A Twilight Dream

Every few months, we make a trip make to Kerala and the joy of going back to one’s home town has never been diminished despite so many years. After marriage, there are two of us now who keep making plans about the trip and despite the difficulty of getting our tickets, we manage to do it every time, even if it sometimes requires a 32 hour journey (like the trip we made this month).

In the midst of all the bonhomie of going back to one’s roots, there is a strong disconcerting thought that always plagues me. In every trip, we meet people, primarily of the elder generation, who wait for someone to communicate with them once a while. Every household or tharavadu has aging members, who have their medical problems but would still be interested to meet you. They would remember the family to which each of us belongs and go on a tangent about the family history; courtesy prevents us from stopping their flights of fantasy.

Many houses that I visit have grandparents who wait for their near ones to make their annual visit while they spend their time wallowing in front of boring television melodramas or reading the plethora of magazines that dot the Kerala paingili magazine circuit. Usually on the TV stand or the drawing room shelf, I see family smiling photos of their offspring beaming from distant lands – Gulf, US and Bangalore are the hot favourites I encounter regularly.

While the drawing room is in sync with the current generation, the rest of the rooms are more or less a reflection of the older times. The old grandfather clock still ticks in a few houses while the store room has a stock of all those things that I had seen in my childhood but have now made way for modern equipment. There are a few albums with those rare black and white photos that are slowly withering away after years of neglect; but they still hold a value unlike the snaps that adorn my laptop now.

The golden oldies have a similar set of complaints whenever I visit them – failing health, safety concerns, loneliness and very prominently the unavailability of maids to take care of household work. I see sprawling houses and a lonely car parked in front of many of the houses I visit but these are silent houses which break into joy only when kids come in during their school vacations. The outside money has brought in wealth and spending but not reduced the insecurity brought about by living alone.

The inhabitants battle a sense of boredom and live every day waiting for a call; so every marriage, child birth and pooja is a source of entertainment for the people. Regular stories floating around of old people being attacked and robbed when alone has also led to the growth of flats even in a place like Palakkad – something which was unthinkable even a few years back. Many of them have found refuge in God and karma and left things to fate – once upon a time staunch communists cannot seek Marx in times of depression.

The maid problem seems to be a Kerala-specific problem, a developed nation issue where menial labour has few takers. Most houses fund it difficult to hire and subsequently retain maids because it is much more lucrative to do small time Government jobs that pay more. The MGNREGS, with all its issues, is helping in giving better paid employment opportunities in the State but the unlikely fallout seems to be the maid availability issue.

This may sound like a trivial problem when you keep the lofty ideas of socialism in your mind but for many, this is a serious concern. It is compounded by the fact that lack of jobs at a more educated strata have led to a massive migration of people to other places. So, what you have is eventually a set of oldies who have to fend it out all alone, without sufficient support to run the house.

As things stand, the rapid spread of modernization, growing urbanization and crumbling of joint family system have led to an increase in the insecurity and loneliness among the population. We all have faced bouts of loneliness but there was always a future to look forward too but what happens when we touch the autumn of our lives? Will our children be somewhere in the vicinity to be available at our beck and call? This is a truth that will come to haunt all of us one day and I shudder to think of how we will manage this scenario.

Economically, we find ourselves as part of a generation that receives no pension; so what you earn and invest now is our only source of income in the twilight years. With spiraling medical costs and an increasing life span, we are committing ourselves to a substantial medical assistance as time progresses. Remember Aparna Sen’s touching 36 Chowringee Lane where the teacher Violet Stoneham is finally back to her loneliness as the young couple which dotes on her suddenly disappear from her midst. Eventually there will be just the two of us sorting out our old age trivialities and maybe waiting for the final call….

It is such a bitter truth to accept that once we age, we may not be so important at all – there would be the next generation who starts believing that we are impediments in the growth of this country. As I touch 30, I have already started feeling slightly cut-off from the current lot of teenagers who are born and live in a much more connected and consumerist world. Probably aging would start much earlier now and as you touch 40, you may be part of a population that is already past its prime. When companies hire and promote employees practically every year or two, there would come a time when you realize that Nature has caught up with you and maybe it is time to re-utilize your talent in better ways.

Just wonder whether begetting children is something that people do as an investment for their future. We have children thinking that one day when we grow old, there will be someone to take care of us when the legs tire and the body is no longer one's friend. But when the same children do not have time to be at your side, will there be a tinge of regret? I guess its a generation to a generation thing - after a few years, we are more attached to our children than our parents and we realize this when we grow up.

Sometime back, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, while referring to the ageing population had observed: Trees grow stronger over the years, river wider and like with the age, human beings gain immeasurable depth and breadth of experience and wisdom. That is why older persons should not only be respected and revered but they should be utilized as the rich resource to society that they are.

Image Courtesy - http://kakkat.blogspot.com/2009/06/ill-lay-still-walk-on-me.html

The Invisible Worker

I was born in a sleepy little village called Elapully in Palakkad and for the first 2.5 years of my life, lived a rustic unfettered existence in the care of my grandparents, looked after by a motley group of characters you’d find present in any Sathyan Anthikad drama. This group included maids and servants who had served our family for generations, shepherds, small time workers and so many others who brought joy to my first couple of years on earth.

After moving to Hyderabad later on, I became an annual visitor, spending all my summer vacations there and over a period of time, all these people were alienated from my sense of existence. They remained merely caricatures in my memory as people who had served our family for years. I had matured – my education had created insurmountable barriers between myself and these people. The class barrier suddenly became so obvious – the people who were playmates and companions in my early childhood had now become mere plebeians in my eyes.

Modern education and the economic changes in India since the 90s have broken many of the differences that arise due to vast differences in the working class. Caste is almost of no relevance in the modern age, except possibly when it comes to marriage. Religion is, of course, a much bigger thorn but as we work in a 24x7 environment, these barriers have broken and to quite an extent, office life (at least in the private sector) is bereft of too many caste and religious issues. It has created a class of people who can make money and learn to discriminate economically – the class rules roost here.

We all have maids or other servants (for want of a better word) who work 7 days a week in our houses. They do not have any PF/Gratuity and are not normally entitled to any official leaves. We do not care for them but the day they are absent, mind you, all hell breaks loose. Would you be surprised how many people do not even know the name of the people working in their houses or have any idea about their families? Now in a normal corporate scenario, that would not be a very endearing HR thought, right?

According to a study, "Invisible Servitude: An in-depth study of domestic workers in the world", by an organisation called Social Alert, there are an estimated 20 million women, children and men in domestic work in India. Of these, 92 per cent are women, girls and children, 20 per cent are under 14 years of age and 25 per cent are between the ages of 15 to 20. In Mumbai alone, this study (released in March 2000) estimated that there were six lakh domestic workers of whom 80,000 are full-time (http://www.indiatogether.org/2003/sep/ksh-domestic.htm).

Is the servant culture something which is against the spirit of humanity and equality? There are thousands of Indian homes where such a "servant culture" prevails – the kids grow up never picking up their clothes, never washing their clothes, never doing any work except eating, perhaps reading and definitely watching television. Aren’t we breeding a secondary class of citizens at our homes by allowing such a culture in our homes?

I think it was an article by Kalpana Sharma which made me realise that I did not know the name of my maid. I found it out but I still could not bring myself to ask her that – wouldn’t be an admission of my lack of concern for her? I know it is shameful but sometimes, we just do not realise the importance of these people who toil for us every day with no great incentive in life. After all, being employed as a menial worker or maid is not anyone’s idea of working oneself up the hierarchy.

A culture of servitude is being fostered upon each generation and it is important that parents realise that it is this upbringing that creates future class related schisms in our lives. We see a lot of youngsters working in Mumbai and elsewhere who bring home grown servants to work at their place. These are generational servants who have for years led lives where the only karma they have is working for their masters.

Servants have an invisible presence in our lives - a presence we have all learnt to take for granted. Everybody always complains about how lazy or unreliable their servants are and are very careless in passng judgements about them. In most Indian homes, servants may not eat the same food as their employers; forget the idea of even sitting together on the sofa or table. They do extensive labour and are routinely made to do extra chores for no extra pay.

Maids are excluded from labour laws – it is the informal sector and does not come under any legal scanner. The result of this exclusion is for everyone to see - long hours, bad pay, inhuman treatment, physical and sexual harassment. Since they are not even recognized as workers, there is no legal protection for them under Indian labour laws; they can only go to a criminal court.

Most of us, knowingly or inadvertently, tend to treat domestic workers as inferior beings. Many of us educated liberals have questioned this attitude in ourselves and attempted to be more democratic, but class notions are too deeply rooted in our culture to ward them off so easily. So, while we feel pained at the capitalistic society that cares two hoots for menial and blue collared workers, we remain totally oblivious to the people who work at our own place.

Unfortunately, the issue is not such a simple one – it is a fact that the haves will run the world and the have nots will have to submit to them. When the labour is in surplus and employment is limited, this remains an unrecognized industry that sustains and feeds a large number of people. But it is imperative that we also recognize the value of human life here - every human being deserves respect and it is upto us to ensure that we practice it and inculcate it in our children.

The laws alone cannot deal with this problem - constitution can only set laws but attitudes cannot be legislated. They say a society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable. And I dare so, we are not earning any laurels on this front!!!

Being Gay is no Gay Matter

Recently, the Union Home Ministry submitted to the Delhi High Court that “Homosexuality is a social vice and the state has the power to contain it. Decriminalizing homosexuality may create breach of peace. If it is allowed, the evils of AIDS would further spread and harm the people. It would lead to a big health hazard and degrade moral values of society”.

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, enacted by the British in the late nineteenth century, criminalizes what it calls, ‘sexual offences against the order of nature’. It does not clearly elucidate what comprises “against the order of nature” but same sex relationship is considered under its ambit in India.

The Union Health Ministry, however, has a difference of opinion and wants to scrap this act. Is homosexuality against the laws of nature? Just wonder if some people sitting in Delhi have decided that it is unnatural and so, it should be banned. Of course, there are many people who believe that this is unhealthy and needs to be treated.

Definitions of social vices are very subjective and there is no clear cut consensus on the vices that require to be controlled by the Government (if they ever needed to be). But our custodians of culture have decided that homosexuality is a definite no-no. I wonder if there are any statistics to prove that gay hood is a threat to the society in any way. If homosexuality is a social vice, then what makes heterosexuality any less holy?

The argument that legalizing homosexuality will lead to AIDS and other STDs is flawed. Banning it has lead to the situation of gays not finding an outlet to meet partners, except in dark shady corners, another type of ghettoisation. The fact that this is not legal has led to a sense of palpable sense of fear and a lack of a safety. There is no legal or medical help/counselling available to these people which makes matters worse.

What is the basis to determine what is natural sex and what is not and who determines this? There are probably many gays and lesbians in our midst who are hiding their sexual orientation because of the fear of being ridiculed and harassed. We have been brought upto believe that only opposite sex relationships are in sync with nature; possibly because marriage was linked only to procreation (Actually, with the levels of sex education in India, sex itself is dirty, so forget the question of homo vs hetero).

Why is homosexuality a social vice that needs to be banned? How different is it from hetero anyway? Funny, that the government thinks that homosexuality leads to AIDS while hetero is fine. Condemning any form of behaviour which is not in tune with our perception of what is right is pretty easy. It may not be easy to digest the idea that people of the same sex can actually co-habitate, because of years of conditioning. It is important to at least empathize with the plight of people who cannot express their love lest they are harmed by society.

Being a homosexual does not mean you are a pervert or you are promiscuous (neither of these qualify to be termed as “criminal activities” anyway). If sex is a natural expression, can the government intervene and tell us what is natural and what is not? If it is natural, then you don’t actually need anyone to tell you that, right? It should come to all of us naturally….

Definitions of morality are culture specific and do not have any universal sanction. Morality policed by society and laws no longer remains “natural”. If two consenting adults are involved, does the government have any locus standi to intervene and tell them how to behave?

There is also the peril of pushing Indian society into an increasing state of intolerance, where there is only one set of beliefs that is culturally acceptable, therefore legally sanctioned, and anything that goes against it has to be suppressed and criminalized -all justified in the name of culture.

Media and society perceptions weigh heavily against them making it difficult to express their true nature. After all, who would want to suffer the ignominy of being featured in the exclusive 24 hour broadcasts by TV Channels? Imagine a parent accepting the fact that his son is not actually want to get married to a girl; how scandalous. Society standards require you to marry a person of another sex only and so, many probably live "happy married" lives, supressing their "natural" instincts.

In Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee beautifully portrays the relationship between two men and their intense love. I did feel uncomfortable watching them kiss (I went with a male friend to the movie) but I realize that maybe I could not fully fathom their relationship because of my concept of love. Now, maybe there is more maturity, and I appreciate the fact that the movie broke new ground in looking at love just the way it was and keeping gender equations out of it.

While writing this, I wondered how I would react to the situation if someone in my friend circle is a gay. And then I realize that there could possibly be a gay in our circle but we have never known and would never know. Why would the poor guy ever admit and fear being ostracized by the rest of the group? Same sex relationship would have the same kind of vagaries, fallacies as well as beauty of a man-woman relationship.

Would a day come when the law and society looks at people as individuals who can take decisions in life themselves and not be coerced or conned into believing that there is somebody else sitting within our midst who can judge what is right and what is wrong for us? We are all responsible for our lives, so why let someone else decide what we need to do or don’t need to do?

A Multi-Cultural Identity Crisis

Yesterday was Onam and I am back at home in Hyderabad on a weekend break. Many people spam me with SMSs wishing “Happy Onam” and several other creative lofty messages. The TV is full of celebrities talking about their memories of the festival – going to temples, spending time with family and the food and all that. Perfectly normal I guess especially because nostalgia always feels good – it is always the present that feels unbearable but if someone were to ask me the same question, I’d be wondering what my memories are of Onam or for that matter, any other festival.

Diwali and Dusshera are no Malayalee festivals (despite what the rest of India thinks) but as a child, bursting of crackers and holidays was fun and the festival name did not matter. And now at 27, all festivals seem to be the same – office holidays and nothing to do but spend time browsing or watching TV. I wonder whether some of us celebrate festivals merely to feel a part of our society; the feeling of being all alone in the crowd (the Malayalam phrase – Aalkuttathil thaniye- remains my favourite expression) can be depressing.

All this makes me ask questions about my cultural identity as an individual. Why do people think it is weird that you don’t actually have any special liking for your festival and look at it as just another day in the office? I find it difficult to justify this and then home grown Keralites are happy to throw snide remarks at non-residential Keralites for ignoring their cultural nuances.

Living in Mumbai now as a non-Marathi speaking person is perfectly fine as long as you are not a celebrity. Even Big B and his wife have to spell out their love for Marathi to avoid being boycotted by the oldest hooligan family in Maharashtra. Somehow, I fancily wished that either he or somebody in the industry would stand up for my right to speak the language of my choice in this country but other than the Commissioner of Police, no one ever did.

Instead, the Big Man apologised and even said that his wife spoke chaste Marathi and the papers reported how so many Bollywood actors could peak Marathi fluently. Christ, did it matter if they could not? Does this make them less eligible to stay in Mumbai? The "forced" resilience of the poor Mumbaikar is not of only the Marathi Maanus but of all the hassled people who are part of this metropolis.

A friend volunteered that if you go to the South, you need to speak their language, then why not in Mumbai – this is the classic Tamil Nadu effect where the image of TN overshadows the presence of other states (I can recollect a colleague of mine telling me in jest not to speak “South Indian”). I am not going to stand up for any state’s interests but does it even matter if someone in another state speaks their language or not. Forget about MNS; we probably are too much in love with our linguistic identity to care about the feelings of others, whether it is the lungiwallah or the UP-Bihari worker.

Coming to religion, there was an NDTV or CNN-IBN report that I had seen recently that spoke about the difficulty that Muslims found in finding a house to stay in the cosmopolitan melting pot Mumbai. And I’m sure, it is not restricted to only Mumbai but many parts of India where we have such a negative perception of Muslims because some motley group of jokers masquerading as protectors of Islam are killing people everywhere. Does the skull cap and beard put us off so much that we are not willing to trust anyone from their community?

Last week, there was a lot of media coverage on Salman Khan’s family celebrating Vinayaka Chaturthi and how secular his family was. He also gave us a couple of sound bytes on how the family believed in all religions and secular principles. Just wondering how media would have covered the story if he or any other Muslim were to complain about the din and ruckus being created in the name of this Hindu festival – a perfect communal angle spoiling his image and creating space for MNS and the rest of their ilk to make a commotion.

For all our progress in our economics, just tell your parents that you love a non-Hindu [Corrected as per Deepdowne's comments below- a person from another religion and not just a non-Hindu] and would like to marry her and all hell breaks loose. After all, we are torch bearers of our religion and cannot afford to pull down the hopes of our community. Remember the Rizwanur Rahman murder case– where the police and the families worked together to separate the couple, leading finally to Rizwanur’s suicide, a wonderful example of “Shining India”. There are so many people who are willing to die in the name of religion but very few who want to live in its name.

And then, there is this nationalistic feeling that engulfs so many of us, especially during cricket matches. The yardstick of patriotism is measured by how much you stand by your country or its narrow interests and beliefs. When I hear cinematic cliches like “I am an Indian first and only then a Hindu/Tamilian” and other patriotic outbursts, I cringe in my seat. Yes, I am an Indian but something stops me from screaming this from roof tops. I am born to an Indian couple and therefore, an Indian but this by itself is no achievement or symbol of divinity. But we do invest a great deal of pride in being born here and even deride other nationalities and cultures – US has poor cultural values, Singapore is less than the size of Mumbai etc.

In debates, we stand by the greatness of our country and its cultural diversity and historical greatness but how does that matter? Arvind Swamy jumps on the burning Indian flag in Roja to extinguish its flames and I wonder how the audience or defenders of our nation’s interests would have taken it if Mani Ratnam were to show the hero sitting silently even when the flag burns. There would be a PIL, surely, demanding that Mani apologises to the nation and deletes the scene for hurting the feelings of millions and of course, violent protests. There is always a vociferous group of people waiting to get hurt at the drop of a hat and taking the rest of the nation to ransom, all in the name of protecting our poor democracy.

These are times when symbols of patriotism become greater than the patriotic feeling itself. So, Manmohan’s India prefers to trade with Myanmar’s junta and welcome the Chinese premiere rather than stand up for Aung Sang Suu Kyi or the Dalai Lama – c’mon, aren’t our economic interests more important? Is there any point in supporting such lost causes?

Do I need to identify myself as someone who speaks a specific language, belongs to a specific region, a specific religion/caste or even a specific country? I feel like renouncing any form of identity that links me to any of these features and call myself just a human being. Living as a human being is a blessing which we need to cherish and there’s no greater common point that exists between me and anyone who reads this, except the bond of humanity.

As Gandhi says – “If you want to give a message, it must be a message of LOVE”, being an educated Indian Keralite upper caste Hindu is not very different from being a poor Somalian uneducated Muslim; at the end of it, we are human and we all need love. And this loves needs to transcend barriers, barriers that we have created so that we need not share our happiness with the rest of the humanity.

The Indian School of Discrimination

The Ash-Abhi wedding was supposed to be the biggest media story this fortnight but the dynamic duo of Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty decided to take the top spot sweeping this hot news from all the channels. Everywhere, you had stories of the British model of racism and the suffering of Shilpa in the hands of a bully Reality TV contestant, Goody, and suddenly UK and India were locked in the biggest diplomatic row between the two countries in recent times.

Enough has been said of the so-called racist attack by Goody and her gang against Shilpa and I’m not going to get into the nuances of the attack involved. Clearly, there were racist remarks involved and Ms. Goody (no longer a Goody, I guess) has been thrown out of Big Brother while the media and the governments on both sides have denounced the racist behaviour in strong terms. There has been a lot of commotion involved with the matter being raised in the British Parliament and widely debated in the media in both countries.

While it’s fine for the ordinary Indian out there to feel outraged, why is the Government dirtying its feet in the entire affair by getting involved unnecessarily? Is the issue so important that it has to issue statements and ask Mr Gordon Brown for an explanation? The British PM-in-waiting, Gordon Brown, in India on a trip, expressed his regrets at the turn of events and stated that such behaviour damages the British image. Our honourable MoS of External Affairs, Anand Sharma, said that “The government will take appropriate measures once it gets to know the full details” while the FM added, for good measure, that the controversy will not affect Anglo-Indian relations. Thank God, we want Arun Sarin and Tesco to invest here, don’t we??

Ms Shilpa, “an award winning Bollywood actress” (as BBC referred to her) is not in “Big Brother” to represent India. She’s being paid about Rs 3.2 crore to be a participant in “Big Brother” – a huge amount for an Indian actress. Like every other Reality TV show, this is another obnoxious show where people live together and fight to vote out each other periodically from the show. Shilpa is very much aware of the rules of the game and should expect such jibes which are more in tune with the kind of programme it is. Getting ragged and then raising the bogey of racism may not look like the smartest thing to do but then, who’s benefited the most??? Shilpa and the programme “Big Brother” of course.

The “Big Brother” acknowledged by a Channel 4 executive as “the most boring BB that we have had in years” was on the verge of being axed and all this publicity has given it a new lease of life. Last heard, Shilpa is being flooded with foreign offers, a move that may revive her career which is currently going nowhere. Now, who can say for sure that his entire conundrum was not the creation of some smart spin doctor who used “racism” as a strategy to boost the TRPs of the programme?

Jade Goody (Wikepedia lists her profession as Reality TV contestant) is of course no do gooder. She has been rightly condemned for her racist behaviour and booted out of the programme. The fact that more than 10,000 complaints were received by Channel 4 expressing the dissatisfaction by the majority against her behaviour probably is a sign of the racist slur actually existing in UK.

Many people have used this controversy to raise their voice against the discrimination they have been facing and the presence of a celebrity like her and the extensive media coverage has only helped them in underscoring their feelings which has been badly shaken, more so in the post-9/11 era.

It is also time for us to look inwards and ask whether our attitudes are any different from the West. Ask the Muslim, who has lost his family and home in the Gujarat riots, how it feels to live under Modi’s rule of law? Ask non-Hindu families how easy it is to get a proper accommodation in “forward looking cosmopolitan” Mumbai? Why do we have villages in Tamil Nadu (and elsewhere) where upper and lower class people are served tea in separate glasses? Did not Khairlanji ridicule our claims of abolishing untouchability? Every now and then, Shiv Sena thugs raise the anti-South Indian bogey, asking “lungi wallahs” to get out of Mumbai (this strategy no longer works, so it has been consigned to the Sena Strategic Archives), while the North-East remains an area which is present merely in the Indian map taught in geography classes in schools.

This brings into picture the nature of the Indian School of Discrimination. Are we merely victims of this racism which is making its appearance everywhere- politics, sports, cinema and you name it. Globalisation has brought about an amalgamation of cultures, at times when people are not ready for it. This conflict surfaces in such situations as exemplified by the “Big Brother” fiasco. So, while the economic status of people may have changed; it has not resulted in much of a social and cultural change.

Fair skin is marketed truly an asset in India, as illustrated by our classified and skin cream ads. Check out the matrimony section of any paper and you will see the demand for fair-skinned, beautiful girls with white, wheatish, “mera wala cream” and god knows what complexions. The Fair and Lovely Ads amplify our obsession with colour with ads promising fair skin and the resulting marriages. All instances of how we worship the “white colour” ourselves though of course, we do not admit it.

And don’t forget the Indian class discrimination. Just for a minute, think that instead of the sultry Shilpa Shetty, it is Rakhi Sawant out there. Would we be so sympathetic about the entire affair? Rakhi has already been branded a “slut”, “item girl” and what not. Her involvement in such an incident would have lead to people brushing aside the case and suggesting that she’s in it only for the money and so no point cribbing. And what is Shilpa there for? Showcasing Indian virtues!!! The poor Indian worker gets railed and abused doing menial work in the Gulf but don’t even expect the Government to bat an eyelid? After all, what are the rights of these nameless people in front of the Shetty babe?

So, while is is fine to condemn racism and other -isms let us not forget where we stand in these matters. Being self-critical is no weakness; as we move ahead, let us not forget that growth does not mean only sound economics but also an ability to respect different views, faiths, cultures and live in harmony in an inclusive fashion, without trampling anyone's feelings.

Finally, there is a business opportunity in every story. The Indian tourism department, in a show of Gandhigiri, invited Ms. Goody to India and the latest news is that she's going to be in India shortly. Now that is a smart PR job!!!

On the Rickshaw's Deathbed

My first recollection of the humble rickshaw is the immortal scene from the Bimal Roy classic Do Bigha Zameen. The protagonist Balraj Sahni keeps galloping across the roads as his customer screams “Aur Tez..Aur tez…” until he finally collapses and the cart topples. It’s been so many years now but this poignant scene remains etched in my consciousness even after such a long time. It once again flashed through my thoughts when I recently read reports banning the rickshaw from our roads. Things haven’t changed; we still want to move faster and faster and the sufferer remains the rickshaw puller…

The hand-pulled cart has been, for years, a quintessential Bengali wonder which has never made it big in the rest of the country. I’m not too sure why this has happened but the Communists now have plans to get rid of this “inhuman” profession which seems to be a stark reminder of everything the red card carriers want to bury. This city has long conjured cliches of humanity’s epic struggle for dignity, amidst grinding poverty. None more so than the Rickshaw wallahs – barefoot human beasts of burden fighting for their very existence on the city’s streets, immortalized on the silver screen by Dominique Lappiere’s City of Joy .

Kolkata attempted to ban the practice in 1996 blaming the rickshaws for clogging up the city’s already congested streets. The pullers fought off that challenge; a year later, it offered rickshaw pullers 7,000 rupees to turn in their vehicles but there were no takers. Now that the Government has amended the 1919 Hackney-Carriage Act governing slow-moving vehicles, you can find comrades hatching a battle plan once again, in their dilapidated union office.

The main grouse raised against these rickshaws is that it is inhuman for anyone to carry the burden of other human beings on themselves. It is a retrograde practice and goes against the spirit of human rights and compassion that we cherish so much more nowadays.

Yes, the hand cart is inhuman and the coolie has a glamorous job profile!!!

I am not too sure what is so inhuman about pulling a cart? It would be inhuman if they were forced into this but they are not. How different is it from the many other labour intensive jobs like working in mines or fields where people have to slog it out for a paltry sum of wages? Does banning the cart that feeds thousands of people give them a greater dignity of labour?

The Government has promised to provide a compensation and alternate means of livelihood. It has said that these hand-pulled carts would be replaced by cycle or motor ones. It has, however, not said if it would provide the rickshaw runners with these new vehicles. Even if the compensation were to be given, it would only be given to the licensed rickshaws, which form a paltry 10% of the overall rickshaws (As per the last estimates about a decade back, there are about 35,000 hand-pulled rickshaws and 45,000 cycle rickshaws). The rest of the faceless set of rickshaws would be driven into unemployment just because the Government thinks it’s better to do nothing than doing something which may be “undignified”.

The rapid pace of urbanization has a corroding effect on the environmental and social conditions in cities. With the auto industry accelerating and the Tatas all ready to roll out their 1 lakh car (where else but in Singur in West Bengal), we can expect an avalanche of polluting automobiles sweeping the roads. But when the Government thinks it’s more important to create SEZs for auto majors, why think about handling the road infrastructure or lack of it?

It may not be very glamorous for the State to be a part of the green brigade but the least it can do is not destroying such non-polluting transportation systems, which employ thousands of people, especially the most vulnerable ones. Cars are owned by well to do people and they contribute heavily to the atmospheric pollution. The sufferers are primarily the people who live in the fringes in cities – on the pavements and slums created by poor infrastructural policies.

Another argument put forward is that rickshaws slow down traffic, leading to congestion at all busy roads. Don’t even think about the numerous cars (currently growing at more than 20% rate) that clog India’s poorly managed roadways and the autos; the culprit is the poor man’s rickshaw. Since it’s easier to ban the rick rather than try to improve the urban infrastructure, the State is going ahead. We live in a fast world where being “slow” is a sin. There’s no time for anything in the world and we cannot wait for things to happen at their own time; anything that does not conform to this principle is archaic and needs to be removed.

Every city has its own set of landmarks or heritage structures which gives it that distinct look and it is the rickshaw, that has dotted the cluttered the lanes of Kolkata, that has served this purpose. Moreover, hand carts are generally used not in the city but in these numerous by-lanes which traverse through the length and breadth of the city. No other means of transportation can take their place through such places. But by targetting this vehicle, the only “non-polluting” means of transportation is being eradicated from the Earth.

But come to think of it, the reason for this sudden enlightenment and human compassion is nothing else - the State’s attempt to hitch their cart onto the band wagon of globalisation. And in this pursuit of money, there's no place for such images of backwardness which have to be cast into the past. Buddhadeb and his party are looking at giving it an image make over and so, the humble rickshaw will be booted from Kolkata’s bylanes. So, if you want the see the rickshaw again, the only place available may be the celluloid screen...

However, if you think that Bengal is the only place determined to get rid of its past, you are wrong. Delhi has banned rickshaws in many parts of the city and China, the home to the largest cycle market, is taking steps to ban them in Shanghai and other places. Globalisation is fine but can’t we try to modify it to have a policy of Green Globalisation, where everyone has a scope to live and let live…

Dollar Dreams from Andhra

It’s almost New Year now and a time when friends have their regular get together discussing the hits and misses of their lives over a dinner or a couple of drinks. This year also marks 10 years when I left my school to enter a new world .While contemplating a meeting to celebrate this, I realized that I am among the rare species of my batch who’s decided to not to pack my bags and flee India. There are just so many guys out there in the US that a get together there makes so much more sense than here.

What is that makes the average Andhraite so obsessed with the idea of going abroad or more precisely the US of A? He may not have any great visions on what to do when he goes there but he sure wants to land there, irrespective of the kind of work he does there. I have had friends working in petrol pumps and in bars in US which they would have never thought of doing in India. I attribute this to the mindset and the upbringing that has led them to believe that a Green Card ensures that the grass on the other side is always green.

I remember when I had given my job interview in ICICI Bank, I was asked how come I had done engineering and then moved over to MBA. I had answered that as a proper South Indian, I had become an engineer. May not be the best answer to give in an interview but that was the truth. South India generally suffers from a certain genetic disorder which forces them to become either engineers or doctors and I guess the problem is more accentuated in Andhra Pradesh.

The peer pressure of becoming an engineer and going to US is pretty high for the Andhraite. Right from childhood, he is constantly fed the mantra of “IIT” into his ears and by the time he is through with his primary school, he is ready to enter the haloed corridors of the IITs. In Andhra, students join coaching classes who tutor them to join Ramaiah or Krishnamurthy IIT coaching factories. These institutes then coach this select group of students for the IIT entrance exam. So, the crème-le-crème of the state is selected to train them into becoming IITians. For all those who do not enter IIT, we have a host of other engineering colleges which cater to this huge demand for engineers.

Post-engineering, most of the students take their GRE exam to do their M.S. abroad. Now this is of course a laudable attempt at higher education but you realize that the idea in many cases is not inspired by the concept of higher education but by the mere idea of going abroad and fulfilling the dreams that have been sown in their minds, for all these years, by their friends and family. They could be forgiven for assuming that it was for quality higher education. This argument must have made sense sometime back but now?

When one of my classmates had come down recently from Canada, he gave me gyan saying that the problem here is that people do not recognize you for your efforts unlike in the West and that there’s no strong incentive to work in such an environment. Nonsense, I say, what the hell am I doing here then? With a thought process like that and an outlook which fails to understand the progress we have made, I am really not surprised at such a remark.

The dowry amount is a strong incentive that drives parents to dream of their kids ensconced safely in California and elsewhere, while they spend days waiting for them to come back one day. So a B.Tech guy who commands a dowry price of say, Rs 10 lakh, would probably move into the 25 lakh+ category once he carries the “American abbayi” tag. I have seen palatial houses here constructed on the basis of the dollars sent back home but just a lonely couple waiting for their loved ones to come back one day and share their moments with them.

Friends tell me that this kind of exodus of people from one’s state is not a solitary case and they cite the classic example of Kerala where at least one member of every family works in the Gulf (more than 2 million of them in the Gulf). Numerically and statistically, the argument works but honestly, there’s no comparison between the 2 states when you look at the reasons for this. Majority of the Keralites employed in the Gulf work at lower strata in the Gulf society and do not represent the well-to do crowd there. This emigration is more to do with Kerala’s vehement anti-employment policy, which encourages people to look for other avenues for jobs.

But it is not my point that this flight of intellectual capital is wrong and that people should not leave our shores. After all, merely working in India does not make us any more patriotic. I am not even deriding the claims of subsidised technical education at the IITs though that can also be avalid point.Working outside India is a natural consequence of globalization where we export our most abundant natural resource-labour. This has also lead to a great deal of knowledge transfer that has been of immense utility to the country. The NRI remittances from there also contribute to a great deal in sustaining their families, though I also believe that this inflow (along with the IT pay packages) has fuelled to quite an extent Hyderabad’s inflationary real estate prices.

There’s something less tangible that we probably lose as we stay away from our roots; something I feel at a micro level when I am staying about 1500 odd km from my hometown. My point rests at a more emotional level about a sense of loss and erosion of identity that happens over a period of time.This becomes more pronounced as each generation goes by; somewhere akin to the loss of a certain genetic material found in us. Maybe it’s a purely emotional thought but as we go further away from our roots, there exists a certain loss of identity which is hard to regain as time passes.

To Hang or not to Hang???

A young lawyer from Delhi, a Kashmiri militant and an Iraqi leader – nothing in common among themselves until very recently but now their fates are linked by the Hangman’s noose and a slender ray of hope. All of them have been convicted of different kinds of crimes and sentenced to the gallows. The circumstances relating to their punishment and their crime is quite different but most people agree with the verdicts decided in all the three cases ;what is not consensual is the sentence which has been given. These sentences have once again brought into focus the debate on capital punishments.

Afzal Guru, the militant, has been sentenced to death for his role in the attack on the Indian Parliament – an attack which not only disturbed the Indo-Pak peace talks (arguably) but also struck at the centre of India’s authority. It is a crime that we all agree deserves to be punished and other than his immediate family and supporters, there are no takers on his innocence (that aspect is of course beyond the scope of this post). Afzal has himself not asked for mercy; it is only the human rights groups have asked for clemency (wrongly reported in parts of the press as seeking pardon).

Santosh Singh, currently a lawyer in Delhi, had been stalking a young girl Priyadarshini Matoo for a long time before he finally raped and killed her. He was acquitted by a Sessions Court Judge saying that though he knows he’s guilty he cannot be punished due to the lack of evidence produced by the police and prosecution. The media uproar and the subsequent public outcry lead to the case being reopened at the higher court where he has now been convicted. He has been awarded “death penalty” for a crime which does not fit into the “rarest of cases”.

Saddam Hussain faced trial for his role in the slaughter of Shiites in 1982 in Dujail, in retaliation for the failed assassination attempt on him. The case was dogged by controversies right from the beginning. Two of Saddam’s lawyers were killed while the first judge quit. He was not given enough time and space to prepare his defence. Ironically, the conviction would have been welcomed had it followed proper legal and moral protocols and been conducted under the auspices of an international tribunal. The timing of the verdict – just before the Senate polls – and the judge’s conspicuous animosity towards the accused has also raised questions on the fairness of the trial.

The vast majority of democratic countries in Europe and Latin America have abolished capital punishment over the last fifty years, but United States, most democracies in Asia, and almost all totalitarian governments retain it. As per Amnesty International's latest figures, a total of 129 countries (including Canada, Mexico, Australia, Russia, South American nations and most European nations) have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. Of these, 88 countries and territories have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, 11 countries have abolished the death penalty for all but exceptional crimes (such as wartime crimes) and 30 countries can be considered abolitionist in practice, i.e., they retain the death penalty in law but have not carried out any executions for the past ten years or more and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions. Though 68 countries retain and use the death penalty, the number of countries which actually execute prisoners in any one-year is much smaller. In 2005, 94 percent of all known executions took place in China, Iran, the USA and Saudi Arabia (US and Iran on the same stage, interesting, right?)

Beyond the statistics, we need to ask ourselves what is the purpose of the death penalty?

--Is it to remove from society someone who would cause more harm?
-- Is it to remove from society someone who is incapable of rehabilitation?
-- Is it to deter others from committing murder?
-- Is it to punish the criminal?
-- Is it to take retribution on behalf of the victim?

Death is not merely a legal undertaking but has a strong social, religious and moral angle to it. It is not just priests or saints who look at birth and death as God’s handiwork; many of us also do so. There is also a strong religious notion that the act of suffering has a purifying effect on the human spirit allowing for salvation in God. The concept of death as a retribution for the sins committed is slowly losing ground. It has been argued that the person must be given an opportunity to repent for his sins and so death cannot be the way out. Is the idea behind a punishment to reform the person or to set an example in the society? Probably both and we need a more humane solution.

Death penalty supporters argue that it is a powerful deterrent to crime but there are no statistics to support this assertion. If death penalty were a proper deterrent, there would have been a reduction in crimes in such places and eventually their number would die out because the crime rate would have fallen to such an extent. On the contrary, these penalties seem to be on a rise in several countries, undermining the very rationale given for it. Death penalty sentences in India have been on the rise lately compared to the almost non-existent cases in the 60s and 70s. These are supposed to be given in the rarest of cases as per the Supreme Court ruling in 1983 but there’s a danger of the judiciary becoming “trigger free” in handing out capital punishments, especially under greater media glare (The Santosh Singh case is a clear example of that). Moreover, terrorist crimes, serial killer crimes or crimes of passion are not dictated by pure logic, so the rationale of using death as a deterrent does not work.

The next argument is one of infallibility of judgment and the irrevocability of the death sentence. The Liebman Report in 2000, concluding a 23-year study conducted by Columbia University, USA, found that 68% of all death sentences awarded were reversed due to serious legal error. In countries like India where the judiciary is over-burdened and cases drag on for years, would it be a surprise if the number of judicial errors is high. If a person is executed because of miscarriage of justice which is subsequently discovered the extinguished life cannot be restored. An innocent life lost due to callousness on the part of the law would be too heavy a price to pay.

Finally, at a slightly more emotional level, just think about the executioner who has to carry out the death penalty. It’s a profession which caries with itself the social stigma of killing someone but there are people who have to carry out this task. Leaders may take decisions but the final blood is in the hands of the executioner who has to act on behalf of the State. I strongly recommend readers to read Shashi Warrier’s soulful book “Hangman’s Journal” in which he brilliantly chronicles the agony that a hangman goes through when he has to carry out an execution. Similarly, Adoor Gopalakrishnan explores this theme in his movie “Nizhalkuthu”. In the words of Adoor, “The Hangman is conventionally considered to be one with no fine feelings. The public does not expect him to behave like a human being, the law wants him to be neutral, the State sees him just as an instrument of its operation.”

Should a civilized society use death as a tool to counter crime? It is arguable and when you consider the plight and sorrow of the victims, it is difficult to advocate the abolition of death penalty. It is an emotional issue but law must take a firm stance on this. In the Indian context, we could look at increasing the tenure of the life imprisonment since 12-14 years may seem on the lower side for extremely heinous crimes. The media must also be careful in its coverage of events. Repeatedly bombarding visuals of the crime and upping the ante for action can lead to public pressures on judiciary to hand out “populist” verdicts.

Is the Right to Life absolute? I certainly think so but then if I were to put myself in the shoes of Priyadarshini Matto’s father, would I feel the same??? Maybe yes or maybe no….