Mothers and sons

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, June 27, 2010

The Other Half

Mothers and sons

If you happen to be the mother of a teenage boy in Srinagar, your anxiety levels will have hit the roof. Since the beginning of this year, seven young men, the youngest being 13-year-old Wamiq Farooq, have been killed on the streets of Srinagar. The city is literally seething, on the boil, with not a week passing when some incident brings all life to a standstill.

For mothers, the trauma is particularly poignant. Tufail Mattoo, the 17-year-old killed ostensibly by a tear gas shell, although that theory is being contested, was an only son. He was reportedly on his way to tuitions. His mother, who was busy cooking on that day, had never imagined that something like this could happen to him. She realised that something had happened when she saw the crowd outside her house.

Tufail’s mother is inconsolable. Other mothers wonder how to keep their young boys off the roads. One woman, mother of a 14-year-old, told me that she and four other women have pooled their resources to ensure that their children get driven right up to the school gate, are escorted in, and collected from school. Although her son longs to join young boys playing football in a field across from her house, she dare not let him go. So he spends his time in front of a computer or the television or reading or playing in their garden. She says that when he heard the news of Tufail’s death, he burst into a rage, kicked the furniture in the house and screamed at his mother, asking her to let him take a gun and shoot all those responsible for what had happened. How many more such young boys sit locked up in their homes? How many are joining the ranks of the defiant young men who mock and dare the security forces and pelt stones?

The woman quoted above is a professional and leads a comfortable life. Yet the fallout of the Kashmir conflict spares no one, not even people like her. Thus while Tufail’s mother mourns the loss of her only son, other mothers spend their nights dreading the next day and wondering if their children will return home safe from school. Suddenly, conflict is not about “militants” or “insurgency” but the safety of day-to-day existence.

Even a couple of days in Srinagar reminds you that the story of that city, that conflict, that beautiful region, is never fully told in the “breaking news” reports about stone-throwing, deaths and strikes. You can smell the anger, you can taste the disappointment, you can see the disillusionment with talk of “peace” all around you even as on the surface the streets of some parts of the city are crawling with Indian tourists happily escaping the stifling heat of the plains and providing good business to the locals.

At the other end of India, far away from Kashmir and its unending problems, lies the state of Manipur, beautiful and remote. For over 60 days, as we are finally being informed by a media that in the past ignored this region, there has been an economic blockade that has prevented the flow of goods into the state.

This translates itself into unimaginable hardships for people who have learnt to live with a higher degree of daily crises compared to people in most parts of this country. On a good day, in the capital Imphal, people feel lucky if they get electricity for four hours. Like their counterparts in Srinagar, they live with the reality of unexpected hartals and strikes where everything closes down. They have known the struggle to survive and keep their lives running even when there are long spells of dusk-to-dawn curfew. Somehow, people work around all these hurdles and get on with their daily lives. Children go to school – although they miss days on end when there is a disruption. People go to work in government offices and banks, run businesses, big and small, and report for the local and national media. The difficulties journalists face each day with the absence of basic infrastructure are compounded by the insecurity of dealing with literally dozens of militants groups who think nothing of gunning down a journalist they think does not toe their line. This is a “normal” situation.

But the last two months have gone way beyond this “normal” situation. It will take months before things actually become normal. We read news about trucks finally entering Manipur. What we do not read, in any kind of detail, is how ordinary people survived these 60 days, how mothers who delivered babies during this period are doing without essentials, how the elderly are managing without medicines, what people are eating, what is the fuel they have used to cook in the absence of cooking gas – which in any case is always in short supply. “Normal” is a situation they will not experience for a long time to come.

Sometimes people think you are drawing too many far-fetched and even irrelevant conclusions if you try to focus on women in such situations. But it is an angle that is unavoidable in both Kashmir and Manipur. Women are at the centre of it – the mothers of the boys killed, the mothers of the boys who are getting bolder as they hurl stones at the security forces and the mothers of the boys who are now being kept at home for fear they might join the others. Similarly in Manipur, it is the mothers on both sides of the ethnic divide who have watched their children become militants, get killed, get disillusioned with the political system, get killed even if they are uninvolved, stand up and fight for peace and a resolution, and get killed for daring to be different.

So while men decide when to talk and when to fight, when to provoke violence and when to be conciliatory, when to stick to a cause and when to consider other viewpoints, thousands of women, and their young children, live out the reality of conflicts without any end in sight.

Invisible environmentalists

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, June 14, 2010

The Other Half

KALPANA SHARMA

They forage the city, collecting and sorting often hazardous waste when the city sleeps and by day they are gone. Most of them are women and we have no long-term policy in place that looks at their welfare or health…

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Millions of waste pickers in India, who play a crucial role in dealing with the perennial environmental crisis of waste, risk their lives and their health every single day.

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Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

A city's underbelly: Waste being dumped on the outskirts...

Oil and water do not mix as the Americans are being forced to accept with the tragic oil spill from a British Petroleum oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. For almost two months now, the struggle to cap the oil well and protect large sections of the country's coastline from being devastated has been the top story in the news and the major concern of the US administration. It is an environmental crisis of gigantic proportions, and purely man-made. Whether in the long-term this will compel Americans to think again about their dependence on fossil fuels and seriously embark on the path of scaling it down and encouraging alternatives remains to be seen. At present, one finds little expression of this in the discussions around the oil spill.

On a much smaller scale, and not so dramatic, was the “accidental” exposure to radiation that affected workers and waste collectors in Delhi a few months ago when they handled radioactive material. At the time when this unfortunate incident took place, the issue of waste disposal, particularly hazardous waste, made the headlines. Follow up articles were written. The lives of those who live off collecting and sorting waste came into our line of vision. But then the issue disappeared.

Horror stories

Every now and then we keep reading similar horror stories linked to waste disposal such as the one about the garbage mountain in Jawaharnagar near Hyderabad where three waste collectors were buried under heaps of garbage. The body of one of them, a 15-year-old boy, was retrieved. But the body of a woman also buried was never traced.

Long term policies that ensure that the safety and health of those who do such an essential job — “a community of silent environmentalists” someone called them — are not such a high priority any more. One reason is that the people affected are virtually invisible.

(To read the original click on the link above)

Waste collectors around India work silently, often late into the night, sorting out mountains of waste, foraging for anything that can be sold. If you walk down some streets of central Mumbai after 11 at night, you will see an army of waste collectors. Men, women, children are all hard at work. They work through the night and finally manage to get some sleep on the doorsteps of the shops on those streets. By daylight they become invisible, having stowed their belongings in boxes behind the signs of the shops on whose doorsteps they sleep. These are the people of the night, not noticed by those who inhabit the areas in the day.

What is often not entirely appreciated is that a substantial percentage of waste collectors is women. According to a study by the Stree Mukti Sangathan, a group that has organised women waste collectors in Mumbai, 85 per cent of waste collectors in the city are women, five per cent are children and 10 per cent are men. The majority of them are Dalits and landless people who came to the city because of drought in their villages. The age group ranges from 7 to 70 years and 98 per cent of them are illiterate. A survey by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation of 60,000 waste collectors found a similar proportion: 60 per cent women, 20 per cent men and 20 per cent children.

Studies have revealed that 90 per cent of the women waste pickers are primary bread-winners, often widowed or deserted. It is interesting how the sexual division of labour plays out even in the business of waste. While women, and children, do the more hazardous job of sorting and separating the waste, the men deal with the dry garbage, which they transport to wholesalers and factories. As a result, it is the women who are exposed to hazardous waste — none of them wear any kind of protective gear — and also face the physical problems of constantly bending and carrying headloads of the waste. Look at any group of waste collectors and you will spot the bent old women who have been performing this function for decades.

All their wealth

In the slum-city of Mumbai, waste collectors experience the most acute degree of homelessness. While poor people in other kinds of jobs somehow manage to find some shelter in a slum, irrespective of whether it is legal or illegal, waste collectors sleep next to the garbage they have sorted. This is their “wealth”, something they have to protect after they have collected and sorted it until they can monetise it. Hence, near many garbage dumps, even in the better off localities of cities like Mumbai, you see families of waste pickers asleep in the morning. And most often you see only women and children.

As a result of advocacy and campaigns by civil society groups, many cities have now recognised the work of waste collectors and given them some legitimacy. This is an important step but it is clearly not enough. The issues of safety and health have also to be addressed even as their contribution to the city and the environment is recognised.

Why bring up waste collectors at a time when the main environmental issues being debated are the larger issues of global warming, or environmental disasters such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Because you cannot speak of environment without considering the impact on the lives of people. We have hundreds of small-scale and continuing environmental disasters taking place all around us. But we overlook them so long as they do not impact our lives or our lifestyles. Millions of waste pickers in India, who play a crucial role in dealing with the perennial environmental crisis of waste, risk their lives and their health every single day. This is an on-going environmental issue that requires as much attention from ordinary people, the media and policy makers as the larger macro issues.

Defining sexual assault

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 30, 2010

The Other Half

KALPANA SHARMA

The sentence in the Ruchika Girhotra case is a small step in rectifying an anomaly in the law. The draft Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2010 now seeks to tighten laws dealing with sexual assault…

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What is important is that women are made aware of what their rights would be if the law is passed.

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The enhancement of the sentence of former Haryana DGP S.P.S. Rathore, charged with molesting 14-year-old Ruchika Girhotra, from just six months to one and a half years, is a very small step in rectifying the glaring anomaly in the law that allowed him to almost get away with a serious crime. In the absence of the popular furore over what happened, and the determined efforts of the young woman's friends and family, it is possible that Rathore would have continued to hold office and escape the jail sentence awarded to him. But even as many will believe that 18 months is hardly adequate punishment for a crime that led to a young woman taking her own life, the sentencing is the beginning of an important process of change in our antiquated laws dealing with sexual assaults of all kinds.

Ruchika's is only one case. There are hundreds of such cases in India that never reach the point of conviction. And many more incidents that are never even reported. But because more such cases are coming out in the open, the demand for a change in the law has built up to the point that the government has finally taken note.

Change, finally

The draft Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2010 aims to tighten current laws dealing with rape and sexual assault. This has happened not because of a sudden flash of enlightenment by those who make laws but because of the sustained campaign by women's groups for well over three decades. The fact that such a law is finally on the anvil illustrates yet again how important it is that civil society groups exert pressure and provide detailed alternatives when opposing existing laws.

For, in this case, what women's groups have done is not just to point out the obvious, that the existing provisions in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) dealing with rape are antiquated (based on a 19 {+t} {+h} century law) and ineffective but have also submitted to the government detailed suggestions on how these provisions can be changed. The National Commission on Women has also provided the government with a draft law. Such interventions ensure that the discussion does not remain in the area of generalities but actually deals with the specifics.

But here is where the problems often begin. While civil society groups work on changes based on their actual experiences of dealing with cases — such as those of rape, sexual assault, child abuse etc — the bureaucrats who draft laws appear to have a different set of concerns. So some of the suggestions are incorporated but loopholes are allowed to remain that will permit offenders to slip through.

Yet, despite its apparent weaknesses, the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2010, also popularly referred to as Sexual Assault Bill, will herald important changes in the sections of the IPC dealing with rape. It has enlarged the definition of rape to sexual assault, thereby bringing under the aegis of the law many other forms of assault on women that so far have not been considered rape and that have allowed offenders to get away with the minimum punishment of just two years. This is a welcome change. (The entire draft is available on the Union Home Ministry's website: http://mha.nic.in/writereaddata/12700472381_CriminalLaw (Amendment)Bill2010.pdf)

It has also specified that such a crime would be treated more seriously when the offender is a police officer, a public servant who has taken advantage of his official position, a person on the management or staff of a jail or remand home, a person on the management or staff of a hospital, the relative or a person in a position of trust or authority etc. The punishment would be a minimum of 10 years extending to life. Clearly, if such a provision had been in place earlier, Rathore would never have escaped with such a light sentence.

The draft law has also included specific provisions on child abuse that should be welcome. Groups working on children's rights have been demanding a separate law dealing with this but lawyers point out that having specific provisions within the IPC helps as the police usually act on the basis of these provisions. Thus the punishment for sexual abuse of a minor (defined as under the age of 18) will now be a minimum of seven years extending to life.

Women's groups are not entirely happy with the version of the law presented by the government because they hold that it is poorly drafted, is vague in some parts and could provide offenders a window through which they could escape. Their detailed responses have been sent to the Home Ministry and one hopes that they will be taken on board seriously.

What is important at this stage is that these provisions in the law are debated and that people, and particularly women, are made aware of what their rights would be if the law is passed. In India, a major problem is the absence of accurate information on important laws. And the media does not always help as the manner in which these issues are reported leads to a misunderstanding of the law.

Skewed balance

For example, instead of looking more closely at provisions in the draft law, some newspapers have been emphasising the opinions of little known groups that insist that the law will victimise men. This is an amazing form of “balanced” reporting where you place on an equal footing the very real problem facing millions of women who have been sexually assaulted, and their rights, with small, fringe “men's rights” groups who are given equal or sometimes even more media space.

Instead, what we need to consider is why the graph of assaults against women has been steadily climbing in this country, and why the rate of conviction remains pitifully low. According to the latest figures for 2008 assembled by the National Crimes Records Bureau, there has been a five per cent increase in crimes against women — from 1,85,312 in 2007 to 1,95, 856 in 2008. These crimes include rape, molestation, kidnapping and abduction of girls, sexual harassment, trafficking (defined as “importation of girls”) and cruelty by husband and relatives. The last has the largest number of recorded cases — 81,344, followed by 40,413 of molestation, 22,939 of abduction of girls, 21,467 of rape and 12,214 of sexual harassment.

It goes without saying that a change in the law by itself will not reduce crimes. But in this instance, the important expansion of the term “rape” into the much more specific term of “sexual assault” is long overdue. The real challenge, if and when the law is tabled in Parliament, and hopefully passed, will be how well it is implemented.

Sentenced to death

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 16, 2010

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

Asserting one's independence in something as vital as marriage in many parts of India can end in death. That's the price of modernity. How can we still call ourselves a civilised society?

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With Nirupama's death, the issue of honour killings has come closer to home for the middle class.

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Photo: V.V. Krishnan

Needless grief: Manoj's sister Seema and mother at a press conference...

What a week we have had — full of symbols of nooses and death. On the one hand, there was the pronouncement of the death sentence on Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, convicted for the terror attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008 by a special court in Mumbai. On the other, the death of a young woman, 22-year-old Nirupama Pathak, found hanging from a fan in her parents' home in Koderma, Jharkhand. Suicide, said the parents. “Honour killing”, said her boyfriend. The parents had opposed Nirupama's desire to get married to Priyabhanshu Ranjan as she was from a higher caste. The case is unresolved and getting murkier by the day. But the symbol of death in both cases was the noose.

The demands for Kasab's hanging, with people enacting mock hangings in front of television cameras and even the public prosecutor who conducted the case holding up graphics of the noose to illustrate his demand for the death sentence, raises disturbing questions about the role of the media in encouraging irrational emotions. More than one television channel aired the views of people who demanded that Kasab be handed over to “the people”, or hung from the nearest lamppost. Only then would they be satisfied. But mob justice is no justice, even when the person concerned is a “terrorist”. Should the media be inflaming these passions or is its role to bring about some balance and perspective?

More disturbing

But Kasab apart, the far more disturbing issue is that of the alleged suicide of Nirupama Pathak and what that represents in terms of the growing incidence of honour killings. Until recently, most such instances came from rural or semi-urban areas. Many of them were located specifically in Haryana where the system of khap panchayats rules on questions of marriage and opposes the marriage of two people from the same gotra. If young people defy this tradition, they either have to run away and hide or face death. There does not seem to be any other civilised alternative.

With Nirupama's death, the issue of honour killings has come closer to home for the middle class. Here was an educated girl, a journalist, from a middle class family who agreed to her studying and working away from home. Yet, what they did not grant her was the right to choose who she could marry. Even if murder is not proved in her case, it is clear that she was under immense pressure to break her relationship with Ranjan for no other reason than that he was from a lower caste.

Dubious claim

The horrifying nature of some of the honour killings that have been recorded — and there are probably many more that go unreported — make one wonder how we can claim to be a civilised society. Statistics are difficult to collate, as deaths due to honour killings are not listed as such in the National Crime Records Bureau data. But we cannot deny that their numbers are growing. According to one survey, there are at least 100 honour killings each year in just Delhi, Haryana and UP.

How do you define honour crimes? Human Rights Watch gives the following definition: “Honour crimes are acts of violence, usually murder, committed by male family members against female family members, who are held to have brought dishonour upon the family.”

And how do you bring this “dishonour” on your family? In India, this translates into marrying into another caste, another religion or even another class. On October 26, 2009, the reported murder of the daughter of an Assistant Commissioner of Customs in Patna, who eloped with the son of a Class IV employee, was one such instance where class was an issue.

Only in one honour killing case so far, has the court come down hard on those involved. In what will be seen as a historic judgment, a Sessions Court in Karnal, Haryana, sentenced to death five people and gave life imprisonment to one for the murder of Manoj (23) and Babli (19) of Karora Village in Kaithal district. Their crime? The khap panchayatruled that as they belonged to the same gotrathey could not marry.

The common thread that runs through all these incidents is the decision of the boy and girl to choose their own partners rather than letting families decide. And that is at the root of the societal problem we face, irrespective of caste or creed or region. For, modernity is ensuring that girls and boys are getting educated, moving away from their homes, finding jobs, watching images of people of their generation making free choices. Yet, the deadly reality of their lives is that on this one issue of marriage they really have no choice. And if they defy entrenched traditions and attitudes, they are sentenced to death, no less.

Can anything be done? Even if the deeper issue of societal change cannot occur overnight, are there steps that can be taken to curb such regressive influences?

Unfortunately, instead of being discouraged, such elements are being directly and indirectly supported. For instance, Haryana's khap panchayats are now demanding an amendment in the Hindu Marriage Act 1954 so that it prohibits marriages within the same gotra. The government's response, and for that matter of most political parties, is to throw up their hands and say that in matters of caste or religion, they can do nothing. Even younger politicians, such as the Congress MP from Kurukshetra, Navin Jindal, have not taken a stand. Jindal has praised the khap panchayats and stated, “I and my family have always respected society's traditions, customs, beliefs and culture.”

In response to demands for a special law, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram has ruled out enacting a new law to deal with honour killings, although he is open to defining the crime specifically and has come out strongly against the caste panchayats, saying they should be treated as murder accomplices. He argues that the reason “sati” invited a specific law was because it was disguised as suicide. But then so too were dowry deaths in the initial years. And can we be sure that honour killings too are not disguised as suicides? Apart from the Nirupama Pathak case, another instance reported this month was that of 22-year-old Arvind and 19-year-old Dewanti in Kushinagar, UP. The couple committed suicide by consuming poison because their families had arranged for them to marry other people. Would these young people have taken such a step if they were sure that they could make an independent choice? Did the families not abet their suicides?

The law in any case can do only so much. What has to change are attitudes and traditions. How can we talk of independence, or empowerment, if on an issue as basic as marriage, women and men are told they have no choice? And worse, that defying tradition means inviting the death penalty. How can such a situation be accepted by a civilised society? How many more young women, and men, must die before some sense prevails?

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

Twists, turns, dead-ends

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 2, 2010

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

The Sunanda episode leaves us with some hard questions, about the attitude of the media to women, about sexism and other hurdles that women face everyday at the workplace...

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Sunanda Pushkar is not the first professional woman who has had to face innuendo and sexist remarks.

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Photo: PTI

Hounded by the media: Sunanda Pushkar.

The IPL is finally over. Now we can get on with life, with more important issues, such as the number of hungry people in this country where some children are fed mud for dinner, or the actual number of people so poor that they have to be exceptional optimists to believe that there will be a better day tomorrow, or millions of people surviving without electricity and water as the sun's rays get ready to roast the country with the approach of a sizzling summer. Yes, there is life beyond the IPL. Indeed, there was life during the IPL that was almost forgotten.

Though the matches have ended, unfortunately the IPL saga continues to unravel and hog headlines. But when and if it finally recedes to an inside page or off television screens, perhaps most people will have forgotten the Sunanda Pushkar episode.

Wrong priorities

At least that is what she will hope although she is unlikely to forget the treatment she received at the hands of the Indian media. You can debate whether she was as culpable as Shashi Tharoor when she accepted what appears to be a special favour, but the issue that the media focused on was not the impropriety of that as much as the private life and times of one woman. Why? Because she is a woman and the media is sexist, as Tharoor suggested? Or because some people decided that a woman like that should not be seen in the company of powerful upper class men like Tharoor? Or was it a combination of class bias and misogyny? However you read it, the media's attack on Sunanda Pushkar was crass, in bad taste and lacked the basic modicum of decency. You don't kick those who can't defend themselves. These are basic principles of fair play. But all that was forgotten in the IPL scrum.

There is another dimension to this story. Sunanda Pushkar is not the first professional woman who has had to face innuendo and sexist remarks. This is something many professional women worldwide would have faced to a lesser or greater degree at some stage in their lives. Of course, there is a tendency amongst women who are successful to forget such experiences, or brush them off as occupational hazards of being a professional woman. But scratch the surface, talk to women who are still struggling to get ahead, and you will hear many similar stories. “How did she land this job?” “Who is her godfather?” “Whose favourite is she?” “Did she use her ‘womanly wiles' to get ahead?” Etc, etc, etc. If you are young and reasonably attractive, and you get a prized position within an organisation, these and other questions are almost inevitable. No one is prepared to believe that you can get a job or a promotion on your own merit. Yet, when your male counterpart gets ahead through powerful contacts, or through influence, he is envied, considered smart.

The issue goes beyond petty sexism, which is just one of the hurdles women still have to overcome to get ahead. The root problem is the absence of a level playing field, where both men and women are evaluated on the basis of their capabilities. If indeed that had been the case, surely many more women would by now have reached top positions in many professions. Yet data from around the world shows us that this is still not the case.

In her book The Equality Illusion, The Truth about Women and Men Today (Faber and Faber, 2010), Kat Banyard gives the following data: In the 50 largest publicly traded corporations in the European Union, women constitute only 11 per cent of the top executives and four per cent of CEOs and heads of boards. In Britain, 22 of the 100 top FTSE companies do not have a single woman on their boards. In the US, only 15.2 per cent of Fortune 500 board directors are women.

Banyard suggests that the problem is not just one barrier. She writes:

What we are looking at here is not a single, invisible barrier quietly lying in wait outside the boardroom or at the door of the Oval Office. We are looking at the cumulative effect of women being restricted by outdated structures and attitudes at every level in the workplace. Alice Eagly, a professor at Northwestern University, and Linda Carli, associate professor at Wellesley College, point out that the term ‘glass ceiling' fails to capture fully how women are excluded from power in the twenty-first century because it implies an absolute barrier at a specific level. They suggest ‘ labyrinth' as a more accurate metaphor for what women are faced with. Right from the start the route to the top is littered with twists, turns and dead-ends as women negotiate colleagues' stereotypes and the lack of flexible working. Women have to navigate it from the minute they step into the office, not just when they are trying to open the door to the boardroom.

Indeed, a “labyrinth” that surely includes sexist innuendo. Women have to develop an especially thick hide to ignore all this and carry on. Many fall by the way side for this and other reasons, most having to do with the fact that they are women, that they are still expected to be the principal care givers for their children, and to “sacrifice” careers for family and marriage.

Even in sectors like IT, where women have found greater opportunities to succeed, the playing field is far from level. In a recent article in The New York Times (April 18, 2010), Claire Cain Miller spoke to several women in the sector in the US who wanted to launch their own start-ups. One of them was Candice Fleming who had worked with Hewlett-Packard and a small software company. But when she wanted to raise funds for Crimson Hexagon, a company she co-founded in 2007, she was told by a venture capitalist she approached that she need not bother to have a business card because they would refer to her as “Mom”. Another invited her to spend a day on his boat and showed her a naked picture of himself on the boat. How many men go through something even remotely similar? She approached 30 venture capital firms. None responded. Finally Golden Seeds, a fund that helps women setting up firms, gave her funds. And hers is not a lone example.

Different rules

The point remains that the environment for women in the professional world is not always welcoming. In India, cronyism is now so accepted that no one thinks about it. Yet men who get ahead riding on that cronyism do not have to face the personal flak that women do. And that is where the sexism lies.

So the Sunanda Pushkar episode might well be a blip on the horizon. But it should make us ask some hard questions: about the attitude of the media towards women, about sexism and other hurdles professional women face during their careers and about what it will take to ensure equality and equity in the workplace.

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

Uninformed Consent

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Kalpana_Sharma/The-Other-Half-Uninformed-consent/article16123576.ece

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, April 18, 2010

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

What women need is basic healthcare. Not costly medical experiments involving vulnerable sections who don't know what they are getting into…

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Were they informed about adverse health impact and were these monitored and treated?

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Photo:G.N. Rao. THE HINDU

Controversial: Tribal girls treated with the cervical cancer vaccine interact with Brinda Karat.

Marie Antoinette told her people to eat cake when they needed bread. Our government encourages people to buy cars — from Rolls Royce to the Nano — when they need affordable public transport. And when people, especially women, want simple, basic health care — and clean water and sanitation — they are being urged to inject their daughters with a Rs. 9,000 vaccine against cervical cancer. If some of us conclude that the priorities of our decision makers are more than slightly skewed, we should not be blamed.

The recent controversy over the use of the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine on tribal girls in Andhra Pradesh has once again brought into focus several ethical and gender-related issues in the arena of public health that need to be openly debated. In India, we have many recent examples of women, particularly poor women, being subjected to clinical trials for contraceptives, including injectable contraceptives. These women have suffered after-effects and not known fully what was happening to them. It is only when women's groups and health groups raised an alarm about the way these trials were being conducted did the government intervene.

Goverment intervenes

Once again, the government has intervened and stopped, for the moment, the project in three districts — Bhadrachalam, Kothagudem and Thirumalayapalem — of Khammam district in Andhra Pradesh where 14,000 girls, mostly tribal, between the ages of 10 and 14 have been given three doses of a vaccine that is supposed to protect them from cervical cancer. The project is headed by a well-known international NGO and is supported by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR). The official district health authorities and health personnel have been fully involved in every aspect of the project. So it is not something that has been done clandestinely.

The alarm bells first rang when four girls died after they had received the vaccine. Whether they died due to complications caused by the vaccine, or from other factors, has not been established. Perhaps it cannot be conclusively established. But the very fact that the parents of one of the girls believes that her problems arose after she was administered the vaccine suggests that it is an issue that has to be investigated further.

Of course, there is little doubt that cervical cancer is an important health risk that millions of women face. A quarter of all deaths due to cervical cancer worldwide occur in India. The infection can lie dormant in a woman for 20 to 40 years before it manifests itself as cancer. Hence the belief that if young girls, before they become sexually active, are administered a vaccine, they might be able to avoid getting infected by HPV and thereby lower their risk of getting cervical cancer.

The first HPV vaccine came into the market in 2006 in the United States. After trials, it was declared safe for use in young women, and men. While it provided women cover against cancer and genital warts, it protected men from genital warts. However, once you were infected with HPV — of which there are at least 15 strains that can cause cancer while the vaccine protects you against only two — the vaccine was of no use. Also its efficacy in the long run has not yet been tested because the infection takes such a long time before it shows up as cancer. So young girls who have received the vaccine in the last years would have to be followed for that length of time before we can be completely sure that the vaccine actually works. Meanwhile, the best protection against cervical cancer remains regular checks — with or without the vaccine — to catch any early signs of the cancer.

So what then is the basis of the opposition to the project being conducted in Andhra Pradesh?

SAMA, a Delhi-based women's health group, has done a detailed study of the problem in Andhra Pradesh. Its members have spent time speaking to the girls who received the vaccine, to their teachers, to the health workers, to the parents and the district authorities.

What emerges is a disturbing tale of young tribal girls who are not necessarily in the best of health in the first place, given their background of poverty and under-nourishment, being given this vaccine. The information provided to them is in English, which neither they, nor their parents, nor the health worker giving them the vaccine, can read. Even the exact age of many of these girls is not certain as births are not regularly registered in large swathes of this country. Hence how were these girls chosen for the project? Were they informed about adverse health impact and were these monitored and treated? And did they really give “informed consent” to be a part of the project when they could not read the literature? In fact, many of the girls did not know the meaning of the word “cancer” or “cervix” or even “uterus”. So did they know what they were being given and why? It would appear not.

Of course, the company providing the vaccine does not deny contra-indications. Its website states: “The side effects include pain, swelling, itching, bruising, and redness at the injection site, headache, fever, nausea, dizziness, vomiting, and fainting. Fainting can happen after getting GARDASIL. Sometimes people who faint can fall and hurt themselves. For this reason, your health care professional may ask you to sit or lie down for 15 minutes after you get GARDASIL. Some people who faint might shake or become stiff. This may require evaluation or treatment by your health care professional.”

But how do you deal with all this when the girls live in a tribal hostel, or in areas where the health facilities are abysmal? In the case of 13-year-old Sarita, who is one of the four girls suspected to have died from complications connected to the vaccine, by the time her parents managed to go to the nearest big hospital in Bhadrachalam, she was dead. This is what they said to the team from SAMA:

“Our child was active and happy. We lost our child, and we know the pain and the agony of that loss. We don't want any other child to die. We don't want any other parent to suffer. Care should be taken for other children who received vaccination. Even though some girls are suffering from side effects like severe stomach pain, teachers are not letting them go home… We want the government to take immediate action. This is our only appeal. This is why we are speaking out.”

Exposing vulnerability

Fortunately, this appeal has been heard and for the moment the project has been suspended. But it has brought into focus once again, the dangers of exposing poor women, in particular, to this kind of medical experimentation. By all means, efforts should be made to try out a new technology. But not at the cost of the health of the woman. And certainly not on the basis of exploiting her ignorance. What is more important? Women's health or promoting a new vaccine? If it is the former, then there is much more that can be done at a fraction of the cost — starting with ensuring that primary health centres have gynaecologists available at all times. Women in this country urgently need basic health care and nutrition, not necessarily advanced medical interventions whose efficacy has yet to be proven.

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

Missing: 42.7 million women

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, April 4, 2010

THE OTHER HALF

Lack of access to healthcare, malnutrition and selective abortion — all these have contributed to over 40 million women dying in India. And these are the issues the government needs to address now…

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In India, women constitute 48.2 per cent of the population, worse than Pakistan...

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Photo: V. Ganesan

A struggle all the way...

Last month, on March 8, we celebrated the centenary of International Women's Day. A day later some celebrated the passage of the Women's Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha while others ranted and raved against it. Still others asked whether 63 years after Independence, any of this made a material difference to the lives of the majority of Indian women.

The latter were, of course, right. Symbolic gestures have little meaning when every year over 40 million Indian women die for no other reason than not being able to access healthcare, if and when they do being discriminated against, being so malnourished that even if they get treatment they cannot survive, and all this only if they are not eliminated before birth or after being born.

Yes, also on March 8, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released its 2010 Asia-Pacific Human Development Report titled, “Voice and Rights: A turning point for gender equality in Asia and the Pacific”. The picture that emerged of India was not a happy one. In most countries, women generally outnumber and outlive men. As a result, they are a little over half the population. But in India, they constitute 48.2 per cent of the population, worse than Pakistan where the situation is bad enough with women being 48.5 per cent of the population. Even Bangladesh is better at 48.8 per cent. The reason this has happened is a combination of the factors that have led to 42.7 million “missing” women (2007 data).

Chilling reminder

As if we needed another reminder, The Economist magazine carried a hard-hitting feature under the headline: “Gendercide – The worldwide war on babies” (March 4, 2010). “Technology, declining fertility and ancient prejudice are combining to unbalance societies”, stated the article as it reported on several Asian countries, particularly India and China and the skewed sex ratio. The article should have been titled “Femicide” as only one gender is being eliminated — the female. Still, it was a chilling reminder of the reality in the world's two most populous nations, where, as an old Chinese lady who witnessed female infanticide was quoted by The Economistas saying, “It's not a child. It's a baby girl, and we can't keep it…Girl babies don't count.”

But someone is counting baby girls and boys, men and women. In fact, thousands of people are right now fanning out across India for the mammoth exercise, one of the largest in the world, of the 2011 Census.

The 2001 census brought home the point starkly that millions of girls in India never saw the light of day. Either they were never allowed to be born, due to sex-selective abortions, or were killed shortly after birth. As a result, in the 0-6 year age group of children, there was a marked increase in boys as compared to girls in some of the richest districts in the country. Clearly medical technology, that the better off could afford, had been perversely put to this kind of use — of ensuring that girls were eliminated before birth.

The 2011 census will be significant in more ways than one. In 2001, the problem that had been lurking for years was exposed through stark, irrefutable data. As a result, the government had to act. It tightened the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act 2003 (also known as the PCPNDT Act). Campaigns were run for the “girl child”, incentives given for her education, and threats held out of punishment and fines against those misusing technology for sex-selective abortions. How effective were all these efforts? Results from the 2011 census will tell us.

It is small comfort to know that this problem is not unique to India. The article in The Economist, for instance, gives startling data on the situation in China where decades of son preference and a one-child policy as well as sex selection have resulted in a marked difference between the number of young men and women. The article quotes research by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that predicts that by 2020, China will have 30-40 million more men less than 19 years of age as compared to women. (The current sex ratio in China is 123 boys to 100 girls).

Serious consequences

Such a situation fraught with serious sociological consequences, not the least of which is the shortage of brides. In India, in states like Haryana this has already come about with brides from other states being bought by young men who just cannot find a woman from their own region. Every other day we read stories about women from as far away as Kerala or Assam who have made Haryana their home. Nothing wrong with such cross-fertilisation in a country that is so divided by caste, religious and regional identities as long as the women know their rights and have a way out if things don't work out. What is disturbing is the reason this is happening — not free choice but no choice.

Tragically, none of this kind of data seems to create any ripples amongst those in a position to make a difference. Take Maharashtra, for instance, one of the richest states in India. This year's Economic Survey revealed that by 2011, the state's sex ratio would be 915 women to 1000 men, down from 922 in 2001 when it was significantly lower than the national average of 933. Maharashtra also has the dubious distinction of ranking 15 out of 28 states in India in terms of its sex ratio.

Yet, what is preoccupying the men who govern the state? Chief Minister Ashok Chavan has been tying himself up in knots trying to explain how the actor Amitabh Bachchan, who has chosen to identify with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the state's brand ambassador, came to share a dais with him at an official function. How does any of this matter? States like Maharashtra need governance, not showbiz.

The Economist referred to India as “that super giant”. But such compliments count for nothing if our government does nothing about “femicide” and those “missing” women.

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

Thank you, Mulayam Singh Yadav

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 21, 2010

THE OTHER HALF

Thank you, Mulayam Singh Yadav

KALPANA SHARMA

Many have expressed their opposition to the Women's Reservation Bill. Only Mulayam Singh Yadav has been honest enough to say what he really thinks…

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Whatever one feels about this Bill, it is astounding that it always raises such strong emotions.

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Photo: V.V. Krishnan

A long struggle ahead...

Women who support the Women's Reservation Bill are cursing the “Yadav troika” for their opposition. But I would like to thank one of them, Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav. He is the only one of his brethren who has had the courage to say what he really thinks.

According to a report in this paper (“Mulayam Singh fears male representation will dwindle”, The Hindu, March 15, 2010), Mr. Yadav said that he fears that once this law comes into effect, in little over a decade, the Parliament might well be occupied almost entirely by women. This could happen if successful women candidates refuse to vacate the seats from which they won even after they are dereserved. And if they win in every succeeding election, their numbers, combined with the one third from the reserved seats, could very well unseat the majority of male members of Parliament!

Thank you, Mr. Yadav for being so upfront compared to your other colleagues who prefer to couch their opposition by pleading for the rights of Muslim, Dalit and OBC women to a share of the political cake.

Feeling threatened?

So male politicians fear that if they give an inch, women will take a mile. Politicians at the Panchayat level, who thought women could possibly pose no danger at the lowest tier of government, have already realised this. Even before some states enhanced the percentage of reserved seats to 50 per cent, women had begun to exceed one-third seats by contesting and winning from general seats. If this repeats in Parliament and Assemblies, the gender balance would change, or so fear some men.

Of course, the issue is not just one of gender balance. The 108 {+t} {+h} Constitutional Amendment, or the Women's Reservation Bill, is an important piece of legislation not just because it is a tool to help more women get elected but because it changes the ways in which the system has functioned so far.

Unlike Mulayam, no one will say that they fear that women will some day outnumber the men. No one will openly oppose giving women a share of seats. That would not be politically correct. Yet it is evident that while power sharing at the panchayat and nagarpalika level can be tolerated because these bodies implement laws and policies, it takes on another dimension when it comes to Parliament and Assemblies where laws and policies are made. Relinquishing a share of power in these bodies is not such a simple proposition.

So we have watched with some horror and a great deal of fascination as grown men and women scream and shout at each other over a law that has been cooking for 14 years. The consequence of all this public airing of passionate opposition is that the government has chosen to tread more carefully before it takes the Bill forward to the Lok Sabha and thereafter to the Assemblies. It is clear that there is a very long way to go before this Bill becomes the law, if ever, and the pitfalls are not small ditches — they are huge, yawning craters.

Whatever one feels about this Bill, it is astounding that it always raises such strong emotions. There are many laws in this country that are far from perfect. Many of them have been amended in the course of time. Some have been made stronger. Others have had provisions clarified, the rules made more implementable. But this is the one law where everyone seems afraid if it is even introduced.

I have written on this issue several times and must admit that my views have also changed. Just last June I wrote a piece critical of the rotation principle as it is implemented in panchayats because it leads to men fielding their wives or female relatives from seats they had contested and then reclaiming them once they are dereserved. I have also concurred that merely having more women in legislative bodies does not automatically lead to an improvement in the quality of governance.

Yet, should not a law that has been discussed in committees and outside and on which there appears to be some kind of consensus amongst the majority of political parties, at least be tried out? Why should politicians threaten to “do or die” rather than allow the Bill to go through? Is it really such a threat to Indian democracy? And are those opposing it exemplars of the best of Indian democracy?

No threat to democracy

Apart from the “Yadav troika”, there are many other men and women who object in particular to the mechanism of rotation of seats to be reserved for women. They argue that this will undermine democracy, as it will not allow MPs to “nurture” their constituencies. But has anyone counted how many MPs actually nurtured their constituencies? And if they do, how many such constituencies are now the personal fiefdoms of particular politicians who will not permit anyone, but their kin, to contest from them? Do the vast majority of politicians always get the constituencies of their choice during elections? Or do only those who are powerful and have the clout to insist that they will only contest from their “nurtured” constituency? Why has nurturing constituencies — that exists only sporadically on the ground — become such an important component of Indian democracy and that too only when another system has been suggested?

The rotation system might not be ideal but it is one possible way. What is the harm in giving it a try for a limited period? If those opposing it are really concerned about the democratic principle, perhaps they should push for a provision that gives voters the right to recall elected representatives who are not doing their job. That would introduce far greater accountability than allowing the same individual to contest from a particular constituency for successive elections just because he or she has “nurtured” it.

By demanding a share of seats in elected bodies, women are not saying they are better than men — although some do believe that. They are not saying that all women are equal. They are not claiming that they will make better politicians than men. And they are not asserting that an increase in numbers in Parliament and state assemblies will change the reality for the majority of women in this country.

Try something different?

All they are saying is that the prevailing patriarchal system in this country blocks the path of the majority of women to elected office. Even though all political parties mouth rhetoric about women's empowerment, they have somehow not managed to increase the number of women they get elected to Parliament or assemblies. So perhaps it is time to think of a way of changing this. And one way is the Women's Reservation Bill. That is all. Is this so unreasonable?

The last word has not been said yet on this jinxed Bill. Take a deep breath, and wait for the next episode.

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

Folly on private wheels

Opinion page, DNA, March 15, 2010

In Mumbai, you cannot travel on top of a train any more. Western Railways has decided that it will not run a train if even one person is found sitting on the roof.

Excellent. How could anyone object? The railways are concerned that people will get electrocuted as they have switched from 1,500 volt DC to 25,000 volt AC current for the suburban electric trains.

But people hang on to the roofs of trains not because they enjoy the cool air. They do so because there is no place in the compartments below. Or they just cannot afford to buy a ticket.

Despite all this, Mumbai’s suburban rail network — one of only four major cities in the country to boast of one — has a great deal going for it. In fact, until the 1960s, Mumbaikars were spoiled for choice of public transport — trams, buses, taxis and the trains. You did not need a car. Indeed, it was difficult to own a car unless you had a good deal of money. Everyone used public transport, unless they were rich, or in government.

A sensible government would have invested five decades back to enhance all modes of public transport, given that they benefit the majority. Nothing of the kind has happened. Instead investment has facilitated the movement of private motorised vehicles — two- and four-wheelers.

Meanwhile, the aam aadmi, unable to access the roofs of trains, continues to figure out a way to squeeze into railway compartments that lack even breathing space.

The crisis faces not just Mumbai. Every big city in India is facing similar choices — how do you provide the majority of urban
residents safe, affordable, and clean forms of transport? By doing so, you also save our cities from becoming the most polluted in the world, a dubious distinction that they have already earned. In India’s three largest cities, levels of suspended particulate matter (SPM) and respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) are three to four times higher than acceptable levels set by the World Health Organization.

The principal cause of this is vehicular emissions. The growth of motorised vehicles in India at 10% per year is higher than the growth of the GDP. While the population in India’s six major metros grew 1.9 times between 1981 and 2001, the vehicle population grew 7.75 times. Over one-third of the total number of motorised vehicles in India are in our metropolitan cities, where only 11% of the population lives. Delhi alone accounts for 7% of all motor vehicles.

Vehicular emissions increase when the speed of vehicles slows down. In most cities, including Delhi and Mumbai, peak-hour speeds are down to 5-10 km per hour, resulting in a five-fold increase in all pollutants.

If the foul air does not kill you, crossing a road will. In 2001, more than 80,000 people were killed in road accidents in India and
the rate of fatalities is growing at just under 5% per year. Half the traffic fatalities in Delhi are of pedestrians, 10% of bicyclists,
21% of motorcyclists and 3% of car occupants. In Mumbai, 80% of traffic fatalities are of pedestrians.

The mortality rate in India in road accidents is 8.7 per 100,000 as compared to 5.6 in the UK, 5.4 in Sweden, 5 in the Netherlands and 6.7 in Japan. If you take the ratio of mortality per 10,000 vehicles, India’s rate jumps to 14 as compared to under 2 in the industrialised countries.

Road fatalities and air quality will improve if there is better public transport. This is not rocket science. Yet, in every big city, new investment is geared towards facilitating movement of private motorised vehicles.

The new schemes announced for Mumbai, for instance — two more sea links, an expressway and an elevated road — costing thousands of crores of rupees, will help only a fraction of the population. And while people and offices have moved to the north and east of the city, the planners are working out ways to transport people to the south of the city — which hosts mainly government offices.

Perhaps this explains why successive governments pay only lip service to public transport. In Mumbai, politicians, bureaucrats and top corporates live and work in south Mumbai. In other cities, too, they live close to their offices. They do not need public transport.

Unlike the West, where the rich moved to the suburbs as cities grew, in India the poor are pushed out while the rich occupy prime real estate in the centre of cities. The poor commute. Their concerns do not dictate development policy. Indian cities exemplify that tragic reality.

(To read the original, click on the link above. Also a more detailed piece on this subejct on Infochange India: http://infochangeindia.org/Urban-India/Cityscapes/Motorised-mayhem.html)

What's in a name?

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 7, 2010

THE OTHER HALF

Last month, divorced women in India must have been startled to read a news item in a leading English language daily newspaper. It stated that the Bombay High Court had ruled that divorced women could not use their former husbands' surnames. The “ruling”, apparently, was in response to an appeal filed by a woman against a judgment in the Family Court in a case filed by her former husband. The judge had restrained the woman from using her former husband's name stating, “By using the ex-husband's name, or surname, there is always a possibility of people being misled that she is still the wife, when in fact she is not.”

The item caught my eye and I decided to check with a well-known lawyer whether there was any provision in law under which a court could give such a ruling. Did it in fact apply to all divorced women, as the story seemed to suggest, or was it just a judgment in a particular case? I was told that in fact the court had not given a “ruling” and that a single judge had merely upheld the judgment of the lower court in this particular matter. This did not mean that it applied to all divorced women. In fact, she pointed out, there could be no such ruling as people were entitled to take a name of their choice and could at anytime change their names simply by filing an affidavit.

Questioning a convention

The story, despite its inaccuracy, has triggered off a debate on whether women should change their names when they get married, and whether they should revert to their maiden names when they get divorced.

Last year, before the general election, actor Sanjay Dutt kicked off a similar controversy when he suggested that married women should adopt their husbands' surnames. He was clearly peeved that his sister, Congress MP Priya Dutt, continued to use her maiden name — which also established that her father was Sunil Dutt — instead of her married name. He was clearly not so worried about her violating a tradition as the political advantage she gained from maintaining her maiden name.

In India, not only are women automatically expected to adopt their husband's surname when they get married, but in some communities, as in Maharashtra, they are also expected to change their first names. As a result, once married, their identity changes completely. It is almost as if getting married also means wiping off your previous identity and completely subsuming yourself in one chosen by your husband and his family.

Politics of identity

Although the overwhelming majority of Indian women automatically follow the custom of adopting their husband's surname, increasingly some of them are asking why this should be so. What does the institution of marriage have to do with your name? Are you any less married if you adhere to the name you were given by your parents? Are you any less your husband's wife if your surname is that of your father? Is not love and understanding more important than unquestioned tradition? Should the choice not be left to the woman rather than being an imposition, one that she might not want?

Professional women, for instance, who marry after they have already established themselves, much prefer to stick to their maiden names. On the other hand, there are many women who marry young and get established in their professions after marriage. As a result, their professional identity is based on their married name, that is, if they have chosen to take their husband's surname. If such women get divorced, what sense does it make for them to revert to their maiden names? In other words, the issue is not so much whether women take their husband's surnames or not after marriage but that they should have the freedom to decide.

And why is it that the burden of name change is put on the shoulders of women alone? After women get married, if they choose or are compelled to adopt their husband's surname, they have to change all their names on their passports, bank accounts, driving licence, etc. It is not surprising then that only around two per cent of divorced women revert to their maiden names after divorce. This is not because they want to misuse their former position as being married to a particular person, or to appear to be married to him, but because it is just too much trouble. And in any case, they also want to remain connected to their children who have the same surname.

Perhaps in the long term, it would be simpler for women to hold on to their maiden names whether they marry or not, and whether they get divorced or remain married. This is not such a radical suggestion as it might sound. Even in very conservative societies, such as Iran for instance, women do not change their names when they get married.

Markers of belonging

In the past, the issue of surnames has often been subject of debate in many social movements. In the 1970s for instance, many young people who were part of the movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan, chose to drop their surnames because they felt that these identified them as belonging to a particular caste. As one of their principal struggles was against the institution of caste, they felt they should start the trend of dropping surnames altogether. When they got married, their names remained unchanged. Neither the man nor the woman had to worry about a surname. In South India in any case the issue of surnames often does not arise as people use initials.

Surnames are just an instrument for ascertaining family lineage in a patriarchal society. In modern societies, where marriages are registered and courts rule on divorces, why should the last name of a woman matter on issues of succession? Fortunately, some of the bureaucratic hurdles before married women maintaining their maiden names are now being removed and it is a little easier to get a passport, for instance, with your maiden name even if you are married. Schools in Maharashtra now accept the mother's name as the guardian of a child, something they did not do earlier where only the father's name could be entered.

Such changes in rules are important. But the controversy over surnames essentially illustrates the mindset that lays down that a woman's own identity must be submerged in that of her husband's once she marries. Women, married or unmarried, divorced or widowed, are equal human beings, with the same rights as men. Surely this should be reflected in the institution of marriage.

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

My name is India

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Feb 21, 2010

The other half

My name is India

F or those of us who are diehard Mumbaikars, February is a month we will not forget for a while. Mumbai was spared a swine flu epidemic, unlike Pune. But this month it was laid low by a virus of acronyms — SS, BT, MNS, SRK, MNIK (for the uninitiated, that is Shiv Sena, Bal Thackeray, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Shah Rukh Khan and My Name is Khan). For days on end, Mumbai — and for that matter, the rest of India — heard nothing but whether a Bollywood film, which, by all accounts, is the typical concoction of reality and unreality, would be released or not or whether the will of the city's ‘super censor' would prevail.

At first it appeared that as BT and the SS had decreed that the film was unsuitable for popular viewing for no other reason than that SRK had said something they did not like, it would be pulled off the screens. That has been the norm for decades. But this time, thanks partly to SRK's star status, the people of the city said “Boo”, sort of, to the super censor, the state government pulled out most of its police force and stationed it, rather incongruously, in front of cinema theatres, and the film ran.

No victors

BT and SS claimed victory as did the state government and SRK fans. In fact, no one won. Mumbai's so called “spirit” prevailed only momentarily. It was better than in the past when the city's residents stayed at home each time there was the whiff of some trouble from these quarters. Also, rarely have Mumbaikars gone out in the streets to demonstrate for the rights of say, taxi drivers or street vendors, who are the soft targets that the SS and the MNS choose when they seek political mileage and media attention. Yet, it must be said, that even the act of going to see a film, albeit with full police protection, was an act of welcome defiance.

But the high drama, played out minute by minute on all news channels, revealed the emptiness of discussion and debate in this city of commerce. Posturing has replaced politics; violence and confrontation have replaced debate. Mumbaikars have now become accustomed to governments buckling under when these groups raise their voices. They are also used to Bollywood bowing down to the dictates of these political groups without protest. Commerce is more important than democratic sentiments such as freedom of expression.

The MNIK issue is one that every Indian should think about and discuss. What does this say about our democracy? At a recent interaction in Mumbai, Mohammed Hanif, Pakistani journalist and author of the hilarious fictional account of the death of Pakistani dictator Zia Ul-Haq, The Case of Exploding Mangoes, said that India should be glad that it is a democracy and has a judicial system that works, where someone like Ajmal Kasab can be tried. He said this in response to people in the audience who suggested that the only way to deal with terror was to seek summary justice. Hanif suggested that if Indians started talking in these terms, they would not be very different from the Taliban whose ideology they surely oppose. And he was right.

Our own Taliban

Yet, the MNIK brouhaha showed us that our own Taliban are well entrenched. They dictate what people should say, what language they can speak, what films they can see, what art they can appreciate, what books they can read and soon it could be what clothes they can wear. Is this India? Is this a democracy? Why are people sitting back and accepting this state of affairs? Why does a party, that has not managed to win a state election since 1994, dictate the city's cultural life? People of the city came out with banners saying, “Enough is enough” after the terror attack of November 2008. But should this not be the permanent slogan of a city that hurtles from one non-crisis to another?

Ignored issues

Of course, while the media's gaze remains fixed on these non-issues, the real problems that affect the lives of the millions who inhabit this city remain unaddressed. For instance, while the majority of people in the city are reeling under water cuts even before the summer has set in, and women in slums live in constant tension as they wait for water, private builders are advertising new luxury apartments with private swimming pools. Mill workers, who worked in the city's iconic textile mills — now mostly defunct — continue to wait for jobs and housing even as the real estate lobby builds deluxe towers on the vacant mill lands. And even as the city's poor, over half its population, struggle to get basic medical care from overcrowded government hospitals and dispensaries, the city is sprouting five-star hospitals offering three-room suites to its patients. The contrasts have failed to rouse our consciences, make us pause and think what direction the city is taking and who determines how it develops.

These issues should matter not just to Mumbai's residents but also to people in the rest of India. They reflect the absence of real engagement by civic society with urban development in many Indian cities that are becoming symbols of confused, iniquitous and environmentally unsustainable development. And above all, they expose the ease with which citizens and governments can get embroiled in non-issues while decisions that can make a difference to people's lives remain permanently on the back burner.

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

Anything learned from 26/11?

For 15 months, India was spared terror strikes. All that changed on the night of February 13, when a bomb was planted in Pune’s popular German Bakery. In the ensuing blast, nine people were killed, including three foreigners – an Italian, an Iranian and a Nepali. Oddly many newspapers only wrote about two foreigners, failing to recognise that the Nepali too was a foreigner.

In the time gap between the terror strike in Mumbai on November 26, 2008 and February 13, 2010, much has been written about the role of the media and its coverage of the over 60 hours when 10 terrorists held the attention of the entire nation. News channels, in particular, came in for a great deal of criticism for their coverage during and after the terror strike. The jingoistic tone of some channels, notably Times Now, after the terror attack was noted including the way in which its anchors egged studio guests to agree that India should strike back at Pakistan. The media spilled over with pseudo-nationalism and anger against Pakistan. Any attempts to introduce some nuance, to point out the difference between the people of Pakistan and the government, and the difference between Jehadi elements in Pakistan and the government, were shouted down.

Barring a few exceptions, there was a disturbing uniformity in the tone of the media in the days after 26/11. The criticism, however, did not go unheeded. Although there was some defensiveness, several television journalists acknowledged that perhaps they had crossed the line.

It was also evident that the authorities had failed in the way they dealt with the media. In Mumbai, there was no clear centre of authority. Media persons ran from person to person getting quotes, all of them aired in real time. None of this helped create a sense of reassurance or confidence in the public.

After the Pune blast, there was much self-congratulation by the central government and the Maharashtra government on how well they reacted to the tragedy compared to 26/11. Some of this was true. Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan was available to the media, as was Union Home Secretary Pillai in Delhi. Home Minister P. Chidambaram visited Pune within less than 24 hours of the incident. The media were briefed by those given the authority to speak.

Yet, even this time, there was chaos in the immediate aftermath. For one, television footage depicted police, journalists and the public stomping all over the devastated site, unmindful of the fact that they might be destroying important forensic evidence. The Pune police was clearly unprepared or not briefed on how to deal with such a situation. In any other country, such areas are immediately cordoned off. It will be recalled, that in Mumbai on November 29, when the last terrorist had been gunned down at the Taj Mahal Hotel, the electronic media went berserk, trampling over broken glass, pushing their way into the hotel and even holding up burnt curtains to show viewers the damage inside. Then too the authorities failed to prevent anyone, particularly the media, from entering the battle-scarred hotel.

But even if in these instances the authorities could be faulted, has the media learned anything since 26/11 about its own responsibility during and after such events?

Perhaps not. After 26/11 there was wholesale speculation about who was responsible for the terror attack even before the government could make a definite statement. This time again, the government has been careful to say that all facts must be checked before anything definitive can be stated. Yet, the media has already made up its mind. Here’s a sample of front-page headlines from four Mumbai-based multi-edition newspapers on February 15:

The Times of India: Blast Part of LeT’s Karachi Project? Hand of Indian Mujahideen seen all over

Hindustan Times: Directed by LeT, executed by IM?

The story goes on to quote a ‘senior security official’: “It looks like a combined effort, commanded by the LeT leadership in Pakistan and executed by IM sleeper cells. US citizen David Headley is the man Lashkar used for the recce.”

DNA: Finger points to LeT-backed IM: Govt fears serial attacks

It would appear that the same ‘senior security official’ briefed all three newspapers. So what should newspapers do with such information? Run it with attribution somewhere in the paper or play it up on the front-page even before the forensic evidence has been collected and analysed?

One would have thought that after 26/11, the media had decided to err on the side of caution. But that was then. Clearly, today is another day and we are back to the principle of competition and the best strategy to capture eyeballs and sell newspapers.

Only Indian Express struck a different note with its headline: Govt. decides, terror won’t hit talks with Pak. View is knee-jerk reactions don’t help, priorities may be changed later

The second issue in the aftermath of terror attacks is sensitivity, especially when speaking to survivors or the families of those who died. Within an hour of the blast, television cameras were hounding the wounded being wheeled into hospitals. We saw undignified shots of people, some with their clothes torn off, struggling to maintain some dignity in the face of a battery of lights and camera. TV crews tracked down the families of those who had died and as usual tried to get statements despite appeals from these families that they be left alone to grieve in private. Finally the Pune police chief had to intervene and issue a directive asking media not to harass the wounded in the hospitals. No lessons learned here either.

(The Hoot, Feb 15, 2010)

(See also more detailed analysis on Infochange: http://infochangeindia.org/Media/Related-Analysis/Confused-coverage-damaged-credibility.html)