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.

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

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.

Getting to the top

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 17, 2009


THE OTHER HALF



The people of Sehore, a small town in Madhya Pradesh just 35 km away from Bhopal, have another reason to be proud. Until a few weeks ago, the local people would boast of two things: one, that in 1824, the man who fought and died in what they believe is India’s first war of Independence against the British, Kunwar Chain Singh, lies buried in their town. And two, that former Vice President, Justice Mohammed Hidayatullah, studied in Sehore. Now they have another boast, that a young woman, daughter of a laid-off worker, has got into the Indian Administrative Service.

Priti Maithil might not be one amongst the three women who topped this year’s examination to the civil services but even holding the 92nd position is an incredible achievement. At 23, she got through the examination in the first attempt. Her father, Santosh Kumar, has been unemployed since 2002 when the Bhopal Sugar Industries where he worked closed down. One of the principal reasons for the closure, locals tell you, is because there is no water in Sehore. So how can industries run? This is the story of so many smaller towns where sources of employment dry up even as basic services such as water and electricity evaporate.

Bleak prospects

Yet, towns like Sehore have so much going for them, apart from history. They boast of a good education system, one that can produce people like Priti. But the tragedy is that scores of young people emerge from similar towns, with education and dreams, but few prospects.

But coming back to this year’s civil service examinations, it is interesting that the media made much of the success of the three women who held the top three ranks. Shubhra Saxena, Sharandeep Brar and Kiran Kaushal were interviewed and featured on front pages of many newspapers. But will this alter the realities they will face once they enter the service?

Not all women in the Indian Administrative Service think that gender is a problem. But many do. Some of them have openly spoken about it in the media. In some States, like Maharashtra, the women officers have come together at various times when they have felt that they are being overlooked for promotions. At such times, the issue of their status within the service becomes the subject of some discussion. But whether it leads to sustainable change in the way the service is run is still an open question.

Welcome changes

Some things have changed. Veena Sikri, who was in the Indian Foreign Service, writes about how, in 1971, when she entered the service, married women were not allowed. She had to get special permission to get married! She says that many women left the service when they got married.

Just 30 years ago, women officers like C.B. Muthamma had to fight long legal battles that went up to the Supreme Court because they were denied promotions to the rank of Secretary. Veena Sikri was also superseded to the post of Foreign Secretary and she has still not been given the reason why the government did this. She now teaches at Jamia Milia University in New Delhi.

The success of the three women toppers has also brought into the public realm the views of women in the services. Many of them remind us that it is still tough for them to succeed. The issue is not just of the double burden they must carry — of being wives and mothers and professionals. They have to confront a bias that has everything to do with their being women and nothing to do with their competence.

An IAS officer from UP is quoted in Asian Age (May 10, 2009) as saying: “All this talk of women making their presence felt in cadre services is humbug. Women are still discriminated against by their male colleagues in States like Uttar Pradesh. If a woman officer interacts with her male political boss for official purposes, she is linked romantically with him, but when male officers interact with a woman politician, there is no such allegation. A woman officer is made to work twice as hard to prove that she is half as good as her male colleagues.”

The views of this particular officer might not be universal and there are many women who deny facing any discrimination. Yet even a few voices like this suggest that it is not entirely a level playing field once women enter even though they get in through open competition and without any special concessions made to them because of their gender.

Yet, even if women officers face problems, there is no doubt that the civil service still provides a unique opportunity for real “service”. An honest and concerned officer can make a spectacular difference to the lives of people, especially when posted in the districts. Whenever you travel to district towns, you constantly hear stories of such officers. They are long remembered even after they have moved on to other posts.

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

Narmada's vote

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 3, 2009

The Other Half




Who would Narmada Devi have voted for in this election? I met her on a cool afternoon in the town of Madhubani in Bihar, much before the election dates had been announced. She sat with four other women on a sun-drenched verandah spinning cotton yarn on one of those instruments rarely seen these days, the ambar charkha. The women are paid Rs. 50 for every kilo of yarn they spin. And it takes them eight days of spin that amount.

Narmada Devi walks one kilometre to and from her house to Madhubani’s once-famous Khadi Gramudyog established in 1919. Today, its sprawling 17 acres consists of a collection of crumbling and dilapidated buildings and a handful of old men and women like Narmada Devi. From an institution that supplied Khadi fabric and products to all of India, and employed 22,000 people including 1,100 weavers in the surrounding villages, the Khadi Gramudyog today has barely 100 weavers, a handful of spinners and around 46 other workers. The latter are tasked with protecting the extensive properties belonging to the Gramudyog — a total of 65 acres in the district.

Avadh Narain Jha, who is in-charge of the Khadi Gramudyog, showed me dozens of ambar charkhas lying unused in the room adjoining the verandah where Narmada Devi sat. In another part of the campus, he pointed to the special charkhas that this institution once manufactured that could spin yarn fine enough to make muslin. Today, hardly anyone orders these charkhas, this elderly man who is waiting to retire told me.

Like most women her age, Narmada Devi could not tell me how old she was. But she did tell me the problems she faced sitting on her haunches for many hours spinning the charkha. Her right hand was stiff she said, her chest hurt and she had problems with her eyesight. But she had no option but to walk each day to the Khadi Gramudyog and spin for a few hours.
Steady decline

The decline of Khadi has been steady. But the story of how this has impacted the lives of thousands of workers in India’s villages has perhaps never been adequately recorded or acknowledged. Today, people in these villages would be more than happy to get the kind of work Khadi offered them in the past. But neither Jha, nor those who make policy for the development of Khadi in distant Delhi have the imagination or the determination, to revive this village industry.

The fate of Madhubani’s Khadi Gramudyog takes on a new relevance in present times. Recession is a word that brings to mind the loss of jobs in banking, BPOs, the IT sector, industry and even the media. But thousands of workers like Narmada Devi, including many women who are part of the growing informal sector, have been facing recession for much longer. Their loss of employment is a silent, creeping one, not a sudden termination. And unlike people in the formal sector who have some fall-back, some savings, some compensation paid out to them, some asset such as a house, women like Narmada Devi have nothing. If they lose even the little paid work available, they have no alternative.

The situation is not very different in places where employment is easier to find. The global recession has certainly hit the export sector in India. You see it played out in the lives of those who work in the smaller enterprises that feed into the larger export sector. Thus, in Dharavi in Mumbai, thousands of men and women work in small units producing garments for export. According to one such exporter, who has around eight units employing 700 workers, his orders have come down by one third. This means that the women in particular, who come in to work on a piece-rate basis as and when there is work, get much less work today than they did when the economy was growing.

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

Making sense of Election 2009

Election 2009 must be one of the most confusing elections in India's history as an independent nation. Nothing is predictable. No party, regardless of the postures it takes, is confident. And the lines between allies and enemies are so blurred as to be non-existent. We wait for May 16, when this month long process of voting ends and the votes are counted.

But till then, most depend on the media to make some sense of the process. And is the media doing that? Or is it adding to the confusion? The electronic media, in particular, seems content to put together talking heads who shout at each other. What we need to hear is the voice of the average voter. That voice is heard sometimes, but most of the time we are treated to the same old men and women who hog the television screen through the year.

This time, print has proved that it is more reliable. Many newspapers are bringing out some of the real concerns of the average voter. These articles give us an insight into what is really going on in India beyond the metros.

Here's a link to my column in The Hoot that discusses the media and elections:

Poll time reality check

April 17, 2009

http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=3786&mod=1&pg=1§ionId=10&valid=true

Also my take on the elections, written for The New Statesman, and therefore necessarily simplified:

The son also rises but all bets are off

April 23, 2009

http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2009/04/congress-party-india-bjp-prime

Memories of violence

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, April 19, 2009

THE  OTHER  HALF

This election might be more peaceful than past elections although it is too early to tell after just the first round. But an important thread that runs through it is the role of memory of past wrongs and the violent history of some political parties that refuses to be erased.

The withdrawal of Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar by the Congress Party as candidates for the Lok Sabha is only one illustration of how people do not forget or forgive that easily, especially when there is no closure, no reassurance that a genuine attempt has been made to bring justice. The Sikhs have not forgotten 1984 even if the rest of the country has. This is now clear.
Justice denied

The Muslims in Gujarat have also not forgotten 2002 because the perpetrators of those horrific acts of violence are still at large. Some of them have also won elections. There is no remorse, no genuine attempt to ensure justice. This might not impact the election results in that State this time, or perhaps even the next time. But in the long run, the Bharatiya Janata Party will be held accountable just as the Congress Party has been forced to face the cost of attempting to erase history. People are not likely to forget, or forgive, the BJP’s flaunting of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as its chief campaigner in this election even if its manifesto speaks of development and security. The images of Gujarat 2002 live on in the memories of more than just the people who were directly affected by the violence.

Orissa 2008 is another example of political violence that will linger on and come to haunt its perpetrators. The victims of the terrible violence in Kandhamal just six months ago, Orissa’s Christians, are still living in camps. Most of them have lost all their identity papers, including their voters’ identity cards. According to newspaper reports, not only are they afraid to leave the camps but they are also afraid of voting because they fear that their choice will be known to those who tortured them, people who hold the reins of power. Their only choice is not to vote at all. One of the residents of a camp told a journalist, “Unless the booths are set up right here, it is not possible to vote. We will not step out on polling day as we expect further violence after the polls as the polarisation has been complete”. (Hindustan Times, April 13, 2008)

The BJP’s candidate from the site of the worst violence, G. Udayagiri, is Manoj Pradhan who was directly implicated in last year’s violent attacks on Christians. And its Lok Sabha candidate is a former policeman, Ashok Sahu who is now the State President of the Hindu Jagaran Samukhya, a group that makes no apologies for the attacks on helpless Christian communities. He was recently quoted as saying, “What happened in Kandhamal is no reason to be ashamed about, at least not for me. Today Kandhamal symbolises Hindu culture.”

Divisive politics

The BJP’s support of people like Manoj Pradhan and Ashok Sahu, and not to forget Varun Gandhi, reminds us yet again that its true ideology remains unrepentantly majoritarian, communal and divisive. Elections are the best time to test what percentage of the Indian population really believes what Ashok Sahu has stated, that the massacre of innocents in Kandhamal symbolises Hindu culture.
A timely reminder of the lingering memory of violence in the lives of people who have lived through it is the thought-provoking film by Nandita Das, “Firaaq”. The film has been released at an important time, for, it illustrates what happens to ordinary people, their relationships and their lives when communal violence seeps into every crack and crevice of a society. No one is untouched. Victims of violence discover that all relationships, including the closest ones, become vitiated by suspicion and fear. Those on the other side of the divide either live with the guilt of not having done anything, or with the fear that their role in the violence will be discovered. And even those who believe in the strong syncretic traditions of Indian music and art are forced to face the ugly reality that the delicate threads that have held different communities together for centuries cannot survive such vicious communal violence.

Double-edged

What I personally found particularly interesting was how the director brings out the double-edged sword that many women face. Thus, the wife of a Hindu bigot, who is tortured by her inability to help a Muslim woman in distress, faces violence in her own home as does the wife of a Muslim who has lost everything because his community was targeted by Hindu mobs. Neither woman knows the other. They are on opposite sides of the communal divide. Yet their experience of violence, within and outside the home, places them virtually on the same side.

A film like “Firaaq” reminds us during an election that many complex factors dictate people’s choices and actions. As Indians get used to the idea of elections where their vote can actually lead to a change, it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict outcomes. What makes election 2009 especially interesting is the fact that people are now beginning to understand the value of their vote. They also know that one election is not the end of their ability to make a choice.

A young scholar doing her Ph.D. research in Madhya Pradesh narrated to me her experience of talking to a very poor woman in the town where she is working. This woman compared her vote to a single grain in a fistful of grain. Even one grain, she pointed out, could shift the scales.

Many more Mayawatis

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, April 5, 2009

THE OTHER HALF



Rajeshwari Nora in her beauty parlour in Narnaul, Haryana



They cannot compete with Mayawati, or Jayalalitha or Sonia Gandhi. But the new breed of women politicians springing up in India’s small towns will become a political force to reckon with in the years to come.

Take Rajeshwari Nora, the owner of a beauty parlour by that name in the town of Narnaul in Haryana’s Mahendragarh district. Her 6 ft by 10 ft beauty parlour has mirrors on two sides and large posters of a host of popular Hindi film stars ranging from Rani Mukherjee to Katrina Kaif on the back wall. Two swivel chairs and a bench for those waiting their turn completes the furniture. All the film stars are dressed in bridal finery. Rajeshwari tells me she specialises in bridal make up. Beauty parlours are a flourishing business in this small town of under one lakh people, she says.

At home in politics


But Rajeshwari is not just in the beauty business. She is also into politics as a nominated member of the local municipal council. And she takes her task seriously, worrying about the water supply and garbage clearance. She already speaks like a veteran politician. “My family was in the BJP. I was also in the BJP. Right now I’m in the Congress. But I can change,” she tells me without the slightest hint of embarrassment.

In Mirzapur in U.P., a town on the banks of the Ganga that also hosts the carpet industry, Mamta Yadav is enthusiasm personified. This 28-year-old MA in history has been elected to the Mirzapur municipal council. She got the largest number of votes and says she won because “people thought we should vote for an educated person.” Mamta also heads the standing committee on education and she loves every minute of the importance and attention she is getting. “Rajneeti bahut achchi cheez hai (politics is a very good thing)”, she tells me as we sit in her home in Mirzapur town.

Mamta lives in a middle-income colony with paved paths and unexpectedly clean drains. Her husband, a cable operator in five wards, supports his wife’s efforts. Unlike other husbands of elected women representatives, he defers to her and lets her do all the talking. “I’m a fan of politics,” says Mamta, a mother of two children, a boy aged nine and a girl aged five. Earlier, she had considered becoming a teacher. But now she has been bitten by the rajneeti (politics) bug and intends to continue.

Mamta says she draws inspiration from Mayawati, Pratibha Patil and Sonia Gandhi. “Whatever you say, women are proud that a woman and a Dalit has reached such a high position,” she says of Mayawati. An interesting comment coming from a woman who is not a Dalit and who is close to the Congress Party.

In Rajnandgaon in Chhatisgarh, a Dalit doctor is a member of the municipal council. Dr. Rekha Meshram is a Mahar. She runs her clinic and her office as a councillor from her home, located in a colony of Mahars. Her education helps her, she says, to understand her duties and her rights as a councillor. She can read the budget and discuss it unlike other councillors, many of whom are barely literate.

But Rekha has a different spin on educated women entering politics. “I understand why educated people don’t want to enter. We need to be patient, to be articulate. Being educated is the biggest handicap in politics. You can’t get ahead on your own talent. Till you have a godfather, you can’t go all out. Women get caught, entangled in this web. Party politics is very difficult for women members.” Rekha is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Although she believes that women have a difficult time, she too is convinced she will continue to be in politics.

(To read the rest of the article, click on the link below.Many more Mayawatis)

Disturbed in Manipur

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 22, 2009

THE OTHER HALF


The votes from Manipur in distant northeastern India might not determine which party comes to power in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. But one thing is certain. The women of Imphal, its capital, are clear what must happen if any party wants thei r vote. “We have had enough. If the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) is not removed, we will not vote”, said an impassioned 78-year-old Ima K. Taruni.

Taruni and dozens of other elderly women, the Meira Paibi or Torch Bearers, were waiting quietly and patiently outside the Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital in Imphal on March 7, expecting Irom Sharmila, the iconic human rights campaigner who has been on an indefinite hunger strike for eight years, to be released from the security ward of the hospital. Sharmila and the Meira Paibi, who were also on a relay hunger strike, have one demand — remove the AFSPA. They hold this draconian law responsible for the insecure lives they lead in their own State as over 55,000 members of the Indian armed forces are granted total immunity for any of their actions.

Still in place
Despite Sharmila’s eight years of fasting — and being force-fed through a tube inserted in her nose — the AFSPA remains in place. But Sharmila will not give up. On March 7 she was released, and received by her “mothers” who tended her as they would an exceedingly brave daughter. But two days later, she was re-arrested, on charges of attempting to commit suicide, and sent again to the security ward to be force-fed.

The Meira Paibi will also not give up. Amongst those who waited for Sharmila’s release was a smiling 58-year-old woman who looked older than her years. Ima L. Nganbi, a mother of four children, felt no sense of embarrassment in telling me that she was one of the 12 women who held the dramatic,naked protest in July 2004 in front of Kangla Fort, an area occupied by the security forces in the heart of Imphal. The photograph of these women holding a banner that said, “Indian Army, rape me” sent ripples around the world. It drew attention to a State that has lived under the sword of terror — from the security forces and from multiple militant groups — for decades. And a State where people, and especially the women, are not willing to take it anymore.

Ima Nganbi is the Vice President of Apunba Manipur Kanba Ima Lup or Mothers’ Association to Save Manipur. The naked protest was sparked by the arrest and subsequent murder by security forces of Manorama, an activist. “We wanted to say this openly — come take our prestige, rape us, take our flesh”, says Ima Nganbi. They could not sit back and be silent any more after the Manorama incident. They felt there was no purpose to life if they had to live “without prestige” or respect. “We can’t live like this. All of us women in Manipur are mothers of women who have been raped by security forces. We want to fight to protect our prestige and the removal of black laws like the AFSPA”, she says.

But Ima Nganbi and her colleagues are glad that their protest had some impact. It led to the opening up of the Kangla Fort to civilians. This vast area, surrounded by a moat, was once the palace of the Manipuri king. In 1891, after the Anglo-Manipuri war, the British Army occupied it and after Independence it was taken over by the Assam Rifles. On November 20, 2004, after 113 years, it was handed over to civilian authority and opened up to the public.

That year, the Manmohan Singh government in Delhi promised it would remove the AFSPA and as a first step the municipal limits of Imphal were placed outside it. Yet, it continues to prevail in the rest of the State till today. The central government also appointed a five-member committee headed by Supreme Court Judge B.P. Jeevan Reddy to examine whether AFSPA was required. The Committee, whose report was never made public, was unequivocal in its recommendation that AFSPA should be withdrawn and pointed out that the Act, “for whatever reason, has become a symbol of oppression, an object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and high-handedness”. The government has neither accepted nor rejected the report. It has been silent.

(To read the rest of the article, go to: https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/Disturbed-in-Manipur/article15941265.ece)

Steel magnolias in Manipur

Irom Sharmila joins the Meira Paibi in Imphal, Manipur on March 7, 2009

Curfew is a hated six-letter word not just in Srinagar. It has been a reality in many parts of Manipur, including its capital Imphal, in the northeastern corner of India for many decades, a reality that we who live in metropolitan India would find difficult to comprehend.

A few days in Imphal and you realise why people curse the curfew. At the moment, curfew has been “relaxed”. It begins at 7 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. But since February 19, Imphal was under curfew from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m.

This means, that in a city with a population of over three lakhs, the streets are jammed from 4.30 p.m. onwards as people desperately try to get home. Every form of public transport is under siege. Shopkeepers hurriedly pull down shutters before the police and the army come along to enforce the curfew.

At the famous Ima market in Imphal run entirely by women, hundreds of them can be seen hurriedly tying up their goods and rushing out to make their way home. In so-called “normal” times, their main business was in the evening hours.

And after five? You can do nothing. In any case, there is also a perpetual power-cut. “We get power for barely four hours a day”, says a local journalist, “when we desperately try and charge our phones, our laptops and hope that the battery will last for the rest of the day.”

There is also little water. Everywhere, in the non-curfew hours, people can be seen collecting water from any source they can find.

Absence of power and water are a reality elsewhere too. But not the presence of over 50,000 members of the armed forces. Or the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 that gives members of these forces complete impunity.

On March 7, on the eve of International Women’s Day, a 36-year-old Manipuri woman, Irom Sharmila, who has become an iconic figure, ended the eighth year of her indefinite fast demanding repeal of the AFSPA. Sharmila has been repeatedly arrested and released for attempting to commit suicide, a charge under which she can be detained for a maximum of one year. For most of this period she has been force fed through a tube inserted in her nose.

Sitting patiently on the steps leading to the security ward of the Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital is 78-year-old Ima K. Taruni, one of the “mothers” of Manipur, the Meira Paibi who have been on a solidarity relay fast for 88 days. “Let’s save Sharmila by removing AFSPA”, she says. “If the Act is not removed, we will not vote. We have had enough.” The quiet manner in which this is said is typical of the determined non-violent struggle against the oppressive AFSPA by women like her.

After hours of waiting patiently, even as the evening sky begins to darken, Irom Sharmila steps out of the security ward. She is dressed in Manipuri dress, a pink diaphanous shawl around her shoulder. She winces at the light of the flash bulbs that pop as she steps out into media scrum. Taruni and the other Meira Paibi form a protective ring around her and while supporting her on all sides slowly walk out with her. People clap, some weep on seeing this pale woman who is barely able to speak or smile.

But each step seems to give her strength. Instead of going into a vehicle, Sharmila walks with the group of women a distance of at least 500 metres to the tent where they have been fasting. She tells the women later that she was ready to walk through the entire city of Imphal.

Once they reach the tent, the women help her sit down on the mattresses, cover her with blankets, lovingly massage her feet and put socks on them, rub her back and coddle her.

Sharmila then turns to the waiting media and speaks. Her voice is surprisingly strong for a woman who has been on a protest fast for eight years. “While the whole world will be celebrating International Women’s Day, no one will know that in a land called Kangleipak, where the land is very fertile and there are so many resources and the people are very friendly, and the wind blows very sweetly, the women of the land are facing so much oppression,” she says. She talks slowly and clearly for over half an hour, never flagging. And as darkness descends, she gets ready to spend the night in the tent with the Meira Paibi.

The release and re-arrest of Irom Sharmila has become an annual ritual. Even as this was being written, she was arrested yet again. Yet, it is an important ritual, one that the rest of India has not fully understood.

Manipur is tucked away in a distant corner. A beautiful land that is being destroyed by strife that is far more complex than the one in Kashmir. A state where the daily hardships of life are compounded by what people feel is an oppressive system. A state where you cannot but be impressed by the determination not to lose hope in its women, its Meira Paibi like K. Taruni. And where the sight of a pale 36-year-old holding on to her demand despite years of arrest and force-feeding has to touch even the most cynical heart.

Manipuris tell you that they have noted how the Indian media gives blanket coverage to any terror attack, be it in Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur or Ahmedabad. Yet although they in Manipur face terror every day, from the armed forces, from the scores of militant groups, hardly any of it is reported, except by their own media.

The current clampdown is the consequence of the murder of a bright young dedicated officer of the Manipur Civil Service, Thingnam Kishen, who was abducted and brutally killed in Ukhrul district on February 13 along with his driver and guard. Kishen, like many young Manipuris, was educated in Delhi and returned to the state in the hope of making a difference.

Despite strong laws like AFSPA, the government has failed to keep people safe in Manipur. Almost every day four or more people are killed in violent incidents involving the rebel groups or the security forces. The most recent was the shooting of a 13-year-old boy in Imphal. The demand for the removal of AFSPA is not likely to disappear. Nor will Irom Sharmila or her determined women supporters stop their protest.

(Also published in Mumbai edition of The Indian Express, Op-ed page, March 12, 2009)

This must stop

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 8, 2008

The Other Half


On International Women’s Day, Indian women have every right to call for a halt — to violence, to intimidation, to threats, to insults that are so quickly becoming the norm. I had hoped that I would be able to write something celebratory t his year. But there is just too much bad news that overshadows even the positive developments taking place in many corners of India.

The media reported these incidents in brief. They did not merit the attention that the Mangalore pub attack of January 24 elicited. The goons who hit out at these individual women did not take along television crews. But on just one day, February 17, in three different locations in the so-called “international” city of Bangalore, women who were minding their own business and just going about doing what any citizen is entitled to do — go to work, walk on the street, take public transport — were suddenly pounced upon by men who spat on them, hit them, chased them, hurled insults at them and even tried to pull off their clothes.

Two men on a motorcycle followed one of these women in her car in the afternoon in a crowded part of the city. They spat on her and forced her to stop. She ran into a building to escape them. They followed her and stopped only when she shouted back at them in their own language, Kannada. But as they left, they threatened her saying they had noted her car’s licence plate number.

Four men accosted another woman as she walked on the road at 10 in the morning. They attacked her, accusing her of being part of the Pink Chaddi Campaign by women who challenged the Sri Ram Sene and their Right-wing agenda. She was saved because an army van stopped and two soldiers intervened.

On the same day, a third woman, a young woman filmmaker was attacked. The men chased her to an auto-rickshaw and tried to drag her out. She managed to escape and registered a complaint with the police. And on February 28, a woman journalist on her way home from an assignment was punched on her face as she was getting into an auto-rickshaw. It just happened that on that particular day, these women had worn “western” clothing.

Distressing indifference

What is even more distressing about these incidents is that even though people saw what was happening, no one, except the two soldiers, intervened. They just watched.

What is happening to our society? Why are we breeding a combination of indifference and cowardly violence? How do we bring a halt to this?

Bangalore women are incensed and have launched the Fearless Karnataka campaign to fight against this onslaught from men who are so cowardly that they pick on individual women who are in no position to fight back. But this is a campaign that should be mirrored all over this country. Today it is women in Karnataka who are being targeted. Tomorrow it will be women in any other city or town in this country. While the safety of women in the public space has been a concern in many cities, this new aspect of being deliberately targeted by men who want to inject fear and keep women at home is a new and disturbing development.

The other face of violence is what women face even within the ostensible safety of their homes. Two recent studies have reiterated the extent to which Indian women face domestic violence, a fact already established by two consecutive National Family Health Surveys.

The study by the Indian Institute of Population Studies and the Population Council assembles more evidence that establishes the extent of violence women face in their marital homes. Based on interviews with 8,052 married men and 13,912 married women in the age group of 15 to 29 years in six States — Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu — the study notes levels of violence ranging from as high as 30 per cent in Bihar to 18 per cent in Rajasthan.

The study defines physical violence in specific terms, consisting of any of the following: twisting arm, pulling hair, pushing, shaking or throwing something at the woman, punching with fist or something else, kicking, dragging or beating up, attempting to choke or burn on purpose, threatening attack with knife, gun or any other weapon. And sexual violence as forced sex anytime during the course of marriage including the first night.

Continuing evidence
Women registered a lifetime experience ranging from 18 to 30 per cent of physical violence and between a third and half of them spoke of forced sex including on the wedding night. Women usually bear all this in silence. They do not revolt until it is too late — when they are grievously injured or even die.

Deaths amongst young women due to fire-related injuries could be six times higher than official estimates. Prachi Sanghavi, Kavi Bhalla and Veena Das, in their study released in the respected international medical journal, The Lancet, have used national hospital registry data for urban areas and a representative survey of causes of death for rural areas to arrive at this conclusion. Looking at fire-related deaths in specific age groups, the researchers estimate that there were 68,000 urban deaths and 95,000 rural deaths caused by fire in 2001, a total of 1.63 lakhs. Of these, 1.06 lakhs, or 65 per cent, were women. And more than half of these were women between 15 and 34 years of age. There could be other explanations for these deaths but the probability that many of these women were injured or died due to dowry harassment or domestic violence is not a far-fetched conclusion.

Studies and data simply confirm what we already know: that despite so-called “progress” on many fronts, women in India continue to be subjected to unconscionable levels of violence – on the street and at home. This has to stop.

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

Speaking out

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, February 22, 2008

The Other Half


Two days before February 14, in Rajnandgaon in Chhatisgarh, a group of young girls and boys met for a dinner at a local restaurant, one of only two in this non-descript small town. The restaurant served the ubiquitous selection of “Punjabi/Chinese”. On the lawn behind the restaurant, a party was in full swing with loud Bollywood music blaring out.

Ten years ago, would we have seen boys and girls meeting like this in a town with just over one lakh people? Unlikely. Some of the girls wore western clothes, one wore a salwar kamiz. I asked my host whether this gang of boys and girls were from outside Rajnandgaon, a place with several educational institutions in and around it. He said it was a possibility but they could also be local girls and boys. The presence of the lively group went virtually unnoticed by others in the restaurant. It seemed as if such meetings were commonplace.

In many ways, that group of young people represents the changes taking place in several parts of India, where education and economic mobility are allowing young women to lay claim to the public space as they never could before. They can be seen riding bicycles to high school and scooters to college and work and meeting in mixed groups without fear of being attacked or rebuked. Their mothers would never have dared do this, even if they had wanted to. Perhaps these girls will go on to earn degrees and then get married to the men their parents choose for them. Perhaps some of them will decide to move out of the small town and seek work elsewhere. Perhaps a handful will even be bold enough to decide whom they want to marry. None of this is beyond the realm of possibility.

This is a generational change that the loony fringe who train their guns on hapless couples on Valentine’s Day fail to understand or do not even wish to think about. It has nothing to do with an imposition of another culture. It has to do with education, opportunity and urbanisation.

This year February 14 came and went with the predictable reports of some shops being attacked, random couples being humiliated and demonstrations about “decency” and “culture”. The awful case of the brother and sister being beaten up in Ujjain because the Bajrang Dal gang thought they were a romantic couple was a particularly distressing incident as also several other cases where couples had their faces blackened and one in which the boy was “married” to a donkey. Yet, compared to previous years, this time some state governments did act and the preventive arrests of likely trouble makers managed to dampen the enthusiasm of the “morality brigade”.

But this year was different for another reason. In the bigger cities, for the first time, people decided to fight back. As one television channel dubbed them, the “Love Sena” also came out with assertions of why they had a right to express themselves as they wished in a free country. For instance, students of Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Indian Institute of Mass Communication and the Jawaharlal Nehru University took out a march in the Delhi University campus and then went on to perform street plays in Kamla Nagar market, an area where the Sangh Parivar’s activists had attacked shops selling Valentine’s Day cards in previous years. “Love is not a crime. So why fear the Sanghi terrorists?” they shouted.

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

In the name of culture

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Feb 8, 2008


The attack by the Sri Rama Sene on five women in a Mangalore pub on January 24 was an assault not just on those five but on all Indian women. And on Indian society. And on Indian “culture”, however we might choose to define it.

Since that widely televised crime, that has been repeatedly aired, showing men in saffron pulling women’s hair, pushing them to the ground and openly molesting them without a trace of fear, a great deal of anger, frustration and outrage has been expressed by women’s groups and others.. We have also witnessed the meekness with which even ostensibly “liberal” politicians quake when “Indian culture” comes into the picture. Note the strange responses from people like Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, for instance.

The attack on the women at the Mangalore pub is not the first such incident.. It has been preceded by many others, in and around Mangalore, in Karnataka, and in the rest of the country. What we need to think about is what these incidents say about our society, our systems of governance and our politics.

Collective responsibility
Why is the burden of upholding “tradition” and “cultural values” placed exclusively on the shoulders of women, young or old? Do men and their behaviour have nothing to do with the degradation of “culture”? And what exactly is this “Hindu” or “Indian” culture that the men from the Sri Rama Sene claim to protect? Is it Indian culture to publicly thrash and molest women? Is it Indian culture to kill women — and the men they choose to marry — if they are from a different caste or community? Is it Indian culture to torture and kill women who fail to produce the desired amount of dowry? Is it Indian culture to gang rape Dalit women who dare to challenge regressive traditions like child marriage? Indeed, is it Indian culture to sit back and accept that mothers will die during childbirth without feeling a sense of outrage at the inequity in our society?

If we wanted to find reasons for so-called “moral outrage”, there are plenty. But “pub culture”? Boys and girls going out together? Public displays of affection? Even Valentine’s Day? In any case, what is “pub culture”? Is it a disapproval of alcohol being served in public places? Or is it only about women?

The real reason for such an attack, and previous attacks, is that outfits like the Sri Rama Sene have no understanding or commitment to anything that could be understood as “culture”. They represent a primitive patriarchal mindset that is all about control — particularly over women. At a time when more women in India are getting educated, becoming economically independent and gaining the confidence to make their own choices — a process that has extended now to even smaller towns and cities — our own version of the Taliban feels emasculated. They have lost control.

So how should they assert it? By making a public and violent display of intolerance. The founding member of the Sri Rama Sene, Pravin Valke, a 40-year-old school dropout, is quoted in a newspaper (Indian Express, February 3, 2009) saying, “Why should girls go to pubs? Are they going to serve their future husbands alcohol? Should they not be learning to make chappatis? Bars and pubs should be for men only. We wanted to ensure that all women in Mangalore are home by 7 p.m.”.

In that quote you have a clear explanation of the mindset of these men who speak in the name of culture. Women should stay at home and make chappatis while men can go out and drink, rape and molest women, cheat, murder or do whatever they wish. Thereby our “culture” will be preserved!

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