Fear in the city

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, August 22, 2010

The Other Half

KALPANA SHARMA

Sexual harassment seems to be an occupational hazard in our cities… So how do we make them safer for women?

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It is men's gaze, their attitude, their inability to accept women as equals in the public domain that must change.

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Photo: V.V. Krishnan

Possible remedies:Exclusive compartments for women...
Sexual harassment. That is a phrase we have seen more than once in recent weeks in the media. From publishing houses to sports training, women have complained. Some have settled outside court, others have turned to the media, and many more continue to be silent, preferring not to go public. But that sexual harassment in various degrees is an occupational hazard that women face at all times is now a given.
In our cities, the harassment women face on the street, in the public domain, has taken on new forms. It is not just the touch; it is also the talk and the look. Walk down a street in practically any city in India, big or small. It is rare that you get through unscathed. If you are not pushed and prodded, you will definitely hear unwanted comment. And even if you are stone deaf, you cannot avoid the look in the eyes of the beholder who virtually undresses you in public. So am I exaggerating? Is this just a generalisation? Is this not the lived experience of millions of women, particularly younger women?
Irrefutable data We now have some data that establishes what we already know. We did not need it. Things can change without producing numbers to show the extent of the problem. The problem itself should be enough to warrant some attention, to invite some thought on how things can change.
In continuation of a campaign that they began in 2004, Jagori, a women's group based in Delhi, has conducted an interesting survey of Delhi in the context of women's safety. Some of their findings are not surprising; others make one pause and think about what needs to change in the way our cities are structured.
The study itself was a joint Initiative of the Department of Women and Child Development, Delhi, Jagori, UNIFEM and UN HABITAT. It included 3,816 women, 944 men and 250 “common witnesses”. The latter is an interesting category as it included men and women who would have witnessed incidents of sexual harassment. These could be shopkeepers, bus conductors or drivers, or others, men and women, who have fixed locations on streets or other public areas. As a result, the study is textured and also more credible.
The majority of those in the survey were under 35 years of age. Over 40 per cent of the women and around 37 per cent of the men were college or university educated. However, roughly half the men and women, and 93 per cent of the common witnesses earned less than Rs. 10,000 a month.
For those who have lived, or live, in Delhi, it will come as no surprise that 85.4 per cent of the women, 87 per cent of the men and 93 per cent of the common witnesses said that sexual harassment was “rampant” in public places and that this was the single most important factor that made Delhi an unsafe city.
The locations where such harassment takes place are also interesting. While 84.9 per cent of the women reported it in market places, 83 per cent talked about Metro stations, 82.4 per cent in areas around schools and colleges and 79 per cent in industrial areas.
School and college students faced the highest incidence of verbal harassment as well as visual harassment (flashing, for instance). Interestingly, public transport, particularly buses, were the places where women experienced the maximum sexual harassment. This is something any woman who has had to travel on a DTC bus regularly can concur, regardless of her age.
Also significant is the fact that the majority of women expressed a lack of confidence in the police and said they would not automatically turn to them for help in the face of harassment in a public space. Over 40 per cent of them felt that either the police would not act, or they would trivialise the complaint. In fact, according to the survey, very few women, less than one per cent, have actually complained to the police about this kind of harassment when it occurs.
What is sad is that while the women had no faith in the police, those who witnessed acts of harassment admitted that they did not come forward to help, as they did not want to be involved.
The road was the location for the maximum amount of harassment, including while women waited at bus stops for their buses, followed by harassment once they actually got onto the bus.
Widespread violence The survey concluded that “women and girls face violence and the fear of it on a continuous basis in the city. Due to the fear of violence and harassment many women do not have the autonomy to freely move in a variety of public spaces — markets, parks, bus stops, roads.”
None of this data is particularly startling. It pertains to Delhi but could be applied to most Indian cities in varying degrees. In small cities, the absence of public transport probably forces more women to stay inside their homes, as their mobility is restricted. In the bigger cities, although some forms of public transport are available, they are not geared to make women feel safe or comfortable. It is interesting that even the much-celebrated Delhi Metro was cited as a place where women were harassed.
What can one conclude from such surveys? That safe cities are those where women feel safe. That public facilities — such as transport, or public toilets, or shopping areas — must factor in women's safety as much as they should issues like access for the disabled. This does not require additional investment. It means you plan keeping these problems in mind. If you want half your population to feel safe and comfortable, you have to find the ways to do so.
Ways forward Jagori has come up with concrete suggestions on how at least the physical infrastructure can be planned so that women's sense of safety is enhanced. For instance, better street lighting is one guarantee, 24-hour eateries at bus stops and train stations also ensure that there are people around, and a better system of public transport, with enough buses or trains to avoid overcrowding, or even separate women's compartments, as in Mumbai, go a long way.
Sadly, ultimately, even this might not suffice. You can give a city “world class” infrastructure, as is being attempted in Delhi around the Commonwealth Games — all the scams notwithstanding — but you cannot change attitudes overnight. It is men's gaze, their attitude, their inability to accept women as equals in the public domain that must change. Only then can our cities be safe and inclusive.
(Click on the link above to read the original)

Is our neighbour's tragedy not our own?

So why did the Indian media choose to ignore a huge human tragedy which, by virtue of its proportions, has to be considered “breaking news” by any objective criteria, asks KALPANA SHARMA

Posted Wednesday, Aug 11 23:50:10, 2010

SECOND TAKE KALPANA SHARMA    On August 6, the BBC carried extensive reports on the terrible floods in Pakistan.  The estimated number of people affected stood at an incredible 12 million.  The number increases by the day and at last count stood at 14 million. That evening I checked the main news bulletins on three English news channels, Times Now, NDTV and CNN/IBN. There was not a word on any of these channels about the devastation in our neighbouring country. The next day, August 7, I checked five Mumbai editions of English language newspapers ' The Times of India, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, DNA and Mint—as well as The Hindu on the net.  Barring The Hindu, the only Indian newspaper with a correspondent in Pakistan, not a single paper even mentioned the floods although all carried news of Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's visit to the UK and his meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron. By August 8, some reports did appear but more often than not they emphasized the political angle, such as the criticism in Pakistan over Zardari's absence from the country, rather than the enormous humanitarian and ecological catastrophe.  For details on that, one had to read papers and websites outside India. So why did the Indian media choose to ignore a huge human tragedy which, by virtue of its proportions, has to be considered “breaking news” by any objective criteria? Going by a traditional understanding of events considered newsworthy, any natural disaster affecting such a large population anywhere in the world would fall into this category. Disasters closer home merit even greater interest. Hence Pakistan's proximity also makes the floods there eminently newsworthy. One could argue that floods are an annual phenomenon in vast swathes of the subcontinent and a media now obsessed with the exceptional or sensational is bound to treat such events as routine.  Indeed, two years ago the floods in Bihar that displaced 2.5 million people got more coverage outside India than in our media. Yet one cannot fail to notice that torrential rain and mudslides in China were reported within a day of their occurrence while Pakistan's worst floods in 80 years had to wait longer for the Indian media to take note. Even when reports appeared, they spoke of an angle that presumably would interest Indian readers, such as “terror” groups collecting funds for relief efforts much as they did for the Kashmir earthquake in 2005. Does this, in fact, illustrate how the media on both sides of the border contributes to a narrow and limited picture that remains firmly fixated on the areas of dispute and conflict whereas our two countries, virtually joined at the hip, share much more in common than we care to admit?  The aam admi and aurat have similar problems. The natural environment is a mirror image in some parts, not to speak of overlaps in cultural heritage. Yet there is precious little of this other Pakistan in our media ' or of the other India in theirs. If we read reports about the devastation caused by these floods, the problems of getting across relief, the misappropriation of relief funds, the efforts of civil society groups and the disappointment and anger against politicians, we would realise that our experiences during such natural disasters is not that different from theirs. What is different is the trenchant and frank criticism of their leaders.  We tend to be far more polite. Read Café Pyala for a brutally frank take on current developments inPakistan and the role of the media. Here is a quote: “So Zardari was an insensitive ass. But is that such breaking news that the media focus shifts entirely to undermining him? Were he not the president, would the suffering of the affectees of the biggest floods in Pakistan's history be any less? Would the administration become super-efficient? Isn't the issue of the inherent lack of capacity of the Pakistani state to deal with such crises a bigger issue than Zardari and his jaunts? Criticise him by all means but is a man chucking a couple of shoes in his direction really a bigger story than the tens of millions displaced from their homes? Or have we become so blinded by our rage and the cult of personality that we are willing to jettison all sense of proportion?” Clearly, politics and entertainment and politics asentertainment have become far more important to media on both sides than the sudden and perennial tragedies that affect millions of ordinary people. I want to end this column with a quote from Basharat Peer's searing “Letter to an unknown Indian” in the Economic Times (August 9, 2010). It addresses a similar issue, what the media chooses to report, what it chooses to ignore: “When pain makes it difficult to articulate coherently, quiet remembrance helps. Like many other Kashmiris, I have been in silence, committing to memory, the deed, the date. The faces of the murdered boys, the colour of their shirts, their grieving fathers — these might disappear from the headlines, but they have already found their place in our collective memory. Kashmir remembers what is done in your name, in the name of your democracy, whether its full import ever reaches your drawing rooms and offices or not. Your soldiers of reason carrying their press cards might dissuade you from seeing it, comfort you with their cynical use of academic categories and interpretations of Kashmir, they might rerun the carefully chosen, convenient images on TV, but Kashmir sees the unedited Kashmir.” Unedited Kashmir, unedited Pakistan, unedited India. Given current media realities, is this ever possible?

Why make divorce easy?

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, July 25, 2010

THE OTHER HALF

Kalpana Sharma

What are the laws that need the urgent attention of the government? One that deals with the increasing, and horrific, instances of so-called “honour” killings, where young women and men are being murdered for no other reason than choosing who they will marry, a right that is guaranteed to them as citizens of this democratic country? Or one that will make divorce easier for those who want to opt out of marriage?

These are not mutually exclusive choices. But because they have a direct impact on the lives of millions of women and men, they cannot be rushed through without adequate thought and debate. On the former, there is still some discussion and no conclusion yet. On the latter, strangely enough, the government seems to have made up its mind and is contemplating introducing a new provision in The Hindu Marriage Act that will permit divorce under “irretrievable breakdown of marriage”.

Divorce is still relatively uncommon in India compared to many other countries. The incidence of divorce is barely 1.9 per cent of registered marriages. This figure of course would not include a much higher percentage of desertions that routinely occur, where men leave their wives and children and live a bigamous life without any fear that the law will ever catch up with them. Such women are left in limbo, still legally married, unable to go into another relationship, and left without financial support. In a country where poverty and illiteracy are common, the figures if ever collated of such women would be staggering.

Under the Hindu Marriage Act and the Special Marriage Act there are specific grounds on which divorce can be sought. These include adultery, cruelty, desertion, conversion to another religion, unsoundness of mind, virulent and incurable form of leprosy, venereal disease in a communicable form, renouncement of the world and not heard as being alive for a period of seven years or more. Section 13-B of the Hindu Marriage Act and Section 28 of the Special Marriage Act also provide for divorce by mutual consent. Under this, both parties have to file a petition in court and are given six months after its admission and up to 18 months to change their minds. If neither party withdraws, the divorce is granted.

The government, and the Law Commission in its 217th report (March 2009), holds that the introduction of a provision of no-fault divorce, that is where neither party has to prove that the other committed an offence such as adultery, or cruelty or desertion to file for a divorce, will assist many couples who get caught in legal wrangles when their marriages have already broken down. Sometimes, even when they use the provision of mutual consent, one or the other party pulls out part way through the proceedings, leaving the other with no choice but to resort to a lengthy legal process to get a divorce. The government believes it is introducing this provision to bring such situations to an end.

But lawyers and women’s groups, who have known first hand the problems deserted women, or those who are victims of cruelty within their marriages, or have to live with adulterous husbands, say that such a provision will place a bigger burden on women. At present, a mutual consent divorce is the easiest and only possible way if both parties want to break up. Otherwise, one or the other has to prove a “fault”. Women often do not take the first step, particularly those women who are not financially independent, as they cannot pay for the litigation and also fear that even if there is a divorce, the final settlement will not suffice for them to survive on their own. For instance, apart from maintenance, sometimes the court awards a lump sum if a woman is able to prove her husband falls under any of the categories listed for grounds for divorce. But if the woman has to leave her matrimonial home, she would not have the resources to get another house unless that was part of the final settlement. And the current law does not mandate a formula for a financial settlement that would take care of the woman’s shelter needs.

In countries around the world, including the United States, where the grounds of “irretrievable breakdown of marriage” are part of the statute, there has been considerable debate over its introduction and it has been followed by clear and specific mandates on division of property. In some states in the US, everything is divided equally between the couple after a divorce on these grounds. In India, there is no such provision in the existing law or in the contemplated new addition.

What this will mean in real life is that an adulterous husband can file under this addition to the divorce law and even if he agrees to pay alimony, he is not bound by law to ensure that the woman has adequate resources to survive on her own. Also, in a society where being married grants women “respectability”, a divorce means losing that status. There is no legal compensation for this and no sign that our society is likely to change its attitude toward divorced or unmarried women in a hurry. Hence, women will always hesitate before filing for divorce.

The bottom line is that provisions for divorce are not gender neutral in a society like ours where there is no level playing field for men and women. Therefore, before any such provision is introduced, there needs to be a much closer scrutiny of its impact on poor women without independent economic resources who constitute the majority in this country. You cannot bring in a law that would ease the way for a small minority without considering the impact on this majority.

This is not to say that women or men should be permanently tied into loveless or cruel marriages. Divorce is a way out of such situations and marriage is not sacrosanct as some hold. But the provisions for divorce must be just. Of course, women who have a hard time proving that their husbands are cruel, or bigamous, could also use this provision to end their marriages. But such women are usually those with financial independence and the ability to negotiate a decent settlement. The majority of women would not dare use the provision for fear that they would be left with nothing. On the other hand, for their husbands, this would be a very handy piece of law to opt out of the marriage, and then go in for another.

Let me end by quoting from a reader who responded to the news that the government was going to introduce this provision. Writes Dr. Mitu Khurana from Delhi on the Economic Times website (June 14, 2010): “My husband threw me out because I could not give him sons. I have two daughters. After trying for four years to make my marriage work, for sake of my daughters, now I have initiated legal action against my husband. So has my marriage broken down irretrievably? Now my insistence not to take any more abuse, has it become a ground for my husband to take divorce and remarry to have sons, which he so badly desires? And what is the fault of my daughters in all this? Just that they were born daughters. That means now no mother should take the stand I took, and simply go ahead with female feticide.”
This is just one voice. There are many more. They need to be heard and heeded. Why is the government is such a hurry?

Just let them play

The Hindu, sunday magazine, July 11, 2010

The other half

Women are visible as spectators in most big sporting events but face great hurdles in their attempts to excel in sports.

Today, after a whole month of watching men kicking a ball around a field, and hearing the buzz of the Vuvuzela, the drama of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa will end. Millions of eyes that remained glued to television screens will get a rest. Emotions will settle. Life will move on, to other sports, other interests.

The FIFA World Cup is the world's most watched sporting event. This year, we are told, it has successfully drawn in an ever greater number of women viewers, over 40 per cent. Women were certainly visible as spectators, or rather the television cameras made sure that they were visible. But does a larger women's viewership of what is seen as a men's game have any relevance in the context of women and sports?

Clearly not. Because sports is not about watching others play; it is about being able to participate, to enjoy the physicality, the team spirit, the self-confidence, the exhilaration that sport imbues in the people who participate. Of course, in this media and corporate age, it has also come to represent fame, fortune and glamour.

But what draws millions of young women and men around the world to the playing field is not the prospect of money or fame as much as the sheer enjoyment and freedom that sports represents. Yet, we know only too well, that women who want to excel in sport face many hurdles. A few succeed. The more glamorous amongst them get name and fame. Others appear occasionally on our television screens and news pages and are then forgotten.

Where are the women?

In contrast, pages are devoted to men's sports and individual men who excel in sports. Looking at an average sports page, or sports coverage on our television channels, you could almost believe that women either do not play any sports, or are not interested.

Take just soccer, or football. The American team made a mark in this World Cup. But it is women who made soccer popular in the U.S. The American women's soccer team won the FIFA Women's World Cup as far back as 1999 in a spectacular match against the Chinese team.

Even in China, women have done extremely well on the football field. Not so their male counterparts, who have not yet managed to qualify for the World Cup. And in Germany, women's football is successful and they now even have professional clubs like the men.

In many countries, women's participation in sports increased because those who manage sports acknowledged that traditional gender biases work against women taking part in sports, and because of that specific steps sometimes have to be taken to encourage them to participate.

Thus, in the United States, for instance, Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education including athletics, was enacted in 1975. As a result, more women could enter institutes of higher learning on athletic scholarships. Before the law, only two per cent of women college students participated in sport. After it, by 2001, the number had jumped to 43 per cent. Similarly before Title IX, only seven per cent of girls in high school participated in sport. By 2001, 41.5 per cent were doing so.

In athletics, the Olympic Charter was amended in 2004 with the following inclusion: “The IOC encourages and supports the promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures, with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women” (Rule 2, para 7, Olympic Charter). Possibly because of this specific provision, the participation of women in the Beijing Olympics in 2008 touched an all time high of 42 per cent.

Of course, gender equity in sports is not just a numbers game. The playing field can serve so many other functions. Sticking still with football, a unique experiment of bringing healing to a nation that saw the worst genocide since World War II was undertaken in Rwanda a few years ago. “Kicking for Reconciliation” is a project in which over 100 girls, both Tutsis and Hutus, have been trained to play football.

One of their trainers, a young woman called Emertha, said in an interview to Women without Borders, the organisation that initiated the project, “In football, there are no Hutus and Tutsis, there is just us, we, the team.” Passionate about football, Emertha had to overcome the questioning of her neighbours when she took to the field. They told her that this was a man's game. To which she replied, “Why? I have my legs and I use them! What's up? Do I ask you to help me? It's me who's playing and the ball is there. So let me just play.”

Facilities

In fact, that is what millions of young girls around the world must be saying, “Let me just play”. In this country, we don't talk enough about women's sports. It is virtually invisible from our sports pages barring the exceptional sports woman. But should we not be looking at sporting facilities for children, including girls, in schools? Are they given adequate encouragement? Do they have role models if they really want to pursue a future in sports? Where can they go for further training? Do colleges give sports scholarships? How many girls win them? Is their percentage going up or declining? Even as we encourage girls' education, should we not be looking at sports as an integral part of education?

India is hosting the Commonwealth Games later this year. We read constantly about the infrastructure being put in place in New Delhi for it. The spanking new airport is now the envy of every major Indian city including Mumbai, which suffers the problems of making do with an incrementally improved airport. Yet will these games encourage more young Indians, women and men, to aspire to be sportspersons?

That is unlikely if even the few sports facilities that exist for young people are swallowed up by the infrastructure being built for the Commonwealth Games. As the former director of the NCERT, Krishna Kumar, wrote in this newspaper last week (The Hindu, June 28), school playgrounds in Delhi have become dumping grounds for construction material and some grounds have been taken over. Delhi schools will be closed during the Games. As a result, when children return to school, they will be forced to make up with extra classes, leaving precious little time to enjoy sports. We might have the Right to Education now, but young people still cannot assert the right to play sports. And young women cannot even dream of kicking a ball around a football field leave alone saying, “Let me just play”.

(To read the original click on the link above)

Words and their meanings

The Hoot (http://www.thehoot.org)

The language used to describe those who protest in Kashmir is not just a matter of semantics. It is important because it places what is happening within a context, says KALPANA SHARMA.

Posted Thursday, Jul 08 20:22:51, 2010
SECOND TAKE
KALPANA SHARMA

It is interesting how in the current standoff in Kashmir, with curfew imposed in Srinagar and even journalists not being allowed free movement, the phrases used to describe those confronting the security forces are consistently careful in most of the English language print media outside Kashmir. The angry young men of Srinagar, Baramulla, Anantnag and Sopore are being called “stone-pelters” or “stone-throwers” or just the generic term “protestors”. Although some reports hint that some of them might be paid to provoke the police and the CRPF, nowhere is the word terrorists, or even separatists, used to describe those participating in street battles in Kashmir, notwithstanding their battle cry of “aazadi”.

Is this because the bulk of the reporting, as the situation developed in the last month or so, is by Kashmir-based reporters who have followed the story, and the process leading to the protests, rather than by parachute journalists from Delhi or elsewhere who land up when there is a high drama?

Speak to journalists in Kashmir and you will find that many are extremely sensitive about the terminology that so much of mainstream Indian media uses without pausing to think about the meaning. In fact, on a news programme on NDTV on July 7, the day curfew was imposed on Srinagar, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, the “moderate” Hurriyat leader, took the Indian media to task for calling the young men on the streets “hooligans” and “trouble-makers” without understanding why they have taken to the streets.

Another example is the generally accepted view that the higher turnout in the last elections in Jammu and Kashmir, as well as the increase in tourism, adds up to a return to “normalcy”. Or that ordinary Kashmiris are now willing to settle for better governance, basic facilities and a “peaceful” life rather than demanding “aazadi”. Many journalists accept this conclusion without question. Thus, through the summer, when tourists from all over India flock to the beautiful valley, you will find articles about “normalcy” in Srinagar and elsewhere.

Yet, when the street battles escalated, particularly in the course of the last month, many readers in other parts of India must have wondered why? Were these young men provoked, paid to throw stones? Or were they nursing grievances for months and years that finally came to a boil with the increase in civilian deaths and the lack of response from New Delhi on the demand for the removal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act? Is it possible that the media did not probe deeply enough to assess the mood of these young people in the beginning, or to understand how widespread was the feeling of disillusionment and disappointment in the valley? Could it be that journalists from outside Kashmir underestimated the power of a Shopian or the fake encounter of three young men in Machil and presumed that a surface “calm” meant that things were indeed “normal'? Could it be that journalists have been seduced by the language and phrases used by the authorities in relation to Kashmir and as a result overlooked the gaping wound of unresolved political questions that remains open?

I would suggest that the surface changes have not touched the deeper disappointment and disillusionment in Kashmir about the long-term future of the region. Thus, it is not “peace” that ordinary people want; they stress they want a “resolution” to the Kashmir question. They want development and jobs, yes, but they also want a political solution. These are not mutually exclusive. And for us in the media to believe that participating in elections settles open and unresolved political issues like Kashmir is naïve at best and foolish at worst.

The language used to describe those who protest in Kashmir is not just a matter of semantics. It is important because it places what is happening within a context. Thus, what is significant is not that people are using stones instead of guns, as some reports suggest, but that young people are daring men with guns, even at risk to their lives, because their anger and frustration cannot be contained any more. We need to comprehend this anger that fuels the “stone-pelter”.

Writing in the context of the Middle East, veteran journalist Robert Fisk, who has covered the region for over three decades, talks about language and semantics in his column in The Independent. He discusses the use of phrases like “spike in violence” when what is actually meant is an increase in violence, about the unthinking repetition of phrases like the “road map to peace” or getting it “back on track” or even the tautology “deadly massacre” when all massacres are necessarily “deadly”. Many of these phrases emanate from official briefings and become part of the lexicon of journalists. Fisk questions this unthinking adoption of terminology and what it represents. He writes:

“Power and the media are not just about cozy relationships between journalists and political leaders, between editors and presidents. They are not just about the parasitic-osmotic relationship between supposedly honourable reporters and the nexus of power that runs between White House and State Department and Pentagon, between Downing Street and the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, between America and Israel.

In the Western context, power and the media is about words ??" and the use of words. It is about semantics. It is about the employment of phrases and their origins. And it is about the misuse of history, and about our ignorance of history. More and more today, we journalists have become prisoners of the language of power. Is this because we no longer care about linguistics or semantics? Is this because laptops ‘correct' our spelling, ‘trim' our grammar so that our sentences so often turn out to be identical to those of our rulers? Is this why newspaper editorials today often sound like political speeches?”

The context of Fisk's comments might be different, but the point he makes is apt for Indian journalists, whether we cover Kashmir, the Northeast, or the so-called “Naxal-infested areas” in India.

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

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.

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