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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

And now the good news

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 23, 2008

The Other Half

If you were a woman journalist, based in Chitrakoot in Uttar Pradesh, what would be your take on the Scarlett Eden Keating rape and murder in Goa? Would you consider it front page news? Would you conclude that all of Goa is now unsafe for white women? Would you think it is national news?

For the eight Dalit and Kol women from Chitrakoot, who bring out a fortnightly publication in the local language, Bundeli, called Khabar Lahariya, Goa is a long way away. But rape and murder of women is something they know, that is not unusual. White women might not visit Chitrakoot, but the colour of your skin matters little if you are a victim of rape. You just have to be a woman. The editors and journalists of Khabar Lahariya know and understand this.

One of the more unusual interactions I have been a part of was a meeting between these eight women and Mumbai-based women journalists. We were worlds apart, literally. And yet, as journalists and as women, we spoke the same language.

An experiment


Khabar Lahariya began as an experiment in 2002, aided by Nirantar, a resource centre for gender and education. It is based in Chitrakoot district, one of the 200 poorest districts in India, where there is practically no industry and the majority of
people survive on rain-fed agriculture. Literacy rates are lower than the national average; female literacy is only 35 per cent. The sex ratio is also below the national average, only 872 women to a 1,000 men. Incidents of sexual violence are high and
the justice delivery system barely functions as criminal gangs operate with impunity under the nose of a complacent and often complicit administration.

Against this background, a group of Dalit and adivasi women felt the need to start and run their own newspaper because the existing media in the area did not report on the issues that concerned them. They wanted to break the stereotype that lower caste women like them would not dare enter the public domain. Despite their lack of education, they wanted to prove that they too could be journalists.

Meera, who is the editor-in-chief of Khabar Lahariya (they now have a second edition from Banda), says that initially women like her faced an identity problem. For instance, she had worked with the Mahila Samakhya programme and was known in the
district as an activist. How could she establish that she was now a journalist? How could she tell people that she was there to report on what was happening but was not in a position to solve their problems? Would she be able to report with objectivity, she wondered? Also how would she tackle the feudal, patriarchal system? How would she and her team deal with opposition and criticism?

These and other related issues formed the subject of training workshops for the budding editors and journalists. In the initial years, they stuck to familiar areas — violence against women, developmental stories etc. They steered away from politics and other contentious issues. But a survey of readers shocked them into realising that no one was taking their efforts seriously. That their paper was being seen as a publication only for women and about women when they wanted to make it a rural
newspaper that would be read by everyone, men and women.

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

Sad Sunday

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 9, 2008

THE OTHER HALF

Kalpana Sharma

The euphoria over India’s achievements in the field of sports on Sunday, March 2 — the under-19 Cricket World Cup victory, the win over World Champions Australia in Sydney by the Indian Cricket Team, and the Indian hockey team defeating Austria in Santiago, Chile — was somewhat dimmed for me by three news items that appeared in Mumbai’s newspapers. One could argue that one should not get so perturbed at such news, that newspapers always report bad news and that often such news is exaggerated and sensationalised. It would be comforting to believe this. Unfortunately, the real story is likely to be worse as these stories are probably indicative of many more such incidents that never get recorded.

The most upsetting was the report about a 12-year-old Nepali girl who had been tortured and sexually abused by her employers. The Superintendent of Police (Thane Rural), Naval Bajaj was quoted as saying, “The little girl’s condition is spine-chilling. She has scars from deep stab wounds all over her body and we cannot even think of the scars these incidents have left on her mind.” (Mumbai Mirror, March 2, 2008) The girl’s mother was a domestic help who trusted her employer when the latter took the little girl with her to
Pune. Little did she suspect that her child would be the victim of this kind of torture.

Traumatised lives

On the same day, another story appeared in the newspapers about young schoolgirls in class III and IV, studying in an English medium primary school outside Mumbai, being sexually molested by their school principal. He would call them for extra tuitions on a Saturday and instead of teaching them, he would molest them and threaten that if they told anyone, he would ensure that they failed in their exams. Three of the girls finally broke down and told their parents. As a result, the parents lodged a complaint with the local police and the man has been arrested. The law will now take its own course. But in the meantime, these young girls are traumatised and their parents are beginning to wonder whether it is safe for anyone to send their daughters to school.

Last month, another story from an educational institution in Gujarat raised similar questions. In that instance, in the town of Patan in north Gujarat, an 18-year-old Dalit girl training to be a primary school teacher revealed that she had been gang-raped on numerous occasions by six male teachers for six months. They threatened to fail her if she reported these incidents. The Patan issue has now become a political hot potato with students of the teachers’ training institute demanding a judicial inquiry.

The third is the story of the wife of a jeweller in Mumbai who has been thrown out of her house with a 20-month old baby and a two-year-old because she failed to produce a son. After the first daughter, she was forced to undergo two abortions because they found out the sex of the unborn child. The third time, she carried the child to term only to realise that it was another girl. Her husband and his family have thrown her out of her house. They were even willing to commit her to a mental institution. The woman turned to the police for help. Hence the story has been told.

Three different stories but one common thread — the vulnerability of girls and women inside and outside their homes. The first story of the 12-year-old is especially heart-rending because it emphasises the absence of any protection for young girls who are forced into domestic work. Women who work in homes often take their young children along with them. While the boys are sent to school, the girls are made to help the mother in the domestic chores. In time, the minor who should not be working at all becomes a part of the household. Some employers are kind and virtually adopt such children making sure they are looked after. Some even pay for them to go to school. But there are those like the employer of the 12-year-old who exploit and torture them. Nine times out of ten, silence surrounds such atrocities; no one knows, no one complains. And lives are permanently destroyed.
 
A set back

The incident at the English medium primary school outside Mumbai is also troubling at a time when concerted efforts to educate girls are beginning to pay dividends. At least up to the primary level, there is a noticeable increase in the number of girls who enrol in schools. You can see these girls excitedly running towards their schools in the morning. The quality of their education might be indifferent. But at least the first step has been taken.

If incidents of this kind of sexual molestation circulate, the entire effort to increase girls’ education could be set back. Parents would prefer to protect their daughters by keeping them at home rather than risk sending them to such schools. Or they might make same sex schools with same sex teachers a precondition. Of course, none of this can guarantee that their daughters will be “safe”.

The story about the woman being thrown out for producing a girl child does not shock anymore because so many such incidents are reported. We have to despair when we think about the issue of son preference in the context of women’s status in India. All the hype about a handful of successful women cannot detract from this shameful reality — that girls are simply not wanted. How can we break the stranglehold of this mentality that denies women the right even to exist? As long as this attitude dominates, can we really claim that women’s status in this country is improving? A day after International Women’s Day, celebrated these days more by companies selling consumer goods than by women, we must pause and reflect.


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

Facade of cosmopolitanism

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 2, 2008

Kalpana Sharma


Amina presides over Dharavi’s Muslim Nagar like a monarch. She is the local ‘Dadi’, the woman to whom all kinds of people turn to for help. She is also the protector of her settlement, off Dharavi’s 90ft road. So when Raj Thackeray raised his call against so-called “outsiders”, the Biharis and people from Uttar Pradesh living in Mumbai, Amina was not bothered. Across her house — consisting of two rooms separated by several other similar rooms — are a bunch of “Bihari” tailors. They have worked there for at least a decade. The steady buzz of the machines rarely stops. “When the police come and ask me about them, I tell them in Marathi, ‘Don’t worry, brother, they are our people’,” she says. Ironically, the same woman had to defend another group of “our people” during the 1992-93 communal riots when the police came hunting for young Muslim men. Then too she intervened with the local police and protected the youth, many of them children of her friends.

Calm in Dharavi


So have the recent events triggered by Raj Thackeray disturbed relations in a place like Dharavi? Not at all, Amina asserts. Dharavi has a sizeable population of people from North India. They have lived and worked in this sprawling settlement for decades. Amina laughs as she recounts how the Shiv Sena in Dharavi has now come out in support of the North Indians living there, the majority being Muslims. These were the very people who the Sainiks targeted during the 1992-93 riots, forcing many of them to lock their rooms and run away to their villages. Most eventually returned.

Raj Thackeray’s men cannot enter such settled places as Dharavi. They would find it impossible to target the individuals who are part of the fabric of Mumbai. So they pick on the easy targets, the visible targets — taxi drivers, bhel puri vendors. And in other cities in Maharashtra, the temporary migrants, the construction workers, the casual labourers in the smaller industries who cluster together in temporary settlements. You can threaten them, scare them, demand they speak Marathi and force them to pack up and leave.

There are many ironies, contradictions, myths that lie exposed after the shameful events of last month, when ordinary, hard-working people were beaten up in full view of television cameras just because they happened to have been born in another part of this country.

Such “sons of the soil” campaigns have been seen in many parts of India. They have also been a part of Mumbai’s politics. Yet the visual images of that violence left many people shaken. Was it a passing phenomenon or would it permanently alter the demographics of not just Mumbai but other cities in the state? Is Mumbai’s apparent cosmopolitanism really in danger? What would be the long-term impact of this divisive campaign on the rest of the country?

Through his anti-outsider campaign, Raj Thackeray has exposed himself as little more than a Sena man pretending to be different. He launched the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) on the grounds that he wanted to be get away from the politics of his parent organisation. He drew to it many of the younger Sena workers who were unhappy with the bureaucratic and cautious ways of his cousin Uddhav, anointed successor to Bal Thackeray.

And in the first year, he tried to attract Marathi intellectuals and professionals to advise him on how he should proceed. Some people believed that the man had changed from the days when he led the Shiv Sena cadre who beat up Biharis applying for jobs in Mumbai.
But with elections drawing closer, there is no time for such gradualism. So Raj Thackeray has taken a short cut in the belief that nothing succeeds like divisive politics.

He has his uncle’s example to follow. The Shiv Sena built its base by targeting non-Maharashtrians — South Indians, Gujaratis, Muslims — and by injecting fear through strategic violence. The Congress Party gave it a leg-up in the initial years as the Sena helped break the hold of the Left parties in Mumbai. As a result, the Sena took hold of Mumbai, held it to ransom at will and destroyed its inclusive image.
 
Divisive agenda

Raj Thackeray is building his base on the same platform. The politics of fear and hate are the easiest recourse for politicians with no other ideology. Such political formations, born of divisive agendas, cannot be reformed. Raj Thackeray has proved that.

The incidents of last month have also forced many in Mumbai to question yet again the so-called “cosmopolitanism” of this city. The last time we questioned this was after the 1992-93 communal riots. Even South Mumbai, considered the heartland of the city’s cosmopolitan culture, fell in line with the communal atmosphere as buildings with mixed residents hastily removed nameplates of Muslim residents and even requested some of them to leave.

Since then, with all the hype about turning Mumbai into a global city, perhaps some unreality has come in again. It is visible in the elite circles in the city where Mumbai is once again being called Bombay without any fear of being politically incorrect.
Mumbai might seem cosmopolitan for those with safe jobs and secure housing. But even among them, not all have the same experience.

Ask Muslim professionals from other parts of the country the problems they face finding a place to live. People are rejected not just if they are Muslim but even if they eat meat. There are entire areas in Mumbai where even restaurants serving meat cannot operate. This is not cosmopolitanism; this is the bully tactics by the majority.

At the same time, although the images of bhel puri vendors and taxi drivers being beaten up bring home the shameful reality that it is the poor who get trampled on when the politically powerful play games, the reality also is that in Mumbai (not the Bombay of the elite), economic interdependence has forged alliances and tolerance that survive such politics.

It is not an accident that the displaced people from Nashik, the city that saw the most violence, found their relatives in Mumbai and sank into the anonymity of a big city. It is this anonymity that works in favour of the “outsider” because he/she cannot be easily identified or targeted.

What the real outsiders to Mumbai do not recognise is that Mumbai is many cities within one. All those different entities come together during a crisis, as was evident during the 2005 floods. But on a day-to-day basis, they operate separately, even if interdependently.
 
Different entities

So there is the aspirational global city — restricted to a few handpicked areas where there is a mix of population in terms of communities. This is the city that is once again calling itself Bombay, pretending to be cosmopolitan and open but actually catering to a “globalised” class of people who would prefer the city’s poor people to disappear.
And then there is the inclusive city, evident much more in poor Mumbai than in the richer areas. Here tolerance is not a theoretical construct. It is forced on you.

It’s a survival tactic. You tolerate me, I tolerate you and both of us prosper. That is the mantra that drives Mumbai. And most of the time it works. Until an upstart politician decides to inject fear and poison. In places like Nashik or Pune or other cities in Maharashtra, the same formula does not work.

Here migrant workers live together in enclaves and are easy targets. Most of those who have left these cities in the last month are temporary workers employed in the construction industry and in small workshops. There are no Maharashtrian migrants lining up for these jobs and being denied them.
 
Disturbing developments

What is disturbing about the recent developments is the absence of a strong civil society response against the violence. Politicians like L. K. Advani pointed out that Thackeray’s statements were unconstitutional.

But where were the other voices that would normally come out against communal violence, for instance? And what about the Maharashtrian intellectuals?
Some Marathi newspapers did criticise Thackeray; some individuals appeared on television talk shows and expressed their dismay at what he was doing in the name of the Marathi Manoos. But there was little by way of mobilising the larger secular community.
One of the few statements that was circulated by e-mail and signed by younger Maharashtrian academics stated, “It is also true that Mumbai is a highly divided city and it’s very easy for some Maharashtrians to be manipulated by a nativist ideology. This is as true in many other parts of the country as well. However we firmly believe that the vast inequalities in the city need to be addressed in real ways rather than this shadow-boxing that Mumbai has been a victim of for decades. We the undersigned would like to place on record that Raj Thackeray does not speak for all Maharashtrians. He certainly does not speak for us.”

Those who believe that India is a free country where every citizen is entitled to live and work where he or she chooses cannot afford to remain silent and just observe such politics of hate and violence. If we fail to resist and oppose it today, in the long run it will take over all our lives.


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

Sorry, a powerful word

Sunday, Feb 24, 2008

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine

The Other Half

Kalpana Sharma


The image of Australia has taken a beating in this
country because of two recent incidents — the
Haneef case where the doctor from Bangalore was held
on charges of terrorism and the cricket controversy
over Harbhajan Singh’s allegedly 
220;racist” comments directed at Australian
cricketer Andrew Symonds.

The Haneef issue in particular raised questions
about racism in Australia, a complex country and a
lively democracy. It has undergone a significant
demographic transformation in the last half-century
with steady migration from Asian countries. Yet, the
stamp of a “white” Australia has not
been diluted enough to project an image of
multi-culturalism. Above all, the unresolved issue
of the treatment meted out to the country’s
Aboriginal people is one that continues to haunt
succeeding generations of Australians.
Until the 1970s, Australia had a policy of
separating Aboriginal children from their parents by
force in an openly racist policy of social
engineering that began in 1910 but remained
unquestioned until 1970. In an effort to virtually
eliminate Australia’s Aboriginals who have a
living history going back some 60,000 years, the
government adopted a policy of forced assimilation
of Aboriginal children into white society.

Books like Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris
Pilkington Garimara, later made into a film in 2002,
brought out in moving detail the gross inhumanity of
this policy. The book recounts the journey of the
author’s mother and two other aboriginal girls
who ran away from the Moore River Native Settlement,
north of Perth, where they had been forcibly placed
in 1931. The three girls walked for an incredible
nine weeks covering 2,414 km, dodging the officials
and trackers trying to find them, until they reached
their home.

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

How confident are we?

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Feb 19, 2008

THE OTHER HALF


KALPANA SHARMA



When the media claims that the Indian woman has
finally “arrived”, that there is a
noticeable change in her status, and that she
displays a new confidence, how should one react?
Believe? Disbelieve? Applaud? Be cynical? Or conduct
a reality check?

It is virtually impossible to generalise on the
status of women in India. For every plus point
showing an improvement, there are a dozen minus
points indicating the reverse. Therefore, arriving
at a mean between these two extremes becomes
difficult.

Last month, the Centre for Study of Developing
Societies (CSDS) with two media houses, Indian
Express and CNN-IBN, released the results of an
interesting survey on the status of Indian women.
The sample was small — 4,000 women in 20
states and across 160 locations — and the
survey acknowledge that it had a decided urban skew.
Yet, the results indicated some notable trends.
One of the interesting findings was that the
majority of Indian women wanted to
“work” outside the house in paid labour.

Those not engaged in such work at the moment, wanted
the chance to do so. They felt they got more respect
if they worked outside the house. Yet, the majority
also admitted that they were not paid equal wages to
the men nor did they get the position they felt they
deserved at their place of work. And a large number
complained of harassment at work.

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

Importance of being Bilkis

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, January 27, 2008

https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/Importance-of-being-Bilkis/article15401358.ece

The Other Half

Kalpana Sharma


It is one of those horror stories from the Gujarat carnage of 2002 that few can forget. A young Muslim woman, six months pregnant, runs for her life from her village when rampaging mobs attack it on February 28. She has with her a three-year-old daughter, her mother and other relatives. They move out of their village under cover of darkness and
hide in a field hoping to escape. Instead, the next morning they are confronted with a mob of 20 to 30 men carrying swords and sickles who assault and gang rape the four women, including Bilkis and her mother, kill many of the others, and kill her three-year-old daughter by “smashing” her on the ground. Of the 17 who left the village, only three survived, the bodies of eight were found and six are still missing.

The horror does not end there. Bilkis pretends she is dead and waits till the mob leaves. Then with the help of a home guard, and with her six-year-old nephew and a three-year-old boy who have survived, she trudges to a police station to register a complaint. On the way she borrows some clothes from an Adivasi woman to cover herself.

At the police station she receives little sympathy. Instead the policeman on duty pretends to listen to what she is saying but writes something completely different in the First Information Report on which he gets the illiterate Bilkis’ thumb impression.

Two days later, local photographers find eight bodies of the massacred family. This forces the police to act and post-mortems are conducted. Again, instead of recording the truth, they conduct what has now been termed a “shoddy” post-mortem and bury the bodies. Some years later, when the bodies are exhumed as part of a fresh investigation, none of them have skulls. It appears that they were decapitated after the post-mortem to prevent identification. In addition, salt was sprinkled on the bodies so that they would disintegrate.

Need to intervene

The case of Bilkis Bano has all the elements of the worst kind of horror including the indifference and complicity of the State in covering up the truth. But it also illustrates the kind of intervention that is needed in such situations to ensure that some justice is done.

For, it is now evident that the case would not have moved if it had been tried in Gujarat where it was first filed. In August 2004, the Supreme Court ordered that the case be tried in Mumbai. At this stage the CBI took over the investigation and ordered that the bodies of the eight people from Bilkis’ village be exhumed.

In just over a year after taking over the investigation, the CBI gathered enough evidence to arrest 20 people including six policemen. On February 21, 2006, the trial began in Mumbai. On January 18, 2007, the trial court held 12 of the 20 guilty including one policeman, sub-inspector Somabhai Gori, who “suppressed material facts and wrote a distorted and truncated version” of Bilkis’ complaint, according to the CBI. While Gori was given only two years imprisonment, the other 11 were given life sentences.

Apart from hearing the case in Mumbai, the decision to hold the trial in camera has also made a difference as it encouraged witnesses to testify without fear, something they would not have done in an open court. The policeman’s conviction, for instance, was made possible because three witnesses heard Bilkis give her report and what they said they heard differed substantially from what the policeman noted down.

Even today, fear dominates Radhikpur village. In anticipation of the judgment, the 60 Muslim families who still live there apparently quietly left the village as they feared a backlash from the families of those convicted, most of whom are from the same village.
But above all, it is Bilkis’ courage in going to the police station in the condition in which she was after a gang rape and after seeing her infant daughter being brutally murdered that clinched the case. Most women hesitate to go to the police. If you are poor, a Muslim, and living in a situation like the one that prevailed in Gujarat in 2002, the chances of turning to the police are even more remote. This is what makes Bilkis’ action so exceptional.
 
Uncertain future

Even after filing the complaint, she could have given up, been intimidated, allowed herself to be bought off, decided it would be simpler to forget about it. Yet, she persisted even though the personal price she has paid is hard to imagine. Nor can we fully comprehend what is her future, whether she will ever be able to live in peace in her village, or whether she will forever be a refugee hiding from those waiting to teach her another lesson. But amazingly, she has gone on record to say that she will not give up and continue to pursue the case until the five policemen who were let off for lack of evidence are also convicted.
Seeing photographs of this diminutive woman, one wonders from where she got the courage at that terrible moment to make the journey to the police station. If she had not done so, the story would never have been told. This ordinary woman has to be saluted for her extraordinary courage.

An assault on dignity

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, January 13, 2008

Kalpana Sharma

When 70 to 80 men surround two women, push them,
touch them, pounce on them, it is not
“molestation”; it is sexual assault. So
before we even begin to discuss the incident that
took place in the upmarket Mumbai suburb of Juhu in
the early hours of January 1, 2008, we should call
the crime by its real name.

The assault happened not because a group of
“lustful louts” were indulging in
“Mumbai molestation”, as the media put
it by using sexy shortcuts to describe the incident.
It was in fact an illustration of a range of
assaults on women that take place every day of the
year and in every part of this country. It became
national news because there was visual evidence. The
other thousands of similar and worse crimes get only
a brief mention in the newspapers because cameras
are not positioned to record them.

Other crimes

On the same day that the Juhu attack took place and
a few days later, here is a list of some of the
other crimes against women that occurred in Mumbai
and Maharashtra as reported in the English press:

On December 31, a 28-year-old woman in
Khadegolavali, Kalyan (east) was raped by two men
who entered her first floor room in a chawl, beat up
her husband who is a zari worker, and raped her.
This was at 2.30 pm in the middle of a working day.

On December 31, in Maharashtra Chief Minister
Vilasrao Deshmukh’s constituency of Latur, a
14-year-old girl was found hanging from a tree. When
her body was exhumed, there was a suspicion that the
men who killed her had also raped her. She had
complained about these men “teasing” her
but no one paid heed.

On December 31, the conductor and driver of a state
transport bus raped a woman who was on her way to a
village just north of Mumbai.

On January 5, a 13-year-old girl was gang raped and
burnt alive, her body found in the fields in a
village in Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra. She was
on her way back from school.

Maharashtra is competing with other states in its
record of crimes against women. Last year, Mumbai
police registered 356 cases of
“molestation”, that is almost one a day
and the railway police have a record of 1,068 cases,
almost three a day.

None of these incidents was reported in any detail,
nor did they make it to the front page or
“national news”. Crimes against women
don’t always make news. They hit the headlines
only when they are particularly horrific, or when
they affect women like us (that is urban, middle
class women) or when they are captured on visual
media.

The Mumbai incident has shock value. But that shock
should result in introspection and a reality check.
The reality is that crimes against women occur, have
been occurring and have not stopped just because
there is more money, more education, more
urbanisation, more globalisation, more
liberalisation. The difference is that more of them
are being noticed and reported.

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

Invisible women

The Hindu Sunday Magazine, Dec 30, 2007

THE OTHER HALF

They flit in and out of our homes like ghosts in the
night. They sweep and swab, wash and cook, look
after our children, care for the elderly. Yet we
know little about them. Most of us just about know
their first names. We don’t know where they
’re from, where they live, whether they are
married, how many children they have, how many other
homes they work in, what they earn — how they
survive. They are virtually invisible.

We usually wake up to their existence when they
don’t turn up for work. And the first response
is annoyance, because of the inconvenience caused to
us. Many professional women don the title of being
superwomen because they manage jobs and homes
— work life balance. But in fact the real
superwomen are these silent workers, without whom
few professional women in India would be able to
function. Yet, while those in formal employment get
sick leave, casual leave, privileged leave and
weekends, our domestic help is not entitled to any
of this. If she rests too long, she’s lazy. If
she doesn’t turn up for work, she’s a
shirker. It would appear that these women
don’t have the right to relax, to fall sick,
to have some fun. And of course, no one acknowledges
that when they’re done with our homes, they
still have their own homes where they have to do the
very same jobs, sweep and swab, wash clothes, cook
and take care of children and elderly.

Nishtha Jain, a Mumbai-based documentary filmmaker
has done what all of us need to do. She has not just
acknowledged that this silent worker in her home has
a name, but she’s followed her life so that we
see the person behind the name — a person just
like any of us. And instead of viewing the woman
from a distance, the filmmaker has bravely placed
herself in the frame, honestly dissecting her own
relationship as an employer. “Lakshmi and
Me” is a remarkably honest documentary about
21-year-old Lakshmi and the filmmaker, Nishtha.

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

Unrecognised heroines

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, December 16, 2007

THE OTHER HALF


KALPANA SHARMA



Is it best to forget, forgive and move on or should
we hold on to our belief that there has to be
justice for past wrongs? This question is being
asked repeatedly in the context of the forthcoming
Gujarat election. Some people argue that the
horrific events of 2002 can and should never be forgotten.

Others believe that Gujarat and Gujaratis must move
on and that economic development will ultimately
benefit all and automatically heal the wounds.
Yet, we know that unless there is justice, the
wounds don’t heal. In Mumbai, for the victims
of the March 1993 serial blasts, perhaps there is
some closure with the conclusion of the long drawn
out case that has convicted 100 people. But the
riots that preceded the bomb blasts have left behind
a legacy of gaping wounds — the perpetrators
of the crimes committed then, specifically named in
the Srikrishna Commission report, continue to roam
around freely while the victims survive in an
increasingly divided society. India’s post
Independence history is replete with such instances
of unresolved communal crimes.

Getting away unscathed



And then there are corporate crimes that also remain
unresolved. Remember Bhopal 1984? In one night,
3,000 people died because a leaking plant using
poisonous chemicals continued to operate with
impunity in the vicinity of a crowded locality of
urban poor. Until one cold December night when there
was an “accident”. Thousands died, many
more lived impaired lives for years and then died
and still more continue to carry the burden of poor
health for the crime of being near the Union Carbide
plant on that fateful night. Yet, the corporation
responsible for this “accident” has
escaped virtually unscathed.

For the victims of the Bhopal Gas Disaster, the
23-year-old struggle for justice has been relentless
and quite often thankless. For every bit of
additional compensation, for basic health
facilities, for a clean up of the rotting plant that
closed down after raining death on its
neighbourhood, they have had to petition,
demonstrate and fight.

Leading the struggle have been women. Two of them,
Rasheeda Bee and Champa Devi were recognised for
their efforts when they received the Goldman
Environmental Prize (considered an alternate Nobel)
in 2004. Now these women have used the prize money
of $1,25,000 to set up the Chingari Trust that will
seek out others like them around the country and
recognise their efforts.

This year, the first ever Chingari Award for Women
Against Corporate Crime was given to a 45-year-old
tribal woman from Rayagada district in Orissa, Mukta
Jhodia.

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

Srinagar Diary

The Hindu, Sunday, December 2, 2007


THE OTHER HALF


Cities can change and do. Five years is a long time
in the life of a city. It appears even longer when
the city in question is one at the heart of a tussle
that has ranged over 60 years. Srinagar, capital of
Jammu and Kashmir, has seen happiness and
sorrow, strife and togetherness, natural beauty and
the ugly detritus of conflict.

In 2007, many of the symbols emblematic of the
conflict are still in place. The gun-toting security
forces in civilian areas, the barbed wire, the
sandbags, the pill-boxes, the armoured cars. Also
the anger and resentment that spills out on the
streets at the slightest provocation. And the deep
wounds that sometimes remain unspoken.

But superficially, there are changes. Against the
background of the unsettled reality of the State and
the region, they seem dramatic. There is a new
international airport under construction. The road
from the airport to the city is lined with huge and
impressive new houses built with the wealth that is
now being invested in the State. Srinagar now boasts
of a flyover that is almost ready and a railway line
that is slowly making its way. The troops are not so
prominent now, although they are still a visible and
disturbing presence.

Apparent changes


The shops don’t shut after sunset as they did
five years ago. The beautiful boulevard kissing the
banks of the Dal Lake, now sadly shrinking due to a
combination of neglect and pollution, is now peopled
and not deserted as before. There are Internet cafes
and coffee houses. There are shopping malls. And
tragically, there is so much air pollution with the
explosion of cars on the roads that the sky is not
blue anymore. A grey haze hangs over Srinagar. The
urban scourge of the rest of South Asia has
descended on this picturesque city.

Five years ago, cell phones did not work in
Srinagar. Today, you see almost every person holding
a cell phone. But you can call anywhere in the world
except Pakistan. Pakistanis can reach you if you
live in Srinagar. But you can’t call them
back. One of those inexplicable decisions based on
“security” considerations.

Can this kind of physical change, integration into a
national and global economy, more personal
investment and wealth, erase the unresolved
questions that hover over every conversation in
Srinagar? There is a new confidence that is now
evident in the young Kashmiri and in the older ones
who have suffered through the decades of conflict.
Yet, this confidence does not necessarily mean that
people have changed their positions about the future
of Kashmir. And even if there is superficial peace,
the conflict is far from resolved. Reports in the
local newspapers, not always relayed to the national
press, remind us of the daily incidents that
illustrate the extent to which parts of the State
remain tense and disturbed.

At the same time, the Indo-Pak peace process, the
people to people exchanges, the opening up of
meeting points along the Line of Control have raised
some hope that permanent peace is possible. Apart
from the larger questions, what concerns the
ordinary person is finding ways to increase
communication between divided families and
communities straddling the LoC. This was the
question that engaged a group of almost 50 women
from both sides of the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

Fourteen women from the Pakistan side of Kashmir
crossed the Wagah border in mid-November, travelled
by road to Jammu and then flew in to Srinagar to
meet their counterparts on this side of the border.
This was the first time such a meeting was held
between women from the two sides.

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

World without women

The Hindu, November 18, 2007

The Other Half


KALPANA SHARMA

In the late 1980s, when we had the first indications
that technology was being used to ensure that girls
were not born, a few people made rather prescient
predictions about the future. They predicted that
women would face much greater violence. They suggested
that women would be trafficked.
These campaigners against sex-selective abortions were
condemned as scare-mongerers. They were told they were
exaggerating to make a point. Fewer women would mean a
greater demand for them. That instead of dowry, women
could demand a higher price for marriage.

Realities now
We know now that the opposite has happened. Many of
the dire predictions made in the 1980s are coming
true. In the States where sex selection is most
rampant, there are entire villages where the men
cannot find women to marry. So they are “buying” women
from other States. And in some instances, where the
family can afford to buy just one woman, she is
expected to “service” all the men in the family.

An increasing number of studies and reports are now
revealing that this is happening not just in Punjab
and Haryana, the States with the worst sex ratios but
also in some districts of Uttar Pradesh. It is
possible that such incidents could be occurring in
other States as well but have not yet been reported.

The 2001 census was a wake-up call. It exposed the
damning Indian reality of falling sex ratios in the
0-6 years age group. The national average stood at 927
girls to 1,000 boys. Since then some efforts have been
put in place to implement the law to check
sex-selective abortions and to encourage parents with
girls. But clearly, so far, the impact of such
policies has not made a difference. The Third National
Family Health Survey has revealed that five years
later, the sex ratio in the age group has fallen to
918.

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