Crime and Punishment

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Feb 17, 2013

APShould a civilised society be moving away from capital punishment or continue justifying its continuance? File Photo

Introducing the death penalty for rape will create more problems than it will solve.

On February 9, a man was hung to death in Tihar jail. Justice was done, said some. Others felt the man had not been given a chance to prove his innocence. And still others felt that irrespective of the case, the dictum of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth could not be the imperative that a civilised society follows.

The object of this column is not to go into the details of the Afzal Guru case, although it is one that should not be pushed aside as old news. But two months after the gang rape of a young woman in Delhi, a terrible tragedy that triggered waves of protests and demands for justice, it is important and relevant for everyone, including women, to talk about the death penalty.

Do we as women, destined by biology to give birth and ordained by society to be nurturers and care-givers, support a regime that awards death for certain heinous crimes? Do we believe that taking a life will act as a deterrent to those who destroy lives? Do we accept that the system of justice is so even and fair that even the poor, the oppressed, those without the wherewithal to survive long drawn out legal battles, can get justice? Should a civilised society be moving away from capital punishment or continue justifying its continuance — and even demand that it be extended to more crimes, as is happening in India? These are questions that we must ask, debate and resolve.

The reason why the death penalty should concern all women is because of the crescendo demanding death for rape that followed the December 16 Delhi rape. In newspapers, television channels, everywhere, you heard voices arguing that only death would act as a deterrent. The government has apparently decided to respond to this chorus of demands for death by introducing the death penalty for rape in the recent ordinance that was promulgated on February 3, the Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance, 2013. Introducing the death penalty for rape flies in the face of the Justice Verma Committee’s recommendations.

It is a pity that the government has chosen to do this without considering the reasoned and excellent discussion on the death penalty in the Justice Verma Committee report and also without allowing the time and space for more opinions to be garnered on this question. Instead, to show that is finally becoming “decisive”, it has rushed through an ordinance even when Parliament is about to begin its budget session.

There are many aspects to this debate. On the death penalty for rape it is worth reading the Justice Verma Committee report, available for a free download on several sites including www.prsindia.org/parliamenttrack/report-summaries/justice-verma-committee-report-summary-2628/, particularly chapter nine, which deals with “Sentencing and Punishment”. The chapter begins with a quote from an American judge, Justice Stewart in Furman v Georgia that sums up the philosophical argument against the death penalty: “The penalty of death differs from all other forms of criminal punishment, not in degree, but in kind. It is unique in its total irrevocability. It is unique in its rejection of rehabilitation of the convict as a basic purpose of criminal justice. And it is unique, finally, in its absolute renunciation of all that is embodied in our concept of humanity.”

The Committee has argued that introducing the death penalty for rape could lower the conviction rate rather than enhancing it or acting as a deterrent. It has recommended instead, that the punishment should be from a minimum of 10 years to life, with “life imprisonment” redefined to mean the end of the natural life of the convict. It has also pointed out that across the world, the majority of countries have revoked capital punishment.

Furthermore, the UN Human Rights Commission adopted a resolution in 2007 that asked all countries for a moratorium on death penalty paving the way to its ultimate abolition. In support of the death penalty, some young women have argued with me that if men know that they will be hanged if they rape women, the incidence of rape will automatically decline. They point to countries where capital punishment is liberally used to control all forms of crime. They forget however that in many such countries, women are confined, not given the right to move freely in the public space. Also in such countries, the sexual assaults within the home, which anyway constitute the majority of crimes against women in practically all nations, are never reported. Thus, the mirage of fewer crimes is created without actually reflecting the reality. We need to ask whether millions of women — rich, poor, urban, rural, tribal, Dalit, and women living in conflict zones where the armed forces have impunity against such crimes — would feel more secure if men are hanged for rape. Within the existing, and deeply flawed, criminal justice system in India, introducing the death penalty for rape will throw up many more problems than it will solve. We need justice for the victims of rape. But for that we need an efficient criminal justice system that registers cases, that collects evidence and that prosecutes.

This is far more important than an extreme form of punishment that might allow judges to pass lenient sentences because they are not convinced that the crime deserves death. Fortunately, the ordinance will lapse within six months if it is not passed as a law by Parliament.

Here is a window of opportunity – to bring in a more nuanced and balanced argument on how to ensure justice for crimes against women without the death penalty.

(to read the original, click here)

Newsrooms need a dose of diversity

Second Take, The Hoot

News channels were quick to brand Ashis Nandy as casteist, but newsrooms themselves are staffed overwhelmingly by upper castes, says KALPANA SHARMA. Pix: Ashis Nandy

Posted/Updated Friday, Feb 01 11:43:15, 2013

SECOND TAKE
Kalpana Sharma

Whether the remarks of academic and well-known sociologist Ashis Nandy at the Jaipur Literary Festival were casteist or not, the media – and particularly television media – is being blamed for making a mountain out of a molehill. If the discussion had not been recorded for television, the issue would probably never have reared its head. But given the lust for controversy with which 24-hour news television is afflicted, it was inevitable that an off-the-cuff remark such as the one made by Nandy would be fodder for news channels. And of course the unfortunate fallout has been the calls for Nandy’s arrest under various laws, a reaction far out of proportion with the so-called ‘crime’, if it can even be called that. 

This controversy, however, raises other issues that are predictably not being addressed by the media. For instance, does the fact that mainstream media amplified an ostensibly insensitive remark suggest that the media is sensitive to issues of caste? In the absence of a detailed study on this issue, one can only make generalised observations but it would be fairly accurate to say that even if mainstream media does not indulge in outright casteism, it is not necessarily sensitive to caste issues in its reporting – in what it covers and what it chooses not to cover.  

A related question would be the composition of our newsrooms – in both print and electronic media. Do they reflect the diversity of the country in terms of caste and creed, or are they largely dominated by people from the higher classes and castes? Once again, the absence of surveys to establish the reality either way is a limitation. Yet, we can make an educated guess that it is mostly the upper castes that dominate the news media. 

A survey done by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in 2006 of 315 decision-makers in 37 Delhi-based English and Hindi publications as well as TV channels found that 90 per cent in English print media and 79 per cent in TV were from the upper castes. This is a small sample but even if it is extended to the whole country, the figures are unlikely to be that different today.

Yet, diversity in the newsrooms is hardly ever a topic of discussion in the media or even internally within media houses. One exception is The Caravan magazine, which advertised for a staff writer last year under the category ‘Journalistic Diversity (Reserved Position)’. In the job description, it stated: 

“The near absence of journalists from Dalit communities in the Indian media has created a noticeable decline in its sensitivity to issues of caste, communalism and discrimination. Committed to promoting greater diversity, both in the workplace and in the way news is reported, The Caravan seeks a Staff Writer (position reserved for SC/ST) to join its fast-paced New Delhi-based newsroom.”

The deadline is March 2013.  It would be interesting to watch the kind of responses The Caravan gets for this.

A common excuse by media bosses if asked why they do not promote diversity is that they do not get candidates from lower castes and that in any case their commitment is to hire the most qualified of those who apply and not to worry about issues like diversity. Clearly, more from other castes and classes will apply if they get a chance to get trained as well as those who can access the better schools of journalism. The Asian College of Journalism in Chennai has made a special effort by offering four scholarships to Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe journalists in their courses which otherwise would be out-of-reach to many of them. What is stopping other journalism schools from following this example?

Even if it takes time to build up a pool of well-trained SC/ST journalists who can compete for jobs in mainstream media, are there steps that can be taken to enhance diversity in principle today? 

In the United States, this issue has been under discussion for several decades. In 1975, when the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) surveyed the news media, it found that there were only 3.95 per cent journalists who were black or belonged to other minorities. To correct that, they decided in 1978 to work towards parity in newsrooms by the year 2000. To do this they suggested that newspapers open a diversity department, that special scholarships be offered to black and other minorities, that proactive efforts be made to recruit journalists other than white, and that every year, a racial/ethnic census of the newsroom be conducted. Remarkably 60 per cent of members of the ASNE signed on to this plan.

Yet the year 2000 came and went and not enough had changed, as noted by Bryan Monroe in Nieman Reports (Fall 2003). In an article titled ‘Newsroom diversity: Truth vs Fiction’, Monroe points out that 90 per cent of people in newsrooms in the US were white and mostly male in 2003 (that might have changed marginally in terms of gender and race balance in the last decade).

But he makes some useful points on why diversity is desirable and important:

“Too many newspapers still cannot fully cover the richness and complexity of their communities because their staffs come from a limited perspective. We are unable to regularly listen to those in the shadows and too often incapable of hearing voices different from our own. We, therefore, are telling our readers an incomplete, inaccurate story. And, in the process, we are practicing bad journalism.”

Monroe’s remarks could well apply to mainstream Indian media. The lack of diversity in our newsrooms is also reflected in our coverage of so many subjects that depict the extent of deprivation and discrimination in this country. Of course, the reason that such stories are excluded is not entirely due to the kind of journalists that inhabit the newsroom but principally because of the preoccupations of proprietors with the market to which their media cater. But it is certainly worth discussing whether even within the limited space available to report on deprivation, the real stories of what people ‘in the shadows’, as Monroe calls them, are suffering are often never told because we don’t hear them. 

These are the real voices that the media needs to amplify, of people who are never heard by those who make policy, who remain marginalised decades after Independence for no other reason than the accident of birth that has relegated them to a particular caste. Clearly, we cannot assume that more SC/ST journalists will automatically add up to better coverage of these issues. Journalists from other castes have been writing on such subjects for decades and with sensitivity. But the advantage of a diverse newsroom is that it represents a wider set of life experiences and therefore also brings in a wider spectrum of approaches to stories. It would make for better journalism in the end because, as Monroe suggests, the media would not be telling ‘an incomplete, inaccurate story’ as it tends to do a lot of the time.

(To read the original, click here.http://www.thehoot.org/web/Newsrooms-need-a-dose-of-diversity/6578-1-1-10-true.html)

Republic of the offended

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Feb 3, 2013

Have we become a nation that takes offence too easily, and for all the wrong things?

We are becoming a nation of individuals and groups who get offended at anything and everything. If it is not the out-of-context remarks of well-known academic Ashis Nandy at the Jaipur Literary Festival then it is the presence of Pakistani writers at festivals and sportspeople on playing fields.

Of course, the favourite of this “republic of the offended” remains writer Salman Rushdie irrespective of whether he says something or does not. And if academics, writers and sportspeople are not enough to give offence, we find politicians who seem ever ready to offend someone or the other. And of course we cannot forget filmmakers, Kamal Haasan being the latest to join this list of people who are “offensive”. So the fraternity of the “offended” continues to grow by leaps and bounds even as India completes 63 years as a Republic, a respectable senior citizen.

The Shiv Sena in Mumbai is “offended” that the Pakistani women’s cricket team is participating in the Women’s World Cup in India. Not because they are women, but because they are Pakistani. Yet, ironical is it not that these women have succeeded in pursuing a sport in a country where there is growing intolerance of women in the public space, where in some provinces, groups like the Pakistani Taliban are trying to enforce dress codes. But when they come to a country where their counterparts face no such problems, they have to contend with this kind of prejudice and intolerance.

Instead of stopping the Pakistani women, we should be “offended” that sportswomen, whether they are Indian or Pakistani face the same challenges just because they are women. If you are a woman playing a sport, particularly one deemed a “male” sport, you have to fight harder to succeed, you are more than likely to be ignored by your sports authorities and the media and you will have a tough time getting sponsors and financial backing. Yet, the fact that women’s cricket exists and is becoming more successful is a tribute to the determination of all these women, Indian, Pakistani and other nationalities. So let us by all means be “offended” but not by these pointless issues such as people from a country, whose government they do not represent, taking part in sporting events.

For instance, when we read news day in and day out about little girls, some as young as three years old, being raped, do we get offended? Recently, in Mumbai, there was the story of a five-year-old girl in Dharavi who was lured by a man who offered her chocolates and then raped her. Her parents went looking for her and found her crying outside a public toilet. She was bleeding and could barely explain what had been done to her. Such stories should outrage us. What is happening to our society that even little girls on their way to school have to be protected from these predators?

Look at our cities. All of them are turning into giant garbage heaps. The authorities claim the mess is beyond their control. And citizens, the very same who take offence at so much else, seem not to mind as they add their might to enlarging these mountains of garbage. It never occurs to them that perhaps they too need to reduce the amount of waste they generate. So we live in the midst of this filth and do not get offended. We point fingers. Or we simply look the other way. Many of us were offended and angry enough to come onto the streets and demand that something be done after the terrible December 16 incident in Delhi.

Since then Justice J.S. Verma and his team have brought out a path-breaking report that locates violence against women within the context of denial of justice and equal rights to women. The report has rightly emphasised that until these larger issues are addressed, merely tinkering with one law or another will not make a difference. But should we now stop being angry?

Here is my list of things about which all of us should be “offended”: that in this “free” country, where our 63-year-old Constitution promises women equality in all spheres, they continue to be second class citizens; that they continue to be denied the right to even be born; that they continue to be denied the right to education if they are poor; that they continue to be denied the right to have control over their own resources; that they continue to be tortured and killed for not bringing enough dowry; that they continue to face verbal and physical abuse inside their homes if they so much as dare raise their voices; that they continue to be assaulted and raped irrespective of their class or creed and that they continue to be abandoned and isolated if they become victims of sexual assault because they are deemed “spoiled goods”. Yes, take offence by all means but on issues that a civilised society should not tolerate.

(To read the original, click here.)

Hidden spaces

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, January 20, 2013

  

The HinduInvisible world. Photo: K.V. Srinivasan

The issue of violence perpetrated on domestic workers, largely women, remains mostly invisible and unaddressed.

The many conversations on violence against women that began on December 16 remain incomplete. We discuss the visible. We rarely mention the invisible or less visible, the violence inside closed doors, in private spaces, away from the public sphere. By this I don’t just mean the violence by family members. 

That is, in any case, shrouded in several impenetrable layers of silence. Apart from this, there is another form of violence, one that is largely accepted. Often the perpetrators of the violence can be women, even those who have themselves been at the receiving end of domestic violence.

This is the insidious form of violence that millions of domestic workers suffer each day in the homes where they work. It consists not just of physical or sexual attacks but of a lack of dignity, of lack of basic rights and of the absence of recognition that they deserve a fair wage for the work they do. We need to condemn and combat this hidden violence as much as we have now begun to talk about the violence on our streets.

This column has repeatedly taken up the cause of domestic workers because it is one of those under-the-radar issues that is somehow not addressed. The majority of domestic workers worldwide are women. In India, the official data puts their numbers at just seven million when it is evident that the actual number is many times more, closer to 90 million. And this figure does not take into account the children who are illegally employed for domestic work.

Worldwide, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), an estimated 53 million people are employed in people’s homes. Over 80 per cent are women. Admittedly, this too is an underestimation. A new ILO report points out that, despite international attention being paid to the issue, little is being done. In 2011, after many years of campaigning by organisations that represented domestic workers, the ILO passed the Domestic Workers Convention (No 189). Yet two years later, the Convention has still not come into force because only a handful of governments — the Philippines, Uruguay and Mauritius — have ratified it. The Philippines has gone a step further by promulgating its own law on domestic workers giving them the same rights as other workers. Not so most other countries, including India, which is among the list of countries yet to ratify this convention.

Why is such a convention or a national law specifically addressing the problems facing domestic workers needed? Precisely because of their invisibility. They work under individually negotiated contracts, have no job security and can be fired at will. There is no regulation about their working hours or minimum wage. Nor do the women get the benefits of sick leave, maternity leave or a weekly day off. Their vulnerability is exacerbated by the fact that they are not organised and, therefore, cannot resort to any kind of collective bargaining. A law would at least inform them of their rights and would make it clear to employers that, even if they continue to exploit them as they do today, they are wilfully breaking the law.

The ILO report titled “Domestic workers across the world: Global and regional statistics and the extent of legal protection” brings out several disturbing statistics. For instance, more than half the domestic workers around the world have no limitation on the normal weekly hours of work, or get a weekly off, or get paid get paid a minimum wage. An estimated 15.6 million women working as domestics do not get maternity leave or cash benefits.

The central government has drafted a policy for domestic workers, one that will ensure that they come under the ambit of existing laws that relate to the rights of workers — such as the Minimum Wages Act, the Trade Union Act, Payment of Wages Act, Workers’ Compensation Act, Maternity Benefits Act, Contract Labour Act and Equal Remuneration Act. Karnataka was the first state to fix minimum wages for domestic workers, to accept that they were entitled to a weekly off and to ban children less than 14 years of age working as domestic workers. Of course, the implementation of this policy is another story but at least a beginning has been made.

There are many layers to the issue of violence against women. But as women’s groups have been repeatedly emphasising over the past weeks, several simple interventions can be made. I would suggest that one such step could be to implement a policy for domestic workers. Even though domestic workers now come under the ambit of the law on sexual harassment at workplace, as long as they continue to work as isolated, atomised individuals without other rights granted to workers in general, they will remain vulnerable to all forms of violence and exploitation.

If we can deal with these dark spaces in our society, where there is little value for the rights of the people who do thankless work, perhaps then we will be better placed to talk about the more visible forms of abuse and assault that have dominated public discussion and debate.

(To read the original, click here.)

Change is visible

OPINION » COLUMNS » KALPANA SHARMA

January 5, 2013

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

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When people come together.... Photo: R.V. Moorthy

TOPICS

 The fight against rapecrimesexual assault & rape
social issue

Hope lies in the fact that even if the rulers are deaf and have lost the ability to speak words with meaning, the people have found a voice.

Since December 16, a day that is now seared in national consciousness, and December 29, when many of us felt we had lost a member of our own family, millions of words have been spoken and written on rape, on sexual assault, on women’s safety, on the attitude of Indian men. Thousands of young women and men have come out on the streets to demonstrate their anguish at the absence of justice for Indian women. Passion, anger, rhetoric, argument, posturing, empty promises, brute force — we have seen it all in this fortnight.

The despair at the State’s silence is justifiable. But the hope lies in the fact that even if the rulers are deaf and have lost the ability to speak words with meaning, the people have found a voice. Never before has the issue of violence against women been such a dominant topic of discussion.

Even in the 1970s, when the then nascent autonomous women’s movement launched its campaign to change rape laws following the custodial rape of a young tribal girl, Mathura, by two policemen in Chandrapur, Maharashtra, the response was tepid compared to what we have seen today. This was not just because the issue was rape of a tribal girl, far removed from our urban sensibilities or that the perceived levels of violence on the streets in the cities were lower than they are today. The absence of 24-hour television to amplify the protests could have contributed.

I believe the real reason was that most people would not accept that women’s rights are human rights. There are many in this country who still refuse to acknowledge this. Yet, thanks to the determined campaigns by women’s movements across the country, there is a break in this wall. Laws have been amended. Women are more visible in decision-making positions although nowhere near what is needed. And most importantly, a generation of young women has grown up believing that they are entitled to the same rights as men. While our generation, the mothers, sometimes chose to keep quiet and tolerate, this generation, our daughters, will not. They want their voices to be heard, they have better and more effective media with which to make their views known, and they firmly believe that in a free country they should not be denied these rights. That is the change we witnessed when we saw thousands of angry and determined young women holding placards, facing water cannons, suffering the lashes of the police lathi. It is something that cannot and will not be easily reversed. The silent rulers sitting in their soundproof offices in Delhi need to recognise this.

On a personal note, I saw this change in the response to my last column “What’s wrong with Indian men?” (Sunday Magazine, December 23).

In the past, whenever I have touched on the subject of violence against women, I receive at least a dozen vituperative emails from men berating me for being a “feminist” (which I am proud to declare that I am) and generally ticking me off for not understanding the “plight” of Indian men.

This time, I received almost 70 emails, the majority of them from men, most of them quite long and thoughtful. Space does not permit me to quote from some of these submissions but it was evident that every one of them had thought hard about what needed to change in the attitudes of men to prevent occurrences like the one that triggered the current outrage. The one I quote below reflects some of the sentiments expressed:

“I write not only as a 21-year-old man of young India, rather more as a man of the concerned India. Witnessing the recent events that have shook the nation, I’m only left with the option of asking myself, where is Our India? I was a part of the protests that took place at India Gate. I saw things change in a matter of minutes. We were not a part of any group or political organization; we were just a spontaneous gathering of young citizens of India asking about our rights and questioning the people in power. I would also like to make a point that not all the people were actually concerned on this sensitive issue. But then, where do these things end? Will they end by bringing in tougher laws, or making public speeches assuring that ‘someday’ things will change? I have now started doubting the future of my nation. We have to go beyond the social barriers that have hindered the growth of our society for the past many decades. Has our country fallen so deep that a rape case is needed to awaken us?

We proudly call ourselves the largest democracy in the world, but I think we all know what the reality is. In this male chauvinist and egoistic society I am ashamed to call myself a man. Our country is in a dire need of a revolution which not only changes people in power, rather their thinking. One after which the men of our society at least start respecting the wombs from which they are born. But the question still remains, HOW?”

This young man’s views reflect the churning that has begun. For it to continue, we have to move beyond slogans to working out the concrete steps that must be taken — making the criminal justice system more responsive, changing the sexist attitudes among politicians, in the media, in our school texts, in our films, at our work places and refusing to give up fighting for change, even within the confines of our inefficient and limited democracy.

(To read the original, click here)

Adding to the victim's trauma

The Hoot, December 28, 2012

We have to question the media’s thirst for every detail about this woman’s condition, their invasion of privacy. Was it really necessary for the doctors to give out a daily health bulletin on live television, asks KALPANA SHARMA.

Posted/Updated Friday, Dec 28 11:05:21, 2012

SECOND TAKE
Kalpana Sharma

“It’s like the life we have never existed … every day now passes in a flash”.  This was the headline in the Indian Express on December 25, 2012.  And it is a quote from the younger brother of the 23-year-old survivor of the heinous gang rape that took place on a Delhi whiteline bus on December 16, 2012. 

Since then there have been thousands of words spoken on television and written in the print media, scores of slogans shouted on the streets, especially in Delhi, by women and men, many of them young.  There is justifiable anger and anguish over what this one rape, among the daily occurrence of sexual assaults all over India, represents for the future of Indian women, not just their safety but also their lives as free individuals in a free country.

Yet in the middle of all the noise and slogans many people, including the media, appear to have forgotten that the story is also about an individual and her family, and their right to have some privacy.  The Indian Express story was an essential reality check, a reminder of how things could be, or should be, when such terrible things happen.

Put yourself in the shoes of the 19-year-old brother of this woman.  She is constantly described as a “victim”.  While she certainly was the victim of a horrendous crime, surely the more accurate description is to call her a “survivor”.  This might be just another term, but it places everything in a different perspective.

Amongst the many articles that have been written and circulated in the last 10 days, one that raised a pertinent point appeared in the American feminist journal “Off our backs”.  In the article “Male-pattern violence”, the author, Jennie Ruby asks why the media always reports that a woman has been raped but not that a man has raped a woman.  Terming it “gender dyslexia”, she writes:

“This reluctance to talk about men’s violence is widespread and seems to amount almost to a taboo. The news media report that “a woman was raped,” but never say “a man raped a woman.” Analyses of school violence talk about “kids killing kids,” ignoring the fact that it is almost exclusively boys committing the violence. Terms like “domestic violence” mask the fact that most of this violence is committed by men. Feminists and feminist organizations also fall into this pattern by using the term “violence against women.” This wording puts the focus on women as victims and hides who is perpetrating the violence. If we can’t even say who is doing most of the violence in the world, how can we hope to stop it?”

So even if nothing else changes, the media should at least have another look at the terminology it uses when reporting on such cases.

Secondly, we have to question the media’s thirst for every detail about this woman’s condition.  Was it really necessary for the panel of doctors to give out a daily health bulletin on live television?  How does this help?  Is this not feeding into voyeurism?  When a person is so critical, they waver between life and death.  There are days when there is an improvement; at other times it seems hopeless. Anyone who has had to care for a person in this condition knows how your emotions swing from hope to despair almost by the hour.  In such a situation, you do not need people constantly asking you “how is she/he?” or “what is her/his BP, pulse rate, red blood count etc etc”.  Why should anyone but the family be told all this?  Is this not a gross invasion of privacy?  What were the doctors at Safdarjung Hospital thinking when they agreed to the demand for a daily news bulletin? Surely the doctors could have told the media firmly that the girl’s privacy had to respected and that they would give information as and when the family agreed to this being made public.  Was the family even consulted before all this was done?

And fourth, let us look at why some newspapers and TV channels felt they had to give the woman a fictitious name, as if respecting her anonymity was too daunting a challenge for journalists to respect.  Hence, while Times of India has decided to call her Nirbhaya, and patted itself on the back for having picked what it deems is an appropriate name given her courage, other are variously calling her Damini, Amanat etc.  But her brother, who has to hear these names, told the Indian Express,  “It’s hard to digest that this is my sister they are talking about.”  He says the first time he saw one of these names flashing on TV, he thought the channel had got his sister’s name wrong.  He says he was furious but then someone explained to him that “it is a phenomenon known as personification.  I don’t like it, but they say she is the face of a movement.”  

Unfortunately, the young man was misinformed about the meaning of “personification” and how it is commonly used.  Here’s the definition from Wikipedia:

“Anthropomorphism or personification is any attribution of human characteristics (or characteristics assumed to belong only to humans) to other animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities.”

Is it really that difficult to follow this story without dramatizing it further, giving the survivor a fictitious name – as if by doing that the horrific aspects of this story will become more believable.  It is astounding that responsible media persons can endorse such a decision from within these media organisations.

The survivor’s brother also told the Indian Express about the pressure put on his father to issue an appeal once violence broke out during the demonstrations at India Gate.  After this experience, his father does not want to speak to anyone in the media. “My father is scared that a wrong message has gone out.  It seems like we don’t want the protests. We are suffering so much, why should we be against the movement?  Now he has decided against speaking to the media.  There were more requests from the police, but we told them we don’t want to risk it again”, he told IE.

As I write this, the woman has been taken to Singapore for treatment and her life still hangs by a thread.  One hopes the daily health bulletins will stop and the family is allowed its right to choose what it wants to convey to the world outside.  She is their daughter/sister.  Her story might have galvanized people to come out on the street and demand changes in the law.  But that is a decision that people made; she did not and neither did her family.  The media must respect that even as the wider debate on rape, on women’s safety, on the criminal justice system and the law, and on the misogyny in Indian society continues. 

(To read the original on The Hoot's website, click here.)

What’s wrong with Indian men?

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Dec 23, 2012

  

No easy answers. Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury

This is a question more people need to talk about and not be satisfied with clichés or the usual solutions.

Another horror; another rape. This time in a moving bus; at a time of the night when people are still on the roads in Delhi; in a populated area and not some remote jungle. Each time you read news like that of the bestial gang rape of a 23-year-old para-medical student in Delhi earlier this week, your senses are numbed. What is happening to us? What is this brutality we witness all so frequently now? Can it ever stop?

I doubt if we will find a satisfactory answer in the short run. But it is a question that more people need to talk about and debate and not be satisfied with the clichés, the usual solutions or even some unusual ones.

I spent last weekend in my old school, a place where I had five happy years before completing my schooling. It is an all-girls residential school with a substantial proportion of day students. Our memories of our school days, when some of us met again after many decades, were those of the fun times, the carefree years, of a place where we felt safe and were not inhibited from expressing our views. Of course, the very fact of a compulsory school uniform imposed a level of conformism but even within that girls found ways to assert individual personalities — a tuck here, a stitch there. And hair always remained the ultimate expression of rebelliousness — refusing to be neat was the preferred statement of individualism.

All these years later, the girls in that school still wear the same school uniform but they have changed, as has the world around them. They exude the same confidence some of us did. I want to be a Cordon Bleu chef, one girl told me. Another said she wants to be a lawyer — but with the army. Another became really excited when I mentioned I was a journalist. Clearly, for these girls no career is out of reach.

Yet, reading about the Delhi incident, I thought about these young women who are on the verge of stepping out into another world, away from the relatively safe environment of an all-girls school. With modern communication and social networking, they are not as secluded as perhaps we were in our days when even contact with the boys in the school across the boundary wall was frowned upon. Today, girls have Facebook friends and are daring enough to meet them even if all they know about them is what these young men choose to put on their “profile”. I am told that often it is girls from the most conservative homes who take such bold chances and end up in all kinds of trouble.

Yet, whether it was our generation jumping the boundary wall to meet boys or this lot setting up meetings through social networking sites, the compulsions are the same. But is the world a more dangerous place today for young women than it was in our days? If so, how does one prepare them for it?

The predictable formula is to urge them always to be vigilant, to be careful, not to take unnecessary chances. Against the background of the recent spate of sexual crimes against women in Mumbai, the Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) in Mumbai, Himanshu Roy, had this to say: “The most obvious method of preventing such crimes is that women should be aware of their environment. This does not mean that they should be suspicious of all their male relatives, friends or colleagues, but it would be wrong to assume that none of these will ever harm them.” In effect, he was suggesting that the onus of preventing the crimes is really on women. Roy needs to be reminded that the job of the police and law enforcement is not to tell women what they should do, but to do their own job more effectively.

At the same time, many believe the problem will be tackled if the government, law enforcement and society at large figure out how to “protect” these girls from violence. The courts have suggested more policing, asking for plainclothes women police in malls, cinema halls and public places, with closed circuit cameras. But are women safer in a police state? Can we really “protect” women in a society where they can experience the worst forms of sexual violence inside their homes?

Furthermore, even if there are men who genuinely try and “protect” women and intervene, they do not succeed. In the Delhi incident, the girl’s male companion was mercilessly beaten and thrown out of the bus. In Mumbai, men who tried to intervene were murdered. So who will “protect” the protectors?

A male reader of these columns suggested that we should not focus exclusively on women and instead we needed to make more of an effort to understand men and what drives them to such violence. Without justifying the violence, he felt it was a combination of repression and suppression that drove Indian men to such levels of violence. He might have a point. We have not looked at Indian men, at what is happening to them, what is turning some of them into people who would be better off caged.

These are troubling questions. There are no easy answers. We can begin by debating and discussing this issue much more than we do, in our schools and colleges, in the columns of our newspapers, and in our families.

(To read the original, click here)

Think pink

Power through the stick

Arming women with sticks may not be enough to guard the Gulabi Gang from violence, but it certainly makes an impact.

She is not an easy subject to film or write about. Sampat Pal Devi, the 54-year-old self-proclaimed ‘commander-in-chief’ of the Gulabi Gang, a group of vigilante women that operate out of Uttar Pradesh’s notorious badlands of Bundelkhand, has been variously lauded as an activist, a feminist, and a pioneer of sorts. Yet, during this fortnight, when violence against women is in focus across the world, it is useful to ask whether the kind of strategies followed by Sampat Pal and her ‘gang’ can actually be sustained in a world where women experience violence on so many fronts.

A new documentary “Gulabi Gang” directed by Nishtha Jain, whose earlier film “Laxmi and me” on domestic work was outstanding, tackles this difficult subject. Sampat Pal remains the name and face of this unusual group. According to her website, the group was formed spontaneously when she witnessed a farmer in her village mercilessly beat up his wife. When she tried to intervene, the man turned around and abused her. Sampat Pal rallied a few women, went back to the man’s house, and thrashed him until he begged for mercy.

From that incident in 2006 was born the Gulabi Gang which now has a membership of 2,00,000, claims Sampat Pal. The women pay a membership fee, and are given a pink sari and a stick as a uniform. They respond to calls for help not just on violence, or dowry torture and death but also police inaction and corruption in the district administration. Their fame has spread beyond Bundelkhand, as the unique nature of their way of working is a natural media draw.

Jain’s film, however, moves beyond the celebratory prose of what has been written about the Gulabi Gang and Sampat Pal in particular. The latter, incidentally, has managed to get nationwide attention by participating for a short while in the reality show Big Boss 6. Jain’s documentary tries to be non-judgmental, recording some of the cases that the Gulabi Gang tackle and through this bringing out the many shades of grey that layer the work as well as the issues around violence against women.

For this reason alone, such documentation is important. It is much too easy to come out with pat solutions for any number of problems facing women. Empower them, educate them, make them economically self-sufficient – then they will not have to suffer violence. Yet, despite all this, we know for a fact that even educated, professional women cannot escape domestic violence or violence in the public space.

The film brings out quite effectively that even as injustice and violence bind these poor women together, prompting them to either join the Gulabi Gang or seek its help, religion, caste and class divide them. Women have many different identities and often their other associations take precedence. Thus, an active member of the Gang argues for honour killings, justifying it as a custom that is legitimate in her view. She withdraws from the gang when she finds others do not share her views.

Similarly, although it is encouraging that members of the Gulabi Gang have entered the political fray by contesting panchayat elections, many lost. Those who lost are bitter that their own gang members did not vote for them. The daughter of one such member who lost speaks bitterly in the film and wonders why her mother was persuaded to stand if the other members of the gang were not going to vote for her. Clearly, no one had explained to her that in elections, caste and community often play a much larger role than gender.

The film also highlights how the deeply ingrained custom of looking for a “leader” also affects a group like the Gulabi Gang. Even though there are other strong women who have been a part of the gang for the last six years, it is only Sampat Lal who is identified with the Gulabi Gang. And she clearly does not dislike the attention, including people touching her feet and garlanding her.

Finally, can arming women – even if it is only with sticks and not guns – really deal with the embedded issue of violence against women? The State so far seems to tolerate these women, even humour them, but clearly the systemic issues that underlie the violence, the inability of the criminal justice system to respond to the victims, and the fact that society accepts that such violence is inevitable, have not been touched.

One could argue that every effort to highlight and tackle violence against women, and all kinds of collectives of women, should be lauded because even if they cannot change everything, they do make an impact. The film shows us that even participating in the activities of the Gulabi Gang is meaningful for many of the women. The very fact that they can walk into a police station, or a district office, without fear is almost revolutionary in a region where women have no voice.

Yet, that is not enough. For even as women are finding a voice in so many ways, some of them quite unusual, the elements that perpetuate violence against women remain firmly in place.

(To read the original, click here.)

A right, not a favour

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, November 25, 2012

 

The tragic death of the 31-year-old dentist Savita Halappanavar in a hospital in Galway, Ireland, on October 28 has brought the issue of women’s right to safe and legal abortion to the forefront yet again. Savita died in her first pregnancy even though she was within reach of a hospital with modern facilities and trained medical personnel. Yet, the doctors chose not to intervene because of their interpretation of the law that makes abortion illegal.

There are literally lakhs of Savitas in India who die during pregnancy either because they have no access to modern medical facilities or because doctors choose not to intervene because of the way they interpret the law. And this happens in a country where abortion has been legalised since 1971, under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act. Yet even here, although it is the right of any woman facing the kind of complications Savita did to go to a government facility and ask for an abortion, there is simply no guarantee that she will get it. Because the ultimate decision is left in the hands of doctors who can choose to interpret even this liberal law in different ways.

According to a recent study by the World Health Organisation and the New York-based Guttmacher Institute, India has the highest number of unsafe abortions in South and Central Asia. Of the 10.5 million abortions in the region, an estimated 6.5 million abortions take place in India (2008). And of these, two thirds are “unsafe abortions”, that is abortions that expose the woman to infection that could even lead to death. Although official figures cite that only 8 per cent of maternal deaths are caused by unsafe abortions, this is likely to be a gross underestimation as the link between an unsafe abortion and a maternal death is unlikely to be established in cases where health complications occur over a period of time after the abortion.

These complications include blood loss, infection and septic shock. Think of a woman in rural India who becomes pregnant but has to seek an abortion for various reasons. She is most likely to be sent to a quack for an abortion. If she then develops complications, chances of her getting to a medical facility in time are low. Even if she makes it to a primary health centre, whether she will get the treatment she needs in time is a question. But in the event of her death, it is highly improbable that the cause will be linked to the earlier episode of an abortion under unsafe conditions.

That apart, several studies in the last two decades have brought out several important aspects of women’s access to safe abortion facilities in India. For one, a substantial number of rural women are unaware that abortion is legal in India and that they can go to a government facility within 12 to 20 weeks of their pregnancy. Secondly, even if aware, they would not find such facilities as most are clustered in or around urban areas. As a result, most rural women are left with no choice but to turn to private untrained practitioners, thereby risking their lives.

Even where women can access government hospitals, they have complained of long waits, humiliation at the hands of doctors and nurses, insistence on approval of husbands even though this is not mandatory, and in the case of married women considerable pressure to undergo sterilisation after the abortion. For unmarried women, the treatment is much worse and usually results in the young woman running away and seeking some other facility.

This year, the central government appears to have woken up to this reality in India where, despite the law, women are dying from complications arising out of unsafe or incomplete abortions. It has identified 20,000 model health facilities that will provide abortion services round the clock and has prepared “Comprehensive Abortion Care” guidelines. This is a baby step in a country as large as India but it is a step forward.

The bottom line is that pregnancy is not a life-threatening condition or a disease. Women, who have the exclusive responsibility of childbirth, should not be exposed to risks that result in permanent health complications or even death. At a time when advances in science have increased longevity of the human race, it is unacceptable that millions of women in India continue to die during the course of their pregnancy or during childbirth.

Savita’s premature death should act as a wake-up call to our government too. There is no point having a liberal law if you cannot extend its reach to the women who need it; if you cannot train your doctors to understand and interpret the law keeping in mind the urgent need of the woman in front of them; if your facilities cannot provide the necessary safe and aseptic conditions that are essential; and if you fail to inform women that access to all this is their right and not a favour that a government doctor bestows on them.

(To read the original, click here.)