Judges, judgments and women's rights

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, October 31, 2010

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

When it comes to women's issues and the law, the courts continue to send contradictory signals…

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As much as police officers, doctors also need to be taught a rape survivor's rights.

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Photo: Vipin Chandran 

Speaking out in anguish:Indira Jaisingh.

Two courts. Two judgments. Two attitudes. In the contrast lies the story of what Indian women continue to face when they turn to the law.

On October 21, the Supreme Court, in the context of a case before it, held that a woman in a “live-in relationship” could not claim maintenance in the event of abandonment by the man as such a relationship could not pass as a “relationship in the nature of marriage” as described under the law for arrangements outside formal marriage. The Court held that if the woman was a “keep” of the man, who looked after her financially but “uses mainly for sexual purpose and/or as a servant”, then such a woman was exempted from claiming any benefits of maintenance under the Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act 2005 on grounds of abandonment.

The ruling led to a justifiable outburst by India's first woman Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, who also happens to be one of the main movers of the Domestic Violence Act. Ms. Jaisingh ticked off the judges for using a term like “keep” which she held was derogatory to women and was “male chauvinistic”.

Wrong precedent?

Ms. Jaisingh's statements in court made it to the front pages of most newspapers. But one wonders how many will pause and think about why she felt she had to raise her voice at the use of such a term in the judgment. It was, as she herself emphasised, because the ruling of the Supreme Court sets a tone and a precedent for future judgments that affect women. One of its judgments in what is called the Vishakha case is even today used as the standard for judging all matters relating to sexual harassment in the absence of a specific law. By using a term like “keep”, you disregard and virtually excuse the responsibility of the man in an arrangement in which two people are involved and where one, the woman, is most likely the more vulnerable. Once this becomes the precedent, any man can go to court and challenge the right of a woman with whom he has a relationship outside marriage, and who demands compensation when abandoned, by claiming that she was merely his “keep”. Therefore, Ms. Jaisingh's intervention needs to be appreciated, as also her courage for speaking out in the highest court of the land where some others might have felt intimidated.

Apart from the Vishakha judgment, the Supreme Court has also passed several orders that make it clear that in a rape case, the woman's character will not be part of the proceedings during the trial and that it is immaterial to the case. This is also an important precedent in the context of women's rights. Yet, as is evident from another judgment, in another court in Delhi, the practice continues.

Pronouncing judgment in a rape case on October 23, Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau drew attention to an outdated and barbaric practice that continues to be used in rape cases while collecting forensic evidence. Rather than help the survivor, this particular test, called the “finger test” or the Per Vagina (PV) test, traumatises the survivor and gives the defence in such cases a stick with which to intimidate and demoralise her in court.

When a woman reports rape, she has to go to the police who then send her to a government hospital for a medical examination. The report by the doctor who conducts this test is supposed to be part of the medico-legal evidence that the prosecution presents in a rape case. Yet, although such a test has long been discarded elsewhere, in India doctors are trained to test whether the rape survivor is “habituated to sexual intercourse” by inserting two fingers inside her vagina. Why is this of any relevance to a case where the facts of rape and sexual assault are being determined? Does this mean married women cannot be raped? Does it mean an unmarried woman who has had sex cannot be raped? What does this absurd test actually establish when the woman's character, or sexual habits, are of no consequence in the matter before the court?

It is heartening to read of at least one judge who was incensed enough to speak out against this test. Judge Lau said, “The test is violative of the fundamental right to privacy of the victim.” She went on to say, “State action cannot be a threat to the constitutional right of an individual. What has shocked my conscience is that this test is being carried out in a routine manner on victims of sexual offences (even minors) by doctors.”

The judge recommended that police officers be sensitised to this issue. But as much as police officers, doctors also need to be taught a survivor's rights and informed that such a test is simply not allowed. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch titled, “Dignity on Trial: India's Need for Sound Standards for Conducting and Interpreting Forensic Examinations of Rape Survivors”, the “finger test” remains standard practice in many parts of India including Mumbai and Delhi. In fact, in Mumbai, three leading government hospitals, where hundreds of rape survivors are examined each year, still use this test.

The HRW report also reveals that outdated medical textbooks recommending this test are still being used. As a result, each succeeding generation of doctors continue to follow the practice without thinking twice about its relevance or the trauma they are causing the rape survivor.

Intimidating practice

Worse still, because the practice continues, many survivors lose their cases in court because they get demoralised, confused or intimidated when sections from the medical report relating to this test are used by the defence to undermine their testimony. Yet, the survivor's testimony is supposed to be enough in a rape case and the forensic evidence is only secondary. This is especially so because survivors often wait before they go to the police and as a result valuable evidence is lost. As a result, several court rulings have emphasised that delay in filing a complaint should not be held against the survivor.

Judge Kamini Lau has drawn attention to an extremely important aspect of the procedures followed in rape cases. Unless something like this is addressed urgently, convictions in rape cases, already abysmally low, will never improve. And women who are sexually assaulted will continue to hesitate before turning to the law.

 
(Click on the link above to read the original)

Conflicting interests: After FIFA and the Commonwealth Games

The questions being asked in South Africa after the FIFA World Cup are similar to those raised in India before, during and after the Commonwealth Games. Who really benefits from these mega events? The people or only the contractors? Transparency International states that public works and construction are the most corrupt sector in the world, says Kalpana Sharma

 

The Commonwealth Games are over but what have they left behind?  Controversies.  Scandals of corruption.  Stories about shoddy workmanship.  “World class” sports facilities.  A Games Village, that went from dirty and unlivable to tolerable in one week, for sale.  The list is long and by now familiar.

But the relevant question to ask is in terms of what such an extravaganza does for the city or cities in which it is located.  Does it really upgrade the infrastructure so that all residents benefit?  Or does it create white elephants at the expense of the exchequer that will take decades to recover the initial investment apart from on-going maintenance costs that will further drain resources?

These are some of the questions that South Africans are asking.  They raised them before the successful FIFA World Cup 2010 matches were held there in June/July this year.  And they are still asking them after the fun and frenzy of the World Cup has subsided and life has returned to normal.

Take Johannesburg, for instance.  Soccer City, the striking looking football stadium was constructed in the heart of Soweto, the township of urban poor known best for its rebellion and uprising at the height of the apartheid regime in 1976.  On June 16 that year, hundreds of school children had dared the police and came out on the road and protested against the imposition of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction.  Amongst those shot dead by the South African police was 12-year-old Hector Pieterson, in whose memory a museum has now been erected.

Soccer is the game of townships like Soweto.  The people there are passionate about it.  Much as kids play cricket in this country on any open space they can find, in South Africa, and townships like Soweto, soccer is played.  Yet, even though Soccer City is visible from most parts of Soweto, an ordinary soccer fan from that township would not have been able to watch a live match there.  Why?  Because you could only buy tickets on the Internet with a credit card.  Poor people have neither.

That was only one of the problems.  Although most South Africans are proud that the one month of matches passed seamlessly without any incidents and everyone who visited South Africa had nothing but praise for the facilities, the urban poor cannot help but wonder if the funds could have been better used.

For apart from being denied the chance to watch matches, the areas around stadia like Soccer City were sanitized so that no informal vendor could sell goods anywhere in the vicinity.  With its high levels of unemployment, one of the only forms of livelihood available to poor people in South Africa is selling goods on the street.  You see vendors everywhere you go, often sitting on a box with a tray full of a variety of goods.  This is no different from the options facing the urban poor in this country.  Yet, street vendors were barred from selling anywhere near the stadia and oddly, the ban continues and will stay until December.

A stone’s throw away from Soccer City is one of the many tin shack settlements where the poor live. Fifteen years back, the entire area looked like that.  These are slums not very different from many of our in cities like Mumbai.  Although South Africa has made a herculean effort to deal with housing for the urban poor, something that this country can certainly learn from, there is still a great deal to be done.  And the contrasts are only too visible.

One of the plus points of the investment surrounding the FIFA World Cup was the investment in public transport, something that has a direct benefit for the poorest.  The total amount spent on enhancing transport systems in the different cities where stadia were built or refurbished exceeded what was spent on the sporting facilities. You can see evidence of this in the new Bus Rapid Transport System (BRTS) introduced in Johannesburg, a city that has no bus system.  The only way poor people can travel is by “taxi”, a privately-owned mini-bus with around 12 seats that runs on the main roads and picks up passengers at crossroads.  Because of the World Cup, this system has also been streamlined with large terminals where people can go and pick up a taxi ride to their destination.  As a result, even if poor people still live outside city limits, a legacy of the apartheid era where under the Group Areas Act people from the different races could not live in the same locality, they can commute more easily to their jobs in the city than they could in the past.  But it is still not easy and if there is anger at the slow pace of change, it is not entirely surprising.

But the questions being asked in South Africa several months after the FIFA World Cup are similar to those raised in this country before, during and now after the Commonwealth Games.  Who really benefits from these mega events?  Do people benefit or only the contractors?

The answers to those questions are also strikingly similar in India and South Africa.  A fascinating monograph, brought out in the run-up to the FIFA World Cup, exposes the extent of corruption, crony capitalism and nepotism that was an integral part of the construction frenzy that preceded that event.  “Player and Referee: Conflicting interests and the 2010 FIFA World Cup”, edited by Collette Schulz Hersenberg[i], points out that according to Transparency International (TI), the extent to which corruption is concealed is directly related to the size of projects.  In TI’s “Bribe Payers Index 2002”, public works and the construction sector were identified as the most corrupt in the world.  It estimated that the amount lost worldwide due to corruption just in infrastructure procurement was in the region of US$3,200 billion a year.

Several other interesting points emerge from this monograph.  One, that the corruption disease is not restricted to poorer countries or emerging economies like South Africa or India.  Even the 2006 FIFA World Cup held in Germany threw up a corruption scandal involving the president of one of the hosting clubs.  The very size of the event and the temptation to exploit the contract system to benefit friends and family, are tendencies that are universal, it would appear.

The second point that would have a resonance to the situation in India is how one maintains and covers the on-going costs of expensive stadia.  According to the editor of the monograph, some of the stadia built for the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Japan and South Korea could not be maintained and ultimately had to be demolished.  In South Africa, similar questions are already being asked about Soccer City in Gauteng and Green Point in Cape Town. 

And third, whether these mega events actually yield economic benefits to the host country as is projected before the event.  The story from South Africa is that FIFA made more than the government of South Africa.  In India, we will have to see whether the contractors from outside India made profits far in excess of anything India gained from hosting the Commonwealth Games.  Certainly in South Africa, local people did not benefit.  For instance, despite South Africa producing many different brands of beer, the FIFA contractual terms restricted the sale of beer to only one brand, and that too an imported one. 

The bottom line in any city, particularly in cities in South Africa or India, is how one sets priorities for development.  If mega events such as these do not boost the local economy, only marginally contribute to urban development by way of additional transport infrastructure, and divert funds from the more pressing issues, such as housing for the poor, are they worth it?  Whose image do they boost, especially if corruption in every deal seems to be the inescapable hallmark of all such events?

The scorecard on Delhi after the Commonwealth Games has yet to be prepared.  It is fairly apparent already, that no one is going to win any gold medals in the Organising Committee and perhaps even in the Delhi government.  And citizens of the national capital – all citizens and not just those who could afford to buy tickets to the events – will have to decide whether in the end their lives have been made easier, have remained the same, or become even more stressful after this showpiece mega event. 

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[i] Monograph 169, Published by Institute of Security Studies, Pretoria, South Africa

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

NDTV gets it right

The Hoot

Second Take

NDTV did a brave thing on October 14.  On a day when Karnataka Chief Minister was exulting over having won the vote of confidence in the Assembly and the Commonwealth Games were winding up, at prime time the channel telecast an environmental story.  It was not just another environmental story.  It was one that hardly anyone had reported.

On August 15, Nand Aparajita, a 78-metre long cargo ship belonging to Essar Shipping floundered off the coast of Kavaratti island in the Lakshadweep and was grounded.  Since then it has been sitting there, buffeted by strong waves even as efforts to salvage it flounder because of the weather.  The ship was carrying 35,000 tonnes of cement that has now been off loaded.  Fortunately, it had very little oil by the time it ran ashore and that has also been removed. 

Any shipwreck is a disaster but an accident off Lakshadweep is especially tragic even though no one was killed. This is because the Lakshadweep is one of the most fragile ecosystems and is one of the global biodiversity hotspots. These islands consist of 12 atolls, 3 reefs and 5 submerged banks apart from 36 islands with an area of just 32 sq km.  Only 10 islands are inhabited and Kavaratti is the administrative centre.  The coral reefs of Lakshadweep are some of the best preserved in the world displaying an awe-inspiring array of biodiversity and are the only living coral reefs in India.

Significantly, a few days before this accident, the MSC Chitra collided with MV Khalijia near Mumbai.  The former was carrying oil and pesticide and as a result an estimated 800 tons of oil spilt into the sea.  Marine life was affected, as were mangroves.  The media gave it detailed coverage including efforts to clean up the oil.  The story has now disappeared from the radar but the effects of that oil spill will still be playing out.  Thus, the story is far from over.

The Lakshadweep accident is also an on-going story.  There is the environmental cost of the damaged coral that has yet to be estimated.  There are the long-term costs of further damage if the ship is not salvaged soon.  And there are linked stories about pollution, construction, tourism, global warming and other factors that are already stressing coral reefs around these islands.  In other words, an accident that the shipping company dismisses as minor because it has not resulted in a major oil spill could actually open the way for a larger environmental crisis. The coral reefs are the only protection for the islands from erosion. If they are damaged, life on the islands would be severely affected. 

Coverage of many events is still determined by physical proximity even though today media houses have far better resources to be able to send their journalists out to follow up on stories even in remoter locations.  The pity is that the Indian media continues to function within a very narrow geographical area – usually around the national capital, state capitals and a few other important cities.  The rest of the country only appears on the radar when a disaster of what they consider major proportions takes place.  Then too it is covered and forgotten.

Therefore, full credit must go to NDTV for following up on this story that could otherwise be easily forgotten.  For every one story like this, there are dozens waiting to be reported.

We are so cavalier in our approach to nature in this country.  The media will take up the bigger campaigns, the tiger, elephant corridors etc.  But the environment is damaged daily by such occurrences, ships that get wrecked off our shores and are allowed to remain there until they break apart.  For instance, in Goa, the MV River Princess, a 240 metres long cargo ship belonging to the Salgaocar Shipping Company, ran aground near Fort Aguada in June 2000.  Yet 10 years later, the ship continues to be in the water and nothing is being done.  Meanwhile, it has altered the tidal pattern and damaged the popular beach of Sinquerim-Candolim.

An interesting aspect of the Lakshadweep story is the effort by the administration to keep media away.  Why?  NDTV quoted from a letter written by the Indian Broadcasters’ Association to the islands’ administration which stated: “The capricious denial of entry to journalists directly and immediately impedes their right to carry on their profession and violates the free speech guarantee contained in the Constitution.  Above all, such action on the part of your administration deprives the people at large of their ‘right to know’ about the goings on in their own country by receiving news from all over.”  As a result of such an intervention, the ban was removed.  Yet not many journalists have rushed to cover the story.

Apart from the on-going environmental angle, this reason behind the media ban needs to be investigated. Who prompted the island administration to ban the media?  What was it afraid of?  Are there other developmental activities taking place in the Lakshadweep that are also impacting the environment?

NDTV should follow up all these aspects after this important exclusive.

(To read the original, click on the link above and if you want to see what is meant by "living coral" click here)

In a class of our own

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, October 3, 2010

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

The Commonwealth Games fiasco, more than anything else, has exposed the hypocrisy of our attitudes…

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If toilets for the athletes were filthy, think of the 665 million Indians who do not have a toilet.

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Photo: Kamal Narang 

Reality check:The collapsed foot-over bridge near the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

The Commonwealth Games have begun — and the common man or woman must wonder what all the fuss is about. Why has the media, those consuming the media, politicians, athletes, sports officials from around the Commonwealth, and even the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, been so hugely engaged in a 10-day event in one city in India? How does what happens over these 10 days make such a difference to the lives of India's 1.2 billion?

Yes, there has been huge corruption, the details of which will emerge once the games end. But is that new or all that surprising? Yes, the work is shoddy and the finish sub-standard. Yes, the toilets were filthy, liberally decorated with paan spit and stray dogs had a grand time. Is that so unusual? How and when did we delude ourselves into believing that things are now done differently in India? Merely because of the Delhi Metro or a handful of airports? Incidentally, systems even at these posh airports have broken down. Visit the toilets in the sparkling Mumbai domestic airport at night and you will see what is evident in the majority of public toilets around India.

Wrong lessons

We are drawing the wrong lessons from Commonwealth Games mess. We are told India's “image” has been damaged. That we should hang our heads in shame now. Why? Because we did not match up to the expectation of being “world class”, whatever that means? That we did not manage to put across to the world that India has changed, that it is now an efficient, non-corrupt, functioning democracy?

In my view, the Commonwealth Games fiasco is a much-needed reality check for us. It has not only exposed that we are a long way from being “world class”, but it has also reminded us that we remain a corrupt society and that our standards of efficiency, leave alone cleanliness — whatever Lalit Bhanot might think — are unacceptable.

If toilets for the athletes were filthy, think of the 665 million Indians who do not have a toilet. If the buildings where the athletes are housed are sub-standard, think of the millions who are without a roof over their heads. If some of the homeless get houses, courtesy the government, or some private builder availing a scheme, they usually leak, are lower than sub-standard and look like ancient relics within a few years of completion. Drive around Mumbai and you will see “new” buildings, constructed for the poor that already look decades old.

But more than the sub-standard structures that have apparently brought such disgrace to India, we should be worried about sub-standard attitudes. Why is no one really concerned about the workers injured when a foot overbridge collapses? Why do we know nothing about the workers who built these “world class” facilities, where did they come from, and what happens to them now that the work has ended? If some of them are guilty of having messed up the toilets, do we know whether they had access to sanitation, or even clean drinking water, where they lived for months, perhaps years, as they slaved over these “world class” facilities?

And then there is corruption. Blatant. In your face. Yet, we cannot forget that the real price for the deep-rooted corruption in this country is being borne by the poorest, those without the ability to pay their way.

In the welter of the scandals emerging every day from the Games, an important report on the real picture of India's maternal mortality rate was lost in the fine print. “No Tally for the Anguish” is based on a study by Human Rights Watch on the conditions women face in Uttar Pradesh when they seek help during and after pregnancy. The stories are chilling. They speak of women dying as they are pushed around from one facility to another, of husbands begging doctors and nurses to treat their dying wives, of petty corruption at every level that exacerbates an already scandalously high death rate amongst Indian women.

Other realities

One such story, which I quote below, will suffice as an illustration:

“One man I know had taken his wife for delivery to the CHC. He had sold 10 kilos of wheat that he had bought to get money to bring his wife for delivery. He had some 200-300 rupees [US$4-6]. Now in the CHC they asked him for a minimum of 500 rupees [US$10]. Another 50 [rupees] to cut the cord and 50 [rupees] for the sweeper. So he started begging and saying he did not have more money and that they should help for his wife's delivery. I... asked them why they were demanding money. The nurse started giving us such dirty [verbal] abuses that even I was getting embarrassed and wanted to leave. You imagine how an ordinary person must feel who wants help. –Activist from a local non-governmental organisation in Uttar Pradesh, March 2, 2009.”

And finally, the differing standards of hygiene that Lalit Bhanot so famously spoke of when those inspecting the site mentioned how appalled they were to see a member of the staff urinating in the public area. Well, here is a reality that even the most skilled managers of an event in India will not be able to hide. And although a part of the problem does arise from the lack of toilets — not all of it does as far as Indian men are concerned. For some reason, regardless of facilities available, the nearest wall is the favoured spot for urinating.

A recent study on women and sanitation in the slums in Mumbai by the activist group Jan Jagruti revealed that while men can use pay public toilets free of cost if they want to urinate, women must pay one rupee each time they use it. Yet, you see only men urinating in public and not women.

Long way to go

I know these are not pleasant subjects to write about when we are trying to project an image of ourselves as “world class”. But every time I hear that phrase, I shudder at our rank hypocrisy. How can a country where children die within days of being born, mothers die while giving birth to babies, millions die from communicable diseases, malaria and dengue are even today wreaking havoc in many parts of the country, still continue to harp on growth rate and some illusory standard of “world class”?

I hope some of our athletes, who in non-Games times are not given anything resembling the facilities available in Delhi now, do well in these games. And I hope that when the Games end, heads do roll and the men who have made this mess are held accountable.

But more than anything, I hope the Commonwealth Games drama will make many of us who live in comfortable homes in India's cities spare a thought to those who build our homes, those who clean them, those who have no homes, no toilets, no access to healthcare, no food and little work. That is the real India. And I don't know what “class” it is but it is a far cry from the concept of “world class” that we have been bombarded with for the last many months.

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

Should journalists apologise?

The Hoot


Are reporters, who fall for police and IB plants and happily give chapter and verse on the lives of individuals suspected of terror links, bound to apologise if they are proved wrong?  Does anyone bother to find out what happens to those who are picked up, wonders KALPANA SHARMA

“Is the media becoming increasingly susceptible to police plants?” This is the question The Hoot has posted on this site. It will be interesting to know the results of the survey, particularly if any journalists covering the police take part in the survey.   Run these results alongside the letter of protest by Siddharth Vardarajan, National Bureau Chief of The Hindu, to the jury that gave the Indian News Broadcasting Award to Neeta Sharma of NDTV India. Vardarajan pointed out in his letter that Sharma was the reporter who wrote a false story inHindustan Times in 2002 claiming that Iftikhar Gilani, Chief of Bureau of Kashmir Times in Delhi, had admitted in court that he was an ISI agent. The story, obviously a plant, appeared even as journalists were consolidating their support for Gilani. Because of this report, and others like this, Gilani ended up in jail for nine months where he was tortured and his family suffered terrible humiliation. Although the paper for which Sharma wrote did apologise to Gilani, the reporter did not. Vardarajan states in his letter, “I hope that even at this late stage, you as jury members can either find a way to withdraw this award or at least shame Neeta Sharma into acknowledging that the basic code of a good reporter involves respecting the truth and having the decency to say sorry when you make a grave mistake.”   For those interested in this particular case, it is also worth reading Gilani's comment on Sharma getting the award and seeing his power point presentation of the media coverage during the time when he was charged and incarcerated. So are reporters, who fall for police and IB plants and happily give chapter and verse on the lives of individuals suspected of terror links, bound to apologise if they are proved wrong? I suspect if this became the norm, more than one prominent journalist would have to do this.   After every so-called terror attack, the police round up suspects and question them. Sometimes their identities are not revealed to the press and only people in the neighbourhood where these men live know that they have been picked up. At other times, publicity hungry police in some states, run to the media every time they have some incremental piece of information on a terror plot and reveal that they have caught the “mastermind”, only to backtrack a few weeks, months or even years later when another “mastermind” is caught. But has anyone bothered to find out what happens to the men who are picked up, questioned, possibly tortured and finally let off if they happen to be lucky enough to find a lawyer who will take up their case and prove their innocence or at least establish that the police does not have a case? Nine times out of ten, this does not happen. Iftikhar Gilani was based in Delhi, worked for a prominent Kashmiri newspaper and therefore got some help. But what of scores of others like him?   Take the curious case of the Mecca Masjid blast on May 18, 2007 in Hyderabad. Initially the police said they were certain it was the work of the Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami (HuJI). Around 60 young Muslims were arrested on suspicion, one of their ostensible crimes being viewing DVDs depicting the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and scenes from the Gujarat riots. Thanks to the intervention of a human rights group and their lawyer, the men were released and the police admitted it did not have any evidence against them. Meantime, three years after the blast, with no leads, the possibility of the involvement of Hindutva groups like the ones held responsible for the Malegaon blasts is now being investigated.   But what about those 60 men who were wrongly implicated? Who will compensate for their loss of reputation at being labeled terrorist? Will the journalists and the newspapers that perpetuated this theory apologise?   The most recent such case was that of Samad Bhatkal. On May 25 this year, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) picked him up from Mangalore airport when he returned from Dubai. He was called “suspected terrorist” in the early reports and a “co-conspirator” in the Mumbai terror attack. He was also written of as a “prize catch” in the Pune blast case of February this year. Yet when the police produced him in court to get custody, only an arms seizure case of 2009 was mentioned in the remand application in which they claimed Bhatkal was involved in supplying arms to three persons in South Mumbai in 2009. Bhatkal got bail on June 15 and was finally released three weeks later when the police admitted that they had no evidence to hold him any longer.   We know Gilani's story because he is our colleague, a fellow journalist, and based in the national capital. And he has written a book, “My days in prison” that should be made compulsory reading for budding journalists so that they understand how even in a democracy laws like the Official Secrets Act can be misused and how being in the media cannot protect you. If Gilani's is the story of a man with some influence, what about those without, who are picked up for “routine” questioning? How many more Samad Bhatkal's are there in each of our cities and do we in the media bother about them, follow up on their stories when the police drops these cases without acknowledging that they made a mistake?   And now we have the Jama Masjid shooting and once again, even as the police is taking care to say they do not know, “sources” in the police and intelligence are already telling journalists that this is a “terror” attack and is the “handiwork” of the Indian Mujahideen (IM). “The modus operandi in the firing, which left two Taiwanese tourists injured, carries the signature of Indian Mujahideen, home ministry sources said,” reported DNA on September 19. Similar reports have appeared elsewhere including an edit in The Hinduthat states, “Police believe the attack was most likely carried out by one of the Lashkar-e-Taiba-linked cells that are collectively referred to as the Indian Mujahideen”.   The alleged email sent by the IM is already being accepted as genuine. Curiously, even though nowhere in the mail is there a claim that the IM carried out the shootout, many in the media seem to have jumped to that conclusion. Over the next days the drama will unfold with “highly placed sources” placing different versions of what happened, who was responsible, whether the explosion in the car was really a crude bomb etc. As in previous cases, “suspects” will be rounded up for questioning and perhaps soon a “mastermind” will be found.   The police face a difficult task cracking such cases. No one doubts that. But the question we in the media have to continue asking is how we deal with the piecemeal information we are fed? For instance, should we publish the mugshots of suspects rounded up by the police - photographs that the police provide - even though there is now a considerable record of the number of times the police have been wrong in such cases? Don't these individuals also have the right to protect their privacy? And when we are proved wrong, should we not acknowledge the mistake and issue a correction, if not an apology?   There are far too many uncomfortable questions before us in the media and we cannot overlook them. Even if this cannot form the subject of a general debate, surely within our own newsrooms the issue can be discussed and some kind of code formulated for such reportage. The credibility of the media has already touched rock bottom with the “paid news” phenomenon. Add to that the “plant news” aspect and you wonder why readers should believe anything that appears in the media.

(Click on the link above to read the article on The Hoot website)

Making the invisible visible

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, September 19, 2010

The Other Half

KALPANA SHARMA

If women are getting more visibility today, it is partly because of the changes initiated by the UN conferences of the 1990s…

Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar 
 Going unacknowledged: Women farmers...

The most striking photograph of the farmers' agitation against the Yamuna Expressway last month was that of a 45-year-old woman, Rajkumari Devi ( Indian Express, August 29, 2010). Captioned “Protesting Farmer, Zikarpur Village, Aligarh”, the story that accompanied the photograph described how Rajkumari, holding a lathi in her hands, sat in protest for days on end with other men and women, demanding more compensation for their lands that had been acquired for the Yamuna Expressway.

Her life was her land. “My day would start at four in the morning, feeding the cattle and then tilling the land. I would take a brief lunch break and get back to the field. It was during the evening that I finished my household chores and spent some time with my family and neighbours.” She told the reporter that she knew no other life than working in her fields, something she had done even as a child as her father was a farmer. “A farmer has no holidays. One is supposed to work everyday and all the time”, she said.

I was struck by Rajkumari's photograph and testimony for more than one reason. Her story is that of every farmer, man or woman, but her story is also that of women farmers, who are rarely acknowledged when one discusses any matter related to agriculture. Indeed, women as farmers continue to be invisible in India even though millions of them are as directly involved with agriculture as the men.

A reader wrote to me a few weeks ago and asked why I find this “women's” angle in every story. It is precisely because of stories like Rajkumari's, the invisible women who are an important part of our economy, our lives and yet their contribution is so routinely overlooked.

Her story reminded me that this month marks 15 years since the UN fourth World Conference on Women that was held in Beijing from September 4-15, 1995. It was the largest of the series of UN conferences held through the 1990s, bringing together thousands of official and non-governmental representatives from 189 countries to discuss women's rights, how to make them more visible and to strategise ways to ensure that governments legislate and formulate policies that ensure that women have the same rights as all other citizens in their countries.

I know that these days the United Nations does not have much currency. But through the 1990s, some of the important conferences that the UN convened saw the emergence of an international consensus on a number of important issues.

Significant conferences

Of these, as far as women worldwide are concerned, the two really significant meetings were the 1994 Cairo meeting on population and the Beijing conference. Cynics sometimes wonder what is achieved by these huge jamborees. But there was a time and place for them and in some respects the fruits of those efforts can be seen in the decades that followed.

The Cairo conference, for instance, established the link between population and development and between women's rights and population policies. As one of the signatories of the document that emerged from the conference, the Indian government had to look again at its reproductive health policies and discard the earlier system of incentives and disincentives that resulted in fudged data and women being penalised for being the ones who can procreate. The change in policy has, of course, not been uniformly implemented and every now and then we still hear stories about coercion. But 16 years after the conference, there is already enough evidence to show that developmental policies that deal with illiteracy, health and women's rights are a far more effective strategy to limit population growth than coercive policies such as forced sterilisation or limits on the number of children you can have.

Women's rights are a trickier issue. One of the star attractions in Beijing was Hillary Clinton, then the First Lady of the United States. She got the world's attention when she stated unequivocally that “it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights.” She said, “It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls, when women and girls are sold into slavery or prostitution for human greed. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small, when thousands of women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.”

Uneven results

Of course, not all the countries present carried forward the philosophy behind this slogan in their policies post-Beijing. Women continue to be denied basic rights in many societies including India. Violence against women in the home and outside continues in all our societies. While we hear little today about violence at home, including dowry torture and deaths, statistics establish that women are far more prone to assault within the home than outside it.

So was the rhetoric, the declarations, the Platform for Action adopted at Beijing worth anything more than the paper on which they were written?

I personally think they were. What Beijing did was to reiterate standards that are universal within the rights context. It laid out violations of women's rights that were unacceptable. And it urged governments to legislate and enact policies that would make these rights a reality. It also gave civil society actors around the world a handle that was useful for advocacy for change of policy within their countries.

What does any of this have to do with Rajkumari from Zikarpur village? A great deal. Conferences like the one in Beijing set in motion campaigns and changes that were aimed at ending the invisibility of women like Rajkumari. If today we can see her proud face in our newspapers, and recognise that she too is an Indian farmer, then a small step towards ending her invisibility has been taken.

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

Dying of indifference

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, September 5, 2010

The Other Half

KALPANA SHARMA

Every eight minutes a woman dies in our country due to pregnancy-related complications. Why aren't we able to devise an accessible healthcare system?

Photo: A.M. Faruqui 

Filled to the brim: The state of our maternity hospitals, where they are available.

“She gave birth, died. Delhi walked by”. This was the headline of a six column news item on the top of an inside page in Hindustan Times (August 29, 2010). Illustrated with four telling photographs, the story was about a pregnant destitute woman, who lay on the footpath of Delhi's busy and well-frequented Shankar Market, which is adjacent to the iconic Connaught Place. Thousands of people must have passed her, but no one spared a glance at what appeared a bundle of rags covered in a red cloth.

On July 26, this woman gave birth, unaided by anyone. The cries of the newborn infant caught the attention of some of the shopkeepers and one of them, the owner of a garment shop, picked up the baby. The mother apparently refused help and died on that same spot where she had given birth, four days later. The police came and removed her body and took the child, who had been in the care of the Good Samaritan until then, to a foster home.

This is an item that should have been on the front page of all our newspapers because it illustrates two things. One, the increasing indifference of people who live in our metro cities, who are so absorbed with their own lives that they don't even look around to see how other people survive or die. We have lost our ability to see, to feel. No one wants to get involved. There is a fear that you might be asked to commit more of your time, your resources, your emotions than you are willing to do. So our eyes glaze over, we look the other way and we walk away.

And two, it brings home the reality of maternal mortality in this country where even as we boast of becoming an economic super power and the media celebrates the few Indians who are joining the list of the richest in the world, millions of our women are dying in the process of giving birth to a child.

Of course the story of this woman, whose name we do not know, is one extreme. But it should remind us that this is the reality that we have to address in this country.

Countless more

One can just imagine with rains and the floods that have taken place in the last months how many more such nameless women there must be on the streets of Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, a part of the thousands who have no shelter, who have to sleep out in the open. All our cities, particularly Delhi but other cities too, are in the midst of a huge construction boom. This is bringing in thousands upon thousands of people from the surrounding areas. Those who have a skill and find regular work in these construction sites are possibly provided temporary shelter by the contractors. But many more do causal work, as and when it is available. The rest of the time they do what they can to earn a few rupees everyday, sometimes send their children out to beg and find whatever place they can to sleep.

In Mumbai, for instance, the fancy new skywalks that have been built connecting railway stations to business hubs have become temporary homes for these homeless people. It is an eerie spectacle to see these bodies laid out in a row, all ages, men, women and children, some sleeping under mosquito nets strung to the side of the skywalk, somehow catching a few hours rest under the relentless yellow light that shines all night. By morning the skywalk reverts to being what it is meant to be, a pedestrian walkway. No one can complain or say anything because there is no solution. But what happens to the children, especially the small babies, what happens to the women, some of them fairly young who become pregnant and have no recourse to any healthcare?

For the other side of this tragic story from a busy street in our national capital is that one woman dies every eight minutes due to complications arising due to pregnancy such as sepsis, haemorrhage or obstructed labour. These deaths could be avoided if there is timely medical intervention. But such help is hard to come by if you live in a remote area or if you are poor woman in city or village. Even if you get some help, it is often too late to make a difference between life and death.

India's current Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) is 254 in 100,000 live births. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), half of all maternal deaths in South Asia occur in five Indian states — Rajasthan, MP, UP, Bihar and Orissa. We have committed ourselves as part of the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to bring the MMR down to 109 by 2015, in just five years. Is that possible?

The central government has launched the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) to specifically address the problem. It provides cash incentives to women who choose institutional delivery in the belief that this will reduce maternal mortality. If we believe official data, then it would appear that many poor women are benefitting from the scheme. For instance, according to one report, two months before the destitute died in Delhi's Shankar Market, another poor woman living in an open park near the Nizamuddin Dargah was lucky enough to be found by an NGO that helped her get the benefits under this scheme. As a result, the baby girl she delivered in the park has a chance to live, she has a birth certificate unlike others like her, and the mother too is receiving healthcare.

Different reality

Sadly, just as the exception in the case of the woman who died on the street does not make the rule, neither does the woman who survived in the park. Cash incentives in this country have usually led to corruption and fudging of data. This is already evident from reports from Bihar and Jharkhand. Also, the media often remains content with reporting official figures without investing in investigating what is actually happening on the ground. The few investigative stories that do appear on healthcare — on websites like indiatogether.org or infochangeindia.org — tell a very different story. They inform us of the struggle poor women face to reach a hospital, how they are either turned away or have to wait as there are no trained personnel around. As a result, regardless of new schemes or incentives, they are either too weak to survive childbirth or die because the promised help never turns up.

Maternal mortality means women are dying of causes not related to diseases or epidemics. Their ability to survive something like childbirth is inextricably linked to poverty, malnutrition and the absence of basic healthcare. We can set ourselves all kinds of targets but a realistic plan to improve the survival chances of millions of Indian women is to ensure that our systems of healthcare actually cater to those at the bottom of the economic pyramid, women like that poor, nameless destitute in Delhi.

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

Public transport vs personalised transport

The JNNURM initiative, under which the central government funds a substantial part of the costs of city public transport systems, has begun to show some results. The most talked about examples are the Bus Rapid Transport System in Ahmedabad and the public-private partnership in Indore, writes Kalpana Sharma

When you arrive at Geneva airport in Switzerland, a sign just before the exit urges all visitors to collect a free bus pass take them into the city.  If you do that, you find yourself riding in a pleasant low-floored bus to the heart of this relatively small, but nonetheless important Swiss city.

Once you check in to your lodging, irrespective of whether it is a youth hostel, budget hotel or a more luxurious one, the check-in clerk will hand you a free pass to be used on public transportation – trams and buses – to cover the entire duration of your stay.  And the day you leave, all you need to do is wave your plane ticket at the bus driver and you get to ride free back to the airport.

It was not always like that in Geneva, I am told.  But at some point, alarmed at the growth of private vehicles that had begun to crowd the roads and foul the air, the government decided it was worth its while to invest in efficient public transport.  And as the city attracts many visitors – tourists and people attending scores of international conferences through the year – it also made sense to make the public transport system irresistible even for a short-stay visitor.

Unfortunately, given the trajectory of urban development in India, it is highly unlikely that we will see a replication of this kind of model in this country in the foreseeable future.

No one will argue anymore that one of the most important components of a liveable and environmentally sustainable city is a properly designed, efficient and affordable public transport system.  The National Urban Transport Policy, launched in 2006, does lay down some guidelines and accepts that “public transport occupies less road space and causes less pollution per passenger kilometer than personal vehicles”.  Recognising that public transport is a much more sustainable form of transport for cities, the central government has decided to push for greater investment in “high capacity public transport systems” in state capitals and other million-plus cities.  Such an intervention from the centre is essential as otherwise public transport is handled by state governments and municipalities, many of which either have no funds, or no expertise, to undertake such a task.  The result is already evident in the majority of Indian cities.

As part of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), the central government has offered 50% of the cost for preparing comprehensive city transport plans, equity participation and/or viability gap funding up to 20% of the capital cost of any public transport system and 50% of the cost of projects that are public-private partnership.  The rest would need to come from the state government, city development authority -- if there is one -- and the project developer (as stated in the NUTP).

This intervention has already begun to show some results. The most talked about example of this is the BRTS (Bus Rapid Transport System) in Ahmedabad.  Although still at a nascent stage, it seems to have been accepted even by those who never travelled by bus in the past. On a recent visit to Ahmedabad, when some of us travelled on the BRTS over a considerable distance, two men I spoke to said that in the past they always took their motorbikes to work. Now they take the BRTS to the  point nearest their workplace and then an auto-rickshaw to reach their destination.  They found this not just cost-effective but also a much more agreeable way to travel.  One of the passengers, a middle-aged Muslim gentleman, told me that one of the main benefits of taking the bus was not just a break from breathing in polluted air but also freedom from constant harassment from traffic police who haul up people on motorbikes, check their papers and fine them for even minor discrepancies. Creating a system that is attractive to those who have got used to personalised transport is a very big plus point and is a model that is being followed by several cities.

The BRTS has not been a uniform success in all cities where it has been implemented.  In Delhi, for instance, where BRTS has been tried out in limited areas, the story is a mixed one.  Those who backed the BRTS argue that it could have worked well but for the negative media campaign which seemed to take up only the issues of car owners and the kinds of problems they faced rather than doing an objective assessment of how many people it actually benefitted. 

By way of contrast, the Ahmedabad BRTS has had very positive media coverage. However, it is already evident that it has not made a dent on the number of cars on the city’s roads.  As one passenger ruefully commented, “It will take a lot to get these car-wallahs to take a bus!” Of course transport experts do point out that the BRTS’ success in Ahmedabad is partly due to the specificity of the city. It is one of the cities that has remained compact and dense even though its population has grown.  This is unlike Delhi, or Mumbai, where typically the people who depend on public transport are either the very poor, who have been forcibly relocated in distant suburbs or the lower middle class who cannot afford housing closer to their places of work because of high real estate prices. The BRTS may not be the best way of transporting them into the city where their jobs are located.  These cities would clearly need to pursue other options.  Mumbai already has its suburban rail network that is stretched to the limit and Delhi now has a metro system that seems to be functioning well. Interestingly, as with the BRTS in Ahmedabad, those who use the Delhi Metro the most are owners of two-wheelers (284,433) according to 2005-06 estimates.  The number would be higher now.

Another success story of investment in public transport that has yielded dividends is the case of Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Writing about it in The Indian Express (August 25, 2010), Isher Judge Ahluwalia and Ranesh Nair suggest that this is a good example of public-private partnership (PPP).  In the past, the only form of so-called ‘public’ transport, if you did not own your own vehicle, was a choice between privately-owned mini buses (550), or tempos (500) or one of 10,000 or so auto-rickshaws.  Today, the city’s transport system is managed by a single agency – Indore City Transport Services Limited (ICTSL) – which has a PPP with private bus operators and marketing agents.  Starting in January 2006, ICTSL contracted six private bus operators, worked out routes and schedules they had to follow, insisted on proper maintenance of buses, worked out a uniform fare structure and monitored the entire system through an expensive but effective GPS tracking system.  The city now has 104 buses, with another 124 soon to be added, and 24 routes benefitting around 100,000 passengers every day.

Mumbai poses a difficult challenge.  In the 1960s, the city had a good functioning public transport system with a combination of trams, buses and the commuter railway.  The BEST (Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport) is often cited as an excellent example of an autonomous body tasked with managing bus transport in the city.  Although it is part of the municipal corporation, it functions independent of it.

Today Mumbai is a victim of a hotch-potch uncoordinated policy where all kinds of things are being tried out such as BRTS along the Eastern and Western Express highways, metro rail corridors initially linking the eastern and western suburbs, strengthening of the existing commuter rail system, adding more buses, and a monorail in one part of the city. Perhaps all these are needed but somehow one does not get the impression that this has been thought through as a comprehensive policy.  What is missing in both Delhi and Mumbai is a determined policy to reduce the number of personalised vehicles, and particularly cars.

In Mumbai, for instance, fortunately the idea of granting builders additional FSI to build multi-storied car parks has been set aside for the moment.  If it had been pursued, we would have encouraged even more cars to enter the city, bringing movement on the packed roads to a virtual standstill.  Instead of making car parks, there should be a limit on cars entering the city through a system of high parking fees or congestion tax as has been tried in cities around the world.

If higher taxes on personalised transport coincided with better public transport, we might make a dent on the number of cars driving into the city, sometimes with no more than the driver and one passenger and hogging a disproportionate amount of the limited road space.  This is the kind of proactive strategy that needs to be followed in cities like Mumbai and Delhi.  There’s no point investing in multiple forms of public transport while at the same time facilitating private cars by building flyovers and sea links for smoother travel for this minority.

Creating sustainable cities – or rather reversing the trend of unsustainability in all Indian cities – is a daunting challenge. Plans to enhance or introduce public transport in our cities should have been put in place decades ago.  Today, some cities have almost reached the point of no return. 

But it is still not too late.  What we need are more citizens’ lobbies that will push for environmentally benign and cost-effective public transport systems that benefit the greatest number of people.  This would mean scrutinising and questioning the plans that the government doles out, and working on alternatives.  Apart from additional funding and planning, such citizen awareness and participation are an essential component for the future, especially in India where the tendency to go for capital-intensive big ticket projects without considering the views and needs of the majority of people has virtually become an accepted norm.

Infochange News & Features, August 2010