M A I L B A G

Slums are not areas of darkness and despair

This refers to Ms Kiran Bedi’s write-up (Nov 30) regarding the type of environment that produces rapists. Her observations concerning slum dwellers like other urban elites are outdated. They perceive slums as areas of darkness and despair and slums are also considered as a cancerous growth of the city. Sociologists call such phenomenon as “culture of poverty.”

Kiran Bedi writes “Slums are today nurseries of delinquency, bad habits, violence, exploitation, illiteracy, unemployment, starvation for sex,.... and what not.” She believes that all rapists come from slums because of the social environment. But sociological studies within India and in other countries contradict this notion.

Gillan Tindel writes, Slum settlements, like all settlements, go through a maturing process. This is especially true of Bombay’s slums, where some residents have lived on a particular patch of pavement for 20, 30 and even 40 years. As slums persist, communities form, complete with neighbourhood associations, micro enterprises and codes of behaviour.”

The sense of community and industry within the slum belies grim physical conditions in which people live. Charles Correa argues that a slum dweller is “socially intact”, even though his physical conditions may be wreck. Perlman contends that a slum dweller is not marginal to society but integrated in it on terms detrimental to his interest. He is not socially marginal but rejected, not economically marginal but repressed. I have also done some research on slums of Amritsar and found that they don’t live in a “culture of poverty”.

Prof Ranvinder Singh Sandhu, G.N. D. University, Amritsar

Choudhry Shihab-ud-Din

In my letter “The rusk factor” (Nov 4) I had mentioned Choudhry Shihab-ud-Din as a minister before partition. According to Mr Prem Chand Mehta, he was the Speaker when Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan was the Premier of Punjab (Nov 26). Absolutely true. However, with all due respect for Mr Mehta, it is pointed out that Choudhry Shihab-ud-din remained Education Minister also for some time.

A septuagenarian friend, whose native village was situated near that of Choudhry, has confirmed this fact. Choudhry Shihab-ud-din visited Government High School, Zafarwal, in Narewal tehsil (Pakistan) where he studied up to class VIII, as the Education Minister, and liberally distributed “laddoos” among the students and promoted the Headmaster. My friend was then a student of class VII in that school. He built a new building for this school and also a mosque, named “Shihab Masjid” in his village, Rattal.

Choudhry Shihab-ud-din was an old friend of Allama Iqbal. Whenever he met the poet, he made humorous remarks about him because of his unusually great size and jet black complexion.

One day seeing him dressed in black in the bar room, the Allama said “Choudhry Sahib, aap bilkul nangey aa gaey” (you have come stark naked). On another occasion, when he wore a snow-white dress, the poet quipped in Punjabi, “O veikho kapaah vich katta” (see that he-buffalo in a cotton field). In an Iftaar party in his house, he asked for some water. Iqbal told a man to bring it in a big bucket.

He built a vast, magnificent house in Lahore and asked Iqbal to suggest a suitable name for it. “Name it Dev Mahal (Devil’s Palace)”, ejaculated the poet.

Once the scavengers of the Lahore Municipal Corporation went on strike. He called them for a dialogue. When he uttered in Punjabi “Bhaino tey bharaao” (sisters and brothers), the baby of a sweepress in the front row started weeping. She shouted, “Chup kar. Maama bahot maarey ga (keep quiet. Maternal uncle will thrash you). The people burst into guffaw.

Choudhry Shihab-ud-din was an outstanding advocate and most respected Speaker of the Punjab Assembly. In fact, he was a distinguished personality in the galaxy of the great men of his time.

Bhagwan Singh, Qadian

An efficient government!

Which is the most efficient government?

1. Which does not work for you but makes you work for it.

2. One which pays its employees perhaps three times more than the prevailing market rates for doing one-third of the job which they are supposed to do.

3. One to whom you pay perhaps up to 40 per cent of the basic rate as tax in different forms, to earn may be, 10 per cent profit on your sales.

4. One which remains in slumber when a smaller country than yours goes on doing all forms of acts of mischief and asks you to remain vigilant.

5. One which sold its goods like petrol, telecommunication services at three times the prevalent international prices and tells you that it is in the national interest.

6. One which can ensure high respect in public life for its officers of loss-making public undertakings solely on the strength of their questionable means of earnings.

7. One which commits major taxes collected on the salaries and pensions of its employees and leaves hardly anything for development.

8. One which exists on your taxes but have nothing on agenda for you except paying them more and more for doing less and less.

Surinder Garg, Chandigarh.