too many children are dying soon after they are born. Do something about this, about access to quality healthcare for the most vulnerable — and you will not need to think of volatile volcanoes and torrents.

Sincerely,

Kalpana Sharma

TOI discovers Bharat

For some months now, I have been writing a column on the website The Hoot on media-related issues. Some of the columns pass without a comment, others have generated a heated, and sometimes ill-informed, debate. Here is the latest one.



So what has happened to the Grand Old Lady of Bori Bunder? Why this sudden change of heart, or a “Cinderella moment” as it likes to call it? KALPANA SHARMA is pleasantly surprised at the TOI’s budget coverage. Pix: TOI’s face of the Budget.

Posted Monday, Jul 13 22:55:20, 2009

SECOND TAKE
Kalpana Sharma


The world over, newspapers have struggled to recast themselves in the face of competition from the electronic media and increasingly from the Internet. In the US, for instance, media watchers believe that even the Internet will be out of date as people access news through mobile phones and "tweets". They argue that the new generation has no patience to read more than news nuggets in 140 characters.

India's newspapers, however, can relax. This changing media world has not yet landed in India. If reassurance were needed for this, take a look at the difference between watching Budget-related news bulletins and discussions on the electronic media – particularly the 'general' channels that do not specialise in business – and the coverage of the Budget in the 'general' newspapers the next day.

Every newspaper went out of its way to simplify the Budget, to give as much detail as possible, to explain some complex aspects through graphics, to translate the budget into the way it'll impact the aam admi etc.

In the past, many newspapers would reproduce a major part of the Finance Minister's budget speech. This was useful for those who wanted more specific details and not just the interpretation of the Budget. These days, this is rarely done given the cost of printing and newsprint and the downturn in the economy that has impacted the number of pages in most newspapers.

Some newspapers, like The Hindu, have compensated for this by putting this material on their web editions. In fact, The Hindu does a singular service to readers interested in more detail by uploading many documents on its site including commission reports – the latest being the Shopian rape case investigation.

If a survey was conducted the day after the Budget with lay readers and viewers of TV and they were asked what helped them to understand the Budget better, it is more than likely that the majority would refer to their daily newspaper.

In the face of the non-stop onslaught of electronic media, this is, in fact, the role the print media can play for a long time to come. Rather than competing with television, it can give the value addition that makes newspapers indispensable to the reader. Some newspapers are doing this better than others.

A surprising aspect of the Budget coverage this year was the front-page photograph and comment carried by Times of India. This paper has made no bones about its preoccupation with its upper class readership. The newspaper has been geared to meeting, what it deems to be the interests of this class. Hence, if it ignores or downplays news from other parts of the country, or about poverty and deprivation for instance, it has justified it in the name of this readership. It has argued that this class prefers to read about business, Bollywood, sport and a little bit of politics. The rest can wait.

(To read the rest, click on the link above)

A silent revolution

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, July 12, 2009

The Other Half


For many weeks in June, Iran dominated the news. Now it has slipped into the background. One of the remarkable aspects of the huge demonstrations challenging the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the presence of women. Iranian women had been largel y invisible to the world. Suddenly, there they were, old and young, barely covered and fully shrouded.

And then young Neda, a music student, was shot dead as she stood on the sidelines of a demonstration. Her dying gasps were captured on camera for the world to see. That tragic moment spoke not just of the mindless assault on ordinary people following the election, but also of the existence of a movement for change that the women of Iran have been conducting for decades now. That story is largely untold. People focus on a country like Iran when there is an event. They rarely know what goes on the rest of the time.

Active participants in 1979

The story of Iranian women’s the struggle for justice and equality began soon after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran. Women were active participants in that movement. They expected that they would get their rights as equal citizens as a result of the end of the Shah’s repressive regime.

Instead, the Islamic Republic took away even the rights that women had won in the previous decades. Except for their right to vote, that was only granted as late as 1963, the Islamic government under Ayatollah Khomeini reversed many laws relating to women. Within a month of the new regime taking power, women’s legal status was reduced to half of that of men — two women witnesses were equal to one male. No woman could be a judge. Furthermore, the Family Protection Law introduced in 1967 that gave women the right to divorce, custody of children and laid down that polygamous marriages required the court’s permission and that of the wife/wives, was reversed. Worse still, the minimum age of marriage for girls was reduced to nine years (14 years for boys) and the veil was made mandatory. Public areas, like beaches, were segregated as was public transit and women were not allowed to participate in sporting events.

A fascinating paper on the women’s movement in Iran, written by Homa Hoodfar for a study on women’s movements, coordinated by the Association for Women in Development ( www.awid.org ) reveals, for instance, that many of the veiled women who actively participated in the movement against the Shah were in fact middle class women who had discarded the veil. They chose to wear it at that time to demonstrate their opposition to the Shah’s regime and believed that its end would lead to equal rights for women.

In the early days after the revolution, many of these women protested. But they got little support from political parties, including the Left, and were attacked by religious zealots and the police. The start of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) put an end to any effort on their part to challenge the anti-women laws.

Different paths

But the churning continued. Secular women believed only a secular regime could restore their rights while the more conservative and religious women held that these rights could not be denied in an Islamic regime. It is fascinating to read how women with different perspectives eventually found a way of working towards the same goal.

For instance, a group of religious women began to publish stories in women’s magazines of how women divorced after 20, 30 and even 40 years of marriage had been left without any alimony because the law favoured men. Stories of young widows of men killed during the Iran-Iraq war began appearing, of how they faced long custody battles for their children. Women’s religious gatherings in mosques discussed these issues. Large-scale letter-writing campaigns to the leaders and to women’s magazines were organised about these injustices. Little of this was known to the outside world.

The first indication that their voices were being heard came in 1985 when Ayatollah Khomeini announced that the widows of martyrs could retain custody of their children even if they remarried. This was followed by a new marriage contract that gave women the right to divorce.

(To read the rest, click on the link above)

Prime Time rape

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, June 28, 2009

THE OTHER HALF


It began as a routine crime report. An actor had been charged with raping his domestic help and had been taken into custody. But within a day it became front-page news. Because the actor, Shiney Ahuja, was reasonably well known and the domestic help had registered the complaint within hours of the alleged rape.

The predictable feeding frenzy of the media led to regular updates from the police, even as the case was being investigated, being published. At the same time, the denials and certificates of good character for the actor were also faithfully reported.

Trial by media

Even before the case was filed in court, the trial was on. The chairperson of the National Commission of Women announced, after meeting the domestic help involved, that the accused was guilty and should be punished. On the other side, the actor’s wife declared on major television channels that her husband was innocent and that this was a frame-up. When asked how she had concluded that it was a frame-up, she could not answer except to reiterate that she believed her husband could never do such a thing. Friends and supporters spoke of how much of a gentleman he was, what a good father, and that they too believed he was innocent.

The domestic help, of course, could not speak for herself. She cannot defend the charge made by Ahuja’s wife that this was a frame-up. Rape victims generally do not want to go public and according to the law, the media too has to ensure that neither the name, nor any hint that could reveal the identity of a woman raped, is published. Despite this, at least one television channel and a newspaper ran a photograph of the young woman with her face covered. What did they gain by doing this? Many newspapers also gave details such as the village where she lived, what her father did and several other clues that would determine her identity. Fortunately for her, the media did not pursue this side of the story as the actor’s story was more interesting and would grab more eyeballs.

(To read the rest, click on the link above)

A law with flaws

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, June 14, 2009

THE OTHER HALF

Here we go again. Even those who feel most passionately on this subject must now feel weary at hearing the same set of arguments repeated for and against the long-pending Women’s Reservation Bill. While across party lines women politicians are convinced that the Bill must go through — the notable exceptions being Jaya Prada of the Samajwadi Party and Uma Bharati of the Bharatiya Janashakti Party — the same set of male politicians who opposed it in the past continue to do so.

Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal (United), who will long be remembered for his remark that the Bill would bring into Parliament more women with short hair, has once again staked his claim to notoriety by threatening to drink poison rather than allow the Bill to pass. Although he has retracted this comment, his penchant for the dramatic remains unaltered over the years. Of the other Yadavs, Mulayam sets out the same arguments as Sharad, about a separate quota for Backward Castes, while Lalu, after initially maintaining a diplomatic silence, has now aligned himself with Mulayam and Sharad. And interestingly, while the BJP is whole-heartedly supporting the Bill, its allies, JD (U) and Shiv Sena are opposing it.

Real possibility

The major difference this time from the episodes in the past when the Bill was introduced and then pushed to committee in the face of opposition is that the government has enough support to get two-thirds of the votes in Parliament. Thus, regardless of the threats and noises made by those who oppose it, the Bill could be passed.

It will not happen overnight or even within the 100 days promised by the government because it is still in committee and that committee has to be reconstituted. Given the way these processes work, even setting up a new Committee on Law and Justice will take some time. So the earliest we could see the Bill emerge again would be in the winter session of Parliament. A great deal can happen before that eventuality.

In its anxiety to push through the Bill, the government could brush aside genuine reservations about the current draft of the law and place it before the House unchanged. If there is a constructive debate, something that is not at all guaranteed, then once again the Bill could go into committee to incorporate recommendations. If there is no debate but disruption, as in the past, the government might withdraw it and send it to committee. Or if there is some debate but little opposition, the Bill could go through in its current form.

The last outcome would be the most unsatisfactory. For, if the government fails to take on board some of the constructive suggestions that have been made on the draft, the Bill that is placed in Parliament and somehow pushed through might not serve the purpose for which it has been conceived. The main reason for advocating a quota for women in Parliament is because women do not have a level playing field in the world of politics. Even though political parties have promised to field more women candidates, in fact their numbers have not increased. More women were elected to the 15th Lok Sabha because women’s success rate is much higher than that of men. Given this, if political parties had ensured that at least a third of their candidates were women, it is possible that their number in Parliament would have seen a dramatic increase. That this has not happened illustrates the problem women face, particularly those without family connections, to find a place in the political arena.

A quota will automatically bring up the numbers. But will it make a difference? Who are the women who will get elected? The Yadavs believe that this will only empower the “elite class” of women. That can only be proven if tested.

(To read the rest, click on the link above)

Lessons for new MPs

https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/Lessons-for-new-MPs/article15941449.ece
The Hindu, Sunday May 31, 2009

The Other Half

One of the 59 women MPs elected to the 15th Lok Sabha, that incidentally has more women than in previous parliaments, is Shruti Choudhury from Bhivani-Mahendragarh in Haryana. She should visit the small town of Narnaul in her constituency and go to Nai Basti, a slum-like locality. Talk to the women of Nai Basti. They will speak without a moment’s hesitation if she asks them what should be her priority. Water, they will shout, followed by sanitation.

Even as the new government jostles over portfolios and the media engages in endless speculation about political equations, millions of people around India are going through another year without adequate water. Bhopal has already seen water riots. There are towns in Gujarat where water is provided for an hour every week. Millions of residents in urban India depend entirely on water supplied by tankers though the summer. And in villages, wells are drying up as the water is diverted, either to supply thirsty towns and cities, or industries.
Mutually dependent

Governance and development were the two mantras that the Congress Party believes brought it back to power so convincingly in these elections. But in its second term, will it continue to push these two crucial factors, where one cannot work without the other? The best of schemes falls flat because there are no systems of governance. And even where there are systems of governance in place, nothing changes if there is no investment in basic services like water supply and sanitation.
Narnaul is a good illustration of this. The town, with a population of over 60,000, is located just off the highway between Delhi and Jaipur and is typical of non-descript North Indians towns. Over 18 per cent of its population lives in slums.
I spent a morning with the women of Nai Basti, one of these slum colonies, well before the prospect of a general election had dawned. Women of all ages, their heads covered in brightly coloured dupattas, sat in the verandah of one of the houses and vociferously expressed their views about governance and development.

Pipe dreams

Their biggest problem was water. They showed me pipes peeping out from the ground that were proof that there had once been a plan to supply piped water. But the plan remained, literally, a pipe dream. The water never came, the pipes remained dry and there was no point attaching a tap to a pipe without water. Thus, the women lived with the proof of a dream, one that has yet to come true. Yet, on paper, they get piped water and thus have to pay a flat rate of Rs. 50 a month for water that is never supplied. So much for paper statistics.

“We did a lot of dharnas for water two years ago. We jammed the road, went to the District Collector’s office, sat there for three hours. Everyone came. The water came for two days and then stopped. It is the first time I heard the voices of women drown out those of men!” says one of the women. Despite this, there was little improvement.
How do they get water? The municipality supplies water by filling up tanks some distance from Nai Basti. On paper, this is supposed to happen thrice a week. In fact, the water comes only once a week. Women must wait their turn and fill up as much as they can carry. A couple of hand pumps make up the difference. But the amount they gather and fill is nowhere near their need.

“Gents can go to work. All problems have to be borne by women. We have to collect the water. Women are powerful because they have to bear everything,” says Birna Devi, once a municipal councillor.

You can see this at work as you watch how the women of Nai Basti use and save water. They recycle every drop of water, putting it to multiple uses. The soapy water from washing clothes, for instance, is reused to wash dishes. And water that cannot be used again is then used to flush the drains outside their homes. For, in addition to the absence of running water, Nai Basti has no sewerage. But because of the initiative of these women, the area is surprisingly clean.

So the primary lesson in governance that these women can teach our newly elected MPs is: talk to the women, listen to them, ask them about basic problems and learn from the solutions they have devised.

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What an election!

This has been an extraordinary election in many ways. It was long, protracted, stretching over a month -- the hottest -- and at times seemed never-ending. Yet even when it began, we knew it would end on May 16. A day many of us dreaded. Everyone predicted a hung Parliament, that neither of the two national parties, the Congress or the B JP would be able to form a government easily, that smaller, regional parties would play a much bigger role and that the days after votes were counted the country would witness horse-trading of the worst kind. This would undermine people's faith in politics and democracy.

Well, as usual the pessimists were proved wrong. The Indian voter surprised everyone, including the Congress and the BJP. And we now have the prospect of a fairly stable five years ahead of us as the Congress, with over 200 seats prepares to take office with a few of its allies.

But the question that needs to be asked is why so many people got it wrong? Has the media stopped going out and trying to get the pulse of the people? Have newspapers and media organisations now become so metro-centred that they believe more in the chatter of the pundits sitting in the big cities than the wisdom of the ordinary woman and man sweating it out in small towns and villages? At least one experienced political journalist told me that anyone covering Uttar Pradesh, where the Congress has made a spectacular come-back, would have sensed the growing presence of the Congress. Yet, there were few reports suggesting this. As a result, by most calculations, the Congress was going to fail miserably in UP because it had spurned an ally like the Samajwadi party.

Even in Maharashtra, when psephologist Yogendra Yadav stated that their survey had indicated that the Congress and its ally the Nationalist Congress Party would do quite well in the state, senior journalists were disbelieving. People in the state were fed-up of the state government run by these two parties. Why should they vote for the same people again?

Once again, it is possible that we in the media failed to understand that people have different compulsions when they vote for Parliament than when they do for the state Assembly. Although it is true that the Congress-NCP alliance gained from the split in votes between the Shiv Sena and its breakway Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, the increase in its seats tally suggests that voters did apply a different yardstick in voting for the Lok Sabha elections.

The final tally is a sum of the different compulsions that operated in every state. There was certainly no over-arching "national" issue that benefitted the Congress. But what is clear is that increasingly people seem to be veering towards parties that offer a path between two extremes and can also demonstrate an improvement in the quality of governance.

The real test for the Congress-NCP alliance will come this October when Maharashtra goes to polls to elect a new Assembly. It is then that the complaints about the poor quality of governance of this government might translate into a negative vote against the alliance.

These political calculations apart, I have argued for some time that the Indian voter has now got accustomed to using her vote and increasingly believes that her vote counts, that it can make a difference. Every election since 1977, the most spectacular election when Indira Gandhi and the Congress were voted out of power following the Emergency, has thrown up an unexpected result. No party can now afford to be complacent anymore. People are asking questions and making up their minds. They cannot be bribed and bullied into voting a particular way as they could before. Of course, some of that still happens. But not on the scale it did in the past. And certainly not on a scale that it can change the outcome of elections.

So even as there is much to worry about, with the recession, job losses, social indicators that are changing too slowly, the vulnerability of poor women and children etc, we can be glad that democracy is growing deeper roots every day.