Glamour Undone

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2011/04/3925

With a case in consumer court, a high-end beauty clinic is in the spotlight for irreversible damage caused to the eyesight, psyche and future of a young girl

For those of us who have studied Biology in school and dissected frogs in the laboratory, the following visual analogy might help. Preeti (name changed) had to lie face down on a bench, arms and feet spread out, so that the doctor could perform lumbar (spinal) puncture - a painful procedure involving surgical removal of excessive fluid from the spine to relieve the high fluid pressure that was blurring her vision. She screamed in pain but the operation was the only way to save her from going completely blind, thanks to a drug reaction.

In this procedure, a needle was used to extract a maximum of 25ml fluid to relieve her bulged out eye so that it could see better, and to treat severe headaches. This was the last resort after every other medical treatment to diagnose, treat or suppress her intense, intolerable pain had failed.

As was finally diagnosed by the neurophysician treating Preeti, the high fluid pressure was caused by a reaction to the minocycline drug prescribed to her at the high-end Kaya Skin Clinic for treatment of acne, rendering her 80 per cent blind at that time. Sadly, instead of stopping her from having more tablets, clinic staffers ensured she continued having them "to complete the medicine course".

Preeti underwent the spinal tap once and then another procedure - optic nerve fenestration - to save her failing eyesight, but is still left with permanent loss of peripheral (sideways) vision with blurry vision in one eye. She has acquired a hypo-allergic face skin that gets purple and blotchy under the sun, and so she will always have to use a special sunscreen or avoid sun exposure altogether.

It all started when Preeti complained of mild acne as an adolescent, which is a common complaint at that age. Impressed by advertisements, she wanted her pimples to be removed cosmetically and immediately. She could have also chosen a simple, healthy and balanced diet; but that perhaps would have taken much longer to work, compared to the quick-fix options offered by seductive, often brazenly unethical, ads.

"Since the time we contacted the Noida branch of Kaya Skin Clinic for treatment, our daughter has been traumatised. She has not stopped going to hospitals for one reason or another because of the reaction to the medicine they prescribed her," says her father, on condition of anonymity.

Among other things, Preeti was prescribed minox/minocycline 100 mg tablet daily, without any warning about probable side-effects that are well-established in medical literature. The consent form mentioned nothing to that effect either.

When contacted, Kaya representatives did not respond to this reporter's queries about the issue.

"Despite absence of proper legislation, the one thing that beauty clinics shouldn't be allowed to get away with is malpractice like this," says Dr Shehla Agarwal, consultant skin specialist, Mehak Skin Clinic, Delhi, who has hands-on experience of dealing with adolescents, anxious with skin problems.

"The consumer has to be more vigilant and should not get swayed by big media advertisements. They should ensure that people they go to for beauty treatment have the right qualification and are registered under the Medical Council Act," says Dr Shishu Bhushan Singh, a cosmetic surgeon at Dr Rekha Suman's Laser Cosmetic Surgery and Skin Clinic in Delhi.

Not only that, every clinic should maintain proper documentation of treatment they are giving. They should provide consumers with elaborate consent forms that clearly spell out the side-effects of medicines prescribed by their qualified doctors.

Doctors argue that people should understand how 'selling beauty' is big business because establishing and running such clinics in cities is not an easy job. Hence, demanding full information about the products and services they offer is the consumer's prerogative. Plus, none of the practitioners can claim to have magic wands for quick, short-cut, yet healthy treatments, as is misleadingly claimed in ads promoting beauty products and services endorsed by celebrities.

"Inexperienced medical graduates (fresh degree holders) should not be allowed to deal with patients in beauty clinics as the knowledge required to monitor the side-effects of medicines comes only with time," argues Dr Agarwal. "In many such clinics, there is this trend of different people dealing with the same patient each time s/he visits the clinic, thus breaking continuity in effective monitoring of the treatment."

"Yes, provision of services should be done ethically. The service provider should have full knowledge of the treatment s/he is giving. Another important factor is the quality of chemical products used during beauty treatments to avoid such chemical reactions. Today, every product in the market has a cheaper duplicate, from milk to garam masala. So when anyone goes for beauty treatment, s/he should also enquire about the quality of products used because beauty clinics commonly don't use original, good quality products so as to maximise their profit," says Karan, a senior make-up artist working with the Hindi film industry.

"Whatever the legislative weaknesses with regard to the beauty and cosmetic industry in our country, the fact remains that due to constant bombardment of the so-called ideal beauty images, especially targeting women, they have developed an inferiority complex and deep-seated insecurities about who they are and how they look," says Dr Rippon Sippy, a Delhi-based clinical psychologist. "I mean what is wrong with having acne sometimes? If you let it be, it goes away on its own."

In the contemporary anorexia-driven beauty business in metros and urban India, there is a constant comparison between bodily 'imperfections' vis-à-vis the artificial perfection of models and celebrities. Secretly or openly, the desire to possess a perfect skin, body, features, has been stimulated. Even youngsters, especially girls in their teens, face immense peer pressure, and suffer deep anxieties and insecurities. Like perhaps Preeti did.

Given that a section of women has more money to spare - it empowers but also creates an ironic decrease in self-worth - it is not surprising that many use products and services to alter their looks, points out Jessy K Philip, a sociology teacher at Delhi University. "In cities, fitting the beauty stereotype is something women are more obsessed with than in a village in Kerala, for instance, where women are also valued as workers."

As Naomi Wolf suggests in her book The Beauty Myth, why does this stereotypical notion of beauty - light coloured, fair, flawless, acne-less, hairless, smooth, young, tight skin and an hour-glass anorexic, almost famished, body shape - exclude women's inner qualities, integrity, resilience, achievements and talents? Why are educated, working women expected to conform to the mythical, antiseptic, market-driven, commercial body image, as if their acquired knowledge and professional skills are not enough?

"In my profession, if your face is not acne-free and your body weighs more than a prescribed standard, you'll be soon on your way out. This does cause stress, but it is part of our job to appear that way," says former air hostess Sanjam Jasuja.

Producer-anchor of a TV channel, Kajal Sharma, feels that for someone who appears on the TV screen every day, it becomes mandatory to constantly work towards a fair, smooth skin, wear make-up, have hair of a certain length, flaunt a certain kind of figure and look 'beautiful'. Just being intelligent and efficient is not enough.

Altering one's looks for 'job security' is one aspect of the problem women face, but changing one's appearance to feel valued as a person in relationships seems far more depressing. "One of the reasons why my marriage didn't work out was because I couldn't live up to the beauty norms prescribed in Punjabi families, which is different from what we learnt in Marathi culture. I remember growing up comfortably, like a tomboy, but today I use every product I must to make me look and feel feminine, and worthy of love," says Shruti (name changed), a JNU student in Delhi.

"I dress up conservatively and don't wear as much make-up in Delhi as I do when I am at home. This is because with people from the northeast, other stereotypes are associated. If we wear bright lipstick, we are thought of as women who are easily available. So then, this unfriendly city decides how beautiful I can look or how comfortable I can feel while I live here," says another student from JNU.

Celebrated feminist author-filmmaker Jean Kilbourne brings out similar, deeper concerns in her documentary Still Killing Us Softly, which is about beauty images that media propagates through ads. She says that ads sell not just products, but values, images and concepts such as love, sexuality and normalcy, defining who we should continuously aspire to be. Or else, you can feel left behind, incomplete, imperfect and guilty.

So, be it luxury creams or products to prevent aging, remove pregnancy marks, tighten the cleavage, soothe eyebrows, lighten skin colour and increase lip volume, or treatments for acne removal, facial wrinkles (botox) or body hair removal (waxing or laser), removal of 'ugly' fat (liposuction), breast augmentation, hair spa and so on: everything seems legitimate. However, the bitter realism might be different. "I doubt if women are dying to have body-altering treatments as most procedures are not physically comfortable, some involve painful sittings in beauty clinics with medical risks, some require multiple visits and cost a lot of money. Who would want to go through so much inconvenience unless there's some nagging compulsion inside," says Philip.

Uncannily, the UK has reported several cases of women who want 'vagina-cosmetic surgery' because their partners prefer younger-looking vaginas, similar to those advertised in adult magazines and films. This suggests the level of 'self-hate' and 'deep insecurity' women nurture under the guise of being successful, beautiful, rich and happy, argues Wolf.

In her film, Kilbourne also explains the stereotyped images of the 'perfect male'. In the Indian context, celebrities like Shahrukh Khan, Shahid Kapoor, John Abraham and cricketer MS Dhoni have endorsed fairness cream brands for men. In this racist worldview, to be 'fair' is to be handsome, successful and an achiever, with women chasing you.

The crux is that the concept of 'ideal beauty' is fake, fraudulent and false. It is driven by crass commerce with beauty clinics and products claiming to do the 'magical' transformation of the 'ugly' into the 'beautiful'. But when a silly acne-treatment fails and turns into infinite physical and emotional trauma, altering one's life into an abyss of despair, pain and tragedy (like that of Preeti), then it's time for a serious re-think.

From the print issue of Hardnews :

APRIL 2011

SOS Call

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2010/10/3717

Recognising anganwadi workers as government employees will empower them and motivate them to work better

The Union Government's National Policy for Children acknowledged the dire needs of children way back in 1974. The result was the formulation of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme in 1975 for holistic care of children of 0-6 years of age. Over 30 years into this national scheme, still a majority of our children continue to stay undernourished and uncared for. Who should be held responsible?

Statistics-wise almost half our children of age less than three years are underweight and about 80 per cent in the same age group are anaemic as per the third National Family Health Survey (NFHS) from 2005 to 2006.

The number of 'wasted' children who are too thin for height has increased from 16 per cent in 1990s to 19 per cent by the time of the last NFHS survey. Even if you look at under-nutrition statistics for children under five years at an international level, India stands at 48 per cent, much higher than Ethiopia (39 per cent) or Malawi (22 per cent)!

The ICDS scheme envisions simultaneous provisioning of health, nutrition and pre-school education for children below six years of age while also caring for nutrition and health education needs of pregnant, lactating mothers, and more recently, for an additional category of adolescent girls under the Kishori Shakti Yojana.

The original conceptualisation of ICDS was to run it as a long-term community-based programme, sustained by members of the community, especially women who benefit from this novel scheme. It gets operationalised through local Anganwadi Centres (AWCs), each with one part-time Anganwadi Worker (AWW) and a helper to carry out multiple tasks and record details of each task in registers daily. Though all the backbreaking work is part of their job profile, yet they're not recognised as government employees who get some facilities if not many.

However, higher level officials like supervisors or Child Development Project Officers (CDPOs) are recognised as government employees whose role is to make sure that 'work gets done' at the ground level. We can safely say that they ensure that registers get filled up with nutrition and health-related data by AWWs, whose accuracy or methodology of collection is not anyone's concern.

"When I first became an AWW in 1988, the ICDS system was much more effective than what it has become now," said Parvati (name changed). She works as an AWW in one of the anganwadis in Dakshinpuri, Delhi.

The main work of an AWW is to provide nutrition to small children, provide them pre-school education, record and refer cases of malnourished or ill children, pregnant or lactating mothers to the nearby medical facility, provide health and nutrition education to expecting mothers and adolescent girls, perform surveys related to mortality, pregnancy and ill-health in the community, cooperate with the Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) and Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) during immunisation drives, help them in other health related work etc, since she is well-known in the community and has all the data the government needs to run any of its programmes.

"Can you imagine this kind of workload on me and my helper, daily, even though we are supposedly part-time 'social workers' getting an honorarium for our services? We get no recognition for the worth of our work, no old-age benefits or security, not even minimum wages, but the blame is entirely ours when anything goes amiss. For instance, when food served at the anganwadi turns out to be of poor quality, we're held by the neck by everyone, including the media. But we don't cook the food here anymore like we used to earlier, so how can we be held responsible for its quality?" she asked desperately.

Showing the rusted and unsteady weighing machine she still uses to record weights of children - this is how levels of malnutrition are calculated - she admitted, "I know this machine cannot weigh correctly, still, I use it because I cannot afford to purchase a new one myself. Obviously the data calculated from readings I record in registers is fudged and won't show the real picture regarding health of people in the community. But I cannot help it as no one listens to me when I demand more facilities for children here."

"The government doesn't give us money for paying timely rent for the AWC, which is mostly a room in the house of the AWW, with no colourful charts or educational material, not even a silly board to identify the room as an AWC! We cannot hire a room for the measly amount of Rs 750 per month given by the government. Our own salary is no more than Rs 1,500 per month, and sometimes we get it only after six months. Who can work for the government like this forever?" she questioned.

"Some of us pay AWC rent from our own pockets and even for the data entry registers. Often, I end up entering government data in my children's notebooks since the registers and stationery given to us is inadequate," lamented Parvati.

In the 1980s, however, the scenario was drastically different. "We used to get paid on time even though the amount was a lot less than our current pay. There used to be timely provisioning of materials required for running the anganwadi. We got everything from phenyl, weighing machines, registers and utensils to pre-school education material for children like clay, wooden toys, colourful fruit and vegetable charts, drawing sheets, crayons, storage cupboards etc. That is how we could achieve at least some of the AWC's goals," she reminisced.

"Then, children used to spend quality time with us, learning and developing skills while also getting nutritious, freshly made food at regular intervals. Unlike today, we used to get raw food and the helper used to cook for the children on a daily basis. Today, the prepared food comes from somewhere far, perhaps from an NGO that has a private contract with the government. We don't know how stale or hygienic this food is, what quality of food material was used during preparation etc. We even had people complaining about cockroaches and worms till recently. Everyone avoids having this food anyway because it is neither tasty nor nutritious," she rued, fearfully exposing the current situation of her AWC in Dakshinpuri.

"Yahan poshan nahin shoshan ho raha hai. Netalog humare naam pe khub paisa kama rahe hain (There is no nutrition being given here, only misuse and exploitation of resources in the name of government schemes in which leaders end up making lots of money). Hummain kya milta hai yahan, sirf logon ka gussa (What do we get here, only public anger)?"

This situation is not unique to Delhi. "In terms of infrastructural provisioning, about 40 per cent of the AWCs in India still run under thatched roofs, huts or under trees instead of pucca government buildings. If the government cares for its children, it has to provide at least a decent roof over their head," said Kandikuppa Hemlata, general secretary of the All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers in an interview with Hardnews.

"By the end of 2007, only 6.29 crore of the eligible 16.6 crore children were being covered by the ICDS," said Hemlata while explaining the rationale behind the Supreme Court's order to universalise the spread of anganwadis to every human habitation in India so that children and mothers, especially those who are poor and from the marginalised communities, can claim their right to food. This would lead to building more anganwadis to connect with more people and provide them with basic nutrition and health facilities.

Priya John, senior programme manager at the ICICI Centre for Child Health and Nutrition, said, "In Sunderpahari block, Godda district of Jharkhand, the AWW is usually more disempowered as is the case with most AWWs of north India when compared to those of south India."

"You can at least think of AWWs mobilising women in Delhi, but in the most backward interiors of the country, where households are also separated by vast distances, it is difficult to do any community activity with prejudices against AWW women, who are also tribal, playing out. Besides, the level of apathy and corruption among those administering the ICDS is very high, with probably everyone bribing everyone in a top-bottom chain." Even though the anganwadi scheme is very comprehensive and has great potential, it has to be administered properly all over the country, she said.

According to the 2007 report filed by the Working Group on Children under Six, only about one per cent of the Union budget is spent on children under six years of age - that is, those who genuinely need help from anganwadis don't get it. "Most children don't visit us at the AWC. Sometimes we also fail in our duty to reach out to them. This is especially true of the last few years because we feel highly demotivated and pressurised to fill registers despite knowing that the data being entered is not accurate," rued Parvati.

"In terms of physical infrastructure, about 17 lakh AWCs are needed to cover our entire population - 11 lakh more than what we currently have," said Dipa Sinha from the team of Commissioners to the Supreme Court (CWP 196/2001), recently appointed to ensure that apex court's order regarding universalisation of AWCs and right to food for all gets properly implemented.

"Further, the government should first get all the current vacancies in the existing AWCs filled by conducting exams and selecting capable candidates on a priority basis," said Hemlata. Data shows that there are 2,551 CDPO seats, 16,245 supervisor seats, 69,924 AWW seats and 1,21,896 anganwadi helper seats lying vacant at the end of 2009. "The government has to get proactive, advertise about vacancies and get them filled, besides setting up new AWCs," she added.

The Focus on Children under Six Report of 2006 (abridged) also highlights the fact that not only is there a need to make more AWCs available with adequate facilities like nutritious food, pre-school education material, drinking water, toilets, seating arrangement for children etc, but there is also a need to achieve universalisation of AWCs across the length and breadth of this country, but with quality services that are distributed with equity.

"The overworked AWW can be given some relief by appointing a second AWW, besides better remuneration. Coordination between the health workers and AWWs has to be improved, with full attention given to ensuring health rights of children, mothers and adolescents through the anganwadi," Sinha told Hardnews

"The AWW's salary should be increased to match the rising prices. One also has to reorient all the administrators, right from the top. All village-level workers, including AWWs and helpers, should be motivated again about the purpose of running an AWC. Consistent dialogue and communication at all levels are needed to understand the importance of caring about the health of women and children in the community," said Prof Ritupriya Mehrotra, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

"Just because the government didn't start such community processes earlier, it doesn't mean they cannot be put in place now. After all, ICDS is a very large, comprehensive public programme with huge potential and outreach, if administered conscientiously," she added.

G Dilip Diwakar, who is researching ICDS in Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu, said, "The state government has to be given credit for increasing the salary of AWWs and helpers, providing pension to workers who have completed 30 years of service, and giving AWCs all the required materials to run them effectively. Children and mothers are fed well with a rich diet of sathumavu (nutritious powder made of cereals and sugar), eggs and vegetables in different combinations on different days and in sufficient quantity. Tamil Nadu is a privileged state in this context."

This positive experience can be repeated in many other states if the government and the administrators show will-power and sensitivity towards women and children. There is a certain correlation between good nutrition, reduced morbidity and mortality rates that must not be forgotten.

From the print issue of Hardnews : OCTOBER 2010

Hunger Kills (June 2010 story)

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2010/06/3577

Why do governments in India refuse to accept mass malnutrition and starvation deaths, while the reality is so intensely stark, widespread and tragic?

Even a preliminary inquiry concerning starvation in India would reveal numerous reports of entire families wiped out by chronic malnutrition. People get trapped in a negative spiral of poverty, malnutrition, starvation, unemployment, ill-health and severe immune deficiency till death comes to their rescue, releasing them from this unbearable misery.

Take the recent case of five starvation deaths in the Bariha family of Balangir district of Orissa between September and December of 2009, which were attributed to 'a medical condition' like malaria - the usual official practice of denial when it comes to reacting to such easily preventable deaths. "Research shows that even medicine does not work on an empty stomach, so people starving with chronic malnutrition are bound to die within a couple of days, despite last-minute medical interventions," said Prof Ritupriya Mehrotra at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). "This is just the tip of the iceberg. Therefore, such deaths, when reported, should be used as a marker by the government to identify communities in need of urgent government assistance," she told Hardnews.

After the reported deaths in Balangir, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) was compelled to appoint a special team in March 2010 to investigate deaths in the Bariha family and prepare a detailed report on the underlying causes. The report is not in the public domain yet. Ironically, Damodar Sarangi, who led this special NHRC team, refused to share his experience of interaction with impoverished village survivors, trapped in the same vicious circle of poverty, starvation, unemployment and sickness - and already in the death-queue, awaiting their turn. Instead, he asked this reporter to file an RTI to get the required information.

The Kalahandi-Balangir-Koraput (KBK) belt of Orissa is one of the most starvation-prone regions in India. NHRC has made special recommendations to provide free cooked food to old, infirm and destitute people here in the past. "The problem is not so much about how many schemes there are. It is about how many get implemented and reach out to the people they're meant for. There are 22 central government schemes already in place that could benefit the people but actually do not," Devinder Sharma, a renowned food policy analyst, told Hardnews.

Dr Preet Rustagi, senior fellow at the Institute for Human Development (IHD), Delhi, said, "Besides other districts in India, we have identified the KBK belt where priority or urgent interventions are needed not just to ensure food security by enabling access to food, whichever the government scheme may be, but also to improve communication, infrastructure and literacy amongst women to improve overall well-being." IHD has studied eight Indian states on behalf of the UN World Food Programme to identify the most food-insecure groups.

"In an interim order of 2002 passed in the famous People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) vs. Union of India and Others case (famously called the Right to Food case), the Supreme Court said no state in India should have starvation deaths or else the state administration would be held responsible. That is the reason why no government official will formally admit to these deaths as 'starvation deaths' or else they will have to face the heat. Starvation deaths like in the Bariha family are, therefore, said to be caused by anything but under-nutrition," said Pradeep Baisakh, a writer-activist who met some of the starving families in Balangir.

When Hardnews contacted Balangir Collector Sailendra Narayan Dey, he flatly rubbished media reports about starvation deaths and disconnected the phone after saying, "Deaths keep happening everywhere because of one or the other reason, mostly diseases. All these reports are false. You journalists make up stories. There are no starvation deaths here."

A collector who denies media reports about starvation deaths would obviously go on to deny any relief claims by members of the family. He will not accept that the deaths were due to (preventable) malnutrition in the larger community. "Had he acknowledged these starvation deaths for what they were, he could have put his act together and prevented further deaths by ensuring that the poor and needy get the food security benefits due to them. So you can only imagine the kind of suffering people are living in," said Kumaran from JNU, who is researching food security and hunger.

"Those left behind to fend for themselves when the head of the family starves to death, literally, beg to die themselves. Their situation is so deplorable because they have no financial assets left after everything they had is sold off to meet medical expenses in their last ditch effort to save the loved one. To make conditions worse, the promise of 100-days annual work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) stands broken because neither is work provided for even half of the days promised, nor are timely wages given. Instead of waiting for three-four months to get their dues, people migrate out in a desperate search for work to get money to buy food," lamented Baisakh, after returning from his field-survey. Land is not a sustainable source of income in the entire KBK belt as it is a drought-prone area with dwindling forests and natural resources, he added.

"How can we call the society we live in 'civil' when the degree of inequality between the rich and poor is so immense? Only the top five per cent are well-to-do, while, a sizeable percentage of farmers, widows, children and the destitute are either dying of under-nutrition or committing suicides every year," said Dr Vandana Prasad, joint convener, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan.

"The high GDP is just an average number that hides the income disparities between the haves and haves-not. The rates of infant mortality and maternal mortality are so high in India, with 50 per cent children dying of under-nutrition and a large number of women dying of anemia. These are all preventable deaths that can be avoided by adequate, nutritious food that people should be able to buy, considering the steadily rising prices of foodgrains," she said.

"Starvation death, therefore, is not a technical or a medical issue, and should not be conceptualised as an individual's problem. It reflects a larger socio-economic reality that must be dealt with at a systemic, macro level," she explained.

Said Alaknanda Sanap, "In terms of fair distribution of the benefits of government schemes, people in north India face a higher degree of caste and class bias from administrators as compared to those in south India, even though there are other issues there." Sanap has researched provisioning under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, Delhi.

A groundbreaking writ petition filed in 2001 by PUCL in the Supreme Court regarding hunger in Rajasthan has led to the emergence of a Right to Food (RtF) campaign in India with the core demand of making the right to food and secure employment a fundamental right of every citizen as part of Right to Life enshrined in the Constitution. There have been 50 interim orders since then as the case continues.

Major Supreme Court orders regarding the RtF campaign have converted food and employment schemes into legal entitlements and achieved universalisation (expansion) of food entitlement programmes like ICDS through anganwadis and the mid-day-meal scheme in primary schools run or aided by the government.

NC Saxena and Harsh Mander (both top retired government officials) have been appointed commissioner and special commissioner to the apex court, respectively, to monitor all food schemes in the country. They have the authority to hold states accountable for not providing people their legal entitlements with regard to the right to food.

Saxena has experienced first-hand the high level of under-reporting of severe malnutrition by state governments. Despite documented hunger and destitution in the Kalahandi district of KBK, for instance, the official 'severe malnutrition' figure is a laughable one per cent. "Most state governments, in our experience, deny extreme hunger or starvation in their states and present wrong data. It is a serious problem that must be resolved urgently. Then there is the problem of governance. State-level administrators, especially in the ministry of women and child development, think it is an easy place to make quick money, especially after the recent hike in nutrition-related project funding. This attitude has to change. Thirdly, we need to decide upon a protocol to identify starvation deaths," said Saxena.

"The main challenge for us is to recognise hunger and starvation while it is happening, not after the deaths have taken place," said Harsh Mander. Revealing heartrending details about how poor people respond to hunger, he said, "There are some whose longing for food gradually fades away because they don't get it, others eat less and get habituated to low diet, or else find pseudo-foods for psychological relief. There are people in Orissa who beg for starch leftovers after rice is cooked by their neighbours. This starch is their main food. There are others who boil and eat grass and tubers, sometimes even poisonous ones, to fill their stomach even though the nutrition value of such food is zero. Some people, like the elderly, end up grazing cattle for the whole day to get two chapattis in return. So high is the level of hunger and destitution in India, but it becomes visible only when people die."

Identifying the challenges in dealing with the situation, Mander said, "We do have the famine code in a few states but what we don't have is a 'starvation code'. But before deciding on that, we need to adequately define and agree upon a common definition and some 'measurement' criteria for starvation." Saxena and Mander were speaking at a national conference on identification of acute hunger to prevent starvation deaths held recently in JNU.

The RtF campaign has led to a demand for a proper Food Security Act. The draft bill ran into trouble recently as the empowered group of ministers suggested clauses like a reduced entitlement of 25 kg food grain at Rs 3 per kg (as against the existing 35 kg at Rs 2 per kg), that too for a few 'targeted' people, even though the majority live below the poverty line. "The draft bill is a very unfair document that doesn't look at overall nutritional needs and multiple entitlements of everyone in society. Hopefully, the improved draft will be designed bearing in mind the larger issues of food production and distribution, and economic and agricultural policies, all of which tend to be anti-poor," said Dr Vandana Prasad.

Devinder Sharma suggests that if self-reliant, traditional food security systems are re-introduced in five out of six lakh villages of India, it would go a long way in significantly reducing the existing high level of nutritional and food insecurity. He said, "If only we could go back to our traditional roots wherein village community elders preserved foodgrains for collective or emergency usage - there would not be a single starvation death." He cited a popular saying in these self-sufficient villages, "Jide ghar daane, aude nyane vi syaane (a household with enough foodstock will obviously have healthy children/family members)." Are the state governments, and the aam aadmi government, listening?

From the print issue of Hardnews : JUNE 2010

Film review: 'So shall you reap'

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2010/09/3693

Ajay Bhardwaj's film rips apart the mask of food politics pushed by biotech companies.

Shaweta Anand Delhi

As part of 'Filmy Feast' held in Delhi recently, Ajay Bhardwaj's So Shall You Reap stood out for its honest portrayal of the plight of Indian farmers. Many of them are anxiously trapped in the web of promises made by profit-seeking biotech companies, feeling all the more insecure in the stark absence of pro-farmer government policies.

Monsanto and Indian Mahyco are two such companies facing scathing critique in the film for selling genetically modified (GM) cotton or Bt cotton to unsuspecting Indian farmers. Surprisingly, Indian regulatory bodies allow introduction of such GM crops even though no independent health-safety tests have been conducted on them except by the biotech companies themselves.

In this 35-minute documentary, Bhardwaj covers a lot of ground as he strings together perils of sowing and reaping GM crops in villages of Punjab, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh. He successfully brings out the food politics played out by companies, governments and, in protest and retaliation, by farmers who are rejecting the paradigm of dependent/market-based agriculture by opting for organic methods in a few places.

The timing of this film's screening is especially critical in the backdrop of ongoing deliberations within the central and state governments on whether or not to bring GM vegetables on our dinner plates. While the usual pro-GM argument is that GM crops will bring in food security for all, this film brings out the experience of farmers at grassroots who vouch that this food technology is not geared to help them but to allow biotech companies to mint more money at any cost.

The film enters a rural landscape where farmers cultivating small pieces of land invest every rupee and fiber of emotion into the crops they are planting, hoping that the yield will sustain their needs. Their hope turns into rage when the promise of Bt cotton - the only GM plant allowed in India - fails the test of time, leading to dead cattle, allergic body reactions, reduced soil productivity and near bankruptcy. Agriculture becomes an expensive exercise of dependence on agri-biotech companies that prepare Bt seeds, pesticides and fertilisers, together creating a trap for more input-intensive cropping, including more water for irrigation.

Though it's a short film, crucial minutes are spent explaining how crops are genetically modified in sophisticated labs by isolating genes for exotic traits from one species and artificially fitting them into other species, something that nature would never allow. The most touching moment is when a farmer confessed how his heart broke when he had to uproot his own Bt cotton crop ruthlessly as Bt-resistant pests had ruined it!

He luckily managed to plant paddy as crop failure is not an option when his only piece of land was on lease and he had family responsibilities to shoulder. However, if you have seen Peepli Live, you would know that committing suicide is a definite option many farmers have already chosen in depressing times.

Unlike the other Indian film, Poison on the Platter, screened at the festival, Bhardwaj's film talks about realistic alternatives farmers are already opting for in many Indian villages, for instance, in Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. In a befitting reply to a cold-blooded State (and its cash-rich cricket empire obsessed Union agriculture minister), many farmers have completely stopped usage of chemicals in their fields and are doing much better by turning back to traditional, organic, self-dependent agricultural practices, including seed preservation.

Made in a dozen regional languages, this film is a brainchild of members of Kheti Virasat Mission, a Punjab-based group, for screening all over the country, to inspire farmers to go back to traditional agricultural practices. The filmmaker, who has been exposed to life in rural Punjab for a decade and has made extraordinary documentaries on the rise of Dalit consciousness, Sufism, contrasting the 'victim narrative' of Partition days etc, was roped in for his comprehensive understanding of grassroots issues.

For anyone willing to take a peek into what's going on in the lives of Indian farmers while biotech companies make merry, this film is a must-watch.

Also see, To B(t) or not to B(t) (Hardnews, April 2010) http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2010/03/3509

From the print issue of Hardnews: SEPTEMBER 2010

Nothing ‘natural’ about it

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2010/09/3686

Violence against women is rooted deep in the way girls are brought up to become 'women' and boys are made into 'men'

That women are not treated with dignity unless they shout from rooftops is to say the least. Women often find that they are treated as non-intellectual objects meant to entertain men at workplaces, perhaps so that the latter can perform better in a competitive, aggressive environment. Many office-going, educated women complain about not being treated in their day-to-day dealings with men in public and private spaces as human beings with intellect and their own subjectivity.

Talking about the subtle violence against women in media offices, Smriti Singh (name changed), a media professional who has worked for at least three Indian TV channels in the last ten years, says: "We often find the camera men or their assistants desperate to put the lapel mike (small microphone wired from under the clothes) on women celebrities or news reporters, just for that ever-so-slight touch of pleasure while adjusting the wires. Sometimes other male co-workers in the studio wait through the process to see if the woman's cleavage would get accidentally revealed, even for a fleeting moment. And then this becomes the staple of the men's gossip sessions, which get more graphic and enjoyable, but only for them."

Even walking the city streets alone can make a woman feel very unsafe. "No matter what I wear, men ogle at me. When I was in school, I stopped walking to tuition classes alone because boys on bikes would ride past making kissing sounds. It became very annoying and a constant source of anxiety for me," shares Vidhi Choudhary, a student from the Centre for Media Studies.

"I HAVE A car now, so I feel much safer when I travel," she adds. But a far greater number of women have to depend on public transport. "Travelling in buses is such a nightmare. During monsoons, even metro travel has become so unpleasant. Someone or the other is always on the lookout for that split second when he can touch a woman's private parts as it is easy to blame the overcrowding when confronted," says Savita Sindhu, a Delhi University student.

So what do women do when they are harassed? "Some stay silent and ignore troublesome men while others choose to confront them. Either way, we should not let our work get affected," says Choudhary.

Even the relatively progressive Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is not free of incidents of harassment of women. "Physical mobility gets restricted for most girls once they are out of the JNU campus. However, even within the campus we keep getting cases of violence ranging from mental to physical torture faced by women despite being in consensual relationships, and even after marriage," says Akanksha Kumar, former student representative of the JNU's Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH), a pioneering institution that acknowledges and punishes harassers on campus, both men or women, after a rigorous formal enquiry and fact-finding process.

"At least three recent cases of violence faced by girl students from their male teachers have come to light. The power dynamics in such cases come into play much more strongly. If the girls speak up, they might lose out on grades, but if they don't, they will certainly lose their self-esteem. Understandably, speaking up is a difficult choice at this point, but a few women do make that choice," says Kumar.

With a patriarchal set-up,restrictions on women start from childhood itself and gradually get extended to higher institutes of learning or work spaces as well, as if restricting and silencing women is the most 'natural' thing to do," explains Akhila Singh, a Delhi-based women's activist. From the clothes they wear to how 'gracefully' they should walk and talk, who they can speak with, how many hours they can spend out of home - limitations on women cover almost everything under the sun. Of course, depending on where they are located - for instance, whether in the rural or urban set-up - the restrictions (and the violence or suppression if they resist) can take various forms.

Indeed, killing of couples-in-love reveals an all-time low in levels of misogyny - as if female foeticide, infanticide, high levels of anaemia and malnutrition in women weren't enough of social problems based on deep-seated discrimination against women. Ninety per cent of the times, it is the girl's family that attacks the duo as their 'honour' gets violated when she chooses to fall in love and decides to marry a man outside set social norms. This was one of the findings of a study conducted by National Commission for Women in 2009 with help from Shakti Vahini, an NGO.

Advocate Renu Mishra, who has been relentlessly fighting for women's rights in Lucknow for the past decade, gives an interesting depiction of the subtlety in the working of patriarchal norms. She says, "If a girl straightens her spine and walks briskly with her eyes meeting the eyes of the passers-by, without her shoulders drooping an inch, she is immediately 'corrected' by someone in the family and asked to walk demurely, head bent downwards, to be a 'decent' girl. But if a man walks hesitantly, with his eyes on his feet, he's instantly reprimanded and asked to 'become a man' by fearlessly looking up into the eyes of people as he walks on the street."

It is from here that the difference in socialisation begins.

Being fearful thus becomes a desired feminine trait, but 'boys become men' as they turn aggressive. "But in police stations and courts, women are generally asked why didn't they fight back or resist the perpetrator hard enough. How can anyone sane expect women to fight back or strongly resist a man when all they are taught from childhood is to stay quiet and submit to them?" rues Mishra.

"For thousands of years, women have been trapped inside homes. Today, a large number of them have chosen to move out of the domestic sphere with vigour and determination. This effort to change the status-quo by questioning male domination in every possible way is being met with rising rates of crime against women," says Albeena Shakil, member of All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA).

The Delhi Human Development Report 2006 published by the Delhi government, in a section devoted to crime against women and safety, points to the alarming rise in the rate of crime against women in the capital. Adverse female-to-male ratio, high levels of rapes, sexual harassment, domestic violence etc make Delhi a very hostile and unfriendly city for women.

According to the 'Safe Cities Baseline Survey', whose findings were released in July 2010 by Kiran Walia, state minister for health and family welfare, violence against women is quite 'normalised' in the city. A large number of women live in a constant state of anxiety when out of home. However, as the National Crime Records Bureau data shows, this heightened state of discomfort is not a Delhi-specific phenomenon.

It is one thing to dig out studies and surveys to say how terrible this male-dominated society is. It is quite another to survive this suffocating system and to involve men as well in the process.

"Often men don't know how to help and have to be told how to do so without confrontation with the perpetrator," remarks Dr Suraiya Baluch, director of Princeton University's Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resource and Education (SHARE) programme. Speaking at an event organised by GSCASH in JNU, Baluch acknowledged high levels of violence against women in the US and discussed community-level solutions that seek to involve everyone, especially bystanders, in stopping acts of harassment of women.

In a similar vein, Ruchi Sinha, Chairperson, Centre for Criminology and Justice, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, says it is not feasible for women alone to deal with the high rates of crime against them. For instance, all-women police stations were earlier sought as havens of justice for female victims of violence since policemen don't take their complaints seriously. But the actual experience in states like Orissa and Tamil Nadu showed that women police officers end up being heavy-handed or indiscriminate, promoting the very stereotypes they were meant to break. Indeed, violence against women cries out for an all-inclusive approach, which doesn't shrink from looking beyond merely legal solutions.

From the print issue of Hardnews : SEPTEMBER 2010

Mussourie highs- July 2010

I had forgotten about Ruskin Bond, that he lived in Mussourie but once there, others in the girl-gang remembered and took me to the shop he still visits every Saturday. We got some books autographed by him. I also ended up buying 'Eat, pray and love' that is now being made into a Hollywood film. It's an amazing book. Glad I bought it.

Btw, Amit Sengupta, my senior at Hardnews, made this trip possible for me. He said, "You have every right to take a break after a hard month's work", his kindness despite being 'boss' taking me by complete surprise. It is because he let me out of office that I could reach this quiet space inside of me, and unwind. But before any of that happened, I remember typing the women's reservation dharna story on my new mobile phone early morning while train travelling to reach Mussourie. This, within two days of having an animated argument in office about worthlessness of mobile technology in context of a magazine story :).

View outside our room in Mussourie















Of course when Amit had said 'after a month's hardwork,' I heard MONTHS in my head, not just 'a month'.

 

Anyway, this hill-station getaway (bless the boss and Indu for organising it) was very meaningful despite the non-exciting visit to heavily commercialised and noisy Kempty Falls, a quick taxi-ride to Dhanaulti in rain and limited sight-seeing along the Mall road.

 

Garden in Dhanaulti

The unexpected fun-part was eating out at different food joints everyday, especially at this Thai place called Kalsung (or something like that). We also went to 'Whispering Windows' restaurant on a request made by Indu's mother. The soup there was delicious.

 

Tasty food, oxygen and lack of honking cars and deadlines were making me high effortlessly. As if that wasn't enough, the million pasty shops at Mall road made us all go nearly berserk over the warm chocolate coating on any piece of cake. Not satiated with having one or two of them, we got some more pastries packed to the hotel room for mindless consumption through mindless, but pleasurable midnight chatter.

  

Protecting the pastry box from rain

 

Yummy!!!

Anyway, the weekend ended soon and we were on our way back to Delhi... :(

They hate love

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2010/08/3659

Barbarism of the banana republics of khaps has led to a spate of killings of young couples. Will the epidemic stop, or will it spread its vicious wings?

Shaweta Anand Delhi

Jyotsna and Rohini

Dishonour crimes is a phrase made popular by Shakti Vahini, a women and child rights group, to describe the phenomena of 'honour killings' associated with a sense of violation of community honour. The phenomenon acquires a vicious and barbaric form when youngsters breach the traditionally prescribed social norms of marriage and select a partner of their own choice, mostly across castes, within their gotra (sub-caste) or across religions.

Traditional belief in many villages of the rural northern belt, especially in Haryana, UP and Rajasthan, is that youngsters from the same gotra or even different gotras but living within or adjoining villages are considered to be siblings. Marrying each other is therefore considered incestuous by some and unhealthy for the offspring by others, 'bringing dishonour to the family and community', according to the self-appointed guardians of orthodox culture and tradition.

A handful of men among them, who constitute the khap panchayats, have taken it upon themselves to decide upon 'appropriate punishment for offenders', including unconstitutional torture or death sentences to be executed by villagers themselves. This comes as a punishment for exercising the right to choice of a partner (albeit without social approval), which is well within the purview of law under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.

It is a misnomer that only young people choose socially unacceptable partners because many parents are doing the same for their children due to lack of options. "Earlier, smaller villages had two-three gotras so you could avoid them, but now, villages have 20-25 gotras that must be avoided, alongside parents' gotras and gotras of neighbouring villages. This, coupled with low sex ratio (as low as 550 women per 1000 men in some districts) and high unemployment, makes it a very challenging situation," says sociologist Dr Prem Chowdhry.

The informal institution of khap goes by the names of a particular gotra (Dahiya khap, Hooda khap, Gathwala khap etc) or of the geographical area they represent (Meham chaubisi representing 24 villages in Rohtak, Bawal chaurasi representing 84 villages in Rewari etc). Such khaps are still functioning in states of northern India and cases of dishonour crimes have also been reported from as far as Tamil Nadu down south.

Members of this unconstitutional, parallel system of 'justice' often convene an all-male gathering that squats on or around a chabutara (a raised platform) in the village, smoking hookah sometimes to denote bhaichara (brotherhood), with an aim of taking quick, unilateral decisions on multiple issues like social transgressions, property rights, inheritance, or regarding situations threatening peace in the village.

Most cases heard at such gatherings concern women but they are never made part of the proceedings. This reveals the patriarchal and authoritative nature of this grouping compared to the constitutional gram panchayats that also have women representatives, especially after the 73rd Amendment, says Chowdhry in her acclaimed book Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples.

Interestingly, the concept of bhaichara (brotherhood) as elaborated upon by Chowdhry, whether caste or village-based, covers sisters and daughters, not wives. For instance, a married woman running away is not made to be such a big deal by people of the community. But an unmarried woman eloping with her partner is met with an iron hand and it evokes a range of violent reactions, especially from male members of the community for breaching and threatening traditional social norms and culture.

As it happened in the case of Darshana, a married woman of Jhajjar, who was unveiled in front of other village men (symbolising a return to single status as unmarried women do not cover their heads) and was made to tie a rakhi (a thread signifying the bond between brother and sister) on her husband's hand on the diktat of the khap.

Her torture didn't end there. Her father-in-law was given the duty of marrying her the second time to someone who was appropriate as her marriage was 'against the order of nature' by virtue of fraternal ties between their gotras starting many generations back.

In Punjab and Haryana, the brother is considered to be the 'protector' of the izzat (honour) of his sister. Such emotions with regard to sisters and daughters are played upon and exaggerated. They are also used as male control-mechanisms. They usually serve as common factors in male-bonding within khaps when members collect to pass decrees on couples who transgress kinship norms, informs Chowdhry.

Dwelling on this idea of honour, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy, says the regulation of women's sexuality and violence against them is closely related. She writes: "In most societies, the ideal of masculinity is underpinned by a notion of 'honour' - of a man, a family or a community - and is fundamentally connected with policing female behaviour and sexuality."

'Honourable' behaviour for women then gets defined by concepts of sharm (modesty) and lihaz (deference), explains Chowdhry. Any breach of 'honour' is met with violence of varying degrees to teach them (and others) a lesson.

Such an oppressive system exists because the functions of production (control over land) and reproduction (control over women through the institution of marriage) need to be closely guarded at all costs by men since that gives their lineage or caste strength, recognition and leverage in society and the polity. That explains why men get so threatened and offended by women who choose their partners not only breaking out of social norms, but also taking away their legal share in their father's property under the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, to another group with a different lineage.

In retaliation to the idea of health risks posed by same gotra marriages, Dr RS Dahiya, associated with Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti, offers an interesting argument in his paper titled 'Khaps: Misusing the science of genetics' in the context of Haryana. He says that marriage within the first generation of Jats and within a gotra makes two people first cousins. But beyond the third and fourth generation, blood gets mixed hundreds of times over. So it's a myth that same-gotra marriages cause genetic diseases in the offspring. Women in abusive relationships or teenagers who are forced to give birth to children pose a greater threat to the children's health than the danger posed by same-gotra marriages, he argues.

"That marriage within the same gotra poses health risks is a bogus argument made for the heck of it. This is because the genetic pool of both the families is very different due to different family histories," says research scholar Rani Rohini Raman at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi.

The social ostracism meted out to 'erring' couples and families by villagers can be excruciating, feels Ranjana Kumari of Women Power Connect, a women's rights group. She was referring to exclusion faced by Manoj's family members in the famous 'Manoj-Babli case' in which Additional District and Sessions Judge Vani Gopal Sharma of Karnal High Court found seven people guilty in a landmark verdict of April 2010. Justice Sharma pronounced death for Babli's family members, life imprisonment for the khap leader of Kaithal district who ordered their killings, and a seven-year prison term to the driver who abducted the couple.

The couple-in-love was hunted down after they eloped and got married in 2007, despite having approached the Chandigarh High Court for protection in advance. Their crime was that they belonged to the same gotra because of which their marriage had been declared incestuous, thus null and void. The policeman who had been directed to provide protection to the couple is under suspicion for having revealed their whereabouts to Babli's blood-thirsty family in 2007. He is currently facing departmental action.

Justice Sharma is facing threats from the khap, and has been given police protection. Manoj's mother, Chanderpati, who approached the court in her relentless fight for justice, continues to live a lonely and dejected life. No one talks to her in the village or sells her grocery as a punishment for raising her voice against the khap's diktats. Indeed, the village kumhar (potter) even refused to give Manoj's family clay pots for the dead couple's ashes and their last rights. "The village dhobi (washerman) refused to wash their clothes, such is the extent of ostracisation," says Kumari. It's vicious, entrenched, relentless, this social boycott and vengeance.

The National Commission for Women (NCW) was approached by Shakti Vahini in 2009 and subsequently, a study on similar crimes (unpublished) was carried out in which 326 such cases were examined. It was found that a maximum number of oppressive diktats were made by panchayats in cases of inter-caste marriages (72 per cent), marriage within same caste without family consent (15 per cent), contentious relationships (7 per cent), same-gotra marriages (3 per cent), and inter-religious marriages (1 per cent).

"The issue of dishonour crimes is therefore not about same-gotra marriages as it is made out to be. It is about the larger issues of curbing women's rights to make their own decisions. Most such crimes (90 per cent) are executed by the girl's family," says Supreme Court advocate Ravi Kant, president of Shakti Vahini. "Today, more girls are getting education. Their role models have changed to NASA astronaut Kalpana Chawla, World Number 2 badminton player Saina Nehwal and Mamta Sodha who climbed the Mount Everest, all from Haryana," says Kant.

Zohra Chatterji, Member Secretary, NCW, agrees that parents are supporting education for girls even in Haryana - but to get them better grooms in the marriage market. They are least interested in their professional careers. "There is a widening gap between parents and children, the latter having the exposure and education to rationalise things for themselves, even if there is no social sanction. Such decisions lead to friction, feeding into instances of anger-driven dishonour crimes," she adds.

Prof Surinder S Jodhka at JNU feels that such crimes show serious inability of parents to communicate with their children because the gap between them is generational. Youngsters belong to a mobile generation, are educated and far more independent in thinking compared to parents, which leads to disagreements between them. "Inter-caste marriages are not unheard of if you think about the tales of Heer-Ranjha, Sassi-Punnu or Sohni-Mahiwal. What has happened today is that due to changes in a liberalising world, rural agrarian relations of dependency of lower castes on upper castes are disintegrating. With falling authority outside family and even within it, a large number of people feel socially pressurised, hence the pent-up frustration," asserts Jodhka.

Many villages in Haryana have about 150-200 boys who are unable to get married; the sex ratio is low, unemployment is high. "Altogether there is too much energy and no other work. This makes it easier for khaps to get their violent diktats executed through these people by playing on their emotions," says Kant. "Additionally, in Haryana's case, Jats also want to find a political identity, especially after the landmark Manoj-Babli verdict that convicted seven people for their murder. Just like the BJP used the temple issue, Jats are using the issue of same-gotra marriages for mobilising themselves through khaps," he says.

A spate of community-pride related crimes have been recently reported, but they are not even 10 per cent of what is actually happening. "Sums of up to Rs 20 lakh have been collected by khaps in a small place called Shyamali (Haryana) alone to fight legal battles in courts with regard to same-gotra marriages. This shows the level of mobilisation and bhaichara on this issue and it shouldn't be taken lightly by the government," Kant cautions.

While the Supreme Court has issued notices to nine states and the Centre with regard to 'honour'-related crimes, a certain diabolical politics of conspiracy and silence is being enacted on the ground. How long will the UPA regime, headed by a woman, and the states, refuse to recognise and punish this organised barbarism and blood-letting, which is fast turning into a social epidemic?

From the print issue of Hardnews : AUGUST 2010

Age of Mobiles

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2010/08/3655
Mobile phones are having a transformative impact on developing societies like ours. The phenomenal spread of mobile technology holds out great promise to deliver some of the key government programmes. Mobile banking is one of the services that many public sector banks are using to reach out to the unbanked. Hardnews explores mobile phones and m-banking in this special supplement.

Shaweta Anand Delhi

It is not quite uncommon to see upmarket convenience-product stores thriving in centrally air-conditioned malls on one side of the road, while on the other side there are rickshaw pullers and street vendors, braving the sweltering heat or the biting cold, desperately trying to sell their products and services. However, there is one thing that buyers and sellers on both sides of the street have in common - a mobile phone.

Pradeep is a migrant from Bihar who sells vegetables in the Tagore Garden market. He gets about 50 phone calls from local residents every day demanding delivery of select vegetables to their doorstep. "When I get orders on phone, I end up selling more vegetables compared to others who cannot be contacted directly. Some people don't mind paying me a little extra since I give them the convenience of ordering from home," he told Hardnews.

For someone who has migrated to an unknown city, a mobile phone helps that person to stay in touch with family members with greater ease. "Where is the time to write letters and wait for weeks till the communication reaches home? Obviously, a much easier way today is to dial a number and talk to one's family," said Hariram, a rickshaw puller, who migrated from UP a few years ago.

He transports people and even household items like coolers, tables etc whenever he receives such a call on his phone. "This has increased the money I earn every day but it is nothing compared to the kind of money people like you make and spend in malls in a jiffy," he said.

"Increasing use of mobile phones among the 'small and medium enterprises' - cab drivers, henna artists, ice-cream or vegetable vendors, cobblers, plumbers etc - not only spurs overall economic growth but also helps these people make a transition from street corners to the formal economy," said Prof Rajat Kathuria. He teaches at the Delhi-based Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER).

Stressing the emotional purpose the phone fulfils for her, Rani, a housemaid, said, "My family stays in Tamil Nadu whereas I work in Delhi. I cannot afford to travel, so the only way I can be in regular touch with them is through my phone, though it doesn't really add to my income at this stage."

"Didiji (my employer) maintains contact with me through this phone, so we both are able to handle the household more efficiently, thanks to this gadget," said the 34-year-old who works in a house in Trilokpuri. Azad, a security guard in Kalyanvas, also feels that mobile phones help in making work-life more efficient as well as keeping in constant touch with the family.

If we look around, we can see hundreds of Harirams, Ranis and Azads assisting us - the middle class - in leading more convenient lives by becoming available at our beck and call, 24x7. From the dhobi (washerman), watchman and kudawala (ragpicker) to those who relish football matches on wide-screen mobile sets while commuting for work, dependence on mobile technology has deeply impacted lifestyles, almost for everyone who owns a set.

It is no wonder that mobile density (subscription per hundred people) in India has shot up from less than 1 per cent in 1998 to 55.38 per cent in May 2010 as per figures put out by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, even though the numbers are skewed in favour of urban areas compared to the rural. Our telecom industry is the fastest growing in the world and, globally, we house the second largest wireless network, deemed to surpass world-leader China in near future.

"From our experience of interviewing 1,774 poor urban people living in 84 authorised areas of Delhi, Ahmedabad and Kolkata, we too have figured that few innovations have been as pervasive as the mobile phone," said Prof Ankur Sarin from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He jointly conducted a study for ICRIER on socio-economic impact of mobile phones on the lives of the urban poor.

"The persons we interviewed showed increase in income due to the use of mobile phones for work-related purposes. There has been a positive impact on social ties and relationships too but, simultaneously, there is also a tendency not to meet friends and relatives face-to-face as it is much easier to talk on the phone instead," he said.

His observation is seconded by Delhi-based psychologist Dr Niru Kumar who believes that relying too much on anything is bad. "People who talk for long hours on mobile phones tend to get addicted to them. As with any addiction, the core issue here too is one of low self-esteem, aloofness and depression. With mobile phones increasingly substituting real friends, the basic issues remain unaddressed despite rapid advancements in communication technology," she elaborated.

Other than the psychological aspect, Sarin's study also revealed that although more than 90 per cent of the men among the urban poor use mobiles while women hardly use them. "So the phone hasn't quite overcome the gendered power hierarchies in our social structure though they may be on the way to covering the rural-urban digital divide," he said.

It is common knowledge that India suffers from high levels of gender discrimination. In the context of mobile phones, an interesting study by California-based researcher Dayoung Lee from the University of Stanford concludes that mobile usage by women has had a 'liberating' effect on them. "They are not only able to connect more to the outside world, they are also able to deal better with domestic abuse by voicing it to others through the phone."

The study was completed in 2009 and correlated the impact of mobile phones on the status of women in India. "Maybe there should be subsidised mobile phone services for women here to encourage its usage and their subsequent empowerment," Lee suggested.

The reason why people are increasingly using mobile phones is because of their user-friendliness and the relatively low prices, often less than Rs 1,000 for a set," said Kathuria. There is also scope for benefiting from all kinds of low-priced, innovative Value-Added Services (VAS) that cater to the changing needs of urban or rural markets.

Moreover, the option of getting top-ups for small denominations in prepaid services makes it possible for the poor to afford mobile phones. For operators too, recharging electronically is a more profitable choice as it saves them the cost of printing vouchers, transporting and storing them etc.

Commenting on the popularity of some VAS over others, Kathuria said that text messaging is one of the lesser used services in our country because of widespread illiteracy. However, interactive voice response technology (for accessing database by pressing keys on the phone), voice SMSing and services like ringtone downloads are gaining popularity in rural areas. "The attempt is to contextualise the information and impart it in the local languages," said Kathuria.

In the field of agri-value-added services, organisations like Reuters Market Light (RML) and IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL)-Bharti Airtel are predominant in India. They provide information about crop care, market prices and even weather forecasts in local languages through mobile phones. IKSL's network has already spread to as many as 18 states of India reaching out to millions of farmers already.

RML is a subscription-based service that gives farmers information over text SMSes. To access services by IKSL, the farmer is required to purchase a special 'green SIM card' for receiving five free voice SMSes daily.

ICRIER's first-of-its-kind study on the impact of mobile phones on agricultural productivity in five states shows that many small farmers preferred RML to IKSL as the former provided customised information along with weather information and delivered SMSes at a preset time suitable to each subscriber. IKSL, on the other hand, gave the same information to people spread all over the state at unpredictable times during the day.

However, many farmers have benefited from mobile telephony, which is why the subscription base in rural areas is on the rise. From a mere 33,404 subscriptions in March 2008 to 5,508,532 subscriptions in March 2010, rural mobile penetration is increasing rapidly.

Farmers are indeed benefiting from the information they get directly on their phones, unlike through TV or radio. "I get to know about which pesticide to apply, at what time, and how to keep my cattle healthy," said Raghunath, a farmer from Lucknow. Ghasiram, a farmer from Jaipur, expressed contentment about the information regarding crop price that gets him a relatively better deal when he sells his produce in the market.

However, the study also concluded that for farmers to realise the full potential of access to new information, other infrastructure also needs to be well-developed. For instance, a farmer might get information about where to get the best market rate for selling his produce but lack of storage space and physical infrastructure (roads, inexpensive transportation etc) make it difficult for him to take advantage of the information he now has access to.

"The impact of mobile telephony by itself is therefore limited. It can only complement existing agricultural infrastructure," said Dr Surabhi Mittal, one of the researchers who conducted the study. Kathuria, however, feels that the situation today is not one of choosing this or that. "We need to develop mobile-based solutions along with developing other infrastructure simultaneously to address issues of development," he said.

From the print issue of Hardnews : AUGUST 2010