The Flautist - a short story

Our eyes first locked across the street but I may be mistaken about that.

Across a street, things look different from what they are. Like I once thought that I saw a man selling orange-pink phirkis. I had not had one since I was a boy and my father got me one at the Gadimai fair. That phirki was yellow and green. Like sunshine on new wheat. It was my beautiful possession and I kept it safe through the winter. But that was a long time ago. So when I saw a man selling phirkis, I crossed the street to buy one. But they turned out to be birds of paradise. Flowers!

I hadn’t seen any before, but I have since found out that they are very expensive. One flower costs more than a rice-plate. The young man was holding those flowers rested them casually on his shoulder, like he didn’t care about how expensive they were. Maybe he didn’t want to be seen holding a bunch of flowers the way a girl would hold them.

There was a girl with him and when I came close and asked the name of the flowers and how much they cost, she giggled. She said, in English, that it serves him right to be mistaken for a flower-boy. He dresses just like a sadak-chhaap, she said.

He doesn’t. I wanted to tell her, I know a sadak-chhaap when I see one. This boy’s jeans were like only the rich boys can afford. His belt was a slim one with bits of metal sprinkled on. His shirt was loose and his hair was longer on one side of his face than the other, with one tuft standing up tall like a silken minaret. And he wore open sandals. A real sadak-chhaap steps outside wearing shiny shoes and tight jeans. He colours his hair too, because he thinks that’s what rich boys do. But you can always tell which one is the expensive cut, and who got a third-rate job at the barber’s shop down the road.

I wanted to say all this but I was angry at myself. Why did I ask about the cost of the flowers? This boy was too rich to care about the cost. Besides, I didn’t like the girl. She was short and her hair was uncombed. She was obviously not so rich herself. Why was she laughing at the boy? Such girls irritate me, but there are a lot of them here.

You have to be careful with girls. Here, nobody knows where anyone is from. And sometimes, this is what I like. Today I am me, from Birgunj. Tomorrow I can be from Gorakhpur. And if I meet someone from Gorakhpur, then I can be from Champaran. But with girls, it is different. You must know where they come from, who their father is.

My father told me, if you must find a girl in the city, make sure you know where she is from. And he is probably right. Because one big lesson I have learnt is – things are not what they seem at first.

Like the other day, I saw some artists working on a big sculpture. From across the street, it looked like a model of a building. It was solid and shiny and wobbly. Just like houses in this city. Concrete, but so fragile. You look at them and you wonder if they are safe. Some have cracks running down the sides, pasted over with cement like strips of grey band-aids. This sculpture, though, had no windows or doors; just smooth round walls.

I thought the artists wanted to say something about the city. Like this city doesn’t have enough air. Or that you cannot really leave this city. Buildings are like tombs without sunshine or friendship. That was what I thought.

But when I crossed the street to take a closer look, the sculpture turned out to be a shoe. One giant boot. I felt really stupid. But that is the trouble, you see. Things look different from far. When I was a boy, we used to chant a set of foolish rhymes about the illusion of distance.

“From far, I thought I saw Vyjanthimala drying out her hair/ turned out to be a buffalo wagging her tail while taking the air!”

“From far, I thought I saw a dozen eggs getting hard-boiled/ turned out to be a bunch of baldies getting their heads oiled!”

Nonsense rhymes like that. But it is true. You cannot make things out from a distance. That is why I do not talk much to girls. That is why I did not give much thought to that moment when our eyes locked across the street.

And yet, it seemed as if the breeze had dropped, as if the sun had trembled and begun to sweat. It seemed as if she was crossing the street only to come towards me.

I have a hard head. I know, she was not the type to look at me. She was surely a college girl. She was standing on the road divider, trying to cross the road. As for her eyes, who can say whether they were looking at me, or right through me?

But then, I saw her the next day too, clutching the railing on the road divider. She was looking right and left, but the traffic would not stop even for a moment. Every few seconds, she would squeeze her eyes shut as a bus growled past, tossing fumes and dust and light splinters into her face.

She stood there a long time and maybe she forgot why she was there. There was a gap in the traffic finally and all the others who were balanced on that divider began to rush across the road. But she just stood there, eyes at half-mast, looking at nothing.

She looked so sad in that moment. As if a passing bus had knocked her down and ridden right over her heart. She looked like a child might look when her bright paper phirki falls into a puddle. She looked like the girls in my village, when they were engaged to be married to someone who lives far away. In that moment, I suddenly felt like I knew where this girl comes from.

All of a sudden, she seemed to wake up to the street and its noisy horns, and she rushed across. Just in time, just half an inch from another growling bus. My heart almost stopped for a second.

She was wearing a saree that day. I saw her go into the library. I stood outside. It is a nice spot to stand. Nobody comes into the library so the staff does not glare at me if I hang around. But that stretch is busy since the big, new shop opened in the next building. Such a long shop! As long as six cars parked one behind the other. It has big glass windows and statues of men and women dressed in the same red color. During the Diwali season, these statues wear such rich clothes. Even the brides in our village never wore anything so rich. And during Christmas, these statues all wear red pants and shirts.

Many people come to that shop and they all walk past the library. They don’t always buy from me but sometimes they stop to listen. I weave a tune that will clutch at their hems, scraping its way into their blood. A song with painted talons.

Sometimes, they turn to their children and ask if they want a flute. They always buy the cheapest one. Some do not want a flute; they just want to listen to me. But they look at me and I look at them, and they know they should pay up. But they also see that I do not want a coin tossed at me. The only way to pay me is to buy from me. So they buy a flute.

I do not know whether they are good people but if they catch my eye, they look me in the eye. They do not stare at my clothes or my bare feet. They have the decency to lower their eyes if they are not willing to pay me for standing there and making music outside libraries that nobody wants to visit. Their hearts tell them that they are small, so they scurry away, running from their own gut, from a new ache that wasn’t there before they heard me.

Perhaps, I should say that I really play for money. If I did not play, nobody would buy my flutes. And except for playing the flute, and cooking and cleaning, I cannot do anything else.

Not that this city wants my music. These people would pay me more if I cooked and cleaned. Some of them might even let me live in their houses if I did this. I did it too. But only for a year. Two boys lived in that house and I did everything in return for staying there. I made their beds, cooked two meals, swept and mopped, washed their clothes. Then one more boy joined the house and he said I must wash his underwear. I refused, so they threw me out.

Now I am happier, playing the flute. It was very boring inside that house. Locked up all day. It is better to be outside. The street has so many possibilities. Every day, some new story unfolds.

What I like most is to watch the city slow down when I play. I am not boasting; it really does. When I play, I look at the feet of people walking past. As they hear the rising notes, their feet slow down. They linger even if they cannot afford to stop. If I play the theme song from Hero, more feet slow down. Sometimes I do ten different versions of Hero. A man from America once told me that I was a jazz pioneer in my own right. He did not buy many flutes though.

Another good thing is, when I am out on the street, I see a lot of girls. Like that girl. The day she wore a saree, she walked past three times. From the library, she walked to the museum, then to the college building, then back to the library.

I think it was a special day at the library. In the evening, many women walked in, and they all wore silk sarees. The men wore kurtas and coats. I played a soft tune that day, so soft that only those who were really listening for it would catch it. I saw her catch it. She looked around but she didn’t see me because I was hidden behind a pillar.

She came again the next day. Dressed in black with a white scarf round her neck. It was edged with silver gota. She was standing at the entrance of the library. I started playing my heaviest flute as I walked towards her.

She stepped forward. Then she took out her mobile phone, pressed a few buttons and held it a little away from her body. I knew she was recording my music but I did not stop playing. A minute later, she stopped recording and put away her phone. Finally she looked at me.

I looked into her eyes. She smiled. I took two steps towards her, still playing. Finally she spoke to me. She asked how much I was selling the flutes for. I told her the prices. I showed her how the air sounded huskier in the bigger flutes, and how you could blow into some from a hole cut near the top edge, but with others, you had to take the slim tip into your mouth. I played out a very simple tune of three notes on the most expensive flute I had.

It was two hundred rupees. She bargained me down to one hundred and fifty. It was worth more but I let her have it. She stuffed it into her bag, and walked back into the library.

When she came out, she was walking fast, heading towards the college. I began to follow her, playing all the while, watching the dozens of feet that slowed and quickened all the time.

When I caught up with her, she was at the sandwich stall. As she stood there eating, I went on playing. Twice, she turned around to look at me but she did not meet my eyes.

Then she went back to the library. From a distance, it looked like there was a black shadow across the doorway. When I came closer, I saw it was a young man. A dark man with a beard, and dressed all in black too. Leather boots with big heels and a leather jacket and leather cap.

She was walking quickly towards him. When she was six feet away, he opened his arms out. She did not run. She walked into his arms and then he hugged her tight so their chests were pressed together. They stayed that way for a long time.

Then she was looking at him like she was drinking in his face, and he was smiling down at her like he was enjoying the sun whispering its dying words. She tugged at his arms and they began to walk up and down the old pavements. I followed, just a few steps behind, still playing my flute.

Their heels clicked softly as they walked, and after a while, she let go of his arm. The sun had gone down and their shadows were pale and smoky. Their feet dragged. I had not seen any feet so slow on that pavement before. It was an old lovers’ walk.

They did not touch each other again. They would never hold hands again, even I could see that. But their feet clung to the pavement as if clinging to the last note of a song that you cannot bear to hear. If they hugged now, they would hurt each other. And I think they had decided to stop hurting each other.

From a distance, their long shadows were twisted out of shape. Like a strange beast born with wings so large, it can neither fly nor run. Still, it must leave. It knows that if it is not killed, it will simply die of waiting. It will hop if it cannot run. Crawl, if it cannot fly. There will be no grace in it, but is there grace anywhere? So after one last look, one last gulp of familiar air, the strange beast will leave. Get on a bus, and not return.

When they stopped walking, I fell back a little. And then, a little more. Slower and softer, my song changed and descended into some new note of plunging silence. There were twenty feet between us and then thirty and then fifty and then I stopped playing.

© Annie Zaidi

[This story was first published in New Woman magazine.]

Chori pe chori

Remember that delicate old song ‘ajeeb dastaan hai ye’ (what a strange tale this is)? It’s a romantic sort of lyric, but I often feel an urge to hum it when I read the newspapers. For instance, I automatically began humming it when I chanced on a report of 20-odd farmers being arrested. For stealing water.

Another report said that about 30 FIRs were filed against farmers in Saurashtra. They wanted to irrigate their fields and so they started drawing water illegally from canals fed by the Narmada dam. In fact, 600 police personnel had been guarding just one branch of one canal.

It’s quite an image: armed men standing along the length of a life-giving water source, and farmers sneaking around with plastic pipes, drilling holes into the walls of a canal. Picture postcard for our modern democracy, eh?

The Narmada dam is supposed to be a major source of water for Kutch and Saurashtra, which are dry regions in Gujarat. At least, that’s what they said while building the dam. But the water level had fallen to worrying levels recently. The state government had to stop supplying water to farmers because it was afraid it would run out of drinking water for cities. Then, the rains came down in parts of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat officials said they didn’t have a crisis after all. Besides, elections are looming and the ruling government would rather not annoy too many farmers. Especially the ones with money.

Another crisis looms, but that lies beyond the elections. Farmers who do get legal access to water aren’t paying for it. And they’re investing in more water-intensive crops, like sugarcane. They aren’t learning anything from the tragedy of Punjab and Maharashtra.

But speaking of sugarcane and dams, there’s been an interesting unraveling closer home. Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithiviraj Chavan is under attack. He had promised a ‘white paper’ on irrigation projects. At least Rs 70,000 crores was devoted to “Major and Medium Irrigation projects” but there are worries that there’s been only a 0.1% increase of irrigated land in the state over the last ten years.

The can of worms was opened earlier in the year by Governor K Sankaranarayanan when he asked for a probe into Kondhane Dam, and a clamp on new irrigation projects, especially in Western Maharashtra. He pointed out that the state had failed to create a better canal network (which is necessary for irrigation) while sanctioning costly dams. The Kondhane dam contract was cancelled.

Water resources minister Sunil Tatkare was also under fire. Questions had been raised about the size of his assets. Now, the Opposition alleges an irrigation scam of Rs1,000 crore. Activists had been hollering about environmental damage and a larger ‘Dam Scam’, naming Kondhane, Kalu, Shai, Susari and Balganga as projects worthy of an investigation. One contractor seemed to be getting too many construction contracts. The backlash came from within the state government. NCP chief Sharad Pawar, being India’s Agriculture Minister, should have encouraged more probes. Instead, he turned around and accused the Governor and CM Chavan of “not doing enough for drought-prone areas”. He seemed to have forgotten that Sunil Tatkare is from the NCP. And so is his nephew Ajit Pawar, currently deputy CM, who was irrigation/water resources minister between 2000 and 2009.

And if you’re wondering why more farms in Maharashtra are not being irrigated, given the serious money we’re pumping in, or where the dam water is actually going, a good place to look would be some sugarcane fields. Word is, there are farmers with pipes, valves and even canals of their own.

First published here

A march, a crawl

The wind was strong enough to drown out the feeble sounds of a group walking up to the tiny market in Rekong Peo. They had probably ‘marched’ to the Kinnaur district headquarters and were now returning — a few placards, a few men and women tiredly protesting the Karcham Wangtoo hydroelectric project, reminding the administration of broken promises, and so on.

I was surprised to see them. Last I heard of protests against this hydel power project was in 2007. It seemed to be a bit of a minor election issue, and when the former chief minister’s wife had tried to address an election rally, she had been interrupted by aggressive protestors, I was told. But that was then. Now, five years later, I had just driven past the massive walls supporting the proposed 1,000 MW project by Jaypee, a private firm. This private firm did not own the river Sutlej, whose waters were being dammed. But the government helped by granting permission and providing environmental clearances.

In any case, they don’t call it damming any more. They call it a ‘run of the river’ project. Anyone who has seen a river before-project and after-project knows that it doesn’t quite run. Crawling is more like it.

But even so, it really is too late to go about shouting slogans. In 2011, there were media stories about how the project was ready to generate electricity. How much electricity, and for whom, and towards what purpose — this was not told, nor was the question raised.

Besides, even the United Nations (Framework for Convention on Climate Change) has reportedly registered this project under its ‘Clean Development Mechanism’ list. There is some documentary evidence of waste disposal downstream of the Karcham Wangtoo project. Surrounding villages report that 26 % of water sources in the area had dried up by 2009. But never mind. The project appears to be adhering to some guidelines, which makes it better than several others.

Although this is a private project, the state of Himachal Pradesh will benefit through royalties — it earns and can sell a percentage of the power generated. It is a separate matter that this is already a ‘power surplus’ state, and is reportedly struggling to find buyers elsewhere. There aren’t enough takers.

But there they were, still bearing banners, still going round and round that tiny town in the Himalayas. And I thought to myself, what keeps them going? How do they find the strength in the face of so much thwarting, so much evidence that nobody really cares?
Then, I heard about Tongam Rina. The journalist who works at Arunachal Times was shot at when she stepped out of the office. She survived, but we don’t know if her spine is damaged, and how badly. We also don’t know why she was shot. What is known is that Rina is the vice president of Siang People’s Forum, a group that is opposing the Lower Siang Dam. There are about 150 dams planned or proposed in Arunachal Pradesh. A Global Post reporter who had met Rina has written about how she was offered a cash bribe to stop her crusade against the dams. The report also mentions that while the state gave the green signal to more and more dams, the personal wealth of our elected representatives leaped and bounded skyward.

Possibly, the attack on Rina has nothing to do with hydel projects. It could be personal vendetta. And possibly, our representatives’ hearts are as clean as the energy they promise us. It’s possible, of course. As for Karcham-Wangtoo, I suppose those dogged protestors will eventually get tired. 

First published here

What democracy means

“Earlier, people just did as they were asked. Or, they sniffed at the wind and followed its bent. Now, people note which way the wind is blowing, but sometimes, they bend the wind a little bit, bend it to their own will.”


So a woman told me. I was tempted to believe that it is too cold, simply too inconvenient to go out and vote in a winter election. Replugging this, simply because I am thinking of the landscape, the sound of the Himalayan winds, the betrayals of leaders. And because it is almost election time again.

In which I expose my maha-random musical tastes and hold forth on eggs as a philosophy to live by.
http://cityfm89.com/annie-zaidi-on-89-chapters

It was my first time inside a radio station/studio, and I was already over the moon at the idea of being on the same show as writers like Bapsi Sidhwa and Hanif Kureishi, talking to the beautiful Mahvesh, who is actually so wonderfully well-read it is almost a bit intimidating.

But I am also totally jealous of Karachi for having a radio show dedicated to books and writers. Why does India not have such a show? And it goes on for nearly two hours. Why can we not go on for at least one hour? Much as I love Hindi films and Hindi music, and the people who make them, why can we not have just a little more imagination, and a little more courage in our radio and television programming? Or do we actually believe that writers are totally irrelevant and the only people worth talking to film stars, or perhaps film directors?

Not just Pinki

I was in transit through Delhi recently when I spotted an ageing gentleman at a metro station. He stood out in the evening rush hour crowd because he was in a dhoti and short kurta, with assertive white moustaches.

Every other man — and there were thousands, of all ages — was in western-style trousers or jeans. I began to wonder what would happen to a young man in our modern metropolises if he went to work in a dhoti, or a churidaar with a flowing angarkha-style kurta. Or even if he just wore surma in his eyes. I suspect he would be ridiculed. And a lot of this ridicule would find expression as questions around his sexuality. And there will be some who insult or hurt him because his sexuality is different.

It made me sad to think of how narrow our own lives have become, how we restrict our own sartorial or lifestyle choices, because we are afraid of being punished somehow. And I was even sadder to think that people believe they can punish a citizen for being born into a certain gender.

This isn’t really about Pinki Pramanik, and it isn’t only about India. There has been a small furore in the USA recently, where a transgender woman has been sent to jail for killing a man, but will be housed in a male prison. What makes it complicated is that Cece McDonald, a black woman, had stabbed a white man who was part of a group that had attacked her both physically and verbally. It is believed that she acted in self-defense, but now she must live in a male prison for 41 months. Reports suggest that transgender women are far more likely to be sexually assaulted in US prisons than non-transgender people.

But this isn’t about transgender people either. This is about gender violence and letting people get away it. It is about the 150 Afghan girls who ended up drinking poisoned water recently at a school in Takhar.

This is about the teenaged Lal Bibi who was kidnapped, raped and tortured, allegedly by a gang of Afghan police officers. It is about a culture where a raped woman is seen as ‘dishonoured’, and therefore must either be killed or kill herself. A culture where a rapist can claim innocence just because a local mullah has declared him ‘married’ to his victim.

So far, Lal Bibi has refused to punish herself for being attacked, and her family has chosen to seek punishment for the rapists. But some Afghan officials remain ambiguous about the case, or deferring to traditions, where the girl cannot choose who to marry. And so, this is about a global political culture where we pour ‘aid’ money into countries that refuse to take an unequivocal stand on women’s sexual right, knowing that most of that money is spent on arming men and training them to use guns.

It is about punishing gay activists in Russia for “distributing information that promotes LGBT rights and equality to minors.”

It is about men hacking into medical records, to steal information about women who had abortions, and try to ‘expose’ them on the internet. It is about refusing emergency abortions to women on the grounds that it is against the ‘religious beliefs’ of a hospital employee.

It is, finally, about trying to control someone else’s life. Because you are afraid of sexual freedom. Because you haven’t realised that the next humiliation or act of violence might be directed against you. And the danger is ever-present because you have not helped create a world where sexual violence is not tolerated.

First published here

Once upon a time

Humans discovered that seeds could be put in the soil, to get more fruits and vegetables and grain. This caused humans to settle down in one place. Professional farming led to diverse trades, which led to the world as we know it. Wars were fought; freedoms wrested; empires built and destroyed. And through it all, farmers kept growing food.

When nations like India began to worry about how they were going to feed so many people, they invested in research institutions that would create and test hybrid varieties of seeds suited to local climates.

Then along came some corporations who thought they’d make money off seeds. They took seeds (which an anonymous farmer ‘discovered’), made slight changes at a genetic level, and sold them back to farmers at high prices. Makers of ‘GM’ (genetically modified) seeds invest large sums of money in promoting them as ‘better’.

Then, farmers discovered, there was no guarantee these expensive GM crop seeds would lead to better crops. They often need more chemical support (pesticide and herbicide). There were doubts about how these chemicals impact health. Tests were run and the results were not good news. Glyphosate-based herbicides caused birth defects; GM corn led to organ failure in laboratory rats.

But did the firms who make GM food stop making it? Did they spend money advertising possible damage to animal or human health? Well, what do you think? Which is why it is important for all governments to make GM labeling mandatory. Whether or not it is safe, we have a right to decide whether we want to risk our health or not.

For now, the Indian government is being sensible. The ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution has said through a gazette notification that, starting January 2013, packages containing genetically modified food must say ‘GM’. But the ministry has not said how it will enforce this norm. Still, it is comforting to know that the government prefers to let us decide what we eat.

On the other hand, we should watch out. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Indian Council of Agriculture Research is “seeking to collaborate with multinational seed corporations to develop high-yielding, durable seeds – both for profit and to improve the nation’s poor crop yields.” In exchange for ‘expertise’ and a share in profits, the ICAR offers access to one of the world’s most diverse gene banks.

Let us not, for the moment, question the assumption that crop yields are ‘poor’, although technically, India is a grain surplus nation. If yields are low, it is often because there aren’t enough farmers growing pulses, vegetables or fruits, or because they have moved to cash crops like cotton. Even so, a publicly funded body like the ICAR has no business seeking ‘profits’ that depend on blocking farmers’ access to new seed varieties!

The Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) and the Safe Food Alliance has already sent strongly worded letters about gifting our bio-heritage to multinational corporations on a platter. But in the meantime, we should keep an eye on international developments, especially reports related to GM food.

A farming magazine recently carried a story about a Danish farmer, whose pigs had chronic diarrhea, loss of appetite and reproductive problems. He switched to a GM-free diet and reportedly, the diarrhea disappeared; fewer animals died. In response to this, the Danish National Pig Research Centre has decided to investigate effects of non-GM and GM soya on pigs.

Which makes me wonder what GM soya or corn does to humans. But then, do we really want to find out?

First published here

The kids are not alright

24 kids ‘disappear’ everyday in Madhya Pradesh alone. Between 2003 and 2011, the total figure was as high as 75,521, with the chart peaking in 2010 (the figure for 2011 was calculated only up until October, so it is safe to say that trafficking seems to be on the rise in the state). Of the ‘disappeared’ kids, 12,636 were never found.


The kids are not alright.

At least, several millions of them aren’t. I was recently mailed a report by Vikas Samvad that says, 24 kids ‘disappear’ everyday in Madhya Pradesh alone. Between 2003 and 2011, the total figure was as high as 75,521, with the chart peaking in 2010 (the figure for 2011 was calculated only up until October, so it is safe to say that trafficking seems to be on the rise in the state). Of the ‘disappeared’ kids, 12,636 were never found. Within this ‘never found’ category, the majority — 8,108 — is girls.

The interesting thing is that many of these disappearances occur in tribal areas. Tribal blocks in Madhya Pradesh are the only regions where the sex ratio is positive; that means that there are more than 1,000 females per 1,000 live male births. Now, there are reports that some of the girls who were tracked down are being sold off in neighbouring districts for anywhere between Rs35,000 and 60,000.

Madhya Pradesh isn’t the only problem state, of course. The National Human Rights Commission believes that 45,000 kids disappear every year in India. And yet, the scale and horror of the situation comes home to us only when the children come home to tell their stories.
One of the girls — named in the report only as ‘Savita’ — did return. Five years after she went to Delhi and was put to domestic work. She was sold, and then sold again. Next thing she knew she was in Iran where she was enslaved in a single room. Next thing she knew, she was pregnant. When she managed to escape with the help of a kindly neighbour, she reached Kolkata, child in tow. She reached Delhi, and begged on the streets to feed the child, then took a train back to Jabalpur, hitched a ride on a tractor and then walked another 50km.

Despite her trauma, Savita did return to her family. But over the last five years, 5,499 girls have gone missing from eight ‘tribal’ districts in MP, of which 1,501 girls cannot be traced. There must be hundreds of others whose parents couldn’t even file police complaints.
The reasons for a spurt in trafficking are complex — female foeticide, dowry, misogyny, food insecurity. But children usually leave home only when poverty is extreme, and no work can be found locally.

A group of teenaged children are offered jobs by ‘agents’. The kids rarely have cell phones, or addresses of potential employers. When they disappear, parents don’t know where to look. They also allege that the police sometimes don’t take complaints seriously. On occasion, parents have gone with names and numbers of the local ‘agent’, but the police have not made arrests.

What can be done? Well, the state did set up anti-trafficking cells and it will take a much more detailed investigation to gauge their performance. However, activists have long been demanding an increase in budgetary allocations. In Madhya Pradesh, the child security budget comprises just 0.13% of the state budget. This translates into Rs1.94 per child per year (the report cites comparative figures from states like Andhra Pradesh where the share is Rs27.5).

India’s allocation for children is only 5.3% in the 2011-12 union budget, and of this, only 0.8 is devoted to child protection. Crimes against children are on the rise, and studies suggest that India is one of the main destinations for cross-border trafficking in South Asia. So, what the protection budget means, I don’t yet know. But it does mean that a whole lot kids disappearing. And are probably nowhere near alright.

Read full piece here

Two extracts from two pieces worth reading:

"A plan to stop the destruction of the world’s oceans was blocked by the US, Canada and Russia. The final text simply says that countries should do more to prevent over-fishing and ocean acidification, without specifying what. A call to end subsidies for fossil fuels was removed from the final text, as was language emphasizing the reproductive rights of women. And of course there were no new commitments on fighting climate change.

The 49-page final declaration of Rio+20 contained the verb “reaffirm” 59 times. In effect, some 50,000 people from 192 countries traveled to Rio de Janeiro to “reaffirm” what was agreed there twenty years ago. The fact that the document was not even less ambitious than the 1992 final text was trumpeted as a success.

Rarely has such a large elephant labored so long to give birth to such a small mouse." Article here

And

"Till date, the Army, based on an internal artificial interpretation by the Military Secretary's Branch, is promoting Short Service Officers commissioned prior to 2006 as Captains in nine years of service while those commissioned after 2006 are being promoted to the same rank in two years. The impediment was not created by with the Ministry of Defence, but by the Army. When the Military's medical establishment was directed by Courts to grant medical facilities to its elderly retired Emergency Commissioned Officers based on an already existing Government Order, the Army itself was quick to challenge it before the Supreme Court. Imagine, the Army approaching the Supreme Court with a prayer that the same Army may be directed to withdraw medical facilities from its own officers, some of them in their 80s." Article here

Presidents 101

I thought it worthwhile to reiterate this — the President does represent us. As ‘First Citizen’, he (or she) signs off on our future. He often serves as the voice of our conscience and sometimes, as the face of the nation.

At the very least, he has power to overturn the death penalty. As head of the executive, he signs bills passed by Parliament. However, if he does not agree with the decision, he can send a bill back once. He can’t overturn decisions, but he can force MPs to think about whether their decisions are in the national interest. At the very least, his act of returning a bill unsigned alerts the rest of us to the fact that a law is problematic.A President is also commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He appoints state Governors, the Chief Justice and other judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts, the Attorney General, the Comptroller and Auditor General, all the Election Commissioners, and the Ambassadors to other nations. Even if he doesn’t do the actual hiring himself, there must be a lot of paperwork. And if he is conscientious about the right people being hired for very important jobs, he should check the backgrounds of those he appoints.

His role is critical in times of crisis, such as an Emergency, which India has experienced already. It is the President who declares an Emergency in times of war, or internal rebellion. Besides, when states face a constitutional crisis, ‘President’s rule’ is imposed. The Governor can dissolve an elected Assembly in the name of the President. This too has happened in Jammu and Kashmir, and more recently, Jharkhand. Clearly, the President wasn’t vacationing while these crises were playing themselves out. Tough decisions had to be made, against great political pressure, and with huge ramifications for Indian democracy.

It’s true that the President acts on the advice of the Prime Minister and the cabinet. Even so, he must decide whether or not he should take that advice. Legally, his decision cannot be challenged on the grounds that it is not in accordance with the PM’s advice. Nor is he easy to get rid of, unless it is proved that he violated the Constitution. Even so, the government can’t impeach him without the support of two-thirds of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. That is another reason why it’s important to build consensus on the candidate. MPs are not bound to follow party orders when voting for a new President, since they vote by secret ballot.

I do hope the next President follows in KR Narayanan’s footsteps and sends out communiqués to explain his decisions. It would have helped if Pratibha Patil had done the same. For instance, her decision to tackle 30 mercy petitions, and saving lives, including those convicted for killing children (one was a jailer’s daughter, gang-raped and killed inside jail premises). But Patil did not come to a decision on mercy petitions from men accused of political (separatist) murders. It would help if she explained why, because I just don’t understand.

Read full piece here

Recently, watching the documentary Supermen of Malegaon — which is the funniest, most empathetic film I’ve seen this year — I began to think about ‘small’ projects. The documentary tracks the making of a fiction film, Superman of Malegaon, an extremely low budget handycam-shot parody of Hollywood’s Superman. It was made by the same filmmaker who made Malegaon ki Sholay, putting in his own money. The actors are often workers from local textile mills.

It was clearly a difficult project. But the making of one film encouraged others in Malegaon to try their hand at filmmaking.

It was clearly a difficult project. But the making of one film encouraged others in Malegaon to try their hand at filmmaking. Films are mostly circulated on CDs, but whatever emerges is a thing of pride and hope, and also personal responsibility. And I kept wishing there was at least one theatre dedicated to screening indigenous films. Not just in Malegaon. Why should every small town not have its own film industry, its own talent, and its own system of theatrical distribution?

Of course, there is the question of demand and supply, and the question of superior/inferior quality of the work produced. I do believe that people should be free to watch whatever they want to watch, whether it is a Korean action film dubbed into Tamil, or a Bhojpuri family drama jiggling with innuendo, or expensive Hindi films made in Mumbai. But if there is no way to show their work, especially to local audiences, why will local writers and filmmakers be driven to tell local stories?

And if we do not take responsibility for local needs and problems, how are we ever going to be a fair society? So many thousands of problems arise from centralisation. There is too great a physical distance between administrators and the local population, between farmer and policy-maker and beneficiaries of the public distribution system, between people who live near rivers and people who benefit from the electricity produced by damming those rivers.

For instance, the so-called small or ‘mini’ hydel projects on rivers are supposed to be greener, in the sense that they do not fully stop the flow of the river water. But they do destroy the local ecology. Forests are depleted. People’s access to the water, and the fish, changes. For instance, villages impacted by the 200-MW Gundia Hydroelectric Power Project (GHEP), proposed in the Gundia River basin, have been protesting. Meanwhile, the Karnataka High Court has reportedly issued a stay order on 72 mini hydel projects in the Western Ghats.

Some sources suggest that the government has cleared as many as 261 small hydel projects across several Indian states, not including the north-east. Around 132 hydro projects have been planned in Arunachal Pradesh alone. Some north-eastern tribes have already suffered displacement, thanks to dams, which led to conflicts between the refugees and other communities.There have been dam-induced floods.

It is also not enough to turn to renewable energy from wind and sun. Wind farms in Andhra Pradesh have demolished forests that local communities had painstakingly grown on ‘barren’ land. Grasslands were destroyed, which in turn led to a collapse of cattle farming.

This is not to say that electricity shouldn’t be generated at all. But we do need to snap out of our national habit of looking for energy solutions too far from home. We have to find a way of generating it locally, so that if sacrifices must be made, the impact is also felt by those who benefit most.

If Mumbai and Delhi and Chandigarh want lots of electricity, local governments must find a way of getting residents to generate some. It isn’t impossible. But it does require a certain amount of will. And a certain sense of justice.

First published here

Rulers, purposes

Infrastructure and colonialism make me think of Lord Dalhousie. I read recently that he built the Grand Hindustan Tibet road in 1850. According to the Himachal state tourism website, amongst other reasons for building the road, one was that the former Governor General of India was upset to see the system of ‘begaari’ – bonded labour, effectively. “Unpaid labourers were pressed into service — including for the transport of timber and files to Shimla,” the website says, adding that Lord Dalhousie wanted to improve the road upon which these men trudged.

Getting around in the hills meant riding mules or horses, and the journey was fraught with danger. Of course, Lord Dalhousie himself needed travel in the Himalayas. He also wanted to create trade ties with Tibet and the road was important. So, as the website puts it, “the immense machinery at the disposal of the East India Company was pressed into service”; but it doesn’t say whether or not the labourers were paid. That’s the question I’m interested in. Did the labourers who created colonial infrastructure get paid?

If they were paid, I must acknowledge a tiny bit of grudging respect to Dalhousie. To my mind, a good administrator is one who intervenes in a bad situation. A good ruler sees people suffering and does something about it.

One of my favourite stories about rulers relates to former nawab of Awadh, Asaf-ud-daula, who moved the capital from Faizabad to Lucknow. Certain chroniclers have described him thus: “He used to laugh unseasonably, fling derisive abuse at others and desire derisive abuse in return. He delighted in meaningless amusements...”

He was known to have been indifferent to governance, but I can forgive all his “meaningless amusements” if only one story about him proves true — the story of the Bada Imambara being a charity project. In 1784, famine hit Awadh. Lucknow was suffering. Asaf-ud-daula, it is believed, hired over 20,000 people to build a complex that houses a palace, a mosque, a maze and a step-well. However, this wasn’t an ordinary food-for-work program. What was built during the day was demolished at night. Rumour has it that even ‘noblemen’ worked at night, so they wouldn’t be jeered at for being reduced to starvation.

As long as the famine lasted, the project went on. Some called Asaf-ud-daula mad. The treasury was being emptied with nothing to show for it. But I think he had something more precious than sanity. He had priorities.

Read full piece here

Short, and bittersweet.

So I made this short film.

'Engine' was entered into a contest organised by humaramovie, where the main draw was a brief mentoring session with either Anurag Kashyap or Imtiaz Ali. The film did not win the prize, but it did get a special mention (as a worthy rival to the winner). All teams worked to a common theme: the girl and the auto-rickshaw. I re-edited the film slightly after the contest was over. Feedback, as always, is welcome.

Last week, in Rohtak, a young man who sold boiled eggs for a living was reportedly beaten up as he tried to stop other young men from snatching some eggs. People rushed to his rescue and broke up the fight. But after he wound up work, his assailants cornered him. The victim identifies as Balmiki. His assailants are upper caste. Reports say, they beat him, urinated on his face, stole Rs2,500 from his cart, then broke the cart.

Over a hundred years ago, in Hoshiarpur, there was a boy called Mangoo Ram. He was the only “Untouchable” in his school and had to sit outside the classroom. His father packed him off to the USA to work on farms, and when he returned in the 1920s, he was nearly forty. Perhaps it was the shock of being re-introduced to caste, but Mangoo Ram went on to become an organiser of people we now prefer to call Dalit, and a proponent of Ad Dharm, a casteless religion that claimed to be pre-Hindu.

When the Ad Dharm movement was in its nascent stages, a former Arya Samaj member Swami Shudranand was addressing a series of meetings around Jalandhar. One of these meetings went on for four days and had to be broken up when the upper castes attacked the participants for using the village pond.

I’ve been reading about the social and political forces that shaped a religion, in a book called Religious Rebels In The Punjab: The Ad Dharm Challenge To Caste, by Mark Juergensmeyer. I’m also reading news reports about Dalits camped outside the Hisar district administration’s offices, alleging discrimination in their village to the extent of being denied trade at provision stores – a socio-economic boycott described in north India as ‘hukka-paani band’. And I’m wondering at what the last hundred years have meant for Dalits.

Juergensmeyer writes, “Upper castes identified casteism and social discrimination as the cause of the Untouchables’ plight (but) Untouchables felt themselves, instead, to be victims of poverty and economic discrimination.”

This is, of course, a critical difference of perspective. Upper caste people, however empathetic, see only the obvious — discrimination and/or violence. What the discrimination accomplishes is that it pushes poor people further into poverty, or keeps them there. The young man in Rohtak, for instance, lost money, suffered losses on eggs he couldn’t sell, and must repair his cart or find money for a new one. He might not have money for legal battles. And if the guilty are not convicted, his losses will never be recovered.

Far too often, conversations around caste veer away from the economics that lie at the core of casteism. Resources — especially land and water — are not unlimited. Jobs — especially the ones that do not involve backbreaking, soul-numbing labour — are hard to get. Those who have the better bargain are in no hurry to change the status quo. Throw power into the equation and people will see bloodshed before they surrender their benefits.

Nepal faces a fresh crisis because its leaders could not agree on a constitution and writer Manjushree Thapa believes that caste had a big part to play. “Brahmins and Kshatriyas — called Bahuns and Chhetris in Nepal — occupy almost all national space,” she writes. She accuses the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML, particularly of trying to preserve a high-caste monopoly, and opposing the rights of women, dalits and other ethnic groups.
But those who have a monopoly on power are not going to give up without a fight, are they? To mix metaphors, more eggs are likely to get smashed before the apple cart is upset.

Published here

I’ve been thinking about what Gandhiji would do about our Public Distribution System (PDS). At the heart of this programme is the idea that the poor must not starve: They must have a bit of food security, despite market prices or black-marketeers. It is an idea Gandhiji would approve of. Most of us would find it very hard to dispute the rectitude of this idea.

But the PDS has never worked as well as it should. Recently, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee even said, “Improper PDS is the biggest weakness of the country.” He said this while talking to students at Mohanlal Sukhadia University in Udaipur. It must have rung painfully true, given that this was south Rajasthan, which has reported several hunger deaths in recent years...

As it is, the last Global Hunger Index report (2011) has ranked us 67 (among 88 nations) when it comes to food security. We have 
actually dropped a rank since 2008, when we were ranked 66. Our overall situation is judged ‘alarming’.

Researchers have also developed an India State Hunger Index, which calculates hunger and malnutrition within India. They looked at 17 states, and claim to have covered 95% of the population. Some states, expectedly, did better. Punjab, for instance, was the best performer – its food security situation is merely ‘serious’. Madhya Pradesh was ‘extremely alarming’, 
with people suffering greater hunger here than in Ethiopia or Sudan. Gandhiji would not have approved.

It is also true, of course, that India is a food-surplus nation. Or so it claimed to be, in our school textbooks. But this ‘surplus’ exists because too many of us — some estimates suggest 836 million Indians survive on less than Rs20 per day — either have no land to grow food, or don’t have jobs that pay enough to buy food.

If we are not to turn into a failed state, we have to prevent mass hunger. The PDS is a firm step in that direction. But what ails the PDS?

One answer is ‘poor offtake’, which means our distribution system isn’t distributing far and wide enough. Another is ‘leakages’. This doesn’t refer to rats biting through sackcloth. It refers to non-hungry people stealing grain meant for hungry Indians.

The way to tackle theft is to police it. But the PDS is a complex system. There are too many stages of transportation and storage and sale. No matter how alert administration officials are, or how honest, it is hard to plug a million leaks unless a food inspector physically stands around, guarding each sack of grain. We know that isn’t a tenable solution.

Read full piece here

Kum se kum akela chana bhaad mein gaya to sahi

Shyamal Chaudhary, a 65-year-old farmer was running around, trying to get the block office to sanction an irrigation project in his village. Finally, he got sick of the runaround and gave up.

Except, he didn’t really give up. He just got up and did it himself. Alone. It took 14 years, but he did it. His own farming income went up, of course, and he could fish in the pond too. Since things were hard for everyone in the village, Chaudhary shared his pond with the community. Things have been better, since.

There are many lone grams in this country. There was Kamleshwari Singh, a farmer from Bihar, who spent seven years digging. People laughed at him; some called him ‘talaabi baba’. Perhaps they thought he had gone mad. But he went on digging, and when he was done, he had created a large pond.

There’s Rajinder Singh, now described as India’s ‘water man’, who initially dug alone in ‘dark’ thirsty Alwar, trying to find water.

There was Dashrath Manjhi, another Bihari who created a road over hilly tracts with his own hands, and no help. Manjhi was lucky enough to be honoured during his lifetime and cremated with state honours when he died.

Another recent report mentioned Suresh Khanapurkar and Amrish Patel, who worked together to resolve the water crisis in several villages of Shirpur taluka, Dhule district. They did this although Khanapurkar is described as an RSS supporter, and Patel, a Congressman.

Why am I suddenly thinking of these people? Well, we have several infrastructure and hygiene problems where we live. There have been improvements over the years, but there’s no end to such problems because maintenance is a lifetime responsibility.

Much of the ‘open’ or leisure spaces promised by the builder was swallowed up or sold off. Garbage piles up on the roads. Rats breed merrily. Drains aren’t covered. Every monsoon brings the risk of floods.

My mother, by way of community service, had been slaving away at beautifying the area behind our building. Many people told her not to bother. Some mocked her. Some warned her that all her hard work would be destroyed in a few weeks. Even I snapped at her, asking why she worked so hard when the rest of the community was merrily choking up our gutters with plastic waste.

She carried on — sweeping, cementing walls, digging, colouring pots, buying flowering plants, white-washing. On mothers’ day, she got a few women together and ceremonially offered a clean corner of beauty to the community.

Another suburban friend told me about his building’s resident ‘akela chana’ — a young woman who got sick of the filth and starting sweeping the common area outside. After two months, a few other women — women only, it seems - were shamed into helping her. Somehow, the building got clean and so far, it has stayed clean.

So, I’m wondering if the oven of our problems can be busted if we just did what needs getting done. We could at least stop mocking the ‘akela chana’ who is trying.

Read here

It's not about the kaam, but the daam

I wonder if you travel by cycle-rickshaw. I wonder because recently, some friends mentioned that they suffer too much guilt on account of the fellow pulling the rickshaw.

I rarely feel guilty, except when I see three full-bodied adults pulled by an elderly man who looks like his lungs could do with a year in a sanatorium. But after a few years in Mumbai, I saw rickshaws as some of my friends (Mumbai-bred, or NRIs) do - an artefact in the museum of oppression.


I examined my feelings towards hand-pulled rickshaws in Kolkata and thought that I couldn’t bring myself to ride one. So, although I continued to hire cycle-rickshaws, I told myself that perhaps I’m blind to the oppression dangling from the handlebars. Perhaps I owed my lack of guilt to middle class antecedents. Most of my childhood memories are from Lucknow where cycle-rickshaws were the only affordable mode of transport... 

Then I visited the UK, where taxis were an indulgence I couldn’t afford. Besides, I wanted to walk around London. But I was wearing high heels that day, and so I ended up barefoot and ready to weep from exhaustion. And lo! What do I see?

A clutch of cycle-rickshaws wafting about. These bright rickshaws were clearly a tourist attraction and confined to a touristy part of town. I didn’t think I could afford them, but a puller - a six-foot-plus, beefy blonde - approached me.

I mentioned my destination; he whipped out a map; he quoted five pounds; I hopped on. Along the way, I asked questions - who he was, whether he made enough, did he eat well? He was a Polish immigrant. Yes, he made enough to eat well and sleep safe.

Suddenly, the penny dropped and the rickshaw guilt slid off my back. Once again, I saw the cycle-rickshaw as it was — a much-needed service, a healthy alternative to motor vehicles, a joyride.

But what we call the humble, besieged ricksha in Lucknow becomes a pedicab or ‘eco chariot’ in London. What I paid in London would cover a coffee and croissant in a nice sit-down cafe. Or it would buy a couple of sandwiches, muffins, and maybe some milk at the supermarket. For the same distance, a Lucknow puller gets paid Rs 15, not enough to buy one paratha at a dhaba.

Read full piece here

Suffering, and happy

Surveys can be very confusing, of course. Last year (2011), the Gallup poll found that only 11% Indians were ‘thriving’, Pakistan was apparently doing better, at 20%. This, even though food insecurity is higher and confidence in the government much lower in Pakistan.

In any case, it seems to me that many of us have been lying about our misery. Because, according to another survey conducted by Ipsos Global, Indians are the second-happiest people in the world. Which means that either most Indians surveyed were from the ‘thriving’ class, or else, far too many of us enjoy our suffering.

So much struggling and suffering isn’t hard to believe since we fare badly on most indices of wellbeing. According to the Legatum Prosperity Index, for instance, India was ranked 91 (among 110 nations), because of our low per capita GDP, and the lack of social support.

If you want to know why we lack social support, look at our tax reports. A parliamentary committee, headed by Yashwant Sinha, found that just 4,06,000 taxpayers earn more than Rs20 lakh per annum (in 2010-11). That’s just over 1% of India’s total taxpayer base.

In our national wealth narrative, 88.98% are crammed into the 0-5 lakh income bracket, which means most of us don’t have much that can be taxed. But 1.25% of us sprawl across the 20 lakh+ bracket, and they contribute 63 percent to the personal tax collected. These figures apply to individuals, of course, and not to businesses, but they tell us how suffering (or happiness) works.

Another newspaper has an income-bracket calculator up on its website. You feed in your income, and it tells you where you are on India’s financial ladder. Say, you earn Rs 12,000 a month and are the only earning member in your family. You’d still be among the top 8.45%.

But the question is, what does Rs 12,000 mean? What it means in a village, I cannot say, but in a metropolitan city like Mumbai, it means being dangerously close to poor. It may not translate into going to bed hungry. But it does mean long, exhausting commutes in overcrowded buses and trains. It means not having access to fresh fruit. It means being slightly overweight and malnourished at the same time, since you cannot afford to eat the good stuff.

Read full piece here

What surprised me was the newspapers’ howling. Then, I realised that most journalists — especially editors — ride in cars or taxis or autos. In this, they were no different from industrialists and senior bureaucrats. I remember being told by a senior politician how, at a meeting, everyone was moaning about how buses now actually went faster than the ministers’ cars. The senior politician hid his amusement in his moustache. Just a few days ago, his peon had been talking about how chuffed he was about the BRT.

Four years later, I assumed things had settled down. But apparently not. Someone filed a petition and the Delhi High Court (the judges use cars, of course) has asked the Central Road Research Institute to conduct a study on how the BRT might work if it was ‘normal’. This, although a survey shows that 40% car owners accept that the BRT reduces traffic snarls. Another survey shows that up to 85% of respondents are willing to use buses if the network improves.

What the CRRI will say is anybody’s guess, but I believe that true feasibility studies can only be conducted by people who actually use public transport. I feel that everyone who writes about BRTs should be forced to commute in buses or cycles for a year.

For too long, transport and urban planning policies have been framed by those who ride in cars. More and more flyovers are built. Existing roads are eaten up by cars parked on either side. Spaces earmarked for gardens or homes are converted into parking lots. But there’s no additional taxing of families who saddle the city with two, three and four cars. We talk of ‘world-class cities’, but in cities like Vienna, Munich, Rome, and even New York, certain areas are car-free.

If Mumbai had no-car zones, we’d be a better-looking, healthier city. But oh, our fear of sunshine! So, here we are, building a city where nobody can walk, or cycle, safely, and where we drive to gyms so we may walk on a stationary treadmill. And we pop pills to make up for the lack of K and D vitamins that the sun could give us for free.

Remember the moaning about skywalks? People were saying it was a waste of money, because who uses skywalks?
Well, I do. 

Read full piece here

Part of the problem is that the author gravitates towards spaces of leisure—house parties, nightlife, music, TV, concerts, restaurants, shopping malls. He also says that leisure has been democratised. “Boys and girls drink together in well-lit, happy spaces.” I’d like to know how many young Indians can afford to be in these democratic spaces.

Nearly 28 percent of India lives in its cities and the figure is likely to go up to 40 percent by 2030. Urban areas contribute two-thirds of the national Gross Domestic Product. Reports from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy indicate that the average quarterly (urban) household income stands at 45,000, which translates into 15,000 per month to cover house rent, food, clothes, medicine, tuition, electricity, transport. At that income level, based on the cost of living in Mumbai and Delhi, the only entertainment one can hope for is TV, and perhaps an Internet connection. Even buying a bottle of wine and hopping into a taxi to visit a friend is a strain.

Surveys suggest that households earning more than 1 million per annum comprise only around five percent of urban households but that they contribute to one-third of the total urban consumer expenditure. From such households come youngsters who can pay monthly house rents of 25,000 or more, and who can buy Carlsberg beer, or Tuborg if they prefer. True, we now have that choice. But Mehrotra tells us very little about the majority that cannot afford, and perhaps doesn’t want, a can of Carlsberg. He tells us that people who work at restaurants like McDonalds like their jobs. But he doesn’t tell us where they might go when they want a drink or how they commute, nor does he seem bothered by these questions.

If Mehrotra were to dissect this notion of democratic leisure, he’d find that it’s a cruel joke. In most cities, green spaces that young people might have enjoyed at no cost are shrinking. Several public parks are locked up after sunset, to keep out ‘undesirable elements’. There are very few clean public toilets. Mumbai has the Carter Road promenade, with benches, but food and drink is forbidden. Except the beach, there’s nowhere to go. Try drinking alcohol on the beach and you’re liable to get arrested. Dance bars have been banned in Mumbai, although dance shows are permitted in five star hotels. There are discotheques but cover charges are high and the drinks expensive. So, whose leisure has been democratised?

One interesting development over the past decade has been the spurt in the number of coffee houses (in a primarily tea-drinking nation!). Chains like Café Coffee Day have at least 1,200 outlets; Barista has more than 200; international brands like Costa Coffee have arrived; Starbucks is making a late entry. There are a few dozen independent cafes. Most of these serve a cuppa priced between 60 and 120. Business is booming because middle-class Indians are hungry for spaces where they can meet safely.

Students, lovers on dates, young professionals—they have nowhere else to go. The cooperatives running Indian Coffee House are struggling, fading out. Those who cannot afford the 60 cappuccino have to drink tea at roadside stalls, where they cannot sit down to talk. Where do the cooks and drivers and autorickshaw wallahs take their leisure?

In ‘Servants of India’, Mehrotra’s writing is empathetic. He describes a mall visit during which he spots a family accompanied by servants out shopping. The employers disappear into a Mexican restaurant and leave the two servants outside, holding the bags and the baby. He mentions Delhi’s high crime rates, the several instances of the help robbing and killing employers, but also of the latter torturing the workers. He writes, “The servant is not someone who provides a service at a cost. He is someone who is less than human… when I put myself in Ramu’s shoes, I can see myself reaching for the iron rod, the hammer, the kitchen knife.”

But then, I’m annoyed at this throwaway line: “In Delhi, most can afford round-the-clock help.” It only reiterates my impression that Mehrotra is essentially writing about the upper class.

And much of what Mehrotra tells us about servants, we already know. By ‘we’ I mean the English-speaking, book-buying middle class in India. We read the papers. We observe what the author observes because we hire domestic help ourselves, or intimately know others who do. He spells out the connections between extreme disparities of lifestyle, physical isolation, and a servant’s attempt to strike back using a moral code borrowed from employers. But he doesn’t give us details. Not a single worker is interviewed at any length, so we don’t have a clear sense of the extent of their bondage, desperation or greed.

At best, the essay serves as a primer for non-resident Indians or international readers who are not familiar with the way live-in servants are treated in upper-class urban households.

Social commentary in The Butterfly Generation is a tossed salad of stock phrases: ‘socialist era’, ‘global capitalism’, ‘liberal’, ‘feudal’... I’m soon longing for a metaphorical flyswatter each time the word ‘socialism’ appears.

We were always a mixed economy—and in a limited way still are—and that knowledge is critical to an understanding of the '90s kids. A mixed economy meant that we thought of the government not only as an administrative and legal force, but also as a provider of secure jobs across a wide swathe of sectors. You didn’t have to be a bureaucrat or a politician or a soldier to get pensions and cheap medical care. You could be a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer, a teacher, a mechanic, a furnace-stoker, a baggage handler, a banker. People took pride in working for state-owned enterprises like Bharat Heavy Electricals or Air India. Even now, despite our ranting against the ‘system’, few young people would dismiss a government job in an institution that’s likely to stay solvent.

You were told that if you were a ‘private’ party, you needed to find ways of ‘getting work done’. This meant a sinuous chain of ‘contacts’ with senior officials, or bribery. At least some of our mistrust of profit and private capital has come from there, not from socialist ideals.

In fact, although our Constitution tells us we aspire towards socialism, we were never taught to respect socialist ideals. I don’t remember being taught that natural resources belong equally to everybody, or that private property was a bad thing. I wasn’t even taught that every citizen had a right to food, sanitation, housing and education. It wasn’t in our books. It wasn’t in the air around us.

Perhaps that would explain why so many in our generation—particularly urban citizens—are up in arms against government schemes that offer food, health and education—especially those directed at rural citizens, such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or the midday meal scheme. It would also explain our early disconnect from the battle for resources. We wanted non-stop electricity and water, but we expected the government to help us get it, even if it meant the destruction of fellow citizens’ homes and livelihoods.

Because we are used to the government being able to step in and control things in every sector, we continue to expect that it will, although much infrastructure is now created and controlled by non-state corporations. For instance, when Jet Airways let go of some of its workers, they wanted the state to help save their jobs. When taxi and auto drivers demand higher fares, the middle-class commuter expects the state to rein them in.

Mehrotra seems not to have taken cognisance of the psychology of the mixed economy as distinct from socialist, or capitalist, or feudal.

Meanwhile, I have a speechless, blank Post-It on page 98 against this statement: “Class barriers, too, have been broken down in these showrooms of global capitalism. The bank manager’s son works side by side with a new migrant to the city, and they both start with a clean slate… centuries of prejudice are instantly wiped out.”

On caste prejudice, the author is disarmingly naïve. He seems not to know that traditionally, cooks belonged to upper castes, so working in a restaurant is not a come-down. He should have interviewed people who clean the toilets.

Extracted from my review of The Butterfly Generation for the Caravan