ek red colour ki love story

A poetry film. A bit of an experiment with cityscapes and words. The script was 'found ' in the sense that the story was constructed around images or situations that already existed and inspired a line or two of poetry in my head. Watch if you can. Like if you like.  

Unbecoming India

I’m currently reading a book that spans the 1920s-60s. It reveals a lot about some of the men who organized and led the freedom struggle – Gandhi and C Rajagopalachari, Nehru and Vallabh bhai Patel. And I’m wondering what these men would do if they knew that, in the sovereign land for which they went to jail and organized strikes and suffered attempts on their lives, two young girls would be arrested for questioning the legitimacy of a bandh. That a doctor’s clinic would be destroyed because a politician died of old age. That this politician would be a man accused of unleashing mayhem and murder upon citizens, and that he would never be punished properly for his crimes, but instead that his dead body would be draped in the national flag.

When India came into being as a republic, we chose to be democratic, sovereign and secular. We were no longer just a landmass upon which hundreds of millions lived, but a notional place of dignity. We knew what it was like to live without freedom, equality and justice. And we wanted to stop suffering, just so that someone else could get richer.

When we say we wanted freedom, it wasn’t just that we wanted rulers who had the same skin tone. We wanted the freedom to choose what was good for us. Because often, what was good for Indians resident in India was not profitable for colonial masters. But when we protested, our leaders were thrown into jail for a range of crimes that ranged from disturbing the peace to treason.

And now? Well now, Dayamani Barla has been in jail for over a month. In 2006, a case was filed against Barla when she was part of a group that blocked a road, demanding NREGS (national rural employment guarantee scheme) job cards for some villagers. She was charged with rioting, criminal trespass and so on. The case was reopened and she was arrested in October this year. She managed to get bail but was immediately arrested in connection with another case. According to a statement issued by other activists, police officials refuse to tell ‘for technical reasons’ what laws Barla is supposed to have broken.

Wondering why an old case reopened, and what was Barla up to? Well, she’s been standing with the farmers of Nagri village who refuse to let go of the 200-odd acres of land the state government has earmarked for a law university and a new IIM.

It is not that the villagers of Nagri wish to pose an impediment to educational institutions. They have said that there are other pieces of land around, which are not being cultivated and therefore more suitable for construction. This land, they say, was acquired in the 1950s, and even then, most villagers had refused the pitiful compensation on offer. For decades, nothing happened. Then the state decided to build a new university, and so it destroyed the standing crop belonging to the farmers. And now, Barla is in jail.

Consider the irony of Barla, an award-winning journalist-activist, being lodged in the Birsa Munda Central Jail. It has been named for legendary freedom fighter Birsa Munda who died in Ranchi jail, it is said, under mysterious circumstances.

I wonder what our freedom fighter-leaders would say to Dayamani Barla. What would Gandhi say? What would Vallabh bhai Patel say? What would Subhash Chandra Bose say?

And I wonder too – how different are we from colonial India where people could be parted easily from land or salt, and leaders jailed for encouraging us to break the law if it hurt people and livelihoods?

First published here.

Get rid of that damn purdah

Here’s a question I have long wanted to ask of our security providers. I understand the need to scan bags and jackets. But how do you explain those monstrous curtained cubicles created especially for women?

Police, security agencies, mall owners, government, someone, explain! What do you think is being accomplished? Women fliers or cinema patrons are checked by other women. Purses or backpacks have already been searched outside, or put through scanners operated by men. Then, we walk into a makeshift cubicle with black fabric walls, or else, horrid rubber strips for curtains (which are probably never washed and make me worry about dust and infection), so that we may have hand-held metal detectors passed down the length of our bodies. And we step out again.

What part of the process needs to be ‘private’? We are not being strip-searched, after all. So, why do we need to go behind a curtain?

I feel upset because there seems to be an assumption that anything to do with a woman’s body must be concealed. It is almost as if the very idea of women having women’s bodies must be embarrassing and that, if we must be touched by anybody – even if it is a female cop – it must be concealed. As if a woman being touched for any reason at all is a horrible thing. But that doesn’t stop the security checks. It just puts us into a temporary purdah, so nobody can see what’s being done to us.

Why?

Do cops or mall-owners seriously think that women want to curl up and die at the thought of being brushed down with a metal detector? I very seriously doubt if shoppers or fliers are ashamed of being made to undergo a mandatory security check. Does being felt up make us conscious? Perhaps. But it would make anyone conscious, men too. Why do you assume that men’s embarrassments are meaningless?

And if security staff needs a private area to conduct an intimate search of our shopping selves, then there ought to be one for men. If it is not appropriate to examine women’s bodies in full public view, it is also not appropriate to conduct such examinations of men’s bodies in front of women, right?

This has bothered me for years now, but most of us don’t see fit to make a noise about it because it isn’t a big enough issue. But actually, I do believe that it is symptomatic of a larger problem – that of shaming women and, at the same time, making them constantly conscious of their physical selves. It is like a message is being sent out – keep those bodies under wraps, even as someone pokes and scans and metal-detects the life out of your bones. Under no circumstances must anybody notice your body.

There is something very absurd and very frightening about a society that cannot accept one simple fact: women have bodies almost the same as men, and that a body – or having things done to these bodies – is not something to be ashamed of.

I personally am a firm opponent of purdah in any form for this reason. The assumption that women’s bodies – even just the hair, or the face, or the legs – lead to violence is a false one. It is an unjust, cruel assumption and if we want a truly equal, peaceful world, then this idea must be ripped out of all minds. And I don’t know if we can change all purdah-loving cultures immediately, but we can throw out those meaningless, bizarre curtained cubicles out of all public areas. And we should. This very night.

First published here

Buy, buy, buy

Here's the new book out there. It is called Love Stories # 1 to 14. There are (obviously) fourteen stories of love, some of it dead, some undying, and some of it involving dead people.


Readers, friends, detractors (especially you), curious onlookers, I would encourage you to pick up a copy.  I will be doing signings in some stores, wherever I can get down to the task without bankrupting myself. But in the interim, you could head to the nearest bookstore, or your favourite bookstore if you have one. If you're more likely to shop online, please do so. Some stores are offering very generous discounts.

Look at this 26% percent off at Infibeam, 19% off at Bookadda, and 14% off at Flipkart.

Growing figures

So it is being said that India’s economic growth is “likely to drop to 5.7%”. The report pointed out that the current growth is lower than the 6.5% figure from last year, and 6.7% in the “crisis-hit 2008-09”.

For the lay citizen, these percentage points and ominous hints of a ‘slowdown’ or a crisis are meaningless. We experience a crisis economy in three terms: Is it hard to find jobs? Is food scarce? Are essential services (like public transport and healthcare) accessible?

Politicians and economists like to bandy about figures, but don’t answer these basic questions. It is like being assured that a child is growing just because her weight is increasing. It could also mean the child has a hormonal problem. If 5 or 6 or 9 per cent growth is not leading to employment and improved public services, it means that our national child is sick.

I recently read a magazine profile of the current chief minister of Gujarat, where there is a fair bit of growth. There are MoUs being signed; industries are being set up. Then why are more young people registering themselves at unemployment exchanges? Why are so few jobs created in the private sector? Why are children malnourished? Narendra Modi might prefer not to answer these questions, but I don’t understand why economists are not explaining.

We’re only a developing economy. Our average could fall to 4 or 3 per cent and we’d still be ‘growing’ faster than the developed ones. The Eurozone economy had zero growth in the first three months of 2012. This was true of France as well. But are children starving in France? I don’t think so. And France has universal healthcare for all her citizens.

What is a ‘healthy’ growth number anyway? It is said that Germany alone is staving off a bad recession. But the German central bank forecast a growth of just 1%. Studies also suggest that 8 out of 10 Germans want a new economic order. ‘Growth’ as a numerical concept is no longer acceptable. More Germans believe that more income is not necessarily leading to a better quality of life.

Nations like Greece are in trouble. But Greeks are looking for ways to deal with their crisis. What do we do when there is no money? Well, we look at alternatives. Say, I need a taxi ride and I can’t pay for it. The taxi owner gives me the ride ‘free’. But his children need Math tuitions. I can offer that service, so I do. An informal barter economy has sprung up in pockets of ‘austerity-wracked’ Greece. People manage with some community trust. We must work for our sanity, even if the basic food, clothing, shelter requirement is met.

But it was interesting to see how the Greece situation was reported. One headline said: ‘It has come to this’. Another said: ‘Cashless currency takes off’. Yet another article said: ‘Misery forces workers from cities’, which sounded so strange to me.

In India, we rarely hear of hardship forcing workers to quit cities. If things are bad in big cities, they are usually a lot worse in villages. Still, most Indians live in villages. They move because they can’t find work, or can’t access basic services. Distress migration has been a trend for decades now. And our economists didn’t seem to think there might be an economic crisis underway.

Another article I read quoted the writer Edward Abbey who said that growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. We would do well to examine the growing child of our economy for symptoms.

First published here.

All our filth

I saw this film recently, A Royal Affair, set in eighteenth century Denmark, and based on real events during the reign of Christian VII. Across Europe, there were changes in people’s ideas about religion, science and civil rights. There was talk of peasants or ‘serfs’ actually having rights, like the right to not be tortured. There was talk of vaccination. And yet, the streets of Copenhagen apparently stank.

The royal council – comprised mostly of the nobility, mostly men with inherited property and titles – did not want to spend on citizen babies getting vaccinated. It took a lot to ensure routine garbage collection.

That was not the only nation where people thought public sanitation was a luxury they could opt out of. As late as 1910, in France, there was resistance to building a sewage system. Property owners, or so I’ve read, preferred to clog the streets with filth rather than pay to install new sewage pipes. It was bureaucrats who worked hard to create a decent sewage system. Someone has remarked that the streets could have been cleaned in ten years, but it took a hundred years because the educated, middle and upper class would not cooperate.

Now here we are, over two hundred years later, trying to figure out what to do with our endless tonnage of garbage and sewage. More and more paper and plastics are used as packaging material. More and more waste, much of it generated by the upper classes. Yet, most housing societies and commercial establishments do not invest in segregation or recycling.

The municipality in Bangalore has finally made segregation of garbage mandatory for homes and commercial establishments, starting October this year. But Bangalore’s hotels were opposed to the move. They thought it was not ‘feasible’, which is not true. It would only require separate bins and just a teeny bit of consideration.

They did say that garbage collectors would mix up segregated garbage, which is a real concern. Collectors aren’t trained properly in recycling and composting; the benefits are not clear to them. Hence, the Delhi High Court had to issue a contempt notice against the municipality’s sanitation department in Delhi for poor waste management. All the wet and dry waste collected was being mixed together again when it went into the landfill.

In Mumbai, there have been some feeble attempts. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation warned housing societies that they have to either start segregating garbage or pay fines. I don’t know how many were actually fined, but as far as I can tell, dustbins on the streets overflow with a mixed mess of glass, plastic and food. Which can only mean that either households are refusing to segregate waste, or that collectors don’t have separate bins and separate trucks for transporting wet and dry waste to different destinations.

It’s not so hard to do. I know that some residential areas in Pune had made it compulsory to keep wet and dry waste in separate bins. When the collector arrived in the morning, he brought two bins and that made his sorting task simpler. It also made it easier to convert waste into organic manure. There is no reason why segregation should not be mandatory in every town. Every housing society could have its own garden with its own manure-production unit. It could lead to an income for more people.

For once, the municipal authorities are trying to do the right thing. Perhaps they aren’t succeeding but the citizens – especially those who can afford dustbins – are equally responsible. We can clean up our streets in ten years, or we can take a hundred. Or we can wait for an epidemic.

First published here.

A belated happy birthday note

A young man recently visited us and noticed a sketch of Gandhi up on my wall. He asked if I liked the man. I said I did. He said he didn’t. I asked why. He said, “We were better off under the British”. So I said, “Do you know what it was like with the British?”

He changed the subject, hopping from one general statement to another about how Gandhi didn’t work. I was about to argue, then I realized he didn’t read, and hadn’t seen much of India outside of his family business and an urban college with a fairly high tuition fee.

I could have told him about satyagrah. But that gets you into trouble with most authority figures including your parents and sometimes involves a stint in jail. But perhaps, I should have told him anyway.

I’ve been thinking about Gandhi all this month. The papers were full of photos of schoolkids dressed up like him – shirtless, bald, round spectacles. It’s one way of remembering Gandhi, to suggest that we want our children to be like him. But the baldness or spectacles were the least significant aspect of him.

The critical difference between him and other Indian leaders was that he embraced our greatest nightmare – poverty. He chose hunger. He chose to walk. He chose jail.

Gandhi could have stayed out of jail. With his determination and intelligence, he could also have served the interests of our colonial masters. He could have bent the backs of other Indians further. He could have bought a car, and sent his children to London. And the children could have done the same.

Instead, Gandhi cleaned toilets because he wanted to smash a social system where some human beings are forced to do ‘dirty’ work that other human beings don’t want to do. He believed in peace between communities and was subjected to assassination attempts – from Indians – much before partition.

Gandhi dressed poor and worked like the poor because he needed to remind us – and himself – that the poor exist, and that India was a place of exploitation. The main problem with imperialism is that it leads to exploitation. People become poorer and are kept that way through unjust laws. If they rebel, they are accused of working against the ‘national’ interest.

Today, the ‘national’ interest is no longer British interests. And yet, food godowns overflow and farmers kill themselves and ‘advanced’ technology allows seeds to self-destruct. Slum-dwellers get 24 hours to move before their homes are demolished, but builders must provide comfortable alternate accommodation for ‘flat-wale’ people whose buildings must be demolished. What would Gandhi do?

Some people in Chhattisgarh must have asked themselves this question. I saw photos from Gare village in Raigarh district, where an organization led a coal satyagrah, just like the salt satyagrah in Dandi, led by Gandhi. On Oct 2 this year, villagers decided to pick up coal from the open cast mines. They were willing to pay royalties as well, and they invited local officials to measure the mined coal and give them receipts for the tax purposes. This was their way of asserting rights not only over the land but also over mineral resources.

Were they are breaking the law? I do not know. But I think they are right to want to do this. There are problems of exploitation in every district, every village. But Gandhi did leave us tools with which to fight. And perhaps, if schools had modules on Gandhian philosophy, or at least on human rights, civil rights movements and non-violent political tools, we might feel less powerless.

Published here

Of rice and ministers

What do Kashmiri militants, traditional caste-based panchayats in Haryana and the Chhattisgarh police have in common?

No, not various kinds of illegal violence. (Well, who knows?) But today, what I’m talking about is a hatred of denim pants. Jeans. That is, women wearing jeans. We’ve heard of girls getting shot at for wearing jeans in Kashmir. And now there are reports that the Chhattisgarh Police Training Academy is frowning upon policewomen in jeans.

Not just jeans, though. Apparently, they’re not supposed to wear slacks, leggings or any kind of western outfit during office hours. The funny thing is, most policewomen on active duty are actually supposed to be wearing pants. They don’t go chasing robbers (or alleged Naxals, for that matter) in sarees.

This rejection of ‘western’ denim is confined to its appearance on women’s bodies, incidentally. Male police officers are not obliged to do their bit for the preservation of Indian culture. Which makes me wonder — what were the two cops — now suspended — wearing when they molested school teachers in Rajgarh? And what were the male cops wearing when they were torturing Soni Sori? Were they in their khaki uniform pants or denim?

The Chhattisgarh police have been busy with other kinds of problematic actions too. There are allegations that one young man in Raipur was beaten up by the police, and he suffered hearing loss as a result. One Anwar Hussain was beaten up allegedly after he asked the chief minister Raman Singh a fairly reasonable question at a rally. The question was about rice production.

Perhaps Raman Singh wasn’t responsible for the thrashing. He may have asked the cops to just remove the guy who asked the question. But it was not the smartest thing to do. Especially when he’s just made the appalling public statement that a father should be punished for crimes committed by murderer or rapist sons, because it is daddy’s fault for passing on bad DNA. Clearly, his views on crime and punishment are a bit wonky.

At any rate, rice seems to be sore point with Raman Singh. Other reports suggest that he had yelled at a journalist who asked a question about rice procurement. Which wasn’t such a smart thing to do. When a politician lashes out at those who raise questions, it just confirms everyone’s worst suspicions. So, now, I’m really starting to wonder what’s going on with rice in the troubled state of Chhattisgarh.

Because troubled it surely is. If Raman Singh was serious about fixing it, he’d get serious about rice. He might look at reports coming in from citizens, and hear of people in Surguja district who have not been paid their dues for six months. He would hear of anganwadi workers in Bastar who have not been paid for months.

He might hear that forest-dwelling people would prefer not to have agricultural universities, as minister Sharad Pawar seems to be promising. They might think that they already know their agriculture. They might prefer it if forest land was not given over to coal mining.

Raman Singh would do well to prepare himself for criticism in coming weeks. If the India Against Corruption workers are to be believed, they’re busy digging up dirt in the state because they believe that “Corruption is the root cause behind the Maoist problem.”

I don’t know about the Maoists, but the people of ‘affected’ districts like Dantewada probably don’t want a college for the unemployed, which Raman Singh seems to be offering. I think they would prefer not to be made unemployed in the first place.

First published here.

Five reasons I am angry this bright Tuesday morning

I live in a country where a woman chief minister can attribute the awful, unforgiveable crime of rape to men and women, boys and girls actually acknowledging each other's existence on the same planet, and she can remain in office. This leader seems not to know the difference between violent assault and voluntary holding of hands, and she is expected to make and enforce laws.

I live in a country where feudal dens of patriarchy that have consistently defied the Constitution of my country are allowed to function. These community 'leaders' can attribute the unforgiveable crime of rape to the eating of chowmein, and they are not taken to the nearest mental asylum to be locked up until their own hormonal or moral imbalances are sorted out.

I live in a country where a popular Punjabi rapper sings of bloodying panties and instead of being being spanked bloody (I'm almost certain he secretly longs for this), he's given work in the mainstream Hindi film industry. Not one singer/lyricist/filmmaker sees it fit to send him to the re-education program he very obviously needs. I live in a country where it seems people fork over their hand-earned money to pack concerts where this creature performs, and I can't do a damn thing about it.

I live in a country where I suspect bribes were paid on my account (though without my knowledge) to enable me to rent a house. And I can't do a damn thing about that either because there's no way of proving anything now, and if I tried, I'd only raising hell for both the real estate agents who were helping me actually find a place.

I live in a country where no service - public, private or cooperative - responds easily to any kind of customer request. Whether it is information or the actual service being offered, you have to claw your way to it. And despite the internet being available, there is no way of reaching companies or their complaint addressal systems. You send an email, no response. You call and you refer to the email, no response. You shout and threaten an escalation of the issue at hand, and you may get a tiny grudging response. You will probably still have to spend time and money going to their offices and drain yourself out by shouting some more.

And it bothers me because things don't work like this in other countries. We do not have to be this way. We want to 'develop' but our idea of development is building glass-fronted stores instead of actually providing the service or product those stores contain. I'm sure the executives who man the customer call phone lines like to shop for foreign brands in new malls. They just don't want to be as good as the best brands who snap to attention the moment a customer expresses dissatisfaction. And I am tired and drained by the whole mess before I've even had breakfast.

Baby blues

I wonder who decided to name her. As a baby name, it isn’t one of my favourites: Ahuti means sacrifice. There she was — three months old and beaten to death. And nobody really knows why. Ahuti’s mother has been arrested. The police say she’s admitted to beating the baby, and being unable to cope with the child’s constant crying.

I think about Dharmishtha Joshi too (Who named her? What sort of childhood did she have?).Some counselors are already being quoted in snap articles, suggesting that we as a culture are getting to be more intolerant, angrier.

But I think of Dharmishtra Joshi, alone at home, trying to cope with two infants (and one recently dead); a frequently absent husband with whom she clearly did not have strong, tender bond. She was furious about something. Or about many things. And because she didn’t know what to do with her fury, she lashed out at the baby.

What life did Dharmishtha dream of? Did she want those children? If she did not want to bring up those children, what would she do with them?

We ought to condemn her violence, but we also need to think of the consequences of burdening women with reproduction without changing our social and moral ecosystem. In the current environment, a woman faces less flak for beating her own children than for refusing to have children, or offering to give up her children to foster care if she feels unable to cope.

For all our breast-beating about the falling sex ratio, there is less moral outrage about dead daughters than discotheque-going daughters.

Now, there is talk of updating our laws to check female foeticide. There are plans to monitor women’s wombs, keep tabs on each pregnancy. In effect, we’d like the female child to exist because we’re worried about a nation with not enough females in it, but we don’t particularly care about what the female child wants from her own life.

There is talk of amending anti-dowry laws, to prevent misuse. But there is no acknowledgment of the fact that any family willing to give dowry has no business crying about it later. There is not one politician in our country who is willing to run an anti-dowry campaign along the lines of: “Don’t stay with a husband who wants dowry. Get out. Don’t try to ‘save’ a marriage through money.”

In fact, some states encourage dowry indirectly, coming up with schemes that give money to girls when they attain marriageable age instead of giving it out in the form of scholarships or vocational training; chief ministers enabling ‘kanyadaan’ so that the community bears the cost of the wedding feast. There is no clear dismissal of unaffordable feasts.

The focus of most women-centric laws is prosecution: Who can you nail? The woman? Her husband? The doctor? The radiologist? But we refuse to grapple with the moral hypocrisy that makes such laws necessary.

We need to understand that we cannot protect baby girls in a culture where grown women are not protected. In an ecosystem where panchyats can declare that marriage is a good way of preventing rape, where people aren’t free to choose a mate, where there is no way of getting out of a motherhood that one may or may not have signed up for — can we expect gentle mothers?

And so, sad as I am about Ahuti, I am also sad for Dharmishtha. I cannot imagine what demons plague her mind, but I do know that marriage and motherhood are often just ways of gaining respectability, and buying peace, or freedom from assault. Which is a hard, cruel bargain.

First published here.

Try growing your LPG

A family outing was spoilt recently after we got into an argument about prices, economic policy and so on. It started with a comment made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to explain the new LPG and diesel prices. He reportedly said that upping prices wouldn’t hurt the poor directly, since LPG wasn’t meant to be the poor man’s fuel anyway.

Which brought me to that awkward question — what is the poor man’s fuel?

I agree that LPG and even kerosene should not be subsidised. Subsidizing non-renewable fuels is the worst long-term policy we could invest in. But these fuels are getting too expensive even for the middle class. So what should the nation cook with? Wood?

Even at the cost of my lungs, say I was willing to use a wood-fired stove. Would I then be allowed to cut trees? But in general, people are not allowed to cut trees without permission.

An argument was put forward — the poor should be planting more trees, and then cutting them down for the wood. But that brought me to another question — what have the non-poor done to deserve petrol or LPG?

If the poor grow their own firewood, they probably have a right to it. But how will affluent citizens ‘grow’ the gas they consume? And if they cannot replace LPG, then why do we expect that the poor will replace any trees they cut down?

One could argue that it is not the poor who ‘discover’ coal or gas. Somebody invests money in locating it. Somebody else extracts it, refines it, delivers it to the market. Those who can afford it, buy it. If most of us can’t afford to buy fuel in the market, how can it be helped?

But then, who is to say who had the right to the fuel in the first place? Say, person X wants to acquire fuel and market it. The fuel sits inside a piece of land owned by a village, ABC. Here, people have a bit to eat, and most people have work of some kind. The village does not want to sell to X. So X goes to the government to ask for help. The government has been elected by the majority of the people, mostly villagers like ABC. But instead of siding with ABC, as it ought, the government sides with X. It buys up land from ABC at low prices, claiming it is doing so for overall ‘development’, and gives it to X to exploit as he will.

The process might create some jobs. Say, A finds work, but B and C don’t. In fact, A’s job might place him in conflict with B or C. The soil or water or air may get polluted to the point of causing health damage.

X sells fuel to Y, who sells it further to Z, who sells it to all citizens, including ABC, who buy it if they can afford it. X makes a profit, Y makes a profit, Z makes a profit. As for ABC… well, too bad, eh?

Chances are that ABC can neither buy LPG nor do they have enough land or water for their work to translate into loose cash. If they migrate to cities, they may not have space to grow trees for firewood. And if they plant on public land, how do they prove that such and such tree is their own and they are entitled to cut it down?

So, although I understand the need to stop fuel subsidies, it would be really nice if the Prime Minister spent some time thinking about this – what, exactly, is the poor man’s fuel?

First published here.

Made of words

In the beginning, there was probably no word. More likely, it was a sound, or a tiny movement. Perhaps, it was no more than the invisible blink of a formless divine eyelash. Perhaps, it was a rogue electron. Or perhaps, the 'beginning' as we know it was the moment when we decided to be us - speaking animals with words as their primary currency.

Perhaps that is why we tip-toe around words. Because we trade through words before we give of our time and energy or possessions. We bind ourselves in word cages - legal agreements, contracts, the Constitution, the penal code. We conduct our rituals through words -- wedding vows, mantras, Quran readings, election manifestos and parliamentary speeches, obituaries. And of course, we educate and entertain ourselves with words - songs, fairytales, religious kathas, radio programs, and of course, books. Where we cannot easily depend on words, we turn to image -- election symbols, cave paintings, films.

So yes, we have reason to fear words. Words run us. And we can only make the world run the way we'd like it to, if we can control words. So we seek to contain the words that frighten us. We try to erase them from public view, and eventually, public memory. We hope they will die out, though we aren't yet sure what the world will be like without those words, without their meanings, without the people who utter them.

It is hard, of course, to control words. Harder than it is to control images. People talk all the time. They fight wars and give up their lives for the sake of the words they use, and the meaning those words lend to their lives. You can't shut up every whisper of the night. You can't fight lullabyes. You can't fight the language of dreams. You can't get rid of words that are written in sand or snow. The less tangible they are, the cleverer, the stronger. 

But you can fight words printed on paper, or spoken out loud on a stage. You can threaten to kill them because you can kill the people who speak them, write them. And so, you try.

In our own way, we are all part of this conspiracy to get rid of words. It's not just the right wing. It's every wing. We know of pseudo-religious militants who kill writers. We know of re-education programs in technically non-religious nations. We know of democracies who arrest people for writing a pamphlet. 

But we also know of ourselves, don't we? 

I will confess. I have thought to myself that some writers and speakers ought to be banned. Because I have thought of the consequences. I support controls on hate-speech after all. When a court summons a leader who is trying to cause rifts between communities, I am glad. I consider it a sign of sanity, of safety. When a leader is jailed for exhorting people to kill, I am relieved. 

Sometimes I begin to think, with what face do I say, 'Let's not ban books'? How can I say, 'Let us not discriminate between what is worthy of a ban and what isn't'? 

I worry about this question. Is it right to ask for uncompromised free speech? Where do we lay down the law? Free Speech can't be free if it is constrained by ideas of what is acceptable and what isn't. If, for instance, somebody believes in sex with minors, or minors born with mental difficulties, and writes a book extolling the idea, what are we to do?

If somebody writes a book putting forth the notion that parents should have a right to get rid of unwanted children at any point -- before or after birth -- what are we to do? If someone puts forward a proposition that anyone who eats the meat of fish should be quartered and drawn, what are we to do?

And if we are not to ban these ideas, what are we to do? How can we say that other people should not seek bans on ideas that we find harmless, or even necessary? 

I struggle with this question. Because hate speech worries me. Child pornography worries me. The extolling of plastic surgery as a lifestyle choice worries me. But if you are stupid enough to kill or maim yourself or someone else just because a book/advertisement/website is telling you to, who is to blame? The words, or you? And if it is you, what good will banning the book do? 

If you are a killer -- or even just a damager of property -- and the people who run the judicial systems in your country have not been able to deter you, what will be accomplished by banning the books that inspire you?

On the other hand, a child is made or unmade by the words s/he is exposed to. How do we hold a person responsible wholly for their crimes without also holding those responsible who formed their minds? 

Like I said, I struggle. But first of all, we must answer this question: Are we willing to let each person take the fall for his actions, or are we going to allow him to get away, using another man's (or woman's) words as his excuse. I suspect, when we have held each adult to account to his actions, we might fear his words a little less. 

Fish-eaters enclave

Blurbs that promise oddities – ‘a manipulative-philanthropist ghost of a chairman’s mother; a footless whore in Siberia…’ – make one nervous these days. An outlandish cast of characters and wild leaps of fancy are no longer novelties in modern fiction. But there is a risk that the fantastical elements plucked out for the back of the book might be the most interesting thing about it.

Happily, this is not true of Lopa Ghosh’s ‘Revolt of the Fish Eaters’. The nine stories in this collection are compelling and Ghosh does deliver on the promise of taking you into a zone of glass towers, elevators, and recession-struck businesses.

‘The Chairman’s Mother’ tells the fate of a high-flying, award-winning executive after his dead mother begins to haunt him. She distracts him from the pursuit of profit by talking incessantly of floods. ‘Siberia’ tells the heartache of a professionally content research analyst whose school sweetheart has gone off to work in Siberia, and their conversation is mainly online. ‘Red Shoe’ tells of the encounter between a gritty young woman who has worked hard to pull herself up the corporate ladder, and a red pair of sexy heels that can no longer be bought for love or money.

‘Corporate Affairs’ is the most corporate story in this collection. It tells of a senior executive, an American, who is handing over his own responsibilities and during the course of a farewell dinner, discovers the conspiracies that have been brewing behind his back.

‘Richest Man in the World’ is not strictly a tale of the corporate world. The main protagonist is a slum-dwelling school-girl who is receiving a computer education at a center run by an NGO, thanks to a very rich man, while her abandoned mother howls and shouts and turns to black magic.

‘Death by Pineapples’ is the only tale here that unapologetically dives into magic-realism, for it is set in a plains town that finds itself overnight transformed into a hill town. It tells the story of a talented executive who is thrown out of his job for no fault of his, but the reference to climate change is obvious.

‘The Lockout’ is this reviewer’s personal favourite. This is the only story that is not just set in the world of corporations and the conflicts presented to their employees, it most directly reaches for the gruesome edge of employer-employee relations. What makes it refreshing is that the story is told as witnessed by the very young daughter of a top manager dealing with irate workers during a factory lockout. The victim label is hard to attach and politics doesn’t tip the story off its centre.

The only story that is more politics than business is the one that lends its title to the collection. It is also the one that offers the least surprise, the least tension. It attempts to traverse so much terrain – art, class war, elections, media, love affairs – that the reader is left with only a hazy impression of its context and purpose.

Overall, these stories are memorable. Ghosh successfully imprints her protagonists with a human ache, so that their financial and social drive lies crumpled around their ankles. This, along with a lucid, insistent narrative style, makes the book a worthy inhabitant of your ‘new writing’ shelf.

Published here.

This awkward business of sedition

Once upon a time, a man wrote three letters. He wrote that he hadn’t heard from his correspondent in a while. He talked of the gulf between rich and poor, of the need for propaganda, of how their organisation needed to do more to achieve their goals.

These letters were carried by a doctor. The doctor was subsequently arrested. For sedition. Which means that his actions hurt the nation.

Dr Binayak Sen was already known for the years he spent serving the poor, providing medical aid that the government should have been providing. He was then accused of waging war against all of us. Those letters he carried were written by a sick senior citizen called Narayan Sanyal, who was in jail for Maoist/Naxalite activities.

In a new book, The Curious Case Of Binayak Sen, journalist Dilip D’Souza points out that the judge who found Binayak Sen guilty offered the interpretation that a letter describes certain murders as reactionary. But the letter does not mention the word ‘murder’ at all. At another place, the wording has been twisted around. Instead of a request for ‘MR’ to send funds for ‘friends here’, the judge interprets it as a request to send money to a person or group called ‘MR’.

D’Souza mentions that there are people who dislike Dr Sen because of his alleged support of Maoists, or even just because he was trying to help Sanyal in jail. The author describes his own brief brush with the law. 

D’Souza writes that he — along with some other men — was once arrested for travelling in the Ladies compartment of a local train in Mumbai. He was bailed out and asked to appear in court. The other men did not appear in court. They had already bribed their way to freedom.

Which brings us to this awkward business of corruption. Now a cartoonist called Aseem Trivedi is accused of doing the nation harm. He drew a cartoon that seemed to suggest that the lions on our national emblem have turned into wolves, their mouths dripping blood. Their motto reads: Bhrashtamev Jayate. The Corrupt Win.

Whether it was a good cartoon or not is a separate matter. But it did citizens no harm. It did the national emblem no harm. The emblem remains where it was, engraved on a pillar. As for our motto, Satyamev Jayate, it should be engraved on our hearts. But seeing how corrupt we actually are, how every law turns into an opportunity for someone in governance or administration to extract money illegally from harried citizens, Trivedi was probably just telling the truth as he felt it.

So who does that cartoon actually damage? It damages, I suppose, our image of ourselves. That image of us being lion-hearted defenders of the truth.

If only we were. If only our policemen arrested people who do damage the nation. If only the policemen themselves did not damage the nation.

In D’Souza’s new book, he quotes historian Ramchandra Guha, who has written of his encounter with a Muria tribal in a jail in Chhattisgarh. Dabba Boomaiah had a job as a labourer on a lift irrigation project. One day he offered to take a road-building crew to the Bhopalpatnam police station. The police began to quiz him about Naxal activity in the area and pressured him to become a vigilante, via the Salwa Judum. When he refused, he was arrested.

Neither Guha, nor D’Souza, nor I, know what has happened to poor Dabba since. Let us hope he is out of jail, at home, safe. Perhaps, he is considering engraving upon his lion heart, the words: Satyamev Jayate.

First published here.

Smoke that!

What would you make of a man who told your daughter that it is her duty to suffer violence? And what would you do if this man happened to be the person to whom we all turn for justice?

A certain Justice Bhaktavasala has gained notoriety recently for his handling of ‘family matters’ — which means divorce or domestic violence cases. First he rebuked an unmarried lawyer for arguing a divorce case, implying that she couldn’t possibly understand the significance of marriage. He also forced the estranged couple to spend time together though they were reluctant; at least, the woman was.

There was a minor furor when this judge confronted another young woman who was getting beaten up by her husband — in public, and sometimes at night when she’d be thrown out of the house. Reports quote Justice Bhaktavatsala as saying: “Women suffer in all marriages. You are married with two children, and know what it means to suffer as a woman... Your husband is doing good business, he will take care of you. Why are you still talking about his beatings? I know you have undergone pain. But that is nothing in front of what you undergo as a woman."

He proceeded to ask the woman if her father had never beaten her mother, and cited the example of the film actor Darshan, whose wife went back to live with him despite reports of violence. When her lawyer produced photographs showing the young woman’s face after being assaulted, this judge is reported to have said: “You have to adjust… You have to give him a divorce or go with him... What is on your mind and what is on your agenda?”

If the honorable judge had been getting beaten up himself, he might have had a slightly different take on the matter. But anyway, my problem is not his personal attitude to wife-beating. That is his own wife’s or his daughters’ problem. My problem is his disregard for the law.

Petitions were sent out to the Chief Justice at the High Court in Karnataka and eventually, ‘family matters’ was taken away from Justice Bhaktavatsala. While this is a relief, it is also horrid to know that this man is not likely to be penalised for this blatant defiance of the very laws he is supposed to uphold. God knows how many lives have been destroyed along the way.

Last year, a Bangalore resident had filed a petition seeking to be reunited with his wife. He claimed that she was being illegally detained by her parents. Justice Bhaktavatsala had remarked that the Hindu Marriage Act ought to be amended so a girl under 21 could no longer marry without the permission of her parents.

And thisman, who would rather send a loving husband to jail than the violent man who beats his wife, is being paid by all of us. To think that I work hard and pay taxes to enable this man’s livelihood!

He isn’t the only one with strange ideas about women. V Shekhar who was representing the health ministry in the Supreme Court, made statements like: “Indian tradition doesn’t permit a lady to smoke.”

Which makes me wonder if Shekhar even knows who India is. With my own eyes, I’ve seen women smoking in Rajasthan, in Madhya Pradesh, in Maharashtra, in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh (I haven’t travelled much in the south or northeast). None of these women were urban, nor did they watch many films. They were as ‘traditional’ as they come. They had their beedis or chillums, often in front of children. And they enabled and passed on culture. Smoke that!

First published here.

Short 2

And here is a new short film I made. It was great fun working with the actors. The whole thing was shot in a day and a half. Feedback welcome.

The Millionaire Effect

When I first went to Dharavi I wasn't wearing my middle-class-gawker glasses. I was researching a story on successful businessmen and already knew the sprawling slum was host to industries ranging from plastics to pottery, tanneries and bakeries. I knew there was serious money involved and also that the slum once tagged the largest in Asia (currently, the Orangi township in Karachi is the largest, according to the United Nations) is no longer even the largest in Mumbai.

The UN defines a slum as a run-down urban area, "characterised by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security". While these characteristics do exist in the 557 acres that comprise Dharavi, that the definition is inadequate becomes apparent as soon as you set foot there.

Which brings us to the other question – if you could avoid it, why would you set foot in a slum?  Yet a whole lot of people are doing just that, and paying for the privilege. There are at least four tour operators within Dharavi that offer guided tours, charging between Rs 500 to 2500 per head, depending on whether you want a private tour or travel in a group. There are no clear figures, but based on operator estimates, in 'season' – roughly from the end of October until March – Dharavi has thousands of visitors.

Call it the Slumdog Millionaire effect, or just that old thing, curiosity. People have always wanted to discover the lives of the 'other': the phrase 'slumming it' comes from members of the upper class touring poor neighbourhoods in London and New York in the nineteenth century. Indian cities have no dearth of squalor, poverty or insecurity. Mumbai has slums, or slum-like conditions, in almost every suburb. But what distinguishes Dharavi is its unique economic ecosystem. The poor don't just go there to sleep. They create wealth.

Krishna Pujari, who runs Reality Tours and Travels, lived in the Prateekshanagar slums for two years but says that Dharavi offers a unique experience. He says since 2006, when he co-founded the firm, Dharavi has changed. "Slum policies are changing too. People also work for BPOs, MNCs, hotels. There are schools and hospitals. Infrastructure is better but nowhere close to good. And we get more and more tourists. Perhaps, people are developing a social conscience. Or maybe they are just intrigued."

This curiosity is not always appreciated though. Pujari himself admits it was hard at first. "When Chris Way, one of our partners, first visited Mumbai, I took him to Dharavi. People said, 'Take him to Malabar Hill or the Gateway. Why are you bringing him here to show off our poverty and filth?' So, I asked, 'Do you think you are poor and dirty?' They said, no. I said, 'So, let him see that you're not'."

Since then, resident tour guides have taken a measure of pride in 'their area'. Fahim Vora, 24, says that when he was first approached to be a guide, he baulked. "I felt, 'What? Bringing those people to my area?' But I did it once, and realised that nobody really minds."

Fahim was working with Reality at the time but soon developed independent ambitions. Along with partner Tauseef Siddiqui, he set up 'Be The Local' in 2010. Now they employ other Dharavi boys, mostly college students, as tour guides.

Pujari trains English-speaking students for a month on the history and economic spread of Dharavi. He says he prefers to take students "from humble backgrounds" and also works with government schools and local teachers. The firm also supports some NGOs either through money or the use of their space and skills. They help fund a girls' football team. But the tour itself, he says, is like an empowerment program for young people who cannot find jobs.

The guides agree. Despite 'knowing' English in theory, Fahim couldn't draft a coherent email until he started the job and Tauseef didn't have the confidence to talk to people until his first tour. For students, there's some pocket money to be made and the chance to meet interesting people. Nilesh Vaidya, a student who has worked with Reality for six months now, says that he has grown from being a shy, silent type into an aspiring radio jockey. Since he lives in the Mahalakshmi Dhobi Ghat area, his learnings have been greater. "I came here for an interview, and that was my introduction to Dharavi. I'd heard of the filth and the bhai-goondas (goons, often those with mafia links). But now I say every Indian should visit this place once," he says.

But few Indians do. Even those who live an easy cab ride away are uncurious, perhaps nervous about going into a slum. Deepa Krishnan, who organises tours through Mumbai Magic, says she gets at least 500 visitors a year but most are overseas tourists, ranging from "upscale" to backpackers.

Some like Emily Lawrence, 20, already have some exposure. "I'd seen a documentary. It looked interesting and I was curious." She'd never seen this sort of slum in the UK, but conditions were better than expected. "I was surprised by how people live together in these cramped spaces and are still so organised. I didn't expect that."

And then there are visitors like Anna Wagner, 22, who takes Bollywood dance lessons in Austria. She wanted to see the city where the films get made but she also wanted to find out more about Dharavi. To her surprise, the streets were not full of people begging on the streets. "They are all working," she said, adding that she wishes her Indian host, who lives in Mumbai, would visit too. "More upper and middle class Indians should go. It is more important for them."

There are Indians who do visit slums on work, of course, but they'd rather not go as tourists. Suman, a volunteer at a social school (name changed, because she prefers to remain anonymous) is critical of this "exhibition of misery". She believes that instead of sensitising them, slum tours merely gives tourists something to talk about at home. "It's an ego boost, making them feel blessed because they don't have to live in such conditions." She was particularly riled by a note on the Internet (posted by 'Bollywood Tours') that says 'their life is full of struggle for existence but still make them happy'. Suman wants to know, "How can they be happy? There is a don in every lane; the men are crippled by bad habits and they force their women to work and bring home money to buy more booze... Slum tours show none of this. For God's sake, these people are not freaks or animals in a zoo that we need organised tours!"

People certainly don't want to be seen that way, which is why most tour companies have a no-photo policy. Rajesh Prabhakar, a researcher who co-founded the Red Press and Media, and a life-time resident of Dharavi, says that people have become especially sensitive after the movie Slumdog Millionaire. "They still hurt about being called 'dogs'. Besides, the depictions of life were false. That toilet scene, for instance, belongs to the 1950s, not the '90s," he says.

Some parts, according to Prabhakar, were shot guerrilla-style, which makes people suspicious of cameras now. Recently, a friend of his was interrogated in the Rajiv Gandhinagar area when he was out shooting without permission. When hutments near an important water pipeline were demolished last year, residents believe it was because of foreigners taking pictures and the media publishing them, though it turned out the municipality did so for different reasons.

On my first visit, attempts to discuss the fruit business with a banana vendor were firmly rebuffed. But I did have a long, rambling conversation with L. Kannan, who runs the Murugan Laundry. As I sipped on a bottle of cola (which he insisted on), he gave me the shop's history, living conditions – the lanes are so narrow that if you have a medical emergency and an ambulance needs to be brought in, god help you – and his hopes for his sons. All along, his hands were busy, ironing.

On that trip, I'd been led by Prabhakar, who doesn't do conventional tours. "I take people to meet people. I don't take them to pre-decided spots. I take them to families. I can arrange for you to spend a few hours just talking to a potter, for instance. But if you say you want to do a tour tomorrow, within two hours, I can't do that."

The debate about the ethics of slum tourism is an old one. Some claim that it helps to bridge the psychological divide between rich and poor. A Wall Street Journal article has talked about how 'philanthropic travel' – that seems to be politically correct term – is growing, with large international travel firms diversifying into slums. But it poses the question of whether this could help 'bridge' the gulf of understanding between rich and the poor, especially if the traffic is one-way. Surely, the poor too must be allowed to see how the rich live, and where they work?

The question is interesting but perhaps, a bit unfair. After all, the upper classes in India areexposed to the scrutiny of slum residents who work in their homes or offices. It is the reverse which almost never happens. Tour operators believe that they are helping tear down negative stereotypes. In fact, Deepa Krishnan emphasizes, "This (Dharavi) is not a 'slum' tour. If you are expecting extreme poverty and despair based on movie depictions, you will be disappointed."

Even in Indian movies, locals complain, Dharavi is represented as squalid and dangerous, full of dons, drunks or drug addicts. But the young men who work as tour guides insist that the problem is no larger than it is elsewhere in Mumbai. It is just that Dharavi's problems have nowhere to hide.

First published in the Sunday Guardian.

A little justice

A few days ago, there was much relief when Ajmal Kasab, the man who killed innocent people in Mumbai, would hang after all. The Supreme Court had decided. There was no doubt about his guilt, of course. It was only a question of time. And though the wheels of justice turn slow, we needed to know that they do indeed turn.

And therefore, it was an even bigger relief to hear about the conviction of BJP MLA Maya Kodnani, and Babu Bajrangi, formerly of the Bajrang Dal, for inciting mass murder during the Gujarat riots in 2002. About 29 others were convicted too, but we were actually sort of surprised about Bajrangi and Kodnani. These two won’t hang, but if the Special Court’s verdict holds, they might spend their lives in jail, especially Bajrangi. This is so rare for riot cases in India that even if we — well, many of us — were convinced of their guilt, we were sceptical of their ever getting punished.

We have had a terrible track record of punishing rioters, even those who commit horrific crimes, but most importantly, we have rarely punished political leaders or those who have links to the government. Justice Jyotsna Yagnik certainly isn’t the first judge to convict a rioter, but her judgment comes at a time when citizens have very little faith in institutions. Elected representatives, administrative officials, even judges and prosecutors are assumed to be either corrupt or cowardly. And nothing is as damaging to the fabric of a democracy as a lack of faith in the law. 

The road to justice is very long one. There are appeals and counter-appeals, especially if the rioters have more money than the victims. Gujarat 2002 is already a decade ago. Kodnani’s career actually flourished. As for the victims’ careers, I can only imagine how they’re doing.

Actually, I can’t imagine. But I did read a report about riot victims recently. This wasn’t about Gujarat 2002. It was about Kandhamal 2008. A wave of violence was unleashed after Laxamananda Saraswati, who was affiliated to the Sangh Parivar, was killed allegedly by the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Thirty eight people were killed. There were instances of gang-rape and torture. Around 5,600 homes were burnt and 55,000 ‘minority’ people across 415 villages were displaced.

Last month, a fact-finding team visited 16 of these villages. Most of the riot victims used to work as labourers in fields or homes belonging to ‘other communities’. Now they are either not given work or they are too afraid to go. They can’t get temporary work offered by the rural employment guarantee scheme, because that’s controlled by local leaders with majority muscle.

The team found that 10,000 people who fled during the riots have not returned home. Some tried to return, but were told they’d have to convert. Most victims in Kandhamal were Christian dalits or tribals. According to the fact-finding team, they can’t get caste certificates now because the administration issues certificates on the basis of "recommendations" from leaders, and these leaders are often affiliated to right-wing groups like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

Many people were convicted for the Kandhamal riots by a fast-track court, and cases are still pending. And the Odisha government did offer compensation — Rs50,000 for houses that were completely burnt and Rs20,000 for partly damaged ones. But people lost more property than that. They lost pots, ploughs, crops, documents (like certificates and land records), schools, hospitals, NGOs, churches. How do you go about compensating the loss of the things that people call ‘home’? How long does it take to collect all the pieces of life and start over?

First published here.

Knocking on god's door

So word is that our billionaire Member of Parliament Vijay Mallya, donated doors worth Rs60 lakh to a temple. With Kingfisher Airlines in serious trouble, employees have not been paid for months. Some of them finally began to strike, which led to flight cancellations. Instead of reassuring his employees, though, Mallya asked them to leave if they had no faith. His own faith, of course, is not in question, given that he is running to temples with such rich offerings.

I can’t help but wonder, what makes a man, perhaps one with a measure of self-respect, do this? 

Donating golden doors to the lord, but expecting the government — which is you and me — to help tide over a financial crisis? If he has Rs60 lakh to spare, the moral thing to do would be to pay his workers, or else, donate to the government. He could have created a welfare fund for his employees, so that those who face personal emergencies could borrow money. Or he could have donated to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund. He could even have fed all the hungry people in Bangalore for a day. What made him spend on a door?

I suppose it comes from a certain conception of god. In Mallya’s conception of god, He prefers nice doors on one of His innumerable houses to a just society where people actually get paid on time. This god rewards pricey gifts, not a commitment to your own employees. But if you can only weigh yourself (and other people) against material possessions, then the only thing you will bring — even to the lord — is an expensive object.

If you are this sort of person, then you probably have very odd ideas about where wealth comes from, and what you owe people who help you get rich. The earth, its minerals, its capacity for heat, water, the trees, their fruit — all this existed before you were born, and in a nation, it technically belonged to all citizens equally. You were fortunate enough to inherit a larger chunk of these resources, and then you hired other citizens to work, so that you could harness even more resources. You took bank loans, which are enabled through millions of other people and their savings and investments. But if you are a decent sort, you try to acknowledge their very legitimate concerns about their future. You try not to sound like you were doing them a favour. You very definitely don’t take money that morally belongs to your workers, and offer it up to god as a personal gift.

Perhaps, Mallya should have offered his donation to the ruling party in his home state. The Karnataka government reportedly wanted to invest in a new form of drought relief — ordering pujas at about 35,000 temples to appease the rain gods. The money for this would have come from our taxes, if there had not been an immediate outcry.

Speaking of favours and temples, we certainly don’t seem to believe in the equality of all citizens, especially before the gods. It has taken us this long to stop the VIP ‘pass’ system at temples in states like Tamil Nadu. But the state still wants a list of ‘exceptionally treated’ persons, including IAS officers and judges, who can get special appointments with the gods. ‘Security concerns’ are being cited. Clearly, the administration doesn’t trust in god alone when it comes to personal safety. Perhaps they should look to their colleagues in Karnataka. As Mallya puts it, if you lack faith, leave.

First published here.

Anaaj to anaaj, bora bhi durlabh

I don’t know much about Latehar, a district in Jharkhand, and what’s been happening there. When I ran a search online, I found one news item about how there are fewer wolves in the wolf sanctuary in Latehar, and a few items about Naxal violence. For instance, an attack on an independent Member of Parliament, Inder Singh Namdhari.

There’s also an item about how a village called Sarju — or Sarayu — that used to be a Maoist ‘hotbed’ is on its way to development. A special development programme has been initiated to bring about political mobilisation, social justice and security. Security forces are camping out there already. There is now talk of education and drinking water and sanitation and even building a stadium. There isn’t much talk of food, though.

The reason I was interested in Latehar was that there was some mention of a recent protest in Manika block, where activists were demanding that the government’s grain godowns be opened and food distributed to the hungry. This was barely a day or two after Independence day, when the chief minister Arjun Munda made a speech promising food security.

Perhaps, there is reason to worry. The public distribution system is very important in Jharkhand, which doesn’t grow enough food to meet its needs, and has a very high incidence of poverty (official poverty, which means not enough calories) compared to the all-India average. The ‘poor’ constitute nearly 50% of the rural population. Besides, state scientists also fear a 40% reduction in rice harvests this year, thanks to the delayed monsoon.

Forty percent is a lot less than usual, and even the usual picture isn’t pretty. A June 2012 video on Videovolunteers, filmed by a community correspondent, suggests that people don’t get food grains every month at the local PDS shop and certainly not their full quota of 35 kilos. Most get only about 30 kilos. Meanwhile, a block official explained that about five kilos might have been shaved off to account for the weight of the jute sack.

This business of jute sacks is also quite strange. Apparently, last year India’s food production went up to 250 million tonne. This should be a cause for joy. But in Raisen, farmers were protesting — and the police was opening fire — because the state wasn’t buying their grain. Meanwhile, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh was blaming the central government, and threatening to go on hunger strike. The reason was a shortage of jute sacks.

Because if there are no sacks, then farmers cannot transport their harvest. There was a similar problem in Uttar Pradesh. Reports say, some farmers in Punjab have committed suicide because of this. Oddly enough, reports also say that jute farmers in Bengal are burning their own crops because the prices of jute have crashed. Which is strange, given that there is such a great demand, and considering that India and Bangadesh produce most of the world’s jute.

Perhaps farmers in Jharkhand should try growing jute, or some organic substitute. The state also has high rates of unemployment, although the state’s per capita income is on par with the rest of India. Which means there are many more poor people who desperately need work, and a few people who have a lot of money. Which reminds me of activist Niyamat Ansari, who was killed days after he helped expose fraud in an NREGA scheme in Latehar district. Which means that some local officials were stealing our money by creating fake documents using the names of really poor — and hungry — citizens. I would like to know if these officials are in jail. I hope they are.

First published here