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

Fourth National Convention on Right to Food, Rourkela, Orissa, 6th-8th August, 2010

The official 'Right to Food' (RtF) campaign pamphlet says it comprises an informal network of organisations and individuals working towards attaining the right to be free from hunger. This includes accessing food-related rights, right to livelihood, land rights and other forms of social security too.

Divided into 3-day interactive sessions, the national convention on RtF held parallel workshops on the first two days and a massive rally to the godown of the Food Corporation of India on the concluding day, after passage of many related resolutions formulated during the deliberations. 

On the third day, about 6-7 truckloads of people parked themselves close to the FCI building, marched to its gates, passionately sloganeering and breaking into loud claps as campaign leaders urged aam admi to start demanding their rights, especially their right to food. Bemused passers-by watched on, wondering what's with the sudden jamavada of people, from where did they come and where did they vanish to after the impressive demo. Most of the people we encountered on the roads while on our way to the FCI were orange-clad shiv-bhakts or kavadiyas, on their way to the Shiv temple. 

 

 

 

As a participant-observer, one could only attend two workshops at max since they were all happening simultaneously and at different venues on first two days. I attended the 'hunger and starvation' and 'the PDS system' workshop, the proceedings of which I will pen down here as well, but later, as that would take lots of time.

Then I got to speak in detail with people like Gracy Jajo, an activist from a conflict-afflicted region of the Northeast, who corelated a war-like situation with difficulty in accessing right to life, right to food becoming a secondary demand in that context . Local MLA George Tikrie gave me verbal and pictorial evidence of the state government's operation green hunt, as in, how that affects people's right to food amongst other rights. Praful Samantara spoke to me at length about the relevance of the conference and also Binayak Sen, though briefly, while we walked back from the rally to our respective trucks.

More pictures first, details of these conversations will come later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more photos, click here.

Rally to protest Amit Jethwa's death- 26 July 2010

Isn't it ironical that we crossed ITO in this particular rally and found not even one reporter from the mainstream newspapers to cover an event about protesting the killing of RTI activist and environmentalist Amit Jethwa, who like other whistleblowers, needed protection after allegedly taking panga with powerful ministers by daring to question their anti-people activities?

In this case, Jethwa had filed a PIL in HC as well against a BJP bigshot in Gujarat against his illegal mining activities. At least for me, I kept thinking about this irony while passing offices of TOI, IE and others on the day of the rally. They seemed like high-rise buildings that stood watching tamasha, as people clapped and raised slogans in protest right under their noses. 

 

What increased this sense of irony was this that a handful of people - the activists in protest against this kind of silencing of voices of truth - ensured they gave media bytes at the venue (Gandhi Peace Foundation) much before even beginning to protest! Many of them are well-known faces anyway.

All the shouting and sloganeering happened much later, after it was ensured that every activist worth their name, took mileage out of a sad situation, most of them promoting their NGO's agenda as the best solution.

Soon enough Amit Jethwa was lost to the background. Felt extremely sad at witnessing all this. Just didn't know which side to look at. 

 

For more pix, click here.

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

Way to go women!

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2010/07/3636

In a show of strength and solidarity, 5,000 people marched from Jantar Mantar to Parliament Street on July 29 to demand 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament

Shaweta Anand Delhi

Hundreds of colourful banners with lakhs of pro-reservation signatures from all over India marked the street as people rallied along, shouting slogans and singing folk songs, demanding reservation for women in Delhi's Jantar Mantar on Thursday.

A delegation of 10 representatives met President Pratibha Patel who expressed 'unequivocal support' to the demand calling reservation for women 'good for the country' in this 'now-or-never situation'. Meanwhile, the fever pitch at Parliament Street got raised further when  Sharmila Tagore, Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar took stage, raising their voice in solidarity. "Women of India are still fighting a war of independence, even after 60 years of freedom from the British. Women have been systematically kept away from education, employment and active politics. That should change now because they deserve equal rights," said Tagore.

"It's a matter of shame that something like equality between women and men, is not an obviously understood concept. Women, when they are being tortured, which has been true through generations, are never asked their caste or creed then, but when it comes to giving them their due rights, all these 'concerns' about reservation within reservation spring up," said Akhtar to a thunderous applause.

"It's a thought-out strategy to prevent women from coming up as 'allowing' that would threaten some people's sense of family and social order, while others openly, and  foolishly, think that women are weak and stupid so cannot lead anyway," he added. "One should be careful of such so-called supporters of the bill, who'll not genuinely support it at the time of decision-making," Akhtar cautioned.

"We're a civil society only when everyone gets equal rights. Why do we settle with just 8 per cent political representation from women of India? It's not that they don't deserve it but they're being left out on purpose. They neither have access to money or muscle power that wins elections in this country!"  asserted Shabana Azmi.

Parliamentarians like Jayanti Natarajan from Congress, Brinda Karat from CPM, D Raja from CPI and MLA Christine Lazarus also spoke in favour of the Bill and assured that it would be taken up in the ongoing monsoon session.

"By passage of the bill in the Rajya Sabha, only half the battle has been won. We'll see to it that it gets passed in Lok Sabha now," said Natarajan. "What is 33 per cent, women should get 50 per cent reservation, " commented Raja.

Karat also said that even though the Lok Sabha is just ten steps from the Rajya Sabha still the distance is something that needs to be covered this time.

Lazarus opined that the challenge is not just getting reservation in the Parliament but also training in how to do politics as well.

The rally was addressed by Annie Raja of NFIW, Sudha Sundararaman of AIDWA, Shabnam Hashmi of Anhad, Ranjana Kumari of Women Power Connect, Madhu from Jagori and Dr Vimal Thorat.

It was organised by a collective 'Alliance for 33%' comprising over 350 organisations.

(For photos, click album 1, 2 or 3.)