Disappearing warp and weft

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Feb 20, 2011

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

As urban India moves away from handlooms and takes the high road to fashion, it has left in its wake a cultural legacy and shattered lives…

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Can today's generation find reason to use handloom the way our parents' generation used khadi, as a statement rejecting colonialism?

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Photo: Kalpana Sharma 

Bleak future:Chandra Shekhar.

The wedding season is still in full flow. A striking aspect of weddings these days is not just the homogenisation of customs. For instance, mehendi and sangeet, formerly common only in the north, are now part of almost every wedding, barring the most traditional.

There is something else that strikes you as a change, especially in marriages taking place in our cities, marriages amongst the middle and upper classes. From the days when the bride and the women wore some of the most intricately woven Indian handloom saris – from Banarasi to Paithani to Kancheepuram to Jamdhani – today there is another kind of uniformity that has replaced this richness and variety. Hand embroidered saris and wedding outfits on chiffon or georgette are now virtually the norm. What has happened to Indian handlooms?

Indian handlooms and the handloom weaver are paying for this change of taste in urban India, a market that helped weavers to survive. From the days when even the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, promoted handlooms by wearing strikingly beautiful saris from all over India, hand-picked and especially woven for her by master weavers, to today, when handloom fairs in different cities barely clear accumulated stocks of handloom products, India has travelled a long way. And on that road have perished not just craftspeople but a cultural tradition that was distinctive.

Chandra Shekhar and his wife Swapna are two of the 43.3 lakh handloom weavers in India, the majority facing severe hardships. They live in the village of Pochampally, around 50 km from Hyderabad. The weave that takes its name after their village is distinctive; it is a kind of tie and dye ikkat that involves dying both the weft and the warp. The planning has to be meticulous, the dying process has to be accurate and the weaving requires immense concentration on every inch that is woven.

Historic event

Pochampally is known not just for its weave; in 1951 Vinoba Bhave stopped at the village while on a padayatra in Telengana. On entering the village, 40 landless families surrounded him and spoke of their desperate lives. During a meeting in the village, he asked if anyone could help these families. Vedira Ramchandra Reddy, a local landowner, stood up and volunteered to donate 100 acres of his land to the landless. Thus began the Bhoodan Movement through which Vinoba managed to get thousands of acres of land donated voluntarily for landless peasants in many states across India. Pochampally now has the prefix, Bhoodan, to its name.

Chandra Shekhar and Swapna are one of the over 3,000 families living in this village who survive on weaving. For hours of work needed to complete one cotton or silk sari of breathless beauty, Chandra Shekhar and his wife, both working together for over seven to eight hours a day, can barely earn Rs. 3,000 a month. They have two daughters who go to school. There are months when there is no work because there is no demand for the fabric. They are literally asked not to weave because there is too much stock with the merchant or the cooperative society.

Swapna.

Almost every day, the number of weavers is declining. The men go and seek work in Hyderabad. The women turn to embroidery or garment making. And the children, who are getting educated, are unlikely to follow in their footsteps. In fact, most weavers would prefer that their children do something else.

Multiple causes

The crisis of these weavers is not just due to lack of demand, but also because of high yarn prices and the import of cheap substitutes. The sector has survived on government subsidies but that too is not as readily available. Even if the present generation of weavers is given some assistance to continue, there appears to be no guarantee that the craft of weaving handloom material like the Pochampally ikkat will survive another generation.

Not many realise that the majority of weavers are actually women. One reason could be the decline in income from weaving. As a result, the men seek other work while the women stay back and weave. This means young women, with the potential to pursue other interests, are forced to remain at the loom. Women like Swapna, now only 20, who regrets she could not continue her education. “After marriage, I started doing this work. It is hard work and we are not getting wages up to our expectations,” she says. She says she has studied up to 12th standard and wanted to study further. She realises that she cannot take up any other work because she does not have the qualifications.

Ironically, in the same village, another young woman, Latha Venkatesh, is the Sarpanch. Smartly dressed in a pale yellow sari, Latha has also studied only up to 12th standard. But she comes from a political family and some suggest she inherited her post from her husband, who was Sarpanch. Latha speaks enthusiastically about the steps she wants to take to improve life in the village, such as dealing with the water problem and “giving self-confidence to the women”. She acknowledges that the weavers of Pochampally are facing a crisis and that the majority of the men are migrating to the city.

One could argue that in many countries traditional weaving and crafts are now a niche activity, available as exotic products for tourists. But handlooms in India have a different story. They have been the source of livelihood for millions across the country. If you look at a map of India, and mark the different types of handlooms available, you will touch almost every state and from the northeast and Kashmir to the southern tip.

Furthermore, the skill involved in producing these special handloom products, such as the silks of Kancheepuram and Benaras, the Kosa and Moga silk from Chhattisgarh and Assam respectively, or the Jamdhani from Bengal, the Bhagalpur silk, the Chanderi from Madhya Pradesh and the Tussar and Ikkat of Orissa, is part of a special cultural capital that ought not to be squandered. In the rush of modernisation and globalisation, we are erasing something very distinctive and special, something that has been accessible to ordinary people and is not restricted to the realm of high design and fashion.

Can today's generation find reason to use handloom the way our parents' generation used khadi, as a statement rejecting colonialism? Or is that completely unrealistic? Having visited Pochampally, watched Chandra Shekhar slowly and painstakingly dying the yarn for the next sari he would weave, marvelling at the varied designs and colours that emerge from the semi-darkness of his house, one hopes that this can still happen.

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

New CRZ notification: One step forward, and two back?

Even as the new CRZ notification grants fishing communities the right to redevelop the land on which they live, it lays open coastal lands for other forms of development which will adversely impact their livelihoods, says Kalpana Sharma Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh wants to introduce a River Regulation Zone to regulate activities on the banks of major rivers. “The manner in which the Yamuna riverbed has been devastated by constructions should be a wake-up call to all of us,” he stated at a meeting in New Delhi recently. The statement was made, coincidentally, on the day his ministry announced the new Coastal Regulation Zone Notification 2011 that replaces the earlier one from 1991. While the minister’s plans for rivers and their banks might be appreciated, his plan to manage India’s coasts has not been universally lauded. In fact, the very fear he expressed about the Yamuna riverbed could become a reality for India’s coastal cities. Not everyone is apprehensive about the new regulation. Builders and land developers are viewing it as a positive step. But the fishing communities that dot the 7,500 km long coastline are distressed, for the new regulation gives with one hand and takes away with the other. And environmentalists fear that unchecked development of coastal lands will destroy precious natural buffers and biodiversity. What the new notification gives is the right to fishing communities to redevelop the land on which they live so that housing conditions can be improved. This is now possible through a change in the classification of their location from CRZ II to CRZ III. (In CRZ II, redevelopment would not have been permitted.) Plus, in the case of fishing communities in Mumbai, they get an additional Floor Space Index (FSI) of 2.5 instead of the current 1.33. In other words, they can build higher on the same piece of land. The justification for this is ostensibly to ensure that everyone is resettled. But it also means that the excess land available once people are accommodated vertically can be used for other purposes. This is where there is ample room for manipulation and misuse of a concession designed to benefit fisherfolk. But the fishing communities’ concern is not just housing; it is principally livelihood. And on this they are not at all sure that the new notification will help them. For, even as it grants them additional rights to organise their housing it lays open coastal lands for other forms of development. For instance, one of the issues that fishworkers’ representatives took up with Ramesh in the run-up to the new notification was their opposition to roads on stilts along the coastline. They argued, as the Mahim fishing colony in Mumbai opposing the Bandra-Worli sea link had done for years -- that erecting pillars in the sea along the coast affects tidal patterns and thereby fishing. In the case of Mumbai, their pleas were overruled in the name of ‘development’. And yet their specific request on this count has been left out of the notification. Indeed, the Maharashtra government has already started pushing for a plan for coastal roads on stilts. There is some sense in the argument made by Ramesh and others that you cannot have a uniform rule for the entire coast of India. You need to factor in the realities of urbanisation as well as the urgent need to preserve natural buffers such as mangroves and reefs that can minimise the damage caused by sea level rise or by natural disasters like tsunamis. Those for a diluted CRZ hold out the example of other cities around the world where such strict regulations are not in place and where the sea front has been exploited for commercial purposes. However, environmentalists emphasise that even the original CRZ notification had been modified 25 times. And its implementation was followed more in the breach -- with spectacular instances such as the 31-storey Adarsh building in Mumbai, which added a full 25 floors more than it was allowed to under these very rules. If this can happen within shouting distance of the lawmakers of Maharashtra, and with many of them being complicit, one can only imagine what else has been going on. It also means that the new, more lax, CRZ notification will be even more amenable to misuse than the previous one. V Vivekanandan, advisor to the South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies, believes that the new notification cancels out the fishworkers’ struggle against the previous Coastal Management Zone plan that was sought to be introduced in 2008.  It had to be abandoned in the face of trenchant opposition. Since 1991, he points out, there have been new pressures on coastal lands. In 1981, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi acknowledged the need to protect coastal areas from an environmental and livelihood perspective. The CRZ, 10 years later, was the result of this awareness. But since then, he says, it has been steadily weakened by a combination of groups -- those who want to put coastal lands to other uses such as Special Economic Zones (SEZs), for the construction of power stations, including nuclear, for ports, for non-polluting industries -- and those who want to fence off coastal areas to preserve biodiversity. Both strategies overlook the concept of coastal zones as common lands that should remain accessible to everyone, especially those dependent on them for their livelihood, such as fishing communities. Take the case of Maharashtra. The government plans to build a series of power stations, nuclear and thermal, all along the Konkan coast. What this will do to the marine resources does not even form part of the discussion. Ramesh was quoted as saying: “India must get used to power plants being located in coastal areas. The availability of water, import of coal or uranium fuel… will necessitate power plants being located here.” Yet, it is an indisputable fact that the warm water discharged from power stations eliminates marine life in coastal areas. In addition, other infrastructure like ports and jetties will further disrupt the marine ecosystem and directly impact the lives of fishing communities along these coasts. The impact of the new CRZ rules on urban areas like Mumbai will also be considerable. Despite its many limitations, Mumbai’s coastline has been preserved to some extent because the rules forbade development within CRZ I and II. It is entirely possible that if such rules had not existed, popular beaches such as Chowpatty and Juhu, which constitute important democratic open spaces for people of all classes in the city, would have disappeared altogether. In Goa, citizens’ groups had to go to court to ensure that five-star hotels did not cut off access to beaches. On the other hand, one has to acknowledge that some slum redevelopment schemes have been held up because of CRZ rules.  These are not just the Koliwadas. They include slums that fall within CRZ II. In fact, some of the redevelopment schemes in Dharavi, quite a distance away from the sea, were delayed for over two years because, technically, they had to obtain CRZ clearance. Such anomalies have to be rectified. But they could have been sorted out within the older notification. The real problem in India with all environmental laws and regulations is their implementation. In Mumbai, as in other cities, those with power and political clout manage to get around every rule, while genuine cases such as those of the urban poor wanting to redevelop their land end up embroiled in endless red-tape. The importance of strictly adhering to a more stringent coastal zone regulation for a city like Mumbai, and other coastal cities, has become all the more urgent in light of global warming and genuine fears of sea level rise. If Mumbai experiences another episode of heavy rains and high tides, as it did in July 2005, and there is no buffer by way of beaches, rocky outcrops and mangroves, the devastation could be more extensive than that which occurred six years ago. The question that Ramesh has to answer is why the specific needs of the Koliwadas could not have been met by bringing in amendments to the existing rules without issuing an entirely new CRZ notification. Who will monitor implementation of these diluted rules if the past record has been so murky? Can the Centre really ensure that state governments are not complicit in diluting an already diluted set of rules? These are not just rhetorical questions. People living in cities along the coast as well as those dependent on coastal lands for their livelihood have a genuine reason to be worried about the future. Infochange News & Features, February 2011 (To read the original, click on the link above)

Revolution without context

The Hoot Second Take The context was missing. Yes, for 18 days the world was transfixed on the people’s uprising in Egypt. Would they succeed, or would they be crushed? Was this going to be another Tiananmen Square? Could a disparate crowd of people of all classes, creeds and ages really shake up a dictatorship that had ruled for 30 years? Yes, they did succeed and no, they were not crushed.   But as with all events, even momentous ones like the January 25 uprising, the media deals with them as they happen and leave the reader/viewer not much wiser about the context.    For the Indian audience, Egypt rarely features anywhere apart from travel columns. So when the first reports appeared on BBC and CNN, and in some newspapers, most Indians would not have understood why this was happening. The earlier uprising in Tunisia got very little coverage in the Indian press. And despite Al Jazeera English being available in India now, it is still not widely seen in the country as cable operators and DTH platforms are still not relaying it.   What was not reported, either by the foreign channels, or by the western media as reproduced initially in Indian newspapers, was the state of affairs in Egypt before January 25. How high were poverty levels and unemployment? To what extent did crony capitalism operate? How extensive were the emergency powers of the government and human rights abuses? What was the status of women, of literacy, of healthcare, of child survival? Was this ancient civilization just a “stable” autocracy because the West preferred it to be just that, or did Egyptians have ideas about the kind of system of governance they desired? If they could not express their views through normal channels, like the media that was entirely government controlled, then where and how did people talk about alternatives? So many questions, yet so few answers even if you watched each day of the 18 days leading up to Mubarak’s exit.   Occasionally you did get a glimpse of another story. For instance, John Simpson of the BBC, did travel outside Cairo and spoke to fishermen at a seaside resort, normally packed with tourists. The only information they had was from state television. And from it they learned that all the trouble that was turning away tourists and therefore impacting their livelihood, was the work of ‘foreigners’. Simpson and his crew had to be rescued by the Army as the crowd got belligerent.   Through that short news feature, you got a sense of the state of affairs outside the national capital, and the extent to which the state controlled media affected attitudes. It reminded me of the days of the Emergency in India, when press censorship had closed off all avenues to independent information about developments in the country. The vast majority of people got their information from government-controlled All India Radio and Doordarshan. And from these channels it seemed all was well and that the government and Sanjay Gandhi were sincerely implementing the 20-point programme for the benefit of people, and that Indira Gandhi had been compelled to impose Emergency because of the troublemakers out to destabilize India. The 1977 elections allowed the steam to escape. Otherwise one wonders how long India too would have accepted a dictatorship masquerading as democracy, assisted by a controlled media.   The change in Egypt is because despite state-controlled media, information today just cannot be blocked, thanks to the Internet. And for the Middle East, in particular, the existence of a channel like Al Jazeera is clearly beginning to make a difference.   Of course, every channel has its biases. But the difference between a channel based in the Middle East and those outside could not have been more apparent than during the 18-day uprising in Egypt. While the western channels obsessed about the impact of any change on the geopolitics of the Middle East, Al Jazeera informed viewers about the realities in Egypt, including the background of some of those in power who were billed as acceptable faces to replace Mubarak. While BBC and CNN kept raising the spectre of an Islamist takeover – more CNN than BBC – we learned from Al Jazeera and from the voices of the participants the fact that this uprising had nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood, which only joined in later.    For a nuanced understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood one had to trawl the Internet or read a paper like The Guardian, which ran a long interview with its leader. Or read Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East correspondent of The Independent. Or listen to Al Jazeera English to understand the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, what it stood for, and how far it could go in Egypt.    Yet, despite people on the ground and several scholars reiterating that the Muslim Brotherhood did not instigate the January 25, the bogey kept appearing. It sprouted discussions around whether Islam and Democracy were compatible. Perhaps this is a valid subject in the face of the absence of democracy in so many Islamic countries, but coming at a time when people in Egypt, regardless of whether they were Muslims or Christians, were crying out for a “secular, modern, democratic” Egypt, a phrase one heard repeatedly from the people at Tahrir Square, surely the perspective from the ground had to be given some validity.   Unfortunately, the Indian media failed to develop a clear perspective on its own. To its credit, at least some media houses did send out correspondents to report directly, rather than depending on reprints from The New York Times or western news agencies. And most newspapers carried strong editorials supporting the developments in Egypt. Indian television did not do anything distinctive in its reportage barring Barkha Dutt’s documentary on “The Women of Tahrir Square”. Even some of the debates on TV, with the usual talking heads, seemed to take their cue from subjects discussed on Western channels – such as whether Islam and democracy are compatible (CNN-IBN). The coverage of Egypt in the Indian media illustrates how we give far more importance to developments in the western world than in parts of the world with which we have more in common and strong links. For instance, Egypt and India have been closely allied for decades. Yet, so little is written about Egypt in the Indian media except in the context of the Middle East crisis. Even developments in countries like Thailand, or Indonesia, or Vietnam, rarely find space on our international pages unless there is a crisis of major proportions. As a result, even the discerning Indian reader or viewer will know little about such countries when a crisis compels media attention. (To read the original, click on the link above)

Child Labour Laws: Lacunae and contradictions

India Together, Feb 2011

The young girl, in a yellow salwar kamiz, spoke hesitatingly into a microphone. The brightly lit stage, the darkened auditorium, the microphone were enough to terrify any young girl. More so if she was not familiar with the big city and came from rural Maharashtra. Yet, Tabassum Sheikh Latif from Shirola village in Maharashtra's Akola district testified clearly and simply about her life as a child worker. The occasion was a public hearing organized by Save the Children on child labour in agriculture in Maharashtra.

A day before the hearing, the Maharashtra government had released data that suggested that enrollment in schools across the state had increased and stood at over 90 per cent. One was supposed to believe from this that the majority of children in the state were now attending school.

Tabassum's story revealed a rather different picture. I want to go to school, I want to become a teacher, said the 11-year-old. But instead she spends her days working with her family in cotton fields like millions of other children across India. During Diwali she works in a factory that makes firecrackers, an occupation specifically banned under the Child Labour (Prevention and Regulation) Act 1986.

Yet, while handling hazardous material is specifically prohibited, all forms of agricultural work are not disallowed for children under 14. So girls like Tabassum can be found in cotton fields plucking and doing cross-pollination. Their hands get cut from the thorny bushes; they inhale the pesticide sprayed on the plants. Some of the pesticide rubs off on their hands, gets into their eyes. They complain of skin problems, nausea, giddiness. Yet, this work is not considered hazardous for young children like Tabassum.

Even as the government introduces new laws aimed at children's welfare, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is an urgent need to look at all these laws together, iron out the contradictions and find ways to make their implementation more rigorous and effective.

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

Egyptian voices

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Feb 6, 2011

THE OTHER HALF

Far from being ‘stable', Egypt is a country of multiple fissures as the current uprising shows…

The world has been transfixed by the developments in Egypt. Out of nothing, it seemed, an uprising of unbelievable proportions has emerged. Women and men, young and old, rich and poor, have all been heard saying the same thing — we want an end to three decades of repression, we want a change. It is as if the steam has been let off from a pressure cooker. There is clearly no going back.

Much of the world saw Egypt as a ‘stable' country in West Asia. For Western nations, it was their most faithful ally. But for Egyptians, the story has been vastly different. For them, Egypt's real face was that of increasing poverty and disparity, of unaccounted riches by the few, of the denial of human rights, of police brutality.

At the time of writing (February 1), it was unclear how this will end. Can this apparently leaderless upsurge lead to a peaceful change? Will the people who lead be able to meet the heightened expectations of millions of people in this most populous Arab country?

Change is here

Whatever the final outcome, the events beginning January 25 have forced the world to look again at Egypt and at Egyptians. We cannot fail to notice the fearlessness of men, as well as women. Within what appears to be a sea of men, you see the women, old and young, conservative and modern — and fearless. Yes, the women are there, but sometimes you have to look closely. One of the most striking images doing the rounds on the Internet is that of an elderly woman kissing a rather startled policeman, dressed in full riot gear.

Egyptian women are as vociferous and as articulate as the men even if the media sometimes fails to make the effort to seek out their voices. Thanks to the Internet, we have heard the voices of so many women in the last week, voices that spoke out strongly against emergency laws, against police brutality. These women were not afraid to state their names nor did they mince words.

Truthful portrayal

An Egyptian woman who first gave me an idea of the real situation within Egypt was the remarkable writer, Dr. Nawal El Sadaawi. Her book Woman at Point Zero, about Firdaus, a woman condemned to death for having killed her pimp, is one of the most gripping and moving books I have read. Dr. Sadaawi, a professional psychiatrist, met Firdaus in the notorious Qanatir Women's Prison in the mid-1970s. She narrates Firdaus' story of violence and abuse. But the book also gives us an insight into the life of millions of Egyptians, particularly women, living in conservative rural societies.

Less than a decade later, Dr. Sadaawi was incarcerated in the same prison for her political views and her trenchant opposition to the treatment of women, especially the practice of female genital mutilation. Such criticism was deemed a ‘crime against the State' and over one thousand intellectuals like Dr. Sadaawi were thrown into prison by the government of Anwar Sadat in September 1981. Her experiences in prison are captured in Memoirs from the Women's Prison, which she wrote on the basis of notes written with the help of a “stubby black eyebrow pencil” and “a small roll of old and tattered toilet paper”.

After her release from prison, she wrote: “Danger has been a part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.”

The repression did not end when Sadat was shot and the present incumbent, Hosni Mubarak took over. Women like Dr. Sadaawi have continued to face problems from the State and from conservative elements, some of whom have functioned under State protection. At one point Dr. Sadaawi chose to leave Egypt and live in exile. Even after she returned, the attacks on her continued.

Looking at the life of just one person like Nawal El Sadaawi gives us an idea of life in Egypt for people who question, who speak out. In fact, the women of Egypt have a long tradition of resistance. They were equal partners with the men who fought against colonial rule. There are newspaper reports from 1919, when Egypt faced political turmoil, that sound almost as if they are describing the scenes on the streets of Cairo — of women of all classes coming out to demonstrate against British rule.

Yet, as Nemat Guenena and Nadia Wassef write in their monograph, Unfulfilled Promises, Women's Rights in Egypt (published by the Population Council, 1999), “it has been noted that women's liberation has never come to assume the primacy of political or economic liberation. Women's particular concerns have been, and continue to be, subordinate to those of society, the nation, and development. Also, Egyptian men like their counterparts in the West have resisted the process of redefining gender roles and allowing women more equality.” Sounds familiar, does it not?

Token gestures

In many ways, Egypt represents the typical contradiction seen in many countries where governments accommodate some changes but essentially deny people the right to question. Thus, some progressive changes were made in laws that affect women, but many more were denied. And statistics, such as the gap between male and female literacy, the increasing incidence of violence against women, the continued practice of female genital mutilation that continues to have cultural acceptance, high maternal mortality and low political participation — only eight out of 454 seats in the current Parliament are occupied by women — reveal the real status of women.

At the moment, the specific concerns of women, or of the poor, will be subsumed under the over-arching demand for a regime change. But in the end, whatever the shape and form of a new government, these basic issues will have to be addressed. One can only hope that the voices of the courageous women and men that are being heard around the world today will not be muzzled.

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

Why did Vypari Bai die?

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, January 23, 2011

THE OTHER HALF 

Women in rural India continue to die because of indifference and neglect by healthcare authorities...

Widespread anger: Adivasis protest Vypari Bai's

This is a public health warning. Do not express concern for the state of healthcare in this country. Do not express anger that women die because they are either denied care or help is delayed when they have complicated pregnancies. Do not demand that healthcare is an entitlement that the poor have a right to demand and that the government must deliver.

Chances are if you are too vocal about an issue like this, and if you happen to be working in an adivasis-dominated district anywhere in India, the district administration will hint that you have Maoist tendencies. And that alone is enough to land you in jail and even, as in the case of Dr. Binayak Sen who has spent a lifetime working as a doctor for the poorest, get you a life sentence for sedition under an antiquated law.

This is no exaggeration. On December 28, 2010, more than 500 adivasis demonstrated peacefully in front of the district hospital in Barwani, Madhya Pradesh. They were not demanding wages or forest rights. They were protesting the death of a 22-year-old pregnant adivasi woman, Vypari Bai, caused by callousness and negligence of the medical authorities.

Vypari Bai's story is not unusual. It is enacted hundreds of times in the poorer parts of this country. On November 27, Vypari Bai, who was eight months pregnant, developed high blood pressure and eclampsia, a life-threatening condition of pregnancy. She needed urgent medical help. From her village of Ban, her relatives carried her in a cloth sling for 10 km to the nearest Primary Health Centre at Bokarta. There she was told that the place was not equipped to deal with her condition. So she was sent to the Community Health Centre at Pati by ambulance. There again there was no help and the family was told to take her to the district hospital in Barwani.

Made to run around

The story did not end there. In Barwani, at the time of admission her blood pressure was high. The normal procedure in such situations is to try and normalise the blood pressure and induce labour. Although she was given some medication for the BP, nothing was done to induce labour. Instead, her relatives were asked to take her to a private hospital for an ultrasound in an auto rickshaw even though the facility existed in the hospital. The ultrasound confirmed that the foetus was still alive.

Yet, despite her relatives pleading for help, no doctor was ready to attend to Vypari Bai. Instead, they were advised to take her to Indore, 150 km away. For refusing to do so, they were asked to sign a statement that they took full responsibility for the consequences. By this stage, it would have required a miracle for this young woman to survive. She did not. On November 29, in the early hours of the morning, she died.

Her death has enraged the adivasis in Barwani district who have seen too much of this kind of callous neglect. A survey of maternal deaths in the district hospital from April to November 2010 revealed that there were 25 maternal deaths during this period, nine just in November.

A year earlier, in 2008, in a similar incident, a pregnant woman was turned away from the Primary Health Centre in Menimata in Barwani district when she had already begun labour because she would not pay. She was entitled to free treatment. As a result, she delivered her child literally on the road, outside the hospital. Those who expressed their disgust at this were charged by the district administration under various sections of the Indian Penal Code.

On December 28, the district administration once again slapped charges against some of those who demonstrated peacefully in front of the hospital and arrested Bachhiya Bhai on charges framed against him in 2008. He was finally released on bail after eight days. But the charges against him, under Section 146 IPC (unlawful assembly, rioting, armed with deadly weapon which when used is likely to cause death) and Section 186 IPC (obstructing public servant from discharge of public function) remain. Over 200 of those who participated in the December 28 demonstration have also been charged.

We know about Barwani because there is a group there, the Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan that is organising and working in the area. But there must be hundreds of similar stories from around the country.

The response of the district administration is shocking enough. What is worse is that this is happening five years after the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was launched to check precisely these kinds of incidents, where poor women are made to go from pillar to post for help when they develop complications during pregnancy. Institutional deliveries were seen as a way to bring down the unacceptably high maternal mortality rate. Yet, according to the National Family Health Survey – 3, only 13 per cent of births to the poorest women and 18 per cent of births to women with no education or who belong to the scheduled tribes are delivered in institutions. So no one will argue that increasing access to medical help when women need it most is an urgent need.

Only on paper

This need was supposed to have been addressed by the NRHM. Its guidelines state that every Community Health Centre — that comes between the Primary Health Centre and the District Hospital — is supposed to provide “24-hour delivery services including normal and assisted deliveries” and “Essential and Emergency Obstetric Care including surgical interventions like Caesarean Sections and other medical interventions”. Furthermore, specific districts have been selected in every state where the district hospital is designated as a Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care Centre (CEMONC). The Barwani district hospital is designated as such. Yet, despite a staff that includes four gynaecologists and two anaesthetists, no one was available to help Vypari Bai.

The real story of India's progress lies in the detail of how programmes like NRHM are implemented, or not implemented. It is a story that is not told often enough to make us angry. Occasionally, we pay attention to the needs of our children. But women like Vypari Bai, who die because no one cares, remain invisible, the ghosts of another India.

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

IPL's bimbettes and him-bettes

SECOND TAKE Kalpana Sharma If you wanted an illustration of how private capital and media come together to sing the same tune, you only had to watch the IPL auction in Bangalore telecast live over two days, January 8 and 9. For two days, non-stop, the auction was covered by the main news channels. Nothing else mattered. Only the money. Once again, news television went overboard. We are a cricket-mad country. No one can deny that although many still question whether the IPL is really cricket. Still, the nature and the amount of coverage raise several questions. First, was this kind of election-style coverage necessary? How many people were really interested or even cared about the money being thrown about? Second, how did the channels decide to set aside regular news and spend a good part of the day giving a ball-by-ball account of the sale of cricketers? Did they conduct some kind of survey to assess viewer interest or did they just make a calculated guess? Third, did the certainty of a good part of the millions being talked about coming their way during the IPL fuel the decision? Were they ‘prompted’ to do this with actual financial support, another form of cheque-book journalism? Why do we ask these questions? Because the IPL is about big money as was evident from the size of the purses displayed during the auction. This is not small change; it is serious money. The team owners and the BCCI will only recover these sums if the IPL draws viewers and advertising support. How will this happen if the hype and excitement before the matches begin is not sufficiently pumped up? And who better to do it than television channels? The link is so obvious that one can be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that there was more than just a ‘news-sense’ decision behind the full two-day coverage of the auction. Apart from the suspicion that the decision to given blanket coverage was prompted by promises of some of the lucre, it was extraordinary to see how the entire exercise seemed to erase recent memory of the seedy scandals surrounding the IPL and its chief promoter, Lalit Modi. The full story of that scandal has yet to be told. But on those two days, it was business as usual without the presence of Modi. As Anupam Mukherji wrote in his column Fake IPL Player in Mumbai Mirror (January 11, 2011), the auction “still had all the bearings of the Modi-era. The two new teams fit in well with the IPL culture by choosing hideously coloured outfits, Shilpa Shetty, who till the other day couldn’t tell the difference between swing and spin, was seen deciding team compositions.”  Cricket remains a man’s game even though Indian women’s cricket team, and that of other countries, plays the same game. You would never know that if you read our sports pages. But apart from that, some kind of ‘gender-balance’ is now the norm thanks to the induction of Mandira Bedi during the World Cup some years ago and the guaranteed media attention that she drew. Today Bedi has morphed into a commentator who seems to know her cricket; hence her presence during the IPL auction on Times Now. CNN-IBN had Latika Khaneja, who got noticed when everyone realized that she ‘managed’ Virendra Sehwag. Khaneja is serious about her business and knows it too. Yet, predictably, both women were asked to comment on the attire of two of the owners – Shilpa Shetty of the Rajasthan Royals and Preity Zinta of the Kings XI Punjab, the bimbettes if you will. Yet none of the men were asked to comment on the excessive gel on Siddharth Mallya’s hair or the bright orange Tshirts worn by the Kochi team, or what Ness Wadia wore – the ‘him’-bettes. A little bit of misogyny is probably par to the course in a game that has been designed to sell for its ‘sex appeal’ – via the cheer leaders, not the quality of the game. And significantly, neither the men nor the women on the panels were asked to comment on the other woman owner – Nita Ambani of the Mumbai Indians. Clearly, advertising clout zips up loose talk. Given the amount of useless chatter that filled those hours during the auction, it was amazing that everyone held off on commenting on Nita Ambani, on what she wore or how she functioned. Mukherji had no such qualms when he wrote, “Nita Ambani, after successfully buying Rohit Sharma, was congratulated via handshakes by a table full of lackeys as if she had coached the batsmen.” In fact, given the latest development from the house of Tatas, where an unwritten directive has gone to all Tata companies to avoid certain publications that featured the Niira Radia tapes and Ratan Tata, media houses must know how far they can go with the powerful.  Most striking of all was that there was not even a hint of anything critical being mentioned about the very fact of cricketers being auctioned. To get some perspective on this entire tamasha, read Sharda Ugra, well-known sports journalist who is now a Senior Editor with crickinfo.com. In her column titled, “The joke was on cricket”, Ugra fills us in on the background of auctions and how humans have never been auctioned, except of course when slavery still existed.  “Before the IPL turned up, the word ‘auction’ was understood to be ‘public sale’ of ‘goods’ or ‘property’ or ‘articles’ or ‘merchandise’. No dictionary contains the mention of people in an auction because in the history of mankind, the only human beings ever involved in public auctions were slaves.” Ugra also goes on to explain that no other sport in the world has anything resembling the IPL auction: “There is no respectable sport in the world whose athletes go up for auction. Not even in the richest professional leagues in the world. Not in European or North American football, not the NBA, not the NHL. The words, ‘franchise’, ‘commissioner’, ‘salary cap’ belong to American sport which is what inspired Lalit Modi to rework the idea into Indian cricket. So why abandon its steel frame: the league regulations, the minimum wage. Modi somehow thought nothing of borrowing and adapting into cricket the most common form of player hire in American leagues: the rookie drafts. (The BCCI thought the auction was a good idea.)” So what is about our media that it has stopped questioning and simply follows the money? ‘Paid news’ is clearly morphing into so many different forms that we will need a special commission to track it full-time.

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Saving India's children

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, January 9, 2011

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

Just under half of our children will grow up stunted because of malnutrition and hunger. How can we change this?

Photo: V. Sudershan 

Time to act:Aamir Khan, part of Citizens' Alliance, comprised of MPs across parties and NGOs, that aims to create social awareness of malnutrition among kids.

A year of scams and scandals is over. Can we expect 2011 to be different? If one had a wish list for 2011, topping mine would be a wish that the government make tackling child malnutrition in India one of its topmost priorities.

Everyone knows the glaring contrasts in India — between some of the richest men in the world and some of the poorest who also inhabit this country, between a high economic growth rate and increasing disparity and inequality, between unchecked consumption in our cities and the absence of basic survival needs of people in the villages and our forested areas.

What stands out as the worst statement about the state of India today is the fact that 46 per cent of our children are stunted because they simply do not get enough to eat. How can we accept this and at the same time boast about having moved up from the company of the poorest countries in the world into a middle-income country?

I began 2011 by looking again at the data on child malnutrition in India and it was like a cold shower. Sobering. Shocking.

India has more malnourished children than neighbouring Bangladesh which, until a decade back, was considered something of a basket case. Even African countries like the Congo, Lesotho, Tanzania and Rwanda are better placed than us.

Fundamental issue

Why be so concerned about this one issue? Because the very fact that almost one out of every two children in this country goes to bed on an empty stomach is shocking in itself. Malnutrition is the principal cause of child deaths. Half of all child deaths in India could be prevented if this one issue was tackled. Children die because malnutrition lowers a child's resistance to infection. As a result, they become vulnerable even when they have eminently treatable conditions like diarrhoea and respiratory infections.

What is worrying is not just the high percentage of children who are malnourished, but the fact that the rate is going down so slowly as to be virtually negligible. Between 1998-99 and 2005-06, the rate only came down by one per cent. At this rate, the challenge of cutting down on the prevalence of malnutrition in children by half by 2015, a part of the Millennium Development Goals, will be impossible.

So why is this happening in a country where there is an enviable economic growth rate? Development economist A.K. Shiva Kumar points out in a recent article that the belief that malnutrition automatically comes down if the per capita income improves is not necessarily true. He points out, for instance, that 28 out of 37 sub-Saharan African countries have a lower per capita income than India's and yet also have lower rates of malnutrition. Within India, Manipur has a per capita income of only Rs. 8,114 (1997-98), yet its child malnutrition rate is 28 per cent. By way of contrast, Gujarat has a per capita income of Rs. 16,251 and its child malnutrition rate is 45 per cent.

Dr. Shiva Kumar's contrasting data on two Indian states, Sikkim and Madhya Pradesh also brings out another important angle to malnutrition, that of gender.

Sikkim has 13 per cent children born with low birth weight; MP has 24 per cent. Sikkim has 11 per cent ever-married women with a BMI (Body Mass Index) of less that 18.5 (considered very low); MP has 38 per cent. The 0-6 years male female ratio in Sikkim is 986; in MP it is 929. The age of marriage for women in Sikkim is 22; in MP it is 19. Female literacy in Sikkim is 62 per cent; it is 50 per cent in MP. In Sikkim, 89 per cent of girls in the age group 6-17 years are in school; in MP it is 71 per cent.

Vital link

In other words, women in Sikkim marry later, are more educated and are in better health. As a result, there are fewer children born with a low birth weight. The link between women's status — both in terms of access to education and health — and under-nutrition in children is obvious. Women who are themselves malnourished, anaemic (56 per cent of women in India suffer from some form of anaemia), and become pregnant when young, give birth to low birth weight babies who never catch up.

Interestingly, the National Family Health Survey – 3 (2005-06) that gave the latest data of anaemia in women also shows that while 56 per cent women were found anaemic, only 24 per cent men had the same problem. Clearly, there is a gender dimension even to anaemia. Also, 47 per cent of girls in the age group 15-19 years are anaemic. Furthermore, 59 per cent of all pregnant women in India are anaemic.

These might seem like a set of numbers. But translate that the next time you read about children dying in a village, or even in a slum in your city. Last month, people in Mumbai woke up to the rude reality that living in a fast-moving metropolitan city in India does not mean that poor children have better chances of survival. The story of 15-month-old Sahil Salim from the Shivaji Nagar slum in Govandi, who weighed just 9 kg and died from “fever and cold”, was a stark illustration of how hunger haunts the poor in city and village. Indeed, although the rate of malnutrition in children in urban areas is better than in rural areas, it is still unacceptable — 32 per cent or one in three children.

This is not the India we like to think about. Yet the numbers tell us that this is the India in which half of our women are anaemic, where just under half of our children have diminished chances of survival.

What do we do to change this? The government has to make this a priority and look again at programmes like the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) that was designed to deal with this issue.

But we need more than that. The media has run campaigns to save the tiger. That is a valiant campaign. I would suggest that India's children are also endangered. That they too need an active campaign by media, schools, colleges, politicians, corporates, anyone who cares, to see that we break this circle of poverty and hunger.

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Too many lacunae

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, December 26, 2010

THE OTHER HALF

Finally we have a law that addresses sexual harassment at the workplace. But some controversial clauses need to be debated…

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Days and weeks have gone by with the deadlock over the 2G scam. As a result, laws like this one have been left hanging [in the parliament].

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Photo: Mohammed Yousuf



No one wants to talk about it. Even women shy away from discussing it. Do women really get sexually harassed in the workplace? Many women, when asked this question, often give a vague reply. Some are more forthcoming. Others suggest that this is a non-issue, that women need a sense of humour to deal with ‘harmless teasing' at the workplace.

But, as women become more aware of their rights, they are speaking up. Thus, recently policewomen in Mumbai spoke about sexual harassment. Teachers have talked of it. Women in other professions are also acknowledging that it exists. However, one of the reasons many hesitate to bring the issue up is the unequal power equation between them and the harasser. If a complaint means losing a job, then women prefer to hold on to the job and be silent. In any case, even if they wish to complain, very few organisations have mechanisms in place where a woman can give a written complaint with the complete confidence that it will be investigated without bias.

Ineffective guidelines

For many years, the only precedent that operated in this area was the Supreme Court judgment of 1997 in the Visakha vs State of Rajasthan case. In the absence of a law, the court had laid down guidelines to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. These included asking employers to set up an internal committee to look into complaints. But this could only work for women employed in formal organisations. What of the millions outside the formal sector? Also, as these were guidelines, and not a law, they were routinely ignored, or followed without any seriousness. Thus, even where committees were set up, they often did not work or women employees were not informed of their existence.
Women's groups have been pushing for a law on sexual harassment so that there are penalties for not implementing its provisions. Finally, such a law has seen the light of day. On December 7, Minister of State for Women and Child Development Krishna Tirath placed the Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Bill, 2010 in Parliament.

Unfortunately, this has happened in a session where no work has been done. Days and weeks have gone by with the deadlock over the 2G scam. As a result, laws like this one have been left hanging. One does not know whether it will ever be discussed, leave alone passed, given the amount of work that will be pending if and when our parliamentarians ever get back to doing the job for which they were elected.

Although the introduction of this law is a welcome step, it still needs to be discussed in detail before it becomes law. In its statement of Objects and Reasons, the Bill states: “Sexual harassment at a workplace is considered violation of women's right to equality, life and liberty. It creates an insecure and hostile work environment, which discourages women's participation in work, thereby adversely affecting their social and economic empowerment and the goal of inclusive growth.”

The law requires every employer to set up an Internal Committee to look into complaints and also mandates the setting up of Local Committees at the district level to address the complaints of women who are not in the formal sector. The latter is particularly important as the majority of women are employed in the informal sector and thus would fall outside the ambit of the law if it were restricted to formal organisations.

It lays down provisions for compensation to be paid to the women complainant and punitive measures against the harasser. As in rape cases, the law prohibits the media from publicising the name and address of the complainant or the witnesses.

Yet the law falls short on several important measures. For one, it specifically excludes domestic servants from the ambit of the law. This is a strange exclusion given the millions of women in our cities who survive on domestic work and the problems they face. An alleged rape of a domestic worker by a film star is still being heard in the Mumbai courts. Many such cases never reach the stage of a formal complaint. The women would probably decide to leave the job and look for another.
I know from having discussed this in detail with a couple of domestic workers in Mumbai that they work out their own defence mechanism. So, if they hear that a woman domestic has been harassed in a particular household, they spread the word and ensure that at least young women do not take a job in such a house. Therefore, why the government has chosen to exclude these women, who are as vulnerable if not more so than other women in the workplace, is inexplicable.

Controversial clause

The other mysterious clause seeks to punish women who cannot prove sexual harassment after registering a complaint. While it is possible that some women can misuse the law, should the word of an Internal Committee that is not convinced by a complaint be enough to actually penalise the complainant? When a woman who has been raped cannot establish this in a court of law, she is not penalised. Rape cases fail in court most often because the prosecution cannot, or will not, make a strong enough case.

In sexual harassment cases, women face an uphill task to prove their case. Unlike rape, where there is physical evidence, what can you produce to prove the kind of harassment that consists of words and gestures? Only the woman and the man concerned know the truth. Whose word will be accepted? As in the majority of such cases, the power equation is weighed heavily against the woman, it becomes even more difficult to prove sexual harassment. Against this background, if there is a punitive clause, women will shy away from even trying to prove sexual harassment for fear that instead they will be punished.

These are some of the questions that should have formed part of a discussion in the last session of Parliament. One hopes that our MPs will be attentive when this Bill finally comes up for discussion. However, given Parliament's record on these matters, it is unlikely that too many of them will give the minutiae in the Bill any serious thought. It would be a pity if, after the efforts of so many women's groups at formulating the law, this particular version of it is passed without any changes.

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New Delhi: Apartheid city

There are chilling parallels between the building of the ‘new’ Delhi by Edward Lutyens exactly 100 years ago and the construction of the global city today. Then as now, the men and women who actually built this increasingly segregated and fissured city have no place in it

In another hundred years, will Mumbai resemble even closely the urban chaos it represents today or will it become an orderly megacity where everything functions?  Will Delhi ultimately fulfil its aspiration of becoming a global city?  And in the process what will these cities lose and what will they gain?

Documenting Indian cities today is a tricky affair.  For they are changing at such a pace that even as you produce a document on a city, it gets outdated. In Mumbai, for instance, what were once the landmark textile mills that gave the city its nickname  ‘Manchester of the East’ have been erased and replaced in less than a decade by glass and chrome structures that display not a hint of the city’s industrial past.  Everyday there are reports of plans to replace the old with the new and destroy arrangements that have served a diverse population.

The changes in India’s national capital are in some ways even more emphatic.  2011 will mark 100 years since the British notified Delhi as the capital of India through a proclamation by King George V.  It is a fascinating century to study for it witnessed not just the dramatic political changes accompanying India’s move from colonial rule to independence but the physical transformation of an old walled city to one that aspires to become a ‘global’ city.  What is striking is the disturbing continuity in attitudes and policies of the colonial rulers and those of an independent India.

Finding Delhi, Loss and Renewal in the Megacity (Viking Penguin 2010), an edited volume by Bharati Chaturvedi, attempts to address the changes in the national capital from the perspective of those who are a low priority for the planners.  Perhaps more than any other city in India, Delhi exemplifies the pitfalls of huge investments that produce a city that fails to satisfy the basic needs of the majority of its residents.  Of course things could change and the city could yet become a more democratic and less segregated space.  But from the lived experience of millions of Delhi’s residents, especially those who have been rendered virtually invisible by the visioning exercises of a ‘global city’, ‘new’ Delhi seems less democratic, more fissured, than the old and historic Delhi.

Chaturvedi’s edited volume is an important addition to urban literature in the face of the direction of transformation in Indian cities.  Unfortunately, although she acknowledges that there are gaps in it – such as chapters that look at the disappearing trees and green spaces – the real gaps are articles that look hard at the economics and politics of land use and the absence of an affordable housing policy.  For in the final analysis, no Indian city will ever be deemed liveable if the desperate need for decent shelter by a growing number of city dwellers is not addressed with a sense of urgency. Yet neither local governments, nor state government, or even the Centre, address affordable housing on a priority basis as part of urban policy.  

Despite such gaps in the volume, at least a couple of the essays are important both for the perspective they provide and for the direction for the future that they indicate.

Lalit Batra’a essay, ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Slumdwellers in “World-Class” Delhi’, suggests that Delhi today is an ‘apartheid city’ that is the outcome of an exclusionary planning process.  He points out that while the colonial government made no pretence of being inclusive, the post-Independence governments of a ‘free’ India seem to have abandoned all attempts at being inclusive.

The turning point in Delhi’s history was 1857, following the anti-colonial uprising.  Delhi then was seen as a dirty congested place that needed to be ‘improved’.  A municipal committee was set up in 1863 and tasked to improve and ‘sanitise’ it with the help of public nuisance laws that could be used to discourage activities considered unsuitable in a modern city.  Thus tanneries, keeping draught animals and milch cattle, roadside hawking, slaughter houses etc were banned. (There is an eerie similarity to the current attitude towards some of these activities, particularly roadside hawking, something that gives millions of migrants their first opportunity of earning something when they arrive in a city.)

In 1911, Edward Lutyens was given the task of building a new city, away from the old walled city of Delhi, “as the perfect embodiment of limitless imperial power”.  Lutyens’ Delhi continues to be the embodiment of power even as other parts of the city struggle to survive. 

Batra’s essay brings out the chilling parallels between the building of the new capital a hundred years ago and the construction of the global city today.  Then as now, the men and women who actually built it had no place in it. A hundred years ago, construction workers crowded into an already congested old Delhi or went to live on the outskirts.  Today, they find places in slums that have survived demolition or move to the relocated slums outside the city. 

The pressure for affordable housing has been a constant in Delhi, greatly exacerbated first by the wave of refugees post-Partition, an estimated 4.5 lakhs, and thereafter the steady stream of migrants from the states surrounding Delhi and further afield.  As early as the First Five-Year Plan, the presence of slums in urban areas was noted and they were seen as a “national problem” and a “disgrace to the country”.  The Second Five-Year Plan acknowledged that any policy dealing with slums should ensure minimum dislocation of slum residents.  The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the Delhi Master Plan were supposed to address the need for affordable housing.  Indeed one of the features of the plan was “getting rid of slums by providing standard ‘decent’ housing for everyone.”  Yet between 1959-75, the slum population grew rapidly as provisions in the master plan were routinely violated. By the late-1990s, despite these efforts at planned development, Delhi had 3 million people living in 1,000 slum clusters.

By the time the age of liberalisation dawned, even this attempt to deal with the problem was abandoned, argues Batra, and was replaced by the concepts of “legal and aesthetic”.  Slums that were illegal and certainly not beautiful could have no place in such a vision.  And so began the policy of slum removal and relocation outside the city.  Batra estimates that between 1998 and 2010, an estimated 10 lakh poor people have been displaced in Delhi.  That is an astoundingly large figure.

The result of such a policy towards the urban poor is the creation of a city that has the superficial markers of a modern city but is based on making invisible the people who actually make the city work. 

A vivid description of exactly who these people are comes through in Vinay Gidwani’s fascinating essay on Delhi’s recycling industry.  It mirrors such industries in other cities, where thousands of silent workers pick, sort and remove the growing mountains of waste that modern urban living produces.  Yet, even as the service they render is being recognised at a time of growing environmental consciousness, there is little or no attention paid to their wages or their health. 

A memorable section of the essay describes women removing the PVC outsoles from discarded sneakers.  “As the soles heat up, along with the adhesive that binds them to the body of the footwear, plumes of noxious grey smoke waft into the air.  The smoke catches the back of the throat, so acrid that it is difficult to suppress a staccato of coughing.  ‘Dioxins’, my colleague mutters.  The women, who have no safety gear at hand, merely cover their noses with their chunni or pallu.”  What will be the lifespan of these women workers who inhale poisons on a daily basis?

Gidwani rightly argues that the recyclers of waste illustrate well the interdependence in the urban economy of the formal and the informal.  Yet while the formal is valued, the informal is not.  “How different might Delhi look if its ruling classes learnt to recognise the sprawling universe of people, places, activities and things that they currently scorn as marginal, peripheral, illicit or annoying as the enablers of their own lives in this city.”    Yes, indeed, all our cities would look different if the ruling classes had such an epiphany.

The volume also contains an essay on the Yamuna River by Manoj Misra.  Delhi is described as a city located on the banks of this 1,400-km-long perennial river.  Yet the part that flows past Delhi is pure poison and the city’s residents know little and care even less about this.  Manoj Misra of the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan illustrates in his essay the callous and ignorant attitude of city planners toward the river and the flood plains that in the past absorbed the excess water in the river during the monsoon.  Today, the threat of flooding has become greater because the Delhi authorities have chosen to exploit what they deem are ‘vacant’ lands.  Despite expert advice to the contrary, they have gone ahead and built a Metro Rail Depot and station, an IT park, the Akshardham Temple, the Commonwealth Games Village, an electric sub-station and a mall on these flood plains.  Needless to say, the poor communities that lived around this area have been pushed out.

Perhaps the volume should have been called ‘Losing Delhi’.  For it is clear from the essays in the book and other writing on Delhi that what marked it out as a city with a history, a beautiful environment and a diverse population is quickly being replaced by an unsustainable and unequal megacity.

FINDING DELHI, Loss and Renewal in the Megacity, edited by Bharati Chaturvedi, published by Viking Penguin 2010, pp 171, Rs 350

Infochange News & Features, December 2010

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