The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, October 19, 2008
THE OTHER HALF
Breaking the silence
The economy is in meltdown mode and our political parties are in election mode. So even as those who cannot take it anymore are opting out of life altogether, old wounds are being opened again to ignite communal passions, resulting in the loss of life and injury to many who want to live. It is a time when it would be easy to panic, about one’s personal future and about the future of the country.
Yet, even at times of apparent madness, you hear sane voices that remind you that all is not lost; that there are still institutions that understand the silent emergencies that people face in ostensibly normal times.
A recent ruling by the Bombay High Court can be viewed as one of these positive flickers of hope. Unfortunately, despite the relevance of the judges’ comments, the case has had little coverage in the media.
Encouraging observations
In a ruling on a case of sexual harassment against a private sector company, the two-judge bench has made observations that would encourage women who face such problems but are afraid to talk about them.
A woman employee of an Indian company filed the case. She says her superior male colleague subjected her to harassment. Initially, she did not complain, as she was afraid of losing her job. But, she alleges, that the officer posted her out to another project site “for not cooperating” with him. Four years later, when the project failed to take off, all the other women employees were given the option of moving out except her. The harassment also continued. In 2004, the woman finally complained to the State Women’s Commission and also to the District Collector. She also filed an FIR with the local police station. The women’s commission sent a notice to the company asking it to inquire into the woman’s complaint. The company appointed an enquiry officer, an advocate, to look into the complaint. The latter exonerated the officer against whom the complaint had been made. Within a week of his report, the woman was dismissed from service.
Even then she did not give up and went to the Labour Court and complained about unfair dismissal. The Labour Court upheld her appeal and directed the company to reinstate her last year. The company failed to comply with the Labour Court’s ruling.
The Bombay High Court’s ruling is important for a number of reasons. For one, it reminds us that the law of the land requires that work places where women are employed must institute a committee headed by a woman and consisting of at least 50 per cent of women members and a civil society representative to look into such complaints. In this instance, the company did not do this and instead appointed a single person to inquire into the matter.
Secondly, the case reminds us of the important role that women’s commissions can play in such cases. Women are often afraid to go directly to court. The women’s commission is often the first step. If the woman had not gone to the women’s commission, perhaps her case would never have reached the court. A woman who suffers sexual harassment is in a very lonely place. She is afraid to speak out for fear of losing her job. And if she does, she faces the additional problem of not being employable as other companies might see her as some kind of “trouble-maker”. As a result, most women silently bear harassment and sometimes voluntarily opt out of jobs or positions where they are harassed. The silence ensures that more of this kind of harassment continues.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
No lessons being learnt
DNA, Mumbai, October 16, 2008
In Loharpura village, Nawada district, south Bihar, over 500 children crowd into half a dozen classrooms in under-construction buildings of a government school. This is the local primary and middle school with classes from standards 1 to 8. Yet there are only four teachers, including the school's principal. By law, there should be four teachers for the primary and 10 for the middle school.
For over a year, children in the primary division have not been served the hot mid-day meal mandated by the Supreme Court. That's because there are no supplies, says the principal. An inspector who surveys 20 schools in the district confirms that none of the schools received supplies for a year. The parents of the children who are listening in to the conversation want to know who is eating up the share of the grain en route? Also, according to law, children should get school uniforms. Have they got these? No, because there are no supplies. Most of the kids come from Dalit families.
This story is not peculiar to Bihar. In every Indian state with low literacy rates, the situation is similar. Schools without teachers, sometimes without buildings, usually without electricity and unable to get even what has been mandated because of entrenched systems of corruption that siphon off development funds.
In nearby Sikandra, the two-storey school building painted a bright pink. Here the full quota of teachers is available and khichdi, the mid-day meal is being cooked. But there is no water, no toilets? That's because the water pump installed outside the school cannot be used as a part was stolen within days of installation. Another pump inside the school building has also been vandalised. So there is water, but it cannot be pumped up. And the toilets built with development funds by a mukhiya who is honest cannot be used as the doors have been stolen and toilets pans smashed.
In thousands of government primary schools and municipal schools across this country, children are enrolled in primary schools. But they learn very little, certainly not enough to lift them out of the poverty and discrimination that has been the fate of their parents. As per data gathered by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) by Pratham, an organisation that works on the right to education, enrolment has improved but the quality of education has not.
ASER 2007 confirms that there has been a dramatic improvement in enrolment thanks to campaigns like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and other efforts, and also a marked improvement in the provision of mid-day meals in government primary schools because of sustained pressure from civil society organisations that moved the Supreme Court. However, the quality of education leaves much to be desired.
According to the ASER survey, 40 per cent of children in Standard V in government primary schools could not read Standard two textbooks and 60 per cent of Standard V students cannot do simple mathematical division. In Standard 2, only 9 per cent were able to read and 60 per cent unable to recognise numbers from 10-99.
Even if more children go to school, and get a reasonably nourishing mid-day meal and uniforms, will it make a difference in terms of their chances to compete later on in life with those who have benefited from a better quality education?
Of course, there is a great variation within states and Bihar, predictably, is at the bottom in terms of both enrolment and quality of education. But what the ASER survey emphasises is that better infrastructure or higher enrolment, are simply not enough unless the quality of teaching improves. It would help if schools had enough teachers who were trained to ensure that the children learn.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
In Loharpura village, Nawada district, south Bihar, over 500 children crowd into half a dozen classrooms in under-construction buildings of a government school. This is the local primary and middle school with classes from standards 1 to 8. Yet there are only four teachers, including the school's principal. By law, there should be four teachers for the primary and 10 for the middle school.
For over a year, children in the primary division have not been served the hot mid-day meal mandated by the Supreme Court. That's because there are no supplies, says the principal. An inspector who surveys 20 schools in the district confirms that none of the schools received supplies for a year. The parents of the children who are listening in to the conversation want to know who is eating up the share of the grain en route? Also, according to law, children should get school uniforms. Have they got these? No, because there are no supplies. Most of the kids come from Dalit families.
This story is not peculiar to Bihar. In every Indian state with low literacy rates, the situation is similar. Schools without teachers, sometimes without buildings, usually without electricity and unable to get even what has been mandated because of entrenched systems of corruption that siphon off development funds.
In nearby Sikandra, the two-storey school building painted a bright pink. Here the full quota of teachers is available and khichdi, the mid-day meal is being cooked. But there is no water, no toilets? That's because the water pump installed outside the school cannot be used as a part was stolen within days of installation. Another pump inside the school building has also been vandalised. So there is water, but it cannot be pumped up. And the toilets built with development funds by a mukhiya who is honest cannot be used as the doors have been stolen and toilets pans smashed.
In thousands of government primary schools and municipal schools across this country, children are enrolled in primary schools. But they learn very little, certainly not enough to lift them out of the poverty and discrimination that has been the fate of their parents. As per data gathered by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) by Pratham, an organisation that works on the right to education, enrolment has improved but the quality of education has not.
ASER 2007 confirms that there has been a dramatic improvement in enrolment thanks to campaigns like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and other efforts, and also a marked improvement in the provision of mid-day meals in government primary schools because of sustained pressure from civil society organisations that moved the Supreme Court. However, the quality of education leaves much to be desired.
According to the ASER survey, 40 per cent of children in Standard V in government primary schools could not read Standard two textbooks and 60 per cent of Standard V students cannot do simple mathematical division. In Standard 2, only 9 per cent were able to read and 60 per cent unable to recognise numbers from 10-99.
Even if more children go to school, and get a reasonably nourishing mid-day meal and uniforms, will it make a difference in terms of their chances to compete later on in life with those who have benefited from a better quality education?
Of course, there is a great variation within states and Bihar, predictably, is at the bottom in terms of both enrolment and quality of education. But what the ASER survey emphasises is that better infrastructure or higher enrolment, are simply not enough unless the quality of teaching improves. It would help if schools had enough teachers who were trained to ensure that the children learn.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Corruption’s real victims
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Oct 5, 2008
THE OTHER HALF
She sat on her haunches. Her face was lined by a hundred years of worry. Saraswati Devi, age unknown, is a widow who lives in Sikandra village in South Bihar’s Nawada district. Her story is not unusual. Yet you weep when you hear it because of the sense of helplessness it brings up.
I was asking Saraswati Devi what the Mukhiya of her Panchayat, a remarkable woman called Veena Devi who lives in the same village, had done for women. Even as I asked the question, a dozen other women entered the room, stood in the doorway or craned their necks to look inside the house where this conversation was taking place.
Lack of awareness
“I did not know that I was entitled to a government pension”, she said. “It is Veena Devi who helped me get it.” So now was she getting her pension, I asked. Yes, she said. She had to go to the nearest post office, some distance away, by whatever means of transport available. And then when she got there, the postman cut Rs. 10 from her pension of Rs. 100 a month. Why? That is the “fee” for the work he does to give her the pension, she said, with not the slightest tinge of cynicism. When she was told that she actually did not need to travel to the post office and that the postman was supposed to deliver the pension to her in the village, she could not believe it. “But then he will ask for Rs. 15”, she said.
There must be millions of poor women like Saraswati Devi who either don’t know that they are entitled to a pension, or have to forfeit a part of it to get it. You can’t really blame the postman. He is doing this to recover the costs of payments that he probably has to make at another level. Everyone is trying to recover the costs of corruption. But ultimately the person who pays the price is the most vulnerable person at the very bottom, women like Saraswati Devi.
Of course, illustrations of this are available everywhere. We don’t have to travel to Bihar to see the manner in which corruption has eaten into every facet of life. In fact, apart from an expanding economy, the area covered by corruption in India is also growing every year. According to Transparency International’s 2008 survey of corruption, India’s ranking amongst least corrupt countries has fallen from 72 to 85. The United Nations Development Programme estimates that India’s GDP growth is cut by a quarter of what is possible because of corruption. It is also evident from stories such as this that corruption hits the poor the hardest because they are almost entirely dependent on the largesse of the State.
Apart from Saraswati Devi’s story, there were other illustrations of the costs of corruption. Near Sikandra village is Loharpur, a village with about 400 houses. The majority of the population of the village is Dalit and very poor. The village has a primary and middle school. The same Mukhiya, Veena Devi, is using development funds to build additional buildings for the school.
Yet, for over 500 students, there are only four teachers, including the principal. On the day we visit, an inspector checking the state of 20 schools in the surrounding villages is also present. What about the mid-day meal for the primary school students, I ask. Both the inspector and the principal admit that the children have not received a hot meal for almost a year now. Why? Because there are no supplies available, they say. The inspector admits that most of the 20 schools under him have not been serving a mid-day meal for at least a year.
Meanwhile the parents of the children, who are listening to this exchange, get really angry and begin shouting. They accuse those in-charge of the school of making off with the grain. Everyone seems to know that “No supplies” is a euphemism for supplies diverted for some other use or to someone’s kitchen. Once again, the most vulnerable, children for whom the bowl of khichdi is the only decent meal they will get in a day, are paying the price.
Meanwhile the parents of the children, who are listening to this exchange, get really angry and begin shouting. They accuse those in-charge of the school of making off with the grain. Everyone seems to know that “No supplies” is a euphemism for supplies diverted for some other use or to someone’s kitchen. Once again, the most vulnerable, children for whom the bowl of khichdi is the only decent meal they will get in a day, are paying the price.
Power games
What about electricity? Both Loharpur and Sikandra should have electricity. You can see the electric poles. But there is no light. It comes, I am told, sometimes for a few minutes and occasionally for a couple of hours. In the meantime, kerosene meant for BPL (Below Poverty Line) families also never arrives because it is being diverted — for generator pumps of those who can afford to run them. So while the women in these villages look for firewood to light their stoves every day, we in the rest of the country discuss the “energy deficit”. The energy story in these villages is literally a world apart from our metropolitan cities.
Readers of this column sometimes complain that I only write about problems without giving any answers. It would be too glib, in the light of the extent to which the rot has seeped into our system, to come up with easy answers. Yet, I was encouraged to see the enthusiasm of the children in both village schools, despite all the shortcomings. And the determination of a woman like the Mukhiya, Veena Devi, to overcome these hurdles and do something good for the people. I suppose as long as our system still throws up such individuals, there is hope.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
THE OTHER HALF
She sat on her haunches. Her face was lined by a hundred years of worry. Saraswati Devi, age unknown, is a widow who lives in Sikandra village in South Bihar’s Nawada district. Her story is not unusual. Yet you weep when you hear it because of the sense of helplessness it brings up.
I was asking Saraswati Devi what the Mukhiya of her Panchayat, a remarkable woman called Veena Devi who lives in the same village, had done for women. Even as I asked the question, a dozen other women entered the room, stood in the doorway or craned their necks to look inside the house where this conversation was taking place.
Lack of awareness
“I did not know that I was entitled to a government pension”, she said. “It is Veena Devi who helped me get it.” So now was she getting her pension, I asked. Yes, she said. She had to go to the nearest post office, some distance away, by whatever means of transport available. And then when she got there, the postman cut Rs. 10 from her pension of Rs. 100 a month. Why? That is the “fee” for the work he does to give her the pension, she said, with not the slightest tinge of cynicism. When she was told that she actually did not need to travel to the post office and that the postman was supposed to deliver the pension to her in the village, she could not believe it. “But then he will ask for Rs. 15”, she said.
There must be millions of poor women like Saraswati Devi who either don’t know that they are entitled to a pension, or have to forfeit a part of it to get it. You can’t really blame the postman. He is doing this to recover the costs of payments that he probably has to make at another level. Everyone is trying to recover the costs of corruption. But ultimately the person who pays the price is the most vulnerable person at the very bottom, women like Saraswati Devi.
Of course, illustrations of this are available everywhere. We don’t have to travel to Bihar to see the manner in which corruption has eaten into every facet of life. In fact, apart from an expanding economy, the area covered by corruption in India is also growing every year. According to Transparency International’s 2008 survey of corruption, India’s ranking amongst least corrupt countries has fallen from 72 to 85. The United Nations Development Programme estimates that India’s GDP growth is cut by a quarter of what is possible because of corruption. It is also evident from stories such as this that corruption hits the poor the hardest because they are almost entirely dependent on the largesse of the State.
Apart from Saraswati Devi’s story, there were other illustrations of the costs of corruption. Near Sikandra village is Loharpur, a village with about 400 houses. The majority of the population of the village is Dalit and very poor. The village has a primary and middle school. The same Mukhiya, Veena Devi, is using development funds to build additional buildings for the school.
Yet, for over 500 students, there are only four teachers, including the principal. On the day we visit, an inspector checking the state of 20 schools in the surrounding villages is also present. What about the mid-day meal for the primary school students, I ask. Both the inspector and the principal admit that the children have not received a hot meal for almost a year now. Why? Because there are no supplies available, they say. The inspector admits that most of the 20 schools under him have not been serving a mid-day meal for at least a year.
Meanwhile the parents of the children, who are listening to this exchange, get really angry and begin shouting. They accuse those in-charge of the school of making off with the grain. Everyone seems to know that “No supplies” is a euphemism for supplies diverted for some other use or to someone’s kitchen. Once again, the most vulnerable, children for whom the bowl of khichdi is the only decent meal they will get in a day, are paying the price.
Meanwhile the parents of the children, who are listening to this exchange, get really angry and begin shouting. They accuse those in-charge of the school of making off with the grain. Everyone seems to know that “No supplies” is a euphemism for supplies diverted for some other use or to someone’s kitchen. Once again, the most vulnerable, children for whom the bowl of khichdi is the only decent meal they will get in a day, are paying the price.
Power games
What about electricity? Both Loharpur and Sikandra should have electricity. You can see the electric poles. But there is no light. It comes, I am told, sometimes for a few minutes and occasionally for a couple of hours. In the meantime, kerosene meant for BPL (Below Poverty Line) families also never arrives because it is being diverted — for generator pumps of those who can afford to run them. So while the women in these villages look for firewood to light their stoves every day, we in the rest of the country discuss the “energy deficit”. The energy story in these villages is literally a world apart from our metropolitan cities.
Readers of this column sometimes complain that I only write about problems without giving any answers. It would be too glib, in the light of the extent to which the rot has seeped into our system, to come up with easy answers. Yet, I was encouraged to see the enthusiasm of the children in both village schools, despite all the shortcomings. And the determination of a woman like the Mukhiya, Veena Devi, to overcome these hurdles and do something good for the people. I suppose as long as our system still throws up such individuals, there is hope.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The art of not learning
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, September 22, 2008
The Other Half
Even as we ponder the randomness of life and death as serial bomb blasts hit our big cities, and we live with the chilling reality that India stands second only to Iraq in the number of people killed in terror attacks since 2004, we also cannot forge t that every day people, including little children, are dying because of the terror of poverty. That people are being killed just because they belong to another religion. That women and girls are dying because they bear a triple burden of work and have little access to health care. These too are perennial Indian realities — a constant state of teetering between life and death.
Perpetuating inequality
Another reality is the entrenched system that perpetuates inequality. Thus, while mention of reservation for schedule castes and tribes and OBCs in institutes of higher learning leads to demonstrations and heated debates in the media, the pathetic state of primary education continues virtually unnoticed and unaddressed. And millions of Indian children still go to schools without buildings, without books and without teachers.
Filmmaker Umesh Aggarwal has made a brave attempt to balance the reservation debate in his documentary “Divided Colours of a Nation” that premiered at the Open Frame International Film Festival in Delhi last week and will be shown shortly on Doordarshan. Whether he has actually managed to strike a balance between the extreme positions on this contentious issue could be debated. He has tried to push home the point that the question is not whether reservation is right or wrong but whether the “creamy layer” within these disadvantaged groups should continue to claim the benefits of reservation.
However, the most striking footage in his film is of the village schools he visits. By focusing on the disheartening state of primary education, he has actually struck the right chord. For, whether there are seats reserved at higher levels for the disadvantaged matters little if they continue to be deprived of quality education at the entry level.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
The Other Half
Even as we ponder the randomness of life and death as serial bomb blasts hit our big cities, and we live with the chilling reality that India stands second only to Iraq in the number of people killed in terror attacks since 2004, we also cannot forge t that every day people, including little children, are dying because of the terror of poverty. That people are being killed just because they belong to another religion. That women and girls are dying because they bear a triple burden of work and have little access to health care. These too are perennial Indian realities — a constant state of teetering between life and death.
Perpetuating inequality
Another reality is the entrenched system that perpetuates inequality. Thus, while mention of reservation for schedule castes and tribes and OBCs in institutes of higher learning leads to demonstrations and heated debates in the media, the pathetic state of primary education continues virtually unnoticed and unaddressed. And millions of Indian children still go to schools without buildings, without books and without teachers.
Filmmaker Umesh Aggarwal has made a brave attempt to balance the reservation debate in his documentary “Divided Colours of a Nation” that premiered at the Open Frame International Film Festival in Delhi last week and will be shown shortly on Doordarshan. Whether he has actually managed to strike a balance between the extreme positions on this contentious issue could be debated. He has tried to push home the point that the question is not whether reservation is right or wrong but whether the “creamy layer” within these disadvantaged groups should continue to claim the benefits of reservation.
However, the most striking footage in his film is of the village schools he visits. By focusing on the disheartening state of primary education, he has actually struck the right chord. For, whether there are seats reserved at higher levels for the disadvantaged matters little if they continue to be deprived of quality education at the entry level.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The medical emergency of the urban poor
From InfoChange India, September 2008
By Kalpana Sharma
A man who works as a driver in Mumbai discovered recently that his wife, who complained of breathlessness, had a heart problem. She has a blocked artery and a faulty heart valve. Like others of his ilk, this man lives in a slum. His salary as a driver is not enough to rent, leave alone buy, an apartment anywhere in Mumbai. So he lives in a ‘regularised’ slum, which cannot be demolished, and which is, ironically, located on the most expensive real estate in Mumbai, in the upscale neighbourhood of Malabar Hill.
This preferred location, however, makes little difference to him when facing a health crisis such as this. The choices before him are stark. If he does nothing, because he cannot afford to get his wife treated, then she will die. If he chooses to get her treated, then he faces lifelong indebtedness.
In a city with some of the most expensive and modern healthcare facilities, millions of lower income and poor people face the dilemma of this driver. As opposed to their rural counterparts, even poor people living in cities are well aware of the medical interventions that are possible to prolong life and to deal with life-threatening conditions. But they also know that such interventions are out of their reach in an increasingly privatised healthcare market. The public healthcare systems that exist are simply not enough to meet the demand even for ordinary health conditions, leave alone for specialised care.
Mumbai is actually better served than most other Indian cities with public health facilities. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) runs four teaching hospitals, five specialised hospitals, 16 peripheral hospitals, 28 maternity homes and several hundred dispensaries and health outposts. Out of the estimated 40,000 hospital beds available in Mumbai, around a quarter come under the BMC. In addition the state government runs one medical college, three general hospitals and two health units with a total of 2,871 beds. The Central government also runs one hospital.
Yet, despite the availability of these services, people who cannot afford to spend on private healthcare still do not necessarily see public services as the first choice. Several studies have shown that as many as 77% in urban areas and 63% in rural areas turn to private practitioners for outpatient care because the public facilities are either too far, or their procedures are too bureaucratic and take too long to access. Even amongst poor people who cannot afford private care, the percentage of those who use it is over 60%.
However, for in-patient care, the poor seek out public facilities, even if they are at some distance from where they live, because they are the only ones that are affordable. It is evident that these are inadequate to meet the demand. The overcrowding seen in every public hospital is a stark reminder of the shortage of affordable beds in a city where the majority of people cannot afford expensive healthcare. Furthermore, the big hospitals in Mumbai serve as referrals for people from across the state and other states.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
By Kalpana Sharma
A man who works as a driver in Mumbai discovered recently that his wife, who complained of breathlessness, had a heart problem. She has a blocked artery and a faulty heart valve. Like others of his ilk, this man lives in a slum. His salary as a driver is not enough to rent, leave alone buy, an apartment anywhere in Mumbai. So he lives in a ‘regularised’ slum, which cannot be demolished, and which is, ironically, located on the most expensive real estate in Mumbai, in the upscale neighbourhood of Malabar Hill.
This preferred location, however, makes little difference to him when facing a health crisis such as this. The choices before him are stark. If he does nothing, because he cannot afford to get his wife treated, then she will die. If he chooses to get her treated, then he faces lifelong indebtedness.
In a city with some of the most expensive and modern healthcare facilities, millions of lower income and poor people face the dilemma of this driver. As opposed to their rural counterparts, even poor people living in cities are well aware of the medical interventions that are possible to prolong life and to deal with life-threatening conditions. But they also know that such interventions are out of their reach in an increasingly privatised healthcare market. The public healthcare systems that exist are simply not enough to meet the demand even for ordinary health conditions, leave alone for specialised care.
Mumbai is actually better served than most other Indian cities with public health facilities. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) runs four teaching hospitals, five specialised hospitals, 16 peripheral hospitals, 28 maternity homes and several hundred dispensaries and health outposts. Out of the estimated 40,000 hospital beds available in Mumbai, around a quarter come under the BMC. In addition the state government runs one medical college, three general hospitals and two health units with a total of 2,871 beds. The Central government also runs one hospital.
Yet, despite the availability of these services, people who cannot afford to spend on private healthcare still do not necessarily see public services as the first choice. Several studies have shown that as many as 77% in urban areas and 63% in rural areas turn to private practitioners for outpatient care because the public facilities are either too far, or their procedures are too bureaucratic and take too long to access. Even amongst poor people who cannot afford private care, the percentage of those who use it is over 60%.
However, for in-patient care, the poor seek out public facilities, even if they are at some distance from where they live, because they are the only ones that are affordable. It is evident that these are inadequate to meet the demand. The overcrowding seen in every public hospital is a stark reminder of the shortage of affordable beds in a city where the majority of people cannot afford expensive healthcare. Furthermore, the big hospitals in Mumbai serve as referrals for people from across the state and other states.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Monday, September 08, 2008
What women "deserve"
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Sept 6 2008
The Other Half
Hillary Clinton has lost her chance to have a go at the U.S. Presidential stakes this time around. Yet, she remains a presence. However much those who hated Hillary might have wished that she would fade away, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will allow her do so. By choosing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, Republican Presidential nominee John McCain has clearly shown that he will go all out to woo Hillary supporters. Some have already joined his campaign. And Barack Obama and the Democrats also know that the 18 million voters who supported Hillary, many of them women, will have to be persuaded to remain with the Democrats.
To us in this country, this might seem peculiar as there is still no defined “women’s vote”. In the U.S., however, the women’s vote has become a factor in elections and in the forthcoming Presidential election, it will be particularly important. Yet, why would women, who supported Hillary not just because she was a woman but also because of her position on a number of issues affecting women such as abortion, now contemplate voting for a man and woman who are against women’s abortion rights and for the war in Iraq?
Generational shift
The explanation perhaps lies in the generational shift in the U.S. amongst women that is not so perceptible in this country. The women’s movement in the U.S. has fought hard for many rights for women. The daughters of those who fought for these rights are now entering the work force, women with the confidence to know that they do not need to apologise for being women.
As a result, their take on women’s rights is different from that of their mothers’ generation. It is mediated by a different reality in which they must survive. It tends to be less strident and perhaps more pragmatic. It is not anti-men. On the other hand, the older women who supported Hillary feel affronted that their candidate was treated badly, that she was derided because she was a woman, and that in the end, there was no place for her. They see this as a reflection of the bitter battles they have fought for decades.
An article by Hannah Seligson, a freelance journalist and author of New Girl on the Job: Advice from the Trenches in The New York Times (August 31, 2008) spells out some of the challenges that women in their twenties face in the U.S. And her conclusions possibly explain the difference between the women who support Obama, or have decided to give him their full support even though Hillary lost, and those who remain unreconciled. Young women in this country, particularly the educated urban woman, would find a resonance in what she writes.
Seligson describes how, while growing up and in college, she did not experience any institutional gender bias. It was a time of “girl power”. Women students excelled in academics. They also helped each other and there was a feeling of solidarity.
Then these women entered the work force and realised that they were unprepared. First, the solidarity amongst women that they had taken for granted in college did not exist in the highly competitive space at work. Career mattered first, peer support could wait.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
The Other Half
Hillary Clinton has lost her chance to have a go at the U.S. Presidential stakes this time around. Yet, she remains a presence. However much those who hated Hillary might have wished that she would fade away, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will allow her do so. By choosing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, Republican Presidential nominee John McCain has clearly shown that he will go all out to woo Hillary supporters. Some have already joined his campaign. And Barack Obama and the Democrats also know that the 18 million voters who supported Hillary, many of them women, will have to be persuaded to remain with the Democrats.
To us in this country, this might seem peculiar as there is still no defined “women’s vote”. In the U.S., however, the women’s vote has become a factor in elections and in the forthcoming Presidential election, it will be particularly important. Yet, why would women, who supported Hillary not just because she was a woman but also because of her position on a number of issues affecting women such as abortion, now contemplate voting for a man and woman who are against women’s abortion rights and for the war in Iraq?
Generational shift
The explanation perhaps lies in the generational shift in the U.S. amongst women that is not so perceptible in this country. The women’s movement in the U.S. has fought hard for many rights for women. The daughters of those who fought for these rights are now entering the work force, women with the confidence to know that they do not need to apologise for being women.
As a result, their take on women’s rights is different from that of their mothers’ generation. It is mediated by a different reality in which they must survive. It tends to be less strident and perhaps more pragmatic. It is not anti-men. On the other hand, the older women who supported Hillary feel affronted that their candidate was treated badly, that she was derided because she was a woman, and that in the end, there was no place for her. They see this as a reflection of the bitter battles they have fought for decades.
An article by Hannah Seligson, a freelance journalist and author of New Girl on the Job: Advice from the Trenches in The New York Times (August 31, 2008) spells out some of the challenges that women in their twenties face in the U.S. And her conclusions possibly explain the difference between the women who support Obama, or have decided to give him their full support even though Hillary lost, and those who remain unreconciled. Young women in this country, particularly the educated urban woman, would find a resonance in what she writes.
Seligson describes how, while growing up and in college, she did not experience any institutional gender bias. It was a time of “girl power”. Women students excelled in academics. They also helped each other and there was a feeling of solidarity.
Then these women entered the work force and realised that they were unprepared. First, the solidarity amongst women that they had taken for granted in college did not exist in the highly competitive space at work. Career mattered first, peer support could wait.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Insidious intent
Indian Express, Aug 30, 2008
The immediate crisis over Marathi signboards for all shops in Mumbai might have subsided with the intervention of the Bombay High Court and the state government’s firmness, but several larger issues remain unresolved. The Bombay High Court, in response to a petition by the retail traders’ federation has insisted that the “rule of law must prevail” and that “no one can hold the state to ransom”. The court was referring to the manner in which activists of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, at the urging of their chief Raj Thackeray, had gone around the city threatening and attacking shops that did not display signboards in Marathi.
However, a far more serious issue remains unaddressed. Besides urging his cadre to virtually take the law into their own hands, Raj Thackeray also wrote an open letter to the Maharashtra police urging them not to “pick up lathis and serve externment notices” against members of the MNS who were terrorising local shopkeepers into displaying signboards in Marathi.
In a letter addressed to “all my police brothers and sisters”, Raj Thackeray has claimed that the agitations conducted by his party are “directly and indirectly for you all”. Maharashtra’s “entire police force (except some IPS officers) is Marathi,” he writes. “You have an idea of the way in which Maharashtra and the Marathi language is being strangled in Maharashtra by bhaiyyas and some baniyas”. He then appeals to their consciences before they move against MNS workers. “Will you and your families like it in case the Marathi language and Maharashtra die at the hands of these bhaiyyas and baniyas?” he asks.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
The immediate crisis over Marathi signboards for all shops in Mumbai might have subsided with the intervention of the Bombay High Court and the state government’s firmness, but several larger issues remain unresolved. The Bombay High Court, in response to a petition by the retail traders’ federation has insisted that the “rule of law must prevail” and that “no one can hold the state to ransom”. The court was referring to the manner in which activists of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, at the urging of their chief Raj Thackeray, had gone around the city threatening and attacking shops that did not display signboards in Marathi.
However, a far more serious issue remains unaddressed. Besides urging his cadre to virtually take the law into their own hands, Raj Thackeray also wrote an open letter to the Maharashtra police urging them not to “pick up lathis and serve externment notices” against members of the MNS who were terrorising local shopkeepers into displaying signboards in Marathi.
In a letter addressed to “all my police brothers and sisters”, Raj Thackeray has claimed that the agitations conducted by his party are “directly and indirectly for you all”. Maharashtra’s “entire police force (except some IPS officers) is Marathi,” he writes. “You have an idea of the way in which Maharashtra and the Marathi language is being strangled in Maharashtra by bhaiyyas and some baniyas”. He then appeals to their consciences before they move against MNS workers. “Will you and your families like it in case the Marathi language and Maharashtra die at the hands of these bhaiyyas and baniyas?” he asks.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Changing men
The Hindu, Sunday, August 24, 2008
The Other Half
This has been a season of medals — gold, silver and bronze. Men and women, strong and beautiful, have competed as never before. And for a brief moment, the problems around us have evaporated as all of us, regardless of nationality, have basked in the reflected glory of this international bunch of achievers — from tiny Jamaica to the mighty United States of America and China.
The dust will soon settle, the stadia will fall silent, and the achievers and the voyeurs will return to their daily lives. Has something changed in all of us through such an effort? Or are the basics of life and our attitudes untouched by progress on the sporting field, or in the economy or elsewhere?
Incremental change
I would like to believe that there is change. That we should celebrate every little effort at changing entrenched customs and attitudes. And that in the end all this will add up to something.
Last week a friend got married. It was a Hindu wedding. But the person conducting it was a woman. So was her assistant. The ceremony was simple, dignified and participatory. For many of us it was the first time we had witnessed such a ceremony conducted by women. The women priests told me that they and their kin had been conducting religious ceremonies for over two decades now, in Pune and some other parts of Maharashtra. When they began there was opposition. Today, no one questions.
This is only one of several instances we know of where women have broken through stereotypes and roles set for them. Recently, there was a news item in a Bangalore newspaper about women being a part of a Brahmin “thread ceremony” that had remained an exclusive male domain. Not long ago, the Army agreed that women had the right to join the forces as equals. There are scores more of such examples of change. Two or three decades back, none of this would have been considered possible in this country. Yet, it is happening.
We can be cynical and dismiss all this as exceptions that do not reflect the reality of the majority of Indian women. Absolutely true. They do not. Being a woman in India, particularly if you are poor and belong to a lower caste, is not a happy prospect. Despite this depressing reality, however, we can look on these and other developments as small, perhaps faltering, steps towards change.
Yet, while women are breaking new ground almost every day, we hear little about men who are breaking out of moulds. If women feel that they are forced into stereotypes, what about men? Are they not expected always to be strong, hard-working, aggressive, earn money for the family etc? These are roles forced on men by society and any man wanting to break away from these expectations faces ostracism and is considered less than a man. As a result, many men suppress parts of their personalities, often the more creative parts, because they feel they must conform.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
The Other Half
This has been a season of medals — gold, silver and bronze. Men and women, strong and beautiful, have competed as never before. And for a brief moment, the problems around us have evaporated as all of us, regardless of nationality, have basked in the reflected glory of this international bunch of achievers — from tiny Jamaica to the mighty United States of America and China.
The dust will soon settle, the stadia will fall silent, and the achievers and the voyeurs will return to their daily lives. Has something changed in all of us through such an effort? Or are the basics of life and our attitudes untouched by progress on the sporting field, or in the economy or elsewhere?
Incremental change
I would like to believe that there is change. That we should celebrate every little effort at changing entrenched customs and attitudes. And that in the end all this will add up to something.
Last week a friend got married. It was a Hindu wedding. But the person conducting it was a woman. So was her assistant. The ceremony was simple, dignified and participatory. For many of us it was the first time we had witnessed such a ceremony conducted by women. The women priests told me that they and their kin had been conducting religious ceremonies for over two decades now, in Pune and some other parts of Maharashtra. When they began there was opposition. Today, no one questions.
This is only one of several instances we know of where women have broken through stereotypes and roles set for them. Recently, there was a news item in a Bangalore newspaper about women being a part of a Brahmin “thread ceremony” that had remained an exclusive male domain. Not long ago, the Army agreed that women had the right to join the forces as equals. There are scores more of such examples of change. Two or three decades back, none of this would have been considered possible in this country. Yet, it is happening.
We can be cynical and dismiss all this as exceptions that do not reflect the reality of the majority of Indian women. Absolutely true. They do not. Being a woman in India, particularly if you are poor and belong to a lower caste, is not a happy prospect. Despite this depressing reality, however, we can look on these and other developments as small, perhaps faltering, steps towards change.
Yet, while women are breaking new ground almost every day, we hear little about men who are breaking out of moulds. If women feel that they are forced into stereotypes, what about men? Are they not expected always to be strong, hard-working, aggressive, earn money for the family etc? These are roles forced on men by society and any man wanting to break away from these expectations faces ostracism and is considered less than a man. As a result, many men suppress parts of their personalities, often the more creative parts, because they feel they must conform.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Niketa's Choice
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, August 10, 2008
The Other Half
Thanks to media interest, millions of people have had a direct peek into the life and the choices before a 25-weeks pregnant woman and her husband in Mumbai. Niketa and Haresh Mehta, who were married earlier this year, decided to seek the court’s permission to have an abortion when their doctor informed them that the foetus in Niketa’s womb had a complete congenital heart block. Rather than going through with the pregnancy, the couple decided on an abortion only to come up against stipulations in the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1971 that permits abortions only up to 20 weeks, and that too on certification by at least two medical practitioners that either the mother’s or the child’s lives are at risk.
The Bombay High Court heard the case. On Monday, August 4, it denied the petition stating that they could not make an exception in the case and that nothing in the report of the expert committee they had instituted suggested that the child’s life was at risk. They also suggested that the court could not change the law, that this was the job of legislators and that people like the Mehtas should seek a change in the law.
The case has thrown up a fascinating number of issues that concern individual choice, ethics, technology and the law. In each instance, there are no clear guidelines, there is nothing that is black and white.
Much of the press coverage, for instance, has stressed the right of Niketa as a mother to choose whether she wants to bring this child into the world or not and whether she wants to be burdened with the possibility of a disabled child. There is nothing wrong with this formulation. The battle for women’s reproductive rights has rested on the issue of choice. Yet, there are limitations — ethical, scientific and legal.
For example, women’s groups around the world have fought for liberal abortion laws so that women do not have to put their lives at risk by seeking illegal abortions as a result of unwanted pregnancies. Yet in India, women’s groups have had to figure out how to prevent a liberal law from being misused for sex-selective abortions. Of course, it could be argued, and indeed has been argued, that this too is a woman’s choice. Women prefer not to give birth to girls because they want to spare them the suffering that they are bound to encounter for the rest of their lives as well as the problems they themselves will face as mothers of girls. Yet, the “choice” for sex-selective abortions has been denied under law in India because of the growing evidence of the impact of this on sex ratios in some parts of the country.
Niketa’s case also brings into focus the question of the use and misuse of technology. Ultra-sonography and earlier, amniocentesis, were principally meant to detect genetic abnormalities. Yet in India they have been deliberately and callously misused to detect the sex of the foetus following which women seek an abortion. There would be cases of genetic disorders followed by abortions too but as these are usually detected at a later stage in the pregnancy, as happened to Niketa, legal abortions are not an option.
But, like choice, technology too has a flip side. Thus, while the technology to detect genetic abnormalities has been misused to determine the sex of the child, advances in science today are ensuring that even children born with congenital problems, such as arterial blocks, can actually be treated and can go on to live normal lives. So the same mother who uses technology to ensure that the child in her womb is normal and healthy also has the knowledge that even if there is a problem, there is now a medical solution.
The case has raised legal issues including the need to amend the MTP Act. Those against sex-selective abortions have argued fiercely for maintaining the 20-week limit while others would argue that there is a case for relaxing it by a few weeks. The time limit varies from country to country where abortion is legal. Therefore, there should be no objection to debating the possibility of amending the law.
Not an easy choice
While changes in the law can be debated, the ethical dimension, on whether abortions are right or wrong, is not as emotive an issue in India as it is in countries like the U.S. Although there are religious groups that strictly prohibit abortion, this dimension has not been central to the debate. Yet, while women constrained by religious belief would not consider abortion as an option, even those not bound by religious belief often hesitate and feel guilty when seeking an abortion. It is never an easy or simple choice for any woman.
Of course, the question of choice is restricted to an urban class in India that has access to and can afford to use technology to monitor the progress of a pregnancy. Poor mothers have neither the time, nor the money, to go for regular check-ups during pregnancy. If they and the child survive the pregnancy, that in itself is often a miracle given the high rate of maternal and infant mortality in this country. And if at the end of nine months, a deformed or incapacitated child is born, the gods are blamed for it and life goes on. The question of choice simply does not arise, not on whether to get pregnant, or on what to do about an infant with severe health problems.
Niketa and Haresh will now have to live with the choice that has been made for them by the court and the law. But they should be lauded for being open and seeking a legal way out. As a result, they have thrown open an important issue for people to understand and debate.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
The Other Half
Thanks to media interest, millions of people have had a direct peek into the life and the choices before a 25-weeks pregnant woman and her husband in Mumbai. Niketa and Haresh Mehta, who were married earlier this year, decided to seek the court’s permission to have an abortion when their doctor informed them that the foetus in Niketa’s womb had a complete congenital heart block. Rather than going through with the pregnancy, the couple decided on an abortion only to come up against stipulations in the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1971 that permits abortions only up to 20 weeks, and that too on certification by at least two medical practitioners that either the mother’s or the child’s lives are at risk.
The Bombay High Court heard the case. On Monday, August 4, it denied the petition stating that they could not make an exception in the case and that nothing in the report of the expert committee they had instituted suggested that the child’s life was at risk. They also suggested that the court could not change the law, that this was the job of legislators and that people like the Mehtas should seek a change in the law.
The case has thrown up a fascinating number of issues that concern individual choice, ethics, technology and the law. In each instance, there are no clear guidelines, there is nothing that is black and white.
Much of the press coverage, for instance, has stressed the right of Niketa as a mother to choose whether she wants to bring this child into the world or not and whether she wants to be burdened with the possibility of a disabled child. There is nothing wrong with this formulation. The battle for women’s reproductive rights has rested on the issue of choice. Yet, there are limitations — ethical, scientific and legal.
For example, women’s groups around the world have fought for liberal abortion laws so that women do not have to put their lives at risk by seeking illegal abortions as a result of unwanted pregnancies. Yet in India, women’s groups have had to figure out how to prevent a liberal law from being misused for sex-selective abortions. Of course, it could be argued, and indeed has been argued, that this too is a woman’s choice. Women prefer not to give birth to girls because they want to spare them the suffering that they are bound to encounter for the rest of their lives as well as the problems they themselves will face as mothers of girls. Yet, the “choice” for sex-selective abortions has been denied under law in India because of the growing evidence of the impact of this on sex ratios in some parts of the country.
Niketa’s case also brings into focus the question of the use and misuse of technology. Ultra-sonography and earlier, amniocentesis, were principally meant to detect genetic abnormalities. Yet in India they have been deliberately and callously misused to detect the sex of the foetus following which women seek an abortion. There would be cases of genetic disorders followed by abortions too but as these are usually detected at a later stage in the pregnancy, as happened to Niketa, legal abortions are not an option.
But, like choice, technology too has a flip side. Thus, while the technology to detect genetic abnormalities has been misused to determine the sex of the child, advances in science today are ensuring that even children born with congenital problems, such as arterial blocks, can actually be treated and can go on to live normal lives. So the same mother who uses technology to ensure that the child in her womb is normal and healthy also has the knowledge that even if there is a problem, there is now a medical solution.
The case has raised legal issues including the need to amend the MTP Act. Those against sex-selective abortions have argued fiercely for maintaining the 20-week limit while others would argue that there is a case for relaxing it by a few weeks. The time limit varies from country to country where abortion is legal. Therefore, there should be no objection to debating the possibility of amending the law.
Not an easy choice
While changes in the law can be debated, the ethical dimension, on whether abortions are right or wrong, is not as emotive an issue in India as it is in countries like the U.S. Although there are religious groups that strictly prohibit abortion, this dimension has not been central to the debate. Yet, while women constrained by religious belief would not consider abortion as an option, even those not bound by religious belief often hesitate and feel guilty when seeking an abortion. It is never an easy or simple choice for any woman.
Of course, the question of choice is restricted to an urban class in India that has access to and can afford to use technology to monitor the progress of a pregnancy. Poor mothers have neither the time, nor the money, to go for regular check-ups during pregnancy. If they and the child survive the pregnancy, that in itself is often a miracle given the high rate of maternal and infant mortality in this country. And if at the end of nine months, a deformed or incapacitated child is born, the gods are blamed for it and life goes on. The question of choice simply does not arise, not on whether to get pregnant, or on what to do about an infant with severe health problems.
Niketa and Haresh will now have to live with the choice that has been made for them by the court and the law. But they should be lauded for being open and seeking a legal way out. As a result, they have thrown open an important issue for people to understand and debate.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Bad news for Maharashtra
Here are some facts that appeared in different newspapers today, based on data from the National Family Health Survey -3, that remind of us about the real state of affairs in this country:
1. In Maharashtra, one of the better off states in the country, 35 per cent of pregnant women deliver their babies at home. The good news is that contraceptive use has increased from 61 per cent in NFHS-2 to 67 per cent in NFHS-3. But the sad news is that over one third of women in the state cannot access institutionalised delivery and have babies at home.
2. More bad news. Full immunisation coverage of children has decreased in the period between the two surveys. NFHS-2 found that 78 per cent of infants between 12 to 23 months had received all the basic vaccinations. By NFHS-3 this figure had dropped to 59 per cent.
3. The bad news doesn't stop there. NFHS-3 also found that two out of five children in Maharashtra are stunted or too short for their age, a clear indication of malnutrition. 37 per cent of the children were underweight and one out of five was wasted or too thin. All this in a state that ranks amongst the top five in the country in terms of GDP.
1. In Maharashtra, one of the better off states in the country, 35 per cent of pregnant women deliver their babies at home. The good news is that contraceptive use has increased from 61 per cent in NFHS-2 to 67 per cent in NFHS-3. But the sad news is that over one third of women in the state cannot access institutionalised delivery and have babies at home.
2. More bad news. Full immunisation coverage of children has decreased in the period between the two surveys. NFHS-2 found that 78 per cent of infants between 12 to 23 months had received all the basic vaccinations. By NFHS-3 this figure had dropped to 59 per cent.
3. The bad news doesn't stop there. NFHS-3 also found that two out of five children in Maharashtra are stunted or too short for their age, a clear indication of malnutrition. 37 per cent of the children were underweight and one out of five was wasted or too thin. All this in a state that ranks amongst the top five in the country in terms of GDP.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Why women?
Here's something I wrote earlier this year that was never published. It incapsulates what I feel about the status of women in India today.
There are fewer women than men in India. That is a reality. You see fewer men than women in the public space in India. That too is a reality.
It’s not a bad idea to ask “why” in relation to both realities.
For the answer to that question explains the paradox of women in India, why they seem powerful and powerless, why they are successful yet bereft, why they are visible yet invisible, why they are desired yet eliminated even before birth, why they count yet do not seem to matter.
Every single day I walk past these two women. There are two women and three children. Once in a while I see a man. They live, eat, sleep next to a small garbage dump on our road. They are rag pickers. When the sweepers from the surrounding multi-storied buildings dump garbage in the large metal bin, the two women rummage through it to extract plastic, bottles, and anything else that could be recycled and sold.
In ten years, I have seen no improvement in their lives. They started as young, single girls. Today both are mothers with no evident male around. Yet, they laugh, scold their children, bathe them and clean them up, feed them and live their lives. Some like me “see” them every day, exchange smiles, a few words. To the majority of the thousands living in the buildings near this small dump, they are invisible.
When I open the newspapers every day, I do not see the women near the garbage dump. Instead I read of women who have “made it”, who are successful in a world of men, who have climbed the corporate ladder, who are in politics, in parliament, in government, who are pilots, models, actors, government officials, software engineers, entrepreneurs… The whole world, it would seem, is their oyster. These too are Indian women. But they do not include the two near the garbage dump.
I also read each day about women who are violated, raped, murdered for dowry, tortured and forced to leave their marital homes, roughed up on the road, harassed in offices, schools and colleges. The crime graph is climbing and women remain the principal victims. The two women near the garbage dump would have suffered their share of such violence. But you cannot tell if you look at them. Yet, this too is the story of Indian women.
And then there are the “missing” women and girls. Even before they are born, the message is clear. “Not wanted”. Women who produce girls are also not wanted. So modern technology ensures that only boys will be born. The more money you have, the more certain you can be of the sex of your child. So the richest parts of India also have the lowest sex ratio in the zero to six years age group – one thousand boys but often less than 800 girls.
Now the inevitable has happened. In some of these areas, boys cannot find girls to marry. So they are importing them from other states. Sometimes, one woman must service a whole family of men. This too is modern India. I am not sure what my two women near the garbage dump think of this. I doubt if they had a choice about the sex of the children they produced.
But then there are also the joyous sights. For me, the best is to see the dozens of girls, hair tightly plaited and tied usually with bright red ribbons, in neat and clean uniforms, making their way to school. Their mothers never had this chance. What these girls will make of what they learn remains a question mark. But a door has been opened for them, one that was tightly closed, one that could swivel and slam in their faces, but they have the option of sticking their toes in and preventing it from banging. At least they can dream now.
And they do. Speak to these girls. There is no limit to their dreams. What will you do when you grow up? Like lightening comes the response – a doctor, a teacher, a singer, an artist, a computer engineer, a pilot. Words that never entered the minds of their mothers, leave alone escape their lips. So some things have changed.
Women’s enhanced visibility in the media is also a change, although not always positive. The media determines how “success” is measured. So if you are photogenic, you are noticed. If you are brilliant, but don’t have the physical attributes to brighten up the grey areas in a newspaper, then your chances of visibility decrease. If you are rich, you will always be famous. If you are poor, you have to be exceptional to get anywhere near that elusive word “fame”.
But even the partial frame held up by the media serves up pleasant surprises. Like girls from conservative Muslim homes topping the merit list. Like girls from the rural hinterland making it in the city. Like women from an area where the media has hardly any reach producing their own rural newspaper. Like women repairing hand pumps, working as masons, designing and building houses and toilets, saving money and shaming the men, standing up for their rights against unimaginable odds.
So all is not gloomy. Yet there is enough and more to be concerned about. There is enough and more that we need to “see” so that we are not taken in by the superficial, by the celebratory, by the glamorous. Yes, let us applaud those women who have “made it”, who have broken barriers, who are doing what their mothers never dreamed of, who are surprising even themselves and everyone else.
Yet, let us also ask: Why?
There are fewer women than men in India. That is a reality. You see fewer men than women in the public space in India. That too is a reality.
It’s not a bad idea to ask “why” in relation to both realities.
For the answer to that question explains the paradox of women in India, why they seem powerful and powerless, why they are successful yet bereft, why they are visible yet invisible, why they are desired yet eliminated even before birth, why they count yet do not seem to matter.
Every single day I walk past these two women. There are two women and three children. Once in a while I see a man. They live, eat, sleep next to a small garbage dump on our road. They are rag pickers. When the sweepers from the surrounding multi-storied buildings dump garbage in the large metal bin, the two women rummage through it to extract plastic, bottles, and anything else that could be recycled and sold.
In ten years, I have seen no improvement in their lives. They started as young, single girls. Today both are mothers with no evident male around. Yet, they laugh, scold their children, bathe them and clean them up, feed them and live their lives. Some like me “see” them every day, exchange smiles, a few words. To the majority of the thousands living in the buildings near this small dump, they are invisible.
When I open the newspapers every day, I do not see the women near the garbage dump. Instead I read of women who have “made it”, who are successful in a world of men, who have climbed the corporate ladder, who are in politics, in parliament, in government, who are pilots, models, actors, government officials, software engineers, entrepreneurs… The whole world, it would seem, is their oyster. These too are Indian women. But they do not include the two near the garbage dump.
I also read each day about women who are violated, raped, murdered for dowry, tortured and forced to leave their marital homes, roughed up on the road, harassed in offices, schools and colleges. The crime graph is climbing and women remain the principal victims. The two women near the garbage dump would have suffered their share of such violence. But you cannot tell if you look at them. Yet, this too is the story of Indian women.
And then there are the “missing” women and girls. Even before they are born, the message is clear. “Not wanted”. Women who produce girls are also not wanted. So modern technology ensures that only boys will be born. The more money you have, the more certain you can be of the sex of your child. So the richest parts of India also have the lowest sex ratio in the zero to six years age group – one thousand boys but often less than 800 girls.
Now the inevitable has happened. In some of these areas, boys cannot find girls to marry. So they are importing them from other states. Sometimes, one woman must service a whole family of men. This too is modern India. I am not sure what my two women near the garbage dump think of this. I doubt if they had a choice about the sex of the children they produced.
But then there are also the joyous sights. For me, the best is to see the dozens of girls, hair tightly plaited and tied usually with bright red ribbons, in neat and clean uniforms, making their way to school. Their mothers never had this chance. What these girls will make of what they learn remains a question mark. But a door has been opened for them, one that was tightly closed, one that could swivel and slam in their faces, but they have the option of sticking their toes in and preventing it from banging. At least they can dream now.
And they do. Speak to these girls. There is no limit to their dreams. What will you do when you grow up? Like lightening comes the response – a doctor, a teacher, a singer, an artist, a computer engineer, a pilot. Words that never entered the minds of their mothers, leave alone escape their lips. So some things have changed.
Women’s enhanced visibility in the media is also a change, although not always positive. The media determines how “success” is measured. So if you are photogenic, you are noticed. If you are brilliant, but don’t have the physical attributes to brighten up the grey areas in a newspaper, then your chances of visibility decrease. If you are rich, you will always be famous. If you are poor, you have to be exceptional to get anywhere near that elusive word “fame”.
But even the partial frame held up by the media serves up pleasant surprises. Like girls from conservative Muslim homes topping the merit list. Like girls from the rural hinterland making it in the city. Like women from an area where the media has hardly any reach producing their own rural newspaper. Like women repairing hand pumps, working as masons, designing and building houses and toilets, saving money and shaming the men, standing up for their rights against unimaginable odds.
So all is not gloomy. Yet there is enough and more to be concerned about. There is enough and more that we need to “see” so that we are not taken in by the superficial, by the celebratory, by the glamorous. Yes, let us applaud those women who have “made it”, who have broken barriers, who are doing what their mothers never dreamed of, who are surprising even themselves and everyone else.
Yet, let us also ask: Why?
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Wrong priorities?
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, July 27, 2008
The Other Half
One out of every two persons in the world compelled to defecate in the open is an Indian. This is one of several unsavoury facts brought out in a recent report by the World Health Organisation and UNICEF. According to the report, out of the 1.2 billion people who defecate in the open worldwide because they have no access to toilets, more than half are Indian. An astounding 667 million people in this country have no option but to defecate in the open, a country that would like people to believe that it is on the cusp of becoming a global economic giant.
Why then does sanitation remain a subject that is accorded a relatively low priority compared to many other needs, including water and energy? Could it be because for the middle classes, policy makers, those who live in permanent housing with built-in toilets, sanitation is not an issue? But the lack of water and electricity is? Could it be because the problem is essentially that of the poor and the homeless? Could it also be because the worst affected are poor women?
These are questions that come to my mind almost every day when I walk past a woman with two young children. She is a rag picker. She has permission to sort through the garbage of the large government colony in the area. Usually, she sleeps near the garbage bin. Recently, she was asked to move. So she has found a spot in the colony where she sleeps surrounded by a few plastic bags that contain her meagre belongings.
Each day, the municipal truck clears the garbage bin after she has already rummaged through it and retrieved everything that is reusable and recyclable. This woman has no shelter, although she has an income from the sale of rags. As a result, she has no access to water or sanitation. Her children defecate on the road. I have no idea what she does. She probably has to wait until nightfall to locate a secluded spot. Yet, she “lives” in one of the more expensive parts of Mumbai. And she sorts the garbage of the very people who populate our government — the civil servants.
Larger realities
But this woman’s life is more than just a curiosity. It is illustrative of an ugly and larger reality. The absence of sanitation is not just a question of personal hygiene, or terrible indignity for poor people. It is also principally responsible for the spread of several diseases. According to the international charity Water Aid, which assembled data on this issue for world leaders meeting in Japan for the G8 summit, 40 per cent of the world’s population lack access to improved sanitation and this in turn kills more children than malaria, HIV/Aids and measles put together.
Water Aid believes that as many as 9,10,000 child deaths could be avoided from diarrhoea each year through provision of improved sanitation. An estimated 85 per cent of the 1.6 million deaths due to diarrhoea each year can be linked to poor sanitation and unsafe drinking water, it states in its report.
None of these facts is new. Yet, every few years new reports have to be issued, organisations like Water Aid run campaigns, some statements are made by leaders endorsing the concern — and then little happens.
India has agreed to developmental targets set under what are called the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) that should be reached by 2015. One of these is ensuring that the sanitation coverage reaches at least 46 per cent of the country’s population. Yet this is the one area on which the country is falling short.
Once again, you are forced to ask: Why? Why when we want recognition as a nuclear power, why when we want recognition as a growing economic power, why when we want to boast of our educated and trained manpower should we not come to grips with the issue of sanitation?
One reason, as I have suggested above, is that the people most affected are often the most powerless. And those who have the power to make decisions do not feel the need in the same way. Hence, the lower priority.
Not just a question of choice
Secondly, clean and healthy living has now been reduced to a personal choice. Health is all about what we eat or don’t eat, how much we exercise and what kind of exercise, what medicines we take, the kind of doctors we consult etc. But what happens if you live in an area where there are no pipes to carry water, where there is no sewerage? How can you make such personal choices when your environment negates any desire you might have to remain clean and healthy?
This is the reality that confronts my rag picker woman every day. Others of her kin probably live in slums, many located on low-lying flood prone areas that have never been serviced with water or sewerage. Sometimes, the municipal corporation receives funds to build toilets. And these are constructed on land incapable of absorbing the waste from these toilets because it is already sodden. Within a short time the toilets are blocked and overflowing — and people continue to defecate in the open all around the toilets. For this they are blamed — for creating dirt and spoiling the environment.
If I were to make a wish list for whichever party comes to power next in India, I think I would put toilets at the top of that list. Of course, livelihoods are also important. As are pucca houses. And water. And power. And education. And healthcare. But sewerage systems connected to individual or shared toilets would overnight change the look and smell of so many of our cities — and provide enormous relief and dignity to millions of poor people.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
The Other Half
One out of every two persons in the world compelled to defecate in the open is an Indian. This is one of several unsavoury facts brought out in a recent report by the World Health Organisation and UNICEF. According to the report, out of the 1.2 billion people who defecate in the open worldwide because they have no access to toilets, more than half are Indian. An astounding 667 million people in this country have no option but to defecate in the open, a country that would like people to believe that it is on the cusp of becoming a global economic giant.
Why then does sanitation remain a subject that is accorded a relatively low priority compared to many other needs, including water and energy? Could it be because for the middle classes, policy makers, those who live in permanent housing with built-in toilets, sanitation is not an issue? But the lack of water and electricity is? Could it be because the problem is essentially that of the poor and the homeless? Could it also be because the worst affected are poor women?
These are questions that come to my mind almost every day when I walk past a woman with two young children. She is a rag picker. She has permission to sort through the garbage of the large government colony in the area. Usually, she sleeps near the garbage bin. Recently, she was asked to move. So she has found a spot in the colony where she sleeps surrounded by a few plastic bags that contain her meagre belongings.
Each day, the municipal truck clears the garbage bin after she has already rummaged through it and retrieved everything that is reusable and recyclable. This woman has no shelter, although she has an income from the sale of rags. As a result, she has no access to water or sanitation. Her children defecate on the road. I have no idea what she does. She probably has to wait until nightfall to locate a secluded spot. Yet, she “lives” in one of the more expensive parts of Mumbai. And she sorts the garbage of the very people who populate our government — the civil servants.
Larger realities
But this woman’s life is more than just a curiosity. It is illustrative of an ugly and larger reality. The absence of sanitation is not just a question of personal hygiene, or terrible indignity for poor people. It is also principally responsible for the spread of several diseases. According to the international charity Water Aid, which assembled data on this issue for world leaders meeting in Japan for the G8 summit, 40 per cent of the world’s population lack access to improved sanitation and this in turn kills more children than malaria, HIV/Aids and measles put together.
Water Aid believes that as many as 9,10,000 child deaths could be avoided from diarrhoea each year through provision of improved sanitation. An estimated 85 per cent of the 1.6 million deaths due to diarrhoea each year can be linked to poor sanitation and unsafe drinking water, it states in its report.
None of these facts is new. Yet, every few years new reports have to be issued, organisations like Water Aid run campaigns, some statements are made by leaders endorsing the concern — and then little happens.
India has agreed to developmental targets set under what are called the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) that should be reached by 2015. One of these is ensuring that the sanitation coverage reaches at least 46 per cent of the country’s population. Yet this is the one area on which the country is falling short.
Once again, you are forced to ask: Why? Why when we want recognition as a nuclear power, why when we want recognition as a growing economic power, why when we want to boast of our educated and trained manpower should we not come to grips with the issue of sanitation?
One reason, as I have suggested above, is that the people most affected are often the most powerless. And those who have the power to make decisions do not feel the need in the same way. Hence, the lower priority.
Not just a question of choice
Secondly, clean and healthy living has now been reduced to a personal choice. Health is all about what we eat or don’t eat, how much we exercise and what kind of exercise, what medicines we take, the kind of doctors we consult etc. But what happens if you live in an area where there are no pipes to carry water, where there is no sewerage? How can you make such personal choices when your environment negates any desire you might have to remain clean and healthy?
This is the reality that confronts my rag picker woman every day. Others of her kin probably live in slums, many located on low-lying flood prone areas that have never been serviced with water or sewerage. Sometimes, the municipal corporation receives funds to build toilets. And these are constructed on land incapable of absorbing the waste from these toilets because it is already sodden. Within a short time the toilets are blocked and overflowing — and people continue to defecate in the open all around the toilets. For this they are blamed — for creating dirt and spoiling the environment.
If I were to make a wish list for whichever party comes to power next in India, I think I would put toilets at the top of that list. Of course, livelihoods are also important. As are pucca houses. And water. And power. And education. And healthcare. But sewerage systems connected to individual or shared toilets would overnight change the look and smell of so many of our cities — and provide enormous relief and dignity to millions of poor people.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Monday, July 14, 2008
Motif of violence
The Hindu, Sunday, July 13, 2008
The Other Half
Afghanistan is once again in the news with the horrific bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul. Violence has remained a motif in a country trying hard to build a peaceful civil society. Everyone pays for this continuing violence -- men, women and children-- not just with their lives but also through the abysmal quality of their lives if and when they do survive.
Although some things have improved in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was removed, much remains difficult to tackle, not least the problems women face. Hamid Karzai&'s government has set up a Ministry of Women's Affairs to deal with women's issues, has emphasised education for girls, has tried to deal with the other forms of violence to which women are daily subjected. But the instability in the country appears to undo the good that is being done. Thus, the slow progress of getting girls to enrol in schools has been adversely affected with the forced closure of 350 schools in the last year in the Taliban-dominated southern part of the country. Making a dent on the low literacy levels -- 85 per cent of women are illiterate -- becomes virtually impossible under such circumstances.
Another custom that has been difficult to reverse has been that of forced marriages, where even under-age girls are forced to marry men much older than them. One indication of the desperation of women caught in such circumstances is the increasing incidence of self-immolation as a form of suicide. According to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission ( www.aihrc.org.af), such acts are increasing. Last year, 165 such suicides were recorded. It is possible that many are never reported.
Universal phenomenon
But violence against women is a motif that extends beyond Afghanistan. It is common to all societies although in some it takes a more horrific form. In several countries around the world, where traditional laws continue to be practised, women have no court of appeal to which they can turn when traditional courts order punishment or death for "honour" crimes. Even where there are laws banning such practices, they continue to be
practised with impunity.
"There is no 'honour'in killing", a report of the South Asian Seminar on Honour Killings that was held in Mumbai in 2006, brings this out vividly. The report was released last month by former Pakistan Supreme Court judge, Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid. It emphasises that the concept of "honour" in all societies is premised on women's bodies and their behaviour. Norms are set on how women should behave, whom they can marry and how they should conduct their lives. These norms are rooted in patriarchy, based on what men believe is a woman's place. "Honour" of the community, the caste and even the nation is vested in women. So if women deviate from these norms, they are
deemed to be violating this "honour". And for this they are punished, sometimes even with death. Men are not spared either. There are innumerable reports of men and women being killed for marrying outside their caste or religious community.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
The Other Half
Afghanistan is once again in the news with the horrific bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul. Violence has remained a motif in a country trying hard to build a peaceful civil society. Everyone pays for this continuing violence -- men, women and children-- not just with their lives but also through the abysmal quality of their lives if and when they do survive.
Although some things have improved in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was removed, much remains difficult to tackle, not least the problems women face. Hamid Karzai&'s government has set up a Ministry of Women's Affairs to deal with women's issues, has emphasised education for girls, has tried to deal with the other forms of violence to which women are daily subjected. But the instability in the country appears to undo the good that is being done. Thus, the slow progress of getting girls to enrol in schools has been adversely affected with the forced closure of 350 schools in the last year in the Taliban-dominated southern part of the country. Making a dent on the low literacy levels -- 85 per cent of women are illiterate -- becomes virtually impossible under such circumstances.
Another custom that has been difficult to reverse has been that of forced marriages, where even under-age girls are forced to marry men much older than them. One indication of the desperation of women caught in such circumstances is the increasing incidence of self-immolation as a form of suicide. According to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission ( www.aihrc.org.af), such acts are increasing. Last year, 165 such suicides were recorded. It is possible that many are never reported.
Universal phenomenon
But violence against women is a motif that extends beyond Afghanistan. It is common to all societies although in some it takes a more horrific form. In several countries around the world, where traditional laws continue to be practised, women have no court of appeal to which they can turn when traditional courts order punishment or death for "honour" crimes. Even where there are laws banning such practices, they continue to be
practised with impunity.
"There is no 'honour'in killing", a report of the South Asian Seminar on Honour Killings that was held in Mumbai in 2006, brings this out vividly. The report was released last month by former Pakistan Supreme Court judge, Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid. It emphasises that the concept of "honour" in all societies is premised on women's bodies and their behaviour. Norms are set on how women should behave, whom they can marry and how they should conduct their lives. These norms are rooted in patriarchy, based on what men believe is a woman's place. "Honour" of the community, the caste and even the nation is vested in women. So if women deviate from these norms, they are
deemed to be violating this "honour". And for this they are punished, sometimes even with death. Men are not spared either. There are innumerable reports of men and women being killed for marrying outside their caste or religious community.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Monday, July 07, 2008
Work matters
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, June 29, 2008
The Other Half
In Aurangabad, Maharashtra, a group of women have taken on the challenging but difficult job of burying or cremating the bodies of accident victims. The women are a part of a self-help group. Traditionally, most such groups engage in traditional task s — “womanly” tasks, one might say — such as making papads, embroidery, making paper products etc. to earn money. It is rare that you hear of a group that breaks away from the norm.
According to a newspaper report, the women in Aurangabad successfully won a contract put out by the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation for this task. Four groups of men had also applied and had asserted that such work was not “woman’s work”. Yet, the 11 women of the Panchsheel Mahila Bachat Gat managed to win the contract. They are paid Rs. 15,000 per month by the AMC for five bodies and Rs. 3,000 for every additional body. The women say that they manage to save Rs. 500 per body. And amazingly, these women have overcome their own aversion to such a job and their worry about what others would say, including members of their family. They strongly believe that victims of accidents, often unidentified, must be given a decent burial or cremation.
Gendered professions
This story is interesting because it raises questions about the kind of jobs women can do, or cannot do. While women with education have crashed through many barriers and broken stereotypes in this country, choices for work are limited for poor women. Much of what they do is unpaid work, particularly in rural areas where women engage in agricultural work. Even in cities, poor women either work as domestics or do home-based work for which they are poorly paid.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
The Other Half
In Aurangabad, Maharashtra, a group of women have taken on the challenging but difficult job of burying or cremating the bodies of accident victims. The women are a part of a self-help group. Traditionally, most such groups engage in traditional task s — “womanly” tasks, one might say — such as making papads, embroidery, making paper products etc. to earn money. It is rare that you hear of a group that breaks away from the norm.
According to a newspaper report, the women in Aurangabad successfully won a contract put out by the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation for this task. Four groups of men had also applied and had asserted that such work was not “woman’s work”. Yet, the 11 women of the Panchsheel Mahila Bachat Gat managed to win the contract. They are paid Rs. 15,000 per month by the AMC for five bodies and Rs. 3,000 for every additional body. The women say that they manage to save Rs. 500 per body. And amazingly, these women have overcome their own aversion to such a job and their worry about what others would say, including members of their family. They strongly believe that victims of accidents, often unidentified, must be given a decent burial or cremation.
Gendered professions
This story is interesting because it raises questions about the kind of jobs women can do, or cannot do. While women with education have crashed through many barriers and broken stereotypes in this country, choices for work are limited for poor women. Much of what they do is unpaid work, particularly in rural areas where women engage in agricultural work. Even in cities, poor women either work as domestics or do home-based work for which they are poorly paid.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Being Hillary
I must add this note before I post this link to my column in The Hindu on Hillary Clinton. I got a huge response from readers, most of it positive but some of it viciously negative. One reader called Hillary a "bitch" and me a "misandrist". Another suggested that I should stop writing altogether because all I did was write from the perspective of women -- he's probably missed the point that my column in The Hindu is precisely that, a comment from a gender perspective. Some of them said I was ill-informed, that my comments were not factual, that they were biased etc. Somehow the fact that I had tried to separate the personalities of Obama and Hillary Clinton from the way the media handled the race was missed and I was seen as being narrowly partisan. While I expect as a columnist to provoke reactions, I am intrigued at the columns that do bring forth such extreme reactions. I find it even more fascinating that a race in a country where none of us can vote can trigger off such passions. On my part, while I do not celebrate that Hillary lost, I do think it is a historic moment for the US that Obama is the candidate. If he wins, and he should, it will be something the world will celebrate.
--------------------------------------
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, June 15
The Other Half
Hillary Clinton is now off the front pages. But she is still simmering on the back burner. The woman who would be President of the United States of America, by any measure the most powerful job in the world, is not going to slink away into anonymity. Someone who managed to get 18 million voters to support her attempt to claim the nomination of the Democratic Party is not a person you can brush off lightly. She has proved that she is someone to be reckoned with, to be taken seriously.
Yet, despite her determined and tireless campaign over seven months, there were many in the US who refused to take her seriously. Or rather they tried to ensure that no one would take her seriously by concentrating their criticism of her on things that have no relevance when it comes to holding political office. TV anchors mimicked her laugh or cackle as they called it --, spoofed her dress sense, railed against her for acting tough, chastised her if she showed any emotion, and made the most
unmentionable personal comments and jokes about her. If anything like this had been said about the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, Barack Obama, all hell would have broken loose. In the land of political correctness, you cannot make jokes about colour or about religion. But apparently women are fair game, particularly women who dare to enter an arena that has historically been the exclusive reserve of men.
One can find many faults with Hillary Clinton, as one can with Barack Obama. But these criticisms should be centred on the policies they advocate, the positions they have taken or not taken, their inconsistency, their lack of experience, their ethics, their world view. But surely in a race that is for the highest office, neither should have to face cheap personal attacks of the kind Hillary Clinton faced at the hands of America's "free" press.
Which brings us to the central question that must be asked now that the dust has settled: Is America ready to have a woman as President? Yes, if one counts the popular vote for Hillary Clinton that matched the votes that Obama managed to
get. No, if you read some of the writing and watch some of the television comments made about Hillary. All of them were personal. All of them were in bad taste. And all of them were anti-women.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
--------------------------------------
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, June 15
The Other Half
Hillary Clinton is now off the front pages. But she is still simmering on the back burner. The woman who would be President of the United States of America, by any measure the most powerful job in the world, is not going to slink away into anonymity. Someone who managed to get 18 million voters to support her attempt to claim the nomination of the Democratic Party is not a person you can brush off lightly. She has proved that she is someone to be reckoned with, to be taken seriously.
Yet, despite her determined and tireless campaign over seven months, there were many in the US who refused to take her seriously. Or rather they tried to ensure that no one would take her seriously by concentrating their criticism of her on things that have no relevance when it comes to holding political office. TV anchors mimicked her laugh or cackle as they called it --, spoofed her dress sense, railed against her for acting tough, chastised her if she showed any emotion, and made the most
unmentionable personal comments and jokes about her. If anything like this had been said about the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, Barack Obama, all hell would have broken loose. In the land of political correctness, you cannot make jokes about colour or about religion. But apparently women are fair game, particularly women who dare to enter an arena that has historically been the exclusive reserve of men.
One can find many faults with Hillary Clinton, as one can with Barack Obama. But these criticisms should be centred on the policies they advocate, the positions they have taken or not taken, their inconsistency, their lack of experience, their ethics, their world view. But surely in a race that is for the highest office, neither should have to face cheap personal attacks of the kind Hillary Clinton faced at the hands of America's "free" press.
Which brings us to the central question that must be asked now that the dust has settled: Is America ready to have a woman as President? Yes, if one counts the popular vote for Hillary Clinton that matched the votes that Obama managed to
get. No, if you read some of the writing and watch some of the television comments made about Hillary. All of them were personal. All of them were in bad taste. And all of them were anti-women.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Diary of the displaced
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, June 1, 2008
The Other Half
When a natural disaster, like an earthquake or a tsunami, destroys your home and leaves you destitute, you have no one to blame. The trauma and grief are great but most people move on. And there is help available. What happens when your home is flattened by bulldozers because a city decides that you should not live there any more, that the land you and perhaps your parents have lived on is now required for a “public purpose”? Which “public” and what “purpose”? You cannot demand an explanation.
In such an eventuality, the trauma and grief are as great as when hit by a natural disaster, but the sense of hopelessness is greater. For, it comes after years of deception, false hopes and broken promises. There is little help available. The choice has been made for you. Move to a new site, government approved, or perish.
The problem is that even when you do move, often you perish. For, the new locations are distant, deprive you of community, of livelihood, or security. A new, well-researched book, Swept off the Map: Surviving Eviction and Resettlement in Delhi by Kalyani Menon-Sen and Gautam Bhan (published by Yoda Press) brings many of these facts out in a credible and forceful way. The book traces families compelled to move from the banks of the Yamuna from an area called Yamuna Pushta in 2004 to the Bawana Resettlement Colony on the outskirts of Delhi. This was done because the Ministry of Tourism wanted to make the area into a tourist attraction. And the slums there, where an estimated 35,000 families had lived for over three decades, were an eyesore. So they had to be moved. Despite court cases and interventions by activists, the bulldozers moved in and flattened the colony. Only 16,000 families could prove their credentials to the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). They were allotted plots in several areas outside Delhi, including Bawana.
Through feminist lens
The above study follows 2,577 households and records the impact of the move on livelihood, quality of life and environment. The research project was novel because it trained community workers to conduct the study alongside trained researchers. And it developed the research through what the researchers call a “feminist lens”. Explaining this, they write: “Methodologically, feminist research differs from traditional research because it actively seeks to address and account for the power imbalances between women and men, and between researcher and subject. It is also a strategy for challenging the social inequality built into mainstream research methods. Most significantly, it recognises and builds on the standpoints and experiences of women in particular and other marginalised groups in general.” In other words, you don’t study women as subjects but study everything from the perspective of women. The results of applying such a lens to research are very different as is evident from this particular study.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
The Other Half
When a natural disaster, like an earthquake or a tsunami, destroys your home and leaves you destitute, you have no one to blame. The trauma and grief are great but most people move on. And there is help available. What happens when your home is flattened by bulldozers because a city decides that you should not live there any more, that the land you and perhaps your parents have lived on is now required for a “public purpose”? Which “public” and what “purpose”? You cannot demand an explanation.
In such an eventuality, the trauma and grief are as great as when hit by a natural disaster, but the sense of hopelessness is greater. For, it comes after years of deception, false hopes and broken promises. There is little help available. The choice has been made for you. Move to a new site, government approved, or perish.
The problem is that even when you do move, often you perish. For, the new locations are distant, deprive you of community, of livelihood, or security. A new, well-researched book, Swept off the Map: Surviving Eviction and Resettlement in Delhi by Kalyani Menon-Sen and Gautam Bhan (published by Yoda Press) brings many of these facts out in a credible and forceful way. The book traces families compelled to move from the banks of the Yamuna from an area called Yamuna Pushta in 2004 to the Bawana Resettlement Colony on the outskirts of Delhi. This was done because the Ministry of Tourism wanted to make the area into a tourist attraction. And the slums there, where an estimated 35,000 families had lived for over three decades, were an eyesore. So they had to be moved. Despite court cases and interventions by activists, the bulldozers moved in and flattened the colony. Only 16,000 families could prove their credentials to the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). They were allotted plots in several areas outside Delhi, including Bawana.
Through feminist lens
The above study follows 2,577 households and records the impact of the move on livelihood, quality of life and environment. The research project was novel because it trained community workers to conduct the study alongside trained researchers. And it developed the research through what the researchers call a “feminist lens”. Explaining this, they write: “Methodologically, feminist research differs from traditional research because it actively seeks to address and account for the power imbalances between women and men, and between researcher and subject. It is also a strategy for challenging the social inequality built into mainstream research methods. Most significantly, it recognises and builds on the standpoints and experiences of women in particular and other marginalised groups in general.” In other words, you don’t study women as subjects but study everything from the perspective of women. The results of applying such a lens to research are very different as is evident from this particular study.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Deleting girls
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 18, 2008
The Other Half
Now, even Amitabh Bachchan is speaking up for the “girl child”. Or so I am told. At a book launch in Mumbai last month, the Bollywood icon apparently spoke about the skewed sex ratio and unwanted girls. The five-star audience that had com
e to celebrate shining and successful India, the subject of the book, might have considered this a little odd. Success at ensuring that girls are not born is certainly not a reason to cheer. But it is also something people don’t like to be reminded of when they are fixated on “super power” India.
So whether it is a statement by Amitabh Bachchan today or the Prime Minister yesterday, the “girl child” issue, or that of sex-selective abortions, keeps popping up with uncomfortable regularity. No amount of cheering about India’s progress can detract from such an unsavoury reality about our country.
Complex issue
Although the issue seems simple — don’t select and delete girls — in fact it is far more complex. The campaigns against sex-selective abortion tend to simplify the issue. They emphasise one aspect so that people are shocked, or feel guilty. It is hoped that such a strategy will actually lead to change. But does it?
Take, for instance, images of a foetus in a womb with a noose around the neck. This is supposed to create a sense of revulsion and guilt about the use of sex-selective abortions. Perhaps it does. But is it also indirectly giving a message against all abortions? Is targeting the act of aborting the foetus the issue, or the fundamental reason why the woman has had to do this? The difference is important, as abortion rights are part of the larger debate on reproductive rights, while the motivation for sex-selective abortion is the prevalence of son-preference, which concerns the status of women in our society.
Need to be specific
Although the problem of sex-selective abortions and a declining sex ratio is spreading, it is confined at the moment to distinct parts of the country. Campaigners on women’s health and reproductive rights have argued that messages on this problem should be clearly targeted rather than universalised, particularly as they could have the adverse effect of making women feel guilty about having an abortion even for a legitimate reason.
India is one of the many countries where abortion is allowed on several grounds and can be done in safe conditions in government hospitals. Yet, although women have been given this right, only a small percentage of them go to government facilities for abortions. Most of them go to private practitioners or to quacks. Often this is due to ignorance. Poor women in particular are unaware that abortions are permitted and available in government facilities. The worst affected are poor, unmarried women who seek abortions for unwanted pregnancies. In government hospitals they often encounter uncomfortable questions. As a result, they are left with no choice but to risk infection or even death by getting an abortion in unsafe conditions.
Against this reality, where literally lakhs of women seek safe abortion because they are denied effective contraception, or are victims of sexual crimes, it becomes imperative that the campaign against sex-selection does not indirectly result in the curtailment of a woman’s basic right to decide whether and when she wants to have a child. The heart of the matter is a woman’s right over her own body. She should be allowed to decide. She should be given a choice. And she should not be made to feel guilty or like a criminal if she chooses not to bear a child.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
The Other Half
Now, even Amitabh Bachchan is speaking up for the “girl child”. Or so I am told. At a book launch in Mumbai last month, the Bollywood icon apparently spoke about the skewed sex ratio and unwanted girls. The five-star audience that had com
e to celebrate shining and successful India, the subject of the book, might have considered this a little odd. Success at ensuring that girls are not born is certainly not a reason to cheer. But it is also something people don’t like to be reminded of when they are fixated on “super power” India.
So whether it is a statement by Amitabh Bachchan today or the Prime Minister yesterday, the “girl child” issue, or that of sex-selective abortions, keeps popping up with uncomfortable regularity. No amount of cheering about India’s progress can detract from such an unsavoury reality about our country.
Complex issue
Although the issue seems simple — don’t select and delete girls — in fact it is far more complex. The campaigns against sex-selective abortion tend to simplify the issue. They emphasise one aspect so that people are shocked, or feel guilty. It is hoped that such a strategy will actually lead to change. But does it?
Take, for instance, images of a foetus in a womb with a noose around the neck. This is supposed to create a sense of revulsion and guilt about the use of sex-selective abortions. Perhaps it does. But is it also indirectly giving a message against all abortions? Is targeting the act of aborting the foetus the issue, or the fundamental reason why the woman has had to do this? The difference is important, as abortion rights are part of the larger debate on reproductive rights, while the motivation for sex-selective abortion is the prevalence of son-preference, which concerns the status of women in our society.
Need to be specific
Although the problem of sex-selective abortions and a declining sex ratio is spreading, it is confined at the moment to distinct parts of the country. Campaigners on women’s health and reproductive rights have argued that messages on this problem should be clearly targeted rather than universalised, particularly as they could have the adverse effect of making women feel guilty about having an abortion even for a legitimate reason.
India is one of the many countries where abortion is allowed on several grounds and can be done in safe conditions in government hospitals. Yet, although women have been given this right, only a small percentage of them go to government facilities for abortions. Most of them go to private practitioners or to quacks. Often this is due to ignorance. Poor women in particular are unaware that abortions are permitted and available in government facilities. The worst affected are poor, unmarried women who seek abortions for unwanted pregnancies. In government hospitals they often encounter uncomfortable questions. As a result, they are left with no choice but to risk infection or even death by getting an abortion in unsafe conditions.
Against this reality, where literally lakhs of women seek safe abortion because they are denied effective contraception, or are victims of sexual crimes, it becomes imperative that the campaign against sex-selection does not indirectly result in the curtailment of a woman’s basic right to decide whether and when she wants to have a child. The heart of the matter is a woman’s right over her own body. She should be allowed to decide. She should be given a choice. And she should not be made to feel guilty or like a criminal if she chooses not to bear a child.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Connecting to the Northeast
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 4, 2008
The Other Half
You know you have left “mainland” India the moment you leave the outskirts of Guwahati, Assam. Life suddenly takes on a different pace. For the tired eyes of an urban dweller, the green is incredibly soothing. And even the pre-monsoon Brahmaputra, at its lowest water level, is awe-inspiring.
But the scenic beauty, the slower pace at which things move, the abundance and variety of vegetation fail to camouflage the tensions that prevail just beneath the surface. You catch a glimpse when suddenly you come across army personnel patrolling an area. The military presence in Upper Assam is not as obvious as in Kashmir. But it is there, a reminder that all is not well in this beautiful State.
Constant reminder
Even in the not-so-remote parts of Assam, you are constantly reminded of the fact that the entire region remains apart. “Connectivity” was an issue more than three decades back. Assamese and other Northeasterners complained of their lack of access to each other and to India. Today, things have improved. There are more flights and trains coming into the Northeast from the “mainland”. But connectivity between the “Seven Sisters” is still poor. And although the Internet has begun to spread its reach, access is still indifferent at best and non-existent at worse. In fact, despite all these changes, the issue of “connectivity” continues to be the subject of editorials and discussions.
Difference and remoteness from the “mainland” are also evident in the choice of stories in the newspapers of Assam and the Northeast. After days of being assaulted by images of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket matches on the front page in Mumbai newspapers, it was a relief to read local newspapers for whom the brouhaha over this meshing together of sport and entertainment was a non-issue. In fact, even their sports pages did not carry any reports on this new version of Bollywood and cricket — that ought to be called Bricket.
Instead, the newspapers reported bomb blasts in Manipur, the death of a one-horned rhino in Assam (a reminder of the constant problem of poaching), and the civic problems that the burgeoning capital city of Assam faces. “Mainland” politics, and sports, were a somewhat lower priority.
The visit was also a reminder of how serious environmental concerns are ignored despite studies and reports. The highway that slices through the Kazhiranga National Park, a World Heritage Site, is like a scar. Buses blow loud horns, trucks spew out diesel fumes. Despite this, you can actually spot a rhino or two in the distance. But how long will these animals survive this steady onslaught on the environment that occurs day in and out just a few metres away from where they graze and calmly view the world around them?
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
The Other Half
You know you have left “mainland” India the moment you leave the outskirts of Guwahati, Assam. Life suddenly takes on a different pace. For the tired eyes of an urban dweller, the green is incredibly soothing. And even the pre-monsoon Brahmaputra, at its lowest water level, is awe-inspiring.
But the scenic beauty, the slower pace at which things move, the abundance and variety of vegetation fail to camouflage the tensions that prevail just beneath the surface. You catch a glimpse when suddenly you come across army personnel patrolling an area. The military presence in Upper Assam is not as obvious as in Kashmir. But it is there, a reminder that all is not well in this beautiful State.
Constant reminder
Even in the not-so-remote parts of Assam, you are constantly reminded of the fact that the entire region remains apart. “Connectivity” was an issue more than three decades back. Assamese and other Northeasterners complained of their lack of access to each other and to India. Today, things have improved. There are more flights and trains coming into the Northeast from the “mainland”. But connectivity between the “Seven Sisters” is still poor. And although the Internet has begun to spread its reach, access is still indifferent at best and non-existent at worse. In fact, despite all these changes, the issue of “connectivity” continues to be the subject of editorials and discussions.
Difference and remoteness from the “mainland” are also evident in the choice of stories in the newspapers of Assam and the Northeast. After days of being assaulted by images of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket matches on the front page in Mumbai newspapers, it was a relief to read local newspapers for whom the brouhaha over this meshing together of sport and entertainment was a non-issue. In fact, even their sports pages did not carry any reports on this new version of Bollywood and cricket — that ought to be called Bricket.
Instead, the newspapers reported bomb blasts in Manipur, the death of a one-horned rhino in Assam (a reminder of the constant problem of poaching), and the civic problems that the burgeoning capital city of Assam faces. “Mainland” politics, and sports, were a somewhat lower priority.
The visit was also a reminder of how serious environmental concerns are ignored despite studies and reports. The highway that slices through the Kazhiranga National Park, a World Heritage Site, is like a scar. Buses blow loud horns, trucks spew out diesel fumes. Despite this, you can actually spot a rhino or two in the distance. But how long will these animals survive this steady onslaught on the environment that occurs day in and out just a few metres away from where they graze and calmly view the world around them?
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Does reservation matter?
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, April 20, 2008
THE OTHER HALF
Every year, for the last decade or so, around this time, noises are made on the issue of women's representation in Parliament. Some shout, some request, some reason, some argue, all hope that somehow this year the vexed issue of whether there should be reservation of seats for women in Parliament is finally resolved. Predictably, the day, the month, the year passes,
Parliament convenes and reconvenes, and nothing much happens. The debate continues, inconclusive for all time it would seem.
Those who support reservation for women in Parliament argue that without a quota, women will continue to be excluded and
the most important decision-making body in the country will remain dominated by male politicians as it is at present and has been in the past. The counter argument holds that merely reserving seats for women will not ensure that any kind of gender or women's perspective will enter decision-making processes as the women who enter through this route are as likely to be the wives, sisters and relatives of male politicians as they have been in the past. Hence, why should these men be given a chance to extend their area of influence by inducting women who will, in any case, follow their command?
Then there is the other argument about women making it through this route and the exclusion of poor and lower caste women. So if there is reservation for women, it should be further broken up into quotas according to caste.
Lost focus
As is inevitable when such a debate stretches out over decades, the main focus somehow gets lost. In the meantime, many things have changed in Indian politics, not least the caste make up of Indian politics. And women too have become far more prominent in most political parties, including the Left parties, as compared to a decade back. You have women like Jayanti Natarajan, a lawyer, who is spokesperson for the Congress. In the past, we have seen Sushma Swaraj fulfilling the same function for the BJP. And Brinda Karat is a very visible face and voice of the Left. Of course, the women ministers remain confined to the "soft" ministries. We have still to see a woman heading Home Affairs, or Defence, or any of the economic ministries. Yet, there are professional women holding high positions in the area of finance, there are women in the bureaucracy who have now breached many barriers, and younger women are entering professions that their mothers thought were closed to their gender. So competence or knowledge on these issues cannot be an argument anymore in confining women politicians to certain portfolios.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
THE OTHER HALF
Every year, for the last decade or so, around this time, noises are made on the issue of women's representation in Parliament. Some shout, some request, some reason, some argue, all hope that somehow this year the vexed issue of whether there should be reservation of seats for women in Parliament is finally resolved. Predictably, the day, the month, the year passes,
Parliament convenes and reconvenes, and nothing much happens. The debate continues, inconclusive for all time it would seem.
Those who support reservation for women in Parliament argue that without a quota, women will continue to be excluded and
the most important decision-making body in the country will remain dominated by male politicians as it is at present and has been in the past. The counter argument holds that merely reserving seats for women will not ensure that any kind of gender or women's perspective will enter decision-making processes as the women who enter through this route are as likely to be the wives, sisters and relatives of male politicians as they have been in the past. Hence, why should these men be given a chance to extend their area of influence by inducting women who will, in any case, follow their command?
Then there is the other argument about women making it through this route and the exclusion of poor and lower caste women. So if there is reservation for women, it should be further broken up into quotas according to caste.
Lost focus
As is inevitable when such a debate stretches out over decades, the main focus somehow gets lost. In the meantime, many things have changed in Indian politics, not least the caste make up of Indian politics. And women too have become far more prominent in most political parties, including the Left parties, as compared to a decade back. You have women like Jayanti Natarajan, a lawyer, who is spokesperson for the Congress. In the past, we have seen Sushma Swaraj fulfilling the same function for the BJP. And Brinda Karat is a very visible face and voice of the Left. Of course, the women ministers remain confined to the "soft" ministries. We have still to see a woman heading Home Affairs, or Defence, or any of the economic ministries. Yet, there are professional women holding high positions in the area of finance, there are women in the bureaucracy who have now breached many barriers, and younger women are entering professions that their mothers thought were closed to their gender. So competence or knowledge on these issues cannot be an argument anymore in confining women politicians to certain portfolios.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Let’s not forget
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, April 6, 2008
The Other Half
Reams have been written in recent weeks about the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war. A war without justification. A war that has proved costly beyond measure. A war that is a living testimony that proves yet again that you cannot invent democracy and that you cannot impose peace through the use of force.
We know that more than 4,000 American soldiers have been killed, we know that George Bush is now one of the most unpopular presidents in the last months of his presidency principally because of the strong anti-war sentiment in his country.
But hidden behind all the analysis about this unjustified war and its impact on global politics, lies a hidden tragedy that is rarely reported, that of the condition of the women of Iraq. We know that war wreaks havoc on civil society. We know war hurts
the most vulnerable sections of any society the most. We also know that women often carry the biggest burden and pay the highest price for war. Yet, often their stories remain untold, their suffering unknown, their tragic faces unseen.
Iraq’s dirty secret
That is what is happening in Iraq where the impact on women is being dubbed its “dirty secret”. According to a recent survey
conducted by Women for Women International in Iraq, two thirds of the 1,500 women surveyed said that violence on women had increased in Iraq. Zainab Salbe, the CEO of Women for Women, is quoted saying: “It has been five years since the American
invasion of Iraq and while the mistakes made then continue to accumulate still, no one has stopped to listen to what this critical mass of the population, women, have to say about solving the problems.” Even if Iraqi women wanted to have a say — and they certainly do — would anyone listen to them? From a country where women were prominent in professions like medicine, engineering, academia and in government, Iraqi women today are sequestered in their homes, forbidden by various sects from working in various professions. According to the Women for Women International report, “Stronger women, stronger nations: 2008 Iraq report”, 76.2 per cent of the women surveyed said that girls in their
families were not allowed to attend school. Over 70 per cent said their families could not earn enough to meet their basic needs and 68 per cent said women were having difficulty finding jobs. Over 67 per cent said that their ability to walk on the street as they pleased had become worse since the US invasion. Less than a third of the women surveyed were optimistic about the future as opposed to almost two thirds in an earlier survey.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
The Other Half
Reams have been written in recent weeks about the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war. A war without justification. A war that has proved costly beyond measure. A war that is a living testimony that proves yet again that you cannot invent democracy and that you cannot impose peace through the use of force.
We know that more than 4,000 American soldiers have been killed, we know that George Bush is now one of the most unpopular presidents in the last months of his presidency principally because of the strong anti-war sentiment in his country.
But hidden behind all the analysis about this unjustified war and its impact on global politics, lies a hidden tragedy that is rarely reported, that of the condition of the women of Iraq. We know that war wreaks havoc on civil society. We know war hurts
the most vulnerable sections of any society the most. We also know that women often carry the biggest burden and pay the highest price for war. Yet, often their stories remain untold, their suffering unknown, their tragic faces unseen.
Iraq’s dirty secret
That is what is happening in Iraq where the impact on women is being dubbed its “dirty secret”. According to a recent survey
conducted by Women for Women International in Iraq, two thirds of the 1,500 women surveyed said that violence on women had increased in Iraq. Zainab Salbe, the CEO of Women for Women, is quoted saying: “It has been five years since the American
invasion of Iraq and while the mistakes made then continue to accumulate still, no one has stopped to listen to what this critical mass of the population, women, have to say about solving the problems.” Even if Iraqi women wanted to have a say — and they certainly do — would anyone listen to them? From a country where women were prominent in professions like medicine, engineering, academia and in government, Iraqi women today are sequestered in their homes, forbidden by various sects from working in various professions. According to the Women for Women International report, “Stronger women, stronger nations: 2008 Iraq report”, 76.2 per cent of the women surveyed said that girls in their
families were not allowed to attend school. Over 70 per cent said their families could not earn enough to meet their basic needs and 68 per cent said women were having difficulty finding jobs. Over 67 per cent said that their ability to walk on the street as they pleased had become worse since the US invasion. Less than a third of the women surveyed were optimistic about the future as opposed to almost two thirds in an earlier survey.
(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)
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